People understand the concept of, "no infinite growth on a finite planet," but then refuse to accept that that holds true for us as well. The world population has more than doubled in my lifetime. Obviously we can't do that forever. Especially in the context of a climate crisis that is making less land livable over time. For completely practical reasons we are going to have to set up some kind of system that can function in equilibrium rather than requiring growth.

Like, they are bad for societies though. Not just in terms of keeping them around but also in terms of demographic makeup, no? Children are an important part of the social fabric. There is a point at which the old outnumbering the young does bevome a bad thing.

I think some in this thread do not fully realize what some of the inherent problems of capitalism are and how they relate to this issue.

In a capitalist economy resources and labour are generally allocated in a way that maximizes profit. Profit is determined based on the prices of things and prices are determined by the exchange value of those things. That often results in the price of something being way higher than what it cost to make it. One result of this is that capitalist economies allocate enormous amount of resources and labour to things that don't have any beneficial value to society. For example, some of the most skilled labour in America is tasked with figuring out how to get as many people as possible to spend as much time as possible looking at anger-inducing content on their phones. This isn't contributing in any meaningful, positive way to solving society's known, difficult long term problems, like ageing population. In fact it likely does the opposite.

In contrast, a socialist economy allocates resources and labour according to society's needs, which are determined by some mix of economic planning and limited market dynamics. Prices of things are determined through these processes and generally represent how much labour goes into them. As a result, keeping people angry wouldn't get many skilled engineers allocated to. Instead these people's labour would for example be employed in automating the shit out of the vital sectors for society's long term well-being. Like automation in agriculture, healthcare and elder care. And then since labour isn't allocated or paid on the basis of profit, the socialist economy can keep labour employed in sectors where proven automation already exists and gradually ramp up automation as they retire. Alternatively it could let people retire earlier, or have them do other work if they want to, like community service, or art, or R&D, or childcare, etc. As a result a socialist economy has a better ability to sustain itself with less labour while taking care of its elderly, without enduring crises.

Worse, a capitalist economy has to go through the real material changes, actually allocating labour and resources, producing the things it would produce with its current configuration in order for it to figure out what to change and what to do next. Thus we're faced with the horror of all these bad decisions that we currently see basically locked-in and consuming vast resources and labour until they become unprofitable or resources or labour are exhausted. Which means we're very likely to run into crises before the system adjusts to the new realities of diminished labour force. And then we'd likely (as we already are) rush into solving that by importing labour, which is going to get us into social instability due to racism, and we know how that goes. There are plenty current examples to go around. Meanwhile an economy that can do planning can model ahead of time what different future economic configurations would look like, make projections, choose a desired one and have resources and labour allocated on solutions today, thus increase the chances of avoiding acute socioeconomic crises or minimize their scale.

I hope this helps understanding the premise.

And for today's misallocation of resources in capitalism I give you - https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18820691.

There is enough out there for everyone to live a happy life. We just have to realize it.

It usually always translates to "We really need more poor and working class labor so pump out more wage slaves." We could be a way better society if we move past enriching billionaires and the rich.

It's a crisis for who will support you in your old age. Capitalism or no capitalism, if you want to keep eating after you stop working, either you store enough literal food in your barn, or somebody else works so you eat.

Traditionally, that's family: your children. Capital/investments/savings, or socialised care, spreads that around the State a bit more (or round the local or global community). But when there are few children and many adults, later there are few working people and many retirees wanting to enjoy life - and you're one of the retirees.

It's a "problem for capitalism" because so many people have invested in capitalism for their retirement, and that could be upended. And because actually-small investments were made, on the basis that constant economic growth means lots will be returned when the time comes.

But it's a "problem for humanity" - all the people who don't have children to care for them and rely on money and financial investments - which both just represent a stake in someone else's work - for the future.

I've written myself into a corner a bit here. Few working adults to many retirees is always going to be difficult, no matter your economic/political system. But logically from my, simplified, argument, the last two paragraphs beckon a third. To recap,

1. Retirement funds: a stake in "Capitalism", to provide for your retirement based on broad economic growth

2. Money: a stake in the total economy, to provide from people's work. Then:

3. A stake in the community, based on being a member of the community. E.g. a citizen - then this is socialism. If there are enough working adults - or bread in the barn - to provide for all the elderly, then all the elderly (you included) are provided for, regardless of whether they have children or saved money or made investments.

But still, if there isn't enough for everyone, everyone suffers. And it's rare to find a community that really wants to care for its elders well, putting in the effort for them rather than people spending on themselves, without outsourcing to 'capitalism' and economic growth.

They are kind of a crisis for pensions, mind. The whole idea of a state pension is that for every worker there are approximately two more paying in to cover the costs of the pensions. Every generation is paying the pensions of the previous generation. Obviously it's actually less than two because of tax brackets and the fact that people die early, but on the whole, it's roughly two people.

