this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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Degrowth
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Since our economy depends on growth of population this is gonna be very interesting.
I don’t want to be one of “those guys” but if we ever do progress AI to the point of AGI we will be able to take care of an aging population without infinite population growth.
(Whether or not the oligarchs who control that AGI will decide to help people instead of hoarding that power is a different problem.)
We are already way past the point where we COULD take care of an aging population without population growth. The only reason we can't do so today is corporate greed.
I’m aware of that, the point is that we might not continue to have that ability in the future should birth rates continue to fall.
And yes, greed is the main driver of human suffering today, and will likely be the same in the future.
The key number here is the dependency ratio. So the number of retired and underage people to working age. The intressting part is that there are fewer younger people and the old ones tend to die. The other part is built up infrastructure. If you are a country with a falling population, you do not need to built a lot of housing, as there is already enough around. Public transport infrastructure just has to be maintained and things like the electricity grid work as well. Even many factories do not need massive upgrades all the time.
So for the most part it tends to work rather well, unless you have a really bad ratio. Obviously innovation helps as well.