[hliyan]

Not a historian nor economist, but to my layman's mind, these revolts seem like a recurring phenomenon whenever long running economic cycles reach that point at which the aristocracy overreaches while trying to suppressing growing public sentiment against them, not unlike in Polybius' anacyclosis. But unlike Polybius' cycles, as technology improves, the likelihood of a successful reset at the end of a cycle, gradually diminishes with each cycle. I've recently started on Piketty's Capital, and he too alludes to the possibility that the post-industrial-revolution spiral into inequality could have continued uninterrupted into the 20th century and beyond, had it not been for the socioeconomic shock of the world war. Looking at the current trajectory of automation of intellectual labour and surveillance technology, I too am starting to worry that the odds of breaking the current cycle are slim.

[Tade0]

Something else is going to happen this time, or really is happening already: people vote with their feet and stop having children.

On one hand wealth is being pooled into a smaller number of people, on the other it's becoming difficult to have anyone invested in working harder - and for good reason, as there's little payoff in that.

[smallmancontrov]

The Demographic Transition is modern but the age of family formation is actually used by historians to track how stressed the social contract is. Families have always been expensive and delaying them has always been a last resort for expense management.

[microtonal]

Not an expert at all, so mostly a question. I have often heard the opposite, where large families are more common in less developed countries because having many children acts as insurance/social safety net for when parents become older and more frail. How does that relate?

[mandevil]

For all societies before about 1870 at the very earliest, the reason for large families was the very high death rate: a typical woman could expect to get pregnant 10 times, lose five of them to miscarriage, lose two of the five live births before their first birthday, and another at some later point before adulthood. These families typically would be so close to the food margin that the rule of thumb was mothers expected to lose a tooth for every live birth- the baby and the mom would struggle for the same calcium. This is a serious deal, and the main reason for the large families- to survive all of that death.

And even the wealthiest families would still lose kids. In 1924 the 16 year old son of the President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge Jr, went out to play tennis against his brother. But he forgot to put on his socks. He got a blister, it popped, got infected, and he died. That was the world that humans lived in just a century ago, even the most powerful could expect to lose children before adulthood. And so they needed large families to ensure that some of them made it.

[smallmancontrov]

That's the Demographic Transition. It's real, but having a big family still requires a big up-front resource investment and the harder it is to secure that investment the longer it takes.

[esseph]

That only works as long as you can afford to feed them.

[strken]

This sounds interesting but I couldn't find any sources in a few seconds of searching. Got any resources for further reading?

[roenxi]

As theories go, that one makes little sense. At no point in human history has living in miserable conditions caused people to stop having children. And the evidence seems quite suggestive that people stop having children as their material conditions improve.

There isn't really a final word on the topic I'm aware of, but it looks like all the options available are out-competing having children rather than that people are avoiding families as some sort of revolt. People aren't generally willing to have kids if it means abandoning their efforts to achieve the most comfortable modern lifestyle that they can.

[Tade0]

> At no point in human history has living in miserable conditions caused people to stop having children.

That's mostly because for most of history, they didn't have much control over it.

Contraception and basic sexual education changed all that, as evidenced by the sharp decrease in teen pregnancies.

> People aren't generally willing to have kids if it means abandoning their efforts to achieve the most comfortable modern lifestyle that they can.

That's a minority opinion.

Around 12% of the (US) population actually pursues this, in their view, comfortable lifestyle. The rest consistently indicates either same or a larger number of desired children than they have:

https://populationconnection.org/blog/survey-americans-want-...

[roenxi]

> Around 12% of the (US) population actually pursues this, in their view, comfortable lifestyle. The rest consistently indicates either same or a larger number of desired children than they have:

This is basic economic revealed preferences. These people have all achieved the best living standard (and for the least effort) of anyone in the history of their genetic lineage measuring from before humans were a species.

They may say they want more children, but they are not willing to compromise away any of their comforts to actually have more children. Nothing is stopping them except their own preferences. Literally all their ancestors managed to have children in much worse conditions.

[sorokod]

people vote with their feet

With their reproductive organs more likely.

[hermitShell]

Sure, most of the developed world is facing a demographic crisis. But will it trigger a meaningful reset of wealth distribution? Or be ineffective like the peasants revolt...

The core question seems to be whether the economic systems and fiat currencies can survive the next century. Population decline and a shrinking economy should go hand in hand... but planning contractions does not seem to be priority...

[rapsey]

> Something else is going to happen this time, or really is happening already: people vote with their feet and stop having children.

And then the elite says, well lets import excess population from the third world. An idea unthinkable in the past, but now we are modern and not racist.

[whateverboat]

Well, US is already banning abortion and contraceptives, so, we will see.

[trevithick]

When all labor is automated, is it a problem for the elites if people stop having children?

[Tade0]

Is that a realistic scenario anytime soon?

The highest estimate of jobs long term removed by automation that I've seen is around 200 million.

The current labour shortage just in China is already around half of that.

Layoffs in tech notwithstanding, we're still in a period of labour shortages and increased efforts at automation are a reaction to it.

[IrishTechie]

I know there are some criticisms of Capital in the 21st Century and Picketty himself, but the book changed how I see the world profoundly, I cannot recommend it highly enough to anybody interested in these topics. The audiobook is a good way to digest it for the average person.

[inglor_cz]

If I generalize a bit: sometimes conditions change enough for the system as a whole to become unviable, but the entitled part of the population still tries their utmost to keep those entitlements.

Usually, it was a tiny elite, but nowadays, in the time of heavy pension systems, we might actually have succeeded in building an untenable system for a massive part of the population.

[faidit]

The world war helped via wealth destruction and redistribution. Polybius' theory also has Arabic (Khaldun) and Chinese analogues. In China it looks like a 300-ish year cycle driven by wealth/land concentration and elite corruption which ends with peasant revolts, a power vacuum, peasants taking back their own land, and a new dynasty formed by rebels or invaders, after which the new elite slowly begins encroaching on the peasants and taking their land again.

[constantius]

The idea that wars, epidemics, and catastrophes lead to wealth redistribution is the thesis of "The Great Leveler" by Walter Schneidel: it's not an absolute rule (and as far as I remember, another book was published to criticise this one), but it seems to hold through a change in power dynamics, supply and demand of labour, and coordination between the previously oppressed classes.

[shevy-java]

The revolts kept on coming back because people hated to being slaves and working for others for (almost) free.