[sixQuarks]

You know that famous YC question "What is something you feel most people are wrong about?"

Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired Magazine, believes the answer is overpopulation. He says it would be a disaster to stop population growth. Read more here:

https://edge.org/response-detail/23722

[losteric]

The WSJ 2050 series of articles supports that. However population is shrinking in many parts of the world, despite government attempts to force growth... This is going to have a tremendous impact on the global economy and political unrest.

On the other hand, thats a good way to reduce humanity's contribution to climate change

[gotchange]

> This is going to have a tremendous impact on the global economy and political unrest.

Why do you associate the decline in population numbers with political unrest? Are you referring implicitly to the phenomenon of immigration to make up for the falling numbers and the typical and usual problems that come along with this development?

[losteric]

I wasn't referring to the US with that line. We'll suffer but we're just along for the ride.

What do you think is going to happen when China finds itself with > 1 senior for every working age citizen, with a male-skewed population? Worse yet, what happens when China's heavy investments in AI/automation pay off? A dictatorship of 1 billion that has it's jobs permanently filled by machines while it's citizens struggle to raise their parents, working in overcrowded cities, with little hope for their own future? A country that's already rapidly depleting their agricultural resources through poor management, with dire projections ~20-50 years out?

That alone isn't a pretty picture.. But then remember that India's next door with similar problems, and the two aren't exactly buddy-buddy. Inevitably both countries will have to lean on regional allies to power through, but that might bring in the US (via S.K./Japan, today). And then we've got Russia upstairs, their future is a bit harder to see but today they're the nuclear-armed wildcard oligopoly... one that's not on friendly terms with the US's sphere of allies.

Then there's the middle east. If you think today's bad, wait until their oil money starts running out as climate change keeps turning up the oven. That's just adding fuel to the fires, millions of culturally alien people flooding relatively homogeneous societies already under pressure from their own needs.

And then Africa... yet another wild card. Today the various countries are in various states of development with mixed weak alliances to the East/West, but there's a massive population boom coming. No one is really certain where that's headed. Maybe it becomes the next China (selling environmental degredation and cheap labor), or maybe we'll end up with an under-developed continent of high unemployment/desertification. I'm really curious to see how the various countries land on that spectrum.

Taken alone, the Americas don't have a particularly risky looking future. South American drugs, guns, immigration, revolutions, old news for the US... though mass deforestation/desertification will be a tragedy with serious climate impact. Europe might build some walls but they're not going to war with each other again either. Australia probably won't play a big role unless it gets invaded. But the other big continents? I can't see the future, but today there are many red flags of something much worse.