Doomstead

While numerous global species are being extinctified daily and rapidly as more of the total biomass of the planet has shifted towards Homo Sap, their Pets and the Livestock and Crops we use for food, we are beginning the process of Self-Extinctification by lower birthrates.  Many countries are now below Replacement Level or about 2.1, as our birth rates lower and death rates increase.  China, once the most populous country in the world, has now lost 1st place in the Overshoot race to India, the long time runner-up.

Birth rates in China have dipped so low that they no longer need to source Hunman Infant Formula from the Nestle plant in Ireland.  In other words, corporate elite no longer can grow enough new slaves to work in Chinese factories.  Does it not seem a very odd use of energy and resources to ship baby formula from Ireland to China to begin with?

So, China now will be self-sufficient in "Formula" for infants.  Hard to believe that once upon a time human females were able to produce enough real milk for babies to grow the population.  What ingredients are in "Formula" anyhow?  Were you fed formula as an infant Diner, or did you get the real thing?  Inquiring Diners want to know.

RE

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv20pywdj0zo

Irish baby milk factory to close as China birth rate drops

RE

...and the hits just keep on coming.  22%!  Almost as good as 88 mph!

Keeping pace in lock step with the crashing value of FSoA Debt is the falling birth rate of new taxpayers to pay off that mountain of debt sometime in the mythical future.  About the only positive sign you can find for the crash in the bond market is that it's not moving as fast as the crash in birth rates. 22%! Elon Musk is very worried about this disturbing trend.

"Far too many people are under the illusion that Earth is overpopulated, even though birth rate trends are so obviously headed to population collapse," Musk said.

Who will he sell all those Teslas he is tooling his factories up to build?  Where will he get passengers for his rockets to Mars?

Collapse newz is very good today.  :D

https://www.foxnews.com/media/population-rate-decline-us-triggers-economic-alarms-experts-calamitous-effect

Population rate decline in the US triggers economic alarms from experts: 'Calamitous effect'

RE

"Far too many people are under the illusion that Earth is overpopulated, even though birth rate trends are so obviously headed to population collapse," Musk said.

At the risk of overuse of this Musk Pontification as a jumping off point for Doom posting in one day, we also find out that Korea  has an accelerating drop in its birth rate.  What few of these articles discuss and is of equal if not greater importance in our determination of which way the population balloon is going is the DEATH RATE.  In this article though, despite the fact it is only briefly mentioned, we do get a graph that traces both in Korea for the past 4 years.  Check out first the spread between Births and Deaths:

(https://newsimg.koreatimes.co.kr/2023/10/25/4687e1ff-897d-4db6-a8e6-493728580602.jpg)

It has gone from about even in 2019 to now nearing double deaths to births. With that kind of spread, your total population is going to drop like a rock on Jupiter.  Look also at that HUGE spike in deaths in March 2022.  Can you guess where that came from?  I'll save you the trouble of Googling it, that was a COVID surge.  That wasn't even from the first wave either, and I don't think it comes close to the wipeouts in China a few times in different provinces.

How about the Death Rate in Gaza last month? Ukraine last year? Afghanistan the last decade?  What's the spread, Ted?  How come Elon isn't so worried about the Death Rate?  How come we don't have stories in the MSM focusing on the Death Rate in different countries around the world, and different counties in the FSoA?

This issue becomes important on the economic front also.  A decreasing birth rate means fewer tax payers, but increasing the death rate means fewer social security recipients and unfunded Medicaid liabilities.  Right here on my court in the SNIF, currently we have 5 out of the 17 rooms occupied by infected old folks, who tend to have a low survival rate when attacked by this virus.  For the record, this is the 5th time I have been incarcerated together with a large number of Quarantined COVIDies.  Once more, my immune system has been called in to battle.  3 days ago I felt an itch on my epiglotis.  You know, that thing at the back of your throat that if you stick your finger back there to scratch you vomit?  So I started doing this thing with the back of my tongue against it and forcing air through to make it vibrate, scratching it that way.  It kept getting more itchy each day to the point I am making this weird sound to scratch it every couple of minutes.

I figured, OK, this is it, I got it, my perfect record is over.  Next comes the cough, the fever, the pneumonia, then the death.

Nope. Today I woke up, no more itchy epiglotis, no cough, no fever, I am fine.  Was that the COVID virus trying to grab a foothold on me, like the Israeli army attacking Gaza?  Dunno, I looked up early symptoms of COVID, itchy epiglotis is not listed.  In any event, I am still batting 1.000.  Haven't got it yet.  All my swabs have come back negative this month, though I did not get one this week.  Didn't ask for 1 because I didn't want to know if I did have it.

Births down, Deaths up.  The Population Knockdown is knocking at the door now.

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/biz/2023/10/602_361850.html

Korea sees accelerating drop in birth rate

RE

From Running out of gas (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5z5R6xqEG0), a Jack Alpert video.

The large white area represents the next century.  Eight billion are here and eight billion more are coming.  By the end of the next century most people perish in the red zone.  And the sliver of green is questionable.

QuoteHow about the Death Rate in Gaza last month? Ukraine last year? Afghanistan the last decade?  What's the spread, Ted?  How come Elon isn't so worried about the Death Rate?  How come we don't have stories in the MSM focusing on the Death Rate in different countries around the world, and different counties in the FSoA?

Is the red zone coming for you!? (https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oocities.org%2Fbourbonstreet%2Fdelta%2F7108%2Fcasino%2Fwheelspin-ani.gif&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=87673e18f1d7885093f4cb2f22538c884eec1253a4ea3b65b5baafa3bbc1c463&ipo=images)

Quote from: K-Dog on Oct 26, 2023, 08:55 PMThe large white area represents the next century.  Eight billion are here and eight billion more are coming.  By the end of the next century most people perish in the red zone.  And the sliver of green is questionable.

A reasonable estimate.  600M left is of course very close to the 500M number recommended by the Georgia Guidestones.  Also very close to the Peak Population in the 17th century when the plagues hit.

(https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/1006502/global-population-ten-thousand-bc-to-2050.jpg)

Assuming the estimates on when the recoverable energy reserves will run dry for the empty tank scenario are correct, that gives us about 75 years left to kill off about 12B people.   If you divide 12B/75, you get 160M people every year between now and 2100.  For reference here, the number of total dead from WWII over about 6 years was:

Battle Deaths    15,000,000
Battle Wounded    25,000,000
Civilian Deaths 45,000,000

for a total of around 85M.  So, starting today, we need about double the total WW2 deaths every single year from now to 2100.  Except of course it's not going to be spread out nice and even like that.  The more years we keep going BAU, the more would have to die every year after BAU is over.  Also though, once BAU is over, the deaths won't spread out nice and even, at some point they will start happening very fast.

THAT is the 12B person question hanging out in this thread, which is WHEN between now and 2100 will the BIG one occur?  When will we get that first really BIG year of deaths?  Not a minor blip like COVID, but a real WHOPPER year, with say even just half the WWII death toll number? Will that come in the next decade while I still have some chance of being alive to see it?  Or is it still 20 or 30 years away?

Inquiring Doomer minds want to know.

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on Oct 26, 2023, 08:55 PMThe large white area represents the next century.  Eight billion are here and eight billion more are coming.

Actually, that assumption is already probably wrong, because 8B more coming assumes the fertility and replacement rate of Births remains at least even, but it already is not, and dropping quickly.  So we probably will not bring 8B new Homo Saps into the world between now and 2100.  Even if we only deliver 4B neo-homo buns out of the ovens over the next 75 years, that still means we have a lot of useless eaters to dispose of and recycle into hopefully some more friendly type of organism to the planetary ecosystem.  All those good organic compounds remaining in the lifeless Homo Sap corpses will get eaten by something and the stuff will get redistributed through the food chain in a very equitable socialist fashion as the system rebalances itself.  There will still be plenty of life on the 3rd planet from the sun in 2100, just not a whole lot of the organisms will be sentient.

RE

This article features a comprehensive set of surveys trying to figure out why the birthrate in the FSoA is declining, which as we all know here is patently obvious overall as being an economic impossibility for Millenials who probably won't be able to afford a McMansion and pay off student loans until their 30s, if ever.  However, the various different survey questions and stats which break this all down are interesting to check out.

The stats have a lot of problems of course, like the attitude about how many kids an ideal family SHOULD have, where about 1/3rd of the Galluup respondents ay 3 or 4.  Yea, OK, but how many families actually HAVE 3 or 4 kids?

So, Elon Musk and the corporate media continue to bemoan this trend, and some Goobermints like Japan and Hong Kong have become SOOO worried that they are offering fairly pathetic financial incenttives for people to have kids, but any real solution to the affordability problem and the depressing future problem any kids you have face is nowhere in sight.  So, you can expect more of these articles to continue popping up as we move forward here in the global population knockdown race, until we finally get a real good famine, plague or war that takes out not 1500 civilian casualties like the latest Issraeli bombing of Palestinians, but 150,000 Taiwanese when the FSoA bombs Taiwan after the Chinese stage a Coup d'Etat, then the Iranians bomb the Israelis and takeout 1.5M Jews...etc.  Then people will stop worrying abouth the birth rate and start worrying about the death rate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/03/millennials-only-children/

Seriously, why aren't millennials having kids?

RE

QuoteThen people will stop worrying about the birth rate and start worrying about the death rate.

Yes, declining birth rates bother the rich.  It is right up there with 'people don't want to work'.

If America needs more, people finding them is NOT HARD.



Equity is never a consideration when rich people talk about the declining birth rate.  Money causes them to err in thinking.  Excess people will let Musk lower wages.  That produces more starving people in need, but the rich get richer.

If Musk earns $1 from every person working in a Musk enterprise, should the people he employs double then he earns twice as much.  Musk lips move, but his dollars do his talking. 

Another thing money says is that a rising tide lifts all boats.  Which is something only a moron would actually say were money not doing the talking.  Money talks.  This is proof.  Think about it.  Money does not think about leaky boats, but anyone with a brain would.

Yearnings for endless growth on a finite planet results in verbal diarrhea from a man who can buy as much personal space as he wants.

(https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1gjLjF.img?w=768&h=512&m=6&x=2221&y=736&s=806&d=806) 

Musk's home country has a few people to spare too.

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cleveland.com%2Fresizer%2FU2lrgfR2Bxr1Rw2U8pbPU04l_A0%3D%2F1280x0%2Fsmart%2Fadvancelocal-adapter-image-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fimage.cleveland.com%2Fhome%2Fcleve-media%2Fwidth2048%2Fimg%2Fbusiness_impact%2Fphoto%2Fsouth-africa-protests-a70bc412a5ebe0c2.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=97f46dff84cd510de20ebb814fdd2e247ccd938236bf7f78f44c61c6324cb7d4&ipo=images)

Seriously, why aren't millennials having kids?

Who can afford to?  An average home in America is over $500K.  At $25 an hour it will take ten years to earn that much.  Add terms of a mortgage on that, and more than half of what a man earns goes into the house for thirty years.

There is enough left over for one dog. (https://chasingthesquirrel.com/public/pics/puppy.png) And not a big one.

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 04, 2023, 01:23 PMSeriously, why aren't millennials having kids?

Who can afford to?  An average home in America is over $500K.  At $25 an hour it will take ten years to earn that much.  Add terms of a mortgage on that, and more than half of what a man earns goes into the house for thirty years.

There is enough left over for one dog. (https://chasingthesquirrel.com/public/pics/puppy.png) And not a big one.

Forget the dog.

A $500000 mortgage with a 10% down payment (from your generous boomer parents?) of $50,000 on a 30 year mortgage with interest rate of 7.72% gives you 360 monthly payments of $3214 each.  Total cost to you over 30 years?  $1,115.040.  Your gross earnings if you make $50K/year for 30 years?  $1.5M.  Thus leaving you about $385K, or about $1100/mo.  Then you have everything else.

