The most serious problem is that in all the developed countries (and also in the sometime developed countries of central Europe) the birth rate has been declining steeply in the last few decades. It is now well below replacement rate in most of Europe -- and very steeply so in what ought to be the most pro-natalist country of them all, Italy. The same applies in Japan. In America, the birth rate has also come down and is hovering at about the replacement rate, though what the birth rate is among the average and better-off white population -- the most 'developed' in terms of living standards -- I don't know. As far as I know, the data don't distinguish between these and the poorer and non-white part of the population.
One of the results of this is that, in a decade or two, the developed countries will face a health-care and pension crisis because there will be an insufficent number of workers to pay for the ill or the retired. And then this will be followed a decade or two later by a steep population decline as the demographically old population start to die in large numbers. And this applies whether we are considering countries with widespread welfare systems, such as the UK, or in countries in which pensions and health care are largely privately administered, as in America.
One solution given by the more liberal elements in developed countries (and I am not using "liberal" pejoratively) is that immigration should be encouraged. This usually attracts young energetic people, usually males in the first instance, who can then start paying taxes or stimulate business firms which will then start to balance up the worker-dependency ratio. The evidence here is, though, that once the immigrants have families of their own and reach the same standard of living as the indigenous population they, too, will also have smaller families. This happens within two generations and, a generation later, they too will start to experience a shortage of productive workers and the beginning of their own population decline.
But leaving that particular problem on one side for the moment, I think there is widespread usease in all developed countries, particularly among the middle-aged who are imminently facing old age, but also among a minority of the more thoughtful and intelligent young. Many of these, however, because they haven't much experience of life tend to blame causes which can be easily labelled, such as "globalisation" or "capitalism".
Globalisation and capitalism are certainly part of the problem, but they are only outward manifestations. Ever since man began long-distance trading in pigments and ochres more than 75,000 years ago, so we are told by paleoarcheologists, and ever since a certain amount of additional time and effort had to go into the business of trading -- that is, capital -- then the evidence is highly suggestive that globalisation and capitalism are very much part of our basic nature. They are fundamental features of our species which made us different from the other primates and caused us to break out of the narrow confines of the group or the tribe with fairly well constrained territories for the most part and into governances which became successively more powerful and centralised.
Which is where we are today. And we don't like it, because developed populations are now on strike. We are signing our own death penalty by not replacing ourselves.
If we can't blame globalisation or capitalism without blaming ourselves as a species then is there anything else we can more usefully blame? I think there is. One of the consequences of economic growth is that throughout history it has needed ever larger supplies of energy to power its manufacturing systems, the predominant one in the last two hundred years being coal, oil and natural gas. (In the same period agriculture has also depended on fossil fuels in order to make the nitrogenous fertilisers which are necessary to grow food intensively for the still-growing population in the undeveloped world.)
The main consequence of vast amounts of fossil fuels has not so much been globalisation or capitalism -- because they have always existed -- but mass production. More importantly, mass production depends upon mass markets.
We are now getting a little closer to the nub of our problems. Mass production means that there is an inevitable tendency towards separation between the more technologically-trained parts of the population and the remainder. And those who can become scientists, engineers and technologists are, it goes without saying, more intelligent than the average. Governments in developed countries have been aware of this and many of them, particularly in Europe, have been trying earnestly to expand higher education in the hope of finding sufficient numbers of technologists to sustain an increasingly complex civilisation. The paradox is, however, that the more egalitarian the education system, the more selective it becomes and it aids, rather than alleviates, the intelligence divide. And the faster than a particular country grows economically, the more divisive it becomes and it overtakes the redistributive effects of intelligence which normally happen each generation.
So that's one division in developed societies. The other division is due to mass markets in that products or individuals which are just slightly superior to the competition clean up. This is sometimes called the Hollywood effect. An example of this occurred to me last night in the finals of the 100 metre race in the World Athletics Championship. The first four in the race were within inches of one another at the winning tape (and the other four were only a metre or two behind). The winner, however, will probably be able to earn vast sums of money in appearance fees and sponsorships while most of the rest are very likely going to sink into average earnings. The same applies to opera singers, say, or those organisation men or politicians who happen (in their case, as often by luck and contacts as by brilliant performance) to get to the top of the heap and can become immensely wealthy.
So that's another division. The inequality in earnings between the top and the bottom is perhaps not so great as it was a century ago, but it is more serious and demoralising today because, due to mass communications and the media, more people are aware of these gross disparities than ever before.
If it were the case that the supply of enormously cheap fossil fuels were to continue for ever -- or even for another century -- then I see no possible future for mankind because the more that we become developed, the more that the mass of the people will decide not to replace themselves with sufficient numbers of children. And, at the same time, we will become totally demoralised by seeing increasing earnings gaps and, at the same time, the mass of the population will be dependent on an inner core of technologists who will be carrying an increasing burden of effort and work-time in keeping the whole system going. It is, to say the least an unstable and unsustainable condition.
However, the existing supplies of fossil fuels at their present levels and present cheap prices will not continue foreever. Already considerable thought is being given to the only possible practical solution in the long term, and this is to tap directly into the enormous supplies of solar energy that bathe the surface of the earth. And this will be much more widely and democratically distributed than the present system which is only exploited by about one third of the world population and cannot be supplied to more.
Another hopeful sign is that the desire for smaller communities appears to be growing. Never mind the scorn or bitterness that is frequently hurled against Disneyland-type cities like Celebration, and gated communities, both of which are growing in America, this, to my mind, is a powerful trend albeit affecting only a small proportion of the population at present. If this trend is coupled with the as-yet theoretical potential of distance-working and distance-education, then I think we will see this community trend as the next status good -- that is, being able to afford live in such a community.
Like all status goods, it will only be available initially to the affluent -- what I term the 'initiatory class' -- but hopefully it will be able to work its way down into lower socio-economic strata..
Whether this trend will be enough to save a portion of mankind as the rest tumble over the demographic cliff into extinction is quite another matter, and I can't begin to guess.
>>>>
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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