a large organism (human populaton on earth) reaching equilibrium and ceasing to grow does not equal to human extinction... it far more likely is just a temporary contraction that will then reverse when the conditions are set for it.
Populations do not tend to grow to equilibrium and then stop. They tend to overgrow their environment, outstrip resources, and then collapse.
The result may not be extinction. But losing 90% of the human population won't feel that different if you're living through it.
A relevant book recommend, https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Succeed-Rev.... It walks through a variety of past examples of human societies that went through this. There is no reason to believe that our current world-wide society will fare better.
> They tend to overgrow their environment, outstrip resources, and then collapse.
That's not what's happening here. Birth rates are below 2.1 in many countries who are no where close to "outstripping their resources". There are other factors causing the contraction which have nothing to do with resource limitations.
In fact it seems like it's the opposite: richer nations with more resources tend to have lower birth rates. That's the scary part because it means there's no equilibrium to be reached. Birth rates could, in theory, remain low until humanity ceases to exist.
Has any organism ever extinguished itself as you describe ? This whole human extinction thing… isn’t that catastrophising? We are a 7-8 billion individuals away from extinction.
All plausible theories I've heard for the cause of humanity's unprecedented, historically low birth rates are things that could not occur in less intelligent species. (Birth control, women's rights, hedonism enabled by modern technology, etc.)
> isn’t that catastrophising
Yes, I'm only putting that forward as the worst case scenario to make the point that this can't just be ignored. As I said in other comments, this almost certainly won't actually result in extinction because there are other corrective factors which would occur long before that, but none of those scenarios are particularly desirable either. (E.g. Civilizational collapse returning humanity to pre-industrical birth rates, global takeover by theocratic governments that ban birth control, etc.)
The only non-catastrophic corrective factors that sound plausible to me involve some kind of intentional collective action on our part that reverses the trend, which won't happen if everyone's attitude is the same as the root commenter's. (Granted, maybe there are other possible corrective factors I haven't thought of, but if so I'd like to discuss what those are rather than just have the problem dismissed with a hand wave.)
Neither the fall in birth rates nor its rise is intentional. I struggle to understand why people think a mega fauna of 7-8 billion people takes intentional decisions. An individual takes intentional decisions. Humanity … not so much I think.
Eventually Universe 25 took another disturbing turn. Mice born into the chaos couldn’t form normal social bonds or engage in complex social behaviors such as courtship, mating, and pup-rearing. Instead of interacting with their peers, males compulsively groomed themselves; females stopped getting pregnant. Effectively, says Ramsden, they became “trapped in an infantile state of early development,” even when removed from Universe 25 and introduced to “normal” mice. Ultimately, the colony died out. “There’s no recovery, and that’s what was so shocking to [Calhoun],” says Ramsden.
Like the mice, our population is going into reverse. And that description of behavior, looks awfully prescient when I compare to humans on social media today...
Lack of personal space is certainly not the cause of our declining birth rates. People in wealthy countries with lots of personal space actually tend to have lower birth rates than poorer countries with less. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?most_rec...
The population is not "reaching equilibrium", it's shrinking. If it was reaching equilibrium you'd expect the births per women to be slowly reducing until it approaches 2.1 and then staying there. It's dropping substantially below that. And there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the contraction is temporary, the causal factors seem largely unrelated to the existing population size.
Because all plausible theorized causes (birth control, global reduction in poverty enabled by technology, women's rights) are not temporary conditions. (Or at least we better hope they aren't.)
The problem is that's not a likely hypothesis. There's no evidence lack of capacity is the cause of declining birth rates. In fact there's strong evidence for the opposite: countries with more resources to go around tend to have lower birth rates than countries with less resources. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?most_rec... There's no equilibrium here, if anything the feedback loop is positive rather than negative. That's the concerning part.
I thought this was common knowledge, but given the reaction I'm getting in this thread I guess it's not as common as I thought and I should have explained myself better in my original comment.
You’re right. I mean that’s certainly interesting, I just keep struggling with the question of - why is this a disaster? Seems like it’s only a disaster under a narrow set of conditions - capitalism, economies that need to grow to survive, lack of robotisation of elderly care.
Well, like I said, if the trend is caused by something that's not easily reversible, and there's no negative feedback loop which would naturally cause birth rates to come back up in the future, then unless something happens to reverse the trend then mathematically speaking the end result of global birth rates below replacement rate is human extinction.
Granted that's not an imminent threat, it would take quite a few generations at current first-world birth rates. But I still find it a concerning long-term trend, and there are a lot of less severe negative consequences that could occur between now and then. If you care to dig into it more, this podcast episode has a good discussion of the short-term problems, which go beyond just elderly care: https://www.thepoliticalorphanage.com/p/the-great-baby-short...
Why are you concerned about something that’s so far away from your lifetime ? There are so many problems - this one might even be self correcting - yet you seem prone to seeing it as an imminent catastrophe where you have to focus your attention on?
I literally just said it's not imminent. I'm focusing my attention on it in this thread because that's what this thread is about. Not like I walk the streets proclaiming our doom on my days off. :P
Also, as I just said, there are less severe short and medium-term problems caused by low birth rates as well so it's not just the looming threat of human extinction I'm concerned about; that's just the biggest and most obvious consequence so it's a convenient counterpoint to people asserting that low birth rates are not a problem at all.
It's a disaster from many quality of living standards (healthcare worker availability, funding for social safety net and social security and elderly care/retirement, ability for a society to fund new infrastructure or maintain existing infrastructure, etc).
Under another set of criteria (environmental concerns), it's probably a positive.
I mean "capacity" isn't some magic barrier. Usually it involves increased chances for the organism in question to starve to death due to reduced availability of food. We don't seem to be that close to reaching that.
We seem to have reached, maybe, the point where more human beings is not necessarily a positive. Capitalist society through supply and demand seems to be signalling this - we seem to be running out of transformative capacity to keep building essential stuff like housing in many countries, without increasing our already fairly disruptive footprint.
This just seems self correcting to me - on both axis. It’s an organism not a linear process. It will fix itself later same as it seems to be doing now.
> we seem to be running out of transformative capacity to keep building essential stuff like housing in many countries
Eh, I think we all know that we could build the housing if we really wanted to.
> This just seems self correcting to me - on both axis.
I agree, but it could a rough ride if the correction is too fast or too far. I think quite a lot of people would prefer the industrial system to keep running, and there is probably a minimum population below which it cannot run.
That's... not how equilibrium works. A self-balancing segway or robot doesn't reach the balance point and then freeze in place. There are oscillations. And it isn't a pretty sine wave either. Considering the massive number of factors that go into something like "global population growth", expect a VERY chaotic graph indeed, like the stock market, but worse.
Actually I was replying to someone who said that we weren't reaching equilibrium, and I contended that we are. I said nothing about "our current economic system can’t handle it".
its unlikely that will happen. If you read Arrighi, his hegemonic cycle narrative says that the interregnum between two hegemons is decades of chaos as the system reorganises. We seem to be heading for a US to China transition.
The last transition was British Empire to US and that was 1900-1945.
I feel like this is a joke but honest answer: I worked ocean rescue for 4 years then lived with some tech folks in sf who were making literally 5-10x my salary.
What’s stopping me? Probably some combo of wanting to one day afford a home and a family without having to move to Memphis and the a sense that I’d get bored as a welder and therefore be a bad one.
