You're missing the point. The point is that it does not matter in the grand scheme of things whether or not humans exist.
We are going to have to have an a priori disagreement there.
Didn't you just say the Japanese have been here before? And isn't Tokyo a mega-city?
No. I said that the Japanese have
never seen fertility rates dip this low. That is why the nation with the mega-city of Tokyo now buys more adult-diapers than baby-diapers. No civilization has survived having a fertility rate that low; but instead have been reduced and absorbed into others. That is Japans' future.
Oh, by the way, if you want to know one of the biggest reasons why Japan's birth rate is plummeting, it's because women are still treated like chattel in domestic roles, but not in professional roles. Who would give up their career that they enjoy to be treated like a maid for the rest of their lives?
That's funny. I live in Japan and that's not what I see at all. Methinks you are rather exagerating the agreably more traditional roles they have over here. But, for example, our neighbor has three kids, and she works, and is just as happy and in control of her own house as my wife, who doesn't (although she is more stressed because hey, she's working and a mom, that's a harder juggle than one or the other. Sweet lady though, we trade Japanese for American dishes all the time).
There are many examples of "elderly bulges" stabilizing.
No, there aren't. Not least for the simple enough reason that this is mathematically impossible. You cannot have an "elderly bulge" stabilize because 40 million 45 year olds cannot become 50 million 55 year olds ten years later.
Most of Europe hasn't been going through this for long enough for us to know if they will.
No, most of Europe has been
approaching this for many years, just as we have been approaching the insolvency of our own entitlement systems when the Baby Boomers retire. That's most of the reason why southern Europe (which has had the lowest fertility rates) is currently facing insolvency.
Some of the better-off countries also have very low fertility rates. An elderly bulge isn't the only factor in play, clearly. Those eastern countries also have decades of extreme economic and social mismanagement.
Some of the countries who are
currently better off are
approaching an elderly bulge and have low fertility rates.
I don't have a "goal." Since I'm basically "not playing" the reproduction game, it is neither here nor there to me what the rest of humanity decides to do about it. My job is to be a positive influence while I'm here. They're the ones who have kids and grandkids to worry about. I don't.
Why in the world would you want to have a positive influence? And how can you say you have no goal or that the human population is irrelevant and argue in the next breath how it would be a good thing if there were fewer of us? Both of these things cannot be true. Either we are irrelevant and it does not matter if there are 6 or 60 billion of us, or we are not, and these things do matter.
But in my opinion of what ultimately results in the best quality of life for the most people in the long run, I'm weighing the short term discomforts against the long term viability of the population. People will suffer either way. It's only a question of how many, and how long.
So humans are
not irrelevant. Well that's good to know. It's also good to know that the Malthusian argument (which you
are putting forth) has been repeatedly demonstrated to be false - production has increased
faster than the population. A world in which our fertility rates drop below replacement and we expend increasing portions of our productivity into consumption for the elderly is the poorer, longer, more painful one. Take a good hard look at Greece and take a good look at Japan. That's the future in the model you are proposing. Hard, painful crashes followed by long periods of intensely slow, flat, or negative growth.
No, it clearly isn't, or we would have stuck with our earlier agricultural models. It's a model under which everyone but the most powerful suffer extremely.
On the contrary, it was a superior model than hunting-gathering which is why we adopted it. Then we industrialized, which in turn was a superior model and so we adopted
that.
Your physical location doesn't change your internal world view. You think short-term, single-factorially, and parochially. I don't.
Gosh you like that word. :lol: Oh parents are so parochial, and you know, they're like, parochialistic, with all their parochialism, and stuff. Me and my friends sitting down at the coffee shop talking about how, like, there's like, poverty and stuff, in like, Africa and stuff are like, so much more, like
broad, you know? 'Cause, we, like, write for small-distribution magazines, and stuff, which, like,
raises awareness, you know, and
really discusses the issues. :roll:
What utter banality. Smoke, you are a smarter person than that tripe.
You and your fellow CF'ers are out there
talking about the future of the human race while parents are out there producing and shaping the future of the human race. You are the Monday-morning quarterback to their game.