I think a lot more people would have children if they didn't have to worry about whether they could afford it. I'm not saying this would change the trend, but I think the best way to support people to feel able to have more children is better child benefits and community support. Better community support could both support people having more children and support an aging population.
Me and my wife are in very well paying jobs but the future is so uncertain that we don’t want children. Also, climate change is a MAJOR source of anxiety for us. If we have children, we don’t want them to live in hell. If politicians want more children: fix climate change, make housing a human right
Education is what drives the numbers down. You're more likely to have children if you're poor than working on your career, having children in many professions is a career killer so we focus on the career and then worry about children later. The problem, for women, is the biological clock. The longer you delay having children the more issues you might run into later on in life. I've seen this trap with many well educated friends where they delayed having children into their 30-35's and then no longer were able to due to all kinds of issues that appeared. I'm not saying everyone runs into these problems but I'm a firm believer in having kids early on and then work on your career if you even want to bother. Our purpose on this planet is simple: breed, eat and sleep. That's it. Everything else doesn't matter.
@@huldu But is it education then, or is it how accepting jobs are of people having children? Plus how does gender equality and paternity leave factor in?
@@conlon4332 It seems the more educated people are the less likely they are to have children, or a lot less of them. Compared to very poor areas where they can easily have 5+ children in a household. I'm looking at India and many countries in Africa. Not sure how it is in Brazil to be honest.
Most people who need support didn’t want their children. Poor people have more kids than they desire. Free, readily available birth control and abortion will go a huge way to make every kid wanted and happy.
There is strong benefits for having kids in developed states and it’s been a disaster. Here in Estonia we give women three years of paid leave for having kids (1,5 full pay and 1,5 half pay) and our birth rates and numbers are literally the lowest in our history here. With the quality of life quality, despite our high standards now, people had children during soviet occupation and tsarist rule, not now. What causes people to have kids is a cultural thing, not what people claim here.
I will always be deeply suspicious of those who say " more babies we need more workers!" Those people will pay your babies low wages until they can replace them with robots!
Every worker is also a consumer so in theory it should be a wash (and additional stress on the environment at this point), but the fact that billionaires are worried about population growth slowing down proves in my mind that they see workers as just a means of profit skimming off of people's backs. Who do we work for? Also, I can think of plenty of jobs that aren't truly necessary where these people could be taking care of the elderly instead. The real problem? The elderly usually don't have the money to pay a competitive wage, so people are off doing other jobs instead.
They will also want your children to work in meat packing plants and other hazardous environments, simply to fill job openings, usually, as you say, at low wages and benefits.
Viewing increased consumption as a constant necessaity is the real problem. We simply cannot have infinite growth with finite resources. Reaching a steady equilibrium based on "enough" should be our goal. ~And billionaires don't fit into that picture.~
Agreed. Even if a lower population will cause a bunch of economic problems we simply have no choice but to go that route. Endless expansion is impossible. We can only keep becoming more efficient at things like growing food for so long.
Best way of preparing is rethinking our current economic models that count on continuous growth in consumption and focuses on other metrics to measure quality of life and prosperity
BAM 💯 exactly ! Couldn't have said it better myself. On the upside, if any of the younger Gen wants a job in nursing it'll b in high demand taking care of the old timers. Lol
This video doesn't even cover some of the biggest issues with the decline in childbirth. Lack of homes. Lack of high paying jobs. The death of the middle class. The exploitation of the growing lower and working classes. The fact that people can't be sure if their children will starve to death in the streets because of climate problems. The consolidation of wealth into the hands of the few while the many suffer. All this stuff is being brought on by governments and corporations, then we get talking points fearing the collapse of the economy based on this stuff but it still keeps happening. Nobody is fixing the root of the problem. The rich are ruining our world with their greed, the governments with their corruption. Our planet is dying, our societies collapsing into war and poverty. No shit people don't want big families.
It's not that simple and that's probably not the primary reason why people don't have kids these days. Historically there used to be much more war and poverty yet fertility rates were higher. In fact tough conditions usually prompted higher reproductive rates in order to compensate for the high child mortality or high mortality in general.. (Look up r/K selection theory.)
@@kyjo72682and the children can be used as free hard labor. They worked the farms. Led the house. In a lot of economies we sent them to work as young as 3 years old.
@@kyjo72682people can’t afford to have more children, and it’s not about child mortality rates now, it’s about the quality of life for those children in the future.
@@kyjo72682 Yep. The main reasons people don't have kids are a) Its too expensive and b) They simply don't have to. The GOP is trying to tackle reason (b) by taking away all the rights women have fought for over the past century. They want to be able to force their choice of woman to marry them (the woman's opinion doesn't matter), have as many kids as the man wants (why does he care its not his body), and prevent any option for divorce (well, the man can instantiate divorce of course.. its just the women who wouldn't be allowed). They don't really have a solution for reason (a). But they also don't really care thanks to the way they want reason (b) handled - if the man decides he no longer want to support his family, _he_ always has the right to just fuck off and leave his wife to try and survive on her own with however many kids he forced her to have. Obviously they won't use such caustic terminology when describing their "plan" - they'll wrap it up in phrases like "family values" and call you "woke" if you point out the glaring abuses their "plan" not only allows but encourages. The legislation they've been trying to get passed (and have succeeded at in a lot of red states) tell the real story though: All their flowery speeches and "promises" that they won't abuse their new laws is just bullshit and smokescreens. They simply want to go back to a world where white Christian men get to do whatever they want and everyone else exists in a state of semi-bondage if not outright slavery for the sole purpose of supply said white Christian men with their heart's desire. (They generally don't mention that the goal is actually "rich white Christian men" - they need the support of the poor white Christian men to even attempt to pull this off, and outright telling the poor that they'll get even more shafted is not a good way to win their support. Letting them believe they'll be allowed into the "in group" however works wonders and what's a few life-altering lies between "friends", right?)
Honestly, for ecological reasons, I can’t see population growth as a good thing. Better for our societies and economies adapt and the population shrink.
Automation, AI, etc means fewer and fewer jobs will be available starting NOW, not just in the future, so fewer people will be needed. Shrinking population mania is mostly about military, religious, and ethnic nationalist power agendas. The boomer birth numbers were never sustainable from their beginning. The downwards birthrate trend starting with Gen X is also a partial correction to abnormally large post-world war boomer numbers.
@@louisanowI totally agree with you, well put. We should be glad that at last correction of abnormality is happening. Instead of fearing it why not take measures?
@@SoftHeart-l9w Exponential population growth is not an abnormality. If you look at evolutionary history it is rather a norm. All life forms try and expand into all available niches which leads to exponential growth which then typically levels off when it aproaches the carrying capacity of the environment, and the fertility rates are balanced by mortality rates (due to resource scarcity, competition, predation, etc.). What is _actually_ abnormal is the current "voluntary" population shrinkage which is not caused by the above factors.
@kyjo72682 In nature, wherever exploding population reach tipping points, massive die-off in many painful forms also happens. Exploding population is usually an indication of imbalance. It's ludicrous to consider the human animal entirely excluded from all the laws of nature. Our many abilities to defy nature do not entirely exclude us from all the consequences.
@@sambitmishra1229and we sort of coped with an eightfold rise in population in two hundred years. So we should be able to cope with some level of population decline.
Humans did just fine when there were only a billion of us. We don't need 9 or 10 billion. Even 5 billion people is way more than we "need" to sustain civilization. Most of these "advances" in agriculture have been devastating to the environment and to species diversity. If we can adapt to going from 3 billion to 8 billion in my lifetime, we can certainly adapt to going back to 6 billion.
The problem is while the population is growing there is a lot of young people to take care of the old people but when the population is shrinking there's a lot of old people and nobody to take care of them.
"Humans did just fine when there were only a billion of us." - what do you mean by "fine"? Many of the horrors of wars and slavery, and a great deal of ecological devastation, happened when the population was a billion.
@ginalDanEdwards Well, I certainly wasn't praising war, was I? Why would you think that? And do you think we'll stop having war and greed, etc. when we have 10 billion people on the planet?
My wife and I chose to wait until our 30s for children. It let us establish our careers and become financially secure. Also, by only having 2 kids, we can better focus on each one.
People still speak about it as if it is some revolutionary idea. While my grandma figured it out in 1952, when she had one child when she was 25, and stopped after that
Sounds great, in theory. But, if everyone had only one child it would not be enough to replace the parents who had the one child and the population would eventually decline. Unless a bunch of other people decide to have huge families to make up the difference. That is China's current demographic issue since adopting their one child policy. Now there aren't enough young people to keep the economy afloat; buying houses and goods to support their burgeoning families, if they're even able to afford a family. Not to mention enough young people to take care of their elderly population that outnumbers the younger generations. This is the "nightmare" of Replacement Theory that white nationalists are having these days. The idea that other ethnic groups will take over the country because so many educated white people have decided to forego having children at a young age so they can live their lives, have their careers, and make their money before having children. It works for some folks to wait, but not everyone's bodies want to wait and they face an uphill battle when they finally decide to try. Which is why the Alabama decision on IVF treatments is such a kick in the nuts. A lot of people rely on IVF as they have children later in life. In a nutshell, it's beyond complicated when, as a government you see your population as cattle and just need them to make babies for your economic and military agendas. In my opinion, the low birth rate is the best thing for the planet, the economy can take a back seat and people can learn to adapt. As much as all of the adults in my life told me I would, I always knew I wouldn't have children and I have succeeded thus far.@@KateeAngel
Brilliant, engaging, calm in the face of flustered billionaires and policymakers who see a person with a uterus as a customer-printing machine, and so instructive. Thank you, Sinéad Bovell and team!
@@wexpmedia5889 I hope you are being sarcastic, but either way you hit the nail on the head, the people complaining about the environment now and how people should off themselves or whatever, are the same people who were doing eugenics and population control in the last century. It’s actually a pretty good rule of thumb that if your solution to X problem is to decrease the human population, you’re probably the bad guy historically.
@@G-Rex95 I appreciate how you feel, but we are all part of the community of humankind, and children are the ones who will carry forward our race. They are the hope for a better world, if they are raised in love. I hope you gain some hope for the future!
High-intensity fertiliser indeed.. The nitrogen is now screwing ecosystems everywhere it is used on this massive scale. That's not a solution either. It's a problem that we created that allowed us to grow rapidly.
Yep, agriculture is one of the big exceptions to the general rule that population decline isn’t sufficient to stop climate change. No matter how clean and efficient we get in our energy use, at the end of the day more (and more affluent) people translates to more food, which tends to mean more nitrogen fertilizer and more land clearing. And as Europe is showing right now, farmers have little interest in the costs necessary to grow food in an environmentally efficient way - it’ll always be easier to use more fertilizer/pesticide or (if you’re in the right region) slash and burn wild lands. A decline in population (especially in affluent nations) could ease the pressures of agriculture on the climate and biosphere. It’s not a silver bullet, but it can help.
Not to mention the devastation that "Big Ag" and its horrific pesticides are wreaking in our insect and wildlife populations: neonicotinoids in RoundUp, glyphosate, dicamba, ad nauseam. Informed and thus outraged citizens have been calling on the Environmental PROTECTION Agency to ban these killers for years -- to virtually no avail. They make too much $$$ for the GOP PAC donor-companies to pass up, no matter what happens to their own kids' planet....
The birth rate decline is actually good news for people and the Earth. We're overpopulated now, trampling the Earth and decreasing biodiversity. A further increasing population would mean even higher housing costs (and the rent is already too damn high!), and a downward pressure on wages, particularly for lower wage workers. A lower birth rate is a collective solution to these problems.
I'd like to dispute the closing tag about living in a "shrinking world". The smaller the human population the larger the world. Humans aren't the only thing on this planet. Also, by changing the way we farm, we've only accelerated environmental collapse (extra chemicals, soil malnourishment, loss of nutrition in the food, and collapse of surrounding environments).
Thank you for this beautiful statement! Yes, fewer humans with less stress in their lives and on our living world! It could work if it was more or less an effort that we all worked on.
Commercial farming uses chemicals to grow as much food as they can to sustain the growing population. I don't blame the farmers, they are only doing their job. If people have nutritious food, clean environment and supported advanced medical technology, the elderly will not need to depend on the younger generation.
IMO there are far too many people in the world NOW. This decline in population is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. The world will have to adjust, and it will in time. And if there are fewer consumers of goods, which is the real issue with magnates obviously, they will have to adjust too. I chose to be child free years ago, and am glad I did. ✌
Agree. This is an unnecessary & silly video, imo -- another TH-camr selling some dumb thing they want us to "worry about" that is 1) DECADES in the future, ignoring all the potential changes that length of time entails and 2) is selling their concept based on pseudo-science. Hello? The fact that there could potentially (but not realistically) be far fewer humans around to pollute and screw up the planet is NOTHING to worry about, now or in the future. We should embrace an educated and low-birthrate populace in as many nations as possible. I chose to remain childless back in the 1980s due to what I learned about the advancing (& yep, still ongoing) environmental destruction of our one and only planet. There is not one second since that I have ever regretted protecting my children by never subjecting them to what's coming. I would LOVE to be proven wrong about human nature (selfish greed alone is doing a "great" job at killing us off.) But so far I've been right all along. Dammit.
you will regret It once your old sick and all alone. Who will come to get your dead body off the floor? In Korea, thousands of 80-year-olds are found decomposing months after they have died. You will die alone miserable with no one to look after you.
@@adrianthoroughgood1191 Trouble is they don't really have any direct control over the speed of reduction. They can gain indirect control by ensuring that families of the "right" size have the support they need to be happy and healthy, but that typically implies taxing the rich and legislating the corporations so they're pretty resistant to taking that option. Which means like climate change, they'll wait until its too late and then attempt to do something drastic as a last-minute fix which will likely help for a year or two before makings things much, much worse when the unintended or overlooked consequences hit.
Population decline is inevitable. How we act collectively doesn't have to be a problem. If "we" don't charge our economic thinking, it will be a problem.
Consupmtion isn't the driver of the economy, and "we" are not using it. Profits is the driver and it is the Capitalist class who use it. The rest of us are just being exploited with no choice of anything else. We can't change the economy. This is another blind road. We need to change the entire mode of production.
Thank you for this. I'd thought "everybody" was going nuts. I am glad to hear I am not alone. Somehow. I was hearing whispers throughout the vid over the concern to fewer wallets. Then she brought it forward. Tell industry to get over it. Yeah I know, it is going to be rough making adjustments, but there it is.
