Seems like there are already too many people and finite resources.
In: Economics
It’s not. All populations ebb and flow due to their environment, but because we live longer, and we are one of the animals that can look farther ahead in our timeline, we are more aware of the discomforts that go along with a population decline. The catch 22 of it all is: the discomforts of a declining population over an 80 year timeline are far preferable to the discomforts of an out of control population increase from where we are over an 80 year timeline. But either way…it’s going to be uncomfortable
I’d just like to add, the issue with overpopulation isn’t that there are necessarily too many people, but that there are too many people in areas that can’t support them. Just like with world hunger, there’s enough food in the world, it’s just a distribution problem. Many of the countries with declining populations aren’t the ones with overpopulation.
When a population is declining, it’s generally also aging, which means more people not working, which puts a lot of stress on the economy. A way to counter this is with either increase birth rates, or immigration (ideally both).
Japan is a good example of this, since they have low birth rates, high life expectancy and low immigration.
Disproportionately rich older folks with no youths to look after them. Also no young to be part of the capitalism machine. EG: Japan
Because people like to retire. If you have negative population growth and a life expectancy that is over the age of retirement then you eventually get to a situation in which there are more retirees than people working.
The thing about being a human is that humans enjoy consuming goods and services. To produce those goods and services, you need humans who are actively employed in the labor force. Retirees, on the other hand, only consume goods and services without producing any themselves.
This means that in our society with more retirees than working people, you end up with a situation in which you have a very low ratio of humans working to provide goods and services compared to humans consuming them. This means that everyone has to consume less goods and services, which means that everyone ends up being much poorer.
Humans, generally speaking, don’t like being poor due to the aforementioned lack of goods and services available for them to consume.
It means your population skews old. Too many people who can’t work and too few having to support them. It means economic woes.
Btw Thanos was absolutely wrong. More people create more resources in almost all cases. We haven’t hit carrying capacity.
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