The End of the World is Just the Beginning - Peter Zeihan

[honorentheos]

"Thin" is a good adjective for much of the book. I'm enjoying the ideas well enough but it feels like an abstract for a more muscular treatise that isn't there. Or not yet anyway. He makes points, often glibly, that are sharply stated but then moves on when it seems they would have been better introductions than being the treatment he is giving the subject. I get the sense he probably presents to business types and YouTube watchers who aren't looking for academic treatments; where entertaining is given as much or more weight as informing. It's good enough and reads well, and I think the ideas in it are arranged in such a way most would benefit from the organizational presentation and seeing interrelated issues where we more often isolate.

[MeDotOrg]

I just placed a hold on this book from my library. I’m in the middle of another Neil Stepheson book (Anathem in case anyone cares), so it’ll be about a week or so before I can get started. Thanks for sharing your selection and motivating me to read something educational.

- Doc

First of all, it says something about the people on this board that Zeihan and Stephenson are in the same orbit for so many people. My tour started with Snow Crash, The Diamond Age...but today I was thinking one of his books would be a great name for a trading company: Cryptonomicon.

[Physics Guy]

I doubt I'll have time to read this but it sure sounds sketchy. Predicting catastrophe because of falling birth rates seems like observing a driver traveling at 60 miles an hour on the freeway, noticing that at this point they're getting close to home, and predicting that they will surely crash into their garage. The car does have a brake, though, and no matter how much the driver is hurrying to get home for dinner, they're going to slow down at some point well before hitting the garage door.

If falling population becomes a severe problem there are ways to get people to have more kids. The most straightforward way would probably be for governments to pay people so much for having and raising children that nobody could afford to ignore the opportunity. Yes, that will be expensive, but not as expensive as social collapse. So nobody will try anything like that seriously until the costs of shrinking population are higher than the costs of encouraging child rearing. Birth rates will keep on falling and demographic doom will seem inevitable. Like the driver hitting the brake in the driveway, however, societies will react to the onset of really serious demographic problems by encouraging children aggressively, and then doom will not come.

Perhaps I'm missing something big here, through not reading the book.

[honorentheos]

I doubt I'll have time to read this but it sure sounds sketchy. Predicting catastrophe because of falling birth rates seems like observing a driver traveling at 60 miles an hour on the freeway, noticing that at this point they're getting close to home, and predicting that they will surely crash into their garage. The car does have a brake, though, and no matter how much the driver is hurrying to get home for dinner, they're going to slow down at some point well before hitting the garage door.

If falling population becomes a severe problem there are ways to get people to have more kids. The most straightforward way would probably be for governments to pay people so much for having and raising children that nobody could afford to ignore the opportunity. Yes, that will be expensive, but not as expensive as social collapse. So nobody will try anything like that seriously until the costs of shrinking population are higher than the costs of encouraging child rearing. Birth rates will keep on falling and demographic doom will seem inevitable. Like the driver hitting the brake in the driveway, however, societies will react to the onset of really serious demographic problems by encouraging children aggressively, and then doom will not come.

Perhaps I'm missing something big here, through not reading the book.

I think Zeihan sees modern civilization as a Janga tower where each block is also attached by tangled, hidden stings to apparently distant blocks. He doesn't use this analogy, I'm just offering it up from my own reading. This Janga tower is unique in human history because, post-WWII, the US focused on the creation of a global order to oppose communism among other aims. Prior to this, human history has largely been a different game of varied, evolving attempts to build block houses by stealing blocks from others while defending ones own block structures. The creation, growth, and protection of said Janga tower from the inevitable accidental bumps and intentional attempts to pull blocks has required intense investment and intention in creating a global interest in cooperation and willingness to not attempt to grab blocks to build one's own tower. Zeihan references the Janga Tower as The Order. The world in 1990 saw the west lose the enemy that focused it on maintaining the tower. The Nationalism and Populism we see are ripples originating out of the tendency of humanity to not play Janga, but rather blocks. And now there are a number of major shocks lined up on the tower that Zeihan doesn't see us avoiding.

Those include the massive numbers of people globally who are aging out of the workforce without the population entering the workforce to maintain the economic energy needed to keep the tower standing. Some countries have it worse than others, and China is one of the worst off due to their one-child policy. These governments won't be able to fix it by spending their way into incentivizing having babies because the problem is lack of money to deal with the boomer generation retiring and dying. To the car analogy, I think it would be better said he is pointing out a car racing down a freeway, now too far from a refueling stop to be able to just top off and get back on the road in order to start accelerating again. All the cars on the freeway are running out of gas but can't slow down by choice, and only a few have reserves they may be able to rely on to get them to the nearest station. There will be a lot of cars being pushed in the coming decades.

Another is that the US has been the world's police force that allowed the global economy to operate. He used an example from the Iran Iraq war to show how the decision by those combatant nations to attack oil shipments in the gulf to try and cripple one another's economies in the 1980s almost destroyed the global insurance industry. Turned out, the companies that insured the ships that were sunk were in the position of both needing to make claims of their own while calling into question the ability to insure global shipping if sinking commercial vessels came back on the table as it had been for most of human history. The US dedicated naval escorts and reflagged ships in the Gulf to be American vessels to enable insurance companies to have the faith needed to maintain the system. He noted it only took sinking a handful of ships to almost knock over the tower and send us back to playing blocks. (Again, the tower being my analogy, not his).

