There is a genre of population decline doomerism. An example:
Three terrifying charts about Japan’s demographics.
1) Japan’s population is shrinking. It decreased by 850,000 last year. pic.twitter.com/HOKijFWRdx
— S.L. Kanthan (@Kanthan2030) December 21, 2024
Here’s the thing, Japan imports about sixty percent of its food. Japan is, by any reasonable measure, over-populated.
If you can’t feed your population and if there is no reasonable prospect that you could feed your population, perhaps you have too many people?
Another country for which this is true is Britain, which imports about 80% of its food. Yet the British have also been importing over a million people a year.
One might suggest, as well, that any country which has a large number of homeless people is also overpopulated: clearly it has more people than it is capable of taking care of. (Though we all know that’s usually a choice, not a constraint.)
The world is overpopulated by humans and our domesticated animals. We are in classic population overshoot.
When climate change and ecological collapse and resource depletion hit, there isn’t going to be enough food to go around. When that becomes the case, countries are going to prioritize themselves first and their close allies second. Entire countries which are now breadbaskets will either produce less, or will no longer produce enough for themselves. When the Gulf Stream turns off, which is expected any time in the next 50 years, for example, Europe as a whole will face a huge food deficit.
Better to start shedding population now, gradually, than to do it thru famine, food riots, revolution and war.
If you can’t feed your population, you have too much population. (Partial exception for city states and small states. Partial.) If you can’t house your population, you have too much population.
There are very few countries in the world which genuinely need more people. Russia, perhaps. Japan doesn’t. China doesn’t. India doesn’t. Most European countries don’t. Most African countries don’t. Etc…
Population doomers never ask the simple question: Under what circumstances is population growth good and under what circumstances is population decline good?
And for whom?
There was no better time to live in Medieval Europe than after the Black Death.
Decline now, while it’s gentle. If you insist on not doing so, you will do it the hard way.
(Much of this is driven by prioritization of GDP, a desire for low wages, and a deep misunderstanding of what makes an economy strong. More on that in the future.)
Sub-Boreal
Thank you for these eminently sensible observations.
The Left has a huge blind spot on population. Just so much as implying that there may be limits causes hair-on-fire tantrums and shrieking about “ecofascism”. It’s so tiresome.
Z
cap·i·tal·ism
/ˈkapədlˌizəm/
noun
def.: a fervent belief in false profits and the pursuit of infinite growth in a finite world
Z
Oakchair
clearly it has more people than it is capable of taking care of. (Though we all know that’s usually a choice, not a constraint.)
——-
Step 1: Prosperity gospel, there is no society, follow orders and obey.
Step 2: Poison the population, restrict housing food and other necessities
Step 3: Blame the gradual social decline on the people you’ve poisoned, and impoverished.
Step 4: Profit and be lavish in your mansions, wearing silk dress, diamond bracelets, with servants pampering your make up covered sneers.
Step 5 is already underway some of us just don’t want to admit it yet.
Curt Kastens
I wonder if European Countries are importing people to keep the housing market from losing value.
Mary Bennet
Curt, IDK about Europe, but exactly that has been the case in the USA for decades. Lefty intransigence about the alleged moral superiority of “open borders” has not helped, but the root cause of American inability to control our borders is the implacable insistence of the rich that housing prices must not ever decline. The upper class does not make stuff anymore, so RE is where their money is kept.
Z
In my view, the production team of Weekend at Biden’s open border immigration policies had more to do with Miriam Adelson’s personal pedicurist Donald “Toe-Jam” Trump winning the election than anything else. It was the most damaging thing that the working class felt most powerless to stop under the Lead Stiff’s presidency.
Z
Joan
I hope that people are able to more deliberately choose whether they have children and how many they have, and that a chosen population decline results in the future being gentler on successive generations.
In my personal life, population contraction is visible. Just did a rough count of the girlfriends I’m in some kind of regular touch with, most of them mid-range Millennials:
5 of them have 2 kids
2 of them have 1 kid
1 of them doesn’t have kids yet but wants 1.
15 of them have no kids and no plans to have them.
And to be clear, this was before I started deliberately seeking out ladies who were childfree to make friends. This is just the population I befriended in my 20s and early 30s.