Econo-Terrorism for Depopulation to Save the Planet

In the last couple of years, the subject of population decline has become topical, with even Elon Mush mentioning it a few times. And rightly so. Not only is it well-known (because of Japan leading the charge) that the new population pyramid will mean more retired people and fewer workers. there is also the barely recognised endgame, the failure of capitalism. That is because capitalism has never experienced prolonged negative growth, and quite likely is incapable of surviving it. And even with growing populations (via immigration) most countries are struggling to grow. GDP is a dud measurement…

So we have these factors in play:

  • Climate change, partly due to too many people
  • Environmental harm and continuing extinctions
  • Peak population in 2050
  • Capitalism will fail, eventually, because of degrowth

One way of looking at that is to consider that bringing forward the decline of capitalism, could mean fewer babies, more rapid population decline and less harm to the environment. There are a number of reasons for lower fertility rates, but economic conditions and uncertainty are major.

Potentially called econo-terrorism is the purposeful destruction of infrastructure to cause economic harm. We could start with global trade, because in some ways import is theft and export is theft.

In all industries, where there is exports and imports, certain aspects are almost universally true. The supplier at the start of the journey will get beaten down to the lowest price they can produce the product for. And the end purchaser will pay the most the market will allow. Neither are allowed to profit from global trade. That profit goes to middle-men, corporations and governments. That means shipping, duty, tax, banks and profit margins, often through grift and corruption.

These could be implemented by governments, except they all want artificially-derived growth from population growth:

  • Mandate like China 1 child
  • Incentivise by making children more expensive
  • Incentivise by offering benefits for sterilisation 
  • Help poor countries get wealthier
  • Give life more meaning than child-rearing
  • Make living more expensive / arduous by taxing everything that harms the planet to a righteous extent

All of the above means we can at a minimum halve the population globally in 80 years, and make it only 2 Billion in 120 years.

But they will ever happen, so which potential tactics are available to a wannabe econo-terrorist?

(It goes without saying that even though depopulation is the aim, no deaths – even accidental – are wanted. Every action would need to be carefully thought through for possible direct harm to people),

Global and domestic trade has become increasingly fragile, with high rats of debt and just-in-time systems that are highly efficient but not resilient. A few spanners-in-the-works can have a ripple effect, not just in actual hindrances but also perceived future problems. The ultimate goal is to minimalise world trade and emphasise local reliances. That should lead to countries having to live according to their environmental means.

Railways are long and insecure. They are relatively easy to damage. Or hinder. A person chained to the tracks, or a drone carrying a sheet hovering above the track and impeding views beyond it.

Crops and livestock are easily destroyed from disease. Water can be infiltrated. We do not want people to starve, but they can do without beef and flowers.

Piracy still happens in the Africa and can happen more in international waters.

Machinery can be tampered with. Look up monkey wrenching, Earth First and Ed Abbey.

Retail businesses can be attacked. Drop off some manure on the doorstep of a McDonalds, or any other company directly profiting from environmental harm.

Such actions, under an umbrella name, but barely affiliated otherwise, can get a lot of publicity from not many activities, and a low risk. While laws are rapidly changing, in many cases the risk is a large fine which is meaningless for those who already have nothing.

Until now, economic terrorism has been a state vs state concept. Now it could be a means to ending capitalism more quickly and “saving the planet” by small groups and individuals who feel the calling and can grasp the consequences.

Tokyo Dating App – Another Weak Response

When one of the globe’s largest economies is facing a demographic crisis, throwing $3M at an app won’t help, especially when it is run by the Tokyo government.

Absurdly:

Japanese media reports that said the app will require a confirmation of identity, such as a driver’s license, your tax records to prove income and a signed form that says you are ready to get married.

https://time.com/6986142/japan-tokyo-government-dating-app-marriage/

It isn’t judge fertility that is dwindling in Japan. Unlike western countries, marriages and sexual relationships are reduced as well, and surveys show that there is a lot of disinterest.

A meagre investment in a state-controlled app will not be the solution. Maybe a billion dollar investment in movies and TV shows that feature young happily married people would work better?

Desperate Immigrarion Measures to Boost GDP

The rich world is in the midst of an unprecedented migration boom. Last year 3.3m more people moved to America than left, almost four times typical levels in the 2010s. Canada took in 1.9m immigrants. Britain welcomed 1.2m people and Australia 740,000. In each country the number was greater than ever before. For Australia and Canada net migration is more than double pre-covid levels. In Britain the intake is 3.5 times that of 2019. Economist

It has been long-known that increasing the population is a cheat’s way of improving the GDP, and giving governments something positive to point to. However, the GDP is failing metric, and the populace are working that out. More so when it is pointed out that all the countries above having a declining GDP per capita. In the retail world, opening more stores won’t fool investors if the per-store revenue is dropping.

Even Japan is doing it, although stealthily. The number of foreign workers in Japan has quadrupled since 2008, reaching the 2M mark last year. This is happening in places that are common in other countries, like convenience stores. In the Konbinis of Japan, 9% of the workforce are foreigners, but it is as high as 50% in some 7-Eleven stores in major cities (Economist).

Hong Kong – Cash Bonus for Babies

Every advanced economy except the US is suffering from a fertility rate that is too low. While immigration can offset that, not many people are keen at present to move to Hong Kong, given all of its recent problems. People have been leaving, of course.

The number of children being born in Hong Kong each year has been in steady decline since 2014, but the decrease quickened to an almost 40% drop between 2019 and 2022, falling from 52,900 to 32,500 births last year, according to government data. 

Wall Street Journal

That means the current fertility rate is 0.8, even lower than South Korea.

