[HN Gopher] The great abandonment: what happens to the natural w...
___________________________________________________________________
The great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when
people disappear?
Author : zeristor
Score : 128 points
Date : 2024-11-28 07:14 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| scooke wrote:
| The perspective of the entire article is confused. Abandonment
| doesn't overcome and infuse something. It's not an action; it is
| a state. And what happens TO nature? No, what does nature DO when
| humanity stops what it does to nature. Reclamation, from the
| proper perspective; abandonment is from the human perspective.
| pololeono wrote:
| It is all about aesthetics. Humanity is also part of nature.
| falcor84 wrote:
| As I understand it, it's not about aesthetics per-se, but
| rather that "nature" is a semantic concept defined by us
| humans for anything that is outside of the human sphere -
| i.e. something is "natural" or "out in nature" or "nature's
| way" if it's what would have been if humans hadn't been
| involved.
| g8oz wrote:
| In the manner of an algal bloom, yes.
| jpcom wrote:
| Covid was a great example of how the natural world returns to
| harmony when human antagonism via noise/sound pollution and so
| forth is suddenly halted. I think a lot of dolphins in the sea
| rejoiced.
| Neil44 wrote:
| The article actually argues that the idea that nature finds
| lovely balances if we just get out of the way is not correct. A
| lot of what we view as stable ecosystems are stable because of
| our management and influence over millennia. Nature on it's own
| is not a thing, there are no checks and balances, no intention,
| no morality. The quote from the article is that nature does not
| organise it's self into neat parables.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| This is called the "baseline" problem among conservationists.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| Why is it a problem? It's not like people are somehow
| special. We eat and shit like every other mammal but
| without us the water and land would not be full of
| synthetic chemicals and plastics. Seems very obvious to me
| that human industries change the baseline to a polluted
| state vs what it would have been without industrial
| activities. But even without industrial activity the
| historical record is very clear on the effect that human
| populations have on the surrounding flora and fauna.
| oblio wrote:
| Well, if you want to be optimistic, I think we got coal
| from lignin/wood being uneatable for hundreds of millions
| of years (I think).
|
| So wood would stack up, not rot, get covered by dirt and
| turned into coal due to physical processes, not
| biological ones.
|
| So coal deposits of the existing magnitudes couldn't be
| created now.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| I am very optimistic. I don't remember where I read it
| but whatever remains after the current industrial
| civilization will not have access to the energy resources
| necessary for reindustrialization. Might have been
| Derrick Jensen but I can't remember which book exactly.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| I have no idea what book might have first explored this
| idea, but it's a very common theme online whenever this
| type of discussion comes up: someone will inevitably
| point out that any post-human-extinction civilization
| that might evolve on Earth won't have such easy access to
| energy as we've had.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| It's obvious once you think about what enables our
| current industrial activity: millions of years of
| biological growth and sedimentation. But it's all
| equivalent to solar radiation that was incident on the
| planet over millions of years which we have burned up in
| less than a few hundred. Once you understand this basic
| reality the logical conclusion is very clear and obvious:
| the current rate of consumption is unsustainable. The
| obvious next question is what can be done about it but no
| one wants to think about it so it never gets addressed.
| Presumably someone higher up the political and economic
| hierarchy is thinking about it and they will manage
| things as best as possible but based on how people
| reacted to COVID lockdowns I'm not sure they know what
| they're doing.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think you are missing the point. The "problem" is the
| question of what you baseline you want humans to restore
| it to and then actively maintain.
|
| Many people want to restore nature, but the natural state
| is usually one of flux which is deeply unsatisfying to
| many advocates of it's restoration.
|
| It is an interesting question.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| Nature is much too complex to fit into people's
| anthropocentric perspective. Either we dial back the
| production of industrial poisons or the natural world
| will continue withering from our consumption of natural
| resources. The fundamental problem is that industrial
| activity is unsustainable but it's neither politically
| nor economically expedient to actually address the root
| causes of why that's the case.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Sure, but that a complete tangent from the
| problem/challenge the parent post was talking about and
| you were attempting to critique.
|
| Your tangent does not negate the point, as it has
| practical applications for public policy and managing
| interest groups.
|
| One of my favorite examples to illustrate the challenge
| is restoration efforts around the Salton Sea. The lake is
| drying, causing dust, and there is a major environmental
| movement to restore it. The challenge comes in that the
| entire lake was created by accident in 1905, so the
| benchmark for restoration is critical. Restoring it to
| the dry lakebed of 1904 would not help with fish life and
| dust reduction. Dial the clock back to 1700, and it was a
| enormous lake again, but we would have to reroute the
| entire Colorado River from the current path along the
| Arizona boarder, because the Colorado river has shifted
| 200 miles east 300 years ago.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| In any event, good luck with whatever plans you think
| will restore natural balance. I've made my points as
| clear as possible.
| lyrr wrote:
| troll alert
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| yep, or someone engaging with enough bad faith that the
| distinction makes no difference. I usually give folks the
| benefit of the doubt once and then move on.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| All my responses are always of utmost sincerity.
| vacuity wrote:
| So I get the sense that we can be considered part of nature,
| and however much or little influence we exert is a part of
| the overall system. It can balance to an extent with our
| presence and will do so without it.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| The article doesn't claim that 'nature finds lovely balances
| if we just get out of the way'. It says
|
| >> Over time, Clements' more sweeping theories were picked
| apart by fellow botanists. The stable, permanent climax
| communities he had theorised proved elusive: field studies
| continued to find ecosystems passing through unpredictable
| cycles of collapse, regeneration, divergence and stasis.
| Today, this deterministic version of succession theory is
| seen as widely debunked. But Clements' vision endured in the
| popular imagination - sometimes to the frustration of
| ecologists.
|
| ...
|
| >> To harness the full environmental possibilities offered by
| the great abandonment will require changing our conception of
| humanity's relationship to nature, and understanding how our
| species can benefit ecosystems as well as harm them. It will
| also require human intention: neglect alone is not enough
| ocschwar wrote:
| In the 1960s there was a long overdue correction to the
| Australian constitution because the preamble mentioned the
| continent's "flora and fauna" in a way that implied
| Aborigines were part of the "fauna." The wording was grossly
| racist, and had to be changed because of the politics, but
| from an ecological standpoint, there was some truth to it.
| Australia's ecosystems were stable because of how Aborigines
| interacted with them.
| stavros wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flora_and_Fauna_Act_myth
| ocschwar wrote:
| I stand corrected.
| wruza wrote:
| Learning about logistic map, phase spaces and attractors
| helped a lot with understanding the fundamentals of natural
| evolution. It doesn't really answer any question (akin to
| Newton laws don't really answer how to build Ford). But it
| makes you grasp the whole model. It's
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor all the way down.