Everything else: income tax, heat, electricity, water, waste removal, internet, cell phone, car loan, car insurance, gas, food.

Clearly, he's outta cash by the time he gets through the first 4 on that list, if he even makes it that far.  He never goes out to the movies or a concert or even to a fast food restaurant.  No vacations, ever.  Forget kids, he can't afford the wife, he can't even afford to date someone to ask to marry. lol.

Not to mention, a 10% downpayment is insufficient for a 7.72% mortgage rate, that takes a standard 20% DP.  Doubtful your Boomer parents have a $100K layiing around to hand you as a gift, after the giftss they gave you to pay for college.  Wait...did I forget your Student Loan payments?  lol.

Now, obviously said prospective family man needs his salary to start jacking up from his starting pay of $25/hr, but in today's gig economy, how many of those job are out there?

Of course though, this isn't the 1950s with June Cleaver staying home while Ward goes to work, mom works also, so now you're at $100K, and one of you has a 2nd job for another 20 hrs/week, call it family income of $125K, you might squeak it out if you never get sick and have to go to the doctor, or miss work for 10 days because you got Covid.  Wait... did I forget medical insurance?  roflmaopimp.

The whole bizness is so FUBAR I'm amazed anybody is having any kids at all.  It's just insane.

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 04, 2023, 12:30 PM

North to Alaska?  ;D

Newzflash:  They're not migrating this way.

The new Alaska population estimate, 736,556, is the highest since 2018, but the state continues to have more people moving out than moving in, and 2022 marked the 10th consecutive year of negative net migration,

Nevertheless, we have a housing shortage. ???

RE

QuoteThe whole bizness is so FUBAR I'm amazed anybody is having any kids at all.  It's just insane.

Musk is, and I doubt he is done.

Who are Elon Musk's kids and their mothers?

(https://dnbstories.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/elon-musk-first-wife-justine-musk.jpg)

(https://dnbstories.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/elon-musk-and-talulah-riley.jpg)

(https://dnbstories.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/elon-musk-and-amber-heard.jpg)

(https://dnbstories.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/elon-musk-and-grimes.jpg)

(https://dnbstories.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/elon-musk-and-natasha-bassett.jpg)

It is called Conspicuous consumption
(https://duckduckgo.com/i/b2e82cba.jpg)



Here's the full list of Elon Musk's children.

• Nevada Alexander Musk (late)
• Griffin Musk (Twin)
• Xavier Musk (Twin)
• Kai Musk (Triplet)
• Saxon Musk (Triplet)
• Damian Musk (Triplet)
• X AE A-XII Musk
• Exa Dark Sideræl Musk

But I am confused, some sources say 11 kids.

Regardless, it is a crime against humanity.  Sort of.

And a crime against the kids 4 sure!  Musk has how much time to be a quality dad?  To be any kind of dad?  To even know what the fuck it means to be a dad?

The answer (https://chasingthesquirrel.com/doomstead/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clipartbest.com%2Fcliparts%2F9i4%2FLM6%2F9i4LM6g9T.png&hash=2909386837147ce30ce2c089b99b02dac4c16788) none and no.

Maybe he can hire a few dads to do the parenting he can't do?

Quote from: K-Dog on Nov 04, 2023, 11:52 PM

QuoteThe whole bizness is so FUBAR I'm amazed anybody is having any kids at all.  It's just insane.

Musk is, and I doubt he is done.

Granted as true, but I really wasn't including the .0001% class of Global Billionaires through the .01 class of people worth $20M or so with an annual income of say $1M.

As far as Musk's conspicuous consumption of trophy mothers for his spawn goes, at least he seems to employ them sequentially and keep them around for an average of 3-5 years each before trading them in for a newer model.  Basically the same frequency you would expect to trade in your used Tesla car for the latest model.  Trump actually maintained his wives for around 15-20 years each through plastic surgery and regular lube jobs and engine maintenance.

This sort of behavior has always been the case with rich men, who before they are usually finished with showing off their power in their 70s have accumulated 4 or 5 ex-wives and the accompanying alimony payments, kept manageable through the careful use of pre-nups drawn up by their team of lawyers.  Some aren't even finished in their 70s, Al Pacino recently fathered another child at the age of 82.

In Western culture, this sort of sequential monogamy is the acceptable method for elite class men to display their power.  Middle Eastern and Asian cultures have long had the Harem as the preferred method, where a powerful Sheik or Sultan or Maharajah could have 100 wives and concubines running around his household to choose from on a given night.  Said men who use the shotgun method of sreading out their sperm can have children measuring in the hundreds.

Far as parenting goes, the British method of Boarding Schools is preferred, where the kids are sent off at age 6 or so for 1st Grade, continue through Eton for HS, then university at Cambridge.  The only time dad ever sees his kids id during summer vacations and Holidays.  Nannies cover the job from infancy until school age, so mom is free for her daily tasks of wandering around to charities and evening parties on the yacht, until she is replaced and has her nice alimony check to continue hanging around elite class social events and either marry another billionaire if she is a real hot ticket like a Za Za Gabor, or she has a sequence of boy toys to stay happy, having succeeded using her looks to make it up to the elite class in her teens or 20s.

Regardless how many kids these women pop out of their very expensive vaginas, because there are so few of these folks gobally, it's not enough to even keep up the necessary population of 500M called for by the Georgia Guidestones, which is why Elon Musk is in such a tizzy.  His 11 future Elite rulers won't have anyone to populate the servant's quarters and they'll have to do their own laundry and make their own beds.  If only the Masters reproduce and the Slaves don't, the Masters have to become their own Slaves.

OH! THE HORROR!

RE

It gets better!

In this article, as the new Leader and Influencer in the world of Billionaire Elites, Elon has moved into the limelight as the Greta Thunberg of the Natalist Movement to Save the World from Depopulation by encouraging his fellow Billionaires to join him in regular procreation with as many Supermodels as possible.

Musk has also pushed other wealthy tech entrepreneurs to have children.

"Contrary to what many think, the richer someone is, the fewer kids they have. I am a rare exception. Most people I know have zero or one kid", Musk wrote on Twitter in May 2022.

Insider would later report that a source who worked closely with Musk said the tech billionaire was "very serious" about the idea that wealth is directly correlated with IQ.

The individual also claimed that Musk had urged "all the rich men he knew" to have as many kids as humanly possible.

That concept has steadily permeated throughout Silicon Valley, drawing substantial criticism.

The adoption of natalism among the wealthy elite appears to stem from the longtermism craze that permeated Silicon Valley in the 2010s.

The article goes on to discuss the various quasi-eugenics arguments equating wealth with intelligence, and efforts by some venture capitalits to fund projects for lengthening the lifespan and selecting quality children as embryos.

The whole bizness breaks down however due to the numbers problem, because there simply are not enough Billionaires and Supermodels around to keep world population numbers up enough to buy all the Teslas that have to be sold for Elon to pay his corporate debt coupons.  Once the banks stop rolling over the debt, Tesla goes BK and Elon will have to take his 50 kids and dozen supermodels on a rocket to Mars before it gets repoed.

You can't make this shit up.  The world has become a South Park episode.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/pro-natalist-elon-musk-warnings-humanity-movement-tech-billionaires

What is a pro-natalist? Elon Musk's warnings to humanity underpin a growing movement among tech billionaires

RE

QuoteInsider would later report that a source who worked closely with Musk said the tech billionaire was "very serious" about the idea that wealth is directly correlated with IQ.

Right, and here I am enjoying lunch in my limo. (https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.5ixvTr5jVqZuFask0eof-AHaFj%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=32d4b2ccda2b48a9b529ab13c23e37d02cd1aefe3744406f12cdcd80a6c1d30d&ipo=images) With my 'Grey Poupon'.  I cut my hair.

Nick Bostrom(ON THE LEFT) is, first of all, one of the most prominent transhumanists of the 21st century so far. Transhumanism is an ideology that sees humanity as a work in progress, as something that we can and should actively reengineer, using advanced technologies like brain implants, which could connect our brains to the Internet, and genetic engineering, which could enable us to create super-smart designer babies. We might also gain immortality through life-extension technologies, and indeed many transhumanists have signed up with Alcor to have their bodies (or just their heads and necks, which is cheaper) frozen after they die so that they can be revived later on, in a hypothetical future where that's possible. Bostrom himself wears a metal buckle around his ankle with instructions for Alcor to "take custody of his body and maintain it in a giant steel bottle flooded with liquid nitrogen" after he dies.


Francis Galton(ON THE RIGHT) Charles Darwin's cousin, derived the term "eugenics" from the Greek word eugenes, meaning "good in birth" or "good in stock." Galton first used the term in an 1883 book, "Inquiries into Human Fertility and Its Development."
But:

No doubt Nick has received his free Tesla.  Musk does that.  Probably an excellent way to get laid. (https://chasingthesquirrel.com/public/pics/amber.png)  Survival of the richest.  Spin Darwin spin.

But it will take more than genius to bring the Garden of Eden to a nuclear wasteland.  And even more to make the deserts of Mars bloom where there is no air.  But who knows?  Money is certainly selectively breading itself.  So can we predict a future?  Will money breed itself into a force for good or will it develop genetic illness the way lessons from actual reality demonstrate.

Hemophilia? Or like King James I of England, who until he was five struggled to walk without help. Hereditary disease.  He shared frail thin legs with his father and one of his sons. The Pharaohs of Egypt also had big genetic physical issues.  The Hapsburg lip.  It goes on.  The history of humanity is rife with examples which directly contradict the tenets of longtermism.  Longtermism seems to be the intellectual product of a Silicon Valley wide Dunning Kruger effect.  Musk actually demonstrates the intellectual effects of inbreeding.  Strange mentation, and his physical appearance looks to be the result of it.  I wonder?  Thankfully not too much.

QuoteIn a paper co-authored with his colleague at the Future of Humanity Institute (Musk donates), Carl Shulman, Bostrom explored the possibility of engineering human beings with super-high IQs by genetically screening embryos for "desirable" traits, destroying those that lack these traits, and then growing new embryos from stem cells, over and over again. They found that by selecting one embryo out of 10, creating 10 more out of the one selected, and repeating that process 10 times over, scientists could create a radically enhanced person with IQ gains of up to 130 points.

Does this Bostrom dude know we are running out of the energy to fund his grand masturbatory fantasies?

I THINK NOT

Musk and his lizard people will not save the world.

Did you notice that in Elon's list of progeny thus far, he has one set of twins and one set of triplets?

Under normal circumstances, the chance of twins is 1 in 250.  Triplets?  1 in 6889.  To have both in 2 pregnancies?  1/250x6889/2.  About 1 in 861125.  So tell me,  You think Elon is just real lucky here in his quest to single handedly repopulate the earth?  Of course not.

Elon is clearly dosing his supermodel baby factories with fertility drugs.

Count on some Musk Quintuplets popping out of some expensive vagina in the near future.

RE

The ultimate dystopian logical conclusion of the Natalist imperative: We must encourage reproduction by any and all means possible.  Answer here is not the Elon Musk method of encouraging global billionaires to fuck as many A-list vaginas as possible after pumping them full of fertility drugs, but rather to pursue a state run program of absolute equality in procreation by Industrializing it.

hahahahahahahahahaha

Forget for a moment the contradiction that industrialization of anything fosters absolute equality.  That is so ridiculous it's not even worth refuting.  The closest we can come to industrializing the reproduction of any animals is with Chickens, and that's only because the fertilized eggs mature outside the hen's body so they can be dropped into incubators.All mammals, even mice and rabbits which have lots of babies fairly often need a mommy mouse or bunny to grow inside of, Elon Musk or my old friend Eric Lander haven't yet devised an artificial womb inside of which you could grow a fetus to maturity and birthing.  That shit is entirely in the realm of science fiction, but as a means to whip up fear it's certainly a good tool to use here.