Population will ebb and flow as resources allow. Everybody down n out can't afford a mouth to feed. Lack of economic slaves? I somehow can't feel sympathy for it. I dunno, that's just me. What goes up must come down.
Well if you just hear "there's going to be 3 billion more people" and connect that with ecological disaster, I guess it would make sense. Looking a bit more into it, it makes way more sense to keep the population the way it is by simply making it possible for people to have as much children as they would like. And especially by making it easier for people to have more space, homesteads etc., people would both be an asset for the planet as for the economy and at the same time live happy lives. Maybe it sounds utopian but it's been done before.
Less children means less taxpayers to pay for the elderly and potentially not enough care workers to look after them, even if they have good enough private pensions to pay for care, (assuming robots aren't up for the job by then). People will have to, as they did in most of history, work untill they can't and then rely on their children and grandchildren to look after them when they are too sick to work. The problem is, birth rates are low and not everyone is having kids, so many people may be left old in a declining economy with no support from family or the state..
Birth rates are low and staying low. Japan is dying along with South Korea. It is not just about consuming, how do we supply all of these seniors with support in their old age with fewer people in the workforce?
It's easy: By expanding the social sector massively. This is of course very expensive under our current mode of production and will never happen. So emiserasion is, for now, the future for us. The alternative is to change the mode of production, which will enable us to solve every problem we currently face.
FEWER CHILDREN who are raised by EDUCATED and EMPLOYED mothers and fathers mean a better life for those children. What parent on earth does not want that?
There's a disconnect between how our civilization views humans vs. every other species. An increase in food supply results in an increase in the feeder population. Everytime.
Wait, you mean an increase in the food supply means /fewer individuals starve/?? 😮 Also, we have this magical thing called birth control that other species haven't figured out yet as far as we know.
@ajchapeliere actually, an increase in food supply means more people starve. By shipping grain from Middle America to Saharan Africa, the population explosion there continues, furthering the desertification of the planet. Birth control may work on an individual level, but when you look at species population as a whole, it doesn't seem to have an effect. There's thousands of years of data supporting that statement, but not even one year since the invention of birth control has human population decreased. Human population increases every year, so more land is put to agriculture to feed the starving millions, but every increase in food production is met with an increase in population. Every time. For every species. There's absolutely no proof to the contrary.
The growth in the food supply is slowing down, slowing down global population growth along with it. The peak in the global food supply is projected between 2025-2035, and declining afterwards, thanks to a projected peak in the global natural gas supply around 2030, and its derivative, fertilizer. So, contrary to popular opinion, food is very much at the heart of the matter. Consumers can directly see this in action at the grocery store, with the ongoing shrinkflation since 2009, and groceries just getting really expensive.
There are good reasons for the disconnect. There are examples of species that experience boom-and-bust population cycles. I feel a bit squeamish at the prospect of that kind of rapid die-off in humans. Also, humans are now dominating the whole Earth. That means we could cause (or are already causing) a mass extinction event that will change the planet forever.
When considering the impacts of demographics we should seek opinions of other scientists besides economists who are only concerned about money. We should also remember that absolute numbers are less important than population structures (kids vs teenagers vs adults vs retirees vs elderly people). For example, in the 80s there were a lot less people, but the economy was okay'ish generally. Elderly people are viewed by economists as "unproductive" and / or "a strain on national resources". The problem is they are only valuing people by work productivity & spending. But let's take a look at this more closely - as housing becomes more unaffordable, young people are staying at home longer, supported by parents - parents often give kids a financial step up by, for example, paying a deposit on a house or helping buy a car etc - grandparents often provide free childcare while parents work - older people are more likely to volunteer for welfare agencies & charities providing free social assistance to people govs are failing - older people provide lnowledge & wisdom gained over years of life experience - the cost of healthcare in general is because it's been privatised and corporations make big profits from health services - this is gov failure not the fault of the elderly - city a generally developed & managed to get rich men in fancy cars to / from work and fails to properly cater for ALL residents,incl the elderly, impacting their health & welfare awa via pollution from unregulated industry & manufacturing (again this is due to gov failure) There's lots we can do to support families like providing family planning services, and ensure families have everything they need to raise a happy family. Let's see if govs are doing this - serving the interests of economic & political elites only - rolling back the rights of women - gender inequity - no paid maternity leave, discrimination in career opportunities during family years etc - inaction on the ecological, biodiversity & climate crisis - slow on action against racism, sexicism, agism & misogyny etc - high rates of GBV & sex trafficking globally - heavy taxation of the middle & lower classes - cut backs on spending on social support services - privatisation of many essential services such as food, housing, energy & healthcare awa high cost of living etc Soon the only jobs available to most of us will be soldier, worker drone or sex slave. Our world is slowing disintegrating around us... not a good place for kids to grow up in. Perhaps its best that we don't - if there's very little hope for the future, why bring children into it? Tx for an interesting take on the demographic crisis. It was a bit short though - perhaps a series looking at different aspects of the crisis as there's a lot to consider (psychology, sociology, enviro sciences, development sciences, urban planning & development, gender studies, economics, healthcare & education, political sciences etc)
@@marmarlittlechick We need to recognise & value our older people. In many parts of the world multi-generational households are common, sharing resources & helping each other out. And after a lifetime of taxes, raising families, supporting the economy & contributing to society (eg donating to charities, community development, perhaps serving in the military in wars etc) govs & economists should shut up & pay up (like providing discounted integrated health services), awa make urban centres great places for our older folk to stay healthy, engaged & contributing to society instead of being stuck at home or in a care home (if they are still active). In my community retired people pretty much "run" our local library - volunteering, mending books & fundraising!
Funny thing is, old people SPEND. Funny as in irony On our costs, our families and the stuff they want, on our doctors most of all, LOL And we are the last of the workers with pensions to spend. When our demographic bulge goes, there will be a big dip in spending which WILL bother the privatizers' bottom line. *That is why they want more kiddos in the pipeline, or so they think.* As you hint, a soldier/sex worker/ factory drone economy is not enough to keep the spending power UP the way they need for eternal growth of profits, even if they figure a way to keep everyone eating.
@@CitiesForTheFuture2030 There is a wee problem with most of what you said, namely, that for the most part what we would consider extremely progressive and egalitarian societies i.e. the Nordic and Baltic countries still have below replacement fertility levels. At the end of the day, some of the things you mentioned do matter, but they don’t matter as much as other social factors, the one exception to the rule of rich countries having below replacement fertility levels is Israel, now Israel still has a very well educated female workforce, and is generally Considered to be a relatively progressive country, especially when compared to its neighbors, but underlying all of it is an immense sense of family, community, and national/ethnic identity, trying to be killed constantly for 2000 years kind of does that to people, but I digress. In short people aren’t having kids because they don’t view it as a priority in developed countries.
@@allthenewsordeath5772 Most cultures have firmly entrenched family values. Perhaps high rates of urbanisation & nuclear families is losing its sense of community or family support structures? In my country parents go to cities to work with the grandparents left to raise the grandkids. Poverty & high rates of GBV also means high rates of teenage pregnancies. My country's fertility rate is above replacement rate. Any social issue is complex & different set of social constraints etc will exist. Most countries where fertlity rates are high there's usually high poverty & lack of respect for human rights, especially for women. If all things were equal everywhere would fertility rates be low everywhere? It's also interesting to think about what would make fertility rates increase? Some countries offer consumer goods like a tv, and other countries offer child support services eg free hours of childcare. So far I don't think anything is working...
Technological growth will stagnate and possibly regress. Old people will be abandoned and die or else tax rates will have to increase exorbitantly to pay for their sustenance. Do you think the average person in Japan is optimistic about the future after 30 years of near zero growth? They are not. Literally 95% of the people in Japan are very pessimistic about the future, whereas almost nobody was in the 1980s. That is going to be the entire world, or worse, in about 1-2 generations time.
Reducing the human population is absolutely a good thing - for one thing, it could mean less human sprawl into hitherto undeveloped/wild land areas. ' If we could focus on any one thing, I'd strongly urge advocating a revolution in attitudes toward consumption. We need a shift in global philosophy away from uncontrolled consumption, casual consumption ("click once to order from Temu!"), and an end to planned obsolescence that requires frequently replacing everything from shoes to major appliances. Reducing the excessive and needless buying of ephemeral, non-recyclable, non-sustainable goods will have a ripple effect throughout the world: stop supporting polluting industries, stop giving money to the private equity interests that are behind them, stop putting money in multi-billionaire pockets. I'm not sure how to make that shift happen: young people, though far more aware of and concerned about climate change, show no signs of limiting their consumption of the very consumer goods that exacerbate it.
Sadly, if all of the kind and intelligent people stop having children because they see the effects of humanity at large, think of who will be left having all of the children... the Earth will be left in ruin by the greedy, impulsive, war mongers of the world. I guess they will eventually consume themselves and humans will cease to exist, so maybe it's a good thing. Who knows... @@fuxan
Well, they do in some ways. Young folks are organizing clothing swaps as a way to have their fast fashion without buying more. They just need to be taught to do their own alterations and mending as will.
@@fuxan or you can have children and not live a consumerist life. you can live a simple life, most of the world though not by choice does live a simple life. like replace car by bicycle.
Smaller populations make it easier for gov control why do y’all support dystopian futures do me a favor and go read the Georgia guide stones so you can see what they planned all along
No, it's sustainable. But progressive ideology isn't and is what's going to lead to our extinction. If it wasn't for conservative subcultures like the amish.
The population isn't stabilizing, but collapsing. This is in spite of the fact that humans are still enormously increasing their consumption per capita of almost everything, so that is not the limiting factor or reason why, and could probably continue to go up a lot for quite some time to come in theory.
@@WilliamSantos-cv8rr The situation is especially dire in east Asia, in South Korea for instance at current levels by the end of the century there will be approximately one child for every eight retirees. To put into perspective as to how much of an apocalyptic drop that is in population the black death wiped out around 1/3 to 1/2 of Europe , at the current rate if extrapolated over 200 years, the population of South Korea will drop by 98%.
@@ochotunesnature has recovered from Permian extinction. So it can recover from any current crisis for sure. Humans should worry about themselves, we are destroying our own future, not all of life or the planet
Um scuse me, Skeptical Boomer here again - those new farming techniques _ especially pesticides and enormous monoculture as shown in your clip there_ have resulted in exhausted soil and nasty resistant pests!
Thank you for saying what I was thinking. My eyebrows shot up when that was offered as a perfectly acceptable result of a growing population. Nu uh. I'm not at all in agreement that bs farming techniques and GMOs pretend to solve our food problem. Add to your list allergies and/or adverse food reactions, actual malnutricion and soil death. I'm also in agreement w/ an above comment that it needs to be discussed not only from the economists' pov, but also scientists and doctors. (from a 'Boom-X' cusp child)
@@eba44These farming techniques suck, yes. But billions of people starving sucks worse. Learning to feed the entire population without the problems of current agriculture is a really important challenge, but romanticized visions of “family farms” aren’t going to work.
Not to mention fertilizer & pesticide runoffs into rivers, lakes & oceans. There's a huge "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico thanks to the runoff coming from the Mississippi.
However it's done, billions have been saved by new farming techniques. GMO food has played a huge part (including pest repellent crops meaning few to no pesticides) and being able to grow something like 4-5 times the amount of certain crops on the same amount of land. We have enough food easily to feed everyone on Earth. And we are constantly developing new techniques for further pest resistance (same story as resistant bacteria) and I believe we are pretty good at the whole switching soils for different crops in different years and not using some soil for a while so as not to ruin it. I'm not sure how the whole soil thing works but I get the gist and in developed countries, I'd bet anything most are doing this properly. Developing countries are probably more of a mix. But the point is....Starving people can't create, invent, become x profession, make families, etc. So let's save billions first, which we have done and can't turn back on now, and now we fight the downsides to modern agriculture, without reducing output. I'm personally optimistic about this because of advancements technologically that I have seen.
It's just my opinion, but I think the top 1% of those who hold all the money in the world are worried they will not have any consumers or workers if the middle class shrinks. This is not a concern for those of us living paycheck to paycheck (paying increasing cost of living, taxes, etc...) trying to make ends meet.
Even middle class wealth building and financial security is based on interest rates and stocks (401k), the increase in value of which is tied to revenue growth. That doesn't happen if the customer base shrinks. Even those living paycheck to paycheck will feel the pain when things get expensive due to a shrinking market.
@@BSGSVI agree with you given the current circumstances. That needs to change. It isn't working well for the majority. Short term, things will get more expensive, but then corporations will have to re-evaluate their business, which will drive down expenses. How do you justify a head of lettuce, by a ratio of income to a head of lettuce, costing much more than it did 40 years ago? Eggs, same. Aren't we more efficient with those processes? Mass production. More with less. Unfortunately, humans are stuck in a short-duration, narcissistic, feedback loop. Meaning, the individual's concerns of today overwhelm the potential societal catastrophes 150 years from now. This couldn't be more apparent than with the 1%. IMHO, omitting inflation, revenue growth has nothing to do with profitability. I realize this is a much bigger discussion with many minute details, but in the end, revenue growth does not determine the health of a company or how it pays out profit to stockholders (keep the money and grow - price appreciation, or pay a dividend - grow slower). Managing revenue, cash flow, and profitability drives the health of a company. The challenge lies in the ever-consistent need to grow revenue, paying huge sums to the few, at the expense of the employees and consumers. "More with less" is the motto of every company I've ever worked for and btw thanks for reading... gotta get back to work now. :)
@@BSGSVYes this video was very general but the root of the issue is how do you maintain savings in an economy that shrinks every year for decades. Today Japan can invest in American stocks but when every country is shrinking there will be no haven for money to grow.
The best thing governments can do to incentivize people to have more children is to offer free and low cost childcare. I don't have kids and even I know this.
Love your channel and the topics you touched on in this video. IMHO, I wish you had given more time to the economics of what families face today. In my opinion, population collapse is a concern of the wealthy 1%. They're worried they'll run out of workers and consumers. Yeah, we may see a shortfall in services in 100 years, but that just translates into less profit for the 1%. Most families, at least the middle class in the US, require two incomes to keep up. Who wants to have children that will be raised by a daycare center while the parents are working to pay for the increase in the cost of living, increase in taxes, and the increase of having children. E.g., my brother and his wife are in their late 40s and they are still paying off their student loan debt. We want the fertility rate to go up, we need to take a look at the economics and the quality of life of these "workers and consumers".
Why do people act like this is some mystery? Wages down, income inequality up, college costs way up and childcare costs way up. What exactly did people think this would lead too?
