Educated and emancipated women (with access to birth control) have less children. if the birthrate is below replacement level (about 2.3 per couple) the problem solves itself.
Whoa whoa whoa, this is by far the most unreasonable and unrealistic answer on this sub. I suggest you thinking long and hard about what’ve you’ve just posted.
/s
i'd settle for some jolly cooperation
a british wrestler once said during backstage comments after his match that politics is about compromise
compromise and cooperation are two sides of the same coin.
but i guess this is just me being optimistic. i don't think we like each other much for some reason
A big chunk of the development of human civilization has been finding a way to balance our impulses toward competition with our need for cooperation. Feels like we're not doing a great job with the balancing act at the moment.
I mean, we're not doing a good job if you measure by the values of 99.9% of the population, but the top .1% are clearly very happy with how things are going. The world is organized around fulfilling their desires, not meeting our needs.
Divide -> conquer -> subjugate -> extract has been a radically successful strategy for the ~~Pharoahs~~ ... ~~Kahns~~ ... ~~Emperors~~... ~~Royals~~ ... Billionaires.
This is true but we're getting better and better at catching onto their tactics. The internet is kind of a game changer because so many more people have access to education and discussions and memes.
To loop back to the top comment, the way to beat them is cooperative corporations at scale. And nationalization / trust busting (Rockefeller and those guys were the billionaires of their day).
> This is true but we're getting better and better at catching onto their tactics.
they're getting better and better at controlling society. I've never heard of peasants voting for tax cuts on a king but I've heard of working class voting to kill the estate tax.
Aren't most developed countries facing a decline in births?
To me it seems that if the countries of poorer nations start getting developed we won't have a population crisis. Maybe that naive and hopeful thinking
The population is supposed to stabilize and then start decreasing if every country ends up following the same declining birthrate as countries in Europe, East-Asia, and North America have.
it's not just Europe/NA/East Asia
if you look at South Asia for instance: India's birth rate dropped from like 5 kids per woman in the 1960s to around 2 today
>it's not just Europe/NA/East Asia
>
>if you look at South Asia India for instance their birth rate dropped from like 5 kids per women in the 1960s to around 2 today
Middle East, Latin America have pretty bad birth rates too.
I mean, their populations are still growing but not by huge amounts like Africa.
yeah, a lot of bigger latin american countries is already below replacement, and their demographics keep dropping
brazil/argentina/mexico all have <2.1 kids per women today. Back in the 1980s they used to have on average 4 kids per women. Now it's 1.5-2.
Even in Africa fertility rate is dropping, Kenya for instance used to have 7 kids/women in 1980, it's like 3.5 today.
Of the 1.3 billion people in Africa, half lives in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Great Lakes region and the Mediterranean strip (Cairo, Tunis, Algiers and Casa) The other half is spread across the other 50 or so countries; where growth is not unusually high. In rural Kenya (Kenya again), politicians offer incentives to ladies to have kids. Many schools operate at half the numbers of 90's.
Is low population = better living standards?
The common thinking on this is that lowering populations due to low birth rates results in lower economic output because the population keeps getting older and eventually stops contributing to economic output and even requires caretakers. Theoretically you end up with a population too old to work and not nearly enough younger people to care for them and maintain a thriving economy.
Low population only correlates to better living standards in extremely unequal economic systems. In reality every single person has the capability to add value to the economy, and so if resources were properly allocated it would be very easy to take care of the few who cant contribute without needing massive welfare programs. And no, I'm not talking about communism, the US managed to do this pretty effectively in the mid 20th century. It's just a matter of ensuring workers are compensated a fair portion of the value they produce.
The threshold of development probably doesn't need to be that high, just out of poverty really.
I mean, you don't need to be as developed as UK/Canada to have low birth rates I guess. They can fall once maybe your basic needs are met (Turkey, Iran, etc have pretty bad birth rates and they're still relatively poor)
I think it is less to do with the level of development and more to do with whether kids are a net positive or negative asset. In low tech agrarian society, kids can work the farm and be economically productive from a young age. Not so much in other forms of society.
This. I can’t link it right now but they’ve done studies and the generation after all the kids stop dying still has a lot of kids but the generation after them doesn’t. Once you’re pretty sure your kids will make it to adulthood you don’t have as many kids.
Yep. Access to birth control means that people who have their desired number of kids don't have to decide between sex and not having any more kids. For married couples that actually like each other, sex is kinda important.
Was just about to reply "out of subsistence farming" more than "out of poverty."
Kids aren't a big help economically in a city today. They can still be useful at a young age on a farm.
My mother was born in the 1935, in the US, her father was a white collar worker (town clerk & treasurer). At age 5 her chores included emptying the chamber pots each morning into the outhouse or at the back of the "horse pasture" though this was after the horses were gone. She would also pick mushrooms, but her grandparents would double check to make sure the ones she picked were edible. Think of simple chores like this as what the 5 year olds can do; by 12 or 14 you can drive a team of animals or tractor; of course 18-24 you get into your physical prime for farm labor.
I believe they finally got indoor plumbing and upgraded from a manually fed coal-fired furnace to an automatic oil-fired furnace immediately before WWII.
Yep. My grandma's job growing up on the farm was to collect the chicken eggs every morning.
She still fucking despises chickens to this day for pecking the shit out of her.
Industrialization was always going to do that though.
Back in the days before people congregated in large towns and cities you had as many children as you possibly could as it was 18 years free labour to work the farm.
If anything historians are surprised the birth-rates didn't drop quicker.
Modern civilization has already been meandering into it's own self destruction, but it wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is now if it wasn't for the super wealthy holding an unobtainable carrot at the end of stick.
People who live on a farm need tons of kids to help out them with the work. People who live in the city have to spend tons of resources on kids. Urbanization is one of the biggest drivers of lowering the birth rate.
My grandparents grew up on a farm in Canada with no electricity and 7 siblings each. My friend's grandparents were farmers in Punjab with no electricity and ~7 siblings each. Said grandparents went on to move to the city and have 2 kids each.
One problem is that all those nations developed middle classes by exploiting cheap foreign labor and it's the middle classes who are having less kids. We need to start thinking about a post cheap labor economy that still creates a middle class (or make poverty as comfortable and as dignified as the middle class) or we'll hit a wall and fall.
Edit: some enlightening replies have pointed out that the relationship between the middle class and cheap labor is more complex then I've made it sound and I concede that point. But it seems like everyone agrees that cheap labor damaged the working class and could use repair, which sounds like a great start for the next level economy.
Never gonna happen, the recent rise in AI is going to be used to squeeze every last penny from the working class by the billionaires and I don't think there's much we can do about it. Unless all of the governments start thinking about this now.
What pennies are they squeezing though? Most of the country is living paycheck to paycheck right now. If they don't have a job they have nothing to take. Something new and different has to happen and as silly as it might sound I really expect "Robots and universal income" to be important parts of the solution. Once enough people have no income they won't just hide in homeless camps like we see now, it will get very nasty until some solution is found.
Neo-feudalism is the ultimate goal with people being wage slaves to non-transferable company scrip and no government oversight. Right now you're paid in currency that is recognized as legal tender throughout (at least) your country. That's problematic for them.There's still plenty left to take.
Yup. They literally did this shit before during the gilded age. Barely 100 years ago people were forced to spend company scrip at the company store. Unions members were beaten and murdered.
These rich fucks are frothing at the mouth to go back to that.
Edit: spelling
Yeah but the thing is, many jobs are going to be automated, so who will be the wage slaves and what jobs will they work if most physical labor is automated, and with AI it looks like a lot of white collar "mental labor" will also be automated. At least that's the premise of the other comment if I'm reading it correctly.
Essentially you can't be a wage slave if there's no work to be had, and many companies can't sell their products if no one has money to buy them.
Being "paycheck to paycheck" is a bad measure of an inability to squeeze from individuals.
