Alas, Poor Thanos

[Purpelia]

However more people means more workers and more demand for goods and services (hence workers if you do not outsource).

And your economy will not expand if demand and the workforce are both declining.

More people creates demand for more workers, absent outsourcing.

And up until the coronavirus lockdowns the US had a record low unemployment and a growing economy.

Except the west does outsource which means less jobs which means less need for workers which means more workers contribute nothing as they can not actually find work. I mean just look at all the african and asian countries that are dirt poor even though they have millions of "workers" to fill demand.

What people don't seem to understand is that the primary reason for less people having children (barring those that just hate children) is that the cost of raising a child and educating him to become a productive worker that can do the same to his children has grown so high thanks to all the low need jobs moving to outsourcing that it has become too much of a burden. Back in the day an 18 year old strait out of high school could and did find a decent job that afforded decent quality of living and paid enough to make sure any children he had could do the same. Now that the working class has collapsed or is collapsing and factories are all in China that is no longer the case. You basically have to be a university graduate to get the same sort of decent job that a factory worker had 50 years ago. So naturally people are going to have less children under those conditions.

Put simply you do not grow your economy by importing people. You grow your economy by growing your economy and than import people if and when you need to fill any gaps.

[Plzen]

This really is the main thing:

[...] Now that the working class has collapsed or is collapsing and factories are all in China that is no longer the case. You basically have to be a university graduate to get the same sort of decent job that a factory worker had 50 years ago. So naturally people are going to have less children under those conditions.

I'll add a bit more to that.

As a society grows wealthier and more sophisticated, social-conservative norms pressuring young couples into abiding by "family values" weaken, youth are expected to stay in education (and thus out of the kind of full-time work that supports children) for much longer, the higher the cost of living in general and raising children in particular become, the more alienated individuals are from conventional social relations, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The technological and cultural trends of our era points towards continuously decreasing fertility. It's just the nature of the times we live in.

---

I should point out - and I hope this is an opinion shared by most people - that under no circumstance should we see childbearing as something that people should do, as a moral/political/social obligation. The discussion on national fertility rates over here in this corner of the planet often devolve into issues of patriotism and "survival" of "our nation" (like, what?) or young people "not doing their part" (...), which I find patently ridiculous and incredibly reactionary.

[Forsher]

Catholics who actually follow the "can't use contraceptive rule"(and bear in mind there's also a big chunk which cheats on the rule, then claims that it's due to fertility problems or the rhythm method working unusually well) absolutely do sometimes act like that, albeit not phrased in that manner, at least on the more conservative end. You're not going to replicate that cultural model without also having significantly less liberated than in the present women, however(as a cultural if not legal norm).

Oh, I know. I put that line of thought in based on my grandmother. It's hard to say how much of it's true since she's been dead for decades and literally everything I know about her is filtered through my mother, but... I mean, my mother's got 8 siblings via said Catholic grandmother so...

... not that said Catholic grandmother was a good Catholic, exactly. All of those children were born out of wedlock. I would assume she was otherwise reasonably conservative. My mother might be extremely anti "Jesus freaks" but she's definitely not "a liberal".

(Coincidentally my father also had 8 siblings but a different religion. I, myself, have a mere 7, but most of them are half siblings and much, much older than me.)

[Shanghai industrial complex]

Slowing population growth is a good thing. Because the environment is on the verge of collapse.John_B._Calhoun and his mouse universe

[Lost Memories]

Personally, no amount of money from the government could convince me to have kids, I literally wouldn't even consider it for a million dollars, so when it comes to people like me there's really no incentive that will work, and there are apparently a lot more people like me out there so I don't know what they're going to do about it.

That's not an unsolvable problem, someone else will fill up the population void left by the people not having childs after they die, so long the people willing to have childs are not hindered to do it.

The individual shouldn't be at the center of society and politics, but the family should be at the center.
The average single salary being inadeguate to sustain a family, forcing both spouses to work full time, thus having no time to plan the growth and no time to grow their own children, is a crime against humanity.
It's not a problem of money, it's before that a problem of time, work rhythms, in the endless desire of the economy for unlimited growth, have invaded the time of the family. Many nations with below replacement fertility are basically working their own societies to death.

[Purpelia]

Personally, no amount of money from the government could convince me to have kids, I literally wouldn't even consider it for a million dollars, so when it comes to people like me there's really no incentive that will work, and there are apparently a lot more people like me out there so I don't know what they're going to do about it.

That's not an unsolvable problem, someone else will fill up the population void left by the people not having childs after they die, so long the people willing to have childs are not hindered to do it.

