The Empty World Scenario

A Thought Experiment on Fertility

I believe that infertility is the most striking aspect of modernity and I do believe that it will be the defining factor of the 21st century. However, it still remains a complete mystery that cannot be reduced to a single factor.

To approach this topic I think that it would be interesting to imagine a scenario. The central idea is this: One day the entire population of the world simply disappears with the exception of your country, which now finds itself in an empty world. The question is; what would be the social response to this event and how would it affect fertility?

- The Impact of Infertility -

In a strictly biological sense, mass infertility is quite bizarre. Which other species have problems with reproduction? Bacteria certainly seem to do fine, rats have at it with little difficulty, and most other pre-modern human societies have also had little trouble when it comes to making children.

Indeed, you and I are the result of thousands of successive generations since we started being homo sapiens and many more millions before that leading up to the first Living Organism. When we put this into context, we realize how much of an outlier our modern societies are. This is a recurring debate topic in my friend group since many of them believe that this is, at worst, an economic inconvenience, and the best a nothing burger. However, I'm very much convinced that this is a civilization-defining phenomenon.

Certainly, if there existed an uncurable viral disease that killed 40% of all newborns while they were still in their mother's arms, we would not be so nonchalant. However, the end demographic result, of both this hypothetical disease and of a TFR of 1.2 children per woman (Italy, Japan), would be the exact same; a society without youth and a society without a future.

Indeed, if we adjusted the mortality rate of our baby-killing disease to match the fertility rate of South Korea, we would have a disease with a mortality rate of 67%. By having a TFR of .70 this means that each new generation will be approximately 33% (.7/2.1) the size of the previous generation.

The only difference in this comparison is that in our hypothetical epidemic this demographic decimation would be involuntary, while in our reality the disappearance of youth is completely voluntary, and as a result, there is no panic.

The South Koreans aren't stupid, they know what's going to happen to their country, that's why they have spent over 200 billion dollars since 2006 to incentivize their young adults into having children with no visible success. If we assume that all current fertility trends stay stable, by the time that I will die in the year 2080, South Korea will have a total population of 24 million, a reduction of over -50% from their peak of 52 million in 2020 in just 60 years.

Not to mention that most of these 24 million would also be approaching the end of life, approximately 45% to 50% of the population would be over 65 years old. It would not be an exaggeration to say that such countries are in the slow process of dying. Can we imagine a modern city like Seoul with less than half of its current population?

A city made of steel, glass and concrete where only half of all apartments are inhabited, with thousands of abandoned businesses, restaurants and strip malls, all glimmers of their past prosperity. In short, it would be a ghost city that would put Prypiat to shame. (Interestingly while I was still editing this essay Kurzgesagt uploaded a video on the future collapse of South Korea, if you want some animated statistics.)

This situation is not very different in other parts of the world such as Europe, for example, the population projection for Italy in 2080 is for the population to shrink by one third. But perhaps the most shocking statistic is the total number of children in the 0-5 age bracket today as compared to 1970; in 1970 there were 4.549 million, today it is less than 2 million. Today there are 56% less young people in Italy than 50 years ago. Let us not forget that they will soon have to pay for the retirements of those age brackets over twice their size born in the late 60s.

However, the great trouble is that all of these demographic trends cannot simply be reduced to a single measurable factor. There are many indicators that also correlate with and low fertility rate such as rate of urbanization and percentage of women with a formal education. However, the issue is that none of these correlations implies direct causality because there are many exceptions in each one of these cases.

This leads me to believe that although economic factors are important, that fertility is a more direct consequence of cultural and social factors that are not easily measured. In order to talk about some of these social, cultural and personal factors I think that a thought experiment could be interesting.

(You're free to imagine this scenario with your own country)

—— The Empty World——

Let's imagine that one day the population of Italy wakes up, has their morning espresso and prepares for another day's work, however, something is off. There is complete radio silence outside of the peninsula, nobody picks up the phone in any other country, and their Internet activity suddenly stopped in the middle of the night. As time passes it becomes evident that the entire population of the world outside of Italy has simply vanished into thin air; they are alone now… and the world is theirs. What would be the consequences of such a cataclysm for Italian society and what would happen to their birth rate?

