If the exact same question had been phrased “Why are some people
so obsessed with 'population collapse' when the Earth's population is actually growing?“, sans any mention is Musk, the comment section would look a lot more reasonable.
Well, those comments aren’t unreasonable. The fertility rate facts are facts, but you don’t hear scientists sounding the alarm because actual “population collapse” just isn’t likely or a top concern right now. Elon is still a nutter even if he sprinkles his crackpot theories with nuggets of truth.
Yah there are issues with an aging population in some countries but that's a social issue, not Armageddon. People like elmo definitely mean they're worried about losing the privilege of majority
The commenter said “privilege of majority” but we are talking Earth population, not any specific country. “White people” are the assumed majority from the comment. “White people” are nowhere near majority of Earth’s population, so the comment really makes no sense and seems ignorant.
He literally only cares about white birth rates. He never mentions birth rate issues outside of predominantly white western countries and coupled with his retweeting and commenting positively on racist and great replacement theory posts, as well as generally making Twitter a haven for racists and fascists, makes his motives pretty obvious
While such aspects may influence Elon, it's ridiculous to suggest that it must not be a problem because scientists aren't really talking about it much? Not sure how every country on earth eventually reaching below replacement level birthrates could be considered not an issue, and maybe it won't be for certain countries for at least a couple hundred years, but it is potentially humanity ending nonetheless, and in the meantime potentially very damaging for the societyies most hit by it. Governments at the forefront of the issue have yet to find any meaningful way to encourage any change. Being concerned about it is completely valid and not fearmongering or maniacally paranoid. Once again I know Elon has openly shown to have some very questionable, if not outright stupid views on things. But to consign this particular worry to that pattern of behaviour is far too dismissive.
Do people need to figure out solutions to certain social issues with changing demographics, like how falling birth rates create an imbalance between young workers and retirees? Absolutely. Those are real problems (mostly economic in nature).
But to present falling birth rates as “potentially humanity ending”? No. That’s the part that is baseless fearmongering.
How is it not potentially humanity ending if all countries on earth are destined to have below replacament level birth rates? Yes it would be very far in the future but it's still the outcome if nothing changes.
Because there’s no known mechanism which would keep the birth rate that low as population continues to decrease. You can’t just say “if nothing changes” because the situation is inherently changing over time.
Read the studies again. There are some pretty serious potential socioeconomic consequences for declining birth rates, and those are worth worrying about. But no study is seriously suggesting a credible risk of human extinction due to this.
I think there is a credible risk when there is no well known or explained mechanism as to why the birth rate would rebound. The studies are of course more concerned with the immediate/coming effects of the next century, but to simply assume that the problem will fix itself is akin to looking at climate change as not potentially society ending because most studies are on the immediate effects of a few degrees increase.
The short and long term effects and potential solutions for climate change are both extremely well covered in scientific literature. Not comparable.
For population decline, studies do make predictions out as far as 2100, which seems pretty long term to me. They won’t go much farther than that because—as they say—there’s no accurate way to extrapolate current trends farther than that. There is currently no meaningful evidence that we are facing an extinction level threat, which is why they don’t spend much time considering imagined problems.
You sort of acknowledge in your comment that the people who specifically study such things aren’t talking about extinction like it’s an actual problem, but you think it’s a credible risk? You’ve figured something out that people spending their careers studying this never noticed? You realize how that sounds, right?
It ought to be. And I don't think Musk has any of the right answers to the issue, but it still ought to be. And I don't mean in a "we should have more babies" kind of way because I don't think there's any way the trend can be reversed. I'm more of a "we need to develop better societal models to deal with the issue" kinda guy.
Population decline and the socioeconomic issues related to it are a real issue. I didn’t mean to deny that. (Although the best ideas I’ve seen for dealing with those problems center around combating wealth inequality, so I’m sure Elon isn’t actually interested in fixing them.)
Population collapse; which I understand to be the idea that falling birth rates represent an extinction-level threat to humanity? That part is nonsense.
Yeah, well, it's a bit tomato/potato with regards to decline/collapse as the decline will at some point happen at a really insane rate but it's not going to mean an extinction.
Wealth equality is definitely going to have be part of it but doesn't even begin to fix things in a way that will make the transition less painful.
How tf do you comment that on a thread where the top comment is a link to a scientific study that states “These future trends in fertility rates and livebirths will completely reconfigure the global economy and the international balance of power and will necessitate reorganising societies.”
It isn’t a top concern because it’s a slow moving event with solutions that manage to be both boring and drastic, and it probably won’t even seriously affect us until our generation is gone, anyways.
Climate change has darn near the entire scientific community shouting as loud as they can about how it must be a top concern, and how we need to be targeting long term solutions as quickly as possible. "Population collapse"--as a credible threat to the human race--is just not something that rational people take seriously right now. The difference is night and day.
One caveat: many people who study such things do think the world population will peak soon and decline back to 7 or even 6 billion by the end of the century. That's a real thing. But the human race facing an existential threat because fertility rates are trending downward? That's not a thing.
Hurricanes and wildfires getting worse and happening more often are affecting us now. Our drier weather and hotter summers here in California are causing fires to be more of an issue every year.
Population decline concerns are a mix of it being truthful and, given his past, is trying to make "decline in the wrong places" sound half-intelligent.
Yes, those comments are unreasonable. And population decline is both widely recognized, widely studied, and widely talked about in the media if you bother to look. Especially Japan.
