Well either one of two things are going to happen in a “shrinking pool” global economic environment: governments will go hard populist left (likely to communism, which actually makes sense in a world where long-term degrowth or stagflation is likely), or a handful of mega corporations become the de-facto world government which allows them to continue productivity growth at all costs (read: the death of billions of poor people from lack of water / food).

Either way, the second half of this century is going to be bleak. That’s the other reason young people aren’t having kids: why bring them into a world that’s likely to be pretty awful?