“Actually, the problem in the world is that there are too many rich people.” Paul Ehrlich Degrowth is an ascendant cultural and political movement. Its central claim is that the growth of humanity’s population and economy is unsustainable on a planet with finite resources. Therefore, the only way to avoid inevitable future collapse and incalculable damage to the earth’s natural environment is to voluntarily slow and reverse this growth now. The cultural values and policy prescriptions of degrowth are shared by prominent
We have a finite planet. We obviously can't have infinite population growth forever.
But at the same time, declining population causes a host of problems
I think people of goodwill can quibble about what would we eat ideal population level for the planet
I think it's probably a bit smaller than what we have now.
But whatever you're optimum level is, there needs to be a stable population eventually. And it really bothers me that no developed country has figured out how to have a stable population
In my opinion, there are many different causes of population decline, but the biggest for me is the high cost of housing and how that relates to family formation
For example, my wife and I refuse to have kids before we were in a home. Luckily, the housing bubble popped in 2008, and we were able to buy in 2010
I think the current cost of housing is one of the large drivers of declining fertility in family formation.
This seems like a strawman to me. Nobody is claiming that the population should increase or decrease exponentially forever.
Instead it seems like nobody (including Max) wants to address the obvious follow-up question: What is the ideal human population on Earth, given current technology?
AI gives the promise of changing the paradigm that “progress” people repeat that we require growth for material progress and that growth requires more population. On other graphs, growth per person is shown to be correlated to energy spent per person, and that could grow with a shrinking population, and innovation could also flourish if all current jobs that are replaceable by AI and robots, give people free time to be creative in whatever domain they like. Also an aging population that is still in good health will still be active, e.g. the age to retirement has been pushed up in europe in recent times to avoid collapse of the system. In any case these are exciting times for innovation, and to me the fast decline in birth rates gives us more time to figure out long term solutions without getting too fast into a collapse.
1. Economics is a social science of observation, not predictability. Nevertheless we have lots of historical data to work with. I suspect that economic models are toys compared with say, climate models, which do attempt prediction-test against result-improve with time.
2. The entire modern age- science, engineering, economy, population, agriculture, infrastructure, medicine and so on is built on coal and oil. This is a historical fact, that is, a matter of data and observation. But the evidence is overwhelming.
3. The climate apocalypse is upon us, and will get worse indefinitely. The sooner we get to net-zero and then to removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, the more mitigation, less cost we'll get. There is a very real risk that climate change could crash the global economy. Crashing the economy might mean we can't fight climate change.
Therefore it is clear to me that we should welcome population shrinkage, but mitigate the demographic effects by schooling all children, and devising some sustainable way to care for the elderly.
By the time we get to a sustainable population, we'll probably have figured out how to maintain fertility, and thats clearly generations ahead of us now.
This presents a false dichtomy. "Progress" isn't just some arbitrary rate times the current human population, it's driven by a very small subset of elite who will continue to be the cream of the crop no matter what happens to the population as a whole. I don't see why the few thousand to at best a million or so researchers actually pushing the frontiers of human understanding forward would notice a difference between 7 or 8 or 3 billion other humans on the planet. If anything, I expect a falling population would just lead to e.g. a higher number of spaceships per capita, especially as technology, automation, and AI increase. This is not a degrowther argument, I am pro growth and don't think transient declining fertility is inherently a big deal.
If low fertility is a problem because we need more people to innovate in science/technology, then low fertility is really only a problem in rich countries and/or among people with high IQ. Basically almost all innovation in science/technology comes from Europe, the US and other Anglo offshoots, and East Asian countries, and within these countries, the people doing science/technology research tend to be the children of parents with above average intelligence, with some of these people being third world immigrants who generally come from talented families from very narrow sections of their home countries populations.
One solution to this problem will be embryo selection and eventually genetic editing. If the overall population is shrinking, but the pool of talented people is growing thanks to such technologies, there will be no shortage of innovators. As someone else mentioned, AI is also a possible solution dependent on its future capabilities. Another solution is to just encourage smart people in rich countries to have more children, but I've never heard a good idea of how to make that happen, with the exception of the idea of paying parents a mountain of money for every child they have. Politically though, paying upper middle class parents a gigantic amount of money doesn't seem very plausible, unless you make such benefits universal, then maybe.
Another great work on fertility, something that I also have written about extensively. The best research I have found suggests that existential risk to humanity is following a Kuznets curve, the same kind of curve that we see with CO2 emissions, forest coverage, pollution…etc.
Stagnating at our current position on this Kuznets curve, or rolling back down the left, is paradoxically much riskier for humanity than progressing over the hump to the right. Progress is less risky than degrowth. A shrinking population engenders questions of whether or not we can sustain progress at a reasonable pace going forward.
Your link for the text "general case for progress" does not actually make a general case for progress, it just repeats the claim that such a case is needed.
So make one. Persuade a member of the Taliban or the Amish or a Haredi or members of zero-sum societies that practise cousin marriage and/or polygamy that we need to move out the frontier of material comfort in preference to wreaking vengeance on our enemies and denying them any possessions, or hewing to the wise ways of our forebears.
Either that, or persuade WEIRDs, women in particular, to have more children.
I think both are true.
