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> In 1700, almost 1 in 25 inhabitants on Earth, and one in five in Europe, was French. Today, less than a percent of humanity is French. Why did France’s popula

> In 1700, almost 1 in 25 inhabitants on Earth, and one in five in Europe, was French. Today, less than a percent of humanity is French. Why did France’s population decline in relative terms so dramatically, and did it really mark the decline of France? It seems far-fetched to use global population as a relative indicator of France's "decline", where the global population exploded after the industrial revolution.

eastbound 4y ago
Also, why would we want to overpopulate? The whole premise is wrong. We need to weigh less on the environment, and currently farmers are receding in France, and it’s the first profession for suicide; All tells us that the next generation will be full-urban, which is an extremely bad thing. Of course, empires with more dense populations have more ability to dominate others, at least thanks to the variety of skills and the sheer mass of the population. There’s a reason why politicians work to increase population: It increases levied taxes. The system wouldn’t be balanced with stable population. But even if we equate population with domination, is dominating the world what we want? As for the “but they’ll pay your retirements!” argument, well, retirement-by-next-generation-paying is a pyramid scheme and the elderly should have thought of it before they set it up.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  If you want to weigh less on the environment, you want to go urban: it's far more efficient to live in shared housing (apartments), commute by public transport, etc.
  - throwaway049 4y ago
    The person you replied to was arguing for a smaller total population - for humans in aggregate to weigh less on the environment even if individuals weigh more.
- jstanley 4y ago
  > why would we want to overpopulate? Half the reason we got out of the Malthusian trap is that we finally got enough people that specialisation and economies of scale start to pay off. Wanting to reduce the global population is like saying you want to eliminate economies of scale, which would make life harder for those who remain, not easier.
  - kubb 4y ago
    Economies of scale can happen with a billion people just as well as with 8 billion. The food production grew because of the invention of synthetic fertilizer, not because the more people we have, the cheaper the food can be.
    - jefftk 4y ago
      By "just as well" do you mean "still happen some" or "still happen at least as much"? Because the former seems clearly true while there are many counterexamples to the latter (ex: anything with zero marginal cost).
      - kubb 4y ago
        I mean enough to sustain the population, and with a surplus.
  - Aaargh20318 4y ago
    Our current economy is a pyramid scheme on a gigantic scale and dependent on an ever growing population. Since we live on a planet with a finite amount of resources we know infinite growth isn’t sustainable. If we don’t intervene at some point the whole system will inevitably collapse. The longer we wait, the more difficult it will be. Unfortunately we live in a gerontocracy where our leaders don’t care about what happens in the future since they’ll be dead in a few years anyway.
    - mastax 4y ago
      Economic growth can mean accomplishing more with the same resources. Very frequently, it does. Very frequently, it doesn't.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Aerroon 4y ago
  >Also, why would we want to overpopulate? Because population is key for the level of influence a country can have. A high population doesn't guarantee it, but a low population will likely sideline the country when important topics come up.
- uonpopular_th 4y ago
  [flagged]
4gotunameagain 4y ago
I think this was intended, to show the relative decline of the birthrates compared to other countries at the time which was the point of the data analysis
rzk 4y ago
If the explosion of the global population is driven by the industruial revolution, then it would've impacted France's population the same way. So it makes sense to compare this way.
- bmacho 4y ago
  France's population exploded sooner.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    But it should have kept exploding.
    - bratbag 4y ago
      Why? There are diminishing returns on industrialising.
      - bumby 4y ago
        Not just that, but in cold economic terms there are diminishing on having large families in industrialized societies. A large broad is an asset in agrarian societies but largely a liability in an industrialized one.
        lotsofpulp 4y ago
        A large family is an asset in industrialized societies too, but in the long run. For example, having lots of siblings can help you later on for networking or being able to go someone to depend on, assuming a decent number of them obtain useful positions in society. But in the short term, it is a lot of sacrifice, especially for the woman who has to give birth and raise all those babies. And of course, it is a lot of work to instill values such that the family stays close, and luck such as being located in a location that is experiencing an economic boom.
        4y ago
wouldbecouldbe 4y ago
Of course it's not far fetched, it's an interesting way to look at the macro changes that happened in the last centuries in the world.
MakeUsersWant 4y ago
So this is why Europeans were able to colonize the entire world roughly in the 1700s.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  The Industrial Revolution was why they were able to colonise the world. Being much, much more productive means you can afford a lot more bullets/cannon/artillery/small arms and you need less of your population as a share growing food. Europeans were better at war than anyone else because Europe was always at war somewhere. It was geographically fragmented enough that any one power becoming hegemonic never happened again after Rome. The difference wasn’t big enough to explain conquering most of the world though. They Sikhs came very close to defeating the British and Japan was almost certainly outproducing Europe in firearms by the end of the Sengoku Jidai. The Industrial Revolution made European conquest possible.
  - Retric 4y ago
    That line of thinking only goes so far, industry also allows one to simply buy resources from foreign locations without the bother of conquest and administration. It’s really a combination of many factors including Europe’s relatively high population that made it both viable and desirable.
    - inawarminister 4y ago
      And tbh the European demographics expansion between 1500-1800, before industrialization properly spread out from Britain [0], was the Columbian Exchange. Potatoes unlocked lots of land in the northern part. And the other unsung botany, too. And the ability to send surplus men (and women) to an empty (because of disease) continent instead of having them warring against each other like pre-Columbian Europe and East Asia (looking at Sengoku) is also decisive... [0] Remember one reason why Britain was able to fight Napoleon even when the entire continent was conquered was because of industries.
      - 4y ago
genman 4y ago
It is actually not true. The global population exploded after industrialized nations developed after WW2 new types of high yield crops and then gave those away to non-industrialized nations.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  post-Colombian exchange, adoption of potato also helped Europe as a whole. "By feeding rapidly growing populations, [it] permitted a handful of European nations to assert dominion over most of the world between 1750 and 1950." "Because potatoes were so productive, the effective result, in terms of calories, was to double Europe’s food supply." "Routine famine almost disappeared in potato country, a 2,000-mile band that stretched from Ireland in the west to Russia’s Ural Mountains in the east." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-potato-changed-the-world-108470605/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-potato-change...
  - genman 4y ago
    True, partially. But the growth was much slower over longer period of time while after 50s the population of developing nations almost quadrupled in 1/2 century. https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth

