This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
New week is here, it is time for some culture war (and culture war by other means) news, news not concerning plebeian ball games, aspiring upper class winter games, or top elite human capital tropical island games.
1/ From Demography is Destiny files
It seems world's TFR as a whole is below replacement by now. It is just rough estimate from highly questionable data by anonymous xitter demography nerds, possibly the inflection point already happened few years ago.
What is certain that the exponential growth that began in early 1700's (due to potato, maize and wise leadership of European and Manchu statesmen of the time) is finally over. The line leveled up and will start going down.
Whether it is matter for mourning or celebration, is up to you.
2/ From Elite Human Capital files
Even the most elite human capital is made of flesh and blood(so far) and all flesh must perish.
How billionaires die?
TL;DR: The lessons are: if you are a billionaire, avoid choppers, it is not worth it. Also, do not be a woman.
3/ From Cold War geopolitics files
Cuba is on the ropes, strangled by intensified US blockade, and, unlike in the past, no help is coming.
It is clear now that Venezuelan operation was about regime change in Cuba.
Politically speaking, it can be Donald's crowning achievement.
Marco Rubio will have his revenge, Red tribe boomers get to enjoy one final triumph over dirty commies before they expire (imagine Donald Trump personally tearing down statues of Fidel and Che in Havana just before the midterms), the remaining old style leftists are humiliated one more time. Cuban people gain freedom and democracy (whether Mexico, Colombia or Haiti style is to be seen), ICE finally gets to round up Cubans and return them home. Everyone wins.
4/ From South Asia files
Resistance in Baluchistan embraces grandma power, and is on the roll.
One struggle against colonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism and ageism.
Whether real or PR, it is interesting they think this particular PR is needed. It could be another case of provincials being slightly out of touch with Current Year(TM) zeitgeist, or it could be prescient vision that in negative population growth world, the elderly will be expendable and disposable meat (as we already see in East Europe).
5/ From Eastern European files
Most high-level assassination attempt of the current East European unpleasantness. The target was lieutenant general Vladimir Stepanovich Alekseyev
He seems to be IRL action movie hero, who successfully fought the assassin after being shot in the back twice (while the assassin seems to be boomer who was using gun for the first time in his life)
6/ Gamer affairs + more Eastern European current events files
Most oppressed people in the world, the gamers, are fighting back.
16 years old Muscovite Artem killed one Alexey Belyaev deputy head of Roskomnadzor, Russian media and internet censorship agency. There is severe media blackout about this issue, as if someone was worried.
Xitter anonymous shitposter reactions are overwhelmingly positive. Zoomer gamers are strongly Kulak pilled. As Kulak predicted.
From pure technical point of view, compared with previous event, the difference is palpable.
Lone Zoomer with knife and grudge >>>>> Boomer with gun working for big three letter organization for promise of big payoff. (only mistake Artem made was letting to be taken alive to be raped and tortured for the rest of his life, but no one is perfect)
The Age of Boomers is over. The Time of the Zoomer has come.
The poor man doesn't even have his own Wiki page.
More options
Context Copy link
You got anything that doesn't look like AI-generated photos to back this up?
It looks like AI slop to me, but Baluchistan really has been heating up over the last few months.
Well, I can always use some ammo in my contention with Amadan over Gen X older women activism. Gen X is old enough (just about) to be grannies, so go Gen X Baluchistani revolting grannies! 😁
My gen x parents are grandparents. Of little kids, but still.
More options
Context Copy link
I know (personally) at least one Millennial granny and she isn’t even white trash or anything.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I just wonder what the 'first deputy head of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (GRU) since 2011' was doing 'in a residential building near the Volokolamsk Highway', without bodyguards, presumably.
Standing a long way from the windows, presumably.
More options
Context Copy link
Living there? It's an upper-middle class part of Moscow. Or are you suggesting he was seeing a woman?
