Author Topic: The future of Europe  (Read 12529 times)

Buffaloski Boris

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #100 on: August 01, 2020, 03:54:07 PM »
I was one of those American thread hijackers. Apologies for that.

Coming back to topic - I think the biggest problem facing Europe is the lack of growth drivers. In previous centuries, Europe has been the epicenter and beneficiary from Colonialism and industrial revolution.

That picture changed after WW2.

So, the default long-term future facing Europe is of stagnation, and demographics adds a massive amount of fuel to that issue.

This should be contrasted with the short and medium term future where Europe still provides very high standard of HDI to it's population.

To change this long term outlook:
1. Europe can suddenly become the epicenter of innovation and replace US in this regard. I am not sure it is feasible.
2. Start making a lots of babies. That's unlikely as well.
3. Allow a much higher degree of immigration - up to Canada/Australia levels. I think this is much more possible than most people think. Countries like UK are very immigrant friendly as far as their culture goes. *Even* the crazy BoJo is not anti-immigrant. Others have more of a nativist streak in them - but that is likely to wither away once the orange one is disposed of. At least I can hope that happens.

Item 3. is a beggar thy neighbor strategy that isn’t going to be available for much longer. None of the countries of Europe, North America, or developed Asia have a Total Fertility Rate above replacement. And the TFR for the remainder of the world is dropping. There is only so much of a supply of educated young people who are willing to uproot and move.

I’ve always found it interesting that while we closely look at the immigration aspect of population movement, we don’t normally look at the emigration side of the equation. Such as the available supply, what emigrants leave behind, and how high emigration rates affect policies in the losing countries. Nor do those countries that are generally considered as desirable for immigrants seem to look much at emigration from their countries.

If you drop the "educated" part of the criteria, climate change will keep this racket going for at least the next 100 years:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-unfolding-tragedy-of-climate-change-in-bangladesh/

It has already started, and affecting countries that had least contributed to it. The affected population also skew young, albeit not very educated/skilled.

To fuel economic growth, you probably need more lettuce pickers than code monkeys. These countries can supply lettuce pickers in abundance.

As to the code monkeys, yeah that stock will run out faster! Indeed, it is already very difficult to hire competent code monkeys (I know from experience) - so that would be nothing new.

Thanks for the link. I read the article and probably didn’t have the desired reaction. All I wanted to do was invest in Bangladesh. They seem to have a great future ahead of them. Governance that seems at least somewhat interested in moving the country forward. High but not too high fertility, quickly developing.

ctuser1

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #101 on: August 01, 2020, 04:32:46 PM »
Item 3. is a beggar thy neighbor strategy that isn’t going to be available for much longer.

If you drop the "educated" part of the criteria, climate change will keep this racket going for at least the next 100 years:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-unfolding-tragedy-of-climate-change-in-bangladesh/

It has already started, and affecting countries that had least contributed to it. The affected population also skew young, albeit not very educated/skilled.

To fuel economic growth, you probably need more lettuce pickers than code monkeys. These countries can supply lettuce pickers in abundance.

As to the code monkeys, yeah that stock will run out faster! Indeed, it is already very difficult to hire competent code monkeys (I know from experience) - so that would be nothing new.

Thanks for the link. I read the article and probably didn’t have the desired reaction. All I wanted to do was invest in Bangladesh. They seem to have a great future ahead of them. Governance that seems at least somewhat interested in moving the country forward. High but not too high fertility, quickly developing.

I was responding to the bolded part.
My point is that the supply of low-skilled immigrants is not going to disappear anytime soon.

Supply of "well educated" immigrants is more limited - so your point is partially valid there. I say partial because the supply of labor is not completely static and will adjust over time. So it will only be limited by a time lag in the foreseeable future.

------------------

You also argued about the impact of emigrating. My personal opinion (not *yet* substantiated by data, but quite confident data will support it) is that emigrants are great for the sending country.

First, the immigrant generally creates more economic value after immigrating, and the entire system of markets comprising of the sending and receiving countries is now more efficient (else the immigration/emigration won't happen in the first place).

Next, the sending country often gets economic windfall in terms of remittances (which is huge for a country like Bangladesh).

Lastly, when the sending country is ready to get to the next stage of economic development - the diaspora can provide the skills and connections to make that happen. This is a huge part of how Manufacturing developed in China and SE Asia and knowledge economy developed in India.

--------------------

Net net, immigration is a win-win proposition for the whole system and generally for most people. But, it will correlate with dislocations in the recipient countries - emphasis on "correlated" because there is little evidence for "causal" relationships.
So, immigration should be driven by the concerns of the recipient country's economic needs (with appropriate breakers in place to take care of the people that are dislocated correlated with immigration). I'd also argue that there is no need to especially consider the sending countries concerns, since it is save to assume that it will always be a positive thing for them. In fact, that's why I think nobody spends time talking about it. 
« Last Edit: August 01, 2020, 04:43:17 PM by ctuser1 »

markbrynn

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #102 on: August 03, 2020, 07:43:07 AM »
I was one of those American thread hijackers. Apologies for that.

Coming back to topic - I think the biggest problem facing Europe is the lack of growth drivers. In previous centuries, Europe has been the epicenter and beneficiary from Colonialism and industrial revolution.

That picture changed after WW2.

So, the default long-term future facing Europe is of stagnation, and demographics adds a massive amount of fuel to that issue.

This should be contrasted with the short and medium term future where Europe still provides very high standard of HDI to it's population.

To change this long term outlook:
1. Europe can suddenly become the epicenter of innovation and replace US in this regard. I am not sure it is feasible.
2. Start making a lots of babies. That's unlikely as well.
3. Allow a much higher degree of immigration - up to Canada/Australia levels. I think this is much more possible than most people think. Countries like UK are very immigrant friendly as far as their culture goes. *Even* the crazy BoJo is not anti-immigrant. Others have more of a nativist streak in them - but that is likely to wither away once the orange one is disposed of. At least I can hope that happens.

It's possible to consider 2 and 3 (in above quote) in the short team. In the longer term, the whole world needs to find an economic model that fits with long term decrease (or at least stabilisation) in population, and the aging that goes with it. Unless we somehow think that we can continue to have more and more people on this finite rock without it ever having consequences. The change in demographics and/or decrease in population has the potential to fit quite well with the growth of automation and AI (less need for labour). That's when Europe's experience with socialism may well be an advantage over more individualistic societies (no countries named here to avoid sidetracking the conversation again).


Shane

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #103 on: August 03, 2020, 08:30:55 AM »
I was one of those American thread hijackers. Apologies for that.

Coming back to topic - I think the biggest problem facing Europe is the lack of growth drivers. In previous centuries, Europe has been the epicenter and beneficiary from Colonialism and industrial revolution.

That picture changed after WW2.

So, the default long-term future facing Europe is of stagnation, and demographics adds a massive amount of fuel to that issue.

This should be contrasted with the short and medium term future where Europe still provides very high standard of HDI to it's population.

To change this long term outlook:
1. Europe can suddenly become the epicenter of innovation and replace US in this regard. I am not sure it is feasible.
2. Start making a lots of babies. That's unlikely as well.
3. Allow a much higher degree of immigration - up to Canada/Australia levels. I think this is much more possible than most people think. Countries like UK are very immigrant friendly as far as their culture goes. *Even* the crazy BoJo is not anti-immigrant. Others have more of a nativist streak in them - but that is likely to wither away once the orange one is disposed of. At least I can hope that happens.

It's possible to consider 2 and 3 (in above quote) in the short team. In the longer term, the whole world needs to find an economic model that fits with long term decrease (or at least stabilisation) in population, and the aging that goes with it. Unless we somehow think that we can continue to have more and more people on this finite rock without it ever having consequences. The change in demographics and/or decrease in population has the potential to fit quite well with the growth of automation and AI (less need for labour). That's when Europe's experience with socialism may well be an advantage over more individualistic societies (no countries named here to avoid sidetracking the conversation again).

