2024-01-09_Everyone_is_Moving_to_the_Metropole
00:00:00.000 | In the 1980s, when Deng Xiaoping committed China to the path of development, its strongest
00:00:06.000 | asset was its population.
00:00:09.640 | China was young and smart.
00:00:12.240 | Reaching 1 billion residents in 1982, the median person was in their low to mid-20s,
00:00:18.920 | making the country a perfect industrial workforce for a financializing West ready to offshore.
00:00:27.520 | Four decades of applying it has made China rich, but the accompanying urbanization and
00:00:34.160 | population control policies have had a cost too.
00:00:37.680 | The median Chinese person is now 38 years old and projected to only grow older, nearly
00:00:43.720 | 50 years old by the mid-century.
00:00:47.120 | The new China is becoming old.
00:00:50.960 | This spells trouble for the future because as far as global power and prestige go, being
00:00:56.600 | young is at least as important as being rich.
00:01:01.680 | It's also a problem faced by the entirety of the developed world, not just China.
00:01:06.900 | In the West, migration is the substitute for failing to raise native birth rates.
00:01:12.200 | Other regions remain young for now.
00:01:14.520 | Much of Africa maintains a median age of 20 years.
00:01:17.840 | Southeast Asia hovers between the late 20s and early 30s, and South America is at 32.
00:01:23.960 | Each beats the US's median age of 38.
00:01:27.920 | But if birth rates plunge globally, migration is a partial solution that can only last so
00:01:34.560 | long and one that would have to be competed for.
00:01:39.360 | The battle for wealth and the battle for youth represent two axes of power.
00:01:45.480 | As far as the next few decades go, it's already getting clear who's going to win.
00:01:51.840 | The Axes
00:01:53.400 | Using the two axes of wealth and youth, a simple model of the next few generations divides
00:01:58.440 | the globe into four emerging types of state economies.
00:02:03.520 | The rich and relatively young world of the metropole.
00:02:07.080 | The rich but geriatric old world.
00:02:10.440 | The older, economically stagnant, quiet world.
00:02:14.320 | And the relatively poor but currently high fertility young world.
00:02:19.400 | We can intuit a number of their characteristics.
00:02:22.280 | With a relatively young and growing population and a high labor supply, the states of the
00:02:27.680 | metropole, primarily the United States, have what it takes to be a global economic power
00:02:34.160 | and a locus for immigration.
00:02:36.800 | But high gross productivity doesn't guarantee a particular per capita income and standard
00:02:42.280 | of living for its members.
00:02:44.600 | It only has to be relatively wealthy compared to the rest of the world to have economic
00:02:49.240 | power, and moving there only has to make you relatively richer than home to be a migration
00:02:54.880 | hook.
00:02:56.240 | While the United States is poised to take the lion's share of this migration, other
00:03:00.480 | cities located in states with unfavorable fertility, like London or Moscow, will be
00:03:05.380 | regional migration hubs as well.
00:03:08.640 | The so-called "first world" stretches both west and east of America, encompassing
00:03:14.800 | both Japan and Western Europe.
00:03:17.480 | But while they have similar levels of development, this old world has very different migration
00:03:23.120 | and fertility patterns from the US.
00:03:27.580 | Migration is lower, especially in Japan.
00:03:30.120 | In countries with high migration, like Germany and France, assimilation does not happen as
00:03:34.920 | easily as it does in America, and the native populations of these countries seem to have
00:03:39.720 | lower fertility than the national average.
00:03:43.520 | All these countries are highly developed, and they experienced baby booms in the last
00:03:48.280 | century.
00:03:49.280 | They tend to have highly developed social welfare states and are dominant in global
00:03:54.120 | institutions.
00:03:55.120 | Collectively, these regions make up an old world which, in the near term, appears destined
00:04:01.680 | for a future of population aging, labor shortage, and slow or zero growth.
00:04:09.200 | In parts that don't resort to immigration, governments are already attempting to manage
00:04:13.600 | this via technology and mechanization.
