Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The fifth horseman of the apocalypse (Demographics is THE defining issue of the 21st century)
Asia Times ^ | 12/14/2011 | Spengler

Posted on 12/24/2011 7:07:09 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Population decline is the elephant in the world's living room. As a matter of arithmetic, we know that the social life of most developed countries will break down within two generations. Two out of three Italians and three of four Japanese will be elderly dependents by 2050. If present fertility rates hold, the number of Germans will fall by 98% over the next two centuries. No pension and health care system can support such an inverted population pyramid. Nor is the problem limited to the industrial nations. Fertility is falling at even faster rates - indeed, at rates never before registered anywhere - in the Muslim world. The

world's population will fall by as much as a fifth between the middle and the end of the 21st century, by far the worst decline in human history.

The world faces a danger more terrible than the worst Green imaginings. The European environmentalist who wants to shrink the world's population to reduce carbon emissions will spend her declining years in misery, for there will not be enough Europeans alive a generation from now to pay for her pension and medical care. For the first time in world history, the birth rate of the whole developed world is well below replacement, and a significant part of it has passed the demographic point of no return.

But Islamic society is even more fragile. As Muslim fertility shrinks at a rate demographers have never seen before, it is converging on Europe's catastrophically low fertility as if in time-lapse photography. The average 30-year-old Iranian woman comes from a family of six children, but she will bear only one or two children during her lifetime. Turkey and Algeria are just behind Iran on the way down, and most of the other Muslim countries are catching up quickly.

(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; History; Society
KEYWORDS: demographics; europeanunion; germany; italy; japan
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-58 last
To: SeekAndFind

These demographics will still take time to achieve their full effect. God’s timetable is probably much shorter. Diverse and oppostional cultures are collectively manifesting a hopeless pessimism that will lead to the final conflict.


41 posted on 12/24/2011 9:55:13 AM PST by grumpygresh (Democrats delenda est; zero sera dans l'enfer bientot.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

They might not right now but they will. They have been getting lots of Western money and many Muslims return to their homelands and bring with them these desires for freebies.


42 posted on 12/24/2011 10:34:41 AM PST by CodeToad (Islam needs to be banned in the US and treated as a criminal enterprise.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: Age of Reason

The one with population growth run “amok” will survive. :Lets get Darwinian - geographic diversification is critical for long-term survival of any species. Only a intelligent life that achieves the economies of scale that go with large populations can achieve the geographic diversification that goes with inhabiting other planets and/or spacecraft permanently away from earth.

This so-called balance you want on one planet dooms us to death, a death the can be prevented by preventing us from going beyond earth. This death of mankind in your way of thinking is guaranteed because the sun will expire.

We do not know the hour Christ will come so we need to be around for the long-run.


43 posted on 12/24/2011 10:39:01 AM PST by impimp
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind
Having large families has been the traditional retirement plan throughout history. Have several children, some of which will survive, and they will then take care of you when you get to old to take care of yourself. Having a few extra kids reduces the burden on them to take care of you. Raising children in this environment was not expensive, especially compared to the benefits that you get with extra labor and old age benefits.

However, modern society has replaced this formula with social security schemes. We can now save and invest for our own retirement, so in this environment, children are a high cost burden, interfering with our saving (and spending). But a critical mistake has been made in this formula. We are not all saving exclusively for our own retirement. What I will get from social security is not what I put in to it, but a designated amount coming from current despositors, the young. So what we really did is create a system where we got rid of our children because we thought we didn't need them, but are still relying on someone's children to pay for our retirements. The demographic implosion will cause the old to lose their benefits. If everyone had ben saving for their own retirements and no one else's, demographic fluctuations would not matter.

We in the US will be luckier in the future, however, because we do welcome immigrants. Closed societies, like Japan and the middle east, will be hit much harder. We also should be seriously working on improving our productivity through innovation and robotics.

