Less is More

On a recent episode of Plain English, Derek interviewed a demographer about the coming global population decline. I’ve seen this topic covered in various places and it’s almost always framed as a looming crisis.

I get why. Sort of. Much of our social, political, and economic systems are premised on growth. Growth is assumed to fuel increases in standards of living and drive economic prosperity and power in a competitive global economy. Growth is often the rising tide that makes various social policies affordable and successful.

But don’t most environmental challenges, including climate change, derive from overpopulation? More people means more pressure on limited natural resources. It’s not something folks like to talk about because the policy implications get dicey—who should be having kids, how many, and under what circumstances?

And if AI actually does eliminate jobs, might producing fewer workers actually be a good thing? It seems like something of a natural reset. There’s a lot of anti-capitalist talk out there right now—most of it critiquing wealth inequality, concentration of power, and unbridled growth. These are valid criticisms, though we’ve yet to see any viable alternatives. And certainly not ones that could function at the scale required.

Perhaps population decline is a chance for capitalism to figure out how to deal with de-growth. Fewer workers means more competition for those workers, implying higher wages and better working conditions. On the other hand, those workers are also customers and taxpayers. Reducing both of those will cause problems.

What role could technology play? So much of technological innovation is aimed at efficiency and eliminating jobs. The elimination part fuels profit margin, but the same force could be tuned as an adaptation to a declining population. How do we produce the same products and services with fewer people…for fewer customers?

Getting from here to there won’t be easy; we’re not set up for changes like this. But people built these systems and people can change them. Despite the challenges, a world with fewer people might just be the world we need.