Elon Musk says clear truths that without humans there is no bright future for humanity.
Nextbigfuture has written about this and looked at the detailed numbers of declining birthrates.
The world population in 2200 will be about 250 million if if all countries have a total fertility rate of 1.0 or less. This is the current situation in South Korea, China and Taiwan. Falling below replacement levels of 2.1 means that the average women no longer has an average of 1 daughter. If fertility rates go to 1.0 or less that means the total of all women have half of a daughter. This means the next generation (30 years later) has half as many fertile women. In 60 years there are 25% as many fertile women and in 90 years there are 12.5% as many fertile women.
The world is trending to a low-fertility scenario, global fertility is approaching 1.3 after 2050.
Poor countries like India and Bangladesh have fallen below replacement. This means the mother is not on average replacing herself with a daughter and the father with a son.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
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How about for every child you have, you get a robot?
A free lease, including all maintenance and upgrades.
First one is a homemaker and child caregiver, competent in all respects, freeing you up to do –that thing you want to do.
That alone, a dedicated and competent caregiver for every child, would change the trajectory of society.
Money well allocated.
For each child after that, another robot is built and deployed into the workforce, dedicated to creating wealth for your, and their, accounts.
And mandatory off-planet service for all humans, from the age of 25 through 125, to build character.
Too many people are calmed by some non existent and unproven ideas about AGI, robot labor, and anti-aging technology. It is likely that in the future we will be closer to those ideals, but it’s a fool’s errand to actually predict what the future will be like in nearly 200 years. In the meantime, we do know that the population is definitely decreasing, and it would not be wise to rely on non existent technology to save us all down the line. No one wants to be around for an awkward realization that non of our last ditch technologies actually panned out, and now humanity is screwed.
Ha ha ha, Elon urging people to have more kids, like that will fix it, the meme: https://www.genolve.com/design/socialmedia/memes/Billionaires-puzzled-why-birth-rates-are-declini
We should be much more worried about a future Idiocracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy.
“Idiocracy is a 2006 American science fiction comedy film directed by Mike Judge and co-written by Judge and Etan Cohen. The plot follows U.S. Army librarian Joe Bauers, who wakes up five hundred years in the future after a botched government hibernation experiment to find himself in a dystopian society run by corporations, where evolution has made humanity stupid because the benefits of technology made it unnecessary for people to be intelligent and physically fit to survive.”
Although satire, the movie became a cult classic because it rings true. The poorest, dumbest, most stressed, parents, are having the most children. Worse, the replacement of parents with the state/technology is NOT raising a generation of content but ignorant people. It’s raising a generation of violent, grasping, immoral, illiterate youth. The automated/remote ways of teaching during the pandemic when kids weren’t allowed to go to school didn’t work, and it’s looking like the kids will never recover those lost 2-3 years, at least not the ones who were already struggling. They have become violent gangs, criminals and lost boys and girls. Here in NYC, 1 out of 10 children in school is homeless sometime during the year. A flood of migrants has resulted in half the 140,000 sheltered population being illegal and poorly fit for society, let alone to pay taxes (a sovereign gov’t could of course, just print money instead of using taxes, but who is going to do the hard work? Gov’t can guarantee a job, it can’t guarantee that job will be done well or at all).
On a national level it means more wars, with old men throwing a surplus of young men into the field as fodder so they won’t rebel at home as much. Hamas’ leaders are billionaires, while Palestinians average age <20 with no future, no matter what Israel does. A generation based on hate and false narratives can't produce anything but violence.
Meanwhile, the best and brightest couples – since educated people tend to stay married more than uneducated ones – are barely having children at all, with all the career and other lifestyle options they have. Children are a lifelong burden to them and will not support them in old age, particularly since those children are now doing worse than their parents. The middle class is shrinking.
Elon Musk has the wealth to have a dozen of what used to be called concubines (he doesn't marry most of the women who've borne him children). So do many Arab sheikhs and oligarchs. This is the new "work" for young, attractive women. No STEM workers there, just trust fund babies.
Welcome to the future.
Check out the old SF story, “The Marching Morons”. It’s on the same general theme, and was probably the inspiration for the movie.
Up until now, having children depended on liking to have sex. Now, having children depends on the willingness to have children. So we have a new and powerful human selection mechanism for people with the genetic trait to have many children.
In 200 years, the population will almost entirely made up of the people that like to have children. Lots of children. The population curve will “bend upwards” long before 2200, so there is no need to worry about the size of the population. The real question is what kind of society will we have if the population is so different from what it is now. These new breed of humans… what will their music be like? Their politics? Their IQ? Their work ethics? Their willingness to take risks?
Well before the end of this century a number of things will happen relevant to this topic:
– Labor will be plentiful due to robots / AI.
– Artificial womb technology will be developed.
– Robots / AI will be able to do a lot of the child rearing and teaching of next generation.
– Automation will give people a life of plenty.
The year 2200 is nearly 200 years from now. I don’t think that we can be reasonably concerned about that until we see how such relevant factors such as those above will affect the situation.
