In the modern world, we are surrounded by a vast number of goods, many of which are the result of high-tech production. These goods allow us to have a quality of life that no one had before, not even kings and the super-rich. We can afford to consume more food than our ancestors, fall ill less often, and live longer thanks to achievements in medicine, travel quickly and efficiently across the world, and conduct business remotely with other people. In the long run, the development of technology is the only thing that can ensure the survival of humanity.
However, the theoretical development of various technologies is useless in itself without the organization of the production of the corresponding goods. And the more complex this production is, the longer and more convoluted the associated production chains become. Moreover, even the theoretical development of more complex technological processes is often impossible without the practical implementation of previous, simpler developments. This makes production chains even longer and more complicated.
Take a very ordinary smartphone, which is likely next to you right now, a computer, or a television. To produce them, the work of millions of people is required: those who extract all the necessary chemical elements, process them, transport them, keep records, engage in theoretical development, design and manage production processes, operate and maintain the technical means of production (which, in turn, must undergo all these processes to be produced), assemble individual parts of final goods, assemble the goods themselves from parts, and engage in hundreds, thousands, and millions of other accompanying processes. This is the situation with absolutely any high-tech good. And considering that there are also hundreds, thousands, and millions of such goods, I think it should now be obvious that maintaining high-tech production at the current level requires billions of people, which is precisely what we currently have on the planet.
Several conclusions must be drawn from this. First, there is a concept that population growth only leads to various problems, and therefore it would be better if it decreased to a certain number that could supposedly be provided with an abundance of all necessary goods, while also reducing the ecological and resource burden. However, this is a rather absurd concept. Regulating the population, and even more so reducing it, would force the reduction and simplification of production chains. Fewer goods would have to be produced, and they would be of lower quality. Furthermore, further expansion of production chains would become impossible; that is, it would be impossible to organize more high-tech and complex production. Society would begin to stagnate, limited resources would be consumed without any result, and in such a case, we would guaranteed become hostages of this planet, since the production of spacecraft is one of the most complex productions possible. The death of all humanity under such conditions would only be a matter of time, and most likely, not in the very distant future.
The problems usually appealed to when defending the position of population regulation are solved precisely by the development of technology. Technology allows for more efficient use of limited resources while producing more goods; it also opens paths to more ecological production without reducing its volume. These problems are only not solved when scientific and technical progress is slowed down artificially, for example, by the inadequate and violent policies of corrupt governments that simply destroy the favorable environment for the emergence and development of new initiatives.
Secondly, one must not underestimate the threats that could lead to population decline. This especially concerns threats arising from such a phenomenon as violence. As a result of scientific and technical progress, the appearance of effective means of destruction is inevitable. Moreover, they are becoming increasingly accessible, which means that the violent potential of individual actors grows every day. It is only a matter of time before anyone can synthesize, for example, a very dangerous and contagious virus at home (some employee might even now intentionally take one out of a laboratory or incorrectly dispose of infected laboratory animals). Or, ultra-high-capacity energy carriers will become common (for example, even now, piercing your smartphone battery can cause severe chemical burns; now imagine that in the future there will be devices a thousand times more functional than modern smartphones with batteries a thousand times more capacitive, and that someone could acquire them in large quantities for violent purposes). Even current dangerous means in the hands of certain organizations and governments, such as virus samples or nuclear weapons, also carry serious threats, as nothing excludes the possibility of their use by current owners or their leak into the hands of maniacs and terrorists.
We can observe now what the coronavirus epidemic led to. Even such a relatively low level of contagiousness and mortality was enough to cause global turmoil and bring the economy of the entire world to a crisis. Now imagine that a more dangerous virus is released, or nuclear weapons are used, or something else happens that leads, for example, not to the death of all humanity, but to the death of 10-20% of the planet’s population. It would seem that this should not be critical, as the vast majority of people would still survive. However, let us remember the length, complexity, and convoluted nature of production chains. The disappearance of such a number of people would lead to a severe disruption of their operation; the extraction, processing, and supply of many resources might cease entirely. It is quite likely that such a loss in the modern world would lead to an unprecedented crisis, and a mass shortage of basic goods for survival might even begin, because producing large quantities of food for a large number of people (especially the urban population, who do not have their own agricultural plots) requires, again, long production chains.
In addition, niche organizations and specialists could suffer. For example, what would happen if the main companies producing central processing units for computing equipment, and some of their specialists, did not survive the disaster? Many technological processes would simply be lost, and when the last batches of these companies’ products wore out, we would face a reversal from digital to analog technology—a return to the technological level of the mid-20th century. And one should not think that all processes can be quickly restored. Of course, it is quite easy to restore the production of analog equipment—a radio, a mechanical typewriter, a film camera, a vinyl record player, a tape recorder, and even a primitive black-and-white CRT television can be assembled even in a garage using fairly simple tools and components. But a central processor, without which most microelectronics is just a useless pile of junk, cannot be. It cannot even be reproduced by the efforts of a small number of companies; it requires too vast production chains. And this applies not only to the central processor but to many other technologies that we use in everyday life or benefit from in other ways, including medicines and fertilizers for high-yield agriculture, without which maintaining the planet’s population at the current level would become simply impossible.
The loss of high-tech production processes would only exacerbate the problem of producing and supplying basic goods for survival. It is practically impossible to imagine how, without modern information technologies, one could ensure the supply of food for more than 4 billion of the planet’s urban population, as well as the production and supply of goods necessary to maintain the production of this food. One could even expect mass deaths of people and the decline of modern civilization.
Therefore, the fight against such a phenomenon as violence is critically important to prevent a catastrophe capable of taking a part of the planet’s population, which would trigger a terrifying crisis that could well lead to the fall of modern civilization. Under no circumstances should the threat of violence be underestimated!
