Demographics
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Violent youth bulges
From this article in the Financial Times
when 15 to 29-year-olds make up more than 30 per cent of the population, violence tends to happen; when large percentages are under 15, violence is often imminent. The “causes” in the name of which that violence is committed can be immaterial. There are 67 countries in the world with such “youth bulges” now and 60 of them are undergoing some kind of civil war or mass killing.
Read the whole thing.
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The Steyn Article
I’ve been meaning to comment on the Mark Steyn Op-Ed “It’s the demography, stupid” is for a long time (the page has been open in Firefox for a week now.) but it looks like i won’t get around to it, so I guess I’ll just post the link. James Lileks comments on it are here.
While I think Steyn overstates his case by a lot, mostly in not counting the positive value of immigration (buying, rather than building Westerners) and longer lives for a lot of people (who will be disproportionately our best and brightest).
Now that I think about it, he also overestimates (IMHO) the importance of population. There is really no reason to think that the asymmetries currently in existence will disappear. Still a society that can’t sustain itself (not true of America but true in Europe and Japan) is not healthy. Curiously unmentioned are payroll taxes.
Another random thought: the similarities to our current problems and late 19th century Bolshevism are eerie.