Corporate greed has devastated the middle class in America. I would have loved to have a family of 4 kids, but there's no way we could have afforded more than 2, especially with both parents in the house needing to work. If you want the population to grow, either fund child care with public money, or make it possible for a larger family to be supported by one wage earner.
@@MaoRatto Oh, it’s almost like the social revolutions of the 60s were a veiled attempt to increase economic productivity by propagating things like no-fault divorce and pushing more women into the workforce OK that’s a bit of an oversimplification to be sure but look at the number of corporations that will offer their female employees Insurance that covers birth control and abortions, and see how many of them also offer their female employees paid maternity leave.
I think those things should be publicly funded too but if you look at many European countries where they are funded, birth rates are well below replacement
A LOT of countries seem caught in a "no take only throw" mentality when it comes to increasing birthrates. they want the benefits of a high birthrate without making the social, economic, or political that would actively incentivize women to give birth. as long as women are unable to rely on supports like affordable childcare, labor laws protecting their job, and others, they can't reliably trust in their ability to provide the best life for themselves and their children
That is not true: that is a false narrative. akin to "baby makes you poor" and poor people will steal and commit crime. AFRICA IS SUPPOSE TO BE POOR according to Western press but they are the only continent that can afford children. why? when the West is soooo rich yet cant afford a natural process of having children. the answer is culture. JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE LESS PEOPLE: does not negate the fact the top 1% wont take more of the pie. Simple mathematics of supply and demand is fair if the played fair. just because 100🏘🏠🏡 homes are available in the market = does not mean its open to 100 families. 1 family will own 90 of those homes. that is what is collapsing. i hate to be cold but look how many people died during the pandemic in the West and housing is still hard to come by. there are less people since 2020 = yet nothing changed in the dip in population. its how the demographic pie is cut ; not how much pie is baked. about 7 to 12 families in the USA owns most of the wealth. and its echoed across the globe. Earth allows you to grow food for free. but they discourage it because they want you to get a job and give up your 24 hours to them. this is how wealth is created; its parasitic
Africa's population is exploding primarily because their agricultural technology is just now starting to be brought into the 21st century, and they're starting to produce some real first world levels of agriculture.
You statement is correct, but maybe incomplete. I’d go with …. birth rate is very high in some developing countries. In almost all developing countries the fertility rate is dropping like a stone. Nigeria for example, 7.2 children per woman in 1970. 2024, 2.5. It’s just that many of those people are going to live into their late seventies, so population will continue to climb for decades. BTW, Mexico. Birth rate is 1.79, and dropping. Well below the U.S. Already in the last couple years numbers entering their working years has peaked, and started to drop. During the next half decade there will be labor shortages in Mexico. Immigration into the U.S. is going to collapse faster than any government program can get into operation.
@@billsmith5109 Yes, it is very interesting, but I welcome it. And I welcome especially a declining birth rate in developing countries. Fewer children per woman meets each child gets more resources. The only sad thing like is the case for example for China is that it is likely that many countries will grow old before they managed to grow rich.
Population decline all over the world and people still aren't being told the truth about exposure to agricultural chemicals and falling fertility rates.
Really? Here is this detectable decline we are talking about. Only we are framing it in terms of our own one little species, when we should be worrying more about the soil, the frogs, the bugs, the birds and so on. We are at the top more or less of the food chain and hurting what is underneath, supporting us. That's the greater danger to human population in the near future - more cancers, less land, less food.
I think the only thing shrinking is the dollar signs people envision when they only see profit as a value. I hope that people will find a better way to determine what is valuable and what is superfluous.
I think what people underestimate is the necessary shift in expectations. It's theoretically possible that having more older people to take care of may lead to young people not being able to keep up with the demand. But this view is based on the scarcity model: a belief that we are barely able to keep up producing what the population needs to survive and prosper. But I propose that it's an illusion. In fact there is a large number of jobs in the economy that are make-work. Producing a new model of a car every year is a straightforward example. Another is forcing a new model of cellphone onto the market, while making sure the old one is no longer updated after four years, even by a willing third party. It's basically gauding the population into believing they HAVE TO buy a new phone, while making the technically savvy unable to keep old phones working, by locking out everyone except the manufacturer, using crypto-locks and secrecy. There is absolutely no need for this; my desktop is a 2011 model running Linux, which is a proof old hardware can go on for much longer. But it can only be done because it's based on IBM PC, an open technology, rather than secret design of cell phones that are not mutually compatible. There are other examples of market and regulatory capture that only serves manufacturers. There are NO technical reasons for the crazy amount of make-work going on, just to please the banks and stuff CEOs' pockets. Perhaps if we redirected the economies of the world to concentrate on sensible, useful, open technologies, we could afford the health care, the pensions, the agricultural machinery, the next-year's seed, and even mass-produce robots that can cater to the needs of the elderly population. But if we don't, all that will happen is that the industrial complex will burn itself out, leaving us hungry and helpless, and slaves to the few remaining people with options, who will have life and death power over us.
Thanks. "Make - work" used to be the insult flung at government projects, no matter how usefull the project was - or not. But now it applies SO MUCH BETTER to the thousands of "jobs" where they "work" placing bets on the feelings of investors about the "value" of DIGITAL MONEY OR DIGITAL ART......using up enormous volumes of electricity and computing resources. This and other high tech atrocities and excesses and other "work" catering to simply obscene level of wealth and greed could and should be redirected to sustainable humane thrift - and reward for people who WORK...🤬!
Change also means opportunities. I hope after the change wealth and population will be a bit more evenly distributed over the world. Also a focus on essentials, farming/energy/healthcare/technology. Also more solidarity, because the older generation (aka me by that time) will have to support each other and provide entertainment. There's no doubt in my mind the transition will be hard, but my dream is that afterwards we will live in a slightly better world. I won't have any kids but it is my intention to invest in society as long as possible and the best way I can. Together we can do it.
A very balanced video; it avoids both kinds of alarmism. On one hand, it's important to say that reducing birth rates is neither necessary nor sufficient to stop climate crisis, but on the other hand, it avoids populist propaganda for breeding.
And look around, how many people around do you WANT to be raising children? Just because someone can, in no way, means they should…with or without government programs.🤨
The biggest problem is debt. A change in the population structure and its reduction will result in a decrease in people who take out loans, which will translate into a reduction in the amount of money. The problem is that the population already has huge debts and they will not be able to repay them, which will threaten the stability of the debt-based monetary system. The population decline is not only a collapse of the current pension system, but a collapse of the entire monetary system.
Possibly, it may be too risky to risk losing people. Already in Ukraine, the average soldier is like 40 something, which is completely unprecedented historically. It was 20s for WW2 for example, but that would be impossible today. 40 used to be considered way to old for becoming a soldier.
your graphic at the beginning should have the date 1900 for when the population reached 1.65M. As for billionaires whining about falling birthrates -- they just want more masses to exploit.
1. We must stop the compulsion of trying to engineer everything - today we want less babies, tomorrow more, etc; let the couples decide what size of family they wish. And those who decide to have large families (for reasons best known to them) go ahead and make sure they can feed and look after them and not clamour for subventions from society. 2. I can not understand why a decrease of population is being presented as a negative. For starters, there will be a beneficial impact on environment for obvious reasons; it is incidental, but positive 3.The other reason why a fall in population is is perceived to be of concern is (a) funding for Pensions and (b) a fall in demand and as a consequence lower Employment and lower Profits for the Corporations. 4.These are genuine fears, in our present economic thinking. What we need, however, is (a) a new economic model that produces only what is required, such that conspicuous and wasteful consumption is eliminated, but enough is produced to provide for everyone's needs to have a comfortable standard of living (b) evolve a new theory of economic production that reflects our ability to produce optimally and, side by side, a theory of distribution of wealth in a world where scarcity is a thing of the past (c) unleash new ideas for the people to use their leisure time in a way that is fulfilling. Our economic Theories hang on the overriding premise of - SCARCITY. We need to recognize that Scarcity will not be a limiting factor from the last quarter of this Century (or thereabouts). Therefore, MONEY, as we know it will not be the driver of choices. Thank you.
Decline to how many? It will have to decline to a lot fewer than we currently have now to get to 'not overpopulated'. David Attenborough said, "I can't think of a single problem that wouldn't be easier to solve if there were less people". And he was talking about whatever the population was years ago. We already have too many. 10 billion is terrible even if it is the plateau and the end of the century is plenty of decades to do damage from overpopulation. I don't see those forecasts as good news. Preventing fewer consumers and taxpayers is not a good reason to keep increasing overpopulation, given the preponderance of problems it causes to the ones it allegedly addresses. th-cam.com/video/IC0ysBmD--c/w-d-xo.htmlsi=-9lj_9vCVpMCDOzZ
Saying there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers, but I’m sure history will judge you just as kindly as it has all the other people who say we should get rid of all the undesirables.
We probably have to let go of economic fantasies that seemed realistic for a few hundred years. Capitalism as practiced in the West was never really sustainable, either in terms of the environment or as a viable economic system. Modern crony capitalism must always expand to survive; it's the ultimate Ponzi scheme. And one can easily see how failure is baked into the very premise. For example Western companies have always sought to force their way into new markets to create new consumers of their products but even more importantly as fresh sources of cheaper labor. But eventually those "developing economies" will "mature" causing wages to rise necessitating finding even newer markets to exploit. And since rising productivity nearly always depends on creating a more educated workforce this further drives fertility rates down since education and economic opportunity are the main drivers of the choice to have less children. The fact is that for much of human history women have few if any choices at all.
Is that a typo at 0:13, where the 1990 population is shown to be 1.65 billion? Should that be 1890? I believe population was around 3 billion in the 1960s, so it couldn't have been 1.65 billion in 1990.
Overpopulation leads to less opportunity, increased distress, fewer jobs, more violence, increased government control to try and mitigate the increased violence and overuse of earth resources. Those seeking more money want to ensure growth. Those seeking increased quality of life want the polluting, people population to decrease.
Well, the economy has finally to adapt to not exponential growth. And in rich countries, they still try to achieve exponential growth even with lower birth rates, which makes richer countries the largest environmental problem. So economy adapting to a stable non-growing market would be sensible both considering population and environment.
@@atlanticrf Well, your comment is an oxymoron: if a poor country becomes rich, it is obviously a rich country and not a poor country anymore. Hence, there is no question to reply to.
The Population Boom was only wrong in the particular disaster it predicted. It was right on in predicting disaster from overpopulation. Now we have it: out of control climate change. And there are others. Planet-wide microplastic pollution. Massive species and habitat decline. Unaffordable land and housing leading to massive homelessness. So, economic crises have ALREADY happened due to overpopulation. Yes, further economic challenges will occur as a result of aging populations. This is especially true because we have an economy founded on the false idea of perpetual growth. Now that we see the flaw in that, one might think there would be a great deal of effort going on to find ways to change the economy to function well with DECLINING growth, but I don't see that happening. We'll wait till the last second just like we are doing with climate change. But declining population is a very good thing, not a bad thing. It will eventually give the earth a chance to recover. And one more thought: economic disaster seems more likely to be coming from AI rather than population decline. But actually, with a different economy the two could work hand-in-hand, AI providing the workforce needed to sustain a largely post-retirement-age population.
Look up the chart of the demographics of South Korea and tell me where in it you see stabilization occurring. There are almost 5 times as many 50 year olds as newborns.
4:50 I always looked at a 401 (k) as a better retirement investment than kids. The Ponzi scheme that is Social Security is bound to collapse anyway, regardless of whether the population grows or shrinks
@@sharonreddy5557 in what way? There are 10 times as many people alive as they were 100 years ago. That's overpopulation by my standard. We are the cockroaches
@reddy5557 yes, when we go back to a billion or two people which is what the planet can support. Today we are practically locusts consuming faster than the whole world can recover. The only way to do that is to reduce the birth rate and live sustainably
@@alanbudde8560 What the planet will support is advanced technology dependent. We waste massive amounts of resources, up in smoke. The Fire Age is ending and Stellar Age beginning.Population will fall, because we don't need to have several children in hopes one survives.
I would suggest we must change the economic relationship between capital and labor developed in the 19th century. Stronger unions, profit sharing, employee owned companies, dismantling monopolies and cartels, demanding transparency and accountability in financial markets. These are some of the things that would help.
2.3 children per couple sounds about ideal as a global birthrate, though births/woman and births/couple are different enough as metrics that the figures shouldn't be used interchangeably. "Close to population replacement" birthrates are the ideal, not only for climate reasons, but political and economic stability as well; not so many as to increase stress on infrastructure and renewable natural resources, not so few as to cause economic instability instead of allowing incremental change that forces wages and standards of living to rise with the invention and adoption of new technology.
Interesting that the people who see the specter of disaster in a population decline are for the most part, the same people who benefit from business as usual. Those of us who have been increasingly barred in various ways from prosperity through the current systems of government, economics, and social strata, tend to see the low birthing trend in a more nuanced way, and with much more curiosity as to the possible consequences.
I thought that population runaway growth WAS the existential threat. If the human population growth rate levels off or even declines to some extent that's a good thing for the earth, right? Humans are more than just consumers and GDP growers.
Unless in some point in the future, the birthrate starts to increase, then even we adapt to an older, smaller population, there's still no hope for the population to not die out completely.
Corporations better stop mass production of toxic substances if consumption is still gonna be our basis for economics. An elderly majority means that most people will be unfit for most labor.
Oh, gosh - at 4:40 you came so close to saying something like we need to get away from a consumption economy (although old people "consume", too) and then didn't take it beyond Sciubba's remarks.
I don't get why this would be a bad thing. The only reason the video seems to give about why it would be bad is that it's not going to fix climate change (doesn't mean that decline is in itself bad) and that capitalism would not find it profitable. These are not important reasons. Why is there an urge to have more and more people? What does that serve? (Outside of religious dogma.) Surely the goal is homeostasis so that we can continue, and for the people who are alive *now* to be safe and happy.
Rapid population decline is not population stabilization. How will a society where the average person is retired or almost retired and not working going to sustain itself? Where will the money come from? Or will old people just be left to die in the future?
Honestly I think a loss in population is not a bad thing. There already a strain on resources. Lower demand equals lower costs, less crowding and more opportunity. The only sectors that benefit from excessive population are corporations, they sell more products at higher costs and governments get more tax revenue!
If people died as soon as they started becoming unproductive you might have a point, but a world where 50%+ of the population is old and cannot take care of themselves, and also don't have kids or grandkids to do it, seems pretty bleak to me.
