[toomuchtodo]

This is a call for community and durable systems that serve the human instead of traditional systems built to aggregate and funnel capital to a few. The fertility crisis is a capital crisis (taxpayers needed to pay back debt issued today decades into the future, workers for corporate profits), not a crisis for the individual. I see it as an exciting opportunity to maintain and improve quality of life for humans while solving for decoupling from these suboptimal systems primarily built to extract and exploit. Solarpunk vibes.

https://ilsr.org/ is one resource, there are more.

(to your food example, the US harvests land the aggregate size of the state of Oregon just for biofuels, ethanol and biodiesel; this is, arguable, unnecessary, and there are many other examples of unnecessary economic activity that can be deprecated)

[imtringued]

Uh no?

The fertility crisis is an entirely individual crisis. You are a parent and you raise children

Your children's pension contributions are paid out to someone else, leaving less for you.

Having your own children no longer ensures your retirement, so you don't have them in the first place.

The problem couldn't be more individual than that.

[trumpdong]

You're describing a systemic problem. An individual problem is: my paycheque is next week but I need to pay rent this week. That's a problem specific to me. A systemic problem is: paycheques aren't big enough to cover rent any more. It's a problem that affects a large number of people. Systems are comprised of individuals but describing a systemic problem from the perspective of one individual doesn't change the nature of the problem.

[toomuchtodo]

Having children in no way guarantees they will provide for you in old age. Stop by your local retirement home and ask how many kids stop by to see their parents. Free will is a thing, children are not assets.

[matchbok3]

Corporate profits are good, they help companies make new things.

Do you think they should lose money? How would you be typing on a computer if that evil, evil company didn't make a profit?

There is a reason every communist society has failed.

[tikkabhuna]

There is a huge gap between capitalism and communism.

Just like how pure communism doesn’t work, neither does pure capitalism.

[btilly]

I could rant about the stupidity of spending fossil fuels, to grow biofuels, for no net gain in energy. But with a definite cost in engine wear.

That said, like Democracy, capitalism is the worst economic system, except all of the others that have been tried. And there have been enough alternate experiments that I wouldn't want to literally bet my life on the next one working better.

[toomuchtodo]

Europe has done fairly well imho balancing socialism with capitalism and free market mechanisms, good patterns exist today I argue, even if they need tweaks and improvement. Importantly, these demographic curves are locked in for decades into the future, so might as well get comfortable with forward curve of change, we aren't going back to the historical demographic growth curve in anyone's lifetime, if ever. Plan, forecast, and model accordingly.

The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments)

(~71% of the world’s population now lives in countries with birth rates below the replacement level needed to maintain population size, the remainder will follow in time)

[matchbok3]

Europe's "socialist" only works because they depend on the USA for military protection and tech innovation. Or oil revenues.

[trumpdong]

The free market is a very good starting point indeed, but it shouldn't be confused with Capitalism. Ironically, the free market best embodies the Communist slogan "let a million flowers bloom". Capitalism is more like giving Elon a lawnmower.