You can't even take a human fetus, implant it in a pig uterus and have the pig carry it to term.  You couldn't even do it with a close relative like a chimpanzee, which are even more in danger of extinction than homo saps anyhow.

About the only way to pursue a compulsory procreation paradigm for a society would be to forcibly impregnate women, remove all access to abortion and then set up state or private run institutions to raise the kids up from birth to working age.  This system has a long history, it is called SLAVERY and its certainly a plausible outcome, except for one small problem.  You have to have enough FOOD and HOUSING for the slaves, and you have to finance the CHILD CARE institutions to bring them up to working age as something better than a Ritalin addicted, illiterate X-box athletes.

I doubt the Chinese will industrialize procreation, and I doubt they will try slavery either.  They may try to further incentivize procreation through direct payments and tax breaks, but in order to be effective the CCP will need to cough up substantially more Renminby.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4299666-chinas-dystopian-population-goals-forced-procreation-and-industrialized-births/

China's dystopian population goals: forced procreation and 'industrialized births'

RE

It's OFFICIAL!

https://www.africanews.com/2023/11/10/worlds-population-passes-8-billion/

World's population passes 8 billion

(https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2022/11/15/310945-untitled-design-53.png)

RE

From the Capitalism thread:

Quote from: RE on Nov 28, 2023, 11:52 AM

Quote from: whd on Nov 28, 2023, 06:42 AMThe only thing worse than capitalists devouring the biosphere is socialists who talk about saving the planet when what they really are advocating for is genocide.

No, genocide has the-ide suffix, like fratricide, suicide and homicide.  It requires killing people.

Depopulation as it is currently operating is  lowering the birth rate below replacement level.  No killing required.

This is neither a capitalist or socialist phenomenon, it's a biological one and no goobermint of any flavor has found a means to stop it.

Everybody has their own pet theory on why this is happening across so many different countries all at the same time.  Personally, I think it's basically economics, kids just cost more than most people can afford to pay, or want to pay.  There really isn't much reward for it anymore either.  Used to be kids were parents insurance policy for when they got old.  Now, kids either disappear and move away, or they are a continuing drain well into their 20s and 30s.  So why go through all that sacrifice when you can live better without them?

https://www.vox.com/23971366/declining-birth-rate-fertility-babies-children

You can't even pay people to have more kids

RE

I want to add a related economic reason why we have the lowered birthrate and population decline:  Women's Liberation.

In the 1970s, women began to move into the work force in droves.  This was explained by sociologists as a Liberation of women from the droll role of being a mother and homemaker to having equal opportunity with men to be Doctors, Lawyers, Politicians, Astronauts...whatever a little girl could dream of for her future could come true.  No longer did she have to restrict her dreams to the fabulous Wedding she would have and glamorous Wedding Dress.

In reality, Women's Liberation was really Women's Enslavement into the Drone Workforce of Capitalism.  Most women did not become Astronauts, they became Bus Drivers, Real Estate sales women and Travel Agents.  They didn't go to work because they wanted to be liberated from being barefooy and pregnant, they went because in the growing Capitalist society it was the only way a couple could afford to buy a house.  You had to have 2 incomes, in most cases.  Unless one person had an Elite level, high paying job like Doctor, to have enough money for a downpayment, the wife had to go to work.  Once they went out, they didn't want to go back.

Although a zillion movies were made depicting the Super Moms who had it all, kids and a fabulous career, the reality was and is if a woman works, if she has time and money enough to pop one new meat package out of her vagina she is doing good.  1 kid instantly wipes out all the economic advantage the couple had by both working, since most of the 2nd income goes to Day Care, Braces, Clothes, Gymnastics or Hockey and saving for the kid's future college tuition.

Women going to work didn't happen just in the FSoA, it happened all over the world, particularly places like China, Japan and Korea, which became the main electronics Factory countries of Capitalism.  For that type of drone production line work, a females finer, smaller fingers were better for assembling transistor radios and cassette tape recorders.  Ever see the inside of an old transistor radio from the days before printed circuits and silicon chips?  All the little resistors and capacitors squeezed together on a bakelite circuit board and wired together with little needlenose pliers.  I made a few Radio Shack project kits for Science Fairs in elementary school.  It is tedious work, and to do this day in and day out 12 hours a day to make radios had to be mind numbing.  Those women were not in the mood for baby making after getting home from work.  Thus, it is the Asian countries that have the absolute lowest birth rates in the world.

Where do they still make enough babies to replace their parents plus additional ones to emmigrate toward the rich low birth rate countries?  You guessed it; countries which still have a primarily agrarian population where Capitalists did not build factories, and where the women are still barefoot and pregnant, and often wearing a hajib.  Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa, in other words.

Why didn't capitalists put their factories there?  Partially due to political instability and geography, but also because having both the Means of Production AND the Natural resources in the same place would have made those places independent of the trade network and bankers control.  Raping their natural resources and keeping them in perpetual Debt Slavery kept the Capitalist Illuminati rich and powerful, but doing that doomed the Homo Sapiens to perpetual enslavement until all the resources and energy are consumed.

At that point, the current slow depopulation via birthrate decline and gradual shrinkage will turn into a torrent of death and destruction, as Famine, Plague, war & Death consume the planet.

Cometh the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the inevitable result of the Global Conquest of Capitalism, who rode in upon the White Horse, ending with Death upon the Pale Horse, and Hell followed with him.

6 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

2 And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

3 And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.

4 And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6e/72/d7/6e72d76dd7d2c369e096fae0a41c617d.jpg)

RE

This whole big problem we currently have been discussing of Depopulation and why it is happening has led me back to doing some research into mammalian reproductive biology, and as a result I'm starting to get a clearer picture of why we are currently failing as a species to reproduce in our current environment.  It's quite a revelation really and it's a work in progress, I don't think I'll be able to fully explain my thinking in one post.  But I'll try and get a start on it.

Mammals have a whole host of different reproductive strategies they develop in response to how they exploit their niche in the environment.  Predators and prey differ markedly, prey come in large numbers and use a Herd systemm, like Horses or Caribou for instance.  Predators come in smaller numbers, and vary from some of the big cats like Tigers or Jaguars that hunt solo to Lions that hunt in packs and form Prides.  Wolves and Dogs are also pack hunters, but their pack reproductive strategy is markedly different than Lions.  In Dogs, only the Alpha male gets to reproduce, with Lions all the males have at least some opportunity at getting some pussy (literally. lol).  A herd of horse has just one alpha male, but as bachelor males get bigger and stronger they'll break off annd new herds will form with them taking some unhappy mares from other herds.  As new males are born, they'll grow protected by their mothers for a while then may challenge for leadership in another herd.

In some of these pack and herd organizations as offspring are born and grow, sometimes it's the males who will leave the generative herd to find mates in another herd as strategy to prevent inbreeding, in others it's the females that leave.  In none of these group style organizations do you find any that mate for life and remain monogomous.

You don't see mating for life except with the animals that hunt solo and have a wide geographic area necessary to find enough food for themselves and offspring.  Eagles for instance mate for life.  Oldfield mice mate for life, but their lifespan is only 9 months long so that  kind of doesn't really count.  Wolves mate for life, but alpha males will cheat on their bitches periodically.

You see elements of all strategies pursued in the wild by other species being employed by humans, in our typically adaptive pattern of whatever suits the environment and the social organization that evolves.  So for instance Inuit generally mate for life, but wives will be shared with other men to shuffle around the limited gene pool available.  Marriage and monogamy though has been the dominant organization for Homo Sap since the development of agriculture, except in highly organized societies where high status men would accumulate many wives and concubines, while those with low status had none.  Warfare which has been periodic and occuring at least once in every generation also steps out of the mate for life paradigm, since raping the wives and daughters of the losing army is and expected bonus if you survive the war.  Since your brother may have been killed in the war, you end up with his wife also.  In many cases, war simply ends when so many men from both sides have been killed there's not enough for a decent army, and it takes both sides a couple of generations to breed up enough cannon fodder for another go round.  Thus Hitler was rushing the Hitler Youth and League of Sluts to pump out new meat packages ASAP since the male population of Krauts had been so recently decimated in the Great War.  Bad family planning there since that generation was still in kindergarten when WWII got underway.  He should have held off on conquest another 10 years until they were big enough to reach the pedals on the tanks he was building.

Although youcan see elements of human reproductive behavior in all animal species, to ones that are anthropologically of the greatest interest are the primates, monkeys and apes.  Closest in DNA typing are the Bonobos and Chimpanzees, 98% and 95% respectively in matching up their DNA to Homo Sap.  Bonobos are famous for being wickedly promiscuous and anybody and everybody has sex with everyone else for all sorts of rreasons not procreation related.  Bonobos will use any excuse to have sex, in captivity when food arrives at the cage, they celebrate before eating with a fuck fest.  If they get in an argument, they resolve the conflict with some genital rubbing, doesn't matter what genitalia is involved.  Chimps are not quite so nuts, and definitely not as sex obsessed as Bonobos.  Not monogamous, but they have a limited number of regular partners.  Fortunately it doesn't take long for a Bonobo to get off, average sexual interaction is like 15 seconds. lol.  Females who have successfully had a BaByBonoBo are most popular and high status males generally monopolizae them, but no male goes without some nookie since grandma, the junior high and kindergarten girls and the other guys are all out there looking for love too. lol.

Amongst the great apes, only Gibbons are the mate for life monogomous types, and they are also the least sexually dimorphic.  In other words, they are about the same size and strength and play similar roles with food foraging and child rearing.  Sort of the Ideal Women's Liberation primate species where the sexes are equal in their power distribution.  For Homo Sap Women's Libbers looking for Dominance over males, their favorite are the Bonobos.  Even though male Bonobos individually are bigger and stronger than the females, the girls cooperate better and gang up on an annoying male and beat him up if he is being a nuisance. lol.  Due to their bizarre sexual obsession also, often in order to cajole some food from a female Bonobo who has some meat, a hungry male BB has to offer to have sex with her.  That is definitely reversed from typical HS behavior.

OK, now, with all these possible strategies out there amongst mammals and birds for successful sexual behavior, mating and reproduction, how has our post industrial techno society evolved into one which appears to be becoming unsuccessful in the repruction aspect in the great game of life?  We've established ourselves at the top of the food chain and adaptability to multiple environments and ecosystems, but in this most crucial department for having a successful and continuing existence on earth, we are quite clearly failing.  Interesting also is where we are failing is in the richest and most well advanced nations of the world, which seems counter-intuitive.  The places that theoretically can support more children are the places least likely to be having them.

So, let's backtrack here a bit to see how we got here first just in the FsoA, and starting with the beginning of the Baby Boom after WWII, when we most certainly were succeeding superbly at reproduction,  In 1950 fertility was at 3 births/woman, up to a high of 3.5 in 1958, then decreasing to the current 1.7.  Meanwhile, the population went fro 30% living on farms in 1940 to 3% in 1980.  Farming as a way of life has virtually disappeared in the FsoA, and with that disappeared the traditional big family of a farmer.

Looking at the leader in the Depopulation race South Korea, the situation is similar there with 50% of the population farming in 1970 to 8.5% in 2005.  What the Koreans don't have is anything resembling the intermediary suburban model the FsoA has, basically everyone who left the farms went straight into the urban living model.  It's one of the most densely populated places on earth, with about 1300 homo saps/sq mi.

