Korea's Birthrate Hits Another Record Low
Korea's birthrate in July dropped to an all-time low, further highlighting the country's swift transition into an aging society.
Sorry but this is a good thing. Earths population is too large for the resources available.
My instinct is that you’re right, but I wonder if what we’re really saying is that earth’s population is too large under the currently dominant socioeconomic and lifestyle constructs.
It's clearly the current lifestyle. Africans are destroying the world much less than the industrialized world because they're too poor to live the climate-wrecking lifestyle of the West.
A key issue though is that it takes a while for lifestyles to change. The higher the population, the quicker the switch needs to be done to avoid catastrophic consequences.
If the Earth's population were 100 million, it might be fine to take a century to switch away from fossil fuels. But at nearly 10 billion, if it takes a century, the results will be catastrophic.
In the end, that's more or less the same thing. But the question is, do we need more people? It's also easier to be sustainable if we require less.
I mean, yes but also no. There's just way too many people, period. Merely 60 years ago the human population was sitting around 3 billion people. Now it's 8. Earth's resources are finite, and at this rate of growth I would not be surprised if we ran out of non-renewables (with no renewable alternatives that scale as well as non-renewables) in our lifetime or our children's.
How do you know this?
The esteemed Mr. Malthus wrote about it. The admirable J. Swift has also written a wonderful proposal for how we may deal with it.
sorry comrade, but under capitalism any amount of people is too much as capitalism itself is predicated on infinite growth.
Absolutely true and correct.
I am not an expert, but it seems like most developed countries are learning to deal with a shrinking population. The current decline hasn't had effects like loosening up the job market, so it seems to me this means it's not currently causing any problems that would be catastrophic. There's clearly enough workers for the work that needs to get done.
I think there's not yet been a article of all the 'doom and gloom' of population decline that actually explains why it's worse than overpopulation.
Because the problems come years after the birthrate decline when a large portion of your population is retired and you don’t have enough young workers to fill the roles they typically fill
It's going to be tough but it needs to happen eventually, plus now we have ai which should help alleviate some of that once it really gets going
You'll also run out of young people who can just take care of the elderly.
For one, those roles dont pay worth a damn anymore. Two, many roles are being automated.
This society we built is now too expensive for anyone but the top 10 to 20 percent to afford. All these old people are expecting youngsters to foot the bill, but the young cannot even afford to look after themselves let alone an entire generation of seniors. How the hell are they supposed to afford kids?
Except we need really tight labor shortages to jack up wages and house prices to go down
2050 is gonna be crazy
Yay for Korea! A constantly growing population is not sustainable.
This isn't a Children of Men scenario, so there's no need to fear intentional low birthrates.
Except
Koreans are having a low birth rate because they are destroying their youth
You'd think "people can't afford to fuck" would be some kind of wake up call for capital.
famously, people get more kids the more money they have
