There is a difference between a world population that is 4 billion and strongly growing versus 4 billion and shrinking. When I write about global population collapse there are many people who will say that they lived in a world with 4 billion people and it was fine.
This is like saying they were in an airplane that was flying up through 10,000 feet and then 20,000 feet and those altitudes were all fine. The difference will be when the plane at 30,000 feet has lost engine power and will start plummeting uncontrollably.
I am saying hey the world has lost three out of four engines for population growth and this is not good.
People say, don’t worry about it, we got through 15,000 feet of altitude just fine.
But last time we had all of our engines working.
Don’t worry, we will restart the engines at 10,000 feet or 3,000 feet.
But losing all the fertile women means that the engines are ripped off entirely.
A rapidly dropping population will wreck various national economies and then the world economy.
There will be less innovation with fewer young and energetic people with new ideas.
Here was Japan in 1965 with about 100 million people.
Here is the projection for Japan in 2050 with 100 million people.
The difference is 18 million in 1965 fertile women versus 8 million fertile women in 2050.
The difference is 18 million young people in 1965 versus 7.5 million young people 0-19 in 2050.
Here is a reminder: Only fertile women can have new children. A population of 100 million people who are all over 45, will have no children and will just age out with no next generation.
In 1965 you would have full schools and now they are virtually empty. Thanks to Youtuber Paulo for a great youtube video documenting a virtually empty school in Japan. The older people outnumber the kids. IF you have an average of one child per couple continuously, then you will have 4 grandparents, two parents and one child.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Well put Brian, I don’t want the total human population to ever decline. I’d be happy with 4 billion on Earth if the total population of the solar system was say 10-15 billion. As Mark Steryn put it, ‘The future belongs to those who show up’, I don’t think extinction is a worry but even if the species survives it won’t necessarily be our Western societies and cultures.
One of the features of Niven and Pournelle’s book about the Mote was the effect of civilization die-offs and how it only truly became dire when all the civilizations fell at the same time. Are we lining up for another world of 1177 BC when all of the great civilizations except Egypt perished? Who knows. Be interesting to see the history of that in a thousand years though.
You are missing market size. As you ascend the technology ladder, you need larger and larger markets. How are you going to manufacture cell phones with only 500 million people in the world? As the population shrinks, the number of high tech industries declines. The market is insufficient to support the technology.
The future will not belong to technologists, but rather to the religious. By 2100, 90% of the US population will be either Baptist, Mormon or Amish. According to Darwin, it’s survival of the fittest, and the fittest are conservative Christians.
I lived in Japan for 4 years with my family, I have 3 kids. I lived in Sapporo, the schools were full and everyone we knew had at least 2 kids, though I suppose that’s because we met everyone though our kids, getting to know other parents etc, so I suppose we wouldn’t have known any childless people. The decline is real but it’s not universal, there’s sort of a cultural extinction event happening, a certain KIND of person is disappearing, not all people. My 2 brothers each have 3 kids, my 2 sisters in law each has 2. Our kind of people will remain once this curve flattens down and then the population will slowly begin to grow again in a world that is more conservative and probably more religious
The number of extinctionists in here points to a larger problem – folks are fine with it.
I think those who just wish away consequences of depopulation with technology have subscribed to a pipe dream. We are used to dealing with a growing population and a growing economy. We are used to having children who can take care of aging parents or at least navigate the safety net. We are used to have many working age people who can support those who no longer work.
Think of a world where you have more people ending their work life than starting? Think of a world where a large portion of the population either has no child to support them or only one child to support them. Think of a world with a failing economy and fewer taxes to support support services for an aging population.
It will not be pretty and you cannot just wish it away with technology. You cannot pretend that it will not be a problem. It will be. People will die because there is no one to help them. The safety net depends on government funding and on kids who actually care about an aging parent. Take both of those away and you will see horrible outcomes.
The problem with ignoring the problem is institutions like Social Security, which has been a legalized Ponzi scheme from the get-go. With fewer folks paying in than recipients taking benefits, something’s gotta give. It may not be a hard crash landing, but not everyone’s going to walk away unscathed.
I’ve been proposing Amish economics to young people.
Do not make money or buy things. Don’t even try. It’s now a suckers game.
Vicious thrift. Save, make, trade. Amish do it, you can too.
Young need to swim away from Fed Reserve racket. The young exist for the Fed, boomers, government, big business to dump debts on to. Intergenerational debt rape. Don’t be a victim. Don’t play their rigged game.