Right. Even if the population would dip, the robots would be more than able to compensate for the lack of work force. There will probably be more robots and AI’s than human in a not so distant future.
No, humanity needs powerful AI to ensure the constant generation of discoveries. People who do not have capital are not needed at this stage. The sooner they die, the less benefits they will have to pay
No , any people on earth get the right to live , poor or rich
Agree. We need new and more intelligent generations in order for the the future to be bright. War, famine, pestilence, green transition, and DEI for the rest.
Don’t most competent scientists/engineers come from 2 parent homes, or at least come from homes that cared for and nurtured and raised a child properly? If we are to advance humanity, don’t we need knowledgeable, competent scientists and engineers? And lots of them? (Almost all of our modern prosperity is the result of technological research.)
We as a society need to decide if stable families- ones capable of raising strong, competent, achievement-oriented children are a priority or not. Socialization and integrity are not innate; they have to be taught by someone absurdly unselfish and loving, someone who is fiercely committed to the success of their progeny.
Just my two cents.
Totally right, my mother stop working results: 3 engineers and one phd in chemistry, she sacrifices everything to support us but at the end no pension , no extra benefits…
I try to replicate it with my kids but there one biggest enemy and threat to humanity: social networks which don’t bring anything positive and become quite mandatory scocialy for young people. I play with trains and read a ton of books in the 80 , much more valuable
Let’s be honest, if the world’s population were to naturally decline back to a billion or less, it would only take us back to the population around the year 1800, and that didn’t stop the Industrial Revolution and a whole host of significant scientific discoveries. On the other hand, a population of a billion or less can afford everyone a very high standard of living while being sustainable. The trick of course is getting from here to there smoothly and without the aging and decline in population causing a decades long economic decline. That can be avoided through a gradual increase in per capita living standards and consumption coupled with greater use of AI and robotics to replace the shrinking human workforce.
It does make me wonder why a few thought leaders, including on this forum, are getting so agitated over declining birthrates? What’s the concern? Is it religious, the impact on stockholdings, or what? Genuinely curious.
“On the other hand, a population of a billion or less can afford everyone a very high standard of living while being sustainable.”
Wealth doesn’t come from resources, but from knowledge(new tech/science) we learn all the time how to transform useless matter into usefull things/wealth. Knowledge is generated by humans. More humans = faster progress = more wealth.
We never were wealthier than we are in 2023, our population is record high (with only 8,080 billion people), and we will be even wealthier in 2024.
Global average per capita (real economy/PPP) is now growing by around $2000 per capita and this process will accelerate enormously in the next few years thanks to AI’s/automation.
Because there’s no reason to think that, if a society that still remembers successfully reproducing can’t resume doing it, a society that can’t remember ever doing it will stumble on the trick to it.
This problem isn’t going to get easier to solve with time…
Human reproduction is not learned, it’s biologically built into us, just as it is for all other living species on this planet. Human populations have grown and shrunk throughout recorded history, and before. There is absolutely no reason to think it will be any different this time.
I share the concern. But on the other hand extrapolating decades into the future is almost impossible. We don’t know what is coming … some possibly counter trends… anti aging therapies, ai and robotics eliminating the need for many humans, unforeseen culture changes ( eg. For example because of new tech ability to disperse out of cities – density is a fertility killer), growth of subpopulations especially religious communities, , etc.
Actually extrapolating decades in to the future is very easy and reliable when it comes to demographics.
But yes increased remote work to get out of poorly run, expensive, family stifling cities is a good start.
Fear if population shrinkage is over-rated.
The problem will fix itself.
When young people can get high paying jobs, large living spaces, and good government childcare education and services… THEN the population will start growing again.
NOTE: The highly religious communities are NOT decreasing in population but are increasing.
So basically never? The formula of:
rich young people (lol) + large home (lolol) + magically reduced cost childcare and “services” (lolololol- reduced cost like the way government reduced college costs!)
Yeah none of those variables exist.
People have children who value having children and are willing to sacrifice to have them. It helps if you have parents that you don’t loathe and will help with the kids (pick them up from school, babysit, etc).
We have condoms and contraception. Times are differrent, more travel is possible, some people dont want to bother too much with children, want to enjoy. Old age survival is not so dependent on children, like it was in past. We have pensions,… Things will get more automatized and if robots wont go in skynet direction and be more pro human we wont need so much new human workforce.
Social security is based on the idea that populations are growing. The children work and pay taxes so that their parent’s generation can retire. No kids = no Social Security retirement.
The “we don’t need so many people because of automation” overlooks that a fixed % of the population pursues STEM fields. Fewer people multiplied by the same % means that there are fewer people in STEM fields in the future. It isn’t the case that everyone in the future is an engineer.
More automation can mean more welfare for less work and higher security. It is not just who pays for what, but also what and how much is produced for what price. If much more assets are produced for lower price(because automation) that makes argument to need so much more working population to pay for it not so rational.
Robots will work and if they will decide to tax their work I don’t know, but society will adjust properly.
Go to some less developed country and see how children take care for elders. Without them it would look differently. Now short term personal survival is not so dependent on the number of children.
Society will adjust properly.