How To Win The Next 15 Years: Location Location Location (Feat. BowTiedBernard)
No matter how to want to look at the world, geography has a lot to do with your chances of winning
Welcome to part 3 of the ‘How To Win The Next 15 Years’ series, this time we’re going to focus on location, more specifically populations in locations. No matter how you want to look at the world, geography has a lot to do with your chances of winning. A person born in Belarus doesn’t have the same chances of being a millionaire (USD) as someone born in the UK, lets begin.
People agree or disagree on what causes population decline, I don’t care. What I can say for a fact is that in some countries people are having less children or have had less children in the past and it’s coming back to haunt them. They suffer in terms of 1 generation having more workers and or consumers then another. If you have less consumers and workers that means your economy has to retract to reflect the market and people will suffer during that retraction. Some countries are due for a massive retraction and you want to stay away from those places. Take a look at this chart:
Out of these two, who do you think will suffer economically most from population issues in the next few decades? When I’m talking about economically I mean a everything. People going into retirement around 60-70 years old.. What happens to an economy where a majority of their workers retire and they don’t have anyone to replace them? What happens when you lack the 18-25 year olds to replenish the ranks in your military? What happens to your sporting teams, events and business when you don’t have star athletes in their prime around 25-30 years old? The answer to everything is this… Your economy shrinks! Some people are even speculating that Russia attacked Ukraine now because they won’t have enough number to do so in the future. Let’s look at some more charts:
A population pyramid is supposed to try it’s best look like a pyramid. If it looks like a dog drew it, something is wrong.
“The fertility rate of a population is the single most important influence on the shape of a population pyramid. The more children per parent, the broader will be the base of the pyramid. The median age of the population will also be younger. Mortality will also have an influence on the shape; however, it will be far less important an influence than fertility but also somewhat more complex. One would assume that lower mortality rates in a population would result in an older age distribution. However, just the opposite is true -- a population with lower mortality rates will display a slightly younger age distribution. This is due to the fact that any -disparities in the mortality rates of a population are more likely a result of variations within the younger age groups (usually infants and children).
There are generally three types of population pyramids created from age-sex distributions-- expansive, constrictive and stationary. Examples of these three types of population pyramids appear at the end of this report. Definitions of the three types follow:
EXPANSIVE population pyramids show larger numbers or percentages of the population in the younger age groups, usually with each age group smaller in size or proportion than the one born before it. These types of pyramids are usually found in populations with very large fertility rates and lower than average life expectancies.
CONSTRICTIVE population pyramids display lower numbers or percentages of younger people.
STATIONARY or near-stationary population pyramids display somewhat equal numbers or percentages for almost all age groups. Of course, smaller figures are still to be expected at the oldest age groups.
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You want to place yourself in a country that’s under Expansive or Stationary. Constrictive means they are going to go through a decline at some point. Here are a few countries that are expansive or stationary.
Understand: I’m not saying that you can’t win in a country that’s Constrictive. You have the internet, anyone can start an internet business. As long as you understand the situation you’re in and what’s about to happen, “do you”.
Now BowTiedBernard is going to explain to you some of the “why’s” of population decline. No, his thoughts are not my thoughts but I keep an open mind.
Thanks to Hitman for having me on. I’ll explain the key markers that you can look for to watch for population decline. To save you time (and the email length limit), I’ll do a longer write up on my own Substack.
Note: The combination and severity of factors is what leads to decline. You look for trendlines, not the cross-sectional view.
It’s important to not view a country as a single entity, as you may have multiple cultures within a nation, and the severity of these markers don’t always mirror one another.
There are cultural markers, economic markers, and black swan events.
Cultural and Economic Markers point to one key thing - short term prioritization, either for pleasure or survival.
Either it becomes too difficult to do anything besides look for your next meal, or there are cheaper sources of pleasure in abundance, both lead to decline.
Black Swan Events are unpredictable by nature. War, natural disaster, disease. You can’t watch for these more than a few months out at most, so we won’t cover them.
Cultural Markers
Sexual Deviance
Abortion
Paganism
Economic Markers
Emigration Push
Costs
Incentives
Sexual Deviance
Sexual Deviancy would be anything from a higher percent of LGBT population, increase in late in life marriage or no marriage, and an increase in single parent families.
It’s hard to reproduce when you have a partner who can’t, and it’s hard to have kids with a chance of being successful with only one parent around.
To get outside the Western-centric trends, look at the Japanese phenomenon of Hikikomori, where young men chose to just stay in their rooms (and have anime waifus) and not progress with their lives. Also a form of deviancy.
Abortion
More abortions or use of birth control means less babies being born. The Romans drove a plant used as birth control to extinction, and would abandon children on their doorsteps.
Paganism
Brief explainer - This is different than religion. Paganism doesn’t need to have an afterlife, or supernatural world, just a claim to be in possession of secret knowledge or power.
Paganism can range from hedonistic practices all the way to human sacrifice. The latter does still exist in the modern day, just less gruesome. "So we can survive” being the secret knowledge.
Ancient historian Polybius blames paganism for the decline of Greece due to infanticide it promoted.
Emigration Push
If the reasons to move to another country can overcome the desire to stay, and the costs to move, people will move. Hostile government, and economic opportunity elsewhere being two big ones.
Costs
If economic costs to raise children are high, birthrates go down. In developed nations this threshold can be different than undeveloped ones (will I have my ideal retirement vs. can I put food on the table).
Incentives
Raising children is hard work, with a long payoff. If a country doesn’t have a mission, it’s easier to focus on brunch, a new car, that new TV series, people will look for the easy path to feeling good. Compare Europe to America for innovation. If a culture of nation has a mission, accomplishing that mission becomes important. Align that mission with increased birth rates, and you can force population growth
Wrap Up
If you’re looking to win over the next 15 years, you want to focus on location, hard to start a business when your economy is in shambles and violence is at your doorstep. There are more filters to apply when you’re picking your location though we’ll hit those in the upcoming episodes. Thank you for reading.
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