Ok so to be fair to biology the shape of the curve matters if you want to understand the mode of life and reproduction of the organism. It can be steady and sharply decrease like humans, or it can sharply decrease and then level off in adulthood like turtles. This illustrates different survival strategies: having a few offspring and investing a lot of energy into them so they survive or having a lot of offspring and relying on statistics to ensure a few of them survive. Then you have the worst case, like fish (and in this case, deer apparently), where the likelihood of death is constant throughout your life so it basically sucks the whole way through.

Some of the terminology is from Dan Simmons’ Hyperion series.

I don’t really care about the history of it. I only care what Taiwanese people think now.

I’m really curious how you defend a statement like this. What do you think defines present reality for people?

How am I blaming Taiwan? They’re trying to survive like anyone else. What that looks like is dictated mostly by the US, which represents an existential threat to the rest of the world.

And somehow I get downvoted and you don’t. How symmetric.

I think it would be a lot easier for China to cooperate peacefully with countries it perceives within its sphere of influence if there wasn’t a hostile global military hegemon maintaining a bunch of military bases and naval fleets within striking distance.

Ignorance is strength.

We’ve been hearing this for decades. Care to cite some actual data?

HIV is next, then cancer. China now has the kind of state scientific infrastructure that the US had in the 1950s. For some reason the USA is actively trying to destroy theirs.

The man ad libbed an hour and a half speech at Davos. We’ve been hearing reports of his impending demise since 2016. He’s got at least another 10 years even if he shits his pants every day.

Somehow it hits differently after our society decided that human rights were a thing.

Does it really liquify your liver though? Curious how it would do this.

Haiti should have just patiently waited to gain their independence.

70% of Americans believe in angels. If you take the extreme end of that statistic you can just insert any crazy belief.

Just come to Eastern Europe where every trend arrives a decade later.

“If you don’t give me a Nobel Peace Prize I’ll go to war with you.”

Ok I just don’t see a reasonable way that less children helps to fight the oligarchy. Not having enough nurses to take care of all the dying boomers does what to further the cause? Eliminating labor doesn’t work the same way as withholding labor. I can’t exactly imagine a childless adult union so what would the plan even be?

Who do you think suffers most during economic turmoil though? If you want to fuck up the economy in a productive way you need mass action, for which you need a mobilized working class. Reducing the number of workers doesn’t help with this.

Yeah funny thing is this is basically what we’re already doing. China’s one child policy and neoliberal austerity everywhere else ensured the current generation of children is smaller than ever. We’re running the experiment now, and overall we’d be fine if the countries that have negative growth rates weren’t so xenophobic and let immigrants in to replace their ageing workforce.

Twenty years ago I would have agreed, there’s too many people, but now the pendulum is swinging the other way.

I used to think this. Then I remembered everyone will get old and no one will be around to run the economy.