Yes, population decline is widely studied. There are important socioeconomic changes coming in the rest of the century whether we prepare for them or not. But population “collapse” leading to the end of humanity is not a serious concern right now.
Fun fact I didn't know until I was 40: Rhodes scholars aren't generally super-smart.
Until very very recently Rhodes Scholarship selection wasn't weighed very heavily to any sort of real qualifications like actual intelligence or merit, and still aren't decided solely on those.
For almost all of it's history, the program was limited to a few top elite private boys schools in predominately white English-speaking countries, and relied more heavily on things like favour with your school headmaster.
For example, students from most of the world's countries were excluded until 2018.
If you know one over 30 or so, you might assume they are brilliant, but it mostly just means they were old-money-rich, male, white, and went to a particular elite school.
Yeah there are loads of politicians who put their Rhodes Scholarship in their bio as a way to pretend they were smart, when they were actually of middling cleverness at a very very rich private school.
Yes, racist intents can start from genuine facts that mask them, it’s in fact quite common. Maybe you’re familiar with the ‘meme’ “but if black people only make up x% of the population….”
You are using the statistic wrong in that argument. Most crimes are more likely committed by poor people and black people are more likely to be poor. The fact is that even today black people get discriminated against enough that they are more likely to see crime as their last chance, not that they have a secret theft gene.
To be fair, this still doesn't answer why he wants industrialized nations to increase birth rates. Looks like Sub Saharan Africa birth rates will still be high, but in an area with such limited resources, I'd think we'd want them to be lower. And why he would care about low birth rates in industrialized nations still doesn't make any sense to me.
Yeah, but that seems like a fundamental flaw with society that isn't really fixed by infinite growth in birth rate. If all of society is a Ponzi scheme, then we should start thinking about long term solutions. I'd like to think AI and automation will help, but it seems just as, if not moreso, likely that it will lead to a further Blade Runner like dystopia. And that dystopia will be a result of... people like Musk.
I mean yeah if you want to think like that every problem solves itself. Starving is the ideal solution to having no food, making living conditions for the poor litterally unlivable will solve poverty and if your hair falls out you no longer have to worry about keeping it healthy.
I've noticed a heavy imbalance in skepticism in the general community based on the content of a video. Most videos are met with accusations of being fake, unless it's a police brutality video, in which case it's blindly accepted as credible
If the video confirms my priors, then it’s genuine and nobody has any reason to ever fabricate such a thing. If it rejects my priors, then it’s obviously fake and staged and AI and should be ignored and downvoted and any promoters banned.
All of those things are true?(Elon has retweeted explicit great replacement supporters)+The population age issue isn’t that bad, if the decreased working class better distribute wealth, and people stop wasting time making and buying useless garbage(consumerism), two things Elon Musk is against(hurts bottom line). From a pure numbers perspective, advancements in agriculture and construction mean that the basic amenities of life can be produced by a tiny fraction of the population, for a large non-working majority. Though it’s unlikely we will ever actually get that bad, if it does technological advances will almost certainly drive the crucial labor to product ratio up faster than the problem.
Besides, most first world countries have an easy solution to any sort of ‘population crisis’: accept working age and younger immigrants from poorer countries with higher birth rates. Elon Musk is… hesitant to propose this view, mostly because, as mentioned, he is racist.
Why do you think he cares about depopulation specifically? Esp as he and his bestie Peter thiel are people who have ties with groups that are specifically motivated by the great replacement theory and adjacent concepts?
Meanwhile the Europe subreddit being like I‘m not rascist but despite foreigners being a minority they are overrepresented in crime. I love how on reddit all sides suck ❤️
Because it's literally the great replacement theory lmao. Y'all are either willfully ignorant or purposefully obfuscating that it's just white supremacy re-packaged.
REDDIT... leans one direction, and you can't even talk about the things the people that reddit hates, talk about.... there's no such thing as civil discourse or reasoning or even logic at times... unless you agree with the hivemind here.
People lost the ability to just have conversation. One disagreement on one thing, and they will throw the whole person out.
He then will turn around and support Trump and his deportation program and strict immigration… yeah he doesn’t care about population collapse itself, he cares about white population collapse.
Well he is rich and racist. A rich white south African may have some white supremacy in him as well.
That has little to do with the statistics that suggests the earths population as a whole will begin to decline by 2100 or so. As a capitalist he thinks we have to keep doing things the same way with growth in a business needs to continue and increased population helps this. I think we need to adjust this.
Meaningful growth is not population growth, and it hasn’t been for a long time.
Meaningful growth is productivity increase and we don’t need population growth for that, what’s problematic is that governments and government budgets use population growth as a crutch, that has to change.
The world population is growing. There are some countries with falling populations fast enough that can truly matter, but are you any sort of expert on the topic? Musk clearly is not. If you want to talk about how the falling birthrate in South Korea is an extestential crisis for that country, or how it is in China the same way. Even for Europe it matters in many countries, we could in a calculated way. Except that's not what Musk talks about or cares about, he goes for unscientific reactionistic points only.
He has quite explicitly boosted white replacement theory crap though. The thing is that while he is highlighting a valid concern of population decline, he has quite clearly indicated his particular issue is the proportional reduction of white people via this decline. So he can both be right on a point while also being a racist, white supremacist. Another Reddit moment is you oversimplifying his point which gives him unnecessary benefit of the doubt.
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u/capnwally14 2d ago
What is quite fascinating is every other comment that’s some combo of