The Population BustSeptember/October 2019 221
focusing society on reducing costs
(which technology is already doing)
rather than maximizing output. But those
policies would likely be met in the short
term by furious opposition from business
interests, policymakers, and governments,
all o whom would claim that such
attitudes are defeatist and could spell an
end not just to growth but to prosperity
and high standards o living, too. In
the absence o such policies, the danger o
the coming shift will be compounded by
a complete failure to plan for it.
Dierent countries will reach the
breaking point at dierent times.
Right now, the demographic deÇation is
happening in rich societies that are able
to bear the costs o slower or negative
growth using the accumulated store o
wealth that has been built up over genera-
tions. Some societies, such as the United
States and Canada, are able to temporarily
oset declining population with
immigration, although soon, there won’t
be enough immigrants left. As for the
billions o people in the developing world,
the hope is that they become rich before
they become old. The alternative is not
likely to be pretty: without sucient per
capita aÍuence, it will be extremely
dicult for developing countries to
support aging populations.
So the demographic future could end
up being a glass hal full, by ameliorating
the worst eects o climate change and
resource depletion, or a glass hal empty,
by ending capitalism as we know it. Either
way, the reversal o population trends is a
paradigm shift o the ¿rst order and one
that is almost completely unrecognized.
We are vaguely prepared for a world o
more people; we are utterly unprepared
for a world o fewer. That is our future,
and we are heading there fast.∂inÇation. No capitalist economic system
operates on the presumption that there
will be zero or negative growth. No
one deploys investment capital or loans
expecting less tomorrow than today.
But in a world o graying and shrinking
populations, that is the most likely
scenario, as Japan’s aging, graying, and
shrinking absolute population now
demonstrates. A world o zero to negative
population growth is likely to be a world
o zero to negative economic growth,
because fewer and older people consume
less. There is nothing inherently problem-
atic about that, except for the fact that
it will completely upend existing ¿nancial
and economic systems. The future
world may be one o enough food and
abundant material goods relative to
the population; it may also be one in
which capitalism at best frays and at
worst breaks down completely.
The global ¿nancial system is already
exceedingly fragile, as evidenced by
the 2008 ¿nancial crisis. A world with
negative economic growth, industrial
capacity in excess o what is needed, and
trillions o dollars expecting returns
when none is forthcoming could spell a
series o ¿nancial crises. It could even
spell the death o capitalism as we know
it. As growth grinds to a halt, people may
well start demanding a new and dierent
economic system. Add in the eects o
automation and arti¿cial intelligence,
which are already making millions o jobs
redundant, and the result is likely a future
in which capitalism is increasingly passé.
I population contraction were
acknowledged as the most likely future,
one could imagine policies that might
preserve and even invigorate the basic
contours o capitalism by setting much
lower expectations o future returns and