For those unwilling to watch, it basically says that a demographic shift is taking place in all countries and that overpopulation is merely a passing side effect of it. It goes like this:
1. Society has high birth rates but lacks technology to keep children alive, meaning it's cancelled out by high death rates. 2. Technology is introduced, high birth rates stick around for cultural reasons for a while, population grows massively. 3. Large families become too expensive and new ideas like contraception and women's liberation make pregnancy less popular. Birth rates decline. 4. Current state of the west, either growth equilibrium or slight negative growth.
According to the video, all countries will go through these steps and the human population will peak somewhere between 11 and 12 billion, shrinking afterwards.
Kurzgesagt have been optimistic, idealistic or plain wrong on multiple issues before and this claim seems fishy. Capitalism is intentionally keeping certain countries unstable to be better able to exploit their population and resources. The video sounds like scientism to me, a constant progress of civilization through technological advancements, which is not what the world is really like. I'd like to ask you, do any of you know enough about population growth and overpopulation to support, refute or elaborate on the statements made in the video? I think knowing if we need population control or if it's going to take care of itself is important. Pic unrelated
A feel good liberal channel that doesn't really say anything. Next question.
Thomas Long
The dynamic popularly known as "economic growth" is the sum of productivity gains and population gains. When productivity gains don't come true, porky policy needs to compel working-class reproduction in order to make the numbers and keep the credits coming and the game going. A reproductive strike would be very powerful, even well short of volcel. Rubbing gooey bits together on someone else's dime is literally break-even at best.
Camden Gonzalez
Can you at least read my post before being such a cunt?
Thomas Campbell
Reproductive strikes don't seem like a likely possibility. First of, they take too long. You need to wait decades for the effects to be noticeable, people want to see an effect when they do something. Then there is the issue that you can unintentionally break this strike, something that doesn't happen in factories. Not all children are planned. Lastly, this actually goes against human nature. When the hormones kick in, they should overwrite ideology in a significant number of cases. Many women and men wish for children and few will give up this wish for the possibility of an improved economic situation later on.
Liam Mitchell
People see an effect as soon as they commit to that cause. Reproductive strikes change a person's or couple's entire economic and social outlook. Plus, it's cheaper to not breed than to breed. Not all pregnancies are immutable destiny, either. Various forms of abortion have been known for millennia. Scabs are real possibilities but societies can discipline themselves once liberals have been put to the wall. Human nature = the perverse impulses that you feel the need to have others approve. Back to /r/socialism with you.
Jeremiah Morris
The video is mostly accurate. Neo-Malthusians are a cancer on humanity.
still, feeding people out of altruism without giving them the tools to escape poverty is dumb and destructive. Industrialize Africa NOW.
Jaxon Adams
Are you MGTOW or /r9k/. Because that last part sounded a lot like them.
Sexuality isn't a "perverse impulse", you frame it like it's something disgusting and evil. That is your abrahamic cultural background speaking. It's supposed to trap you in a cycle of guilt but when you remove the institution of the church, it seems to malfunction and lead to stupid opinions. Also fuck you for thinking that abortion isn't something that leaves people with psychological scars, that shit isn't something you do easily.
Ethan Ortiz
What are Neo-Malthusians?
Brandon Parker
Overpopulation is a major problem imo. More people and less resources can't go on forever, and it also means that changing politics on a global scale get harder. Condoms are a good start but we also have to get rid of the social pressure to breed. Can you imagine if there was only 7 million people instead of 7 billions? We would already live in FALC without any need for revolution. What caused people to have so many children? Is it because of religious memes?
Connor Robinson
Even if the population does stablise at 12 billion or whatever, that's still way too fucking many.
Angel Gonzalez
All countries, yeah that isn't going to happen.
Jackson Diaz
Listen to that damn tankie. Overpopulation is not an issue. Destribution ie. politics is the problem.
Joshua Ward
Like anything it makes sense on paper
Leo Bell
I don't think we are able to make future predictions based on current trends like that. If we need population control like china has/had, so be it. The welfare of the collective is more important than individual liberties, so keeping our population under control is important.
Currently there is a negative growth in the west, but we are not able to say if this will continue once we introduce socialism, as it will alleviate much of the negative stimuli for this phenomenon, such as lack of time, lack of money, income instability (flex working), depression and other forms of mental illnesses and burdens caused by the continuous modification of people, their self worth and their labour.
IMO, it would be more pragmatic to have a slight natural growth and control for that, rather than having an ever shrinking population, but this issue is not a primary goal socialism should focus on, it is a fact of life it needs to handle, just like the need for food, roads and healthcare. Pro or anti natalism is not inherently part of socialism.
However, let me just say that we should not fall into one of the two dominant camps that exist today, the first being and the second being
As with anything, a pragmatic, realistic standpoint must be taken, and not explain everything away with either "We can't fix it better give up" or "Techno-Jesus will save us". These two viewpoints are both status quo as fuck and anti socialist. The first accepts the world as it is, unchangeable, the end of history, and the other sees the current state of the world functioning perfectly. Both refuse to actually do something about the problem.
Just my two cents.
Jackson Adams
Just some thoughts from my side.
I think slight positive growth is necessary if you just want to maintain your current population. It skews the view when people talk about the average number of children per couple, there are singes, some children are born infertile and others die before adulthood due to various causes. If you had 2.0 children per family, your population would still be shrinking, overproduction is somewhat necessary here.
