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mhornberger t1_ivl25lq wrote

Reply to comment by Artanthos in The Collapse vs. the Conclusion: two scenarios for the 21st century by camdoodlebop

> Only the Utopian society survives, as the dystopian societies collapse and die off.

Or the Utopian society also dies off, due to low fertility rates. By all indications better conditions tend to correlate with lower fertility rates. It sometimes bounces back from its nadir, but usually stabilizes somewhere around 1.7, well below replacement rate.

We're very focused on dystopia or disaster killing people off. I suppose because a great amount of our science fiction and other speculative literature explores that idea. But prosperity and high (enough) quality of life lowering fertility rates below the fertility rates was something no one saw coming. It "doesn't make sense," in that it doesn't fit with our intuition of how the world should work.

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sticky_symbols t1_ivljwmr wrote

Don't you think people in a utopian society could head off collapse from lack of population replacement? Like, by making parenting easier and more fun and more respected?

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mhornberger t1_ivm4o0j wrote

This assumes that measures could successfully raise the fertility rate above the replacement rate. Other than hypotheticals like 'pay parents a billion dollars' or something that can't scale, I think it's going to be challenging. Even with paid leave, subsidized childcare, whatever, children are still an opportunity cost. They undercut free time, money, options, etc. And every additional child reduces the time/focus/hugs that can be given to the first child. Our expectations go up with wealth, to include our expected quality of parenting time, number of extracurricular or developmental activities for the child, and so on.

I think people want to think that if only we improve the world then birthrates will bounce upwards a significant amount. But there's scant data that supports that. High birthrates correlate with dystopian conditions, such as lower levels of education, less empowerment for women, less access to birth control, higher infant mortality, and so on. Give women options, and more women choose to have fewer (or no) children, and more choose to prioritize careers. It doesn't seem to actually be the case that women as a mass want to be stay-at-home tradwives with a passel of children, and are working only because they're forced to by economics.

Another concern is that people seem to think that if you say that improving the world won't increase the birthrate, then you are by implication saying don't improve the world. I'm not, at all. I want to improve the world, on all of these measures, even if they result in a lower birthrate.

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Artanthos t1_ivmdvtd wrote

In a world where only the wealthy have survived and most labor is automated, a lot of the issues you point out simply would not exist.

I say most and not all because there are certain jobs the very wealthy are unlikely to want automated even if possible.

Nannies would be one of those jobs. Along with personal chefs, certain highly creative jobs, and areas that they simply don’t feel comfortable giving machines decision making power.

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sticky_symbols t1_ivnhstz wrote

You're responding to a bunch of stuff I'm not saying or thinking. Sometimes online conversations work, sometimes they don't. Maybe others will be edified.

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