Master Class Policy and Budgetary Forecasting

ForecastingandtheCurseofLargeNumbers.pdf

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Part B – The Mains IV – The Curse of Large Numbers or The Demography of Despair 1 – The Limits, How to Push Them, and Where Things May Come to a Full Stop A little over two centuries ago humankind was finally able to break the Malthu- sian jail. Or rather, the most developed societies of the planet were able to. Should one despair of achieving this escape for all societies, even those that are– remarkably condescendingly–referred to as (already) developing countries? After all, some of them at present seem to be in better (or more promising) shape than the so-called developed, rich states. What Gregory Clark, with delightful irony, has referred to as "survival of the richest" (Clark 2007:112-132) expresses well that there is more to a pleasing (or at least passable) life than mortality and fertil- ity specifics and how statistics express them. Less sardonically put, the desperate dilemma of increase in population/pauperization, for eons the basic pattern of human existence and seemingly only overcome two centuries ago, remains one of the great enigmas and is by no means simply a thing of the past. In order to remain in that blessed state, abundance has to be permanently brought about to a power several times superior to simple subsistence. Generating "wealth" is an inescapable necessity–if only it were more evenly distributed. It is, however, worrisome that–although for some time we seemed to be on a promising trajectory–one can by no means be certain not to be forced back into the penitential universe. How sanguine can we be about that beneficial trajecto- ry: isn't the "developed world" metamorphosing into a dilapidated new type of socio-economic sphere? Penitentiary implies punishment, but penalty for what? One answer might well be: for the "original sin" of being too numerous. Of course no demographer would be happy with such a flippant charge, and it is indeed unnecessary to take pains to bring superstitious concepts ("sin") into play (although on another plane the churches' interdiction of birth control is sure- ly disadvantageous in terms of population control). Yet there also is a strange taboo about saying what merely seems to be a simple truth: throughout history humans mostly were exactly too plentiful and too much given to arbitrary multi- plication. (To be sure, there were phases in history when it seemed that human-

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EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/3/2014 5:31 PM via LINDENWOOD UNIV AN: 488153 ; Schmid, Georg.; In the Presence of the Future : Mapping the Roads of Tomorrow Account: 092-800

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kind might die out–mainly because of pandemics. But large numbers are by no means a safeguard: a major nuclear conflict can quite conceivably see to the ter- mination of the human race, too, not simply causing a very large number of deaths; quantity is a benchmark here not least because of the possibility that too much crowding might actually amplify the potential of discord and fighting.) There can be no doubt that the planet is overburdened. All the same, the con- clusion that it is the planet itself which should be "saved," its nature, all living beings and even inanimate matter–in short, everything except the humans–seems a tad radical. Retribution indeed. (Remember the seventies bumper sticker saying "Save the planet. Kill yourself!"?) The present argumentation, then, does not in- tend to defend positions holding that the rain forests or the oceans are ends in themselves. That humankind should strive for a reasonable arrangement of its needs and, indeed, ambitions (in terms of comfort and pleasantness, surely of equitableness but also of aesthetics) on the one hand and a durable ecological balance seems so trite a remark that it can all too easily be passed over as a tru- ism. Yet, nothing could be further from the agenda at present than this moderate proposal: outrageous squander coexists with no less preposterous voguish exhor- tations to return to a supposedly harmonious and idyllic pre-industrial (or even pre-Neolithic?) type of society that would leave Mother Nature in peace. It can- not escape one's attention that the latter view–rather an immature, deceptive and ungenerous assessment–is peculiarly frequently expressed by the most posh (and chatty as well as prominent) people. But we should not provoke our fate: a re- lapse into a pre-1800 world is always possible, and the Malthusian prison has never been demolished: it is still there to bid us a welcome back; our freedom may be quite temporary. It serves well to recall that only about a generation ago alarm about non- sustainability of the world's rapidly growing population caused quite some furor (e.g., Meadows et al. 1992). Titles such as The Limits of Growth and Beyond the Age of Waste were common currency. Principally, people seemed to worry a lot about a shortage of energy supply (although the oil crises were, at first, rather quickly brought under at least partial control); apprehension about the "popula- tion bomb," hardly less widespread, was current too. And growth, it was pro- claimed–not only industrial growth but also population growth–, had to be checked in a most decisive way, otherwise the "limits" would soon be reached and collapse would inevitably follow. (Incidentally, some of the key concepts then were the Ozone hole and Waldsterben; nowadays it is practically exclusive- ly global warming. Back then one of the big fears, skillfully depicted in Robert Altman's Quintet, rather was a new ice age.) Obviously, at least some of the re- spective scenarios, then and now, were and are based on reasonable assumptions,

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and the fact that–at least so far–total upset could be avoided should not lead us to believe that things can go on the way they seemingly always did. Paul Ehrlich, in 1968, estimated that as early as by the 1970s the world's population could outpace the production of foodstuffs, resources and energy. This would have meant humans falling back into a Malthusian world already then–though that time not only because of exponential population growth. It is a reasonable supposition that very large numbers of humans will provide no chance of ever breaking free again. Promised to final doom–either because of the lack of an industrial and agricultural revolution or, ironically, exactly because of them, as those revolutions made the survival of many more humans possible in the first place. In previous eras, then, societies had ultimately ample room to multiply; in our age, however, the planet is already jam-packed. Malthusianism, in its most comprehensible rendering, contends that the growth of the means of subsistence will never be proportional to the increase in population, the former tending to follow an arithmetical progression, the latter being exponential. Thus the popula- tions should be checked, be it only to avoid severe dearths in food supplies. Ehr- lich's works, then, proved to be not only important with regard to the ecological debates but also in terms of politics of contraception and, consequently, no doubt also sexual techniques. (There is no reason to assume that people will refrain from sex, for instance simply because one or the other established church says so; hence sexual techniques that avoid reproduction should be encouraged. Evi- dently, this is in total contradiction with the laments that in many societies there are too many old and too few young people.) The "developed" countries from 1800 onwards seemed to disprove Malthusi- anism. For reasons still offering a phenomenal spectrum of deliberation and dis- pute, a number of factors combined that enabled the most mature societies to break the spell. Veritably all of a sudden, rapid expansion of populations did not automatically and inevitably mean impoverishment, famine and deteriorating life expectancy. It is only now–with grave doubts in regard to the sustainability of current global growth policies–that a new type of Malthusian worries manifests itself. There is then another contradiction: growth is necessary in order to nourish a still growing world population and is seen as negative because, conceivably, it is pushing the planet over the edge. The reappearance of the Malthusian threat seems to have come as a kind of shock; it is worth remembering that, for instance, the Club of Rome was criti- cized as Neo-Malthusian (which was meant as a reproach for unfounded alarm- ism). The present-day phenomenally influential climate change movement, how- ever, focuses (in a somewhat obsessive way) on ill-understood meteorological

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phenomena. This, in parenthesis, may well turn out to be, qua too restricted a perspective, an insufficient basis for a broad discussion of future courses. In a sense, the global warming angst could identify the increasing number of humans as the reason for willful damage of the planet. Outlooks in regard to the population the planet is able to "handle" can be qualified as (tendentially) optimistic or pessimistic; inverted commas would come in handy for these two labels–they are quite inadequate although they could well be characterized as anti-Malthusian or (Neo-)Malthusian, too. To what an extent should one put trust into human control, and to what an extent can it in effect be truly exercised? Quite obviously, questions such as these are but the beginning of a large number of further intricately interlocked issues. In con- crete terms, nobody will know with absolute certainty how far the limits can be pushed–until it'd be too late with no more remedial action possible. (Airplanes have so-called flight envelopes beyond whose boundaries no recovery is possi- ble. Evidently, absolute laws of physics cannot be overcome by even the most refined electronic tricks. Once these boundaries are reached, the "window of re- covery" ceases to exist.) Given this "unknowability," the utmost caution is advis- able. But a finally one-dimensional approach, staging anxiety mainly if not ex- clusively in regard to "global warming," is positively insufficient to sharpen people's awareness of a whole cluster of major and possibly life-threatening risks. It certainly won't do to classify uneasiness about limits as unnecessarily pes- simistic. Although it is true that for about two or three decades modern agricul- ture has made such enormous progress that the goal of adequately nourishing the global population seems attainable, a new series of setbacks is becoming mani- fest. Population growth continues, its ominous characteristic being a specific non-prognosticability: there are no clear procedures of working out changes in variables such as life expectancy, populations' susceptibilities to fall victim to epidemics, famines or the demographic consequences of wars and, above all, their interconnections. Like the debates about "peak oil" or "climate change," the controversies relative to maybe probable but lastly unprognosticable tendencies of population growth are too much ideologized; that's to say, there are lots of preconceived opinions–worse: beaten tracks and dogmas. They make many peo- ple simply subscribe to them and reiterate supposedly well-backed allegations. One can be under the impression that these persuasions non-intentionally con- tribute to circumvent the basic underlying obstacles. That way, the reappearance of acute apprehensions à la Ehrlich, Meadows and others was in effect likely to come as a shock: earlier convictions have been repressed and are now reappear- ing in an even more terrifying shape.

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There are a few certainties though. The world's population continues to aug- ment–if supposedly at a less frenetic pace–, and there can be no doubt that criti- cal resources have been becoming scarce enough to bring about at least the early stages of distribution conflicts. We are now at about seven billion humans, but can we be sure that the present trends will really make world population top out at a little over nine billion around 2050 (the U.N. projection)? And to whatever degree it will turn out to be possible to push the limits, raw materials, energy supplies, foodstuffs and, conceivably most importantly, drinking water reserves simply are finite. We are using renewables in a by far insufficient way. Even if the menacing population growth can be stopped, indeed even if the number of humans could be decisively reduced by peaceful means, that wouldn't change anything about the fact that the planet's resources are in all probability already much too much depleted. Resources, once exhausted, for the most part have the unpleasant quality of not reappearing miraculously; at any rate, even wind- generated energy might be quantitatively as insufficient as wood as building ma- terial is ill-adapted for each and everything (there is no such thing as a tramway d'osier, to quote the title of a novel by Nella Bielski). What is more, a further massive increase of exploitation of all the finite re- sources has to be anticipated at least until the mid-century. So even in case popu- lations such as the Chinese remain stable (and even if some populations actually quantitatively decline somewhat) the increase in demand of just about every- thing, as yet not clearly foreseeable, will additionally complicate the situation. Distribution conflicts, then. Such problems are rather well understood as such, but even trenchant, quite radical measures could not possibly provide alleviation because it is too late already: it takes some time to make a U-turn with an aircraft carrier. Rudder input, immediately applied, will take some time to even become noticeable. Well then, within just around thirty or forty years the total fertility rate has dropped from about six children per average woman to roughly three. But this breakthrough could only be seen as a success if its consequences were immedi- ately perceptible. In fact, the contrary is the case: its exact effects are still not well calculable, at best long in coming, the repercussions of the reduction of fer- tility will imaginably not have decisive consequences until mid-century and, still more crucial, will be offset by increasing demands of populations craving for more material goods or quite simply adequate sustenance. The "population con- trollers" are correct to point to their success in reversing an epochal trend–but its results are disappointingly inadequate, insufficient. By no means their fault, the desired consequences fall far short of what would be necessary to "save"–as the saying goes–"the planet," the ludicrous parlance expressing in a painfully clumsy