00:04:17.520 | It remains to be seen whether any will succeed at increasing their fertility, but countries
00:04:22.120 | with cultures of social cooperation and a strong sense of identity, such as Japan, will
00:04:27.440 | be interesting to watch.
00:04:30.200 | The "quiet world" refers to the current "emerging market" states, many of which
00:04:35.100 | are on track to become older in median age than the US itself by 2050.
00:04:41.920 | Rather than "emerging," low future total fertility rates (TFRs) will likely doom places
00:04:48.660 | like Turkey, Ukraine, the Balkans, and parts of Central Asia to the "quiet world,"
00:04:54.120 | in which an aging population cripples further economic development.
00:04:58.860 | These countries differ strongly from each other in history and culture.
00:05:02.960 | Some had developed industrial national economies, others less so, but the fate of Europe's
00:05:08.520 | post-Soviet regions loom particularly large.
00:05:12.320 | While some have gotten richer in the past 30 years, emigration rates are extremely high
00:05:17.000 | among the young, and it is unlikely that most of these countries can complete a strong development
00:05:22.400 | track of the sort China accomplished.
00:05:25.360 | Finally, we see the rise of a massive new category, the "young world," an untapped
00:05:32.440 | labor workforce of billions, particularly in parts of Africa, the Middle East, Southeast
00:05:37.520 | Asia, and South and Central America.
00:05:40.600 | Much of the offshoring over the last four decades did not reach these regions, although
00:05:44.960 | Chinese offshoring now is.
00:05:47.480 | While much of the young world now lives in urban, semi-industrialized societies, hundreds
00:05:52.680 | of millions still live in rural regions.
00:05:56.120 | This population will be progressively incorporated into the world system of the metropole, as
00:06:01.360 | its current population ages out of their roles.
00:06:05.120 | The integration of these regions into production networks will be a major challenge given the
00:06:09.300 | extensive cultural differences, lower human capital, and lack of history with economic
00:06:15.520 | mobilization.
00:06:17.280 | Social socialization takes a long time, sometimes generations, to complete.
00:06:23.200 | The Metropole Assuming current trends, the US of 2050 will
00:06:27.800 | have a median age of 41.
00:06:31.040 | It will be decisively younger than China and other East Asian states, and will edge out
00:06:35.440 | Iran, Turkey, Russia, Mexico, and even Brazil.
00:06:39.380 | The so-called "bricks" countries built a coalition on marketing themselves as part
00:06:44.240 | of a young, rising world.
00:06:47.120 | In the battle of youth, the US will beat all except South Africa.
00:06:52.000 | Even more importantly, the US will have large and growing numbers of young workers, many
00:06:56.280 | more than other states of roughly similar median age.
00:07:00.040 | This will give the country a demographic edge over the so-called "emerging markets"
00:07:04.360 | of today, and its economic heft will only grow as its population does.
00:07:10.120 | From the current figure of 332 million, the US population is expected to reach 400 million
00:07:16.720 | in 2058, at currently projected rates.
00:07:20.880 | The Census Bureau predicts continued growth throughout the entire 21st century, with the
00:07:25.840 | population projected to reach an immense 571 million by 2100.
00:07:33.600 | The number of people reaching military age annually isn't just a useful statistical
00:07:39.240 | measure of both military manpower, it's also an indicator of annual workforce growth.
00:07:45.480 | In order, the top 10 countries ranked by this metric are currently India, China, Indonesia,
00:07:51.920 | Pakistan, the US, Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and the DRC.
00:07:59.400 | In a practical sense, these are the largest 10 countries on earth.
00:08:03.760 | In the future, the US is the only already rich country that still appears in the global
00:08:08.840 | top group on this sort of manpower comparison.
00:08:12.720 | The increase in both total population and young people will be heavily driven by international
00:08:18.360 | immigration.
00:08:20.200 | After 2030, net immigration is expected to overtake the natural increase of residents
00:08:25.960 | as the prime driver of population growth.
00:08:29.000 | By 2060, net immigration is expected to be double the annual natural increase, adding
00:08:35.320 | over 1 million people per year.
