October 29, 2025 • 30 mins
Andrew talks with Mia about the history of the human population and how different groups have sought to leverage it for their own fears and advantage.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media, Hello and welcome to it could happen here.
I'm Andrew Sage. I run andrewism over on YouTube, but
I'm here on this podcast with the.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
One and only Mia Wong, who does this podcast most
of the time.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Exactly exactly, And I think you and I both have
something in common, which is that we are people, and
we are two people. But the world has a lot
more than just two people. It's a really convoluted way
of saying that. For this episode, we're going to be
talking about population. You know, how many of people there are,
(00:42):
and how many of them there will or will not
be in the future, and all the different conversations that
end up happening around that, most of which suck. It's
a time true, Yeah, I mean, every single one of
us humans is a product of billions of years of reproduction.
But for most of that reproduction, population growth was pretty slow.
(01:07):
You know, the world's population is estimated at around five
million in the year eight thousand BC. So five million
is like the population of New Zealand right now, or
Costa Rica, or Ireland or Norway, but spread across the
entire planet. Can you get so many people who are
(01:29):
alive in the year one. See though, thirty million, that's
actually an underestimate. It's one hundred and eighty eight million, jeez. Right,
So that's between the current population of Bangladesh and the
current population of Brazil, which are at one hundred and
sixty nine million and two hundred and thirty million, respectively.
(01:51):
But that's spread across the entire planet. So I mean,
imagine that, you know, a whole world of people so
spread out. I mean they were concentrat into the Narios,
of course, but you had all this vast forest land
and planes and entire continents that barely had people compared to today.
(02:11):
And the reason the population grew so slowly was really because,
I mean, humans have always been doing the do you know,
but death was kind of a very present phenomenon. You know.
You had famines, you had plagues, you had the occasional war,
and you especially had a lot of infant mortality. Yeah,
(02:34):
and that's what really kept populations in check. You know.
I remember hearing I don't even remember who it was,
but this one person had like nineteen children and only
eight of them survived to adulthood.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, they honestly did pretty good, like by those metrics.
Like yeah, then infant mortality rate was unbelievably high.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah. Yeah, family's had a lot of children, but only
a few of them made it to adulthood. Thanks to
the industrialization, things were able to change a bit. You know.
We improved agriculture, we invented refrigeration, we got better fertilizer,
and most importantly, we developed advancements in sanitasia. You know,
(03:20):
doctors were actually washing their hands. You know, we developed vaccines,
so children were dying of measles and mumps. Imagine that,
good Lord. And we also had an overall improvement in medicine.
You know, one of the greatest inventions of humanity, I
think is the vaccine. And it's such a wonderful thing
(03:42):
that there's not this massive movement of people who challenge
it's very legitimacy in this day and age and threaten
all of our lives as a result. You know, imagine
being in that world. God. So, we eventually hit one
billion in the year eighteen oh four, which is just
(04:02):
below the current population of China, and things really began
to accelerate from there. We ended up creating something called
a Jacob of exponential population growth. Thanks to like I said,
the decline in infant mortality and improvements and fertility and
food production, and the other billionaire milestone started rolling it.
(04:23):
By eighteen oh four, Kiti had just gained its independence.
Napoleon the First was crowned Emperor France, and Lewis and
Clark had begun their expedition across America. In nineteen twenty seven,
that's one hundred and twenty three years later, we hit
two billion people. You know, by then we had Trotsky
(04:44):
being expelled from the USSR, which had just been founded.
We had Charles Linnenberg completing the first solo NonStop flight
across the Atlantic Ocean. And then also in nineteen twenty seven,
we had the release of the first feature length film
to fe just synchronized sound for dialogue quite the time,
to Be Alive. The fast forward to thirty three years later,
(05:06):
nineteen sixty, and we hit three billion people. By then,
Nigeria had just gained its independence. JFK was in the
White House, ham the chimpanzee went to space, and the
FDA approved the first ever both control pill. But the
birth control pill didn't really kick in in terms of
you know, hampering our growth for some time. By nineteen
(05:29):
seventy four. Fourteen years later, we hit four billion people.
By then Nixon had resigned to he had invaded Cyprus
Portugal overthrow its dictatorship. The Godfather Part two came out
and Abba was still at the top of the charts.
Nineteen eighty seven, thirteen years later, when we got five
billion people. That's when we had most of the major
(05:50):
colonies around the world gained the independence or having already
had gained the independence. You know Thatcher was beginning her
third term and the Simpson first appeared on TV. Twelve
years later, in nineteen ninety nine, we had the Y
two K panic, the Clinton and Peachmonth, the SpongeBob premiere,
the introduction of the euro, and six billion people made
(06:13):
their debut on planets. Twenty eleven, twelve years later, we
hit seven billion people, and that was in the midst
of the Arab Spring, a tsunami hit in Japan, the
Occupy movement, the premiere of Game of Thrones, and really
the beginning of smartphones and social media taken over the world. Finally,
(06:35):
by twenty twenty two, which is eleven years after twenty eleven,
we hit eight billion people. Amidst Russia invading Ukraine, the
growing popularity of TikTok and Elon's purchase of Twitter. So
from eighteen four to twenty twenty two, we went from
(06:55):
one billion people to eight billion people. And the U
when expected to grow by about one point nine billion
between now and twenty one hundred, so we'll end up
reaching from eight point two billion people to ten point
two billion people. And population is projected to peak at
ten point three billion in twenty eighty four and then
(07:17):
decline to ten point two billion through the end of
the century. So with this rapid population growth, there has
been a lot of faars surrounding overpopulation, particularly in the
late twentieth century and early two thousand, so there was
a lot of conversation around, you know, this population bomb,
this worry that there were too many people. Now, at
(07:41):
least early on in the population boom, I think it
makes some sense to have concerns. You know, there had
never been this many people on the eighth at any
point in time prior. You know, if you're watching the
numbers climb and climb and climb, you might have thought
we were headed straight for a planet covered in city
and some kind of collapse. But even before we even
(08:04):
hit a billion people the idea of overpopulation being a
significant problem wasn't new. In late seventeen hundreds, Thomas Mauthus
argued that population would always outpaced food supply, and his
prediction was that there'd be twin people, not enough resources,
and a decline into famine, disease and mass death. Now
(08:28):
he was obviously proven wrong, but in nineteenth century Britain,
Marthus's ideas helped justify the harsh welfare policies that that
government ended up implemented, like the spread of workhouses around
the country. Also, we speak about faminis if it's this
natural phenomenon that can't be helped, that is just almost
(08:50):
like a hurricane or a torny zero. But famines are
usually not actually the result of not having enough food.
