News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:"Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026 (1960) by somenameforme on Friday November 13, 2026 @10:26AM (#50484935)
Immigration is largely irrelevant at the current rates of decline for many reasons. A simple one, and without any controversy, is plain old numerics. A shared fertility rate of 1 will trend towards you losing approximately 2.5% of your population per year (which is why Japan's current deterioration will still be seen as the 'good ole days' in their future as they're only losing about 0.5% per year), compounding. So after 80 years, a single human lifetime, your population declines by 87%.

There simply are not enough people to replace this sort of decline, even if you just grab anybody regardless of skills, education, or even the ability to speak your language - which is not exactly a great recipe for a healthy country. Like if 60% of the world, by population, is losing 80% of their population over that timeframe, that'd be a global population decline of 48% with only 40% of people in the rest of the world. You'd need all of them and then a good chunk of their babies too, and that's for less than one human lifetime of change.

I'd say immigration is just kicking the can, but it scarcely even counts as that given how little of an effect it can have even at theoretically absurd levels.

Re:"Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026 (1960) by vladms on Friday November 13, 2026 @06:55PM (#50491903)
The problem is rates never stay the same. What you say is correct, if nothing changes. But things do change (for one, population is decreasing).

Let me put it another way, if a pandemic would reduce the world population by 50%, what do you think birth rates would do?

Now, if your argument is "it will soon be a shitty time to be old and it will last for a while", with that I do fully agree. The old people of today have it much easier than the old people in 30 years. But people in 80 years might have enough (resources, space, etc.) to start making children again at different rates.

I would say we will live and see, but doubt it is the case for that long periods...