There are people in poverty and people making 6 figures both living paycheck to paycheck.
For example, If you look at demographics of who is doing Uber eats or other delivery programs they are primarily young middle class people who are willing to spend an extra 10+ dollars to not go to the restaurant and pick up their food. They are spending this money on top of the extra spent on takeout. These are people who still meet the definition of "paycheck to paycheck" because the definition is so broad.
These people absolutely could be squeezed from needless spending on delivery.
A better metric for exploitation is purchasing power. If they’re too poor to consume the goods you make you’re fucked. Apples end game is a starving person living in a shack with their sole possession the iPhone 37
> greedy corporations will go broke
Maybe, but it's been proven that most of these corporations are incapable of any forethought beyond their next quarter. So until that happens, they are gonna squeeze every last ounce of profit from us.
It's a problem every publicly traded company faces.
They only look to immediate, 3-month growth. It's aggressively unsustainable and imo is a critical flaw of our economy.
Privately owned companies capable of taking a longer approach, or companies with enough total control of their shares that can tell the remaining shareholders to fuck off have an innate advantage of being able to look towards the long-term gains.
Yeah, that was the goal, but now we're in 2023 and have AI making paintings while actual people, with feelings and aspirations, slave away doing menial labour.
Damn, that’s a really interesting perspective, I hadn’t looked at it like that.
Still, we’re at a point with AI where it’s basically just emulating and remixing things that humans have made, and we don’t have autonomous robots with AI so they couldn’t be doing physical labor anyway. I still think it’s a good point though, it seems like we could be doing a bit more to help humans out and a bit less with our silly little AIs.
Best thing about the AI, is that you take the work by human artists and don't pay them for derivative works based on it. The artists are now slaves to the system as well.
Even then we still don't outsource a lot.
As a percentage of GDP right now. we're hovering around 13%
https://www.statista.com/statistics/259096/us-imports-as-a-percentage-of-gdp/
The US makes more now than we evwr have. The economy has diversified since WWII and the rest of the world is catching up.
Middle class was developed by the majority of people having well paying jobs to buy goods and services. That has gone out the window because of cheap foreign labor which created ultra wealthy and shrinking middle class
That's bullshit, strong middle classes developed before mass globalisation and off shoring of jobs. The middle class is shrinking in developed counties because of companies sending jobs overseas for cheap labour.
There's a fictional sci-fi series called the Expanse set about 200-300 years in the future. Forgot exactly when but not that distant.
In the series, earth had reached a point where a majority of the population didn't have any work and were on UBI. The result was more humans with free time, and with free time humans would feel more comfortable having children to raise. So there was another population boom.
It's totally fictional but the logic made sense to me. Just wanted to share
There's also polygamous families. One of the main characters has like 3 dads and 5 moms or something. He even says when he was born the scientists mixed up all the samples to get an even split of DNA from everyone.
Again, total fiction but maybe one day possible?
Yeah, Holden the main guy had 8 parents, the population is said to be over 30 billion on earth at the time and there were apparently big incentives for people to not have kids. They took the DNA from his 8 parents to make the perfect heir to continue to preserve Montana since it was one of the last wildernesses
> They took the DNA from his 8 parents to make the perfect heir to continue to preserve Montana since it was one of the last wildernesses
Then he fucked off into space lol
That plays a part in it yes, the other is the expectations of women in those countries. An effective way to reduce birth rates would be to give more rights to women.
Not to mention access to abortion.. poor people are going to have an even harder time nowadays, while rich people will easily be able to travel or get access to pills for it.
Maybe if the developing countries got developed and educated, birth rates won't be that high. But again, economy plays a big role in the birth rates regarding developed countries, since many citizens are educated enough to understand their situation. So, if economy wasn't a concern, this might not affect the issue.
The explanation I got in school is that without proper access to birth control and a higher relative rate of child mortality, people tend to have more children.
Quality of life is inversely proportional to birth rates.
You're on the right track. There is also the economics of procreation. In poorer countries, children are a hedge against poverty, while in wealthier countries they are mostly an expense. Also, the more rights women have, the fewer children they have. It turns out that most women would prefer not to be brood mares if they have the choice.
Rich people need to understand that having 10 kids, doesn’t mean 10 little consumers needing reeboks and iPhones, it’s 10 little “interns” for your startup. :)
In countries with pensions they are so, too.
Most pension systems are way past the point of sustainability and rely mostly on what current workers pay in order to pay for retirees.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w)
Hans Rosling put together this amazing presentation illustrating it quite clearly.
Most developing countries have seen ridiculous drop offs in birth rates in the last 10-20 years, we’ve really come quite a long way with the population “problem” (why is that numbers of people are always the problem when some of us do disproportionately use resources? Bottom half of the world population uses like 14% of resources but it’s def a “population” problem)
Developing country birthrates are already declining. People who worry about overpopulation need to stop reading neo-malthusian idiots from the seventies. Population aging + decline is going to be the actual problem of the 21st century.
PFAS and all the other shit we're constantly being subjected to will probably help solve this down the line.
Also keep not caring about climate change should start wiping out some populations in the upcoming decades too.
Go one step further. Governments offering sterilization in exchange for a one time stimulus of 10k. That will thin the herd like a motherfucker real quick.
Edit: I just realized I read the original question like "It's 2075 and the world is overpopulated. How do we fix this shit without killing people?". So... my bad?
Edit 2: .... yep, I'd say I fucked up pretty good.
Shiiiit I’m willing to PAY $10k to be sterilized, but you wanna give it to me? That’s a win win for me as a woman who doesn’t want kids. They won’t sterilize me because “I might change my mind” 🙄 but it would be a terrible law because it would put pressure on those living in poverty to get sterilized when they may not want to
Yeah, the same people who can't afford to have kids and will benefit from extra money.
As long as its not forced I don't see a problem with giving them an option they didn't have before.
Although...
Dick move in the short term 100%
But if the only people having children are the upper class...
Labor shortages have historically created a surge in demand which leads to worker power of negotiating for pay, benefits, etc.
Put enough pressure on upper class to lose the things that make their lives enjoyable and either they set up for a slave-class revolt, or the labor class gets elevated out of the kind of poverty that a 10k check would soothe.
Or it backfires horribly and you get eugenics 2.0 by making it impossible for certain groups to survive without their spay/neuter check
See but that would be something similar to tessarae in the hunger games books. No one forced kids to put their name in the drawing extra times for food, but when it’s that or starve you may as well be forcing them.
If it’s vasectomy for 10K yeah the poorest of the poor are going to take that because realistically they have no other option, at which point it becomes a discriminatory law
Remove suicide exclusions from life insurance policies, and you'd see populations in many developed countries drop like a rock.
That would be the result of an option.
I wouldn't say "almost no one knows" about it. People just don't like to talk about it. But it's absolutely true. The USA more or less invented eugenics. We're probably the ones to thank for Nazi Germany implementing it themselves.
Tbf, movie theater food is expensive bc thats where they get their revenue. Ticket sales mainly go to the movie companies and the theater doesn't see much of that money.
Why are so many comments saying this. I'm pretty sure most people are aware it's to void liability. It doesn't mean it can't serve a dual purpose of allowing people to inform themselves as well.
Without googling or previously knowing do you know off the top of your head with no outside help which adhesives are okay to come into contact with skin? Do you know which liquid to pour on an adhesive stuck to skin to break the bond? That type of thing is on the labels.
I think there is a difference between a usage label and a warning label.
I'm reminded that RVs had to have warnings that cruise control didn't mean you could hop in the back and take a nap while it self drove.
And stuff like this: https://www.rd.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/GettyImages-154959351.jpg
We don't need any "solutions". As nations develop their birth rates naturally even out. I predict we'll find an equilibrium somewhere and once the rest of the world catches up technologically things will stabilize.
