The more interesting thing about this is that it is part of a new type of economics, contraction economics. The global trend toward birth rates below replenishment means that first-world countries are maintaining their population growth through immigration. As some countries embrace restrictions on immigration, and ultimately all countries plateau in their population growth (projected to be around 2100) it means that the driving force behind increases in property value (population increases) will be curtailed.*
As we saw in 2008 curtailing or reversing growth in real-estate can have major impacts on society, but in the future this won't be just a correction it will be a new phase of global economics. There will be fewer humans each year making the total pressure on land values negative. Even before that an aging workforce will cause the total working population to contract (as it already has in Japan). Everything the Japanese do with more land and fewer workers is a canary in the coal mine for the global economy.
One of the great predicates of modern economics (perpetual expansion) will need to be re-thought. In some ways it's great news (more space for everyone after the great pinch of the 21st century) but in others it will necessarily wipe out the speculative aspect of many current growth markets. Contraction economics means deflation becomes a norm not an exception.
* Urbanization means cities will lag behind this reversal.
I disagree that there is a significant correlation between expanding population and an expanding economy. In fact there are plenty of examples of countries whose economy expanded way faster than their population, which implies that factors other than population dominate economic growth. (If population was the dominant factor in economic growth, we would see a consistent correlation between the two.)
Every day we read articles about how AI is going to drive massive improvements in productivity, killing millions of jobs in the process. If we really believe this is true, then a shrinking population is what we want, to "soak up" those destroyed jobs. A bonus of massive productivity increases is that real property transactions as a percentage of the economy will shrink too, softening the blow of contraction there.
Real estate is not the first industry to be threatened by changes in the economy! Creative destruction is part of our economic story and there is no inherent reason real estate should be immune from that, or that we should feel special concern about that industry among all others.
In short, I see no reason to believe that a shrinking population necessarily creates a shrinking economy. "Contraction economics" sounds cool but it's just a new name for what happened to the buggy whip industry, the telegraph industry, the canal industry, etc. And yes, maybe the real estate industry too.
EDIT to add: In my opinion a more significant future for economics is accounting for externalities that have typically stayed off the books, like clean water, clean air, a stable climate, etc. Economics has typically modeled economies as open systems, that is, there are "inputs" like raw materials and energy sources, that create economic outputs. But we've conquered the Earth now... with the exception of insolation, the global economy is a closed system. Every ounce of raw material and every joule of energy creates a complementary cost somewhere else in the system. Unless we can account for that, we will fool ourselves about the actual net value we are creating.
"I disagree that there is a significant correlation between expanding population and an expanding economy."
In any functioning economy there is obviously a correlation.
Bodies have jobs, generate income, and they buy stuff meaning GDP.
Government spends on social services per body, meaning GDP.
Not only are 'warm bodies' a part of economic growth ... 'warm bodies' are the very basis of economic growth in most of the West! If you take out population growth from US economic data, it looks a little more like Europe. If you normalize for lower rates of children ... that explains a huge amount about lagging economic growth in the West.
Populations that require homes, cars, services, food, mortgages - that's what drives the economy.
So to your point - in a dysfunctional scenario, more bodies means problems, but overall no.
How do you think America became the most powerful entity in the Western world and in some ways in the world? And not Sweden?
The story of American economic growth from 1777 onwards includes a lot of things, but if you measure up against Europe, what mostly stands out is body count.
Also - remember that growth is measured in GDP, not 'efficiency' - so as AI does 'more for less' it's technically 'bad' paradoxically, for the economy, as you point out. But as long as we figure out a way (any way!) for the surpluses to be distributed, they will be spent, hence 'growing economy'.
Canada's economic strategy is fully based on body count. The nations banks drive our strategy, and they can't grow any more through competition or innovation - they can only grow through more mortgages, which come from more bodies. So they push for large scale immigration, which is in their self interest.
'AI' is not how the economy will grow.
A sea of new homes, out to the horizon, with a Starbucks on every corner, an IKEA in every neighbourhood, a Toyota in every driveway, and a dozen prescriptions per home ... this is how our current economy 'grows'.
How many of those economic growths situations weren't linked to local population growth, but were linked to global population growth and populations emerging from poverty?