I'm no urbanist but the description 'a residential building near the Volokolamsk Highway (part of the Moscow Ring Road)' somehow does not sound to me like a cozy upper-middle class neighborhood. But anyway, what I am suggesting is that security appeared to be lax and the location chosen by the assassin is a bit suspicious.
This part was written by someone who has no idea where this happened. Here's the street view. It's a new condo finished three years ago, just five stations away from the central business district, next to some good parks, practically across the road from the central military hospital.
It's a little grim that even senior government officials live right on a six lane freeway. But at least ВИНЛаБ is easily accessible.
Zero traffic lights between this house and the Kremlin, baby!
Are you saying that these guys can't just turn the lights green?
Russia is not quite at the level of Day of the Oprichnik.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Thanks for pointing that out. These are skyscrapers.
More options
Context Copy link
It occurs to me that to Americans this might still not read as upper-middle class. They would be looking for something like villas with large gardens and 3m tall hedgerows blocking outside views in a car-only neighbourhood, and certainly no parks, stations, big roads or hospitals anywhere in ear- or eyeshot. Perhaps more similar to a nouveau riche dacha settlement, in Russian terms.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is it possible that this is all some elaborate Russian plot? War hero gets shot 3 times in the back, but lives and fights off his assassin bare-handed. They blame it on the Ukrainians. Makes for great propaganda value. (I'm probably biased because I've been reading Tom Clancy spy novels recently so Maskirovka is on my brain. The Russians are always doing this sort of thing in his books.)
It's a bit of a stretch to call him a 'war hero' in the everyday sense of the word.
More options
Context Copy link
Everything is possible. Another possibility is Ukrainian infighting. There's a coalition that really wants the war to continue: groups funded by the EU, Dems and GOP neocons, armchair nationalists, Ukrainian MIC. There's a coalition that really wants the war to stop: Trumpists, regular businessmen, populist opposition, closeted pro-Russians.
If the peace talks really reached the point where the purely symbolic (but still incredibly contentious) question of the rest of Donbass was the only remaining one, then Trump successfully pressuring Zelensky to accept the loss of it would be a real possibility. Assassinating a GRU general when his superior was in charge of the talks would be a good way to sabotage them by sowing distrust. Let Budanov lose face and explain whether he's lost control over the various alphabet agencies or is just duplicitous.
Ukraines best fortifications are all in the rest of the Donbas, so it is in no way a purely symbolic issue. Also, their whole strategy is to atrit the Russians by playing defense, so every meter of land is valuable because they can make the Russians pay in blood for it. If there was any reason to trust the Russians not to just resume the war after being given the Donbas, the Ukrainians would probably be willing to do that, but there isn’t, so giving it up without a fight is massively unpopular in Ukraine.
The Russians aren't storming head on. They are semi surrounding fortresses and then droning the Ukrainian logistics. To make matters worse for Ukraine Russia has a clear advantage in air power and in thermobaric MLRS that allow them to pound these fortifications.
More options
Context Copy link
There's no real reason to storm Ukraine's best fortifications head-on if taking Ukraine is the goal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What sense would that make? Russians (the ones that can be reached by staged terrorist attacks on a general, at least) don't seem to need further motivation to continue prosecuting the war; fence-sitters will surely not become more inclined to stay on the fence with further evidence that internal control is weak; everyone who is against them, meanwhile, will be cheering on the attempt and consider it absolutely justified and further proof of Ukrainian pluck and skill. Any general norms against dirty tricks played on enemy leadership were long kicked to the curb by Americans and Israelis.
Killing a high ranking military official isn't terrorism. Either he was killed by the Ukranians, in which case he's a completely legitimate military target, or he was killed by the Russians, in which case it's just their ordinary procedure for replacing high level functionaries.
Oh bull shit, if Iran blew up a cabinet secretary you would be weeping tears of blood and calling for nuclear strikes.
I couldn't really care less about a random politician in whatever country you think I'm from getting killed. However, to the extent that I would favour retaliation, I would do so because it is an act of war, not because everything I don't like is magically "terrorism".