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way that there is that disconcerting blooper: shouldn't the well-being of the planet's inhabitants be seen as the fundamental criterion? Population stabilization is insufficient, population reduction would be prefer- able. "The planet" is not really habitable anymore–or rather, life for a large num- ber of its inhabitants is less than agreeable, indeed much less acceptable than it could and should be. The reason simply is: ongoing population growth plus di- minishing resources. Any triumphant song–that it has been possible to defuse the population bomb–is offensively misplaced. It must equally categorically be re- futed to withhold a comfortable (if not opulent) existence from non-Western populations. And the reverse contention–that the "Westerners" are morally obliged to retrogress to a materially curtailed (if not outright derelict) existence in order to make it possible for all to arrive at appropriate levels of affluence–is also illogical and even immoral. It would be a truly lunatic misinterpretation of "socialistic" principles of pari- ty to stipulate that the lives of all should be equally miserable. The already fash- ionable doctrine that the Occident "took away" planet, plenty and prosperity from Africans and Asians, in fact everyone, is utter nonsense, just party gabble: there is a difference between finding out, perchance, things somewhat earlier than others and criminal acts and simple robbery. The politically correct addi- tion–that indeed colonial crimes have been committed–can be passed over: every civilization, given the opportunity, has always done ugly things. This is quite a different matter from finding out, maybe by pure dumb luck, how to escape from the Malthusian prison–there is nothing morally dishonorable about that, particu- larly taking into consideration that the relevant expertise can be exploited by everybody (which is exactly being done right now). Rather, it is asinine to accuse of disregard of "ancient rules" the first to find out how to break the jail; it is also infamy to hold their successful escape against them. In these respects quite sick interpretative motifs have taken hold; the often implied reading that the Europeans emigrated to America with the express pur- pose to commit mass murder is, incidentally, another of the charming verdicts of the same cast that have gained traction and wide support by the trustees of "polit- ical correctness." Such attitudes and distortions do not exactly facilitate the scholarly task of contributing ideas for at least partial solutions of terrible quan- daries. The limits of mindless chatter have indeed been reached; its harmful con- sequences are clearly to be seen already. This kind of self-absorbed misrepresentations of history merely serves the purpose of procuring "good vibrations" for a posteriori wiseacres. But it is also a dead giveaway: the well-meaning chattering classes still think in categories of the ones and the others–one party being good, the other bad, one entitled to long,

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happy lives of fulfillment and rapture, the other condemned to eternal damnation because of the sins of their fathers. But a simple inversion won't do. Meanwhile, the Malthusian prison is still there. And even if the "well-meaning" ones appar- ently wouldn't mind to lock themselves up again, that would strand those who are still inside where they always have been: in a place they surely want to leave behind. All these distortions, pseudo-humanist chatter and the countless taboos re- sulting thereof make us miss the one decisive point: there are too many humans. 2 – Race Wars and Age Wars If the assessment that there are "more people than the planet can endure" is war- ranted–and in view of the general dearth of resources and the impossibility of permanently (and ad infinitum) augmenting agricultural output it is surely diffi- cult to deny it out of hand–the question logically follows, who has to go? (Let us notwithstanding never forget that it is not a problem of the planet, a non-sentient if big thing, but a predicament of the humans who inhabit it: "too many" implies reduction as the planet itself cannot be enlarged, output not increased without limit). Population control–which finally always means reduction, at least of growth rates–has long been influenced by eugenics (Connelly 2008); conse- quently, the issue of supposed inherent qualities of different human races comes into play, even if well-hidden or pre-consciously. This seems a thing of the past; there are seminal qualitative inversions in the field of the hierarchisations of cul- tures. Given that there is, of late, again much talk about a "new population bomb" (Goldstone 2010) and that the global financial and economic crisis which began in 2007 (with intensifying deterioration since 2011) saw to increasing undersup- ply if not outright inadequacy of foodstuffs and alarming increases in their pric- es, the burning question of whether Neo-Malthusianism should not be taken seri- ously is obtruding upon any serious discussion of demography. It would obvi- ously be a grave mistake to consider demographic issues without taking into ac- count underlying economic circumstances (not least because of what you could term Malthusian fundamentals) and supplemental co-determining factors (for instance religious obfuscations). After some decades of justified optimism– mainly vindicated by quite astounding advancements in agricultural techniques– the pendulum seems to swing back: skepticism is in place, be it because of the limits of maximum stress on the ecosystem or the increasing scarcity of basic materials.

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And yet it is by no means just a question of feeding the world population or providing it with sufficient drinkable water: a number of other important factors, medical attendance and socio-cultural services principal among them, also are of elementary importance. (In France for instance, some of these "basics" are sub- sumed under the catchword services publiques: their verbal invocation, however, does not make them appear as though commanded by sheer magic–making you think of Solow's bon mot that Adam Smith's invisible hand maybe is invisible because it's not there.) Too many humans, then: a large number is/must be considered expendable. That, of course, implies decrees about expendability. Let's not beat about the bush: the persuasion that the world is overpopulated (which the present argumen- tation considers to simply be an actuality) will lead to "displacement wars." By choosing such a stopgap term, I am trying to approach an elementary (and fright- ening) quandary. In an increasing measure the–still somewhat veiled–answer to the implicit question "who has to go" is: old people. Of course, there continue to be inhibitions to muster the bluntness necessary to move from innuendo to intim- idation. But the increasingly frequent references to ageing populations, thinning out the "productive" segments of societies, and above all the more commonplace and obsequious assertion that the baby boomers have "stolen" the younger gen- erations' future are quite betraying indeed. Not only have those baby boomers ruined the planet, their squandering lifestyle has sapped just about everything, from resources to energy, both in the literal sense and the figurative meaning. To be sure, expectable decrease in working-age populations, mainly in most European countries, but also in Japan or South Korea and China, will pose con- siderable problems (and indeed already does). However, they appear, as I will presently argue, not unsolvable at all. There is nothing ineluctable there: timely reforms of traditions and, verily, taboos steering societies away from stagnation to fundamental modernization can avert most of the respective problems. Possi- ble elements of a comprehensive solution comprise longer working lives, new approaches to the organization of labor and more exotic-seeming ideas such as making better use of the expertise of older generations. Although I shall take up some of these considerations again later, here–again–are two French examples. It is a self-defeating, shortsighted, truly stupid idea to fight against an upward ad- justment of the retirement age; conversely, an intelligent strategy would insist on decisive alleviations with increasing age while emphasizing the indispensability of the experience of weathered workers of all walks of life. One could refer to that as making use of the "ripe stuff." And, more specifically, why would anyone literally chase professors from their universities at a–relatively–modest age when they are still useful, not seldom even famed and popular with the students; they

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could go on to be of service with a reduced workload and a proportionally recon- figured income, increasingly paid by the retirement fund; they could continue to generate wealth by contributing valuable knowledge–just as others could also hand on their skills–while, in parallel, their formal posts are taken over by the up-and-coming scholars and teachers and artisans and staff of all kinds.11 Remember that, only a few years ago, the lowering of the retirement age was not least "sold" under the heading that older people had to make way for the young generation by "liberating" their posts. There certainly are professions where this is not only possible but quite feasible; there is extremely arduous, even unsavory work that one should be able to retire from as early as possible. In higher education though and particularly in research such a strategy quickly leads to undesirable results. By and large, in this limited field the consequences are arguably marginal in respect to hiring young people but as a rule ruinous in terms of expertise. Basically the same is true for many other categories of pro- fessions: workmanship can also be passed on incrementally and doesn't have to be learned solely from scratch by each subsequent generation. But the laments about something like a stolen future can be heard more and more frequently. Although doubtlessly politically incorrect, they couple the (supposed) remarkable life expectancy of the baby boomers to the imputation that they have already plundered the planet by indulging in a wasteful lifestyle. It is inferred that their lack of responsibility and foresight has caused the shortages and shortcomings we are experiencing today. The innuendoes are all too easily transfigured from grave rebuke to ill-concealed if hardly ever openly articulated admonitions to make room. Contrast this unpleasant (and indeed immoral) sug- gestion with the–logically opposed–whining that this or that country is "dying out." The hysterics of a gradual extinction of "precious races" (preferably German- ic, blond, blue-eyed) has been, as a sort of leitmotiv, with us for a long time; they have subsided, but beneath the smooth surface of cultivated chatter you can still spot the remnants of superficially reworked offensive irresponsibility. This col- lective-psychotic Umbau can perhaps most clearly be seen in anxieties about emerging eastern countries. Certainly, no one invokes the "Chinese peril" of yes- teryear anymore, but cannily adapted derivative variants are routinely articulated in even shriller fashion. The imagined threat of menacing populations and the 11 The eminent AIDS-researcher Luc Montagnier had to leave a French university at the age of 65 and consequently went to the U.S. where he continued his work. No doubt, one has to over- come conditioned reflexes that make appear unconventional ideas such as the one just sketched "unrealistic." The problems especially higher learning is facing urgently demand more trailblazing ideas.

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(supposedly ensuing) decrease of exalted peoples are combined in a genuinely embarrassing (and perfectly deceptive) way. But there is no convincingly logical nexus between, say, the "Deutschland stirbt aus" hysterics and the lack of enthu- siasm of wide swathes of indigenous populations for immigration of newcomers not really prepared to accept the socio-political system of the welcoming society. In this case it is imperative to distinguish between immigration leading to an apartheid-type of society–different ethno-cultural communities existing in paral- lel mode–and effective integration which, of course, requires an elementary ac- ceptance of the traditions, institutions and merits of the population already in place. While there is much delusion, some present-day demographic data indeed hint at serious reductions of specific "national, indigenous" populations. Italy's birthrate, for example, is far below the level necessary for quantitative stability; the same is true for an important number of other states; it is assumed that South Korea's population will decline by close to ten percent by 2050 (Goldstone 2010:31-43:34). But does the term decline necessarily refer to the ominous "de- cline and fall?" Wolfgang Münchau has commented astutely: "You can decline with a clear sense of direction. Or you can decline with fear, panic and angers [...]" (Münchau 2010:9). (He specifically refers to the predominant emotions at European summits these days, but these sentiments are quite general, simply condensed at the so-called highest levels, the "commanding heights.") Some of the respective notions sound outright frenzied although hardly any- body poses the questions: a) How can societies become extinct–like the dino- saurs?–because of an ageing population? and b) Even if they'd go down that route, aren't there enough "other" human beings–too many of them, come to that–who'd fill the void? There, of course, the gist of the matter is concealed. The issue at stake is that quite specific parts of humanity might–well, not in fact dis- appear–become less numerous; the (potential) loss is seen in the reduction of cer- tain states, relatively small entities within the larger framework of a civilization or a culture. But the relevant factor surely is to be seen in relaying civilizational achievements regardless of origins, race or residence. What are people really talking about when they profess to worry about over- population while, in the same breath, bemoan the slow disappearance of this or that particular population, i.e. "ethnicity?" Make no mistake: the fear of overbur- dening the planet goes hand in hand with the gripe about the "disappearance" (which, in fact, could at worst only be a quantitative diminishment) of, say, "the Germans." This logical inconsistency does not even register which makes it an indicator of irrationality and political malfeasance. It amounts to (albeit mostly pre-conscious) hypocrisy which caters to age-old prejudices, yet outwardly