00:08:38.640 | Population is unquestionably the key factor in suppressing the process of population aging
00:08:44.760 | and workforce decline.
00:08:46.960 | According to the US Census, "In 2016, about 78% of the foreign-born population was of
00:08:54.080 | working age, between 18 and 64 years, compared with just 59% of the native-born."
00:09:02.680 | This will expand the size and relative power of some demographics, such as Hispanics in
00:09:08.160 | the US.
00:09:09.160 | It's likely that the current major cities will retain their place and prestige.
00:09:14.200 | Given that cities will attract the bulk of this migration, the battles between residents
00:09:19.120 | and newcomers will almost certainly magnify.
00:09:22.920 | Both the adversarial use of zoning, which can already be seen in current development
00:09:27.280 | battles, and more violent conflicts between classes and ethnic groups will likely occur.
00:09:33.320 | It's also likely that current upper-middle class remnants within a number of cities will
00:09:38.160 | finally get pushed out or reduced to the professional renter class.
00:09:42.880 | However, some cities may figure out the right mix of building and law enforcement that stabilizes
00:09:48.360 | them into high-growth cities with minimal or ghettoized social conflict.
00:09:54.200 | In these cities, each year's cohort of young workers will be larger than the last.
00:10:00.240 | The total number of persons under 18 in the United States is projected to continually
00:10:04.920 | increase, going from approximately 74.0 million today to 80.1 million in 2060.
00:10:13.360 | Many will be absorbed not only into the professional classes.
00:10:17.040 | One of the traits of the metropole is that it is generally good for individual people
00:10:21.600 | as economic actors, but generally bad for population groups in terms of fertility and
00:10:28.480 | cultural continuity.
00:10:30.960 | Migrants from the young world will improve their own individual situations, but, like
00:10:35.200 | previous generations of migrants, will likely see fertility decline when faced with the
00:10:39.880 | social and economic pressures of the metropole cities.
00:10:43.520 | Overall, this inflow will benefit the employers of large industries like agriculture that
00:10:49.320 | can handle high turnover, as well as those with the resources to continually retrain
00:10:54.040 | new entrants into not just their company, but broader US professional norms.
00:11:00.360 | In practice, it's likely that as cultural commonality declines, coordination within
00:11:05.920 | companies will become increasingly difficult to do well without an extremely strong set
00:11:11.360 | of internal norms and rigorous enforcement.
00:11:15.920 | Particularly hard to resolve will be ethnic conflict along lines that are hard for US
00:11:20.280 | culture to perceive and regulate, such as the caste discrimination that already occurs
00:11:26.720 | in Silicon Valley.
00:11:28.160 | Despite the inevitable conflicts that will play out at the middle and lower levels of
00:11:32.600 | metropole society, there are clear beneficiaries in its power structure.
00:11:37.440 | The US economy is already set up to favor large globalized companies with offshore production
00:11:42.960 | and onshore logistics and management, and US political elites share close ties with
00:11:48.980 | these industries.
00:11:50.600 | It's the outcomes of current political battles, not economic ones like wealthy tech billionaires
00:11:56.140 | versus DC regulators or competing energy lobbies, that will determine who wins access to the
00:12:01.600 | resources of the metropole.
00:12:04.280 | The process of creating a metropole via demographic replacement will create strong growth of total
00:12:09.800 | GDP, with the related effects of strong asset appreciation and, particularly, the consistent
00:12:16.120 | growth of real estate values.
00:12:18.560 | This will benefit pre-existing holders of power and wealth above all else.
00:12:24.560 | In contrast to the US, members of the old world will generally have continually shrinking
00:12:29.640 | workforces, with each year's cohort of workers being smaller than the one before.
00:12:35.200 | This differentiation is more radical than would be suggested merely by median age figures.
00:12:41.380 | Even with the much-publicized immigration and refugee influx into Germany, the German
00:12:46.680 | workforce is currently shrinking at the rate of 300,000 people per year due to retirements,
00:12:52.360 | and the annual labor shortfall is expected to reach a staggering 650,000 by 2029.
