OwlFancier posted:

As it exists it necessitates growth, that can take the form of more exploitation of land, labour, or resources, but if you take away growth then it has to fundamentally change how it operates.

distortion park posted:

I never said the only options are 0 and infinite. Why does capitalism require populations to go up? At what point will populations going down and there still being capitalism count as evidence against this theory?

VictualSquid posted:

Capitalism requires infinite economic growth, it is included in all philosophical definitions and fundamental to all economic analysis.

Wikipedia posted:

Current neoclassical, Keynesian and endogenous growth theories do not consider a growth imperative[3] or explicitly deny it, such as Robert Solow.[4] In neoclassical economics, adherence to economic growth would be a question of maximizing utility, an intertemporal decision between current and future consumption (see Keynes–Ramsey rule).[5] Other sociological and political theories consider several possible causes for pursuing economic growth, for example maximizing profit, social comparison, culture (conformity), or political ideologies, but they do not regard them to be compulsive. Possible growth imperatives are discussed in Marxist theory, Schumpeterian theory of creative destruction and ecological economics, as well as in political debates on post-growth and degrowth. It is disputed whether growth imperative is a meaningful concept altogether, who would be affected by it, and which mechanism would be responsible.[1]

Count Roland posted:

This doesn't seem so much like a capitalism thing as a human thing.

distortion park posted:

alnilam posted:

Capitalism does not require growth. If the population were perfectly stable, people would still be producing and exchanging stuff and the capital owners would still be extracting profit from their labor.

OwlFancier posted:

All life expands to fill space where it can survive, but capitalism as a social structure will actively and intelligently resist any attempt to do otherwise, which is why climate change keeps happening and why every aspect of our lives is becoming commodified and marketized regardless of whether that actually makes anything better, it must find more space to grow to maintain its power structure.

Blut posted:

My understanding of Great Replacement craziness is its a belief that theres some grand global government/UN/WEF/whatever conspiracy to replace native populations, which is not what I suggested at all.

The poster I was responding to was suggesting that the best/easiest way to counterbalance rapidly declining birth dates was to simply import hundreds of millions of people from the developing world. Which my point was would be a hell of a lot more problematic, and worse for the quality of the current residents, than bringing in measures to increase birth rates. And as His Divine Shadow pointed out also screws over the developing world, and is likely only going to be an option for the next two/three decades.

Having birth rates at replacement level should be a pretty core goal of any society if it wants to have a long term future. If thats not happening then questions need to be asked about why. Currently the best guesses are too much work, and too much economic uncertainty (no easy access to housing, the costs of raising children etc) for young people. Efforts could and should be being made to remedy both of these - particularly as they're general quality of life improvers too.

Count Roland posted:

Sure, but what I wonder is what other systems are better able to cope with this? The ideas may not be cooked into different systems the same way it is with capitalism, but economic decline generally means less to go around. This would cause problems in any system I can think of, as people come to feel entitled to what they've grown up with or what their parents had.

VictualSquid posted:

I would not consider a system that doesn't maximise profits to be recognisable as capitalism as we know it.
Switching to such a system is functionally identical to abolishing capitalism.

VictualSquid posted:

Anyways, capitalism as we know it needs the economy and population to be infinitely expanding. If those ever stop for a significant amount of time then capitalism will not survive in a form we will recognize. I mean the whole economy which includes most of the world these days, and over several decades.

If the only options are 0 population and infinite population then only 0 people will fit on our finite planet. Sorry, by your logic humanity is intrinsically doomed.
I personally believe that an actual approximately stable world population is possible, though not under a capitalist system.

VictualSquid posted:

No, they are a sign that resources are not abundant. Even if that is caused by capitalist mismanagement.

And infinitely increasing populations are only needed for capitalism to exist. They are not needed for societies to exist.
I suppose you are saying that capitalism and infinite growth is an in intrinsic part of our culture and preserving existing culture is so important that any changes are evil. I do not think that culture is worth preserving in such a way.

DTurtle posted:

Society changes so much in 50 or 100 years that that kind of long-term thinking for this kind of stuff is completely irrelevant. Pensions in a society not at replacement levels of births can be funded by things like immigration, increased labor participation rates, GDP growth, more full-time instead of part-time work, etc.

This is something completely separate from needing replacement level birth rates. Having children - and how many - should be up to individual choice and completely separate from what society wants or needs.

The US has been below replacement rate for a generation or two and the population has grown by roughly 70% in that time. Births at or above replacement level are not required.

Please tell me the drastic economic changes that happened in the US between 1960 and 1975 that lead the birth rate to decline from almost 4 to almost 1.5? Please tell me how the society of 1975 was hyper-capitalist in a way that the society of 1960 wasn’t.