If population declines, well you're gonna have to re-think your pensions and social care and find the money and/or labour somehow.

Actually would be nice if worker pop drops so hard the value of workers goes up.

Capitalism is fine with it actually.

The issue is that there will be too many old people and not enough young people to support them.

But old people have most of the money. So, lots of money will still be spent. Capitalism will be fine. Sure, some old people will have no money and bankrupt their children. But capitalism does not care about that.

It would have been a bigger problem before AI and robotics. But capitalism will shrink the workforce faster than birth rates.

In so many of the contrarian responses I'm seeing, I'm reminded of Fisher:

it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.

That is to say that so many cannot escape the capitalist framework of productive workers supporting the elderly. As though that's the only way society can possibly be organized.

Retirees are not seen as deserving of their reward, but rather a drain on productive labor. It's no wonder that there is so little sympathy for the destitute and homeless when those who've "earned" their leisure are still known as parasites.

Birthstriking is the biggest middle finger one can possibly give to capitalism and to the corrupt establishment that enforces it through violence. It is the strongest action available to the average person, a direct vote against the future that we are headed towards.

They know this, which is why they are freaking out with tons of propaganda, attacks on education, and erosion of women's rights.

Birth rates below replacement level do present some actual challenges to society. But instead of trying to actually address these issues, they are going for the band-aid of increasing birth rates.

"you're not producing enough capital batteries"

that is why countries wont even dare discuss why its occuring instead trying to low effort coerce people into having more children.

Yeah depends on what scale you’re looking at. Worldwide it’s still poor, religious conservative people who still have lots of children. If the scales tip far enough I could mean humanity will regress for several generations because these religious conservative people have become the majority and will put fascists and dictators into power.

Trap people in a work - consume - die paradigm

People refuse to bring new life into the hellscape you created

Cry about it in your propaganda channels

Low birth rates are problematic to carcinogenic ideologies.

Positioning the increase in population as a core tenet for a system condemns it to resource exhaustion.

I’m all for providing the option to ‘procreate’ where it’s appropriate and non-coercive, but demanding it as a requirement for acceptable incorporation into society should always be disparaged and ridiculed.

I said it before and I'll say it again ....

It's not about the quantity of life

It's about the quality of life

If you make the world a capitalistic hell hole where people are constantly worked to the bone without much reward and no time to enjoy their lives, then chances are, they won't be motivated or even healthy enough to want to have children. In the premodern wild, people had many children because they had time and they knew that conditions had the possibility of improving in the future. Sure, many of their children died but they knew that the ones who did survive would have a chance to survive if they worked hard enough because they knew their work would be rewarded.

In our current world .... you can work until your hands fall off and you won't be rewarded. More and more people are realizing that they don't want that for themselves so why should they do that to their unborn children?

The conditions for humanity are falling everywhere and people are so compassionate for their children that many of them feel like they don't want to bring their children into this hell hole we've created if 99.99% of everyone has no chance at a good life.

OK - hear me out.

https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Hurling_Day

Yeah, capitalism sucks - but the greying population is an issue all the younger gens have to deal with. Once again the problem is boomers (not their fault for being born though). Thankfully, Jim Henson gave us a solution.

Well yes but no. Supporting this many old people is a genuine problem, no matter the economic system.

Unless you expect people to work until they drop dead it's a crisis regardless of the economic system, especially coupled with the increases in life expectancy. You have fewer and fewer people of working age who have to provide for and take care of more and more old people for longer and longer. Even if you eliminate profit motives, you're placing an outsized burden on younger generations.

It seems to be a totally naturally occurring phenomenon happening everywhere. We're developing more as a species and having less offspring as a result. Its predicted that we will hit our planets population maximum this century. Its entirely possible that the human species will never have more then 10 billion people on the planet at once. Thats our high score.

Captialism can cause low birth rate, but no economic system can survive the decimation of the prime-aged working class.

Even china's seeing low birth rates, but they have a bit more padding.

That depends, really. I'm sorry, but these anti capitalism memes always show such over simplified view of the world, this is not how things work.

Take South Korea, for example. The way they are going right now, 50 years from now it might not even exist anymore. Granted, the underlying causes there for the low birth rates have a lot to do with uncontrolled capitalism, but communism won't save the country from this problem.

You still have a shrinking work force to do the required work, you still have a relatively expanding section of elders that won't work anymore but requires care instead, being an extra "burden" on the country. Less people will have to do more work over time and it causes a huge list of issues that communism really isn't going to solve.

The actual solution for South krea would be in tightening laws on their capitalist system, allowing people more time to have children in the first place. Then they need immigrants, and probably quite a few of them. Like Japan, South Korea is rather homogeneous, they're in for a surprise, I guess.

Either way, just posting these "but of course communism will solve this, communism solves everything" memes is so naive it's just child level dumb.

Communism hasn't worked well anywhere, how about some pragmatism and we start hard limiting capitalism instead, which we know does work

Birth rates are so low