In the abstract there are a lot of possibilities for "population decline", and in some of those scenarios there are potential upsides like capital accumulation per capita and relieving scarcity, congestion, pollution, etc.
But if we focus on the specifics of the actual kind of population decline we are observing to occur across the entire developed world, and even most of the developing world, there are legitimate sources of worry.
My impression is that the whole debate is warped by a background consideration that, IIRC, Yglesias made explicit at least once. That is, "Well, what are you gonna do about it?" The implication being that since the politically acceptable tactics like baby subsidies don't seem to do much, all the other government interventions that stand any chance of working are basically "Handmaid's Tale" unthinkably dystopian and so beyond the pale that it makes these complaints like "unactioinable intelligence". And the brain adapts to problems it can't solve by SlatePitching itself into redefining "legitimate problem" to move this issue from the legitimate-problem class to the illegitimate-complaint category, which justifies ostracizing anyone who complains about it. Accepting it as a problem and taking it seriously would mean measures too radical to contemplate.
As for worrying scenarios, for one thing - and as Scott discussed when mentioning Hive Mine - if you believe in smart fraction theory - that the number of people in their prime productive years and above some cognitive threshold both in absolute terms (innovation) and relative terms (leadership roles) has an outsized influence on a population's welfare and prospects - then one needs to pay close attention to any multiplier effects that happen at the right tail of the distribution when that distribution changes.
The issue is that if smart fraction is true, then when they are combined, even relatively small and slow changes in (1) fertility rates, (2) disparities and skews in who has the kids, and (3) in many countries the brain drain effect, can still make things go really bad fast. Scott says "0.3 IQ points per decade" which is just 2% of the SD and way too low an estimate in my judgment. But even a 20% drop in the SD (100 to 97) reduces the number of +3SD people by 6.7%.
If you add in declining births, the net flow of population through "prime productive years" is negative, and makes this decline worse. In South Korea, there are about 12 million people between 35 and 50. In 35 years, that will be cut in half to 6 million. With a little high human capital emigration, by 2060 their smart fraction could be down 2/3rds, and if Hive Mind is right, that's huge and justifiably worrisome. That is, if you don't define away the problem.
Another source of worry is that many people have really bad models and theories for why birth rates are declining so much and so fast in so many places despite all the other big differences in policies, resources, culture, etc. Even if you find the current situation acceptable you can still have a point at which, if current trends continue, the situation would become unacceptable.
If you don't know why the trend went the way it did, you don't have any good reason to believe "here but no further" and why it won't continue to keep deteriorating, then focusing analysis on the derivative is an error when all the action's in the second derivative and what's driving it, indeed, what's been driving it for a long, long time. And something like that doesn't just stop on its own unless we get serious about stopping it.
Something that can't go on forever won't, but the question then becomes, "When it goes, how much else will it take down with it?" The bathwater can't keep draining from the tub forever, but it can take the baby with it down the drain.
‘ As they [birth rates] fall, you have fewer young people and more older people who need support.’
Birth rates fall the richer a society becomes, and they have been falling in Western Countries for a century - even falling in developing Countries - as children are no longer required as cheap labour to contribute to the family economy and ease the burden on parents.
Better health means people can stay in employment longer to support themselves, but more important increased wealth means they can accrue wealth to pay for themselves in old age, unlike in previous times.
Or not.
This comes unstuck when ‘Cradle to Grave’ welfare statism relieves people of the responsibility and necessity to make provision for their retirement. This shifts the cost burden from retirees to those still working, because social security is a Ponzi scheme.
The situation is exacerbated by there being an increasing number of people who receive a wage to do jobs which have no productive output and create no wealth. The public sector is growing, funded out of taxation from a diminishing number of workers in the private sector producing wealth. As well the public sector, various other wealth consumers in non-jobs such as activist groups, community support, charities, gender/climate/equality compliance.
No wonder trillions in valueless money have to be created to plug the gap between the wealth being generated and the wealth being destroyed in a downward spiral of economic ruin to get votes.
Yes, "any state, network or physical, requires some strong tribal psychology to maintain it," and even stronger tribal psychology to establish it initially: once established, it can continue a long time by inertia, even with weakened passion. This is consequential for me: like most people of WEIRD culture, I doubt that I will ever be able to muster sufficient tribal passion to contribute to the founding of a new state. (Maybe this is just deficient self-awareness, but I don't think so.) Thus, I am destined to remain a citizen of the United States *and of no other nation-state-like organization*; I would not join Balajistan or any of its rivals, even if they ever got going (which, of course, is very unlikely).
"By 2050 or 2100, crazy new technology will make everything you're worried about meaningless" kind of feels like your and Scott's take. I won't be completely dismissive, we should think about the far future in discounted terms for this and other reasons. And if the intervention to solve the problem is reckless, then such discounting is entirely proper. However, I mostly just see people making some common sense proposals on family subsidies or education policy or immigration combined with an attempt to shift cultural norms by persuasion. In my view, the status quo and its trend are more reckless than anything people voicing concern about this are talking about.