Amartya Sen found that famines usually happened despite food surpluses.
The issue is usually distribution and not scarcity, you know,
a famous example being you know, during the Irish Famine,
(09:14):
Ireland was still exporting tons of food to feed its
colonial overlord. So we fast forward to nineteen sixty eight
and the biblegist Paul Erlich publishes the population Bomb. He
describes visiting Delhi and feeling the crush of overpopulation, convinced
that mass deviation was imminent in the nineteen seventies. Now,
(09:37):
I think that book that he published was one of
the main influences in the widespread panic around overpopulation. You know,
governments start to scramble about. A lot of policies were born,
likely from people reading that very book. You know, some
of these policies were fairly benign. You know, you promote
(09:58):
family planning, you improve access contraceptives, you improve education for
women especially, but other approaches were very harsh and brutal.
You know, you had sterilization campaigns, forced sterilization campaigns taking
place in India and Puerto Rico and in the United States.
(10:19):
China's one child policy also gets a lot of attention,
but it was only one example of a widespread brutality
around the impositions placed on women, especially in that time,
the fear of too many people and that anxiety leading
to the control of women and their bodies. And it's
(10:42):
a scary prospect, especially if you were a minority in
this time, if you were a cultural, racial, or religious minority,
Because it made very ordinary human activity, things like moving around,
having children, just existing being it seemed like an existential
threat to civilization, to humanity that needed to be dealt
with by any means necessary. So they had some positive
(11:16):
outcomes of positive outcomes of the overpopulation concerned. You know,
you had pushes Foreman's empowerment, you had the proposal of
improved urbanization to reduce the sprawl of human activity. You
also have people proposing things like extraterrestrial settlement, which you know,
(11:36):
it's not really realistic as a solution for a multitude
of valid reasons. Yeah, I think it's really funny, you know,
whenever people push that sort of yeah, humans are destined
for the stars kind of narrative. You know, it's a story,
a really powerful story coming out of science fiction, and
it's good that it has inspired people to learn more
(11:59):
about base and you know that their lives to the
study of the stars and that kind of thing. But
this idea that would to be shipping off like millions
of people off planet to settle on other planets, I
think is pretty safely in the realm of science fiction.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, that's a full like get back to me. In
a thousand years, we could baby start talking about moving
like thousands of people.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah, even thousands or hundreds of people. I mean, we
don't have those those massive generationships. We can't even get
those off the ground at this stage in our spacecraft.
And we also have a lot of issues to resolve
on Earth before we spread our problems across the galaxy
as far as I'm concerned. But beyond these solutions, the
(12:47):
ideas and public discourses around population have also boothed a
lot of conspiracy theories. You know, I'm sure you might
have heard a few of them in your time.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Oh boy, yep. This is one of the big Alex
Jones things. For example, So he's convinced that there's like
a giant plot by the globalist to kill off an
enormous part of human population to like stop over population
or something.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
It's yeah, yeah, Honestly, any combination of conspiracies concern hobby
smushed together to fit that kind of narrative. And they
can talk about all the vaccine sterilizing people, the chemtrails,
the five Gita was, the Bill Gates microchips, they are
even the food supply. All these things a leegedly being
(13:36):
used to sterilize people. I'm not to say that there
isn't validity to any claims of the things that we consume,
contributing to lower fertility, the fact that we clothe ourselves
in like polyester. You know, we still have a full
idea of the impact of microplastics on our bodies. You know,
(13:59):
there's valid concerns about some of the consequences of the
ultra processed foods that you know, fill out grocery shells.
But that's just the sad thing about conspiracy theories. You know,
they have some kernels of truth mixed in to boaster
their validity, but then they mix it up with a
(14:21):
bunch of garbage about you know that's a nonsense. Yeah.
