They Will Blame You
Most likely, our world civilization will peak in population in about three decades, and its economy will peak soon after, or maybe even before, depending on how bad Africa is at substituting for everyone else in the world economy. From then on rates of innovation will shrink faster than does the economy, and our civ will continue to fall and slow for centuries, until replaced by rising insular fertile religious subcultures (eg Amish, Haredim).
When future folks look back on this, the fall of the greatest civ so far, who will they blame? You, actually. In two polls I asked re a generic civ that rises and falls, people in which period are most to blame for that fall. In one poll I divided the civ’s history into 4 parts: start to rise, finish rise, start to fall, finish fall. In another, I divided it into 5 parts: flat turns to rise, mid rise, peak where rise turns to fall, mid fall, fall turns to flat.
For the 5 part split, 61% most blamed peak, with equal 19% going to each of the two adjacent periods. For the 4 part split, 52% say start fall, and 35% finish rise. Thus the most blame is given to those around just after the fall begins. And as most of my readers are below age 50, and about half of age 50 readers should be alive in 35 years, that’s you.
Maybe think about what you are doing to hinder our civ’s fall?
I'm more worried about rage directed at the Amish once cities begin dwindling. It's not out of the question that our great grandchildren will find pretexts to murder them en masse, or forcibly assimilate their children into the dying dominant culture.
The religious subcultures that can preserve themselves and fertility won't "blame" us, or not for very long. They'll more pity us. We turned away from God's plan and cursed ourselves with decadence and infertility. Crumbling cities and vanished technological miracles will be warnings, not losses to lament.
I genuinely appreciate an effort to put responsibility on those currently best positioned to do something about it before it's too late (if it isn't already). Thank you.