|
| Tldr, things get stable until they aren't and then they may
| remain unstable for a while, and you never know how, why and
| how long in general, unless it's something really obvious and
| measurable.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| We are part of the natural world and your natural world is a
| place of constant savagery.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| > As populations move and shrink, people are leaving long-
| occupied places behind. Often they leave everything in place,
| ready for a return that never comes. In Tyurkmen, Christmas
| baubles still hang from the curtain rails in empty houses, slowly
| being wrapped by spiders. In one abandoned home, a porcelain
| cabinet lay inside a crater of rotted floorboards, plates still
| stacked above a spare packet of nappies for a visiting
| grandchild. Occasionally, abandonment happens all at once, when a
| legal ruling or evacuation sends people scuttling. But mostly, it
| is haphazard, creeping, unplanned. People just go.
|
| This always confuses me. If I were abandoning my home of my own
| volition, I'd take my possessions with me.
| analog31 wrote:
| Every time I've moved, it involved getting rid of piles of
| stuff. And my next move will probably be a downsize. I'm
| already on a mission to get rid of X cubic foot of stuff per
| year. After helping my mom downsize, I've lost my nostalgia for
| keeping old stuff around. And my kids want none of it -- they
| don't know if they will ever own a house, or necessarily what
| country they'll even live in.
|
| And of course I wonder why stuff piles up. The reasons include
| laziness and probably a mild hoarding instinct.
| ralph84 wrote:
| Eventually we all die and our heirs if we have any tend to
| value our possessions closer to the market rate ($0) than we
| do.
| Macha wrote:
| Christmas decorations and nappies both strike me as the sort of
| thing that would get left behind, they're pretty poor in the
| value/space tradeoff, not to mention that a lot of these houses
| were left behind when elderly people died. It's not uncommon
| for elderly people to have stuff they accumulated over the
| years, it would not surprise me if there's christmas
| decorations that have been unused for decades in my
| grandmother's attic, or nappies that were once for
| grandchildren that are now adults. In a country where the
| population is growing, this stuff just gets dumped as the heirs
| clear out the house to sell, but what are these houses in the
| middle of nowhere with infrastructure that has crumbled away
| worth?
| dotinvoke wrote:
| Those old homes are usually used as storage for things that
| don't fit into their new, urban homes. The market value and
| taxes are low, so there's no point in selling.
|
| Then eventually, without realizing, you have gone there for the
| last time, and there's nothing left to move to your new home.
|
| Alternatively, the last old person who lived in the house dies
| or goes into a care home, and their kids (if they have any)
| never find the time to clear out the old place. There's no one
| to sell it to, anyway, so they have all the time in the world.
| Rygian wrote:
| Life After People is a TV show that covers some answers to the
| title, from several points of view.
| wmwmwm wrote:
| Book recommendation for The World Without Us which explores what
| might happen if humans vanished overnight:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us
| Animats wrote:
| Wikipedia has a list of ghost towns in the United States.[1]
|
| Most rural towns were built to serve surrounding farms and
| ranches. As farming became less labor-intensive, the need for
| those towns went away, and the towns slowly died. See
| "Depopulation of the Great Plains"[2] It's interesting to note
| that the depopulated area is the best part of the US for wind
| power. That could work out OK.
|
| Mining towns die when the resource is exhausted. They go fast.
|
| Japan, where the population is rapidly declining, has a large
| number of empty rural towns. There's an incentive program to get
| young people to move there, but not many are interested. Because
| Japan's infrastructure is centrally funded, much of the
| infrastructure is still maintained in areas with very few people.
|
| Russia has a declining population and entire abandoned cities.
| Putin is pushing young people to have kids. There's a "Pregnant
| at 16" TV show in Russia, which has been re-branded to encourage
| pregnancy.[3]
|
| The countries that are above breakeven (2.1 children per woman)
| are all in Africa or are dominated by religions which oppress
| women. And poor.[4] "Peak baby" was in 2013 worldwide.
|
| There are two futures, both bad. "Keep 'em barefoot and
| pregnant", or "Will the last one to leave please turn out the
| lights."
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Un...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depopulation_of_the_Great_Plai...
|
| [3] https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/11/05/as-russia-targets-
| ab...
|
| [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
| RestartKernel wrote:
| [3] is really interesting. I'm not surprised, but it really
| feels like history is _happening_ when even the mundane starts
| to reflect it.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| I don't think it will work as long as women have access to
| information and literally anything else to do in life other
| than making endless babies. I fear there will be a push
| against women's freedom of choice, once things become dire
| enough that can't be patched with immigration.
|
| It's just a huge opportunity loss if you talk to any young
| woman, and they're obviously right. There is no tangible
| benefit to have more than two children other than "for the
| humanity!".
| Animats wrote:
| > I don't think it will work as long as women have access
| to information and literally anything else to do in life
| other than making endless babies.
|
| Which has happened in Afghanistan. The Taliban has cracked
| down.[1] "Our analysis shows that by 2026, the impact of
| leaving 1.1 million girls out of school and 100,000 women
| out of university correlates to an increase in early
| childbearing by 45 per cent."
|
| [1] https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1153151
| JackMorgan wrote:
| I think if everyone in the country could easily afford a 5
| bedroom house on one person's salary, and they deeply felt
| like their kids would grow up safe and healthy environment,
| we'd have a population explosion. The decline is caused by
| a population that cannot afford enough and is constantly
| panicked over global events. Everyone is presented with
| terror of doom constantly, and squeezed by a major shift of
| resources from labor to capital holders. The rich get
| richer, everyone else gets poorer.
|
| A family of rabbits without enough quiet, food, shelter,
| etc will have hardly any babies. The mother will also eat
| any babies.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| You really think women, on average, would be willing to
| sacrifice 6+ years at the minimum to have 3 children?
| It's easy for us, men, to say that. But all my girl
| friends around my age group (late 20s-early 40s) are
| generally happy with 0-2 children. Genuinely nothing is
| stopping them other than "why do I need to make that
| sacrifice?" question. I will never blame them either,
| because I would do exactly the same in their place. It is
| the most logical thing to do. It's either we make women's
| lives objectively worse, or figure out a way where we can
| live without everyone going for 3+.
| lmm wrote:
| Dig into what exactly is it they would be sacrificing.
| The actual day-to-day raising of children is fulfilling
| and positive. The cost is mostly worries that are partly
| financial and more social - falling behind in your
| career, not being able to maintain friendships, not being
| able to spend enough time with your existing kids, not
| being able to afford to give your new kids a good
| childhood, not being able to put all your kids through
| college, not being able to afford retirement.
| bad_haircut72 wrote:
| Everyone says this until they have kids, and I think they
| forget once their kid reaches about 5. I currently have a
| 1 year old and parenting duties are rough, and we have
| only one kid and my wife is a stay at home mom, its still
| super tough and I can absolutely imagine why many women
| would not want to have to raise children no matter how
| good the circumstances
| graemep wrote:
| I have kids and I disagree. I have been the primary
| parent for much of their lives and an am single parent of
| a teenager (the other one is an adult).
|
| Its not easy, but its worth it. Far more so that putting
| long hours into your job.
|
| > I can absolutely imagine why many women would not want
| to have to raise children no matter how good the
| circumstances
|
| That sentiment is part of the problem. Why is it still
| women's work to raise children? Why are there so few stay
| at home days? Why do couples not sharing parenting
| equally if both work? Why do not not have more famimly
| friendly working hours?
|
| We have currently culturally accepted that its OK for
| women to do traditionally male work, but not for men to
| take on women's work. That will not work. I think this is
| unstable and we will have either a reversal (of which I
| see some signs) or a transition to men taking on more of
| a role in raising children (which is the better outcome,
| but I think is less likely because it is so ingrained
| that they do not).
