It is the change that is bad, not necessarily the future total size of the population.
Edit: Maybe I should unpack that a bit. I also think more people is better, because life is good and innovation is proportional to the number of innovators, but apart from that:
A decreasing population leads to economic stagnation and innovation slowdown. Both can be observed in Japan. South Korea, China, Taiwan are on track to tank their population much faster than Japan ever did. Hows that going to work out for them?
In a permanent recession will investment dry up killing whatever dynamism there might still be?
If the age pyramid is inverted old people have too much political power for the country to ever reverse course and support the young towards family formation.
If you allow massive immigration to fix the labor shortage you also invite ethnic strife down the line. Almost all violent conflicts are based on having two or more ethnic groups within one country.
Will young people emigrate if they are burdened with caring for too many old people in a shrinking economy?
My view is that the progress we observe in the last centuries is more fragile than it seems and it is certainly possible that we will kill it almost completely if we continue to remove or weaken many of the preconditions for it.
I agree that civilisational progress is fairly fragile. But it is fragile in both directions. Climate change and resource wars seem about as likely to lead to global conflict as internecine ethnic strife to me.
I say this partly because immigration seems like a force for mutual cultural understanding and trade, to me. Without it we would probably see more closed-off nations, more likely to go to war. With too much of it, however, there can be bad side effects and cultural rifts if not managed very wisely. Where the line is is no simple question.
I also want to advance the simple main idea that drives my views on this issue, which is that population growth HAS to level off eventually unless we colonise space. The side effects on the economy will equally have to be managed at one time or another.
Will they be easier to manage in the future? Or could growing populations make it even harder? Could managing a fall in population rates be easier if done more slowly?
Maybe. But I don’t feel that’s the tenor of the arguments I am hearing from rationalist and adjacent people right now.
I agree that massive population growth would also be dangerous. We have that in Africa, so I worry about it for Afrika. We don’t have it anywhere else, so I don’t worry about it for any other place.
Empirically, resource wars are much less likely than internecine ethnic strife.
After we have automated much of the economy, there won’t be side effects on the economy. The trick is actually getting there.
Automating much of the economy is more than a little way off, and is highly likely to bring its own problems which I would expect to cross-cut with all these issues. I personally doubt that –in the event humans are not sidelined altogether – advances in AI would make demographic transition much economically easier, but I think that’s in the realm of speculation either way.
Do you think that a large population that was reducing slowly would be something Zvi, Robin Hanson and others taking this stance would celebrate? (As opposed to what we have a large population that is growing but showing signs of falling relatively fast in geographical/cultural pockets?)
Currently global population growth is positive but decelerating, I guess a more gradual deceleration would be less disturbing to them? But what about if world population growth very gradually moved from positive to negative? Would they be happy with that?
I had assumed not but I am trying to understand what good looks like.
I don’t know what Zvi and Robin Hanson would celebrate, but I personally worry about fast population decline in those “geographical/cultural pockets” that are responsible for scientific and technological progress.
And I worry because I see the possibility that the decline of innovation and tech will not be as gradual as even fast population decline generally is, but that this decline will be exacerbated by the political instability and/or political sclerosis that comes from two many old people / too much immigration + a shrinking pie.
It is the change that is bad, not necessarily the future total size of the population.
Edit: Maybe I should unpack that a bit. I also think more people is better, because life is good and innovation is proportional to the number of innovators, but apart from that:
A decreasing population leads to economic stagnation and innovation slowdown. Both can be observed in Japan. South Korea, China, Taiwan are on track to tank their population much faster than Japan ever did. Hows that going to work out for them?
In a permanent recession will investment dry up killing whatever dynamism there might still be?
If the age pyramid is inverted old people have too much political power for the country to ever reverse course and support the young towards family formation.
If you allow massive immigration to fix the labor shortage you also invite ethnic strife down the line. Almost all violent conflicts are based on having two or more ethnic groups within one country.
Will young people emigrate if they are burdened with caring for too many old people in a shrinking economy?
My view is that the progress we observe in the last centuries is more fragile than it seems and it is certainly possible that we will kill it almost completely if we continue to remove or weaken many of the preconditions for it.
I replied before your edit so a bit more:
I agree that civilisational progress is fairly fragile. But it is fragile in both directions. Climate change and resource wars seem about as likely to lead to global conflict as internecine ethnic strife to me.
I say this partly because immigration seems like a force for mutual cultural understanding and trade, to me. Without it we would probably see more closed-off nations, more likely to go to war. With too much of it, however, there can be bad side effects and cultural rifts if not managed very wisely. Where the line is is no simple question.
I also want to advance the simple main idea that drives my views on this issue, which is that population growth HAS to level off eventually unless we colonise space. The side effects on the economy will equally have to be managed at one time or another.
Will they be easier to manage in the future? Or could growing populations make it even harder? Could managing a fall in population rates be easier if done more slowly?
Maybe. But I don’t feel that’s the tenor of the arguments I am hearing from rationalist and adjacent people right now.
I agree that massive population growth would also be dangerous. We have that in Africa, so I worry about it for Afrika. We don’t have it anywhere else, so I don’t worry about it for any other place.
Empirically, resource wars are much less likely than internecine ethnic strife.
After we have automated much of the economy, there won’t be side effects on the economy. The trick is actually getting there.
Automating much of the economy is more than a little way off, and is highly likely to bring its own problems which I would expect to cross-cut with all these issues. I personally doubt that –in the event humans are not sidelined altogether – advances in AI would make demographic transition much economically easier, but I think that’s in the realm of speculation either way.
Do you think that a large population that was reducing slowly would be something Zvi, Robin Hanson and others taking this stance would celebrate? (As opposed to what we have a large population that is growing but showing signs of falling relatively fast in geographical/cultural pockets?)
Currently global population growth is positive but decelerating, I guess a more gradual deceleration would be less disturbing to them? But what about if world population growth very gradually moved from positive to negative? Would they be happy with that?
I had assumed not but I am trying to understand what good looks like.
I don’t know what Zvi and Robin Hanson would celebrate, but I personally worry about fast population decline in those “geographical/cultural pockets” that are responsible for scientific and technological progress.
And I worry because I see the possibility that the decline of innovation and tech will not be as gradual as even fast population decline generally is, but that this decline will be exacerbated by the political instability and/or political sclerosis that comes from two many old people / too much immigration + a shrinking pie.