Adam Van Buskirk
@AHVanBuskirk
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Observing the Present to Understand the Future.
New Mexico
Joined January 2023
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Good time to review this older article.
"Things happen" but at the same time, normality is amazingly durable and quick to return.
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One key reason for the severity of post-Soviet collapse is they created generations of secular people.
Secular people respond to economic hardship by refusing to have children.
Only the religious have the morale to raise families under hardships.
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Most of yesterday's "countries of the future" are no such thing.
They are in fact candidates for entering the "quiet world" of middle income countries that will enter a post-growth phase without ever becoming rich.
Brazil is the same story, as is Argentina, many others.
📌Turkey's collapsing population:
Less than a decade, a quarter of the country's 81 provinces had above-replacement fertility rate. Considering the trend line, in 2025, the number will be down to only 3 out of 81 provinces (Urfa, Mardin, Sirnak), and then 0 in 2026-27
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The big picture of Latin America is more like the Mediterranean that most realize.
Spain was an exporter of unskilled migrant labor until at least the 70s. Italy had really high homicide and "cartel" violence until well into 20th century.
Lat Am. will flip to an aged, low
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In 2024, the rational strategy for any group is simply to recklessly maximize birthrate.
Much of the world is going to be emptying out in the next 50 years. Your grandchildren might live on a different continent.
They will live in the homes of weaker peoples who are gone.
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WILL GREATER PERSIA RISE AGAIN? Part 1
There is a tendency to see Central Asia as a fundamentally post-Soviet Space: a vague mass of “stans'” in Russia’s backyard, an arena for a Great Game that America seems to be conclusively losing after the disorderly withdrawal from
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One of the big changes in modern warfare is the lack of "surrender."
Pre-WWII, surrender came oddly quickly.
But today's belligerents understand that they can often win strategically by simply refusing to surrender when "beaten."
Prolonged warfare. Maoist tactic.
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This is especially true if technical advancement tops out at some form of useable fusion propulsion.
Under this scenario, meaningful expansion by traditional biological humans would be conducted by long-duration "generation ships."
Requiring what amounts to a religious
Dune is special because Frank Herbert understood that a space Faring civilization would be a zealously religious one. Secular nerds and atheoids will never travel the beauty of creation- eternally hindered by material and reason. Zealotry is the natural state of man.
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It's hard to exaggerate how bad US elites are at interacting with non-Western countries.
We just don't know how to produce, promote, and select the people who can actually do this.
Biggest weakness of modern US hegemony versus the British forebearer.
Niger ends military deal with US, paving the way for the expulsion of >1,000 Americans operating from a key drone base known as airbase 201 in Agadez.
Niger is the world’s 7th largest uranium producer (~5% of global output).
America out, Russia in?
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Two of the hardest hitting pages ever.
You might be surprised to learn that the author is Henry Kissinger.
It's page 40 and 41 of his Harvard undergrad thesis.
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I've used the phrase "Porcupine Country" before. The current situation in Yemen dramatically shows the concept.
One of the poorest countries on earth is disrupting global trade, costing multiple other countries billions.
Land invasion probably required to solve it. But of
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It's questionable if the novel is still relevant.
It's so painful to write/read about characters who spend most of the day on their phones.
Temptation is to set books in the past or far future.
The current year is un-writable.
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Af-Pak Remains the Key to Central Asia
After America’s calamitous defeat and withdrawal from Afghanistan, there is a temptation to forget about the entire region, to write off the entire effort as a pure loss. However, this would be a profound error. In the midst of Russia’s
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I'm not at all a doctrinaire isolationist.
But US hegemony barely (and somewhat unexpectedly) survived the last middle east forever war.
Can't think of a quicker way to really end it than engaging in round 2.
It's not winnable.
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We see how profoundly westerners lack a theory of mind for groups like Hamas.
"Why would they attack a country that provides their running water and electricity?"
Failure to grasp that some humans really are not motivated in any way by personal safety or comfort.