If it remains unchanged and the citizens of the Repubblica continue their lives exactly like before, with the exact same miserable TFR of 1.2, then humanity will become extinct in a matter of a couple of centuries as their population shrinks and shrinks further into an evolutionary bottleneck.

However, this scenario seems unlikely in my opinion, I believe that if any country finds itself alone in the world, there would be a great drive towards the repopulation of the world and the expansion of their borders into the vast uninhabited continents with their empty cities. In short, I think that their current birthrate would sharply increase.

I believe that this rise in fertility would not be very pronounced if instead of the entire world sank into the ocean with the exception of Italy. In this scenario there would be no new unclaimed land to expand into instead there would just be same old Italy with endless oceans around it.

Of course, we would never know how each society would react to such a drastic change; however, speculation is what is interesting here. The rest of the essay will approach this hypothetical scenario from 3 different angles to try to explain why I think that infertility would end in the Empty World Scenario.

- The Resource thesis -

One of the first explinations for a possible spike in the birth rates is that, in this world, the population of Italy would enjoy near limitless resources for at least a couple hundred years. Every young person now struggling to buy a house could just move to one of the millions of abandoned homes around the world, the same would go for cars and every other single sought after item. And let’s not forget about raw materials; the vast Arabian and Venezuelan oil reserves are just sitting there!

In short, the first few generations would enjoy a very high standard of living after the economic shock of the first few months. Surely this increased standard of living would move more people towards having the number of children that they desire without the anxiety of not being able to afford to have their own home.

This thesis has very clear internal logic, however, the strange thing is that it does not directly correlate to the real-world data. At a national level, the correlation between standard of living (HDI, GDP-PC) and fertility is clearly negative, so this data would suggest that having more resources generally does not incentivize family formation.

However, it has to be said that this is not as simple as money=infertility. There are many outliers in this graph alone. There are relatively poor countries that have a sub-replacement birth rate such as India (1.99), Jamaica (1.37), and, of course, Ukraine (0.9). On the other hand, there are exceptions on the other side such as Israel (2.9), Kazakhstan (3.1) and the oil states (however, they have been declining rapidly).

Another interesting aspect of the resource thesis is class. There are remarkably different fertility rates when one looks at income brackets, one can observe a U-shaped curve where both the lowest income brackets and the upper earners have a higher fertility rate as compared to middle class households.¹

So, here one can observe that the relationship of income and fertility is beyond complex and the correlations seem to often contradict themseves; rich countries tend to have almost no children, but inside these societies, the richest infividuals have more than the middle classes. This implies that there are social dynamics that go beyond economic considerations.

For example, the middle classes desire upper social mobility, this is universtally true. In this case, a child for an aspiring professional is a huge liability, on the other hand, both the very poor and the very rich are less concerned with social mobility and will not hesitate to have an extra child. One could infer that the social pressures and class dynamics might be more influential than the material reality of a couple. One extreme example of this is, of course, South Korea where there are insane pressures on young people to succeed in education and move up the social ladder (Here is a good article about that).

I think that, in our thought experiment, the sudden availability of resources might facilitate the aspirations of many young people, however, I think that it is certain that wealth does not directly equal fertility.

- The Manifest Destiny thesis -

An interesting angle in this thought experiment is that repopulation and colonization of the empty world would be something that could give a sense of national meaning to a country. In this case, many would believe that it is Italy’s destiny is to repopulate the world and to bring civilization back into a deserted world.

When the main motivation to have children is simply personal fulfillment, then having children becomes just another life project not unlike your career, your romantic relationships or your painting hobby.

Indeed, there are millions of people who decide consciously not to have children because they prefer to dedicate their energy to other life projects that will give them fulfilment without countless less sleepless nights and 20 years of daily work. If children are personal projects, having few of them is the rational choice, that way you will still have time and money for painting and a corporate career.

