I don't know if any realm of human sciences where extrapolating exponential growth yields trustworthy results, outside maybe of wealth accumulation, and even then not for 2 centuries.
The main ways it might not happen would be if either (1) they (gradually or suddenly) abandon their current culture for a less fertile one, (2) mainstream society persecutes them sufficiently. Both are entirely possible, but neither is anywhere near certain.
The situation for the (Old Order) Amish is more difficult, since – unlike ultra-Orthodox Jews – they'll run out of enough land to sustain their agrarian lifestyle, and will have to transition to a more urban one. While the more urban lifestyle of ultra-Orthodox Jews demonstrates it is possible for insular high fertility religious minorities to exist in an urban setting, there is a real risk that they might lose their fertility and/or their insularity in the process.
Also, people often bring up the problem Israel has with many ultra-Orthodox Jews not working and relying on government subsidies to live. That is much less of a problem in the US than it is in Israel, so the sustainability of that lifestyle is less of a barrier to future growth in the US than it is in Israel. Furthermore, the fact they manage to grow so much in the US without doing that, means being forced to stop doing that isn't necessarily going to stop their growth in Israel either.
And Kiryas Joel is expanding in its de facto area: as its spiritual leader, Satmar Rebbe Aron Teitelbaum likes to say, its “holy borders” go further than its legal boundaries under New York state law, although very likely the legal boundaries will at some point grow too. And, there are similar ultra-Orthodox communities in other parts of New York state, and also in New Jersey (especially Lakewood)
We already see this in Israel - a big increase in Haredi women pursuing secular careers. In other communities worldwide, that development ended up significantly undermining the patriarchal culture and producing a demographic transition to lower fertility. But, will it necessarily have the same consequences for the Haredim? We will have to wait and see: maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Precedent would suggest the Haredim won’t be able to avoid that outcome, but the situation on the ground suggests that maybe they will
I’m not claiming any of this is inevitable, only possible, plausible. Nobody knows for certain what the future holds-we shall find out
To be honest I really dislike this kind of vague speculative fearmongering when targeted at specific minority groups, which seems extremely dangerous. It historically blends right into overt bigotry and sectarian oppression.
The US has a long, proud tradition of all sorts of unusual sects and cults trying to do their own thing, often in somewhat closed communities, sometimes to the dismay of their neighbors, sometimes failing pretty badly, but usually without really breaking fair laws or causing serious mischief to anyone else (but also occasionally breaking a lot of laws and hurting people; the police should go after such cults). We all owe quite a few of the rights we take for granted to the hard struggle of some of these groups to make their own choices.
Kiryas Joel NY, Lakewood NJ, certain parts of Brooklyn. They basically have their own government, and they have far less state government oversight due to politicians not wanting to go against them.
They drive around NYC with vehicles that look like cop cars, acting like cops, which would get most other groups charged with impersonating a government official. They elect themselves to the school board and vote to prioritize funding for their group’s children, and deprioritize funding for any other group’s children. Etc etc.
Not that they are the only group to have done it, but these are your easy to google examples.
Basically, I'm repeating the contention of sociologist Eric Kaufmann's book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth–that in the long-run religious (ultra-)conservatives will dominate due to high birth and retention rates.
It isn't "fearmongering", because that assumes one is presenting a takeover by religious conservatives as negative. One might view it as positive. One might view it as neutral. I'm not presenting any value judgement of it here.
The contention isn't about any religious group in particular, it is about ultra-conservative religious groups in general. Ultra-Orthodox Jews happen to be the clearest example of the phenomenon, but there are other candidates – Old Order Amish, Latin Mass Roman Catholics, Salafist Muslims, etc.
Personally, I doubt ultra-Orthodox Jews will ever single-handedly takeover America, because in the scenario I am talking about, there will likely be other (non-Jewish) ultra-conservative religious groups, with which they'll share power. But I do think it plausible that in 2 or 3 centuries from now, North America will be a much more reliigious and much more conservative place than it is today. Not certain, of course, but plausible.
Peak-anything is just shorthand for "the first peak on record" because our culture and ability to record-keep has only really existed in a population and resource boom period.
I agree that circumstances might mean that the global peak baby might be 200-300 years away, but the thing that makes the current round of peak-anything relevant is that we don't know how our social and economic systems will function when certain things are in long-term decline (even if they do pick up again in a few hundred years).
If we knew what a few centuries of low birth rates or low oil consumption looked like, we wouldn't be nearly as interested in what "peak-those-things" means, the same way we're not all that interested in specific market peaks because we understand the boom/bust cycles and long-term productivity increases, etc.
Humans are presumably always going to want babies. There's nothing to really replace them.
On the other hand, coal/oil/pollution all seem highly likely to be a transient phase of industrialization. There's no reason to think we should ever go back to burning coal or oil once we have renewables.
Oil is tricky in that we do like plastic and there's no obvious alternate material, but the amount of oil needed for plastic will be minuscule compared to the amount of oil burned as we bootstrap to renewable energy sources.
What is a mainstream American?
