DPUGT

It's bizarre that your theory is that we haven't run out of gas when the speedometer still says we're doing 100kph.

And even if you extrapolate the current trend it will not drop significantly below replacement rate anytime soon.

Soon for me is "anytime in the next 200 years". Soon for you is "next 2 minutes". We do not have the same "soon".

Oh and there is no evidence that people (on average) have decided to go totally childless.

It wouldn't have to be average. All it has to do is nudge things below replacement.

They usually only get one or two children, which does indeed drop the average fertility rate below replacement, but only slightly so.

And children who grow up in that world internalize it as a social norm. That becomes their ceiling for how many children to have someday. They then have the same number. Or fewer. The ones that go for "fewer" just nudged the rate down lower still. Iterate that through 30 generations, see what happens.

Even assuming the trend will last for thousands of years (nothing in human history has ever lasted that long!) we will not go anywhere near extinct.

Depends on the "we". If by "we" you are excluding myself and my descendants, then you most certainly will.

If you are including me, then no. But the subset of humanity that is like yourself, you're goners. Along with most of your ideology.

With 8 billion people world wide (and still growing above replacement rate right now!) it is simply absolute non-sense to talk about human extinction due to birth-rates dropping below replacement rate.

I forgot. Only climate science is allowed to think long term. The one true science. Measured in human generations, any one of which lasts no longer than about 100 years, each generation staggered with the next, and with a growing sentiment that having children is wrong, dangerous, and unfashionable that we impress upon youth... you people have less than a couple hundred years. Someday, when it becomes impossible to ignore, those of you still alive will look back to times like now, when something might still have been done about it.

I don’t know where you get your figures from, but the global fertility rate is still above replacement level,

Only when including several regions where fertility remains high (mostly Africa). If those are excluded, it's extinction-level. But hey, you say "that's how averages work".

So let's look at Africa. Their fertility rate is above replacement, but is dropping rapidly. We can measure how fast it is dropping. We know approximately when it will fall below replacement levels. And we don't see any reason why it should remain above them, when it didn't remain above replacement (or even just at) anywhere else in the world. It's natural, and even smart, to assume that the same sociological forces that made it drop elsewhere are those making it drop in Africa, and that they will work the same as elsewhere (since Africans are human like everyone else). It'd actually be sort of racist to assume that it would work differently there wouldn't it?

Once we have considered the places it's below replacement, and the places that it's above replacement but dropping, where else is left at all? Nowhere.

You don't even understand the phenomenon. You don't want to understand it. And you're claiming that somehow it's not even happening. It's bizarre.

Also even at a slightly below replacement rate (where the global fertility rate is heading indeed) it will take centuries

No. The effect actually picks up speed the longer it occurs. Children internalize norms. If the 5 children who see everyone around them childless (excepting their own parents who have one), then don't grow up to have one child also, they'll have on average 0.2 children or something like that. Each generation shrinks faster than the last.

And if that somehow still translates into "it will be centuries before the last centenarian dies!"... how is that a counter-argument at all?

Uhmm, you realize the world population is nearly 8 billion people and still growing fast?

Let's imagine a simpler scenario, for those who might read our comments but are bad at math. We won't use humans (too much baggage), but little aliens we'll call zoops.

Zoops have two biological sexes that procreate together. There are two specimens, a Y and a Z. They have two offspring, also Y and Z. The population has doubled, but the fertility rate is at exact replacement level. When the two older zoops die, there will be only two. Zoops have no incest taboos, and so the second generation procreates twice.

In this way, the population has reached a steady state. But what if, instead, they only procreated once? This population is dead. Period. Sure, it will hang on a little longer, and sure, you'll scream "but their population increased by 50% in just minutes" as some sort of lame argument that overpopulation is a concern. No, that was never a concern, instead extinction is the real risk.

We are in the period where humans are just having the one offspring per two parents, and since the parents don't immediately die, it looks to you as if the population is "still growing fast".

We will not run out of “them” anytime soon

You will indeed run out of them within 25 years. Within your lifetime. This will be about the time that you personally are relying on them to be the nurse's aids in your nursing homes and to wipe your geriatric ass.

and even if we do at some point (far in the future) that is probably a good thing as the world is way over-populated as it is right now already.

No one growing up in this world you imagine will think "ok, the population has fallen enough now it's time to start having 2.1 children again".

You belong to a death cult. Suicidal at the species level.

