Countries are shrinking and becoming older.
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Frankly, I think it is a positive development for humanity. Human life has already been extended. With current technology, it is very easy to create healthy, high-quality embryos that do not contain criminal genes. Even if the reproduction rate drops to zero, every country can easily produce healthy embryos.
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Arguably humanity evolving to live longer but not reproduce as much would be a problem solving response from evolution.
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What @John_Hemming said, x 1000!
Fewer people will indeed negatively impact the GDP, but I personally feel itâs a net positive. My friends who only care about the stock market disagree.
All of these things are obvious to everyone, butâŚ.
It will go far in helping the climate.
Costs of many goods and services will probably decrease, and yes, causing many people profit much less.
And most notably to me, the biggest single purchase most people will ever make is their home, and housing would become more plentiful and therefore affordable.
There would be less traffic and fewer crowds which would positively impact the quality of life of the general population, but yes, there would be fewer widgets sold and less being fed into the safety net systems which would have a negative impact, and the latter is indeed quite concerning.
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I think the traders and market watchers are hopelessly blind to the larger situation. Capitalism IS a Ponzi scheme, there is no such thing as limitless growth, and so any system whose success is predicated on that is bound to fail. I think population shrinkage could be a good thing in the long term, but we do have to move beyond capitalism and find a system that can function without the need for continual growth. We have plenty of resources to care for people, we just need to employ them more intelligently.
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Perhaps as lifespans are extended and fertility extended, people will have more children.
These predictions always assume no changes in any other area (âall things being equalâ), which is in itself a risky and unlikely forecast.
I also read recently that the issue isnât so much couples not having children, but rather people staying single and not getting married or establishing couples:
Number of Chinese couples getting married falls to 12-year low, data shows
The number of Chinese couples who got married in the first half of this year fell to its lowest level since 2013, official data showed, as more young people deferred nuptials amid a slowing economy and a rise in living costs.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/957206/poland-marriage-rate/
Of course, a lot of this is the issue of high costs of living, and lower employment and lower wages for Generation Y and Z⌠and Iâm struggling to see how AI and mechanization will improve things for most of them, but one thing about the future is its hard to predict.
And here is the full McKinsey report:
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The full McKinsey report below:
dependency-and-depopulation-confronting-the-consequences-of-a-new-demographic-reality_small.pdf (6.8 MB)
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Capitalism does not require limitless growth. Government policies, however, are often predicated on growth.
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When social programs are predicated on Ponzi schemes (as most are), they run into problems when the pyramid becomes inverted, and a few need to support the many instead of the other way around as it had been in the past.
You can expect social programmes to be cut or else governments will need to find funding from other sources.
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Perhaps you can explain to me how a company can turn a profit every year (which of course is then reinvested into some asset class which is expected to provide its own ROI) in the absence of continual growth? No, capitalism is long past its sell-by date.
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Capitalism means private ownership of business. (not necessarily all businesses)
Businesses do not necessary make profit every year and the rest is not a requirement of capitalism or even something that happens in what are considered to be capitalist societies.
The alternative to Capitalism is state ownership of business.
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Itâs often stated that capitalism relies on limitless growth, but in fact itâs ever-growing state/national debt that relies on limitless growth. And thatâs largely because lifespans are increasing faster than healthspans (and retirement ages). This means that govt budgets are ever increasing.
if growth stops, capitalism carries on - company values drop but it carries on. Its the national govt debt that causes a problem and risks a system collapse.
But with AI and robotics there may be a way out, Japan is ahead of us demographically and may well show us the wayâŚ
If we could increase healthspan (without an equivalent increase in lifespan) it would also potentially have a huge impact. State pensions are the ponzi scheme and unless we dramatically increase the retirement age, sooner or later theyâre going to collapse.
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I donât wish to derail the conversation so I will not argue any further. I will only say I do not agree with your reasoning. We can agree to disagree.
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Also a company doesnât need any growth to generate an annual profit. A company can make an annual profit by providing added value over and above the cost of itâs parts. If 1000 people are employed by a company then collectively they may be able to produce more value (revenue) than the sum of the thousand salaries. No growth is necessary.
Growth isnât necessary for annual profit, however innovation often is because capitalism is inherently competitive. so if company a is not innovating, then company b may well out-compete it. I think part of the confusion around capitalism requiring growth is that often companies innovate by getting bigger. This allows them greater economies of scale and therefore competitive advantage. But if the total pie is shrinking because of population decline or lower economic activity then companies will merely compete over who can shrink the least rapidly.
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It is not a positive development for humanity because young people are the main source of innovation, creativity, and drive. Young people want to strive, build, and achieve; older people just want to sit on what they have. And that leaves aside the whole issue of the elderly costing more for health care, pensions, etc.
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There is reason to be very concerned by the low birth rate.
I would like to touch on one other point mentioned here - infinite growth is absolutely possible. On planet Earth. Our wealth does not only come from taking raw resources from the earth but from our infinitely growing knowledge. A great book on this with a case for optimism is The Beginning of Infinity by Deutsch.
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I donât myself think âinfiniteâ growth is possible. There will always be some limits.
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That is how it has been in the past, but I wonder if thats how it has to be going forward, or if it might change as more and more people adopt life extension therapeutics? While âpast behavior is the best predictor of future behaviorâ has been the guiding principle in the past, I have to wonder it it might change if, for example ISRIB works as well in humans as it has in animals.
Perhaps with some ISRIB, mitochondrial transfer, and rapamamycin older people become as fast-learning, energetic and effective as they were when young?
âWe can⌠take an old mouse and train it to do something, but it has a hard time learning. If you give it ISRIB, it learns like a teenager. So we can rejuvenate the learning behavior.â
Source: Peter Walter, biochemist: âThe ISRIB molecule could become a wonder drugâ (El Pais)
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This of course implies that we need humans? Robots unite.
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