And then of course, I mean some of these consiracy
theories are kind of benign, you know, like if you
think it's five gtaas I guess you'd put a I
don't know, a tinfoil hat on your junk.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
But I mean, to be fair, there was one of
the five g guys who did like blow himself up
at a giant car bomb. I did not hear about
that a couple of years ago down. Oh yeah, luckily
he only killed himself. But giant giant car bomb in
the middle of I want to say, Memphis or something
(14:58):
down Yeah, But yeah, so like every once in a
while you get some real oh boys stuff from that.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah yeah, I mean, honestly, people could take even the
simplest things and turn it into a threat to themselves
and others if they're not in the right head space,
so they haven't been given the right sports. Sadly and obviously,
like none all the conspiracies are be nine. I mean,
if you have people rejecting vaccines, you know, it's almost
(15:28):
like what in the world that I alluded to ulia,
you know, where we have a residence and measles for example.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, Jim O'Neil, who's the Deputy Secretary of Health and
Human Services and the acting director for the CDC, literally
on Monday called for splitting the MMR vaccine it's multiple vaccines, like,
which is basically which is just straight up the Andrew
Wakefield I think, like I said this on seven podcasts
on this show now, but this is literally just straight
(15:59):
up the Andrew Wakefield anti vaccine thing from the original
giant anti vaccine panic in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
That was the autism vaccine thing.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, yeah, like and this is this is this is
the guy who's currently running the CDC. It's just being like,
no yeah, you should do this thing.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
That's yeah, yeah, you guys are cooked.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah again, this thing that was developed specifically so that
Andrew Wakefield could sell his own vaccine.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's the thing. If
I was conspiracy brain, I would say that, actually, the
popularization of vaccine conspiracies on social media sites contribute to
exactly that kind of population control that those same conspiracy
theorists famonga about. But that's if I was conspiracy brain,
(16:43):
which I'm not.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
God, so someone someone believes that somewhere, absolutely, there was
someone who's like, the anti vaxxers are a conspiracy to
call them goal population or something.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Like, because I mean, we have this very straightforwardly effective
human and one of the best and not in the
history of humankind. And you're telling me that a couple
of people on Facebook and are responsible for the entire
government rejecting the effectiveness of vaccines and you know, jeopardizing
(17:19):
the healthy entire population.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Come on, yeah, I mean, unfortunately, the true believers are
in charge now.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Indeed, indeed they are true believers. And of course, people
who stand to profit from the dip in the sales
of paracetamol and whatever else. So they're those conspiracies about population.
And then there's the typical far right Nazi conspiracies about
great replacement, right, the idea that's shadoway elites orchestrating falling
(17:54):
blue rates among white populations while encouraging immigration from the
population boomen global South. I mean, of course, not all
the global self is Boomen population wise. A lot of
places are also experienced in decline. It's a global problem.
But we're going to get to that. Unconnected, of course,
to those great replacement type. So you have the eco
(18:15):
fash with their worries about the environmental impact of population
and their twisted belief that environmental collapse could be solved
by reducing the number of people, which usually ends up
target and marginalized groups, which is exactly the kind of
thinking that inspired real violence, like with the Christian shooter
in twenty nineteen. And of course, the actual drivers of
(18:37):
ecological collapse are not poor families in India or Africa
having too many kids. It's the over consumption of the
global North. You know, if you actually wanted to reduce consumption,
reduce the impact of population on the planet, are you
going to start with fewer people? Are going to start
with fewer billionaires flying private jets. You know, it's not
(19:00):
about the number of people they headcount, it's about the
lifestyles and the systems that support those lifestyles. You know,
believing population is a very cheap, simplistic and cowardly get
out of jail free code for the rich minority that
drive this systemic crisis. Yep.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
The thing about this, obviously is that if you believe
that you need to reduce the human population, that it's
your obligation to go first.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yes, we we are going to talk about those types
of people in the next episode. But you know, speaking
of the overpopulation, I think nowadays at least an opposite
concern that is dominating in the headlines. You know, in wealthier,
more developed countries, fertility tends to be lower, and that's
tied to things like back to education, more women working,
(19:50):
urban living, greater choices, greater access to contraception, et cetera.
But in less developed countries, fertility is usually higher because
children are often seen as both help and hand and
future caregivers, and education and access to birth control are
more limited. But the global fertility rate is now stardily
dropping due to that increasing development creating access to birth control,
(20:12):
create education of women's rights, and there's a fair nowadays
where there won't be enough people to support the system
as it has been built. Member capitalism is predicated on
endless growth. When its population starts to decline naturally, everything
that is building towards in terms of the amount of consumers,
(20:32):
the amount of infrastructure, the amount of workers, those are
not going to be there anymore, especially as more and
more people end up dipping out of the workforce as
they age. So ins twenty three, the global average had
(20:56):
dropped to just two point three children poor women, which
is less than half of what it was sixty years ago.
According to the United Nations, facility will keep falling throughout
the century, and by the year twenty one hundred, the
global average is expected to dip below replacement level of
two point one to about one point eight children poor woman. Now,
(21:19):
some countries are already there. Japan sits at a one
point two children poor woman, Italy, Spain, and much of
Eastern Europe are well below one point five. South Korea
is famously a demographic outlier at zero point seven children
poor woman, which is the lowest facility rate in the world,
and That means obviously that on average, Korean women are
(21:41):
having less than one child each for very valid reasons,
I might add, considering the economic and cultural conditions in
that country. Now, I don't live in Eastern Europe or
Southern Europe or East Asia. I live in the Caribbean.
I live in Chernan, Tobago, but speak it anecdotally at least,
(22:03):
which obviously is not representative of the full picture. I
can count, maybe on one hand, the number of people
I know my age who think that they'll be able
to bring children into the world, whether they want to
or not. You know, very few people I know actually
want children, or if they do want children, they don't
(22:23):
think they'll be able to afford to have children. But
maybe that's a selfishness.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
What do you think I mean, I don't know, Like
I am not interacting with a representative example of the population.
But no, yeah, I mean it's a lot of people
who are like no, and it's too expensive. It sucks.