Population correlates directly with some economies: food, housing, etc. I think most of our measures of an economy (GDP? VTI?) aim to get as many people in as many human-only productive jobs as possible. (I apologize for leaving "productive" open-ended)
”If we really believe this is true, then a shrinking population is what we want, to "soak up" those destroyed jobs”
The number of jobs is highway correlated with the number of people (most jobs exist to serve the population). So, population decline won’t help keep (relative) unemployment numbers down.
One prominent recent example that destroys the myth that economic expansion is very tightly bound to population expansion, is the US.
2008 pop: 304m people. 2018 pop: ~327m people. A 7.5% increase in population across a decade.
2008 GDP: $14.72t ($17.64t inflation adjusted). 2018 GDP: $20.5t. Approximately a 17% real increase in GDP.
The US added an economy close to the size of Germany in just ten years while only adding 23m people (Germany's population is 83m). That's courtesy of increasing output per capita far more than it is population growth.
They can be correlated without being a tight linear relationship.
If every two people in a group have exactly one transaction, then adding 20 people to a group of 100 will create more new transactions than you'll find in a group with just 20 people.
To be fair, when I google for research on correlations between economic growth and population growth, I get a jumble of papers on opposite sides - some pro-natalist and some anti-natalist and some agnostic. (Maybe one camp is considered far more authoritative than the others?)
Maybe it's a nontrivial relationship if it exists, though I'm not convinced anyone knows definitively how the relationship plays out.
The fact that the slope of the growth line is not 1 does not imply that economic expansion is not tightly bound to population expansion, or that economic expansion could continue under population contraction. Consider the simplest possible linear model Y = beta * X + noise where beta != 1; to say nothing of nonlinear models or interaction effects between population growth and other factors. Surely output per capita matters, and the true data generating process is far more complex, but you have not come close to demonstrating population growth and economic growth are decoupled through this example.
It's easy to grow fast while borrowing heavily, and that should be taken into account when looking at growth curves for various economic regions. Oil prices have also dropped from around $100 to $60 iirc.
Japan is not a very good proxy due to their strict immigration policies and preference to be an "ethnically homogeneous nation." As you mentioned, other countries can just replenish their head count through relaxed immigration. I'd wager, for example, that the US will remain highly multicultural with looser immigration long term since it's baked into its identity[0], despite some recent policy changes.
"Japan has strict immigration policies" is often repeated, but I don't think this is tells the whole story. Some of the policies are very permissive:
* If you graduated university and have a 'skilled' job in Japan, you are likely to get a visa. There is no cap on the number of these. There is no language requirement.
* If you live in Japan for over 5 years continuously you can apply for citizenship, though you must renounce any other citizenships.
* If you live in Japan for over 10 years you are eligible for permanent residency.
* If you are married to a Japanese national you can do any kind of work and get permanent residency in 3 years.
* If you have enough points on the highly skilled professional visa you can get permanent residency in 1 year. This is retroactive as long as you lived in Japan during that time, you don't even need to have had the highly skilled professional visa.
So, is it really an issue of policy? I think the causes may lie elsewhere.
Based on my experience visiting Japan and talking to both expats and expat-friendly locals there, I think the issue is more cultural than political. If you live in Japan but don't look Japanese you never really feel welcomed as a Japanese.
Contrast that to countries like most of the West, where at least a solid proportion of people consider it socially unacceptable to discriminate socially based on someone's looks or origins...
> Contrast that to countries like most of the West, where at least a solid proportion of people consider it socially unacceptable to discriminate socially based on someone's looks or origins..
Those things are also socially unacceptable in Japan. My experience is that the often discussed "micro-agressions" against foreigners happen about as often in Japan as they do in my own country (US, grew up in Texas).
Of course, the only complaints that foreigners in Japan can make is about trivia. The US is so fucked up that we cannot seem to stop shooting unarmed black men, we're separating mothers from babies, and as of last week now tear gassing families at the border. So not sure if you are American, but many of the foreigners in Japan that complain of discrimination are, and I just want to say that I think it takes a lot of balls for an American in Japan to be like "hey, you guys can do a lot better with the discrimination thing."
As horrifying as someone being impressed with your ability to use chopsticks is, it's not quite so horrifying as being literally shot for walking on the street.
