Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk predicted that the island nation of Japan would ultimately not survive if the country’s death rate continued to exceed the birth rate.
Musk was responding to an article about the recent population decline in Japan in 2021 — which fell by a record-breaking 644,000 to 125.5 million over the course of 12 months.
“At risk of stating the obvious, unless something changes to cause the birth rate to exceed the death rate, Japan will eventually cease to exist. This would be a great loss for the world,” Musk tweeted.
Musk has often complained about declining birth rates in other countries as well — even attributing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to a decline in population.
“Pretty good summary, although national pride is underweighted relative to economics. Latter serves former, not other way around,” Musk said of a video exploring the reasons Russia might be at war with Ukraine. “The foundational issue imo, which this video doesn’t ignore, is low birth rate. After all, what good is land with no people?”
Musk has also complained about the declining birth rate in the United States — and noting that “population collapse” is a more realistic concern than the opposite.
“We should be much more worried about population collapse,” he said in January, arguing that the United Nations’ population projections were not accurate. “UN projections are utter nonsense. Just multiply last year’s births by life expectancy. Given downward trend in birth rate, that is best case unless reversed.”
“If there aren’t enough people for Earth, then there definitely won’t be enough for Mars,” Musk concluded, making an apparent reference to his own company, SpaceX, and the possibility that humans could ever colonize another planet.
“If the alarming collapse in birth rate continues, civilization will indeed die with a whimper in adult diapers,” he said on another occasion.
German demographer and geographer Simon Keustenmacher shared a graphic showing the worldwide decline in population as a decreasing spiral.
“Elegant way of showing global fertility data for every country in 2019. It’s actually a rather elegant visual. Spend a few minutes studying it and might become as big as a fan of the piece as I am,” he said.
This is an excerpt from The Daily Wire.
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