The paper is fundamentally flawed in numerous technical ways also. The most overt is that they are looking at the current state of countries with low fertility rates. The consequences of low fertility lag the onset of low fertility by many decades, but are largely inescapable. Taken to an extreme, if everybody in a country just stopped having children, that country would look, from an economic point of view, excellent for at least a couple of decades.

For a real example, South Korea has a fertility rate of ~0.7 while Japan has a fertility rate of ~1.4. Yet South Korea seems to be doing okayish, while Japan has clearly entered into decline. The reason is because South Korea had a 3+ fertility rate all the way up to 1976, whereas Japan hasn't had a 3+ fertility rate since 1952. Give South Korea a couple of decades and it'll make the Japan of today look like a utopia. For that matter give Japan a couple of decades and it'll make the Japan of today look like a utopia - their decline is still just beginning, as they only hit the current lows in the 90s.

> The authors propose a solution (immigration) to the problem, but in doing so pretend the problem doesn't exist

It’s quite remarkable. They assert the problem doesn’t exist by essentially treating a highly debated policy change as inexorable.

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf

The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments)

(slide 39, net migration to Earth is zero)

The truth is that woman, given a informed choice without societal or religious pressure - would rather not have children. So artificial wombs and AI for raising it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_womb

Is this a good solution? No. But its a foreseeable feasible one that does not involve slavery. Which, lets not kid ourselves, the migration approach is also. Just outsourced slavery.

Of course, societal status and contract-control functions that were allocating resources and value to woman would have to be reevaluated - as what remains is a faction of the population unwilling to contribute anything but terrorist movements trying to take over because that urge for societal control and fear of non-power is to strong.

I can't speak to places outside of the Western Anglosphere, because I simply don't have any information about them—but within it, it's abundantly clear (and there have been some recent studies bearing this out) that a major cause of reduced birth rates is lack of economic opportunity among the non-capital-owning classes.

I 100% guarantee you that if we implemented a full UBI today—one that would pay something close to the median individual income, and even if it were only for adults (and thus you got no "bonus" for having extra kids)—once the initial chaos settled down, you'd see those birth rates go up quite a bit. So many people are waiting to have kids until they're financially stable enough...and then they never become so.

I know that one of the big reasons my wife and I didn't have kids in our 20s was because we were concerned about our financial stability (and frankly, we were better off than most of the people that age today—by quite a ways, since we were homeowners).

Africa has TFR 4.1

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If all this sounds unsustainable, it's because it is.

We're essentially legitimizing a pyramid scheme here. Economics and policy are all centered around extraction and share holder value. I've never seen any attention paid to making an industry stable or resilient.

Nearly every issue we face day-to-day is either due to companies holding massive control over our society, or companies degrading services we rely on because profit is no longer increasing.

We're not allowed a stable, peaceful life in a stable climate because someone else needs to get one over on someone else.

We could provide for everyone but we have decided making immaterial numbers go up is #1 priority.

When I ask why can't we have companies that exist in a steady state, the answer is another company will take advantage if the first company doesn't first. Why do we live like this? Is this system truly responsible for our technology and comfort? or is the comfort a side-product that can be produced by a number of other systems?

We're being played for fools. We all know it, but we can't imagine an alternative because they've got us all by the balls controlling our health care and housing.

Yeah, the open borders folks like to paint a rosy picture of, "If we let a bunch of people come here and work cheap, it'll make things better back in their homelands too as they take their training and wages back sometimes." But if that's true, pretty soon they won't have any reason to come here and work cheap, and then the reason the bosses wanted them in the first place is gone.

I don't think they really expect that to happen (and we can observe that it hasn't); it's just a sales pitch.

That's an unsupported assertion.

Lots of non-Ukranian Europeans still want to move to the US for example, because there's an idea that in skilled jobs you can make more money in the US.

Likewise, India isn't "kept" in poverty nor is the country at war, but the opportunity for economic prosperity elsewhere is a strong driver for migration. And when India surpasses the US or Europe in economic prospects, the trend will reverse and enterprising people will flock to e.g. Hyderabad and New Delhi.

Economic prosperity, until we do away with capitalism, probably won't ever be homogeneous. Where there's a potential across a circuit the electrons will flow.

That is _one_ assumption.

Another is that immigrants into these countries can and will just plug right into the local economy and be adequate substitutes for the economic effects of the local population decline.

There's everything about a country unrelated to economics that isn't even addressed too that will likely have ... big implications for these countries receiving the mass immigration too. These will likely also affect the economy.

The paper explicitly states that global population decline is not being projected.

Obviously that can't be true "forever" assuming that trends never reverse, but their scope is just the "long-term."

That sums up the ideology: That some ethnicities should continuously replace other ethnicities until the latter group has been genetically exterminated.

If everyone around you is starving, it doesn't satisfy your own hunger. Your quality of life depends on absolute production output.

Yes, if the process works in the way it's being sold to us, it skims off their smartest, most talented and ambitious people--the people they most need to improve conditions in their own nations.

No one is stealing anything, millions willingly immigrate, they get to live better lives (according to their desires) and the home country gets back increased trade, transfer of capital, tourism, and many other things.