00:12:59.720 | Statistics like this clearly show that the US is no longer even in the same category
00:13:04.520 | of country as many of its purported first world peers.
00:13:09.120 | The process of transition to a metropole is frequently characterized as a national collapse
00:13:14.680 | by commentators who erroneously conflate the global power of a state with the disruption
00:13:20.120 | of individual living standards for the lower and middle classes.
00:13:23.440 | Indeed, it would appear that the decline of human development indicators may be an integral
00:13:28.320 | part of the metropole's power.
00:13:30.940 | While this process increases gross GDP and national power, large swathes of the metropole
00:13:37.160 | population could, and likely will, see falling life expectancy, increased child poverty,
00:13:44.480 | rising crime rates, and unaffordable housing.
00:13:47.720 | The metropole begins as a first world country, with all the wealth and infrastructure that
00:13:52.600 | implies.
00:13:53.600 | However, these first world conditions appear to inevitably lead to very high labor costs
00:13:59.480 | and a shrinking workforce due to low fertility, population aging, and welfare programs reducing
00:14:05.440 | the imperative to work.
00:14:07.680 | The logic of the metropole is that it dramatically short-circuits this process by implanting
00:14:12.720 | something resembling a lower-cost, emerging market workforce directly into the existing
00:14:18.360 | structure of a formerly first world country.
00:14:22.080 | To a large extent, the entire economic point of this process is to maximize gross GDP and
00:14:27.360 | world power by reducing wage growth, which is done by compelling the native population
00:14:32.600 | to compete with a hungry workforce of first and second generation immigrants.
00:14:38.000 | An optimistic view sees this as a viable, large, moderate-cost workforce, integrated
00:14:44.040 | into the pre-existing expertise, population, and resources of a first world country.
00:14:49.800 | This will allow a mix of resource exporting, a degree of high-value technical exports,
00:14:55.200 | and huge amount of white-collar work in finance, logistics, software, and similar industries.
00:15:01.400 | The massive agricultural capacity of places like the Mississippi Basin will continue to
00:15:05.760 | provide huge volumes of grain for export.
00:15:09.200 | A more pessimistic view would suggest that the level of disruption and population replacement
00:15:14.600 | involved in this process will more fundamentally erase the inherited advantages of the existing
00:15:20.720 | first world nation, leading to serious instability or deterioration of technical capacity.
00:15:27.480 | But even in relatively more pessimistic projections, it is hard to picture how a state with a population
00:15:33.400 | of 500-700 million and potentially the world's largest GDP would fail to be one of the world's
00:15:40.520 | preeminent geopolitical powers.
00:15:43.560 | The US capacity for energy independence is a particular advantage for its role as a metropole.
00:15:49.220 | The considerable domestic production and reserves of oil, gas, and especially coal will fuel
00:15:55.240 | US industry and agriculture.
00:15:57.960 | If current trends hold, there will not be any other large, young, and wealthy power
00:16:03.160 | on earth in this century other than the United States.
00:16:08.520 | The Old World By the mid-century, the cumulative effects
00:16:12.760 | of aging and low fertility on currently wealthy countries in Europe and East Asia will become
00:16:18.120 | apparent.
00:16:19.180 | The old world countries are those whose populations age and shrink due to low immigration and
00:16:24.640 | fertility.
00:16:25.800 | Their populations are on track to plunge below the levels of the period in which these countries
00:16:30.240 | became rich to begin with.
00:16:32.440 | In the decades ahead, they will face an entirely different social and economic trajectory than
00:16:37.560 | the United States.
00:16:39.920 | Japan's current population of 128 million is projected to drop to 86.7 million by 2060,
00:16:48.080 | and its already advanced median age is predicted to increase to 53 by 2050.
00:16:54.560 | Germany's population of 83.2 million will fall to 74 million by 2060, with the median
00:17:00.480 | age increasing from 44 to 51.
00:17:04.040 | Italy's population of 60.7 million is expected to drop to 58.6 million by 2050, and 53.7
00:17:11.880 | million by 2065.
00:17:14.400 | Its median age will increase from 43 to 50 by the year 2050.