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sports, a clever disguise, some hackneyed verbal ready-mades in accordance with the compulsory exercise of making offerings to political correctness–that Charlton Heston has so perceptively referred to as "tyranny with manners" (Colquhoun and Wroe 2008:57). That fraudulent concoction of outward open- mindedness and cloaked partiality thus reveals one of the most common syn- dromes of all: racism, and it is only by means of the elocutionary stagings–a purely verbal "political correctness" then–that it can be made to appear commen- surable: to be in accordance with supposed exquisite decorum. In the summer of 2010 a book asserting by its very title that Germany is do- ing away with itself made headlines; its author, a certain Thilo Sarrazin, member of the German Bundesbank, even had to step down from his post because of the (expectable?) public outcry. Apart from the possible psychoanalytic clue that the name hints at Huguenot origins, making the polemicist susceptible to overcom- pensation ("non-German" origins, though temporally far removed, motivating him to argue at least as German as any other German: a remark by no means out of place as Sarrazin's contentions play out in the realm of ethnic and tribal giv- ens), there are some other interesting pointers and indicia in this little episode. The outrage was primarily, nearly exclusively, due to the assertion that there is too much Muslim immigration in Germany; conversely, the statement that there is a "Jewish gene" (presumably making Jews such a nuisance in financial and especially banking affairs) caused much less mayhem. It's not a matter of grant- ing Mr. Sarrazin the benefit of the doubt (never mind whether he is just a simple anti-Semite or rather incapable of differentiating between genes and memes: conceivably he hasn't yet heard of the latter), what is rather unsettling is the muddled puerile lack of comprehension, principally of correlations and contexts. A high Jewish proportion in a number of sectors is easily accounted for by equal- ly easy-to-understand historical circumstances and their details, and this has very little, if anything, to do with Muslim immigration in Western countries. Also, it is utterly nonsensical to embroil a diagnosis–too much immigration–, regardless of whether it is reasonable and well substantiated or not, with the retarded ex- ploitation of one of the oldest and most deleterious racist clichés ever: the Jews are everywhere, somehow different (if so, so what?), they don't even have to mi- grate because they are always already there. So who is superfluous? (We'll pass over the received idiocy: the Jews– because of their different "genetic" make-up or whatever.) Which generation, culture, group is expendable? Is everyone in the right place; what about migra- tions? And can "identities," i.e., specific traits be kept up once there are too many people–and too much intermingling? The extremely malignant (but fash- ionable) identity politics further contribute to the deterioration of a status already

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ominous enough. But do we actually agree that the planet is overpopulated and is getting more crowded by the hour? Or has the strange idea really gained ac- ceptance that it is the planet itself which should be saved? Yet how could it be disencumbered from the disturbing humans, above all the inferior, not really welcome "races" and "tribes"? You see, there are too many grotesque "ideolo- gizations;" what's more, they are heavy-handedly expressed and intended to in- cite hatred. On a less threatening note, there are confusions about causes and ef- fects, there is complete uncertainty about what it means to be a member of hu- manity–as opposed to one particular umma–, and an outright inability to arrive at value judgments in regard to preferable, compelling, sustainable and, well, moral solutions. In short there is muddled thinking–or rather hardly any thinking at all, there are just convictions and passions, prejudices and a near-total inability to assess the merits of specific societal models, polities and their cultural expres- sions. One could, of course, retort that it is easy to disparage what can be under- stood as common opinions. How to think better? It is not a know-it-all attitude when one proposes, firstly, to define and isolate the separate elements of quanda- ries before trying to determine their interconnections and attempting to construct a general picture that would ultimately lead to saner choices of courses. Here, then, are some of the issues: overpopulation (there seems to be general agree- ment about that), migration, ageing, ecological problems and dearth of resources, divergence of cultural patterns. Add that the way in which the respective depic- tions are communicated also plays an immense (and routinely underestimated) role–how the message is presented, does indeed make a difference (and does not only accentuate one or the other view). Assuming that it is beyond doubt that there are too many humans (readily expressed by feeble-minded formulas such as "the planet has to be saved"), the conclusion to reduce their number is inevita- ble. With whom to begin: whose number? Aren't we hearing time and again mo- ronic laments such as "Germany does away with itself" or equivalent homespun slogans, moreover in total contradiction with the equally ceaseless laments about our Overcrowded Earth. So, what is it: too many people–or not enough? Too many Muslim immigrants (and still too many Jews in the wrong places, that's to say "everywhere"?) or an insufficient number of Germans? Actually, a number of different discourses of quite unequal moral and practical caliber are mixed up, further contributing to the disarray characterizing the present state of affairs. First things first. The planet's resources already are critically diminished with its ecosystems destabilized, populations still grow and the hungry want to be fed while the (well) fed continue striving for more livability. The deduction has to be

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that there must be a consensus about stopping population growth and that, sec- ondly, the number of inhabitants of the planet should be reduced. Migrations, although in part caused by unfavorable or even unbearable living conditions, are something different, not least because cultures with different traditions and ways of doing things come into contact, regularly resulting in some kind of conflict. The ageing of populations is something different again: its results are mainly a problem of adapting social, i.e. generational, contracts and of financing different sets of need and care. There are, of course, numerous connections, often quite unexpected ones, but it doesn't make sense to intermingle the different compo- nents of a critical global situation so much that it becomes impossible to treat them in an appropriate manner. 3 – Displaced Populations, Constant Preaching, and the Elites/Plebs Quandary Let us, for a while, sidestep the classic "population bomb" conundrum (the over- population enigma, making you think of ugly obsessions such as Lebensraum as well as of the Malthusian danger). One could refer to the apparently hopeless quest for growth (Easterly 2002) that, of course, has to be understood as qualita- tive advance although it nearly invariably is misunderstood as the mindless amassment of ever more riches that in turn continue to overload the planet. Re- garded in an abstract fashion, this view makes specific races (ethnic groups, "civ- ilizations," etc.) appear irrelevant. On the other hand it is indisputable that the repetitive grumbling that this or that particular society is disappearing–normally the word country is preferred, inexorably evoking some special, maybe even "noble" ethnic group–is based on something entirely different. Despite all the superficial and mendacious declarations of loyalty to the mirage of "multicultur- alism" the conviction of the higher value of one's own country–yes, state rather than culture/civilization–is passed on in sly yet subterranean and very effective ways. All things considered, and especially from an assumed neutral viewpoint, it makes precious little difference whether the Germans "die out"–how many dec- ades have we had to listen to those petty laments–or are "doing away with them- selves," imputing even a kind of collective-suicidal active component. Finally it is but a racist argument that this or that socio-culture, let alone single country, should survive because of its supposed or actual merits; what would count, re- versely, is that certain ideas (liberty, tolerance, responsibility, advancement) con- tinue to have the possibility of thriving. At any rate, it is quite amazing that the

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two discourses–oh, how splendidly multicultural we are versus it is us who are particularly worthy of surviving (which is sometimes merely turned upside down: the others are more precious than we are)–can coexist so well, without the slightest hitch. Paradoxically, it seems to be possible because two altogether dif- ferent issues somehow neutralize each other–with the perfectly incongruous ef- fect I shall sketch as follows. Ageing populations in many Western countries indeed pose the problem of financing the pensions, old-age health care and the like. Consequently, young workers are or appear to be necessary to buttress the prerequisite financial basis. As the indigenous birthrates are too low, workers have had to be "imported" for quite some time; however, they also procreated eagerly. Integration let much to be desired; in parallel, much of old nationalisms and traditions continued to exist though they didn't really resurface all that visibly. A great deal of all this was preconscious; superbly shrouded behind the verbally incessantly professed love for foreign cultures, it went widely unnoticed. This is incoherent, to say the least. Either one reproduces sufficiently, or one reconciles oneself with fundamental changes resulting from "under-population." Either one professes to just love "alterity" or one realizes that other civilizations have weaknesses, too. Alas, a further adversity went mostly unheeded: the immigrants were not necessarily ready to become culturally integrated although they had, after all, chosen new places if not entirely willingly, at least accepting the requirement of migration. The more obvious it became that the newcomers would rebuild their ancient traditions, regulations and customs in their new countries rather than ac- cept the basic guidelines of the latter, parts of the old-established populations became gradually ever more recalcitrant and contrary. Eventually a truly detri- mental effect, possible because of a remarkable if hardly noticed endurance of the class society, manifested itself: the classes one painstakingly avoids to refer to as lower classes started to react in a fed-up way whereas the "elites" attempt- ed, from their commanding heights, to explain the advantages of immigration. But there is no one big, harmonious "middle class." An unforeseen kind of reaction–to be alarmed by migration–must not be judged to be "incorrect" after the fact, as a priori not acceptable. The more the culturally dominant circles ser- monized, faultily or properly, about multiculturalism, the less people wanted to be bothered. Worse, disquiet about–actual or imagined–transgressions of often Muslim immigrants was demonized as at best crypto-fascist; politicians catering to these apprehensions were automatically labeled as populist and/or fascist. A large number of them were or are; others were quick to exploit the situation by travelling along.

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It is imperative to be painstakingly sincere at this point. Many of the politi- cians in question actually are at least fascistoid. And the all too frequent use of the obscuring term "populist" for close to anything a shade divergent from what is simply handed down as the politically correct opinion makes things even worse. Sometimes "populist" is used euphemistically for fascist, some other times "populist" is instrumentalized to belittle what in effect could well be une- quivocal, emphatic (and entirely legitimate) thoughts on how societies should develop. It doesn't a priori discredit such thoughts that they are not exactly shared by the elites but felt by a majority of the population. To put it as drastical- ly as possible: the culturally/politically dominant circles are not the sole owners and purveyors of truth, nor are the lower classes–where are the middle classes: aren't there nearly exclusively either meagerly endowed people on the one hand and extravagantly rich ones on the other? Nor is the "common man" above very base feelings and, indeed, often unambiguous fascist leanings. In any case, the scene is staged perfectly for full-blown mutual misunder- standing. There is a deep discord in most Western societies, profound enough that no messages get across, or if they do, in a completely disfigured manner. This fissure has essentially been brought about by a total lack of honesty of near- ly all officious discourses. Naturally, it would be possible to say, we need mas- sive immigration in order to amass sufficient contributions for our pension schemes–a particularly unpleasant variant of that view is that Turkey has to be made part of the European Union because Europe needs soldiers. The alternative would consist in once again taking up inconvenient work–plus, possibly, accept- ing quantitative reductions of the current lifestyle. In parallel, it is high time to admit that large parts of immigrant populations do not want to adopt the ways of the societies in which they have arrived, often long ago. Moreover, it has to be expressed with categorical frankness that the respective problems focus on Mus- lims: there are, in fact, lots of incompatabilities of Muslim Weltanschauungen and Western ones; the question simply is why "respectable" persons shy away from saying so. By discursively linking the ageing populations/pension schemes with the immigration problem, a nexus is inferred that seems to describe an unfixable sit- uation. In fact, the status is much more complex than this spurious equation would let you assume. It is not a matter of a simple synchronicity of ageing pro- cesses and migrations: there are a number of other factors involved that are over- determined by a whole lot of other issues. Increasing life expectancy is not just a "problem," and it appears solvable by instruments and mechanisms not discussed exactly because a crude solution is supposed to have been found already–the older populations get, the more immigration there has to be. It is quite erroneous