^^This! When I was a kid, the population of the US was around 200MM. Now, it's 330MM, and the plan seems to be to just keep on growing our population, now through immigration, basically forever. That that's not a sustainable plan seems obvious, but mentioning this inconvenient truth seems to usually draw either anger or silence. How we can transition from an economy based on constant growth to a new paradigm of declining, or at least stabilizing, populations, is a fundamental question that is going to need to be answered in coming years. Reading a fascinating book about zoonotic diseases and the reasons why spillover to humans has been increasing in recent decades. TL/DR: Over population by humans, over development of formerly wild environments and the associated decline in diversity of wild species is bringing humans into contact with zoonoses more frequently. Voluntarily decreasing the human population on Earth seems like it would be a pretty smart move. Unfortunately, it's not a popular subject to bring up. Highly recommend: Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen. Book was published before covid. In hindsight, covid is now what Quammen refers to in the book as the Next Big One (NBO).

ctuser1

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #104 on: August 03, 2020, 11:25:26 AM »
I was one of those American thread hijackers. Apologies for that.

Coming back to topic - I think the biggest problem facing Europe is the lack of growth drivers. In previous centuries, Europe has been the epicenter and beneficiary from Colonialism and industrial revolution.

That picture changed after WW2.

So, the default long-term future facing Europe is of stagnation, and demographics adds a massive amount of fuel to that issue.

This should be contrasted with the short and medium term future where Europe still provides very high standard of HDI to it's population.

To change this long term outlook:
1. Europe can suddenly become the epicenter of innovation and replace US in this regard. I am not sure it is feasible.
2. Start making a lots of babies. That's unlikely as well.
3. Allow a much higher degree of immigration - up to Canada/Australia levels. I think this is much more possible than most people think. Countries like UK are very immigrant friendly as far as their culture goes. *Even* the crazy BoJo is not anti-immigrant. Others have more of a nativist streak in them - but that is likely to wither away once the orange one is disposed of. At least I can hope that happens.

It's possible to consider 2 and 3 (in above quote) in the short team. In the longer term, the whole world needs to find an economic model that fits with long term decrease (or at least stabilisation) in population, and the aging that goes with it. Unless we somehow think that we can continue to have more and more people on this finite rock without it ever having consequences. The change in demographics and/or decrease in population has the potential to fit quite well with the growth of automation and AI (less need for labour). That's when Europe's experience with socialism may well be an advantage over more individualistic societies (no countries named here to avoid sidetracking the conversation again).

^^This! When I was a kid, the population of the US was around 200MM. Now, it's 330MM, and the plan seems to be to just keep on growing our population, now through immigration, basically forever. That that's not a sustainable plan seems obvious, but mentioning this inconvenient truth seems to usually draw either anger or silence. How we can transition from an economy based on constant growth to a new paradigm of declining, or at least stabilizing, populations, is a fundamental question that is going to need to be answered in coming years. Reading a fascinating book about zoonotic diseases and the reasons why spillover to humans has been increasing in recent decades. TL/DR: Over population by humans, over development of formerly wild environments and the associated decline in diversity of wild species is bringing humans into contact with zoonoses more frequently. Voluntarily decreasing the human population on Earth seems like it would be a pretty smart move. Unfortunately, it's not a popular subject to bring up. Highly recommend: Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen. Book was published before covid. In hindsight, covid is now what Quammen refers to in the book as the Next Big One (NBO).

1. You can not plan for the long term!!
Lots of things will change between now and whatever you would consider even medium term that would be beyond our imagination today. Consider zoonotic diseases. Are they going to remain such a menace once quantum computer can simulate how organic compounds interact with other organic compounds? Synthesize new medicines and do the equivalent of the level 1 and 2 drug testing in a matter of days? Compute new gene therapies?

Before you react "oh, but how about the environment?" - think of the likely scenario. Rural economies are in the process of collapsing. They would no longer support the population they have. Result -> much more urbanization. While urbanization and vertical growth is bad for the ecology of the (relatively) small cities seat, they are fantastic for the rural areas that go back to the nature. I suspect (not supported by peer reviewed studies) that the projected population of 10B by the end of this century will likely have lower ecological footprint than the current population.

2. There is nothing to plan anew!!
The world lived with a stagnant population up to the industrial revolution. Any of us can pick up a history book and understand how such a society behaves.

3. The exponential growth in "economic utility" *can* continue longer than you'd think!!
Much of what is considered an "economic utility" is no longer physical. What's the limit of information utility? Before you scoff at it, imagine 50 years down when the entire concept of human computer interface itself is different. So, that future of never ending exponential process is just as possible as the gloom and doom of Malthusian resource constraints.

4. The wealthy nations can easily continue supplementing their populations with other people (who would admittedly look different) for the next 100 years or so - till climate change completely ravages tropical countries. Beyond that - who knows!!??

---------------
The reason the Malthusian POV elicits negative reaction is because it is associated with some nasty nasty political movements. In the US itself, you can trace some anti-immigrant hate groups originating from such movements. I'm sure such historical linkage won't be amiss in Europe and other places. Advocating policies rooted in such POV based on very questionable visions of future would (and IMO should) cause the reactions it currently does.

« Last Edit: August 03, 2020, 11:35:31 AM by ctuser1 »

Michael in ABQ

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #105 on: August 03, 2020, 11:43:29 AM »
I was one of those American thread hijackers. Apologies for that.

Coming back to topic - I think the biggest problem facing Europe is the lack of growth drivers. In previous centuries, Europe has been the epicenter and beneficiary from Colonialism and industrial revolution.

That picture changed after WW2.

So, the default long-term future facing Europe is of stagnation, and demographics adds a massive amount of fuel to that issue.

This should be contrasted with the short and medium term future where Europe still provides very high standard of HDI to it's population.

To change this long term outlook:
1. Europe can suddenly become the epicenter of innovation and replace US in this regard. I am not sure it is feasible.
2. Start making a lots of babies. That's unlikely as well.
3. Allow a much higher degree of immigration - up to Canada/Australia levels. I think this is much more possible than most people think. Countries like UK are very immigrant friendly as far as their culture goes. *Even* the crazy BoJo is not anti-immigrant. Others have more of a nativist streak in them - but that is likely to wither away once the orange one is disposed of. At least I can hope that happens.

It's possible to consider 2 and 3 (in above quote) in the short team. In the longer term, the whole world needs to find an economic model that fits with long term decrease (or at least stabilisation) in population, and the aging that goes with it. Unless we somehow think that we can continue to have more and more people on this finite rock without it ever having consequences. The change in demographics and/or decrease in population has the potential to fit quite well with the growth of automation and AI (less need for labour). That's when Europe's experience with socialism may well be an advantage over more individualistic societies (no countries named here to avoid sidetracking the conversation again).

^^This! When I was a kid, the population of the US was around 200MM. Now, it's 330MM, and the plan seems to be to just keep on growing our population, now through immigration, basically forever. That that's not a sustainable plan seems obvious, but mentioning this inconvenient truth seems to usually draw either anger or silence. How we can transition from an economy based on constant growth to a new paradigm of declining, or at least stabilizing, populations, is a fundamental question that is going to need to be answered in coming years. Reading a fascinating book about zoonotic diseases and the reasons why spillover to humans has been increasing in recent decades. TL/DR: Over population by humans, over development of formerly wild environments and the associated decline in diversity of wild species is bringing humans into contact with zoonoses more frequently. Voluntarily decreasing the human population on Earth seems like it would be a pretty smart move. Unfortunately, it's not a popular subject to bring up. Highly recommend: Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen. Book was published before covid. In hindsight, covid is now what Quammen refers to in the book as the Next Big One (NBO).