Many people in the US freeze up if a black person so much as walks by them on the street. And on the other side of the pacific? Ask a random stranger for directions; 9 times out of 10 they will stop whatever they are doing and walk with you to wherever you are going.
>The US is so fucked up that we cannot seem to stop shooting unarmed black men
Twice as many white men are shot by police but I can't remember the last time I saw a national news story about one of them. Name one in recent years you heard covered in the national news. [0] I edited out "unarmed". That ratio slightly favors white males.
>we're separating mothers from babies, and as of last week now tear gassing families at the border.
Everyday, across this beautiful land, we seperate children from their parents for commiting crimes. We have a legal immigration system.
What does Japan do to people who enter illegally? How many refugees did they take in 2017? 20. Out of 20,000 applications. They could do a little more, right? [1]
> Twice as many unarmed white men are shot by police
I visited your link and could not see a matching statistic.
Filtering by "unarmed" and hovering over "Race" I got a count of 19 White, 15 Black, 4 Hispanic.
I then also had a quick look at the article for "Brett Luengo", [0] (White) which states i.e. "Luengo attacked a woman first..." etc. etc.; I mean it goes on for quite a while. So seems like there's a big variation in the definition of "unarmed man" shooting that doesn't preclude other kinds of violent or aggressive activity/indications.
Looks to me like the statistics are not really telling the whole story there so maybe that's why you don't hear them "covered in the national news".
> I visited your link and could not see a matching statistic.
I was wrong. Police kill twice as many whites but I shouldn't have included the unarmed qualifier.
> I then also had a quick look at the article for "Brett Luengo"
He did attack but I think it still qualifies. I personally didn't hear of this one but a google search shows it was covered, even if not very extensively. It was picked up on national news.
Even still, the comment that law enforcement is wholesale killing young unarmed black males is just false.
Oh right, I guess I thought what you were doing was saying that cases like [0] being "heard about on the national news" is showing some kind of bias, that it's not something to be concerned about because the same is happening regardless of race, and using some statistics to evidence your assertion.
I was trying to say that a) you were massively off about the relative quantities of unarmed shootings and that b) in any case; I would imagine people are more upset - i.e. it's in the national news - about e.g. [0] than; e.g. Brett Luengo, because there's a huge difference in the circumstances surrounding their deaths, something which cannot be interpreted from the statistics you cited.
Further, my admittedly limited & poor knowledge of the situation caused me to infer that the op was talking about this qualitative difference, although you are correct in saying that if you take the statement "we cannot seem to stop shooting unarmed black men" absolutely, strictly, literally; without applying any context whatsoever, then talking about quantities is completely valid.
> Everyday, across this beautiful land, we seperate children from their parents for commiting crimes. We have a legal immigration system.
It is possible to have a legal immigration system and to be humane when dealing with people who for some reason wouldn't/couldn't go through it. Especially if it involves kids - as I'm pretty sure they are not to blame on any of this.
It must be hard working on the border when people bring children that are not their own to fast tack their way through into the country. Or when families lie about their child’s age to loophole the system. But it’s easier for us to focus on the separation rather than the reason the separation exists to begin with.
And let’s not forget tear gas being used for crowds of people throwing stones at border patrol. No lets focus on tear gas issue and less of the people doing their job being assulted.
> people bring children that are not their own to fast tack their way through into the country. Or when families lie about their child’s age to loophole the system.
Completely citation & evidence free assertions - smells like slander to me.
"On Thursday, officials revealed that in seven of 102 cases involving children under 5 separated from their guardians, the adult was determined not to actually be the parent."
So ok, you're only slandering ~95% of those 102. If you don't like the term "slander" how about "generalisation" or "prejudice".
Forgive me if these words have negative connotations, or "trigger feelings" - but what term would you use, to describe declaring 100% of a group to have attributes that only apply to - by your very own research - 5% of that group?
> Using tear gas at the border is an American thing, not a Trump thing.
No one above thread claimed any individual was responsible. The apologetics of inserting that statement is unnecessary. I do respect that you added citations.
This feeling they experienced is of course subjective. Take it from a 20-year non-native Tokyo resident - it doesn't have to feel unwelcoming. Depends on the individual I guess.
