Should the ChildFree lifestyle or Birthstrike become common, what is the response of Goverment and us?

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I don’t have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, but if you do you can read the rest of this article:

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Is a dangerous population explosion imminent? For decades we’ve been told so by scientific elites, starting with the Club of Rome reports in the 1970s. But in their compelling book “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline,” Canadian social scientist Darrell Bricker and journalist John Ibbitson lay out the opposite case: “The great defining event of the twenty-first century,” they say, “will occur in three decades, give or take, when the global population starts to decline. Once that decline begins, it will never end.”

 
GEddie said:
If the latter, then the demographics will recover once the sociological conditions that have led to decline have faded.
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What are the sociological conditions which led to decline?

I would suggest that industrialization, corporate structures leading to large companies, decline of population involved in agriculture, high taxes, and Social Security are major components.

I am not sure what the changes necessary to reverse the decline will be.
 
JimG said:
the reality is that fertility rates are falling faster than most experts can readily explain.
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Gee, maybe birth control programs in 3rd world nations? Women empowerment programs? Lots of social pressure and fear-mongering?
 
If one considers the alternatives, falling birthrates is probably the best possible scenario.

What other options are there?

We could continue with an inexorable march to overpopulation. In which case some less than desirable forces will eventually act to control the population for us. I.E starvation, disease, and war.

It’s likely to be far easier to deal with the problem of too few people, than it would be to deal with the problem of too many people. In fact, the problem would likely be self-regulating. Any group of people who’s birthrate fell below replacement levels would simply be replaced by a group of people who’s birthrate was above replacement levels. So long as there’s always at least one group of people who have a birthrate above replacement levels, then humanity should continue. And that cycle may repeat itself over and over again. And it would seem preferable to a cycle in which starvation, disease, and war were the controlling factors in the human population.
 
Although to my mind, overpopulation is a phony terror (which has given rise to some real terrors,) the last post does have somewhat of a point.

The two countries most affected by demographic decline up to now have been Germany and Japan. Seeing as how both countries launched wars for geographic expansion in the 1900s, it would not seem that less crowding in either one would be per se a catastrophe.

ICXC NIKA
 
The Industrial Revolution led to the population boom, by making huge urban families possible. It is not a cause of decline.

Having almost everybody involved in subsistence agriculture keeps population down, because life is at survival level and more land is needed per head. There are more children born in such a society, but many do not live. Saint Bernadette of Lourdes was born into an agrarian society (early 1800s, France,) and had numerous aunts/uncles who died in infancy, before even being named.

On the world population graph (used to scare people about overpopulation,) one sees that the population boom began after 1800, during the Industrial Revolution, which therefore cannot be a cause of decline.

Really, human life has yet to fully adapt to a world in which most children live.

ICXC NIKA
 
Annie said:
Consider the Black Death, which had a huge part of the European population die within a short time. Major changes resulted from that.
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Yeah, but we have antibiotics against it now, and the CDC tracks the plague cases (we see about 10 per year in the US)
 
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My mention was to show an example of population decline which was successfully handled.
 
GEddie said:
The Industrial Revolution led to the population boom, by making huge urban families possible. It is not a cause of decline.
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It may have initially led to a population boom, but ultimately, it is in industrialized nations that we find low birth rates. Part of the reason is that it is no longer economically advantageous to have more children, and among wealthy families, it dissipates the wealth.
 
Your second point would also hold in an agricultural society, because, if somehow all the children lived (this was very unlikely to occur prior to 1800), the land would be subdivided (or younger siblings given the boot.)

The historical conditions of the first population boom, where agricultural settlers could make their way to the North American West, Australia, etc., in search of land, are gone for good.

One reason for huge families in the past was that most of the children were expected not to live. The boom exhausted itself because when most children do live, they become too expensive.

In any case, without an Industrial Revolution, there would never have been a population boom to now be exhausting itself. Industrialization is needed for antiseptics, fertilizers, modern medicine, etc., that allow everybody to live and to stay fed.

ICXC NIKA
 
I’m not going to try to make Bricker and Ibbitson’s case for them. They lay it out in the book and in some videos on youtube. Search for Empty Planet. It is not just a few nations which are falling below replacement levels; it is nearly all of them, including China. Bricker and Ibbitson are Canadian, and they do point out that even with a below replacement level TFR, Canada is maintaining its population with a targeteed immigration policy.

World population growth is being maintained now, not by new babies but mostly by old people living longer. In the coming world there will be more peope over 60 than those who are 50, more 40 year olds than 20 year olds, and more 20 year olds than 10 years olds. In economies which for several hundred years have relied on young people spending and paying taxes, this will be a major shift. The economic grown model will be upside down.

For an interview with the authors you might try this video. And if you plan on being alive mid century, review your economic model.

 
It may surprise you to know this, but I want children. I think a better way to combat climate change is producing better technology, not having less kids.
 
Maybe I’m just a wide eyed optimist, but I see many benefits to replacement levels being low.

As robotics decreases the need for low skill labor, there will be less people to fill the jobs anyway.
As the labor pool shrinks, wages will rise to assure that companies get the best of a shrinking pool.
We are a society that values that which is rare. When babies become the exception rather than the norm, their value will rise. Abortion rates lower dramatically…babies become special and valuable again.
Initially, immigration will be used to fill in the shrinking labor pool until some equilibrium is reached at which point everyone will be competing for immigrants rather than rejecting them.
Finally, we tend to find solutions when faced with crisis. It’s humans best trait! We will adjust and adapt.

I have no idea what the arguments are for some point of no return. If anyone has read what that is, I’d be interested in knowing. Often, people assume things won’t or can’t change and that absurd. We tend to be quite adaptable! We just don’t always like to change.
 
I can answer this question if I am allowed to go off the original topic.

Within America their is so much currently existing technology that is not being used in bulk. This is caused by Politics, not Technology. Thus, having more children will not solve the politics.

The entire premise of the following video is a movie about using the best things we have today, to stop climate change, with no new technology:


Want to see progress in climate change, wait for the age demographics that reject climate change in higher numbers to die off, I don’t apologize for the truth.
 
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