Fertility Rates: Is Western society self sustaining?

[Propertarian]

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What does "society committing suicide" mean? Too many brown people?

[/ QUOTE ] For once I agree with Tom. This ostensible problem is complete nonsense. 'society' by itself cannot feel love or pain or pleasure. It is human beings that we should be concenred about. While human beings are 'social beings' to some degree, and hence quality social relationships are important, the fact that the percentage of the population that is white is not increasing is not a problem.

[Propertarian]

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Is having a negative fertility rate, when you have ample resources, a cause for alarm?

[/ QUOTE ] Actually if everyone in the world consumed resources at the rate that people in the U.S. consume them, we would run out of many if not most of them.

[lehighguy]

Well, let me posit it this way. If a societies entire social framework relies on a massive infusement of people from external sources is it sustainable. What happens if you ever run out of people who want to come?

[lehighguy]

This has nothing to do with society remaining constant. It is a matter not even having enough people to sustain a society. Any society that relies on a massive flow of immigrants to merely function, one has to ask, what happens when the immigrants stop comming?

[lehighguy]

In the long run, what happens when people no longer want to immigrate?

A good parallel would be someone that is able to maintain a certain standard of living above his earnings by running up credit card bills, but eventually the credit card companies stop extending him credit.

Does western society rely on immigrants to function? If so, what happens if they supply of immigrants ever dies down?

[Copernicus]

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I don't understand why you are so concerned about GNP. GNP growth has been shown to contribute little to human well-being once a society reaches what I would call 'affluence', which most western countries reached by the 1950s-60s
.

[/ QUOTE ]

Because it is one of the few regularly kept statistics available. While small changes "once a society reaches affluence" may not contribute much to well being, it is still the best country to country comparison available. I also suspect that a large increase or reduction in per capita GNP would indeed impact well being.

[Arnfinn Madsen]

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Well, let me posit it this way. If a societies entire social framework relies on a massive infusement of people from external sources is it sustainable. What happens if you ever run out of people who want to come?

[/ QUOTE ]

Then we've got a problem [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. Just don't think it will be a practical problem for long to come, but if you use the term self sustaining as meaning no immigration (as I should have realized 1st time [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]), I guess our society is not self sustaining. Not at all, actually. 6-7 years ago several sectors of society really stopped functioning due to lack of labor (I got mail just twice or so a week, sometimes garbage was not taken etc.), now we are managing to avoid it by being liberal towards the new EU-countries. We would of course survive without it, but would have to lower our ambitions and thus not "sustain".

[Propertarian]

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Because it is one of the few regularly kept statistics available.

[/ QUOTE ]

I suppose that is why it is still used, even though it doesn't tell us much about the quality of life in different affluent societies.

[Propertarian]

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6-7 years ago several sectors of society really stopped functioning due to lack of labor (I got mail just twice or so a week, sometimes garbage was not taken etc.), now we are managing to avoid it by being liberal towards the new EU-countries.

[/ QUOTE ] You could also solve this by rearranging the economy to reflect the current population.

It is faulty reasoning to presume that less people=a less good economy, because, amongst other things, while productivity is likely to be less than it otherwise would be overall, productivity per person won't, and that is what we really care about.

100/10=1000/100. A lower population=less producers but also less consumers; lower supply and lower demand.

[Arnfinn Madsen]

I think that if you look at it from another perspective, certain countries are more able to put labor into effective use than others. U.S. vs Mexico is one example. The U.S. government and business life efficiency and capacity makes it able to provide decent jobs for Mexicans in addition to its own work force, whereas Mexico is unable to provide decent jobs for its own work force. Thus you get a stream of work migration north which expands the US economy. It thus operates at a higher level than it would without the immigration. Immigration thus has created a non self-sustainable economy. It gets a bit like saying "could our society sustain without oil?". Of course it couldn't, but if oil never existed we would have built the economy without oil and thus is would be sustainable without oil.