Liberal Millennials, Not Surprisingly, Fail At Sex Too

I feel for you. I fathered two children. My then wife aborted both of them. I have no sons to carry on my name or DNA, only step-children, to whom I tried to at least impart my values. Somewhat successfully, I thought. I have no daughters who would always be Daddy’s little girls, just step-daughters who are somewhat estranged. They seem to resent the fact that I and my family gave me some of the credit for their turning out to be hard-working, well educated young ladies, instead of reverting to their mother’s working class background, or worse, emulating the worst of the lower class contemporaries they grew up among.

Forgive me. Around the Holidays I get somewhat maudlin. It feels as if I have no family left. I miss them.

“....Calhoun's work with rodent populations predicts this....”

Hmm. I remember that research. Given security and an abundance of food, the populations expanded until a certain population density was reached. Then, in spite of the fact that there was still ample food and adequate, if restricted space, a generation of “Beautiful Rats” occurred which did not reproduce at replacement rates, nor did their offspring, nor their 3rd generation. In 3 generations (rat generations), the populations in the experimental colonies dropped precipitously.

But what is really frightening about that study, is that the experimental rat colonies were closed populations. No new rats were introduced from outside the failing colonies. In the real world, population pressure will always push new individuals into the vacuum left by the falling populations of the original experimental colonies. Or in terms of human societies, there were no barbarian hordes ready to migrate into the former lands of the Roman Empire as the population dropped. There are today.

In the real world, population pressure will always push new individuals into the vacuum left by the falling populations of the original experimental colonies.

A couple of points:

While a city is not a closed population in the absolute sense, I think it is closed enough to cause a depopulation in the same way that Calhoun described. Right now people living in big cities exhibit the same sort of anti-reproduction "behavioral sink" qualities that the rodents did. They are not trapped in these cities, but the only places they would move to would be other behavioral sinks.

By the way, one thing that already validates that Calhoun applies to the US as a whole is the distribution of democrats and republicans in the country, the famous (red/blue) election maps. Democrats control the high population density cities, and their platform approves of any anti-natal behavior, from birth control to abortion, to "alternative lifestyles." Republicans control the less dense areas, and adhere to traditional views of family and children. It could have been republicans in the cities instead of the democrats, but in a two party political system, one had to become the rural traditional party, and one the behavioral sink party.

As for immigrants moving in, yes, absolutely there will be massive amounts of immigration in order to keep the population up if we don't increase the birth rate. However, the birthrate is falling around the world, as the world is urbanizing. For the past 30 years Asia has been building massive cities, and now have the same birthrate problems we have. Africa is now doing the same thing. So, in the relatively near future, we will live on a planet with about a hundred or so megacities, and the rural areas to supply them. But all of these mega cities will have lower than replacement level birthrates, and will eventually compete with each other for immigrants. We're just entering the mega-cities phase, which will empty out large areas of the planet. If we think 5,000 people from Honduras today is large, eventually Central America will empty out entirely, with everyone moving to Mexico or the US.

I believe this has already happened to one civilization, the Mayans. In a time span of 200 years, seemingly for no reason, the Mayan population went down by 95%. Scientists have over 80 theories on why the Mayan civilization disappeared, but that civilization fits Calhoun pretty well. First, their cities were large and densely populated, between Los Angeles and New York today. Second, in the time their population was dropping, anthropologists have found other groups that moved into and took over Mayan cities, and adopted Mayan culture, almost identically to the US today.

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