In my quest to understand the roots of the Muslim world’s weakness and instability, I examined its explosive population growth during the modern era. That research gave rise to these thoughts which run counter to mainstream thinking on the relationship between demographics and economics. Most economists and politicians favor policies that promote population growth on the basis that this drives economic growth. At first glance, there is some merit to this approach, but a deeper examination indicates it only leads to fool’s gold.
Let’s start by relying on common sense grounded in a few obvious, but often overlooked, facts. The first being that certain resources, like aluminum, gold, cobalt, and oil are finite. One day, whether it’s fifty or five hundred years from now, we will run out of them. The exact date they run out will depend on the rate at which we consume them. Consumption rates are, in turn, a function of population size since this drives demand.
In addition to depleting resources that will eventually run out, growing populations also increase demand for the most finite resource of all: land, particularly arable land. Population growth causes the price of land to climb as demand increases but supply remains constant. This directly impacts the cost of shelter, a basic necessity, and key determinant of the cost of living. Keeping these facts in mind to frame the discussion, let’s throw out some numbers and examples.
The population of Pakistan in 1951 was 34 million. It now sits at over 227 million, representing an increase of 6.7 times. During this time, its economy grew from $3 billion to $383 billion, a factor of over 127. On the surface, these numbers seem to justify the mainstream approach; however, raw numbers can be misleading. Despite growing significantly faster than its population, Pakistan’s economy has been unable to provide a decent standard of living for most of its people. For example, it has the second highest infant mortality rate in the world and extremely high rates of malnutrition. A substantial number of Pakistanis remain stuck in poverty and have yet to receive any socio-economic benefits from its rapid development. This makes sense when one considers that due to its exploding population, its per capita GDP only grew by a factor of 19 during this time.
Egypt has experienced similar growth rates. Its population recently passed 100 million though it was only 12 million in 1914[1]. That’s over 8 times as many people sharing the same space and vying for the same riverside property on the Nile in just four generations. That also means Egypt is consuming 8 times more water and other resources than it once did. Not coincidentally, Egypt’s socio-economic performance, though better than Pakistan’s, is still poor.
France, on the other hand, has seen its population grow from 40 million in 1947 to only 65 million today. As a result, its per capita GDP grew nearly 34 times during the much shorter timeframe from 1960 to today. These differences help to explain why France performs relatively well based on various socio-economic indicators and boasts a high standard of living. Its people are well-fed, educated and have access to both jobs and decent healthcare.
Due to its differing immigration policies, Japan’s population growth has been even slower than France’s. People often point to it as an example of the horrors of low population growth. And to be fair, it does create issues that mostly boil down to not having enough young people around to take care of the elderly and do all the menial but necessary jobs they can no longer perform. Aside from these issues, Japan is a pretty great place to live. At least that’s what most socio-economic indices that measure these things say. Like France, it still has a well-developed economy, plenty of jobs, great schools, and a high standard of living for most of its citizens. What it does not have is the explosive growth in GDP that seems to make everyone so happy, hence the hand wringing.
Similarly, the news that China’s population is declining has been labeled a crisis as its population is projected to fall to less than 800 million by the year 2100. These demographic changes will certainly create problems but only because its entire economic model is predicated on using its surplus labor to make cheap consumer products for the world. While they were implementing economic policies that relied on abundant, cheap labor, China’s leaders used an authoritarian one child policy to drastically and unnaturally alter the composition of the average Chinese family. It is the combination of these social and economic policies that have created China’s current predicament. But this should not detract from the arguments made herein since these problems are largely self-inflicted.
The mainstream view is that growing populations like Pakistan’s are a good thing while shrinking ones like Japan’s or China’s are not, since more people means more demand for clothes, shelter, cell phones, cars, schools, etc. as well as abundant labor. Providing these goods and services therefore leads to economic activity, jobs, capital formation and what Ibn Khaldun called the “business of civilization[2].” As a result, population growth is seen as a win-win by politicians who get to tell their constituents GDP grew by X percent and businesses that benefit from the increased supply of labor and demand for their goods/services. This dynamic has driven human civilization and technological development for thousands of years.
But the world is changing, which means we must change with it. Populations are much, much bigger than they have ever been and most people live much longer than they ever have. Our world is already home to over 8 billion people. Policies that incentivize unchecked population growth are a product of antiquated conceptions of demographics and life expectancy that ignore the simple fact that when human populations are measured in billions, the consumption rate of certain resources will deplete them much faster.