The government is now offering a $20K (Hong Kong dollars, around $2500 USD) bonus for new babies, but like most countries they are offering too little to make much difference. 40% of young local women say that Hong Kong is not a suitable place for child-rearing (up from 16% just over a decade ago), and 44% of women have no children.

The situation is similar to climate change, with governments only willing to make minor concessions, that ultimately won’t fix the problem.

Japan’s $38B Child Care Plan

That’s $38 billion (USD) annually. While it sounds like a lot, it actually isn’t much relative to the severity of their situation. Politicians would rather have small failures over larger ones…

“This will bring our country’s spending per child on families to the level of Sweden,” said Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

In other words, socialism is the key. Capitalism doesn’t work with a declining population.

The 3.5 trillion yen doubles the existing spending on childcare. Hopefully future governments continue along the same vein, because people take time in deciding to have children, and base their decisions on what they perceive to be long-term, stable situations.

More at Japan Today.

Incentives Do Not Fix Fertility Rate Decline

In this well-researched and well-written article at Reason magazine, the primary focus is on what has caused the fertility decline. It pinpoints no single factor, and says that all of the known factors combined still do not explain the dramatic drops in children being born. It suggests that everything matters, plus there may be lag involved, plus a whole lot of women are simply less interested in being Mums, regardless of reasons.

In the section regarding incentives, it does a great job summarizing things that have not made much difference:

  • Countries from Russia to Japan to Italy have tried an array of measures—from pressure campaigns to subsidized child care to giving people days off work for making babies—to raise national birthrates. Yet fertility rates remain stable or continue to fall.
  • South Korea spent more than $200 billion subsidizing child care and parental leave over the past 16 years, President Yoon Suk Yeol said last fall. Yet the fertility rate fell from 1.1 in 2006 to 0.81 in 2021.
  • The Japanese government almost quadrupled spending on families between 1990 and 2015, expanding child care provisions, paid family leave, parental tax credits, and more. The fertility rate went from 1.54 in 1990 to 1.3 in 2005 before rebounding slightly (1.4 in 2015) and then falling back to around 1.3.
  • And then there’s Singapore, which offers $8,000 for a first or second baby and $10,000 for every child thereafter—up from $6,000 and $8,000 back in 2014. The authorities have also tried offering tax rebates, guaranteeing 16 weeks of government-paid maternity leave for married mothers, giving housing subsidies to parents, matching Child Development Account savings up to thousands of dollars, and other schemes. None of this has stanched Singapore’s plunging fertility rate. In 1990, it was 1.83. In recent years, it has hovered between 1.1 and 1.2.
  • researchers found “one extra percentage point of GDP spending” on early childhood education and child care programs was “associated with 0.2 extra children per woman.”

Nagi, Japan – Baby Making Town

The WSJ reports on a town in Japan that is bucking the trend, and easily have fertility above the replacement rate. What is their secret?

The fertility rate reached 2.95 in 2019, and has slipped back to what is still a very commendable 2.68 in 2021, a pandemic year. Japan as a whole is a lowly 1.3.

Something to keep in mind is that the town only has 5,700 people, and based on the stats given, only 16 births per year. So it doesn’t take many extra babies to swing the statistics a little. Still, 16 is a lot more than the 8 they would have if they were typical of all of Japan.

Nagi-cho has received widespread media, especially now the national government is putting more effort into halting the declining population, and seven or eight delegations from other towns are arriving each month to learn the secrets, which are not particularly magical:

  • Capped daycare
  • Subsidised baby-sitting
  • Free medical care for children
  • Subsided bus transport to high schools in other towns (Nagi doesn’t have one)
  • Cash incentives for young couples to move to the town

The town has sacrificed other aspects of the budget to achieve it.

The first three factors are not particularly rare or innovative, but paying people to move there is. That seems to be the key for Nagi, and obviously it cannot improve the national fertility rate!

Korea’s Economy & Population Decline

When researching degrowth, I find that nobody ever advocates for or predicts actual degrowth. They end up discussing no-growth, which of course is impossible to keep at precisely not going up or down. So sometimes instead of degrowth they advocate for very low growth, below 1%.

But actual economic degrowth is too hard to discuss seriously. Being unprecedented, nobody really understands what will happen.

So this article, which I hoped would discuss how capitalism collapses via population decline, doesn’t. Its boldest prediction is, of course:

Some analyses are showing a grim picture of Korea that the persistent trend of low birth rate and population aging will result in its annual economic growth rate of less than 1 percent after 2050. It is a warning that the country might fall into a swamp of long-term low growth if it fails to overcome the labor shortage caused by population decline through capital investment or technological innovation.

Lee Jong-hwa, professor of economics at Korea University

It also avoids discussing that fewer people means a smaller domestic market, and of course most Korean businesses are not international.

Internal Migration Will Worsen Population Decline

While we tend to look at averages and global totals, the reality is the population decline is going to be very lumpy. After we reach peak global population, Africa will still grow for a while. Even though Japan peaked ages ago and there are empty houses everywhere, Tokyo is still growing and houses are being built.

When capitalism starts to falter (low or no growth due to fewer consumers and workers), it will affect some places quicker than others. And then people leave for somewhere more prosperous, even another city in the same state, exaggerating the effect in both places.

We have seen this recently, in a way, in San Francisco. While the cause was the pandemic, and partly because people could now work remotely, it does show how much mobility there is in where people choose to reside.

US Census data shows that the median household income in the area containing San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley fell from $121,551 in 2019 to $116,005 in 2021 – a drop of over 4% in two years. New York City saw a similar decline.