This was such a great article. Thank you! If I may, I would like to boldly offer a resource that I think might be very helpful in this conversation. Written by worldview speaker and author, Darrow Miller, this book offers perspective and wisdom from the past with strategy for the forming of the future. You, Mr Renn, are actually referenced in this book in chapter 3. http://occupytillicomebook.com
Childless chumps. We are sitting at the top of a roller-coaster big hill called, "Doom's Steep Decline." A declining population is doomed. Rural Japan is a ruin. The modern rural population has declined from 35% to 8%. The median age in rural Japan is >60. They will give you a house and some land if you will move out there. Schools, hospitals, transport- they are all disappearing. Japan has the oldest mean population in the world at ~49. It will plateau around 58. The TFR (birth rate) is at 1.22 - in fifty or sixty years, Japan will lose half its population.
The US is at a TFR of 1.6. Canada is at 1.25. The whole world is basically averaged out at 2.1 -ZPG has arrived ahead of schedule. South Korea is at 0.68, China is at 1.0 - that's one child per family, yes siree. Eu =~1.3. The transition has begun, all right. But the promise is - even dead cats bounce if they fall far enough. The transition looks like a depopulation bomb. And Renn looks like a chump ignoring the horrific demographics that are descending on our childless future.
Yeah. Sure. The TRF could get a lot worse, just like it has for at least the last forty years. What do you see reversing the disastrous global trend downward? Why are women going to choose to have more children?
The continuance and worsening of the K-shaped present is one possibility if the current course of deflating the debt through dollar debasement continues: those with assets are further enriched while those with savings/bonds and reliant on current income/pensions are further impoverished and trapped.
This is extraordinarily insightful. As a boomer religious leader, I find it strangely comforting to "see" what's happening so well-charted through various systems and structures. Faith, being the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, allows folks like me to live imaginatively in liminal space. I need to communicate that each and every Sunday to both the faithful and the doubtful.
I don't see the Boomers as our "iconic generation". At this point they are fading from the scene-- they are becoming has-beens.
Fame skipped my generation (the Xers). Today it's Millennials whose star is rising.
Tell that to Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, etc... but I agree that we Xers are under-represented.
Thanks for this wisdom, Aaron. Very well done.
Sounds very Strauss and Howe/Fourth Turning.
Maybe change the Institutions table to read "national interest?" instead of "isolationism?" It's more descriptive of the reality you're pointing to.
This was such a great article. Thank you! If I may, I would like to boldly offer a resource that I think might be very helpful in this conversation. Written by worldview speaker and author, Darrow Miller, this book offers perspective and wisdom from the past with strategy for the forming of the future. You, Mr Renn, are actually referenced in this book in chapter 3. http://occupytillicomebook.com
Childless chumps. We are sitting at the top of a roller-coaster big hill called, "Doom's Steep Decline." A declining population is doomed. Rural Japan is a ruin. The modern rural population has declined from 35% to 8%. The median age in rural Japan is >60. They will give you a house and some land if you will move out there. Schools, hospitals, transport- they are all disappearing. Japan has the oldest mean population in the world at ~49. It will plateau around 58. The TFR (birth rate) is at 1.22 - in fifty or sixty years, Japan will lose half its population.
The US is at a TFR of 1.6. Canada is at 1.25. The whole world is basically averaged out at 2.1 -ZPG has arrived ahead of schedule. South Korea is at 0.68, China is at 1.0 - that's one child per family, yes siree. Eu =~1.3. The transition has begun, all right. But the promise is - even dead cats bounce if they fall far enough. The transition looks like a depopulation bomb. And Renn looks like a chump ignoring the horrific demographics that are descending on our childless future.
"Trees do not grow up to the sky".
No trend endures indefinitely other than basic physical processes based on physical constants.
Yeah. Sure. The TRF could get a lot worse, just like it has for at least the last forty years. What do you see reversing the disastrous global trend downward? Why are women going to choose to have more children?
When circumstances are radically different from today, so that the "return" of having children is positive again as it was for most of history.
What will create circumstances radically different "for women" that they will want to bear more children? Honest question.
You neglected one major factor: DEBT
And the root of that problem: SPENDING
How those two are resolved will determine how much of your white space fills in.
The continuance and worsening of the K-shaped present is one possibility if the current course of deflating the debt through dollar debasement continues: those with assets are further enriched while those with savings/bonds and reliant on current income/pensions are further impoverished and trapped.
If this is true (which I believe it is and has been for decades), then why not invest in assets instead of complaining about the way things are?
Those who can, do (or should). But that K is not sustainable, especially if it extends for decades. It only ends in collapse or revolution.
Historically the only way any society has ever rebalanced its inequality has involved war, plague or some other highly lethal disaster.
You're repeating me.
This is extraordinarily insightful. As a boomer religious leader, I find it strangely comforting to "see" what's happening so well-charted through various systems and structures. Faith, being the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, allows folks like me to live imaginatively in liminal space. I need to communicate that each and every Sunday to both the faithful and the doubtful.
Your perspective aligns with mine.
https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/anthropological-reversibility-part