00:17:19.920 | South Korea will fall from 51 million to 44 million in 2060, with a stunning increase
00:17:26.160 | in median age from 38 to 53 by 2050.
00:17:32.520 | By way of contrast, the US median age will rise to only 41 by 2050, with France and the
00:17:39.080 | UK both at 42, and all three will have population growth rather than shrinkage.
00:17:44.960 | However, outside of their capital cities, France and the UK lack the natural resources
00:17:49.480 | and overall populations to match the power of the US itself, making them something like
00:17:54.920 | bridge countries between the metropole and the old world proper.
00:18:00.540 | Countries with median ages in the 50s are entirely unprecedented, and no one really
00:18:06.200 | knows how a country in this situation will continue functioning.
00:18:10.340 | In the most affected countries, more than 35% of the total population could be over
00:18:15.320 | 65 by 2050.
00:18:17.840 | Obvious effects include a drastic fall in geopolitical importance, stagnant or declining
00:18:23.480 | asset and real estate valuations, shortages and high prices of all forms of labor, and
00:18:28.760 | permanently falling or stagnant GDP.
00:18:32.040 | Due to current high levels of wealth, health, education, and infrastructure, these countries
00:18:37.320 | will probably maintain statistically higher levels of individual human development and
00:18:41.720 | well-being for the foreseeable future, in a manner decoupled from their collapse in
00:18:46.160 | global importance.
00:18:48.160 | Life in these places might be quite pleasant for the younger people due to a profound lack
00:18:52.320 | of competition for housing stock and the ability to demand extremely high wages for non-mechanized
00:18:58.200 | human labor jobs.
00:19:00.240 | As far as its role in the world system led by the metropole, the most obvious role of
00:19:04.680 | the old world may be recreational and aesthetic, particularly as a playground for the more
00:19:11.240 | privileged classes of the metropole and the young world.
00:19:14.840 | The beauty and natural value of these lands in the eyes of outsiders will only be enhanced
00:19:19.400 | by the general slowing of activity and industry.
00:19:23.080 | Also, much of this area has great agricultural potential as well as an increasingly vacant
00:19:28.840 | countryside, raising the potential of expanded export agriculture using some form of guest
00:19:34.160 | worker labor from the young world.
00:19:36.920 | Further potential lies in the deep linguistic and cultural links that some of the old world
00:19:41.600 | nations retain with their former colonial possessions in the young world.
00:19:46.360 | A number of these old world countries still provide managerial, financial, and more advanced
00:19:50.760 | manufacturing services to their former colonial possessions, acting as a sort of back office
00:19:56.120 | for the young world.
00:19:57.600 | However, there is a danger that life in the old world will create a profound psychological
00:20:02.880 | malaise that only accelerates the process of degrowth and population collapse.
00:20:08.960 | What does it do to the human mind when you live in comfort, but there is no apparent
00:20:12.600 | future and nothing for your civilization to do but curate the relics of the past?
00:20:18.380 | Life in many parts of the old world will mean not hearing the voices of children in the
00:20:22.840 | now empty park outside your window.
00:20:25.680 | Most of the teens and young adults you will see on a daily basis will be tourists, immigrants,
00:20:31.200 | or foreign guest workers.
00:20:33.380 | It may be that talented young workers from the old world emigrate to the metropole, or
00:20:38.160 | even the young world due to emotional rather than economic factors, out of the sheer desire
00:20:43.960 | to be where things are happening.
00:20:47.240 | Given the high living standards for young people who do grow up in the old world, it
00:20:51.520 | might seem like there should be higher migration to it from the metropole.
00:20:56.360 | For those tired of a highly competitive life in the cities, a quiet existence in an aging
00:21:01.520 | welfare state might even sound idyllic.
00:21:04.800 | But while such migration happens even now, there are many barriers to American migration
00:21:10.320 | to Europe or East Asia.
00:21:12.380 | The sheer logistics of formal immigration in these countries can be difficult, and most
00:21:16.600 | Americans face both cultural and linguistic barriers.