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This is one of the more reliable laws of history.
Abrahamic religious tend to react to low living standards by having more children. Like in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Mali, etc.
Seculars however will crash their birthrates in response to even quite minor economic hardships.
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None of these outcomes will seem remotely normal, nor will any resemble America as we have known it.
Low prediction will be an extremely aged, stagnant country with extensive abandonment. Demographics ~50% minority (similar to current under 18s). Kind of a Latin feeling,
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Over-population is, for lack of a better word, good.
The Seas were sailed and the West was settled because people couldn't afford farms in the old home town, etc.
History is driven by what amounts to housing/food price pressure forcing expansion, war, exploration, invention.
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Reading "The Rise of the West" by W.H. McNeill.
One great point is that exhausted civilizations are often revived or "internally conquered" by their own semi-barbarous offshoots from a border area.
The culture of an imperial border area becomes syncretic with the outer
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This is an extraordinary statistic on so many levels.
Basically the 20 the largest countries by "effective population."
The USA is the only fully developed country in the top 20!
In a category of its own, combining 1st world legacy wealth with top 10 population size.
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His model society shows very little sign of being eternal.
Current TFR 1.1.
It's a machine that eliminates its occupants.
"I don’t think in terms of the next election, I think in terms of eternity." (LEE KUAN YEW 'Father of Modern Singapore')
This is e/acc's whole vibe
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Or we might say that secular people tend to create high GDP conditions, but are also extremely dependent on such conditions.
So when we see a fall from a prior high GDP state in an effectively secular population, there is mass despair, demoralization, and population collapse.
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Movements such as the Taliban largely spread by offering Sharia courts as an alternative to tribal adjudications.
The Sharia courts are perceived as less harsh, especially by women.
In an odd way, the Taliban is a movement of lawyers.
@olafgalvan3
@AHVanBuskirk
Yes, you are exactly correct. People don't realize that the Taliban was popular with so many Afghanis precisely because they put a stop to many tribal "abuses". They are really a homegrown civilizational movement, even if distasteful to Western sensibilities.
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The pessimistic hypothetical outcome of history is very simple to express.
Developed populations dwindle endlessly in numbers due to birth collapse, while easy-to-access resources are consumed to the point of exhaustion, both by burgeoning 3rd world populations and extreme
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As it turns out, there are many ways to "develop" and very few of them ever yield the type of Western consumer lifestyle everyone expects.
You can get to Life Expectancy of 76, low TFR, be selling robotic death machines, and still not have any broad affluence in the US sense.
Turkey is weird because it has the manufacturing capacity of a high income country, e.g. it now produces as much steel as Germany and is a fairly big exporter of various electronics & consumer goods, yet also purchasing power comparable to a low-income one.
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Imagine an alternate universe where Moby Dick was never published.
If someone discovered the unknown manuscript in an attic in 2023, and passed it off as their own work, they wouldn't be hailed as a genius.
It would just be rejected. Moby Dick is unpublishable today.
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Read a surprisingly good piece in the Atlantic arguing that, above and beyond issues of translation, the Iliad is illegible to modern westerners because it depicts an Honor Culture.
Without special background, the fundamental motivations of characters aren't relatable.
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My original "big picture" article now hits the Print Edition of Palladium!
A demographically aging world will be increasingly divided between sparsely-populated old rural areas and ever-denser youthful giga-cities, "metropoles," argues
@AHVanBuskirk
.
Neither borders nor cultural critiques will do much to stop this.
Read here:
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It's interesting to read "All the Pretty Horses" and "No Country for Old Men" together.
All The Pretty Horses deals with the post-1900 taming, fencing and privatization/closure of the American West, there is a notable line where the characters ask "how do they expect you to
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America has very strong numbers versus the rest of the world going forward after 2030. I've written about this.
But right now we are in "The Crisis of the 2020s." USA needs to emerge from this crisis in a strong position to capitalize on its long term advantages.