However, if my country had invaded Iran and Iran responded by killing a high-ranking military officer, who is, let's be clear, not a member of the cabinet, not a civilian, and obviously a completely legit military target, then I obviously would be off my rocker if I wanted them nuked in response.
You don't want your military personnel to get killed? Don't invade other countries lol.
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, but not because it's terrorism.
Blowing up a cabinet secretary would be an act of war, and if Iran wants a war then "Bring It On" is a reasonable response - doubly so if they start it with a perfidious surprise attack rather than by declaring war.
Ukraine and Russia are already at war, at Russia's choice. It is a defensive war for Ukraine, and if they are successfully defending themselves by blowing up Russian cabinet secretaries, then Russia should either suck less or start fewer wars. As a matter of international law, Ukraine can defend themselves all the way to Vladivostok if they want to and have the military ability to.
@GBRK @The_Nybbler I still call bullshit. If that happened your response would not be “well we’ve been propping up their regional adversary and bombing the hell out of them for three years so fair play I guess”
What is the point of this obstinacy? They're all correct, it is an act of war. We constantly commit acts of war by bombing the shit out of Ukrainian residential blocks, and this gets called terrorism because civilians become collateral damage, even if terror is not the point (terror is the point in human safari and arguably in infrastructure destruction though). If Russia could surgically annihilate Ukrainian generals no matter where they are, that's be merely war.
Ukrainians do commit terrorism, but not in this case.
More options
Context Copy link
If it happened I would say "Well, looks like they're fucking around so we should make them find out". But it's still war, not terrorism. The boundaries can be blurry sometimes (because it's advantageous for states to blur them) but the hypothetical here is that Iran is doing it, not one of their associated "terrorist" militias, right?
Contra MadMonzer above, I would say it's not "perfidious", but just because it's "fair play" doesn't mean the US doesn't get to respond.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Wait, why would Iran have to declare war for it to not be a perfidious surprise attack? The US government recently bombed Iran, so Iranian retaliation would not be a strike out of the blue.
Good point. You can plausibly argue that the US and Iran have been in a state of undeclared war since the embassy siege. (Which was a perfidious surprise attack)
More options
Context Copy link
The US declared a unilateral ceasefire after that bombing operation completed. Iran doesn't have to accept it, but if they choose not to they shouldn't be surprised at a kinetic response.
Sure, they shouldn't be surprised by it. My point is just that an Iranian attack would not be some Pearl Harbor style surprise attack.
The US unilateral ceasefire is in my opinion meaningless since it seems clear to me that in reality the US reserves the right to bomb Iran whenever it chooses, and if it chooses to do so will just come up with some narrative about how it was justified despite the supposed ceasefire. At most the ceasefire just means that the US would wait a bit between spinning up the narrative and launching the actual attack, in order to make it look as if it had observed the ceasefire.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, it probably depends on the cabinet member... But anyways non-nuclear strikes would be justified. Not on the basis that that's an act of terrorism, but on the basis that it's an act of war. And yes, I understand hat the trump has commited plenty of such acts on iran. If they ever use one as a casus belli I'm not going to be shocked or surprised. Mostly I'd just be wondering what took them so long.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, because it would be an act of war.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think it's borderline, but insofar as the idea is to signal to the Russian upper brass that they are not even safe in their apartment blocks, it meets dictionary definitions such as Merriam-Webster's "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion".
The problem with such a loose definition is that for example completely legal executions (which seek to deter crimes by tapping into would-be criminals fear of getting fried) fit the definition equally well.
If I said "the racist notion that black people are of higher risk of sickle cell anemia", I am technically correct, but I am also at the same time quite obviously full of shit.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You can always use further motivation to continue the war. They're relying on volunteers, not conscripts, and this will surely spark a wave of new volunteers. They'll probably play up the "IRL action movie hero" part even more in Russian media, too.
