• EleventhHour@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    OK, all of this panic about lower birth rates… Is it really that big of a deal? I mean, the planets overpopulated as it is. Can someone clarify this for me? Is it really the crisis people seem to think it is?

    • xtr0n@sh.itjust.works
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      5 days ago

      I think it’s treated as a crisis because the economic charts always need to go up. Infinite growth requires people.

      • Glent@lemmy.ca
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        5 days ago

        Infinite growth requires infinite people. So yea, speedrunning the end of earth and all life inhabiting it because well…line must go up.

    • yes_this_time@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Lower population in of itself is a good thing.

      It’s the change that is disruptive and will cause suffering in ways that are unique to the suffering caused by over population.

      As population growth slows, the younger generation needs to support more elderly. Which means we need some combination of:

      Working population being more productive. Population making do with less.

      However you approach it, there will be segments of the population that are very unhappy.

    • Arsecroft@lemmy.sdf.org
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      5 days ago

      generally a racist/xenophobe thing, there are more than enough people, they’re just not the “right kind”

    • MissJinx@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      it is for rich people. The less ofer the higher the value. If you have less workers the ones you have will cost more and than shareholders won’t have as much profit and CEOs won’t be able to make bilions a year

    • 0laura@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 days ago

      the planet is not overpopulated. narratives like overpopulation are used by and can quickly lead to nazi stuff.

      • bizarroland@fedia.io
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        5 days ago

        I guess it’s a quality versus quantity thing. It’s a lot easier for 4 billion people to coexist happily than it is for 8 billion people in the same space.

        Our food air and water quality have all dropped dramatically over the last 50 years even though the protections for them have increased.

        If half the population did not reproduce then those of us that have grandkids might live in a better world.

        • Allero@lemmy.today
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          4 days ago

          I don’t think so.

          Having less children means having worse ratio of elderly to young people, which strains social security and may ultimately force seniors to work until they die, while young generation will see an ever greater burden of disabled elderly.

          Unless you want to shoot people after certain age, that is. But, happily, this is a tradeoff unlikely to be accepted.

      • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        We’re overpopulated given our current resource distribution/consumption, but solving that through eugenics is obviously moronic.