Demographics and limited input

POST: On Demographics, Part 3: Why the Gap will conquer the Core

An analytically-narrow and subpar post from Curzon, who seems to have drunken the Kool-Aid recently on demographics, confusing characteristics/outcomes of economic development with causality (he seems shocked poor people have more babies than rich). The 95 percent number tossed out of nowhere at the end is particularly egregious, flying in the face of the economic reality of the past quarter-century.

Ah, but once you've committed to the Dark Lord ... you've just shut yourself off from the bulk of reality, so you make do with what you can.

Plenty of reasoned analyses of globalization cite the one-third (as I do, as does Chanda in his book "Bound Together") of the planet currently suffering from poor connectivity to globalization. In that one-third you find 80 percent of population growth between now and 2050 (cited in PNM), meaning we go from 6.5B today to about 9.2 and then--by all reasonable predictions--we top off planet-wise at below 9.5 and begin a long, slow decrease. That 80 percent, BTW, won't live so long--on average.

How that planetary pathway equates to the Gap "conquering" the Core, given that the two-thirds living in the Core progressively enjoy the benefits of 90 percent of the wealth and are experiencing the biggest, broadest, and most booming global economy we've ever witnessed (to include 1B new consumers with disposable income emerging in the next decade), is beyond my "optimistic" capacities for doom-and-gloom prognostications fueled by cherry-picked stats.

Beware the single causality explanation for how connectivity--in all its myriad of forms--comes about or fails to come about. A lot of things go into making "destiny."

Chanda's book is a great description of all that growing connectivity over time, including its historical gaps in Asia (recently reconnected) and the Middle East (still struggling). Globalization is unstoppable now simply because too many people are "infected" with the ambitions it enables. Fine to highlight global guerrillas and such, but--as always--you don't want to confuse friction with the force in this only-bad-news-constitutes-real-news media environment. You can't think systematically about the future when you limit your inputs so.