You need people to work.

A consequence of decreased fertility is increasing median age.

It's a compounding problem as you need resources and more young people to support older peoplevv

Why is it a cause for celebration?

Less people -> less congestion, less pollution, less finite resources consumption .

With automation we don’t need that many people as in the past.

Infinite growth is not sustainable.

To offer a counter-point, doesn't less people = less workforce over time, less economic activity, less competition, less able-bodied men for your military, making you more vulnerable compared to other nations with better birth rates?

Doesn't seem like a slam-dunk case but rather one of tradeoffs?

I get that infinite growth isn't sustainable, but shrinking isn't the only alternative, correct? It can be slower rates of growth.

Not necessarily, if you have automation and AI.

> less workforce over time

Manual workforce can be replaced by robots. We don’t need 4M+ uber drivers if we have 4M Waymos.

> less economic activity, less competition

Not if you compensate productivity with automation and AI. Work of 100 people done by one.

> less able-bodied men for your military

Ideally, you should have most of your army be robots and semi-autonomous systems. Military action should only cause equipment loss on your side and not personnel loss.

You still can have growth, just not the population growth, but productivity and quality of life growth instead.

> Why is it a cause for celebration?

Anti-humanist environmentalism?

I understand you’re not necessarily taking a stand one way or another on “anti-humanist environmentalism”, but surely it’s possible to be both in favour of declining population numbers for the environmental and other benefits, _and_ not be anti-humanist at the same time?

More planet for the rest of us. /s

How do you support retirees on a declining population? There's a reason there's all this pressure to raise retirement ages.

> There's a reason there's all this pressure to raise retirement ages.

From this end, the pressure to work later in life feels more like our only chance to avoid homeless retirement.

I only say that because that is the pure reality for many of us.