And now do this for every western country, as they all saw that decline at the same time.

Finally, even though the birth rate was higher throughout history, the death rate (especially infant mortality) was much, much, much higher. The humongous population growth of the last 150 or so years is the historical outlier:

Eiba posted:

It's the word "import" that to me suggests you think someone is doing it. The poster you were responding to never said "import". They mentioned that people from other countries are trying to work in Germany and are currently being denied. Relaxing immigration restrictions is not "importing" people, and it felt pretty Great-Replacement-adjacent to suggest that's what was going on.

I recognize that your primary point is about population self-sufficiency, and that's fine. The way you've been phrasing the alternative is kind of messed up though. People are going to naturally want to move somewhere they think they can build a better life. That's the default. Preventing that is something that requires specific policies and concerted effort.

EasilyConfused posted:

lol, that's the fastest goalpost moving I've seen in awhile.

I forget this thread is in D&D sometimes and then we get a dumb derail like this (not that other subforums don't have dumb derails, politics forums just have their own unique version).

SlothfulCobra posted:

I'm not sure what Chicagostonia represents, but I do like how the Yoop has been ceded to Texas.

DTurtle posted:

Finally, even though the birth rate was higher throughout history, the death rate (especially infant mortality) was much, much, much higher. The humongous population growth of the last 150 or so years is the historical outlier:

Blut posted:

I'm not saying anything of that sort, I have zero idea how you could get that from my posts. I've said that reaching a birth rate of replacement level is a requirement for a long term sustainable society, and parenthood is what most human beings want, but most modern first world countries are failing disastrously at it currently. And that measures should be taken to remedy this.

Frionnel posted:

It's not exactly birth rate, it's growth rate (births - deaths).

Platystemon posted:

It would be extremely concerning if this number dropped below seven.

Why, if it keeps going, it will hit zero.

Blut posted:

One of the major problems with our society today, thats directly impacting the low birth rates, is people are working too much. And your solution is more work. Thats not going to go great.

The problem is having children isn't up to individual choice currently. Overwork, and financial insecurity, are causing many people to have fewer children than they want to.

Blut posted:

The US birth rate has been barely below replacement for a handful of years in total in its history. Its not an example that compares to places like South Korea, as I said in my last post. As for what happened between 1960 and 1975, there were plenty of factors you can research yourself, but heres the major one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_oral_contraceptive_pill

drk posted:

What caused the inflection point in birth rate in the 1920s here?

Off the top of my head, I can think of mechanization of farming and electrification occurring around this time, but on the graph, there is a sharp turn up in what appears to be a single year.

Or is that a post great war baby boom that lasted half a century?

Torrannor posted:

Fewer people means fewer scientists to discover cool new stuff, and fewer artists creating epic stories, catchy music or moving images.

distortion park posted:

distortion park posted:

3D Megadoodoo posted:

Last time I checked, Wikipedia counted president Martti Ahtisaari (Finnish, born in the Republic of Finland, served as its president) as a Russian Nobel laureate. I can't be arsed to figure out if this counts him as Finnish or Russian.

Platystemon posted:

Well it’s missing one, so the options are:

Martti Ahtisaari doesn’t count, because Russia stole his home town.

Ragnar Granit does’t count, because Sweden claims him.

Bengt Holmström doesn’t count, because the economics prize is fake or because he had lived in America for thirty-seven years at the time of his award.

3D Megadoodoo posted:

I checked and it's Holmström because he hadn't won yet in August 2016.

distortion park posted:

OwlFancier posted:

It sort of is, although technically so are the channel islands.

Gully Foyle posted:

Parenthood doesn't mean replacement rate though - you probably need the average child-bearing couple to have 3 kids for pure birth-rate replacement level (given people who can't or don't want to have kids and deaths before the next generation), and even if you say that most people want parenthood (source probably needed at least for prosperous societies right now), that doesn't mean people all want big families.

I don't think anyone in this discussion thinks there should be barriers for people to have kids if they want, and I'm sure most are for huge social security nets for parents alongside everyone else in society. But well-built immigration policies alongside well-funded support for said immigrants are going to be far more effective, and I would argue that having a strong immigration with the right government support makes for a better society than an insular one trying to only have internal births as population replacements.

DTurtle posted:

Citation needed.

So nothing to do with economics, but people having the choice.

Medicine. And access to medicine.

Basically every country worldwide that saw a drastic drop in infant mortality then saw birth rates decline some time later. The time between those two things happening is what led to massive population growth in each country before that growth flattening again.

Access to reliable and cheap birth control then led to further drops in birth rates.

Also, that graph apparently only has one data point or so per decade before 1940 or so.

Count Roland posted:

This doesn't seem so much like a capitalism thing as a human thing.