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From the point of view of spending less resources, a smaller world population is good. However, most resources are consumed by the relatively smaller, wealthy p

by flexie 3y ago

From the point of view of spending less resources, a smaller world population is good. However, most resources are consumed by the relatively smaller, wealthy populations who's populations have been stagnating for decades, not by the larger and poorer populations of India, South East Asia and Africa, that have seen most population growth. The main worry I have is how we are going to manage financially. For hundreds of years, we've only had growing world population and it has been a driver for much economic growth. Industrialism and the increasing world population has gone hand in hand. Will we see more inflation now, when there will continuously be smaller working populations? What about investments: Will it be more difficult to attract investment when many markets are naturally shrinking due to shrinking populations?

Tepix 3y ago
> However, most resources are consumed by the relatively smaller, wealthy populations I don't understand why you write "however" here. Isn't it good if the populations with the highest per capita resource usage shrink?
- ElevenLathe 3y ago
  The problem is that more societies are joining them. In a vacuum its good (for some values of good, since there are real problems with declining population) for all populations to stabilize, but if poorer countries reach population equilibrium (or slight decline) while also consuming like the USA, then we're net behind. The nonhuman biosphere doesn't really care about per-capita consumption and emission, just the overall amounts of each.
ElevenLathe 3y ago
The market will clear one way or another. Investment will fund schemes that work in the new state of energy and labor availability, or it will be lost. Retirement schemes will either work in this new regime, or go bust. What will the state of those labor and energy markets be? If you know, and there's a killing to be made. Perhaps Africa is poised for 100 years of insane growth as the increasingly-wealthy Asian countries outsource production there. Maybe more expensive transportation will mean the end of meandering, globe-bestriding supply chains and the localization of manufacturing, with exports being concentrated in high-value items like machine tools. Maybe industrial civilization simply isn't possible within the energy and population limits that a global economy without fossil fuel can sustain, or maybe we can only sustain something like a 1960s (or 1930s or 1890s or whatever) standard of living. Maybe there is some deus ex machina technology that will mean limitless free energy and raw materials from the asteroid belt or something, and we'll all mostly live as westerners do now but with weirder social problems brought on by uncontrollable advanced AI manipulating our elections and culture. Any of this is within the realm of possibility, and in every scenario there are winners and losers. Investment will go somewhere, the question is not how hard or easy it will be to attract it, but whether the fossil fuel wealth we've managed not to piss away in the past couple centuries is enough to bootstrap us into some sustainable form of civilization. If it is, will we manage to do it? Will we destroy the whole biosphere or only most of it? Will something recognizably human exist in the future? If not, when do we wink out?

by flexie 3y ago

Tepix 3y ago

> However, most resources are consumed by the relatively smaller, wealthy populations I don't understand why you write "however" here. Isn't it good if the populations with the highest per capita resource usage shrink?

ElevenLathe 3y ago
The problem is that more societies are joining them. In a vacuum its good (for some values of good, since there are real problems with declining population) for all populations to stabilize, but if poorer countries reach population equilibrium (or slight decline) while also consuming like the USA, then we're net behind. The nonhuman biosphere doesn't really care about per-capita consumption and emission, just the overall amounts of each.

ElevenLathe 3y ago

The market will clear one way or another. Investment will fund schemes that work in the new state of energy and labor availability, or it will be lost. Retirement schemes will either work in this new regime, or go bust. What will the state of those labor and energy markets be? If you know, and there's a killing to be made. Perhaps Africa is poised for 100 years of insane growth as the increasingly-wealthy Asian countries outsource production there. Maybe more expensive transportation will mean the end of meandering, globe-bestriding supply chains and the localization of manufacturing, with exports being concentrated in high-value items like machine tools. Maybe industrial civilization simply isn't possible within the energy and population limits that a global economy without fossil fuel can sustain, or maybe we can only sustain something like a 1960s (or 1930s or 1890s or whatever) standard of living. Maybe there is some deus ex machina technology that will mean limitless free energy and raw materials from the asteroid belt or something, and we'll all mostly live as westerners do now but with weirder social problems brought on by uncontrollable advanced AI manipulating our elections and culture. Any of this is within the realm of possibility, and in every scenario there are winners and losers. Investment will go somewhere, the question is not how hard or easy it will be to attract it, but whether the fossil fuel wealth we've managed not to piss away in the past couple centuries is enough to bootstrap us into some sustainable form of civilization. If it is, will we manage to do it? Will we destroy the whole biosphere or only most of it? Will something recognizably human exist in the future? If not, when do we wink out?