The planet can not afford to change the current trend, and we should not want that either. What has to change (and what is easiest to change) is our economic system that is built on the insane concept of infinite growth. I am only a few years from retirement but my employer does not offer partial retirement, where I could still be productive and my health care costs could be met by Medicare (saving my employer $). If I could take partial Social Security payments (not an option today; it is all or nothing) then my income could remain the same as it is today, I would still be contributing to the economy AND I would be reducing the burden on the Social Security system. Why is this NOT an option for me? All we have to is change the way we think about these and other things that can be changed with the stroke of a pen. A whole lot simpler than removing millions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere!!
I think we have to deal with the age-old "haves vs the have nots" problem before most of the planet is willing to get on the same page about population, or any major challenge we face.
There are vast numbers of people trying to move from the places where weather and war have made life impossible to the extent they WALK hundred if not thousands of miles to come to where technological civilization and SOME equity in economy and civil services and life make it livable. They want jobs. LET'S WELCOME MIGRANTS TO THE GLOBAL NORTH!
No, thank you. The bring crime and live of welfare. Plus most of them are economic migrants. If they leave "dangerous" zones it's because they made it that way. Now the new places they come to will become dangerous and shitty
It's entirely moronic to hold the idea that populations need to grow in this era. A century ago the population was a fraction of what it us now, so it's rediculous to claim it needs to stay high. We've dealt with dramatic change to get to this point, we'll adapt to the changes in the other direction. The real problem is the same problem the world has been facing for forever. Greed. Notice who are all the people freaking out about population reduction. The uber wealthy and those in power. With population growth came constant economic growth. Going from 2 Billion to 8+ Billion people meant the need to build a lot. A lot more cars, a lot more toasters, a lot more houses, a lot more sewage and water pipes. This has been such a boon to corporations around the world that constant growth has been grafted into the DNA of corporations. If a corporation is merely holding steady, the markets will view it as a dismal failure. No, the real problem with population reduction will be a fundamental change in economics. When that happens, many of the corporations that are so successful today will collapse. Demand in sectors that currently make some uber rich will dissappear, along with their riches. Just look at the richest people in the world right now. Most of their wealth is an illusion based on company stock prices. Even others who have invested lots of their money in properties like commercial buildings and land retain their value based on the constant demand for those properties. If the demand evaporates, so does their value. Just think about it for two seconds. If we reduce from 8 Billion to 4 Billion, we already have enough housing built to hold around 8 Billion, so why woulf anyone need to build a new house? More, why waste good materials when the need to build comes. Just dismantle old homes, take what is good, and build the new ones. No more strong need to level forests. Things like copper pipes, wiring, and glass could be recycled and made new. Again, no need keep extracting such resources when it will be abundant in old rotting homes and buildings. This all threatens whole areas of industry. More, this really shouldn't surprise us. Climate change itself is mainly the problem it is today solely because the uber wealthy were afraid to lose their positions of wealth and power. It is well documented that we've had data showing us that climate change was a worsening problem for a century or longer now. A half century ago the data became so hard to ignore that the wealthy through massive corporations serving to keep the status quo put out Billions of dollars worth of propaganda to hide the problem. When it couldn't be hidden any longer, they put even more money into muddying rhe waters. They flooded the public with contradicting misinformation so nobody would trust factual sources. The very same fear of loss of power that has delayed action on Climate change is behind the fear of population loss. Even when you look into possible solutions to climate change, we see this fear. So many of the wealthy have now been racing into funding research into climate change solutions. This is because they want to control the narrative there as well, so they can guide the solutions they think will best help keep them in wealth and power. Just look at how hard most of the narratives are holding to the idea of maintaining the status quo. We'll be able to grow and prosper. We can all keep buying cars, they'll just be electric cars. Despite the fact that building the cars accounts for most of their lifetime greenhouse emissions. We can still live rhe suburban dream and commute to work, despite the colossal resources it consumes. I'm not saying we need to enter into a class war. I'm mainly pointing out that the real solution to our problems is to get people to see through the noise to the reality of our situation. Both Climate change and population reduction are going to require similar solutions. A complete overhaul to our economies and a fundamental shift in our societies. We need to discern the realities of what that really means and plan for it. Anyways, that's my opinion.
I think population decrease is great. But we need to get ready for caring for a large amount of older people with fewer young people. Cleaning robots, drone deliveries, intelligent medical monitoring devices, etc will all help.
I predict that a small number of city states or nations will start poaching the worlds skilled young people later this century by offering very low tax rates, compared to surely considerably higher than today tax rates in the remaining nations to try to sustain the welfare system, which will be voted for by the mostly old and childless electorate, and that many of today's nations will just become retirement homes with nobody to pay the bill and collapse outright.
Lower populations are coming. That's just a fact. We need to prepare for it.There's no reason this can't lead to widely shared prosperity coupled with a lower environmental footprint. None at all. An economy is nothing but a framework of rules, regulations, laws, and expectations within which people trade. The supposed need for constantly increasing consumption serves no purpose beyond constantly increasing profits for the elites.
less consumption means less production. What do you think would have happened to for example the UK or US if they produced less than Germany or Japan in WW2? You compete or you die. That is the way of this world, and it won't change anytime soon. I for one am not interested in producing less than say Russia if at all possible. In addition, population decline rather than simply stabilization means there will be by far more old people unable to provide for themselves than young, and most of them won't have children or grandchildren to take care of them, nor a government capable of affording it without taxing young people considerably higher than is the case in any country today. In addition, technological growth and development will surely slow and maybe regress in some areas as the number of people working on it enormously declines and new people aren't taking over from the people retiring. Simply put, population growth and technological and economic growth go hand in hand. If the population explosion had never happened, we most certainly would not have the internet or countless other things today.
@@ssssaa2 so you're telling us the economy is doomed. I think we should try to meet the challenge head on as opposed to just waiting for an inevitable collapse.
I'm choosing to not have kids at all at this point, but if I still wanted them - I can't buy a house that I will for sure own until I cease and be able to give to my kids for them to have or sell. I am worried about buying a new car rn as well. I can't even afford to feed myself a true good diet, I'm not birthing a kid to not be able to feed them. Even with insurance, my own eyes and teeth bills always trip me for months after a visit, I cannot afford another person's health costs. And it wasn't long ago when the talk of "pre existing conditions" was here and basically if you were born with xyz it was looking like a possibility that insurance wasn't wanting to cover it (I think that got banned but I personally won't forget that evil). And let's say I have child no. 1 and it goes great but pregnancy no. 2 is an ectopic pregnancy and nation wide I'm pretty much told its better for me to just stop existing - what if I cease, what happens to my already here child? I could go on and on. I could mention how I've been socially treated pre-marriage, during, and now post-marriage by people. Society is ugly to women, I fear raising a daughter here. Just, in conclusion, why why WHY would I procreate? There's no benefit in any direction except in the just "being a mom" bc I had considered it before and that looks so selfish and like an ugly choice to me knowing I could not provide and having an unsure future for them to survive in. I also hate that this feels like its "economics! Corporations! Rich overlords worry!" D amn them. I hope they worry themselves off of something high.
While I still believe that having children in full knowledge of today’s uncertainty and strain is selfish and short-sighted, I don’t have a better reason why humans should continue to procreate and populate. The economy isn’t a stable or sustainable system and many of our systems require addressing and likely restructuring. I don’t want to be judgmental of others and try to respect that other's experience, understanding and perspectives differ from mine. If we don’t self-reflect or self-restrain, and if we are so negatively impactful of every other species on the planet, then the reasons are possibly culture, religious and reasons of social pressures. When the conditions of the world were different we could do as we liked without experiencing the impacts. As the world is as it is now and all is impacted by human behaviour, we would do well to respond thoughtfully rather than emotionally or without careful consideration. Despite consideration, many people are incapable of overcoming influences, and as this is a reality of the world, it’s worth accepting the texture of reality and enjoying things as they are. The topic of this video is based on a subject of human behaviour which is within our ability to master individually, but maybe not collectively.
So, clearly the answer is: 1. Stop climate change and lower emissions now 2. Reduce population as it will consume less and use less planetary resources 3. Ditch capitalism, consumerism and infinite growth economic models which are out of the laws of Physics and get to a sustainable steady state
I’m undecided on children. One of the reasons I’m against having children for myself is the effect on climate change and the fact I worry about financially supporting them.
Countries are going to increasingly compete for migrants. Countries with hateful social policies and leaders will lose migrants; countries with welcoming, progressive policies and leaders will gain migrants. Some countries are going to respond negatively to population declines and take away liberties, power, and rights from women, forcing them into lower education, less professional work, and more child-bearing and -raising. Some countries are going to decrease their social safety nets for the elderly, spending less and less money on health, medical, and rent for older people. They will push retirement/pension age requirements higher and higher. However, some countries will spend more on re-educating and -skilling their elderly, pushing for more working years. These jobs will need to be more part-time and less physical.
My job is to make more and more people unemployed. Thinking that one needs to work to earn a living will not be tenable much longer. When we switch away from that dogma then the need for young working people to be the financiers of our society will evaporate.
I used to kinda like that theory. I think I saw Clint Barton holding a mug that said as such, in ‘Hawkeye’. Then again, why didn’t Thanos use the stones to just make the universe twice as big?
@@razzle1964 maybe he wanted people to understand how low population is beneficial. Like if he just doubled the resources people would have even more kids and increase population really fast making the universe the same as before. I would have never made endgame if it happened in real life and just ended at infinity war.
Does anyone else, approaching 40, find themselves with a growing aversion to kids? I’m genuinely curious. Here in Florida, we’re surrounded by millennials grappling with a bizarre mix of resentment toward boomers, who still treat us like rebellious teenagers. Meanwhile, they run their businesses from their ventilators, refusing to pass the torch. But here's the kicker: many of us, nearly 40, are still living with our parents, not because we want to, but because we’re stuck in the looming caregiving crisis that's starting to hit. Relationships? Forget about it. We're too busy playing nurse and watching our own lives rot away. Frankly, I’ve had enough. Let it rot-I’m leaving.
Population collapse is the least of our worries. Why does it matter how many people are on the planet if the planet is burning and no longer suitable to support life. Why does the economy matter if everybody is starving? As humans, as societies, as governments, we need to figure out how to live without consumption being a marker of economic success. We have to stop buying things to feel successful or normal. We have to modify our behaviors today if we have any interest or compassion for future of life on Earth.
If population declines by 50% but GDP declines by 40% then gdp per person increases by 20%. So the question is _how_ you decline. Also: transition to a sustainable economy is easier when it'll be a smaller population to sustain. The trick is to build it now to live in it later.
I think a lot more people would have children if they didn't have to worry about whether they could afford it. I'm not saying this would change the trend, but I think the best way to support people to feel able to have more children is better child benefits and community support. Better community support could both support people having more children and support an aging population.
Me and my wife are in very well paying jobs but the future is so uncertain that we don’t want children. Also, climate change is a MAJOR source of anxiety for us. If we have children, we don’t want them to live in hell. If politicians want more children: fix climate change, make housing a human right
Education is what drives the numbers down. You're more likely to have children if you're poor than working on your career, having children in many professions is a career killer so we focus on the career and then worry about children later. The problem, for women, is the biological clock. The longer you delay having children the more issues you might run into later on in life. I've seen this trap with many well educated friends where they delayed having children into their 30-35's and then no longer were able to due to all kinds of issues that appeared. I'm not saying everyone runs into these problems but I'm a firm believer in having kids early on and then work on your career if you even want to bother. Our purpose on this planet is simple: breed, eat and sleep. That's it. Everything else doesn't matter.
@@huldu But is it education then, or is it how accepting jobs are of people having children? Plus how does gender equality and paternity leave factor in?
@@Spectacurl Interesting, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I think community support should definitely include housing support where necessary.
@@conlon4332 It seems the more educated people are the less likely they are to have children, or a lot less of them. Compared to very poor areas where they can easily have 5+ children in a household. I'm looking at India and many countries in Africa. Not sure how it is in Brazil to be honest.
5:25
I think the powers that be want our lives to be high in quantity- more people to keep wages low, but low in quality- poverty to keep us desperate.
Its perfectly logical if you have the right mentality: "I get what I want and I don't give a fuck if someone else has to suffer for it."
Most people who need support didn’t want their children. Poor people have more kids than they desire. Free, readily available birth control and abortion will go a huge way to make every kid wanted and happy.
Took 5 whole minutes to get to the real issue?
There is strong benefits for having kids in developed states and it’s been a disaster. Here in Estonia we give women three years of paid leave for having kids (1,5 full pay and 1,5 half pay) and our birth rates and numbers are literally the lowest in our history here. With the quality of life quality, despite our high standards now, people had children during soviet occupation and tsarist rule, not now. What causes people to have kids is a cultural thing, not what people claim here.
I will always be deeply suspicious of those who say " more babies we need more workers!"
Those people will pay your babies low wages until they can replace them with robots!
More babies, more cannon fodder.
Every worker is also a consumer so in theory it should be a wash (and additional stress on the environment at this point), but the fact that billionaires are worried about population growth slowing down proves in my mind that they see workers as just a means of profit skimming off of people's backs. Who do we work for?
Also, I can think of plenty of jobs that aren't truly necessary where these people could be taking care of the elderly instead. The real problem? The elderly usually don't have the money to pay a competitive wage, so people are off doing other jobs instead.
Tech billionaires obsessed because they need enough workers until they can unleash AGI and abandon the planet
They will also want your children to work in meat packing plants and other hazardous environments, simply to fill job openings, usually, as you say, at low wages and benefits.
Bro population decline is good for this planet 😢
Viewing increased consumption as a constant necessaity is the real problem. We simply cannot have infinite growth with finite resources. Reaching a steady equilibrium based on "enough" should be our goal.
~And billionaires don't fit into that picture.~
Exactly!
Agreed. Even if a lower population will cause a bunch of economic problems we simply have no choice but to go that route. Endless expansion is impossible. We can only keep becoming more efficient at things like growing food for so long.
"It's easier for economists to consider the end of the world, than to consider the end of capitalism"
Eh, you're right, retirement, social security, and supply chains are overrated
@beth8775, that is it exactly!
Best way of preparing is rethinking our current economic models that count on continuous growth in consumption and focuses on other metrics to measure quality of life and prosperity
Some kind of market economy in place of consuming capitalism is a place to start.
A circular economy could fill that need.
YES! I keep saying that! We need a different economic model!
@@claudiaroedel1368 what economic model do you have in mind that doesn’t involve having younger workers
BAM 💯 exactly !
Couldn't have said it better myself.
On the upside, if any of the younger Gen wants a job in nursing it'll b in high demand taking care of the old timers. Lol
@@wamnicho
Simple !