Admittedly, I've never lived in any of the out-of-the way places where most of these properties are located.
I would consider it weirdly arrogant to go to Japan and then have them ever accept me as 'Japanese'. I would hope that thy are respectful to me, and treat me well, and maybe even 'as a Japanese' but not actually 'Japanese', because - I'm not!
There's a big difference I think between 'rights' and 'cultural attribution', we mix them up a lot in the West.
You're assuming that those White/Black people were Japanese because they were born and raised Japanese.
From a certain perspective, that would not be correct.
Many people (most of the world) view race as fundamentally intertwined with ethnicity, ergo, the white folks in the video may never really be considered 'fully Japanese', although surely they are mostly accommodated as such.
'American' really isn't an ethnicity so 'new world' people often have difficulty grasping how others might view ethnicity.
As longs as people are treated reasonably, frankly, I don't care.
> If you live in Japan but don't look Japanese you never really feel welcomed as a Japanese.
That goes for a lot of countries, especially if your skin color is different as well as your accent, language and whatnot. Heck, even when you are born in a country where you are not the same skin color as the majority you can feel not welcome. So, it's kind of a generalization to say that only about Japan.
You can apply, but actually getting both permanent residency and citizenship isn’t nearly that trivial.
“Working in japan” and “becoming Japanese” are different things, and the latter is very much more difficult.
Japan is very happy to have foreign workers who will politely leave once they lose their jobs / get old, but the immigration figures, in absolute terms, are tiny.
/me is a US citizen with a PR (permanent residency) status in Japan. Spouse has naturalized to a Japan citizen.
My anecdote: without fitting into any of the qualifying categories, I was able to get a PR in Japan after residing in the country for 10 years. The rules have changed and with the right qualifications it's possible to apply for PR with only two years residency (work visa).
Further anecdote: My wife recently got her Japanese citizenship. This was difficult, it took over a year and an intrusive investigation. Like getting top secret clearance. The investigation brought up why I wasn't pursuing Japanese citizenship until they discovered my low level of Japanese skills, and it was no longer an issue.
My entire family here in the greater Tokyo area is doesn't quite fit in with the Japanese. We're a bit loud. We're consumerists. We get quizzical looks when filling in applications. We've broken software that expected only Japanese to use. It has it's negatives but the positives of being different in this mostly homogeneous society has it's advantages.
Yes, my situation is a small minority but with the policy changes, it's one less hurdle for people who want to live in Japan. We are what makes the "society".
But they seem to have dramatically lowered the bar for highly paid workers to stay in the country. That 1 year PR eligibility is technically open to just about anyone earning over ~$100k. I know people who went over with nothing but a Bachelors, a few years in tech, and zero Japanese, but keeping their high incomes meant they could at least apply after only a year. I don't know how easy they would actually get it, so you may be right.
Even with the work visas themselves, I know someone at a small R&D company in a small city desperate for people, earning kinda low. He got a 1 year visa, then after a decent raise, a 3 year visa. I make more money in a big city, and got 5 years right off the bat, with poor Japanese. PR eligibility once it expires. I still hear about English teachers bouncing between 1 year visas after 10+ years in the country and near fluency.
I think a lot of what you hear about Japan comes from the English teacher side of things. Those guys are a dime a dozen, and have to hustle a lot. But there is a sense that Japan is desperate for skilled workers, and is trying to attract more of them. I've mentioned working in software to old dudes in bars and been instantly treated like an anticipated special guest, and told how good my opportunities are, that I should find a local girl and stay etc. Even if they'd rather not have foreigners in general, they are kinda rolling out the red carpet for a selection of them. All over the place companies advertise in English, promote their foreign working styles, and offer overseas relocation. They'll never be seen as Japanese, but welcomed to stay as if the country depends on them, which it just might
But vast majority of migrants ain't highly paid nor highly skilled.
All countries drool after certain professions nowadays and those people are doing pretty well pretty much anywhere. Head hunt for those people is a tiny dent in demographic trends.
The difference is in unskilled workers. The US has open gates to unskilled Mexican workers, Europe has open gates to unskilled Middle Eastern workers. Japan has nothing like that.