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| See, I completely agree with you, but it's one of the
| "it's a nice thing to say but never really works out".
| Even in countries with extreme demographic problems (SK
| and Japan), men still expect the women to take over the
| main duties of parenthood. And if women know that they'll
| just burden themselves with multiple kids with not enough
| support from their partner... why would they do it? Can't
| blame them, because we might say one thing, but super
| majority works out differently in practice, so odds are
| against you.
| graemep wrote:
| I ended up in much the same position, and still think its
| worth it.
|
| > Even in countries with extreme demographic problems (SK
| and Japan), men still expect the women to take over the
| main duties of parenthood.
|
| Maybe that is why they have extreme demographic problems?
| People choose to have kids for personal reasons, not
| demographic ones.
|
| Why can we not have that cultural change? We managed the
| one that allowed women to do men's work? Everyones wins.
| men get the joy of full participation in their kids
| lives, women are not landed with all the work, and
| children get better parenting.
| bad_haircut72 wrote:
| You misunderstood me, its not just the womens role, we
| have split the parenting job pretty much down the middle,
| and we have about as good a situation as a modern family
| could get - its still very hard on both of us and thats
| why I can confidently say its a rough job that anyone
| (women or men) might want to for go.
| graemep wrote:
| You said your wife is a stay at home mum and you have
| split parenting down the middle. That does not sound
| consistent to me. That sounds more like traditional
| roles, so why is to so hard?
|
| I was married to a stay at home mum and did half the
| parenting, but that meant I was overworked and she was
| not doing very much. It is one reason I am not married to
| her any more!
|
| My ideal would be something like both working part time
| and sharing parenting. I blame governments focused on
| maximising the workforce and GDP. A lot of parents here
| in the UK drop kids off at school for breakfast and pick
| them up after "after school" activities. Not much joy in
| your kids if you hardly see them/
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| And the cost to a woman's body, during and after
| pregnancy, including risks?
|
| I know a pregnant woman has been nauseous for 6 months,
| is on prescription medication for it, and now can barely
| walk due to symphysis pubic dysfunction. Completely
| healthy prior to becoming pregnant in terms of BMI/blood
| sugar/pressure/physical activity/etc
|
| I know many who have had to get a C section, or bed rest,
| or the kid has issues like allergies, club foot, autism,
| etc.
| lmm wrote:
| > And the cost to a woman's body, during and after
| pregnancy, including risks?
|
| Is very real, but significantly lower for later
| pregnancies, and was generally not something that put
| people off in more prosperous times, even when medical
| care was less advanced.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Women only gained rights recently, how could one know
| that?
|
| There is a 100% correlation with total fertility rates
| dropping and women's independence.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| I think you're not factoring in the other choice - not
| having kids and not having those problems, lower or later
| in life. Hanging around with educated women in their
| 20s/30s, and that's a very real concern.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > "why do I need to make that sacrifice?"
|
| No one does need to make that sacrifice, but don't be
| alarmed when other groups that made that sacrifice start
| changing world how they see fit.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| That's kinda an irrational statement especially towards
| the ones that had a kid or two, no? Like even
| statistically speaking, majority in the west does not
| have 2+ children. So, like, they're more likely to change
| the world as they fit.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| I think it's rational if a bit cold.
|
| Subreplacement level fertility is bound to bound to bite
| you. We don't know of any way to turn subreplacement
| country (fertility rate < 2.1) into a above replacement
| country (fertility rate >= 2.1). Just how to mitigate it
| (immigration). Eventually pools of high fertility will
| run dry.
|
| Some think that it depends on replacing individualism
| with some form of collectivism. Some think it's related
| to hope for future. It's very hard to do any comparison.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Yeah. It's pretty hard to want to have lots of kids when
| the whole of the economy is designed to transfer all
| current productive resources as much as possible to
| leisure obsessed boomers.
|
| Kind of depressing when you realize you're designing CPUs
| with billions of transistors and yet you're going to end
| behind some retired boomer who sold cars just because he
| got here first and the magic of compound interest
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| My understanding is that research does not support this
| position. Something else is likely going on.
| whartung wrote:
| > Mining towns die when the resource is exhausted. They go
| fast.
|
| In Nevada/Eastern California there was a railroad that went
| from the Carson City area down toward Owen's Lake.
|
| The interesting part is if you look at the railroad map, pretty
| much none of the stops exist anymore. It's a long string of
| communities that are all long gone from the eastern Owen's
| Valley.
|
| Even the eventual highways that were to follow ended up coming
| down the western side of the valley, yet more reason for those
| late communities to no longer exist.
|
| And it's pretty much all gone. No ghost towns, maybe a few
| overgrown foundations remnants.
|
| But if you had never seen this railroad map, you'd probably
| never have any idea this land was occupied at all.
| partomniscient wrote:
| As an outsider looking-in that caught some of this portrays
| in Pixar/Disney's animated Cars [1] movies its interesting to
| reflect upon the parallels with its Route 66 references,
| which originate from and also culturally impacted us locally
| [2].
|
| It's also ironic that Route 66 [3] was originally in-and-of
| itself a bypass.
|
| As someone that predominantly lived in a capital urban city
| of a nation still expanding rather than contracting,
| understanding its equivalent occurence in Bulgaria is even
| more difficult.
|
| [1] https://betweenenglandandiowa.com/2018/02/11/cars-
| route-66-m...
|
| [2] https://route66.com.au/
|
| [3] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Route-66
| jdlshore wrote:
| > There are two futures, both bad.
|
| Or, more likely, people are extrapolating from current trends,
| and those trends won't hold. Not that long ago, people were
| doing that extrapolation and deciding that overpopulation and
| worldwide famine were in our future. "The Population Bomb" was
| a bestselling book along those lines.
|
| The population is likely to shrink, easing strain on resources,
| and people will look back fondly on "the good old days" when
| folks had big families. Trends will shift and the population
| will grow again.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| It's a self-correcting problem. The people who don't have
| children select themselves out of the gene pool and are
| replaced by those who do have children.