It's
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It's clear that JD Vance represents an extremely novel and perhaps incompletely harmonized fusion of multiple Republican tendencies.
"Left Behind" style Rust Belt MAGA + Ivy League Law Catholic + W. Coast Tech, and even the party of GWB when it comes to his rhetoric on Iran!
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The math behind this statement is extremely simple.
But the great majority of global leaders and elites appear to genuinely not understand that depicting/encouraging the 2 child family as a norm guarantees population collapse.
2 child norm = TFR 1.5 or less.
Yes, thinking that families of 2 kids are "replacement" fertility is an example of innumeracy.
Once you account for single/infertile people, the "typical" family must have 3 or even 4 kids in order to assure true replacement and long term survival of the group.
Few grasp this!
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Oddly enough, USA is notable for almost never experiencing signficant ethnic-based rioting by immigrants.
This is particularly extraordinary considering the vast numbers of 1st gen immigrants currently in the USA.
The logic of “decolonising Britain” would therefore lead to the abandonment of multiculturalism in favour of French-style assimilationism. However, as France tragically shows, that approach also falls far short of the ideal in terms of the results.
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Joe Biden may be remembered as one of the most consequential post-war American presidents, for his role in preventing the fall of Kiev and Odessa in the initial Russian offensive.
It was the ultimate near miss for the American-led World System.
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This is an important point.
You can't call the "bottom" of population collapse until the TFR increases back up to 2.1.
Very counter-intuitive but think about it.
@inner_scorecard
But that isn't the bottom of shrinkage. 1.36 means every generation is much smaller than the prior, and infinitum.
To call a "bottom" you would actually have to see recovery of TFR to 2+.
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Bad relations with places like Venezuela are a "luxury belief."
It's of the utmost importance for the USA to suppress oil prices at this time.
Can't afford unnecessary beefs with major producers, especially in New World.
Huge news:
US and Venezuela have reached a deal where US lowers sanctions on VZ oil production; in exchange, Maduro will allow free and competitive elections next year.
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It's a mistake to imagine that you are very smart and leaders are very dumb.
When you dig into Afghanistan, it's very clear why the GWB administration wished to install a friendly government there.
Didn't work out but it wasn't just random stupidity by any means. Success in
Af-Pak Remains the Key to Central Asia
After America’s calamitous defeat and withdrawal from Afghanistan, there is a temptation to forget about the entire region, to write off the entire effort as a pure loss. However, this would be a profound error. In the midst of Russia’s
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The coming "Quiet World" is one of my more important concepts.
Much of the developing/middle income world seems headed towards low birthrates, high life expectancy, flat or declining populations, zero growth.
It won't develop or industrialize in the conventional sense at all.
Declining birth rates in the developing world won’t decrease the rate of immigration to the developed world
If anything, it will increase, as these countries will miss their demographic dividend and will never experience industrial takeoff
There’s a world model of the future
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There is a lot that goes into this refusal to surrender.
Food calories are much more abundant, states are reluctant to starve civilians, and often other states will give aid during war.
Small arms and IEDs are far more effective, allow insurgents to meaningfully contest
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The USSR at least partly lost the cold war and collapsed due to an extreme abortion culture.
This was much more significant that the losses of WWII in holding the growth of the Russian population behind the USA.
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Few "original" traditional cultures show much resistance to modernity.
Once education and electricity arrive fertility rapidly converges towards a Western norm.
It looks like true "resistant" forms will be neo-traditional patterns developed by interaction with modernity.
The thing is...many homogenous, patriarchal, insular cultures in the 21st century are not high fertility. And the proportion that are not increases with each passing decade.
No simple answers...
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The most recent "great American novel" was All The Pretty Horses. Even though I don't like the style.
Picked up where Lonesome Dove left off.
Depicted the 20th century American West as a fenced and owned space, and the deadly fascination of Mexico as the last frontier.
