Whereas previous economic shocks such as the oil crisis of 1973 caused a temporary dip in fertility, the 2007-2008 banking meltdown was different because birth rates continued to decline even after the economy started growing again, says to Daniele Vignoli, professor of demography at the University of Florence in Italy. He believes the turbulence a decade and a half ago marks the point at which people’s uncertainty about the future began to take hold.
I see this society as a pyramid scheme and as a young worker, I‘m somewhere near the bottom. I‘m supposed to be grateful cause others are further down and I‘m supposed to bring in more bottom dwellers to serve those above, but I refuse. Let it collapse for all I care.
Good enough of an explanation, or do I need to go into detail how much these too small apartments and mediocre food products cost?
I’m pretty torn on this. On one hand you are right, the current demographics mean, fewer yougn people have to provide for a lot of older people, at least realtively speaking. Te ratio between these groups has seldomly (never?) been this bad. This does mean we do not have the money to build out or even maintain the infrastructure, education, basically everything the generation after us will badly need.
On the other hand by not having enough children to at least have a better ratio, the generation after us will be in the exact same situation as we are, or even a worse one. So they are pretty much fucked anyways, but by at least maintaining population the generation after that might be able to do better?
That‘s why I call it a pyramid scheme lmao, you need to recruit more people into it to keep it going basically. That or take money and resources from the top of the pyramid, which I doubt will happen and if it does probably not without a lot of violence like in communist revolutions, which usually comes along with more fascism too, bad times. So I won‘t recruit anyone to this mess myself, but if you want to do that to your descendants to help out the system, go ahead.
Maybe the lack of my descendants can make the labour of others worth a bit more overall, or they get screwed by climate change anyway, since this pyramid can‘t grow forever without exhausting the planet‘s resources. Either way, I sleep well knowing I won‘t drag any more people into it.
My point was, that by just existing you will be a burden upon the next generation when you are old. The only way of making this easier on the next generation is by spreading your own weight on more shoulders aka having more kids. We got screwed by the boomers because they stopped having as many kids, an by a large margin at that. But I get your point, if my imaginary teenager would ask me “Why did you even put me in this hellhole” I’d have no good answer for them.
I am often surprised by so much pessimism of people in Western Europe. There are of course big problems, but if taken seriously, can they not be addressed? I do not deny that many people have reasons to be pessimistic, but maybe the cause is more lack of ideas for building better future. So much was achieved, in art, science, technology, reflecting in high quality of life, how can this be seen as a hellhole?
I am aware that this is complaining on a very high standard. My life is and probably will be quite comfortable relative to the lifes of others that were less fortunate in the birth-lottery.
But to explain a little more: I am in my mid-twenties. In my lifetime I have seen (arguably tainted by a LOT of childhood nostalgia) a pretty nice world. Then, when I became more concient about politics shit started happening:
Of course a lot of this are problems that COULD be dealt with. But a big part of society seems to vote for parties that want to maintain most of the status quo. So while ‘hellhole’ is a overstatement (but one that a teenager might very well make ;)) I don’t see a lot of improvement coming.
I think, very broadly, climate change can be tackled by collective action or/and technologies which make climate-friendly action economically favorable. There was a lot of progress recently on the second part, including sizable contribution of Germany: rapidly growing contribution of renewables, electric transport, better heating and insulation, etc? I think good people putting themself to work on an important goal can achieve a lot for common good, I see this a lot in my area of research and technology. I realize there is a danger of thinking “technology will solve all” and relaxing, but what I am saying that it’s part of the solution, and at least a cause for some optimism fueling further action. Furthermore, I see that as Europe gained a privileged position due to historical circumstances, it is its moral duty to leverage this position for helping to advance the necessary technologies.
For the first part it’s harder since there is no consensus but I suspect this will be facilitated by progress in technology (yet, it’s important to work on consensus). Also I see that some understanding of the need to act is increasing in the Western Europe population, is it not?
Maybe part of the challenge with US, Arab spring, and far right, is that after the fall of Soviet Union there was too much confidence in neoliberal system automatically bringing democracy, prosperity, and fairness everywhere. While delivering democracy as a gift of historic process is somehow antithetic to the idea of democracy, which implies active agency, individual and collective action. People grew complacent assuming that all gets solved for them by the market, and politics became sometimes a dirty word. Instead, it’d be better if people continued to practice political discourse about tough questions in respectable but honest way. But now it is becoming next to impossible to avoid engagement, which makes some people loose any hope, some turn to fascism, and some searching for a better solution. I think the last, better, way is not yet lost.
Technology development itself raises further difficult political questions, about ownership of new tools deriving from commons (like LLM AI), viability of common space in privately managed companies (social networks), and so on. People need to be engaged in this else the decisions will be made for them and not in their interest (even if their consent may be sometimes formally acquired following some misleading campaign).
This potential for action, and recent history of progress, in two related directions, technology and political agency, seems to be the cause for optimism. Even raise of fascism, as worrying as it is, indicates that people are striving for change, they just do not see a better option since it is not sufficiently developed and communicated to them yet.
Maybe I went a bit overboard with my post above, I do have some optimism but I wanted to explain why there is a big tendency to be pessimistic.
Oh I am definitely not at the doomer stage. I do think that we will be able to limit the heating of the climate to something of the effect of 2,x Kelvin. That’s pretty shitty though and will still cause a lot of global change. I do agree, we likely will have even better ways in the future. What annoys me is that we have technology right now that would be way better than oil/gas based systems for heating houses and driving vehicles. We just managed to make the people poor enough so they can’t afford the higher fixed costs, so they will be locked out of enjoying the lower variable costs. (Which means we will have to subsidize them which means political debates with compromises that will probably be met half-ways between the green and liberal party currently in control, which will probably satisfy none really)
Yes, but very very slowly. That’s because there are two blocks left unconvinced:
We also see that while a lot of people (around 65%) claim that they support the climate protection movement in general acceptance of specific laws is always way lower. Meaning that they have not fully realized that to protect the climate we need to actually change some things, and sometimes dramatically so.
For that to be a cause for optimism would require me believing that we as a people will want to and be able to seize that potential for action. Which I seriously doubt at least for germany.
The reason driving a lot people towards conservatives and even the fascist parties in germany is their promise of “getting back to the good old days” which the conservatives are actually currently failing to communicate well because they have a elected a leadership that is pretty market liberal which makes the party currently a weird economically liberal and socially conservative amalgam which do not always go well together. Compared to that the AfD is publicly still putting up the charade of keeping and upholding the “good old values” while getting more and more obviously racist and fascist. Both these developments additionally to a lot of people who, out of protest against the last and the current government, vote for them to make a statement, have made them poll at more than 20% with no tendency of stopping.
So no, I don’t think people turn to fascism for change, at least not here. They turn to fascism because of the promis of keeping everything as it is or even go back a few steps.
Oh, I misunderstood sorry. Well I don‘t have any qualms about that either, if the society don‘t want to sustain me anymore I don‘t mind dying earlier, they can give me euthanasia if it‘s such a huge issue. I‘m honestly over this implied duty I‘m supposed to feel to sustain this scheme, let‘s just be glad I‘m channeling all my disdain for it into useless social media rants, while still following most of it‘s rules and duties as best I can anyway.
The one implied duty I simply won‘t follow is the one about dragging anyone into existence, if procreation were mandatory I‘d rather go to prison instead, that is how protective I feel of my non-existent kids.
I guess that’s a fair point to argue. I personally don’t think I have the strength to just off myself when I start becoming a burden though