I’ll acknowledge that saying it’s a dog whistle every time was slightly hyperbolic.
However, I’d argue that the claim that the global human population is declining too rapidly is actually pretty hotly contested. The world’s population is still growing — around 8.2 billion now, heading toward a peak near 10.3 billion in the 2080s.
That being said, in some countries there will be a surplus of retirees and not enough workers to fund them through the existing tax structure, which is a legitimate problem. But it’s a problem best remedied through better social safety nets, not by popping out more babies.
The biggest contention I have with the concern over population decline is that population decline doesn’t matter at all if we don’t adequately address climate change within the next decade. If someone’s house is actively on fire and they express concern to me that their roof should be re-shingled, I’m not going to give a shit about their roof shingles until I’m certain their roof will survive the fire.
Thanks, that was a much more nuanced take that I have a much easier time agreeing with :)
I think the population problem has some in common with food distribution: There’s enough food in the world, it’s just distributed in such a way that some places have obesity as a societal-level issue, while other places people are dying of malnourishment.
Similarly, the global population is increasing, however it’s increasing far more rapidly that sustainable in some places, while declining more rapidly than sustainable in others.
There’s only so much you can do by redistributing wealth in a better way (which I think we should, regardless). It doesn’t help to tax the rich if there isn’t any manpower you can buy with that tax income to actually do the work that needs doing. I think that’s the scary part about a rapid population decline: We’re heading towards a situation (in some places) where the ratio of capable workers to people needing care approaches 2:1, which means a far larger fraction of the population will need to spend their entire working career as direct care providers than is currently the case. You can’t really alleviate a manpower shortage with just money.
I’ll acknowledge that saying it’s a dog whistle every time was slightly hyperbolic.
However, I’d argue that the claim that the global human population is declining too rapidly is actually pretty hotly contested. The world’s population is still growing — around 8.2 billion now, heading toward a peak near 10.3 billion in the 2080s.
That being said, in some countries there will be a surplus of retirees and not enough workers to fund them through the existing tax structure, which is a legitimate problem. But it’s a problem best remedied through better social safety nets, not by popping out more babies.
The biggest contention I have with the concern over population decline is that population decline doesn’t matter at all if we don’t adequately address climate change within the next decade. If someone’s house is actively on fire and they express concern to me that their roof should be re-shingled, I’m not going to give a shit about their roof shingles until I’m certain their roof will survive the fire.
Thanks, that was a much more nuanced take that I have a much easier time agreeing with :)
I think the population problem has some in common with food distribution: There’s enough food in the world, it’s just distributed in such a way that some places have obesity as a societal-level issue, while other places people are dying of malnourishment.
Similarly, the global population is increasing, however it’s increasing far more rapidly that sustainable in some places, while declining more rapidly than sustainable in others.
There’s only so much you can do by redistributing wealth in a better way (which I think we should, regardless). It doesn’t help to tax the rich if there isn’t any manpower you can buy with that tax income to actually do the work that needs doing. I think that’s the scary part about a rapid population decline: We’re heading towards a situation (in some places) where the ratio of capable workers to people needing care approaches 2:1, which means a far larger fraction of the population will need to spend their entire working career as direct care providers than is currently the case. You can’t really alleviate a manpower shortage with just money.