It's like a kingfisher diving in water to catch a fish. You want to dive quickly, catch the prize and rise back up away from the problem.
Go down slowly and the fish gets away; stay down too long and you drown; don't rise back up fast enough and something else might catch you instead
____
Same with birth rate for a country. As you develop, you want it to drop quickly so you can actually make life better for the people you have (lower child mortality, increase literacy).
Once you you have caught the prize (an educated population able to support the system) you want birth rate to shoot back up again because now you need more of that educated populace to keep the system running.
____
Countries like China dived too low and are drowning, while countries like mine (with still very high birth rates and poverty) are too slow and will never catch the fish in the first place.
The Countries like the US... they are just barely coasting above the water, they can't let go of the fish, its so big and juicy.
____
Ideally you would both use external supply AND pump up our own birth rate, so you got the benefit of immigration without feeling threatened by them.
But then the extremism shark jumps and takes a bite at you. And you wonder where everything went wrong.
____
really feel for women, the burden of birth and (immediate) child rearing is on them, and nothing science can do to change that, at least currently. And they don't get much of a say in this.
Who's going to solve it if the people smart enough to work on the problems and the people smart enough to worry about overpopulation are the same people?
It's like a kingfisher diving in water to catch a fish. You want to dive quickly, catch the prize and rise back up away from the problem.
Go down slowly and the fish gets away; stay down too long and you drown; don't rise back up fast enough and something else might catch you instead
____
Same with birth rate for a country. As you develop, you want it to drop quickly so you can actually make life better for the people you have (lower child mortality, increase literacy).
Once you you have caught the prize (an educated population able to support the system) you want birth rate to shoot back up again because now you need more of that educated populace to keep the system running.
____
Countries like China dived too low and are drowning, while countries like mine (with still very high birth rates and poverty) are too slow and will never catch the fish in the first place.
The Countries like the US... they are just barely coasting above the water, they can't let go of the fish, its so big and juicy.
____
Ideally you would both use external supply AND pump up our own birth rate, so you got the benefit of immigration without feeling threatened by them.
But then the extremism shark jumps and takes a bite at you. And you wonder where everything went wrong.
____
really feel for women, the burden of birth and (immediate) child rearing is on them, and nothing science can do to change that, at least currently. And they don't get much of a say in this.