- AUTOMATION -
This video doesn't even cover some of the biggest issues with the decline in childbirth. Lack of homes. Lack of high paying jobs. The death of the middle class. The exploitation of the growing lower and working classes. The fact that people can't be sure if their children will starve to death in the streets because of climate problems. The consolidation of wealth into the hands of the few while the many suffer.
All this stuff is being brought on by governments and corporations, then we get talking points fearing the collapse of the economy based on this stuff but it still keeps happening. Nobody is fixing the root of the problem. The rich are ruining our world with their greed, the governments with their corruption.
Our planet is dying, our societies collapsing into war and poverty. No shit people don't want big families.
It's not that simple and that's probably not the primary reason why people don't have kids these days. Historically there used to be much more war and poverty yet fertility rates were higher. In fact tough conditions usually prompted higher reproductive rates in order to compensate for the high child mortality or high mortality in general.. (Look up r/K selection theory.)
the planet is not dying and societies are not collapsing stop listening to MSM propaganda.
@@kyjo72682and the children can be used as free hard labor. They worked the farms. Led the house. In a lot of economies we sent them to work as young as 3 years old.
@@kyjo72682people can’t afford to have more children, and it’s not about child mortality rates now, it’s about the quality of life for those children in the future.
@@kyjo72682 Yep. The main reasons people don't have kids are a) Its too expensive and b) They simply don't have to.
The GOP is trying to tackle reason (b) by taking away all the rights women have fought for over the past century. They want to be able to force their choice of woman to marry them (the woman's opinion doesn't matter), have as many kids as the man wants (why does he care its not his body), and prevent any option for divorce (well, the man can instantiate divorce of course.. its just the women who wouldn't be allowed).
They don't really have a solution for reason (a). But they also don't really care thanks to the way they want reason (b) handled - if the man decides he no longer want to support his family, _he_ always has the right to just fuck off and leave his wife to try and survive on her own with however many kids he forced her to have.
Obviously they won't use such caustic terminology when describing their "plan" - they'll wrap it up in phrases like "family values" and call you "woke" if you point out the glaring abuses their "plan" not only allows but encourages. The legislation they've been trying to get passed (and have succeeded at in a lot of red states) tell the real story though: All their flowery speeches and "promises" that they won't abuse their new laws is just bullshit and smokescreens. They simply want to go back to a world where white Christian men get to do whatever they want and everyone else exists in a state of semi-bondage if not outright slavery for the sole purpose of supply said white Christian men with their heart's desire. (They generally don't mention that the goal is actually "rich white Christian men" - they need the support of the poor white Christian men to even attempt to pull this off, and outright telling the poor that they'll get even more shafted is not a good way to win their support. Letting them believe they'll be allowed into the "in group" however works wonders and what's a few life-altering lies between "friends", right?)
Honestly, for ecological reasons, I can’t see population growth as a good thing. Better for our societies and economies adapt and the population shrink.
I agree #savetheearthreducechildbirth
Automation, AI, etc means fewer and fewer jobs will be available starting NOW, not just in the future, so fewer people will be needed. Shrinking population mania is mostly about military, religious, and ethnic nationalist power agendas. The boomer birth numbers were never sustainable from their beginning. The downwards birthrate trend starting with Gen X is also a partial correction to abnormally large post-world war boomer numbers.
@@louisanowI totally agree with you, well put. We should be glad that at last correction of abnormality is happening. Instead of fearing it why not take measures?
@@SoftHeart-l9w Exponential population growth is not an abnormality. If you look at evolutionary history it is rather a norm. All life forms try and expand into all available niches which leads to exponential growth which then typically levels off when it aproaches the carrying capacity of the environment, and the fertility rates are balanced by mortality rates (due to resource scarcity, competition, predation, etc.).
What is _actually_ abnormal is the current "voluntary" population shrinkage which is not caused by the above factors.
@kyjo72682 In nature, wherever exploding population reach tipping points, massive die-off in many painful forms also happens. Exploding population is usually an indication of imbalance. It's ludicrous to consider the human animal entirely excluded from all the laws of nature. Our many abilities to defy nature do not entirely exclude us from all the consequences.
The population explosion was also unprecedented. Many people alive today were alive when the population was half what it is now.
and?
@@sambitmishra1229and we sort of coped with an eightfold rise in population in two hundred years. So we should be able to cope with some level of population decline.
In the 1950s it was 2-3 billion
@@sambitmishra1229
Our current population size is abnormal but most of us grew up in it so we think it is
Humans aka animals are adaptable. We’ll be alright.
Humans did just fine when there were only a billion of us. We don't need 9 or 10 billion. Even 5 billion people is way more than we "need" to sustain civilization. Most of these "advances" in agriculture have been devastating to the environment and to species diversity. If we can adapt to going from 3 billion to 8 billion in my lifetime, we can certainly adapt to going back to 6 billion.
The problem is while the population is growing there is a lot of young people to take care of the old people but when the population is shrinking there's a lot of old people and nobody to take care of them.
@@richardnwilson So do we always need more and more and more people? That's not sustainable.
@@johnnytownsend4204 no I agree it's just a sharp decline that's going to be difficult to adjust to.
"Humans did just fine when there were only a billion of us." - what do you mean by "fine"? Many of the horrors of wars and slavery, and a great deal of ecological devastation, happened when the population was a billion.
@ginalDanEdwards Well, I certainly wasn't praising war, was I? Why would you think that? And do you think we'll stop having war and greed, etc. when we have 10 billion people on the planet?
My wife and I chose to wait until our 30s for children. It let us establish our careers and become financially secure. Also, by only having 2 kids, we can better focus on each one.
People still speak about it as if it is some revolutionary idea. While my grandma figured it out in 1952, when she had one child when she was 25, and stopped after that
@@KateeAngelYeah, well, Grandma's didn't always have the choice to have sex(and thus babies) or not.
Childfree here...1 seems like too many with 8 billion people already
And your children will benefit from your decisions.
Sounds great, in theory. But, if everyone had only one child it would not be enough to replace the parents who had the one child and the population would eventually decline. Unless a bunch of other people decide to have huge families to make up the difference. That is China's current demographic issue since adopting their one child policy. Now there aren't enough young people to keep the economy afloat; buying houses and goods to support their burgeoning families, if they're even able to afford a family. Not to mention enough young people to take care of their elderly population that outnumbers the younger generations. This is the "nightmare" of Replacement Theory that white nationalists are having these days. The idea that other ethnic groups will take over the country because so many educated white people have decided to forego having children at a young age so they can live their lives, have their careers, and make their money before having children. It works for some folks to wait, but not everyone's bodies want to wait and they face an uphill battle when they finally decide to try. Which is why the Alabama decision on IVF treatments is such a kick in the nuts. A lot of people rely on IVF as they have children later in life. In a nutshell, it's beyond complicated when, as a government you see your population as cattle and just need them to make babies for your economic and military agendas. In my opinion, the low birth rate is the best thing for the planet, the economy can take a back seat and people can learn to adapt. As much as all of the adults in my life told me I would, I always knew I wouldn't have children and I have succeeded thus far.@@KateeAngel
Brilliant, engaging, calm in the face of flustered billionaires and policymakers who see a person with a uterus as a customer-printing machine, and so instructive. Thank you, Sinéad Bovell and team!
Maybe we can socially evolve our way into extinction!
All I see are many lonely women. past 40, with a wonderful "career"
@@wexpmedia5889
I hope you are being sarcastic, but either way you hit the nail on the head, the people complaining about the environment now and how people should off themselves or whatever, are the same people who were doing eugenics and population control in the last century.
It’s actually a pretty good rule of thumb that if your solution to X problem is to decrease the human population, you’re probably the bad guy historically.
@@Cocoisagordonsetter I nominate this comment for inclusion in the wisdom literature canon.
Actually the babies will be paying for your retirement... it is not about politics, its about math
As a 28 year old, I have no interest whatsoever in bringing any children into this horrible, corrupt, and broken world
How did you get here?
@@Contraction1205 why don’t you use those brain cells of yours and think about how babies are made? That’s how I got here.
@@G-Rex95 I appreciate how you feel, but we are all part of the community of humankind, and children are the ones who will carry forward our race. They are the hope for a better world, if they are raised in love. I hope you gain some hope for the future!
agree. bring Thanos..😂
54 here. My wife and I didn't have children. I got a vasectomy. We're perfectly happy.
High-intensity fertiliser indeed..
The nitrogen is now screwing ecosystems everywhere it is used on this massive scale.
That's not a solution either. It's a problem that we created that allowed us to grow rapidly.
You are correct they just figured out a way of prolonging the inevitable, and it's at a major cost to all futures...
Yep, agriculture is one of the big exceptions to the general rule that population decline isn’t sufficient to stop climate change.
No matter how clean and efficient we get in our energy use, at the end of the day more (and more affluent) people translates to more food, which tends to mean more nitrogen fertilizer and more land clearing. And as Europe is showing right now, farmers have little interest in the costs necessary to grow food in an environmentally efficient way - it’ll always be easier to use more fertilizer/pesticide or (if you’re in the right region) slash and burn wild lands.
A decline in population (especially in affluent nations) could ease the pressures of agriculture on the climate and biosphere. It’s not a silver bullet, but it can help.
Not to mention the devastation that "Big Ag" and its horrific pesticides are wreaking in our insect and wildlife populations: neonicotinoids in RoundUp, glyphosate, dicamba, ad nauseam. Informed and thus outraged citizens have been calling on the Environmental PROTECTION Agency to ban these killers for years -- to virtually no avail. They make too much $$$ for the GOP PAC donor-companies to pass up, no matter what happens to their own kids' planet....
The birth rate decline is actually good news for people and the Earth. We're overpopulated now, trampling the Earth and decreasing biodiversity. A further increasing population would mean even higher housing costs (and the rent is already too damn high!), and a downward pressure on wages, particularly for lower wage workers. A lower birth rate is a collective solution to these problems.
I'd like to dispute the closing tag about living in a "shrinking world". The smaller the human population the larger the world. Humans aren't the only thing on this planet. Also, by changing the way we farm, we've only accelerated environmental collapse (extra chemicals, soil malnourishment, loss of nutrition in the food, and collapse of surrounding environments).
Thank you for this beautiful statement! Yes, fewer humans with less stress in their lives and on our living world!
It could work if it was more or less an effort that we all worked on.
Commercial farming uses chemicals to grow as much food as they can to sustain the growing population. I don't blame the farmers, they are only doing their job.
If people have nutritious food, clean environment and supported advanced medical technology, the elderly will not need to depend on the younger generation.
IMO there are far too many people in the world NOW. This decline in population is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. The world will have to adjust, and it will in time. And if there are fewer consumers of goods, which is the real issue with magnates obviously, they will have to adjust too. I chose to be child free years ago, and am glad I did. ✌
Agree. This is an unnecessary & silly video, imo -- another TH-camr selling some dumb thing they want us to "worry about" that is 1) DECADES in the future, ignoring all the potential changes that length of time entails and 2) is selling their concept based on pseudo-science. Hello? The fact that there could potentially (but not realistically) be far fewer humans around to pollute and screw up the planet is NOTHING to worry about, now or in the future. We should embrace an educated and low-birthrate populace in as many nations as possible.
I chose to remain childless back in the 1980s due to what I learned about the advancing (& yep, still ongoing) environmental destruction of our one and only planet. There is not one second since that I have ever regretted protecting my children by never subjecting them to what's coming. I would LOVE to be proven wrong about human nature (selfish greed alone is doing a "great" job at killing us off.) But so far I've been right all along. Dammit.
Same childfree by choice and permanent
you will regret It once your old sick and all alone. Who will come to get your dead body off the floor? In Korea, thousands of 80-year-olds are found decomposing months after they have died. You will die alone miserable with no one to look after you.
All countries should aim for a gradual reduction. Going too fast causes major problems.
@@adrianthoroughgood1191 Trouble is they don't really have any direct control over the speed of reduction. They can gain indirect control by ensuring that families of the "right" size have the support they need to be happy and healthy, but that typically implies taxing the rich and legislating the corporations so they're pretty resistant to taking that option.
Which means like climate change, they'll wait until its too late and then attempt to do something drastic as a last-minute fix which will likely help for a year or two before makings things much, much worse when the unintended or overlooked consequences hit.
We should probably stop using consumption as a driver of the economy anyway.
Population decline is inevitable. How we act collectively doesn't have to be a problem. If "we" don't charge our economic thinking, it will be a problem.
Agree 100%...
Consupmtion isn't the driver of the economy, and "we" are not using it. Profits is the driver and it is the Capitalist class who use it. The rest of us are just being exploited with no choice of anything else. We can't change the economy. This is another blind road. We need to change the entire mode of production.
Thank you for this. I'd thought "everybody" was going nuts. I am glad to hear I am not alone.
Somehow. I was hearing whispers throughout the vid over the concern to fewer wallets.
Then she brought it forward. Tell industry to get over it.
Yeah I know, it is going to be rough making adjustments, but there it is.
Population will ebb and flow as resources allow. Everybody down n out can't afford a mouth to feed. Lack of economic slaves? I somehow can't feel sympathy for it. I dunno, that's just me. What goes up must come down.
Well if you just hear "there's going to be 3 billion more people" and connect that with ecological disaster, I guess it would make sense. Looking a bit more into it, it makes way more sense to keep the population the way it is by simply making it possible for people to have as much children as they would like. And especially by making it easier for people to have more space, homesteads etc., people would both be an asset for the planet as for the economy and at the same time live happy lives. Maybe it sounds utopian but it's been done before.
@@kristafluit3042 certainly am glad you are not in charge.
@@larrymunn5279 this will be permanent low tide
Less children means less taxpayers to pay for the elderly and potentially not enough care workers to look after them, even if they have good enough private pensions to pay for care, (assuming robots aren't up for the job by then). People will have to, as they did in most of history, work untill they can't and then rely on their children and grandchildren to look after them when they are too sick to work. The problem is, birth rates are low and not everyone is having kids, so many people may be left old in a declining economy with no support from family or the state..
Birth rates are low and staying low. Japan is dying along with South Korea. It is not just about consuming, how do we supply all of these seniors with support in their old age with fewer people in the workforce?
th-cam.com/video/1JshrF6G3fE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=NeO59Q6H6ijNJOvj
So is europe
We live to long. And no, we are not more healthy, they keep us alive. Health care can do alot, but not enough, aging can not controlled.
I have decided not to support my parents in favour of my own family. Not worth it.
