Population for Profit

Ever since I was a kid, there has been a conversation about the explosion in global population growth and there has been talk about the measures that can ease the burden. Often the countries that have "the problem" are poor countries, ravaged by war and economic crises, poor education and inadequate access to healthcare. A lot of the talk has been about how improving conditions reduces population growth, which has been seen as a good thing.

You might have seen something along these lines in the last couple days:

The government said on Tuesday that 9.56 million people were born in China last year, while 10.41 million people died. source

That is the first reduction in the population of China since the 1960s.

This is good, isn't it?

Afterall, no matter what we do individually to combat man-made climate change, if the global population keeps growing, it is going to counteract any benefits. So, shouldn't we want an aging population that will pour out of the bucket faster than it is filling up? The problem is of course, that since this isn't the world of Soylent Green where the elderly are turned into dry biscuits to feed the poor, the elderly want to be accommodated, fed, cared for, treated and valued.

The nerve of some people!

And, as we largely don't live in a world where family cares for family, in order to take care of the elderly, a very large number of people are required, from nurses to banking staff, builders to dry biscuit makers. But, a shrinking population causes problems with this, as at some point, there just aren't enough people to fill all the open positions and at least for now, as hard as they try, robots aren't replacing humans in key areas, otherwise restaurants wouldn't be short-staffed. And, then there are other issues like, where while much of the world is currently experiencing housing shortages due to investors and other supply issues, once the population declines enough, real estate goes into a freefall due to oversupply, though that will likely be some time away, especially in highly populated areas.

However, in countries like Finland with a population of about 5.5M people, the expectation is that there needs to be 200-300 thousand additional workers brought into the country to satisfy labor needs. That is an increase of foreign labor by over 5%, which is in effect doubling the amount of non-Finnish (like me) workers in the country. And since they will be brought in to fill jobs that Finns can't or won't do, it will mean that they hold skills that Finns don't have or don't want to use. It doesn't mean that there is full employment already.

That isn't going to cause any issues at all.

It should be obvious that there is an issue with the way we think about population and wellbeing, because if for example all the people living in slums in Indian cities were to live like "normal" people, the pollution it would cause would be enormous.

So would the cost.

But "cost" is not a very good way to frame it, is it? For example, one of the arguments against a lot of clean tech initiatives is the "cost" of it, but that makes very little sense, because of there is a cost to development, manufacturing and implementation, that is a profit. It is a stupid argument to not do something, because that is how an economy works - the economy is agnostic about what is demanded and supplied, it will work as it works regardless. It isn't too expensive to stop using oil in cars, it just isn't profitable for those selling oil and, the initial cost of the changeover is going to be enormous for the consumer. But, "enormous cost" means "enormous profits" for some group of companies and those employed by them, meaning it is still generating economic activity that will supplant the previous suppliers.

For an economy to work well, there has to be some kind of balance in the economic community. For a simplified instance, a tribe of 100 people would have hunters and gathers that would provide food, craftspeople who would make tools, and elders who would carry lore and learning and would teach it to the children to keep the cycle going. But, they also needed to make sure that they didn't overhunt, and perhaps worse, underhunt.

The more people "not doing much" yet still demanding, the faster the equilibrium is going to get out of sync, where the required supply isn't being "hunted and gathered" and the tools and learnings aren't being created and taught. Essentially, a skill gap forms, as well as labor shortage, which is where we are headed with aging populations and youth who think a viable career is making TikTok videos.

Only so many people can claim workless wealth before the economics fails and supply of real goods and services is unable to meet demand. This should of course balance in a free-market where the price/ cost/ profit of what is in demand will increase to move resources and fill the gaps, but that also implies that the skills required are relatively easily available, and the labor is willing. Have a look at the nursing and teaching industries and the labor shortages they have, and see that there is an issue - one of them being that the price paid to them hasn't gone up enough, even though there is demand for the service.

All of the aging population talk has nothing to do with anything, other than money, so don't get confused that it is otherwise, as when they talk about it, it is all about the economic impact of an aging population, not the wellbeing or health of society as a whole. And, the "cost" is nonsense, as essentially, cost is a meaningless metric, other than it being used to track activities in the economy, meaning that people get paid for actions that are deemed valuable and when they aren't deemed valuable, they don't get paid.

A healthy economy isn't the amount of money or whatever token is being passed from hand to hand, it is where performed activities that produce goods and services are aligned with the demand for the goods and services. A healthy economy could function without any tokenization at all, but we all should know how that turns out in a world of humans that are looking to do as little work for as much of the token as possible, so they can use that token to pay for the work they don't want to do. But, when enough people don't want to do the work, or can't - well, the economy collapses. As does it when enough people are doing the wrong work.

The current economy really is a mess, but it isn't just because the governments don't know how to handle finances. It is also because so many of us are doing the "wrong" activities for a healthy economy, which means that we are increasingly getting out of synchronization, even if we are hitting demand.

What I mean by this goes back to the agnostic economy, because economic activity doesn't care what we demand and supply - even if what we want, isn't what we need. But, the laws of economics dictates, if there is a demand, no matter the cost, someone will create the supply.

Want a better economy?

Demand it.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]