| debesyla wrote:
| It's debatable if choice/want/accident of having children
| is based on genetics.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| It's a tautology. Replicators which do not replicate do
| not persist in the environment and so are selected out of
| the pool of replicators. So whatever genes persist in the
| environment are tautologically the ones that managed to
| replicate and persist. The people who do not have
| children are selecting themselves out of the pool of
| genes that make copies so will be replaced with ones that
| do make copies.
|
| If you're talking about environmental pollution and
| declining fertility because of it then that's something
| else but even then, those who manage to survive and
| persist in a polluted environment will be the ones who
| pass on copies of their genes.
| notahacker wrote:
| > It's a tautology. Replicators which do not replicate do
| not persist in the environment and so are selected out of
| the pool of replicators. So whatever genes persist in the
| environment are tautologically the ones that managed to
| replicate and persist. The people who do not have
| children are selecting themselves out of the pool of
| genes that make copies so will be replaced with ones that
| do make copies
|
| That's.... not how humans work. If people choose to have
| less children, which has very little to do with their
| genetics, there are fewer children to replicate, not
| "replacement" with children who are genetically
| determined to be fecund.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| Humans are animals and animals which do not replicate are
| selected out of the gene pool. There is nothing to argue
| here.
| notahacker wrote:
| Nobody is taking issue with the fact that humans that do
| not replicate do not pass on their genes
|
| They are taking issue with the ludicrous assertion that
| falling birth rates are "self correcting" because the
| offspring of people who do replicate are somehow
| genetically predisposed to have more children to
| "replace" them.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| Either they'll have children or they won't and the ones
| who do will replace the ones who don't. It's like I said,
| whatever people perceive to be a problem is not actually
| a problem because it corrects itself without any
| interventions.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| It depends on what you consider the problem to be. I
| personally didn't think there is a problem, but if you
| define the problem to be "population decline until there
| are no people left", your solution doesn't work. Unless
| maybe you consider other mammals to be people too.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| I haven't defined any problems or solutions but certain
| people do seem to have defined the problem like you have.
| What I said specifically was that whatever people
| perceive to be a problem with the global human population
| is self-correcting (from a biological perspective)
| because those who voluntarily choose to not procreate
| will be replaced by those who are more than happy to have
| as many children as possible.
|
| If someone has a different perspective on this then they
| are welcome to make their version of the problem explicit
| and concrete and explain what exactly they propose as a
| valid intervention for fixing it. I suspect and am almost
| certain they have not thought about the issue as
| rigorously as they think and are simply parroting popular
| talking points they've seen and heard on social media
| platforms about the impending collapse of civilization
| caused by declining birth rates.
| card_zero wrote:
| You don't recognize that people can think. You assert
| that the offspring behave like the parents. You imply
| that the offspring are defined by their genes. You have
| no concept of the cultural transmission of ideas. You
| imagine that looking at everything biologically is
| correct. Your reasoning is bad, and you should feel bad.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| Not really sure if serious or not but good try anyway.
| For the record I thought your response was very funny.
| card_zero wrote:
| I didn't really mean it, I was channeling Zoidberg from
| episode 72 of Futurama ("your music's bad, and you should
| feel bad"). But I do get the impression that you have
| cloth ears.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| On some days my cloth ears are more dry than on other
| days so the sounds are more or less muffled depending on
| ambient conditions.
| notahacker wrote:
| The problem is usually reframed as factually accurate
| claims that the number of people in most countries is
| below the replacement rate, and thus the number of people
| over working age swells whilst the number of working age
| people is set to shrink.
|
| The implications of this may have been exaggerated of
| course. But it's quite clear that it is not being "self
| corrected" by the offspring of people who do choose to
| have more children than the replacement rate being
| genetically [or culturally] predisposed to breed like
| rabbits...
| Dalewyn wrote:
| The elderly vastly outnumbering the working population is
| a symptom of sudden and drastic population count decline
| and is a different problem even if it is correlated.
|
| Biology and evolution by definition is determined by
| those who reproduce offspring, those who do not will be
| replaced by those who do. Put another way: Generation B
| and onwards are the offspring of Generation A who
| reproduced.
| notahacker wrote:
| I mean, sudden and drastic population declines are
| _literally the subject of the thread_.
|
| Or more specifically, that humans in many parts of the
| world are reproducing at below replacement rate.
|
| Reproduction below replacement rate means that those who
| do not reproduce offspring are _not_ replaced by the
| offspring of those who do.
|
| Nobody is arguing that Generation B aren't the offspring
| of those who reproduced, they're arguing that this detail
| is essentially irrelevant to how many children Generation
| B will have and therefore birth rate decline need not be
| "self correcting" and empirically _isn 't_ in much of the
| world.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding what "replace" means.
|
| Given a long enough time span, everyone alive will be the
| children of those who reproduced. Generation B will be
| composed of Generation A reproducers. The world of
| tomorrow will be owned by those who reproduce today.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >Biology and evolution by definition is determined by
| those who reproduce offspring
|
| Not true. If my brother reproduces, then about half of my
| genes are still getting passed on. If my cousin
| reproduces, 12.5% of my genes are still getting passed
| on. If the argument is that pure gene selection will
| determine the outcome, then you can't treat genetics as
| some simplistic binary.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Your genes aren't your brother's or cousin's and vice
| versa. Imagine a tree, if you fail (or choose not) to
| reproduce then your branch will be a dead end. Other
| branches who did successfully reproduce will continue the
| tree.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The predisposition may be cultural rather than genetic.
|
| Religious people belonging to certain religions/sects do
| have a lot more children even in the contemporary world.
| Maybe the world of 2100 is going to be a lot more
| religious than today.
|
| The development is certainly visible in, say, Israel, or
| even migrant communities in Europe. Europeans must now be
| a bit careful not to insult Islam; that wouldn't be the
| case fifty years ago.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Animats wrote that in the top level comment.
|
| > The countries that are above breakeven (2.1 children
| per woman) are all in Africa or are dominated by
| religions which oppress women. And poor.[4] "Peak baby"
| was in 2013 worldwide.
|
| >There are two futures, both bad. "Keep 'em barefoot and
| pregnant", or "Will the last one to leave please turn out
| the lights."