Historically, US immigrants have been able to assimilate time and time again. That isn't the case in Japan. There are Koreans who's families have lived in Japan for hundreds of years... yet they still aren't considered Japanese. The Japanese would rather rely on robotics instead of immigration to mitigate their problem with a dwindling population.
Yes, the US has done some horrible things in the past, yet:
1. we publicly admit them in the historical record
2. we teach these mistakes to our children in our schools as both reminders and ways to avoid them in the future.
The other question is, are there really any countries that are easy to immigrate to without the right to abode or right to return (for certain groups)?
Not just immigration, Japan also doesn’t rely on real estate speculation to drive middle class wealth. Houses and buildings have always depreciated and even land stopped appreciating after their bubble popped nearly 30 years ago. No one buys real estate to build wealth, but simply to live there. So they’ve got a huge head start in contraction economics.
In 2017, over a million people[1] received legal permanent resident status. In 2017 it was slightly less than in 2016, but on roughly the same level as the previous decade. So recent policy changes don't seem to have much effect in that regard.
Over 500,000 of those are familial green cards (spouses and children), meaning they likely would have been issued regardless of the changes in policy and don't really reflect a multicultural dimension for the country.
Other permanent resident status issuances take up to 15 years to achieve, meaning you won't see the effects of recent policy changes in that metric until the years to come.
That depends a lot what exactly visas are those. There are dual intent visas, which allow change to permanent immigrant status, and ones that explicitly prohibit such change. Most visas at your link are B type visas, which would be denied if immigration officer even suspects you have intent to become a permanent resident.
It works well in America and Canada, but ethnic tensions are probably one of the root causes of tension in every other American nation, even Mexico. Everywhere south of the US has kind of a 'soft race war' going on between descendants of White colonialists, ex-black slaves, the indigenous population, the mixed crew, and other ethnic groups. It's a kind of overwhelming systematic ... 'racism' is not the best word ... more like 'systematic racial friction'. It's apparent everywhere, even by just driving through regions you can see it.
Ah right... just get more immigrants from the immigrant factory.
I know this is difficult for some to understand but brown, black and asian people are made via sex and birth (Shocker of shocks, I know).
What you're arguing for is for the birth rate of the undeveloped world to continuously grow at a never-ending rate in order to compensate for the utter laziness of the developed world.
I hate to break it to you but that'll simply lead to a flip in which countries are classified as developed.
George Friedman wrote a book of creative predictions called "The Next 100 Years" that argued mounting depopulation pressures and labor shortages would lead countries to begin competing for migrants.
Interesting that has not been Europe's solution so far...
Japan's politics, with a strong aversion to open immigration and a desperate need for labor, have landed on some controversial compromises--for one, "internships" for temporary foreign workers with questionable protection for rights. May be an early signal for how the rest of the world will handle this.
> Interesting that has not been Europe's solution so far
Not all immigration is of equivalent "quality".
The worsening IQ test results in europe is often credited to the african immigration.
On the other end of the spectrum, asians are being actively restricted from entering the top schools in the US.
Europe (and pretty much every country in the world) is already competing for qualified immigration.
If we keep going the way we're going now, by the time population decline puts a negative pressure on land and housing prices, they will be so high that 99% of people will have no way of ever owning it other than by inheritance.
I don't think we will arrive at declining housing prices the way you suggest. Something will have to give way before that.
> it means that the driving force behind increases in property value (population increases) will be curtailed
> There will be fewer humans each year making the total pressure on land values negative
Your premise about real-estate inherently contracting in value due to population contraction, is not correct. Nor is your premise about the driving force correct.
Double the US population and drop the total national income by 95%. See which is the greater driving force in real-estate values. You can see this in action right now just by looking at high population density countries that are poor. Bangladesh has extreme population density, their real-estate is not expensive compared to Canada (~1/400th the population density) or the US (~1/40th the population density).
You can increase the value of real-estate while contracting the population, by increasing the per capita income of each person enough to overcome the effect of the population decline. Germany's population has barely budged in 50 years, their real-estate has increased in value in that time as the economy has expanded in real terms with a climb in their per capita wealth and incomes.
Today nearly everything you've ever heard about healthy (ie non-war, famine, etc) population decline being a horrible outcome, is false. It may have been true in the past, it is no longer.
