Declining birth rates should be celebrated and the population of the world should decrease. amirite?

It's not the decline itself it's the fact you'll have a load of old people who can't work with less people coming of age to work and keep the economies afloat by paying the taxes and buying stuff.

by Tyreltowne 2 days ago

Its also the decline itself. Roads, infrastructures, airports, defence forces, scientific research... cost the same irrespectively of a country population. So if population goes down we will no longer afford as much of these things. Also most goods and services become less efficient, and thus more expensive

by Anonymous 2 days ago

Exactly, declining population could push societies to innovate faster and adopt smarter technologies.

by Anonymous 2 days ago

This is it. The problem is not declining birth rates, it's declining birth rates combined with higher life expectancy. You need young people working to fund care for old people.

by Anonymous 2 days ago

Thats ridiculous. Human workers are the most productive they have ever been. We throw away enough food to feed all of the elderly, let alone make enough. There are plenty of empty houses to house them. There are plenty of unemployed people to care for them. The elderly aren't in trouble because there aren't enough young people to support them, there are and more. The elderly are in trouble because we haven't figured out a fair way to distribute our wealth. And I'm saying this as someone who disagrees with OP. We should be having more children. Not because we "need to" though. But because we've created a world where our children will be happy and healthy. Improve the average quality of life so couples want to have kids.

by Anonymous 2 days ago

Pension

by Anonymous 2 days ago

Hoarding wealth has more to do with goods not being spread than distribution.

by Anonymous 2 days ago

Hopefully those old people generally have a lot of savings to release into the economy as they die off.

by kennethharris 2 days ago

In theory, this would be ideal. Lower population = less resources used. But in reality, lots of people would be affected by all kinds of shortages. If you can think of a way to remedy that, it'll be quite interesting.

by Anonymous 2 days ago

Logan's Run had an answer

by Nyasia73 2 days ago

Who's killing you all?

by Heaneyorpha 2 days ago

Your grandparents don't love you?

by Anonymous 2 days ago

That guy was such a puss

by BasketNo3509 2 days ago

When your entire economic system is a giant Ponzi scheme, declining birth rates are a major problem. When you don't have enough workers available to fleece to support the people on the take, the whole thing comes crashing down. Then again, that might not be so bad

by Weekly-Revenue 2 days ago

The problem is retirement. People live longer and longer while there are less and less workers. Who will pay for the retirement checks because there is no money for them. Either people will be made to retire later or they will have to finance more of their own retirement. Now as you noticed this will lead to the collapse of our social system if we don't find a solution and nobody has not thus far.

by Big-Telephone-9771 2 days ago

The solution is already in your reply. The problem is just implementing it. Difficult in a democracy...

by Elianecronin 2 days ago

This isn't so much an unpopular opinion as a ridiculously naive opinion. It has superficial appeal but fails to understand the impact of falling birth rates and why they are regarded as problematic.

by schowalterarian 2 days ago

Yep, if we have slowly declining population over whole globe like 2.0-1.9 it would not be such bonkers take. But Earth population is still growing while some countries have rate of 0,8

by Top-Grand 2 days ago

Yeah, I'm not sure if a world where the elderly start outnumbering the youth is a better one.

by Anonymous 2 days ago

Import Filipino nursing home workers.

by kennethharris 2 days ago

What comes when birth rates decline? You are too focused on a system like the one we have to see outside the box. This is unsustainable. There are finite resources and you can't expect human populations to keep increasing until there's nothing left.

by Anonymous 2 days ago

Declining population = lots of old people = few young people = fewer workers and contributors to society = huge burden social care sector and economy Even if we have to feed less people, the world will become a much worse place to live for everyone. Old and young alike. Someone has to take care of the old people - either the state or their family, which creates a huge burden for everyone.

by Qparisian 2 days ago

They would not have this problem if they would legalize assisted suicide for anyone over a certain age, say 60 or so. A lot of people would check out before disability sets in. Most people dread this stage of life and would welcome the opportunity to exit before the worst happens. I'm 66 and would welcome the opportunity to just pass away and be done with it. All my close loved ones have already passed away, so there's no reason to hang around any more. I'd be willing to bet a lot of older people feel the same way. Not all, but enough to make a difference. Those who want to stick it out could continue the old-fashioned way, hanging on until the bitter end. Checking out would be voluntary.