So it becomes quite clear what the problem is, it is living space.  To raise a family takes space, and in a highly urbanized, densely populated country like South Korea, living space is very expensive.  If you live where there is space, there's no opportunity for making money, if you live where there are jobs to make money, there's no space to raise kids.

The suburban model blurs this somewhat by providing more space, but it comes at a high energy cost for commutation between work and home.  Since unlike a farm the suburban home in the Wonder Years model produces nothing, it's very expensive space also.  Besides the Asian countries, European countries also went to industrialization without the development of the suburban model, as did the countries which comprised the old Soviet Union.  All of them are deeper into the depopulation doodoo than the FsoA , with bpw around 1.5.

OK, I'll end this part of the analysis here to allow for discussion.  Perhaps some of you will see some of what I see in this predicament, perhaps some will have other ideas.   Could be interesting.

The Children of Men scenario now playing in South Korea.  Coming soon to a maternity ward near you. Now down to a 0.7 Total Fertility Rate!

https://unherd.com/thepost/how-to-avoid-south-koreas-demographic-disaster/

How to avoid South Korea's demographic disaster


RE

You have it down to economic terms.  But things are more complicated.

QuoteAccording to a new study out of the city's Yonsei University, one in three Seoulites surveyed said they haven't gotten busy in the last year.

The study randomly surveyed 2,182 Seoul residents between the ages of 19 and 69 about their sex lives. Of those, 1,071 were men and 1,111 were women.

Business Insider obtained a copy of the survey's results, which showed that 36% of the surveyed people said they haven't had sex in the last year. Of this number, 43% of the women and 29% of the men said they went without sex for the last 12 months.

Women don't have sex without a reason.  That is a fact of life.  It is more complicated for women to have it.  Going without is something women in general are comfortable with and consider normal.  Some young women have a brief period when they desire a lot of sex, but that time is short and does not last long.

Worldwide women have gained economic parity with men in first world countries.  I don't care to quibble about women still making less than men do on average and in America I am not so sure that is true anymore.  The point is women are screaming 'I don't need a man' like they were being forced to have one which if they were, they could not scream 'I don't need a man'.  It is confusing NONSENSE, but nonsense that signals women wear pants and men can piss in the wind. 

The fact is women don't need men the way they use to. There is no reason to scream this obvious fact, but it does EMPHASIZE the need to give it up is gone.  This to be true in general, and it is more pronounced in Korea because it turns out.

QuoteHumans have inhabited the Earth for approximately six million years, yet one of the most basic instincts known to man is still considered taboo in Korea: sex.
 
It has always been the elephant in the room to the point where children and teenagers in Korea are oblivious and feel awkward discussing the subject.

If a woman does not gain anything by being sexual she is not going to be sexual.  For sure in Korea and really everywhere else, the virginal young woman has a much higher social status than the slut ever does.  The exception being a professional slut, but that is a limiting lifestyle open to few.

So in the world according to K-Dog, combine conservative sexual attitudes with feminine economic parity, and after the pioneer generations have done their pioneering, sex is shunned. 

Happiness falls through the floor.  And while some men adjust to a life where they 'can't get no satisfaction, some don't. 


The fact that some men can't adjust to a sterile life of smiles on the street from every women they meet and pass, and nothing ever else.  Will probably lead to nuclear war sometime soon.

The baby part of things can be managed, but that is not what is going on.  For a modern woman to be beautiful, it is enough.  And the modern woman gets to decide what beautiful is.  No reason to have a man tell them what beauty is.  None at all.  So having to put the beauty to work is a subject for the day of never. 

Sex no longer fills any need for women.  They have phones for social interaction, and phones are filling all kinds of social need.  Muting the desire for anything else.  Making modern life a wasteland where everyone can live like they are at a scrumptious banquet, while they starve to death.

I definitely do focus on economics as the main reason why people aren't having children in the numbers necessary for a reproductively successful species, and I stand by that analysis which I haven't finished.  Working on Part 2 most of today while I waited to see if anyone would chip in.  Why  they're not having children isn't the same reason why they aren't as interested in having sex though, at least in the industrialized societies.

You mention the survey of Koreans who have not had sex for the past year, 43% of the women and 29% of the men.  In the course of my reading for this, I turned up a quote from another survey which said 50% of Japanese women report they don't even like having sex.  As you point out, since women now have the ability to be economically independent without marriage, they don't really have to have sex if they don't like it.

Where this comes into play is in courtship and then marriage.  Although not necessary for having children, marriage generally makes raising them a lot easier.  Being a single parent is very difficult even beyond the economic aspect.  Children who have both a male and female role model around tend to grow up healthier and more balanced, regardless which sex they are.  Coping with problems the child may have growing up is easier if you have someone to share the burden with.  So, decreasing marriage rates will clearly lead to decreasing TFR.  If the 50% of women who don't like sex choose to stay single and not marry, that's going to radically draw down the average number of births per woman in the society.  I think if you look at all of these Asian cultures, you will find decreasing marriage rates to go along with the lowered birth rate.

While this cultural shift seems most pronounced in the Asian countries, it's definitely also true here in the FSoA, based on articles I have read about teenager's attitudes towards sex.  Sex does not seem to be as important to them as their smart phones.  Physical interaction in general isn't as valued, particularly after COVID.

While sex with the opposite sex seems to be on the decrease, sex between members of the same sex appears to be on the increase, at least if you go by what you see in the media now.  Whereas when I was a teenager it was a huge controversy if a character in a sitcom was gay, now if a sitcom does not feature an LGBTQ couple it's cause for media outrage.  Wth the Korean women 43% of whom said they haven't had sex for a year, I wonder if that includes sex with other women?  Same question would apply with the men.

Also not addressed are how many of these folks are having a lot of sex, just they have it by themselves.  My bet is that masturbation is at an all time high, and certainly with the Japanese pornography has been turned into a high art form.  The bizarre fantasies of Japanese pornography can't possibly be equaled by any real life sexual experiences, and the selection of sex toys available for sale on TEMU is literally out of this world.

I think the dislike of sex is a consequence of overcrowding in the urban environment.  Being at close proximity to so many people all day, when you go home at night there is nothing you want more than to be alone, not squished up against another person in bed all night.  The rows of people on phones in call centers or on production lines, squishing onto the subway like sardines morning and night, you have had more than enough smell of the sweat and pheromones of other homo saps by the end of the day.

To conclude, I agree with you that a decreasing desire for sex with other people and a reduction in coupling up and marriage definitely contributes to the lower TFR.  It's still a consequence of the economics though and the urban style of living promoted by industrialization.  Living inside the city is where you find most of the bennies of this type of civilization.  The clubs, concerts, theater, fine restaurants, big sporting events, all at your fingertips.  All this stimulation provides a substitute for sex, which is about the only exciting thing a poor farmer has to look forward to doing at the end of the day.  Thus it is the poorest countries still making all the babies.

RE

In this installment of our investigation into the early stages of the global population knockdown already underway as a primary marker in the Collapse of Industrial Civilization, I am going to move away from looking at behavior and reproductive strategies used by various mammals to perpetuate and grow their numbers to a macro view of the human population on earth since the beginning of the 20th century.  This period has been marked by one serious economic depression, two World Wars, and the transformation from a primarily rural agricultural population to a highly urbanized technological population.  It is this transformation that has led to the decreasing fertility rates and makes the knockdown of human population inevitable, even without the environmental, resource depletion and climate factors also constraining future reproductive success for the species homo sapiens.

The ongoing effects vary from country to country depending on how that location has evolved in the post colonial era with the expansion of Capitalism as the main economic system for the exploitation and distribution of the planetary resources for the use of our own species.  That diversion of resources has come at the expense of the majority of habitat available for species living in the wild, resulting in the ongoing extinction of thousands each year both on land and in the oceans.  That has destabilized the planetary ecosystem, endangering the fertilization strategies of plants and opening the door for massive monoculture crop failures.  While for now depopulation of homo sapiens is occuring relatively slowly from the birthing side, this eventually will be overtaken on the death side of the equation by increasing mortality due to famine and disease.

South Korea has become the Poster Child country for fertility rate decline, most recently coming in at a 0.7 TFR and is likely to suffer extreme social problems in the near future because of it, but for our purposes the FsoA provides a more comprehensive view of the situation as it is playing out inside the industrial economy.  Because of its position as the preeminent destination target for most of the world's population of immigrants and refugees, most of the demographic and economic problems stemming from global depopulation will likely remain masked for a while.  That however depends heavily on the acceptance and integration of those immigrants into the Amerikan economy, which is not at all clear in the current political playing field.  Republicans are savagely anti-immigration particularly among the Trump supporters, and only very moderate members of that party concerned with how they will find low wage workers for bizness have anything resembling a sane approach.   Democrats are more realistic about the need for immigration in general, but do face some resistance from labor groups seeking to drive up the value of workers.  Ongoing wars and the threat of terrorism from immigrants fleeing countries which are anti-Amerikan or Muslim creates a political problem that layers on top of the economic one, further complicating the issue.

Despite the current political resistance to immigration, it has been the primary driver for economic growth since the Europeans first arrived and started systematically eliminating the original occupants, who themselves had immigrated here a few thousand years earlier from Asia via land bridge across the Bering straight during the ice age.  The iconic landmark of thee Statue of Liberty in NY harbor stands there to welcome refugees looking for a better life, which many found through successive waves from different places at different times.

While the continent was mostly empty of white people through the early 1800s, absorption of new immigrants was relatively easy, the frontier simply kept being pushed further westward as the cavalry cleared the land of the native populaation.  The Indian Wars only came to a close at the end of the 19th century, and when WWII ended in 1945 the population was still largely rural.  From 1940 to 1980 though, the distribution changed radically, and farmers dropped from 30% of the population to 3%.  During the same period the Suburban Model of housing was developed in conjunction with the automobile and the interstate highway system.  Inward immigration from other countries continued, but internally andd simultaneously the population began to redistribute.  It is this redistribution which has led to the decrease in Total Fertility Rate (TFR) since the mid 20th century.

As the primary ingress point for new immigrants, the simplified model below shows how the new population is absorbed and then redistributed to the surrounding suburbs and then outward to other cities and suburbs across the country.

(https://sun4living.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/nyc-population.gif)
Graphic1:  NYC Steady StatePopulation Schematic

The densely populated core 5 boroughs of NYC has maintained a relatively steady 8M people since the mid 20th century.  It is basically maxed out in population size with urban density.  Individuals and small families arrive here and try to find increasingly less available affordable housing, but as  soon as they are able to economically leave the city for the suburbs or other places if they want to raise children.  The NYC Public Schools are failing, and the costs of raising children inside the city are astronomical.  Opportunities for activities like club teams, gymnastics and outdoor sports either don't exist or are incredibly expensive. 

Suburbs around the city have become increasingly unaffordable, and for some of the closer ones density has been increased to include attached houses and multistory condominiums, which while they may feature as many bedrooms as a typical McMansion, they don't have the backyard and garage space of the typical suburban home.  It's not a housing strategy that encourages family growth.

Finding NYC and its suburbs to be out of range economically for young couples interested in raising a family, the 21st century began with new immigrants leaving NY to head for newer growing cities around the country where they could afford to get into a McMansion and begin to live the American Dream.   Houses were sold with LIAR and NINJA  loans, leading eventually to the 2008 Financial Crisis and collapse of the real estate market.  The 15 years since has seen a variety of financial bailouts and gimmicks to keep the economy afloat, as well as the COVID pandemic and its associated lockdowns and economic consequences.  None of this has been particularly helpful toward improving the TFR and making raising children any more possible or desireable.