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I can imagine some other developments. Maybe parenting
| will become professionalized, kids will be born in
| artificial wombs and specialized pairs will take care of
| 10 of them at once.
|
| It sounds wild, but we already professionalized a lot of
| other activities that were "naturally" done by
| households, such as fuel gathering, cooking, home
| construction and small agriculture.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| What a brave new world. But what happens when the machine
| stops?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| What happens if other machines stop? The ones that carry
| food into megacities or provide drinking waters to
| millions?
|
| We are now very, very far from our hunter-gatherer roots.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| I'm aware of that. That's why I questioned the validity
| of the idea, because it seems too risky to rely on.
| Probably unsustainable because the ever faster changes of
| the 'meteorological machine' will disrupt many other
| mechanisms, because they are too slow to adapt.
|
| The idea of mechanizing/automating/centralizing that
| stuff is irking me in general. One could argue that the
| biologisms which evolved us, and we with and through
| them, are just another, rather imperfect way of doing
| this, by slow, biologic means.
|
| IMO this only leads to transhumanism, which I consider
| BS, because it will produce shadows/weak simulations of
| the real thing and philosophical zombies.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Didn't ECHR take note of a Austro Hungarian imperial law
| still in the books to that effect?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| The pool of replicators can prune itself in many ways
| (indeed, it must), but that doesn't mean that those
| prunings are having any effect on the pool of genes. The
| relative frequency of fertility-relevant alleles is just
| as likely to remain stable. It's called Hardy Weinberg
| equilibrium and it's the default state for large
| populations that are not experiencing predation or
| expanding into new niches.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| That's good to know.
| lmm wrote:
| Personality traits are a whole lot more heritable than
| it's fashionable to admit.
| Someone wrote:
| Birth rate doesn't seem to be very heritable, given the
| amount it can change over relatively short periods of
| time.
|
| For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate#/me
| dia/File%3A1910-... shows it going from 8 around 1940 to
| 12 around 1957 and back down to 7 around 1972 in the USA.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| If you are barking mad ane propagate , i choose you,
| evopokemon
| bawolff wrote:
| That's oversimplifying.
|
| Do the people who don't have children send resources to
| relatives who do? Making the family more succesful?
|
| Not to mention it isn't a binary really. There is a middle
| ground of simply having less children. A family that has a
| single child is still below replacement and quite different
| from a family with 5. Regardless, genes are still being
| passed on.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| Sounds like you agree that there is no problem.
| bawolff wrote:
| If by problem you mean some variant of: humans are going
| to stop having babies and go extinct, then yes, i agree
| that is rediculous.
|
| However i disagree with the mechanism you propose. Having
| less children can be evolutionarily advantous in some
| circumtances. People will have less children when it
| makes sense, and have more children when conditions
| change and that make sense.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| Great, it's always good to reach a clear resolution.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Do you see this happening a lot on modern industrial
| societies?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Modern industrial societies (with strong womens rights)
| are a relatively new thing. We'll adapt. Most likely by
| making it much easier to have and raise children so that
| educated, rich folks don't avoid it so long.
| lazide wrote:
| Ah, the optimism.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Well this path feels incomplete:
|
| Having kids early precludes education and career focus ->
| Education and career focus gets you money and prestige ->
| Folks want money -> Folks want to avoid having kids early
| -> Fewer kids.
|
| It's all based on a couple misconceptions that a) you
| can't have what you want now if you have kids and b)
| you'll want what you want now when you have kids.
|
| Try this thought experiment on for size:
|
| Initially, you don't have kids b/c you don't want to
| avoid this vacation ($5k?) and that opportunity (A few
| years at a good job?)
|
| But consider the reverse: If you had kids, and they were
| going to die if you didn't turn over $X, what value of X
| is "too high"? There is no value of X that is too high,
| you'd happily give everything you have to bring your kids
| home safe. Why don't we give a meager few years of our
| lives to have kids and get them through the infant stage
| until our lives return somewhat to normal?
|
| Why do we all pretend that $5k before kids is somehow not
| the same as $5k after kids? It's not a trap - parents do
| want their children, do love them, and are willing to
| drop money to have them, but we only recognize this after
| they have them. Substitute money for a job change, a
| spouse choice, etc.
|
| It's a weird cognitive dissonance that we don't recognize
| this for ourselves when we're young, and I'd argue it's
| mostly this cognitive dissonance that stands in our way.
| So, some tangible improvements and a slight increase in
| number of successful people having kids would probably
| dispel that misconception.
| lazide wrote:
| Have you had kids while both parents are working?
|
| I have, and it's miserable for the parents and often
| traumatic for the kids. At least if the jobs are at all
| challenging.
| bawolff wrote:
| Yes, I think both effects are prominent in developed
| societies.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That's a perversion of the idea of evolution. Survival of
| the genes only applies to individuals, because they are
| each completely unique in their genetic makeup.
| bawolff wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection
| dgacmu wrote:
| That's not correct. There's substantial evidence for kin
| selection and inclusive fitness:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection
|
| (Used to be a biologist)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I'm very skeptical to kin selection in general, but for
| humans it is out of the question. Genghis Khan is all the
| evidence you need against it.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I believe you are describing the plot of Idiocracy.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| I'm not making any value judgements. Intelligence is not
| necessary for replication.
| Qem wrote:
| If natural selection were that effective, no species would
| ever go extinct. And yet most do. Relying on natural
| selection to shrug off problems is like making lottery
| tickets your retirement plan.
| myrmidon wrote:
| Strongly disagree with that take.
|
| Genetics can only have a minor influence on number of
| offspring, because the genetic makeup of basically _every_
| industrialized nation did _not_ change completely within 20
| years.
|
| If there was no other factor apart from genetics, it is
| decidedly unclear if that _could_ stabilize population
| numbers on its own.
|
| But it won't have to, almost for certain, because non-
| genetic mechanisms will balance this in all likelyhood
| ("organized" incentives from states and also emerging
| ressource over-supply), and those mechanisms will work MUCH
| faster than genetics ever could.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| He's not saying that genetics caused the problem, but
| that natural selection will solve the problem. Natural
| selection also need not be obviously genetic. For example
| certain religious groups maintain very healthy fertility
| rates, while secular populations tend to have quite poor
| fertility rates. So this logically leads to an outcome
| very few would intuitively expect - the percent of
| humanity that is religious will likely increase over the
| coming decades and centuries.
|
| Also collapsing populations will lead to resource
| scarcity. One of the many negatives of low fertility is
| that you end up with far more elderly than working age
| people. Any given market will also naturally decrease in
| size, all other things being equal. These factors,
| amongst others, will completely wreck economies which may
| well end up creating a vicious cycle against fertility.
|
| Another reason I think 'organized incentives' will be
| unlikely to achieve much is that Scandinavia had been at
| the forefront of fertility collapse in Europe and they
| have both an exremely strong social safety net as well as
| great minimum maternity benefits. Clearly there are other
| factors than economic inability driving people to go
| childless or to only have 1.
| Animats wrote:
| Japan and France have tried incentives, with little
| effect. Japan is even cutting their social security
| payments to pay for increased subsidies for children.[1]
| France has a benefit scheme for parents with two or more
| children.[2] It's about EUR75 per month, so not that big.
|
| [1] https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/06/3918e24819
| 36-japa...
|
| [2] https://www.service-
| public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F13213?...
| sebastiennight wrote:
| The math on the French website seems to indicate EUR 75
| "per child" (~150 total) per month for 2 kids, 110+ per
| child per month for 3.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| IIRC France has a higher fertility rate than neiboors.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| In humans, memes are a stronger driver of fertility than
| genes. It _is_ a self correcting problem, but that 's
| because having more children than you can support is an
| antimeme. Even if they survive and reproduce, they won't
| pass on the "large family" trait.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I believe we're in a correction period. All through history
| it was dangerous and debilitating for women to have children.