by wizaearline 2 days ago

Many people in the older generations are not so well off financially too. Better look at the extremely skewed wealth distribution than at older people.

by Anonymous 2 days ago

I'll pay to see how it goes

by Anonymous 2 days ago

at least for the US, there are two answers (along with more controlled immigration) that can hold off the problem. Raise the age of Social Security benefits and raise (or get rid of) the stupid cap on earnings. I'm generally pretty far right economically, but even I find the reasons they give for the cap to be stupid.

by Nyasia73 2 days ago

"Like the one we have" ok OP. Pretty sure depopulation is a problem in essentially any system you create

by Anonymous 2 days ago

Extremely challenging times for the current millennial generation ahead.

by Anonymous 2 days ago

You seem to only understand about 25% of your argument. You forget the elderly, the work to just maintain things, and overall happiness. Trump's policies are so bad mostly because in 10 years we will have to allow tens of millions that have little knowledge to do jobs we need; now they won't speak english. We understand animals and the earth needs less of us but COVID needed to kill more of the elderly to have worked. Not to mention trash heep countries don't care about the earth because God will fix it.

by Anonymous 2 days ago

The only out of the box thinking that makes this viable in the medium term is if there was a requirement for people to continue to be net productive members of society until they die.

by Anonymous 2 days ago

We are an overpopulated planet

by Anonymous 2 days ago

Lel, for a person with no investments and no real estate nothig bad comes from.another crash. I get OP's point. It is naive thou, because Low birthrate is not global issue.

by Anonymous 2 days ago

Surely you do know what happens when there's too much people and not enough resources?

by Anonymous 2 days ago

I'm so with you on this OP 🙌🏻🩷

by Additional-Estate 2 days ago

30 years ago there were 20 workers for every retiree, now there are 4...how do you propose we deal with this...pensions, elder care etc.

by Ernie10 2 days ago

Soylent Green?

by Initial_Bowl7924 2 days ago

I guess it's their turn to suffer. /s

by Anonymous 2 days ago

Radically increase the retirement age and lower the pensions.

by Elianecronin 2 days ago

They're already doing that. It still isn't enough and we need more Healthcare assistants for the elderly with difficulties with their ADLs

by Ernie10 2 days ago

Me too

by Anonymous 2 days ago

Unless you're a raging capitalist, that should really just be a normal opinion. You're gonna find that even here, a lot of people are brainwashed into believing that less people equals bad.

by Reasonable-Bag-823 1 day ago

That's not true at all. How do you pay for social programs like healthcare when every year you have less people paying in and more people taking out?

by Anonymous 1 day ago

The simple answer is that social safety programs will have to reduce payments for probably a generation as the population stabilizes at a lower level. Will that be painful in the short term? Yes. Will a lower population also be hugely beneficial to our planet in the long term? Absolutely yes.

by Dry-Sprinkles-5762 1 day ago

Sure why not. But it's not unlimited and will quickly run out. That's if you believe it's ok to take their wealth in the first place.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

idk. working until death seems to be quite capitalist idea, because without young workers there will be no taxpayers to pay for pensions, retirement would be a privilege of those who managed to amass great wealth

by Shanieankunding 1 day ago

A slow decline wouldn't be bad, but when half the population ends up being 70+ years old, you end up with significant problems akin to something out of a scifi horror movie.

by Acrobatic_Humor_932 1 day ago

That's all great, but imagine if 60% of the survivors of the plague were elderly people. That would be a catastrophe, would it not? You might not even have enough workers in that world to produce the food society needed, and then famine would knock out another half of the population.

by Ana59 1 day ago

Well, I gave it one, too. I agree :) The baby boomers were always going to cause this problem. It was called a boom for a reason, and population was always going to decline after.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

I don't disagree. However, the process of transitioning to a low birth rate reality will be incredibly painful. Most developed countries today developed at least in part due to a demographic dividend. An increase in life expectancy and quality of life, combined with a drop off in birth rates leads to a scenario where you have a few decades with a ton of working age people, and not many retirees or young children. When that wave of people retire, suddenly you are in the opposite situation. Few working age people. Tons of retirees. Retired people live off of working people in one way or another. Either paying taxes into social programs, directly taking care of elderly parents, or by young people working at and buying things from companies retirees own shares in. There is going to be a lot of economic pain before things go better.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