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WILL GREATER PERSIA RISE AGAIN? Part 2
A Developed Iran and a Poor Hinterland
From the perspective of the eastern Persian world, Iran is a comparatively developed and industrialized nation, an appealing destination for migration and a possible partner for development.
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In Defense of Nostalgia
It is often argued that artistic, architectural, or aesthetic nostalgia is a purely arbitrary taste, a mere desire for things slightly older than the present.
To an extent this is true, particularly regarding ironic or forced, hipsterish, nostalgia for
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In non-socially modernized populations, war and hardship often result in increased births.
But once a population is socially modernized, this does not happen.
Any perceived hardship (even if objectively very minor) results in a birth crash for moderns.
Yemen's sky-high fertility rate (~children per woman) has been confirmed by the recent MIC Survey 2022-2023.
The fertility rate has risen to 4.6 from 4.3 a decade earlier.
It can be estimated the country likely has ~1.2-1.3 million births annually (similar no. to Russia).
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The relationship between "wealth" and architecture is counter-intuitive.
Complex societies with low wages ("poor") create substantial and impressive architecture.
But societies with high individual wages ("rich") tend to create a flimsy and disposable built environment.
As
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Sunday Book Review. Recently finished The Balochistan Conundrum by
@tilakdevasher1
.
Excellent and I think it's the first place anyone should go if interested in Balochistan. The works cited section also provides a roadmap for further learning.
I'm a little embarrassed because
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One thing that hasn't really "sunk in" is the zero-sum nature of modern populations.
Since native populations don't increase (and actually decrease) growth in one place mandates distressing decline in another.
Every new house in Phoenix is an abandoned house in Buffalo!
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The French Algerian war is of great importance in this discussion, as it reflected the transfer of the Maoist concept of prolonged war or "war without surrender" into the Islamic context.
This method has become core to Islamic and global south resistance to larger powers.
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Correct, and also the lack of electricity is part of *why* it has such a large population.
Human populations grow much faster when there is limited access to electricity.
Access to food and fuel increase population, yet electricity is different, reduces birthrates greatly.
This is why Congo has such a big population but you rarely hear from them online
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Theories of fairly rapid demographic "bounce back" are probably fantasies.
Another reason for this is that even younger generations returning to TFR 2.1 (and they absolutely won't) will not halt population decline.
This is because the younger cohorts themselves are already
Demographic decline creates a cycle where less children cause the infrastructure that supports future children to collapse. The Korea Institute of Child Care & Education reports by 2028 1/3 of daycare centers+kindergartens will close due to low birthrate.
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Has Mr. Hawley considered that his predictable reaction may be part of the strategic reason that these seemingly insane events were contrived?
Israel is facing existential threat. Any funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately
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Pakistan might be the nation with the highest "variance" in its future outcomes.
If it holds together, will be a top 5 country by 2050, population 350 million plus.
But non-zero odds of monstrous implosion, which would itself be a very major global event.
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Hamas appears to be using what we might call "mass strategy."
An approach where a numerous, young, and less developed population uses tolerance of both military and civilian casualties as a asymmetric weapon against a more developed population.
Archeo-futurism.
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The other thing about space is we falsely assume it to be an endeavor purely of technophiles, rather than biophiles, or philosophers and mystics.
This is an illusion of the earliest stages. You can only go so far on freeze dried rations and "astronauts."
Beyond a certain
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Is it too early to discuss a "Korean Solution" in the Ukraine?
Lines solidify about where they are now.
Ukraine enters NATO and perhaps EU, NATO forces camp out on W. Bank of Dnieper.
Probably a major USA base in vicinity of Odessa.
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A true multi-polar world would lead to a frenzied nuclear arms race, where every country with pretentions to sovereignty rushes to buy/develop bombs and medium range delivery systems.
Not sure we want a future where Sudan and Ethiopia are lobbing dirty fission at each other.
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If there is one thing we have learned, it's the futility of the attempt to impose Western institutions.
