[office_drone]

With all the talk of the impending fertility crisis, I very much believe that WFH helps significantly.

1) It makes parenting easier by letting the parent be more present. 2) It allows parents to buy houses with more bedrooms and more greenspace further from expensive cities. 3) It allows workers to stay in one location for a long time, helping form community.

And it's low-carbon to boot.

[gumby]

FWIW it's a fertility "crisis", not the. Globally, the fertility rate exceed the replacement rate -- there are plenty of people being born.

Your points are good regardless of the fertility rate.

[0xcafefood]

It's probably too simplistic to just look at a global average. Developed countries (largely Western and Asian ones) have fertility rates well below their replacement levels, while sub-Saharan African nations (many of which are on food aid) have fertility well above replacement levels. These don't cancel one another out in terms of effects on humanity. Not economically, not culturally, not geopolitically.

[gtvwill]

Well pretty sure we know how to fix that. Go have some kids! Seriously folks need to breed more. You wanna spread your ideals? Have a family. Wanna sway politics in the long run to your ideals? Tell your kids to have big families too. Religions have been doing this for yonks. It's not rocket science. It strikes me as absurd the academic class hasn't worked this out.

[0xcafefood]

I think what you're proposing will happen, but over time. Birth control has separated sex from reproduction, for anyone with access to it and the desire to use it. So nature's former trick of making sex enjoyable in order to incentivize reproduction doesn't work as well any longer. The next trick will have to be an actual desire to have children, instead of a desire to have sex with the results also including children. That desire may be genetic or memetic (e.g. in the form of a religion), or most likely a synthesis of the two.

[threatofrain]

A lot of people want to have families... you're making it sound like there's a marketing problem, but the conversation is on whether or not there's the right platform for the middle class to have children; i.e. childcare, family, home, money, etc. People want to maintain their station in life while having children.

But somehow you're looking at the problem like "why don't people know they could achieve religious and political gain by having more kids?" Gosh, these dumb academics haven't figured it out. And who is thinking that academics even has serious political sway on these matters?

[gtvwill]

Hey look I'm poor as I've ever been and have 3 step kids. Gonna send it for another two kids soon regardless of our finances. Why? Well because we want to and we're not getting any younger! Mate childcare, house sizes, money. Eh well make it work. No point worrying about problem that might not even happen.

It is a marketing problem largely. People got too high a expectations these days. They expect everything to be perfect and are largely massively selfish in doing it.

We might be poor, we might be cramped in a tiny house. But the kids are fed, clothed and are in a loving family. It's better than a lot of wealthy fams I know where the kids are depressed because the parents rarely cross the giant house to have a chat or hang out with them. Everybody is hidden behind thousands of dollars of screens.

The middle class has a massive marketing problem re. Having kids and families.

[gumby]

> Seriously folks need to breed more.

People who want to are welcome to -- you be you.

People who don't want to should not be pressured to do so.

[gumby]

The usual complaint is that the pyramid scheme stops working (not enough people working to pay the pensions of the old people). This is simplistic: the real problem is that there aren't enough doctors/garbos/crop-harvesters etc as a proportion of the population. Either way the fix is straightforward: bring in some people who'd like a job.

Some rethinking is required -- in the USA Social Security was put in place when the typical recipient was expected to receive a payout for...less than three years.

I have friends in the "reduce the birth rate" community, and they are at least as thoughless if not more than the "birth rate too low" crowd. In the former case their "diagnosis" is inevitably that the wrong people are having too many kids though they hate it when you point that out.

A higher birth rate in sub saharan africa is hardly a crisis: every person in the US emits 5X the CO2 of a person in Africa. Dropping population in the rich, polluting countries can be a step in the right direction.

(Personally I'm pretty indifferent to either position. As Herb Stein famously put it: "if something cannot go on forever it will stop". Sure, the latency in this case is quite high but people deal with worse all the time.)

[tivert]

> This is simplistic: the real problem is that there aren't enough doctors/garbos/crop-harvesters etc as a proportion of the population. Either way the fix is straightforward: bring in some people who'd like a job.

That "fix" doesn't work when the birthrate problem is widespread. It just moves the problem around so it hits the poorest the hardest.

> Some rethinking is required -- in the USA Social Security was put in place when the typical recipient was expected to receive a payout for...less than three years.

Yes. Social security's payout formula should factor in the number offspring. Anyone who has less than two gets a significantly reduced or no payout, because they didn't sufficiently contribute to the next generation's labor pool to provide the goods and services they payout would be used to buy. The tax payments would be kept but re-conceptualized as support for elderly parents. To make it fair, the government should pay for fertility treatments, and count a certain number of good-faith attempts as children in the formula.

[gumby]

> It just moves the problem around so it hits the poorest the hardest.

Could you expand on this? I can’t think of a scenario where that is the case.

> Social security's payout formula should factor in the number offspring.

Ha, how will you track it? I have no offspring in this country (USA) bc they decided things are better elsewhere. But they were born here.