There's quite a bit more to it, if mainly treated with a light, fast touch to cover a lot of ground in less than 500 pages. The book is basically a gloss about each block in the tower and why the strings exist. I guess. Essentially, he sees the global order simplifying by necessity and going back to some form of smaller block structures, with the US likely maintaining a smaller tower in the western hemisphere while the eastern hemisphere realigns.

[Morley]

I posted some thoughts on this book a couple of weeks ago, but channeling my inner Binger, I ended up deleting them. However, here I am again: Same thoughts, more words.

I began the book a few months ago, but didn't finish it, so I may be commenting on things the author didn't actually say. (If that disqualifies me--and it certainly may--you should stop reading right now). I lost interest when it became obvious that the author was advancing his own version of a Malthusian Crunch.

Most here will remember that in the end of the 18th Century, Thomas Malthus wrote a treatise warning that the rapidly increasing world population would soon overwhelm all available resources, leading to mass starvation, social unrest, and yada, yada. Needless to say, though Malthus's statistics and modeling were sound, this didn't happen. A few years later, the more highly populated world was doing just fine, proving that predicting future trends is a tough job that almost no one gets right. In this book, Zeihan is doing a Malthus--only instead of exponential population growth overwhelming humanity's ability to produce food, Zeihan thinks that declining population and a glut of oldsters will bring about his own particular version of Armageddon. I think that, as Malthus had earlier, Zeihan is taking a complex set of challenges and data and trying for a simple explanation, a sort of sociological theory of everything.

I think Zeihan sees modern civilization as a Janga tower where each block is also attached by tangled, hidden stings to apparently distant blocks. He doesn't use this analogy, I'm just offering it up from my own reading. This Janga tower is unique in human history because, post-WWII, the US focused of the creation of a global order to oppose communism among other aims. Prior to this, human history has largely been a different game of varied, evolving attempts to build block houses by stealing blocks from others while defending ones own block structures. The creation, growth, and protection of said Janga tower from the inevitable accidental bumps and intentional attempts to pull blocks has required intense investment and intention in creating a global interest in cooperation and willingness to not attempt to grab blocks to build one's own tower. Zeihan references the Janga Tower as The Order. The world in 1990 saw the west lose the enemy that focused it on maintaining the tower. The Nationalism and Populism we see are ripples originating out of the tendency of humanity to not play Janga, but rather blocks. And now there are a number of major shocks lined up on the tower that Zeihan doesn't see us avoiding.

I think your Jenga tower analogy is pretty good for outlining what Zeihan is trying to say. I wished Zeihan, himself, had used it. Where I'd differ is that I don't believe that there are any separate block houses, only other awkwardly built, and randomly connected, Jengas. It seems to me that all that society builds are variations on a type of Jenga. Everything that happens in one country in the modern world reverberates and influences what happens everywhere else. Everything that happened in the ancient world was the same way (for example, Rome's adoption of Christianity eventually was a tumbling Jenga block knocking out polytheism and leading to Mormon missionaries knocking on my door 2000 years later). The problem with modernity is that the Jenga-tumbling effects are felt so much faster. Where the Black Death Jenga took about a decade to topple its tower and spread from Asia to Europe, Covid Jenga only took a few months. And nuclear Jenga would be felt in a few hours.

Those include the massive numbers of people globally who are aging out of the workforce without the population entering the workforce to maintain the economic energy needed to keep the tower standing. Some countries have it worse than others, and China is one of the worst off due to their one-child policy. These governments won't be able to fix it by spending their way into incentivizing having babies because the problem is lack of money to deal with the boomer generation retiring and dying. To the car analogy, I think it would be better said he is pointing out a car racing down a freeway, now too far from a refueling stop to be able to just top off and get back on the road in order to start accelerating again. All the cars on the freeway are running out of gas but can't slow down by choice, and only a few have reserves they may be able to rely on to get them to the nearest station. There will be a lot of cars being pushed in the coming decades.

There seem to be a few obvious solutions. The answer, for the US, Canada, and much of Europe, is added immigration. You don't need baskets full of babies if you have robust immigration. The other answer is to model Japan Even without open immigration policies, Japan has already confronted many of the same economic and social problems outlined in the book, and they've done so with moderate success. I'm sure other solutions will arise when the time comes.

Another is that the US has been the world's police force that allowed the global economy to operate. He used an example from the Iran Iraq war to show how the decision by those combatant nations to attack oil shipments in the gulf to try and cripple one another's economies in the 1980s almost destroyed the global insurance industry. Turned out, the companies that insured the ships that were sunk were in the position of both needing to make claims of their own while calling into question the ability to insure global shipping if sinking commercial vessels came back on the table as it had been for most of human history. The US dedicated naval escorts and reflagged ships in the Gulf to be American vessels to enable insurance companies to have the faith needed to maintain the system. He noted it only took sinking a handful of ships to almost knock over the tower and send us back to playing blocks. (Again, the tower being my analogy, not his).

