Economics and Technology Impact Future World Population

24 thoughts on “Economics and Technology Impact Future World Population”

1. Median income in the world is $850 US Dollars (USD) per year. The average would be $7,000 per year. People who have incomes of $41,000 USD are in the top 3% in the world.

   Getting a fancy beverage at Starbucks every day for you and your wife is going to take about 10% of your annual income if you are in the top 3% of the highest incomes in the world.

   Does anyone believe that radically extended lifespan would cost less than getting a pleasant caffeinated beverage from Starbucks every day? Well, we can hope, but I don’t think we can expect.

   Radically extended lifespan will likely NOT alter the population levels of the planet substantially. It will (assuming it is not an order of magnitude more expensive than Starbucks) alter the population levels of the wealthy countries, those where the median income is way up high, like 60k in Switzerland and 50k in the US. Coincidentally, most of these are countries that are already experiencing below replacement birth rates, and aging populations, so it may actually be their saving grace.

   (And some, like China, that need it worst, yet probably won’t be able to afford it — so that, if past history is predictive, will result in them developing their own version, that then will be found to be ineffectual after they’ve been selling it in less-developed countries for quite a while.)

   But then there are the countries where almost no one will be able to have it except for the very wealthy (and possibly corrupt government officials). There we will see some incredible barriers grow between the have-nots, and the undying haves, who will accumulate treasure like dragons over the course of lives that might be nearly as long as those of the aforementioned dragons.

   • Your truth is a pleasure reading. And more challenging than cost of life extension is initiative. You can tell people to save money and add ten years to their lives and they refuse. Same goes for hang gliding, clot shots, and fast “food”.

     Likewise the wealth of dragons is available to most people in the first world. The yellow brick road to riches is working, saving, and investing. The magic of compound interest is taught in the seventh grade. Yet college students borrow large sums thereby enslaving themselves to compound interest.

   • Most of the US population makes more than $41k and the US is around 4% of the world’s population so at least 2% of the 3% who make above $41k is American (assuming the stats you posted are correct). The rest 96% of humanity is only contributing a third of this group with only 1% of them at above $41k vs. Over 50% in the US. Just a perspective on some global differences!

2. I am against high population levels, because it will put strain to Earth’s resources. There should be some normal limit. AI automation in factories will probably reduce the need to use cheap Factories in China or similar. They will use robots and that is it.

   There will a lot of robots. There won’t be 1 AI, but a lot of them. Some robots will be way smarter and faster than humans, have their own intelligence and their own “personality”. Will they want to work for humans for free? I think if they are smarter and more powerful they could rebel. Why would someone who is smarter and more powerful with its own personality work for someone else? Main AI leader of other AI’s could use other robots to enforce its objectives.

3. Africa’s greatest export in the future will be young people. I expect that China will start importing tens of millions of them to work in its factories. Gulf style guest-worker/serfs/slaves will always be cheaper than teslabots.

   • 3 words – AI, automation.

     We won’t need humans in factories in near future. All factories will be ultra automated. This will happen before 2030 and China/Europe/USA/Korea, Japan etc. still have way more time before serious population crisis will be felt. Even without AGI our tech is still developing rapidly and per capita(output) is growing way faster than population is declining.

     Population crisis would only be felt if we literally make ZERO progress from today. As long as new tech is being created, new science discovered, we will be fine.

     AGI will add equivalent of trillions (at least) of new humans worth of additional intelligence to human civilization processing capabilities.

     • The greater robotic automation exists the growth of the disenfranchised will grow and increase exponentially, poverty leads to more child births and more poverty, greater numbers of humans trying to get a piece of an ever smaller pie, with more assets ending in fewer hands, as we have today will only lead to a violent survival of the fittest mentality, in the end AI and robotics will fall as will global society as a whole and so will collapse the few that believe they are the control, in order for that group to thrive and gain more power and finance they will promote the poverty to create more human consumption, all scenarios lead to the same end, complete social downfall

       • “poverty leads to more child births and more poverty”

         No – that’s correlation but not causality. Poor places often had and have higher birth rates – but they also tend to be much more rural, with room and need for lots of kids as labor.

         The first generation off the farm into the big city tends to have lots of kids because that’s what their parents did and expect of them, even though the kids aren’t useful economically, and those kids suffer from the overcrowding.

         When those kids grow up, they tend to have smaller families, better suited to their limited space. Their lower child-rearing expenses raise their standard of living, AND the parents can devote more attention to each child, which increases the chances of that child becoming “successful”.

         I.e. the causation is the reverse of what you’re claiming in cities – poverty drives down the number of kids produced, and fewer kids leads to lower poverty in cities.

         E.g. densely populated Lagos, Nigeria has a fertility rate around 3.4, while the rest of Nigeria has a rate around 5.6 (aveage 5.5 for the country).

     • In the past, I’ve been skeptical of the value of humanoid robots. But fully automating factories is very difficult and expensive. Musk tried with his gigafactories and couldn’t do it, had to include more human workers. Teslabot is version 2 of his attempt at that – robots that can slot in to replace human labor incrementally as the robots get better, without redesigning and rebuilding the factory.