In the next 30 years, if the USA needs an alliance with Afghans (or other Muslims) it must take them strictly as they are.
And give them real tangible benefit for alliance.
@AHVanBuskirk
The problem with Afghanistan was they tried to establish an administrative democratic state on what is fundamentally an Islamic tribal people. The civilizing project would have required decades. The implementation wasn't bad, the time horizon was just wrong.
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It appears clear that our society urgently needs to decouple things like health care from employment.
The employer-based social services network has been obsolete for some time and AI is posed to disrupt it entirely.
The time for a replacement is now, not mid-crisis.
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I think Spengler and Toynbee share a core error.
Along with Glubb, they see the current global civilization as merely the latest part of the regular "rise and fall" cycle that has been occurring since Ur.
But it seems more like a change in the meta-cycle, a larger paradigm
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We like to pretend that the issue is lack of supply.
It's more awkward to discuss that the issue appears to be lack of generational "turn over."
Society has never built an entirely new set of homes for each new generation.
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Yes Algeria was the prototype.
Despite drastic military inferiority, the Algerians simply exhausted the willingness of the French to endure casualties and inflict atrocity.
And there were more Algerians at the end of the war than when it started!
Same as Afghanistan.
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American has thousands of cats on kidney dialysis, we are doing organ transplants on pets.
The money is there.
To keep the gravy train of private consumption going, a slightly increased percent of that consumption may need to be diverted towards the national interest.
Americans narrowly defining their national interests as limited to “saving” budget “pennies” are overlooking serious 2nd order effects from its potentially diminished international role and presence.
Are you enjoying the glorious “multipolarity” yet?
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Another thing I highly disagree on is the faddish idea that "piracy" will somehow close the sea lanes and end globalization.
It's a fantasy popular with people who have a pre-existing desire for globalism to end.
#1
is that China would almost certainly step in if the USA
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Possibly the single most coherent hypothetical explanation for Modern America is that the post-war big brains calculated the odds of strategic nuclear exchange at nearly 100%, and engineered a nation that could "win" a nuclear war.
Via dispersal, redundancy, "inefficiency."
@AHVanBuskirk
someone had a great thread on this last year i think. the gist was “yes, the way our country has modernized seems dumb, *until* you look at it in this light, and then it’s very smart”
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Hermann Kahn on the "Failures of Success." From 1976, The Next 200 Years.
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None of this stuff matters.
We see countries with free day care, free healthcare, subsidized housing, long parental leave . . .
And none really have much higher birthrates that the USA where people are pulling out their own teeth and fixing lacerations with superglue.
"In Austria the cost of a nursery place for two kids is 3% of an average woman's income, whereas in Switzerland it costs 64% of her income, and those countries have the exact same birthrate"
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In the current time, we are able to see some counter-intuitive answers to the Fermi paradox.
It appears that the level of development needed to launch a species into space causes various forms of demoralization, long before the space tech arrives.
We are of course seeing this
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Consider that middle easterners organized as irregulars or semi-irregulars will very often defeat a conventional Army made up of their own co-ethnics.
Combat effectiveness can be actively reduced by imposing western-style military organization.
Genuine question: why are Arab militaries (in general) so incompetent? Even countries like Iran and Pakistan have semi-competent militaries.
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For instance, are Hamas an effective/well equipped military force compared with the IDF? No.
Did they surrender as a result of this? No.
Will Israel obtain a satisfying resolution this year? Unlikely.
Will some element of the Hamas strategic goal be achieved? Probably.
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Sometimes material "progress" really is just a dead end.
If you criticized orange shag in 1965, you would have been laughed at as a deluded Luddite.
But the shag really was "wrong." It didn't stand the test of time at all.
It was a false future.
There are, I fear, intellectually fashionable people all around us who would gladly rip out the hardwood floors of our tradition to put down cheap, trendy carpet.
Their ideas will age about as well as orange shag.