It would take a pretty high discount rate to make me care more about The Current Thing than scary looking demographic trends with big potential impacts. The very reason that people care more about long term trends than short term concerns is because of the potential to actually matter in the long run.
I'm not 100% sure that we will cure aging or invent genetically engineered super babies with no side effects by whatever date means we don't have to think about this stuff. Further, society getting older and dumber in the meantime certainly lowers the probability and extends the timing of such innovations. "Let's do suicidal thing X and hope it doesn't matter" just isn't my cup of tea.
Lastly, many more immediate concerns I have are not helped in any way by people getting older, dumber, and more alone. Even if your hobby horse is whatever happens in the short term, would people having fewer kids or more low IQ immigration help whatever it is you're concerned with? Are the people you are usually aligned with on most current issues generally pro or anti fertility?
As to labor saving devices, it's irrelevant. Medical care is rising faster than GDP and its labor intensive by design (and intensive of some of our most skilled labor). People like their medical sector inefficient and wasteful. When people talk about the fiscal cliff, its always medical cost trend combined with increased utilization due to aging. Until I'm convinced there is a political formula that will halt this trend, I assume that the medical sector will just continue to eat more and more of our labor and economy, crowding out everything else. I don't think an aging society has it in itself to reform this.
Does Emily note that many studies show that employees who take more work breaks more often get cancer?*
--
Martinez: "the seculars have reinvented a religious concept to cope with the very barrenness that secularism bequeathed us."
Liberalism has become irresponsible individualist libertine hedonism, which privatizes the hedonist pleasures (sex, drugs, rock'n roll, video games, social media outrage mobs), while socializing the costs. Perhaps because of the loss of Christianity and Patriotism - "why am I here? What is the purpose of my life?"
Imagine - nothing to kill or die for,
nor finding meaning in anything, neither real nor virtual.
Well, status might be something that many would kill or die for -- but God & Country & Family have far better historical records for recruiting fighters.
(Mercenaries,
get paid a meagre wage,
which is just about enough to make 'em wanna kill for ya,
but not enough to make 'em wanna die for ya.)
When the World of Em stats being more instantiated, we'll see more real network state. Until then, we'll see more citizens of country X living in country Y, and working on-line. With geo-citizenship.
Mexicans are grumbling about laptop elites moving in and gentrifying part of Mexico City. They will be finding out they still live In Real Life, some, not just browser URLs.
In the abstract there are a lot of possibilities for "population decline", and in some of those scenarios there are potential upsides like capital accumulation per capita and relieving scarcity, congestion, pollution, etc.
But if we focus on the specifics of the actual kind of population decline we are observing to occur across the entire developed world, and even most of the developing world, there are legitimate sources of worry.
My impression is that the whole debate is warped by a background consideration that, IIRC, Yglesias made explicit at least once. That is, "Well, what are you gonna do about it?" The implication being that since the politically acceptable tactics like baby subsidies don't seem to do much, all the other government interventions that stand any chance of working are basically "Handmaid's Tale" unthinkably dystopian and so beyond the pale that it makes these complaints like "unactioinable intelligence". And the brain adapts to problems it can't solve by SlatePitching itself into redefining "legitimate problem" to move this issue from the legitimate-problem class to the illegitimate-complaint category, which justifies ostracizing anyone who complains about it. Accepting it as a problem and taking it seriously would mean measures too radical to contemplate.
As for worrying scenarios, for one thing - and as Scott discussed when mentioning Hive Mine - if you believe in smart fraction theory - that the number of people in their prime productive years and above some cognitive threshold both in absolute terms (innovation) and relative terms (leadership roles) has an outsized influence on a population's welfare and prospects - then one needs to pay close attention to any multiplier effects that happen at the right tail of the distribution when that distribution changes.
The issue is that if smart fraction is true, then when they are combined, even relatively small and slow changes in (1) fertility rates, (2) disparities and skews in who has the kids, and (3) in many countries the brain drain effect, can still make things go really bad fast. Scott says "0.3 IQ points per decade" which is just 2% of the SD and way too low an estimate in my judgment. But even a 20% drop in the SD (100 to 97) reduces the number of +3SD people by 6.7%.
If you add in declining births, the net flow of population through "prime productive years" is negative, and makes this decline worse. In South Korea, there are about 12 million people between 35 and 50. In 35 years, that will be cut in half to 6 million. With a little high human capital emigration, by 2060 their smart fraction could be down 2/3rds, and if Hive Mind is right, that's huge and justifiably worrisome. That is, if you don't define away the problem.
Another source of worry is that many people have really bad models and theories for why birth rates are declining so much and so fast in so many places despite all the other big differences in policies, resources, culture, etc. Even if you find the current situation acceptable you can still have a point at which, if current trends continue, the situation would become unacceptable.