(22:50):
I don't want to deal with this. But again, like,
not not a representative sample here, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you could just look at the economy.
Things have been getting worse for my entire life. You know,
there hasn't been any point in my life where anyone
in my generation could look around honestly and say, yeah,
you know, this is we be cooking. You know, it's
time to double double it. You know, let's have a child.
You know, the housing situation has gotten worse, the cost
(23:20):
of living as a whole has gotten worse, child care
costs have gotten worse. And of course, outside of that
economic stuff, there's also cultural attitude shifts and people realizing
I don't need to have a child to be fulfilled,
to find meaning. You know, people are able to pursue
higher education, and also they're more educated about the process
(23:43):
of child bearing in general, including the very valid medical
concerns surrounding that whole process. I mean, if I were
a woman, I would not want to have a child.
You know, the consequences on their bodies, on their minds,
and their health, the risks to their very life are
(24:04):
not something that can be swept aside as it was previously.
People are aware of it now, People are talking about
it now, and they are empowered to make decisions that
be right for them. You know, a lot of people
are also very much focused on their careers, either by
choice or because they don't have any other choice but
to focus on putting food on the table. You know,
(24:24):
people are also getting married later, and as a whole,
we have shifted to what a more individual society. So
you know, in the past you did have the extended families,
the closet communities that made raising children a bit more manageable.
But today it's a bit rarer to find, and you
(24:44):
send to see a lot more nuclear families or even
just individuals going at it a lowan you know, less
support and more isolation, and so it makes it very difficult.
And then there's the existential angst of it all. You know,
I can't forget the fact that they are multiple wars
waging around the world. You know, there's a lot of
political instability in much of the world, and of course
(25:07):
the biggest issue of all climate change, which makes it honestly,
it makes it feel it responsible to even think about
bringing a child into this mess. So a declining fertility,
a decline in population, it has the government's panicing. You know,
China went from having decades of a one child policy
(25:29):
to now desperately trying to encourage people to have more babies.
They're offering cash bonuses and housing books and extended parent
to leave. But it's not really working. You know, as
populations are aging, there's a lot more elderly people to
care for and fewer workinish people to support them. So
that is you know, a recipe for pension crises and
(25:50):
labor shortages and spiral and healthcare costs. So some governments
are even trying to raise the retirement age, which, as
France and their protests have shown, is not going to
go over well with much of the population. Nobody wants
to work extra five years and extra ten years more
when they've already put so much of their lives to
(26:12):
ease dead end pointless and you know, mentally and physically
dreaming tasks that really just line the pockets of their bosses.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
It is worthporting out the last year there was a
pretty massive race in the retirement age people in China.
That's being phased in a way where's going to take
over the course of fifteen years. It goes up gradually
to sort of like spread out the anger over it.
But yeah, it is worth noting that China's is like
significantly increased or is going to significantly increase over the
(26:46):
course of the next fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
M Yeah. And then on the other side of things,
there is in the retirement age now, but the young
people who are working today are more than likely not
going to get any kind of pension. Yeah, you know,
rather the world of my sixties don't look like the
world of my twenties. That would be my preference. So
(27:11):
I would rather that we've reached a point as a
society where pensions are not the necessary band aid that
they are right now. But until then, you know, there's
quite the powder keg. Yeah. We also have in Eastern Europe,
you know, you have countries rolling out pro natalist policies
(27:31):
that tie financial support directly to family size. I'm going
to get a bit more into pronatalists in the next episode.
But there's also the darker side of that pronatalist push
in terms of the policies meant to reverse the population decline.
Some governments, instead of making life better for potential appearance,
(27:55):
are criminalizing. They are turning to anti choice policies. There
is t to abortion, their limited reproductive rights. They're demonizing
child free lifestyles. Russia actually recently criminalized what they called
child the free propaganda, you know. Yeah, and then this
is also part of a broader conversation about population where
(28:16):
they have the immigration concerns as a political flashpoint because
a lot of wealthy countries, because of their population decline,
are starting to rely more on immigrants to keep their
economies going. But as a flip side, that tends to
fuel backlash from the far hid groups who are able
to frame it as a threat to national identity, and
(28:37):
because the system of the states and capitalism is not
interested in actually taking care of people, those immigrants become
a very useful scapegoat. You know, obviously I'm in support
of people moving and living wherever they want to move
and live as they please. I don't believe in borders,
especially as the climate consequences are hitting those of us
(28:59):
in the global boost. But I also I'm not a
fan of the way that some progressives end up talking
about immigration, where they act as if, you know, the
global sealth is like a population bank that wealthy countries
could tap into and you know, pull population from, regardless
of the consequences on the home countries of these people.
(29:20):
You know, it's like, let immigrants come, and I'm all
for that, but then it's also like your your government
is destabilizing their governments, your your system, your economic system,
and the global economic systems making life in those countries unlivable.
And I think the priority also needs to be on
dealing with that issue and not just shrugging and say, well,
(29:43):
you know, at least immigrants are able to help our
economy stay aflut even as their countries languish and suffer.
So to kind of wrap things up, where does this
all leave us? You know, for centuries we feared having
too many people, and now we're signed a fair having
two few people, and both anxieties are shaping policy, fuel
(30:05):
and conspiracy theories and sparking culture wars. And whether the
future holds overcrowded cities or ghost towns really depends on
the direction of politics, economy, culture, and urban designs teach.
On the next episode, I'm going to be talking about
the ideas around population, the pro natalists and the anti natalists.
