[ExI] How new AI economics might change our systems

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 23/09/2026 16:30, spike wrote:
> Ben I have noticed a very clear change in insect population in the states,
> all species.  Starlings eat bugs (and anything else they can get their beaks
> around.)  I too have noticed a drop in starling population.
>
> I read Ehrlich's Population Bomb back in the 70s.  It was required reading
> for the environmental science course, which was part of the mechanical
> engineering degree.  I am going on very faded memory here.  Treat the
> following accordingly.
>
> As I recall, Ehrlich estimated future population dynamics in China.  The
> book was already 10 years old at the time, but China was already starting to
> recognize its demographics challenge by 1968.  China's one child policy had
> just become official government doctrine in 1979 when I was taking the
> course.  The professor of that course, who was Indian, explained that the
> big problem was not solved entirely by China's one child policy, because so
> many Chinese females were young: they had not yet borne their one child.  He
> extrapolated out 50 years and predicted that China by about now would hit
> 2.4 billion people.
>
> But it doesn't.  Why?  
>
> Because...
>
> My professor vastly underestimated the starling effect.  In this case, he
> underestimated how many fertile Chinese women would choose zero children.
> In China today, they no longer have the one child policy (ended in 2015) but
> a big share of Chinese women now choose to have either one or zero children.
> There are still multibreeders, but China's estimated fertility rate is now
> about 0.93 children per female.
>
> Now the starling effect isn't happening back the other way: the government
> is encouraging bigger families, since it can foresee taking over vast
> Africa.  But now the proles don't feel the need to breed.


I don't know if its not feeling the need to breed as much as it's being discouraged from breeding by the gloomy economic prospects in China. Lots of young people have pretty dismal chances of getting a job at all, much less a well-paying one. That's not going to encourage anyone to start a family. Add to that the perception that AI is taking away human jobs, and it's no surprise that having kids is getting less popular.
-- 
Ben