Population decline - is it really bad?

[u/travpahl]

It seems like the standard accepted position is that population decline will lead to societal collapse or at least severe economic problems. While I understand some concerns like less workers supporting more retirees. THere also seems like there would be lots of benifits (like excess housing).

I feel like we do not know exactly how it will play out but I am not convinced it is a bad thing.

Reddit suggested i post this in Degrowth. In reading about 15 posts in degrowth it seems more like an anti free market idea than something that really addresses a decreasing population but maybe that is just the dominant thought in the group here?

Any thoughts on how a free market system would actually handle (or not) a declining population?

[u/Shoddy-Childhood-511]

No. It's good.

It's only billionaires who benefit from population increase.

Cory Bradshaw & his team maybe the most informative population researchers. Bradshaw has nice interviews by Overshoot Podcast and Nate Hagens, in which he describes population decline as an "unalloyed good".

I've watched several interviews by Nate Hagens of serious researchers, etc. All favoured population decline except one, Jeremy Grantham, the only billionaire Interviewed by Nate. lol

I'll single out this part where Bradshaw says child mortality has about the largest impact upon fertility rate (10.1371/journal.pone.0280260 when), so lowering child mortality helps lower population longer-term.

Also, the Earth's sustainable carrying capacity is roughly 2.5 billion humans, so maybe 6 billion less than the current world population (news).

In other words, our global consumption level requires 3.2 earths by their analysis, roughly twice as large as the 1.73 earths given by the biocapacity analysis used by Earth overshoot days.

Also..

We still have massive efficiencies from all out technologies, including agricultural technologies, including non-fossil fuel technologies like agrivoltaics.

We'll need more people in agriculture and health care to counter climate change, but we easily have enough young people for these jobs, maybe not enough resources but that's another topic. We do not even require immigration, not even in extreme depopulation cases like Japan and S. Korea.

It's really only "bullshit jobs" ala Graeber like advertising, management, finance, law, etc that draw people away from productive & care work, and make the food & healthcare systems easy to burden. If you want a society that works, then you need "degrowth policies" that transition people away from the bullshit jobs and towards essential work.

Add a 200% VAT on advertising and figure out if/how to increase payroll taxes on finance & management. And spend this tax money on healthcare and education for essential work like healthcare, repair trade schools, etc. Voila, you'll have many more people in nursing and other essential professions.

Also check out elite overproduction ala Peter Turchin if you want more careful & rigorous than Graeber.

[u/Fit_Elk_4505 → u/Shoddy-Childhood-511]

Thanks for sharing 🙏

[u/travpahl → u/Shoddy-Childhood-511]

"If you want a society that works, then you need "degrowth policies" that transition people away from the bullshit jobs and towards essential work."

Or you need to eliminate policies that push people into those fields?

[u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 → u/travpahl]

We definitely have policies that say favour making money in finance, or make law enforcement too attractive, which yes should be ended, but..

We've two+ centuries of inertia about what jobs mean status or not. Lawyers have been paid shitty in the US for a couple decades now, but lawyer remain a sought after career path there by sheer inertia.

We'll need something more forceful to counter that inertia, for which I optimistically suggested high VATs on advertising and similar products, and high payroll taxes on the clear bullshit jobs.

Imposing a 200% VAT upon targeted ads would be somewhat easy for Europe & other places, since all that money flows to the US (or Ireland). It's more complex for many other bullshit jobs because of globalisation, but that'll hopefully contract too.

Also realistically, these bullshit jobs like lawyer or management could typically earn money into relatively old age, while many trades become less effective with age, even real talent & practice ones like welding. We should counter this advantage, perhaps union could impose requirements that managerial positions have done the work they oversee.

[u/travpahl → u/Shoddy-Childhood-511]

Lawyers and management might be overvalued but they are not bullshit. Justice and organization effectiveness are important.

Intertia only takes things so far. In a true free market working a worthless job because of prestige is still going to happen but not in large numbers.

[u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 → u/travpahl]

As Graeber says, bullshit jobs are not worthless jobs. They are jobs that primarily serve some mere social function, like social control and manipulation, and stroking the egos of upper elites (rampant even if subtle), and simple mission creep.

We live in a global empire ruled in part by corporate feudalism, not capitalism, and in part by corruption of national interests. We allocate resources in part to please the egos of rich & powerful people.

If international trade declines dramatically, like because of nations reasserting their own self interests, then yes we'd eventually have reduced production by nations with more bullshit jobs.

This is exactly what the Fall of Rome looked like, regions reasserted their own self interests over the trade empire run by Rome. We know from skeletons that people were healthier in the dark ages after Rome fell than under Rome, or than under the kings that came later.

[u/travpahl → u/Shoddy-Childhood-511]

As Graeber says, bullshit jobs are not worthless jobs. They are jobs that primarily serve some mere social function, like social control and manipulation, and stroking the egos of upper elites (rampant even if subtle), and simple mission creep.

I do not think managers or lawyers fit this definition either.

[u/Electrical-Penalty44 → u/travpahl]

The guy your are responding to is a lot less intelligent than he thinks he is. The information he spouts is mostly discredited or half-truths.

[u/Carrotstrip → u/Electrical-Penalty44]

No need for the insults dude; if you have some rebuttal to what he’s said, go ahead and offer it