It is getting weird.
This is just a general statement about the world at large, where it at least appears that everything that matters, is falling apart. With all of our collective intelligence as a species, we have created a global society that is so incredibly imbalanced, that we are heading to total destruction. The major reason for this is that rather than developing for societal growth, meaning wellbeing and opportunity, we focus on making imaginary money instead - and all the silly things that can generate more.
For instance, the "replacement rate" to maintain population size is around 2.1 children per woman, yet the vast majority of developed countries are well below this, with countries like Finland around 1.3, Australia 1.48, South Korea 0.8, and the US around 1.6. Even India, the most populous country on earth, is under replacement at 1.94. Even though developed countries aren't having enough children to replace, underdeveloped countries are having plenty, with Chad and Somalia over 6, Congo 5.98 and Niger 5.94. The global average is around 2.3, which is why the global population is increasing by about 70 million people per year.
Replacement theory?
If you don't know what replacement theory is, it is a conspiracy theory where some believe that white people are being replaced by non-white people in some kind of grand scheme to change the political landscape. While I don't believe in that nonsense, white people are being replaced because that is the world we have created, where the poorest countries on earth, often those that have been stripped of natural resources for profit, are having well above the number of children for replacement and will ultimately emigrate to places where there aren't enough people.
Aren't enough people?
Yes. Because while there would be enough people in for instance Australia without the very high immigration levels, the economy isn't made for a declining population. Companies are about increasing profits, and that requires demand and ultimately, growing populations have been the mechanism for that. Not only this, in many countries like Australia, housing has been the main investment vehicle, with most people's largest holding being their home. But, if a population is decreasing, the demand on housing decreases too and therefore, the value of dwellings decrease.
In declining population countries, immigration keeps the real estate values up.
The entire economy is built on the need to grow and therefore increase profits. There are other ways to increase profits too, like becoming more efficient, but ultimately it is still going to have to grow eventually otherwise it will start to retract. And for a long time this has been happening, with people putting it down to all the technological advancements. But, I don't think that was the major driver at all.
Because:
- 10,000 BCE: ~4 million people
- 1 CE: ~188 million people
- 1800 (1st Billion): ~1 billion people
- 1927 (2nd Billion): ~2 billion people (took 127 years)
- 1960 (3rd Billion): ~3 billion people (took 33 years)
- 1974 (4th Billion): ~4 billion people (took 14 years)
- 1987 (5th Billion): ~5 billion people (took 13 years)
- 1999 (6th Billion): ~6 billion people (took 12 years)
- 2011 (7th Billion): ~7 billion people (took 12 years)
- 2022 (8th Billion): ~8 billion people (took 11 years)
The major driving force behind the economy has been a massive growth in the number of consumers, with 6 billion added in the last 100 years, a quadrupling. This massive increase has pushed everything and has been further catalysed by technological advancement, globalisation, and the explosion in financial instruments used to generate wealth. But when the populations start to decline, the economic growth model starts to degrade.
And this is especially true once the population is "artificially" increased by immigration from underdeveloped countries, because the demand model changes based on individual resources. People with not much, can't buy much. People with a lot, can buy a lot. But most of the money is in the hands of the extremely wealthy and while they seem to spend a lot to you and me, as a percentage of their actual wealth, they aren't spending much at all. Most of their money is being rolled back into investments to generate more money.
The economic system we use is fundamentally broken.
While we have changed in terms of the way we organise ourselves, the economic systems we use haven't evolved to take this into consideration. For example, Keynesian economic theory which champions government intervention through stimulus and taxes to smooth out the economy, wasn't ideated in a world of global conglomerates that do not pay their taxes where they earn them, if at all. This means that the government access to the funds for stimulus (government spending) has been removed, so they only have the other side to raise the funds, increasing taxes for citizens who have to pay their tax locally.
It doesn't work.
Which is why while corporations are hitting all time highs in valuations, governments are taking on more and more debt burden at the cost to their citizens. The corporations can rip money out of a country like diamonds out of Africa, without having to return any value into the country. And of course the many digital service companies, don't even employ many local people to pay personal income taxes anyway. The corporations benefit from the broken system, the average citizen pays the price, multiple times.