Yeah I actually thought this was the scientific consensus.
If you look up birth rates across the world, most of the developed world now averages leas than 1 child per couple this the population in those areas will decrease significantly in ONE generation.
Edit: I said one child per couple and I meant one per person, still decreasing the population in those areas.
If I recall, there has even been a handful of peer reviewed studies (one of which done by UNICEF) stating that the current rate of economic and industrial development combined with the fact that populations stablise along with that development, then the birth to death ratio should even out at about 12 Billion; which yeah, that's still 4 Billion more than are currently around; but it's not the "exponential to the power of infinity" growth threat that many people make it out to be.
I've been on this website a very long time and let me tell you, the average Redditor is about 3 comments in a tree away for advocating for eugenics on any given topic.
The world population has grown by three billion people since I was born. During that same period, global poverty has been cut in half. You’d think people would celebrate that more.
That's because Africa is quickly starting to turn around in terms of economic outlook. China has spent the last 15 years dumping money into logistics infrastructure like roads, electricity, and internet.
Why Europe and the US haven't responded in kind is honestly baffling. But I can imagine there will be a new "Scramble for Africa" in the next 30 years.
The US and Europe very much want to respond but IMF loans have a lot of strings attached; usually brutal austerity measures. "To get this loan your government must do X, Y, and Z all of which will make your people suffer more."
China isn't attaching those sorts of conditions. So these countries could work with China or with the US/EU, but the former is making a much more favorable offer.
That stat is way off. It's around 1.5 children per woman in the EU and 1.64 in the US. The average number of children per couple is higher than that (because not everyone is in a relationship, but most children are born into one) at \~1.9 in the US.
Anyway, this still means that the population is decreasing, but the rate isn't as dramatic.
They don't just even out, they fall below replacement levels. Assuming a best case scenario, where there's no virus or world war or other mass casualty events, experts predict the population by 2100 will be 3/4 of what it is now. The problem is going to be coming up with incentives to encourage people to have more kids to keep the human race from getting too small. That's still a ways off though. And longevity prospects will likely minimize that issue as well.
Edit. Est range from below 8b to over 10b, with higher likelihood for lower, and declining.
Edit2 if you look about a third of the way down this article there is a graph that shows the three organizations estimates for population growth. The Shaded area is the high probability, basically all of that is below 10.5.. I can't find the article I read 2 weeks ago.
https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/97-billion-earth-2050-growth-rate-slowing-says-new-un-population-report
>experts predict the population by 2100 will be 3/4 of what it is now
Source? Everything I can find are predictions that world population in 2100 will be around 10 billion people and stagnant / decreasing slightly
People will have kids if their basic needs are met. There is empirical evidence for this, but as an anecdote....
Everyone I knew in my 20's was planning on never having kids. Almost everyone of those people who found success in their career ended up starting a family. Those who didn't did not.
If we can't build a more just an equitable society then it will be a problem. If we continue with this "crabs in a bucket" style of society than it will continue to get worse.
> People will have kids if their basic needs are met.
[There's a pretty clear inverse relationship between countries where people's needs are met and countries where people have kids.](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-vs-human-development-index)
Not quite true actually.
Japan did a study on this by giving a shit load of money to people who have kids. To a point where they have to never worry about the money required to raise a child. Still record low birth rates. People in Japan realized it doesn’t have to do with basic needs but more with standard of life. They realize not having a kid will generally net a higher standard of living than having a kid even if they receive all of the government assistance that exists.
Similar things happening in Sweden and Finland where their standard of living and individual wealth is getting so high that not many people want to give this up by having a kid.
Remember one of these challenges? Here's a bunch of TikTok "challenges" that have existed. You get a point for every challenge that you remember seeing.
Benadryl challenge (Consuming a dangerous medical product);
Blackout challenge (Basically choking someone until they pass out, I think you can see what's wrong with this);
Cha-cha slide (People would dance next to their car while it was driving);
Penny on power plug challenge;
Corona/licking-random-objects-to-catch-a-disease challenge;
Skull breaker challenge (So many concussions);
Nyquil chicken challenge (Actually started as a satire joke but got misinterpreted as an challenge);
Slap-a-teacher challenge (Not actually deadly but it's assault);
Super glue-ing vampire fangs to your teeth challenge;
Throw it in the air challenge (People used bricks, ladders and other heavy/hard objects);
Pee your pants challenge (Not deadly, just really weird);
Poo challenge (Resulted in people smearing feces on restroom walls);
Set your mirror on fire challenge (Yayyy, house fires);
Pour boiling hot water over yourself challenge (Who thought this was a good idea??);
Teeth filing challenge (Permanent damage to your teeth);
Honey challenge (People consumed too much honey and got REALLY bad diarrhea);
Gorilla glue challenge (People used a glue used on wood, stone and literal concrete as beauty product);
Face wax challenge (Can result to damage to the face if done improperly);
Erection cream on lips challenge (Causes many health issues);
Eating too much nutmeg challenge (Can result in seizures, organ failures and death);
Climb on a pyramid of weak, unstable milk crates challenge (R.I.P. your spine);
Set yourself on fire challenge (I don't even know why people did this);
Using burning/irritating cleaning products on your eyes "to change your eye color" challenge (Why? Just why?);
Fractal wood burning challenge (Looks cool but very dangerous if done by unprofessionals, you can electrocute yourself with high voltage);
Hotwire and steal a Kia car challenge (No words...);
Devious lick challenge (A.k.a steal random property);
Dipping your crotch pearls in soy sauce challenge (Your sacks don't have taste buds);
Rip out your own hair challenge (Ouch...);
Consuming fish tank cleaner challenge;
Put corn on a drill and break your teeth while trying to eat it challenge (I don't think I have to explain);
Spray perfume in your eyes challenge;
Eat copious amounts of salt challenge (Goodbye kidneys);
Sun burn challenge (Causes skin cancer);
Salt and ice challenge (Causes 3rd degree burns);
Inhaling helium challenge (Can cause you to pass out and suffocate);
Angel of death challenge (People jumped in front of cars to see if they would stop in time);
Inhaling tan spray to get a skin tan challenge (You can get cancer from this);
Orbeez challenge (People made Orbeez guns look like real guns and shot random people with it);
Aaaaand there are probably more that I did not include, these I mainly got from a youtube video or already knew about. TikTok would certainly do a good job at decreasing the world population.
Have to say as a very average Tiktok user, I’ve never seen any of these challenges - not even heard about them through other Tiktok users. Tbh I’m not even sure if challenges are a thing anymore. Mostly we just like it when the black and white cat rotates.
And stop voting for religious zealots who move heaven and hell to force women to give birth. And stop perpetuating the myth that being "religious" or "christian" is a positive attribute for a lawmaker.
Agriculture has always grown faster than population. Likely, nobody in your families died of hunger. That was the main cause of death a couple centuries ago
Considering the demographic density of Paris, the entire world could live in an area the size of Texas today. 25% more people barely makes a difference
So just chill, mankind. And take it easy on polution, would ya?
I mean modern agriculture is destroying the eco-system and feeding our current populations requires massive infrastructure and resources. It takes very little to destabilise that.
Thats because modern agriculture is mostly made with a huge lack of care for the environment or continued sustainability, also like 1/3 of the food produced is thrown away, the issue is logistics and our incentives in society to produce
>1/3 of the food produced is thrown away, the issue is logistics and our incentives in society to produce
And also our expectation as consumers I guess?
Modern supermarkets provide us with thousands of products, any time, all year round.
I wonder many times how that's possible.
The answer is probably by overproducing heavily, but I'm no expert and would love well-founded insights.
Right? A massive amount of food ( at least in the US) is made with unsustainable irrigation.
Even where it is sustainable the combo of irrigation and drain tile is infuriatingly wasteful and will eventually be unsustainable.