(30:26):
But until then, I've been Andrew Sage here with Mia
Wong on it Could Happen Here Peace.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
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in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Also media, Hello and welcome to it could happen here.
I'm Andrew Sage. I run andrewism over on YouTube, but
I'm here on this podcast with the.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
One and only Mia Wong, who does this podcast most
of the time.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Exactly exactly, And I think you and I both have
something in common, which is that we are people, and
we are two people. But the world has a lot
more than just two people. It's a really convoluted way
of saying that. For this episode, we're going to be
talking about population. You know, how many of people there are,
(00:42):
and how many of them there will or will not
be in the future, and all the different conversations that
end up happening around that, most of which suck. It's
a time true, Yeah, I mean, every single one of
us humans is a product of billions of years of reproduction.
But for most of that reproduction, population growth was pretty slow.
(01:07):
You know, the world's population is estimated at around five
million in the year eight thousand BC. So five million
is like the population of New Zealand right now, or
Costa Rica, or Ireland or Norway, but spread across the
entire planet. Can you get so many people who are
(01:29):
alive in the year one. See though, thirty million, that's
actually an underestimate. It's one hundred and eighty eight million, jeez. Right,
So that's between the current population of Bangladesh and the
current population of Brazil, which are at one hundred and
sixty nine million and two hundred and thirty million, respectively.
(01:51):
But that's spread across the entire planet. So I mean,
imagine that, you know, a whole world of people so
spread out. I mean they were concentrat into the Narios,
of course, but you had all this vast forest land
and planes and entire continents that barely had people compared to today.
(02:11):
And the reason the population grew so slowly was really because,
I mean, humans have always been doing the do you know,
but death was kind of a very present phenomenon. You know.
You had famines, you had plagues, you had the occasional war,
and you especially had a lot of infant mortality. Yeah,
(02:34):
and that's what really kept populations in check. You know.
I remember hearing I don't even remember who it was,
but this one person had like nineteen children and only
eight of them survived to adulthood.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, they honestly did pretty good, like by those metrics.
Like yeah, then infant mortality rate was unbelievably high.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah. Yeah, family's had a lot of children, but only
a few of them made it to adulthood. Thanks to
the industrialization, things were able to change a bit. You know.
We improved agriculture, we invented refrigeration, we got better fertilizer,
and most importantly, we developed advancements in sanitasia. You know,
(03:20):
doctors were actually washing their hands. You know, we developed vaccines,
so children were dying of measles and mumps. Imagine that,
good Lord. And we also had an overall improvement in medicine.
You know, one of the greatest inventions of humanity, I
think is the vaccine. And it's such a wonderful thing
(03:42):
that there's not this massive movement of people who challenge
it's very legitimacy in this day and age and threaten
all of our lives as a result. You know, imagine
being in that world. God. So, we eventually hit one
billion in the year eighteen oh four, which is just
(04:02):
below the current population of China, and things really began
to accelerate from there. We ended up creating something called
a Jacob of exponential population growth. Thanks to like I said,
the decline in infant mortality and improvements and fertility and
food production, and the other billionaire milestone started rolling it.
(04:23):
By eighteen oh four, Kiti had just gained its independence.
Napoleon the First was crowned Emperor France, and Lewis and
Clark had begun their expedition across America. In nineteen twenty seven,
that's one hundred and twenty three years later, we hit
two billion people. You know, by then we had Trotsky
(04:44):
being expelled from the USSR, which had just been founded.
We had Charles Linnenberg completing the first solo NonStop flight
across the Atlantic Ocean. And then also in nineteen twenty seven,
we had the release of the first feature length film
to fe just synchronized sound for dialogue quite the time,
to Be Alive. The fast forward to thirty three years later,
(05:06):
nineteen sixty, and we hit three billion people. By then,
Nigeria had just gained its independence. JFK was in the
White House, ham the chimpanzee went to space, and the
FDA approved the first ever both control pill. But the
birth control pill didn't really kick in in terms of
you know, hampering our growth for some time. By nineteen
(05:29):
seventy four. Fourteen years later, we hit four billion people.
By then Nixon had resigned to he had invaded Cyprus
Portugal overthrow its dictatorship. The Godfather Part two came out
and Abba was still at the top of the charts.
Nineteen eighty seven, thirteen years later, when we got five
billion people. That's when we had most of the major
(05:50):
colonies around the world gained the independence or having already
had gained the independence. You know Thatcher was beginning her
third term and the Simpson first appeared on TV. Twelve
years later, in nineteen ninety nine, we had the Y
two K panic, the Clinton and Peachmonth, the SpongeBob premiere,
the introduction of the euro, and six billion people made
(06:13):
their debut on planets. Twenty eleven, twelve years later, we
hit seven billion people, and that was in the midst
of the Arab Spring, a tsunami hit in Japan, the
Occupy movement, the premiere of Game of Thrones, and really
the beginning of smartphones and social media taken over the world. Finally,
(06:35):
by twenty twenty two, which is eleven years after twenty eleven,
we hit eight billion people. Amidst Russia invading Ukraine, the
growing popularity of TikTok and Elon's purchase of Twitter. So
from eighteen four to twenty twenty two, we went from
(06:55):
one billion people to eight billion people. And the U
when expected to grow by about one point nine billion
between now and twenty one hundred, so we'll end up
reaching from eight point two billion people to ten point
two billion people. And population is projected to peak at
ten point three billion in twenty eighty four and then
(07:17):
decline to ten point two billion through the end of
the century. So with this rapid population growth, there has
been a lot of faars surrounding overpopulation, particularly in the
late twentieth century and early two thousand, so there was
a lot of conversation around, you know, this population bomb,
this worry that there were too many people. Now, at
(07:41):
least early on in the population boom, I think it
makes some sense to have concerns. You know, there had
never been this many people on the eighth at any
point in time prior. You know, if you're watching the
numbers climb and climb and climb, you might have thought
we were headed straight for a planet covered in city
and some kind of collapse. But even before we even
(08:04):
hit a billion people the idea of overpopulation being a
significant problem wasn't new. In late seventeen hundreds, Thomas Mauthus
argued that population would always outpaced food supply, and his
prediction was that there'd be twin people, not enough resources,
and a decline into famine, disease and mass death. Now
(08:28):
he was obviously proven wrong, but in nineteenth century Britain,
Marthus's ideas helped justify the harsh welfare policies that that
government ended up implemented, like the spread of workhouses around
the country. Also, we speak about faminis if it's this
natural phenomenon that can't be helped, that is just almost
(08:50):
like a hurricane or a torny zero. But famines are
usually not actually the result of not having enough food.
