[ceejayoz]

> If shrinking populations are okay, what is the desired population level?

The answer might simply be "we don't know" here.

> Right now no country seems to be able to stop this decrease in the modern/developed world. We are just currently shrinking.

Why is that being treated as inherently bad, though?

[calmd]

> Why is that being treated as inherently bad, though?

We are not making this decision completely willingly, it is more just happening and it is out of the governments control. To me this means it is risky, and can we pull out of it? How do we pull out of this shrinkage?

I guess the good thing is that the developed world is all in this together, rather than only parts of it. That reduces the chance of massive disparities as a result of the changes it causes.

If would feel much more comfortable that we completely understood it, and how to control it.

There will be a lot of changes that will occur. For example conservatives are less effected by population shrinkage than liberals in the US -- probably just because conservatives are less likely to be city dwellers? Or maybe it is conservatives have different values... or a combination of values that effect whether they live in the cities.

Atheists have lower reproduction rates than those who are religious as well. (which probably correlates with liberalism/conservatism as well.)

I wonder if there are any genetic contributions to conservatism/religiousness? If so this may be a period of rapid genetic evolution...

[ceejayoz]

> We are not making this decision completely willingly, it is more just happening and it is out of the governments control. To me this means it is risky, and can we pull out of it? How do we pull out of this shrinkage?

Isn't all this equally true of population growth as well as shrinkage?

[ptsneves]

No. Major population growth has been happening since the times of the new world migration.

The only major time i can think of where there were major depopulation events are in the times of the Fertile Crescent civilizations and perhaps in Asia in Angkor Wat. In both of the scenarios this massive depopulation led to the extinction of those civilizations.

[ceejayoz]

> No. Major population growth has been happening since the times of the new world migration.

Nah, at least not of this magnitude. The world's population only hit a billion at about 1800, two billion around WWII. We're now at nearly eight. The idea that we understand all the consequences of that is silly; we're only just recently starting to understand the climate change aspect of it.

[mazlix]

I’m not sure with the numbers but but bc were dealing with populations/exponential growth it’s possible the rate of pop growth (doubling time) hasn’t changed much for a longer time period.

However the childhood mortality rates have gone down so raw # of children per household could be lower and still have a higher growth rate.