The individual shouldn't be at the center of society and politics, but the family should be at the center.
The average single salary being inadeguate to sustain a family, forcing both spouses to work full time, thus having no time to plan the growth and no time to grow their own children, is a crime against humanity.
It's not a problem of money, it's before that a problem of time, work rhythms, in the endless desire of the economy for unlimited growth, have invaded the time of the family. Many nations with below replacement fertility are basically working their own societies to death.

Money is definitively a big part of it. It is fundamentally unfair that the liberation of women lead not to the doubling of the average family income but the halving of the average workers pay.
However I feel a much larger part is the fact that the institution of the family has been rendered worthless by means of legal disempowerment. An institution, be that family, religion, state or anything else is only worth as much as it is functionally useful. As in its worth, and thus the desire of people to create and maintain it, is defined by how much responsibilities it has and what powers it has to accomplish these. And in the western world both of those have been eroded and abdicated to the state. Used to be families were essentially self enforcing when it came to internal affairs. Now a days the state defines how you treat your spouse and how you raise your children and generally just does all the things that the family used to do. So people just feel no need to have a strong family when the family is literally banned by law from being functionally strong. So to restore the family to prominence you would literally have to roll back a lot of those social reforms.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

And in the western world both of those have been eroded and abdicated to the state. Used to be families were essentially self enforcing when it came to internal affairs. Now a days the state defines how you treat your spouse and how you raise your children and generally just does all the things that the family used to do.

...care to be more specific?

[Purpelia]

And in the western world both of those have been eroded and abdicated to the state. Used to be families were essentially self enforcing when it came to internal affairs. Now a days the state defines how you treat your spouse and how you raise your children and generally just does all the things that the family used to do.

...care to be more specific?

Two easy examples as I am at work and can't type long texts:
1. The state handles interpersonal relationships between family members. Used to that basically what happened in the family stayed in the family. You couldn't sue a spouse for hitting you or get a divorce or get the courts to work out inheritance and stuff like that. The family was supposed to handle all of these and more and was empowered to do so.
2. The state constantly meddles in how people raise their children to the point of even kidnapping children if the state disproves of their parenting.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not a reactionary who actually wants a return to the days before civilization. But it is a fundamental fact that if you remove rights and powers from an institution that institution collapses as it has become unnecessary.

[Lost Memories]

@Purpelia
I would say family shouldn't be functionally useful to be worthwhile, because family is a necessity, family is the end goal, not a mean to something else. Not a tool to ideology, nor a cog of the economy. Or at least, it shouldn't, and when it is trivialized, the result is what we are talking about now here.

Now a days the state defines how you treat your spouse and how you raise your children and generally just does all the things that the family used to do.

The question then is, is the state doing it well? It doesn't seem like it.

So to restore the family to prominence you would literally have to roll back a lot of those social reforms.

It's less about prominence, but about focus. The interests of families must come before the interests of people who are going to not invest in raising the next generations, raising in all senses.
Prioritizing the latter is suicidal for any society. But maybe that's the aim of the current "modern" societies.

There is often quite the deal of misanthropy involved in these discussions, particularly from the side who would gladly die (only by words) for the sake of their pot plants. May that be also one of the results of the parental role of the state?

[Plzen]

It's less about prominence, but about focus. The interests of families must come before the interests of people who are going to not invest in raising the next generations, raising in all senses.

Why?

The interests of a society as a whole is often not the same as the interests of the individual members in it. "Society" and the well-being of the same are abstractions; people and their feelings are very, very real. Pursuing a policy of advantaging the interests of some privileged people over the interests of those not so privileged for the benefits of some abstract "society" is simple discrimination and nothing else. The institutions of society exists to serve its members, not vice versa, and our policies must be guided by that understanding.

What individual person or individual people, specifically, benefits from the next generation being big? What's the justification behind holding this to be a good to be pursued?

[Lost Memories]

@Plzen Why? it's overly simple.

Whatever the anti-natalists think to be the "ideal world population" to be eco-friendly, once that ideal population is reached, the population must remain stable, little to no growth, little to no degrowth, as the world population can't shrink indefinitely, as that just means extinction.
The current western societal model doesn't work to mantain a stable population, at present time it's just a dog eating its tail, sooner or later it will have to go.

Thinking in advance about what needs to change to have a stable population is preferable than to panic once 80% of the world population will be elderly, and the share of people in fertile age will be too few to avoid a population collapse once those elderly start to die en masse, and no one will take their place into society with as many progresses and services dying with them.

One of the things i think needs to change is to push back the economy out of the time reserved for family. If the economy can't regulate itself as to avoid trampling over the ability of people to form a family, then that must be enforced.

[Auze]

Fortunately it's not too late for France, Scandinavia, the British Isles, Australia, and the USA demographics-wise to have a stable and sustainable population level. As for the rest of the Most-developed world...

