O autor faz uma descrição do rápido envelhecimento das sociedades industrializadas. Aponta para um tipo de economia em que nunca vivemos no passado. No passado, "much of the economic growth comes from a swelling population". Agora, com a paragem do crescimento primeiro e, depois, com o colapso populacional que começará durante esta década, entraremos em "terra incógnita".
"Globalization was always dependent upon the Americans’ commitment to the global Order and that Order hasn’t served Americans’ strategic interests since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Without the Americans riding herd on everyone, it is only a matter of time before something in East Asia or the Middle East or the Russian periphery (like, I don’t know, say, a war) breaks the global system beyond repair . . . assuming that the Americans don’t do it themselves....A central factor in every growth story that accompanies industrialization is that much of the economic growth comes from a swelling population. What most people miss is that there's another step in the industrialization cumurbanization process: lower mortality increases the population to such a degree that it overwhelms any impact from a decline in birth rates . but only for a few decades. Eventually gains in longevity max out, leaving a country a greater population, but with few children. Yesterday's few children leads to today's few young workers leads to tomorrow's few mature workers. And now, at long last, tomorrow has arrived....No matter how you crunch the numbers, China in 2022 is the fastest-aging society in human history....The country's demographic contraction is now occurring just as quickly as its expansion, with complete demographic collapse certain to occur within a single generation. China is amazing, just not for the reasons most opine. The country will soon have traveled from preindustrial levels of wealth and health to postindustrial demographic collapse in a single human lifetime. With a few years to spare. Nor will China die alone. The time-staggered nature of the industrialization process-from Britain to Germany to Russia and northwestern Europe and Japan to Korea to Canada and Spain combined with the steadily accelerating nature of that process, means that much of the world's population faces mass retirements followed by population crashes at roughly the same time. The world's demographic structure passed the point of no return twenty to forty years ago. The 2020s are the decade when it all breaks apart.For countries as varied as China, Russia, Japan, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Ukraine, Canada, Malaysia, Taiwan, Romania, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria, the question isn't when these countries will age into demographic obsolescence. All will see their worker cadres pass into mass retirement in the 2020s. None have sufficient young people to even pretend to regenerate their populations. All suffer from terminal demographics. The real questions are how and how soon do their societies crack apart? And do they deflate in silence or lash out against the dying of the light?...Economic development, quality of life, longevity, health, and demographic expansion are all subject to the whims of globalization. Or rather, in this case, deglobalization."
Trechos retirados de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan.
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