Cities have always been demographic sinks. Always, from prehistory to today. Cities have never been able to sustain their own population organically; they always relied on migration from rural areas.
China demographics thread.
- Thread starter gadgetcool5
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There shouldn't be an obsession with keeping up population, with automation and AI the job market will only continue to shrink. A graceful downward trend would be better than mass unemployment.
The main problem is "graceful". Demographics are like an unstable system whose behavior is extremely hard to fine tune. The question then becomes which is better, an excess of young people or old people ? I think it's the first, simply because young people are more daring, embracing of the future and able to generate wealth/value in general.
If you want high birth rates, revert society by a century and ban women from working, obviously it's not a conversation anyone is willing to have.
I don't advocate for banning women from working. There could be other solutions. But societies that are unwilling to seriously consider solving their birth rate issues will eventually get Darwined out of existence. As for things like artificial wombs and robots that can actually replace humans. They can only be factored in once we started seeing a clear path to their eventual invention, the foundational tech isnt there yet and we don't know if it will ever be, so it is unwise to rely on them.
There's two scenarios.
In the first, the technological singularity happens and everything, as we know it, changes so fundamentally that it no longer makes sense to talk about nations, cultures, or demographics. After all, what does being "Chinese" or "European" matter in a post-human world?
In the second, the technological singularity does not happen; and AI & robotics mostly enriches human civilization, enabling it to ascend to greater heights. In this scenario, demographics very much matters, and the nation that most effectively makes use of AI & robotics to augment demographic influence (via increasing fertility, colonizing space, etc.) will inherit the future.
I don't think anyone can guess which one of these scenarios will play out.
But I'm pretty sure the rational course of action is to bet on the second, since in the first scenario, what countries do literally does not matter.
There is no technological solution for a problem that is basically entirely cultural. You will not replace millions of births with artificial wombs, the amount of medical staff required would be obscene.
I don't want to be a doomer, but no state with advanced economies have managed to reverse this trend so far. With the US on the road to restrict abortions, it will be interesting to see if it will have an effect on population growth.
I think the fundamental reason for the declining birth rate is the misalignment of social incentive mechanisms rather than purely ideological promotion. In the past, the more children a family had, the stronger its productivity and the more resources it had. However, in modern society, reproductive behavior actually sacrifices the family but benefits the entire society. This is a prisoner's dilemma of family selfishness. The fundamental solution I can think of is to re bind family resources and productivity to children. Families with more children can receive huge social welfare benefits, while childless families or individuals will be subject to high hidden taxes. But I think this is fair because families with children contribute themselves, while families without children are often free riders in society. If everyone doesn't have children, the ship will eventually sink.
So I believe that the direction of the Nordic fertility policy is correct, and I would even think that with more revolutionary incentives, the fertility rate can reach 2.1 or above. However, due to the Nordic industrial scale, technological level, and government control, the Nordic countries may have reached the end of their welfare policies. But China has better industry and technology than the Nordic countries. I believe that if the Chinese government is determined to improve welfare levels, the effect will be much better than the Nordic countries. I believe that in a healthy and sustainable society, the fertility rate must be greater than or equal to 2.1, rather than just hovering around 1.4. The ultra-low fertility rate exhibited by urbanized countries worldwide is actually a very unhealthy transitional state in the middle of human development.
But if you ask me about my assessment of China's population problem in the short and medium term, it is still very pessimistic.
China is currently facing a long-term extreme low birth rate, but the government is still wavering on what kind of birth policy to adopt. Even if it plans to adopt a welfare state model, it will take 25 years to pilot and gradually implement it, which completely misses the golden period of improving the birth rate. And I am also very skeptical about the strength of government incentives. Achieving or even surpassing the welfare model of Northern Europe in the mid-21st century requires full confidence, and the hidden single tax will also bring social conflicts.
The only fortunate thing is that the era of robots is likely to arrive in the 2030s, and China is almost certain to be the leader in the global robotics industry. This will effectively retain a part of China's manufacturing industry, while significantly reducing the cost of basic services and elderly care, and providing a buffer for the more severe aging and population decline in the second half of this century.
China is currently facing a long-term extreme low birth rate, but the government is still wavering on what kind of birth policy to adopt. Even if it plans to adopt a welfare state model, it will take 25 years to pilot and gradually implement it, which completely misses the golden period of improving the birth rate. And I am also very skeptical about the strength of government incentives. Achieving or even surpassing the welfare model of Northern Europe in the mid-21st century requires full confidence, and the hidden single tax will also bring social conflicts.
The only fortunate thing is that the era of robots is likely to arrive in the 2030s, and China is almost certain to be the leader in the global robotics industry. This will effectively retain a part of China's manufacturing industry, while significantly reducing the cost of basic services and elderly care, and providing a buffer for the more severe aging and population decline in the second half of this century.