Amartya Sen found that famines usually happened despite food surpluses.
The issue is usually distribution and not scarcity, you know,
a famous example being you know, during the Irish Famine,
(09:14):
Ireland was still exporting tons of food to feed its
colonial overlord. So we fast forward to nineteen sixty eight
and the biblegist Paul Erlich publishes the population Bomb. He
describes visiting Delhi and feeling the crush of overpopulation, convinced
that mass deviation was imminent in the nineteen seventies. Now,
(09:37):
I think that book that he published was one of
the main influences in the widespread panic around overpopulation. You know,
governments start to scramble about. A lot of policies were born,
likely from people reading that very book. You know, some
of these policies were fairly benign. You know, you promote
(09:58):
family planning, you improve access contraceptives, you improve education for
women especially, but other approaches were very harsh and brutal.
You know, you had sterilization campaigns, forced sterilization campaigns taking
place in India and Puerto Rico and in the United States.
(10:19):
China's one child policy also gets a lot of attention,
but it was only one example of a widespread brutality
around the impositions placed on women, especially in that time,
the fear of too many people and that anxiety leading
to the control of women and their bodies. And it's
(10:42):
a scary prospect, especially if you were a minority in
this time, if you were a cultural, racial, or religious minority,
Because it made very ordinary human activity, things like moving around,
having children, just existing being it seemed like an existential
threat to civilization, to humanity that needed to be dealt
with by any means necessary. So they had some positive
(11:16):
outcomes of positive outcomes of the overpopulation concerned. You know,
you had pushes Foreman's empowerment, you had the proposal of
improved urbanization to reduce the sprawl of human activity. You
also have people proposing things like extraterrestrial settlement, which you know,
(11:36):
it's not really realistic as a solution for a multitude
of valid reasons. Yeah, I think it's really funny, you know,
whenever people push that sort of yeah, humans are destined
for the stars kind of narrative. You know, it's a story,
a really powerful story coming out of science fiction, and
it's good that it has inspired people to learn more
(11:59):
about base and you know that their lives to the
study of the stars and that kind of thing. But
this idea that would to be shipping off like millions
of people off planet to settle on other planets, I
think is pretty safely in the realm of science fiction.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, that's a full like get back to me. In
a thousand years, we could baby start talking about moving
like thousands of people.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah, even thousands or hundreds of people. I mean, we
don't have those those massive generationships. We can't even get
those off the ground at this stage in our spacecraft.
And we also have a lot of issues to resolve
on Earth before we spread our problems across the galaxy
as far as I'm concerned. But beyond these solutions, the
(12:47):
ideas and public discourses around population have also boothed a
lot of conspiracy theories. You know, I'm sure you might
have heard a few of them in your time.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Oh boy, yep. This is one of the big Alex
Jones things. For example, So he's convinced that there's like
a giant plot by the globalist to kill off an
enormous part of human population to like stop over population
or something.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
It's yeah, yeah, Honestly, any combination of conspiracies concern hobby
smushed together to fit that kind of narrative. And they
can talk about all the vaccine sterilizing people, the chemtrails,
the five Gita was, the Bill Gates microchips, they are
even the food supply. All these things a leegedly being
(13:36):
used to sterilize people. I'm not to say that there
isn't validity to any claims of the things that we consume,
contributing to lower fertility, the fact that we clothe ourselves
in like polyester. You know, we still have a full
idea of the impact of microplastics on our bodies. You know,
(13:59):
there's valid concerns about some of the consequences of the
ultra processed foods that you know, fill out grocery shells.
But that's just the sad thing about conspiracy theories. You know,
they have some kernels of truth mixed in to boaster
their validity, but then they mix it up with a
(14:21):
bunch of garbage about you know that's a nonsense. Yeah.
