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Pete Alcorn on the world in 2200で観ることもできます。小さいことは気にすんなッ、主題と主張をつかもう！
たった3分ちょっとのプレゼンですが、彼の考えに対して侃々諤々、喧々囂々、賛否両論が飛び交っていて、その意味では非常に良いプレゼンだと言えるでしょう。
【要約】
０．つかみ （カビの生えたオレンジ）
かつてマルサス主義者だったが、卒業した
１．世界の人口
世界人口は21世紀の後半に100億人弱で頂点に達する
その後は減少していく
２．人口減少がもたらす２つの効果
①投機的な不動産投資がなくなる
②労働賃金が上がる
３．14世紀に黒死病が大流行した後のヨーロッパ
賃金上昇、農地改革、技術革新、中流階級、ルネサンス、啓蒙思想
人口は減少したが、経済的・社会的に大きな変革があった
４．今から150年後に始まる「22世紀の啓蒙主義」
今のうちから未来へのポジティブな視野を持っておくことが大切だ
時代の転換期には利害が対立し、社会不安が起こる
ポジティブな視野を持っていれば、転換期を加速して乗り越えられる
Malthusian ：マルサス主義者
enlightenment ：啓蒙思想
scarcity ：希少性
stagnation ：停滞
depression ：恐慌、不況
speculative ：投機的な
burden ：負担
Black Death ：黒死病、14世紀のヨーロッパで大流行した
plague ：伝染病の大発生
heritage ：遺産
notion ：概念
descend ：下る、伝わる
profligate ：放蕩な
settle in ：落ち着く
rash ：軽率な、性急な
accelerate ：加速する
careen off ：転げ落ちる
【transcripts】
I used to be a Malthusian. This was my mental model of the world: exploding population, small planet; it's going to lead to ugly things. But I'm moving past Malthus, because I think that we just might be about 150 years from a kind of new enlightenment.
Here's why. This is the U.N.'s population data, you may have seen, for the world. And the world's population expected to top out at something hopefully a bit less than 10 billion, late this century. And after that, most likely it's going to begin to decline. So what then? Most of the economic models are built around scarcity and growth. So a lot of economists look at declining population and expect to see stagnation, maybe depression. But a declining population is going to have at least two very beneficial economic effects.
One: fewer people on a fixed amount of land make investing in property a bad bet. In the cities, a lot of the cost of property is actually wrapped up in its speculative value. Take away land speculation, price of land drops. And that begins to lift a heavy burden off the world's poor.
Number two: a declining population means scarce labor. Scarce labor drives wages. As wages increase that also lifts the burden on the poor and the working class. Now I'm not talking about a radical drop in population like we saw in the Black Death. But look what happened in Europe after the plague: rising wages, land reform, technological innovation, birth of the middle class; and after that, forward-looking social movements like the Renaissance, and later the Enlightenment.
Most of our cultural heritage has tended to look backward, romanticizing the past. All of the Western religions begin with the notion of Eden, and descend through a kind of profligate present to a very ugly future. So human history is viewed as sort of this downhill slide from the good old days.
But I think we're in for another change, about two generations after the top of that curve, once the effects of a declining population start to settle in. At that point, we'll start romanticizing the future again, instead of the nasty, brutish past.
So why does this matter? Why talk about social-economic movements that may be more than a century away? Because transitions are dangerous times. When land owners start to lose money, and labor demands more pay, there are some powerful interests that are going to fear for the future. Fear for the future leads to some rash decisions. If we have a positive view about the future then we may be able to accelerate through that turn, instead of careening off a cliff.
If we can make it through the next 150 years, I think that your great great grandchildren will forget all about Malthus. And instead, they'll be planning for the future and starting to build the 22nd Century Enlightenment. Thank you. (Applause)