Even if the population stops growing there will still be a need for more goods and services. Most of the world's households still lives on less than $5-10k/year, many on far less than that. We've already seen the US economy shift more towards services than goods - the same with many other rich countries. Those billions of people living in poverty represent a huge untapped demand - if they can generate the income to buy those goods and services. Of course that's pretty difficult if you're livelihood is making charcoal or herding goats or subsistence farming. But bring that same person to the US or Europe and now they could make enough to afford all those things.

As far as zoonotic diseases being more prevalent now - we've been dealing with them for millennia. People living close to their domesticated animals meant Europeans were exposed to far more zoonotic diseases. When those same animals and people came to the Americas it wiped out most of the population as they'd never been exposed. Hard to compare COVID-19 with a mortality rate of less than 1% to smallpox, anthrax, plague, and rabies at 30-100%. 

Shane

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #106 on: August 04, 2020, 01:08:16 AM »
I was one of those American thread hijackers. Apologies for that.

Coming back to topic - I think the biggest problem facing Europe is the lack of growth drivers. In previous centuries, Europe has been the epicenter and beneficiary from Colonialism and industrial revolution.

That picture changed after WW2.

So, the default long-term future facing Europe is of stagnation, and demographics adds a massive amount of fuel to that issue.

This should be contrasted with the short and medium term future where Europe still provides very high standard of HDI to it's population.

To change this long term outlook:
1. Europe can suddenly become the epicenter of innovation and replace US in this regard. I am not sure it is feasible.
2. Start making a lots of babies. That's unlikely as well.
3. Allow a much higher degree of immigration - up to Canada/Australia levels. I think this is much more possible than most people think. Countries like UK are very immigrant friendly as far as their culture goes. *Even* the crazy BoJo is not anti-immigrant. Others have more of a nativist streak in them - but that is likely to wither away once the orange one is disposed of. At least I can hope that happens.

It's possible to consider 2 and 3 (in above quote) in the short team. In the longer term, the whole world needs to find an economic model that fits with long term decrease (or at least stabilisation) in population, and the aging that goes with it. Unless we somehow think that we can continue to have more and more people on this finite rock without it ever having consequences. The change in demographics and/or decrease in population has the potential to fit quite well with the growth of automation and AI (less need for labour). That's when Europe's experience with socialism may well be an advantage over more individualistic societies (no countries named here to avoid sidetracking the conversation again).

^^This! When I was a kid, the population of the US was around 200MM. Now, it's 330MM, and the plan seems to be to just keep on growing our population, now through immigration, basically forever. That that's not a sustainable plan seems obvious, but mentioning this inconvenient truth seems to usually draw either anger or silence. How we can transition from an economy based on constant growth to a new paradigm of declining, or at least stabilizing, populations, is a fundamental question that is going to need to be answered in coming years. Reading a fascinating book about zoonotic diseases and the reasons why spillover to humans has been increasing in recent decades. TL/DR: Over population by humans, over development of formerly wild environments and the associated decline in diversity of wild species is bringing humans into contact with zoonoses more frequently. Voluntarily decreasing the human population on Earth seems like it would be a pretty smart move. Unfortunately, it's not a popular subject to bring up. Highly recommend: Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen. Book was published before covid. In hindsight, covid is now what Quammen refers to in the book as the Next Big One (NBO).

1. You can not plan for the long term!!
Lots of things will change between now and whatever you would consider even medium term that would be beyond our imagination today. Consider zoonotic diseases. Are they going to remain such a menace once quantum computer can simulate how organic compounds interact with other organic compounds? Synthesize new medicines and do the equivalent of the level 1 and 2 drug testing in a matter of days? Compute new gene therapies?

Before you react "oh, but how about the environment?" - think of the likely scenario. Rural economies are in the process of collapsing. They would no longer support the population they have. Result -> much more urbanization. While urbanization and vertical growth is bad for the ecology of the (relatively) small cities seat, they are fantastic for the rural areas that go back to the nature. I suspect (not supported by peer reviewed studies) that the projected population of 10B by the end of this century will likely have lower ecological footprint than the current population.

2. There is nothing to plan anew!!
The world lived with a stagnant population up to the industrial revolution. Any of us can pick up a history book and understand how such a society behaves.

3. The exponential growth in "economic utility" *can* continue longer than you'd think!!
Much of what is considered an "economic utility" is no longer physical. What's the limit of information utility? Before you scoff at it, imagine 50 years down when the entire concept of human computer interface itself is different. So, that future of never ending exponential process is just as possible as the gloom and doom of Malthusian resource constraints.

4. The wealthy nations can easily continue supplementing their populations with other people (who would admittedly look different) for the next 100 years or so - till climate change completely ravages tropical countries. Beyond that - who knows!!??

---------------
The reason the Malthusian POV elicits negative reaction is because it is associated with some nasty nasty political movements. In the US itself, you can trace some anti-immigrant hate groups originating from such movements. I'm sure such historical linkage won't be amiss in Europe and other places. Advocating policies rooted in such POV based on very questionable visions of future would (and IMO should) cause the reactions it currently does.

Agreed, it's hard to know what things will look like in even the medium future.

IMHO, "rural economies collapsing," is a good thing. Rather than all spread out across the landscape, living in dense cities, surrounded by farms, surrounded by wilderness, would be a much better way for humans to live on Earth, and could possibly, sustainably support much higher populations than what we are doing now.

Shane

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #107 on: August 04, 2020, 01:14:28 AM »
I was one of those American thread hijackers. Apologies for that.

Coming back to topic - I think the biggest problem facing Europe is the lack of growth drivers. In previous centuries, Europe has been the epicenter and beneficiary from Colonialism and industrial revolution.

That picture changed after WW2.

So, the default long-term future facing Europe is of stagnation, and demographics adds a massive amount of fuel to that issue.

This should be contrasted with the short and medium term future where Europe still provides very high standard of HDI to it's population.

To change this long term outlook:
1. Europe can suddenly become the epicenter of innovation and replace US in this regard. I am not sure it is feasible.
2. Start making a lots of babies. That's unlikely as well.
3. Allow a much higher degree of immigration - up to Canada/Australia levels. I think this is much more possible than most people think. Countries like UK are very immigrant friendly as far as their culture goes. *Even* the crazy BoJo is not anti-immigrant. Others have more of a nativist streak in them - but that is likely to wither away once the orange one is disposed of. At least I can hope that happens.

It's possible to consider 2 and 3 (in above quote) in the short team. In the longer term, the whole world needs to find an economic model that fits with long term decrease (or at least stabilisation) in population, and the aging that goes with it. Unless we somehow think that we can continue to have more and more people on this finite rock without it ever having consequences. The change in demographics and/or decrease in population has the potential to fit quite well with the growth of automation and AI (less need for labour). That's when Europe's experience with socialism may well be an advantage over more individualistic societies (no countries named here to avoid sidetracking the conversation again).

^^This! When I was a kid, the population of the US was around 200MM. Now, it's 330MM, and the plan seems to be to just keep on growing our population, now through immigration, basically forever. That that's not a sustainable plan seems obvious, but mentioning this inconvenient truth seems to usually draw either anger or silence. How we can transition from an economy based on constant growth to a new paradigm of declining, or at least stabilizing, populations, is a fundamental question that is going to need to be answered in coming years. Reading a fascinating book about zoonotic diseases and the reasons why spillover to humans has been increasing in recent decades. TL/DR: Over population by humans, over development of formerly wild environments and the associated decline in diversity of wild species is bringing humans into contact with zoonoses more frequently. Voluntarily decreasing the human population on Earth seems like it would be a pretty smart move. Unfortunately, it's not a popular subject to bring up. Highly recommend: Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen. Book was published before covid. In hindsight, covid is now what Quammen refers to in the book as the Next Big One (NBO).

