That's because the figures are distorted at current by large rises in India and Nigeria and other countries still in the development phase. Also, due to people living longer, the effects of dropping numbers in developed countries have not yet been seen in the overall figures. But that likely will change sometime this century. For example, birth rates are falling in all countries, including India and Nigeria meaning eventually they will see their birthrate pass below 2.1 births per woman, which will translate to the beginning of a birthrate problem in those countries.

Also, current projections for all developing countries show their populations will begin dropping within the foreseeable future, most within this decade. Some countries are projected to see their populations drop by over half by the end of the century. Drops of that size at that speed would have devastating effects upon those countries and their ways of life.

In regards to your next point, I'm afraid it's well known that there are a lot of people who want children but who do not go on have them – or who do not have as many of them as they would have liked. The reasons are numerous. For example, the number of women who – either by pressure or by choice – have put their career first planning to have a family later in life only to realise that having a family later in life is not as easy as they have been told it is, and as such do not have children or do not have as many as they would have wanted, is ridiculous. I have met numerous women in this position, where this has happened.

Then there are the women who wait too long to start looking for Mr Right because they have again been told they can have a child in later life, only to realise finding Mr Right is more difficult than they thought. I have met many women in this position who have as such not gone on to have children or as many of them as they wanted.

I also know of many couples who in a perfect world would have loved to have had children or to have had more children, but because of how expensive children are they have not been able to afford to. Also, it has to be remembered that considering so many are told that having children will ruin their lives, and destroy the planet, many people are put off having children who otherwise may have had children if they had not been told this. I know good numbers of guys and girls of this mindset, where in a perfect world they would have had children.

In terms of the elderly care point, inevitably, there are things that could be automated but the reality is the majority of elderly care has to be done by people. Giving a living wage would help a little bit, but the reality is it would not help much simply because there are not enough workers available to do the jobs.

This can be seen in the employment figures in countries like the UK and the US, the UK and the US has full employment and yet despite this there are millions of job vacancies. This is because we have not been having enough children to replenish the workforce and as such we have ended up with a lot of jobs but not enough workers to work them. As the birthrate numbers continue to fall, this problem will become more pronounced.

Obviously, like said immigration can put a plaster over this for a while, but only for a while because inevitably all countries will end up at this point unless we do something about it. Also, for all the said reasons mentioned previously mass immigration is not wise to use as a solution due to the damage it does to developing countries, and the cost and mass instability it causes when done in large numbers.

Though I do agree with you in regards to trying to get people to reproduce not being the solution to societal and social problems, you are correct. Societal and social problems are leading to people not reproducing, which is further exacerbating societal and social problems. That means the solution is fixing the societal and social problems because that would fix the birthrate problem. The trouble is, the worse the birthrate problem gets, the harder it will be to fix the social and societal problems that caused it in the first place.

That's why we must break the trend between technological advancement constantly leading to children costing more, and we need to instead start using technology to make children cost less and living cost less. There are many ways we can do this we just have to simplify the foundational properties of technology, so that it's easier for people in society to adapt to the constant changing nature of technology brought about by its constant development. So, we need to create a foundation that everybody can learn, that does not change, and yet gives them the ability to constantly easily adapt to new technological advancements.

In a way think of it like a car, despite the fact that they have been advancing for the last hundred years, a person who drove a car a hundred years ago could easily drive a car now because you drive them in the same way. The roads are different, the rules of the road are different, the cars are more advanced, yet they are still driven in near enough the exact same way. We need all technology to gain this grounding. If we did this it would create stability and a base from which everybody could grow in unison, this would reduce costs greatly due to lowering the cost of education across the board.

In regards to your last point, the aim is to fix problems before they become so pronounced, if the population decreased by a billion people, then the problem would already be extremely pronounced and thus it would be far far far harder to fix.

PS to really show why a falling population is bad, and why we need to sort the problems before it becomes a really big problem i.e. before the population rapidly drops by a billion, perhaps this example will help. Imagine a world with the following population numbers:

1 million people between the ages of 0 and 20

1 million people between the ages of 21 and 40

1 million people between the ages of 41 and 60

1 million people between the ages of 61 and 80

Let's imagine in this world that everybody starts working at 20, everybody retires at 60, and everybody dies at 80. This would mean that the workforce amounted to 2 million people, and these 2 million people would be supporting 2 million people i.e. 1 million children and 1 million elderly. This society would be balanced and would function very well. But, let's imagine that for whatever reason the young generation rather than having 2.1 children per woman, which is the number of children needed to sustain a population, instead only have 1 child per one. By the next generation, this is how that society would look:

0.5 million people between the ages of 0 and 20

1 million people between the ages of 21 and 40

1 million people between the ages of 41 and 60

1 million people between the ages of 61 and 80

The working generation in this scenario would definitely be winning, and as such would see a boom period. Here is why, there are 2 million people in the workforce, but unlike the previous generation, they only have to support 1.5 million people i.e. 0.5 million children and 1 million elderly. If you imagine that the birthrate continues at 1 child per woman, then this is what would happen next:

0.25 million people between the ages of 0 and 20

0.5 million people between the ages of 21 and 40

1 million people between the ages of 41 and 60

1 million people between the ages of 61 and 80

This generation would also still be winning, though not by as much as the previous one. Here is why, yet again, the working generation outweighs the number of people they are supporting. In this case, it would equate to 1.5 million people supporting 1.25 million people. That means the boom would continue. However, if you continue with this trend for one more generation something interesting happens:

0.125 million people between the ages of 0 and 20

0.25 million people between the ages of 21 and 40

0.5 million people between the ages of 41 and 60

1 million people between the ages of 61 and 80

The boom period has now ended big style and the working generation is now under immense strain. Here is why, there are now only 0.75 million people in the workforce, and they are now having to support 1.125 million people. Also, to let the cat out of the bag, the boom periods whenever boom periods because no society would ever reduce the number of children they have by this amount unless it was forced upon them in some way. This inevitably happened in our society which means the boom periods were not boom periods, they were the results of people desperately trying to retain living standards in the only way they could think of doing so, by having less children.

The problem is, that only works for so long i.e. it only works so long as the working generation outweighs the nonworking generation. Once that’s easy to be the case, you end up with real real problems.

The developed world is somewhere between the previous stage and this stage, this is why many of the younger generation complain that life is much more difficult than it was the older generation. Because it is, the older generation were able to sustain a decent standard of living by reducing the number of children they were having which caused the falling birth rate, the present generation is unable to do this because there are now more older people than younger people. The younger people have to sustain those older people, which pushes them to have less children, which makes the problem even worse. Do you see the cycle?

This is the problem with falling population numbers, when population numbers fall it’s always because something’s gone wrong in society is trying to sustain its standard of living. The trouble is, having less children as a means of trying to sustain a standard of living only works for a few generations.

That time is up. You can mask over these numbers for a little while with immigration while the people are available, but once those people run out, you cannot run from the reality of the strain put on people by a society not having enough children.

This is why we must fix this problem before it becomes a problem and before the repercussions are truly felt, right now we are right on the edge of the precipice, and it is far better to step back from the edge rather than allowing ourselves to fall off it before trying to fix the problem.

If we wait for the inevitable big drops in population numbers, we will have fallen off the edge. And one thing is certain, stepping back from the edge of the cliff is a lot easier than climbing back up it.