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[–] 14 points 1 year ago (26 children)
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (24 children)

    Maybe. Could also be that humans never invent anything that comes close to a biological brain. Either because we simply aren't smart enough, or because civilization regresses before we get there. And there's several trends going on currently which could cause civilization to regress. For example, climate change and declining birth rates (While we could set up an economic system that can deal with a shrinking and aging population, our current one cannot).

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Fasciam and religion are bigger threats than 'declining birth rate', that one's just billionaire propaganda. Stop repeating it.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    So, why are declining birth rates not a problem?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Why are they? Fewer people, fewer mouths to feed, more value on labor, more natural resources and real estate for the rest of us.

    We cant grow forever. Dropping total population in the most ethical way then keeping things steady seems like the most nonviolent cool way to do this.

    Tor fucks sake there's like ten billion people we could keep everything we need going, easily, with half that.

    Anf imagibe if we actually valuee people instead of treating them like disposable garbage to throw away in poverty and wars! Wouldn't that be cool?

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yeah, but my point was that our current economic system can't deal with, not that we can't deal with it in general. Migrating away from the current system would require the powerful to give up their power, which they won't do willingly, even as the walls are closing in. (In fact, when it comes to global warming, the walls are closing in).

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Systems adapt. Extrapolation based on current state is often fallacious.

    Migrating away from the current system would require the powerful to give up their power

    Implicit in that statement is a huge and largely unfounded assumption that there's only one possible future state, and that it's as you say it is.

    And, even if it means that the powerful are forced to give up power, well, that's happened before and it's not impossible that it'll happen again.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Because the big rationale for it being a problem is that GDP declines as population declines. But GDP is an aggregate measure that's dependent on population, so that's not a problem, it's a tautology.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (17 children)

    Wait, since when population is shrinking? And since when it's a bad thing too?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    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

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    We need less people

    No we don't. And, S. Korea in particular will need more people than they have available, soon.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    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

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Technically there should be a ratio of young to old to take care of all of the elderly

    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.

    Lower population will make resource allocation easier and improve quality of life, and obviously is necessary to prevent further environmental damage.

    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."

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    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.

    Your opinion runs counter to every single dataset to ever exist.

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