Oh, and this general was apparently from Western Ukraine, so he's practically the perfect model for their "Ukraine is Little Rus" propaganda. He can be a useful spokesman after the fighting ends.
At this point, what I expect to spark new waves of volunteers more than anything is rising compensation along with rising big expenses such as mortgages and cars, not some stale propaganda. It's been five years, infamously longer than The Most Holiest of Patriotic Wars 1941-1945.
At the very least, who's gonna be fool enough to volunteer during winter? If you're going to go to war and can pick when you go, you wait until the season of snow and mud is over.
The best time to join the war is on the end. If one was to join WWII as a Russian the best time would have been to arrive at the front when it was in Berlin and after a tiny bit of action take a selfie at the reichstag.
Russia clearly has the momentum in this war. Ukraine is losing ground faster and faster, Ukraine has rising desertion rates and the highly motivated fanatical elements of the Ukrainian military are largely spent. People want to join the winning team and Russia is clearly the team to bet on at this point.
The front line has hardly shifted for years. If a literal snail had started where the Russians did it would be halfway across Ukraine by now, and the Russians are nowhere near that. Lately the Russians have started lying about taking objectives at a greater rate because no man’s land is getting wider and wider so they can kinda get away with it. The fact that they are not attacking for the most part does not mean that Ukraine is spent. It’s a deliberate choice to remain on the defensive and win the attritional exchange. If the Russians want to send guys to die on assault, Ukraine is smart to sit in dugouts and pick them off with drones. The win condition for Ukraine is not that they reconquer their territory, it is that Russia gives up. One way to accomplish that is retaking territory to weaken Russian morale, but it probably isn’t the best one. It’s going to take time for the Russian people to sour on the war.
If you were actually paying attention, or reading sources that cover the conflict in any amount of detail, you would be concerned.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Ukraine has been losing ground faster and faster for 5 years now, at the risk of repeating myself. I do not recall hearing about the front being in Kiev yet.
What is different about the "momentum" today that wasn't true a year ago, or two years ago, or at any other point where Ukraine was about to collapse any day now?
Ukraine essentially has no real initiative or ability to do anything larger scale. In 2022 they had two big and succesfull counter offensives. In 2023 they had a large summer counter offensive. In 2024 they did Kursk. In 2025 and into 2026 they have been losing ground at a noticeably higher rate while not being able to launch any real counter offensives.
More options
Context Copy link
Aren't you engaging in Atlanticist retconning here?
I'm engaging in describing my experience with reports on Ukraine as I remember it.
Another point: the recruiters ought to have more information on how the war's going than the average potential volunteer does. If they're still offering wads of cash, then it's probably not going to be a 2 weeks walk in the park.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
At least as of right now, the official-line-adjacent Telegram channels I know about (anna_news, sashakots, rybar) are not really giving this any priority over their daily war reporting noise, and I'm not seeing any traces of an "IRL action movie hero" framing. They are just talking about how those perpetrators that were caught admitted to being paid money by the Ukrainian secret services and the like.
Even if you think a false flag is conceivable, why would it be more likely than that the Ukrainians indeed did it? This wouldn't be the first time, unless you claim that all the assassinations of prominent Russian figures until now, including the ones that they openly took credit for, were actually false flags, and the benefits for their side are obvious without mental gymnastics (eliminating useful individuals, encumbering Russian processes with friction and fear, signalling Russian weakness to internal doubters and external supporters). It seems like you want this to be a false flag, contra LW principles.
I just thought it's odd that the man was shot 3 times at point blank range at survived, and i'm trying to think of an explanation. But I admitted that I'm biased because I've been reading spy thrillers recently. I'm really not making a strong claim here about anything, I just thought it was an odd story. Whats the point of Ukrainian secret services shooting some random general in Moscow?
If the person who shot him had no experience with firearms, it's entirely plausible. Hit a non-lethal spot the first time because you are nervous, and two more times because you underestimated recoil and now your hands are hurt and shaking.