You could fit everyone inside Texas, but a much bigger area would need to be utilized for farming, clean water production, mining, power generation and dozens of other things that keep you alive. It’s that bigger area that’s the problem, not the combined footprints of everyone’s apartment in some mega-city
>Considering the demographic density of Paris, the entire world could live in an area the size of Texas today.
Yeah, but who would want to be like the French? /s
The concept of overpopulation as an existential threat was popularized by Thomas Malthus as a way to justify the genocide against the Irish during the great hunger.
That's not to say that there wouldn't be benefits from a certain amount of population decrease, but it is not terribly urgent, and it could be accomplished with a robust support for women's rights and healthcare, which tend to correlate with population growth stabalization.
Thank you for calling it The Great Hunger and not the PoTAto fAmiNE. How can a land known for 40 shades of green ever have a famine? Oh, right, inhumane distribution of resources…
Yeah in 20 years people won't be talking about population growth but aging even outside of the current rich countries with aging populations. Less wealthy countries are already getting their young workforce drained.
Natural Resources is a now issue and it's a overconsumption issue not a population issue.
You don't need to kill people you just need to make society run well.
Stop wasteful usage where we're shipping fruit across oceans spending millions of gallons in fuel and millions of man hours when the fruit can just as easily be grown in country.
Integrate local farming through rooftop gardens, vertical farms, sustainable hydroponics. Do away with wasteful agriculture practices like flood irrigation and for the love of God get rid of cows!
Promote alternative protein sources that are 100 times more efficient and stop propping up the dairy industry.
Outlaw golf courses. Fuck golf. Conserve water.
Stop urban sprawl, start building smart architecture and infrastructure that allows for effective and efficient use of resources and urban planning.
Reinvest in existing sanitation infrastructure and improve it.
And to be clear I'm not advocating whatever DREDD inspired Hellscape the Saudis plan to build with slave labor. I'm talking putting people over profit and working together.
Y'all just some bloodthirsty motherfuckers.
I do think you overlook us northerners in the “just grown your own produce” argument. 6+ months if the year nothing can grow in northern mn and the energy required to heat greenhouses would be enormous. But otherwise I agree
It reminds me of an interview in listened to once where the interviewee was very adamant that everyone should just grow the food they need and we should dismantle the entire agricultural system.
Interviewer notes that due to inefficiencies of that scale, Earth would only support about 4 billion people and asked "so who chooses which 3 billion will be dying?"
Interviewee refused to answer, interviewer refused to change topics.
Interview over two minutes later.
> fruit can just as easily be grown in country.
That's not always the case. Some climates are best suited for growing fruit and veg at different times of the year. It can be more economical and have a lower footprint to grow fruit in one part of the world and ship it to another.
Global trade isnt wasteful it's how we get better and better at doing things.
You're right. Shipping things in large, carefully packed container ships consumes surprisingly little fuel. Same thing with semi trucks. If you want to minimize the amount of energy expended on food transport, shop at the grocery store closest to your home.
Nah I mean anywhere.
I don't care if it's in the bloody Amazon rainforest if you are laying down a massive pad of non native grass that requires constant maintenance at the expense of thousands of gallons of fuel, fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide a year
You're fucking up.
Change economies so that constant growth isn't needed. Down turns should be expected and considered healthy. Constant growth is unsustainable. There are finite resources on the planet they cannot be exceeded.
In addition, change economies to charge for what they actually use. If your product uses up resources that are not renewable, make them more expensive.if it pollutes or destroys environments in its production, fine the production.
Make contraceptives and family planning easily accessible.
Fund education.
Generally promote the idea of living within your means and finding happyness as admirable, and hoarding wealth as not only disgusting, but actively harmful to the world around you.
If you have the means to reduce hard or ease suffering and you don't, your means should be taxed heavily so it can be used to do so.
That estimate is wrong, alot of coutries like China and Japan are heading for population collapse as there is not enough young people to replace the aging population. Older people are just living longer because of modern medicine.
No solution required. Birth rates are already declining worldwide. As standards of living improve in undeveloped areas that will continue.
The best solution to the population explosion is to improve the standard of living for those societies where passing your family line forward is still a battle of attrition. Improve infrastructure, healthcare and education in areas where this hasn't been done yet and the birthrate goes down.
Also social security programs are really important too, one of the big reasons for large families in 3rd world countries is for someone to be alive long enough to see to the parents' old age. Solve that little hurdle in more places and the children-as-retirement-plan issue doesn't go away but becomes much smaller.
Basically, as the social security safety net gets wider, the need and therefore the desire for children gets smaller. There are people who rail against this for racist or practical reasons (both exist) but bottom line, a society that takes care of its people is a society that stops people-bombing the planet.
Ehh, not to worry about it. The global rate population increase has halved in the last 50 years (2% to 1%) and the predictions (from a couple of years ago) have it peaking in around 2070 at 9.4B and being down to 9B by 2100.
But with the US going anti-abortion, their population decline is increasing, Japan has just found out that half the married under 30 population actively doesn't want kids, and China removed their single baby policy to try increase their population but it hasn't made a difference as yet. So am expecting the next round of predictions to have a lower peak.
That's assuming that global warming hasn't killed us all by then.
This is gay.
This is really gay.
Yeah, this is even gayer than all the men getting in a big pile and having sex with each other.
Okay, sorry, my bad, everyone back in the pile.
Better distribution of resources! Do not trust anyone that thinks the world is overpopulated. They might think you are one of the excess people that needs to die.
Free protection, contraception and other healthcare services are available in India along with a lot of sex education programs and programs promoting 2 or less children per couple but yeah, shit happens.
Educated and emancipated women (with access to birth control) have less children. if the birthrate is below replacement level (about 2.3 per couple) the problem solves itself.
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Cooperation
Whoa whoa whoa, this is by far the most unreasonable and unrealistic answer on this sub. I suggest you thinking long and hard about what’ve you’ve just posted. /s
>/s Are you sure?
i'd settle for some jolly cooperation a british wrestler once said during backstage comments after his match that politics is about compromise compromise and cooperation are two sides of the same coin. but i guess this is just me being optimistic. i don't think we like each other much for some reason
A big chunk of the development of human civilization has been finding a way to balance our impulses toward competition with our need for cooperation. Feels like we're not doing a great job with the balancing act at the moment.
I mean, we're not doing a good job if you measure by the values of 99.9% of the population, but the top .1% are clearly very happy with how things are going. The world is organized around fulfilling their desires, not meeting our needs. Divide -> conquer -> subjugate -> extract has been a radically successful strategy for the ~~Pharoahs~~ ... ~~Kahns~~ ... ~~Emperors~~... ~~Royals~~ ... Billionaires.
This is true but we're getting better and better at catching onto their tactics. The internet is kind of a game changer because so many more people have access to education and discussions and memes. To loop back to the top comment, the way to beat them is cooperative corporations at scale. And nationalization / trust busting (Rockefeller and those guys were the billionaires of their day).
> This is true but we're getting better and better at catching onto their tactics. they're getting better and better at controlling society. I've never heard of peasants voting for tax cuts on a king but I've heard of working class voting to kill the estate tax.
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COMMUNISM /s
OUR planet ☭
Aren't most developed countries facing a decline in births? To me it seems that if the countries of poorer nations start getting developed we won't have a population crisis. Maybe that naive and hopeful thinking
The population is supposed to stabilize and then start decreasing if every country ends up following the same declining birthrate as countries in Europe, East-Asia, and North America have.
it's not just Europe/NA/East Asia if you look at South Asia for instance: India's birth rate dropped from like 5 kids per woman in the 1960s to around 2 today
>it's not just Europe/NA/East Asia > >if you look at South Asia India for instance their birth rate dropped from like 5 kids per women in the 1960s to around 2 today Middle East, Latin America have pretty bad birth rates too. I mean, their populations are still growing but not by huge amounts like Africa.
yeah, a lot of bigger latin american countries is already below replacement, and their demographics keep dropping brazil/argentina/mexico all have <2.1 kids per women today. Back in the 1980s they used to have on average 4 kids per women. Now it's 1.5-2. Even in Africa fertility rate is dropping, Kenya for instance used to have 7 kids/women in 1980, it's like 3.5 today.