It's easy: By expanding the social sector massively. This is of course very expensive under our current mode of production and will never happen. So emiserasion is, for now, the future for us. The alternative is to change the mode of production, which will enable us to solve every problem we currently face.
FEWER CHILDREN who are raised by EDUCATED and EMPLOYED mothers and fathers mean a better life for those children.
What parent on earth does not want that?
you dont understand exponential decay, think half life of coffee. there none left by end of day
There's a disconnect between how our civilization views humans vs. every other species. An increase in food supply results in an increase in the feeder population. Everytime.
Wait, you mean an increase in the food supply means /fewer individuals starve/?? 😮
Also, we have this magical thing called birth control that other species haven't figured out yet as far as we know.
@ajchapeliere actually, an increase in food supply means more people starve. By shipping grain from Middle America to Saharan Africa, the population explosion there continues, furthering the desertification of the planet.
Birth control may work on an individual level, but when you look at species population as a whole, it doesn't seem to have an effect. There's thousands of years of data supporting that statement, but not even one year since the invention of birth control has human population decreased.
Human population increases every year, so more land is put to agriculture to feed the starving millions, but every increase in food production is met with an increase in population. Every time. For every species. There's absolutely no proof to the contrary.
The growth in the food supply is slowing down, slowing down global population growth along with it. The peak in the global food supply is projected between 2025-2035, and declining afterwards, thanks to a projected peak in the global natural gas supply around 2030, and its derivative, fertilizer. So, contrary to popular opinion, food is very much at the heart of the matter. Consumers can directly see this in action at the grocery store, with the ongoing shrinkflation since 2009, and groceries just getting really expensive.
There are good reasons for the disconnect. There are examples of species that experience boom-and-bust population cycles. I feel a bit squeamish at the prospect of that kind of rapid die-off in humans. Also, humans are now dominating the whole Earth. That means we could cause (or are already causing) a mass extinction event that will change the planet forever.
Imagine a world where a young family can afford to own a home
With increasing population and consumption, that is not possible
When considering the impacts of demographics we should seek opinions of other scientists besides economists who are only concerned about money. We should also remember that absolute numbers are less important than population structures (kids vs teenagers vs adults vs retirees vs elderly people). For example, in the 80s there were a lot less people, but the economy was okay'ish generally. Elderly people are viewed by economists as "unproductive" and / or "a strain on national resources". The problem is they are only valuing people by work productivity & spending. But let's take a look at this more closely
- as housing becomes more unaffordable, young people are staying at home longer, supported by parents
- parents often give kids a financial step up by, for example, paying a deposit on a house or helping buy a car etc
- grandparents often provide free childcare while parents work
- older people are more likely to volunteer for welfare agencies & charities providing free social assistance to people govs are failing
- older people provide lnowledge & wisdom gained over years of life experience
- the cost of healthcare in general is because it's been privatised and corporations make big profits from health services - this is gov failure not the fault of the elderly
- city a generally developed & managed to get rich men in fancy cars to / from work and fails to properly cater for ALL residents,incl the elderly, impacting their health & welfare awa via pollution from unregulated industry & manufacturing (again this is due to gov failure)
There's lots we can do to support families like providing family planning services, and ensure families have everything they need to raise a happy family. Let's see if govs are doing this
- serving the interests of economic & political elites only
- rolling back the rights of women
- gender inequity
- no paid maternity leave, discrimination in career opportunities during family years etc
- inaction on the ecological, biodiversity & climate crisis
- slow on action against racism, sexicism, agism & misogyny etc
- high rates of GBV & sex trafficking globally
- heavy taxation of the middle & lower classes
- cut backs on spending on social support services
- privatisation of many essential services such as food, housing, energy & healthcare awa high cost of living etc
Soon the only jobs available to most of us will be soldier, worker drone or sex slave. Our world is slowing disintegrating around us... not a good place for kids to grow up in. Perhaps its best that we don't - if there's very little hope for the future, why bring children into it?
Tx for an interesting take on the demographic crisis. It was a bit short though - perhaps a series looking at different aspects of the crisis as there's a lot to consider (psychology, sociology, enviro sciences, development sciences, urban planning & development, gender studies, economics, healthcare & education, political sciences etc)
Well laid out. We may find that nature takes this formula into her own hands whether big industry likes it or not.
@@marmarlittlechick We need to recognise & value our older people. In many parts of the world multi-generational households are common, sharing resources & helping each other out. And after a lifetime of taxes, raising families, supporting the economy & contributing to society (eg donating to charities, community development, perhaps serving in the military in wars etc) govs & economists should shut up & pay up (like providing discounted integrated health services), awa make urban centres great places for our older folk to stay healthy, engaged & contributing to society instead of being stuck at home or in a care home (if they are still active). In my community retired people pretty much "run" our local library - volunteering, mending books & fundraising!
Funny thing is, old people SPEND. Funny as in irony
On our costs, our families and the stuff they want, on our doctors most of all, LOL
And we are the last of the workers with pensions to spend. When our demographic bulge goes, there will be a big dip in spending which WILL bother the privatizers' bottom line.
*That is why they want more kiddos in the pipeline, or so they think.*
As you hint, a soldier/sex worker/ factory drone economy is not enough to keep the spending power UP the way they need for eternal growth of profits, even if they figure a way to keep everyone eating.
@@CitiesForTheFuture2030
There is a wee problem with most of what you said, namely, that for the most part what we would consider extremely progressive and egalitarian societies i.e. the Nordic and Baltic countries still have below replacement fertility levels.
At the end of the day, some of the things you mentioned do matter, but they don’t matter as much as other social factors, the one exception to the rule of rich countries having below replacement fertility levels is Israel, now Israel still has a very well educated female workforce, and is generally Considered to be a relatively progressive country, especially when compared to its neighbors, but underlying all of it is an immense sense of family, community, and national/ethnic identity, trying to be killed constantly for 2000 years kind of does that to people, but I digress.
In short people aren’t having kids because they don’t view it as a priority in developed countries.
@@allthenewsordeath5772 Most cultures have firmly entrenched family values. Perhaps high rates of urbanisation & nuclear families is losing its sense of community or family support structures? In my country parents go to cities to work with the grandparents left to raise the grandkids. Poverty & high rates of GBV also means high rates of teenage pregnancies. My country's fertility rate is above replacement rate. Any social issue is complex & different set of social constraints etc will exist. Most countries where fertlity rates are high there's usually high poverty & lack of respect for human rights, especially for women. If all things were equal everywhere would fertility rates be low everywhere? It's also interesting to think about what would make fertility rates increase? Some countries offer consumer goods like a tv, and other countries offer child support services eg free hours of childcare. So far I don't think anything is working...
I cant see why dwindling population is bad thing except in case of cheap labour for corporates
Technological growth will stagnate and possibly regress. Old people will be abandoned and die or else tax rates will have to increase exorbitantly to pay for their sustenance. Do you think the average person in Japan is optimistic about the future after 30 years of near zero growth? They are not. Literally 95% of the people in Japan are very pessimistic about the future, whereas almost nobody was in the 1980s. That is going to be the entire world, or worse, in about 1-2 generations time.
Reducing the human population is absolutely a good thing - for one thing, it could mean less human sprawl into hitherto undeveloped/wild land areas. '
If we could focus on any one thing, I'd strongly urge advocating a revolution in attitudes toward consumption. We need a shift in global philosophy away from uncontrolled consumption, casual consumption ("click once to order from Temu!"), and an end to planned obsolescence that requires frequently replacing everything from shoes to major appliances.
Reducing the excessive and needless buying of ephemeral, non-recyclable, non-sustainable goods will have a ripple effect throughout the world: stop supporting polluting industries, stop giving money to the private equity interests that are behind them, stop putting money in multi-billionaire pockets. I'm not sure how to make that shift happen: young people, though far more aware of and concerned about climate change, show no signs of limiting their consumption of the very consumer goods that exacerbate it.
Yes agreed childfree by choice to reduce demand and supply at the same time. Spare nature which we all need each other for.
Sadly, if all of the kind and intelligent people stop having children because they see the effects of humanity at large, think of who will be left having all of the children... the Earth will be left in ruin by the greedy, impulsive, war mongers of the world. I guess they will eventually consume themselves and humans will cease to exist, so maybe it's a good thing. Who knows... @@fuxan
Well, they do in some ways. Young folks are organizing clothing swaps as a way to have their fast fashion without buying more. They just need to be taught to do their own alterations and mending as will.
@@fuxan or you can have children and not live a consumerist life.
you can live a simple life, most of the world though not by choice does live a simple life. like replace car by bicycle.
Smaller populations make it easier for gov control why do y’all support dystopian futures do me a favor and go read the Georgia guide stones so you can see what they planned all along
The population is growing where they can't feed kids and shrinking where they can't pay for kids.
Facts
Wow it’s almost like infinite growth and constantly increasing consumption on a finite world isn’t sustainable!
No, it's sustainable. But progressive ideology isn't and is what's going to lead to our extinction. If it wasn't for conservative subcultures like the amish.
The population isn't stabilizing, but collapsing. This is in spite of the fact that humans are still enormously increasing their consumption per capita of almost everything, so that is not the limiting factor or reason why, and could probably continue to go up a lot for quite some time to come in theory.
@@ssssaa2 I wasn’t talking about population. But since you brought it up, global population is not collapsing either.
It is more about the rate of change than the change itself. We can handle more or less people as long as we have time to adjust.
Exactly. But the army of nonsense coments think that it is okay to have 1 adult suporting 2 retirees.
@@WilliamSantos-cv8rr If we develop AI workers, then that's entirely possible.
@@WilliamSantos-cv8rr
The situation is especially dire in east Asia, in South Korea for instance at current levels by the end of the century there will be approximately one child for every eight retirees.
To put into perspective as to how much of an apocalyptic drop that is in population the black death wiped out around 1/3 to 1/2 of Europe , at the current rate if extrapolated over 200 years, the population of South Korea will drop by 98%.
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Finally!!! Good news for mother nature
exactly
Yes! But I wonder if the news is good enough. The video seems to indicate that it likely isn't.
@@ochotunesnature has recovered from Permian extinction. So it can recover from any current crisis for sure. Humans should worry about themselves, we are destroying our own future, not all of life or the planet
Um scuse me, Skeptical Boomer here again - those new farming techniques _ especially pesticides and enormous monoculture as shown in your clip there_ have resulted in exhausted soil and nasty resistant pests!
Thank you for saying what I was thinking. My eyebrows shot up when that was offered as a perfectly acceptable result of a growing population. Nu uh. I'm not at all in agreement that bs farming techniques and GMOs pretend to solve our food problem. Add to your list allergies and/or adverse food reactions, actual malnutricion and soil death. I'm also in agreement w/ an above comment that it needs to be discussed not only from the economists' pov, but also scientists and doctors. (from a 'Boom-X' cusp child)
@@eba44These farming techniques suck, yes. But billions of people starving sucks worse. Learning to feed the entire population without the problems of current agriculture is a really important challenge, but romanticized visions of “family farms” aren’t going to work.
Here we are ALREADY suffering from CAFOs pesticide and fertilizer runoff making rivers and streams unusable and ground water undrinkable.
Not to mention fertilizer & pesticide runoffs into rivers, lakes & oceans. There's a huge "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico thanks to the runoff coming from the Mississippi.
However it's done, billions have been saved by new farming techniques. GMO food has played a huge part (including pest repellent crops meaning few to no pesticides) and being able to grow something like 4-5 times the amount of certain crops on the same amount of land. We have enough food easily to feed everyone on Earth. And we are constantly developing new techniques for further pest resistance (same story as resistant bacteria) and I believe we are pretty good at the whole switching soils for different crops in different years and not using some soil for a while so as not to ruin it. I'm not sure how the whole soil thing works but I get the gist and in developed countries, I'd bet anything most are doing this properly. Developing countries are probably more of a mix. But the point is....Starving people can't create, invent, become x profession, make families, etc. So let's save billions first, which we have done and can't turn back on now, and now we fight the downsides to modern agriculture, without reducing output. I'm personally optimistic about this because of advancements technologically that I have seen.
Why would this be a thing?? Why would people be sooo worried about population going down in 100 years or so? We should all be happy if that happens!
It's just my opinion, but I think the top 1% of those who hold all the money in the world are worried they will not have any consumers or workers if the middle class shrinks. This is not a concern for those of us living paycheck to paycheck (paying increasing cost of living, taxes, etc...) trying to make ends meet.
Low pensions high working age. Short term loses that already alive people will see, long term gain they won't
Even middle class wealth building and financial security is based on interest rates and stocks (401k), the increase in value of which is tied to revenue growth. That doesn't happen if the customer base shrinks. Even those living paycheck to paycheck will feel the pain when things get expensive due to a shrinking market.
@@BSGSVI agree with you given the current circumstances. That needs to change. It isn't working well for the majority. Short term, things will get more expensive, but then corporations will have to re-evaluate their business, which will drive down expenses. How do you justify a head of lettuce, by a ratio of income to a head of lettuce, costing much more than it did 40 years ago? Eggs, same. Aren't we more efficient with those processes? Mass production. More with less.
Unfortunately, humans are stuck in a short-duration, narcissistic, feedback loop. Meaning, the individual's concerns of today overwhelm the potential societal catastrophes 150 years from now. This couldn't be more apparent than with the 1%.
IMHO, omitting inflation, revenue growth has nothing to do with profitability. I realize this is a much bigger discussion with many minute details, but in the end, revenue growth does not determine the health of a company or how it pays out profit to stockholders (keep the money and grow - price appreciation, or pay a dividend - grow slower). Managing revenue, cash flow, and profitability drives the health of a company. The challenge lies in the ever-consistent need to grow revenue, paying huge sums to the few, at the expense of the employees and consumers. "More with less" is the motto of every company I've ever worked for and btw thanks for reading... gotta get back to work now. :)
@@BSGSVYes this video was very general but the root of the issue is how do you maintain savings in an economy that shrinks every year for decades. Today Japan can invest in American stocks but when every country is shrinking there will be no haven for money to grow.
The best thing governments can do to incentivize people to have more children is to offer free and low cost childcare. I don't have kids and even I know this.
That's what France is doing to stimulate the fertility rate
Why do you trust the government to raise your children at their more critical age, birth to six?
Marriage rates are quickly declining as well. Singles either don't have kids or regret it later.
Love your channel and the topics you touched on in this video. IMHO, I wish you had given more time to the economics of what families face today. In my opinion, population collapse is a concern of the wealthy 1%. They're worried they'll run out of workers and consumers.
Yeah, we may see a shortfall in services in 100 years, but that just translates into less profit for the 1%.
