That Japan stat is eye-opening. I don't hold out much hope that things will turn around for the rich world in the next few decades, which is why I think the focus ought to be on softening the blow, and on finding ways for our families to best navigate a society in demographic tailspin.
>The third was that I have been frantically working on a new story, which takes place in the near future; a future where the demographic collapse has caused wars and destruction
At first blush, this seems implausible to me. But recently I was in a discussion about the economic history of slavery, and noted that slavery, or even lesser forms of oppression like serfdom, normally arise under conditions where labor is scarce and land is plentiful. Which is also the condition we're entering into! I don't expect slavery to formally return, but I do wonder what novel efforts will be made to regulate scarce prime-age labor in order to extract maximum productivity from it. The obvious one for most countries is emigration controls, but I also wonder if there will be more formal controls imposed. I can easily imagine countries drafting unemployed or underemployed layabouts into work gangs that fall somewhere in the spectrum between prison gangs, military conscription, and the WPA, while the old folks cheer that finally the young are learning the value of hard work.
Perhaps it depends on what you mean by "near-future", but I think elderly societies are going to be risk-averse. You can see this in how the elderly vote in Europe: all they want to vote for is the Macrons of the world, those who have no real solutions to any present crisis but promise to keep the system going so that the elderly get theirs until they shuffle off this mortal coil.
In the rich world, society's entire focus is going to be on keeping the wheel spinning for as long as possible, to keep the pensions afloat. Pensions will be cut, but as long as the payments are enough to keep the elderly alive, the system will endure. In East Asia, this may start to break down in the latter half of the 21st century, but for the US, I think it can keep going into the early 22nd. What happens beyond that: who knows? It's hard to see, which is partly why I don't think of it as the "near future". More the medium-term future. All the world will be changed beyond recognition at that point.
Steve Sailer has something called the Dirt Theory of Warfare, which I think captures a lot of history: most of history's wars were fought over dirt, because dirt was valuable, the economy was primarily agricultural and most wealth was generated by extracting agricultural surplus. Sometimes wars also helped capture slaves, in those handful of places where slaves were economically valuable (especially the ancient Mediterranean outside Egypt).
The value of dirt in and of itself has been declining for a while as agriculture's share of the economy has declined. The value of unskilled labor has also been in decline in most places, for a variety of factors. You can see this dynamic in something like Egypt's refusal to annex Gaza. For most of human history, this would be absurd, but under present conditions, both Gaza and the Gazan people have negative economic value to the Egyptian state.
So why should countries in demographic death spirals go to war? There's not really a rational motive, and governments will be too strapped trying to supply butter to worry much about guns. Though it's very possible there will be a rise in internal violence as systems begin to break down.
I guess I totally misstated what was going on. What you had was a society, like Britian (see recent riots), where the percentage of immigrants grew larger and larger until there were riots leading to civil war.
Here’s a short blip:
All authorities agree that the French civil war began August 25, 2035. The precipitating incident was the rape and hanging of three French teenage girls, caught on multiple video’s and broadcast live. It is also thought that their brothers and/or boyfriends were sodomized and killed at the same time.
The situation remained extremely tense for about an hour, until the French president came forward with a message for everyone to ‘remain calm.’ Ironically that message had the opposite effect, and the native French populace spilled into the streets, basically shouting a message of ‘Death to the Muslims’. Dozens of Muslim women were seized and brutalized, and serious clashes began between Muslim men and the native French.
At this point the Gendarmarie in several locations underwent their own civil war, with dozens killed. However as the majority of the Gendarmaries were native French, they soon gained the upper hand and joined the rioters.
The French President called upon the army to suppress the ‘rioters’, as he called them. When the French first infantry brigade, however, reached the area of Paris where the fighting was occouring, there were no ‘riots’, there were pitched battles between two side and dozens of bodies.
No one knows what would have happened in other circumstances, but in the event a young French teenager stood on an overturned bus and waved the French flag in the direction of the armored vehicles. He began singing the outlawed French National Anthem, which had been outlawed only two years ago. The anthem was literally a call for Frenchmen to man the barricades and rid their land of impure blood. He was halfway through the verse when a Muslim man hit him with a Molotove cocktail, setting him and the flag on fire.
This turned out to be too much for the commander of the lead troops, and he ordered his troops to ‘clean up those Muslim bastards’, and they complied. The lightly armed Muslims stood no chance in the face of the infantry brigade, and soon several hundred people lay dead, and two large buildings were burning.