Even if the population stops growing there will still be a need for more goods and services. Most of the world's households still lives on less than $5-10k/year, many on far less than that. We've already seen the US economy shift more towards services than goods - the same with many other rich countries. Those billions of people living in poverty represent a huge untapped demand - if they can generate the income to buy those goods and services. Of course that's pretty difficult if you're livelihood is making charcoal or herding goats or subsistence farming. But bring that same person to the US or Europe and now they could make enough to afford all those things.

As far as zoonotic diseases being more prevalent now - we've been dealing with them for millennia. People living close to their domesticated animals meant Europeans were exposed to far more zoonotic diseases. When those same animals and people came to the Americas it wiped out most of the population as they'd never been exposed. Hard to compare COVID-19 with a mortality rate of less than 1% to smallpox, anthrax, plague, and rabies at 30-100%.

I think you're right that even if world population started going down today, consumption would still continue increasing. As people's standard of living increases, even if there are fewer of them, they'll probably consume more.

markbrynn

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #108 on: August 04, 2020, 05:01:20 AM »


Even if the population stops growing there will still be a need for more goods and services. Most of the world's households still lives on less than $5-10k/year, many on far less than that. We've already seen the US economy shift more towards services than goods - the same with many other rich countries. Those billions of people living in poverty represent a huge untapped demand - if they can generate the income to buy those goods and services. Of course that's pretty difficult if you're livelihood is making charcoal or herding goats or subsistence farming. But bring that same person to the US or Europe and now they could make enough to afford all those things.

As far as zoonotic diseases being more prevalent now - we've been dealing with them for millennia. People living close to their domesticated animals meant Europeans were exposed to far more zoonotic diseases. When those same animals and people came to the Americas it wiped out most of the population as they'd never been exposed. Hard to compare COVID-19 with a mortality rate of less than 1% to smallpox, anthrax, plague, and rabies at 30-100%.

I think you're right that even if world population started going down today, consumption would still continue increasing. As people's standard of living increases, even if there are fewer of them, they'll probably consume more.

The points above are exactly why a controlled decrease in the world's population is a good idea. There is a massive proportion of the population who are not using resources at remotely the rate that they are used in North America, Europe, other wealthier regions. If we expect steady improvement in the lives of the people currently poor, then we will need a tremendous increase in economic output. Some of that could be intangible things like computer programs, movies, video games, and the like which need some energy to run but don't consume resources with the same additive effect as physical goods. However, if we need to count on approx. 10 billion cars, 2 billion big houses, 10 billion smart phones, etc. then we're going to struggle to make that happen.

The other argument is that we could all (in the wealthier countries) learn to survive with a lot less than we currently have, which would also lesson the burden. This could mean cramming into smaller spaces (ctuser's comment) and leaving more land to nature. This is happening to a degree now, but only on the side of cramming into bigger cities. I don't see much land being given back over to nature yet.

As mentioned, I don't know how we're going to get from here to there (less population/consumption and an economic model that can handle that), but it seems like a reasonable thing to aim for.

Shane

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #109 on: August 04, 2020, 05:11:46 AM »
Agree with everything you're saying @markbrynn . I'd love to see an intentional, controlled, gradual, worldwide population decline to 1/2 or 1/4 what it is now. But, no one I've ever talked with irl seemed to think that's realistic, or even a good thing. I'm not optimistic that humans will voluntarily decrease their population in time to save the planet.

Buffaloski Boris

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #110 on: August 04, 2020, 05:44:46 AM »

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The reason the Malthusian POV elicits negative reaction is because it is associated with some nasty nasty political movements. In the US itself, you can trace some anti-immigrant hate groups originating from such movements. I'm sure such historical linkage won't be amiss in Europe and other places. Advocating policies rooted in such POV based on very questionable visions of future would (and IMO should) cause the reactions it currently does.

Another reason for the negative reactions to the Malthusian POV is that it has shown itself to be utterly wrong on so many occasions. One time that comes to mind is the “Population Bomb” idea that was so  trendy in the 60’s and 70’s. The idea being that if we didn’t act to reduce population Right Now that all sorts of horrible things would happen. Mass starvation, etc. Of course it didn’t materialize. People are usually pretty clever. Unfortunately though a lot of people and countries allowed themselves to be hoodwinked and  pursued zero population growth views/policies that have backfired spectacularly as they have in China, much of developed Asia, and Europe.

markbrynn

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #111 on: August 04, 2020, 08:10:54 AM »

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The reason the Malthusian POV elicits negative reaction is because it is associated with some nasty nasty political movements. In the US itself, you can trace some anti-immigrant hate groups originating from such movements. I'm sure such historical linkage won't be amiss in Europe and other places. Advocating policies rooted in such POV based on very questionable visions of future would (and IMO should) cause the reactions it currently does.

Another reason for the negative reactions to the Malthusian POV is that it has shown itself to be utterly wrong on so many occasions. One time that comes to mind is the “Population Bomb” idea that was so  trendy in the 60’s and 70’s. The idea being that if we didn’t act to reduce population Right Now that all sorts of horrible things would happen. Mass starvation, etc. Of course it didn’t materialize. People are usually pretty clever. Unfortunately though a lot of people and countries allowed themselves to be hoodwinked and  pursued zero population growth views/policies that have backfired spectacularly as they have in China, much of developed Asia, and Europe.

I get it that some of the worst predictions have not yet come true, but the population has only really exploded in the last 70 years. It was only 1 billion in 1804 and 2 billion in 1927. Now we're pushing 8 billion. I'm a big believer in the ability of humanity to innovate ourselves out of a lot of messes. I worry that the successes to date (not all successes, but we're still here) will encourage people to believe that we can always (and at any time) find solutions to the problems. Then "whooops!" one day we go to far.

Also, if we can look at it from the other side for a minute. Why wouldn't we try to slow down and decrease world population if there's a way that we could do it without great suffering? [and certainly not racism; my population reduction would be as random, voluntary and non-discriminatory as possible; right now it's just an idea, not a policy] If your answer is that you can't see a way without global financial collapse, then fair enough. But are you (general "you" to anyone our there) specifically against the idea of a gradual reduction of human population to something easier to sustain (jobs, food, resources, land use, etc.)? Do you see downsides when we arrive there or only in the process of getting there?

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #112 on: August 04, 2020, 09:02:58 AM »
Also, if we can look at it from the other side for a minute. Why wouldn't we try to slow down and decrease world population if there's a way that we could do it without great suffering? [and certainly not racism; my population reduction would be as random, voluntary and non-discriminatory as possible; right now it's just an idea, not a policy] If your answer is that you can't see a way without global financial collapse, then fair enough. But are you (general "you" to anyone our there) specifically against the idea of a gradual reduction of human population to something easier to sustain (jobs, food, resources, land use, etc.)? Do you see downsides when we arrive there or only in the process of getting there?

I am against assuming politics/policy has (or should have) any agency in negatively effecting the second bolded part in your statement - because that leads to dark places.

If we see that population decrease is happening, we can see how we can remedy that or any negative economic fallout from that. However, trying to effect population decrease via human agency is playing god in my book - and a massively arrogant one at that.

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #113 on: August 04, 2020, 09:23:18 AM »
Utopia - Where is Jessica Hyde?

markbrynn

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #114 on: August 04, 2020, 09:53:12 AM »
Also, if we can look at it from the other side for a minute. Why wouldn't we try to slow down and decrease world population if there's a way that we could do it without great suffering? [and certainly not racism; my population reduction would be as random, voluntary and non-discriminatory as possible; right now it's just an idea, not a policy] If your answer is that you can't see a way without global financial collapse, then fair enough. But are you (general "you" to anyone our there) specifically against the idea of a gradual reduction of human population to something easier to sustain (jobs, food, resources, land use, etc.)? Do you see downsides when we arrive there or only in the process of getting there?