I disagree, this argument ignores the fact that people want to have kids, but social systems are preventing them from doing so. I'd celebrate if it was a thing that is happening because people are freely choosing not to have kids rather than being suppressed due to overwork, housing issues, economy and some being worried about climate change bleakness.

by leatha63 1 day ago

Internet should be banner from anyone with lower IQ than 80

by Training_Elk 1 day ago

So who do you expect to pay for your social security/other public services when you're retired? Or for disabled ppl/sick ppl? For society to continue you need at least replacement population

by Anonymous 1 day ago

In Europe the average Muslim birth rate is around 3 per woman and 1.5 for white women. Expect a big demographics change in the next 50 years and a lot of civil unrest.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

The analogy with cancer is interesting but has no basis other than sensationalism

by More_Boysenberry_261 1 day ago

Good. I am personally sick of the women of the world suffering and being treated like second class citizens, because we are the ones who give birth.

by Dell69 1 day ago

Well I cant say for the rest of the women of the world, but I make sure my expecting wife is as comfortable as possible. And she also has the job security to know its waiting for her when she gets back. Unfortunately, not an experiance avaliable to all women.

by SpareEducational 1 day ago

Ah the great replacement theory. "Good" nations better buckle up; without people from the "bad" countries, "good" country elder social safety nets will collapse.

by Parisiancoleman 1 day ago

Well, the ruling class kept telling us not to have kids if we can't afford them. So we listened...

by Apart_Squirrel 1 day ago

No it is a natural consequence of how humans decided to live and sustain themselves. The study of economics isn't defining things, it's aiming to explain why people and markets are the way they are. One human can't do everything by themselves nor can they protect themselves all by themselves. So as we grew from 200k years ago, we tried to find materials we could trade for goods and services, which goes from things like rocks, general objects or cattle, coins, cash, and then now digital currency, where we're at. And throughout all those years, some humans decided to study how the flow of all of this is happening. Then we found some general behaviors backed by experimental evidence and logical reasoning such as "supply and demand", "diminishing marginal utility", "optimal price to sell goods", etc.

by Kleingerson 1 day ago

Declining birth rates is bad due to the manpower to sustain everything. The continent of Africa has a very high birth rate across a lot of countries, so any low birth rate in the rest of the world generally doesn't see much difference in terms of world population.

by Beginning_Airline409 1 day ago

In general, medeival serfdom was actually a pretty decent life. Sure, there were some regions and times in which the serfs were exploited, but the system had tons of benefits too. So yes, you're actually right--the serf would probably say serfdom is working well.

by Ana59 1 day ago

Any other change would also have you bitching about it.

by Muraziklera 1 day ago

Only 1 solution. Kill enough elderly every year to make the population steady

by Pitiful_Field_9969 1 day ago

Such an uneducated, moronic take as others have pointed out. OP will be forced to keep screaming into the void until they are able to articulate an argument by themselves.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

Problem is that the population will not decrease evenly. All thats gonna happen is that the groups with the biggest demographic impulse and who got hit by declining birthrates the last, will absorb/displace everyone else. As you can imagine, this entails massive conflict ...

by Rohanwillow 1 day ago

Sure at some point it will have to reach a capacity but in our lifetime we won't come close to that. More positives come out of increasing birth rate than decreasing it.

by BasketNo3509 1 day ago

Until capitalism ends they will never praise it. Short term gains is what leads them.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

AGREED! it really isn't that big of an issue yet

by Smithcorrine 1 day ago

Thanos?

by camrongoyette 1 day ago

Number of births below replacement level is a problem because it causes the population pyramid to become inverted, leading to a society where a handful of young people slave away to support a mass of seniors. It also leads to a generally more conservative society (older people as a general rule tend to be more conservative) and an increasing lack of innovators (most innovative people do their most important work before they become middle-aged) increasing the difficulty of solving society-wide problems, like climate change.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

Another 15 year old with a hot take and no experience, lol

by Personal-Low 1 day ago

I'm with OP. Perpetual growth is unsustainable. Yes there's more nuance involved but the human population simply cannot grow forever. Perpetual growth with finite resources guarantees collapse and mass loss of life.

by Standard-Librarian 1 day ago

This is a really good unpopular opinion. I agree with this in some extent.

by Serious-Birthday 1 day ago

No, you need enough births to replace the elderly population and workforce. Maybe we don't need to grow anymore, but a reduction is bad too.

