alt Hacker NewsAs you’ve just said, the decline isn’t the problem, it’s the global financial system. We should be looking to reform that, not to boost the population: that’s a long-term impossibility in a closed system.
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The problem is we don't know what that other system would look like. A lot of countries will try a bunch of different stuff. A lot of them will fail. Catastrophically. Some of them might succeed. The countries further behind the curve will get the advantage of looking at what succeeded before them and use that (if they're smart).
What is one thing you’d reform about the global financial system?
Well not really the financial system per se, but people's appetite for better living than we as a species can really "afford" at any given moment. The hedonic treadmill is to blame. Good luck stopping that!
> We should be looking to reform that
By making retirement unfeasible until you are 80? That might be tricky...
> As you’ve just said, the decline isn’t the problem, it’s the global financial system. We should be looking to reform that...
What organizational 'reform' is going to address the issue that the young and the old survive by consuming the resources of the working age population?
No matter how productive you are, you aren't going to be producing enough tomato's between years 18 and 65 to be still consuming tomato's at 95. They don't last 30 years. If you want a smaller population to support a larger retired population you need to either:
1. Lower the expectations of the larger population set regarding their quality of life. 2. Reduce the size of the larger population, probably by raising retirement age. 3. Utilize capital improvements and investments to increase the productivity of the smaller population
This isn't some issue with the 'global financial system', it's simply a side-effect of people needing to consume some perishable goods and so are dependent on the continual production of those perishable goods even after these people have stopped supporting that production.