The Baby Bust & Future Depopulation

The recent rash of articles about depopulation and the "baby bust" is not really new. There have been articles going back for several decades in all kinds of publications: The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, etc. Earlier entries seemed to focus more on establishment of the demographics and potential implications. The recent entries in the genre tend to fall towards the activist journalism approach. Essentially, they all accept the basic premise that fertility rates around the world are declining and that - eventually - humanity will inevitably go extinct if people do not start having more babies. Which is obviously true from a mathematical standpoint but makes someone sound deeply unserious in the context of a planet with 8 billion humans already here and poised to add at least another billion before peaking. Maybe. Possibly. Depending on the author's assumptions about historical trends and projecting them forward.

But back to that comment about "activist journalism." What I meant by that is that these pieces are generally shaded by which end of the political spectrum the author leans toward. On the far right, there are what amounts to neo-eugenics of the "Replacement Theory" pushers. The oligarchic right (Bezos, Musk, Thiel et al) seems to be pushing some insane faux-utilitarianism vision of the future that purports to somehow account for the hypothetical trillions of future humans that might go unborn if we all don't start having kids right now. The corporate middle ground is worried that we won't have enough workers to service debt, meet entitlement obligations, "innovate" and a myriad other economic concerns that are equally depressing to contemplate for their lack of humanity but also true vis-a-vis the current structure of economic society. Once you reach the left, the baby bust is mostly used as a rationale to argue for more family support policies in the almost mystical belief that these policies will boost the birth rate, which seems to be an almost incidental - though unproven - benefit. On the very far left... honestly I am not sure.* I have seen mentions of some people believing depopulation is a net good for the environment.

Let's have a look at each one in turn starting with the far right since it's the most trivial. These guys just think the "wrong" people are having babies and want the "right/white" people to have more. This is obviously idiotic and discussing it further would be taking it more seriously than it deserves.

The oligarchic techno-right seems to have found in the bizarro futuro-utilitarianism "philosophy" a good reason for them to avoid solving the problems of actually-currently-alive-humanity and thus shun large scale philanthropy in favor of investments that will expand their already obscene levels of wealth. I'd highly recommend More Everything, Forever by Adam Becker because this vision of the future is fascinatingly bizarre, buttressed by think-tanks funded by these same oligarchs and deserves to have a bright light shined on it. But in the end, it boils down to rationalizing bog-standard human greed and self-aggrandizement. Reading that book was in equal parts illuminating and enraging. Put plainly, it is gold-plated bullshit.

Here, I want to pause because what seems missing in a lot of the arguments about HOW to address falling birth rates is whether or not we SHOULD address falling birth rates at all. Absent religious faith arguments, there is no law of the universe that says "more humans is better." And here, I want to lay my cards on the table: I do not believe that the world needs 9 billion humans in it. I do not even believe the world needs half of that. I could likely be persuaded that an even lower number is fine also, since just like the arguments for more humans is based on no discernible universal law, neither is the counterargument. Maybe the actual question has been ill-defined. Is it that: the WORLD needs more humans? Humanity itself needs more humans? The economy needs more humans? Supreme deity/deities demand more humans? To answer the first question affirmatively requires a belief that humans - responsible for functionally all of the environmental degradation of the last oh... 2+ millennia - will somehow correct these sins in a "timely" fashion. That said, there are those who will earnestly try to make that argument.** The third is probably the most common argument and debatably the most depressing since it reduces humanity to economic engines. The last question is obviously unknowable.

Addressing the third question is what the center-right/corporate economic argument for more babies is all about. In this case, the need for “prime age workers” that will have jobs allowing them to pay the taxes needed to support government debt payments, medical care, entitlement payments like social security, etc., etc. On a more hazy level, some proponents argue that fewer people will result in less “innovation” leading directly to reduced economic progress.

If you are inclined to listen to this line of debate, there are dozens of experts and pundits all ready to provide you with data, white papers, studies and projections showing why a falling birth rate leading to depopulation is tantamount to a slow-moving economic trainwreck. This shouldn’t really be a surprise when one considers corporate interests have a way of muscling their way into general discourse. But when you read and listen to what they are all saying, you realize the entire proposition is based on being locked in to the current economic framework with almost no ability – or, more likely zero desire – to even consider alternative approaches. Again, the system works for those who are in charge of the system. Why would they want to change it?  

