this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2026
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My biggest concern is not that fertility rate is low/population decline is happening, it's that it's happening way too quickly for society to be able to handle it.
We're talking like 4 old people per child (estimated number). Not only would it be a massive strain on the economy to have so many elderly people/retirees to take care of, older people will also have a highly disproportionate account of political power due to their relative abundance. If it's already such a big deal that boomers were twisting the political landscape for their gain, I shudder to think what would happen at this larger and longer scale.
All of this is going to be a breeding ground for misogyny and right-wing ideology when people start thinking that it's [opposite gender]'s fault that they're not living as well as they were promised by the previous generation. We've already seen it in South Korea, and we're seeing it now with the rise of isolation and inceldom.
Plus, without younger people to take up the mantle, many industries that we rely on will need to downsize, and a lot of institutional knowledge will be lost. Many roles that require a "master-to-apprentice" style of learning will be lost and will be unable to recover, even if the population started growing again.
Fox News has the wrong take here, as it is wont to have. But we genuinely should be really concerned that birth rates across all developed countries are this low below replacement rate and are still dropping
Well the solution would be END FUCKING CAPITALISM ALREADY, but since none of the younger generations actually care to do so we get to enjoy a rest period on the environment, maybe enough of one to slow some of the later effects of climate change.
We're already dead as a species within 500 years. No matter what we do CO2 PPM is going to triple by that time and that will, at the very least, eliminate higher-order thinking and shrink brain development far below what is necessary to have more than a passing visage of human society.
So maybe with fewer people we can skip the worst of the water wars (which started in 2014) and maybe even skip some of the worst of the food and migration wars (already starting, will escalate over the next five years as major producers like the us fail to produce excess thanks to shifting seasons and lack of workers).
Honestly best case scenario is natural population decline.
Capitalism has been around for a couple of hundred years. During most of that time fertility rates were high in pretty much every capitalist society. This changed within a generation of contraceptives becoming widely available, even in those capitalist societies most strongly influenced by socialism, with low poverty rates and where generally everyone can easily afford to have children. I think we can make a fair guess which factor was more important, between capitalism and contraception.
Humans, and mammals in general, never developed an innate desire to reproduce. It was never necessary in an evolutionary sense, since fucking led to reproduction. There hasn't been enough time for humans as a species to adapt to the new reality, and we can probably develop new contraceptive technology faster than any resistance to them can evolve (one would expect, for example, allergies to the contraceptive pill or condoms to start appearing and/or increasing in frequency among the population).
The more impactful evolution might be of a sociological nature. Cultures and subcultures that encourage large families should be expected to begin proliferating globally. We have seen some beginnings of this happening, such as the Haredim in Israel and ultraconservative communities elsewhere.
Even without capitalism the math doesn’t math.
If there’s only one working person for every four old people, and those four old people each need one or two caretakers a piece then there’s not enough workers to go around.
And that doesn’t count every other job in society that needs done to support the caretakers, like growing food and fixing toilets.
Oh I see the problem you're having, you still think most jobs need doing.
They don't.
The majority of jobs under a capitalist society are not needed to produce goods, nor distribute goods, nor consume goods.
We could just eliminate health insurance. Entirely. Just completely remove the concept from our society. There are now 1.6 million people that need work. Median age of 32.
Remove all insurance and we get up to 3 million. That's about 5% of the working population.
Insurance is only needed under capitalism. so let's eliminate that.
Now eliminate Marketers. Now all advertising. and so on. Eliminate middle management.
Congrats. we keep going like this and we can easily get a quarter or more of the working population doing something useful.
Now let's bring in incentives for the chronically unemployed, the majority of which just can't compete in capitalism, but still have both the skills and capability to flourish under alternative economic systems that don't require 40-80 hour work weeks after begging for a job through the least efficient hiring process ever developed.
The more you dig into the facts, the more you realize that not only do we not need most people working full time, we don't need most people working.
And with more free time that increases innovation, and without a capitalist structure preventing automation vis-a-vi complete societal collapse, congrats you now have incentives to reduce work even further to the minimum amount.
This not only allows for depopulation, but actively encourages it, naturally, as despite having more free time and resources and less stress, people would only have kids if they wanted kids. Not because they need someone to take care of them in their old age, or other such coercive, frankly evil excuses to have kids.
Are you advocating for not treating the sick whatsoever, or are you assuming total governmental funding for treating the sick?
'funding' is a capitalist term, but yes a simplification of socialist and post-currency economics would be 'the government funds treating the sick'.... like it does in 109 countries, including every developed nation, and a majority of recognized developing nations except the US.
What term would you use instead of “funding”? Even if we ditch capitalism, as we should, doctors et al still need to get paid, and hospitals still need money to operate (assuming we got rid of any for-profit healthcare). We wouldn’t be doing this with a barter system, right?
I don’t think most jobs need doing. I don’t want any jobs at all period.
But if you have four old people who need four workers to care for them and there’s only one worker to go around no amount of firing social media managers and insurance adjusters that’s gonna fix it.
This isn’t an economic problem, it’s a demographic one. Which is why it’s a problem across the world and not just in capitalist nations. (And is in fact worst in China due to the effects of the one child policy.)
You don't need one worker per old person. The best care homes in the world still do 10-1. Most care homes get by with minimal incidents at 20-1. Heck you won't even get investigated for neglect in the US until you're at 30-1 or higher (depending on the state.)
As someone who was a CNA for a short while -- either the old people are doing fine, in which case they mostly take care of themselves with 'reminders' and 'structure' provided by the carers, or they're REALLY not doing fine in which case they're going to the hospital and statistically will not need constant care for much more than a few hours.
Old people are shockingly self sufficient, almost like they're people, even in terrible condition; one good nurse and a CNA can handle a 20-odd crowd from breakfast (including wiping) to settling in for bed (including wiping, so much wiping). Technically a nurse can do it alone if they have no overweight or PITA patients to oversee.
Okay, let’s assume it’s 10-1. How many other people, in a perfectly efficient system, would it take to provide a decent quality of life for that caretaker and the 10 elderly people? Growing and transporting food, building and maintaining infrastructure, researching and providing medical care, producing electricity and clean water. Nothing extra.
And how many people to support these people.
Probably more than we’d have available to work.
There’s a reason China started taxing condoms.
Way, way less than you think. 2+2++1+3%. That is the entirety of food workers and food transportation, packaging, and sales, respectively, as a percentage of population for the united states, which produces twice the food needed by the population.
Water workers? maybe 5%. and that's a hard maybe because that includes all plumbers, not just infrastructure. Electricity? As long as we don't go with coal and oil it's an average of 1 worker per GW. admittedly line workers and electricians make up a decent chunk approaching 3 whole % of a population, but let's be honest here, we're fine on that front still.
And that's the great thing about economies of scale and automation and mechanization. It's not the 1700s anymore. We don't have to have 98% of the population in food production. We don't have to waste productivity. We are, and this isn't a joke, on average more than 10,000 times more productive as individuals and as a species than our ancestors.