On the topic of anti natalism, I don't think having it as a dominant view would be a good idea. The philosophy bases itself on the thought that giving birth is a terrible crime and that life is terrible suffering. Since we want to make the world into a nice place, we should take a more positive perspective. We also need to consider the long run. Socialism isn't worth much if it leads to the extinction of humanity in a few generations because nobody is breeding anymore. Shrinking the species without doing crazy exterminism shit but through a lower reproduction rate is beneficial for some time but it can't be kept up indefinitely.
I'm wondering about something though. How would you maintain something like a two child policy. It would be unpopular, so direct democracy would get rid of it fast, leading to ruin further down the road. But having an authoritarian government that acts paternalist instead of like the people want it to is pretty un-socialist and a pretty big risk factor, since it could be taken over by malicious people.
Luis Garcia
Who wants to do that? Revolutionnaires can't afford children, which are a blackmail device the state is all too willing to use. Get your head back in the present year, dipshit liberal who thinks people have to make decisions about eternity right now.
Logan Martinez
Did a school project on this once. The sources I looked at said pretty much the same thing as the video. The trend of slowing growth has been consistent with every country so far. Agricultural nation sees a rise in quality of life, population booms, growth slows as country industrialises and family structure changes, growth stagnates as society becomes post-industrial and family dissolves. There's a pretty good reason for this: In an agricultural society, big families are good because it means more people to work in the fields, not to mention the absence of birth control. But in a post-industrial society, big families are bad, because they cost a lot of money and get in the way of careers, and the proliferation of birth control means that people only have children if they want to. Furthermore people are often unwilling to have children while studying, which means children are born at a later age (and generation time has a huge effect on population growth). Finally, more and more people don't ever have children (voluntarily or involuntarily), and I doubt the incel population is gonna decrease. I doubt the studies are wrong about this, and 12 billion is not an unreasonable number, provided our arable land is used efficiently and sustainably (just the land around the Nile would be enough to feed billions, if modern agricultural technology was used). This is all assuming that climate change doesn't fuck us over, but then population growth will be the least of our worries. Maybe focus on that rather than start talking about population control (because that will totally endear people to socialism). As for what effect socialism would have, I have no idea, but I doubt it would make growth increase, and by that time we've either gone extinct or solved the problem. TLDR: Stop worrying about this shit. You can't do anything about it, anyway.
Thomas Baker
You can't be overpopulated if you still got rich people to eat
James Richardson
see:
Jayden Hall
When people talk about population growth they generally mean replacement fertility which takes into account factors such as infertile children, death, disease, the gays and choosing to not have kids. Thinks like one or two child policies were introduced in china to stop its massive boom for a bit. You could just as easily have a 3 or 4 child policy, depending on the demographic trend in society, and the replacement fertility.
If we as a species are unable to control ourselves like that, then perhaps we deserve it. I believe that we have the capacity to think collectively beyond the short term and into the long term, especially if you have better education.
Ryder Watson
Are you suggesting we should cannibalize the porkies?
Isaac Ramirez
That's far too many, this will kill us all.
Oliver Brown
The entire continent of africa is an empty wasteland that is just waiting for us to use their abundant solar power to irrigate it and make it habitable.
Carson Gray
Good luck doing that on a continent that will become uninhabitable due to skyrocketing temperatures, and is for the time being still filled with people who lack the technical know-how to implement what you proposed.
What will happen in stead is that a billion people will want to leave that hellhole, causing disruption and civil war in the places they will migrate to.
Austin Reyes
Not that guy, but I'm pretty sure having children is a pretty small part in sexuality. By the by, I don't know whether the overpopulation thing is an exaggeration or not, but I've been thinking about having kids for a good decade and I've never come across a single reason to do it. On the other hand, I did find a lot of reason NOT to, either ethical or practical.
Cameron Gutierrez
If it was only the scarcity of resources we had to worry about, we wouldn't even be in such a predicament. The problem is that we actively taint perfectly good resources all the time.
Jaxon White
Ok, but the positive perspective is precisely the problem. Outside of the realm of accidental pregnancies, nobody has a child without expecting things to be all right. But at the same time, nobody has control over the factors that will determine happiness for the child AND for the family itself. Even in the best case scenario (e.g. financial stability, parents are not crazy and/or won't abuse the child, nothing bad ever happens in the socioeconomic environment the child is born in etc.) there's still plenty that can go wrong. What if the child develops severe chronic depression? It's just a wager, and the most unjust of all, since you're wagering on somebody else.
Fertility rates have indeed been falling, even in the 3rd world, which are already below replacement in most countries.
That said, the UN projections assuming global population decline after 8-12 billion people by 2050-2100 assume no moronic intervention to "fix" declining fertility. I'm sure you've heard spiels from 1st-world economists about how we're facing an insurmountable pension crisis, celibate NEETs, snooty workers who "won't do dirty jobs", and other similarly exaggerated lies.
Theoretically, if massive immigration occurred, it could simultaneously prop up fertility rates in the 1st world, and weaken population pressure in the 3rd world, creating a vicious cycle that would greatly slow or even reverse the natural process of population homeostasis.
It appears that the political tide is finally turning against neoliberalism, so hopefully that won't be a problem. Barring that, the other possibility is a rise of backward nationalist natalist ideologies, but those have an extremely poor track-record in terms of effectiveness, so I wouldn't worry about that.