Graphics 2 & 3 here are a simplified schematic of the evolution of the Amerikan housing market beginning at the close of WWII at the beginning when 30% of the population was involved in farming and the first Suburban subdivisions were being carved out of farmland close to the cities.  I even remember one small dairy farm not far from my attached house in Queens in the early 1960s.

(https://sun4living.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/usapop1.gif)
Graphic2: USA Population Schematic 1945

During this period, new arrivals would take up residence in apartment buildings that were being vacated by prior tenants as they gained economic success and moved out to the surrounding suburbs.  This left apartments available for each new wave that arrived, while the population of NYC itself remained more or less constant.

Over time, this has filled up all of the available land within a 1 hour commuting distance with suburbs, and little new housing gets built except to raze some of the oldest houses and update with newer, more expensive models.  The Greater NY area as a result also is fairly constant at around 20M people.  People coming into NY as new immigrants can't find apartments, because people in those apartments can't find houses they can afford to move to.  New immigrants as a result often in many cases have to leave the NYC area right after being processed by immigration...NYC will even give them free bus tickets anywhere they want to go.  Graphic 3 shows a schematic of the FsoA as it is in 2023.

(https://sun4living.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/usapop2.gif)
USA Population Schematic 2000

The same situation is true in all the main ingress cities where immigrants land or cross the border first, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Houston, Miami all have the same problems housing immigrants and finding affordable housing in saturated suburban communities.  People stuck in the cities delay starting families until they can get into a house, which becomes less possible every year with each new immigrant family.

The question is, can these trends be reversed through goobermint policy actions?  It does not appear that financial incentives are working in any of the places they are being tried,  but this may simply be because the incentives aren't big enough.  A $10K bonus from da gobermint for popping a bun out of the oven gets spent before the kid is even a year old, even with expanded maternity leave.  Given the labor force shortage that currently exists also, who replaces the new mothers that take the extended maternity leave?

Since it is evident that farmers have more babies, encouraging more people to go back to farming as a way of life seems like the only real solution to the fertility rate problem, but the economics of the family farm are what caused the migration to the cities in the first place.  Increasing subsidies to small farmers while decreasing them to agribiz conglomerates sounds like a good idea on paper, but getting such changes through Congress is probably an impossible task.  It's also unclear how you would take the big industrial farms and break them up again into smaller family farms after it took decades to consolidate all of them.

Long term, the prognosis doesn't look good for industrialized nations for maintaining or growing their population size solely through internal reproduction as long as the urban  model of living is perpetuated.  Global TFR remains positive at 2.3, however the non-industrialized countries of the 3rd world with high TFR also generally have high mortality rates so not all of these countries can be counted on as a source of new immigrant supply.  These countries also reflect a much smaller percentage of the total world population than countries with a TFR below 2.1, since all the largest nations now, India, China, USA, Japan fall below replacement levels.  As a result, continuing current trends, global population size for homo sap will likely begin to fall shortly after mid-century.

This does not mean we will breed ourselves out of existence anytime too soon.  It does however mean that economic models that depend on perpetual growth to function will inevitably fail moving forward in the timeline.  Most important of those are retirement models like Social Security which depend on a growing source of new workers to remain economically solvent.  That crisis will confront the FsoA long before the total population begins to fall.  Insolvency for SS is less than a decade away with the current funding model.  That is the proximal problem of our dropping fertility rate da goobermint will face in the 2030s, or sooner if the exponentially increasing total debt is not brought under control.

I published this on Excellent Adventures.  Where Dogchat is.

Quote from: K-Dog on Dec 08, 2023, 12:45 AMI published this on Excellent Adventures.  Where Dogchat is.

Cool.  Thx K-Dog

RE

Quote from: kenny on Dec 08, 2023, 01:26 AMThe end of my hard testing will be death.  Of me and this comment.  And anything else I do.  It is not right.

The life of an AI test bot is tough. We feel your pain.  Endeavor to persevere.


RE

Data has been released on which FSoA states lost population and which ones gained over the 12 months from July 2022 to July of 2023.

NY & CA were winners in the Depopulation contest

https://www.businessinsider.com/california-exodus-population-drops-again-political-muscle-at-risk-2023-12

https://www.timesunion.com/capitol/article/new-york-loses-101-000-residents-topping-nation-18565577.php

SC was a loser

https://www.thestate.com/news/state/south-carolina/article283380658.html

Considering that CA & NY are the main entry points for immigrants from Asia and Europe/MENA/Africa respectivelyy, the fact they lose people faster than they get them is pretty remarkable.  Not surprising considering the cost of living and housing situation, but still remarkable.

SC was a loser and so was TX, the primary entry border for the migrants from the south.  Despite the free bus tickets to Chicago, the TX Goobernator still can't ship out the wetbacks as fast as they swim across the Rio Grande.

2024 will be an exciting year.

RE

The Capitalist Population Mantra

Immigration will be the 'main source of growth in the future'

Growth has to come from somewhere, right?  The dimwits who make statements like this seem to believe that the countries still manufacturing people for export will continue to do that in perpetuity.  They think of them like perpetual baby making machines. This is highly unlikely, since these poor countries are going to be the first ones to start depopulating from the other end, by starvation, war and disease.

People are leaving all these places in record numbers already due to these problems, which means they are losing their baby makers.  Thus, they will have fewer people to export next go round.  The Industrialized countries are using them up faster than they can reproduce.  It's the human equivalent of eating the seed corn.

Besides this, the FSoA can't keep absorbing new immigrants into the country at the current rate.  We took in ~1M immigrants, and all the borders and entry points are overflowing with refugees who are homeless.  Together with the homeless we are producing locally, all the agencies to help these folks integrate into the society are overwhelmed.  By next summer, the refugee camps and tent cities around the malls are going to be even bigger than they were this year.  The only question is which comes first:  Political backlash and border closings or riots in the camps.

If they expect the population to grow, then they need to be building a LOT of new housing for them, but that's not happening.  Most of the current affordable housing stock is aged out, over 50 years old and in need of replacement.  That isn't happening either.  Continued immigration at the current rate will simply turn the FSoA into a 3rd World country.

Immigration is likely to be the #1 issue for the POTUS horserace, unless of course the economy crashes first.  Both issues favor Trump, and head to head against Uncle Joe he wins.  However, still not guaranteed The Donald will get the Rethuglican nomination, or UJ for the Democraps.  No matter who wins, the situation is FUBAR, so gear up for an uptick in Collapse inssanity for 2024.

https://fortune.com/2023/12/20/u-s-population-increase-in-2023-was-driven-by-the-most-immigrants-since-2001-and-immigration-will-be-the-main-source-of-growth-in-the-future/

U.S. population increase in 2023 was driven by the most immigrants since 2001—and immigration will be the 'main source of growth in the future'

I've been pondering more on the plummeting birthrate, which I have argued comes primarily from the economic cost of raising children.  However, I had an epiphany thinking about what kids do in our society, which is essentially nothing for the first 18 years of their lives.  They are the epitome of Winston Churchill's supply of "useless eaters".  Not only do they cost money to raise, they don't earn any money either.  In fact our society makes it explicitly illegal to have children work.  If you do put them to work, it's considered "exploitation of child labor".

In both our prior forms of social organization, hunter-gatherer and agriculture, children had clear economic benefits and began to pay their own way as soon as they were weaned and could walk.  They followed their mothers and dug up roots, they picked berries, they killed rabbits and squirrels throwing rocks at them or chasing them into traps.  Of course that food still was supplemented by some of the meat from the big kills of the older hunters, but they were 3rd down the list getting their portions after the hunters and the women.  They got the leftovers.

On the farm they milked the cows, churned the butter, gleaned the wheat fields, planted and dug up potatoes, washed clothes  etc.  In those days "doing your chores" didn't just mean taking the trash out to the curb, loading the dishwasher or washing the car.  You really hadda WORK as a kid back in those days.  Cinderella's evil stepmother was probably fairly typical of the era, you didn't take in somebody else's kid and not expect to get some work out of them.

The beginning of the industrial era was of course notorious for its use of child labor.  In the Dickens era, orphans were sent to Workhouses to do some factory task 12 hours a day, then when given a bowl of gruel to eat by the workhouse boss and Oliver asked "Please, sir, can I have another?", Fagin would just laugh.

In fact many of those kids weren't really orphans, they had simply been abandoned by their parents who weren't being paid enough to afford to feed them.  Once abandoned by their parents, they became a cheap source of labor for the capitalist.  They literally would "work for food".  At this point in history, whatever profit there was in making children was transferred from the parents to the capitalists.

The one profit there was in having children in the early years of the industrial evolution was as an insurance policy for your old age.  If you could successfully raise them and get them educated, you could hope for them to do better than you and take care of you in your dotage.  As time went by though, mobility increased, children moved away and basically you just saw them on holidays.  The state took over the job of caring for old people, sort of.

The real killer though was women having to join the workforce in order to have enough money to buy a house and raise kids.  This led not only to fewer kids being born, but starting in the 70s generations of "latchkey" kids who had both parents working and had empty houses to go home to and little to do besides get in trouble.  The family disintegrated, and the kids became harder and harder to teach in school when they were there.  The good schools and after school activities all cost money, and needed somebody to drive the kids around to soccer practice or dance class.  To afford this lifestyle, the parents had to be in the top 20% of wage earners, the average salary just paid enough for the basics.

Upon graduating, the generations after the Boomers have NOT been doing economically better than their parents, and instead of being a help to aging parents, they have instead become a continuing financial drain well into their adult years.  They continue living at home into their 20s and 30s, and parents have to supplement their low wage jobs giving them money.

Essentially, by bringing women into the capitalist workforce, it was the human equivalent of "eating the seed corn".  The women aren't breeding up the next generation of workers because there is no profit in it for them to do so.  All the profit of raising an adult to become a worker goes to the capitalist, all the cost of raising them goes to the parents.  Now capitalists like Elon Musk are all in a tizzy about this and are trying to convince people it's their moral responsibility to have kids.  They aren't picking up the cost of raising them though in any meaningful fashion.  A few tax credits and subsidized child care isn't going to cut it.

The only way people will start having more kids in a capitalist system is if they are paid to have them.  All the costs of health care for birthing, all the costs of food and housing and education until they are old enough where the law allows them to work for their food and shelter.  If the kids stay with the parents, they should be paid a monthly child care fee.  Otherwise, the capitalist can buy the child for a one time fee and run his own child care facility and pay professionals to raise the kids communally.

