Decivilization

The End Of The World Is Just The Beginning

This section of IIB exists because I noticed Peter Zeihan’s YouTube content a couple months ago and have been steadily plowing through his work.

He is a systems thinker, what he has to say on energy, fertilizer, and food matches my own research and conclusions. He brings an intent focus on demographics to the mix, his conclusions are pretty apocalyptic, but he doesn’t invoke the supernatural, it’s just a simple matter of birth rates, aging, and death rates.

There are a couple of must read books on my Bookwyrm shelves. The first is How Civil Wars Start - which explains in detail how we’re absolutely doing the wrong things. The second is The Insurgent’s Dilemma, which offers a tour of how insurgencies develop and where the U.S. is likely to end. They are being joined by Zeihan’s The End Of The World Is Just The Beginning.

Unraveling:

Zeihan has a large number of easily digestible videos in the five to ten minute range. These are the best I’ve found in terms of his overall views.

Basically what he’s predicting matches what the peak oil folks used to call “triage”. There are places that are multiples above their carrying capacity. Mother Nature doesn’t care that we’re self-aware; population overshoots have a well known set of solutions, and none of them are pretty.

The demographics factor is new to me and it changes SO MANY things. I’ve had the view that my life began in the middle of humanity’s golden century and Zeihan confirms this thinking, but it’s not a matter of just resources, or peak oil, or climate change. Our societies rise and fall on the back of expanding populations. When we industrialize fertility falls, first to the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, and then below. I found a list of 204 countries and their associated fertility rates.

All of these are below replacement rate: China (1.2), Italy(1.3), Japan(1.3), Canada(1.5), Norway(1.5), Russia(1.5), Switzerland(1.5), United Kingdom(1.6), Denmark(1.7), Sweden(1.7), United States(1.7), France(1.8), Turkey(1.9) … basically anywhere you might want to live is NOT keeping up.

Places that are making it that might be OK? The U.S. Virgin Islands, Fiji, Paraguay, Samoa. There aren’t a lot and most of them are “yeah, but …” when it comes to being a destination.

The other end of the spectrum and stalked by famine and war. Niger(6.7), Somalia(6.1), Dr Congo(6.1), Chad(6.1), Mali(5.8), Central African Republic(5.8), Nigeria(5.1), Angola(5.1).

Strategic Implications:

Japan has the world’s second largest navy. But with 1.3 children per woman they are NOT going on any imperial adventures. China may, due to their enormous population, but with a fertility of 1.2 they’re going to have urgent problems at home.

Russia is squandering the lives of young men, or driving them away, and their 1.5 fertility rate means the half million taken out of the game are a loss from which they can not recover. Ukraine has a similar demographic implosion brewing.

Germany is an aging, demographically doomed industrial state. Poland is similar, but in better position overall, and they’re bulking up to deal with Russia. But like Russia, 1.5 children per woman.

But there’s a much bigger picture to all this.

We’ve only experienced post-industrial population collapse in a few places, the best known being Japan. They’re isolated and well supported so they’ve muddled through. Italy has been similar - not an island, but akin to one thanks to topography, and with friendly neighbors.

Just look at conditions in China. We can discard Zeihan’s estimate of a 100% housing overbuild - the idea that there are a billion excess homes in various stages of completion. The financial trade outlets like Wall Street Journal are willing to admit to a hundred million excess units. That’s two or three times worse than our subprime housing crisis of 2008 and we are allowed investment diversity. China’s laws are such that 70% of individual savings goes into real estate. Which is now worth two or three dimes on the dollar(!)

The Big Picture:

These demographic implosions are unprecedented. The U.S. can pull back from supporting global free trade and we have a path forward that involves Mexico becoming the workshop of the western hemisphere. That is if we can avoid civil war, a nonsensical race based war with Mexico, and otherwise getting snookered by foreign powers taking advantage of our excessively open society.

But so much of the world is going to decivilize … HARD. If we have to focus on food production like we did prior to finding fossil nitrates around the year 1800 there is a lot of complexity we take for granted … that’s not granted. We’ve had a little taste of supply chain trouble thanks to COVID19, but there’s so much more of that ahead.

I understand what this means in a way most of you don’t, because I’m a time traveler. I’m in my late fifties, but I had a childhood more like the 1940s than the 1970s. Planting a large garden? Keeping chickens and pigs and cows? Baling hay? Hand shucking corn and shelling it with a 19th century machine? Cutting wood for heat? I’ve done all of those things. And I think it would be an extraordinarily hard life for those who’ve never known anything but soft suburban living.

Conclusion:

If you’re reading this site at all you’ve got some investment in needing to be ready to navigate the turbulent times ahead. The End of the World is Just the Beginning is only $14.49 on Kindle. It’s grim reading, in some ways, but you’ll feel better having a worst case estimate in hand, so you’ll know what to do when things start happening that nobody else can understand.