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There is no indication that birth rates are going to stabilize, let alone recover, anywhere. Only Israel and Georgia (?) look like even half-way exceptions. Unless they drastically and rapidly change, the 21st century will be the century of unbelievable aging and depopulation.
Based on these latest fertility numbers, we can expect the drop in new people in 100 years to be the following: USA (-47%), France (-46%), Russia (-65%), Germany (-68%), Italy (-78%), Japan (-81%), China (-88%), Thailand (-89%). Turkey, UK, Mexico, etc. all similar.
People haven't really integrated what this means for our civilization, industrial society, and the progress of history because it's too big to wrap your head around. I think what it means is that our civilization is about to collapse. Meaning sometime before 2200.
It is in every practical sense numerically *impossible* for immigration to fix this. You can't "make up the difference" with immigration when the difference is 50%+ of an entire generation. Especially not if you're China or the EU and your shortfall is in 100s of millions.
People still haven't updated on how rapidly fertility rates in the developing world are falling either. In 2022 already, Brazil was at 1.6, Mexico 1.8, India 2.0, Turkey 1.9, etc. Numbers above say *Chile* is now at *0.88.* Thailand is at 0.95! What is happening!
The Danish population of Denmark hasn't changed a whit since 1980—44 years ago, or, you know, half a century. The entire population growth in Denmark since 1980 has been immigrants. I bet this holds for many other countries too. Which means... https://t.co/e9Ber81CH4
...the entire functioning of the quasi-redistributive quasi-capitalist system we have in Europe and North America has been subsidized by immigration for half a century already, while the previous population has stagnated and aged. The system has been non-functional for decades.
There is no way to sustain the stack of institutions behind our version of modern industrial society when the next generations are collapsing by 50%+. It is as numerically impossible as throwing more immigrants at the problem. The math doesn't add up.
There is a strong psychological need to believe in utopian or apocalyptic visions of the near future, like AI doom/acc or imminent WW3 or ecological catastrophe, because the alternative is staring our incomprehensibly pathetic civilizational population collapse in the face.
I don't expect the dead players and bureaucrats to leap at opportunities for reform, but I think it's a catastrophic distraction for live players and independent thinkers, especially in tech, to forget that the straightforward solution is societal reform. https://t.co/fjC7bXYlFG
The solution isn't to hope we can build an AI who will solve all our problems for us or subsidize our incoherent, sociobiologically insolvent system with our wacky technology, the solution is coming up with a new, functional plan for organizing industrial societies.
People used to think that surely the low fertility rates of Asia would stabilize at, like, 1.1 at absolute minimum. Nope. South Korea (population of 50 million) is now at 0.68. Others following. As @SamoBurja says, no reason not to expect 0.0 TFR societies in the near future.
If we fumble a much-needed reform of industrial society by 2100 or so, I think we miss our opportunity to establish permanent settlements in the Solar System and thus our chance at the stars down the line. It closes the book on that for us. Maybe in another 1000 years.
Everyone proposing to save the day with robots, AI, artificial wombs, longevity, or whatever other speculative wacky tech solution is proposing to do a great favor to the bad and broken system that brought us here. The system needs reform, not more subsidy. Ideas, not tech.
The global economy and industrial/post-industrial standard of living, and all its attendant social norms, relies on a tremendous scale of population to be viable. I don't think it's viable anymore when South Korea has 5 million people instead of 50 million.