| As women's reproductive and voting rights and freedom
| increased (a nanosecond ago history wise), more couples self-
| selected out of that and if they had kids they had them
| later. Myself and my spouse included. Add to that - it's
| expensive and difficult to raise kids without support. Either
| you buy support or you neglect huge opportunities and say
| near parents.
|
| Right now, we pay more for our nanny than we do for our
| house, and combined both are pretty huge chunks of our income
| - and we're both fairly successful professionals.
|
| Eventually, there will be better resources for working
| couples to have kids. It's a fairly easy problem to solve:
| More childcare options, more housing supply (so its cheaper
| to live), and more childcare workers by e.g., reducing
| regulations and improving immigration policy. USA has no
| reason to do this - we have good demographics b/c of
| immigration and (frankly) Calthocism and its ilk.
|
| When I married into a catholic family I inherited 100s of
| cousins, and there's 1000s of relatives in our state now.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > More childcare options, more housing supply (so its
| cheaper to live), and more childcare workers by e.g.,
| reducing regulations and improving immigration policy. USA
| has no reason to do this - we have good demographics b/c of
| immigration and (frankly) Calthocism and its ilk.
|
| How do you square this with huge childcare costs in the US?
| The costs come from childcare ratios and liability, and
| those regulations are there for a reason.
|
| Where are all the workers going to come from? Won't the
| growing and politically powerful old population want
| workers for their needs/wants?
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Population shrinking is going to annihilate the current
| economic system we have where everyone puts their retirement
| into stocks. Then the shell-shocked people will be even more
| poor and unable to afford having children. You have to have
| new entrants to the pyramid to buy the stocks that the people
| all want to sell to finance their retirement.
|
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-009-9179-9
|
| Places like Japan and Korea aren't having the sort of birth
| rate turnaround you are discussing.
| dustypotato wrote:
| There are very few if not zero number of countries going back
| to replacement levels after they fell from it. The world on
| average is getting richer and richer countries have falling
| birthrates
| ANewFormation wrote:
| But you don't need to extrapolate. Current rates are far more
| than sufficient for catastrophe. It's merely that the effects
| of dangerously high fertility rates are immediate while the
| effects of dangerously low fertility tend to lag the advent
| of said reduction by around 60 years.
|
| So for instance Japan is still living the good times relative
| to what's yet to come since they collapsed in the 80s. South
| Korea hasn't even begun to really feel the consequences of
| their actions since they only collapsed in the 90s. And
| places like Finland or the Western world in general only
| collapsed even more recently.
|
| But collapsed they have. And because our fertile window in
| life, for women at least, closes long before we die - most,
| if not all, of these places will, unavoidably, see dramatic
| population declines, screwed age ratios (with consequent
| impacts on the labor/retiree pool/costs), shrinking
| economies, and so on. And we're left to rely on some ever
| smaller generation(s) down the line to start having large
| families in this context.
| mountainb wrote:
| It will be "fixed" by just killing off old people in large
| numbers through some combination of high pressure
| euthanasia campaigns and denial of healthcare subsidies.
| Just no one wants to be honest about it.
|
| Our political culture is not a high integrity, high honesty
| culture but one that relies on a lot of indirect
| communication and symbolism. In this the west has become a
| lot more like east Asian stereotype. So in my view this
| crisis will be solved, just not in a way that people want
| to acknowledge. A lot of the nonserious "attempts" to
| address the issues are just performances to make it look
| like the facially palatable policies have been tried before
| they inevitably fail.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| It's not the most intuitive thing, but how long we live
| has no long term impact on population levels. Think about
| a fertility rate of one - this means each successive
| generation will be half the size of the one prior. This
| makes simplified population sims very simple because it's
| simply powers of 2.
|
| If you start with a population of 1 then the generation
| before was 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32, etc. So when you remove
| the biggest group, the oldest, it will always be about
| 50% of the total population regardless of how many other
| generations happen to be alive. And a 'generation' is
| proportional not to our life expectancy, but to our
| practical fertility window - so about 20 years.
|
| You _would_ substantially mitigate many of the economic
| problems but your Logan 's Run would also need to be a
| dictatorship (and a rather less than benevolent one)
| because the skewed age ratios mean with a collapsing
| fertility rate the elderly will exclusively control any
| democracy, even if 100% of people vote. And all of this
| just to make it more comfortable to sleep walk into
| extinction.
|
| I'm fully on board with you about saying the unspoken
| parts out loud, but I don't see this idea as a solution.
| lazide wrote:
| Or just cut all the socialized medical programs old folks
| disproportionally rely on while telling everyone in the
| group that you aren't.
|
| Hmm, which is what the current plan for the next US
| president seems to be....
| beAbU wrote:
| > There are two futures, both bad.
|
| The more likely scenario is a natural oscillation between these
| two outcomes, similar to how animals maintain oscillating
| population equilibrium that's controlled by space, resources
| and predation.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean one thing many people, myself included, have been
| clamoring for ages is that people can't afford to live and
| own property anymore. People can't afford to think about
| raising kids if they're stressed about your next paycheck and
| making rent.
|
| This is probably oversimplified and naive, but go back to the
| 80's economically where families could afford a family-
| raising sized home and a comfortable life on a single income.
| Bring jobs back to the smaller towns, which are safer and
| healthier places to raise families.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| This sentiment is interesting and coexists in a world where
| real estate is super cheap the second you move out of urban
| centers.
|
| Combine this with the fact that is has never been easier to
| work remotely.
|
| From my perspective it is a matter of preference - people
| decide that their life style in urban centers is more
| important than having a resource surplus and starting a
| family.
| arlort wrote:
| > that is has never been easier to work remotely.
|
| Which still means it's almost impossible for almost
| everyone almost everywhere
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| TFR was low even back in the 1980s, and especially the
| 1970s.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINUSA
|
| I am guessing the bump from late 1980s to 2000s was almost
| entirely due to immigrants, especially Latin American.
| Similar to a bump seen in other countries where immigrants
| coming from places with higher TFRs bumped it up, and
| within a couple decades, even those immigrant populations
| now have lower TFRs.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-
| un?tab...
| anonzzzies wrote:
| At least here people, including my grandparents who lived
| through WOII, lived outside cities, had to travel hours for
| work and worked the land for food. They had 10 kids and
| they helped in the household and on the land (only for
| their own food: animals, veg and fruit) while the dad was
| away 12+ hours of the day (4+ hours commute) (my dad also
| travelled 4+ hours every day for work by the way; fairly
| normal in the 80s here; not sure what happened). This is
| still just possible; you don't need to live in a city and,
| again at least where I live, the prices drop sharply only a
| few hours drive from every large city (1.5m euro vs 1000s
| to 10ks for land and houses). Everyone can afford a house
| or land, but everyone _wants_ to live on the city where
| they generally can 't. If you want to raise (many) kids,
| you can choose the same life as my grandparents had (who
| also could not afford a house in the big city but wanted
| one so built multiple (one for them and later for their
| kids including my parents) with their own hands in a small
| village), but it's not an easy thing; it never was an easy
| thing.