by Strong_Tart_6305 1 day ago

It's not that lower birth rates are necessarily bad. It's that the current birth rates are lower than is ideal. Right now too much population is being lost within a generation or two to support the older generations as they retire, drop out of the work force and then require healthcare or other care as they get older that younger generations are no longer able to provide.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

to everyone who calls OP stupid, naive, braindead: what's your suggestion? reproducing until we have 20 billion people and completely ruining the planet? We have 8 billion now and it's already causing irreversible damage

by rutherfordcleme 1 day ago

Cool. Do you volunteer to go without food in your old age because the active labor force is literally half the population size of the retired labor force? Because i sure feel like it's a problem to have no resources myself, but maybe you see it differently. In reality, a drop in population is a good thing. It's the abrupt drop from one generation to the next that's going to cause a lot of problems and if the gap is wide enough you can't strategize your way out of it.

by LittleLoad 1 day ago

Way too many people are needed if we want to live in the comfort we live in today. If our governments weren't so corrupt, everyone would have food since our current food supply could feed everyone comfortably and more so. Resources (besides oil) aren't a huge concern and if people end up dying, we wouldn't be able asvance in many sectors as fast as we are right now

by Some-Professor-3599 1 day ago

I don't know about your country but mine isn't over populated at all. Solving it with immigration is not solving it all and yeha the system that needs replacing like this isn't good but saying declining birth rates should be celebrated is unhinged especially when they mostly happen because of economic factors. In the western world, Celebrating declining birth rates is celebrating not being able to afford a family. In Korean and Japan it's celebrating a toxic work-life balance that doesn't allow for the creation of a family. If your birth rates allow for population replacement (this isn't the word but I'm not thinking of it rn) then it would be fine. Right now it doesn't so immigration en masses is being allowed and disguised like you said. In the long run we will keep the declining birth rates issue and loose important pieces of culture with everyone moving away from their country lol (Also child labour laws, and actually enforcing them, has big impact in this)

by TopPossibility2918 1 day ago

I have no evidence to prove this, but I do think the human population needs to hit certain levels before we can get to a certain level of technology. I call it shoe lace theory because if no one is making shoe lace and doing all the other jobs needed, then the guy that built the space shuttle never gets to do his job and we never make it to the moon. I'm sure at current levels we have enough people to do everything, and we could even cut back significantly. But it may cause us to Plateau out technological advancements..... is it worth it, maybe, I really have no way of knowing that

by Parking_Ad5187 1 day ago

2 problems with declining birth rates. 1. In the US, Social Security is set up, assuming an increasing population. 2. The "wrong " people have increasing birth rates.

by ExtentNo609 1 day ago

Why do you think our economic system requires constant growth? I don't understand why so many people are saying this. Having the birthrate near the replacament rate of 2.1 would be enough to prevent the collapse. The problems happen when the rate declines closer to 1 which leads to too many old people that strain the economy.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

Declining birth rates is an issue for the survival of a species. Whether or not an economic or social system survives is not relevant. Name a single civilization in history that wasnt corrrupt and didnt have a hierarchy.

by Capable_Low6926 1 day ago

Too many people that think "number go up" is always the better option. You can't have infinite growth on a finite planet. Any scenario where people still have kids and increase the global population ad infinitum would be far more destructive than the inevitable decline of population. The constant fight to want more babies is very strange and creepy to me

by Anonymous 1 day ago

You know what happens if the birth rate drops too low. Extinction. You are just objectively incorrect.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

Humans went down to about 1000 and still managed to bounce back. We don't need 8 billion people. It's a scare tactic to make sure the billionaires have people to pay for things.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

You probably watched too much Children of Men. We aren't in that type of situation where fertility rates simply collapsed. People still have children. People will still have sex to have children, just less children. You are falling for the extreme propaganda that just because someone has 1 or 2 kids (due to the extreme issues caused by our capitalist system) that we will become extinct.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

This is not due to the capitalist system. Humans, if they are in a good environment, just make fewer kids and give it more attention. When you have the plague, you make like 10 of em because most will die . That's why Thanos was wrong and stupid asf.