The ideal outcome is for populations to decline while productivity and income soars per capita, improving the standard of living of each person remaining and lightening the burden on earth's resources. The focus of all nations should be on aggressively increasing per capita output, not on fighting healthy population decline.
Well, this is all assuming that humanity will not expand out of Earth. If that does happen, we might actually have a perpetually expanding populace and economy. Fun times.
I think you're assuming the current decline in birth rates is due to scarcity of resources. But I don't think that's true. In the developed world food and energy are not scarce, and even land outside of major metro areas is not scarce.
Population might just stabilize at some point, and then there's not much of a driver to expand off of our planet (apart from some resource mining, and other activities.)
Food and energy are not what defines scarcity any more.
If you want to pay the mortgage, have a fulfilling job, have time to spend with your family, and give your child a good start in life, you can't have 8 kids in a middle class family.
Sometimes 1 is the right number if you want your child to be successful and have enough free time to enjoy life yourself.
That IS resource constraint, the resource just isn't food.
The replacement rate is a little above 2 children in the modern world. Three kids is a burden for a lot of people.
It's pretty clear that the major driver is education and freedom of career choice for women. The UN has lots of data supporting that. Industrialization and changing attitudes toward children have also played a role.
My paternal grandfather was a farmer. He had 20 children who survived to adulthood. By two wives, the second having been the nursemaid. As I understand it, all of the children worked. Basically as soon as they could walk. Girls focused on childcare and housework, and boys on farm work. If they'd been living in a city, the boys would have had factory jobs.
So anyway, that's how you raise many children. That or be wealthy, of course. But current expectations, social norms, and laws make that impossible. Except perhaps for farm families, where substantial child labor remains legal.
Education comes with higher life standards. You want your kids to have their own rooms instead of whole family living in single-room shack, education for them etc.
"Freedom of career" for women is more like freedom to have to work. It's hard to raise a family on a single salary. Previously, a woman would work at home and husband would work outside. Now both of them have to work outside of the house to pay for appliances that do stuff back at home.
IMO one of the top issues is housing cost. Increasing specialisation, both parents having to work and urbanisation means people are crammed into more and more condensed cities. Space comes at expense. Children need space. Cheaper space out of the city means more transport costs and/or less job opportunities and likely lower wage. All in all, children is damn expensive.
Yes, it's true that (at least in the US) greater career choice for women has come with declining real wages. So that now, both partners need to work. Some argue that effectively doubling the workforce has played a major role. Or that people just expect to have more stuff. But the power of unions to maintain livable wages has eroded over the same time frame. And maybe it's all connected.
What's the resource constraint then if it's not food, energy, or shelter?
People want to buy more stuff? Hardly a requirement of years gone by.
People want more free time? Doubtful, otherwise people would work less and buy less stuff - which we don't see. People keep getting more productive, but they just funnel that into a more expensive lifestyle rather than cutting back on work.
I don't think the reasons are simple (or even the same between people) but I don't think it's dominated by resource constraints.
I know software engineers with no children and school teachers with four. Very different lifestyles, but all middle class. And I don't think resource constraints factored heavily into their decision making.
The resource constraints now are time and location. It's affordable to buy houses in a lot of places, just not so many that have access to good jobs and schools. So people prioritize the latter and sacrifice their time by commuting for work.
Since both parents now work, often with lengthy commutes, there isn't a whole lot of person-hours left to spend with the children. That means people have fewer of them.
When the kids get older and it's time to send them to university, well, that's something which has gone backwards in affordability. The cost of a university degree has shot through the roof. How could anyone afford to send 3 kids to university these days, let alone 8?
I think both parents (or especially the woman) working is probably the big part of it. But I don't think many people factor the cost of university degrees into their decision (whether they should is another matter)
Never mind traditionally, this is still true, even in the most egalitarian countries (Scandinavian countries).
Women have to choose between family and career, men don't really have to do that. The biggest driver behind the gender pay gap is the difference between women with children and women without. Somehow we haven't solved the issue that it's a cost borne primarily by women.
I think the current answer is quality - people want the best for their kids including a future or they won't have them otherwise. They may feel that their lifestyle consume too much time, that they can't afford what they need, or just that they and their family situation would make poor parent(s) for whatever reason. And this is peripheral to adoption vs reproduction.
