a usa with fewer people would be quite nice. more liebensraum for everybody, true affluence, a spacious rowhome in a walkable city and a rustic cabin in the woods for everybody. population decline is really only a problem in welfare states. it took less than 2 generations to demonstrate this.
> another car sees a gap and changes lanes in front of you.
it's largely a problem in the left lanes, thats where drivers will bunch up most. the subjective feeling is mostly a reptile brain issue though, the feeling you're getting done over. driving is 90% id, sadly.
somewhat tangential, but most interesting phenomeon is the phaseshift non-boomers will undergo when they're around 45, surveying what's left, realizing how much they have paid into the system already, and desperate to claim the same rewards. it's a perpetuum mobile. if it needs to end, the young will have to wrestle it from their seniors _now_, because that gap closes fast.
Most developed countries are peaking in costs to young people right now. The people entering workforce now are getting a huge bad surprise, but the cost of supporting older people will start to decrease very soon.
So, if you are looking for some future phase shift, you are searching for the wrong thing.
Also, most of the developing countries will be in that situation in ~20 years. Most underdeveloped ones will get there in an extra decade or two.
the population bulge is at 50-60. with tfr as low as they are, we're looking at at multiple decades of a top-heavy pyramid. that's not disappearing anytime soon, it will take a lifetime.
the crash is indiscriminate, which is really disheartening. even infra software is getting demolished, no llm is going to replace something like mongodb, but it's all traded under the same umbrella.
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