At this point population decline is a bigger risk than population growth.
There is a LOT of slack in the participation rate. Those workers exist and many of them will likely move back to the workforce if the wages adjust upward to be a more lucrative job due to scarcity.
Sure, it's not going to look the same in 2050, but the economy will just run at 80% participation rate then, rather than 62% now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_noninstitutional_popu...
Only if the economic system is a giant ponzi scheme that depends on continuous, infinite growth.
Really, high population is the source of an enormous amount of problems. We should absolutely be focused on decreasing our population. The planet can support us at our current (and higher) populations, but to be frank, liberal democracies and capitalist markets at-scale are incapable of organizing production in a way that doesn't destroy the earth.
It's funny, there was a post recently about "unsolved problems in economics." Nowhere was there a mention of the biggest economic problem in existence: externalities. Why? Because capitalism is incapable of solving the problem, and the economists know this, so they don't bother talking about it. They pretend it's an issue of state, when the profit mechanism itself is the cause for most externalities.
If we want to preserve our current precious economic order, we need lower populations.
Blanket statements like that are so clearly false and I’m not sure what you’re implying. What is communism’s record on environmental protection? Well, we can go to China or Russia for some clues.
HUMANS aren’t good at understanding externalities. Of course this isn’t some new realization, we’ve known about the tragedy of the commons for some time which is why we have regulation.
Fundamentally, economics needs to adopt realistic system-level concepts, such as 'primary production' (gross photosynthetic input to a system like a lake). Then you can actually start to calculate how productive a hectare of land can be. This also clearly explains why concepts like 'infinite growth in a closed system' are so nonsensical.
As far as capitalism, it's important to note the huge differences between 'investment capitalism' (Wall Street) and 'commodity capitalism' (Main Street). The latter is much more rationale, as it's not based on fairy dust, but actual real things, like farmers growing potatoes. Similarly, there are many areas of the economy that are best managed without any market influence, but rather by state-managed tax-financed programs (basic infrastructure development for example).
That short term bias keeps one alive for another day in our original biological state as hunter-gatherers, which we still are. But it's a pretty crappy quality at planetary scale.
Pure market thinkers say that when you pollute a river, it will create a new market to clean up the river. That makes no sense as you might as well not pollute the river in the first place, so you can't claim efficiency. More importantly, this market to clean up the river does not spontaneously come into existence, as nobody is going to place an order for a clean river. It requires political will, which is easily corrupted, just like regulation.
I would agree that communism would not solve this problem either.
We, as citizens, are equally guilty of this outcome. The politician that plans for the cleaning up of the river will lose from the politician that builds a new sports stadium.
Surely there is no one this naive.
I was pretty clear.
I'll break it down for you though! I have costs, and I have sales. sales - costs = margin (or, profit). If my sales are steady, what's a good method of increasing margin? Reducing costs! How is this generally accomplished? By making some other sap pay for them: externalizing my costs.
The profit mechanism actively incentivizes externalities. This is plain fact, and there's nothing "clearly false" about it. Our economic system encourages externalities, and then builds enormous state apparatuses to quell the effects. You're free to ignore the facts, though.
> What is communism’s record on environmental protection?
How is this relevant? And why is state planning the only solution in people's minds to replacing capitalist markets? There's more than either/or here.
> HUMANS aren’t good at understanding externalities.
We understand them fine. We're being literally paid to create them, though.
> which is why we have regulation.
Yeah, that's working great so far!
They also have many ways for dealing with them.
> Only if the economic system is a giant ponzi scheme that depends on continuous, infinite growth.
Just because growth is good for a system doesn't make it a Ponzi scheme (or some other type of scam). Population decrease _obviously_ harms economies because it leads to fewer young people willing to take on entry-level jobs and more elderly people who aren't working anymore. That's not to say it can't be managed - economic growth is also driven by technological advancements which aren't directly dependent on population growth. But a decline in population would inarguably have _some_ kind of negative impact which would need to be handled correctly.
> liberal democracies and capitalist markets at-scale are incapable of organizing production in a way that doesn't destroy the earth
That's an incredibly bold claim with absolutely no evidence supporting it. And you seem to imply that there exists some other system distinct from whatever you call "capitalism" which can organize production in a less harmful way - again with no evidence.
In general, recent growth of rich "capitalist" countries has significantly outstripped their energy use (an imperfect metric of environmental harm, I know, but it's what I could find) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.GDP.PUSE.KO.PP?locat....
> It's funny, there was a post recently about "unsolved problems in economics."
IIRC that post was only kind of accurate at best. Popular culture's understanding of economics is hilariously bad.
> Because capitalism is incapable of solving the problem, and the economists know this, so they don't bother talking about it. They pretend it's an issue of state, when the profit mechanism itself is the cause for most externalities.
From where are you pulling the notion that "capitalism" (for some definition of that word) is incompatible with managing externalities? Or that economists somehow just ignore the existence of externalities?
This kind of attitude is distressingly common online and to me it seems no different from the mentality of anti-vaxxers. Just because a field of science is imperfect and distorted to some extent by government/corporate agendas doesn't give you carte blanche to throw out every bit of research ever done and substitute your own reality.
Privately-owned productive instruments using a profit-based, moneyed system of distributed production (necessarily with state-based control mechanisms).
> That's an incredibly bold claim with absolutely no evidence supporting it.
Besides the planet we live on? Are you suggesting that if we do everything the same as we have been for the past 100 years, that everything will be fine? Why haven't markets started incorporating the known costs of fossil fuel usage at-scale? What about the countries made of plastic floating in the oceans? Why is the price of single-use plastics still low? Why is planned obsolescence cheaper even though the long-term shared costs are much higher?
Why are we still using an economic system where the price of something and the known cost has such an enormous differential?
> And you seem to imply that there exists some other system distinct from whatever you call "capitalism" which can organize production in a less harmful way - again with no evidence.
Capitalism is just a protocol. There are other protocols available to us (that are distinct from state planning) that can organize production. As far as evidence of them, how would that work? Capitalism is the dominant economic system and actively stamps out any other economic systems. There's fun little experiments like Rojova or EZLN, but nothing at-scale.
If you want an example of such a protocol, you can look at one that I'm developing: https://basisproject.net/
> From where are you pulling the notion that "capitalism" (for some definition of that word) is incompatible with managing externalities? Or that economists somehow just ignore the existence of externalities?
Capitalism, at least in its current form, is incapable of managing externalities because it ignores their existence. It operates on the principles of determining the differential between supply and demand via pricing and profit...this is an overly simplistic mechanism which provides no other information inputs for managing known externalities. It delegates this as a matter of the state. As an economic system, it is incomplete and externalizes its own "simplicity" to other systems.
> This kind of attitude is distressingly common online and to me it seems no different from the mentality of anti-vaxxers. Just because a field of science is imperfect and distorted to some extent by government/corporate agendas doesn't give you carte blanche to throw out every bit of research ever done and substitute your own reality.
I'm not substituting my own reality, and frankly that's fairly insulting. I believe I've described the mechanism at play several times, yet it feels like I'm screaming into the void.
Do you or do you not agree that the profit mechanism incentivizes externalities? If so, do you agree that if a productive system using profit as the organizational lynchpin is scaled, the externalities will scale with it? If so, do you agree that there is a threshold beyond which many externalities cannot be absorbed by the system at large (eg, CO2 output)? If so, then you've reached the same conclusion that I have. This isn't rocket science.