If we are running out of resources and increasing pollution does a smaller population not help with this? As a species we have shrunk in numbers before and clearly increased again. Really keen to understand more about this.
In: 2155
I think it has to do with fears about what is going to happen with all the old people. In most current systems the population looks like a pyramid with lots of young people and less and less old people. When birth rates decline there is a shortage of working age people. So not enough people to sustain the retirement of the old people I believe is the problem. I’m no kind of expert
Mostly severe population decline sucks for old people. In a country with an increasing population, there are lots of young laborers to work and directly or indirectly take care of the elderly. But with a population in decline, there are too many old people and not enough workers to both keep society running and take care of grandma.
It’s a problem for the government because they already spend more than they take in and with fewer taxpayers they will take in even less money. It’s especially bad for programs like social security. The money isn’t invested anywhere they take it out of income and right now it takes 2.7 workers to pay for one retiree, with more people retiring and less working that number will go up.
Generally, when economies enter the stage of population decline, they have trouble with the ratio of working to nonworking people. More people to take care of and fewer people to pay taxes.
Additionally, I have seen arguments that a bigger population in an advanced economy is actually the solution to things like climate change and resource scarcity because it allows people to enjoy economies of scale more (Producing things gets cheaper when you can make lots of things at once). I can’t remember the article I read this in, and it was quite controversial IIRC.
The concerns people have with decreasing population are as follows:
– in traditional societies the children were responsible for managing the care of the elderly. With fewer children, the smaller generations will have to spend more on elderly care proportional to individual spending.
– in capitalist economies, shrinking populations mean less people to buy your goods and services and perpetually increasing profits become a non starter
– workers make less money the younger they are. With an older population, average salaries will rise and there will be fewer people to work the crap jobs that traditionally went to youths (though that’s not really the case anymore)
– some people are also concerned about the military, with fewer young peeler it would be more difficult to staff a perpetually growing military (I don’t honestly think this is a valid concern considering automation and advanced tactics. Even if we were to go into an all out war most of the forces wouldn’t be deployed)
To address your comment, we aren’t really running out of resources other than the blanket statement that many resources aren’t totally renewable, most of the resources issues revolve around logistics and greed.
That said, I’m no malthusian, but I also do not see an issue with having fewer people to worry about providing for.
Population decline is not the problem. Working population is the problem. If the population replacement rate is 1:1 that’s fine
Our economy is based on constant growth. It’s not just governments who use this assumption, but all actors in a neoliberal economy – investors, private companies, state-owned companies, unions etc etc – such as the current world economy, are bound by it. The best way to ensure sustained growth of wealth is to have a growing population, because each additional person is expected to contribute a certain amount to the global economy. All investments in the future will fail if not for continued growth, so population growth is pretty essential to the neoliberal economic model.
Ultimately, this is not sustainable, but the architects of the current world economy essentially did not care about sustainability, only generating wealth, which they saw as being equivalent to capital. Ecological wealth was not considered.
You can research the degrowth movement to understand more.
Yes. You’re right that in terms of running out of resources and pollution, reducing the population can be a benefit.
The trouble with a shrinking population is more about the economy. If you have 10 million old people, with their pensions, living longer than ever thanks to medical advancements, it costs a lot of money. In theory, younger working people help pay for those social benefits. If there are less younger people than expected, due to the declining birth rates, it’s harder to sustain all the non working older people (and other non working people for different reasons). Less people paying the taxes that would go to those social benefits.
In the long run, a smaller population could have some benefits (more sustainable and so on) but in the short run there are other problems with the economy.
Edit: typo
Japan’s population stopped growing in 2008. Its population has been declining ever since.
Japan also has strict immigration laws that don’t allow many immigrants in. Japan is one example of what happens to an advanced nation during population decline.
And what has been happening to Japan? Its Gross Domestic Product, the economic value of everything that all of Japan makes, has not grown or shrunk. This is considered a failure by some economists and politicians.
Now, if Japan’s worth is 100 and it has 100 people and 12 years later Japan’s worth is still 100 and it has 90 people, that means 90 people created the same worth as 100. That means Japan’s per person economic value is actually increasing!
Overall, the means that Japan, whose population is decreasing, is actually doing pretty well. We may just be measuring what “doing well” means incorrectly.
Or maybe, computer, robots, and automation have really turned the corner so more people are not required for more per person economic growth. Maybe those non-human based tools allow us to create more value with fewer people.
However, big caveat here, Japan’s “success” even with population decline may be unique to Japan. They have a unique society and also Japan may be relying on *other* countries to keep growing their populations in order to keep growing their own per person economic value. They do this via investing money in countries whose populations *are* growing. It’s unclear what may happen when the entire world’s population stops growing.
First of all we are not running out of resources. We have done that maths. This planet can sustainably sustain 11-15 billion people depending on who you ask. If you ask a certain brand of people they’ll say 4 billion *white* people is what the earth can sustain. Our planet can not sustain 1 billion people who consume like wealthy westerners do.
Problem is not that we can’t feed or shelter people. We can. Issue is that of logistic. Those who can grow food can’t really get it to those who can’t. India has a massive food surplus, however lack of internal logistics means that there are places locally that starve. India has most arable land in farming use, 2nd being Ukraine if I recall right. About 3rd of global farmland is used just to feed animals instead of people. We are not running out of resources! And if we are, then it is the fault of us wealthy westerners! Although China is doing their best to catch up on the whole wasteful consumerism and just like in the game on capitalism, they will do it better and bigger.
Population decline is really only an issue when it comes to dealing with the older generation. If there is 1 young person for every 2 geriatrics, then sooner or later most of the population is just and only going to be taking care of the elderly.
All out issues of *pollution* and *farmland*, can be traced down to that 3rd of our food production feeds animals that make up only 5th of world wide calories. It is one thing to grow cows or goats for milk on places where you can’t grow crops or feed them with food scraps. It is anther thing having an industrialised system of growing them at maximum economic efficiency so you can have a 1$ cheeseburger. Which are manufactured at such volume that McD doesn’t even put preservatives to the meat because it gets frozen and consumed so quickly that preservatives would just cut to the margins, cold chain is cheaper. And I eat meat mind you!
We are still blowing up mountains to get coal to boil water so we can get electricity, so we can order shoes from Amazon that we then return because they weren’t the correct size; that then gets thrown to an incinerator at Amazon returns unit because it is cheaper to do that than reshelfing logistics. We drill for fossil fuels so we can run computers to calculate complex math problems so we can trade imaignary currency and pictures of ugly apeas. Bitcoin uses about 0,5% of world energy production; Crypto as a whole have been estimated to use about 1%, and these numbers were few years out.
We are not running out of anything on this planet… We are just wasting lot of it on stupid shit. Like google calculating 100 trillion digits of Pi… cryptocurrency… Bluetooth connected saltshakers… Juicero… electric cars where you can replce the horn with a fart noise…
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