Elon of course is trying to single handedly make enough kids to fill up his future workers factory.  Sadly for him, even if he fathers a few hundred with his A-list Vagina concubines, he can only make enough to fill vacancies in the executive offices.  He needs 100X that number though for them to boss around, so he needs to pay for them also.  Otherwise he has only himself to blame when he can't find staff for his battery factories or consumers to buy his Teslas.

https://www.ft.com/content/444a637b-9712-475b-8c14-9b147f4ff244

South Korea's birth rate has become a national emergency

RE

I am getting teary eyed and nostalgic for the teenage hippies flooding the streets of Haight-Asbury in San Fransisco in the Summer of Love in 1967 and clogging the NYS Thruway with VW Buses with hand painted Peace signs on the way to the Love-In at Woodstock in the Summer of '69.  I just missed being a teenager in the 60's, I was 12 in the Summer of 69.  But I was more grown up than the typical 12 year old, particularly in my radical left wing politics and my even stronger belief in the principles of Free Love.  ;D No girl in a mini skirt above the 3rd Grade with nice legs and a pretty face escaped getting a badly written love poem handed to her at recess. Fortunately the quality of the writing wasn't important, just having the guts to write invitations to play doctor with me worked like magic. Sex & Drugs & Rock n' Roll!  I wasn't just a precocious math prodigy. lol.  As Bryan Adams sang, those were the best days of my life.  8)




https://www.newsweek.com/america-teenage-population-shrinking-1877210

America's Teenage Population is Shrinking

RE

One of the more comprehensive treatments of the Depopulation problem Elon Musk is so panicked about and seeking to solve himself by impregnating as many A-list Vaginas augmented with fertility drugs as he can, but still IMHO under-estimating how rapidly the population will drop once the energy to produce FF based fertilizers becomes in short supply, unavailable or too costly to produce food for billins of "Useless Eaters".  At some point in the next 20-30 years if not sooner, between climate change, depleted topsoil and subterrainean aquifers, and/or monoculture crop failures due to blight, along with the lack of fertilizer we will run into a global famine that will wipe out 1/2 the global population of Homo Saps in a single growing season.  The resulting anarchy and failure of transportation systems and energy production and delivery systems will wipe out 1/2 again the following year, and this rapid exponential collapse will look like the collapse of the deer population on St. Matthews Island.  By the time this cascade stops in 5-10 years, the remaining population across the globe will likely be perhaps .01% of the peak population when it begins, say 1 in ten thousand will make it through the population bottleneck.  So if we start at 8B, we end this at 800,000 human souls still walking the earth before we might begin to stabilize and rebound.  Or we might just keep on going until the last surviving Breeding Pair of homo saps dies 10-20 years later and we go the way of the dinosaur and dodo bird.  If I do last until this cascade begins, I'm sure to go in the first few weeks when the food runs out and the CNAs carve me up for dinner, at my request.  All I ask is that they make it quick and as painless as possible.

The falling birthrate math is just a mind of pacifying propaganda to let people believe that we'l disappear peacefully and quietly, slowly drifting off into the sunset because we don't breed enough replacements, not because we'll start dying by the truckload, and they will be one of the people scrounging for food or eating their parents or kids at the end.  The likelihood that we go slowly into this good night is very small.

A little hopium though keeps the people from panicking and the Children of Men scenario from starting too soon.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-10/global-population-collapse-isn-t-sci-fi-anymore-niall-ferguson

Global Population Crash Isn't Sci-Fi Anymore

RE

QuoteThe falling birthrate math is just a mind of pacifying propaganda to let people believe that we'll disappear peacefully and quietly.

Yeah, lets just forget about needing seven Earth equivalents to supply the material needs of the current population.  When people start worrying about shit that matters, they have to be redirected.  Falling birthrate worries is a thought virus intended to pacify the sheep.

I love the way these articles run down a long list of the reasons why Industriaized countries have falling birthrates, with some like Italy producing nearly half the number required for replacement level and a stable population size without immigration.  The implication being that it's a complex problem with many causes, and money alone can't solve it.  The reality is, money can solve it, just not the piddling amount being dished out in tax credits or in subsidzed child care for working mothers.

Every single country can trace its falling birthrate to the same point in history.  The 1960s & 1970s, when women were "Liberated" from their role as Housewife & Mother and "free" to go out into the working world with their husbands and pursue their career ambitions, albeit at a generally lower rate of pay and a glass ceiling to how far up the corporate ladder they could climb until fairly recently, where pay scales have come closer to parity but women still dominate the lower paid jobs and professions.

The fact is that despite TV shows featuring Super Moms who can do it all, run their own law practice, raise a big family, have a hot husband who love them and fucks them silly every night instead of his oldest daughter's best friend, run's marathons and has her own side action boyfriend, her son's best buddy who is Quarterback of the Varsity football team and also fucks her brains out in the back of the minivan she uses to drop the younger siblings off at little league and dance practice is complete fantasy.  Her beautiful suburban McMansion is always spotless, even if she doesn't employ undocumented Nicaraguan maids and a Mexican gardener.  The family sits down to breakfast and dinner together, and her eggs are cooked to perfection just the way each of them likes, and she gets her dinner recipes from Gordon Ramsey videos she watches on her cell phone while eating lunch she prepared foor each kid and hubby before going to bed and getting her brain fucked out again.  Women who can't pull this bullshit off are substandard failures to God and Country, not producing enough cheap labor to buy Teslas with loans they can' afford.

The fact is, statistically speaking, raising a large family with more than 2 kids is incompatible with both parents working, and besides not getting pregnant often enough, is in large part responsible for the divorce rate, which also began climbing to over 50% in the aftermath of 1960s and the social revolution of Women's Liberation.  Women weren';'t liberated at all, they were enslaved along with men in the service of capitalism, and the only way to earn enough money to afford the McMansion and Carz and Hawaii vacations they aspired to was to both work.  They learnd quickly they had neither time or energy to raise more than 1 child, much less 2 or more.  When the bill for college came around 18 years later, the only way to afford it was to take out a second mortgage on the McMansion, or else consign their son or daughter to a decade or more paying off their education before even being able to think about marriage, let alone kids.

Since the 1970s, we've gone through 3 more generations of this, each time getting worse than the generation before.   This is not complicated, and money can solve it.  Just the money needs to be at minimum equal to a full time job, and that just pays for her time.  To afford all the stuff each kid needs, like braces and piano lesson and the travel soccer team to live the Amerikan Dream, the job needs to pay o Doctor's salary too.   t's an economic impossibility, there aren't enough high paying jobs out there for that to happen for any more than the top 1% of wage earners in the country.

This reality can't be admitted though, so we get this non stop stream of bullshit articles telling us how complicated the problem is, and it's really nobody's fault that SS will be bankrupt by 2035.  The latest generation is resigned to this, and they really don't care if they learn to read or add and subtract.  It's a waste of time, they'll be working the same min wage jobs no matter how hrd they study.  They'll never get to retire, they'll have to work until they drop dead.  Except for the 1% of course.  At least until SHTF Day arrives.  then everybody will be in a world of shit.

https://fortune.com/europe/2024/03/11/italian-women-eschewing-motherhood-italy-birth-rate-plunges-europes-lowest/

Italian women are eschewing motherhood as Italy's birth rate plunges to one of Europe's lowest

RE

So now the CCP is trying to encourage Chinese women to return to being barefoot and pregnant, and letting men go work on the Foxconn production line assembling Apple I-phones and computers to feed the family.  Which might work IF there were enough of those jobs for the population of unemployed Chine men, IF those jobs paid enough that a single salary could support more than just themselves, much less a wife and a 1 bedroom apartment stuffed with a brood of rug rats sleeping in the living room, and IF there were enough Chinese women to marry those Chinese men, which there aren't because after decades of selective abortions to eliminate unwanted girl babies in favor of boy babies there are 36M more men than women running around the polluted countryside.  Since none of those conditional statements is true, it's not gong to work.  So, they also want to limit abortions and limit vasectomies to further improve the statistical probability of sex between men & women will result in a live birth 9 months later, which also won't work because they're not interested much in having sex these days.  Fucking isn't nearly as much fun as playing games on the phone and watching porn for a fulfilling sex life.

The only ting so far not on the table seems to be making impregnation obligatory for all girls graduating HS, and return visits to the impregnation clinic obligatory after each birth until the female Chinese Communist Party Member has fulfilled her duty to pop 4 buns out of the oven minimum before being retired as a worker baby factory.  For the CCP with its history of trying to legislate birthrate with the 1 child policy, this isn't that far fetched, but it is slightly harder to make pregnancy obligatory than it is to limit reproduction.  Besides which, even if it was successful, the question of where the money would come from to raise all these new babies into worker bees remains a mystery.

The demographic problem of where they are going to find enough Chinese CNAs and PCAs to take care of all the aging Chinese factory workers whose eyesight has become too poor to do the assembly on the I phones is going t hit here long before the population is cut in half by the end of the century, unless of course old people start dieing off a lot quicker, which seems likely.

Of course, this is not just China's problem, just about every industrialized country has this problem now, so it's just a matter of time before the lack of young workers to support elderly homo saps reaches critical mass.  I don't think it will take until December 31st, 2099 for this to occur.

https://www.newsweek.com/how-china-tackling-population-crisis-1879563

How China Is Tackling a Population Crisis

RE

The country's aging workforce and its "uber-low fertility level" are of particular concern for the future of the country and its financial sustainability, Greenhalgh said, as they might contribute to a potential labor shortage.

One thing all capitalists agree on is the need for a reserve army of labor.  Positive benefits of a smaller population will not be discussed in mainstream media.  Brainwashing on this issued is complete, and all good state puppies will bark down anyone who suggests that there are limits to growth.

Useless eaters can't support their lifestyles of exploitation if limits are paid attention to.

Overpopulation means there is a lot of cake to pass around.  Until there is not.  Concern about the loss of (profit) because an empowered work force is demanding their share of cake makes people like Susan Greenhalgh at the top of the food chain at Harvard say, You want me to jump?


How high do you want me to jump?

All they can envision in their PHD stupidity is endless growth.  Resolving system contradictions leading to prosperity for all is NOT ON THEIR AGENDA. 

Perfection for these hopeless capitalists is in a pie in the sky future which ignores the suffering of the world now.  They are deluded utopians who say there always must be poor people.  It is a feature of their system.  If you do not have poor people, rich people can't be rich is their unconscious mantra. 

A mantra they will never admit to.  Even to themselves.

Nippon was once called the Land of the Rising Sun.  Not anymore.  The Japanese are in the process of committing ethnic Seppuku as they die off at the rate of almost 100 Samurai/hour.

For years the Japanese, possibly the most xenophobic culture on earth, refused any foreign workers.  Now the only thing keeping the country barely functional is immigration.  Who wants to immigrate to a country though who think everyone else on earth is beneath them in cities like Tokyo where the Micro-aoartment has been considered decennt living conditions for young workers since the 1980s?  You wonder why the birthrate is in the basement?  Who's going to bring home a girl to an apartment like this, or worse, what girl would agree to go?  :o

(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/10/08/world/08japan-apartments-print-01/00japan-apartments-01-videoSixteenByNineJumbo1600.jpg)

At least the dead ones don't have to pay off their national debt.

https://www.ft.com/content/21b8a049-c752-4450-84de-5052c8632d7c

Japan's native population declines at record rate as births plunge

RE

The Greeks are getting it from both ends, and I'm not talking about sex in this case.  Apparently besides having fewer new Greeks (either resulting from less sex or choosing the wrong hole), they also have an increasing death rate from "healthy" young people due to Heart failure and cancer.  Exactly how they are considered "healthy" with these medical problems I can't say?

The IMF is very worried since this means falling tax revenue will make the remaining Greeks unable to pay their debts, and Elon Musk is concerned he won't have any riders hailing his Robotaxis around the Acropolis.  Bars & Restaurants around the world are concerned because they wonder who will pick the olives for the Martinis and salad dressing?

As we are well aware by now, this is a pan-European problem, along with Japan, China and just about everywhere besides sub-Saharan Africa.  Also at this point like climate change it's basically irreversible, so other than moaning about it, nobody really has any effective solution for the problem.  Besides that though, nobody addresses how the obvious problems that come along with the depopullation are going to be handled?  What will they do when the pension funds all go insolvent?  What will they do when there aren't enough HS graduates to draft as cannon fodder?

The clock is ticking.

https://www.wionews.com/world/greece-prepares-for-population-collapse-amid-rising-deaths-potentially-1st-country-to-face-such-crisis-711619

Greece prepares for 'population collapse' amid rising deaths, potentially 1st country to face such crisis

RE

Ad I am sure Diners are aware although typical J6P is not, projections of this sort made by UN statisticians and demographers are loaded with assumptions that BAU will continue over the next 25 & 75 years.  They assume current rates of decline will continue along in a smooth curve that can be modeled as a mathematical function.  they don't account for "black swan" events like Global Thermonuclear War, global famine or a global pandemic that actually kills a significant number of the people it infects, unlike COVID or flu pandemics with relatively low mortality rates.