A Ponzi scheme? That implies fraud. By intent. I always was curious what the right wing had as an alternative to social security. Just as the “better” alternative to the ACA which the right tried very hard to destroy, w/nothing to replace it with. Hell, nothing at all. Your right, social security is only as good as the people paying into the system.
Right now, the USA economy needs engineers and scientists our current robust economy can not continue to be the best w/out those from other countries who want to play nice with us. And so many do. And why not? The only potential this (my) country does not offer, is what you can not imagine. Why do so many of my fellow Americans not get this? While so many non-Americans, say well, duh? WE GET IT! So should we.
@Ludus
“The problem with the analysis is it’s about a world that’s otherwise technologically static – which is unusual for a website and analyst who is so focused on revolutionary technology changes otherwise.”
When demographics starts contracting, technological innovation also stops. It’s young people who try new things. Economic expansions always correlate with demographic ones, and never with demographic contractions. Even maintaining existing technology is not necessarily possible with a shrinking population – high tech depends on smart people, which is a fraction of the whole. If you have a smaller whole, you have a smaller fraction, and less ability to maintain and produce high tech products.
I believe the fears are overblown and based more on emotion than logic.
Technology advancements allow activities to occur more efficiently with fewer workers. That means a shrinking population should not be a particularly significant concern. The flip side of technology advancement is the less skillful are replaced with automation.
Go backwards in time. Efforts were much more labor intensive. The Industrial Revolution required more individuals to work in the factories, but that reversed as the factories became more automated over time.
As for innovation, that is more a function of individuals with a passion for an idea. That creativity wilts under the heavy hand of excessive bureaucracy. Therein lies the real problem of a shrinking population. Bureaucracies that only become bigger in spite of a smaller population, with the remaining individuals paying more for ever bigger governments. That, in turn, squashes innovation and economic vitality that could normally overcome fewer human resources. Economic stagnation,, or worse, is the inevitable result.
Governments spending excessively today with massive debt dumped on future smaller populations is perhaps the most severe economic destruction in a world with a shrinking population. The politicians responsible for that future economic catastrophe will be long gone, however.
If folks are actually concerned about future generations, then whole-scale replacement of the recklessly spending political class is required. However, the average citizen feasts on handouts from the political class and those citizens are unlikely to give up the handouts. That means Brian’s forecast of doom is likely accurate.
If the airplane imagery is meant to say that the direction of population movement is not changeable in the near term then granted. If it is meant to say it will result in an apocalypse that no one will survive then the analogy is… flawed to say the least.
Yes our smaller population will have more old people and fewer kids. But that’s still billions of kids, even if not enough to replace their parents. And how many kids they have won’t be known for a couple of decades and how many kids their kids have won’t be known for much longer. And will be strongly affected by conditions we can’t yet predict.
And our 4 billion people will have far less poverty, far more education, far more productivity per person and wealth than the 4 billion from the 70s. Unless the apocalyptic plane crash weakens our global economy enough to force people back into subsistence agriculture where kids become valuable labour again.
It will not be the end of the world.
I think we all realize the problem here is our mindset, not so much the cashproblem as people put forward, our mindset obliviates all.
Our mindset will also change, be it by robots, changing curcumstances, other factors.
I’m an entrepreneur, starting a business is starting to walk a path where you do not know where it ends, you can steer it as much as you can, but not more, this is also so for life.
It’s good we give tought to this problem, but we’ve been around for ages now, I don’t believe it’ll get as ugly on a global scale as it ‘is’ in Japan now.
It’s not the inflation that destroys you; it’s the deflation. Germany didn’t descend into Nazism until deflation hit. The malign political effects from depopulation will be unrelenting and far worse.
As to the “inflation” at issue here, when you don’t compensate people for the valuable work they’re doing – like raising kids – other prices run away, like medicine and rent, because they are being relatively subsidized relative to other “valuable” sectors. You are reducing the bargaining power of other economic actors like mothers and fathers (and their children).
When you get rid of the collective bargaining power of unions, wages drop. Not only do you have to pay for family formation, but you have to pay for their representation. The only groups who don’t need that kind of help are wealthy oligarchs with concentrated economic interests (Olsen’s _Logic of Collective Action_). It should come as no surprise that as oligarchs increase their influence over the government, they steer it away from public investment towards their own private rewards. A system representing corporations instead of families naturally produces more corporations at the expense of families.
Public goods are often vastly undervalued. We don’t pay for the clean air in our rooms, but if somebody starts pumping it out, we suffocate to death. What’s that worth to you?
