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Comment by rocqua | Hacker News Reader

This blog series by Bret Devraux keeps bringing me back to the black death, and how that reformed labor relations.

I have heard about that a few times now. But this series really emphasizes how much surplus labor the rich could extract. And hence shows how much social impact it had when that labor reduced, and could suddenly negotiate.

I wonder if the black death, and subsequent social change, might have been the best thing to happen to the peasant class.

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I wonder what would happen given today’s demographic if mass migration was shut down. There may be similar change. But ruling class is hard at work to avoid that.

The black death killed a lot of people, but mostly the old and infirm. Europe was left an extremely young and dynamic place.

Today's demographic situation also involves a shrinking population, but it's for lack of young people. The world is getting a lot older really quickly, and that means less energetic and dynamic, and it means a lot of resources flowing to older unproductive people.

Still less work hands would mean change of balance between the capital and the labour. The changes in real estate pricing, which is one of the main expenses for labour, would be massive.

It doesn't really mean that because there isn't a forever fixed amount of labor being bidded on by the workforce. That side of the market is also dynamic. As population ages and then shrinks, labor demand will also shrink. If supply and demand shrink in tandem, wages don't increase.

Real estate bubble would pop for simple reason that were would be significantly less people overall.

And much lower real estate prices could amortize a lot of wages shrinking, from labour perspective.

Real estate bubble won't pop with a shrinking population, because shrinking populations retreat to city centers. Spain, Italy, Japan, and Korea are full of $10,000 houses and all of them are overpriced. Meanwhile, Madrid, Rome, Tokyo, and Seoul are, without hyperbole, more expensive than they've ever been.

Japan or Korea are not shrinking that much, but they’re getting older. Give it a couple decades when last bigger generations start vanishing entirely en masse.

Japan is already shrinking a million people per year, and Korea about 100k, but both are accelerating. It won't be long before Korea is also shrinking a million people per year.

My personal guess about this is that wealthy people tend to lock wealth away in unproductive but safe ventures instead of value production. When there is a large labor population decrease and labor can demand more of the wealth of a society, they tend to use that wealth in a more productive way for the average person and that leads to social flourishing. Hence, I am not at all worried about the decrease in population - that will increase the power of labor and unlock a lot of horded wealth towards actually productive ends, not whatever dumb or safe shit rich people think is smart.

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