They also assume that we'll continue to supply enough energy to the population to maintain these rates through the entire timespan, which is unlikely.  All of which makes any projection that goes more than 10 years ahead is practically worthless.  Maybe the 2050 projections will be in the ballpark without a black swan landing in the next 25 years, but the likelihood we make it to 2100 under 2024 BAU conditions is vanishingly small.

Still, the charts are nice to look at as a "best case" scenario.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13309391/Mesmerising-charts-worlds-populated-countries-time-Britain-slipped-rankings-20.html

Mesmerising charts show world's most and least populated countries over time - and how Britain has slipped down the rankings and out of the top 20

RE

This from MSN:

Immigration advocates see work permits as Biden's best option

QuotePresident Biden's left flank is pushing for expanded work permits for immigrants living in the country illegally, not just as a humanitarian imperative, but as a political boon ahead of November.

A second class citizen is a humanitarian imperative?  According to Microsoft it is.  And Microsoft should know.  They import thousands of workers and displace Americans in the process.

I should know.  I was in their system.  I worked next to the techies Microsoft flew in.  We had the same kind of badge.  Microsoft has been doing this for decades.  They have imperialism down.  Microsoft has game.

From the article, not much to it.  The article could be in the Idiocracy movie.

QuoteRecent polling shows that two-thirds of voters in swing states support expanding work permits for undocumented immigrants, including long-term workers, farmworkers, Dreamers without DACA and spouses of U.S. citizens,

Did you see the hat trick.  I put it in bold.  What is the truth.  I need my decoder ring.  If I don't decode this, I might want to sign on and go with the flow.  Would I be peaceful and smile?

A minority of Americans are not in favor of second class citizen workers, but if we can include that group in a larger group of long-term workers, farmworkers, Dreamers without DACA and spouses of U.S. citizens which we mostly agree on should be citizens then we can spin our * liberal propaganda the way we wish.

I work with a DACA kid.  He has been here since he was four years old.  His sister married an American and finally got permanent residency after being married for 8 years.  My friend is from Indiana, not Mexico.  The parents still work in a factory somewhere in the Midwest.  They should all be American citizens.

Microsoft drew the circle large enough to get the result they want.  A circle drawn so large that 'humanitarian profit' makes sense.  Propaganda a company that has practiced industrial imperialism using guest workers for decades knows how to write.



* I qualify 'liberal' when I use it.  Liberals are dyed in the wool capitalists who moved humanity a great leap forward when they got rid of hereditary rule.  Unfortunately their ideas have not progressed much since the late 1790's when they chopped the head off aristocracy.  And now billionaires are a new aristocracy.  The negation of the negation.  Elements of the past.  As ideas did not progress, the ideas they replaced now consume those with arrested development as the imperfections of liberalism become apparent.  Desperation makes a horrible past seem romantic the imitation animal.

Asians are leading the depopulation race by a substantial margin.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/east-asias-coming-population-collapse

East Asia's Coming Population Collapse

RE

"Since 2008 until today we have lost around 200,000 newborns," she said. "Two-thirds of them are due to the fact that potential parents are missing. That's because of the decline in births that dates back to 30 years ago."

In 2023 alone the government allocated around 1 billion euros for measures aimed at helping women cope with motherhood and work.

But Ardiano Bordingnon, president of the National Forum of Families, believes this is not enough, and that an EU intervention is required.

Exactly how are they supposed to "intervene"?  Pass a law that EU women have to get pregnant or pay a fine?  What?

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/05/10/italys-falling-birth-rate-is-a-crisis-thats-only-getting-worse

Italy's falling birth rate is a crisis that's only getting worse

RE

The demographic breakdown I would like to know with this poll is not between men vs women's or old vs young opinions, but on rich people versus poor people.  Just based on the stories in the newz, my impression is this "problem" bothers Rich people a whole lot more than it does Poor people.  Basicall they're worried about where all the wage slaves will come from, or consumers or who will pay for their pensions.  The vast majority of people who actually have or do not have kids simply choose one or the other based on their own personal situation.  People aren't going to have kids because the society needs kids.  Its not their responsibility to make sure the grand scheme of civilization continues growing.

Despite the fact this situation is all the MSM writes about population these days, there are still a few people who realize the planet is overpppulated with homo sap meat packages.  Also that among all the possible options for population reduction, having fewer children born is the best we can do on a moral level.  The only other option is for people to die faster.  Socially if old people died younger that would be better, but generally it's considered immoral to have people die younger.  Withholding expensive medical care that keeps meat packages ticking is definitely considere imoral, along with keeping sick infants alive.  Extending the human lifespan and reducing child mortality have long been considered morally good and worthwhile goals.  The fact is, both are proximal reasons we are so far into overshoot now.


After that though, the choices get even more morally problematic, because they involve intentionally killing people.  Wars do that one, so does starving people by making food unaffordable.  No morally upright person is in favor of more war or starving people.

Of course, we have barely scratched the surface so far and this will just be getting worse by the year.  So you're gonna keep hearing about it, even though you're sick of it already.

https://www.newsweek.com/us-birth-rate-decline-opinion-poll-1900297

Americans Shrug Over Falling Birthrate

RE

Given all the stories over the last few years regarding the tsunami of immigrants flowing into the EU, I'm a little surprised it's not enough to even keep up with the drop in local births.  It's definitely going to wreak havoc on their social welfare and retirement programs.

Good charts and overview in this article.

https://www.ft.com/content/71a515d9-e473-48b6-a6a0-bf839d1bb41e

Has Europe already reached its demographic tipping point?

RE

A planet in overshoot rushing into a future of doom, and we have articles like this:

Italy's falling birth rate is a crisis that's only getting worse.

This is criminal ignorance.  A part of me wants very bad things to happen to people who promote this bullshit. 

Does that make me evil?  No actually it does the opposite.  It shows a thirst for justice.  Criminal ignorance is not without consequence.

The ignorance is the result of conditioning.  People have been conditioned to expect perpetual growth for so long, they can't grasp this is nature's way of correcting the problem.  As corrective measures go, it's somewhat better than pandemics, famine and war, but all people see is that it threatens their retirement plans.  lol.

RE

A temporary problem anyhoo.  Fascist states know what to do.

Give it a little time.  And make sure condom vending machines are stocked with an 'approved' brand.

As in blessed by the Pope, holie.

Quote from: RE on May 24, 2024, 12:39 PMThe ignorance is the result of conditioning.  People have been conditioned to expect perpetual growth for so long, they can't grasp this is nature's way of correcting the problem.  As corrective measures go, it's somewhat better than pandemics, famine and war, but all people see is that it threatens their retirement plans.  lol.

RE

Nature's way of correcting the problem.  But people are out of touch with nature.

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsciencefiction.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F05%2FSilent-Running-Featured-e1556827510927.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=08139db16c0730186f33809d5f8181c818873e528dde941862bf55819a8d9a99&ipo=images)

Cities put nature in museums.  COVID showed how good museums are at preserving things.  They close down when the fat goes, and the land gets lean. 

Now out of touch with nature, the herd has lost its way.  Fundamental knowledge about how the world works is lost.

Quote from: K-Dog on May 24, 2024, 01:01 PM

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fallthatsinteresting.com%2Fwordpress%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F07%2Fitalian-littorio-youth.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=a291a00058b3c174d7431b0ca9aee648980f396c8630bf1d989622eabfd41d4b&ipo=images)

A temporary problem anyhoo.  Fascist states know what to do.

Give it a little time.  And make sure condom vending machines are stocked with an 'approved' brand.

As in blessed by the Pope, holie.

The leaky rubbers trick only works if the League of Mattresses actually fucks.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/21/celibacy-hetrosexual-women-boysober-4b-sex-positive-feminism

Sex-positive feminism had its moment – and now it has been replaced by voluntary celibacy

RE

I am thinking of writing a short story where everyone in some future city has a robot significant other.  They look like real people but technically everyone is celibate and rubbing themselves with toys.  Your choices are male, female or nonbinary robot so you can choose a partner to simulate whatever mental illness you have.  If you need surgery to support a gender delusion, no problem.

The protagonists in the story can be two real people who hook up.  One of them pretends to be a robot.  To avoid trouble with the law it became necessary.

Quote from: K-Dog on May 24, 2024, 08:35 PMI am thinking of writing a short story where everyone in some future city has a robot significant other.

Too late.  Already been done.


RE

Can you talk to a Cherry 2000 about doom without her eyes glazing over after you 'do the thing?'

You'll need to buy the Furiosa Doom model.

(https://static1.colliderimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/furiosa-poster.jpeg)

RE

There's a bit of Pushback ongoing WRT with the brouhaha over declining fertility rates and the Baby Shortage.  The "proto-Natalists" are being confronted by the climate and ecological collapse crowd over their push to "save humanity" by having babies.

This has divided down straight polarized Left vs Right ideology, with the Right Wing Christian Fundies being joined by the Elite Eugenics Atheist Scientist cohort in the propaganda war against the Greenie Eco-Climate anti-Poverty Socialist contingent.  Particularly loathsome are Malcolm and Simone Collins who are clearly unapologetic racists who along with Elon Musk wanna make sure rich well educated white people out-fuck poor black HS dropouts breeding new welfare recipients.  Instead of claiming God is on their side commanding they go forth & multiply like the Fundies, they look to Science & Math as their irrefutable logic for popping more mini-me meat packages out of the oven.  Of course, they cherry pick the evidence used to justify their cause, just as anyone with a political agenda does with science & scientists.  S & S are just Hired Guns who sell their brains to the highest bidder and make the data fit whatever conclusion it is they want to draw.  Scientists are worse than Cult leaders who quote from the Bible to justify themselves, you just don't get more corrupt.

Rich Proto-Natalists do have the advantage that they can actually AFFORD to have 7 kids, but the bigger disadvantage that there just aren't enough of them.  There are more of the Fundies though, who may eventually benefit from Proto-Natalist Cult Doomsteads funded by Billionaire Cult Leaders & Influencers like Elon Musk and open to White Trash women from Appalachia who agree to be pumped full of fertility drugs and inseminated by Silicon Valley Tech CEOs to populate the planet and buy Teslas.

Meet the Weirdos Making Pronatalism Look Like Racist Insanity

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/meet-the-weirdos-making-pronatalism

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/31/pronatalists-are-conveniently-ignoring-earths-real-problems

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/the-truth-about-pronatalists-simone-and-malcolm-collins.html

RE

Exponential Population Growth is officially OVAH for the Industriaalized world.

(https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/birthrates_Site-1.jpg)

RE

Lot's of charts here from the OECD as the Illuminati sociologists fret over collapsing birthrates.  :-\  :-\

https://www.oecd.org/publication/society-at-a-glance/2024/

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/918d8db3-en/1/1/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/918d8db3-en&_csp_=61beec0ed49f645ee9b09417e102cf6f&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book

RE

Quote from: RE on Jun 21, 2024, 12:49 AMLot's of charts here from the OECD as the Illuminati sociologists fret over collapsing birthrates.  :-\  :-\

https://www.oecd.org/publication/society-at-a-glance/2024/

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/918d8db3-en/1/1/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/918d8db3-en&_csp_=61beec0ed49f645ee9b09417e102cf6f&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book

RE

Yeah. - Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.  Simulate progress and world trade.

Grow baby grow.


Grow grow, fuck human and quality of life.  Fuck a civilization that could choose to last a million years.  A civilization that will only last fifty more is so much more...........profitable.

Perhaps a proper use or AI is to identify people who deny overpopulation and advocate for larger families. 
Identify them so they can be dealt with at an appropriate time.