The French president, flanked by variuos generals, took to the air in a live broadcast in an attempt to reign in the army, but the commander of the army, standing just behind him, interuptted his speech with a command to ‘drive the invaders out’, and the rest is history.
I thought we just saw what a nativist riot looks like in Europe -- see the UK. Some working-class men work out some frustrations and get crushed by the police and military, who side with the cosmopolitan elites that pay their salaries. The middle class, generally disliking the disturbance and the whiff of racism, mostly sides with the elites as well. This will still be the dynamic in the Europe of 2035.
If you put the events in 2085 and the French government is insolvent and no longer able to exercise effective sovereignty over its own territory, then you start to move into a world where anything can happen.
Yeah, I’m not fixed on the dates… but I think we have seen several things in Europe that lead to a little different result. The elections in Germany were interesting, the elections in France, etc. And I did have a pretty dramatic precipitating incident.
Interesting thoughts (especially for my math oriented mind!). I ran some numbers on the USA. Currently 4 working age people per person over 65. At current fertility rates in 30 years that will be 2.2 working age people per person over 65 and in 60 year 1.3 working age people per person over 65. We would need to move to a TRF of 6.7 to get back to Japan's ratio of 7.5 in 60 years...
Yeah, and working that math through would, I think shock some people. Even if they were able to wrap their mind around 6.7, they would have to realise that that would mean much closer to 8 in reality... what with infertile women, women who can't get a guy, etc.
Yeah, in my rough calculations I used your 10% estimate of infertility and then 20% 'unwilling/not able'. That maybe high or not - not really sure. But 7 kids per woman is probably inconceivable for most!
I've wondered if the fertility crisis is how God is wrapping everything up for the Second Coming. "To the ends of the earth" is easier when the population is shrinking and technology is connecting everything.
Yeah, I’m not going to get into the eschatology of it, per se. I do think that the ‘without natural affection’ section of Romans I and II Tim 3 are underused markers for the end times… however you define them.
The most obvious evidence is child-murder, obviously. But there is also birth control, day care, government schools, delayed and denied marriage, etc etc… the list goes on.
That Japan stat is eye-opening. I don't hold out much hope that things will turn around for the rich world in the next few decades, which is why I think the focus ought to be on softening the blow, and on finding ways for our families to best navigate a society in demographic tailspin.
>The third was that I have been frantically working on a new story, which takes place in the near future; a future where the demographic collapse has caused wars and destruction
At first blush, this seems implausible to me. But recently I was in a discussion about the economic history of slavery, and noted that slavery, or even lesser forms of oppression like serfdom, normally arise under conditions where labor is scarce and land is plentiful. Which is also the condition we're entering into! I don't expect slavery to formally return, but I do wonder what novel efforts will be made to regulate scarce prime-age labor in order to extract maximum productivity from it. The obvious one for most countries is emigration controls, but I also wonder if there will be more formal controls imposed. I can easily imagine countries drafting unemployed or underemployed layabouts into work gangs that fall somewhere in the spectrum between prison gangs, military conscription, and the WPA, while the old folks cheer that finally the young are learning the value of hard work.
What part of the story seems improbable?
Perhaps it depends on what you mean by "near-future", but I think elderly societies are going to be risk-averse. You can see this in how the elderly vote in Europe: all they want to vote for is the Macrons of the world, those who have no real solutions to any present crisis but promise to keep the system going so that the elderly get theirs until they shuffle off this mortal coil.
In the rich world, society's entire focus is going to be on keeping the wheel spinning for as long as possible, to keep the pensions afloat. Pensions will be cut, but as long as the payments are enough to keep the elderly alive, the system will endure. In East Asia, this may start to break down in the latter half of the 21st century, but for the US, I think it can keep going into the early 22nd. What happens beyond that: who knows? It's hard to see, which is partly why I don't think of it as the "near future". More the medium-term future. All the world will be changed beyond recognition at that point.
Steve Sailer has something called the Dirt Theory of Warfare, which I think captures a lot of history: most of history's wars were fought over dirt, because dirt was valuable, the economy was primarily agricultural and most wealth was generated by extracting agricultural surplus. Sometimes wars also helped capture slaves, in those handful of places where slaves were economically valuable (especially the ancient Mediterranean outside Egypt).