And then of course, I mean some of these consiracy
theories are kind of benign, you know, like if you
think it's five gtaas I guess you'd put a I
don't know, a tinfoil hat on your junk.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
But I mean, to be fair, there was one of
the five g guys who did like blow himself up
at a giant car bomb. I did not hear about
that a couple of years ago down. Oh yeah, luckily
he only killed himself. But giant giant car bomb in
the middle of I want to say, Memphis or something
(14:58):
down Yeah, But yeah, so like every once in a
while you get some real oh boys stuff from that.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah yeah, I mean, honestly, people could take even the
simplest things and turn it into a threat to themselves
and others if they're not in the right head space,
so they haven't been given the right sports. Sadly and obviously,
like none all the conspiracies are be nine. I mean,
if you have people rejecting vaccines, you know, it's almost
(15:28):
like what in the world that I alluded to ulia,
you know, where we have a residence and measles for example.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, Jim O'Neil, who's the Deputy Secretary of Health and
Human Services and the acting director for the CDC, literally
on Monday called for splitting the MMR vaccine it's multiple vaccines, like,
which is basically which is just straight up the Andrew
Wakefield I think, like I said this on seven podcasts
on this show now, but this is literally just straight
(15:59):
up the Andrew Wakefield anti vaccine thing from the original
giant anti vaccine panic in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
That was the autism vaccine thing.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, yeah, like and this is this is this is
the guy who's currently running the CDC. It's just being like,
no yeah, you should do this thing.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
That's yeah, yeah, you guys are cooked.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah again, this thing that was developed specifically so that
Andrew Wakefield could sell his own vaccine.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's the thing. If
I was conspiracy brain, I would say that, actually, the
popularization of vaccine conspiracies on social media sites contribute to
exactly that kind of population control that those same conspiracy
theorists famonga about. But that's if I was conspiracy brain,
(16:43):
which I'm not.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
God, so someone someone believes that somewhere, absolutely, there was
someone who's like, the anti vaxxers are a conspiracy to
call them goal population or something.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Like, because I mean, we have this very straightforwardly effective
human and one of the best and not in the
history of humankind. And you're telling me that a couple
of people on Facebook and are responsible for the entire
government rejecting the effectiveness of vaccines and you know, jeopardizing
(17:19):
the healthy entire population.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Come on, yeah, I mean, unfortunately, the true believers are
in charge now.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Indeed, indeed they are true believers. And of course, people
who stand to profit from the dip in the sales
of paracetamol and whatever else. So they're those conspiracies about population.
And then there's the typical far right Nazi conspiracies about
great replacement, right, the idea that's shadoway elites orchestrating falling
(17:54):
blue rates among white populations while encouraging immigration from the
population boomen global South. I mean, of course, not all
the global self is Boomen population wise. A lot of
places are also experienced in decline. It's a global problem.
But we're going to get to that. Unconnected, of course,
to those great replacement type. So you have the eco
(18:15):
fash with their worries about the environmental impact of population
and their twisted belief that environmental collapse could be solved
by reducing the number of people, which usually ends up
target and marginalized groups, which is exactly the kind of
thinking that inspired real violence, like with the Christian shooter
in twenty nineteen. And of course, the actual drivers of
(18:37):
ecological collapse are not poor families in India or Africa
having too many kids. It's the over consumption of the
global North. You know, if you actually wanted to reduce consumption,
reduce the impact of population on the planet, are you
going to start with fewer people? Are going to start
with fewer billionaires flying private jets. You know, it's not
(19:00):
about the number of people they headcount, it's about the
lifestyles and the systems that support those lifestyles. You know,
believing population is a very cheap, simplistic and cowardly get
out of jail free code for the rich minority that
drive this systemic crisis. Yep.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
The thing about this, obviously is that if you believe
that you need to reduce the human population, that it's
your obligation to go first.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yes, we we are going to talk about those types
of people in the next episode. But you know, speaking
of the overpopulation, I think nowadays at least an opposite
concern that is dominating in the headlines. You know, in wealthier,
more developed countries, fertility tends to be lower, and that's
tied to things like back to education, more women working,
(19:50):
urban living, greater choices, greater access to contraception, et cetera.
But in less developed countries, fertility is usually higher because
children are often seen as both help and hand and
future caregivers, and education and access to birth control are
more limited. But the global fertility rate is now stardily
dropping due to that increasing development creating access to birth control,
(20:12):
create education of women's rights, and there's a fair nowadays
where there won't be enough people to support the system
as it has been built. Member capitalism is predicated on
endless growth. When its population starts to decline naturally, everything
that is building towards in terms of the amount of consumers,
(20:32):
the amount of infrastructure, the amount of workers, those are
not going to be there anymore, especially as more and
more people end up dipping out of the workforce as
they age. So ins twenty three, the global average had
(20:56):
dropped to just two point three children poor women, which
is less than half of what it was sixty years ago.
According to the United Nations, facility will keep falling throughout
the century, and by the year twenty one hundred, the
global average is expected to dip below replacement level of
two point one to about one point eight children poor woman. Now,
(21:19):
some countries are already there. Japan sits at a one
point two children poor woman, Italy, Spain, and much of
Eastern Europe are well below one point five. South Korea
is famously a demographic outlier at zero point seven children
poor woman, which is the lowest facility rate in the world,
and That means obviously that on average, Korean women are
(21:41):
having less than one child each for very valid reasons,
I might add, considering the economic and cultural conditions in
that country. Now, I don't live in Eastern Europe or
Southern Europe or East Asia. I live in the Caribbean.
I live in Chernan, Tobago, but speak it anecdotally at least,
(22:03):
which obviously is not representative of the full picture. I
can count, maybe on one hand, the number of people
I know my age who think that they'll be able
to bring children into the world, whether they want to
or not. You know, very few people I know actually
want children, or if they do want children, they don't
(22:23):
think they'll be able to afford to have children. But
maybe that's a selfishness.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
What do you think I mean, I don't know, Like
I am not interacting with a representative example of the population.
But no, yeah, I mean it's a lot of people
who are like no, and it's too expensive. It sucks.
(22:50):
I don't want to deal with this. But again, like,
not not a representative sample here, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you could just look at the economy.