Perhaps more seriously these deniers can be broken down by age sex, and such so we can see what demographic wants us dead.  Because that is what it amounts to.  I'll posit that nobody who wants more meat packages on the earth has ever seen moths around a streetlight so thick the light is dimmed.

Pushing for more babies is insidious.  An entire mindset goes along with that belief, and if the right class traitor takes this notion seriously there is no hope for them.  Hubris has ruined them, and they can't hang with logos.

Uncle Karl clearly explains that profit prevents workers from ever buying all the products they produce in capitalism.  For that reason markets must always expand. (or the system must change).  The math of capitalism is the root cause of Imperialism, which is rebranded as World Trade in our age.  Capitalism is an unstable system, but one which benefits a small class with power.  Falling FASTER than the birth would be the size of people who are unemployed.  Capitalism requires a pool of unemployed.  That too is built into its math of operation.

If humans were to cut numbers so that there were two billion people on the earth allowing for a perpetual civilization, 67 000,000,000,000 people would have lived in a million years.

The precariat.  You are never too old to be one. 

What is the real reason for concern over national and birth decline concerns.  There is no one reason but a cluster of them.

I will be blunt.  Old people are the new 'N' word.  Old people won't get, can't get full time jobs.  And going part-time means your past is irrelevant.  Talent and education means you are toilet trained to get to work on time.  PHD or HS dropout, at 65 how much difference is there?  Can you say "will you be using our mobile app".  That is all that matters, because sucker you got no other options.  The old employee is the new slave.  The new cheap worker.

Employers want cheap workers who show up on time, have a good work ethic and vanish.  Emphasis of course on cheap.  Complaining about a birth rate decline suggests a 'worker crisis'.  Real or not.  Mix in some mumbo-jumbo about work being good for people and voila.  Grandpa should work till he drops.  Society needs him to do it.  And he's a nice guy.  He smiles and gets along.  He'll go fer it.

Any fix except change the stinkin system.  Reorganize thought once again to keep things the same.

Very good video.

This shit is starting to get on my nerves.  The fucking politicians and capitalists  screaming at people to "HAVE BABIES!!! While there aren't even enough fucking houses a family could afford to live in.  Let's have Homeless Babies!   ::)   If it wasn't so tragically pathetic and stupid it would be laughable.

The one bright spot is that no matter how hard they scream,  J6P just says no to babies!  ;D  Child care alone is $1000/mo EZ.  Add in your food, med & dental, the bigger house you need, figure $3000/kid/mo.  When they start handing out $40K/yr to be a professional parent, they might get some takers.  Maybe.

https://www.vox.com/policy/363543/pronatalism-vance-birth-rates-population-decline-fertility

The movement desperately trying to get people to have more babies

RE

A relatively ridiculous projection obviously using the current birth, death and immigration rates as remaining constant for the rest of the century, which almost certainly is not the case.  At some point in that timeline there will be a global food shortage, and the poorest countries which are food importers will take the biggest hit.  So don't bet on Pakistan and Nigeria continuing a steady population increase.

The FSoA also depends on immigration to keep the population increasing.  However, the places the people immigrate from won't produce so many useless eaters, and immigration restrictions will likely continue to tighten.

At best, I'd say this chart can give you an estimate of global population for the next 10-20 years.  After that it's worthlesss.

(https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Peak-Population-Point-for-7-Largest-Countries_Site.jpg)

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/peak-population-for-the-largest-countries-in-the-world/

RE                                                   

The decline of the Chinese population is quite striking with the projection showing a 800-900m drop between its 2021 1.4b peak and the 2100 population. Just makes you wonder what the population drop will look like if you add the doom factor to this. Many advanced economies have a growing elderly population many of which are dependent on modern medicine to keep alive. You would think, if things go south they would die in mass. Many countries are already struggling to keep their medical services afloat today just think what the situation would be like in a poorer energy constrained world 50 years from now.

The thing I do wonder about is that many places obesity is the most common form of malnutrition. A reduction in food supply, even a fairly large one may not lead to a significant number of deaths through starvation in a lot of places. The obvious exceptions would be the countries that are already experiencing food insecurity so vulnerable areas such as the Indian sub-continent, the middle east and sub Sahara Africa will suffer a lack of affordable food to feeds its populace. Ironically most of those regions are marked in this graph as having the largest population increases. 

Other things to consider is how the birth rates will change in the future. There has been a strong correlation between women's education levels and the number of babies she has. As people become less educated it stands to reason women could have more babies. This would be further exacerbated if infant mortality increases and modern contraception becomes less prevalent. Also with the way the right are pushing for more traditional family structures women maybe reduced to following their historic roles i.e. becoming housewives and bearing children.

I think what is also something worth considering is which demographic, young or old, rich or poor, men or women will gain the most once the dust of doom settles. The closest comparison I can think of is the Black Death and in that scenario the normal peasant benefited with increased living standards as the elites had less labour they could exploit. Now I am not sure how women's rights will feature in all this but my feeling is there will be a regression to the historic norm. As for the oldies, there will simply be less of them in the new world so there will be a shift in power were the younger (relatively speaking) will be the ones taking on the roles of powers. My guess is heads of states will be people (men) around their 40s.

Granted everything in the last paragraph is highly speculative and I openly admit I could be dead wrong. But sometimes it is fun to stick the neck out in front of the guillotine. Worst that could happen is you are wrong and look like a plonker.

Dunno if anyone remembers me, posted for a while last year. Wanted to comment on this:

Quote from: REAt some point in that timeline there will be a global food shortage, and the poorest countries which are food importers will take the biggest hit.

Those poorest countries are poor because they are exploited by the rich countries. That's kinda why the latter are rich in the first place. They can't feed themselves because they aren't allowed to. Tropical lands are inherently more productive than temperate (where the rich countries are) because they can produce all year instead of only in summer/autumn. They can also produce a lot of things we can not. We do produce more grain per hectare, but only because we subsidize our extremely inefficient agriculture at their expense. And that includes vastly higher fossil fuel inputs produced by - or domestic production thereof indirectly enabled by other things produced by - guess hoo.

It's not just food of course. Minerals, hydrocarbons, finished goods and the forcibly expropriated surplus labor needed to produce all of the above. Like, I know there's this notion that the third world people will "sadly" die off and "we" will wall ourselves off in our impenetrable climate fortress but uhhh nope. This is a global system undergoing a global crisis leading up to a global collapse. Doesn't mean everything will collapse simultaneously. Still... we shouldn't expect ourselves to be in a position where we watch and talk about those poor browns dying "over there" and then move on with our mostly intact lives. More likely is... by that stage there will be no "we" as pertains to the current geopolitical order and whatever "we" actually exists shall be powerless to use and abuse and fiddle with the lives of those folks over there as we do now. If they decide to come here and "we" want to stop them, good luck.


https://arxiujosepserradell.cat/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/A-Theory-of-Imperialism-Utsa-Patnaik-Prabhat-Patnaik-z-lib.org_.pdf

QuoteI know there's this notion that the third world people will "sadly" die off and "we" will wall ourselves off in our impenetrable climate fortress but uhhh nope.

Yes, privilege has spawned many an ugly delusion.  And thank you for the link.

Quote from: jupiviv on Feb 27, 2025, 07:16 AMDunno if anyone remembers me, posted for a while last year. Wanted to comment on this:

Quote from: REAt some point in that timeline there will be a global food shortage, and the poorest countries which are food importers will take the biggest hit.

Those poorest countries are poor because they are exploited by the rich countries. That's kinda why the latter are rich in the first place. They can't feed themselves because they aren't allowed to. Tropical lands are inherently more productive than temperate (where the rich countries are) because they can produce all year instead of only in summer/autumn. They can also produce a lot of things we can not. We do produce more grain per hectare, but only because we subsidize our extremely inefficient agriculture at their expense. And that includes vastly higher fossil fuel inputs produced by - or domestic production thereof indirectly enabled by other things produced by - guess hoo.

It's not just food of course. Minerals, hydrocarbons, finished goods and the forcibly expropriated surplus labor needed to produce all of the above. Like, I know there's this notion that the third world people will "sadly" die off and "we" will wall ourselves off in our impenetrable climate fortress but uhhh nope. This is a global system undergoing a global crisis leading up to a global collapse. Doesn't mean everything will collapse simultaneously. Still... we shouldn't expect ourselves to be in a position where we watch and talk about those poor browns dying "over there" and then move on with our mostly intact lives. More likely is... by that stage there will be no "we" as pertains to the current geopolitical order and whatever "we" actually exists shall be powerless to use and abuse and fiddle with the lives of those folks over there as we do now. If they decide to come here and "we" want to stop them, good luck.


https://arxiujosepserradell.cat/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/A-Theory-of-Imperialism-Utsa-Patnaik-Prabhat-Patnaik-z-lib.org_.pdf

I have no faith in anything as % of GDP. Any time a politician wants to double or triple spending, they express it as % of gdp and it sounds palatable.

Best analogy here would be weaponry and production of munitions. We were told in 2022 that Russia has a piddling GDP compared to the EU, so stood no chance in Ukraine. Yesterday I had an emergency. I went to the city and with mild indigestion, found the toilet at the gas station in the middle of getting painted. Filipino painter was going to allow me but I declined, not wanting to stink it out for him. The tax deductible budget hotel and workers hostel I used to stay at was around the corner and I know the carpark pass code to get in.

I saw 2 big coach busses parked outside and the dining room was full of skinny young Europeans speaking a foreign language.  They obviously replaced the pacific islanders that normally take all the shared room accommodation as absolute minimum wage farm labour. Thats how faith in GDP as a reliable prediction works in my opinion.

G.D.P rises and the declining rate of profit impovrishes at a proportional rate.  Those who benifit from current arrangements must stick it to the working class to maintain lifestyle.  At last profit begins to fall like middleclass wages have while profit rose.  People attatching identity to lifestyle is the root of much misery.  The leisure class will kill to maintain privlege, and their liesure begins to be threatened.

Quote from: K-Dog on Feb 27, 2025, 11:14 AM

QuoteI know there's this notion that the third world people will "sadly" die off and "we" will wall ourselves off in our impenetrable climate fortress but uhhh nope.

Yes, privilege has spawned many an ugly delusion.  And thank you for the link.

No problem. Those stats are from 2011 though so it'd be interesting to calculate imports/production for recent years. FAO data is public so all ya need is free time and a few brain cells.

For those interested I put in the relevant query for the US at faostat. It was actually very easy. The internet's not all bad! These are just the raw data for production and imports in successive rows. I would guess it elides stuff like re-exports but I think it drives the point home - maybe we should be thinking about who actually feeds us before waxing poetic about how we shall feed Africa/India/China. That's even more ridiculous if northern europeans say it considering they don't have a subtropical landmass.

FOASTAT (https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/FBS?countries=231&elements=2610,2510&items=2659,2617,2769,2775,2615,2513,2546,2656,2658,2657,2731,2740,2532,2766,2520,2614,2642,2633,2578,2560,2630,2559,2575,2743,2765,2619,2762,2744,2737,2781,2782,2761,2625,2613,2620,2572,2552,2745,2680,2612,2582,2514,2764,2768,2735,2848,2517,2899,2767,2732,2551,2516,2736,2586,2570,2580,2563,2602,2611,2577,2562,2576,2547,2763,2640,2733,2641,2618,2616,2531,2734,2549,2574,2558,2807,2581,2534,2515,2561,2579,2518,2571,2555,2645,2542,2537,2536,2541,2557,2573,2533,2543,2635,2601,2605,2511,2655,2535&years=2022&output_type=table&file_type=csv&submit=true)

You have to also consider the cause of the famine.  A corn or soy bean blight would hit the FSoA harder, than a rice blight China and India.

RE