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to assume an a priori possibility to transfer surplus populations to regions with declining population figures. And while it is neither desirable nor feasible to pre- vent people moving where they want, the least you can ask of them is to accept the basic rules of the newly chosen environment. At any rate, the assumption that the financing of pension schemes and the importing of large numbers of migrants from unfamiliar cultures are logically and functionally connected is misleading; it is but a conjecture flowing from inaccurate (though possibly "politically cor- rect") thinking. The following has to be stated emphatically: it is a catastrophic negligence of practically all political parties to have left the perceived problem of immigration, chiefly Muslim immigration, to generally quite vicious groups, parties and their irresponsible leaders. That way, what truly is a paramount problem has never been rationally, fairly, candidly discussed; instead, resentments, in part justified, have been capitalized on; apprehension could thus turn into rejection, all the more comprehensible as the welcoming societies are surely not obliged to adapt to the newcomers. The other way around would seem more logical and fair. And the situation is further deteriorating because of what can be considered willful acts of provocation. There have been, from the very start, monumental misunder- standings that nearly appear to be intentional. It is surely at best disingenuous to discuss minarets or burquas solely if not exclusively from the angle of religious tolerance or unrestricted personal free- dom. There are always rules, not only laws; among the most important of the former are certain codes (of comportment, dress, aesthetics, social manner and taste) because they express the inner conviction of the respective individual and society. Individual, it should immediately be added, as opposed to just one com- ponent of a group; society as opposed to ethno-cultural faction. Also, tolerance, of course, has to work both ways. It follows that the wearing of the niquab or some such garment is–indeed has to be and is intended to be–seen as a refusal to adapt. Correspondingly, building strange-looking religious structures can be aes- thetically hurtful. Such manifestations go beyond mere garment or building in the strict sense, they signify ideological stubbornness, the conviction that one's own ways are untouchable and absolute, should become the norm everywhere and, still worse in some respects, they display the ineptitude of mustering some tactfulness. Taken as a whole, immigration does not (or should not) mean–in the specific case I am referring to at the moment–that it is the Westerners' business to accept eccentric ideas just in order to accommodate the newcomers. And it is not just a dialectic relation of long-established versus newcomers: it is possible, indeed imperative to compare values, ways of doing things, social practices. It is equally

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essential to make choices based on clearly defined criteria, with both–option and underlying rationale–well argued, with no qualms about angering another culture and its populace. The canon of decision processes, selection and implementation goes for population policies as well as for the tremendously complex problem of the delimitations of tolerance. Let us recall the major elements of the mess we're in. Much of the grief re- sulting from aggravating population growth is motivated by apprehension that it is not the "right" people that procreate in the most profuse way–a concern well camouflaged by the permanent outwardly expressed anxiety about the over- strained planet and its ecosystems. This aspect is, among other particulars, inter- connected with population distribution, that is to say, not only migrations but also with the seldom posed question of the habitableness of localities and regions (for example, large tracts of Alaska may be less than suitable for habitation but it is difficult to see why the French state shuns the under-populated Massif cen- tral), life expectancies (in regard to their still enormous differences between dif- ferent countries), and the civilizations' ability and willingness to coexist. Of course, there are no immutable "racial" characteristics (such as Sarrazin's "Jewish gene," explaining financial adroitness): there are, however, acquired tal- ents–and incompetencies–and, indeed, cultural patterns that only change very slowly over long periods of time. It could already be considered a success if we were able to progress from thinking in terms of racism to imagining culturalism. Quite obviously there are extraordinary differences between contrasting civiliza- tions, simultaneities of the non-simultaneous, incompatible value systems. They account for conflict; more neutrally they appear as factors of slowness and even torpor or precocious advance. This concept of divergence and dissimilarity con- denses sufficiently well that perceived incompatibilities are in many cases due to socially memorized standards and customs and routines rather than truly immu- table traits. No matter though: they are, as we are experiencing at present, all the same extremely bothersome and impede reasonable integration. There also are less important ("minor") differences within single, rather ho- mogenous cultures, and even though they can be–narcistically–overemphasized, they tend to play an important role, extending from work morale to paradigms of sexual mores and practices: anxiety about who is going to pay for old-age pen- sions and healthcare are obviously dependent on reproduction and productivity. Getting used to "old-timers" certainly is a challenge in the most developed socie- ties: just some two or three generations ago they had enough tact to die very soon after retiring. Here, then, is the most unbecoming component of the present demographic conundrum: how to accommodate the old-timers (of whom it will shortly be said

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overtly that they are overstaying their welcome). But the demographic time- bomb, of late once again readily called upon in order to proclaim how dire hu- mankind's situation is, will not be defused by suggesting that people have begun to die too late in life. The calamity is not simply one of overpopulation: it is seen to result from too many old people with insufficient numbers of young workers in "developed" societies and too many young people with insufficient prospects in "emerging" societies. Add to that the widespread outrageous obsession with the "down-with-us"-psychosis in most Western societies and it is easy to see what a mess the humans have maneuvered themselves into. Reduction, then, might be the key concept–given that the humans continue to prove to be able to loiter as close to the abyss as possible. Reduction here is meant in the sense of decrease: slow, well-controlled, conceptually flawless less- ening of pressures–of strains caused by overpopulation, penury of resources, er- roneous strategies (from carelessly importing too many foreigners to brainless strikes against overhauling pension schemes, a depressingly asinine and fanati- cally promulgated but self-defeating and ruinous ploy). "Reduction" in quantita- tive terms–and certainly not by aetacide or senocide (if these neologisms, corre- sponding with genocide, seem feasible: from the Latin aetas or senex). Reduc- tion in that sense would not necessarily imply a loss in standards and the quality of life. One could strive to work better (not necessarily more, or possibly longer), improve the lives by rediscovering the pleasures of cultivatedness as social dem- ocratic movements did until the inter-war period (which means also emotional livelihood), to improve productivity and, more importantly, satisfaction with work well done and widely respected. No doubt, that not least implies well-run economies. These are newish challenges. We are looking for solutions that could be termed Detroit-puzzle–how to "shrink" a macro-structure without any qualitative loss. Detroit as a notion comes in handy for two reasons: the city is forced to de- crease in size because of the crisis of the U.S. automobile, and it also makes you think of automobile technology in the strict sense: recently, there has been much talk about "downsizing" (of engines) aiming at increased efficiency despite a de- crease of (cylinder) displacement mainly by reverting to elaborate turbo technol- ogy–an engineering stratagem that has been employed by Saab for decades be- fore being emulated and capitalized on by many others. What we are talking about is an improvement of a qualitative as well as a quantitative status. Using the concepts of downsizing and turbo technology as technological metaphors, one should think of advancing livability despite a decrement of sheer numbers. Indeed a reduction of population pressures–a decrease of population figures, not only of expansion of growth–indubitably is the very prerequisite of not fall-

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ing back into Malthusian misery. One must not forget that, ever since the omi- nous warnings by authors mainly in the 1970s, the worst scenarios have been dodged because of revolutionary innovations in agriculture–and also because of better-functioning (although still much too protectionist and indeed inadequate and highly inefficient) markets. No doubt it would be overoptimistic, even naïve to expect that they will improve in the present circumstances–on the contrary, a disastrous setback is already clearly to be seen in the regression to still more Colbertinism. Similarly, it is quite utopian to look forward to policies aiming at decisive "cutbacks" in population numbers, all one can hope for is some stabili- zation (by a one-child policy, say). But neither the countless newborns nor pre- vious dominant generations are "guilty" of anything12–simply of being born or having tried to make a life. And it is quite possible that we don't even have to worry: a nuclear war would radically see to "reduction," possibly a total one. 4 – How Many Horsemen? Those expressing apprehension about present dangers and grave risks in the im- mediate future are usually debunked as doomsayers, as incorrigible alarmists in- capable of coveting the brilliant prospects for the future. And yet one does not have to resort to ancient religious whimsies to fear a dire fate looming not just in the future, impending or remote, covenanted by awe-inspiring prophesies: major, possibly terminal catastrophes should rather be expected literally in the present. Conquest, War, Famine, Death: in a way, we have become too familiar with them to fear them sufficiently–and to avoid falling into a repetition compulsion of experience. But it is not necessary to refer to religious gibberish, let alone plunge into respective delicate or shrewd interpretations, to appreciate the somber seriality of such misfortunes; nor is the threat of an absolute end in itself dependent on any kind of faith. It is not about picturesque embroidering or eschatological differen- 12 Obviously, it is quite nonsensical to accuse an entire generation as it was recently done, al- beit with qualifications, in The Atlantic (Kingsley 2010) of having squandered their children's and grandchildren’s futures and done just about everything wrong. "Previous generations," one could say, have even done worse; the World Wars and above all the Genocide were much less charming than waste, purposelessness or engagement for the wrong causes. And I'm not even talking pro domo as I've been born before the postulated baby boomer generation (a plausible 1946 and a quite arbitrary 1964). Which is not to say that there are no ongoing very grave ir- responsibilities, maybe primarily to be seen in the over-regulated European labor and under- regulated global financial markets that cause positively insufficient prospects for younger gen- erations.

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tiations but about quite down-to-earth if solemn perils. You may dote on East- wood's Pale Rider (and even Minelli's all too baroque Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with Glenn Ford and Ingrid Thulin) or delight in Brown's interpreta- tion of The Book of the Seven Seals but it is convenient to keep in mind that all these more or less recurring depictions express an underlying consternation about the bitter destiny of all humans. Death is unavoidable, famine still com- mon to a nearly unimaginable extent, war of monotonous permanence. Let us follow the reading that substitutes pestilence for conquest (the latter indeed being but an aspect of war) and take a further step: do the four horsemen have accomplices, that's to say deputies or sidekicks? Relative to demography, one can in effect (admittedly a little cynically) hypothesize: too many births for too few deaths–as has been specified, too many people, ill distributed, for the most part hateful of each other. Famine being not only due to a penury of re- sources but also to imperfectly functioning markets and to migrations, it is still a constant in human history–as are War and Death. Pestilence is effectively identi- cal with present-day (quite rational) reasoning about pandemics. An unfamiliar element, however, is that Death, in a way, is joined by birth, the latter thus earn- ing a capital b: Birth. Too many births have already led to disaster, but it still serves well to remember that for a very long time human experience led to the assumption that only as many births as possible would guarantee the continua- tion of the human race. Today, the reverse holds true. We have to understand that Birth has joined the troops of utter calamity. The mix of what cannot correctly be referred to as races, but rather cultures, will be changed greatly. The triumph of the East to the disadvantage of the West is already manifest; demography is by no means only about the future, it reaches far back into the past; and that is one of the reasons why it is socially ill under- stood. This seems a banal assertion–as long as one doesn't take into account the wide-spread inability to perceive initially separate phenomena as being unsus- pectedly compounded in an unfortunate manner. The refusal to see ageing as a jeopardy (though not exactly a threat) at first did not seem to be connected to the enormous birthrates of the "unwashed" in far-away continents (who went hungry and died so early that their potential numbers remained unrecognized). There was no "social comprehension" of phenomena like these, much less their future compounding effects. Where, in effect, is the connection according to this simple juxtaposition? Ageing and the difficulty of sustaining existing pension schemes on the one hand, longer life expectancy among those who once made up the so- called developing world plus, above all, more expectancies in a quite general sense. Increasingly then, the formerly rich would be well advised to realize that

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the Malthusian threat, or at least a backslide into relative poverty, is at least as probable for them as for the formerly poor. Somewhat poetically it could be said that the apocalyptic horsemen have of late teamed up in a most troubling fashion. It is also imaginable that the apoca- lypse will finally arrive little by little (one horseman at a time, not like depicted by Minelli), with a number of retarding elements thrown in to make people be- lieve the worst can be avoided. The prophesies have always been strangely pes- simistic, and we should, perhaps particularly in view of the disquieting religious renaissance just about everywhere, more exactingly take into consideration that profound religiousness is inclined to see the end of the old aeon "[no] longer [...] as an historical crisis brought about by God, but as a purely supernatural event, realized by a cosmic catastrophe" (Bultmann 1957:29). This could mean uncon- cerned attentisme (the "let fate run its course" at the basis of all too much immobilism to be diagnosed in so many places) as well as a collective-precon- scious attempt to accelerate the end (truly religious fanatics seem to yearn for the end, and that brutal longing for a showdown is by no means exclusively an Is- lamist thing). Pestilence, War, Famine, Death. We don't have to get all eschatological, but notably the increasing radicalism of religious dynamics should make us pause. They blur the picture even further by entangling irrational speculation and de- terminate, actual peril. By linking the ineluctability of death and the triplet pan- demic/conflict/dearth to some plan, possibly conceived by some vengeful god, everything is made to appear as ultimately unmanageable: there's just blind des- tiny to submit to. Conflict, eventually leading to war; penury, threatening fam- ine; disease, potentially endangering everyone: these are theoretically avoidable– and to a large extent due to too many frictions, in their turn at least in part ex- plainable by the enormous number of humans. The argumentation, as is becoming plainer with each additional piece of evi- dence, is that these all too large numbers are indeed a curse. While it wouldn't make sense to leave out of consideration death–so bitter, so impossible to work through: there is no rational, analytical method to come to grips with it, hence the unhealthy penchant for religious humbug–, the other problems–hunger, dis- ease, poverty–that appear to be as insoluble as death exactly because of that mix- ing just sketched could, on the other hand, well turn out to be resoluble. To re- peat, prerequisite is a substantial reduction of population figures. In accordance with the well-known catch-phrase "too big to fail" we could coin the verbiage too big to handle–but that could be a fundamental error as well. Somewhat misanthropically one could state, wars and pandemics and ex- treme poverty will see to decisive reduction of population figures anyway; in-

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deed they already do (and have done so catastrophically within living memory). There are some new qualities to the conundrum, though. Whereas Black Death may indeed have threatened the very existence of humankind, the present dan- gers tend to be much more man-made. Even a new pandemic, surely a natural cause just as the plague, nowadays tends to be propagated so quickly that there would hardly be time to implement the most basic precautionary measures. And while poverty and thus hunger will certainly go on to kill off tens of thousands within whatever time-span, the possible maximum stress on the planet is proba- bly already so high that corrective measures would come too late anyway. It has become proverbial already a number of years ago that China may well grow old before it grows rich; it is also not a foregone conclusion that China will continue to be governable. Although such a thing is less often heard about India, its growing youthful population notwithstanding, much the same holds true there too. In both cases the problems abound; in principle it would suffice to point to repugnant social injustices in both countries (all the more poignant in a country led by a communist party) or to grave infrastructural problems (in India, it is not only the widespread lack of good roads or the sorry state of most airports but even more so the shortcomings of some basic services and conditions, mainly in hygiene or health services). Superficially, Westerners tend to be nonplussed by Chinese and Indian economic growth and wealth; it is, however, the opulence of narrow castes with the large majority of the populations relatively and absolutely much poorer than the increasingly pauperized Western ones who still flatter themselves as being "middle class." It is difficult to argue that problems such as these are not in large part due to colossal population pressure. It is deplorable–verily outrageous–that the spade is hardly ever called a spade: namely, an excess of people. What to do? What actually is done amounts to playing off some parts of practically all societies against all the others. This is not happening because of some conspiracy of governments or even shadier and more obscure agencies (as is often enough, and increasingly frequently, insinuat- ed) but largely the result of simple stupidity. More amiably, one could say it is the consequence of insufficiently integrative thinking. It is obvious for example that economic forces interact with the age pyramid, yet there are many other fac- tors that codetermine how that plays out in societies. Both the problems of aging and immigration, among others, are conflated here in an unsound way. There are many societies in which the median achievable age is rising fast; in Western Europe it will supposedly rise to over eighty by mid-century. It is not hard to see that problems stemming from this are compounded with specific oth- er problems that extend from capital flows to the necessity of a basic reorganiza- tion of societal structures nearly everywhere. But it is to be feared–as indeed the

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title of a new book plainly indicates (Fishman 2010)–that different parts of the world are pitted against each other, as are competing nations, social groups and, in effect, the young against the old. Ageism rising: I have already pointed to the intensifying (if still somewhat subdued) insinuation that old people are ruining the societal structure. It is absolutely imaginable that very soon medical care will be curbed in a way that sees to earlier, "natural" deaths. Obviously, all that is controllable, adjustable; it suffices to simply "adapt" health services downward to achieve the still just not quite openly admitted wish to see the superfluous go. This is the reverse side (rather than the consequence) of the lamentation that the older generations have, so to speak, stolen their children's and grandchildren's future. But it is not even only an age war; there's still more to it than that. It is, to a large extent, about intelligent use of experience and accumulated knowledge. Exorbitant losses could be avoided (recall the earlier example of chasing away useful staff from research institutes), and at the same time the impression that older people are useless would be effectively subverted. It is appropriate to see this consideration also in a context that is seemingly about something else alto- gether. I have suggested that we should look for downsizing–for a "Detroit strat- agem"–whereas in the next chapter on the economy I will argue that growth is indispensable. This seems to be a contradiction. As I shall show, however, growth can be defined as qualitative advance too. Similarly, the ostensible con- tradiction between making room for the young generations and making continu- ing use of the older ones is sham rather than fact: new models of doing things can quickly do away with thinking along the beaten tracks. Yet there is still another consideration until now seldom, if at all, heard. Is it really certain that life expectancies will continue to progress–or even remain at present-day levels? (Russia's, for example, have fallen significantly and shock- ingly.) Manifestly, it would be a bitter irony if all kinds of measures were intro- duced to check "excessive" life expectancy only to find out along the way that the attainable level of expectation decreases again. We are constantly assured that the contrary will be the case but there have been erroneous prognoses be- fore. (It suffices to think of the ineptitude to predict with some degree of depend- ableness which professions will experience penuries and which will be subject to over-abundance. The respective difficulties are not only due to a lack of pro- gnosticability as such but also to the appearance of unforeseeable, or at any rate unforeseen, new factors such as revolutionary techniques of communication.) Simply imagine one of the Horsemen at work. As non-proliferation already has failed–one can claim as much–, a nuclear conflict is becoming more probable by the day. Even if it should prove possible to limit such a war, the consequenc-

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es, albeit hardly imaginable, would be far-reaching (to employ euphemistic wording intended to calm the spirits) in the extreme. A limited nuclear war does not only have to be seen in regard to the deaths caused immediately or in the longer run: destabilization of important institutions alone would have the gravest consequences. It is imperative to think in unfamiliar ways. We do take much too much for granted without realizing that even the most solid-seeming societies are consid- erably more fragile than routinely assumed even by skeptics. Some among these societies, in many respects those who contend to constitute the proudest and most prestigious nations, are in effect blocked societies which could collapse in- to consummate chaos even after a marginal push. The double dip into which the most recent financial debacle has degenerated could well be the kick-off. The mere assumption that further terroristic attacks will have negative conse- quences, not least in regard to the already decrepit, extremely sensitive and deli- cate economic balance, represents a factor in itself. That, by and large, is the very logic of terrorism: maximum destabilization by simple menace. And the probability surely is that the "nuclearization" of terrorism will be an Islamist thing. The Iranian threat, irresponsibly downplayed mainly by European states, clearly sketches what very probably is in store. A lovely war between Pakistan and India would also cause catastrophic cataclysms. And it is by no means cer- tain that jolly little nuclear contraptions will not soon be (or already are) on the market for best bidders. The sum of all fears can play itself out in Baltimore–but also just about everywhere else. The elementary connection between future nuclear conflicts and demographic trends may not be appreciable right away but it is nevertheless quite easy to im- agine. Wars always have also had, among many horrendous consequences, the corollary of making population projections, i.e., exact computations of future population figures, a losing fight. The–relative–deficit in French births before 1914 was after 1918 aggravated by the high number of dead caused by la grande guerre and had of course massive repercussions even much later, in effect to the present day (the most damaging one being doubtlessly the retarded and still not complete emancipation of women). Reversely, France's–again: relative–small number of human loss in World War II contributed to a situation which until this very day clearly is favorable to high birthrates. The traumatic experience of con- traction so long ago still goes a long way to explain why France today is a bro- ken, blocked, immobile society given to the proverbial excesses of boasting: widely imagined past greatness, prestige, and power, and influence, pre- consciously reinterpreted as simple size, makes the French, mainly those who consider themselves as elites, extremely susceptible to puerile concepts such as

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position, status, "standing" (as they like to say)–as though quantity, even trans- posed in wholly different spheres (number of départements, territory) could compensate for losses endured a century ago. On a global scale today's population statistics are indeed quite expressive. The world would look different with less Soviet/Russian/Ukrainian deaths be- cause of the war–and also because of Stalin; Mao, too, was quite successful in doing away with uncounted millions of his country(wo)men. The Polish asser- tion that there would be many more Poles today if Germans and Soviets hadn't seen to mass decimation–that is to say, had not so many Poles come to grieve because of occurrences outside their control–has some justification too. It met, however, with ridicule and, at best, condescension although, contorted as it may seem to some, it is by no means devoid of substance. It would be indecent to add the Shoah: its exceptionality makes it part of another category altogether. Such reflections go to show that the cleverest population policies can be quickly derailed in a most spectacular fashion. Moreover, such reasoning leads to a further trail: every assumption in regard to population figures or growth is "rel- ative" because there is no "normal" standard of population dimensions and dy- namics. It would be expedient to countenance negative trends as early as possible and act in accordance. Birth control–and its opposite, "forced motherhood," programmed by the State–can (and does) often overshoot. And even one of the keenest Horsemen, Famine, often proved unable to perform its regulatory task: "Despite all the ca- lamities [...]–World War II, the Bengal famine, the partition massacres–popu- lation growth had scarcely slowed and was now almost certainly accelerating" writes Matthew Connelly about the situation in India at the beginning of the 1950s (Connelly 2008:145). On the other hand, China has possibly done too much with its one child policy although that stands to reason: how else could a Detroit pattern be achieved? In terms of "absolute numbers" the Chinese popula- tion is surely large enough (as is the Indian one), but there are no veritable abso- lutes here, only relative dimensions, comparisons, proportions and the central perplexity of coexistence. And in a global age–regardless of whether most peo- ple dislike the idea or not and whether globalization is just screeching to a shud- dering halt anyway–it is not narrowly about competition between nation-states but also about "internal" strife in societies widely marked by all kinds of migra- tion. No doubt demographics and their economic underpinnings are still not suffi- ciently seen as a sort of communicating vessel. One population may grow old before being able to grow rich, another may be getting impoverished because it is growing old or because there are too many young people. Too many, or too

