Fellow Child-free folk - Let's Chat: Do you feel it is risky being "out" these days?

KingGorilla wrote:

My thing is, not just celibate clergy. But by the logic of repopulating the next generation, everyone that has 1 or 2 kids is not doing their part either. It is not the people who are abstaining from procreation that has caused nations like the US of Japan to get at or below retention levels, it is because the vast majority of people procreating are having 1-2 children. And why are people having that 1 child? Because of the costs associated in the article.

Retention levels for what? And how does having 2 children affect this retention level?

nel e nel wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

My thing is, not just celibate clergy. But by the logic of repopulating the next generation, everyone that has 1 or 2 kids is not doing their part either. It is not the people who are abstaining from procreation that has caused nations like the US of Japan to get at or below retention levels, it is because the vast majority of people procreating are having 1-2 children. And why are people having that 1 child? Because of the costs associated in the article.

Retention levels for what? And how does having 2 children affect this retention level?

People die. Sometimes at young ages.

nel e nel wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

My thing is, not just celibate clergy. But by the logic of repopulating the next generation, everyone that has 1 or 2 kids is not doing their part either. It is not the people who are abstaining from procreation that has caused nations like the US of Japan to get at or below retention levels, it is because the vast majority of people procreating are having 1-2 children. And why are people having that 1 child? Because of the costs associated in the article.

Retention levels for what? And how does having 2 children affect this retention level?

To retain existing population from generation to generation. And yeah, people-especially boys often die before they can have children. The US has had population growth the last 3 census from immigration, not from births. We are at 1.89 births per woman. And then it is adjusted to only factor in families having kids.

http://www.census.gov/population/soc...

So, as I said, even the Americans having children, are not doing their part according to Huckabee's logic.

All sorts of fun census data over here.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/stat...

We are at 1.89 births per woman. And then it is adjusted to only factor in families having kids.

If I remember correctly, to be a sustainable static population, we would need to be a 2.1 births per woman?

Demosthenes wrote:
We are at 1.89 births per woman. And then it is adjusted to only factor in families having kids.

If I remember correctly, to be a sustainable static population, we would need to be a 2.1 births per woman?

Unless, of course, you have a healthy amount of immigration.

Demosthenes wrote:

If I remember correctly, to be a sustainable static population, we would need to be a 2.1 births per woman?

That's the figure I recall as well but I believe it dates from an era with inferior medical technology, these days I suspect it could be lower and still maintain numbers.

Whatever the figure is it assumes you want to maintain the population when, globally at least, the species would probably be a fair bit better off with some decline in numbers. On a smaller scale maybe it'll create issues with Social Security or whatever but that's what you get for putting all your eggs in a ponzi scheme basket.

Paleocon wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
We are at 1.89 births per woman. And then it is adjusted to only factor in families having kids.

If I remember correctly, to be a sustainable static population, we would need to be a 2.1 births per woman?

Unless, of course, you have a healthy amount of immigration.

The replacement population birth rate is still about 2.1 births per women.

As Paleo hinted, the only two reasons the US isn't in the same boat as Japan, portions of Europe, and Russia are immigration and the significantly higher fertility rate of Hispanic women (something like 2.4 births per Hispanic woman vs. 1.8 births per non-Hispanic white woman).

But even that is changing. The number of legal immigrants has declined about 15% from its mid-decade peak of about 1.3 million per year and the crappy economy in addition to clamp downs at the border have severely decreased the number of non-documented immigrants entering the country each year. In fact more undocumented immigrants are leaving the country than are entering it since the total number of undocumented immigrants in the US has dropped by 500,000 since 2008.

And the fertility rate of those recent immigrants is falling fast. The number of children born to foreign-born women (i.e., recent immigrants, mostly Hispanic) has declined 13% since 2007.

Interesting stuff about birth rates and population sustainment. I had not known about that stuff before.

I'm not too sure about the 'species would be better off with less numbers' sentiment, though. I think the planet could sustain our current numbers, it's just that some populations (ahem, America) are so f*cking wasteful that it creates these resource problems. But that's another thread entirely.

nel e nel wrote:

I'm not too sure about the 'species would be better off with less numbers' sentiment, though. I think the planet could sustain our current numbers, it's just that some populations (ahem, America) are so f*cking wasteful that it creates these resource problems. But that's another thread entirely.

