1. Because you don't shrink uniformly. Shrinkage is unevenly distributed over the age groups. In simpler terms, you will have a shrunk society with a lot of old

1. Because you don't shrink uniformly. Shrinkage is unevenly distributed over the age groups. In simpler terms, you will have a shrunk society with a lot of old people and very few young ones. Who will run the society in that case? TFA talks about a specific instance of that problem in detail, but also provides useful overall stats where profitable businesses are shuttering down only because there are no humans to run them. 2. This shrinking will be painful as our current structure relies on young caring for old, either directly as part of families or indirectly via tax-funded social programs. If there are not enough young people to pay taxes for the welfare, what should we do about the old ones? Let them die? Let them rot away in loneliness[1]? Force them to work till they die[2]? Or nudge them towards euthanasia like Canada does[3]? [1] another recent NYT article on this subject: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/health/elderly-living-alone.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/health/elderly-living-alo... [2] see the debate about raising medicare age to 67 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32528647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32528647