Things have been getting worse for my entire life. You know,
there hasn't been any point in my life where anyone
in my generation could look around honestly and say, yeah,
you know, this is we be cooking. You know, it's
time to double double it. You know, let's have a child.
You know, the housing situation has gotten worse, the cost
(23:20):
of living as a whole has gotten worse, child care
costs have gotten worse. And of course, outside of that
economic stuff, there's also cultural attitude shifts and people realizing
I don't need to have a child to be fulfilled,
to find meaning. You know, people are able to pursue
higher education, and also they're more educated about the process
(23:43):
of child bearing in general, including the very valid medical
concerns surrounding that whole process. I mean, if I were
a woman, I would not want to have a child.
You know, the consequences on their bodies, on their minds,
and their health, the risks to their very life are
(24:04):
not something that can be swept aside as it was previously.
People are aware of it now, People are talking about
it now, and they are empowered to make decisions that
be right for them. You know, a lot of people
are also very much focused on their careers, either by
choice or because they don't have any other choice but
to focus on putting food on the table. You know,
(24:24):
people are also getting married later, and as a whole,
we have shifted to what a more individual society. So
you know, in the past you did have the extended families,
the closet communities that made raising children a bit more manageable.
But today it's a bit rarer to find, and you
(24:44):
send to see a lot more nuclear families or even
just individuals going at it a lowan you know, less
support and more isolation, and so it makes it very difficult.
And then there's the existential angst of it all. You know,
I can't forget the fact that they are multiple wars
waging around the world. You know, there's a lot of
political instability in much of the world, and of course
(25:07):
the biggest issue of all climate change, which makes it honestly,
it makes it feel it responsible to even think about
bringing a child into this mess. So a declining fertility,
a decline in population, it has the government's panicing. You know,
China went from having decades of a one child policy
(25:29):
to now desperately trying to encourage people to have more babies.
They're offering cash bonuses and housing books and extended parent
to leave. But it's not really working. You know, as
populations are aging, there's a lot more elderly people to
care for and fewer workinish people to support them. So
that is you know, a recipe for pension crises and
(25:50):
labor shortages and spiral and healthcare costs. So some governments
are even trying to raise the retirement age, which, as
France and their protests have shown, is not going to
go over well with much of the population. Nobody wants
to work extra five years and extra ten years more
when they've already put so much of their lives to
(26:12):
ease dead end pointless and you know, mentally and physically
dreaming tasks that really just line the pockets of their bosses.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
It is worthporting out the last year there was a
pretty massive race in the retirement age people in China.
That's being phased in a way where's going to take
over the course of fifteen years. It goes up gradually
to sort of like spread out the anger over it.
But yeah, it is worth noting that China's is like
significantly increased or is going to significantly increase over the
(26:46):
course of the next fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
M Yeah. And then on the other side of things,
there is in the retirement age now, but the young
people who are working today are more than likely not
going to get any kind of pension. Yeah, you know,
rather the world of my sixties don't look like the
world of my twenties. That would be my preference. So
(27:11):
I would rather that we've reached a point as a
society where pensions are not the necessary band aid that
they are right now. But until then, you know, there's
quite the powder keg. Yeah. We also have in Eastern Europe,
you know, you have countries rolling out pro natalist policies
(27:31):
that tie financial support directly to family size. I'm going
to get a bit more into pronatalists in the next episode.
But there's also the darker side of that pronatalist push
in terms of the policies meant to reverse the population decline.
Some governments, instead of making life better for potential appearance,
(27:55):
are criminalizing. They are turning to anti choice policies. There
is t to abortion, their limited reproductive rights. They're demonizing
child free lifestyles. Russia actually recently criminalized what they called
child the free propaganda, you know. Yeah, and then this
is also part of a broader conversation about population where
(28:16):
they have the immigration concerns as a political flashpoint because
a lot of wealthy countries, because of their population decline,
are starting to rely more on immigrants to keep their
economies going. But as a flip side, that tends to
fuel backlash from the far hid groups who are able
to frame it as a threat to national identity, and
(28:37):
because the system of the states and capitalism is not
interested in actually taking care of people, those immigrants become
a very useful scapegoat. You know, obviously I'm in support
of people moving and living wherever they want to move
and live as they please. I don't believe in borders,
especially as the climate consequences are hitting those of us
(28:59):
in the global boost. But I also I'm not a
fan of the way that some progressives end up talking
about immigration, where they act as if, you know, the
global sealth is like a population bank that wealthy countries
could tap into and you know, pull population from, regardless
of the consequences on the home countries of these people.
(29:20):
You know, it's like, let immigrants come, and I'm all
for that, but then it's also like your your government
is destabilizing their governments, your your system, your economic system,
and the global economic systems making life in those countries unlivable.
And I think the priority also needs to be on
dealing with that issue and not just shrugging and say, well,
(29:43):
you know, at least immigrants are able to help our
economy stay aflut even as their countries languish and suffer.
So to kind of wrap things up, where does this
all leave us? You know, for centuries we feared having
too many people, and now we're signed a fair having
two few people, and both anxieties are shaping policy, fuel
(30:05):
and conspiracy theories and sparking culture wars. And whether the
future holds overcrowded cities or ghost towns really depends on
the direction of politics, economy, culture, and urban designs teach.
On the next episode, I'm going to be talking about
the ideas around population, the pro natalists and the anti natalists.
(30:26):
But until then, I've been Andrew Sage here with Mia
Wong on it Could Happen Here Peace.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
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