The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

by Peter Zeihan

One of the many reasons why the wars were so catastrophic in human terms was that the technological builds of the Industrial Revolution didn’t simply make the weapons of war more destructive, they made the cultural fabric, technical expertise, economic vitality, and military relevance of society far more dependent upon artificial infrastructure. Combatants would target opposing civilian infrastructure because it was that infrastructure that enabled warfighting. But that same infrastructure also enabled mass education, mass employment, mass health, and an end to mass hunger.

The American story is the story of the perfect Geography of Success. That geography determines not only American power, but also America’s role in the world.

unique among the world’s major powers, only the United States has major populations on the coasts of two oceans.

nearly all the population gains in the developed world since 1965—overall a greater than 50 percent increase—are from longer life spans.

Most of the spending a person does occurs between the ages of fifteen and forty-five—that’s the life window when people are buying cars and homes and raising children and seeking higher education.

A central factor in every growth story that accompanies industrialization is that much of the economic growth comes from a swelling population. What most people miss is that there’s another step in the industrializationcum-urbanization process: lower mortality increases the population to such a degree that it overwhelms any impact from a decline in birth rates . . . but only for a few decades. Eventually gains in longevity max out, leaving a country a greater population, but with few children. Yesterday’s few children leads to today’s few young workers leads to tomorrow’s few mature workers. And now, at long last, tomorrow has arrived.

What many in the world see as a threat—the rapid rise of China in economic, military, and demographic terms—is nothing more than two hundred years of economic and demographic transformation squeezed into a searing four decades, utterly transforming Chinese society and global patterns of trade . . . . . . as well as the Chinese demography. No matter how you crunch the numbers, China in 2022 is the fastest-aging society in human history.

Under the Order and this magical demographic moment, we have become so specialized and our technology has advanced so much that we have become totally incompetent at tasks that used to be essential. Try producing your own electricity or enough food to live on while keeping up your full-time job. What makes it all possible is the idea of continuity: the idea that the safety and security we enjoy today will still be here tomorrow and we can put our lives in the hands of these systems. After all, if you were pretty sure the government was going to collapse tomorrow, you’d probably worry less about whatever work-related color-coded minutiae your manager insists is so important and instead focus your time on learning how to can vegetables.

In 2019 the Earth for the first time in history had more people aged sixty-five and over than five and under. By 2030 there will be twice as many retirees, in relative terms.

The Baby Boomers are the largest-ever generation, so their absence is hugely impactful in numerical terms. They are also the oldest economically active generation, meaning that their numbers comprise the bulk of all available skilled labor. Remove so many high-skilled workers in a short period of time and labor shortages and labor inflation are a foregone conclusion for years to come.

The American Millennials are already the largest demographic in the workforce by number.

Inward migration has ebbed and flowed over the decades based on U.S. and global economic conditions and gyrations within American political culture, but as a rule it is significantly higher than nearly every country in the world as a percentage of the overall citizenry.

Net migration of Mexicans to the United States peaked in the early 2000s and it has been negative for twelve of the thirteen years since 2008. Just as industrialization and urbanization pushed down birth rates in the developed world, the same process has begun in Mexico, just a few decades later. Today’s Mexican demographic structure suggests it will never again be a net large-scale contributor to American migration. Most of the big migrant flows into the United States since 2014 have instead been from the near-failed Central American states of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Mexican-Americans are turning nativist. The demographic in the United States that consistently polls the most anti-migration is not white Americans, but instead (non-first-generation) Mexican-Americans. They want family reunification, but only for their own families. Never forget that anti-migrant, build-the-wall Donald Trump carried nearly every county on the southern border when running for reelection in 2020.

China’s population path turned terminal two decades ago. Based on whose statistics you’re using, the average Chinese citizen aged past the average American citizen sometime between 2017 and 2020. China’s labor force and overall population peaked in the 2010s. In the best-case scenario, the Chinese population in the year 2070 will be less than half of what it was in 2020. More recent data that’s leaked out of the Chinese census authority suggests that date may need to be pulled forward to 2050. China’s collapse has already begun.