Matt Yglesias: belief

Transcript context

…Let’s talk about fertility for a bit. Is there a danger that the whole world or most of the world becomes like Japan, where the population just keeps on shrinking, and the world becomes a depopulated place? Is that on the horizon if we don’t do what you’re saying? I think that’s a serious possibility. People can disagree as to exactly how dire is that. Japan continues to function, as Dean Baker would tell you. They’re doing okay by some means. I think that’s a sad outcome, in part for the Derek Parfit-type reasons. But also, in terms of growth and dynamism, I think that it’s important that people be able to have families. My thinking evolved a lot when Lyman Stone and others pointed out that people were saying in America that they still wanted to have the classic 2.5 kids on average, and they just weren’t. The number of children they were having was slipping to more like 1.8, more like 1.7 now, and that’s sad when people can’t achieve their aspirations. Of course, sometimes people’s aspirations are wildly unrealistic, or they’re incompatible with each other, or something like that. But I think we know that a world in which most people have two or three children instead of one or two children is a perfectly plausible scenario. That’s not like I wish I had a flying car. We have flying cars, so I think a flying car is more likely.…

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