I am against assuming politics/policy has (or should have) any agency in negatively effecting the second bolded part in your statement - because that leads to dark places.

If we see that population decrease is happening, we can see how we can remedy that or any negative economic fallout from that. However, trying to effect population decrease via human agency is playing god in my book - and a massively arrogant one at that.

I would argue that things like tax policy tries to affect population increase/decrease via credits for having children already. I'm not sure if that's particularly good or bad (or playing god). More importantly, the argument originally was that population decrease is already happening in Europe and some of us see that as a good thing, as long as the economic paradigm can be adjusted. Any concerns with it then (if it's natural rather than "forced")?

Just to be clear, I have more of a problem with the forever repeated "growth is good" mantra that is thrown around. As mentioned up thread, yes, economic growth via innovation (think computer programs that can be replicated millions of times without cost), but it's usually allowed to include population growth and growth of all goods and services. That's what I'm against, more than pushing so hard for population reduction. A nice balanced story of the benefits and pitfalls of each.

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #115 on: August 04, 2020, 10:33:23 AM »
I would argue that things like tax policy tries to affect population increase/decrease via credits for having children already. I'm not sure if that's particularly good or bad (or playing god).
I carefully couched my post in terms of "negatively effecting" population exactly in anticipation of, and to preempt this point.
Policies to increase population has been morally acceptable for thousands of years in many societies, religions. Not so much the other way around.


More importantly, the argument originally was that population decrease is already happening in Europe and some of us see that as a good thing, as long as the economic paradigm can be adjusted. Any concerns with it then (if it's natural rather than "forced")?
It is a very quick slippery slope from population decrease being a "good thing" to xenophobia. I'm not sure I like that, especially since there is no convincing empirical evidence that is desirable, and a lot to the contrary.

Just to be clear, I have more of a problem with the forever repeated "growth is good" mantra that is thrown around.
Why? Any instance where that has caused harm so far in human history?

A nice balanced story of the benefits and pitfalls of each.
Correct.

My position is, empirically there has been loads of demonstrated and proven pitfalls of the Malthusian approach, whereas there are only conjectured and theoretical issues guesstimated with the other side.

(I realize my statement above can indicate "Thanksgiving Turkey Fallacy". I mentioned a load of conjectured futuristic arguments up-thread to show that is not enough of a certainty to influence policy decision.)



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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #116 on: August 04, 2020, 12:12:59 PM »
I would argue that things like tax policy tries to affect population increase/decrease via credits for having children already. I'm not sure if that's particularly good or bad (or playing god).
I carefully couched my post in terms of "negatively effecting" population exactly in anticipation of, and to preempt this point.
Policies to increase population has been morally acceptable for thousands of years in many societies, religions. Not so much the other way around.


More importantly, the argument originally was that population decrease is already happening in Europe and some of us see that as a good thing, as long as the economic paradigm can be adjusted. Any concerns with it then (if it's natural rather than "forced")?
It is a very quick slippery slope from population decrease being a "good thing" to xenophobia. I'm not sure I like that, especially since there is no convincing empirical evidence that is desirable, and a lot to the contrary.

Just to be clear, I have more of a problem with the forever repeated "growth is good" mantra that is thrown around.
Why? Any instance where that has caused harm so far in human history?

A nice balanced story of the benefits and pitfalls of each.
Correct.

My position is, empirically there has been loads of demonstrated and proven pitfalls of the Malthusian approach, whereas there are only conjectured and theoretical issues guesstimated with the other side.

(I realize my statement above can indicate "Thanksgiving Turkey Fallacy". I mentioned a load of conjectured futuristic arguments up-thread to show that is not enough of a certainty to influence policy decision.)

It may not be where you're coming from, but I would argue that there are thousands of examples of the problems of overpopulation around us every day. The shrinking habitat for countless animals has driven many to extinction and threatens others. Our land, air and water are polluted. There have been some success stories of these being cleaned up in various places, but that's just fixing a problem that we made in the first place. There's also plenty of human suffering from poverty that is at least partly caused by high populations.

I realise that my desire to see a lower human population on earth might coincidentally have been proposed by some people with less positive motivations. That gives me pause, but not every idea that has been poorly executed in the past needs to be cast aside for all time. As discussed up post, education and development seem to lead naturally to a leveling and eventual decline in birth rates. If we work with this "natural" development and try to find an economic model that embraces it, I'm not sure how that is inherently bad. If populations were all decreasing equally around the world (not the case, but pretend), there wouldn't be any xenophobia argument would there? [not to mention the argument that there is plenty of xenophobia, or at least self-interest, in immigration policy today]

I wish I shared your optimism that unchecked population growth (except what may "naturally" happen) and focus on continuous economic growth are going to lead us in a sustainable direction. It doesn't really fit my view of what sustainable means. If I squint, I think I can see what you see, but I can't say I want to rely on it.

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #117 on: August 04, 2020, 01:28:36 PM »
The fact that almost 8BB humans are now emitting so much greenhouse gasses into Earth's atmosphere that it is warming at an increasingly alarming rate, doesn't seem like a "conjectured or theoretical issue" to me. Climate change is real, and humans' half-hearted attempts to mitigate the damage by scrambling to try to substitute renewable energy for fossil fuels seems like it's going to be too little, too late. If humans don't decrease our population and shift to renewables and cut consumption, there's no way we're ever going to be able to reduce our carbon emissions enough to prevent catastrophic fallout that's already happening, because of climate change.

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #118 on: August 04, 2020, 02:06:41 PM »
The fact that almost 8BB humans are now emitting so much greenhouse gasses into Earth's atmosphere that it is warming at an increasingly alarming rate, doesn't seem like a "conjectured or theoretical issue" to me. Climate change is real, and humans' half-hearted attempts to mitigate the damage by scrambling to try to substitute renewable energy for fossil fuels seems like it's going to be too little, too late. If humans don't decrease our population and shift to renewables and cut consumption, there's no way we're ever going to be able to reduce our carbon emissions enough to prevent catastrophic fallout that's already happening, because of climate change.

And what is the next step? Reducing populaton? How? Reducing birthrate by women's empowerment? Do you really need to consider "population decrease" for that to happen?

Will 8B -> 10B cause an increase in greenhouse gas emission? Or coupled with urbanization + efficiency lead to lower emission?

The fact that 8B people cause more climate change than 0B would is not in question. The "connjecture" part is to say that the 8B + or - X will lead to less climate change or more.

« Last Edit: August 04, 2020, 02:09:11 PM by ctuser1 »

Shane

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #119 on: August 04, 2020, 04:16:41 PM »
The fact that almost 8BB humans are now emitting so much greenhouse gasses into Earth's atmosphere that it is warming at an increasingly alarming rate, doesn't seem like a "conjectured or theoretical issue" to me. Climate change is real, and humans' half-hearted attempts to mitigate the damage by scrambling to try to substitute renewable energy for fossil fuels seems like it's going to be too little, too late. If humans don't decrease our population and shift to renewables and cut consumption, there's no way we're ever going to be able to reduce our carbon emissions enough to prevent catastrophic fallout that's already happening, because of climate change.

And what is the next step? Reducing populaton? How? Reducing birthrate by women's empowerment? Do you really need to consider "population decrease" for that to happen?

Will 8B -> 10B cause an increase in greenhouse gas emission? Or coupled with urbanization + efficiency lead to lower emission?

The fact that 8B people cause more climate change than 0B would is not in question. The "connjecture" part is to say that the 8B + or - X will lead to less climate change or more.