This is clever, but don't feds sometimes read the same articles I do? I forsee a future when as soon as they grab you they cut away all your belt loops with a utility knife and won't be too gentle about cutting deep. "Your honor, this is a well-established procedure designed to prevent perpetrators from destroying evidence" == qualified immunity.

But I have trained myself to only be able to think in bad pictures miscaptioned with funny words and I can only understand complex scenarios if I can relate them to plot points from pop culture!

Your argument has one glaring logical error: The overall population of Europe is growing

Yes. One of us has a glaring logical error. It is not me. Populations can (temporarily) grow, even as the fertility rate goes below replacement. Just as a car that runs out of gas can coast along for awhile on momentum. Sitting in the passenger seat, you taunt me with "I've invented perpetual motion". I just smile and nod.

Yes, this is due to immigration

Those countries the people come from... what's happening to their fertility rates? Aren't those declining? Are the rates of decline decreasing or increasing? Do you see any evidence of it bottoming out at all? Will it bottom out at 2.1, or go lower?

They have the same problem you do. You just have a head start.

this is no problem at all

This is laughable. I am not a racist. Assume each immigrant magically integrates instantly and perfectly... you'll just run out of them is the problem. Or, more accurately, the problem is that you'll run out of them and that you're somehow deluded enough to never notice that you'll run out of them. The fertility rates are declining even in the countries where the immigrants come from, with no signs of slowing down at all. They'll hit 2.1 and keep plummeting further. What will you do then?

Or, if we want to dig deeper, you don't even know why it's falling. You bandy around sophistry like "when women are educated they have fewer children" and just leave it at that. You can't explore the ideas, for some instinctive fear that you might discover double secret misogyny or something.

Children internalize the norms they grow up with. Every immigrant child in Europe is internalizing your childlessness norms. You're converting them to be like you in that regard, not just the other stuff, the positive "integration" stuff. And you're converting them far faster than their great numbers can hope to overcome.

In your collective psychology, there is something that makes you all feel as if you're bad. So bad that you shouldn't exist. And your wish will eventually come true. Personally I'm not surprised, it is the continent that gave us a century of world wars, pogroms, holocausts, and other villainous acts of barbarism. Maybe you guys have the right idea.

Listen to the stuff being said to me in this thread. That I'm privileged and hateful. You want me to feel miserable with you. To be ashamed, embarrassed, and to change. Why would I want to become what you are?

You're already all dead. You just haven't noticed yet.

but at least it is mostly managed better then in the US

No argument there. We should let in anyone who wants to be here... whether they want to stay and be citizens, or just stay awhile and go back home. Anyone smart enough to want to come here is an asset, and it's sort of crazy that their home countries would let them leave. No strings, no gotchas... if they haven't been convicted of a felony or have untreated tuberculosis, let them in. Bricklayer or PhD.

mean… we’re a social species. We’ve evolved to live in systems called societies.

Sure, if you want to stretch the definition to meaningless. I named my house "society" therefor I live in one too!

Why do you consider you live better in the us then? And with such hate towards other people

I don't. There are things I have to work around even in the US, if I moved, there would be different thins to work around. The US has fewer of these than some places, but not substantially more than other places.

I don't hate anyone. Hatred is a peculiar emotion that I have felt in the past, directed towards specific individuals (low count). I hold no hatred towards any group of people, whatever the manner of grouping.

I mostly have indifference for humans in general. I make exceptions for people I like. As for public school teachers, even the ones who were cruel or didn't give a shit to me personally... how can I blame them? My mother didn't do anything about it, kept sending me back. If someone should have done something, surely it was her don't you think? But public school teachers continue to behave stupidly, continue to make poor life choices (their career, in case that's obvious), and will even scuttle around on the ground picking up dollar bills like an over-aged stripper at the nudie bar.

If they are humiliated, how is it anything other than they doing this to themselves?

About Europe, the fertility rate is not very different from the US.

Anything below replacement is eventual extinction. And it's so far below that that it's absurd. Children growing up seeing everyone around them have one child, or none at all... they internalize it, think it's normal. Then they grow up to have one or none themselves. Which math says means it goes even lower since the ceiling was set but not the floor. Sure, you can pretend that some day 80 years from now one of those little girls will wake up and say "I want to grow up and have 2.1 children!"... but it really has to be all little girls who say that. If it's just one in 10, then those girls have to say "I want to grow up and have 21 children!". Neither of those is plausible.