And they will be depleted in the pursuit of what is best described as “churn” to make all the products people consume, instead of improving productivity, innovation, per capita growth, or quality of life. Aside from depleting resources, this approach also forces people to live on a hamster wheel since this cycle of growth and consumption merely increases the cost of living over the long run. This type of consumerism prioritizes short term gains while ignoring the long-term cost and changing realities. Instead of mindlessly incentivizing people to make babies, we need to think about how to generate qualitative growth capable of giving the billions who already live among us a decent standard of living.
Part of the reason most disagree with these ideas is that we have been raised in capitalist systems that view growth as an end to itself. Before I went to law school, I spent a year in software sales. Every quarter we would sell a record number of databases only to be told that our goal for the next quarter was to beat that mark by a certain percentage. It was a constant drive for more. Without this “churn” our consumer-based economy falls apart. But, as with everything in life, there must be limits. Even when it comes to the pursuit of profits. The constant need for more will leave our descendants with nothing while tethering us to our hamster wheels in perpetuity.
Aside from inspiring these thoughts, this research also helped show that exploding populations are not, by themselves, a root cause of the Muslim world’s weakness. That distinction goes to the authoritarian and absolutists political and social institutions that have strangled it for centuries. But they have certainly contributed to its problems, and these have yet to fully manifest themselves. That will happen in the coming decades as hundreds of millions of under or un-educated youth come of age with little prospect of gainful employment, draconian social and political restrictions on how they can express themselves, and few productive outlets to channel their energy. A mix of variables that will make Muslim societies even more unstable in the coming years. The Muslim world provides an extreme example of the perils of unchecked population growth particularly when coupled with incompetent leadership, but even the world’s wealthy societies should reconsider their policies.
In my lifetime, America’s population has nearly doubled from 180 million when I was in elementary school to 330 million now that my kids are the ones in grade school. That means there are nearly twice as many Americans competing for resources and land as there were when I was a child. It is not hard to see the correlation between the political and social unrest America has experienced these past few years and its population growth.
This growth led to greater demand for land, which increased the cost of living, resulting in demands for higher wages. It was the cost of labor that motivated America’s companies to dismantle their factories and ship them overseas. These changes fundamentally re-shaped America’s economy in ways that marginalized large swaths of its population, leading to much of its recent instability.
In the name of short-term growth, America incentivized larger families and immigration and certainly benefited as a result. I am, after all, a product of those immigration policies. But using consumption fueled by population increases as a foundation for economic growth is an inherently flawed model. It is both unsustainable and irresponsible.
America’s population is expected to grow to 438 million by 2050. Unlike a lot of countries, it has room to grow, so this is not an urgent issue. But at some point it will get to 570 million and so on and so on. Eventually, there will simply not be enough to go around.
As a result, we must consider ways to encourage smaller families and slower growth regardless of the impact on Nike or Apple share prices. Some, like Thanos, share my view but prefer more violent methods to tackle the issue. Instead of genocide or banishing people to an alternate dimension in a state of quasi-consciousness, I suggest using public policy. Not of the authoritarian Chinese variety, but of the sort that might incentivize certain behavior. For example, government policies should encourage people to stay in school or learn a trade since this tends to cause people to have children later in life, which usually leads to smaller families and slower growth rates. They can use their education and skills to build the robots and technology we will need to compensate for the lack of cheap labor[3].
Immigration policy should be designed to meet America’s labor needs but can no longer accommodate large scale inflows. Since those inflows have most recently come from America’s southern neighbors, America should re-locate its factories from China to these countries. This policy recommends itself both as atonement for its war crimes in Central America and as a means of building a more reliable supply chain over the long run that may help to stem the flow of immigrants. By my count, that’s three birds.
Last, we must consider the instability that climate change is likely to bring. No one really knows how these changes will impact us, but the early results are scary. Entire rivers and lakes are drying up in the Western U.S. California has been experiencing a record drought for years. Without its agricultural output, food is going to get very expensive. The point is, we are entering a period of uncertainty. We should be conserving resources and trying to limit the number of mouths to feed until we see how things are going to shake out.
Unfortunately, no one is going to listen to this advice since it addresses problems that are not yet fully apparent and contradicts conventional wisdom. By the time anyone realizes I’m right, it will be too late. As a dear friend once said, “it is better to proact than react.” These words were offered in that spirit.
[1] Hourani at 293-94; 333-34
[2] Khaldun at 238
[3] Those countries, like Pakistan or Egypt, that face a more pressing situation should take even more aggressive measures like offering young men large sums of money to undergo vasectomies or using the tax code to encourage smaller families.