Growing up (born in late 70s), all I heard was “OMG OVER POPULATION” and how the planet can’t support the projected N billion people who will be living on it.

Now the birth rate actually slows down to correct itself and we’re not all breeding like rabbits, that’s a bad thing?

This feels like a capitalist concern, “we won’t have enough workers to produce goods and then consume them!”

The system at large hasn't been great at forward planning so the whole pyramid shape might collapse.

Elderly care is basically going to wipe generational savings from the 20th century off the map and all that wealth will be reallocated to PE.

Overpopulation is still a concern when considering biodiversity, groundwater loss, etc.

The latest UNEP report includes it - see page 37 from https://www.unep.org/resources/global-environment-outlook-7 -> https://wedocs.unep.org/rest/api/core/bitstreams/902187bf-ea...

"Among the major global environmental crises – climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation, and pollution and waste – population growth is most evidently a key factor in biodiversity decline. This is largely due to increased demand for food production, which leads to agricultural expansion and land degradation (Cafaro, Hansson and Götmark 2022). As the population grows and consumption rises, fewer resources and less habitat are available for non-human species (Crist 2019). Overpopulation occurs when the total human population multiplied by per capita consumption surpasses the capacity of sustainable ecosystems and resources. Although the global human population continues to grow, per capita consumption is increasing at a faster rate. To the extent that people are disrupting natural habitats and degrading ecosystem services for future generations, despite regional heterogeneity, some research suggests that most of the world’s nations may be considered overpopulated (Lianos and Pseiridis 2016; Tucker 2019)"

Specifically going back to 70s overpopulation concerns, thing shifted with the Green Revolution / Norman Borlaug but it came at the cost of reducing groundwater supply and reducing agricultural diversity. See 'The Globalization of Wheat' and https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/groundwater-and-c...

I see slowing birth rates as a net positive.

People in these comments are considering to enslave women like The Handmaid's Tale before even asking if it’s a problem.

It's possible to have both overpopulation(too large of a population for a given metric like water, energy, pollution, etc) and demographic collapse(too many old people, not enough young workers). It's not intuitive but they are separate phenomenon.

The reaction to overpopulation concerns probably discouraged people from having kids but it's unlikely to be the main cause.

Without enough children, who will be taking care of you when you are older?

All of society and industrial functions require young people.

Less consumer demand means fewer jobs. When people can't find good well-paying jobs, they become pretty unhappy, and they won't be magically enlightened and out of misery by being told it's the capitalist wheel turning.

Capitalist concern is human concern.

One is a problem of humanity, the other of capitalism.

Capitalism needs constant growth