And then, to try and keep valuations up on investments like housing and to ensure there is a large enough customer base, the countries up immigration. But, the immigrants aren't coming in flush with cash looking to spend, because the countries where some people have some wealth, have a declining birth rate and people don't emigrate away as much. So, the majority of immigrants have to come from places where they have to "look for a better life" which means they are coming into a population where their personal wealth is likely at the bottom of the local average. So they can't really drive demand much locally anyway, but still need housing and essentials.
Still, they might have a better quality of life living in poverty in their new country, than their old.
But, while average people are fighting over immigration and the reasons for housing and cost of living crises, the real reason for all of the problems is that we have built the economy around maximising wealth, rather than wellbeing. This has created a world where there are massive disparities in wealth even within the same country, city or suburb, which means large differences in opportunity, quality of life, and general wellbeing. At A city has its wealthy suburbs and its slums, but we have done the same thing to the entire global population, all in the name of a few having an extreme amount more than the 99 percent.
And it is this disparity where resources and opportunity haven't been distributed by the economic systems adequately, that has created a complete breakdown of all of the things that actually matter to our species; Wellbeing, opportunity, social value, health, family, education, environmental and social improvement...
"Redistribution" can't be a take from the rich and hand to the poor either, because that is going to fail spectacularly. It has to be a change in the way we organise ourselves, and the way we value each other. Wealth can't just keep increasing, because it has to be tied to something. It was tied to a growing population that generated demand, but that system has been broken, and wasn't sustainable due to resource constraints anyway. Economic growth has to be tied to something that has no end, and that is advancing human wellbeing.
A population can retract and human wellbeing can keep increasing.
We have less children being born in many countries and therefore a rapidly increasing aging population. Healthcare systems are being inundated at the same time they are being stripped of resources, companies are making insane profits by reducing workforce, and government debt just keeps increasing, as spending on unnecessaries expands rapidly, whilst their access to wealth is being blocked due to severely outdated corporate tax laws.
As said, *the world is falling apart.
And these are just a couple of the points that are impacting on the entire macro of humanity, which is rapidly falling into a state of decay, with mental, physical and social health issues mounting up to the point that many people are just giving up, because without access to opportunity and resources, Why the fuck bother?
We are all being replaced.
It isn't a conspiracy, it is the economy.
Taraz
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I wonder what the difference is between people choosing not to have kids an the environmental factors of people not being able to have kids. It's just more self inflicted injury I guess, but who knows.
Sometimes it's a personal decision, but there are circumstances where biology prevents it.
This is very real everyone will accept the reality of your words. We are smart as humans but still made a world out of balance and chasing money only from years. The birth rate part is scary but the real thing is that the rich countries don’t have enough kids because they know how to live in good environment, on other side poor ones have too many. Like kid ratio per women in Afghanistan is 4.7 kids, in Pakistan is 3.5 kids and in India is still at 1.94 kids per woman. I agree with you just taking from rich and giving to poor won’t work for us. We need to change how we value people and focus more on wellbeing not just wealth.
The key point here is that we've built a world where "functioning" is more important than "living".
We've confused standard of living with quality of life. In developed countries, the cost of maintaining a "perfect" environment is so high that there's no room left for what's most human and biological (which is having children and spending time in community). It's not about redistributing money, but about reclaiming time and purpose. But at what cost?
The cost is going to be our future. If we keep chasing money and “perfect” living, we lose time with family and community, the things that actually make life feel full. We might have nicer houses and phones but we’ll end up lonely and replaceable.
So, the real price is wellbeing and meaning which is too high to pay.
We don't have a shortage of resources. We have a shortage of willingness to distribute resources rationally🤷
Your are right, When profits become more important than people, the cracks eventually start showing everywhere.
It’s a humbling but necessary realization. We often confuse our uniqueness as individuals with being indispensable for a system to function. As you point out, the machine keeps turning, and while that might bruise the ego initially, it’s actually quite liberating.
It means we don't have to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders; we just have to play our part well while we're here. We can't be the bottleneck.
I’ve seen it in real life more than online fights.
Friends move out not to replace anyone, but to find work, study, better hospitals.
Places with older populations actually look for young hands to run shops, care homes, farms. So what looks like “taking over” from outside, feels like “filling gaps” from inside.
For me, it’s less about fear of losing and more about how we all keep moving to survive + grow...!