Dead. The US might be too. Certainly heading that way. Wouldn't that be a hoot?

you’re as dead as

I don't identify as my country though, unlike yourself. You see yourself as a citizen of X, one of many, collectively acting like some gigantic robot made out of people. One that can die even if some of the individuals survive. Me? I'm just me. My existence in this country is an accident of geography.

I know of many systems. Systems are inhuman things, created by engineers to manipulate things.

Humans are not things, and belong in no systems. Saying "but this other system is better" just misses the point.

Most if not all the other developed countries have good quality public services

No, they have just succeeded in convincing their populations that these are good. That's not the same thing. I don't need my children in a "better public school" where better just means "they do the same things, but more successfully". I need them far away from such things, distances measured in astronomical terms.

Europe is dead. It does not know it yet, it will keep limping along for another century at most. What's the fertility rate again? Everything about its culture is killing it, and it can't escape that fate.

The opinions of dying people don't do much to sway me. My descendants will tell spooky stories about the place that whined itself to death.

Yes, because you are lucky enough to be able to afford an insurance. Lose your job and see what happens.

Just took a new job. The insurance is far worse than at the last job (pay is better though). Decided to not get insurance during open enrollment. My wife and I analyzed the options, and we decided that we'd be better off just squirreling away the cash than to pay premiums for shit insurance that covered little.

We don't have significant medical bills.

If you country implodes, you live in it.

It's been imploding since I was born. The 1970s were a wild ride, even if I only vaguely remember the last few years of it. The 1980s were little better, we did drills in school to crawl under our desks in the event of nuclear bombardment.

Short of a shooting war, there's very little the "implosion" can do to me that I haven't seen. And if that happens, I plan on being somewhere else entirely about 12 months before the first bullet flies. Even have some gold stashed away to bribe whichever border guards need bribing. Fake passports are getting harder to come by though, that's worrisome.

Any attempt to emotionally take me hostage and attempt to fix the unfixable is going to fail. They're all monkeys here, and you just have to accept that monkeys fling shit. It's even kind of funny to watch, if you learn to duck the turds.

US individualism is killing its people

Possibly. But it's not killing me and mine. In fact, it's saving me and mine, when the non-individualism has so many whining about how their welfare checks are too small and flipping burgers isn't a salary career with living wages. I've got a better deal, and you're trying to talk me into taking the worse one.

Honest question: have you considered inviting some less fortunate children to your home to be educated together with your children?

No. While I would consider the children of family (I teach my children that their cousins might as well be brothers and sisters) and close family, none of them are significantly less fortunate. I give when it puts me at no disadvantage, and seeing even the children of strangers do well might make provide some minor satisfaction, the risk that their presence would interfere with my own children's education far outweighs that.

If I have to choose between my children, and some strangers' kid, I will choose my own and not give it a second thought. You're all expendable compared to them.

People like you is what’s wrong with the US. But I’m OK with it, I live in a country where I don’t have to stop eating to pay medical bills.

I haven't needed to stop eating to pay medical bills.

but your country is on its way to implod

It is an accident of geography that I was born here. The government of the United States holds no special place in my heart, anymore than the Roman Republic or the Kingdom of Wessex. If it implodes, it implodes. Nothing important will have been lost.

If you feel differently for your country, whereever that is, how can you even love your family? Your country has become some sort of emotional surrogate for them. It's sort of fucked up.

I am happy to be "privileged". My children benefit from that, whatever it is. If you or others hope to shame me into feeling bad about it... the joke's on you. I was the kid on welfare his entire childhood, mercilessly bullied and the public school didn't give a shit about that.

Whatever connections to other people that most have, that they find so important that they'll do anything (hell, in the Middle East they'll murder their own daughters in "honor killings"), well, I don't have those connections. You and I are a different species. I have no connection to you, and I only feel low-intensity satisfaction when you try to shame me.

and also not a good way of how the important labor of education should be distributed in a society.

Definitely! Your children should definitely be herded into a locked room with 25 other same-calendar-age children and a college-of-education flunky so that they can be force-fed indoctrination and the educational equivalent of junk food. Something like 70% of them will get a mediocre education, and the other 30 percent will be on one side of the curve or the other and ruined. Those are good odds.

If education was so important to you, you'd do like I do. Not try to figure out how to get out of personally and to foist it off on a minimum-wage government bureaucrat.