00:21:20.160 | For countries like Japan, permanent residency is extremely difficult to achieve, and most
00:21:24.360 | foreigners will never become citizens.
00:21:26.560 | The fact is that the majority of people in any country, even those of the young world,
00:21:31.600 | will never even attempt to emigrate.
00:21:34.400 | Those who do will be a relatively small and privileged class with the ability to overcome
00:21:38.800 | these barriers.
00:21:40.280 | The ties of language and culture are strong, and the metropole has ample opportunity within
00:21:44.760 | its borders for the ambitious.
00:21:47.280 | The longer game for these places is, in a sense, mysterious.
00:21:52.400 | Current trends are inexorably leading towards total fertility rates below one child per
00:21:57.440 | couple.
00:21:58.500 | Each new generation, pre-migration, is now approaching half the size of the prior, and
00:22:04.280 | the degree of shrinkage and aging discussed in this article appears inevitable, since
00:22:09.120 | even a deep cultural change to combat the momentum of this process would take decades.
00:22:14.840 | One could speculate that these nations might eventually evolve a new cultural form or new
00:22:20.160 | subpopulations that have the ability to maintain above-replacement birth rates while living
00:22:24.800 | a fully technological developed existence, but there is little evidence of this to date.
00:22:30.020 | One might also predict mass incursions amounting to an invasion of these weak and dormant lands
00:22:35.080 | from the young world.
00:22:36.580 | These nations still have the power to repel mass migration, but they may not choose to
00:22:41.560 | do so.
00:22:43.960 | The Quiet World
00:22:45.880 | In contrast with the old but rich world, there is the quiet world, and the related concept
00:22:51.840 | of the BRICS countries.
00:22:54.060 | These states are generally on a track to become old before ever approaching first world levels
00:22:58.020 | of wealth and development.
00:22:59.960 | Rather than first world equivalents, this quiet world seems fated to spend the middle
00:23:03.680 | and later 21st century as lower middle income countries with the average person being middle
00:23:09.240 | aged.
00:23:10.480 | In comparison, by 2050 the United States will socially be closer to our image of an emerging
00:23:15.640 | market than the formerly emerging countries of this quiet world will be.
00:23:20.640 | The demographic situations in China and Russia are well known, but it is very interesting
00:23:25.160 | to examine some of the smaller emerging markets, which most people casually assume to be fast
00:23:30.720 | growing, youthful places.
00:23:33.200 | By 2050, Brazil will have a median age of 44, similar to modern day Italy.
00:23:39.480 | Turkey will have a median age of 42 by 2050, similar to Spain today.
00:23:44.400 | Iran and Mexico will also have a median age of 42 by then.
00:23:48.720 | All either match or even exceed the US in age by this point in time.
00:23:54.040 | Developers of South and Southeast Asia may even join this category near the end of the
00:23:57.880 | century.
00:23:59.000 | Both Indonesia and India will have a median age of approximately 37 by 2050, similar to
00:24:04.800 | the modern United States.
00:24:06.240 | However, even India is projected to begin experiencing significant population loss and
00:24:11.480 | unfavorable ratios of pensioners to workers after 2050.
00:24:16.620 | The tenor of life in this coming "quiet world" is hard to predict.
00:24:21.880 | What might life be like in a Turkey or Mexico that has the sleepy, elderly-heavy demographics
00:24:28.200 | of present-day Spain or Italy but without the high incomes?
00:24:32.100 | The most obvious example of fairly old and poor countries existing today are some of
00:24:37.280 | the post-Soviet areas, such as Ukraine with a median age of 41.2 and pre-war per capita
00:24:43.360 | GDP of 3,726 US dollars.
00:24:47.080 | The economic impasse of poor countries too old to generate growth will become a major
00:24:52.280 | global issue far beyond the old Eastern bloc.
00:24:56.080 | On the other hand, many of these countries are major exporters of petroleum and food
00:25:00.760 | grains, and it is possible that increasing values for such commodities combined with
00:25:05.480 | stable populations might allow for reasonably comfortable conditions for these aging populations.
00:25:10.840 | The speed of manufacturing transition towards the young world may also become an asset for
00:25:15.840 | those able to integrate into the new supply chains.
