The main problem isn't growth or the lack of it - it's generally decreased welfare of older people because there's no family member or caregiver to periodically check up on them and recognize early signs of deteriorating health - especially mental health.
Again, this is a very fixable problem, and society will be the better for it by learning to adapt better rather than just throwing more kids at the problem. Kids do not owe their parents anything, including geriatric care.
Hasn’t it? There is considerably more infrastructure for the elderly today than a couple of generations ago. Communities where folks can maintain a bit of independence with caregivers and peers in the neighborhood seems like a nearly ideal way to age to me.
But of course not everyone lives like this and many have a horrible quality of life at the end so there is room to improve. One improvement is cultural I think: we shouldn’t be hanging on to every last strand of life possible, and should make it easy for those with little prognosis for quality of life to die gracefully in a way of their choosing.
In any case certainly more adaptation is needed, but I see signs of the development.
Adjusting economic models? We’re significantly below replacement level. That means population collapse and, eventually, actual extinction. We’re not headed toward a future where we just stop growing. We’re headed for a future where populations shrink by more than 50%. It takes decades to create this problem, and even more decades to fix it.
People aren’t paying attention because from a raw numbers perspective our population is growing. But it’s also aging, and eventually people will die and we won’t have created enough kids to reverse the shrinking.
I’m not even getting into the economic catastrophe of a shrinking population caring for an aging society. The US may be alright due to immigration but you can’t say the same of Korea, Japan, Italy, or most of Europe.
This is a crisis and we need to be taking action right now. By the time the populations start shrinking it will be too late. We can eventually reverse the trend but it will take an entire century, or more. We’re quite literally running out of time to avoid disaster.
Do you have some models you're looking at that cause you to believe with such certainty that this is what the future holds? I have not seen, nor can I even really fathom, a scenario in which declining birth rates leads in of itself to extinction (unless the birth rates drop to basically zero for some reason), but certainly this could be due to a failure of imagination. A declining population would certainly look different, but I don't see it causing the end of civilization, much less the species.
I dont agree population decline is a problem. Nevertheless, if it were, at any time of our choosing, we can open the gates and access a practically endless supply of people wanting to move and work in the countries with population decline.
I understand what you mean and I myself know that I want a kid, just not now. But I would never become a parent just because of an economies well-being or low birth rates. If I become a parent it's because I and my partner want to, that's it.
That's just a transitionary problem. Even just 50 years ago there were half of us as now. 99% of humanity's history has had less than 1 billion people. 8 billion people is way more than needed and it's showing it's ill impacts on the enviroment as well.