[jasonpeacock]

Growing up (born in late 70s), all I heard was “OMG OVER POPULATION” and how the planet can’t support the projected N billion people who will be living on it.

Now the birth rate actually slows down to correct itself and we’re not all breeding like rabbits, that’s a bad thing?

This feels like a capitalist concern, “we won’t have enough workers to produce goods and then consume them!”

[MSFT_Edging]

The system at large hasn't been great at forward planning so the whole pyramid shape might collapse.

Elderly care is basically going to wipe generational savings from the 20th century off the map and all that wealth will be reallocated to PE.

[ForHackernews]

Is AI going to take all the jobs, or isn't it?

[antisthenes]

> Elderly care is basically going to wipe generational savings from the 20th century off the map

Probably for the best.

Currently most of that wealth is being hoarded by the top 0.1%, at the expense of 8 billion people having to deal with global warming for the foreseeable future (e.g. - centuries).

If that's the best humanity can do with wealth, then burn it all down. As long as we keep some advances from medicine (vaccines, dentistry) and technology which aren't as energy intensive, it should all work itself out in the end.

[BobaFloutist]

I mean elder care is unlikely to wipe out billionaires as much as low-single-digit-millionaires

[antisthenes]

What's going to wipe out billionaires is lack of a highly-educated workforce, because no one is having babies.

And no, you can't completely solve this by immigration (because the demographic crisis is global).

They might still stay billionaires in absolute terms, but a lot of their wealth will be wiped out as companies struggle to sell their goods to a population with reduced purchasing power (since we're too busy taking care of elderly folks)

[seltzered_]

Overpopulation is still a concern when considering biodiversity, groundwater loss, etc.

The latest UNEP report includes it - see page 37 from https://www.unep.org/resources/global-environment-outlook-7 -> https://wedocs.unep.org/rest/api/core/bitstreams/902187bf-ea...

"Among the major global environmental crises – climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation, and pollution and waste – population growth is most evidently a key factor in biodiversity decline. This is largely due to increased demand for food production, which leads to agricultural expansion and land degradation (Cafaro, Hansson and Götmark 2022). As the population grows and consumption rises, fewer resources and less habitat are available for non-human species (Crist 2019). Overpopulation occurs when the total human population multiplied by per capita consumption surpasses the capacity of sustainable ecosystems and resources. Although the global human population continues to grow, per capita consumption is increasing at a faster rate. To the extent that people are disrupting natural habitats and degrading ecosystem services for future generations, despite regional heterogeneity, some research suggests that most of the world’s nations may be considered overpopulated (Lianos and Pseiridis 2016; Tucker 2019)"

Specifically going back to 70s overpopulation concerns, thing shifted with the Green Revolution / Norman Borlaug but it came at the cost of reducing groundwater supply and reducing agricultural diversity. See 'The Globalization of Wheat' and https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/groundwater-and-c...

[mangodrunk]

I see slowing birth rates as a net positive.

People in these comments are considering to enslave women like The Handmaid's Tale before even asking if it’s a problem.

[dmm]

It's possible to have both overpopulation(too large of a population for a given metric like water, energy, pollution, etc) and demographic collapse(too many old people, not enough young workers). It's not intuitive but they are separate phenomenon.

The reaction to overpopulation concerns probably discouraged people from having kids but it's unlikely to be the main cause.

[swat535]

Without enough children, who will be taking care of you when you are older?

All of society and industrial functions require young people.

[yongjik]

Less consumer demand means fewer jobs. When people can't find good well-paying jobs, they become pretty unhappy, and they won't be magically enlightened and out of misery by being told it's the capitalist wheel turning.

Capitalist concern is human concern.

[croes]

One is a problem of humanity, the other of capitalism.

Capitalism needs constant growth

[lan321]

Not even capitalism. Every economic system has pensions and healthcare costs rising with age, coupled with a decreased productivity.

[croes]

You decreased productivity of the elder, as a society we are getting more and more productive. We create more and more billionaires.

Productivity isn’t our problem, distribution is.

[lan321]

I see these as separate issues.

On a macro scale you want to see country wide economic statistic numbers go up, regardless of who the money gets to in the end. When your population's age isn't evenly distributed it causes spikes in productivity and costs associated with the elderly which makes the metrics go down. Combined with short term politics that are not incentivized to prepare for it, but rather to play hot potato with it, it makes for interesting situations. If, in the worst case, the country is functioning paycheck to paycheck, you have every member of the workforce supporting multiple elderly and children via taxes, since their taxes were already spent on X or stolen long ago during the productivity boom.

[HDThoreaun]

Capitalism needs private property and free markets. Everything beyond that is cultural

[dragonwriter]

Capitalism does not need and has never had free markets, though some arguments for capitalism being ideal rest on the assumption of free markets, along with a stack of other idealized assumptions, like human behavior conforming to rational choice theory.

[croes]

Then explain why capitalism made China its workbench.

[HDThoreaun]

China encourages exports and has no recent history of confiscating property owned by foreigners. Combined with cheap labor this makes it a great place to set up sweat shops. If you are selling a good that can be made in a low labor area but you use high cost labor you will be outcompeted and the market wont buy your expensive products so over time all the successful firms make their low skill products in sweatshop zones