00:25:19.320 | Given their current economies, Mexico and Turkey have the capacity to maintain but not
00:25:24.160 | to increase their manufacturing and assembly operations, particularly in complex fields
00:25:29.200 | such as automotive, shipbuilding, aviation, and armaments.
00:25:33.860 | But no major emerging market country has the capacity to actually emerge as a leading world
00:25:39.280 | power or seriously challenge the United States in the post-2030 period.
00:25:44.880 | With the exception of India and its delayed trajectory, their maximum geopolitical power
00:25:50.080 | and influence have probably already peaked.
00:25:54.160 | The Young World As the First World plunges towards median
00:25:57.720 | ages in the 50s, most of Africa still has median ages under 20, with Niger the lowest
00:26:04.000 | at only 14.8 years.
00:26:07.100 | Outside of Africa, there is still a significant young world as well, including Palestine at
00:26:11.840 | 18, Afghanistan at 19.5, Yemen at 19.8, Iraq at 21.2, Pakistan at 22, Guatemala at 23,
00:26:21.520 | Jordan at 23.5, Syria at 23.5, Egypt at 24, and Honduras at 24.
00:26:29.360 | Much of this young world will retain median ages of under 30 years old to 2050 or beyond,
00:26:35.160 | similar to Mexico today, while traditional cheap labor countries such as Thailand and
00:26:39.120 | China age into their 50s and presumably become non-viable for high labor production.
00:26:45.200 | The new cities of this young world will be vast, turbulent, and often violent, as has
00:26:51.120 | always been the lot of young and fast-growing cities.
00:26:54.520 | In 2050, the DRC's Kinshasa will have 35 million, Lagos will have 32 million, and Karachi
00:27:02.480 | will have 31 million inhabitants.
00:27:05.400 | The raw demographics that compel this outcome are essentially already in place.
00:27:11.080 | Barring some unprecedented global collapse, the young parents of Lagos in 2040 are already
00:27:16.360 | alive now.
00:27:18.240 | The future of this young world will likely be characterized by a rolling frontier of
00:27:22.600 | manufacturing and other high-labor enterprises, quite possibly including large agricultural
00:27:28.020 | and natural resource projects.
00:27:30.580 | This is an attractive option for current rich countries, but it also requires a workforce
00:27:35.080 | willing to venture into the young world and oppose the physical and logistical discipline
00:27:39.480 | of industrial economies in these regions, a process China is carrying out across many
00:27:43.980 | regions today.
00:27:45.960 | Creating an industrial workforce is immensely difficult.
00:27:49.180 | It required a full mobilization of society in Europe and America, from mass public schooling
00:27:54.680 | and factory discipline to negotiating institutions between employers and workers.
00:27:59.400 | The process will likely look similar to what occurred in Mexico, where a very poor, almost
00:28:04.680 | entirely agrarian nation gradually developed into a hub of industry and commercial agriculture,
00:28:10.160 | which now supplies much of America's vegetables and assembles our highly complex computerized
00:28:14.520 | cars and trucks.
00:28:16.320 | Both US and Mexican companies carried out the process with state backing.
00:28:21.320 | Airports in the least developed African states provide another example of maintaining advanced
00:28:25.200 | infrastructure in areas without human or physical support systems.
00:28:28.840 | You can fly from Omaha, Nebraska to Jemena, Chad within a day and a half on commercial
00:28:35.520 | passenger jets with no extraordinary difficulty.
00:28:38.880 | But the radar, control systems, jets, and everything else involved in operating a commercial
00:28:43.240 | airport in Chad are imported wholesale.
00:28:46.560 | The airport is de facto under the control of French Air Force officers, although the
00:28:51.040 | personnel you encounter when arriving are trained native Chadians.
00:28:55.160 | The frontier is rolling because the metropole and the old world do not necessarily outsource
00:29:00.840 | to the least developed, youngest, and lowest labor cost locations.