I'm working on what I think will be a solution to industrial civilization's fertility problem. It's not a quick or easy problem. I published the first piece here in @palladiummag: https://t.co/qEczgA2eXw
There is only one reason to explore space. It is not economic, scientific, or military. Space exploration is rather a mystical proposition to revolutionize what humanity is. My new, long article in @palladiummag. Read here: https://t.co/z8MFCOxnag A short 🧵 of highlights:
Also worth reading (and subscribing to!) @bismarckanlys Brief, which investigated India's rapidly falling fertility rates and near-future population stagnation here: https://t.co/ldyJKUCHU3
There is a personal upside to civilization-scale population collapse. If you are one of the few people to prioritize high fertility, your children and grandchildren will inherit a world: https://t.co/wFfwx1TB1v
I think the real replacement fertility rate is not 2.1 kids per woman. It's 5.1 kids. A recent Swedish study found that in a generation born 1885-1899, an incredible 25% of people who had 2 kids had *zero* descendants by 2007! For 1 kid? 50%. A 🧵 on long-term fertility: https://t.co/DnVz2A4gO8
More thoughts on solving industrial society: https://t.co/DhyA0IHK6w
We have lived in an effectively post-scarcity society since 1885. Most political conflict since then has revolved around what to do with all the surplus we generated. The modern "services-oriented" economy is the solution we arrived at: give everyone fake jobs to LARP scarcity.
Unfounded hope that fertility is a self-correcting problem, yet as @Empty_America is fond of pointing out, falling populations congregate in low-fertility cities even harder. They don't spread out to areas with cheap homes and fruitfully multiply! https://t.co/MZC1rcnES7
@Delicious_Tacos Unfortunately this is wishful thinking. A large number of incumbent political and economic forces conspire to prevent such a natural correction. And there is increasingly no source of "families" anymore because the social fabric of industrial society is so corroded.
If cheap homes attracted young people who automatically used them to be fecund according to some Malthusian logic, it would have happened already in places like rural America or Italy. The opposite is happening. By @Empty_America in @palladiummag: https://t.co/GgaOvpJpiF
If you enjoyed these insights or wish to support further research on solving the problems raised herein, I warmly invite you to become a paid subscriber to @bismarckanlys Brief. You will receive a new in-depth investigation every Wednesday at 2pm GMT: https://t.co/dG8tUpHNxW
You can find every publicly-available Brief to read at no cost here: https://t.co/hNimhDzavc
Are you considering becoming a subscriber to Bismarck Brief? Before you decide, you can already read a number of Briefs we have made publicly available. Here below are all 14 (and counting) Briefs you can read, listen to, and/or share immediately. 🧵Thread:
One underexplored aspect of the population collapse crisis is how many developing countries simply have fraudulent population numbers for various reasons. Nigeria's population may be overstated by as much as double. Read the @bismarckanlys Brief here: https://t.co/Wg3vy3FmOA
Every week, Bismarck Brief sends paid subscribers a new in-depth investigation of the strategy of a key institution, industry, or influential individual, from China to Silicon Valley. You can search all 150+ Briefs we have completed geographically here: https://t.co/rlZ6FdMovx
Some more of our work here, make sure to follow: https://t.co/smOU8DklHz
If billionaires are unduly influential by virtue of spending lots of money, then by the same metric the influence of bureaucracies or universities is a behemoth tidal wave. The Pentagon alone spends 4 Elon Musks each year. Billionaire spending is a few drops in the bucket: 🧵 https://t.co/x5J9qI5rmj
The news is structurally designed to keep you uninformed and losing money. Bismarck Brief is designed to be your guide to the individuals and hidden forces shaping our world—like the demographic collapse. As a bonus, we even beat the S&P 500. Read here: https://t.co/MrRXvYEVnA
Finding solutions to civilization-scale threats like the imminent demographic collapse is part of our daily work at @bismarckanlys. Make sure to follow our founder and president @SamoBurja and my colleagues @benlandautaylor and @RianCFFWhitton to stay up to date on our work!
Indeed. We could call the current demographic collapse trajectory "the Thanos Plan." Many think it will turn out very well, strangely enough. But maybe we shouldn't Thanos ourselves. https://t.co/Cj87VEZTcd
why do you always assume that the birth rates are going to stay fixed at current levels indefinitely? surely there's a negative feedback loop at some point, as in once population has shrunk and there is a glut of housing / other resources for those remaining, raising a family becomes cheaper, and the logic behind having children above replacement rate becomes more appealing. isn't this obvious?
@mmjukic Within the next 15-20 years, aging will be reversed & the human lifespan will increase to hundreds of years. Therefore, there will not be a population collapse in the next century as you imagine. AI and robots will also take over 90% of jobs. These predictions are short-sighted.