The Population Decline Thread

[crazy canuck]

A thought: we do not get to worry about BOTH the decline of young people entering the workforce, and AI destroying most of the jobs. If these both happens at a mass scale it'll even out, surely. White collar jobs will be done by AI while there'll be such a lack of chefs and carpenters that they'll get white collar wages

Yes, with an important caveat. If AI tools can do the job as well or better.  But, with a few exceptions in the area of bench science, that assumption is not proving true.

[Josquius]

Reading the Unmitigated Pedantry bit about about medieval people.
He speaks a lot about how high birth rates were a necessity due to the high mortality rate. That people not getting married and having kids just wasn't much of a thing because it wasn't for you that you got married and had kids, but for the community. It needed the people to survive.

This got me thinking then. Could this be a factor in birth rates today.
Having kids just...doesn't seem very good. So many people choose not to do it. It's entirely their individual choice. The social expectation from your parents has dwindled away and before that the expectation of the broader community where you spent your whole life also died.

A counter-point though. Those countries leading the way on plummeting birth-rates are the least individualistic countries on the planet. If its people no longer giving a shit about societal expectations that is to blame then explain Japan?
Sure...it could well be Japan had a hard shift to controlling your birth rates and efforts to push it back the other way haven't been enough.
Or maybe that this cultural shift is very sticky. Its hard to undo once it has happened....

I do think there's something in the community point. I've long said this is a key factor- live in a car centric dystopia where you have to drive to go to work and the shop then where the hell are you ever going to meet someone to hook up with?
Though the community pressure point, as well as the more recent parental pressure point, is something to think about.
Maybe the issue is that this is all coming from the government, in a very "government says don't eat the mercury? I better eat the mercury" age. There's not such a low level ground pressure as there would once be.
The Japanese government is panicking about its birth rates but your average little old lady in modern Japan? meh. She'd like to see more kids about. But she gets why young people aren't doing it. Its their choice.

[Grey Fox]

For what might be the first time in 2000 years, Humanity is starting to not need more humans to do what Humans do.

Unforeseen consequences everywhere.

[crazy canuck]

Jos, there was a time when community interests and individual interests were more aligned.  For example, a close knit farming village. 

Now, in most/all developed countries what is good for the country (having children) is generally not in an individual's economic interest.

I would argue there are other good reasons for having children, but I could never argue that one of them is economic benefit.

 

[Razgovory]

In the European Medieval period they did control the population by sending a significant number of people off to become monks, nuns, and clergy.  Though under reported, I suspect that infanticide was much more widely practiced in the pre-modern world.  It's not something that people want to talk about, but we know it occurred.

[crazy canuck]

Clergy had children until the 1100s. And even then the rule requiring abstinence was more honoured in the breach.

Also, the rule had nothing to do with population control.

Nuns were often married and had children before entering the nunnery.

Do you have some evidence for the claim of wide spread infanticide?

[Valmy]

In the European Medieval period they did control the population by sending a significant number of people off to become monks, nuns, and clergy.  Though under reported, I suspect that infanticide was much more widely practiced in the pre-modern world.  It's not something that people want to talk about, but we know it occurred.

Oh yeah it happened a lot. I was not aware it was taboo. The other one was child abandonment which also happened all the time.

[Valmy]

Clergy had children until the 1100s. And even then the rule requiring abstinence was more honoured in the breach.

Also, the rule had nothing to do with population control.

Nuns were often married and had children before entering the nunnery.

Do you have some evidence for the claim of wide spread infanticide?

Well for one back when there were public executions women were frequently executed for infanticide. In fact I think it was by far the most common reason female criminals would be put to death back in the premodern era.

As far as evidence...um...if you look up the wikipedia article on infanticide it says this. It is not some weird notion Raz just made up.

[crazy canuck]

Clergy had children until the 1100s. And even then the rule requiring abstinence was more honoured in the breach.

Also, the rule had nothing to do with population control.

Nuns were often married and had children before entering the nunnery.

Do you have some evidence for the claim of wide spread infanticide?

Well for one back when there were public executions women were frequently executed for infanticide. In fact I think it was by far the most common reason female criminals would be put to death back in the premodern era.

As far as evidence...um...if you look up the wikipedia article on infanticide it says this. It is not some weird notion Raz just made up.

Women were also burned as witches.  I wouldn't put a lot of faith in the conclusions drawn by the finders of fact justifying the execution of a woman.

Child mortality was of course very high, and so the chances of a woman being wrongly accused of infanticide are also very high.

[Josquius]

If we are talking medieval Europe I'm not aware of infanticide being very common.
It would be stupid. Not just immoral. Logically stupid. They needed the labour. Half of all kids died anyway.
When a famine came the kids and the old would be deprioritised over working peope. But generally not outright killed.
It helped that the church had structures in place to deal with unwanted kids.

Different cultures have different demands though. In Japan I know it was fairly common that newborns weren't seen as full humans yet and you could choose to just send them back.

[Valmy]

If we are talking medieval Europe I'm not aware of infanticide being very common.

I guess it depends on what you mean by common.

Leaving children to die via exposure was much more common. It was a commonly observed phenomenon and lots of fiction is based on stories about it. That might as well be infanticide.

[Razgovory]

Clergy had children until the 1100s. And even then the rule requiring abstinence was more honoured in the breach.

Also, the rule had nothing to do with population control.

Nuns were often married and had children before entering the nunnery.

Do you have some evidence for the claim of wide spread infanticide?

I mean the Romans were pretty upfront about it.  From the Vindalania letters, we have actually have a soldier telling his wife to kill the child if it's a girl.  I think that a lot of cultures had a major imbalance between men and women mostly favoring men. Infanticide was pretty common among hunter-gatherers and neolithic cultures.   

[Josquius]

If we are talking medieval Europe I'm not aware of infanticide being very common.

I guess it depends on what you mean by common.

Leaving children to die via exposure was much more common. It was a commonly observed phenomenon and lots of fiction is based on stories about it. That might as well be infanticide.

I got the impression a lot of that was just because it was seen as absolutely horrific. Not because it was common.
See how they'd rush to baptise newborns ASAP just in case, the burying of babies right up against church foundations so they could get the maximum of holy-water poured on them, etc...
Possibly later on there could have been aspects of knowledge about the Greeks coming through, they were a lot more into killing babies.

It is a wonder though how they'd have dealt with the clearly disabled. Thats not something i've heard too much about.

[crazy canuck]

Clergy had children until the 1100s. And even then the rule requiring abstinence was more honoured in the breach.

Also, the rule had nothing to do with population control.

Nuns were often married and had children before entering the nunnery.

Do you have some evidence for the claim of wide spread infanticide?

I mean the Romans were pretty upfront about it.  From the Vindalania letters, we have actually have a soldier telling his wife to kill the child if it's a girl.  I think that a lot of cultures had a major imbalance between men and women mostly favoring men. Infanticide was pretty common among hunter-gatherers and neolithic cultures.   

One letter does not make it common.  And what is your source for hunter gatherers and neolithic cultures practicing it?

[Jacob]

Do you have some evidence for the claim of wide spread infanticide?

I'm not in a position to proclaim whether the argument is correct or not, nor to state what the current scholarly consensus is, but as I understand it's been a fairly mainstream scholarly theory that infanticide was fairly common in pre-Christian Europe at least.