The value of dirt in and of itself has been declining for a while as agriculture's share of the economy has declined. The value of unskilled labor has also been in decline in most places, for a variety of factors. You can see this dynamic in something like Egypt's refusal to annex Gaza. For most of human history, this would be absurd, but under present conditions, both Gaza and the Gazan people have negative economic value to the Egyptian state.
So why should countries in demographic death spirals go to war? There's not really a rational motive, and governments will be too strapped trying to supply butter to worry much about guns. Though it's very possible there will be a rise in internal violence as systems begin to break down.
Oh, I see!
I guess I totally misstated what was going on. What you had was a society, like Britian (see recent riots), where the percentage of immigrants grew larger and larger until there were riots leading to civil war.
Here’s a short blip:
All authorities agree that the French civil war began August 25, 2035. The precipitating incident was the rape and hanging of three French teenage girls, caught on multiple video’s and broadcast live. It is also thought that their brothers and/or boyfriends were sodomized and killed at the same time.
The situation remained extremely tense for about an hour, until the French president came forward with a message for everyone to ‘remain calm.’ Ironically that message had the opposite effect, and the native French populace spilled into the streets, basically shouting a message of ‘Death to the Muslims’. Dozens of Muslim women were seized and brutalized, and serious clashes began between Muslim men and the native French.
At this point the Gendarmarie in several locations underwent their own civil war, with dozens killed. However as the majority of the Gendarmaries were native French, they soon gained the upper hand and joined the rioters.
The French President called upon the army to suppress the ‘rioters’, as he called them. When the French first infantry brigade, however, reached the area of Paris where the fighting was occouring, there were no ‘riots’, there were pitched battles between two side and dozens of bodies.
No one knows what would have happened in other circumstances, but in the event a young French teenager stood on an overturned bus and waved the French flag in the direction of the armored vehicles. He began singing the outlawed French National Anthem, which had been outlawed only two years ago. The anthem was literally a call for Frenchmen to man the barricades and rid their land of impure blood. He was halfway through the verse when a Muslim man hit him with a Molotove cocktail, setting him and the flag on fire.
This turned out to be too much for the commander of the lead troops, and he ordered his troops to ‘clean up those Muslim bastards’, and they complied. The lightly armed Muslims stood no chance in the face of the infantry brigade, and soon several hundred people lay dead, and two large buildings were burning.
The French president, flanked by variuos generals, took to the air in a live broadcast in an attempt to reign in the army, but the commander of the army, standing just behind him, interuptted his speech with a command to ‘drive the invaders out’, and the rest is history.
I thought we just saw what a nativist riot looks like in Europe -- see the UK. Some working-class men work out some frustrations and get crushed by the police and military, who side with the cosmopolitan elites that pay their salaries. The middle class, generally disliking the disturbance and the whiff of racism, mostly sides with the elites as well. This will still be the dynamic in the Europe of 2035.
If you put the events in 2085 and the French government is insolvent and no longer able to exercise effective sovereignty over its own territory, then you start to move into a world where anything can happen.
Yeah, I’m not fixed on the dates… but I think we have seen several things in Europe that lead to a little different result. The elections in Germany were interesting, the elections in France, etc. And I did have a pretty dramatic precipitating incident.
And it is fiction :)
Interesting thoughts (especially for my math oriented mind!). I ran some numbers on the USA. Currently 4 working age people per person over 65. At current fertility rates in 30 years that will be 2.2 working age people per person over 65 and in 60 year 1.3 working age people per person over 65. We would need to move to a TRF of 6.7 to get back to Japan's ratio of 7.5 in 60 years...
Yeah, and working that math through would, I think shock some people. Even if they were able to wrap their mind around 6.7, they would have to realise that that would mean much closer to 8 in reality... what with infertile women, women who can't get a guy, etc.
Yeah, in my rough calculations I used your 10% estimate of infertility and then 20% 'unwilling/not able'. That maybe high or not - not really sure. But 7 kids per woman is probably inconceivable for most!
Well, it would take some massive cultural changes. Including legal changes.
I've wondered if the fertility crisis is how God is wrapping everything up for the Second Coming. "To the ends of the earth" is easier when the population is shrinking and technology is connecting everything.
Yeah, I’m not going to get into the eschatology of it, per se. I do think that the ‘without natural affection’ section of Romans I and II Tim 3 are underused markers for the end times… however you define them.
The most obvious evidence is child-murder, obviously. But there is also birth control, day care, government schools, delayed and denied marriage, etc etc… the list goes on.
Whole societies are basically committing suicide.
Interesting numbers! Thanks!