In my own personal experience, this is the biggest reason why Zoomers and M*llenials say that they would rather not have kids. One could certainly argue that the nations that place a high emphasis on everyone seeking their own individual fulfillment, while having no national purpose, are infertile.

The few exceptions to the trend of infertile rich countries are the countries that do have a sense of national and collective purpose. In the case of Israel, they feel that they are in a constant state of siege and that their neighbors would love nothing more than to destroy them. This together with the fact that their enemies have a rapidly growing population means that the Israelis are in a demographic arms race against both their Arab neighbors and their own Arab citizens; if they lag behind it could mean military defeat and demographic replacement in just couple of decades.

Another example is Kazakhstan; their national mission might get less attention than the Israeli case, but it is perhaps more interesting. The Kazakhs were reduced to a minority in their own country during the first decades of the USSR; they suffered a famine in the 30s (imagine my shock) and the migration millions of Slavic settlers and forced deportees who eventually became the majority of the population.

Their nadir was in 1959 where the census reported that the Kazakhs only made up 30% of the population of their SSR. However, today they make up over 70% of the population, this was the result of their significantly higher fertility rates (as compared to the Russians)² combined with large migrations of Slavs following the dissolution of the USSR. It is no exaggeration to say that Kazakhstan has been experiencing both a cultural and a national revival. They have both a young population and a growing economy, so, they seem to be heading into a good century.

I think that Kazakhstan provides a really interesting case study because their national cause was to repopulate their lands, we could imagine that a similar motivation existing in our thought experiment. The people of Italy could see themselves as the only survivors of the human race and therefore, they would feel a collective responsibility to repopulate the earth with other attractive Italians. This hypothetical situation would probably also lead to a cultural revival and a sense of manifest destiny.

However, I believe that it would be incorrect to come to the conclusion that nationalism is directly linked to fertility. Certainly, the South Koreans wish to preserve Korean culture and society, indeed they are generally very patriotic, but this has certainly not translated itself into a sustainable birth rate so that their culture might continue into the future. The proper conclusion is that countries with a high fertility rate tend to have a strong sense of collective purpose.

- The Owned Space thesis -

I believe that the biggest reason why fertility would increase would simply be that there would suddenly be a vast amount of uninhabited and unclaimed territory for Italy to expand into. The idea of unowned and unclaimed space is almost a foreign concept to us modern people; the idea of an unexplored frontier is something for our imagination only.

We have already settled every continent and photographed every island, only space remains unknown and unclaimed, however, we are not technologically advanced enough to explore and colonize space, if this is even a possibility.

However, we are naturally drawn towards expansion and discovery, an instinct that today is sedated through digital means primarily through video games and fantasy. Indeed, I believe that the satisfaction of asserting one’s will on unclaimed space is the primary reason why Minecraft became the most successful videogame ever made, far outcompeting more complex games with better graphics.

I personally would speculate that given enough unclaimed territory, any society would see it as their mission to explore and claim this new land and that this would awaken a great amount of energy, not unlike the energy unleashed when a caged bird is allowed to rove the skies for the first time.

Bronze age pervert (BAP) writes heavily about the relationship between healthy life and the process of seeking out and then owning space:

Struggle for space—A healthy animal not under distress, not maimed, not trapped by man, seeks first when young: space. Animal seeks space in physical sense, territory. But this meaning isn’t crudely physical, (…) generally you must take it to mean something else, space to develop inborn powers. Monkey that lives in trees seeks skills to master canopy, beaver seeks ownership of river and banks and reeds in its grasp, (…) All of this is higher organism organizing itself to master matter in surrounding space.

Successful mastery of this matter leads to development of inborn powers and flourishing of organism, (…) organism seeks mastery of space, environment, to master matter in ways particular to its own abilities, and as a result of this mastery of matter there is development of its body, its senses, and all of its faculties, and the unfolding of its inborn destined form or nature (…) As for reproduction, animal in natural state will not even seek at this point, will not even think it. Very far from its aims: it seeks to become strong, skillful, to master problems and feel the expansion of its powers, (…)

Only after full development of its powers and its mastery over space specific to its needs does the need or desire for reproduction come. Reproduction is side effect of animal desire for discharge of strength, after mastery over space is achieved. For this reason many lower animal breed very fast and in great hurry, but the higher and more organized the form of life, the more complex its needs for development are, the longer is delayed the time of reproduction and the more vulnerable it is to the stresses of competition for survival.