The only reason we are able to have anywhere even close to 8BB people on Earth, now, is because most of them live in the 3rd World, where they consume relatively little resources. If everyone now living in the Developing World were to suddenly become as rich as Europeans and Americans, there's no way possible the planet could sustain everyone at First World living standards. 10BB cars? 10BB cell phones? Billions more refrigerators, flat screen TVs, and computers? Pretty sure, all that wouldn't be possible, given current technology. Maybe in the future, but not with the technology we've got now.

Giving financial aid to 3rd World countries to help them provide their people with better healthcare, education, and infrastructure, would cause those countries' fertility rates to fall. There would be no need to coerce anyone into doing anything she didn't want to do. The reason we don't give massive, Marshall-Plan-level assistance to developing countries is because all of us in the First World benefit from having a large pool of desperately poor people we can get to clean our toilets for us and do other dirty, disgusting and dangerous jobs we don't want to do ourselves.

Hopefully, as 3rd World countries develop, their birth rates will fall fast enough that population will start declining worldwide before it's too late. I just don't see it happening in time to make a difference. This year, before Covid happened, renewable energy was about to be able to supply ~20% of world demand. Experts are predicting that worldwide energy consumption is going to increase by around 50% between now and 2050. They're also predicting that world population is going to increase to 9.9BB people by 2050. I'm pretty pessimistic that humans are going to be able to act quickly enough to make a real difference.

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #120 on: August 07, 2020, 09:34:04 AM »
I tried to think for some time how to explain the crux of the apparent difference in "approach" to the big problems related to population, environment etc.

You guys are thinking this to be a global optimization problem. If you were starting with a clean slate in a brand new planet, how many humans can reside there? What kind of other modifications are necessary, etc?

I think this to be a local optimization problem. We are where we are. What is the most productive incremental direction from here to maximize utility for the humanity, within certain moral constraints.

I don't believe the former is fruitful, mainly because it is not in the human realm. Most of the time, this approach is used by people (e.g. John Birch Society) who want to forestall realistic progress - which should make anyone very suspicious of this approach.

Shane

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #121 on: August 07, 2020, 10:30:49 AM »
I tried to think for some time how to explain the crux of the apparent difference in "approach" to the big problems related to population, environment etc.

You guys are thinking this to be a global optimization problem. If you were starting with a clean slate in a brand new planet, how many humans can reside there? What kind of other modifications are necessary, etc?

I think this to be a local optimization problem. We are where we are. What is the most productive incremental direction from here to maximize utility for the humanity, within certain moral constraints.

I don't believe the former is fruitful, mainly because it is not in the human realm. Most of the time, this approach is used by people (e.g. John Birch Society) who want to forestall realistic progress - which should make anyone very suspicious of this approach.

Not sure I understand why you seem to believe that population optimization is "not in the human realm." For years and years, in the US, we have encouraged population growth, first, by allowing massive immigration of, basically, anyone who wanted to come. Next, our tax codes have incentivized people to have more children. When you give people tax breaks for having more kids, they tend to have more children. If we decided as a society that we wanted to gradually start decreasing our footprint on Earth, humans could absolutely choose to eliminate some of the incentives we are currently giving families to have more children. If we stopped giving families extra money based on the number of kids they had, people would have fewer kids. Why is it you think that actively encouraging people to have more children is fine, but not doing so is somehow suspect?

ctuser1

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #122 on: August 07, 2020, 10:59:21 AM »
I tried to think for some time how to explain the crux of the apparent difference in "approach" to the big problems related to population, environment etc.

You guys are thinking this to be a global optimization problem. If you were starting with a clean slate in a brand new planet, how many humans can reside there? What kind of other modifications are necessary, etc?

I think this to be a local optimization problem. We are where we are. What is the most productive incremental direction from here to maximize utility for the humanity, within certain moral constraints.

I don't believe the former is fruitful, mainly because it is not in the human realm. Most of the time, this approach is used by people (e.g. John Birch Society) who want to forestall realistic progress - which should make anyone very suspicious of this approach.

Not sure I understand why you seem to believe that population optimization is "not in the human realm." For years and years, in the US, we have encouraged population growth, first, by allowing massive immigration of, basically, anyone who wanted to come. Next, our tax codes have incentivized people to have more children. When you give people tax breaks for having more kids, they tend to have more children. If we decided as a society that we wanted to gradually start decreasing our footprint on Earth, humans could absolutely choose to eliminate some of the incentives we are currently giving families to have more children. If we stopped giving families extra money based on the number of kids they had, people would have fewer kids. Why is it you think that actively encouraging people to have more children is fine, but not doing so is somehow suspect?

1. I don't think the intent of the incentives are to encourage people "to have more children". They are more for wealth-redistribution. A 1-person family earning the median income is much wealthier compared to a 4-person family earning the median income.
Is your beef against progressive taxation?

2. "If we stopped giving families extra money based on the number of kids they had, people would have fewer kids."
Any studies showing this within the context of the present day world?
Evidence points to women's liberation -> lower birthrates. If anything, I see a clear negative correlation between the amount of welfare available and birthrates.

3. You did not specify your definition of "not doing so". What kind of discouragement do you have in mind for population control? China's one child policy? Forcible sterilization (yes, it happened - https://www.thedailybeast.com/hold-onto-your-penis)?
I haven't heard of any population control measures that are moral and useful. Have you?

« Last Edit: August 07, 2020, 11:07:16 AM by ctuser1 »

Shane

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #123 on: August 07, 2020, 02:55:59 PM »
I tried to think for some time how to explain the crux of the apparent difference in "approach" to the big problems related to population, environment etc.

You guys are thinking this to be a global optimization problem. If you were starting with a clean slate in a brand new planet, how many humans can reside there? What kind of other modifications are necessary, etc?

I think this to be a local optimization problem. We are where we are. What is the most productive incremental direction from here to maximize utility for the humanity, within certain moral constraints.

I don't believe the former is fruitful, mainly because it is not in the human realm. Most of the time, this approach is used by people (e.g. John Birch Society) who want to forestall realistic progress - which should make anyone very suspicious of this approach.

Not sure I understand why you seem to believe that population optimization is "not in the human realm." For years and years, in the US, we have encouraged population growth, first, by allowing massive immigration of, basically, anyone who wanted to come. Next, our tax codes have incentivized people to have more children. When you give people tax breaks for having more kids, they tend to have more children. If we decided as a society that we wanted to gradually start decreasing our footprint on Earth, humans could absolutely choose to eliminate some of the incentives we are currently giving families to have more children. If we stopped giving families extra money based on the number of kids they had, people would have fewer kids. Why is it you think that actively encouraging people to have more children is fine, but not doing so is somehow suspect?

1. I don't think the intent of the incentives are to encourage people "to have more children". They are more for wealth-redistribution. A 1-person family earning the median income is much wealthier compared to a 4-person family earning the median income.
Is your beef against progressive taxation?

2. "If we stopped giving families extra money based on the number of kids they had, people would have fewer kids."
Any studies showing this within the context of the present day world?
Evidence points to women's liberation -> lower birthrates. If anything, I see a clear negative correlation between the amount of welfare available and birthrates.

3. You did not specify your definition of "not doing so". What kind of discouragement do you have in mind for population control? China's one child policy? Forcible sterilization (yes, it happened - https://www.thedailybeast.com/hold-onto-your-penis)?
I haven't heard of any population control measures that are moral and useful. Have you?

Right now, most First World countries' fertility rates are below replacement levels. Simply doing nothing would mean that all those rich countries' populations would decrease over time, with zero need for any draconian population control programs. The reality is, though, all those developed countries are not doing nothing about their declining populations. Rather than attempting to come up with new economic models by which they might continue to prosper despite declining populations, many countries are instead scrambling to figure out ways to continue growing their populations. In the US, immigration is being consciously used as a means to keep our population growing. Other First World countries are using a variety of creative strategies to try to encourage their people to have more children.