Germany just does it directly: when your kids are little you have to support them (assuming you can); when you are old and decrepit your kids have some responsibility for your wellbeing.

[tivert]

>> It just moves the problem around so it hits the poorest the hardest.

> Could you expand on this? I can’t think of a scenario where that is the case.

Pretty straightforward: there's no unlimited wellspring of young people from poor countries for rich countries to tap, there is a limited amount. Those poor countries also have declining birth rates, they're just a few decades behind on the trend. It's unlikely there are enough poor young people satisfy the labor demands of all the depopulating rich countries.

So the rich countries suck up all the available young "doctors/garbos/crop-harvesters" from the poor countries. That leaves the poor countries with screwed up, unbalanced demographics (without necessarily even fixing the screwed up, unbalanced demographics of the rich countries), and they're in an even worse position to deal with the problem, since they're poor.

So poor African grandma's doctor moves to American to treat rich American Grandma, and African grandma gets to do without.

> Ha, how will you track it?

How does the government track anything? They come up with rules and definitions and bureaucracy, then implement them.

And the types of records needed to implement the idea for 90%+ of cases have been kept for 100+ years.

[TheCleric]

If only there was a way for people to move from one country to the other…

[0xcafefood]

Historically, periods of mass migration have also been periods of immense turmoil and even violence. What will make the proposal to try it again, this time on absolutely unprecedented scale, go better?

[TheCleric]

I dispute your assertion. The late 19th and early 20th century USA had a population boom largely from immigration. There was no immense turmoil and violence.

[0xcafefood]

But there was violence. Between Protestants and Catholics, between English-Americans and the newcomers from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Poland, etc. Lutheran Churches were firebombed during the First World War. For example, many German-Americans today don't even know this, but there was immense pressure to severe ties with Germany, e.g. to stop speaking German, to Anglicize their names, to adopt a more "American" cuisine, etc. Immigration was more or less halted for the half century between 1924 and 1965 due to a great deal of this turmoil.

And that's just describing inter-ethnic conflicts among White Americans. These groups have histories that intertwine extending back to their homelands in Europe. There was also a great deal a inter-racial violence and tension.

I don't blame you for not knowing about any of this. It's just not something the United States really touts about its own history. And knowledge of the problems it caused 100 years ago raises uncomfortable questions about the current levels of immigration into the US. So it's something that goes largely undiscussed today.

[invalidOrTaken]

This map (scroll down to the chart and click the "Map" tab) is worth a look though.

https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate

[tivert]

> FWIW it's a fertility "crisis", not the. Globally, the fertility rate exceed the replacement rate -- there are plenty of people being born.

Right now. IIRC, current projections are for global populations to start to decline before the end of the century, and I think fall sharply in the next. I think only sub-Saharan Africa is the only region that reproduces at much greater than replacement rate, and even there birthrates are declining. Formerly high reproduction rate places like India are now at replacement rate, and their birthrates are continuing to fall.

[worik]

> there are plenty of people being born.

The reports I hear from demographics is that is not true

Depending on your definition of "plenty"

Below replacement rate in most developed countries.

Upending economic arrangements everywhere.

IMO not a bad thing.

[gumby]

> Below replacement rate in most developed countries.

So what -- are those people somehow special?

[worik]

No.

The economic arrangements since forever are predicated on natural increase

[HideousKojima]

Worldwide average fertility rate is 2.35, just barely above the replacement rate of 2.1, and it's projected to continue to fall well below 2.1.

[josefritzishere]

Is this really a problem though? There are currently 8.2 Billion people. A natural reduction could be a net good.

[RestlessMind]

> Is this really a problem though?

Yes, big time

> A natural reduction could be a net good.

Only if it was uniform. Fewer and fewer kids mean within a few generations, we have more and more old people who rely on others to survive. If a society has 50% people over 60 and 50% young'uns, then they have a big problem.

[gtvwill]

Better get hitched and have some kids then! No point crying about it when the solutions simple!

[dwaltrip]

Amazing! You’ve solved it. We need to get some journalists on the phone.

[HideousKojima]

What makes you think I don't have or want kids?

[Thorrez]

The number of babies being born is decreasing each year globally. 2012 was the peek.

[ActorNightly]

There isn't a definitive statement that can be made about fertility crisis. The number of 2.1 as the replacement rate is based on some estimate of human labor output. This could very well be lower in reality (i.e humans can be more efficient with technology that is not currently reflected in economics)

[docdeek]

I always understood 2.1 to be the replacement rate because it would be two children to 'replace' two parents, with the 0.1 being to cover the inevitable deaths of a person before reproducing or for infertility.

[UncleOxidant]

Maybe what they were saying was that that 0.1 may actually be lower in developed countries with lower infant mortality? Maybe it's more like 2.05 in developed countries? (not sure what "human labor output" has to do with it, though)

[HideousKojima]

>The number of 2.1 as the replacement rate is based on some estimate of human labor output.