[Purpelia]

@Purpelia
I would say family shouldn't be functionally useful to be worthwhile, because family is a necessity, family is the end goal, not a mean to something else. Not a tool to ideology, nor a cog of the economy. Or at least, it shouldn't, and when it is trivialized, the result is what we are talking about now here.

But it is. And it always has been. Family or indeed ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING ELSE has newer been a goal unto it self. All institutions are just tools. But yes, what happened to the family as an institution, it's trivialization and destruction in favor of handing power over to the state is indeed what is responsible for the current state of affairs.

The question then is, is the state doing it well? It doesn't seem like it.

That question only matters if you have a choice. And these days you don't. You either do as the state tells you or you go to prison or have your children snatched by government sponsored kidnappers.

It's less about prominence, but about focus. The interests of families must come before the interests of people who are going to not invest in raising the next generations, raising in all senses.
Prioritizing the latter is suicidal for any society. But maybe that's the aim of the current "modern" societies.

Society has no aim beyond immediate survival of the masses and enrichment of the ruling class. Everything else is just a tool to those ends with the details changing based on the mood of the times.

There is often quite the deal of misanthropy involved in these discussions, particularly from the side who would gladly die (only by words) for the sake of their pot plants. May that be also one of the results of the parental role of the state?

Its basically two factors that feed into one another. On one hand you have the 19th century housewife dreaming of a world where she too can have a job so that their family might now have two earners and thus twice the money. And on the other you have the capitalist overlord dreaming of a world where each family has two paychecks which allows him to pay his workers half the money and still not have them rise up in food riots. And we know which won.

[Lost Memories]

As an example of how the economy should be pushed back out from family time:
the 8 hour workday was an important step forward, but that ran on the premise that a worker could still sustain their own family by working 8 hours. If instead now it's almost required for both parents to work, to sustain a family with childs, and still not be able to make it, then that premise has been violated.
There has to be a new working standard, with respect to family life. Either the incomes should be increased as to respect the previous premise, or while keeping the same pay the workday must be shortened further (4 hours workday?) as to allow both working parents to still have time for their own family. Or some other balance which doesn't assume a worker will have to feed and clothe only himself.

But given how the previous idea of 8 hours with same salary was abused, i'm not too confident the same wouldn't happen again with 4 hour workdays.
Measuring income(and regulating it, or at least the minimun wage) on the basis of the number of persons it must sustain, seems a more promising approach to me.

Its basically two factors that feed into one another. On one hand you have the 19th century housewife dreaming of a world where she too can have a job so that their family might now have two earners and thus twice the money. And on the other you have the capitalist overlord dreaming of a world where each family has two paychecks which allows him to pay his workers half the money and still not have them rise up in food riots. And we know which won.

That's how it has been.

Though i find some little resemblance on the idea of easily doubling the gains(19th century housewife), while ignoring how wealth isn't created from nothing, and the idea that we can all become double as rich if the world population shrinks to half(some current anti-natalists). There seems to be a recurring theme there. Maybe it's a naive idea of how wealth is generated, first, and a naive idea about how wealth persists, in the latter.

[Novus America]

However more people means more workers and more demand for goods and services (hence workers if you do not outsource).

And your economy will not expand if demand and the workforce are both declining.

More people creates demand for more workers, absent outsourcing.

And up until the coronavirus lockdowns the US had a record low unemployment and a growing economy.

Except the west does outsource which means less jobs which means less need for workers which means more workers contribute nothing as they can not actually find work. I mean just look at all the african and asian countries that are dirt poor even though they have millions of "workers" to fill demand.

What people don't seem to understand is that the primary reason for less people having children (barring those that just hate children) is that the cost of raising a child and educating him to become a productive worker that can do the same to his children has grown so high thanks to all the low need jobs moving to outsourcing that it has become too much of a burden. Back in the day an 18 year old strait out of high school could and did find a decent job that afforded decent quality of living and paid enough to make sure any children he had could do the same. Now that the working class has collapsed or is collapsing and factories are all in China that is no longer the case. You basically have to be a university graduate to get the same sort of decent job that a factory worker had 50 years ago. So naturally people are going to have less children under those conditions.

Put simply you do not grow your economy by importing people. You grow your economy by growing your economy and than import people if and when you need to fill any gaps.

Well we need to cut back on outsourcing is the point. Yes outsourcing was a disaster for demographics by destroying middle class jobs. But we could stop doing it.

You can only grow your economy one of two ways. Increasing productivity per person, or having more people (or both). The size of the economy is the average amount of net value produced per person times the number of people.

So which one are you going to do? You just days grow the Economy, you never said how.