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few? Or are there even more underlying enigmas that we are just beginning to grasp (think of irrational behavior in "rational markets," of which more in the following chapter). Things change–and often remain, confoundingly, if not iden- tical, similar to the antecedent stages, at least in regard to some of their structural attributes. In parallel, upheavals, or at least their harbingers, can go unnoticed until it is too late to act in a beneficial way, either by steering a new course or by trying to counteract while there is still time. The "rise of the rest" is unequivocal- ly positive; conversely, the decline of the West does not have to be inevitable. The former expression still sounds somewhat condescending, hardly anyone foresaw that the West might soon become the rest. But abundance for the ones does not have to equal poverty for the others. There was a time when Anglophone North America and Europe just among themselves produced close to seventy percent of the world's GDP with a relative- ly modest share of world population. It is not least due to fertility rates–but by no means only because of them–that this figure will be, according to present-day projections, under 30 percent in 2050. Will it? Couldn't it be much lower still? "Overall economic growth will [...] be hampered by a decline in the number of new consumers and households" (Goldstone 2010:35). Surely not only because of that. Dynamics are strongly influenced by self-fulfilling prophecies that can quickly turn out to produce cascading effects: today's (justified) pessimism about the future of the West could toll its bell. Here, then, is a dry remark aimed at "the West:" by believing ever less in intrinsic capabilities to come to grips with unfa- vorable circumstances, one can dig one's own grave, thus relieving the others of their trouble. Europe's victory run came to an end because of the world war in two acts; a similar cataclysm could see to other ends, even a complete, comprehensive end. Wars are the perfect fit for those who (unconsciously, no doubt) want to provoke decline, possibly irreversible decline. Insane economic and fiscal and financial politics, less spectacular, can easily produce comparable outcomes. But better be a consumer than dead. And the usefulness of the notion consumer (and its reali- ty)–even if one might find it unpleasant to be finally, at best, a consumer– follows from the simple necessity that labor, and thus workers, are indispensable, as are indeed consumption and, for the foreseeable future, money in order to conciliate different inputs, however unjustly they may be valued. One should maybe say at least that: an employee, an exponent of human capital (if one is lucky even one with a rewarding and remunerative occupation), is a consumer– and as such not easily expendable, at least not in the aggregate. There are more unfriendly intimations. First among them are the already mentioned increasingly frequent innuendoes that older people only cause "pen-

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sion gaps," outrageous expenditures for health care and that they take up room which rightly belongs to the young. It is too quickly forgotten that even (in some respects particularly) the old-timers are consumers–and as such a favorable com- ponent in the demographico-economic game. The unequal disposition of age structures causes concern because seemingly uninvolved younger generations may be impelled to "[...] pay for all [the older ones'] pensions and prostate sur- gery" (Connelly 2008:373). This, though simply ironically meant, is an unkind remark–notwithstanding that I am quoting it a little out of context. The context being that high birthrate generations in specific societies inevitably are getting old, in an unforeseen (though quite foreseeable) manner. People can get old, that's the nature of things; on the other hand, all too much trust in forecasts can easily throw you off track. So, at what age should you die honorably–in order not to burden subsequent generations too much? 5 – A Law of Unachievable Prognosticability People, then, can–and sometimes indeed do–get old, nothing surprising in that. Yet, to recall the question already posed, are present-day prognoses about the continuing growth of life expectancy really well founded? These predictions can evidently be only based on data, mainly medical ones, drawn from current ob- servation. Equally obviously we have no way of knowing whether there will shortly be one or the other fundamental change: either in terms of public health or the basic attitudes concerning age. In the sense of possible age wars (or "re- placement" wars) it is, for example, prognosticable that payments for costly wel- fare and chirurgical services will be sharply reduced because they are considered too lavish for people who are going to die soon anyway. In regard to presumable or at least possible reductions of life expectancy, you do not have to think solely of epochal upheavals such as wars, genocides, fam- ines. Less crucial changes can be quite sufficient. Minor-seeming adjustments of mentalities or attitudes could also see to salient and far-reaching reversals. Nei- ther is it necessary to resort to deficiently understood Social Darwinism to de- velop the idea that relative tenacity and verve on the part of the old-timers could matter. The "ripe stuff" could prove to be adept in holding on better than initially thought; reversely, the "young lions" could either turn out to be toothless or all of a sudden up to the task of saving the day. On the other hand, a defeatist disposition will, with near-certainty, decisively contribute to detrimental effects. Just think of the widespread understanding of history in the West implying that the East, now triumphant, has in previous stag-

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es been unjustly, indeed brutally and criminally, exploited and treaded down. There is quite some factuality in this; colonialism and its corollaries have been ugly indeed. But what are the advantages of that a posteriori "down-with-us?" There is a difference between historical reflection and self-complacent wallow- ing in guilt. The former has, maybe, a chance of keeping us from making the same mistakes (and committing the same crimes) over and over again (the hell- ish repetition compulsion!), the latter is just a pointless pastime of masochists. Getting morally all worked up is, moreover, as a rule a sign of repudiation rather than perlaboration. And one cannot be all too sure about who and what is really meant "subcutaneously" by morally fanning one's tail: it is altogether pos- sible that much of the self-accusations is actually (though unconsciously) moti- vated by resentment, in the present case no doubt about China's spectacular as- cent. Personally, I don't doubt that a healthy dose of irony and witticism would serve the purpose of getting things into perspective better than glib moralizing. One of the not infrequent jests of Gregory Clark may serve as an example: refer- ring to the warrior Yanomamo society, he points to the conception that "[...] a major predictor of reproductive success was having killed someone." Clark adds: "Of course this raises the question of whether murder is a successful reproduc- tive strategy for males, since some of those who fail in the attempt will die them- selves." (Clark 2007:129,129n.) In a macro-historical perspective, war rather seems to prove the same point. Germany's Griff nach der Weltmacht was not all that successful, and its second act, only two decades later, proved to be even more catastrophic. Yet, it may al- so, at least in part, prove to be the undoing of Clark's–optimistic?–assessment. In fact, the first (and for a painfully long period) country to face Germany's re- newed onslaught with quite some determination suffered, in the long run, the most: Britain, unintentionally forfeiting practically the entirety of its assets, turned out to end up disastrously trimmed down whereas Germany, in the longer run, grew into one of the major powers, economically at least, and far beyond the continent it once tried to subjugate by primitive military means. To assuage those inclined to be outraged by this simple comparison–"jesting about horror"–I hasten to add that this outcome is all the more startling as the human losses are not proportionate to that long-term outcome.13 Any perceptive argumentative 13 Another addendum forces itself upon us. The total number of deaths, of Soviets and others (I've already referred to the irritating habit of ridiculing the Poles for reminding the world of the Polish victims), remains, for all that, truly scandalizing. But there is no absolute "rule" providing us at least with good guesses about "how much it takes" to win (or loose) a war. Neither should it be forgotten that Anglo-American strategy and tactic were greatly influenced by considerations on the minimization of human losses. Polemics about "Dresden" just do not

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strategy must thus take the possibility of unforeseen consequences into account. There is even a "law" to that effect: the "law of unintended consequences" is also a law of unforeseen and unforeseeable and "unknowable" consequences. These reflections, applied to demographic perplexities, simply tell us the fol- lowing: human societies, what with all the disturbingly complex correlations probably generate too many random effects to allow for more than very limited prognoses at best. The human aggregate does exactly not present itself as "simp- ly" prognosticable or not. The countless nexuses within the aggregate prove to be (I think) so complex that we cannot get nowhere near dependable forecasts. (This, of course, implies a plaidoyer for "institutionalized improvisation.”) Par- ticularly in matters pertaining to demographic factors–neutral expressions such as reproduction should not blind us to the fact that reproductive comportment, sexuality then, how it is practiced, lived in concrete terms, is so much over- determined by incalculable, socially and individually unconscious motivations that it borders on charlatanism to imbue the impression that one can be sure about much–forecasts can only be fragmentary. Connelly very justly states: "It is [...] the emancipation of women, not popu- lation control, that has remade humanity" (Connelly 2008:375). That's not at all what the population controllers expected. Also, that can easily be rescinded: there already are signs that women's emancipation is put into reverse. Is emanci- pation really compatible with the high birthrates in France whereas practically all neighboring states are characterized by low ones? First, this isolated birthrate certainly must have come as a surprise to most demographers. Second, the nearly permanent social tensions in France point, as remarked, to a blocked society, an observation validated by the circumstance that the emancipation of women got stuck. To be sure, the latter assertion will seem purely subjective to most; the official position of women in France seems to be not really different from other Western countries; yet, the argument exactly is that there are criteria that are not

hold water: they are nothing but piqued resentment (not least resulting from Germany's pre- sent-day exalted status as at least an economic powerhouse) and nearly willfully overlook that the British had no other means at their disposal when they started bombing Germany. Getting all impassioned about that without pondering the causes (think of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five) prolongs the distortions first planted by "erroneous symmetry:" there may indeed be "two sides," but usually it isn't all that difficult to determine the respective degree of wrong / right. At present, this misunderstood "reciprocity" massively plays out to the detriment of Isra- el. But there can be no question of "disproportionate response" when one's very existence is negated; moreover, Israel's reactions to being constantly aggressed are as a rule moderate–they are simply less well sellable because the near-totality of Western "elites" have completely bought into Palestinian, Arabic, Muslim propaganda.