| elzbardico wrote:
| If I am not mistaken we had other depopulation events in
| history and we rebounded from it. Especially in the past where
| surviving the first years was far from guaranteed and nutrition
| levels and hardship frequently imposed a tax on women's
| fertility. Combine this with lower life expectancies and we had
| the recipe for quite a few depopulation events.
|
| The point is. There's no much you can do if people don't want
| to have kids. And this is probably generational, so you won't
| change the mind of the current generations.
|
| We will need to learn to live without it. Retirement while
| healthy and capable of work, will probably become a thing of
| the past.
|
| Also, we will probably have to rethink compound interest and
| inheritance rights. Compound interest on investments require by
| necessity monotonically increasing economy outputs in the long
| run.
| moomin wrote:
| Honestly, I think you could adjust population growth in many
| western countries by just spending more on schools, providing
| generous parental leave and generally making having kids less
| daunting. But it seems like everyone who wants this outcome
| is entirely comfortable with going full Nazi on the subject.
| elzbardico wrote:
| No way, we need to pay interest to the boomers so they can
| buy Motorhomes, Boats, Harley Davidsons and travel across
| the world.
|
| Stop this school and health care nonsense! This is
| communism!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The data says that the benefits provided by the
| Scandinavian and European countries are not enough, or that
| providing benefits is not going to lift TFR to replacement
| rate. And also TFR was declining a lot all the way back
| since the 1950s, when kids were not as daunting and real
| estate costs and schooling costs were lower and people were
| buying houses on single incomes.
|
| I have a suspicion that there is almost no amount of
| realistic benefits that can incentivize having sufficient
| kids to the level of replacement rate. The problem is that
| once sufficient women do not have 2 children, it is
| unrealistic to expect a sufficient amount of the remaining
| women to have 3+ children to offset those that have 0 or 1
| child.
|
| The big change from 100 years ago is that being a couple is
| now completely optional with no social stigma for being
| single, so if 30% or even 20% opt out of the compromises
| required in a relationship (due to their financial
| independence and safety in society), then you're fighting a
| losing battle (to keep TFR at replacement rate).
| naijaboiler wrote:
| I have longed come to the conclusion that we are social
| beings even more than we are economic beings.
|
| Reversing fertility drops will require social solutions
| in addition to economic solutions. I.e we need economic
| incentives but we also need to find ways to "make it
| cool" to have babies and have women in child bearing age
| be in close social circles with women having kids. And we
| have to all that while respecting all the gender equality
| gains we have made in the modern world. Not an easy
| solution
|
| That or make the economic incentives super huge
| lazide wrote:
| In general, in crisis, people aren't going to go for the
| complex solution. They'll go with the simple one.
|
| If addressed sooner, then it won't be a crisis. Do you
| think that will happen?
| naijaboiler wrote:
| This is going too get increasingly hard due to our
| political system. We have more older people and they have
| more political and economic capital, so the incentive is
| going you keep voting and allocating more societal
| resources towards the old and away from the young, which
| further skews the demographics, which then leads older
| people with more resources and power and ability to vote
| themselves more resources
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, frankly that is like saying you could have a larger
| army if you paid your soldiers better and treated them
| well.
|
| Not wrong, especially in relative peacetime and when things
| are going well.
|
| But there is a reason the first thing Ukraine did when they
| got invaded was a draft.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > There's no much you can do if people don't want to have
| kids.
|
| "Don't want" to have kids. Just like people "don't want" to
| own their own house and "don't want" to have a retirement
| when they get old and "don't want" to have a living salary.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Man, I know people who actually DON'T WANT to have kids.
| Some of them rich people who could afford an expensive
| education and all the help they could get, and they really
| don't want kids.
| lazide wrote:
| There are also people that have had their kids weaponized
| against them, (or were weaponized against their parents),
| and frankly never ever want to play _that_ game again.
| dzink wrote:
| Nope. Look at Israel - their Kibbutz system allows for communal
| raising of children and that means women have the ability to do
| more than be stuck at homes. They serve in the IDF, have
| careers, and population growth is 3 children per woman. Israel
| has the right model - governments who figure out how to support
| their mothers with proper childcare and education for the kids
| will get a developed society with proper population growth.
| TomK32 wrote:
| As usual, religion is to blame for this high rate:
|
| > In 2020, the total fertility rate among ultra-Orthodox
| women in Israel was 6.6, while the rate among Arab women was
| 3.0, and among secular women, it was 2.0 -- still well above
| the OECD average -- according to a report from the Jerusalem
| Institute for Policy Research.
|
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-birth-rate-remains-
| hig...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > They serve in the IDF, have careers, and population growth
| is 3 children per woman.
|
| The women that do the above most certainly have a TFR closer
| to 2 rather than 3.
|
| See table 1 at top of page 7 and figure 2 on page 8.
|
| https://www.taubcenter.org.il/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/01/Dem...
| slibhb wrote:
| > There are two futures, both bad. "Keep 'em barefoot and
| pregnant", or "Will the last one to leave please turn out the
| lights."
|
| One data point against this dichotomy is that most women in the
| West generally report wanting more children than they have.
|
| A different view is that, in the first world, men and women
| have become more neurotic and risk averse. E.g. "we can't
| afford kids with this market"
| jajko wrote:
| > "we can't afford kids with this market"
|
| This seems like a gross simplification. In western world, the
| pressure is to raise kids well rather than just so-so, since
| one can easily see how much this helps them with rest of
| modern complex life. For example emotional stability,
| maturity and resilience is not something that comes
| automatically regardless of quality (and quantity) of
| parenting. This aspect alone is enough to make or break
| literally any conceivable talent or wealth under our sun.
|
| And raising kids well these days is... hard, very hard. If it
| would be just question of money, rich folks would be all
| having 10-15 kids yet even those who are pretty horrible
| parents via ignoring their kids most of the time (with
| corresponding results later in life) very rarely do so, and
| if they do its normally the result of their instabilities and
| mental issues rather than part of a bigger plan.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If it would be just question of money, rich folks would
| be all having 10-15 kids
|
| Well, Musk certainly does... the thing is, for the really
| rich, more kids means more complex inheritance schemes and
| the risk of their wealth going down the drain in
| inheritance fights. Here in Germany for example, there was
| a ridiculous multi year fight in the empire of the Albrecht
| clan (the ones behind Aldi, I think in the US it's Trader
| Joe's?).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The number of kids a man has is irrelevant for population
| statistics because it simply offsets another man's child.
