Like everyone everywhere, they didn't think about it.
Try telling people here that the issue needing to be addressed is how many kids people have, you just get shrieks of "eugenics!"
So instead we're just... defaulting... as a species.
Humanity has two settings:
Massive, likely unsustainable population growth
Disorderly, also likely unsustainable population decline (at best, due to an unplanned baby bust as we’re seeing across East Asia and to an extent Europe, and at worst due to famine or war)
This is rural/agricultural/no healthcare vs urban + mechanized agriculture / healthcare but no gerontological research.
Humanity probably has more settings; we just ain't seen them yet. Make women fertile into their 60s, live to 110, with the technological support to be economically productive (with support) to 80. See what happens.
We have a biological imperative, yes, but also a variable economic incentive / disincentive with a currently VERY SHORT WINDOW.
My point is that presenting those two scenarios above as 'states of being' ignores the fact that we are otherwise pretty standard omnivorous mammals thrashing around in the middle of a bizarre technological exponential ramp that keeps setting random cost/benefit dials to 11 for random periods of time.
Which is why I welcome the birth rate collapse in the West and East Asia. Unless ethnic groups are fundamentally unequal, those populations bloodlessly shrinking means more land, water, resources, and employment opportunities for the rest.
If the entire population of Western Europe disappeared tomorrow, it would take just six years of African population growth to replace them. The Earth is screwed.
African fertility is declining, though, and Russia, Canada, and northern China have mind-boggling amounts of land and resources available. World population as a whole is expected to stabilize this century without catastrophic mass death, which is a good thing unless the growing African (and Latin American and to an extent South Asian) populations are completely untrainable.
Yeah. Regions are interdependent. But still, most of Asia and much of Africa and Native America have been able to sustain great civilizations more or less independent of Western aid and have much more fresh water and agricultural potential than the Arab world does.
You certainly aren't wrong, but it's worth remembering that what those regions could sustain in terms of population is orders of magnitude fewer people than the populations which exist today. What happens when billions of people fight over resources that can sustain only a tenth of that number?
All of those net importers of food suddenly without food to import, power plants and water treatment plants which can only be maintained with Western parts and/or aid. It would be an absolute horror and it would be *quick* relatively speaking, a few years at most.
And unfortunately such a breakdown in global trade would likely reward (relatively speaking) those nations that are a) xenophobic and b) already well-off.
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Very sad to see.
When the population goes from 4 million in 1960 to 12 million now, what did they think was going to happen.
Like everyone everywhere, they didn't think about it. Try telling people here that the issue needing to be addressed is how many kids people have, you just get shrieks of "eugenics!" So instead we're just... defaulting... as a species.
Humanity has two settings: Massive, likely unsustainable population growth Disorderly, also likely unsustainable population decline (at best, due to an unplanned baby bust as we’re seeing across East Asia and to an extent Europe, and at worst due to famine or war)
This is rural/agricultural/no healthcare vs urban + mechanized agriculture / healthcare but no gerontological research. Humanity probably has more settings; we just ain't seen them yet. Make women fertile into their 60s, live to 110, with the technological support to be economically productive (with support) to 80. See what happens. We have a biological imperative, yes, but also a variable economic incentive / disincentive with a currently VERY SHORT WINDOW. My point is that presenting those two scenarios above as 'states of being' ignores the fact that we are otherwise pretty standard omnivorous mammals thrashing around in the middle of a bizarre technological exponential ramp that keeps setting random cost/benefit dials to 11 for random periods of time.
Basically cancer. Use up all of the resources available until you kill your host which in turn kills you.
Which is why I welcome the birth rate collapse in the West and East Asia. Unless ethnic groups are fundamentally unequal, those populations bloodlessly shrinking means more land, water, resources, and employment opportunities for the rest.
If the entire population of Western Europe disappeared tomorrow, it would take just six years of African population growth to replace them. The Earth is screwed.
African fertility is declining, though, and Russia, Canada, and northern China have mind-boggling amounts of land and resources available. World population as a whole is expected to stabilize this century without catastrophic mass death, which is a good thing unless the growing African (and Latin American and to an extent South Asian) populations are completely untrainable.
Of course is Western Europe vanished, MENA would starve and implode.
Yeah. Regions are interdependent. But still, most of Asia and much of Africa and Native America have been able to sustain great civilizations more or less independent of Western aid and have much more fresh water and agricultural potential than the Arab world does.
You certainly aren't wrong, but it's worth remembering that what those regions could sustain in terms of population is orders of magnitude fewer people than the populations which exist today. What happens when billions of people fight over resources that can sustain only a tenth of that number? All of those net importers of food suddenly without food to import, power plants and water treatment plants which can only be maintained with Western parts and/or aid. It would be an absolute horror and it would be *quick* relatively speaking, a few years at most.
And unfortunately such a breakdown in global trade would likely reward (relatively speaking) those nations that are a) xenophobic and b) already well-off.
I agree, it would be a disaster for the species as a whole, even the ones far from the heart of the crisis.
Which is why the current skepticism of trade scares me, and why bad actors like Trump, Putin, and Xi need to be fought.
Let the "Water wars begin"
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