eastbound 4y ago

Also, why would we want to overpopulate? The whole premise is wrong. We need to weigh less on the environment, and currently farmers are receding in France, and it’s the first profession for suicide; All tells us that the next generation will be full-urban, which is an extremely bad thing. Of course, empires with more dense populations have more ability to dominate others, at least thanks to the variety of skills and the sheer mass of the population. There’s a reason why politicians work to increase population: It increases levied taxes. The system wouldn’t be balanced with stable population. But even if we equate population with domination, is dominating the world what we want? As for the “but they’ll pay your retirements!” argument, well, retirement-by-next-generation-paying is a pyramid scheme and the elderly should have thought of it before they set it up.

rippercushions 4y ago
If you want to weigh less on the environment, you want to go urban: it's far more efficient to live in shared housing (apartments), commute by public transport, etc.
- throwaway049 4y ago
  The person you replied to was arguing for a smaller total population - for humans in aggregate to weigh less on the environment even if individuals weigh more.
jstanley 4y ago
> why would we want to overpopulate? Half the reason we got out of the Malthusian trap is that we finally got enough people that specialisation and economies of scale start to pay off. Wanting to reduce the global population is like saying you want to eliminate economies of scale, which would make life harder for those who remain, not easier.
- kubb 4y ago
  Economies of scale can happen with a billion people just as well as with 8 billion. The food production grew because of the invention of synthetic fertilizer, not because the more people we have, the cheaper the food can be.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    By "just as well" do you mean "still happen some" or "still happen at least as much"? Because the former seems clearly true while there are many counterexamples to the latter (ex: anything with zero marginal cost).
    - kubb 4y ago
      I mean enough to sustain the population, and with a surplus.
- Aaargh20318 4y ago
  Our current economy is a pyramid scheme on a gigantic scale and dependent on an ever growing population. Since we live on a planet with a finite amount of resources we know infinite growth isn’t sustainable. If we don’t intervene at some point the whole system will inevitably collapse. The longer we wait, the more difficult it will be. Unfortunately we live in a gerontocracy where our leaders don’t care about what happens in the future since they’ll be dead in a few years anyway.
  - mastax 4y ago
    Economic growth can mean accomplishing more with the same resources. Very frequently, it does. Very frequently, it doesn't.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Aerroon 4y ago
>Also, why would we want to overpopulate? Because population is key for the level of influence a country can have. A high population doesn't guarantee it, but a low population will likely sideline the country when important topics come up.
uonpopular_th 4y ago
[flagged]

