http://www.bioticregulation.ru/life/life3-3.phpSurvivorship essentials:
Neglected aspects of the population numbers problem
I. INTERNAL DEMOGRAPHIC PROBLEM
I.2. Speculations around the internal demographic problem
The modern wide mass-media coverage of the internal, artificially inflated demographic problem is of political nature. Calls to elevate birth rates that can be heard today in most developed countries are accompanied by references to the necessity of supporting the retired people. Alternatively, as in Russia, where pensions are below the living minimum and it is well-known that the elderly people are supporting themselves, to the danger of the nation "becoming extinct".
In all cases population growth leads to a decrease in per capita gross domestic product as compared to a stationary or shrinking population. However, gross domestic product (GDP) of the country as a whole is proportional to the population number and, hence, increases when the population grows. Thus, population growth that is more rapid than the growth of GDP leads to a decrease of per capita GDP and, hence, lowers average living standards in the population. However, since the population elite, which does not grow in numbers, lives on a fixed percentage of GDP, living standards of the elite improve with growing population numbers and, hence, GDP. This is one of the reasons for why high birth rates in a population can be encouraged by its ruling elite.
In the recent historical past, at equal armaments and similar military tactics employed, the military power of a state was determined by the size of its army, the latter proportional to total population number of the country. However, the performance of the army was always a function of the levels of development of military technologies, military science and military education, which were not directly related or even not related at all to the total population number. In the modern world, with the appearance of nuclear weapons and transition to professional armies that make use of the latest technological and scientific advancements of the civilization, the defensive power no longer depends on the population number.
In those societies where the scientific progress and its close follower — technological progress — occur at a maximum speed, the resources allocated to the upbringing and education of the young generation, are necessarily huge. Accordingly, in the developed countries the women have acquired the full rights of society members and can freely decide how many children they would like to have and whether and when these children should be born. The state institution of marriage has largely disintegrated. This is one of the reasons for the stabilization or the recent decline of the population numbers in the developed countries.
After the technologies, on which the civilization of the developed countries has been running and ensured its further scientific and technological progress, come out of date and become incompetitive, they are being exported to the developing countries of the third world. This export costs little in terms of financial investments. It is difficult and costly to develop a new technology. But it is much easier to absorb and learn to make use of an accomplished and tested technology. This can be done by populations of the developing countries without investing much labor, time and manpower. Spared the challenge of advancing their own science and technology and, consequently, of investing heavily into the younger generation, the developing countries continue to maintain high reproduction rates. Therefore, the widely-practiced policy of selling the aging technologies away to the developing countries poses a serious threat to the existence of both developed and developing countries, as well as of the world as a whole.
The developed countries have become what they are — i.e., maximized the rate of their scientific and technological progress — in the course of an intense competitive interaction with each other. These countries cannot afford diminishing the educational investments into the younger generation; in consequence, they cannot allow high birth rates and a rapid increase of population numbers. "Standard of living" quantified as the per capita GDP is continuously growing in the developed countries. (As discussed below, this definition of a standard of living does not reflect the inherent behavioral needs and genetically encoded demands of the human being, i.e., it does not represent a true living standard. For this reason we enclose the above economics-related definition of the standard of living in quotes). This high "standard" is in reality not exceedingly high at all, but barely covers the objectively high demands of a population working intensely to sustain the high speed of the technological progress. It is rarely appreciated that this high "standard of living" is a necessity for the country to remain developed.
It is worthy noting that people in the developed countries could enjoy more free time and a more comfortable and stress-free existence at a lower value of per capita GDP, if the condition of sustaining the high speed of scientific and technological progress were relaxed. But in this case the country where the progress was stopped would face the danger of losing the status of "developed" in the competition with the other countries that continue the scientific and technological race. Moreover, as discussed in the sections to follow, such a country would be unable to buy energy from the countries oil-exporters.
The developing countries pay practically nothing for the high technologies imported from the developed countries. These technologies make it possible to further sustain the high population growth rates in these countries, while the local cultural stereotypes make any changes in the demographic policies, like population stabilization or negative growth, difficult. The cost of living and "standard of living" are much lower in the developing countries, which too facilitates the maintenance of high birth rates. Conversely, the continued population growth does not allow the developing countries to reach a high "standard of living" despite the absorption of high technologies created and delivered to the third world by the developed countries.
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