What’s a common “fact” that’s spread around that’s actually not true and pisses you off that too many people believe it?

  • chunes@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    The birth rate going down = the population is collapsing.

    No.

    The birth rate is going down and the population is increasing. Both of these are happening at the same time.

      • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Other than capitalism, why? We have enough resources to support everyone if we want to. People are still having kids just not as many. Why do we need so many people? What if the population drops to a more sustainable number?

        • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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          16 hours ago

          The problem isn’t the number of humans on the planet. The problem is how many of them are retirees/elderly compared to working age.

          Old people don’t work or work less, still require food, and often require increased amounts of medical care. If you view the world’s economy through a detached, Sim City player eye view, the elderly are a dummy load we dump resources into out of a sense of sentimentality. In an extreme case, where a baby boom is followed within a lifetime by a baby bust, you get into this behind the power curve situation where most of the relatively few working age people are employed in the elderly support industry making orthopedic shoes, walkers, those strawberry hard candies and staffing hospice houses.

          That extreme case? Actually happening right now, especially in Korea and Japan.

          • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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            15 hours ago

            Yes but again those are only issues because of capitalism. What if we tried something else? If the system doesn’t work anymore why not change it instead of trying to make more babies to fix the issue? Why is the only option more babies? It’s not the only thing we can do

            • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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              14 hours ago

              That has nothing to do with capitalism. How does communism solve the “we have a lot of old people that need care” issue that doesn’t divert more people of working age to the Taking Care Of Old People industry? The Soviet answer seems to be “life expectancy of 52” and the Chinese answer seems to be “that’s their state mandated 1 child’s problem.”

              • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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                11 hours ago

                I didn’t say communism solves anything. But we have enough resources and technology now that we can provide for everyone without everyone having to work. If only like a quarter of the people got all the “work” done the rest of the people could be old or care for them.

                A lot of the “work” that people do today are just jobs programs to keep the system moving. Think of people working at insurance companies or car dealers. Pointless middle men that could be free if they weren’t in this system.

                • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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                  10 hours ago

                  You blamed the problem on capitalism, I used communism as a non-capitalist example to demonstrate irrelevancy. If the tire is flat, it doesn’t matter if the car is manual or automatic. That is what leading scholars call an analogy, it is a rhetorical device used to draw comparisons between relationships. Stated in full: The problem of an aging population has as much to do with capitalism vs communism as a flat tire has to do with the vehicle’s transmission being manual or automatic. I state this because I have come to believe you’re the kind of internet idiot/troll/bot that takes analogies literally out of genuine stupidity or intentional bad faith.

                  We don’t have the technology to eliminate the majority of the workforce. If we did, the Epstein class would have done it by now out of pure shitheartedness. And only in the fever dreams of a syphilitic moron would one quarter of the population work to take care of the other three quarters be a solution to anything.