Having recently written about the importance for politicians of articulating a vision of the future I thought about 2 books I’ve recently read that try to develop some idea of what the future will look like. One was “Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration - and Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives” by the Oxford statistician and geographer, Danny Dorling, and the other was “The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival” by the economists Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan. Although both books deal with similar material their approaches are quite different: the Goodhart and Pradhan book is fairly conventional in the way that it tries to work through the future implications of its description of contemporary society , while Dorling’s book is more radical in the way that he sees waning population growth presaging nothing less than the death-by-natural-causes of capitalism.
Much of “Slowdown” seems to depend on Dorling’s view of humanity, which is neatly summed up in the following sentences: “The idea that all people were equal did not ‘begin’ in one place. It was obvious from the outset.” From this it’s clear that Dorling is essentially optimistic, demonstrating a deep faith in humanity’s virtue and fingering capitalism as the culprit that has obscured the truth of our innate decency. For him, Rousseau’s imaginary irons enslaving humanity were forged by the profit motive. But although such optimism can be refreshing, it does seem to result in Dorling offering some strange opinions. So, for example, he writes “[debtors’ prisons] were largely phased out in the United States during the middle of the nineteenth century, when that country was at its most economically equitable: federal debtors’ prisons were eliminated in 1833” [the italics are my own, to better represent my eyes bulging in disbelief at this gloss on slavery]. Elsewhere, he writes about how peaceful village life was disturbed in the past “because invaders came and brought destruction. Then the invaders promoted the more obsequious locals to the role of landlords and began the process of enclosure.” Clearly such situations must have occurred somewhere at some point in the past, but the absurdly broad scope of this observation and the simplistic language employed make it sound as if Dorling is telling a morality tale where the peace loving good guys are victimised by the bad guys and their modern forms of capitalist oppression. It seems equally plausible to me though to argue that vicious conflict was present long before such morally questionable innovations appeared: phenomena such as the Commanche Empire and The Musket Wars would indicate that so-called primitive peoples understood the utility of violence just as well as rentiers. Indeed, “Against The Grain” by James C. Scott (a book that appears to have been a major influence on “Slowdown”) repeatedly makes the point that war and slavery existed well before the rise of the earliest states.
So I’m suspicious of his philosophical beliefs, but does this undermine the overall worth of the book? Yes: his philosophical beliefs really do seem to be little more than articles of faith about human nature, and these articles of faith inform his conclusions about what will transpire in the near future. The result is that Dorling’s conclusion that improved global welfare is inevitable doesn’t really follow from the premises offered: yes, slowing or negative population growth is going to present a challenge for the capitalist growth-dependent economic model, but would this fact not serve to just make capitalism even more predatory? Dorling doesn’t really address how capitalism might react though, trusting instead that improved data literacy and falling birth rates will vanquish the bogey man.
A good example of his approach is when he considers the British housing market, a discussion that at times feels almost disingenuous in the way that it focuses on average UK housing prices and ignores the drastic worsening of housing affordability in certain UK cities in the recent past. While his argument that housing price acceleration across the UK is slowing is interesting, his broader contention that this is a sign of the waning powers of capitalism seems deficient when you consider the different rates of house price appreciation in the UK over the past 15 years, which indicates that the asset price volatility so beloved of speculators is alive and well in at least one region of the UK (note that the graph below only relates to England).
Dorling’s treatment of the American economy is even more deficient. Here he makes predictions based on the experiences of a fictional hedge fund manager who realises too late that his life’s work was morally empty. The trouble with this kind of projection though is that it doesn’t actually engage in any way with how markets operate, simply asserting that at some point in the 2020s long-term confidence in the market will begin to fall. No argument is offered as to why the profit motive is expected to curl up and die, other than the simple statement that confidence will wane. As was the case with his treatment of UK house prices and various other themes he addresses (such as data accumulation, innovation, and fertility rates) you really get the sense that Dorling’s faith in his knowedge of human decency means that he doesn’t need to engage more deeply with the topics he’s analysing.
Overall, Dorling’s unwillingness to engage more deeply with the implications of capitalism means that his book is a wasted opportunity for someone seeking an optimistic view of the future (it should be noted that Dorling is clear that this optimism is entirely predicated on climate change being successfully addressed). For others seeking a drier, more detailed treatment of the future, The Great Demographic Reversal (GDR) may be appropriate. Although its two authors agree with Dorling’s central claim that the implications of current demographic trends are under appreciated in contemporary reflections on the future, they seem far less inclined to start writing an obituary for capitalism. Essentially, their view is that the worsening global dependency ratio (and the attendant rise in the proportion of people with dementia) will result in rising inflation, due to fewer workers and less savings. Consequently, the significance of things like populism and central bank independence may soon start to seem less salient as pressing realities for politicians. In this scenario however, the private sector and its profit seeking ways seems more likely to expand their current role as more and more public sector resources are devoted towards ensuring that quality of life remains high for pensioner-voters.
Whether or not capitalism dies, both books seem fairly confident that the recent changes in population growth patterns will have major implications for the future. Interestingly, both see some grounds for optimism, assuming that the climate crisis can actually be tackled. For the GDR authors rising inflation means that the bargaining power of labour will be enhanced, thereby undermining the causes of populism. For Dorling slowing population growth and eventual decline means that capitalism itself is dying and society will soon be reborn in a post-capitalist golden age of eco-tourism and diminished consumer demand. And while that part at least does sound too wholesome to be credible to my ears, the conditional optimism in evidence in both of these books is a bracing reminder that the world may not be totally doomed after all.