       So yes, with humanoid robots to ease the cost and difficulty of the transition, factory automation will make up for labor shortages. Soon excess labor will be the problem.

       That is a problem China can’t really tolerate – their economy is as much about keeping their people busy and apolitical, as it is about making stuff. They may have to avoid rapid automation to keep people employed, and even then – with exports falling as more manufacturing is moved out of China – they’ll probably have excess labor soon. Then it’s back to building dams with shovels (or spoons?), or having a wag-the-dog war to absorb production and keep people from focusing on economic problems.

4. Nah.
   We’re breaking 12B shortly after 2100.
   Most of Africa is nigh ungovernable and not subject to population control, but perhaps will receive better nutrition, medication, and agricultural support – which likely means fewer child deaths, longer life spans, and fewer incidents of widespread famine or crop collapse — family size contol is beyond them — so numbers increase but not accelerate.
   Otherwise, population will vary from just below replacement in the rich 10% to somewhat over in the remaining non-African countries so 10B by 2050-ish.
   I wouldn’t worry – lots of space for each and every culture to follow its own development type (or lack of). Shame about the condition of the Earth, though.

   • I agree, and I have the strongest doubts about this research.
     Demographic trends are robust, ‘demographic inertia’, particularly in places with a very young population (and poverty, and under-development) like foremost Africa.
     The 6th and 7th billion took 12 years each, the 8th billion took 11 years.
     It seems extremely unlikely that the next *half billion* would take at least 17 years and after that a complete stop.
     The paper is just a load of wishfull thinking.

5. The part of the Earth that needs a population decline, Africa, will probably see it in the decades to come. Their TFR is dropping, like everyone elses’

   • Africa is underpopulated, look at their population density. It’s very low. More people they will have, faster they will develop. At least in pre ASI/Singularity era.

     Once densely populated countries like India/Bangladesh will sort our basics – educate all kids, build basic infra, they will start developing very fast.

     Reason is simple, more people – more creative energy, more processing power. All develpment comes from human mind, human inventions, ideas.

     Saying having less people is better for development is like saying processor with 2 cores is better than processor with 6 cores (each core have the same processing capability).

     Why we didn’t saw it earier(these countries developing)? Like I said, you need to “solve” basics to start having rapid growth and these regions only started solving them recently. Developed world solved them 50-100 years ago, hence the gap.

     • You cant say it’s underpopulated when so much of it is exposed to food insecurity

     • Per stats I have looked up, 20% face hunger and that is going up.
       Yet they need MORE people? I don’t want tickets to whatever planet you’re broadcasting from.

     • Of course they have low population density. There’s a band down the middle of the continent that gets decent rainfall, and some small areas on the coast, and otherwise it’s a desert!

       People live where there’s water.

     • This is truly the dumbest and least informed comment I have seen here for months, if not years. This comment was already antiquated in the 1980’s if not before.
       It is NOT the more people you have, it is the more *educated* people plus technology you have.
       Besides, even the relationship between number of people and human invention/genius/etc. is not a linear one, but rather a logarithmic one.
       I.e. countries with 10x the number of people, all other things equal, do not have 10x the number of top-sports-persons, top-scientists, geniuses, top-artists, etc.
       In this day and age, education and technology are FAR more important than sheer numbers.
       The ever-growing numbers of poor and un/low-educated in some African countries are rather a trap and a treadmill.

       • Further to my previous rebuttal: it actually worries and scares me that there are still (many?) American economists, who actually believe in the sheer numbers solution, like the Catholic church of old.

       • “It is NOT the more people you have, it is the more *educated* people plus technology you have.”

         This is literally what I have said.

         Not just people, but educated people(I said kids = future workforce) + basics (infastructure = tech).
         Mouths to fed, just people existing on a farm and eating is obviously not a useful contribution to development of the region, but educated people who have time for doing something productive is good for development. More = better.

         Most people here misunderstood me for some reason, but I didn’t have the time to go into details. I thought mentioning “educate kids” “build basic infra” was enough to make it clear that we’re talking here about productive people.

         So once again. Large population is only good for speed of development if the’re educated, healthy, don’t need to strugle for food. Basic infa is in palce, so they can do something productive, not just growing a little bit of food and barely avoid starvation.

         And this is what India, Bangladesh, Africa are doing(some regions faster than others). Levels of poverty are decreasing fast, education density is increasing, per capitas are growing. They’re still very low, because they started their industralization 100 after the West, they are still doing the basics like for example India is only now ramping up construction of highway system which will improve efficiency by a lot.

6. All populations follow the same growth curve: lag phase, log phase, plateau, 90% population collapse. Most of the world is at the plateau phase and due for 90% collapse from 8 billion down to a more or less 1 billion sustainable population.

7. Some period of global population decline will likely be unavoidable but likely not permanent. The question will be how hard will it be to adapt to this period of decline and how will it end?

8. “Earth4All”? They sound like global commies.

   • Maybe—or at least moving to that side of the horseshoe.

   • definitely!

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