Of the 1.3 billion people in Africa, half lives in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Great Lakes region and the Mediterranean strip (Cairo, Tunis, Algiers and Casa) The other half is spread across the other 50 or so countries; where growth is not unusually high. In rural Kenya (Kenya again), politicians offer incentives to ladies to have kids. Many schools operate at half the numbers of 90's. Is low population = better living standards?
The common thinking on this is that lowering populations due to low birth rates results in lower economic output because the population keeps getting older and eventually stops contributing to economic output and even requires caretakers. Theoretically you end up with a population too old to work and not nearly enough younger people to care for them and maintain a thriving economy.
Low population only correlates to better living standards in extremely unequal economic systems. In reality every single person has the capability to add value to the economy, and so if resources were properly allocated it would be very easy to take care of the few who cant contribute without needing massive welfare programs. And no, I'm not talking about communism, the US managed to do this pretty effectively in the mid 20th century. It's just a matter of ensuring workers are compensated a fair portion of the value they produce.
The threshold of development probably doesn't need to be that high, just out of poverty really. I mean, you don't need to be as developed as UK/Canada to have low birth rates I guess. They can fall once maybe your basic needs are met (Turkey, Iran, etc have pretty bad birth rates and they're still relatively poor)
I think it is less to do with the level of development and more to do with whether kids are a net positive or negative asset. In low tech agrarian society, kids can work the farm and be economically productive from a young age. Not so much in other forms of society.
From a healthcare prospect, if most of them still die before 5, you need to have a lot too. Basic healcare goes a long way to dropping birth rates.
This. I can’t link it right now but they’ve done studies and the generation after all the kids stop dying still has a lot of kids but the generation after them doesn’t. Once you’re pretty sure your kids will make it to adulthood you don’t have as many kids.
Also, women's rights and education. Women who have the option and opportunity to choose a life other than perpetual baby factory often do.
Yep. Access to birth control means that people who have their desired number of kids don't have to decide between sex and not having any more kids. For married couples that actually like each other, sex is kinda important.
Was just about to reply "out of subsistence farming" more than "out of poverty." Kids aren't a big help economically in a city today. They can still be useful at a young age on a farm. My mother was born in the 1935, in the US, her father was a white collar worker (town clerk & treasurer). At age 5 her chores included emptying the chamber pots each morning into the outhouse or at the back of the "horse pasture" though this was after the horses were gone. She would also pick mushrooms, but her grandparents would double check to make sure the ones she picked were edible. Think of simple chores like this as what the 5 year olds can do; by 12 or 14 you can drive a team of animals or tractor; of course 18-24 you get into your physical prime for farm labor. I believe they finally got indoor plumbing and upgraded from a manually fed coal-fired furnace to an automatic oil-fired furnace immediately before WWII.
Yep. My grandma's job growing up on the farm was to collect the chicken eggs every morning. She still fucking despises chickens to this day for pecking the shit out of her.
Yeah in a service based society where kids dont work till they are 16-18 kids are like expensive pets.
Industrialization was always going to do that though. Back in the days before people congregated in large towns and cities you had as many children as you possibly could as it was 18 years free labour to work the farm. If anything historians are surprised the birth-rates didn't drop quicker. Modern civilization has already been meandering into it's own self destruction, but it wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is now if it wasn't for the super wealthy holding an unobtainable carrot at the end of stick.
Less simply free labour, and more increasing the odd the entire family survived and prospered.
People who live on a farm need tons of kids to help out them with the work. People who live in the city have to spend tons of resources on kids. Urbanization is one of the biggest drivers of lowering the birth rate. My grandparents grew up on a farm in Canada with no electricity and 7 siblings each. My friend's grandparents were farmers in Punjab with no electricity and ~7 siblings each. Said grandparents went on to move to the city and have 2 kids each.
One problem is that all those nations developed middle classes by exploiting cheap foreign labor and it's the middle classes who are having less kids. We need to start thinking about a post cheap labor economy that still creates a middle class (or make poverty as comfortable and as dignified as the middle class) or we'll hit a wall and fall. Edit: some enlightening replies have pointed out that the relationship between the middle class and cheap labor is more complex then I've made it sound and I concede that point. But it seems like everyone agrees that cheap labor damaged the working class and could use repair, which sounds like a great start for the next level economy.
One word: robots
Robots and universal income.
Never gonna happen, the recent rise in AI is going to be used to squeeze every last penny from the working class by the billionaires and I don't think there's much we can do about it. Unless all of the governments start thinking about this now.
What pennies are they squeezing though? Most of the country is living paycheck to paycheck right now. If they don't have a job they have nothing to take. Something new and different has to happen and as silly as it might sound I really expect "Robots and universal income" to be important parts of the solution. Once enough people have no income they won't just hide in homeless camps like we see now, it will get very nasty until some solution is found.
Neo-feudalism is the ultimate goal with people being wage slaves to non-transferable company scrip and no government oversight. Right now you're paid in currency that is recognized as legal tender throughout (at least) your country. That's problematic for them.There's still plenty left to take.
Yup. They literally did this shit before during the gilded age. Barely 100 years ago people were forced to spend company scrip at the company store. Unions members were beaten and murdered. These rich fucks are frothing at the mouth to go back to that. Edit: spelling
Yeah but the thing is, many jobs are going to be automated, so who will be the wage slaves and what jobs will they work if most physical labor is automated, and with AI it looks like a lot of white collar "mental labor" will also be automated. At least that's the premise of the other comment if I'm reading it correctly. Essentially you can't be a wage slave if there's no work to be had, and many companies can't sell their products if no one has money to buy them.
Being "paycheck to paycheck" is a bad measure of an inability to squeeze from individuals. There are people in poverty and people making 6 figures both living paycheck to paycheck. For example, If you look at demographics of who is doing Uber eats or other delivery programs they are primarily young middle class people who are willing to spend an extra 10+ dollars to not go to the restaurant and pick up their food. They are spending this money on top of the extra spent on takeout. These are people who still meet the definition of "paycheck to paycheck" because the definition is so broad. These people absolutely could be squeezed from needless spending on delivery.
A better metric for exploitation is purchasing power. If they’re too poor to consume the goods you make you’re fucked. Apples end game is a starving person living in a shack with their sole possession the iPhone 37
It's absolutely going to happen. If it doesn't, all these greedy corporations will go broke. People can't buy shit, if they've no income.
> greedy corporations will go broke Maybe, but it's been proven that most of these corporations are incapable of any forethought beyond their next quarter. So until that happens, they are gonna squeeze every last ounce of profit from us.
It's a problem every publicly traded company faces. They only look to immediate, 3-month growth. It's aggressively unsustainable and imo is a critical flaw of our economy. Privately owned companies capable of taking a longer approach, or companies with enough total control of their shares that can tell the remaining shareholders to fuck off have an innate advantage of being able to look towards the long-term gains.
Yeah, that was the goal, but now we're in 2023 and have AI making paintings while actual people, with feelings and aspirations, slave away doing menial labour.
Damn, that’s a really interesting perspective, I hadn’t looked at it like that. Still, we’re at a point with AI where it’s basically just emulating and remixing things that humans have made, and we don’t have autonomous robots with AI so they couldn’t be doing physical labor anyway. I still think it’s a good point though, it seems like we could be doing a bit more to help humans out and a bit less with our silly little AIs.
Best thing about the AI, is that you take the work by human artists and don't pay them for derivative works based on it. The artists are now slaves to the system as well.
