Recently, I have been reading many headlines on the current and looming population decline around the world. I have read headlines like «China’s first population decline in decades points to looming demographic crisis», or «Population decrease is irreversible. How do we manage the decline of humanity?» and so on and so on.
According to my latest information, there are 8 billions of us and increasing. Yes, there are regions and countries that have lost population, such as Japan losing 5 million in 15 years, or Italy losing 2 million since 2014, and some other ones. It is also true that countries such as France, Germany, United Kingdom, and China are expected to see population declines in the coming years.
The other day, I was thinking about this question/issue when I came across yet another alarming article, and thought about the following:
On the one hand we raise alarm about population declines, and on the other, we raise alarm about AI taking away jobs, food supplies becoming insufficient to feed people, and the environment suffering from an increasing population abusing it.
It seems as though the growth addiction that has fed the business world, is actually a deep seated pathological condition of humans which pushes us to see anything other than GROWTH as negative (except for cancer cells)!
Let’s take China, the most populated country, which is expected to lose its long held title to India. I recall some time ago, I was talking to one of my old professors who has been researching Asia. He said that according to a simulation (I do not have the source, so I have to trust his word), if China’s government administration were working as efficiently as that of France, which is not necessarily the most efficient, the country would have to lay-off 20 million government employees!!!
I am not going to rampage on a socioeconomic argument on demographics and population study, but instead of throwing another fear mongering curve ball in our media, I wish we would spend real effort to make sure we try to create a world more equitable, instead of having top 1% holding over 40% of the wealth, or sending our young men, and increasingly young women, to war fronts and to their deaths.
Paris, March 9, 2023
Zeejay