This very good article failed to mention how the "pill" and the feminist movement have compounded the problem by: a) turning sex into a commodity and b) dissuading young women from becoming mothers with the big lie that they can concentrate on their careers while they're young (and fertile) and that once they have achieved economic independence (by their 30s and 40s) then they can go out and seek and find a mate. But, the problem is that by that age for a woman it is very difficult to bear children or find a man that is not: married, or divorced, or willing to re-marry, or as financially successful, or as educated, or tall enough, or handsome enough, or (gasp) interested in women their age. The folks at Cupid.com found out that their female clientele reject 88% of the men in their database. They all feel that they are worth the remaining top 12%! The result is that most "average" men have given up finding a mate and the men that are "tens" don't want to get married because they can get all of the sex that they want with hardly any effort on their part!
In the end, the brutal reality of nature for women that are older than 25 years of age is that in the sexual marketplace they have become the "fours" looking for a "ten." If they are single moms -and with more than one child- that value drops to "zero." Attraction is not a choice.
As countries become wealthier population growth decreases. Availability of energy powers economies and increases productivity. The continent of Africa is young and growing. But they will require enormous amounts of new power generation to work their way out of poverty. And people in India, China, and Indonesia are starving for more power. I don’t think begging people that live in advanced economies to have more babies is going to work. What might work is to make sure you provide all the world with abundant affordable power, and finally establish common sense immigration laws informed by lessons learned. Increasing productivity may be the remedy to a decreasing population. I am not an expert on this issue. Just trying to do a little critical thinking. It would be interesting to see what others think. Interesting subject.
Excellent thoughts, Shawn! Pretty sure trying to bribe people to have any or at least more kids isn't going to work. How about creating a cultural environment which honors and rejoices over child bearing? In the past, procreation was critical for survival of the human species. As you've pointed out, now not so much.
Both good points. There's definitely a direct link between less poverty and fewer children. Kids are needed less to help the family farm/business, and lower mortality rates means a higher likelihood your (now fewer) children will survive into adulthood.
How a society encourages a greater birthrate? I think that's something we'll see succeed and fail in different areas over the next few decades.
Succeeding and failing is what our founders had in mind for the states. Let them try different approaches, see what works, and let the other states learn and copy. Of course, if there's anything left of the blue states by then....
My understanding is that a couple of factors drive the reduced birth rates: education and wealth. If you've been educated, you're far more likely to be able to draw the line between having more children and the much higher financial burden of raising them. And the more wealthy you are, the less likely you're going to need to have more children so they can help work the farm. These may be simplistic ways to explain the problem, but it is clear that lower birthrates correlate with education and wealth. Much of the Muslim world has not yet caught up on the education and wealth scores, which helps to explain why they're so prolific and why the newer waves of immigration in Europe are from Muslim immigrants. As those people spend a few generations in first world countries their birthrates will eventually drop as well. My Zoomer-gen children aren't the least bit interested in having children of their own. Raising babies into adults is, for all of its joys, an expensive pain in the ass. It's a shame that it boils down to this, and I don't really have any workable solution other than to say humanity is tenacious and will find a way to survive somehow.
This is spot on, adding Africa to parts of the Muslim world. Your last line is the best ... for all of the problem scenarios one can predict for the future, humans so far have always figured a way to thrive.
As more low skill jobs are replaced by automation and AI takes over more artistic and communication endeavors, there may be far fewer jobs for the lower skilled less educated people having the most children. The globalist “elites” have a long term goal: to “humanely” reduce the world’s population down to around 500 million total, herd most into 15 minute cities, have everyone except the wealthy living in little pods stacked on top of each other, restrict travel and energy use in the name of “climate change,” reverse the industrial revolution, create more frankenfoods like Bill Gates’ fake meat and have people subsist on eating crickets and worms to eliminate the greenhouse gasses caused by agriculture. The UN Agenda 2030 has some ideas for global control, none of which really include lifting the Third World out of poverty because that would necessitate more use of fossil fuels. I love my life now, living on acreage in the country caring for my own horses and giant guard dogs, but that lifestyle will become far more rare in the future. To contemplate the lives our grandchildren may endure is not pretty, sadly. The billionaires may win, and barring a dramatic reversal of goals, we may need another cosmic event to force a planetary restart, such as what ended the reign of the dinosaurs. Just sayin’ . . . . ☺️
Also not mentioned is how forever chemicals and the injection of soy (chemically incredibly similar to estrogen) into our lives, lowers T and sperm count. And has negative effects on woman's systems as well.
A declining population is right in line with the Globalist agenda which envisions a world wide population of around 500 million, albeit with a much longer timeline than just killing us off with death jabs, wars, and starvation - all of which they are responsible for. Enough with any agenda that depresses population growth! Shawn makes some great points about productivity resulting a need for less population growth, but the obvious goal should be to bring the entire world up to modern living standards, keeping in mind that we cannot let the cultural rot that has inflicted more advanced societies hold sway. Hence the desperate need for an overwhelming MAGA victory in November!