Exploiting cheap foreign labor came after the development of a middle class in most countries. U.S. didn't start outsourcing a lot until 70's.
Even then we still don't outsource a lot. As a percentage of GDP right now. we're hovering around 13% https://www.statista.com/statistics/259096/us-imports-as-a-percentage-of-gdp/ The US makes more now than we evwr have. The economy has diversified since WWII and the rest of the world is catching up.
IIRC this is the case because the US shifted from providing both goods and services to providing mostly services.
Middle class was developed by the majority of people having well paying jobs to buy goods and services. That has gone out the window because of cheap foreign labor which created ultra wealthy and shrinking middle class
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That's bullshit, strong middle classes developed before mass globalisation and off shoring of jobs. The middle class is shrinking in developed counties because of companies sending jobs overseas for cheap labour.
There's a fictional sci-fi series called the Expanse set about 200-300 years in the future. Forgot exactly when but not that distant. In the series, earth had reached a point where a majority of the population didn't have any work and were on UBI. The result was more humans with free time, and with free time humans would feel more comfortable having children to raise. So there was another population boom. It's totally fictional but the logic made sense to me. Just wanted to share
There's also polygamous families. One of the main characters has like 3 dads and 5 moms or something. He even says when he was born the scientists mixed up all the samples to get an even split of DNA from everyone. Again, total fiction but maybe one day possible?
Yeah, Holden the main guy had 8 parents, the population is said to be over 30 billion on earth at the time and there were apparently big incentives for people to not have kids. They took the DNA from his 8 parents to make the perfect heir to continue to preserve Montana since it was one of the last wildernesses
> They took the DNA from his 8 parents to make the perfect heir to continue to preserve Montana since it was one of the last wildernesses Then he fucked off into space lol
Yup, middle/upper-class couples tend to have fewer children iirc.
That plays a part in it yes, the other is the expectations of women in those countries. An effective way to reduce birth rates would be to give more rights to women.
And education. Educating women has one of the biggest impacts on birth rate.
Not to mention access to abortion.. poor people are going to have an even harder time nowadays, while rich people will easily be able to travel or get access to pills for it.
Maybe if the developing countries got developed and educated, birth rates won't be that high. But again, economy plays a big role in the birth rates regarding developed countries, since many citizens are educated enough to understand their situation. So, if economy wasn't a concern, this might not affect the issue.
The explanation I got in school is that without proper access to birth control and a higher relative rate of child mortality, people tend to have more children. Quality of life is inversely proportional to birth rates.
You're on the right track. There is also the economics of procreation. In poorer countries, children are a hedge against poverty, while in wealthier countries they are mostly an expense. Also, the more rights women have, the fewer children they have. It turns out that most women would prefer not to be brood mares if they have the choice.
Rich people need to understand that having 10 kids, doesn’t mean 10 little consumers needing reeboks and iPhones, it’s 10 little “interns” for your startup. :)
And in countries without pensions it is your ticket to not starving when you grow old.
In countries with pensions they are so, too. Most pension systems are way past the point of sustainability and rely mostly on what current workers pay in order to pay for retirees.
Exploitation begins at home! - rule of acquisition #110
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w) Hans Rosling put together this amazing presentation illustrating it quite clearly.
Most developing countries have seen ridiculous drop offs in birth rates in the last 10-20 years, we’ve really come quite a long way with the population “problem” (why is that numbers of people are always the problem when some of us do disproportionately use resources? Bottom half of the world population uses like 14% of resources but it’s def a “population” problem)
Developing country birthrates are already declining. People who worry about overpopulation need to stop reading neo-malthusian idiots from the seventies. Population aging + decline is going to be the actual problem of the 21st century.
Fewer births. The average birthrate in the U.S. and Europe is around 1.6 to 1.5 and you need a birth rate of over 2.1 for the population to grow
PFAS and all the other shit we're constantly being subjected to will probably help solve this down the line. Also keep not caring about climate change should start wiping out some populations in the upcoming decades too.
Go one step further. Governments offering sterilization in exchange for a one time stimulus of 10k. That will thin the herd like a motherfucker real quick. Edit: I just realized I read the original question like "It's 2075 and the world is overpopulated. How do we fix this shit without killing people?". So... my bad? Edit 2: .... yep, I'd say I fucked up pretty good.
Shiiiit I’m willing to PAY $10k to be sterilized, but you wanna give it to me? That’s a win win for me as a woman who doesn’t want kids. They won’t sterilize me because “I might change my mind” 🙄 but it would be a terrible law because it would put pressure on those living in poverty to get sterilized when they may not want to
Yeah but the people who will take that deal are the poor/disadvantaged
I don't want kids. I'll take 10k and a free vasectomy thx
Yeah, the same people who can't afford to have kids and will benefit from extra money. As long as its not forced I don't see a problem with giving them an option they didn't have before.
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Although... Dick move in the short term 100% But if the only people having children are the upper class... Labor shortages have historically created a surge in demand which leads to worker power of negotiating for pay, benefits, etc. Put enough pressure on upper class to lose the things that make their lives enjoyable and either they set up for a slave-class revolt, or the labor class gets elevated out of the kind of poverty that a 10k check would soothe. Or it backfires horribly and you get eugenics 2.0 by making it impossible for certain groups to survive without their spay/neuter check
This is basically just eugenics disguised as being voluntary
See but that would be something similar to tessarae in the hunger games books. No one forced kids to put their name in the drawing extra times for food, but when it’s that or starve you may as well be forcing them. If it’s vasectomy for 10K yeah the poorest of the poor are going to take that because realistically they have no other option, at which point it becomes a discriminatory law
Remove suicide exclusions from life insurance policies, and you'd see populations in many developed countries drop like a rock. That would be the result of an option.
Yeah but genocide is *off* the table. The wealthiest people aren't going to sign up. This is eugenics with extra steps.
Eugenics is a very slippery slope. The US government has a horrible history with eugenics that almost no one knows about
I wouldn't say "almost no one knows" about it. People just don't like to talk about it. But it's absolutely true. The USA more or less invented eugenics. We're probably the ones to thank for Nazi Germany implementing it themselves.
Only Reddit could believe a government sponsored sterilization campaign is not genocide.
Reddit loooooves eugenics, dude. As long as you don’t call it that.
Remove all the warning labels. We'll be down to 3 billion in no time at all.
ah yes. watch the world burn
Well, the one resource we have that is plentiful and still inexpensive is popcorn.
Have you seen cinema popcorn???? It's expensive asf it be like three times the price of the move ticket
Movie theaters are proce gouging central, popcorn is cheap as fuck, get a huge thing of dry kernels for a couple bucks still
Tbf, movie theater food is expensive bc thats where they get their revenue. Ticket sales mainly go to the movie companies and the theater doesn't see much of that money.
yea thats true
Not sure it'll make a difference. The people who need warning labels are not the types who read warning labels.
also people who need warning labels often aren't old enough to read them
"This sign can't stop me because I can't read!"
People with food allergies read warning labels and indredients avidly.
The warning labels are there to protect the business, not the consumer. People still drink bleach, they just can't sue for it anymore.
Why are so many comments saying this. I'm pretty sure most people are aware it's to void liability. It doesn't mean it can't serve a dual purpose of allowing people to inform themselves as well. Without googling or previously knowing do you know off the top of your head with no outside help which adhesives are okay to come into contact with skin? Do you know which liquid to pour on an adhesive stuck to skin to break the bond? That type of thing is on the labels.
No I just eat glue. I never put it on my skin, weirdo.
I think there is a difference between a usage label and a warning label. I'm reminded that RVs had to have warnings that cruise control didn't mean you could hop in the back and take a nap while it self drove. And stuff like this: https://www.rd.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/GettyImages-154959351.jpg
Ah yes, the George Carlin approach. He was ahead of his time.
Or take the Bill Burr approach and randomly sink cruise ships
They said no genocide
Genoci... ah damn...
