Babies! Are the answer.

Babies are also the reason. Babies are the problem and the solution, the currency and the contract, the apocalypse and the salvation, all wrapped in cute little rainbow diapers and outlandish college funds that make you weep well into 2042. Who knew?

I have recently returned from Spain. Spain is sultry and delicious like spicy paella at midnight; Barcelona is like San Francisco with a sexier accent and better sangria, warmer and bigger and messier, a million outdoor patios and nightclubs that won’t even look at you until 2:00AM.

Spain is also in a free-fall, economically speaking, one of the worst performers in the EU: Endless turmoil, sky-high unemployment, protests, disgruntlement, graffiti, pickpockets and tension and desperation worse than a cluster of Catholic priests at a Boy Scout convention.

Do you know why? Something about the battered Euro, about struggling manufacturing sectors, the usual economic suspects? Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.

But maybe not. According to Forbes (and others), the problem with Spain — and much of Europe overall — is its shockingly low birth rate. Which is to say, babies. They’re just not cranking them out like they used to. Who knew?

So dire is the fertility situation that not only is Spain’s growth thought to be slowing or even leveling off, it’s actually en route to declining; and it’s far from the only one.

Why is this happening? That’s easy: Because younger people don’t want as many kids. Because Boomers are dying off. Because Millennials — especially modern females — have finally broken the joyless chains of the misogynistic, birth control-hating Catholic church. Because immigrant labor isn’t racing in fast enough to fill the void. And as everyone knows, if the human species isn’t procreating like rabbits, we die like flies.

It’s a basic, insane truism of economics: Population growth is what makes for a thriving economy. Not population stasis, not population contraction, not population oh-my-God-there-are-way-too-many-people-in-this-room-right-now. Only growth, endless and forever, will keep the world from imploding. How very preposterous.

Sound obvious? Sure it is. But it’s also sort of tragic, this collision course with imminent implosion. We’re like the bus in Speed or the boat in Speed II or the quantum rocket ship in Speed III — slow down even for a second, and Sandra Bullock gets it.

It’s not that growth is bad, per se. It’s the fact that we cannot back off. Our systems simply do not allow for scaling down, dialing back the rapaciousness so as to cherish and enjoy what we already have. This is the message: If a country happens to stop birthing so much, if couples decide to have fewer/no kids, if they decide to instead travel, celebrate life and not work themselves to death like their forebears, well, eventually an economy does what Spain’s is doing: it implodes, causes chaos and misery and pain. Hence:

“Without a major shift in policies that favor families in housing or tax policies, and an unexpected resurgence of interest in marriage and children, Spain and the rest of Mediterranean face prospects of a immediate decline every bit as profound as that experienced in the 17th and 18th Century when these great nations lost their status as global powers.”

Really, Forbes? Government incentives to procreate? What a completely ridiculous notion. And how odd that no government, no brilliant sociologist has figured a way for populations to safely, prudently contract without serious economic repercussions, without every headline in The Economist becoming even more bleak than it already is.

How can this be? Everywhere you look, from India to China, Africa to Mexico City, overpopulation is rampant, we are sucking down resources faster than Earth can replace them. There are seven billion of us and in a few short decades there will be 10 billion of us and no one has the slightest clue where to put all those used iPhones.

This much we know: No one is walking through the slums of Mumbai or Sudan, no one is stuck in traffic in LA, coughing up a lung in São Paolo or just trying to cross the street in downtown Cairo and saying, “Hey, you know what we need? We need more people. We need to procreate ourselves out of this problem. After all, it’s what God wants.” Because God, apparently, is a complete idiot.

Are we so inexorably snagged, caught in a wicked Catch-22 of our own devious and greedy creation? You need not be an economist to know that endless growth is, of course, unsustainable, will eventually lead to implosion and famine and zombies.

But apparently the flipside is just as lethal; too little growth, too little fertility, any attempt to cut back on a few people here and there, and it’s all unemployment, discontent, a disastrous domino effect across the global economy. Fun!

Maybe the machine is self correcting? Spain and Europe decline, but Latin America, China and Africa explode? But that’s not accurate, either. The world population is still skyrocketing. And it’s exponential; it’s only accelerating. More people beget more people. It’s just what we do.

Maybe the fatalists are right, and Mother Nature will sense this violent imbalance and send in a corrective, a plague or a virus or a major tectonic hellmouth to swallow and cleanse things out. After all, there is no system in existence into which you can keep pouring in more and more energy, garbage and waste without major recoil and backlash. Except maybe Newt Gingrich. And look how terrifying that thing is.

But oh, how depressing to recognize that we have evolved through all these harsh and difficult phases, caveman to medieval to peasant, industrial to technological, birthing massive broods mostly for the labor pool and out of a blind fear of God, only to finally reach a place where we can slow the hell down, reduce the population a little, take it easy on ourselves and the planet — and it’s all for naught.

Turns out it’s just an illusion. In capitalism, in the global economy, in human culture, there is no easing off the gas pedal. There is no gently reversing the machine to give ourselves, much less the planet, a chance to breathe and restore. Humanity abides no minimizing, no clarifying asceticism, no safe return to, say, four billion and change.

Is that not strange? Is that not more than a little sad? Best suck it up, have more babies, and get back to work, before it’s too late. Who wants paella?

6 Comments on "Babies! At the end of the world"

Kenz300 on Wed, 6th Jun 2012 12:08 pm 



Quote — ” Everywhere you look, from India to China, Africa to Mexico City, overpopulation is rampant, we are sucking down resources faster than Earth can replace them. ”
——————–
If you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child.

BillT on Wed, 6th Jun 2012 2:13 pm 



Mother Nature is the final family planner. Famine will take out billions in the coming decades. We don’t need more babies, we need fewer everywhere.

mlit on Wed, 6th Jun 2012 5:40 pm 



I do agree debt driven capitalism requires population growth – but do not believe at all that lack of population growth has anything to do with current European issues

Rick on Wed, 6th Jun 2012 8:04 pm 



Spain’s problems have nothing to do with lack of people – same everywhere too.

And the world will be better off with less. One of the many reasons I have no kids.

Johny K. on Wed, 6th Jun 2012 10:02 pm 



I think, it is quite the OPPOSITE, about population and economy:

1) less population actually increases GDP per capita (if GDP stays the same)

2) less population actually decreases unemployment especially youth unemployment (the same number of jobs, but less people)

Kenz300 on Thu, 7th Jun 2012 2:27 pm 



Having more unemployed people does not help the economy.