Technically our planet can't sustain our current population. Collectively we're consuming about 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce each year. And that's with about half the population scraping by on less than $2 a day.

The problem is that there's about a billion or so people living swish lifestyles in the more developed economies that the other seven billion people in emerging economies want to emulate. The planet most definitely can't support that.

OG_slinger wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
We are at 1.89 births per woman. And then it is adjusted to only factor in families having kids.

If I remember correctly, to be a sustainable static population, we would need to be a 2.1 births per woman?

Unless, of course, you have a healthy amount of immigration.

The replacement population birth rate is still about 2.1 births per women.

As Paleo hinted, the only two reasons the US isn't in the same boat as Japan, portions of Europe, and Russia are immigration and the significantly higher fertility rate of Hispanic women (something like 2.4 births per Hispanic woman vs. 1.8 births per non-Hispanic white woman).

But even that is changing. The number of legal immigrants has declined about 15% from its mid-decade peak of about 1.3 million per year and the crappy economy in addition to clamp downs at the border have severely decreased the number of non-documented immigrants entering the country each year. In fact more undocumented immigrants are leaving the country than are entering it since the total number of undocumented immigrants in the US has dropped by 500,000 since 2008.

And the fertility rate of those recent immigrants is falling fast. The number of children born to foreign-born women (i.e., recent immigrants, mostly Hispanic) has declined 13% since 2007.

I have actually had discussions with some very twisted individuals of the highly predictable political stripe who have stated that "if we didn't have white women killing all their babies, we wouldn't need all those wetb*cks to come to America".

Sigh.

OG_slinger wrote:
nel e nel wrote:

I'm not too sure about the 'species would be better off with less numbers' sentiment, though. I think the planet could sustain our current numbers, it's just that some populations (ahem, America) are so f*cking wasteful that it creates these resource problems. But that's another thread entirely.

Technically our planet can't sustain our current population. Collectively we're consuming about 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce each year. And that's with about half the population scraping by on less than $2 a day.

The problem is that there's about a billion or so people living swish lifestyles in the more developed economies that the other seven billion people in emerging economies want to emulate. The planet most definitely can't support that.

Sustaining the population and sustaining the lavish lifestyles of a selfish few are different things, and is the point I was addressing. America in particular consumes way more resources than we need (~5 times more than the average global citizen), but anytime any kind of austerity measures get discussed it turns into "DON'T TREAD ON MY FREEDOM!!" Anyways, this is for another discussion.

The backlash from some republicans on Fluoroscent light-bulb standards makes me laugh.

But I think that talk can happen here. Stewardship seems to end and procreation under Huckabee's line of "thought". Because the US does need a carbon tax. The USDA needs to reform to more sustainable crops, techniques, and acreages. We need to shout down the ignorant ass hippies getting modified crops outlawed in Uganda. India and China is more keen to reform their power grid than we are in the US. That should be more shocking than it seems to be. General Electric sells more of their wind turbines to Asia than in the US.

nel e nel wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
nel e nel wrote:

I'm not too sure about the 'species would be better off with less numbers' sentiment, though. I think the planet could sustain our current numbers, it's just that some populations (ahem, America) are so f*cking wasteful that it creates these resource problems. But that's another thread entirely.

Technically our planet can't sustain our current population. Collectively we're consuming about 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce each year. And that's with about half the population scraping by on less than $2 a day.

The problem is that there's about a billion or so people living swish lifestyles in the more developed economies that the other seven billion people in emerging economies want to emulate. The planet most definitely can't support that.

Sustaining the population and sustaining the lavish lifestyles of a selfish few are different things, and is the point I was addressing. America in particular consumes way more resources than we need (~5 times more than the average global citizen), but anytime any kind of austerity measures get discussed it turns into "DON'T TREAD ON MY FREEDOM!!" Anyways, this is for another discussion.

I disagree. However, as you said, this is for another discussion.

nel e nel wrote:

Sustaining the population and sustaining the lavish lifestyles of a selfish few are different things, and is the point I was addressing. America in particular consumes way more resources than we need (~5 times more than the average global citizen), but anytime any kind of austerity measures get discussed it turns into "DON'T TREAD ON MY FREEDOM!!" Anyways, this is for another discussion.

No, they aren't different things. They are deeply interconnected. The number of people the world can actually sustain is wholly dependent on the lifestyle those people live.