4gotunameagain 4y ago

I think this was intended, to show the relative decline of the birthrates compared to other countries at the time which was the point of the data analysis

rzk 4y ago

If the explosion of the global population is driven by the industruial revolution, then it would've impacted France's population the same way. So it makes sense to compare this way.

bmacho 4y ago
France's population exploded sooner.
- kortilla 4y ago
  But it should have kept exploding.
  - bratbag 4y ago
    Why? There are diminishing returns on industrialising.
    - bumby 4y ago
      Not just that, but in cold economic terms there are diminishing on having large families in industrialized societies. A large broad is an asset in agrarian societies but largely a liability in an industrialized one.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        A large family is an asset in industrialized societies too, but in the long run. For example, having lots of siblings can help you later on for networking or being able to go someone to depend on, assuming a decent number of them obtain useful positions in society. But in the short term, it is a lot of sacrifice, especially for the woman who has to give birth and raise all those babies. And of course, it is a lot of work to instill values such that the family stays close, and luck such as being located in a location that is experiencing an economic boom.
        4y ago

wouldbecouldbe 4y ago

Of course it's not far fetched, it's an interesting way to look at the macro changes that happened in the last centuries in the world.

MakeUsersWant 4y ago

So this is why Europeans were able to colonize the entire world roughly in the 1700s.

barry-cotter 4y ago
The Industrial Revolution was why they were able to colonise the world. Being much, much more productive means you can afford a lot more bullets/cannon/artillery/small arms and you need less of your population as a share growing food. Europeans were better at war than anyone else because Europe was always at war somewhere. It was geographically fragmented enough that any one power becoming hegemonic never happened again after Rome. The difference wasn’t big enough to explain conquering most of the world though. They Sikhs came very close to defeating the British and Japan was almost certainly outproducing Europe in firearms by the end of the Sengoku Jidai. The Industrial Revolution made European conquest possible.
- Retric 4y ago
  That line of thinking only goes so far, industry also allows one to simply buy resources from foreign locations without the bother of conquest and administration. It’s really a combination of many factors including Europe’s relatively high population that made it both viable and desirable.
  - inawarminister 4y ago
    And tbh the European demographics expansion between 1500-1800, before industrialization properly spread out from Britain [0], was the Columbian Exchange. Potatoes unlocked lots of land in the northern part. And the other unsung botany, too. And the ability to send surplus men (and women) to an empty (because of disease) continent instead of having them warring against each other like pre-Columbian Europe and East Asia (looking at Sengoku) is also decisive... [0] Remember one reason why Britain was able to fight Napoleon even when the entire continent was conquered was because of industries.
    - 4y ago

genman 4y ago

It is actually not true. The global population exploded after industrialized nations developed after WW2 new types of high yield crops and then gave those away to non-industrialized nations.

Scoundreller 4y ago
post-Colombian exchange, adoption of potato also helped Europe as a whole. "By feeding rapidly growing populations, [it] permitted a handful of European nations to assert dominion over most of the world between 1750 and 1950." "Because potatoes were so productive, the effective result, in terms of calories, was to double Europe’s food supply." "Routine famine almost disappeared in potato country, a 2,000-mile band that stretched from Ireland in the west to Russia’s Ural Mountains in the east." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-potato-changed-the-world-108470605/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-potato-change...
- genman 4y ago
  True, partially. But the growth was much slower over longer period of time while after 50s the population of developing nations almost quadrupled in 1/2 century. https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth