this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025

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There Are Many Threats to Humanity. A Low Birth Rate Isn’t One of Them. (www.currentaffairs.org)

submitted 1 day ago by relianceschool@slrpnk.net to c/degrowth@slrpnk.net

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Far-right authoritarian pundits and political actors, from Matt Walsh to Elon Musk, all seem to have gotten the same memo instructing them to fixate on “low” fertility and birth rates. Musk has claimed that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming” and that it will lead to “mass extinction.”

Some liberals are flirting with this narrative, too. In a February New Yorker essay, Gideon Lewis-Kraus deploys dystopian imagery to describe the “low” birth-rate in South Korea, twice comparing the country to the collapsing, childless society in the 2006 film Children of Men.

It’s not just liberals and authoritarians engaging in this birth-rate crisis panic. Self-described leftist Elizabeth Bruenig recently equated falling fertility with humanity’s inability “to persist on this Earth.” Running through her pronatalist Atlantic opinion piece is an entirely uninterrogated presumption that fertility rates collected today are able to predict the total disappearance of the species Homo sapiens at some future time.

But is this panic about low fertility driving human population collapse supported by any evidence?

https://archive.ph/rIycs

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[–] veganpizza69@lemmy.vg 7 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

The article is pretty good, but you need to have a bunch of context to understand what it's pointing out.

I've been noticing the Social Darwinism plans for a while. The traditional pronatalist policy is indeed that of "quantity", specifically, a high quantity of human capital with high turnover - for labor and war. The human capital, you, need to understand that this means:

women are domestic baby factories ("traditional family")
men are (wage?) slaves, worked to death with only enough time to sleep and reproduce
huge infant mortality rates (this tends to increase fertility as people try to make spare children)
huge childhood mortality rates
large maternal mortality rate (guess why the chainsaw was invented)
an abundance of orphans
lower and lower life expectancy (retirement = death)

What I still don't understand is why these pronatalist types want so much human capital when they have so much technology to replace humans, especially now. It's a weird contradiction in the TESCREAL ideologues. If anyone knows, let me know.

Here's a good podcast to get a grip on this very broad topic: the overshoot podcast.

[–] Dogyote@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 hour ago

This may answer your question. I've read that the only way to continue making a profit, aka be better off than the laboring masses, is to use human labor power to produce products/services. Why? Because if a process is automated, the process's rate of profit will eventually fall to zero. Why? Competition with other businesses that automate will drive the price down as low as it can go (unless of course there's collusion or a monopoly is allowed to exist).

Put another way, in order to make money, you need to be able to pay your labor less than the value of whatever they're producing. If the whole process is automated, there's no one to pay at all, which is amazing for a hot second, but once another business copies and undercuts you, you need to lower your price to match theirs. Then a third person copies and undercuts you both, and before you know it you're not making any money because everyone is selling a fraction of a cent above cost.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 2 points 7 hours ago

But nonnegative birth rates are one of them

[–] hellofriend@lemmy.world 6 points 17 hours ago (4 children)

I mean, it might not be a threat to humanity but it's certainly a threat to my ability to retire. Right now the money I put into CPP is funding the boomers' current retirement and their children's retirement. Who's gonna fund mine? But it's not like my generation could have kids anyway. The same boomers fucked the world so badly that we're only barely able to scrape by. I'm in my 20s, I shouldn't even have to worry about this bullshit.

[–] veganpizza69@lemmy.vg 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

You're in c/degrowth. Retirement from economic growth "generating" "passive income" isn't a feature.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Degrowth supports UBI. Isn’t that a form of passive income?

People eventually retire whether they want to or not. Their body breaks down and they can no longer work. These people need some kind of support or they’re going to die in miserable circumstances.

[–] Tiresia@slrpnk.net 1 points 9 minutes ago

The only way not to die in miserable circumstances is to die suddenly, and retirement homes typically take away people's ability to choose even that.

I would not wish my grandmother's "well-earned retirement" on my worst enemies.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Thats not a problem that can't easily be solved. All the resources needed for you to retire exist in abundance.

[–] Tiresia@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 minutes ago

Sure, if you're a nice person who people want to help out of love. But what about the assholes who can't get people to interact with them without the threat of homelessness?

Please, won't someone think of the narcissists?

[–] nuko147@lemm.ee 2 points 8 hours ago

You will receive less retirement money than Millennials (who will get less than Boomers), while the percentage of your income for pensions increases monthly, and the retirement age rises. This change won’t happen suddenly but in waves.

Many liberal governments in Europe are currently pushing to raise the retirement age. For example, in my country, reforms have already ensured that by the time I reach retirement age, it will be set at 74.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Does it? The Canadian fertility rate dropped below replacement in 1971, which is also the case for most other Western countries.

[–] hellofriend@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

Well, yes. Families have been getting smaller. This means there's a smaller pool of people to support the fund and ensure that the money in the fund grows. If the money in the fund does not grow then the people currently in retirement lose value on their contributions, or in other words, get less out of the fund than what they put in. So young people have to pay more into the fund because there aren't enough of us to support all the boomers at previous rates. Millennials, GenZ, GenA, all fucked.

And I want to be clear: I'm not saying that the CPP is worse than the alternative. Having a ton of seniors homeless due to being unable to work would cost everyone a lot more than the CPP does. All I'm saying is that it's unfair that my contributions will not fund my retirement because they're currently funding someone else's. Especially when I could really use that money right now to, yknow, afford food with actual nutritional value.

And all the more: this is a time bomb waiting to blow. The CPP is only projected to be sustainable for the next 75 years. When GenA is retired, they won't be able to rely on it. It's a robbing Pete to pay Paul sort of situation.

[–] reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net 39 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The ‘demographic crisis’ is one of economics and states, not the persistence of the human race. The ratio of the old to the young is increasing drastically. Our global economic systems are simply not designed to support this. Our states cannot exist —as they are—without constant growth and those that fall behind are left behind.

The solution to the ‘demographic crisis’ is to move towards economies that are not based on constant growth so that the phenomenon is no longer a problem. Ironically people will probably be more interested in having babies in this scenario as well. Global capitalism is depressing, soulless, and does not make me go “wow I hope my decedents get to experience this.”

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

Economic crises drive political crises. The trend towards far-right authoritarianism is a global one. People under stress (of many different sorts) favour authoritarianism for some reason.

The pathogen-stress theory of authoritarianism is fairly well studied and has proven robust. There’s similar support for theories of economic stress and poverty driving support for authoritarianism. Population declines can be a major source of economic stress due to the way older generations need to be financially supported by younger workers.

[–] boreengreen@lemm.ee 10 points 1 day ago

Yes, sustainability has to be part of any solution.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 30 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Low birthrate is a threat to paying folks a low wage.

[–] azolus@slrpnk.net 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

This person has class consciousness!

[–] veganpizza69@lemmy.vg 3 points 6 hours ago

Workers need to learn about what a birth strike is.

[–] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 12 points 1 day ago

I would definitely like a less busy planet

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The only problem with low birthrate is an organizational one, where you don't have enough young population to support the old population. But to me this just means that the organization isn't set up correctly.

[+] brucethemoose@lemmy.world -9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

“Just an organizational problem” is a hell of a problem though.

We’d already be transcendent if it weren’t for that little thing, heh.

Organization aside, it’s also (IMO) a productivity issue without enough automation to take care of elders, or good enough healthcare to keep them “young.” Unless you want to force old people to work.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

“Just an organizational problem” is a hell of a problem though.

As in, it's not a threat to humanity. It's completely different type and order of magnitude.

We’d already be transcendent if it weren’t for that little thing, heh.

Ah I see you're not discussing in good faith. So this will be my only reply.

Organization aside, it’s also (IMO) a productivity issue without enough automation to take care of elders, or good enough healthcare to keep them “young.” Unless you want to force old people to work.

Elder care is not really a physical labor problem, it's a financing problem as it's organized right now. If a person costs more than they paid into the system (on average, on a large scale, why do I bother I know you're not discussing in good faith), then the problem is with the system. We should not need everlasting growth so that each generation gets out more than they paid in.

[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Elder care is not really a physical labor problem

The hell it isn't! As societies approach 1:1 between working and elderly they quickly run into the problem of having enough people to do elderly care and do regular work. Japan is already experiencing a shortage of caregivers and the worst of it won't arrive until 2050.

We should not need everlasting growth so that each generation gets out more than they paid in.

Then you are going to have to start killing the elderly because the plain and painful truth is that they are expensive. They require increasingly costly medical care to keep them alive along with increasing physical assistance as they age.

There is no magic wand to be waived where today's elderly DON'T get out more than they put in...not unless they die when they quit working.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Different username but I'm not entirely convinced you're a different user, so again my last reply.

The hell it isn’t! As societies approach 1:1 between working and elderly they quickly run into the problem of having enough people to do elderly care and do regular work. Japan is already experiencing a shortage of caregivers and the worst of it won’t arrive until 2050.