I read this as a disguised complaint about a declining sense of American exceptionalism represented by waning power. Americans have been bitching, off and on, about this since the end of the Vietnam War. They were complaining that they weren't matching the Soviets right up until the day that the Wall came down. They stopped for a while, but now are right back at it. I see this as more of the same.

Whether or not the West, or specifically, the United States, is in decline won't be clear until decades after said decline has actually happened. I'm not sure our author's reading the right tea leaves; he might have coffee grounds.

There's quite a bit more to it, if mainly treated with a light, fast touch to cover a lot of ground in less than 500 pages. The book is basically a gloss about each block in the tower and why the strings exist. I guess. Essentially, he sees the global order simplifying by necessity and going back to some form of smaller block structures, with the US likely maintaining a smaller tower in the western hemisphere while the eastern hemisphere realigns.

Sure. The global order will realign. That too, is part of the build and rebuild of the eternal Jenga. It will always be dynamic. I'm just not sure he's right about how, when, or why it's going to happen.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Man, I’m picking the book up today and I’m dreading it. Lol.

- Doc

[honorentheos]

Man, I’m picking the book up today and I’m dreading it. Lol.

- Doc

Ha, yeah. I think overall it was a good read if one doesn't expect a deep dive so much as a view from 40,000 ft. up. But I can see someone also feeling disappointed. I was on the edge until the section and chapters on transportation when I decided that the way it was tying things together was worth the time.

[honorentheos]

Hi Morley,

I'm glad to see you decided to post your thoughts.

Most here will remember that in the end of the 18th Century, Thomas Malthus wrote a treatise warning that the rapidly increasing world population would soon overwhelm all available resources, leading to mass starvation, social unrest, and yada, yada. Needless to say, though Malthus's statistics and modeling were sound, this didn't happen. A few years later, the more highly populated world was doing just fine, proving that predicting future trends is a tough job that almost no one gets right. In this book, Zeihan is doing a Malthus--only instead of exponential population growth overwhelming humanity's ability to produce food, Zeihan thinks that declining population and a glut of oldsters will bring about his own particular version of Armageddon. I think that, as Malthus had earlier, Zeihan is taking a complex set of challenges and data and trying for a simple explanation, a sort of sociological theory of everything.

That's fair, and the last sentence is a good summary of the book. Like everyone, I brought other readings, other connections to the table. Books like Talib's Anti-Fragile, Kagen's The Jungle Grows Back, different material on sustainability and politics...so with some distance now there is some blending for me. For example, I know my reaction to the comparison with Malthus is more Tainter than Zeihan as the diminishing guano reserves of the late 19th c., feed Malthus' predictions just in time to see synthetic fertilizers be invented and solve the nitrogen problem for farming. I believe, but don't quote me, that almost half of the global population would starve today if we lost that invention to make bread out of air as they described the miracle it represented. And Tainter's arguments regarding social complexity also include research into what appears to be the increased costs of discovery and invention, where the breakthroughs of the golden ages of science were largely there to be discovered, whereas now we are jumping up and down over news regarding quantum computing and nuclear fusion taking their very first steps. But also, the challenge of demographics isn't purely about bodies, its about earning potential. One could argue that automation is the equivalent and we will see much of that diminished workforce replaced with roo-bits. But then how does that society evolve to transfer the wealth of the owners of capital to the unworking masses? Tough questions.

I have to jump but I'll come back to this later. Again, good thoughts and I appreciate you sharing them.

[Morley]

Heh. I know I butchered your use of Jenga, but I couldn't help it.

But also, the challenge of demographics isn't purely about bodies, its about earning potential. One could argue that automation is the equivalent and we will see much of that diminished workforce replaced with roo-bits. But then how does that society evolve to transfer the wealth of the owners of capital to the unworking masses?

This. As I see it, the failures of unregulated, untaxed capitalism top off the slop bucket of modernity's biggest problems. How we solve (or the fact that we refuse to address) the combination of income inequality and the fruits of automation is the problem that will define and shape us. And yeah, there's also the suicide pact that is unaddressed climate change.

[honorentheos]

It's been a busy December so it's taken time before I could come back to this.

I think it's fair to say that Zeihan tackled a massive subject in the book that, on completion and reflection, reminds me of the CES letter. No single topic is really handled in much depth and adherence to academic standards of discussion is not the goal. Every topic touched on could be sniped at to a degree of satisfaction. Yet, in the end the book is about a huge picture looming on our horizon if not here already that, when considered as the CES letters issues with Mormonism are considered, carries much more weight than I would have given it when I started reading it. By the end of the discussion about agriculture production in a deglobalized world the points are so interwoven Zeihan is practically gesturing in sweeping his arms back to the rest of the book, page after page, as if any reader who read to this point who hasn't figured out the meta-narrative by then can't be helped.

So what is the meta-narrative? I'd say this post is reasonable close: viewtopic.php?p=2813262#p2813262

Anyway, I'd be curious if anyone else reads it to get their thoughts.