A World Without Babies: Private choices and potent public consequences

Re:A World Without Babies: Private choices and potent public... by defrost on Sunday October 29, 2023 @11:05PM (#38065245)

I look forward to a future earth with fewer people.

More people than in the 1950s, to be sure, and the world didn't end then.

This "argument" is bad faith and predicated on living within our means being a bad thing a priori with no demonstration that this is in fact true.

    When future historians look back on the last half century, I suspect they will pass over war, terror, and populism to settle on infertility as the decisive event of the age.

Let's be clear, "infertility" is, in the eyes of the WHO:

    a disease of the male or female reproductive system defined by the failure to achieve a pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse.

and the worlds population is having fewer children in advanced economies largely through choice not disease.

It's well past time to start evaluating economies without the assumption that unlimited growth is the one and only tue goal and measure of success.

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Re:A World Without Babies: Private choices and potent public... by ALittleLight on Sunday October 29, 2023 @11:21PM (#38065335)

That seems pretty implausible. Some people have low fertility and others have high. Over time low fertility sub-populations will become less common and high fertility groups will become more common. That's just evolution. It's normal for a population to vary up and down a bit.

The future will look like Africa and South America becoming more populous and sending people to North and South America to work taking care of the elderly low fertility folks who have no children to take care of them. I don't know the details about Asia, but probably a similar pattern.

That type of thing plus MAID to get rid of the elderly that we can't care for - I highly doubt population will decrease. That's just not what evolution does.

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Re:A World Without Babies: Private choices and potent public... by 7thaccount on Monday October 30, 2023 @01:14AM (#38065936)

Demographics shows populations decreasing in mass anytime people urbanize as children become expensive instead of a necessity like on the farm. This is happening all over Europe, China, Japan, South Korea...etc. People are still having sex, but using protection and other means to not have babies.

Africa will eventually urbanize as well and as infant mortality goes down will be in the same boat as everywhere else. Religion will thwart this in some places (perhaps temporarily or maybe permanently).

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