China's One Child Policy coming home to roost: old people, in big cities, frightened of the sky

[anon61221983]

Okay. Fine. I just get frustrated with the overall tone of threads like this, which tends to ignore historical forces still at play.

[TheyCallMeMrPibb]

@Chad_Boudreau

Like…if the population is compliant enough to have fewer children by command, they are compliant enough to have fewer old people the same way.

An authoritarian/totalitarian state can completely fuck up family structures with relative ease. Rebuilding them? Not so much.

[TheyCallMeMrPibb]

@Wanderfound

If every one of the three billion poorest people disappeared today, reducing the ‘population dimension’ by 43 percent, total environmental damage would be essentially unchanged."

Or, more concisely:

[Wanderfound]

Not quite.

This is Harare:

Note the lack of mud huts.