this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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Futurology
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A non-growing population doesn't mean the species is going to end. This isn't the economy we're talking about here...
Yeah, but it's projected to start shrinking after the static point, because people also die and birth rate continues to drop in the remaining countries above replacement.
Like, we have billions and could probably get by with millions, so we have a couple centuries at least, but eventually we're going to have to figure something out.
This is as reasonable as Malthus's predictions. Continuous exponential growth in a finite space is as reasonable as assuming the population will collapse instead of stabilizing. I'm not saying it will stabilize, I'm just saying that most other populations of other species have.
If you look at the reasons why people are having fewer kids, it's easy to see what would change that. And assuming it simply won't over the span of centuries is absurd.
They don't want to, and now have contraceptives? It's a pretty across-the-board phenomenon, there's no reason to think a different time would change it any more than a different place. Developing countries have dropping birth rates, collapsing countries have dropping birth rates; as do both rich and poor.
Throw around "absurd" all you want, you're not an expert demographer either.
Except capitalism requires infinite growth, and will go catabolic and destructively consume modern “infrastructure” if it cannot grow. Such catabolic consumption and destruction is already in play, and the leading edge of which can be seen in the “pullback” of GenZ from any hope of home ownership and parenthood.
This significant reduction of a next generation of workers and consumers will cause a spiral of increasingly catabolic destruction as capitalism will go through increasingly desperate attempts to extract more and more profit from smaller and smaller spending-age populations, thereby exacerbating the economic decline and the lack of children.
The same problem would arise in a hypothetical socialist socity.
Sorry, but no.
Capitalism is growth based. It requires infinite growth in order to operate normally, and we are on a finite planet.
Nothing within socialism points to growth of any kind, and well-structured socialism can even function well under degrowth conditions.
It is impossible for capitalism to function at all under degrowth conditions.