Replacement rate has to do with keeping the actual population number stable, not labor output whatsoever. It's 2.1 instead of just 2 because of infertility, child mortality (and mortality before reproducing generally), etc.

It has literally nothing to do with robots or efficient labor. Any TFR lower than ~2.1 will result in the total population shrinking.

[ActorNightly]

So are you saying its based on genetics? I always thought that it was related to economics of keeping things like supply chains for food going and other factors.

[HideousKojima]

Not even genetics, just simple population numbers. It takes 2 humans to make a new human. If each female human on earth isn't making, on average, 2 new humans (plus the .1 extra to make up for infertility and mortality) then the population of the world will shrink. Simple as.

[kbelder]

Well, in a sense all babies are a result of human labor output ;)

[stefan_]

What "human labor output" can make up for a fertility rate below 2? Can you show your work?

[RestlessMind]

> houses with more bedrooms > further from .. cities > low-carbon to boot

those seem contradictory. How can a suburban/exurban sprawl be low carbon? And even if WFH workers don't drive themselves, someone still needs to drive to ship their Amazon deliveries to their homes or to move groceries and gas to nearby stores.

[skhunted]

Buying larger houses further spread out decreases population density. This is not low-carbon to boot.

[travisb]

There isn't a clear cut answer to this.

Lower population density does not necessarily equate to higher carbon footprint, especially when commuting downtown for work has been eliminated. Above a certain point density has diseconomies of scale of its own.

For example, if you are comparing, say, a three bedroom house in a large metropolitan area versus a four bedroom house in a small town, the reduced total driving time because driving distances are less in the small town (everything is in town, but town is tiny) can make up for a lot of efficiencies of scale.

The common argument is that we should put people into apartments instead, but that isn't always a clear total system win. For example if somebody is really into fishing letting them live near a lake with space to store their own boat will be more carbon efficient than stuffing them into an apartment where every weekend they drive to the storage place on the outskirts of town to pick their boat up, then drive three hours or so to the lake.

[RestlessMind]

Bigger houses in a bigger sprawl means you have a higher heating / cooling requirement. It also means someone else has to drive to deliver your Amazon package or ship gas/groceries/medicines to a store nearby.

[travisb]

Firstly, sprawl is the result only if it is around a central core(s) to which many people need to travel on a frequent basis. If few people need to travel to those cores regularly then you don't get sprawl, but rather more in-fill nodes along pre-existing highways.

Secondly, those things you mention are true -- all else being equal. But everything else isn't equal. Eliminating thirty miles of driving a day can make up for a lot of extra heating costs. Houses can cheaply avoid major cooling costs like urban heat island effects, and lack of shade suffered by apartment buildings. Economies of scale in shipping is a thing, but past a tractor-trailer a day they diminish rapidly.

So it isn't as clear that, with the way people actually live in cities today, that the systematic carbon costs, or even financial costs, favours cities the way it might have fifty or eighty years ago.

[skhunted]

Firstly, sprawl is the result only if it is around a central core(s) to which many people need to travel on a frequent basis.

This is wrong. As an extreme example consider this. If all families in the U.S. were as evenly distributed as possible with each family having at least a 1 acre lot then it would be correct to say that we are sprawled out. Sprawl in the sense we are taking about refers to spreading out.

[skhunted]

Having houses spread out and lowering population density is bad for environment. More roads need to be built, more infrastructure needs to be built, etc. We consume too much. America is not in danger of having too much population density. We are too spread out as it is.

[rickydroll]

If people want to live in cities, I am all for making it possible. My only request is to control outdoor lighting. Nighttime outdoor lighting has many negative side effects on humans, animals, and plants.

However, cities are not for me. I work in my home office on the outskirts of a minor city. Right now I am listening to house finches and goldfinches arguing over places on the thistle feeders and smelling petrichor as rain showers move in.

Here is the important takeaway: I would never try to force you to live outside of a city. I hope you can grant me the same consideration and not force me to live in a city.

[skhunted]

I don’t care where anyone lives. I’m just stating the fact that being more spread out, having larger homes, larger yards, etc. is not a low carbon option.

[rickydroll]

I agree it's not a lower-carbon option. I think if smaller cities would cover all their parking lots with photovoltaics (complete with a big ass battery) and covers many rooftops with photovoltaics, it would go a long way to reduce the impact of spread-out properties. I would also try to change city practices to encourage rewilding of one's property. I've done a small amount of rewilding, and we have so many more birds in just two years. Of course, we lost a lot of produce to birds and chipmunks, but, heck, they deserved to eat as well.

[bluescrn]

vs. endless commuting by car?

Many people don't want to be in dense cities. Lack of open/green space, noise, crime, and the worst place to be during any sort of crisis.

[skhunted]

Car commuting is a carbon problem. So is buying a larger house, lower living density, and larger yards. I’m addressing solely the claim about this being lower carbon footprint. I’m not addressing any other issues or concerns.