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reflected in and by statistics but can only be decoded when one is ready to em- ploy a certain sensorium. How to proof such assertions? By their very nature–and because of the con- cealed character of the phenomenon in question–it cannot effectively be proved; any kind of corroboration can only be furnished in roundabout ways. We don't want to get stuck with this specific question (although it can serve as a model); two points, however, can be made. Birth control does not a priori denote reduc- tion of the number of births, it can also, as it did for the Nazis, mean a stimulus, a sponsorship of motherhood. There can be full-blown state programs to achieve more births than would in principle be expectable; that is clearly the case in France. But in a country as much given to the strictest nominalism there is one further item that could easily appear far-fetched for those not familiar with the fixation on prefabricated verbal formulas. French usage still differentiates be- tween madame and mademoiselle–how can a virgin (which is to a degree im- plied by the latter term, its other main component referring to the status of being non-married) bear a child (with, supposedly, one sole exception)? The relatively high number of births is thus veiled by lingo (seen in the light of particularly ob- tuse a Cartesian schema, unmarried virgins do not reproduce), a concealment not incomparable to the high-handed and inapt naming of married women with the name of their husbands, say, Madame Georges Durand (a deplorable habit, it is true, one can also still come across in America: Mrs. George Smith). I have by no means been sidetracked by mere observations on absurdities of verbiage. Verbalization is how we experience our surroundings, and long before statistics and erudite treatises smooth out overt thoughtlessness there is primitive understanding, albeit directed by the State and its overriding interests. States, of course, do not think (a simple wisecrack could go like this: if they would, every- thing would be in better shape); the aggregate of their proponents do however (if mostly in unseemly ways). States, in that sense, seem to assume that they need many babies in order not only to pay for future pensions but also in order to po- tentially have sufficient numbers of soldiers–once more, reference should be made at this point to the "argument" that Turkey must become a member country of the European Union because the former is a high-birthrate country and the EU needs more soldiers than its other member countries can provide. Such kinds of absurdities, shocking ineptitudes and immoral demands go to show that "purity" of demographics is inconceivable. The contaminations do not result only from sloppy thinking and deficient arguments and the discourses re- sulting thereof but must be attributed to an inherent instability of population fluc- tuations within the context of the agglomerate of imponderables and "unknowa-

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ble unknowns." Unpredictability is neither just a catchword nor an absolute: there are differing degrees of prognosticability. While we are, for example, wholly dependent upon speculation how the world's populations might react to the impact of a major meteor and what mid and long- term consequences such an event would have on birthrates, there is some possi- bility of estimating changes resulting from further urbanization. All the same, even if it were possible to assess the damage caused by a meteor of a certain size (largely influenced by the location of the impact), we'd still know nothing about conceivable modifications of collective mentalities and how they would resonate in the long run in terms of sexual comportment, fertility etc.–the variables simply are too multifarious. Conversely, there is a fair amount of studies helping us un- derstand how urbanization shapes mentalities, attitudes, ways of life. The gradu- alness of urbanization, possibly still accelerating, also contributes to a relative ease of at least some expectable correctness of predictions. And yet. Looking back at the twentieth century, one cannot be but stupefied by the imbecility of some forecasts and plans, be it only because post factum they seem so obviously invalid and not even desirable to begin with. Possibly the most-cited example is the "car-adapted city" in regard to which you remain non- plussed why no one had the idea of calculating the space necessary for parked automobiles–not to mention moving ones. It continues to be quite incomprehen- sible, too, how ideas and projects by people such as Le Corbusier could appear attractive. Then again, Beijing apparently is just in the process of building its eighth circular motorway. In comparison, it would be very much easier and more circumspect to build yet more metro and electric surface lines. (As I shall discuss in chapter six, such systems existed nearly everywhere and could have been ex- panded and gradually modernized but were most often done away with because of a widely groundless euphoria caused by the "car city.") And there's no end to futile ideas. The bicycle-based city is just about as mo- ronic as the idea of completely automating the automobile. Many cities are al- ready too big and expansive to be realistically navigable by bicycles; and their topography is not always propitious for the cycling enterprise either. More or less propagandistic photos of countless Chinese happily cycling along the streets of Beijing may have misled quite a number of naïve people: going to work, even there, is nowadays rather done by car. Density as well as numbers, however, pre- clude continuing with such trends. But we will see what can be done about some of the urban problems at least in terms of transportation in chapter six. Still: density, concentration, accumulation of people in and around cities is possibly the greatest challenge of them all. That is not least the case because a number of different types of cities have evolved which do not pose exactly the

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same problems: even though they are routinely referred to with the same word (there is no other) they are, phenomenologically and more importantly in terms of social practices, dramatically different. Even the variants of one category–the "Western" city–can be surprisingly dissimilar–something which is even manifest in verbiage: "inner city" in most U.S. cities, for instance, refers to gang-ridden pockets of poverty whereas in practically all continental European cities the cen- tral sections rather tend to be opulent (just think of Mayfair, the seventh arron- dissement or the Josefstadt, not to mention the Erste Bezirk). In Europe it is the urban periphery that poses problems of criminality, destitution, lack of social peace: just think of the scary Parisian banlieues (in French, with a euphemism as delightful as it is feeble-minded, referred to as sensible) or Tottenham. At this point, it has now only to be added that few of the cities' problems have been pre- dicted (or at least predicted correctly to some degree). What it comes down to is the sheer mass of humans on the one hand and the unpredictability of human affairs on the other. While it is true that the former has been bemoaned for quite some time, this emerged from crooked considerations and faulty reasoning (say, the superior white race menaced by Asiatic hordes) and not from the awareness that high population figures might simply be unsus- tainable. Here's for a truly hip catchword ("sustainable" could vie for premier status with "carbon footprint" and similar good conscience-notions germane to the feel-good factor of the highbrow crowd); pity only that it's mistakenly uti- lized: the enormous total of the global population rather than distinctive life- styles are the true cause for concern. Were it the reverse, this would not only (or necessarily) logically imply that the "rich countries" would have to renounce their (widely only supposed) prosperity but that the (still) poor ones must not ever aspire to material betterment. There is, then, an obvious connection between expectancy in regard to the ways of doing things and the politico-social practices that are already in place. In what is feared and what is hoped for, we are entirely dependent on how we al- ready live. It is maybe the psychological dimension of this field of tension that is mainly responsible for so many errors in predicting. Consider the countless ru- minations on geopolitical scenarios (or, more ludicrous still, the contemplations on American power and how to use it in the decades, if not centuries, to come) or the assumption that markets (in particular financial markets) are now well under control. And how many times have demographers erred in predicting with some kind of precision population growth? My own dread of too many people may turn out to be quite unfounded: as I have said already, even a limited nuclear conflict might do the trick–of decisively reducing population figures, if not push- ing the ecosystem over the edge and making earth uninhabitable.

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Of course one always reckons with unexpected developments but the multi- verse of possibilities makes prognoses, chiefly in regard to all matters demo- graphic very doubtful indeed. And this problem is raised to a higher power be- cause of the enormously drawn-out repercussions. Factors which would not nec- essarily be of major consequence are blown out of all perspective by reverbera- tions that sometimes take an extremely long time to dissipate; and even then their corollaries remain palpable because of persistent narratives again and again driving home points that have lost much of their initial relevance but are artifi- cially kept alive. It is not just a matter of inadequate demographic foresight (or its application)–a "sudden" lack of physicians or engineers for instance, a scarci- ty easily foreseeable one or two generations ago but not sagaciously acted upon– but of massive not intended effects, a sea change then. The Spaniards had indeed come to America as conquerors but they didn't expect to win not with canons, the sword and torture–but by disease. And they may have hoped for complete subjugation but they had not in mind near-complete decimation. Sadly, there is a newish strand in Western historiography (or should one say philosophy, a rather reductive one, come to that?) insisting on the suggestion that more or less all Europeans went to America with one sole design in mind: killing off the indigenous populations. This is, even making allowances for the frailties of current idéologèmes, a highly unkind and surely untenable presumption. The emigrants' religious convictions would hardly have made that thinkable; it would have been feasible only by total abrogation of their tenets which even by falling back on completely unconscious motives is highly improbable. Some among these people have no doubt committed despicable crimes–as have, in a quite general way of speaking, all humans–but they were not hell-bent on annihilation. That the developments led to a situation not all that short of it (what today is Mexico was, in terms of population figures, reduced maybe to five percent with- in a century of the first arrival of the Europeans) belongs into that category of unforeseeable consequences. What such argumentation is finally driving at is well worth repeating: alt- hough the law of unintended consequences has general relevance, it is particular- ly troublesome in demographic matters because of effects that become clear only generations after the initial input, regardless of whether it has been planned or is happening seemingly "just like that." Unpredictability–a close relative of the much ridiculed "unknown unknowns"–can wreak havoc on supposedly well- planned blueprints, game plans, strategies; things hardly ever turn out as ex- pected. Therefore I plead for an elementary readiness to improvise. What's more, training in adroitness to react to unforeseen challenges with dispatch, in an order-

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ly fashion and not shunning trailblazing solution hitherto unheard of, would also come in handy. The time-worn problem of excess supply versus shortage of po- tential workers in specific professions is not really a demographic one–it is a matter of economic foresight and the organization of education–; still, it is code- termined by weighing the future impact of high and low birthrate generations. On a much broader scale that still doesn't rule out that China's one child policy– although, when calibrated, not at all illogical-seeming–could, in the long run, mean overshooting. The very term overshoot implies unintentional or accidental results of past decisions and actions. It would be easy to enumerate a high number of examples of overshooting and unwelcome end results. Only, in demographics there never is exactly an end result: the biological, the reproductive machine and its countervailing forces (ep- idemics, wars, seemingly simple radical changes in birthrates) continue to have consequences much later, and the farther one is getting on with the series of en- suing repercussions the more unrelated to the initial project the end results will seem. The devilish complicatedness of reasonable forecasts especially in terms of population dynamics virtually makes planning a kind of va banque operation: while it appears nearly certain at the moment that there are too many humans, some cataclysm in the near future can in no time make the number of those alive unsustainably low. There is some clarification to be expected from a closer look at present-day cities, already mentioned in passing. The "condensed character" of their populations brings much of those unknowns and unknowabilites into focus. That sounds like a contradiction in terms but I am sanguine about good chances of presenting tenable arguments for observations and speculations outside the box. 6 – A City Conundrum Size and hence manageablity of very large bodies of population, compressed in limited space, give a clearer picture of population pressures without being quali- tatively distinct; it is banal indeed to even point solely to the mammoth infra- structure perplexities and obstacles. The–give or take–"twenty million" cities such as Mumbai, Kolkata (once referred to as Bombay and Calcutta, the change- over failing to decisively ameliorate the situation) or México Ciudad pose prob- lems at a scale out of all proportion with smaller (and, above all, "old-es- tablished") cities one used to associate with the term megalopolis only a couple of generations ago. Unpleasant as life for quite a number of inhabitants in these