If you want to restrict humans to eeking out a living using little to no technology then the world could maybe sustainably handle billions more. But if you want people to still have a lifestyle remotely approaching what those living in more developed economies enjoy then we kinda need to get rid of about five billion people.

Any middle ground involves telling a billion people they need to radically alter their lifestyles for the worse and telling another three and a half billion people or so that they have to give up some of the things they just proudly achieved (like eating meat regularly or owning a car).

And that's only to deal with the population we have right now. The next twelve years will add another billion people and by 2050 the world's population will be pushing 9.6 billion. And the vast majority of that population increase will come from countries whose economies are developing, meaning all those people will be consuming vastly more resources than their parents did.

Well, and the sticky part is that population growth is more attributable to longer lifespans in those developing nations thanks to better water, better food, better access to medicines.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_roslin...

What I like about this video is that it explains that interplay between births and life expectancy.

Japan has birth rates sub 2 births a woman, but among the longest life expectancies in the world. The mean age is 83, but living well into your 100's is very common in Japan. It is 76 in China, 73 in Egypt. The projections on how large the world over 60 population will be in the next 50 years is very interesting indeed.

Yeah, maintaining a high birth rate and keeping old people around longer is a recipe for long term disaster.

Nevin73 wrote:

Yeah, maintaining a high birth rate and keeping old people around longer is a recipe for long term disaster.

IMAGE(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__HjbLiVvj6Q/TNZqfG77pUI/AAAAAAAAAIk/5Ql3i5H_BxI/s320/logan.jpg)

I completely forgot that I need to watch that with my wife.

IMAGE(http://www.tvacres.com/images/logans_run7.jpg)

Mine went off on Saturday.

FWIW, I was joking there, I wasn't trying to be sarcastic about what you said, Nevin. I think that idea of telling people in India and China, nevermind Africa, that they can't have the same standard of living as the developed West is abhorrent. To me the only real solution is population control. So when someone like Mike Huckabee freaks out about this I understand that he's bringing the science of the Bible to bear on this problem, but ultimately he's just wrong. Without major scientific breakthroughs the world won't sustain a good quality of life for 9 billion people. My guess would be something more in the neighborhood of 2 - 4 billion. That's a guess based on the population of fairly developed nations.

Here is where I get confused, talking a population of 2-4 billion... are we looking at like Mass Effect where everyone is in like one city and the outlying areas then? How do we still get resources from the rest of the planet... or are we looking at everyone is taking a 2 hour drive to get to the closest GameStop?

DSGamer wrote:

FWIW, I was joking there, I wasn't trying to be sarcastic about what you said, Nevin. I think that idea of telling people in India and China, nevermind Africa, that they can't have the same standard of living as the developed West is abhorrent. To me the only real solution is population control. So when someone like Mike Huckabee freaks out about this I understand that he's bringing the science of the Bible to bear on this problem, but ultimately he's just wrong. Without major scientific breakthroughs the world won't sustain a good quality of life for 9 billion people. My guess would be something more in the neighborhood of 2 - 4 billion. That's a guess based on the population of fairly developed nations.

No, I get that and agree with you.

Demosthenes wrote:

Here is where I get confused, talking a population of 2-4 billion... are we looking at like Mass Effect where everyone is in like one city and the outlying areas then? How do we still get resources from the rest of the planet... or are we looking at everyone is taking a 2 hour drive to get to the closest GameStop?

Well obviously people will have to use Steam.

I love the fact that a Cthulhu-icon'ed member created a thread for discussion of population, overpopulation, and related issues spun off of the child-free thread.

CheezePavilion wrote:

I love the fact that a Cthulhu-icon'ed member created a thread for discussion of population, overpopulation, and related issues spun off of the child-free thread.

Oh good.

IMAGE(https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/7724504832/h5737342C/)

Oh, ick. Poor taste. You might as well start painting little dead babies on the side of your car for each abortion you get like a WW2 fighter ace.

Like mix & match with the stick figures and zombies?

Buh. Pro-choice, but that is not great.

Demosthenes wrote:

Buh. Pro-choice, but that is not great.

Same here.
I'm going to convince myself it means they can afford a lot of clothes.

imbiginjapan wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

Buh. Pro-choice, but that is not great.

Same here.
I'm going to convince myself it means they can afford a lot of clothes.

Good point. They're family is two adults, two fabulous wardrobes.