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I think the maximum reasonable degree of American "isolationism" would be a hemispheric mindset, with an emphasis on employing Mexican and Central American labor in situ via American corporations with operations in Latin America.
It's the median age issue again.
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The middle way might be called "Dune Futurism."
Combination of a taboo against transhumanism, with pro-natalism, and the active embrace of technical advance and expansion.
Needs to be a 3rd approach in addition to agrarian/barbarian return or transhumanism.
@AHVanBuskirk
I think there is a tension in the West atm. The tech-aligned group is continuing the Faustian will (space exploration, AI, transhumanism) and another reactionary one is turning inward and wants to settle into some form of the provincial past with traditionalism and agrarianism.
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We could say that there is an "aging inflection" point occurring when a population's median age crosses beyond max female reproductive age.
For instance Japan (48), Italy (46.5), etc.
These populations have crossed the Rubicon of aging, and no one knows where the bottom is.
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For that matter, your grandchildren may find it pleasant or convenient to live in Hokkaido.
The age of depopulation may also be an age of great migration.
Many will again have the iconic American experience of occupying new frontiers.
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We can witness the development of the Western aesthetic of the sublime via reactions to the English Lake District.
In 1720, Defoe found it hideous. But by 1802, Wordsworth was writing poems about its beauty.
The eye of the early industrial age "saw" something entirely new.
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One non-obvious fact about history is that most peoples in most places could not increase their numbers. More births just equaled more mortality, not population increase. Malthusian equilibrium.
When we read of great conquests, its very likely that the hidden pre-requisite was
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Also consider the (apparently) massive Guyana oil fields.
I'm sure that bringing Guyana on-line is a huge if quiet priority for the USA.
A flood of non-OPEC, W. Hemisphere crude would be game changing.
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Many find it odd that the new commanding general of the Ukraine (Srysky) speaks Russian, was born in Soviet Russia, and studied at the Red Army academy in Moscow.
It's not odd if you understand this as a civil war or a war of independence among the "3 Russias."
Putin's
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And here we have a major Afghan figure visiting the Chabahar Port, regarding the transit corridor.
As discussed in my pinned article.
I see little Western media coverage of these momentous events.
My "Twitter articles" seem to be the only detailed coverage!
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Akhund, the Deputy PM of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, visited
#Chabahar
Port on his visit to Iran.
On his visit, Baradar stressed the increase of Afghanistan's exports and imports through Chabahar port.
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Africa will certainly be a populous market and an interesting economic zone, with possibilities including vast new irrigated agriculture projects.
But to create a "powerhouse" many of the current borders would have to go.
Africa powerhouse would be a new billion+ polity on the
Africa will be demographic (and economic) powerhouse of next century
• Nigeria, Egypt, Tanzania, Ethiopia, DRC will account for over half of global population growth by 2050
• Africa will account for 38% of global population by 2100, with - crucially - young population
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You could argue that a truly rational leader would maximize birthrate, and also create conditions that force his people to migrate internationally.
He would not be loved, but in the long run this would maximize the "global footprint" of the ethnos he was guiding.
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It's not necessary to speculate about Russian involvement in the Gaza events to note how favorable these events are for RU.
Already many (including those who were neutral or negative on the Ukraine effort) are calling for massive USA aid to Israel.
As well as the obvious
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Have you considered the strategic importance of Balochistan?
China has constructed a massive new port complex along the Balochistani coast of Pakistan, in Gwadar.
This port is essentially the terminus of the Karakorum Highway, which leads from Kashgar in Xinjiang.
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I think Western strategists would benefit from a study of global Maoism.
The modern insurgency might not be ideologically Maoist, but "prolonged warfare" has become the standard recipe for obtaining strategic victory over Western forces, despite tactical inferiority.
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One issue is that the "effective population" of the USA is much smaller than it appears.
Max age for enlistment is 35, while national median age is 38. Most adults are too old.