Most families, at least the middle class in the US, require two incomes to keep up. Who wants to have children that will be raised by a daycare center while the parents are working to pay for the increase in the cost of living, increase in taxes, and the increase of having children. E.g., my brother and his wife are in their late 40s and they are still paying off their student loan debt.
We want the fertility rate to go up, we need to take a look at the economics and the quality of life of these "workers and consumers".
They are also worried they’ll have to pay their fair share
It's a smaller world after all. 😉
Why do people act like this is some mystery? Wages down, income inequality up, college costs way up and childcare costs way up. What exactly did people think this would lead too?
Corporate greed has devastated the middle class in America. I would have loved to have a family of 4 kids, but there's no way we could have afforded more than 2, especially with both parents in the house needing to work. If you want the population to grow, either fund child care with public money, or make it possible for a larger family to be supported by one wage earner.
Don't forget about the broken marriage and family court system!
@@MaoRatto
Oh, it’s almost like the social revolutions of the 60s were a veiled attempt to increase economic productivity by propagating things like no-fault divorce and pushing more women into the workforce
OK that’s a bit of an oversimplification to be sure but look at the number of corporations that will offer their female employees Insurance that covers birth control and abortions, and see how many of them also offer their female employees paid maternity leave.
I think those things should be publicly funded too but if you look at many European countries where they are funded, birth rates are well below replacement
Population collapse will lead to loss of critical services and starvation.
Who decided that a growing population is normal.
Economists
A LOT of countries seem caught in a "no take only throw" mentality when it comes to increasing birthrates. they want the benefits of a high birthrate without making the social, economic, or political that would actively incentivize women to give birth. as long as women are unable to rely on supports like affordable childcare, labor laws protecting their job, and others, they can't reliably trust in their ability to provide the best life for themselves and their children
Billionaires not having debt slaves doesn't look like a big problem for the planet.
I’m sorry, I’m not seeing a down side. Less people means more food, more wildlife and more green space.
That is not true: that is a false narrative. akin to "baby makes you poor" and poor people will steal and commit crime. AFRICA IS SUPPOSE TO BE POOR according to Western press but they are the only continent that can afford children. why? when the West is soooo rich yet cant afford a natural process of having children. the answer is culture.
JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE LESS PEOPLE: does not negate the fact the top 1% wont take more of the pie.
Simple mathematics of supply and demand is fair if the played fair.
just because 100🏘🏠🏡 homes are available in the market = does not mean its open to 100 families. 1 family will own 90 of those homes. that is what is collapsing.
i hate to be cold but look how many people died during the pandemic in the West and housing is still hard to come by. there are less people since 2020 = yet nothing changed in the dip in population.
its how the demographic pie is cut ; not how much pie is baked. about 7 to 12 families in the USA owns most of the wealth. and its echoed across the globe.
Earth allows you to grow food for free. but they discourage it because they want you to get a job and give up your 24 hours to them. this is how wealth is created; its parasitic
The problem is that the birthrate is declining in developed countries but remains very high in undeveloped countries.
And while undeveloped countries can't afford high birthrates, they fall back on the option of sending excess population abroad.
Africa's population is exploding primarily because their agricultural technology is just now starting to be brought into the 21st century, and they're starting to produce some real first world levels of agriculture.
You statement is correct, but maybe incomplete. I’d go with …. birth rate is very high in some developing countries. In almost all developing countries the fertility rate is dropping like a stone.
Nigeria for example, 7.2 children per woman in 1970. 2024, 2.5. It’s just that many of those people are going to live into their late seventies, so population will continue to climb for decades.
BTW, Mexico. Birth rate is 1.79, and dropping. Well below the U.S. Already in the last couple years numbers entering their working years has peaked, and started to drop. During the next half decade there will be labor shortages in Mexico. Immigration into the U.S. is going to collapse faster than any government program can get into operation.
@@billsmith5109 Yes, it is very interesting, but I welcome it. And I welcome especially a declining birth rate in developing countries. Fewer children per woman meets each child gets more resources. The only sad thing like is the case for example for China is that it is likely that many countries will grow old before they managed to grow rich.
Demographic changes are never forever.
Population decline all over the world and people still aren't being told the truth about exposure to agricultural chemicals and falling fertility rates.
Really? Here is this detectable decline we are talking about.
Only we are framing it in terms of our own one little species, when we should be worrying more about the soil, the frogs, the bugs, the birds and so on.
We are at the top more or less of the food chain and hurting what is underneath, supporting us. That's the greater danger to human population in the near future - more cancers, less land, less food.
6:12 These adaptive, large scale farming practices (animal/vegetable) have been shown to be rather destructive and non sustaining.
I think the only thing shrinking is the dollar signs people envision when they only see profit as a value. I hope that people will find a better way to determine what is valuable and what is superfluous.
I think what people underestimate is the necessary shift in expectations. It's theoretically possible that having more older people to take care of may lead to young people not being able to keep up with the demand. But this view is based on the scarcity model: a belief that we are barely able to keep up producing what the population needs to survive and prosper.
But I propose that it's an illusion. In fact there is a large number of jobs in the economy that are make-work. Producing a new model of a car every year is a straightforward example. Another is forcing a new model of cellphone onto the market, while making sure the old one is no longer updated after four years, even by a willing third party. It's basically gauding the population into believing they HAVE TO buy a new phone, while making the technically savvy unable to keep old phones working, by locking out everyone except the manufacturer, using crypto-locks and secrecy. There is absolutely no need for this; my desktop is a 2011 model running Linux, which is a proof old hardware can go on for much longer. But it can only be done because it's based on IBM PC, an open technology, rather than secret design of cell phones that are not mutually compatible. There are other examples of market and regulatory capture that only serves manufacturers.
There are NO technical reasons for the crazy amount of make-work going on, just to please the banks and stuff CEOs' pockets. Perhaps if we redirected the economies of the world to concentrate on sensible, useful, open technologies, we could afford the health care, the pensions, the agricultural machinery, the next-year's seed, and even mass-produce robots that can cater to the needs of the elderly population. But if we don't, all that will happen is that the industrial complex will burn itself out, leaving us hungry and helpless, and slaves to the few remaining people with options, who will have life and death power over us.
Thanks. "Make - work" used to be the insult flung at government projects, no matter how usefull the project was - or not.
But now it applies SO MUCH BETTER to the thousands of "jobs" where they "work" placing bets on the feelings of investors about the "value" of DIGITAL MONEY OR DIGITAL ART......using up enormous volumes of electricity and computing resources.
This and other high tech atrocities and excesses and other "work" catering to simply obscene level of wealth and greed could and should be redirected to sustainable humane thrift - and reward for people who WORK...🤬!
Government: We are going to make everything expensive
Also government: Strange, why is no one having kids?
Don’t be fooled this is exactly what they want smaller population for easier control
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@@joimonae4090 Uh, no. They want large populations living hand to mouth, dependent on the rich & powerful.
😂
@@Raja1938 no they don’t go read the Georgia guide stones please go read it
Change also means opportunities. I hope after the change wealth and population will be a bit more evenly distributed over the world. Also a focus on essentials, farming/energy/healthcare/technology. Also more solidarity, because the older generation (aka me by that time) will have to support each other and provide entertainment.
There's no doubt in my mind the transition will be hard, but my dream is that afterwards we will live in a slightly better world. I won't have any kids but it is my intention to invest in society as long as possible and the best way I can. Together we can do it.
Keep dreaming!
❤❤!
What are you talking about ? A declining population means a shift in economy, culture and politics. War is the only constant in human history.
A very balanced video; it avoids both kinds of alarmism. On one hand, it's important to say that reducing birth rates is neither necessary nor sufficient to stop climate crisis, but on the other hand, it avoids populist propaganda for breeding.
And look around, how many people around do you WANT to be raising children? Just because someone can, in no way, means they should…with or without government programs.🤨
so collectivism when comes to rights/welfare, but individualism when responsibilities?
The biggest problem is debt. A change in the population structure and its reduction will result in a decrease in people who take out loans, which will translate into a reduction in the amount of money. The problem is that the population already has huge debts and they will not be able to repay them, which will threaten the stability of the debt-based monetary system. The population decline is not only a collapse of the current pension system, but a collapse of the entire monetary system.
yup
The big challenge is going to be clean drinkable water and until that's figured out little else matters.
👍Water is the next oil. It will be a limited and expensive resource.
@@janicehuff1183 and just as many if not more wars will be fought over it. sucks to live in a water rich nation >.
Maybe lower population means less wars.
Possibly, it may be too risky to risk losing people. Already in Ukraine, the average soldier is like 40 something, which is completely unprecedented historically. It was 20s for WW2 for example, but that would be impossible today. 40 used to be considered way to old for becoming a soldier.
Less people to suffer here, isn’t the worst thing that could happen.
your graphic at the beginning should have the date 1900 for when the population reached 1.65M.
As for billionaires whining about falling birthrates -- they just want more masses to exploit.
1. We must stop the compulsion of trying to engineer everything - today we want less babies, tomorrow more, etc; let the couples decide what size of family they wish. And those who decide to have large families (for reasons best known to them) go ahead and make sure they can feed and look after them and not clamour for subventions from society. 2. I can not understand why a decrease of population is being presented as a negative. For starters, there will be a beneficial impact on environment for obvious reasons; it is incidental, but positive 3.The other reason why a fall in population is is perceived to be of concern is (a) funding for Pensions and (b) a fall in demand and as a consequence lower Employment and lower Profits for the Corporations. 4.These are genuine fears, in our present economic thinking. What we need, however, is (a) a new economic model that produces only what is required, such that conspicuous and wasteful consumption is eliminated, but enough is produced to provide for everyone's needs to have a comfortable standard of living (b) evolve a new theory of economic production that reflects our ability to produce optimally and, side by side, a theory of distribution of wealth in a world where scarcity is a thing of the past (c) unleash new ideas for the people to use their leisure time in a way that is fulfilling. Our economic Theories hang on the overriding premise of - SCARCITY. We need to recognize that Scarcity will not be a limiting factor from the last quarter of this Century (or thereabouts). Therefore, MONEY, as we know it will not be the driver of choices. Thank you.
Decline to how many? It will have to decline to a lot fewer than we currently have now to get to 'not overpopulated'. David Attenborough said, "I can't think of a single problem that wouldn't be easier to solve if there were less people". And he was talking about whatever the population was years ago. We already have too many. 10 billion is terrible even if it is the plateau and the end of the century is plenty of decades to do damage from overpopulation. I don't see those forecasts as good news.
Preventing fewer consumers and taxpayers is not a good reason to keep increasing overpopulation, given the preponderance of problems it causes to the ones it allegedly addresses.
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Saying there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers, but I’m sure history will judge you just as kindly as it has all the other people who say we should get rid of all the undesirables.
Low economic growth?
We probably have to let go of economic fantasies that seemed realistic for a few hundred years. Capitalism as practiced in the West was never really sustainable, either in terms of the environment or as a viable economic system. Modern crony capitalism must always expand to survive; it's the ultimate Ponzi scheme. And one can easily see how failure is baked into the very premise. For example Western companies have always sought to force their way into new markets to create new consumers of their products but even more importantly as fresh sources of cheaper labor. But eventually those "developing economies" will "mature" causing wages to rise necessitating finding even newer markets to exploit. And since rising productivity nearly always depends on creating a more educated workforce this further drives fertility rates down since education and economic opportunity are the main drivers of the choice to have less children. The fact is that for much of human history women have few if any choices at all.
Yes, let's let the government decide how to distribute assets. That works so well in Cuba and Venezuela.
Is that a typo at 0:13, where the 1990 population is shown to be 1.65 billion? Should that be 1890? I believe population was around 3 billion in the 1960s, so it couldn't have been 1.65 billion in 1990.
We are heading towards a dark age of lost knowledge and disinformation. Led chiefly by a lack of resources and education.
Dark ages are the best ages, bring it on!
All of the engineers and scientists, etc. who are retiring aren't being replaced. This won't be pretty.
Overpopulation leads to less opportunity, increased distress, fewer jobs, more violence, increased government control to try and mitigate the increased violence and overuse of earth resources. Those seeking more money want to ensure growth. Those seeking increased quality of life want the polluting, people population to decrease.
Related topic: We know by now that it's less about "over population" and more about "hoarding of limited resources," right?
Well, the economy has finally to adapt to not exponential growth. And in rich countries, they still try to achieve exponential growth even with lower birth rates, which makes richer countries the largest environmental problem. So economy adapting to a stable non-growing market would be sensible both considering population and environment.
Do you think that poor countries would not be environmental problems if they became rich?
@@atlanticrf Well, your comment is an oxymoron: if a poor country becomes rich, it is obviously a rich country and not a poor country anymore. Hence, there is no question to reply to.
The Population Boom was only wrong in the particular disaster it predicted. It was right on in predicting disaster from overpopulation. Now we have it: out of control climate change. And there are others. Planet-wide microplastic pollution. Massive species and habitat decline. Unaffordable land and housing leading to massive homelessness. So, economic crises have ALREADY happened due to overpopulation. Yes, further economic challenges will occur as a result of aging populations. This is especially true because we have an economy founded on the false idea of perpetual growth. Now that we see the flaw in that, one might think there would be a great deal of effort going on to find ways to change the economy to function well with DECLINING growth, but I don't see that happening. We'll wait till the last second just like we are doing with climate change. But declining population is a very good thing, not a bad thing. It will eventually give the earth a chance to recover. And one more thought: economic disaster seems more likely to be coming from AI rather than population decline. But actually, with a different economy the two could work hand-in-hand, AI providing the workforce needed to sustain a largely post-retirement-age population.
The middle class has eroded to the point where a single child is almost too expensive
advanced economy population will fall for a decade or two then stabilize naturally.
Look up the chart of the demographics of South Korea and tell me where in it you see stabilization occurring. There are almost 5 times as many 50 year olds as newborns.
4:50 I always looked at a 401 (k) as a better retirement investment than kids. The Ponzi scheme that is Social Security is bound to collapse anyway, regardless of whether the population grows or shrinks
The planet will heal. Thats what will happen
Does that healing include the human species?
@@sharonreddy5557 in what way? There are 10 times as many people alive as they were 100 years ago. That's overpopulation by my standard. We are the cockroaches
@reddy5557 yes, when we go back to a billion or two people which is what the planet can support. Today we are practically locusts consuming faster than the whole world can recover. The only way to do that is to reduce the birth rate and live sustainably
@@alanbudde8560 What the planet will support is advanced technology dependent. We waste massive amounts of resources, up in smoke. The Fire Age is ending and Stellar Age beginning.Population will fall, because we don't need to have several children in hopes one survives.
