Indeed, that is exactly the point, you are further emphasising the problem. For example, how many of the people who never wanted children but had them didn't want them because we live in such a non-child-friendly environment, where people are under such pressure to work along with other societal factors, that having children just does not seem like a very appealing option. I would like to bet the majority of them. How many of the people who had children and said never again, said never again because of how much pressure there is now put on parents, due to again all the said factors.
We have created a world where there is so much pressure on people to work and remain in the workforce to sustain the world we have created, that we have created a world that is extremely non-child friendly. The paradox of creating such a world is that we need more workers to sustain it, yet we keep having fewer workers because we keep putting more pressure on them to keep working to sustain what we have.
That is the paradox of our present trajectory of technological advancement and is why we need to do something about it.
The purpose of projections is not conjecture, they are to look at facts and trends and see where those facts and trends will lead us unless things change. There is no conjecture in facts and trends, they are realities. The aim of those realities is to use them to understand what is behind the information, and what needs to stay the same to keep us going in the same direction or what needs to change to take us in a different one.
In this case, a clear trend is the more we need workers the fewer children we have, the fewer children we have, the more we need workers. To go with that clear trend, technological advancement and the added complexity it has brought to society are at the root of that trend.
From this, we can deduce that we are not using technology to help us with the most important purpose, which is creating a sustainable model that improves people's lives, and that helps people by giving them the freedom to have children without fearing that it is going to mess up their lives.
This is terrible, because again, what is the human race without children? Extinct.
So, you are right. We do need to figure out how to take care of people, the fact that we have failed to do this is exactly why we are not having enough children. This is the point of this article. If we sort this problem out, the birth rate problem would sort itself out. However, as said the more pronounced the birthrate problem becomes, the more difficult it will become to sort this problem out.
That means like said repeatedly, this is not about trying to control the population – I'm puzzled why you're stuck on the notion that it is? – this is about calling for societal changes to give people the freedom to live their lives and have families without fear. This is about creating a world that is family-friendly, child friendly. People friendly. To do that, we have to break the trend of technological advancement continually equalling in a greater cost of living and having children.
After all, you have to remember that humans are environmental creatures, which means they respond to their environment. Give them a good environment and inevitably they will live good lives, don't, and they want. We have given too many people an environment that is not conducive to a happy life, especially a happy family life. That has to change. That's what this post is about.