What do you figure was the point in the 2024 case? I think I gave a reasonable enough list of benefits. High-ranking military being scared to leave their house without a bodyguard degrades military performance: people make worse decisions under stress, and more competent candidates may not want such a job.
But maybe it was actually done by a Japanese high schooler with a magic notebook - I've been reading a lot of manga lately...
Well, the true answer is I don't know. I don't speak Russian, and I'm not very well-informed about that case or the results of it.
But it seems to me that the reporting focuses on that general's role in charge of chemical weapons. Those are a huge trigger-word for western civilians. By killing him, the Ukrainians are making a big public statement that "the Russians are using chemical weapons on us." If that's true, it would significantly increase Western public support for Ukraine. Of course, I have no idea if that's true or not (I hadn't heard of chemical weapons being used anywhere else), and frankly I don't care, I think a few thousand dead from chemical weapons is much less important than hundreds of thousands of dead from artillery. But politically, they are a big deal.
Also, you know, they killed the guy. They didn't just lightly injure him by sending an assassin who had no prior experience with firearms. That seems like an important step in carrying out an assassination.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Isn't this just the effects of billionaires not being in the bottom quintile of men, who are more likely to die young? It's not some biological law that all men die younger than women do. If you're not a coal miner, drug dealer, fighter, suicidal... (these are usually men, admittedly for reasons rooted in biology) then you'll have a long lifespan.
Somewhere on the Motte we were having a discussion about male vs female life expectancies (IIRC motivated by the UN declaring men dying 5 years earlier than women "equality"), and the decrease in the gap comes in much earlier than billionaires. I think it was, once you get into the top decile, the gap drops to below two years.
It's much more accurate to say, if you're poor, don't be a man, than it is to say if you're rich, don't be a woman, unless your interest in life expectancy is just in having a big gap. Every step up the income ladder for both sexes increases life expectancy; it just does so much more for men.
It is, somewhat. Across the animal kingdom, the heterozygotic sex (XY, ZW) nearly always has a shorter average lifespan than the homozygotic sex (XX, ZZ).
I think it's worth pointing out that the life expectancy of underclass women is also generally rather bad, as their diet is terrible, they often abuse substances, and the tasks they normally do everyday either involve standing in one place for longer periods or bowing and lifting relatively heavy objects, which is also terrible for your health.
I think it depends on why you're doing it.
Point taken. To be clear, I was referring to the sorts of shitty manual labor, mostly in the service sector, that underlass/prole women normally perform.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I would think that's a factor, but I would guess there is another issue in play: The question of when in life the person becomes a billionaire. So for a trivial example, if you look at people who become billionaires at age 85, you can bet that their average age at death is at least 85.
I think it's pretty well known that extremely wealthy women are much more likely to have inherited their money than extremely wealthy men. To put it another way, I think it's much more common for male billionaires to be self-made than it is for female billionaires. It seems to me that if this is true, it's going to have an effect on when in life the person becomes a billionaire, as well as on other aspects of the person's life. These things, in turn, are arguably likely to affect the age of the billionaire at time of death.
Edit: That being said, I recall reading research indicating that among the upper class, the life expectancy difference between men and women is much smaller than in the general population. I imagine this is due to the sorts of lifestyle difference you point out. In other words, it doesn't seem that being rich is bad for women so much as it's good for men.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Barring some game-changing technology or disaster, it is nearly certain that the trend will reverse again and the population will explode. Right now is analogous to when you add the anti-biotic to the petri dish and select for bacteria which are immune. Because it's reasonable to expect that some small segment of the population, due to some combination of genetics and culture, will (1) think it's a great idea to have lots of children; and (2) think it's a great idea to pass (1) and (2) on to said children. And in fact I think we are already seeing this in ultra-religious communities.
But wasn't the entire population fitting into these categories in the last 200,000 years? Why do you think the current ultra-religious communities will survive when so many haven't?
Antibiotics create immune bacteria, but only when you administer it sporadically. The current depression factors on fertility don't seem to be sporadic.
