this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
50 points (90.3% liked)
Futurology
1739 readers
250 users here now
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah, but it's projected to start shrinking after the static point, because people also die and birth rate continues to drop in the remaining countries above replacement.
Like, we have billions and could probably get by with millions, so we have a couple centuries at least, but eventually we're going to have to figure something out.
This is as reasonable as Malthus's predictions. Continuous exponential growth in a finite space is as reasonable as assuming the population will collapse instead of stabilizing. I'm not saying it will stabilize, I'm just saying that most other populations of other species have.
If you look at the reasons why people are having fewer kids, it's easy to see what would change that. And assuming it simply won't over the span of centuries is absurd.
They don't want to, and now have contraceptives? It's a pretty across-the-board phenomenon, there's no reason to think a different time would change it any more than a different place. Developing countries have dropping birth rates, collapsing countries have dropping birth rates; as do both rich and poor.
Throw around "absurd" all you want, you're not an expert demographer either.