Death/extinction is an infinitely high loss. Net corporate profit is revenue less losses/expenses. Your reasoning misses the red ink.
I have my own approaches to dealing with this sort of thing:
https://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/94224-manipulating-mitochondrial-dynamics/page-58#entry903440
https://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/100363-stem-cell-self-renewal-with-c60/page-66#entry917974
At minimum I think we can all agree that “overpopulation” is no longer a valid argument against life extension.
Absolutely, underpopulation is a valid argument for it.
Yeah, with life extension, you get a bunch of stupid old people set in their ways who never die.
What a glorious future.
I think that issue is overblown. We will find the solutions. We wont go extinct because of that.
Robots will be used for work. We really dont need whole world to be super populated and majority living in a tiny spaces.
Even in some ordinary Eu state I can say it is hard to get a real estate for renting. Overpopulation more of a problem, we have enough people on our planet, dont need more.
The argument isnt so much overpopulation as to what ages make up our population. we see early effects of it with the us election. two senile octogenerians for president. its sad and pathetic to watch both of them
I hypothesize that a minimum population is necessary to support a given level of technology. So, with a declining population, our great grand children will not be using virtual technology but will be riding on steam trains and wishing that penicillin could still be produced. Even worse, it takes a minimum population to support the production of stuff like agricultural fertilizer so a declining population means a lesser ability to support any level of population. A declining population may lead to famine decreasing it even more.
So, the best thing you can do for the future is to have children. I’ve had three and I’m older but wish I’d had five. If I knew how much I would enjoy kids I’d have had more. My parents had nine and managed to get by. Have kids, you will probably be happy you did.
https://doi.org/10.4161/cib.7743
Catalysts for Stone Age innovations
What might have triggered two short-lived bursts of technological and behavioral innovation in southern Africa during the Middle Stone Age?
“we propose that the formation of social networks across southern Africa during periods of population expansion, and the disintegration of these networks during periods of population contraction, can explain the abrupt appearance and disappearance of the SB and HP”
There is another possibility for the social disintegration of the African SB and HP expansions.
As this is NBF I must introduce the possibility that space aliens or CIA time travellers or anthropologists infected the Africans with an experimental SARS-CoV-2 precursor which is why they were less susceptible than “advanced” westerners this time.
The comparison to the fate of the native North Americans after 1492 might be a model. I am not aware that the South American indigenes had proportionally as great population collapse after European contact as in North America.
Climate change might be significant- note the decimation of the Irish population with the potato famine and the “Little Ice Age” from which we are now emerging. Our present political “Climate Catastrophe” and rising CO2 levels model at least as well with solar cycles and planetary orbital mechanics as cow farts and use of hydrocarbon fuels.
It would be of interest if the cellular DNA as well as the mtDNA could be analysed for HERV-K changes which might indicate a biological cause for the technological setbacks.
The problem with the analysis is it’s about a world that’s otherwise technologically static – which is unusual for a website and analyst who is so focused on revolutionary technology changes otherwise.
The declines will happen in the context of AI, robotics, age reversal biotech etc which will make the economics fundamentally different. It’s just not possible to make simple demographic projections a century ahead holding everything else constant and think they are remotely close to meaningful.
We need to solve the problem of giving every person a just share of wealth simply to handle the collapse of the need for human labor. Coincidentally, giving every person at birth a just share of wealth also happens to be a dramatically powerful “pro-natalist” policy because it effectively eliminates the cost of raising children and for many people means having children improves their income and lifestyle automatically. Being pronatalist is not the urgent reason for doing it though, it’s just a side effect of policy that’s critical far sooner than any meaningful population collapse. The collapse of jobs will begin now and be severe within a decade.
The era of ‘free’ citizens is over!
Nations need to invest in future citizens.
PAY the parents the equivalent of a full time minimum wage job PER child until the child is 21 years of age.
With a minimum wage of $15/hour X 2000 hours gives $30,000 per child per year.
After 21 years that gives $630,000 per child.
Ten children would give a couple a child bonus of $6.3 million
Watch the population explode!
So would inflation, if spending in other areas stays the same.
Every case so far of a government attempting to subsidize more children – from modern Hungary and Russia and Ukraine all the way back to Rome under Augustus – has had a marginal effect at best and failed to change the overall pattern.
The difference today is that, assuming the pattern holds in sub-Saharan Africa (their birthrates are dropping as fast as everywhere else, they’re just a few decades behind the curve) there will be no youthful population of barbarians to move in and take over. Latin America for example is at or below replacement already; the people swarming our border, low-skilled or not, are people they can’t afford to lose.