I mean the term quite broadly and inclusively, since many of the big divides within American society (ethnicity, race, politics, class) make a relatively modest difference to fertility rates, and those differences appear to be shrinking over time
Secular pronatalism doesn't seem like it has a lot of staying power with most people as an ideology. But I've been on board for a long time, and so have a lot of my friends. So maybe the best answer is the common sense one: Wait a few generations for all those not susceptible to the secular pronatalism mind virus to select out of the gene pool, and hope society doesn't crumble under its own technical debt in the meanwhile.
I often joke to my peers: it doesn't matter what I invest in, my best financial decision was buying a house, my worst financial decision was having kids, the rest is just screwing around in the margin.
I think how the question is phrased really matters.
How much do you value your life? Or how much would someone have to pay you to kill yourself?
Are these even different questions?
I guess it's possible people are just ignorant, but in general I see people especially men acting recklessly enough with their lives that they seem to not ascribe the highest values to them. They would rather have a shorter life where they have more money and other things.
Driving was one I decided on early: I didn't get a driver's license until 25, to get well out of the danger zone for auto accidents; and then less than a year after I got it, I moved to Finland (an uncommonly safe country in its own right) and I've been living off of public transit and bike paths that aren't thin painted lines next to motor traffic ever since.
Everybody who gets up in the morning and behaves in the ways they honestly believe are right has religion, including the non-spiritual.
I write “beliefs” in quotes because there are beliefs (i.e. assumptions) that people might have philosophically on how they model the world, and there are “beliefs” that people espouse they have as a means to bond with other members of the tribe.
Yes, there's also a kind of mandate in the bible to be fruitful and multiply, and the fact that if you grow up in a larger family you tend to have a larger family, but I would bet the other factors matter more.
We don't have a few generations until we are beyond the point where we can mathematically recover unless we develop economic mass adult-cloning technology and develop the psycho-social faculties to integrate that into a healthy (enough) society. The world won't end, but let's just say hyper-advanced visions of the future seem unlikely at this point.
I'm guessing the only thing that will ever reverse this will be the invention of artificial wombs.
For what it's worth, I'm personally on board with having as many children as possible. Life is a cherished miracle. But I also can't bear children and take no risk in this endeavor.
Seeing it from the side of a Woman, it's no wonder birth rates are declining.
Whoa that reads almost as loaded as my reply:
I suspect collapse of nativity is why Feminism(tm) kills civilizations throughout antiquity.
In that way, the pendulum is already starting to swing the other way in the US with the loosening of child labor laws.
Secularly, though, we’d have to do something to make it not hellishly expensive and inconvenient to have children. The US can’t even extend the child tax credit, much less fix healthcare, housing, education, food deserts, or childcare all at once.
If you look at the actual statistics on the growth of ultra-Orthodox Jews in the US and Israel, and Old Order Amish in the US, the actual figures are inconsistent with “net result 0”
In 2023, Israel contained over 1.28 million ultra-Orthodox Jews, 13.5% of Israel’s population. It is estimated that by the end of this decade, it will be over 16%. [0] By shortly after 2065, it is estimated that 50% of Israeli children will be Haredi. [1] I think this is counterevidence to your claim - the social indoctrination processes necessary to maintain Israeli ultra-Orthodox Judaism have already scaled to over 1 million people, and are projected to scale much further than that
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredim-are-fastest-growing-po...
There is already a minority of them, the Hardal (Nationalist Haredi), who are happy to enlist, but whose birth rates, retention rates, and general lifestyle, are similar to the Haredi mainstream
It's so unhelpful to speculate about what the world will be like 100 years from now.
Think about what things were like in the 1920's and how unrecognizable the world is by comparison. Then, consider that technology is being developed significantly more quickly than it was in the 1920's.
Personally, I'd rather have fewer kids and be able to give them more attention and resources.
Plausibly, being much closer to mainstream culture makes it much easier for people brought up JW to leave, whereas people raised in communities where English isn't even their first language, find that much harder.
Only if their reproductive habits do not change in that time. Hard to project out 3 centuries with a good deal of accuracy.
I think your source's claim that "The planet will never see more babies than it has in 2013" is open to question.
To just use the US as an example: mainstream Americans have a declining fertility rate, and we have no reason to think that is going to reverse in the foreseeable future. Immigrants have higher fertility, but they tend to converge to the mainstream after a generation or two. So, that seems to support the article's contention, at least for the US – and if we look at other countries, we observe things are broadly similar, so that in turn supports that contention for the planet as a whole.
However, we also observe in the US small, ultra-conservative religious minorities, such as the Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jews, who still have a high fertility rate, and also have high youth retention (80-90% of their children will stay in the group as adults). Now, even though these groups are a tiny percentage of the population, the miracle of exponential growth means that within 2-3 centuries, they could be the majority of the US population, which could then result in a national baby boom. And, eventually, as they spread across the globe (they exist to varying degrees in other countries too), a global baby boom. So 2013's "peak baby" may end up being surpassed.
Of course, there is no guarantee that is going to happen – maybe they'll get to a certain size, and then they'll stop growing. And of course, it is physically impossible to sustain exponential growth indefinitely. However, it remains a possible future that they won't stop growing until after they've gotten so big that 2013 turns out not to be the year of "peak baby" after all. Maybe it will actually be 2213 or 2313 instead. Our descendants (if one happens to have them) will find out.