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Your reasoning is just historically uninformed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_in_1900 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count

Your reasoning is just historically uninformed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_in_1900 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio.... There are at least a few generations of lag time between a population boom and economic effects, but Europe's former population size (and density) was the key to its current prosperity. France would likely be more populous and therefore richer than Germany, had it not secularized earlier and thereby reduced its fertility rate. With all of Europe being highly secular and extremely low fertility, it will (sadly) lose much of its prosperity and cultural significance. Negative TFR societies are simply not sustainable - they will by definition collapse unless they aggressively revert the trend. See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?tab=chart&facet=none&country=DEU~FRA~RUS~UKR~POL~ESP~ITA~NLD~DNK~SWE~NOR~AUT~LTU~LUX~BEL~BLR~BIH~CZE~CYP~HRV~FIN~GEO~GRL~ISL~MNE~ROU~CHE~GBR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?t...

GrumpySloth 3y ago
Industrial revolution was the key to Europe’s current prosperity. Without it, it was going in the direction of mass starvation, because old farming methods weren’t able to sustain the growing population. The increased population would have been a disaster without the industrial revolution. It’s the reason England crushed China, even though England’s population has always been microscopic in comparison to that of China.
silvestrov 3y ago
Your first link is for 1900 but that is way too recent to explain why some contries got rich in the industrial revolution. It also has British Empire as #1, but this includes India. On its own Britain was much smaller. When you seperate "overseas territories" out, then you are still left with Asia (incl India) as #1 Where did industrial revolution start? In Britain or in India? On this page you can go back to 1700 and see that Europe was way down the list: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1006557/global-population-per-continent-10000bce-2000ce/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1006557/global-populatio... So your own method of arguing leads to the opposite result than your conclusion.

GrumpySloth 3y ago

Industrial revolution was the key to Europe’s current prosperity. Without it, it was going in the direction of mass starvation, because old farming methods weren’t able to sustain the growing population. The increased population would have been a disaster without the industrial revolution. It’s the reason England crushed China, even though England’s population has always been microscopic in comparison to that of China.

silvestrov 3y ago

Your first link is for 1900 but that is way too recent to explain why some contries got rich in the industrial revolution. It also has British Empire as #1, but this includes India. On its own Britain was much smaller. When you seperate "overseas territories" out, then you are still left with Asia (incl India) as #1 Where did industrial revolution start? In Britain or in India? On this page you can go back to 1700 and see that Europe was way down the list: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1006557/global-population-per-continent-10000bce-2000ce/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1006557/global-populatio... So your own method of arguing leads to the opposite result than your conclusion.