| That's why total fertility rate only takes into account
| how many children a woman has, since they are the rate
| limiting factor.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Depends on your point of view, and which statistics, I
| guess?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Jacob_Meijer
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_family_tree
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/distinctive-
| habsbu...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't see how this math could depend on a point of
| view.
|
| You can have 100 men and 1 woman, and predicting future
| population will have nothing to do with how many men
| there are (as long as there is at least 1 fertile man).
|
| But if you have even just 1 man, having 10 women versus
| 100 women makes an enormous difference in potential
| future population.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| But those asymmetries are artificial, made up.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| There are Aldi's in the US also.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| source? here is recent Pew Research data in the US
|
| family relationships - parenting report Jul 25, 2024 The
| Experiences of U.S. Adults Who Don't Have Children
|
| The U.S. fertility rate reached a historic low in 2023, with
| a growing share of women ages 25 to 44 having never given
| birth.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > There are two futures, both bad. "Keep 'em barefoot and
| pregnant", or "Will the last one to leave please turn out the
| lights."
|
| Overly pessimistic. Our culture and economy have been
| structured to yield low fertility. That will eventually pass.
| There's no need for oppression to get replacement rate
| fertility.
| ralfd wrote:
| > Overly pessimistic. Our culture and economy have been
| structured to yield low fertility. That will eventually pass.
|
| But I don't see succesful attempts culture/economy changed to
| be family friendly?
|
| Realistically our culture/economy right now "will pass" by
| being replaced with the virile Amish.
| AlexDragusin wrote:
| This documentary explores this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l11zPNb-MFg
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath:_Population_Zero
|
| Aftermath: Population Zero - The World without Humans What would
| happen if, tomorrow, every single person on Earth simply
| disappeared? Not dead, simply gone, just like that. A world
| without people, where city streets are still populated by cars,
| but no drivers. A world where there is no one to fix bridges or
| repair broken windows...
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Say what? Wikipedia says it's a Canadian production, Youtube
| says "not available in your country". I'm in Canada.
|
| Edit: It's just that particular link. Searching for the title
| itself brought up a working one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHoOG4eKzbM
| ignoramous wrote:
| mirror: https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/l11zPNb-MFg
| pvaldes wrote:
| Some years of great success ended by a rust nuclear plant
| suddenly exploding.
| wongogue wrote:
| Check out the DMZ in Korea and Chernobyl.
| guenthert wrote:
| Afaik, the region which is now the DMZ was never
| industrialized. So this is a very special case with little
| toxic waste (other than the occasional landmine).
| theendisney wrote:
| It would be cool to plant a food forest. Give it 60-80 years and
| it might just change into a garden of Eden.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I have spent time in remote parts of North America that have seen
| few if any humans in several decades. The thing you notice in
| that country is that there are a lot of animals and the animals
| behave differently when they see you than animals almost anywhere
| else. They've never seen a human before, for generations, and so
| you are a novelty in their environment that they know nothing
| about.
|
| Interestingly, humans (without canids) apparently don't come
| across as much of a threat by default. I would be approached by
| curious animals that in any other environment would never allow
| themselves to be remotely that close to a human. For lack of a
| better description, these animals also had much more
| "personality" than the wild animals you see near civilization.
|
| Until you've seen the actual wilds, it is easy to forget how much
| of the "wilds" are actually quite zoo-like.
| EB-Barrington wrote:
| In remote parts of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, I saw wild
| approach closely and then be hand-fed.
|
| I had the same thoughts as you - these animals don't behave as
| expected - it's like they haven't yet learned that humans can
| be dangerous.
| MrLeap wrote:
| I live out in the country. Not quite "wilds" but it's about a
| 45 minute drive to the nearest walmart and we drink water out
| of a well. It's remote enough that only a few cars drive by a
| month.
|
| I've also found that the animals behave differently out here,
| or appear to anyhow. Maybe it's just there's more sensory room
| to notice the differences. There's a family of small furry
| rodents that greet me a few feet away from the porch every
| morning. Birdsong also has a load of hidden complexity to it
| I've never noticed. Go outside every day and listen to the
| songs. There's persistence, modification proposals and
| consensus reaching among birds over days and weeks. I don't
| know a thing about birds, but it's clear there's a lot of
| fascinating stuff happening among them.
|
| We have an "armadillo buddy" that lives under the cabin. Clouds
| of bats swarm between the trees at night and coyotes howl at
| the moon. There's got to be dozens of rabbits. They'll let you
| walk right up to them before they run off. Once had to wait for
| a family of 10 cross the gravel driveway on our way home.
| Another time there was a large cougar just chilling in the
| yard.
|
| Having never lived in a rural area until my 30's, it's wild how
| much activity there is and how close it is to us.
|
| How much of this is because nature doesn't have to work as hard
| to survive around our cabin, and how much is just being able to
| notice it? It's a mix for sure.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Why did you decide to move out there? It sounds nice and
| relaxing but I think I would get lonely, or bored.
| plasticchris wrote:
| I had a similar experience with wild bison - I've spent time
| around domesticated cattle and the wild ones seemed much more
| intelligent and aware. They would react as soon as you showed
| your silhouette on the ridge top.
| phront wrote:
| After I watched the old mario bros movie i thought that dinosaurs
| might have built a civilization but we see no traces of their
| deeds. It was very sad to think about that.
| briantakita wrote:
| Humans can have a positive ecological impact. For example large
| parts of the Amazon were cultivated forest gardens with biochar
| used to build the soil. The issue lies with modern consumerism.
| Where large corporations capture governments & mandate ecological
| problems. If we get back to our roots of homesteading, growing
| our own food, managing the health of our soil, we can get back to
| being a net positive.
| hk1337 wrote:
| Equilibrium is near.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| One of the more interesting photography books I've seen is 'The
| Past from Above' by Georg Gerster. 2005, ISBN 0-89236-817-9.
| Hundreds of aerial shots of long-abandoned archeological sites.
| retrac wrote:
| There's a section of rail line between Senneterre, QC and
| Cochrane, ON in north-central Canada constructed as part of a
| quixotic federal project a century ago to link the grain-growing
| praries with an Atlantic port. It was barely ever used and then
| abandoned in the 1990s. It's the very fringe of the interface
| where North American industrial civilization reached, and has
| since rolled back. It's amazing how completely nature has
| swallowed everything back up. The bridges still stand but they
| won't in another thirty years or so. Even the railbed constructed
| to high quality with packed stone dust has trees growing out of
| it again. I've explored some of the route and I was reminded of
| who were the great engineers here before humans - beavers
| completely transform landscapes. They've dammed every causeway
| along the route, which only further accelerates the erosion.
| They've flooded a couple rail stops and old logging villages I
| had hoped to check out. Before long you'll have to know exactly
| what to look for to even find the line.
| btbuildem wrote:
| That is not a place one visits on a whim, wow!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-11-30 23:02 UTC)