Why Does the World Seem Like Everything is Going Bad?

You know how you keep seeing headlines “Company Fires Thousands of Employees” (eg Disney firing 7,000 staff in 2023)? It’s because CEOs are deciding there are too many unnecessary people, and their roles could be fulfilled with a combination of 1) more software, 2) more machines, 3) AI/automation, etc..

The answer to the title is the same thing, except instead of a single company its the entire planet. There’s 8 billion people on earth, and those in power of the earth want to fire the 7 billion extra people (because ~90% of the population isn’t really needed anymore as a result of AI/automation).

Those in power of the world can’t just execute 7,000,000,000 people .. But they can make life so unbearable (hiking interest rates, inflation, war, oppression, increasing friction between men and women, increasing friction between races, toxic education system, etc) such that people don’t want to — or can’t afford to — have children. As a result, their tactics have slowed the rate of reproduction:

Let’s test the “null hypothesis”: if life was awesome for everyone, world peace, cheap homes, cheap fuel, unity among races, comfort between men and women, confidence in the education system, etc — would people have more kids? Absolutely!

Analogy: When I sit in traffic, I often find myself wishing fuel prices were double, such that less cars would be on the road. Those in power of the earth wish all prices were tripled, such that less people would be on the earth altogether 😭

In short: the more miserable earth’s “board of directors” can make life for the lower/middle class of society, the less kids they will have, eventually resulting in a reduction of the population.

I’ll re-write this sometime later to be more polished, but I had to draft a basic summary of my explanation.

You’re welcome to disagree with me, and I’ll gladly entertain any feedback via comments. However, to me, it is a very clear picture what’s going on.