Does a smaller population not benefit everyone?
In: Planetary Science
Changing population changes a lot of things, the endlessly-cited issues around social security and such is just one issue. Consider that the rate of population increase has been steadily falling in the UK for over 150 years, and is now less than half of what it was in 1870 (-as far back as I found data). The sky has not fallen there, and the entirety of the industrialized world has seen a similar trend. In fact, life is longer, wealthier, and more literate for the average Brit than it was back then.
So steadily dropping rate of growth isn’t anathema to the economy or quality of life. What happens if the growth rate actually goes negative? Total economic output can still increase, as it’s been increasing per capita for decades, so economic collapse aren’t necessary. What about social security? When people talk about social security going bankrupt in 2035 or whatever, then mean that at that time social security will need to pay out more than they take it. In a balanced system they pay out the same amount as they take it anyhow. In general, modest (but real) decreases in benefits make social security soluble for the long term. Massive compounding increases in health care costs aren’t sustainable, but even these have been slowing down in recent years.
I don’t see any evidence that something like social security is the biggest problem of declining population, nor is it a given than economic output should decrease.
Even still, a lowering of the rate of economic increase hurts people by making credit more scarce. We’ve all seen what recessions are like. Infinite growth isn’t as important as incentivizing people to invest their money.
In my mind, the worst thing about shrinking population is that people are good and make good stuff, and less of them means less goodness. All the art and science that makes modern life good is from people. All the infrustructure that makes life comfortable is from people. All the medicine and organizing that saves us from diseases is from people. Bottom line, less people means less of all that.
It takes a very wide base to make a tall pyramid. Research, planning, technology, that is all stuff that sits at the top of the pyramid. Make their be 10% less people and you probably lose much more than 10% of scientists and artists. One of the thing that arts and science powers is getting the pyramid to be more tower-shaped so a greater portion of people are higher up.
The late antiquity collapse in Western Europe saw a big population decline – it wasn’t a paradise, it was a wasteland. People lived in castles if they could afford it because it wasn’t safe in houses. It’s easy to find evidence that growing population means growing quality of life. It’s easy to imagine that lowering population might mean lowering quality of life.
It is not, what you see people complaining about in certain countries is that their population is getting older without much younger generations to replace them however what they’re really saying is “there aren’t enough people that look like us being born” as these are the same countries that would close their doors to families and babies that come looking for a home from other countries.
Just like a hungry person cannot be a picky eater, a country that supposedly needs more people cannot at the same time reject new people.
There’s 8 billion people in this planet, that is a lot of people already, we don’t have a population decline problem, we have a population distribution problem.
Govs get into heavy debt expecting more people to pay for it. If population declines that means more debt per person.
Its the wrong part of the population declining.
Old people are a net drain on society and aren’t dying fast enough.
Who says it’s a bad thing??
Let me guess, someone working for a corporation?
Yes, at this stage of human history a radical drop in the number of human beings on planet earth would benefit our species as a whole. For the last two centuries human beings have been trashing both land and sea at a rate that would not have been possible or even imaginable throughout the previous ten thousand years of civilization. Advances in medicine and nutrition have grossly lengthened the life span of the average citizen of the rich, North Atlantic societies and have even had a similar impact on those hot, crowded societies where no sane human being would have ever chosen to be born (had informed choice been an option).
For an extreme example, just imagine we only have 10000 people left in a country. You would be catapulted back into medieval times.
The more humans there are, the better our interlinked complex systems function. We need Specialisation.
Everything get’s cheaper with more humans (except land).
Now 10000 people is extreme. But if the population is declining… when does it stop? Why would it stop? So it is not that unrealistic that we reach really low numbers.
There’s also the fact that a collective of more people has more power. You don’t really want to be outnumbered ever if possible (though we compensate with technology and infrastructure). If western nations shrink enough, and other nations continue to grow they will outcompete us. That is maybe not bad for “humans”, but for us it is.
Most of the issues related to population decline are economic. The general structure we have for retirement and what that looks like during population decline. One way to think about it is literal dollar values are just conceptual units based on the national output on a broader economy.
What happens when 40%+ of the population is cashing in on conceptual units of money from their retirement accounts with a smaller than ever working population to produce that national output that gives money its value? That’s the problem.
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