by Fantastic-Giraffe 1 day ago

But thats not true and I dont know what you're talking about with Children of men. If the birth rates dropped low, we'd eventually have an aging population. A phenomenon currently seen in several other countries already bringing much economic stagnation. Aging populations also bring: * Shrinking workforces - Obviously you are gonna have more old people retiring and less young people to take their jobs * Higher dependents - You will have more old people that can't work and needs the support of society while having less young people to take care of them. * Lower Government Tax Revenue - Obviously less people means less money to the government. But the main issue caused with an aging population is that it is essentially a self fulfilling prophecy. The lower you go, the harder it will be to climb back up and the easier it will be to slide further down. If you could find a way to advert all of this and keep the shrinking birthrates i would 100% be on board with you.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

Then the issue is the system and the economy. It's quite simple to see this. We are living in a system that requires constant, unlimited growth so that we can still live normal lives. This growth is unsustainable. Do you think it's possible to have unlimited growth in a system with limited resources?

by Anonymous 1 day ago

You're talking idealistically, about which system would be better if we could choose any system at all. I'm telling you that the alternative to this system is collapse, and chaos. A very small number of people monopolise the vast majority of resources, rate of growth is not as significant a factor as is the artifically imposed precarity inflicted on the vast majority of mankind. We have dozens of times more empty houses than we have homeless people. We have untold numbers of people starving daily and yet 1/3 of all food is wasted. Distribution of resources and the stability of society is dictated by economic elites, when population contractions make them less wealthy there will be even tighter control/worse restrictions on access to the material abundance created by industrial civilisation

by Anonymous 1 day ago

The economy is a scam created by the rich to get richer by teaching us to care about their personal investments.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

We already have the technology and resources to take care of everybody, the whole concept of scarcity is artifically imposed. Individual liberties are a tragedy of the commons that serve to justify the strip mining of global externalities for minority profit I don't think there is a solution, humanity will suffer a critical collapse when industrial civilisation can no longer expand

by Anonymous 1 day ago

hey op ilysm have a fantastic day / night mwah 💋😚😽

by Anonymous 1 day ago

I think he's making a separate point. I understand how it works, I understand the reasons for needing a growing economy/population, but that really doesn't address the reality that we are also on a planet with finite resources. The human species has already proven to be destructive. It really cannot grow forever. Sure, we may grow this generation, next generation, possibly more generations after that, but we are still speaking of delaying the inevitable conclusion that our civilization will have to change or it will collapse. It cannot continue to grow indefinitely.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

Sure but decreasing population isn't going to solve that. Best is if we found an equilibrium instead.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

This is something these people never really understand. Programs like universal healthcare or social security will collapse if there are too many older people using the system without paying in. We will have to end at least the big social programs. Europe is already seeing the strain.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

Caring for people doesn't cost money, it costs time. At the moment, everyone is time poor because we work too much to afford the limited living space on offer, and don't have time to care for dependent family members, so we have to pay someone else. If everyone took some of their time off the market and gave it for free to family members, this wouldn't be so difficult

by Shoddy_Clothes 1 day ago

It costs an incredible amount of money.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

People of my generation don't want kids. What am I to do when the people around me largely don't want to have families. I want to be a dad someday crisis or no crisis. But people my age don't want kids, this is not something to celebrate

by carleybaumbach 1 day ago

Yeah, but you know we also have finite resources on Earth, right? We can't reproduce to infinity, at one point we have to have a dip in population or we will create this dip ourseves once resources are gone and we will have to be at war with other nations that still have them

by Anonymous 1 day ago

You're living in a black and white world. There's nuance to everything. What about cultures? Languages? If birth rates decline in western countries, but they're booming on other countries, that means famine/starvation are still factors, but western culture gets eroded by other cultures with those booming populations. There are places in the world where resources essential for survival aren't plentiful, so that means concentrations in cities and urban areas is still a thing.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

we're 8 billions at it stands, we were only 5 billions in the 90s and that was the best time to exist. even if the population goes down by 75% now we'll still be fine if not better due resources becoming more abundant. you know when we wouldn't be fine? at 10+ billions with finite resources and an overheating potentially apocalyptic planet. if we get a world wide apocalypse then we'd actually get wiped out completely.

by Anonymous 1 day ago

Id reccomend some research into birth rates and world population metrics. The idea that there are too many people in the world isnt just weird, its fast out mathematically wrong. The idea that there are too many in in specific places like cities is fair.

by Anonymous 1 day ago