Holy cow did you just stop reading what I wrote after the part you quoted? It's a financing problem, not enough tax revenue. It's not enough funding to attract caregivers, not a physical shortage of bodies. You need a massive, massive, massive, massive ^10 generational shortage before you run into a physical shortage of bodies, which of course I don't advocate for.

Even your link "Consequently, investment in the pension system, healthcare facilities, long-term care, and welfare will become more important." WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT I SAID, IT'S A FINANCING PROBLEM.

Then you are going to have to start killing the elderly because the plain and painful truth is that they are expensive. They require increasingly costly medical care to keep them alive along with increasing physical assistance as they age.

Holy cow at the ridiculousness of your reply and very, very likely bad faith. This is definitely my last reply to you. It's not about elderly stage of life and only that. It's the person's and generation's lifetime. If a person (on average, over large populations, over a generation, I wonder how many explanatory terms I need for you to discuss in good faith) or generation requires more than what they put into the system (again, lifetime), and we need an evergrowing economy to keep giving each generation more than what they put into the system (again, lifetime), that is quite literally THE definition of an unsustainable system. Slow clap. Again, it's not about that your elderly years are more expensive than your 20-65 years, it's about your and your generation's lifetime (see list of explanatory terms above).

[–] thirtyfold8625@thebrainbin.org 5 points 1 day ago

This video suggests that the human population will stabilize at an appropriate level for a given environment, and that it can rebound quickly if that's necessary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-oVwcDg5Uc

[–] GhostPain@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

There's 8 billion of us on the planet. Humanity is fine. Losing a few billion won't hurt anything except maybe capitalist exploitation.

What won't survive this ramping down is consumerism and the "middle class" lifestyle.

What will make it easier, though, is eating the rich.

[–] RedAggroBest@lemmy.world -1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You'll be thinking we need more people when you're 85, rotting in your bed, and the robot butler you'd been told would be taking over elder care by now doesn't exist.

[–] GhostPain@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Ha. Jokes on you. I'm 61 and rotting in bed with no robot butler now. lol

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (7 children)

Hard disagree.

This video (from kurzgesagt) completely changed my perspective: https://youtu.be/Ufmu1WD2TSk

For this exact reason cited in the OP article.

But the bigger problem with Walsh’s argument is that it only makes sense if you care about the quantity of human life more than the quality of human life.

The video illustrates it better than I can, but basically, underpopulation is societally destabilizing and makes people miserable. It reduces quality of life.

It works if we live in a utopian future where people are living longer working lives, staying young longer, automation is reducing job loads, governments are smart, immigration is free and open, global warming isn’t a looming crisis, AI will solve all sorts of problems…

But we don’t.

In the near term, we need a big mass of young people to take care of retired people, otherwise those young people are utterly miserable because they have to work their butts off to support a huge retired population. Again, you can wave your hands and say “automation! immigration! reduced hours!” but that fantasy is clearly not where the world is headed to. Technology is much closer to addressing overpopulation issues, and then we can worry about plateauing birthrates once we got robot butlers taking care of our elders and making their stuff.

The US hasn’t dealt with this because we are privileged enough to have a massive influx of immigrants (who skew young), but we are royally screwing that up.

I despise how this article tries to write it off as an ideological belief, like you’re a Musk loving fool for thinking this.

…I realize I’m probably posting this in the wrong sub. And I’d love to be wrong, but that article is not selling it for me.

[–] veganpizza69@lemmy.vg 3 points 6 hours ago

from kurzgesagt

red flag

[–] superniceperson@sh.itjust.works 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Just a reminder, kurzgesagt is billionaire propaganda and not to be blindly trusted or posted.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

You're talking about this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHMoNGqQTI

It raises good points about the parasite pharma story and their funding, and I was never ready to 'trust' kurzgesagt, but 'billionaire propaganda' seems pretty strong. It's also leaning into bill gates conspiracies pretty hard, and whatever the association, kurzgesagt advocates for some fairly progressive/redistributive policies.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 7 points 17 hours ago

There are a lot of problems with that. First of all just looking at the elderly is a problem. There are also children, which do cost a society quite a lot of resources. With a low birth rate that group is becoming smaller and smaller. Right now that dependency ratio is at 41.43%. That is actually incredibly low. The US is at 53.88% and Japan is at 69.94%. That is dependent person per worker.

Then the assumption of not keeping up with certain services. Although that is true, there is another site to it the video completely ignores. The population is shrinking and the country has a lot of high quality infrastructure. That means low housing prices, as they are already built. No need to built new railways, streets, sewage systems and the like.