Of people on the street young enough to serve, quite a few are illegal immigrants with no SSN.
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My honest advice would have to be:
"No nation is sovereign if it lacks strategic nuclear weapons with 1,000+ mile delivery systems."
I'm sorry but that is the truth.
Knowing what you know now, what lesson would you give to the Muslims of the 1980s?
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The other serious contender for a Great American Novel are the first 4 books of the Dune series by Frank Herbert.
America is all about the future and no work has explored the possibilities of the far future with such detail and vision.
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Here are a couple charts to ponder.
The USA invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan had no negative effect on population growth.
In fact both populations continued to grow rapidly.
Example of the "non-modern" response to hardship, war and death.
But if you applied similar (or
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The biggest "Alpha" right now would be for any developed country to find a way to reduce median age.
Any country that can do this with native population would at once become the real "country of the future."
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China has severe demographic issues but also has extreme population momentum.
In the present moment, China has 19 million persons reaching military age annually.
USA has only 4.3 million.
China won't be militarily impaired by aging until perhaps the 2050 time frame!
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Another huge factor in strategic nuclear resilience is the sheer size of the West versus Russia.
Russia has to spread its ordinance among literally hundreds of target cities across multiple continents to really end the West.
Whereas the West can pour roughly the same amount of
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Depopulation is synergistic with a behavior of "packing" into one urban area.
Japan, S. Korea, Spain, all of them have a primary city that seems "packed."
These metros will still be busy when extensive rural areas and small towns are literally vacant.
South Korea’s birth rate is very low, and continuing to plunge
But the major cities feel very crowded. Seoul is dense and very busy. You wouldn’t intuit that a population bust is imminent from visiting
Which, I think, is part of the problem. Housing is small. The city is
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What I'm getting at is the upside for USA is 30-50 years of continued wealth and global power.
Downside is potentially a USSR-style economic and social collapse.
There is no "safe" option. We are far beyond all that.
It's a win or lose binary.
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Some very serious people are realizing something similar to what I wrote about this
@palladiummag
article.
USA has legs in the post-2030 period.
Rivals want to inflict a big loss before their comparative advantage fades out.
"The more dangerous [the world is], the more real it gets. I believe it's about to get very real. Why? Because our GDP growth is stronger than China's. The rational consequence of that is that our adversaries will be like 'America is going to be stronger tomorrow than today'"
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The end game for societies that weather the demographic transition is to stabilize into "columnar population."
Not a pyramid. Number of 65 year-olds roughly the same as 5 year-olds.
Total population much lower than today.
Median age is half of life expectancy, so 40-45.
Yeah, but this is just a temporary problem, right? We have a lot of old people because we are at the beginning of this new period of low fertility and so we have a mismatch between the number of young and number of old. But those old people will die and they’re not being
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The ability of a country like Yemen or Afghanistan to endure causalities is almost inconceivable to the Western mind.
They could probably lose 500K a year without the population shrinking.
*Update: posted earlier now corrected.*
Yemen now has more births per year than Russia, far more than Germany or Japan.
In a few decades it must end up with a larger population than Russia.
The future is Yemeni.
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In other words "return to 2.1" is seen as a nearly impossible goal that would fix the problem.
In reality it still would not fix the looming disaster for places like Korea or Italy.
They are going to lose at least 50% of national populations in foreseeable future.
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Yes. Insurance red tape and so forth definitely does increase costs.
But even if this was fixed, the basic cost of the service at issue remains extremely high.
There is no way (other than subsidy) to make a service cheap when the persons rendering it make 100-500K.
@AHVanBuskirk
@kan_immanuel
The root issue is the rising cost of medical care
You shouldn’t need to tap the risk pool for routine care
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Since the Neolithic, technical progress has steadily risen.
But it's not a straight line, when you zoom in, many ups and downs make up the rising trend line.
In the moment, this may cause the illusion of regression.
Time to exceed the "highs" of the 1970s.
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