We have a finite planet. We obviously can't have infinite population growth forever.
But at the same time, declining population causes a host of problems
I think people of goodwill can quibble about what would we eat ideal population level for the planet
I think it's probably a bit smaller than what we have now.
But whatever you're optimum level is, there needs to be a stable population eventually. And it really bothers me that no developed country has figured out how to have a stable population
In my opinion, there are many different causes of population decline, but the biggest for me is the high cost of housing and how that relates to family formation
For example, my wife and I refuse to have kids before we were in a home. Luckily, the housing bubble popped in 2008, and we were able to buy in 2010
I think the current cost of housing is one of the large drivers of declining fertility in family formation.
Degrowth proponents are prophets of doom and not a recent phenomenon. They have been predicting doom since Malthus, yet here we are.
Instead of betting on human ingenuity which has repeatedly found solutions, degrowth pessimism risks being a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What we call stagnation is really a decline. So either we continue innovating or we will find ourselves with declining standards of living.
https://open.substack.com/pub/lithiumhorizons/p/neo-malthusian-prophets-of-doom?r=68sw4&utm_medium=ios
This seems like a strawman to me. Nobody is claiming that the population should increase or decrease exponentially forever.
Instead it seems like nobody (including Max) wants to address the obvious follow-up question: What is the ideal human population on Earth, given current technology?
AI gives the promise of changing the paradigm that “progress” people repeat that we require growth for material progress and that growth requires more population. On other graphs, growth per person is shown to be correlated to energy spent per person, and that could grow with a shrinking population, and innovation could also flourish if all current jobs that are replaceable by AI and robots, give people free time to be creative in whatever domain they like. Also an aging population that is still in good health will still be active, e.g. the age to retirement has been pushed up in europe in recent times to avoid collapse of the system. In any case these are exciting times for innovation, and to me the fast decline in birth rates gives us more time to figure out long term solutions without getting too fast into a collapse.
I'd like to expose some assumptions:
1. Economics is a social science of observation, not predictability. Nevertheless we have lots of historical data to work with. I suspect that economic models are toys compared with say, climate models, which do attempt prediction-test against result-improve with time.
2. The entire modern age- science, engineering, economy, population, agriculture, infrastructure, medicine and so on is built on coal and oil. This is a historical fact, that is, a matter of data and observation. But the evidence is overwhelming.
3. The climate apocalypse is upon us, and will get worse indefinitely. The sooner we get to net-zero and then to removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, the more mitigation, less cost we'll get. There is a very real risk that climate change could crash the global economy. Crashing the economy might mean we can't fight climate change.
Therefore it is clear to me that we should welcome population shrinkage, but mitigate the demographic effects by schooling all children, and devising some sustainable way to care for the elderly.
By the time we get to a sustainable population, we'll probably have figured out how to maintain fertility, and thats clearly generations ahead of us now.
This presents a false dichtomy. "Progress" isn't just some arbitrary rate times the current human population, it's driven by a very small subset of elite who will continue to be the cream of the crop no matter what happens to the population as a whole. I don't see why the few thousand to at best a million or so researchers actually pushing the frontiers of human understanding forward would notice a difference between 7 or 8 or 3 billion other humans on the planet. If anything, I expect a falling population would just lead to e.g. a higher number of spaceships per capita, especially as technology, automation, and AI increase. This is not a degrowther argument, I am pro growth and don't think transient declining fertility is inherently a big deal.
If low fertility is a problem because we need more people to innovate in science/technology, then low fertility is really only a problem in rich countries and/or among people with high IQ. Basically almost all innovation in science/technology comes from Europe, the US and other Anglo offshoots, and East Asian countries, and within these countries, the people doing science/technology research tend to be the children of parents with above average intelligence, with some of these people being third world immigrants who generally come from talented families from very narrow sections of their home countries populations.
One solution to this problem will be embryo selection and eventually genetic editing. If the overall population is shrinking, but the pool of talented people is growing thanks to such technologies, there will be no shortage of innovators. As someone else mentioned, AI is also a possible solution dependent on its future capabilities. Another solution is to just encourage smart people in rich countries to have more children, but I've never heard a good idea of how to make that happen, with the exception of the idea of paying parents a mountain of money for every child they have. Politically though, paying upper middle class parents a gigantic amount of money doesn't seem very plausible, unless you make such benefits universal, then maybe.
Another great work on fertility, something that I also have written about extensively. The best research I have found suggests that existential risk to humanity is following a Kuznets curve, the same kind of curve that we see with CO2 emissions, forest coverage, pollution…etc.
Stagnating at our current position on this Kuznets curve, or rolling back down the left, is paradoxically much riskier for humanity than progressing over the hump to the right. Progress is less risky than degrowth. A shrinking population engenders questions of whether or not we can sustain progress at a reasonable pace going forward.
Your link for the text "general case for progress" does not actually make a general case for progress, it just repeats the claim that such a case is needed.
So make one. Persuade a member of the Taliban or the Amish or a Haredi or members of zero-sum societies that practise cousin marriage and/or polygamy that we need to move out the frontier of material comfort in preference to wreaking vengeance on our enemies and denying them any possessions, or hewing to the wise ways of our forebears.
Either that, or persuade WEIRDs, women in particular, to have more children.