this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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The world population is expected to start shrinking within this century after hitting a peak in the mid-2080s due to lower fertility levels, particularly in China, according to the latest projection by the United Nations.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Can't believe we have someone getting so many up votes for saying that the black plague was a good thing? Would you say that about all the deaths during COVID? This upvoted edgelord callousness is nuts.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

It's perhaps a bit callous but throughout history tragedy always brings change. Sometimes that's good change, sometimes it's bad, mostly it's a mix of both.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's nuts (kinda sounds like Nazi speech to me) and it's also not really accurate.

Let's look at a metaphor with money:

My mom and dad work. They give me a little bit of money every day. One day they die and I get a chunk of money from their life insurance, but this amount isn't as much as if they'd stayed alive and had stayed working. Because they died, in 30 years my family's total net wealth will go down compared to the potential because my parents weren't able to contribute.

Now imagine that en masse. There is ABSOLUTELY a loss of money, progress, etc, etc, when people die prematurely. Let alone the human cost itself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What about if people don't die prematurely, but the population isn't replaced? Because that's the scenario this article is talking about. Not additional deaths, but fewer births.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I take issue specifically with the verbiage the commenter was using regarding the black death and wars. And the idea that more people = bad working conditions; less people = good working conditions when that's not the case of what was happening (which was more something like an inheritance/windfall).

In the case of babies not being born in modern times, there are a few things to consider.

  • One, that speech doesn't get weird and start advocating for a Handmaid's Tale Dystopia (forced repopulation for the sake of repopulation).
  • Two, that likely poorer people and probably certain groups will be affected disproportionately by this which is the equivalent of a silent genocide or several silent genocides
  • Three, that we acknowledge there are many sad factors at play as to why people aren't having children and those factors will likely get worse
  • Four, that we acknowledge that AI could very well bridge the worker shortage gap for some time until climate change kills everyone

The pressure we are feeling is from climate change and the rich. Hoping that there will be less humans to give everyone a break is delusional, especially because the past HAD less humans and workers had shit rights then compared to now. We aren't getting saved by anything, not even if we die or sacrifice our would-be children to the sun god.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Well, that's all well and good, but that has little to do with anything the other person, or the article were talking about. It's all well and good to disagree that a reduced population will lead to more wealth equality, or that climate change or AI will derail these predictions, but accusing the other person of eugenics or genocide is hyperbolic at best.

Also, for the last century, the less educated have been disproportionately increasing the population, typically because people with less education are living in poorer countries, which leads to more child mortality, and children are basically the only retirement plan people had prior to the last century. Why you would think this would change is beyond me, because we still have no indication even today that the more educated or wealthy are interested in having more kids, outliers like Elon Musk and Nick Cannon notwithstanding.