But it’s not hard to imagine several counterarguments. First: consider who that debt was issued in support of? Future citizens? Maybe some of it, but certainly not all or even most of it. You can debate about the percentages but those Reagan-era tax cuts based on the Laffer curve began the decades long shunt of wealth upwards to the very richest in our society. That particular flow has continued nearly unabated since. Sure, some of the debt was issued for things like COVID rescue funding but the die had long been cast. Those entitlements like social security and Medicare? Obviously, those are not benefiting the youngest generations. Or really anyone below age 62.

So, within the ongoing framework of our current system, the prime age workers really are needed to keep the whole tower from collapsing. But the key phrase here is the current system. What if we wanted to – gasp – not perpetuate that system? What are the options?

One choice would be to impose a wealth tax and return to post-WW2 era levels of income tax that does not allow for avoidance chicanery until the federal debt is reigned in to a reasonable level. (I’ll pause here for laughter.) In our current upside-down politics of the United States, the oligarchs have managed to co-opt the poor into supporting their trickle-down economics in return for outlawing abortion, getting the government out of Medicaid and halting immigration. It’s unlikely that ship will turn anytime soon and so we continue to sail right towards the iceberg.

Another option – a modest proposal, really – is that once we recognize humans are really only useful as engines of economic productivity that once they are no longer useful in that respect, they are “retired.” It’s the logical conclusion! One of the main pillars in support of the “need more babies/workers” hypothesis is that the population pyramid is getting upside down.

Sure, one way to fix that is by increasing the bottom of the pyramid by squeezing out a mess o’ kids. But the other way? Simply decrease the population denominator by letting the old people die faster. Does Grannie Ruth really need a $125,000 treatment to extend her life for another miserable 6 months at age 81?*** Probably not. That’s not to say if Grannie Ruth or her immediate family can pay for this treatment out-of-pocket they can’t have it! But no more of this subsidized by all of the productive working society shenanigans. That sounds harsh, but really is it any less nasty than cutting off Medicaid to actual working adults now? No.

But instead of considering these other options, instead we are subjected to countless thought pieces arguing that YOU should have more babies. For now, that’s enough on the economic argument. Maybe I’ll get around to writing more at some point since its argument has produced so many different facets.

Moving to the left we get the activist articles arguing for more “family friendly policies.” A terrific example of the genre is this podcast with Ezra Klein interviewing Caitlyn Collins. She looooooooves Sweden and their myriad policies supporting parents and families And with good reason! They sound pretty terrific. But, in a credit to Ezra and Caitlyn they acknowledge that the Scandinavian countries have LOWER fertility rates than the US that – at least nationally – has functionally zero family-friendly policies. Once it is accepted there is essentially zero correlation between these liberal policy proposals and actual fertility rate, you realize it’s not really about making more babies at all and instead about making life a little more tolerable for parents. This is a good thing, but intellectually dishonest.

Finally, and I’m not even really sure if this calling it a “far left” opinion is accurate, are those neo-Malthusians for lack of a better term. They would argue that the number of people are destroying the planet in a dozen different ways and that our collective duty is to have fewer or maybe even zero children to allow the planet to heal. (Disclosure: I am sympathetic to some of this argument.) The corporate middle argument spends significant time addressing these with varying levels of success. I’m working my way through “After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People” by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso and they choose global warming as their stand-in for all environmental ills and argue with some success that falling population will have little impact on global warming. But they leave unaddressed so much else it’s absurd: ecosystem destruction, biodiversity falling, microplastics in oceans, and on and on. They do try to handwave this all away by saying we can choose policies to address all of this because it has happened a few times in the past (see leaded gas, CFCs, etc.) but those were targeted and had clear success metrics (we KNEW lead was toxic and the ozone layer was being wrecked by CFCs). Their hopes tend to ring hollow with our current situation and the more diffuse problems…

That’s enough for now. Obviously this is a topic that has interested me for awhile between my rant about TOO MANY PEOPLE and the After World book discussion. I suspect I’ll revisit this since it’s such a rich subject.

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* The Far Left is like the black sheep family member. It's easier to look at the asshole across the street and mock them.

** After the Spike (Dean Spears & friend)

*** There’s a whole body of literature in healthcare economics that examines treatments through the lens of cost-effectiveness using a metric called a Quality-Adjusted-Life-Year (QALY).