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older metropolises may be, in relative terms things there are rather well under control (despite amazing repetitive blunders and deficiencies of the most puz- zling sort in urban planning). It serves well to remember the dimensions and rank of "world cities" only about one and a half century ago: London, Paris, New York, Vienna (soon to be outranked by Berlin); it is also illustrative to think of very large cities that have- n't contracted all that much but still hardly come to mind when talking about di- mensional preeminence, Naples for example. Then again, Vienna did shrink, quite markedly, and has become all the more livable because of that. Its infra- structure, carefully attended to, could easily accommodate more than its present- day 1,6 million inhabitants (metro area 2,2) as it had always been intended to serve more people than that. A good example for what I meant by "Detroit strat- egy," although in the case of Vienna an altogether desirable outcome was a not intended consequence of the fall of the Habsburg Empire. The case of Vienna, however, also goes to show that reduction (even if comes about as an unforeseen catastrophe) is not concomitant with pauperization, at least not in the longer run. On the contrary: once the incipient unpleasant stages of a rebalanced dimension are left behind, the new equilibrium can manifest itself in regained prosperity and formerly unknown comfort. Reversely, unchecked, non-intended population growth taken to extremes does seem to result in unsolvable problems. The hypothesis is suggesting itself that there is a threshold beyond which the intricacies of operation of what can preliminarily be referred to as routine busi- ness are making things intractable. This threshold, to be sure, is fluid, indistinct, a variable dependent on many factors; it is a transitional zone rather than a strict boundary. This circumstance not least explains why most people customarily assume that growth, any kind of increase, cannot go on indefinitely. (Understood in a purely quantitative way it surely cannot; growth, however, can also be rein- terpreted as improvement.) If exclusively quantitative growth does go on all the same, the eventual collapse can be quite surprising to the clueless. Yet there have been, to be sure, numerous preceding clues and portents; and these seldom are obvious to the less alert as they tend to manifest themselves in manners not im- mediately appreciable. Things can appear to function long after they effectively have ceased to function properly, lulling collectives in a sense of security. I propose a simple illustration. A bus or tram getting increasingly behind schedule because of multiple and not easily perceptible reasons, picking up at each stop steadily growing numbers of waiting passengers, appears to run nor- mally to the untrained eye long after it has started to also pick up, so to speak, more and more dysfunctionality–until the vehicle or train is so overcrowded that even the doors won't close anymore. Long before that stage is reached, things are

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clear to the perceptive observer: the most discernible criterion is the emergence of convoys, that's to say, that the following cars are beginning to run up to the lead car, sooner or later immediately following it in whole batches. An equally important lesson consists in the following observation: the waiting passengers will always tend to step into the overcrowded lead car, continuing to make it in- creasingly dysfunctional and ultimately immobilizing it. Car two, on the other hand, will remain half empty, with the third one of the convoy already nearly unoccupied. Applied in a general way–simple, practical illustrations facilitate the compre- hension of complex macro-structures and macro-dynamics–, this seemingly modest example immediately demonstrates the detrimental results of unintelli- gent behavior. It also establishes that developments are possibly not all that easy to perceive or "decode" in all their complexity. Moreover, it is also obvious that the sheer number of prospective riders blows the basic problem out of propor- tion. Effects of lacking awareness and unwise choices (not noticing the forming of a convoy, entering the first, already overcrowded car) are becoming extremely magnified in the social sphere, "over-proportionally" so the more complex and indeed vast and oversize the realm actually is. There is no doubt a "burden of massive size, complex infrastructure and pop- ulation churn" (Edwin Heathcote in Financial Times 30/31 Oct 2010:7). There even is in well-established cities that haven't grown in a sensational, shocking or unexpected way for decades. Life there is extremely stressful and finally only endurable for the very well-off. Cities with population figures under that magic (and fluid!) threshold of tendential (and sooner or later total) unmanageability, reversely, come off very well in examinations and evaluations of "livability:" Portland or Zurich may come to mind, but also others such as Melbourne, Van- couver, Vienna, Gothenburg. (There is, incidentally, very probably also a lower threshold below which nothing much is doing: too small and spare a basis will not result in chances of generating the multiplicity of stimulations that counteract the brackish waters of immobilism and stagnation.) At any rate, there is a large number of not yet completely itemized and elucidated factors which partly com- bine to create that elusive livability or act against each other and hence that eva- sive ideal. Infrastructure, seen as the material basis of countries, thus of populations, is no doubt particularly critical in cities where density, complexity, size are truly awe-inspiring. It is here that all obstacles connected with demography manifest themselves in the most obvious and readily analyzable form. The term infrastruc- ture has begun to be used metaphorically, too; its "materiality" is seen as a point- er to the interplay of useful and indeed indispensable equipments and installa-

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tions and the utilization thereof (the word end-users may come to mind); termi- nology such as "utilities" also addresses the interlocking quality of the material "chassis" and its utilization. Yet, what if there is nothing to use–or if what does exist is so dysfunctional that, well, its use is of no use? In cities, my argumentation runs, such problems are increased in potency be- cause not only, as they say, size matters but it is compounded with density, in turn resulting in a particular kind of intensity. Demographic problems magnified to a much higher power. These constituents–in fact, these puzzles of density and intensity plus a whole lot of others engaged in permanent and permanently chan- ging intricate mutual influence–, not all that easy to denote or designate, exhibit the population pressures more plainly than any others. And new configurations of urban social (co)existence, real game-changers, are continuingly contributing still more unsuspected features. This condition is not all that dissimilar from the circumstance that it is much too restrictive to speak of countries anymore (although, of course, one is forced to occasionally simply because of common understanding). Trains, not to men- tion planes, do not respect national borders: or where and if they do (think of prerogatives of "flag carriers" or national railroads) they are clearly of much less use than they could be. Comparably, the well defined relations between different layers and groups of the population of cities have to be rethought. Their interplay is on the move, constantly changing. It surely is one of the most damaging con- sequences of stagnant administrations not to reckon with changes (frontier- transcending planes, new types of societal structuring especially in cities) which have begun long ago and rather tend to accelerate although, generally speaking, there seems (perhaps really just seems) to be appalling inoperativeness in today's world affairs. Appearances point to a fossilized state on certain levels and in a number of realms: witness the precariousness of the present geopolitical perspec- tives or the revival of the nation state. There is a further aspect whose problematic nature is not least a result of a linguistic snag. "City," as so many other words, is an absurdly general term in- deed: it can refer to what is not more than a small town as well as to one of the megalopolises where no one knows exactly how many people might be dwelling in them. Even the word "in" is misleading as some of these agglomerations keep overflowing in a hardly cognizable way. Though it is of precious little im- portance how exactly we refer to these huge accumulations of humans, it is still imperative to comprehend that extreme compression and concentration result in new qualities and that they fundamentally change some of the most important demographic patterns. From mere quantitative addition of ever more people re- sult decisive mutations (in not really distinguishable phases and stages) that fun-

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damentally change the character of the phenomenon, its quality then. It is more than just momentum building up or simply a matter of ever higher numbers and still more squeezing of people into what is after all limited space: somewhere along the way, along these ill-understood processes, "the city" changes into something else. And with this change, our conception of demography should be appropriately adapted too. In the fall of 2010 media reported that Shanghai had become the city with the lowest birthrate on earth. At the same time, Shanghai is supposed to be the larg- est city on the planet: about twenty million. Is there some sort of contradiction? Or are there conceivably already countervailing, rebalancing or re-equilibrating forces at work? But what about the shortage of females? There is no reason to call in question the statistics proving that frequently in "traditional" societies parents prefer sons over daughters and act respectively (not always in an appeal- ing fashion). Can one assume that it dawns even on them that the disproportion- ate numbers of females and males will prove to be highly destabilizing, if it isn't already? Whether they realize it now or not: any kind of counter-action would come too late and would not correct the untenable situation within the next dec- ades. It is not about dimension alone but about scope, density, intensity, energies: size in connection with other factors, then. It would be a shade passe-partout, but one could say: complexity. The main thing to appreciate, however, are the desta- bilizing forces released by these innumerable interconnections. And one further constatation forces itself upon us: as an increasing number of humans tends to live in cities–or rather city-like agglomerations–the specificities we ascribe to cities may well have already become irrelevant. Because even "city-like" doesn't convey properly how the setting should be imagined. "Urban population" still evokes (more or less) well-ordered cities of a roughly Western type; it is highly questionable whether this perception does still even approximately correspond with the actual situation in "cities" (even?) less well functioning than Shanghai (for it is by no means certain that the social tensions, not unjustly already pro- verbial, in China, or in the Chinese cities, will not soon become unendurable). "City," for "Westerners," promptly evokes many specific traits, prominent among them familiar outward characteristics of infrastructure. Even the inverse cases of American and European cities–impoverished inner cities and affluent suburbs and exurbs versus opulent central districts and sensible or "sensitive" banlieues–manifest comparable features. There are some that hardly register, water and sewage, energy supply systems (such as city gas, electricity) and communication infra-structure for example, and others that should but seldom make people aware of their existence (surface lines such as trams and trolleybus-

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es). Add, however, attainments such as green areas and public parks, not to men- tion institutions which, in many ways, should be seen as infrastructure, too: there is "materiality" to schools, universities, hospitals and the like; they depend–in terms of financing, administering and providing the basic structures–on intention and planning, principles and strategies, on an equilibrium of services and financ- es. These are rather self-evident (if seldom really consciously perceived) trains of thought. They have to be made conscious in order to allow imagining what it may be like to have nothing of the sort. In the non-Western world–which, of course, in that sense is Westernized at least to some extent–it is absolutely not a matter of course that all these public institutions and services exist in the first place. And if they do, in part at least, they are more often than not in a sorry state or dysfunctional to an amazing degree. (Not that public services are everywhere in such perfect condition as is, quite flatteringly, sometimes assumed. While the expression "crumbling infrastructure" has become, in regard to the United States, close to proverbial, for France the opposite is affirmed. Both assertions are wide- ly baseless. In the latter case the allegation mostly serves to occult the fact that there are regions where there is hardly any public transport whatsoever: perma- nently mentioning the high speed railway lines is but a clever verbal strategy to make things appear better than they are. It is one of the cases where discourses successfully substitute reality by making people see things that aren't there. As to the U.S., travelling on the interstates is still rather risk-free.) The point made here, however, is that city does not equal city–culture areas are, despite surmised globalizing effects, still quite distinct from one another, and so is, consequently, the specific nature of the demographic pressure. On a comparable note, the phenomenon of dimension–"size"–is overemphasized. Ar- rangement and disposition of structures and institutions are of at least equivalent importance. That, in concrete terms, is to say that a huge mass or conglomeration of people (what is more, young and preponderantly male) amplifies the conse- quences of lacking or poor infrastructure, decadent or failing political organiza- tion, religious fanaticism and an astonishing poverty caused by the scarcity or non-existence or inequitable and deficient use of resources. All this, to be sure, stacked according to the dynamic of a vicious circle. It is never merely a matter of numbers but one of functionality. Too many humans? No doubt. But the quandary is aggravated by multiple failing systems. When Michael Crichton published Rising Sun some decades ago, he mistak- enly assumed (as did so many others) that Japan was in the process of becoming dominant at least in economic terms. (By the way, it won't do to contend that he is "just" a novelist. Persons who are not, be it by ascription, title of occupation or

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arrogation and conception of oneself, scholars and scientists can think and reason as correctly as these. Crichton, moreover, displayed a rare talent for the descrip- tion and explanation of systems breakdowns. Arguably, that is what we are wit- nessing at present in regard to overpopulation and thus the overstraining of the planet.) This predominance of Japan did not come about. Today, more or less tout le monde seems to assume that China will, as they say, call the shots for the foreseeable future. And the principal idea behind that assumption ultimately ap- pears to be a simplistic perception of size: so many Chinese, so much power. Maybe. Of course, large numbers can also be a malediction. Actually it could turn out to be a clear case of "the harder they fall." The problem really is that there may be too many factors to be taken into account. And the mere speed with which data can be processed–by the new Chinese super-computer or its eclipsed American forerunner–does not tell us much about whether they were chosen (and then computed) in a way properly corresponding with all too complex reality.

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