00:29:05.600 | There is very little export manufacturing in the least developed and theoretically cheapest
00:29:09.280 | countries of sub-Saharan Africa due to their critical lack of infrastructure and human
00:29:13.720 | capital, not to mention populations that may be entirely unaccustomed to routine wage labor
00:29:19.080 | or mechanical processes.
00:29:20.920 | However, the goal is to strike an ideal balance between low labor costs and minimally adequate
00:29:25.920 | infrastructure and workforce development.
00:29:28.680 | The development of this vast new economic frontier will likely move roughly in order
00:29:33.220 | of higher to lower median age and higher to lower development.
00:29:37.900 | This is because the very youngest countries, without exception, are either extremely underdeveloped,
00:29:43.560 | engaged in civil war, and disorder of a type that precludes foreign investment, or both.
00:29:50.000 | Historically, as in China and India, foreign investment for export appears to gravitate
00:29:55.040 | towards countries of the median age in the early 20s versus the mid-teens seen in much
00:30:00.280 | of Africa.
00:30:01.280 | A key example of a country that was too young is Ethiopia.
00:30:05.720 | Much was made in the financial press of Ethiopia as one of the next big emerging markets, but
00:30:10.680 | the country has recently descended into a period of open-ended civil war with up to
00:30:14.480 | 500,000 total deaths to date.
00:30:17.420 | This is not so surprising if we consider that Ethiopia's current median age is 19.5.
00:30:23.760 | This age increased from 16 due to the early stages of modernization, but Ethiopia blew
00:30:29.000 | up right as it approached age 20.
00:30:33.080 | As costs continue to rise in India or Thailand, attention in Asia will likely shift to Pakistan
00:30:38.920 | or Egypt.
00:30:39.920 | At a certain point, conditions will suggest an extension of operations from Pakistan into
00:30:44.240 | Afghanistan.
00:30:45.960 | China is already courting its new government, and from Egypt into Yemen or Iraq.
00:30:51.840 | From there, the more developed African states, such as Sudan and Nigeria, are a logical choice.
00:30:57.040 | It may be late in the century before attention seriously turns to the last frontiers of labor,
00:31:01.600 | such as Mali, Chad, and the DRC, for ventures other than mining and resource projects.
00:31:09.000 | The New Frontier Like 19th century Europe, the US seems on track
00:31:13.040 | for stricter internal competition for space and opportunity.
00:31:18.040 | California provides a rough preview of domestic conditions as it approaches 2050.
00:31:23.840 | By any objective numbers, California is incredibly rich, nationally dominant, and very far from
00:31:30.600 | collapsing.
00:31:32.480 | It has high asset prices, enormous agricultural production, and a very large population that
00:31:37.680 | has grown steadily over the past 50 years.
00:31:40.580 | It has not just the largest economy by far of any US state, but also the fifth largest
00:31:45.700 | economy in the world at $3.36 trillion, versus Texas at $1.99 trillion and New York at $1.85
00:31:54.120 | trillion.
00:31:55.120 | California attracts large numbers of legal and illegal immigrants from every corner of
00:31:59.240 | the earth, many from the young world.
00:32:01.780 | The increasing amount of residences with ties to the young world and other parts of the
00:32:05.220 | globe give it an outward-looking culture.
00:32:08.780 | Yet California is becoming famous for exporting native-born Californians.
00:32:14.200 | In the midst of its affluence, many natives have fled, finding that extreme asset prices
00:32:18.620 | and competition with a constant stream of new immigrant workers render it impossible
00:32:22.680 | for them to make the sort of life they desire in their native land.
00:32:26.300 | California presents a situation of simultaneous immigration and displacement, even as it grows
00:32:31.880 | larger and richer.
00:32:34.420 | As much ire as California draws, it doesn't stop drawing people.
00:32:40.060 | Even many who leave end up coming back or maintaining business ties.
00:32:44.600 | And the metropole has the priors for a similar kind of term-setting power in its relationship
00:32:49.720 | to the other spheres of the world.
00:32:52.340 | Rather than multipolarity or decoupling, the hard realities of age and wealth will add
00:32:57.900 | up to a system of global power that, in many ways, looks very familiar.