And if anyone thinks a demographic implosion will not affect wealth and standard of living, here is an interesting talk:

When ideas have sex

44 posted on 12/24/2011 10:48:40 AM PST by Vince Ferrer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: impimp

The other issue is that the rising extremist Muslim tied across more modernized Muslim nations like Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt can easily drive up the birth rates in those nations.


45 posted on 12/24/2011 12:04:50 PM PST by tbw2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: impimp

Plus, the goat humpers have their ancient tried and true tactic of repopulation via captured infidel women.


46 posted on 12/24/2011 12:17:39 PM PST by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: CodeToad

But they don’t depend on welfare in their native desert state. That’s why they don’t care about things like infant mort rate due to no medical treatment for women etc. The most rabid among them, who pine for the pure 7th century state of sharia, don’t really care if 9/10 of humanity dies out. A small number of muslim males can impregnate all of the surviving captive women, in their insane view of the world post 4 horsemen.


47 posted on 12/24/2011 12:22:34 PM PST by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: Always A Marine
Exactly. Think about Eurabia in 20 years, when a majority of fighting age men under thirty will be muslims.

The elderly white Euros won't be manning the barricades against them. They will simply be swept away. Muslim conquerors have no use for elderly enemies. They love captured children, whom they can raise as muslims, slaves or eunuchs, depending on their whims. But they have no use for elderly captives.

48 posted on 12/24/2011 12:26:28 PM PST by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: Age of Reason

Good point.


49 posted on 12/24/2011 12:27:22 PM PST by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]

To: Ditter

We don’t care about the New Guineans, but their examples provide useful lessons for the macro example of general civilizational collapse.


50 posted on 12/24/2011 12:28:47 PM PST by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]

To: Always A Marine

I need to read Mr. Steyn’s book, but I can only take so much doom and gloom.

In any case, the Moslem world is apparently suffering a decline in fertility, too, apparently even more catastrophic than the West. Assuming those are the bad guys to whom you are referring.


51 posted on 12/24/2011 3:22:22 PM PST by Little Ray (FOR the best Conservative in the Primary; AGAINST Obama in the General.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: Travis McGee

They failed to get off their island(s). This demonstrates why we need the economies of scale to expand elsewhere beyond earth in a few thousand years. Stagnating on an island was not the way to go.


52 posted on 12/24/2011 7:28:00 PM PST by impimp
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 50 | View Replies]

To: impimp
I had a thought once as a child that to colonize space we don't need other planets around distant stars we just need to learn to survive in space. Lots of resources in space to harvest if we can figure out the radiation, closed systems and weightlessness problems. Some problems take time to solve.
53 posted on 12/24/2011 10:16:10 PM PST by dog breath
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 52 | View Replies]

To: dog breath

Merry Christmas - you are right that we shouldn’t think of Earth as our “closed system”. The universe is vast and the Earth isn’t a closed system as it has external forces, such as the sun, acting on it.

If it were up to me I would kick anybody off of Freerepublic who believed in overpopulation. But maybe Jim likes to leave their lunacy on display for us to mock.


54 posted on 12/25/2011 7:28:30 AM PST by impimp
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind
But Islamic society is even more fragile. As Muslim fertility shrinks at a rate demographers have never seen before, it is converging on Europe's catastrophically low fertility as if in time-lapse photography. The average 30-year-old Iranian woman comes from a family of six children, but she will bear only one or two children during her lifetime. Turkey and Algeria are just behind Iran on the way down, and most of the other Muslim countries are catching up quickly.

I'd like to see proof of this.

55 posted on 12/25/2011 7:31:58 AM PST by central_va ( I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Age of Reason

Natural population balance? What’s that?


56 posted on 12/25/2011 1:03:06 PM PST by Toddsterpatriot (Math is hard. Harder if you're stupid.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]

To: Travis McGee

The Japanese are depopulating, but at least they aren’t importing ruin.


57 posted on 12/25/2011 1:23:32 PM PST by rmlew ("Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies]

To: rmlew

True.


58 posted on 12/25/2011 3:21:09 PM PST by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 57 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-58 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson