• TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Its a good thing and we should stop wringing hands over declining population. This is the singular way in which we can mantain a habitable planet for humans, is to have fewer humans.

    Pass sensible immigration policies and it becomes a non-issue.

    • sushibowl@feddit.nl
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      9 months ago

      The main problem is that most countries don’t have their economic system set up for it. The retirement system also in many cases is not sustainable with a shrinking population. This is going to cause a lot of pain and probably countries will start out with policies aiming to increase birth rates to attempt to maintain the status quo.

      You’re going to face a lot of resistance trying to actually adapt economic policies to a shrinking population. Especially from older people.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Japan and Italy are both going through this right now. I’m not sure its going particularly well, so I think you are generally correct. We should be putting much more effort into figuring out how to manage this transition, because its both completely necessary, and inevitable.

        • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Can’t speak for Japan but for Italy an easy way to deal with shrinking population is by allowing more immigration. The one thing the current government is against, and the populace has been conditioned to believe is the main problem causing all sort of issues. Particularly by facilitating an influx of skilled workers, you have from day one taxpayers that can fund your pensions, and that didn’t cost you a euro for the first 18 years orbso of their lives (education, health care etc). Of course it’s not that trivial as first they should create an attractive job market that makes skilled workers want to go there in the first place but other countries have successfully done that. I’m not counting on this to happen, just saying that it’s an option

        • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          As we continue to replace workers with machines it will be easier… but that’s a slow process.

        • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Japan is like being in the year 2000.

          I think if you talk to people in the west they would say the year 2000 is better than now.

          They have cheap housing/ rent, the country is safe, plenty of jobs. Sounds great. The only issue japan is having is that gdp isn’t increasing but from an individual person point of view things seem better.

          • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Sounds great. The only issue japan is having is that gdp isn’t increasing but from an individual person point of view things seem better.

            So if you rely on a narrow view of what success looks like (for example, only considering GDP growth), it would be considered not good, but from a lived experience, its fine.

            It makes sense that an economy that overshot what its population growth rate can support, it needs to contract.

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      This is such a dumb myth. The problem is that we refuse to embrace green energy, not that there’s too many people.

      If the oil lobby didn’t block all progress this would have been solved long ago.

        • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          A few top% people in the world (mostly western countries) are responsible for the majority of emissions

          We throw away a billion more times food than we really consume too. And we just dump everything we don’t like into the ocean

          Everything is a distribution problem, not an availability problem.

          • platypus_plumba@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            The problem is that the amount of population doesn’t match the way we live. You could create any ideal society and say that overpopulation isn’t the issue, or create an underpopulated society and say the way we live isn’t the issue.

            You’re saying “we just need to fix the biggest issues of our society in in order for overpopulation to be a non-issue, easy!”

            • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              I’m saying we would screw up the earth even if we literally had 1/2 the people. By just dumping even more in the ocean and being even less responsible.

              We have an absolute abundance of resources and energy and somehow (oil lobby) we manage to be so inefficient that we will never improve that efficiency unless absolutely needed.

              If we had half the humans we would waste twice as much.

    • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      This some eco-fascist shit, no humans aren’t the real virus you Ra’as Al’Ghoul ideating dingus.

      Less people just means more work that has to be done by all those machines that directly contribute to the climate crisis via power consumption.

      ISTG people be rooting for population decline to fix climate change as if it wasn’t what caused the industrial revolution that got us into this mess in the first fucking place.

        • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Cheering global population decline when the major contributors to global population are low pollution per person countries outside of the west is indeed ecofascism ya context avoidant nonce.

          • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            We should invite them in then. We’ve got the infrastructure and education systems built. Would be a shame not to use them.

      • Spacehooks@reddthat.com
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        9 months ago

        I do the job a of 3 departments back in 1990. tech will replace humans. Some places have automated warehouses and fast food. Getting a head start by reducing humans that needed those jobs is a good thing. Plus if there is less humans there will be less demand which means less work for machine to do anyway. Also, not like machines are not going to be running on better energy. 20 years ago almost no one had a solar panel on thier house.