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Comment by palmotea | Hacker News Reader

> Birth rates aren't plummeting around the world at the same time.

They are "plummeting around the world at the same time," they just didn't start plummeting everywhere at the same time.

> The labor gap is a short-term problem and can be fixed with immigration and maybe AI. Birth rates aren't plummeting around the world at the same time. By the time the birth rate becomes a problem in Africa, America would have long recovered.

Except Africa can't fill the gap for everywhere else, and if immigration is the "solution" then what do you do about Africa after it's been sucked dry of its prime labor force? Just leave all its poor elderly to die on their own?

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> They are "plummeting around the world at the same time," they just didn't start plummeting everywhere at the same time.

This is pedantic. Do you understand what "at the same time" means? By the time birth rates plummet below replacement rate in Africa, they would have risen well above replacement again in Europe and North America.

> Except Africa can't fill the gap for everywhere else, and if immigration is the "solution" then what do you do about Africa after it's been sucked dry of its prime labor force? Just leave all its poor elderly to die on their own?

We won't need to import labor from Africa when they have their own labor shortage because the birth rate in the US would have already recovered. The labor gap won't hit everywhere at the same time. That's why immigration works. In fact, Africa might need to import labor from America when the gap hits them.

> By the time birth rates plummet below replacement rate in Africa, they would have risen well above replacement again in Europe and North America.

What makes you think they will rise again in a timely manner? Demographers naively predicted the rates would stop decreasing and magicaly stabilize close to replacement levels, and failed miserably. To my best knowledge there is no indication the current trends will reverse or at least stabilize any soon.

Demographers were kinda right, it's just that we've had new socioeconomic problems [0][1] post-pill, and we're really starting to feel the effects since around 2008. Post-pill fertility rates in Europe and NA had been slowly rising before that. I think we're likely to fix at least one of these problems in the coming decades. Or rather, we have to because we'd be royally screwed otherwise. And in the event we fail, most democratic societies would turn authoritarian, in which case they'd be able to implement population engineering measures like banning birth control.

[0] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45725009

Due note, I'm citing these sources because they show the problem, not because their conclusions are sound.

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