Arguably no, they just liked fucking like rabbits and didn't care about the consequences. We'll likely start selecting for people who actually like having kids, breeding fetishists, etc.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think this is true for a number of reasons. Firstly, declines in fertility are somewhat due to endocrine disruptors from microplastic pollution we've caused. That isn't going away for anyone any time soon. Secondly, there seems to be a deeper link between modernity and fertility that most want to admit. We may see high fertility as you say, but it won't be in the world we currently live in culturally, socially, or technologically. Finally, as many on this forum are loathe to admit, we have actually outrun the carrying capacity of this planet. There won't be another fertility explosion in this culture because the planet literally will not support it for much longer.
One, the carrying capacity of the planet is not a single number, but depends on the tech package. Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer, neolithic agrarian, mediaeval agrarian, Victorian-era industrial, and distant-future zero-point-energy-powered societies all produce different figures for the 'carrying capacity of the planet'.
Two, it is far from certain that humanity will be forever limited to the surface of a single planet.
More options
Context Copy link
The only evolutionary pressure on humanity at the moment is to have more kids. We evolved our whole endocrine system; merely adapting to the presence of microplastics in the environment is utterly trivial in comparison. Similarly, our sexual instincts evolved; obviously the small tweaks necessary to encourage reproduction in spite of modernity can evolve. And it's not as though those adaptations aren't already latent in the population: there are plenty of high-fertility families. Population will drop until those alleles predominate, of course, but that's just the nature of the evolutionary process. That can (and likely will) cause a lot of short-term pain, but it certainly doesn't represent an extinction risk, and only extinction could prevent the population from eventually rebounding.
How can you tell? Exceeding carrying capacity generally manifests as mass death, not reduced fertility. What resource is the planet no longer able to supply?
Not space: there remain enormous tracts of undeveloped land, and far more underdeveloped land; people can live comfortably -- by revealed preference, prefer to live -- in cities with orders of magnitude higher population density than the world as a whole.
Not energy: known uranium reserves alone contain 100X the energy of all the fossil fuels humanity has ever burned, and that's most conservative possible estimate. Extracting uranium from seawater, for example, is another factor of 100X, and D-D fusion would outlast the sun at current consumption rates. And desalination makes water a question of energy. (Sea water actually contains enough dissolved uranium to power its own desalination ten times over.)
Not food: never in history has acquiring food taken a smaller fraction of human labor or a smaller amount of arable land per capita, and we're not particularly optimized for the latter -- substituting grains for meat would boost calories-per-acre by a factor of 10-30. And most 'sustainability' issues (nitrogen fertilizer production, water use) are trivially solved with sufficient energy too, and the rest with hydroponics and recycling.
I can't see any factor that dictates global carrying capacity is 8 billion -- I can hardly see any that suggests it's 80 billion.
Fantastic post! Most of the time, when environmentalists suggest that a resource is "limited", it's because we're already meeting current supply using an ostensibly-limited source, so there's no incentive for companies to develop new tech that's more expensive on the margin. This looks to the outside observer as us "running out". Seawater is a great example: first-world nations absolutely could afford desalination for all our current needs (and Israel already does this, I believe) ... but that'd be silly while we still have fresh water to use.
My slightly tongue-in-cheek answer to what we might run out of is "work". As more nations get rich and privileged, it seems like their citizens start to feel that society owes them a comfortable life while they sit around doing nothing. (Imagine if /r/Antiwork became a popular global movement.) Our civilization is very efficient, but it's possible there's some critical threshold of indolence at which our infrastructure just starts breaking down, and fast. Unlike low fertility, this might be a self-reinforcing collapse that can't be recovered from.
We may be in a race to see if we can replace workers with AI faster than they quit on their own...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I thought their average TFR is also dropping or at least stagnating.
No? The boomers are dying off so overall numbers are shrinking, though.
More options
Context Copy link
Mormons and Iranians yes; Amish much less so.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link