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.