Although this is very much a global phenomenon, I think no other region on earth has plummeted quite as fast as these countries. Colombia, Chile, Peru, Argentina all were far closer to the replacement level only some 7-8 years ago. It's quite an interesting case.
Yeah, I’m shocked by these values, I vaguely remember checking them before Covid and finding them close but over replacement levels! Wow… do you have an insight onto the reasons of such drastic change?
As a South American myself, I think it's really just far fewer teenage pregnancies and major cultural shifts.
I know the topic of money and affordability always comes up, but in my experience, this holds true even for couples with high income.
I think people just don't see a reason to have kids. They're expensive, a lot of work and get in the way of adult life. In a world where social pressures to procreate are minimal, entertainment and activities are far better without kids, and career driven educated people are the norm, very few people will actively want children. Only those that really see it as a calling in life, probably.
I know me and my wife almost certainly won't have kids, so we're part of this trend.
I think part of it is distortion from women having children later in life - that will represent as a temporary dip in fertility rates. But thats everywhere in the world.
We are in the middle of an extinction event worse than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, using 20 Earths worth of resources, playing out a Wall-E / Interstellar style apocalypse, and you’re sitting here crying that we ONLY have 8 billion people on this tiny rock (most of whom, let me remind you, are either fucking horrible or very poor).
Im not crying about anything.
As you say yourself the issue is not our populations number, if we would life more efficiently we could easily support a much bigger population. Population collapse will also be terrible for almost every country on earth, the idea the human=bad= and thus less humans=good should've died on reddit long ago
Also if you think most of the 8 billion of us are "fucking horrible" then it seems you don't have a very rational view on humanity
My original point is that breeding more humans doesn’t improve the world at the moment, at all. We need to find balance with our environment. Not to mention, we aren’t even raising humans to be “good” or smart or kind, all while devouring this planet like locusts.
If you’re struggling to wrap your mind around the claim that most people are assholes, I present to you the last US election, when over 50% of voters chose Donald Trump, a convicted rapist, fascist, and known pedophile. This is an enormous sample size, surprising no one who has studied history, since we’ve had slavery for like 10,000 years and most humans are literally incapable of abstract reasoning. You can’t possibly expect me to lament the decreasing quantity of these creatures.
But its not just not increasing, it is decreasing, more older people less younger people will lead to a million other problems aswell. And who but young people actually try to improve the world, is the next generation and educating them well not the best and easiest way to shape tomorrow?
And don't make it so simple you know its not, humans don't just suck or are just bad or good, they are the result of uncountable amount of factors. If 100% of humanity would vote for trump it would show a big issue but the root of that issue isn't just that humans suck, and thinking that way is just giving into your negative feelings and doesn't improve the situation at all. Cheering on population collapse is ridiculous, should we really just stop existing if we could easily have some balls and make it work. A great future is possible loosing that hope is giving up out of weakness
Currently, the US spends $5k per child and $29k per septuagenarian annually. Also, the average voting age in primaries is 72. We are living in a gerontocracy, because old people take children for granted, so much so that they’re enthusiastic about their government rounding up immigrant children, toddlers, and trafficking them out of the country.
My point is that if we had fewer children for a few generations, maybe it would adjust people’s selfish and animalistic priorities. Fast fashion, meat eating, celebrity worship. That’s what the most prosperous people in the world are all about. I want fewer of them on this planet because we are using 20 times the resources available and most people are poor anyway — until such a time as we establish a path to sustainability.
Or do you enjoy reading about dolphins boiling alive in rivers during record heatwaves? What even is the point of having more than a billion people on this rock if we can’t be bothered to feed them? Like what is your game plan here?
11 replies
Although this is very much a global phenomenon, I think no other region on earth has plummeted quite as fast as these countries. Colombia, Chile, Peru, Argentina all were far closer to the replacement level only some 7-8 years ago. It's quite an interesting case.
Yeah, I’m shocked by these values, I vaguely remember checking them before Covid and finding them close but over replacement levels! Wow… do you have an insight onto the reasons of such drastic change?
As a South American myself, I think it's really just far fewer teenage pregnancies and major cultural shifts.
I know the topic of money and affordability always comes up, but in my experience, this holds true even for couples with high income.
I think people just don't see a reason to have kids. They're expensive, a lot of work and get in the way of adult life. In a world where social pressures to procreate are minimal, entertainment and activities are far better without kids, and career driven educated people are the norm, very few people will actively want children. Only those that really see it as a calling in life, probably.
I know me and my wife almost certainly won't have kids, so we're part of this trend.
I think part of it is distortion from women having children later in life - that will represent as a temporary dip in fertility rates. But thats everywhere in the world.
This is absolutely amazing news!
Absolutely not
We are in the middle of an extinction event worse than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, using 20 Earths worth of resources, playing out a Wall-E / Interstellar style apocalypse, and you’re sitting here crying that we ONLY have 8 billion people on this tiny rock (most of whom, let me remind you, are either fucking horrible or very poor).
Im not crying about anything. As you say yourself the issue is not our populations number, if we would life more efficiently we could easily support a much bigger population. Population collapse will also be terrible for almost every country on earth, the idea the human=bad= and thus less humans=good should've died on reddit long ago
Also if you think most of the 8 billion of us are "fucking horrible" then it seems you don't have a very rational view on humanity
My original point is that breeding more humans doesn’t improve the world at the moment, at all. We need to find balance with our environment. Not to mention, we aren’t even raising humans to be “good” or smart or kind, all while devouring this planet like locusts.
If you’re struggling to wrap your mind around the claim that most people are assholes, I present to you the last US election, when over 50% of voters chose Donald Trump, a convicted rapist, fascist, and known pedophile. This is an enormous sample size, surprising no one who has studied history, since we’ve had slavery for like 10,000 years and most humans are literally incapable of abstract reasoning. You can’t possibly expect me to lament the decreasing quantity of these creatures.
But its not just not increasing, it is decreasing, more older people less younger people will lead to a million other problems aswell. And who but young people actually try to improve the world, is the next generation and educating them well not the best and easiest way to shape tomorrow?
And don't make it so simple you know its not, humans don't just suck or are just bad or good, they are the result of uncountable amount of factors. If 100% of humanity would vote for trump it would show a big issue but the root of that issue isn't just that humans suck, and thinking that way is just giving into your negative feelings and doesn't improve the situation at all. Cheering on population collapse is ridiculous, should we really just stop existing if we could easily have some balls and make it work. A great future is possible loosing that hope is giving up out of weakness
Currently, the US spends $5k per child and $29k per septuagenarian annually. Also, the average voting age in primaries is 72. We are living in a gerontocracy, because old people take children for granted, so much so that they’re enthusiastic about their government rounding up immigrant children, toddlers, and trafficking them out of the country.
My point is that if we had fewer children for a few generations, maybe it would adjust people’s selfish and animalistic priorities. Fast fashion, meat eating, celebrity worship. That’s what the most prosperous people in the world are all about. I want fewer of them on this planet because we are using 20 times the resources available and most people are poor anyway — until such a time as we establish a path to sustainability.
Or do you enjoy reading about dolphins boiling alive in rivers during record heatwaves? What even is the point of having more than a billion people on this rock if we can’t be bothered to feed them? Like what is your game plan here?