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In the long term, the West (Europe at first) went from at best a not particularly interesting place compared to, say, China to the global hegemon because 1. it

In the long term, the West (Europe at first) went from at best a not particularly interesting place compared to, say, China to the global hegemon because 1. it became much better at war than the others [0] 2. it became much richer than the others [1] Much has been written about how Western values and/or institutions and/or any other causes led to 1 and/or 2 and the interplay between 1 and 2. The warfare advantage is primarily tech-based against peer enemies. Training and sheer size may matter against asymmetric foes but against China it's basically whoever has the best technology. Given the relative size of Western countries and the rest of the world (China is about four times as big as the US for instance), the West needs to be many times richer per capita to be a larger economic power than China or India. Note that the West used to be a much higher percentage of the world population in the past. There's a lot of catching up both in technology in particular, including military technologies, and economic catch up more broadly; it is very unlikely that the West can leap again and grow/innovate so much faster than China & India can't catch up enough to dominate. People in this thread seems to be too focused on what they see as a cultural decline within the US and not see the economic and technology long term catch up. [0] see for instance https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691139708/why-did-europe-conquer-the-world https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691139708/wh... [1] see for instance https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691090108/the-great-divergence https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691090108/th...

wackro 6y ago
>Note that the West used to be a much higher percentage of the world population in the past. I wonder about this quite a lot. This is obviously mainly due to the boom in developed world esp China, but do you have any opinions about 'fixing' the fertility rate in the West? Is it futile when the developing world incl China will always have higher rates?
- jean_tta 6y ago
  > This is obviously mainly due to the boom in developed world esp China Europe (and the "West" aka where Europe sent its surplus citizens) went through its fertility transition [0] earlier than the rest of the world. Hence it increased its relative size as it experienced a high fertility / low death period, and decreased its relative size after it went to a low fertility / low death while part of the rest of the world went into their high fertility / low death phase. So we can probably expect currently high population growth to transition to the low fertility / low death endgame. China is already well past it. As far as I know, no country went back to a high fertility / low death scenario, though countries stabilized at various level of low fertility. Most Western countries have institutions that rely on population growth (high debt that would lead to enormous debt per capita if the number of people decreases, unmaintained infrastructure, pay-as-you-go pensions...). So they will either have to fix their fertility rate in a dramatic way, massively reform many of the core institutions of society, or have high immigration & handle it well. [0] https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jel.49.3.589 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jel.49.3.589

wackro 6y ago

>Note that the West used to be a much higher percentage of the world population in the past. I wonder about this quite a lot. This is obviously mainly due to the boom in developed world esp China, but do you have any opinions about 'fixing' the fertility rate in the West? Is it futile when the developing world incl China will always have higher rates?

jean_tta 6y ago
> This is obviously mainly due to the boom in developed world esp China Europe (and the "West" aka where Europe sent its surplus citizens) went through its fertility transition [0] earlier than the rest of the world. Hence it increased its relative size as it experienced a high fertility / low death period, and decreased its relative size after it went to a low fertility / low death while part of the rest of the world went into their high fertility / low death phase. So we can probably expect currently high population growth to transition to the low fertility / low death endgame. China is already well past it. As far as I know, no country went back to a high fertility / low death scenario, though countries stabilized at various level of low fertility. Most Western countries have institutions that rely on population growth (high debt that would lead to enormous debt per capita if the number of people decreases, unmaintained infrastructure, pay-as-you-go pensions...). So they will either have to fix their fertility rate in a dramatic way, massively reform many of the core institutions of society, or have high immigration & handle it well. [0] https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jel.49.3.589 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jel.49.3.589