If you don't know why the trend went the way it did, you don't have any good reason to believe "here but no further" and why it won't continue to keep deteriorating, then focusing analysis on the derivative is an error when all the action's in the second derivative and what's driving it, indeed, what's been driving it for a long, long time. And something like that doesn't just stop on its own unless we get serious about stopping it.
Something that can't go on forever won't, but the question then becomes, "When it goes, how much else will it take down with it?" The bathwater can't keep draining from the tub forever, but it can take the baby with it down the drain.
Being alive is awesome, not just cause it affects society. I think that more people is probably good and declining birth rates is bad.
‘ As they [birth rates] fall, you have fewer young people and more older people who need support.’
Birth rates fall the richer a society becomes, and they have been falling in Western Countries for a century - even falling in developing Countries - as children are no longer required as cheap labour to contribute to the family economy and ease the burden on parents.
Better health means people can stay in employment longer to support themselves, but more important increased wealth means they can accrue wealth to pay for themselves in old age, unlike in previous times.
Or not.
This comes unstuck when ‘Cradle to Grave’ welfare statism relieves people of the responsibility and necessity to make provision for their retirement. This shifts the cost burden from retirees to those still working, because social security is a Ponzi scheme.
The situation is exacerbated by there being an increasing number of people who receive a wage to do jobs which have no productive output and create no wealth. The public sector is growing, funded out of taxation from a diminishing number of workers in the private sector producing wealth. As well the public sector, various other wealth consumers in non-jobs such as activist groups, community support, charities, gender/climate/equality compliance.
No wonder trillions in valueless money have to be created to plug the gap between the wealth being generated and the wealth being destroyed in a downward spiral of economic ruin to get votes.
Yes, "any state, network or physical, requires some strong tribal psychology to maintain it," and even stronger tribal psychology to establish it initially: once established, it can continue a long time by inertia, even with weakened passion. This is consequential for me: like most people of WEIRD culture, I doubt that I will ever be able to muster sufficient tribal passion to contribute to the founding of a new state. (Maybe this is just deficient self-awareness, but I don't think so.) Thus, I am destined to remain a citizen of the United States *and of no other nation-state-like organization*; I would not join Balajistan or any of its rivals, even if they ever got going (which, of course, is very unlikely).
"By 2050 or 2100, crazy new technology will make everything you're worried about meaningless" kind of feels like your and Scott's take. I won't be completely dismissive, we should think about the far future in discounted terms for this and other reasons. And if the intervention to solve the problem is reckless, then such discounting is entirely proper. However, I mostly just see people making some common sense proposals on family subsidies or education policy or immigration combined with an attempt to shift cultural norms by persuasion. In my view, the status quo and its trend are more reckless than anything people voicing concern about this are talking about.
It would take a pretty high discount rate to make me care more about The Current Thing than scary looking demographic trends with big potential impacts. The very reason that people care more about long term trends than short term concerns is because of the potential to actually matter in the long run.
I'm not 100% sure that we will cure aging or invent genetically engineered super babies with no side effects by whatever date means we don't have to think about this stuff. Further, society getting older and dumber in the meantime certainly lowers the probability and extends the timing of such innovations. "Let's do suicidal thing X and hope it doesn't matter" just isn't my cup of tea.
Lastly, many more immediate concerns I have are not helped in any way by people getting older, dumber, and more alone. Even if your hobby horse is whatever happens in the short term, would people having fewer kids or more low IQ immigration help whatever it is you're concerned with? Are the people you are usually aligned with on most current issues generally pro or anti fertility?
As to labor saving devices, it's irrelevant. Medical care is rising faster than GDP and its labor intensive by design (and intensive of some of our most skilled labor). People like their medical sector inefficient and wasteful. When people talk about the fiscal cliff, its always medical cost trend combined with increased utilization due to aging. Until I'm convinced there is a political formula that will halt this trend, I assume that the medical sector will just continue to eat more and more of our labor and economy, crowding out everything else. I don't think an aging society has it in itself to reform this.
Does Emily note that many studies show that employees who take more work breaks more often get cancer?*
--
Martinez: "the seculars have reinvented a religious concept to cope with the very barrenness that secularism bequeathed us."
Liberalism has become irresponsible individualist libertine hedonism, which privatizes the hedonist pleasures (sex, drugs, rock'n roll, video games, social media outrage mobs), while socializing the costs. Perhaps because of the loss of Christianity and Patriotism - "why am I here? What is the purpose of my life?"
Imagine - nothing to kill or die for,
nor finding meaning in anything, neither real nor virtual.
Well, status might be something that many would kill or die for -- but God & Country & Family have far better historical records for recruiting fighters.
(Mercenaries,
get paid a meagre wage,
which is just about enough to make 'em wanna kill for ya,
but not enough to make 'em wanna die for ya.)
When the World of Em stats being more instantiated, we'll see more real network state. Until then, we'll see more citizens of country X living in country Y, and working on-line. With geo-citizenship.
Mexicans are grumbling about laptop elites moving in and gentrifying part of Mexico City. They will be finding out they still live In Real Life, some, not just browser URLs.
--
*especially lung cancer