It [struggle for ownership of space] is the path that governs higher life; survival and reproduction are only side effects of this path.

This argument offers an explanation of the incredibly low birth rates to be found in the developed world where individuals have limited space to expand into and where their life trajectory leads them away from the ownership and mastery of space and into an office cubicle. Although this certainly is more comfortable than living as a hunter-gatherer, can we really say that 30 years of office life produces the perfect specimen? The pinnacle of human development?

If we accept the thesis that higher life forms have to develop themselves by conquering and mastering the space around them, and that they must do this before they look towards reproduction, is it any surprise that infertility is the norm? We have spent our entire youth sitting in classrooms, learning useless trivialities that we have long since forgoten, in order to get a degree so that we could enjoy the privilege of working in offices that look like liminal spaces, so that we can earn enough money to consoom more products, until one day we die.

Indeed, if there is no unclaimed space for an individual to claim during his life, this will, this instinct, will become frustrated and this will lead to much restlessness. It is my belief that much of the bitterness of people with modernity comes from this very frustration. We were all raised with stories of heroism and adventure, of superheros, magic, and great quests, but how can adventure exist in a world without the unknown? Or how can heroism exist without danger?

The stark contrast between our fantasies³ and our real lives creates a great amount of resentment and a chronic feeling of disappointment, the feeling that our lives could be so much more than our commute to work; that we are going to miss out on the great adventure that our lives could have been. However, as previously mentioned, to have adventure one needs some unclaimed space to explore and master.

But in a world where everything has already been claimed, the only way to acquire space is to expand into the space of another, resulting in war. However our societies have been deeply traumatized by war in the 20th century. Therefore the only way to live in the end of history, to avoid war and social conflict, is to constrain the will to claim and conquer space.

A big part of this is to not encourage fertility; a country with a growing population, a country with a young population, has the will to expand and the capacity to do so. For example, the nations that fought in the Great War were exceedingly youthful and energetic; the populations were itching for war, when it was declared millions of young men volunteered and, indeed, the women were no less energetic.

Is it any surprise that the Israelis and the Palestinians are constantly at each other’s throats given that their populations are young, energetic, and that they are competing for the same space? On the other hand, an ageing population without this will to power will be able to have both inner and outer peace. However, the price of this peace is the repression of the instinct to master space, and the result is infertility.

The issue at hand is that there is no such thing as free lunch; each type of age structure will have its problems. A society that is young and energetic will seek conflict to claim ownership of space and one that is old and tired will repress this instinct, spiritually castrating their youth, resulting in infertility.

That is why I think that this thought experiment is so interesting; it offers the possibility to claim space without conflict and, as a result, the people living it would become fertile once again.

- My conclusion -

This scenario opens up the larger question of what constitutes a proper environment for human nature to develop itself and flourish. But, frankly, such a large discussion it's outside the frame of this small essay, but I do encourage you, my dear reader, to ponder that question even if it's utopian in nature.

If you have your own theory of what would happen in the Empty World Scenario, I would be glad to read about it in the comments.

As for me, I’m headed off to Italy to fix this by on my own.

1. Other graphs show a similar trend; however, it seems that there has been a downward shift in all income levels as one can observe in the following graph.

2. Take a look at this map and compare it to the percentage of Russian population by district.

3. What is interesting to note is that even though we all play this same game, both men and women show the real preferences in their fantasies. The male fantasy which Is most often expressed in video games is that of competition, violence, and problem solving.

On the other side you have women whose fantasies revolve around adventure and romance, however their fantasies are not directed at them office manager, but instead at the vampire, the pirate and the eccentric billionaire. Both of these fantasies find expression in the digital space because our current society has much difficulty in giving them satisfaction.