This very good article failed to mention how the "pill" and the feminist movement have compounded the problem by: a) turning sex into a commodity and b) dissuading young women from becoming mothers with the big lie that they can concentrate on their careers while they're young (and fertile) and that once they have achieved economic independence (by their 30s and 40s) then they can go out and seek and find a mate. But, the problem is that by that age for a woman it is very difficult to bear children or find a man that is not: married, or divorced, or willing to re-marry, or as financially successful, or as educated, or tall enough, or handsome enough, or (gasp) interested in women their age. The folks at Cupid.com found out that their female clientele reject 88% of the men in their database. They all feel that they are worth the remaining top 12%! The result is that most "average" men have given up finding a mate and the men that are "tens" don't want to get married because they can get all of the sex that they want with hardly any effort on their part!
In the end, the brutal reality of nature for women that are older than 25 years of age is that in the sexual marketplace they have become the "fours" looking for a "ten." If they are single moms -and with more than one child- that value drops to "zero." Attraction is not a choice.
As countries become wealthier population growth decreases. Availability of energy powers economies and increases productivity. The continent of Africa is young and growing. But they will require enormous amounts of new power generation to work their way out of poverty. And people in India, China, and Indonesia are starving for more power. I don’t think begging people that live in advanced economies to have more babies is going to work. What might work is to make sure you provide all the world with abundant affordable power, and finally establish common sense immigration laws informed by lessons learned. Increasing productivity may be the remedy to a decreasing population. I am not an expert on this issue. Just trying to do a little critical thinking. It would be interesting to see what others think. Interesting subject.
Excellent thoughts, Shawn! Pretty sure trying to bribe people to have any or at least more kids isn't going to work. How about creating a cultural environment which honors and rejoices over child bearing? In the past, procreation was critical for survival of the human species. As you've pointed out, now not so much.
Both good points. There's definitely a direct link between less poverty and fewer children. Kids are needed less to help the family farm/business, and lower mortality rates means a higher likelihood your (now fewer) children will survive into adulthood.
How a society encourages a greater birthrate? I think that's something we'll see succeed and fail in different areas over the next few decades.
Succeeding and failing is what our founders had in mind for the states. Let them try different approaches, see what works, and let the other states learn and copy. Of course, if there's anything left of the blue states by then....
My understanding is that a couple of factors drive the reduced birth rates: education and wealth. If you've been educated, you're far more likely to be able to draw the line between having more children and the much higher financial burden of raising them. And the more wealthy you are, the less likely you're going to need to have more children so they can help work the farm. These may be simplistic ways to explain the problem, but it is clear that lower birthrates correlate with education and wealth. Much of the Muslim world has not yet caught up on the education and wealth scores, which helps to explain why they're so prolific and why the newer waves of immigration in Europe are from Muslim immigrants. As those people spend a few generations in first world countries their birthrates will eventually drop as well. My Zoomer-gen children aren't the least bit interested in having children of their own. Raising babies into adults is, for all of its joys, an expensive pain in the ass. It's a shame that it boils down to this, and I don't really have any workable solution other than to say humanity is tenacious and will find a way to survive somehow.
This is spot on, adding Africa to parts of the Muslim world. Your last line is the best ... for all of the problem scenarios one can predict for the future, humans so far have always figured a way to thrive.
As more low skill jobs are replaced by automation and AI takes over more artistic and communication endeavors, there may be far fewer jobs for the lower skilled less educated people having the most children. The globalist “elites” have a long term goal: to “humanely” reduce the world’s population down to around 500 million total, herd most into 15 minute cities, have everyone except the wealthy living in little pods stacked on top of each other, restrict travel and energy use in the name of “climate change,” reverse the industrial revolution, create more frankenfoods like Bill Gates’ fake meat and have people subsist on eating crickets and worms to eliminate the greenhouse gasses caused by agriculture. The UN Agenda 2030 has some ideas for global control, none of which really include lifting the Third World out of poverty because that would necessitate more use of fossil fuels. I love my life now, living on acreage in the country caring for my own horses and giant guard dogs, but that lifestyle will become far more rare in the future. To contemplate the lives our grandchildren may endure is not pretty, sadly. The billionaires may win, and barring a dramatic reversal of goals, we may need another cosmic event to force a planetary restart, such as what ended the reign of the dinosaurs. Just sayin’ . . . . ☺️
Also not mentioned is how forever chemicals and the injection of soy (chemically incredibly similar to estrogen) into our lives, lowers T and sperm count. And has negative effects on woman's systems as well.
A declining population is right in line with the Globalist agenda which envisions a world wide population of around 500 million, albeit with a much longer timeline than just killing us off with death jabs, wars, and starvation - all of which they are responsible for. Enough with any agenda that depresses population growth! Shawn makes some great points about productivity resulting a need for less population growth, but the obvious goal should be to bring the entire world up to modern living standards, keeping in mind that we cannot let the cultural rot that has inflicted more advanced societies hold sway. Hence the desperate need for an overwhelming MAGA victory in November!