[RE]

From the Capitalism thread:

The 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.



RE

[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.

[RE]

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

[K-Dog]

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

According 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.

Humans 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.

[RE]

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

[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.


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.


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.


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.

[K-Dog]

I published this on Excellent Adventures.  Where Dogchat is.

[RE]

I published this on Excellent Adventures.  Where Dogchat is.

Cool.  Thx K-Dog

RE

[RE]

The 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

[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

[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'

[RE]

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

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[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.  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. 

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

America's Teenage Population is Shrinking

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[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

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[K-Dog]

The 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.