For the fourteenth year running, Japan's population has slumped to a record low. The non-foreign population dropped by nearly 900,000 — an unprecedented fall.
Yeah, people forget that there are some real hard limits on how far population can fall. What people fail to realize is that our level of technology is actually a function of our population. Mass production and industrial society requires a certain minimum population level and population density. If things fell so far that there were only 100 million humans on Earth, that would have profound implications on the level of technology we able to deploy and maintain. Past certain points, you by necessity start regressing technologically. At a population of 100 million, we would probably end up with a technology level more like the early to mid 19th century. You just can’t maintain complex supply chains with so few people. Economies simplify, and you end up back in an agrarian state. At that point, most of the population is working on farms again. Suddenly children become an economic boon for a family farm, a source of labor as they were historically. Then the birth rate soars again. And of course at some point you can’t maintain factories that turn out millions of birth control pills.
I don’t think we will actually hit these kind of hard limits. I think cultural factors will cause the birth rate to recover long before we start seriously regressing technologically. But it shows that we’re not at any risk of extinction here. Even if cultural factors never cause the birth rate to recover, eventually technological regression will serve as a hard limit.
I can’t predict what exactly those numbers are where these limits kick in, but it’s pretty intuitive they exist. If your population density falls so far that you’re back at hunter-gatherer population levels, well you’re going to be living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Yeah, people forget that there are some real hard limits on how far population can fall. What people fail to realize is that our level of technology is actually a function of our population. Mass production and industrial society requires a certain minimum population level and population density. If things fell so far that there were only 100 million humans on Earth, that would have profound implications on the level of technology we able to deploy and maintain. Past certain points, you by necessity start regressing technologically. At a population of 100 million, we would probably end up with a technology level more like the early to mid 19th century. You just can’t maintain complex supply chains with so few people. Economies simplify, and you end up back in an agrarian state. At that point, most of the population is working on farms again. Suddenly children become an economic boon for a family farm, a source of labor as they were historically. Then the birth rate soars again. And of course at some point you can’t maintain factories that turn out millions of birth control pills.
I don’t think we will actually hit these kind of hard limits. I think cultural factors will cause the birth rate to recover long before we start seriously regressing technologically. But it shows that we’re not at any risk of extinction here. Even if cultural factors never cause the birth rate to recover, eventually technological regression will serve as a hard limit.
I can’t predict what exactly those numbers are where these limits kick in, but it’s pretty intuitive they exist. If your population density falls so far that you’re back at hunter-gatherer population levels, well you’re going to be living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.