For some time now I've been asking "over population or under population?" without really saying what it means. It's not hard to draw uninformed opinions about it.

What we do know as a rule of thumb is that sufficiently advanced economies do not make babies. North Koreans have twice as many kids as the South; there's something deeply sadistic about this statistic.

In my mind the real question is: is under-population a real problem? I couldn't make up my mind about it, so this is an attempt at processing it.

On the surface, lesser humans means lesser competition in all dimensions. Lesser consumption leads to finite resources being more abundant. So what are the down sides?

One real clever co-worker of mine thinks under-population is a fake problem, a psyop by governments to nudge some unclear objectives. While the narratives from them are fact-consistent, in reality Japanese are still maintaining a high standard of living, he said. As long as quality of life is maintained, it doesn't matter what the population count is.

That's somewhat convincing. But I think Japan as a case study has yet to play out to the end. People who think of under-population as a problem are framing of it as a capitalist problem.

The hidden assumption under a capitalist ecosystem is that increasing value appreciation is predicated on increasing consumer demand. Someone is investing your retirement fund into companies that are counting on making more profit out of more people. Fewer people means lesser profit, your retirement fund doesn't grow, all financial models are thrown off.

Valuation-growth has always been true since Industrial Revolution, so debt are issued based on the assumption of continuing growth of future earnings. That leads to an event horizon made of a black hole of debt. I think Japan has yet to play out the population issue because of the fact that their financial engineering has yet to blow up in their face.

All economic problems eventually turn into political problems. That's what scares them.

There are opinions that think robots will render under-population a non issue. I'm not so sure. What we get are more robot labors. But who gets to own these robots? Also, bots do not consume anything other than energy. If there isn't enough humans, there won't be a budget for Avengers 18.

Still, do all these mean under-population is a real problem that's meant to be solved? If it's solvable and we are meant to do it, then the implicit assumption is there will come a point where we outgrow Earth and forced expand to outer space.

It could be that population ups and downs run inevitable cycles. That to me means it's as much a problem as when the sky is dark. It will only stay dark for a few hours each cycle/day; and all we need is to invent light, not create a new sun.