There'll be two links below to speak more intelligently than I will about this subject. But the fact is that the number of human beings on the planet Earth needs to start declining. Through natural causes. Through a lower birthrate arrived at by free individual choices.
BUT OLD PEOPLE ARE A MILLSTONE AROUND THE NECK OF THE LIVING!!!
To a degree the very aged ARE a burden. But they CARRIED the burden when they were younger. Still and all, as a pessimist I don't think that I'll have a problem allowing myself to die when there doesn't seem to be any point to it. My continuing to eat and think and suffer from aches and pains isn't so fucking important that some poor immigrant woman should have to change my diapers and wipe my ass.
There's lots of stories about the cultural impact of an aging population coming out of Japan. They're interesting.
But we don't need an economy based on the frantic production of junk and garbage that nobody needs where we're all atomized as self-seeking individuals. This world where old people suffer in loneliness is the end result of a society based on shit-head Margaret Thatcher's shit-head utterance of "There's no such thing as 'society.' There's just individuals and families."
A more collective, ecologically sane society that attends to genuine human needs rather than manufactured desires can do it.
Making More Babies to Drive Economic Growth - CounterPunch.org
Declining Population Thru Lower Birth Rates Is GOOD, Mmmmkay? – Ian Welsh
That'll do pig.
3 comments:
Yeah. And OK, it's true that people in developed countries use like huge multiples more resources and emit incredibly much more (and the rich of those developed countries by far the most of all, with their multiple homes and private jets and yachts and all that shit). But I mean, so? One logical development of that line of thinking would be that it's OK for there to be billions more darkies in African and India as long we don't let any of them immigrate to Fortress America/Europe, which is revolting.
And as we've found out in the climate change issue, intensity targets are worthless. Exponential economic growth wipes out intensity targets; exponential population growth does the same. There's an irreducible minimum of how much impact a human has on the planet--when there are enough of us, just land use alone wipes out all the forests and degrades the soil.
So yeah, those of us living in first world countries should be coming up with decent ways of living that do far less damage to the world, versions of the "good life" that COULD be exported to the rest of the world without finishing wiping it out, and meanwhile everyone should be reducing population.
If we don't do it, will get done to us. We've overshot the earth's carrying capacity and that has already started to degrade how much we can pull out, and climate change is going to shrink that capacity further. Pretty soon the famines will no longer be just because we can't be bothered to feed people and will start being because there also actually isn't enough food. Population will shrink the hard way, whether we like it or not.
Purple library guy,
That's sort of what I was saying about a collective, ecologically sustainable society, as opposed to the cult of the individual, capitalist-consumerist nightmare of brainwashing people into desiring what nobody needs and competing against each other in a rigged game in order to afford that crap.
Ian Welsh once quoted Keynes: "If we can do it, we can afford it."
We can afford to house and feed everyone. There's lot's of useful work to do. We just need a revolution in order to be able to do it.
Oh, yeah--about the old people. It's not a big deal actually. I see articles talk dramatically about how in the 70s there were 7 working age people for every one non-working-age person and by some year or other it's going to be only three to one, and how on earth will we manage? This sounds very dramatic--7 to 1 vs 3 to 1, oh no!
But what it actually means is, back then 7 people supported a total of 8 people, whereas by whatever year 3 people will have to support a total of 4 people. That's not actually a huge deal, productivity increases totally swamp that without noticing. Plus, I saw someone point out that in the 50s the ratio was even worse--the baby boom meant everyone was supporting tons of non-productive kids, they had to build masses of schools and train lots of teachers and etc etc etc. And they managed fine, despite productivity being far LOWER than now.
On top of that, it just occurred to me that the "working age" thing conceals some sleight of hand, namely ignoring the entry of women to the work force.
All in all I think the "But too many old people!!1!" is bullshit. Japan's already at that "lots of old people" situation the alarm is about, and they're doing fine.
I might be more likely to take it all seriously if they weren't constantly alternating "OMG there won't be enough people to take care of the elderly!!!" with "OMG everything's gonna be automated, there won't be any jobs left!!!" Make up your mind, pundits. It can't be both.
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