That also goes for the economy. Constant worker shortages, mean the most competitive companies will pay the highest wages and out compete weaker ones. Therefore the average worker will become more competitive.

One important thing here is that South Korea has an incredibly low fertility rate. 2.1 is replacement level. So 0.7 means each generation is 2/3 smaller then the previous one. However most places in the world are above 1.4, which would just mean 1/3 less people per generation, which makes it a lot more manageable. Also again migration. The world is still above replacement level of 2.1.

[–] Dogyote@slrpnk.net 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That video changed your perspective? It was entirely full of assumptions. Yeah, sure, if things continue as they are now and nothing changes, then economic issues will ensue. HOWEVER, things will change, societies will react and adapt to the evolving situation. So all the doom and gloom predicted in that video is just that, a shit prediction based on shit assumptions.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The population demographic projections look quite definitive to me, barring something drastic like a high-mortality pandemic. They're much shorter term than overpopulation projections, hence probably closer to reality.

HOWEVER, things will change, societies will react and adapt to the evolving situation.

The probable reaction is to just burden the working class, as is happening right now with every other problem. This very thread, and pretty much every disaster in the world, is an example of how, well, societies aren't going to react until its waaay too late.

[–] Dogyote@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I agree, that is the probable reaction, but the working class will have more and more leverage the smaller the class gets.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (3 children)

the working class will have more and more leverage the smaller the class gets.

Not if they don't have any wealth.

And again, by the time they're even complaining about this specifically, it is waaay too late.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Not if they don’t have any wealth.

They don't need wealth if they control the means of production. It's just a matter of making them understand that they have all of the power; all they need to do is unite.

[–] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago

Peasants that survived the black death didn't have wealth. Still resulted in a massive increase in their bargaining power.

[–] Dogyote@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago

Bah, you're assuming they'll follow existing laws of property ownership. Wealth, aka means of accomplishing goals, will be available to those that need it.

[–] hellofriend@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago

Can't even say "eat the rich" anymore because most of them are old and stringy.

[–] 4_degrees@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, I've done a turnaround on this, as well. The numbers are there and respected researchers that aren't known for right wing bias/eugenics shit are starting to talk about it more and more.

I can't remember the name of the guest, but she appeared on Adam Conover 's podcast and made some amazing points about destabilizing societies. It's hard to agree with the jackasses sounding the alarm, but I definitely don't agree with their racist great replacement BS. But broken clocks and all

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yeah, there’s an extremely unfortunate intersection with a very bad line of thinking, polluting the argument.

If those eugenics guys really cared, they wouldn’t be trying to firebomb immigration, parent welfare, or wealth redistribution to young people. They just want to purge ‘others’ like a WH40K meme.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth -3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

really hit the nail on the head.

this is an issue of the nation state and capitalism.

Automation has increased productivity instead of reducing workloads, and while we keep capitalism around that's all it will ever do.

Open borders is a good way for a nation state to get robbed.

There needs to be a fundamental shift in how we do globalism and if climate change wasn't enough I doubt anything is.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Open borders are good because they balance age demographics between countries that skew too old, and poorer countries struggling to support massive birthrates. It gives the immigrants opportunity, their relatives back home wealth, and the “host” country young productivity. It also ties countries together culturally.

I’m not sure where you’re going with that.

And on automation, another big problem is just… enshittification. It’s like we’ve burned all these efficiency gains with horrendous systems, with workers grinding away doing basically nothing useful.

Runaway capitalism 100% did that. It also diverts so much production to be wasted by billionaires.

…But, like, mass communism wave could still have similar problems, minus the billionaires. Lots of other systems would too, depending on where you look.

I think a lot of society just needs to be “simplified” and more a-la-carte instead of ideologically driven. I often cite TSMC as an example, which shifted between straight up despotic, state sponsored socialism, democratic capitalism with a lot of private investment, and stuff in between (mixed with a lot of international cooperation) to get to a kind of “best case” where they are today. Could do better, of course (maybe as a worker/researcher owned coop?)

…I’m going way off topic though.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 1 points 1 day ago

The nation state paradigm is the problem, open borders would be good for the common people but as long as the nation state collects taxes and pays for any type of welfare restricting movement is the only way for them to maintain power.

It would be fairer to say abolishing borders is good rather than trying to justify simply opening them.

Bullshit jobs and enshitification are a different thing, any sector where automation has increased productivity has absolutely not reduced workloads, it's not even a question. Time is money after all.