Japan is trying really hard to persuade women to start having babies again

ctuser1

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #124 on: August 07, 2020, 03:04:49 PM »
Right now, most First World countries' fertility rates are below replacement levels. Simply doing nothing would mean that all those rich countries' populations would decrease over time, with zero need for any draconian population control programs.

And this causes deflationary pressures on the economy.


The reality is, though, all those developed countries are not doing nothing about their declining populations. Rather than attempting to come up with new economic models by which they might continue to prosper despite declining populations, many countries are instead scrambling to figure out ways to continue growing their populations. In the US, immigration is being consciously used as a means to keep our population growing. Other First World countries are using a variety of creative strategies to try to encourage their people to have more children.

Japan is trying really hard to persuade women to start having babies again
And that is bad because it causes environmental impact??
Why?
Urbanization + efficiency improvements has broken that relationship some time ago.

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #125 on: August 07, 2020, 04:00:53 PM »
Right now, most First World countries' fertility rates are below replacement levels. Simply doing nothing would mean that all those rich countries' populations would decrease over time, with zero need for any draconian population control programs.

And this causes deflationary pressures on the economy.


The reality is, though, all those developed countries are not doing nothing about their declining populations. Rather than attempting to come up with new economic models by which they might continue to prosper despite declining populations, many countries are instead scrambling to figure out ways to continue growing their populations. In the US, immigration is being consciously used as a means to keep our population growing. Other First World countries are using a variety of creative strategies to try to encourage their people to have more children.

Japan is trying really hard to persuade women to start having babies again
And that is bad because it causes environmental impact??
Why?
Urbanization + efficiency improvements has broken that relationship some time ago.

There's no way to get around the fact that the more humans there are on Earth, the more environmental impact we're going to have. Hopefully, you are right that increasing urbanization and future technological improvements will be mitigating factors. I think it wouldn't hurt to also explore economic models that might allow humans to gradually decrease our population, while still maintaining a high standard of living. There's a finite amount of air, water, minerals, etc., on Earth. It's not physically possible for humans to continue increasing our population forever. Eventually, the growth has to stop. Why not start planning for that day now?

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #126 on: August 07, 2020, 07:53:19 PM »
There's no way to get around the fact that the more humans there are on Earth, the more environmental impact we're going to have. Hopefully, you are right that increasing urbanization and future technological improvements will be mitigating factors. I think it wouldn't hurt to also explore economic models that might allow humans to gradually decrease our population, while still maintaining a high standard of living. There's a finite amount of air, water, minerals, etc., on Earth. It's not physically possible for humans to continue increasing our population forever. Eventually, the growth has to stop. Why not start planning for that day now?
It doesn’t hurt to try something different, but I don’t see it as terribly likely that a different economic paradigm comes about. Indeed I think we end up in a more traditional economy as families have to rely on younger generations for elder care. Those countries that breed will succeed. Those that don’t will face economic malaise and worse, may well lose a portion of the young people they have. No one wants to be a cash cow. 

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #127 on: August 08, 2020, 02:45:17 AM »
It's a bit ironic but the reality is those who want to have children and continue to do so will likely pass along those values to their children. Those who choose to be child-free will not have any children to pass that along too. Eventually, the people who are most concerned about population growth will self-select themselves out of the picture. Granted this would take a few generations to manifest and the world will probably be a completely different place by then.

In the coming decades we'll start obtaining resources from space, both energy and materials. Scientific and medical breakthroughs could extend the average life span decades. We will continue to increase the efficiency of most things - the number of miles per gallon a car can travel, battery capacity, computing power, efficiency of solar panels, etc.

More people doesn't just mean more mouths to feed and more resources. It also means more people working to solve the problems all around us. Those countries the discourage population growth and immigration will have a tough time in a couple of decades when they're expecting one young worker to essentially pay to keep a retired worker going.

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #128 on: August 12, 2020, 08:03:32 PM »
I don't think population growth is likely to be the biggest problem facing us.

There was a guy from Sweden, Hans Rosling, professor of international health or something like that.   He studied population growth forecasts.     He has a good talk on youtube somewhere.   Anyway, his forecast, shamelessly plagiarized from  https://fs.blog/2016/04/hans-rosling-population-growth/

Population growth should hit a limit around 11 billion within the next hundred years, as the world equalizes in health outcomes.

In developed countries, a ratio near 2 parents to 2 children mostly exists and developing nations are getting closer and closer as their childhood health outcomes continue to improve. (And they have improved drastically.)

Stated another way, as a result of equalizing health outcomes, low child mortality, and family planning, family sizes go down, and population growth slows in a predictable way.
Current population trends are strong enough that by 2100, only ~10% of the world population will be in Western nations (North America, Western Europe) — Africa will quadruple in population and Asia will increase about 25%. It will be a very different world.

After an explosion of births in the second half of the 20th century, the number of children worldwide has already leveled off at around 2 billion, and should stay there at least through the century, barring a major development. Population growth from here will mostly be determined by more 30-85 year olds existing in the future than now. (In other words, births are nicely leveling off, but population growth must continue for a while anyways as the current crop of children grow up and have 2 children each. We currently have a very young world.)



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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #129 on: August 12, 2020, 08:47:55 PM »
Thanks, @scottish.  I think others have revised that downward to a peak at below 10 billion, occuring in about 50-60 years.  Knock on wood, my kids will be in late middle age when it happens.

I think a slightly declining population would be good for the world and it looks like that will happen not to long from now.  So at least in that regard, the sky isn't falling. 

ctuser1

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #130 on: August 12, 2020, 08:49:35 PM »
Thanks, @scottish.  I think others have revised that downward to a peak at below 10 billion, occuring in about 50-60 years.  Knock on wood, my kids will be in late middle age when it happens.

I think a slightly declining population would be good for the world and it looks like that will happen not to long from now.  So at least in that regard, the sky isn't falling.

Hmmmm... I, for one, am scared at the thought of a secular deflationary headwind.


Sid Hoffman

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #131 on: August 12, 2020, 09:36:32 PM »
I came here for discussion about the US and EU but apparently this is a thread about taxes, global warming, and population controls.

PDXTabs

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #132 on: August 13, 2020, 10:04:55 AM »
I came here for discussion about the US and EU but apparently this is a thread about taxes, global warming, and population controls.

Taxes, global warming, and population will all be issues that both the USA and EU will need to deal with.

Shane

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #133 on: August 13, 2020, 11:23:59 AM »
I don't think population growth is likely to be the biggest problem facing us.

There was a guy from Sweden, Hans Rosling, professor of international health or something like that.   He studied population growth forecasts.     He has a good talk on youtube somewhere.   Anyway, his forecast, shamelessly plagiarized from  https://fs.blog/2016/04/hans-rosling-population-growth/

Population growth should hit a limit around 11 billion within the next hundred years, as the world equalizes in health outcomes.

In developed countries, a ratio near 2 parents to 2 children mostly exists and developing nations are getting closer and closer as their childhood health outcomes continue to improve. (And they have improved drastically.)

Stated another way, as a result of equalizing health outcomes, low child mortality, and family planning, family sizes go down, and population growth slows in a predictable way.
Current population trends are strong enough that by 2100, only ~10% of the world population will be in Western nations (North America, Western Europe) — Africa will quadruple in population and Asia will increase about 25%. It will be a very different world.

After an explosion of births in the second half of the 20th century, the number of children worldwide has already leveled off at around 2 billion, and should stay there at least through the century, barring a major development. Population growth from here will mostly be determined by more 30-85 year olds existing in the future than now. (In other words, births are nicely leveling off, but population growth must continue for a while anyways as the current crop of children grow up and have 2 children each. We currently have a very young world.)

Enjoyed Hans Roslings' talk. Thanks for sharing, @scottish.