@@sharonreddy5557human species doesnt need to be healed. It brought this upon itself.
I would suggest we must change the economic relationship between capital and labor developed in the 19th century. Stronger unions, profit sharing, employee owned companies, dismantling monopolies and cartels, demanding transparency and accountability in financial markets. These are some of the things that would help.
This is why we need refugees and migrants to keep the country going. No replacement is happening.
That's just delaying the inevitable, treating migrants like a resource to keep the ponzi scheme going
Fuck no
2.3 children per couple sounds about ideal as a global birthrate, though births/woman and births/couple are different enough as metrics that the figures shouldn't be used interchangeably. "Close to population replacement" birthrates are the ideal, not only for climate reasons, but political and economic stability as well; not so many as to increase stress on infrastructure and renewable natural resources, not so few as to cause economic instability instead of allowing incremental change that forces wages and standards of living to rise with the invention and adoption of new technology.
Exactly what I think
its average for whole world, once indonesia and nigeria fall its over
@@sambitmishra1229
, Stability is overall a pretty good take to have on the issue, but currently the issue is that most places aren’t stable.
The less humans in rich countries, the better.
Oh, that's just genius. Concentrate the wealth further.
@@audreydoyle5268 It allows the poor climate refugees a place to move to.
@@joweb1320 ah yes the anti white agenda. TAX THE CHILDLESS!!!!!!!!!!
Interesting that the people who see the specter of disaster in a population decline are for the most part, the same people who benefit from business as usual. Those of us who have been increasingly barred in various ways from prosperity through the current systems of government, economics, and social strata, tend to see the low birthing trend in a more nuanced way, and with much more curiosity as to the possible consequences.
I thought that population runaway growth WAS the existential threat. If the human population growth rate levels off or even declines to some extent that's a good thing for the earth, right? Humans are more than just consumers and GDP growers.
Unless in some point in the future, the birthrate starts to increase, then even we adapt to an older, smaller population, there's still no hope for the population to not die out completely.
According to some scientists the ideal human population is between 2-4 billions. We can afford to loose a few billions.
Corporations better stop mass production of toxic substances if consumption is still gonna be our basis for economics. An elderly majority means that most people will be unfit for most labor.
Oh, gosh - at 4:40 you came so close to saying something like we need to get away from a consumption economy (although old people "consume", too) and then didn't take it beyond Sciubba's remarks.
Nature balances itself
I don't get why this would be a bad thing. The only reason the video seems to give about why it would be bad is that it's not going to fix climate change (doesn't mean that decline is in itself bad) and that capitalism would not find it profitable.
These are not important reasons.
Why is there an urge to have more and more people? What does that serve? (Outside of religious dogma.) Surely the goal is homeostasis so that we can continue, and for the people who are alive *now* to be safe and happy.
Rapid population decline is not population stabilization. How will a society where the average person is retired or almost retired and not working going to sustain itself? Where will the money come from? Or will old people just be left to die in the future?
Honestly I think a loss in population is not a bad thing. There already a strain on resources. Lower demand equals lower costs, less crowding and more opportunity. The only sectors that benefit from excessive population are corporations, they sell more products at higher costs and governments get more tax revenue!
If people died as soon as they started becoming unproductive you might have a point, but a world where 50%+ of the population is old and cannot take care of themselves, and also don't have kids or grandkids to do it, seems pretty bleak to me.
The planet can not afford to change the current trend, and we should not want that either.
What has to change (and what is easiest to change) is our economic system that is built on the insane concept of infinite growth. I am only a few years from retirement but my employer does not offer partial retirement, where I could still be productive and my health care costs could be met by Medicare (saving my employer $). If I could take partial Social Security payments (not an option today; it is all or nothing) then my income could remain the same as it is today, I would still be contributing to the economy AND I would be reducing the burden on the Social Security system.
Why is this NOT an option for me?
All we have to is change the way we think about these and other things that can be changed with the stroke of a pen.
A whole lot simpler than removing millions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere!!
I think we have to deal with the age-old "haves vs the have nots" problem before most of the planet is willing to get on the same page about population, or any major challenge we face.
You mean smart old people vs. foolish old people?
There are vast numbers of people trying to move from the places where weather and war have made life impossible to the extent they WALK hundred if not thousands of miles to come to where technological civilization and SOME equity in economy and civil services and life make it livable.
They want jobs. LET'S WELCOME MIGRANTS TO THE GLOBAL NORTH!
No, thank you. The bring crime and live of welfare. Plus most of them are economic migrants. If they leave "dangerous" zones it's because they made it that way. Now the new places they come to will become dangerous and shitty
It's entirely moronic to hold the idea that populations need to grow in this era. A century ago the population was a fraction of what it us now, so it's rediculous to claim it needs to stay high. We've dealt with dramatic change to get to this point, we'll adapt to the changes in the other direction.
The real problem is the same problem the world has been facing for forever. Greed. Notice who are all the people freaking out about population reduction. The uber wealthy and those in power. With population growth came constant economic growth. Going from 2 Billion to 8+ Billion people meant the need to build a lot. A lot more cars, a lot more toasters, a lot more houses, a lot more sewage and water pipes. This has been such a boon to corporations around the world that constant growth has been grafted into the DNA of corporations. If a corporation is merely holding steady, the markets will view it as a dismal failure.
No, the real problem with population reduction will be a fundamental change in economics. When that happens, many of the corporations that are so successful today will collapse. Demand in sectors that currently make some uber rich will dissappear, along with their riches. Just look at the richest people in the world right now. Most of their wealth is an illusion based on company stock prices. Even others who have invested lots of their money in properties like commercial buildings and land retain their value based on the constant demand for those properties. If the demand evaporates, so does their value.
Just think about it for two seconds. If we reduce from 8 Billion to 4 Billion, we already have enough housing built to hold around 8 Billion, so why woulf anyone need to build a new house? More, why waste good materials when the need to build comes. Just dismantle old homes, take what is good, and build the new ones. No more strong need to level forests. Things like copper pipes, wiring, and glass could be recycled and made new. Again, no need keep extracting such resources when it will be abundant in old rotting homes and buildings. This all threatens whole areas of industry.
More, this really shouldn't surprise us. Climate change itself is mainly the problem it is today solely because the uber wealthy were afraid to lose their positions of wealth and power. It is well documented that we've had data showing us that climate change was a worsening problem for a century or longer now. A half century ago the data became so hard to ignore that the wealthy through massive corporations serving to keep the status quo put out Billions of dollars worth of propaganda to hide the problem. When it couldn't be hidden any longer, they put even more money into muddying rhe waters. They flooded the public with contradicting misinformation so nobody would trust factual sources.
The very same fear of loss of power that has delayed action on Climate change is behind the fear of population loss.
Even when you look into possible solutions to climate change, we see this fear. So many of the wealthy have now been racing into funding research into climate change solutions. This is because they want to control the narrative there as well, so they can guide the solutions they think will best help keep them in wealth and power. Just look at how hard most of the narratives are holding to the idea of maintaining the status quo. We'll be able to grow and prosper. We can all keep buying cars, they'll just be electric cars. Despite the fact that building the cars accounts for most of their lifetime greenhouse emissions. We can still live rhe suburban dream and commute to work, despite the colossal resources it consumes.
I'm not saying we need to enter into a class war. I'm mainly pointing out that the real solution to our problems is to get people to see through the noise to the reality of our situation. Both Climate change and population reduction are going to require similar solutions. A complete overhaul to our economies and a fundamental shift in our societies. We need to discern the realities of what that really means and plan for it.
Anyways, that's my opinion.
I think population decrease is great. But we need to get ready for caring for a large amount of older people with fewer young people. Cleaning robots, drone deliveries, intelligent medical monitoring devices, etc will all help.
I predict that a small number of city states or nations will start poaching the worlds skilled young people later this century by offering very low tax rates, compared to surely considerably higher than today tax rates in the remaining nations to try to sustain the welfare system, which will be voted for by the mostly old and childless electorate, and that many of today's nations will just become retirement homes with nobody to pay the bill and collapse outright.
Lower populations are coming. That's just a fact. We need to prepare for it.There's no reason this can't lead to widely shared prosperity coupled with a lower environmental footprint. None at all. An economy is nothing but a framework of rules, regulations, laws, and expectations within which people trade. The supposed need for constantly increasing consumption serves no purpose beyond constantly increasing profits for the elites.
less consumption means less production. What do you think would have happened to for example the UK or US if they produced less than Germany or Japan in WW2? You compete or you die. That is the way of this world, and it won't change anytime soon. I for one am not interested in producing less than say Russia if at all possible.
In addition, population decline rather than simply stabilization means there will be by far more old people unable to provide for themselves than young, and most of them won't have children or grandchildren to take care of them, nor a government capable of affording it without taxing young people considerably higher than is the case in any country today. In addition, technological growth and development will surely slow and maybe regress in some areas as the number of people working on it enormously declines and new people aren't taking over from the people retiring.
Simply put, population growth and technological and economic growth go hand in hand. If the population explosion had never happened, we most certainly would not have the internet or countless other things today.
@@ssssaa2 so you're telling us the economy is doomed. I think we should try to meet the challenge head on as opposed to just waiting for an inevitable collapse.
I'm choosing to not have kids at all at this point, but if I still wanted them - I can't buy a house that I will for sure own until I cease and be able to give to my kids for them to have or sell. I am worried about buying a new car rn as well. I can't even afford to feed myself a true good diet, I'm not birthing a kid to not be able to feed them. Even with insurance, my own eyes and teeth bills always trip me for months after a visit, I cannot afford another person's health costs. And it wasn't long ago when the talk of "pre existing conditions" was here and basically if you were born with xyz it was looking like a possibility that insurance wasn't wanting to cover it (I think that got banned but I personally won't forget that evil). And let's say I have child no. 1 and it goes great but pregnancy no. 2 is an ectopic pregnancy and nation wide I'm pretty much told its better for me to just stop existing - what if I cease, what happens to my already here child?
I could go on and on. I could mention how I've been socially treated pre-marriage, during, and now post-marriage by people. Society is ugly to women, I fear raising a daughter here.
Just, in conclusion, why why WHY would I procreate? There's no benefit in any direction except in the just "being a mom" bc I had considered it before and that looks so selfish and like an ugly choice to me knowing I could not provide and having an unsure future for them to survive in.
I also hate that this feels like its "economics! Corporations! Rich overlords worry!" D amn them. I hope they worry themselves off of something high.
I just want to tell you that you are not alone in your feelings, and to wish you well. Take care.
While I still believe that having children in full knowledge of today’s uncertainty and strain is selfish and short-sighted, I don’t have a better reason why humans should continue to procreate and populate. The economy isn’t a stable or sustainable system and many of our systems require addressing and likely restructuring. I don’t want to be judgmental of others and try to respect that other's experience, understanding and perspectives differ from mine. If we don’t self-reflect or self-restrain, and if we are so negatively impactful of every other species on the planet, then the reasons are possibly culture, religious and reasons of social pressures. When the conditions of the world were different we could do as we liked without experiencing the impacts. As the world is as it is now and all is impacted by human behaviour, we would do well to respond thoughtfully rather than emotionally or without careful consideration. Despite consideration, many people are incapable of overcoming influences, and as this is a reality of the world, it’s worth accepting the texture of reality and enjoying things as they are. The topic of this video is based on a subject of human behaviour which is within our ability to master individually, but maybe not collectively.
So, clearly the answer is: 1. Stop climate change and lower emissions now 2. Reduce population as it will consume less and use less planetary resources 3. Ditch capitalism, consumerism and infinite growth economic models which are out of the laws of Physics and get to a sustainable steady state
Thanks! What's your plan for #3?
@@BradThePitts start voting for parties and people that propose different economic models, based on science, equality, redistribution of wealth.
I’m undecided on children. One of the reasons I’m against having children for myself is the effect on climate change and the fact I worry about financially supporting them.
I won't have children, (I could adopt), without someone in my life to help.
The expense just drives you into poverty.
Countries are going to increasingly compete for migrants. Countries with hateful social policies and leaders will lose migrants; countries with welcoming, progressive policies and leaders will gain migrants.
Some countries are going to respond negatively to population declines and take away liberties, power, and rights from women, forcing them into lower education, less professional work, and more child-bearing and -raising.
Some countries are going to decrease their social safety nets for the elderly, spending less and less money on health, medical, and rent for older people. They will push retirement/pension age requirements higher and higher. However, some countries will spend more on re-educating and -skilling their elderly, pushing for more working years. These jobs will need to be more part-time and less physical.
My job is to make more and more people unemployed. Thinking that one needs to work to earn a living will not be tenable much longer. When we switch away from that dogma then the need for young working people to be the financiers of our society will evaporate.
Get used to it, things are gonna change. Perhaps Thanos was on to something...
I used to kinda like that theory. I think I saw Clint Barton holding a mug that said as such, in ‘Hawkeye’. Then again, why didn’t Thanos use the stones to just make the universe twice as big?
@@razzle1964 maybe he wanted people to understand how low population is beneficial. Like if he just doubled the resources people would have even more kids and increase population really fast making the universe the same as before. I would have never made endgame if it happened in real life and just ended at infinity war.
Excellent information. Thank you
We can’t flirt with each other anymore without fear of being accused of sexual harassment. And we wonder why young people aren’t dating.
And if you do, watch out for the hidden nanny state.
Does anyone else, approaching 40, find themselves with a growing aversion to kids? I’m genuinely curious. Here in Florida, we’re surrounded by millennials grappling with a bizarre mix of resentment toward boomers, who still treat us like rebellious teenagers. Meanwhile, they run their businesses from their ventilators, refusing to pass the torch.
But here's the kicker: many of us, nearly 40, are still living with our parents, not because we want to, but because we’re stuck in the looming caregiving crisis that's starting to hit. Relationships? Forget about it. We're too busy playing nurse and watching our own lives rot away. Frankly, I’ve had enough. Let it rot-I’m leaving.
Population collapse is the least of our worries. Why does it matter how many people are on the planet if the planet is burning and no longer suitable to support life. Why does the economy matter if everybody is starving? As humans, as societies, as governments, we need to figure out how to live without consumption being a marker of economic success. We have to stop buying things to feel successful or normal. We have to modify our behaviors today if we have any interest or compassion for future of life on Earth.
If population declines by 50% but GDP declines by 40% then gdp per person increases by 20%. So the question is _how_ you decline.
Also: transition to a sustainable economy is easier when it'll be a smaller population to sustain. The trick is to build it now to live in it later.