Some Countries Need Less Population

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.)

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