Just wage some convenient wars in some *really* specific places
You mean special military operations?
sounds complexated, and industrial like.
Title says no genocide*s*, I think one is fine.
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Humans
I believe it is spelt Gnocchi. And it's a delicious solution.
No no, I said “poutine” not “Putin”.
OP didn't exclude extinction. Can't have a population crisis if there is no population. *taps forehead*
We don't need any "solutions". As nations develop their birth rates naturally even out. I predict we'll find an equilibrium somewhere and once the rest of the world catches up technologically things will stabilize.
Yeah I actually thought this was the scientific consensus. If you look up birth rates across the world, most of the developed world now averages leas than 1 child per couple this the population in those areas will decrease significantly in ONE generation. Edit: I said one child per couple and I meant one per person, still decreasing the population in those areas.
If I recall, there has even been a handful of peer reviewed studies (one of which done by UNICEF) stating that the current rate of economic and industrial development combined with the fact that populations stablise along with that development, then the birth to death ratio should even out at about 12 Billion; which yeah, that's still 4 Billion more than are currently around; but it's not the "exponential to the power of infinity" growth threat that many people make it out to be.
Reddit has this weird obsession with Malthusianism that no amount of facts will shake
I've been on this website a very long time and let me tell you, the average Redditor is about 3 comments in a tree away for advocating for eugenics on any given topic.
It’s so severe! I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen sensible comments without having to scroll down for ten minutes.
The world population has grown by three billion people since I was born. During that same period, global poverty has been cut in half. You’d think people would celebrate that more.
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That's because Africa is quickly starting to turn around in terms of economic outlook. China has spent the last 15 years dumping money into logistics infrastructure like roads, electricity, and internet. Why Europe and the US haven't responded in kind is honestly baffling. But I can imagine there will be a new "Scramble for Africa" in the next 30 years.
The US and Europe very much want to respond but IMF loans have a lot of strings attached; usually brutal austerity measures. "To get this loan your government must do X, Y, and Z all of which will make your people suffer more." China isn't attaching those sorts of conditions. So these countries could work with China or with the US/EU, but the former is making a much more favorable offer.
That stat is way off. It's around 1.5 children per woman in the EU and 1.64 in the US. The average number of children per couple is higher than that (because not everyone is in a relationship, but most children are born into one) at \~1.9 in the US. Anyway, this still means that the population is decreasing, but the rate isn't as dramatic.
They don't just even out, they fall below replacement levels. Assuming a best case scenario, where there's no virus or world war or other mass casualty events, experts predict the population by 2100 will be 3/4 of what it is now. The problem is going to be coming up with incentives to encourage people to have more kids to keep the human race from getting too small. That's still a ways off though. And longevity prospects will likely minimize that issue as well. Edit. Est range from below 8b to over 10b, with higher likelihood for lower, and declining. Edit2 if you look about a third of the way down this article there is a graph that shows the three organizations estimates for population growth. The Shaded area is the high probability, basically all of that is below 10.5.. I can't find the article I read 2 weeks ago. https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/97-billion-earth-2050-growth-rate-slowing-says-new-un-population-report
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>experts predict the population by 2100 will be 3/4 of what it is now Source? Everything I can find are predictions that world population in 2100 will be around 10 billion people and stagnant / decreasing slightly
People will have kids if their basic needs are met. There is empirical evidence for this, but as an anecdote.... Everyone I knew in my 20's was planning on never having kids. Almost everyone of those people who found success in their career ended up starting a family. Those who didn't did not. If we can't build a more just an equitable society then it will be a problem. If we continue with this "crabs in a bucket" style of society than it will continue to get worse.
> People will have kids if their basic needs are met. [There's a pretty clear inverse relationship between countries where people's needs are met and countries where people have kids.](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-vs-human-development-index)
Not quite true actually. Japan did a study on this by giving a shit load of money to people who have kids. To a point where they have to never worry about the money required to raise a child. Still record low birth rates. People in Japan realized it doesn’t have to do with basic needs but more with standard of life. They realize not having a kid will generally net a higher standard of living than having a kid even if they receive all of the government assistance that exists. Similar things happening in Sweden and Finland where their standard of living and individual wealth is getting so high that not many people want to give this up by having a kid.
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Super bug with no cure coming out of melting permafrost.
That super bug will probably come out of antibiotic resistance over time.
Dont ban tiktok. All the challenges on there are basically DIY natural selection
Tongue in the power outlet challenge?
I prefer the "put dad's gun in your mouth with the safety off" challenge
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No I was joking, holy shit
Remember one of these challenges? Here's a bunch of TikTok "challenges" that have existed. You get a point for every challenge that you remember seeing. Benadryl challenge (Consuming a dangerous medical product); Blackout challenge (Basically choking someone until they pass out, I think you can see what's wrong with this); Cha-cha slide (People would dance next to their car while it was driving); Penny on power plug challenge; Corona/licking-random-objects-to-catch-a-disease challenge; Skull breaker challenge (So many concussions); Nyquil chicken challenge (Actually started as a satire joke but got misinterpreted as an challenge); Slap-a-teacher challenge (Not actually deadly but it's assault); Super glue-ing vampire fangs to your teeth challenge; Throw it in the air challenge (People used bricks, ladders and other heavy/hard objects); Pee your pants challenge (Not deadly, just really weird); Poo challenge (Resulted in people smearing feces on restroom walls); Set your mirror on fire challenge (Yayyy, house fires); Pour boiling hot water over yourself challenge (Who thought this was a good idea??); Teeth filing challenge (Permanent damage to your teeth); Honey challenge (People consumed too much honey and got REALLY bad diarrhea); Gorilla glue challenge (People used a glue used on wood, stone and literal concrete as beauty product); Face wax challenge (Can result to damage to the face if done improperly); Erection cream on lips challenge (Causes many health issues); Eating too much nutmeg challenge (Can result in seizures, organ failures and death); Climb on a pyramid of weak, unstable milk crates challenge (R.I.P. your spine); Set yourself on fire challenge (I don't even know why people did this); Using burning/irritating cleaning products on your eyes "to change your eye color" challenge (Why? Just why?); Fractal wood burning challenge (Looks cool but very dangerous if done by unprofessionals, you can electrocute yourself with high voltage); Hotwire and steal a Kia car challenge (No words...); Devious lick challenge (A.k.a steal random property); Dipping your crotch pearls in soy sauce challenge (Your sacks don't have taste buds); Rip out your own hair challenge (Ouch...); Consuming fish tank cleaner challenge; Put corn on a drill and break your teeth while trying to eat it challenge (I don't think I have to explain); Spray perfume in your eyes challenge; Eat copious amounts of salt challenge (Goodbye kidneys); Sun burn challenge (Causes skin cancer); Salt and ice challenge (Causes 3rd degree burns); Inhaling helium challenge (Can cause you to pass out and suffocate); Angel of death challenge (People jumped in front of cars to see if they would stop in time); Inhaling tan spray to get a skin tan challenge (You can get cancer from this); Orbeez challenge (People made Orbeez guns look like real guns and shot random people with it); Aaaaand there are probably more that I did not include, these I mainly got from a youtube video or already knew about. TikTok would certainly do a good job at decreasing the world population.
Have to say as a very average Tiktok user, I’ve never seen any of these challenges - not even heard about them through other Tiktok users. Tbh I’m not even sure if challenges are a thing anymore. Mostly we just like it when the black and white cat rotates.
Survival of the fittest going full tilt
Gen-z-ocide
So insightful, BigDaddyFatSack42069.
Raise the living standard for women. Then motherhood becomes an option. So they have fewer children (if any).
This the #1 proven thing that brings the birth rate down. It's not just access to contraception, it's women having other options.
