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Comment by red-iron-pine | Hacker News Reader

e.g. how do you sell 100 million smartphones when the population is only 50 million, and can hardly afford to buy 1 (and certainly not more than 1)? this leads to layoffs

how do phone shops like verizon or t-mobile stay open if people aren't buying? same for phone repair places? more layoffs

more laid off people means less people going out to dinner, ordering pizza, taking trips, buying new cars. those businesses close, and layoff people.

less workers means less tax revinue, either income tax, payroll tax, or sales tax (cuz people ain't buying shit). government offices cut bodies (layoffs) and reduce services. there are now less cops and more potholes.

how do billionaires, whose wealth depends on publicly traded companies and their stocks, keep making money when no one can buy anything? spacex and tesla can make up numbers and stay afloat, somehow, but most stocks will tank.

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> how do you sell 100 million smartphones when the population is only 50 million

You don't. You only sell 50 million.

> this leads to layoffs

Why? 50 million people instead of 100 million also means half the employees in the factory, making just 50 million phones instead of 100.

> government offices cut bodies (layoffs) and reduce services

Yeah, but no layoffs (same reason as the phone factory). Fewer people need fewer services. Potholes are indeed a problem. Some roads leading to abandoned places will need to be abandoned as well.

> most stocks will tank

By your argument, those people that can't buy a second phone, also can't buy any stocks anyway. I see no problem here.

The population doesn't just go from 100m to 50m instantly. It gradually changes over time, 100 years from now the smaller population will work itself out, but none of us will be alive for that. We still have 100 years of discomfort to get through.

Fewer children mean all the industries and gov't services who are employed now to service children will need to downsize, these are lost jobs now before the fewer children grow to adults where they would take over those fewer jobs. All of this will have a effect across the economy.

Pediatricians, Teachers, Toys & Games companies, Children Furniture, School Supplies, Electronics, etc.... All of these are sized with the expectation of the same consumer demand, but when there are less kids to buy and service each of these will be forced to downsize. Again in the long run it works out, but in the short run say next 50 years for people in these markets will see downsizing over time. Can the rest of the economies pick that up?

Pediatricians - not enough of them now. Teachers - also not enough. Toys & Games companies - can switch to adult games, no problem. Children Furniture - can and do make adult furniture too. School Supplies? Electronics? Can also switch to adult products. Fewer people means fewer companies as well - not a problem.

Lots of new jobs will be needed in health and elderly care - you just ignored those.

> All of these are sized with the expectation of the same consumer demand, but when there are less kids to buy and service each of these will be forced to downsize.

Downsizing happens all the time. It's considered normal by most economists.

Yes, there are domains that are more affected than others. Reduction in population is slow enough to simply let the workers retire without hiring new ones.

You're acting like the birth rates are 0.2 instead of somewhere above 1 (too lazy to check). I remind you that Japan had lower birthrates than that for a very long time and nothing bad happend. In fact, their workplace conditions are improving. Salarymen are finally starting to work decent hours.

Why don't you admit that you're worried about your own quality of life at 70y old and you couldn't care less about future generations and their polution, resources, global warming, famine and refugee problems?

Potholes are indeed a problem

actually, less people would mean less traffic, and less wear on the roads, therefore also less potholes.

That's not how potholes form. It depends on wheather, not traffic.

weather, mainly rain, is only responsible for weakening the soil under the pavement, the actual holes are created by traffic. so as long as there is no traffic, holes would not form. especially holes getting larger also depends on traffic.

freezing and thawing can also be an issue, but obviously only in areas where it gets cold enough.

This is backwards.

Heavy traffic causes depressions in the road. Water collects there and seeps into tiny cracks. Then it freezes, expands and makes the cracks bigger with every cycle.

It's also possible for potholes to form if the roads are continuously covered in snow that is compacted into ice. There is no direct damage from traffic. The expansion of ice creates tiny holes throughout the road.

Road wear (including potholes) is almost entirely proportional to the number of large trucks.

So, the economy of scale is still there whether the finances are there or not. If I make 10 pizzas for me and all my friends, Bob fixes all our bikes, Carol goes to fetch water from the well, Dave tends the sheep, etc... All 10 of us are doing our own little economy without money and benefitting from it. What I'm trying to say is there can still be people selling pizza in a collapsed financial system, if we can somehow trust each other to deliver (which is what money does). Maybe we'll end up making our own currency.

All this relies on a basic subsistence right though, us all living in harmony on some commune. If the housing rental system remains in place and demands dollars even though no dollars are available to be gotten, then our landlord is probably going to choose to escalate to violence and won't take pizzas as payment. If the government is going to mandate rent payment in dollars without actually making any dollars available, we have a problem.

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