Kids have turned from a resource like they were to farm families to an expense and an increasing one at that - and I don't mean in a "kids these days" sort of way - the world changed and not people. Which leaves children to be had by those who want to have them for the sake of having them - some sort of enjoyment or sense of obligation.
There are plenty of other drivers to expand off Earth:
1. Backup in case things go wrong (meteor strike, end of the Earth, nuclear war, mass plague, AI/robot revolt)
2. Outright inability to live alongside other cultures and societies/groups. Just like throughout history, some beliefs will also be controversial at best/illegal at worst, and while in the past finding a unoccupied area on Earth was practical, that's not really the case now. So space it is.
3. Science/academic study. Robots are neat, but there are some things it's better to send humans for, and a fair few scientists would probably rather be out there exploring than sat behind a computer screen.
4. General boredom/tourism/whatever.
5. Environmental concerns. Not just resource mining, but let's face it... eventually a lot of environmentally unfriendly industrial processes will probably work better in a place with no atmosphere/biosphere to ruin.
The people left to live on earth will be more and more tied to doing mindless jobs. I think there are a lot of people that would be excited to start a new community on Mars, get paid to, basically exist and build homes (pods) and connect those pods to additional pods. The act of mining will have meaning again beyond helping someone else get rich off bitcoin.
> how does Fortnite demonstrate “infinite growth”?
Fortnite makes money by selling digital in-game goods. Their revenues could grow infinitely without their material footprint expanding one iota. What they demonstrate is not infinite growth, but the capacity for infinite growth in a finite universe.
Value, at the end of the day, is subjective. Growth is a measure on this subjective value. It is not a measure on material inputs.
That's not infinite growth. There are only a finite number of humans on earth who could possibly play the game, and many of those either have no interest or can't afford to do so. And, of all those potential players, each of them only has finite disposable income. So there is a hard upper limit on their revenue, without growth in world population (to increase population of potential players) or growth in the world economy (to increase disposable income of those players). So, Fortnite is subject to the same finite growth limitations as every other business.
> There are only a finite number of humans on earth who could possibly play the game, and many of those either have no interest or can't afford to do so. And, of all those potential players, each of them only has finite disposable income. So there is a hard upper limit on their revenue
The proposed metric, a product of population and incomes, is unbounded (in aggregate). Population isn’t. But nominal incomes, a function of the unbounded money supply, is. Real incomes are trickier, but they--too--are unbounded. It just requires some fraction of the basket be immaterial. As long as that component grows sufficiently, the real value of the basket–which, again, is subjective–grows.
This isn't some edge-case philosophy, but a well-recognized effect of the subjective nature of value. (The physicist in me points out that the observable universe has, based on known physics, a finite computational capacity, but that objection merely illustrates the absurdity of proposing a practical upper bound on growth.)
We're used to thinking of production as making cars and ships. Those activities represent a falling share of human activity (weighted by value). To illustrate, witness the falling material intensity and energy intensity of GDP growth.
You two comments strongly remind me of what is currently happening in Venezuela. Having bigger numbers on your money or bank account isn't necessarily a good metric.
Anyway, let me rephrase your argument to make sure I understand it correctly:
There exists resource sinks like Fortnite, media & alike. Thus regardless of how much growth we will have / more efficient we become, even more would be better so we can spend it on those sinks.
This seems technically correct, but I doubt this is how our civilization should spend the finite amount of resources available.
As we saw in 2008 curtailing or reversing growth in real-estate can have major impacts on society, but in the future this won't be just a correction it will be a new phase of global economics. There will be fewer humans each year making the total pressure on land values negative. Even before that an aging workforce will cause the total working population to contract (as it already has in Japan). Everything the Japanese do with more land and fewer workers is a canary in the coal mine for the global economy.
One of the great predicates of modern economics (perpetual expansion) will need to be re-thought. In some ways it's great news (more space for everyone after the great pinch of the 21st century) but in others it will necessarily wipe out the speculative aspect of many current growth markets. Contraction economics means deflation becomes a norm not an exception.
* Urbanization means cities will lag behind this reversal.