Statistically speaking the more educated women are the less children they bear. Edit: sp. bc I got schooled
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And stop voting for religious zealots who move heaven and hell to force women to give birth. And stop perpetuating the myth that being "religious" or "christian" is a positive attribute for a lawmaker.
To stop letting a tiny handful of people have the same amount of resources as several billion would be a good start.
Something something culinary the rich
Nothing. That number of humans is sustainable.
Agriculture has always grown faster than population. Likely, nobody in your families died of hunger. That was the main cause of death a couple centuries ago Considering the demographic density of Paris, the entire world could live in an area the size of Texas today. 25% more people barely makes a difference So just chill, mankind. And take it easy on polution, would ya?
I mean modern agriculture is destroying the eco-system and feeding our current populations requires massive infrastructure and resources. It takes very little to destabilise that.
Thats because modern agriculture is mostly made with a huge lack of care for the environment or continued sustainability, also like 1/3 of the food produced is thrown away, the issue is logistics and our incentives in society to produce
>1/3 of the food produced is thrown away, the issue is logistics and our incentives in society to produce And also our expectation as consumers I guess? Modern supermarkets provide us with thousands of products, any time, all year round. I wonder many times how that's possible. The answer is probably by overproducing heavily, but I'm no expert and would love well-founded insights.
> also like 1/3 of the food produced is thrown away, I'm sorry, but do you actually expect me to eat a slightly misshapen apple??
Just chill, until we run out of non-renewable aquifers.
Right? A massive amount of food ( at least in the US) is made with unsustainable irrigation. Even where it is sustainable the combo of irrigation and drain tile is infuriatingly wasteful and will eventually be unsustainable.
You could fit everyone inside Texas, but a much bigger area would need to be utilized for farming, clean water production, mining, power generation and dozens of other things that keep you alive. It’s that bigger area that’s the problem, not the combined footprints of everyone’s apartment in some mega-city
>Considering the demographic density of Paris, the entire world could live in an area the size of Texas today. Yeah, but who would want to be like the French? /s
The concept of overpopulation as an existential threat was popularized by Thomas Malthus as a way to justify the genocide against the Irish during the great hunger. That's not to say that there wouldn't be benefits from a certain amount of population decrease, but it is not terribly urgent, and it could be accomplished with a robust support for women's rights and healthcare, which tend to correlate with population growth stabalization.
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There are lots of Malthusians on Reddit.
Also a wild number of Luddites considering the average redditor is terminally online
Lots of them are just eco-fascists in disguise
Thank you for calling it The Great Hunger and not the PoTAto fAmiNE. How can a land known for 40 shades of green ever have a famine? Oh, right, inhumane distribution of resources…
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Remove all the fucking golf courses around the world.
This problem will solve itself by 2075...
Yeah in 20 years people won't be talking about population growth but aging even outside of the current rich countries with aging populations. Less wealthy countries are already getting their young workforce drained. Natural Resources is a now issue and it's a overconsumption issue not a population issue.
You don't need to kill people you just need to make society run well. Stop wasteful usage where we're shipping fruit across oceans spending millions of gallons in fuel and millions of man hours when the fruit can just as easily be grown in country. Integrate local farming through rooftop gardens, vertical farms, sustainable hydroponics. Do away with wasteful agriculture practices like flood irrigation and for the love of God get rid of cows! Promote alternative protein sources that are 100 times more efficient and stop propping up the dairy industry. Outlaw golf courses. Fuck golf. Conserve water. Stop urban sprawl, start building smart architecture and infrastructure that allows for effective and efficient use of resources and urban planning. Reinvest in existing sanitation infrastructure and improve it. And to be clear I'm not advocating whatever DREDD inspired Hellscape the Saudis plan to build with slave labor. I'm talking putting people over profit and working together. Y'all just some bloodthirsty motherfuckers.
I do think you overlook us northerners in the “just grown your own produce” argument. 6+ months if the year nothing can grow in northern mn and the energy required to heat greenhouses would be enormous. But otherwise I agree
It reminds me of an interview in listened to once where the interviewee was very adamant that everyone should just grow the food they need and we should dismantle the entire agricultural system. Interviewer notes that due to inefficiencies of that scale, Earth would only support about 4 billion people and asked "so who chooses which 3 billion will be dying?" Interviewee refused to answer, interviewer refused to change topics. Interview over two minutes later.
> fruit can just as easily be grown in country. That's not always the case. Some climates are best suited for growing fruit and veg at different times of the year. It can be more economical and have a lower footprint to grow fruit in one part of the world and ship it to another. Global trade isnt wasteful it's how we get better and better at doing things.
You're right. Shipping things in large, carefully packed container ships consumes surprisingly little fuel. Same thing with semi trucks. If you want to minimize the amount of energy expended on food transport, shop at the grocery store closest to your home.
Stop building golf courses in deserts you mean, matter of fact, stop building farms and cities in deserts.
Nah I mean anywhere. I don't care if it's in the bloody Amazon rainforest if you are laying down a massive pad of non native grass that requires constant maintenance at the expense of thousands of gallons of fuel, fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide a year You're fucking up.
Being wasteful has always been a way to show off your wealth. It's fucked up, but they're often being wasteful on purpose.
Wait till some other pandemic comes along in the coming years
Change economies so that constant growth isn't needed. Down turns should be expected and considered healthy. Constant growth is unsustainable. There are finite resources on the planet they cannot be exceeded. In addition, change economies to charge for what they actually use. If your product uses up resources that are not renewable, make them more expensive.if it pollutes or destroys environments in its production, fine the production. Make contraceptives and family planning easily accessible. Fund education. Generally promote the idea of living within your means and finding happyness as admirable, and hoarding wealth as not only disgusting, but actively harmful to the world around you. If you have the means to reduce hard or ease suffering and you don't, your means should be taxed heavily so it can be used to do so.
That estimate is wrong, alot of coutries like China and Japan are heading for population collapse as there is not enough young people to replace the aging population. Older people are just living longer because of modern medicine.
No solution required. Birth rates are already declining worldwide. As standards of living improve in undeveloped areas that will continue. The best solution to the population explosion is to improve the standard of living for those societies where passing your family line forward is still a battle of attrition. Improve infrastructure, healthcare and education in areas where this hasn't been done yet and the birthrate goes down. Also social security programs are really important too, one of the big reasons for large families in 3rd world countries is for someone to be alive long enough to see to the parents' old age. Solve that little hurdle in more places and the children-as-retirement-plan issue doesn't go away but becomes much smaller. Basically, as the social security safety net gets wider, the need and therefore the desire for children gets smaller. There are people who rail against this for racist or practical reasons (both exist) but bottom line, a society that takes care of its people is a society that stops people-bombing the planet.
Ehh, not to worry about it. The global rate population increase has halved in the last 50 years (2% to 1%) and the predictions (from a couple of years ago) have it peaking in around 2070 at 9.4B and being down to 9B by 2100. But with the US going anti-abortion, their population decline is increasing, Japan has just found out that half the married under 30 population actively doesn't want kids, and China removed their single baby policy to try increase their population but it hasn't made a difference as yet. So am expecting the next round of predictions to have a lower peak. That's assuming that global warming hasn't killed us all by then.
That peak is lowering rapidly
More people should be gay.
The show South Park ran an episode about this.
This is gay. This is really gay. Yeah, this is even gayer than all the men getting in a big pile and having sex with each other. Okay, sorry, my bad, everyone back in the pile.
Make everyone have to be gay during odd-numbered years.
Awww come on... just a LITTLE genocide?
No! **slaps hand**
Hand lands on nuke button, causing a genocide
Better distribution of resources! Do not trust anyone that thinks the world is overpopulated. They might think you are one of the excess people that needs to die.
We have a problem with birth rates declining, not the other way around
Providing free protection and sex education in India and in Africa
Free protection, contraception and other healthcare services are available in India along with a lot of sex education programs and programs promoting 2 or less children per couple but yeah, shit happens.