this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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Wait, since when population is shrinking? And since when it's a bad thing too?
I don't think it is shrinking globally, yet. But, some countries (e.g. South Korea) are in dire situations due to shrinking and aging population already.
But it's mostly caused by social issues, imo it is nowhere near being a real problem
I agree with your premise, but I don't think it implies your conclusion, which I disagree with.
That's just repeating the assumption that's being questioned.
Might be bad now but it leads to a better future. Infinite growth was always impossible, this is just the result of decades of mismanagement.
The future for S. Korea looks bleak, not better.
I agree that infinite growth was always impossible, but in some countries birth rate is well below replacement rate (if they matched, population would be stable, not growing), and in many birth rate + immigration rate is also below replacement rate -- we are failing not at growth, but "mere" stability.
Idgaf about replacement rate. I don't want the old to be replaced. I want the economy to get smaller and for the wealth to be better distributed.
Smaller economy is fine, I guess -- tho deflation has certainly caused problems in the past. Better distributed wealth is a shared goal. Depopulation, and other forms of Degrowth, are largely driven by eugenicist ideas and are neither necessary nor desirable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW8vkUY93i8
You might notice I never once promoted any such depopulation ideas, simply that the natural negative growth trend as a result of highly educated populations is a good thing that we should not take any action against.
We need less people, we don't need to make the number of people less: it happens on its own.
If it were possible to make a nondiscrimatory policy against growth then that would be great, but we already saw attempts fail in places like China which resulted in skewed demographics. In 1994 in Cairo the UN met and decided the best answer was simply: Educate Women.
No we don't. And, S. Korea in particular will need more people than they have available, soon.
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They don't NEED more people, nowhere on earth NEEDS more people, as long as you have as few as 12 genetically distinct individuals then life will continue, and even if they did NEED people then theres lots of people all over the world who would love to migrate to SK.
Global warming is independent of population, emissions can be controlled without population controls.
Yes, they do need more people, and immigration is a possible "solve", but right now they aren't getting the immigration necessary -- tho largely due to their own policies.
Global Warming is NOT independent of population.
The population growth almost perfectly aligns with climate change, and the top polluters on the planet are China despite having one of the lowest pollution per capita ratios.
More humans = more environmental destruction
It's not shrinking yet, the birth rate is declining, and the world population is projected to start declining 2050.
Technically there should be a ratio of young to old to take care of all of the elderly, but IMO fuck'em it wasn't the young's choice to be born and suffer for the sake of the old.
Lower population will make resource allocation easier and improve quality of life, and obviously is necessary to prevent further environmental damage. There will be momentary suffering for a brighter future.
That's a rule of thumb that assumes a lot of things about elderly people's need for care, how much that's funded by the young, productivity in how that care is provided, and a huge number of other variables.
The environmental damage is more to do with bad choices about the mix of technology currently used to power the economy, and the poor ratio of GDP per unit of energy consumed. So I dispute that "obviously."
Your opinion runs counter to every single dataset to ever exist.