Sid Hoffman

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #134 on: August 14, 2020, 11:56:37 PM »
Taxes, global warming, and population will all be issues that both the USA and EU will need to deal with.

So this goes to really the core of why I think the topic needs to be framed as what cities to live in. While you may technically live in a country, you don't experience that entire country, you experience what goes on in your city. A great example is the USA and as morbid as it is to talk about, the homicide rate. Homicides are local - they can even be a matter of street by street within a neighborhood, but at the city level you see anywhere from a rate of around 100 per 100,000 in East St. Louis, about 30 in "normal" big US cities, 5 for the overall average, but generally only 1-2 per 100,000 in lower density suburban America.

Point is, it's important to pick a city that lines up with your expectations. I recall about a year ago talking about how much I enjoyed France on one of my Discord servers and many recoiled in horror basically because of all the yellow vest protests going on across France and how there had been a number of injuries and even deaths as a result. Bottom line however is that if you leave a particularly peaceful US town and move to a high crime city anywhere else, EU or otherwise, you're going to be disappointed.

While I'm not a dual citizen like some, thus I don't have the easy option of just moving to other countries than the USA, I'm not entirely opposed to reviewing options if there's a good reason to do so. Thing is - I already live in a town with a modest enough cost of living and exceptionally low crime / high stability. I bet the vast majority of people on here can say the same, well, I mean except you, haha. I can see why you'd want to leave Portland in particular. I have friends there that recently let me know that as soon as their son graduates high school, they're moving out of the city, possibly out of the whole state as they can't deal with the corruption and rioters that take over the protests any more, especially if they're only going to get worse every year.

Again - the importance of living in a city that works for you. For me, France is the place I could most easily see myself applying for a temporary resident visa once I'm FIRE though it probably wouldn't be in Paris, for example. Maybe Lyon, or perhaps a quiet outlying town of Bordeaux. I think there's great options all over the world, but especially in the US and EU. It's just harder than picking a country, since you have to pick a specific city that meets all the desired criteria.

Shane

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #135 on: August 15, 2020, 05:10:56 AM »
Taxes, global warming, and population will all be issues that both the USA and EU will need to deal with.

So this goes to really the core of why I think the topic needs to be framed as what cities to live in. While you may technically live in a country, you don't experience that entire country, you experience what goes on in your city. A great example is the USA and as morbid as it is to talk about, the homicide rate. Homicides are local - they can even be a matter of street by street within a neighborhood, but at the city level you see anywhere from a rate of around 100 per 100,000 in East St. Louis, about 30 in "normal" big US cities, 5 for the overall average, but generally only 1-2 per 100,000 in lower density suburban America.

Point is, it's important to pick a city that lines up with your expectations. I recall about a year ago talking about how much I enjoyed France on one of my Discord servers and many recoiled in horror basically because of all the yellow vest protests going on across France and how there had been a number of injuries and even deaths as a result. Bottom line however is that if you leave a particularly peaceful US town and move to a high crime city anywhere else, EU or otherwise, you're going to be disappointed.

While I'm not a dual citizen like some, thus I don't have the easy option of just moving to other countries than the USA, I'm not entirely opposed to reviewing options if there's a good reason to do so. Thing is - I already live in a town with a modest enough cost of living and exceptionally low crime / high stability. I bet the vast majority of people on here can say the same, well, I mean except you, haha. I can see why you'd want to leave Portland in particular. I have friends there that recently let me know that as soon as their son graduates high school, they're moving out of the city, possibly out of the whole state as they can't deal with the corruption and rioters that take over the protests any more, especially if they're only going to get worse every year.

Again - the importance of living in a city that works for you. For me, France is the place I could most easily see myself applying for a temporary resident visa once I'm FIRE though it probably wouldn't be in Paris, for example. Maybe Lyon, or perhaps a quiet outlying town of Bordeaux. I think there's great options all over the world, but especially in the US and EU. It's just harder than picking a country, since you have to pick a specific city that meets all the desired criteria.

Used to think I'd like to apply for a temporary resident visa in some other country once we were FIRE. When we actually looked into the logistics of doing it, though, we ended up deciding it would be easier to just remain tourists. With US passports, we can easily fly into any city in France, stay for up to 3 months, then move on to another country outside the Schengen Zone. After staying somewhere outside Schengen for 3 months, we can go back to France for another 3 months if we like, maybe to the same city, or maybe to a completely different part of the country. Airbnb makes it possible to easily just drop in to a city or town for a month or three and then move on. No need to deal with visas. No need to worry about deposits on apartments, realtors' fees, or finding local sponsors who will vouch for us in order to be able to rent an apartment. With Airbnb, I just click, and a month or three months' rent gets charged to my CC, for which I get points that help us get free plane tickets to fly on to the next city when we're ready to move. Every part of the world we've lived has had good seasons and seasons that were kind of miserable, e.g., super cold or really hot and humid or tons of smoke from burning agricultural fields. Remaining nomadic allows you to time your visits to cities to the good times and, then, move on to other places, e.g., the mountains or beach or whatever, during seasons when the city is miserable.

scottish

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #136 on: August 15, 2020, 09:08:32 AM »
That's for sure, homeaway and airbnb have been a big boon to recreational travel.   At least they used to be.    You can't get very far with a US passport these days.

Shane

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #137 on: August 16, 2020, 07:46:20 PM »
That's for sure, homeaway and airbnb have been a big boon to recreational travel.   At least they used to be.    You can't get very far with a US passport these days.

Yep, I've heard that but, luckily, we're settled for now. Glad we're not out and about this year. Hopefully, before too long, things will return to normal. Covid isn't going to last forever.

Sid Hoffman

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #138 on: August 26, 2020, 08:13:36 PM »
Used to think I'd like to apply for a temporary resident visa in some other country once we were FIRE. When we actually looked into the logistics of doing it, though, we ended up deciding it would be easier to just remain tourists. With US passports, we can easily fly into any city in France, stay for up to 3 months, then move on to another country outside the Schengen Zone.

I'm still maybe 7 years from FI and suppose I will almost certainly stick to the "easy" route of just keeping time outside the US to under 90 days. As you said, even things like fees and getting approved for traditional leases is a bigger problem in a sense, though you may get better monthly rates. Also I'm not sure I'd ever want to stick to one single place for a full year. In that sense I guess I'm not sure we have to care too much about transient problems of any given city or state. We can just choose to live there during the good times and leave when there's bad times.

MaaS

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #139 on: August 30, 2020, 04:49:52 PM »
Being European - I wonder what everyone's (inside or outside) perspective is on the future of the continent. Where do you see Europe going in the big picture - financially, socially, quality of life?

I often get the impression that many Americans are dissatisfied with the current state of the USA. Heard multiple times of considerations to move to Europe. Why?

Also, are you following the euro zone developments, such as the latest installment of yet another round of bailouts?

I guess I am just really fed up with Europe's direction and am wondering if it looks as bad from the outside vs. from within...

Financially, I think Europe has some rough days ahead. Declining demographics, banks leveraged to the hilt, and a lack of major technology companies being three of the top reasons why. It seems that much future is being built in China and the US (no order) - while much of Europe is stagnating.

No opinion socially.

Paul der Krake

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Re: The future of Europe
« Reply #140 on: August 30, 2020, 05:19:43 PM »
It‘s kind of typical for us from Europe that we talk about the future of Europe and end up - again - comparing our system to the US and mostly talking about the US. 😉
Oh man, that hit close to home.

I read the France reddit every now and then to keep tabs on what people from my homeland talk and think about. Their obsession with comparing everything to the US, a country most of them only know through the internet, is astounding.

Not a peep about The crazy shit going on Hungary, but a woke Bernie Sanders tweet gets a million comments. It’s really fucking sad.