How Can It Be A Surprise When You Knew It Was Happening?
Humans took millions of years to evolve into their different distinct population groups across the globe. As the array of breeding populations experimented with the spectrum of political and economic systems, a set of likely winners and perennial losers grew more distinct. But a funny thing happened on the way to the awards ceremony: the winners started disappearing, and in their place popped up growing colonies of the perennial losers.
More advanced societies grew to reach relatively comfortable limits with the resources around them. Less advanced societies -- with technological and financial aid from more advanced societies -- continued to grow well beyond sustainable limits.
Of course Europeans themselves, having been relieved of the need to provide for their own defense in 1945 at the end of WWII, have been somewhat subsidised themelves. And research and development into advanced sciences and technologies also shifted away from Europe somewhat as Europe focused internally on itself. That would be another sense in which Europe has been somewhat subsidised from the outside.
Can the US sustain and improve its infrastructure -- when the people within the nations supplying its future population certainly could not do so? California gives us a preliminary glimpse:
"More of the country is going to be like California," said William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution. Minorities make up 57% of the population in California. _LATimesIf the new voters of California can pull the state back from the brink of economic collapse, that will be a sign of hope for the demographic transition hitting the rest of the country. But if the new residents of California bring the corruption, violence, dysfunctionality, and incompetence so prominent in their countries of origin, with them to California -- the inference will prove more ominous.
Debt and potentially dysgenic demographic change make a potent combination. Try not to be too surprised when the potent effects impact you and your life.
Labels: demographic change
posted by al fin at 6:17 am
11 Comments:
Two comments. First, when someone white marries someone of another color, their children are called "non white", but that's really not a very accurate way of keeping statistics in terms of genetic percentages.
Second, the chart of population percentage in undeveloped countries needs to be adjusted to take into account the undeniable fact that undeveloped countries do eventually become developed countries.
The best charts for this sort of thing are the ones that show global literacy as a percentage of population over time. The illiterate countries are steadily becoming less illiterate.
Between 1990 and 2000 the literacy rate in the uneducated part of the 3rd world went UP by about 12%. See page 34 "trends" in this link: http://www.uis.unesco.org/template/pdf/Literacy/LiteracyReport2008.pdf
This has been going on for decades. It basically amounts to a steady increase in wealth even in the crappy parts of the world. The majority of the 3rd world is no more than about 40 years from joining the semi-developed world. And the developed world is stalling, so every year the undeveloped world catches up.
Thanks for the comment, Carl.
You are sounding a great deal like Bruce Hall, in your approach to this topic. And each of you sounds very much like an Al Fin of perhaps 10 or 15 years ago.
I am not trying to convince anyone to give up whatever optimism he may have for the future of the "unraveling" world (or as RDKaplan puts it, "the coming anarchy".
This is not a persuasion blog so much as a provocative (and occasionally inspirational) blog.
I am not opposed to NGOs, non-profits, and religious groups who wish to open schools, clinics, hospitals, and appropriate technology transfer centers in the third world.
But North American governments should get out of the massive foreign aid business, and try to encourage commerce and trade instead. And North America should shut down its 3rd world immigration programs, clamp down on illegal immigration, and get rid of the birthright citizenship policy for children of aliens born on US soil.
If the third world is going to develop, I would prefer that it happen inside the third world. That would spare the developed world a lot of collateral damage along the way.
One of the reasons the third world population is exploding is because we are supporting their population with food aid and medical treatment, but mostly because of the food aid. While I agree that we should get rid of the anchor baby policy, and crack down on illegal immigration, I can not sit idly by while the people we have been feeding for decades are intentionally starved to death. They do not have the technology to feed themselves, we made mistakes that will have to be fixed over time to stop sending the aid would be cruel.
You are describing an infinitely sticky "tar baby" situation, gtg723y.
That's the type of thinking that got the Vietnam war ramped up to disastrous proportions, and threatens to do the same for the Afghan mission.
If ever there was a situation that calls for creative and original thinking, the threat of a shrinking advanced world confronted with an exploding primitive world is one.
The charts don't tell the whole story. For example, both "Asia" and Latin America will have the demographics comparable to Europe today in 2050. Africa will have lots of young people. Sub-Saharan Africans may comprise nearly half of all people less than 20 years old by 2050.
1.5 billion Chinese are joining the developed world faster than a speeding bullet. Latins will follow. Southern Asia will manage. Who cares about the rest? The only issue is a good fence.
Hmmm my family came to the US with my dad having his pHD and my mom having her masters both now doing research and yet we would be lumped into your group of undesirables. Nice...
anyways unfurl your nervous white brow, we've since moved on to Canada.
Tell me more, Justin. Where is your family from? Where in Canada did you move? Your father's PhD is in what area?
The brain drain is a very real phenomenon. It benefits the advanced world while it probably does not hurt the third world very much. The third world does not appreciate its brighter outliers.
If third world dictators cannot appropriate the intelligence of the bright outliers, they will often simply dispose of them.
Purely from demographic standpoint it looks like US might lose its dominant position and Canada instead will overtake it in this role .
I am not sure though if this will in fact happen. true US will be more like Mexico or Brazil, but it is still workable model - far from complete disintegration many predict
Society will further stratify into the dumb and poor and rich and smart. Middle class will be the losers.
How sustainable it is?- its a big question mark, but for society to truly collapse merely demographic shift will not be enough -at least not on the scale US will see in 21st century
The word demographic is often misinterpreted to mean race. My father often noted this at work, does Audry have more in common with divorced working mom with three children or 40 year old black women. Does my father have more in common with ex=military making the transition to civilian life or 50 year old white men? We are not talking about an immigrants desirability based on color but on age and intelligence. While people of certain decent do seem to have things like birthrate and IQ in common due to proximity not all members of a particular phenotype are desirable. What we need are for people with a high IQ to have larger families and people with a low IQ to have fewer children without this being enforced by a totalitarian government. The best and cheapest thing we can do is make The Pill available in the third world.
What we need are for people with a high IQ to have larger families and people with a low IQ to have fewer children without this being enforced by a totalitarian government.
I dont see it happening without hard line polices,which would require some degree of totalitarian control
Low IQ people will out breed high with any policy short of forced sterilization.
Furthermore I think the real problem is overpopulation. Having one child per family would be great start. Future children should be selected for IQ , health and other positive qualities , and from the most desirable pool for the demographics to improve
World does not need 10 billion of 100 iq people. It would be much better with only 10-100 million of IQ 150+ healthy productive members
Post a Comment
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” _George Orwell
<< Home