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The mass sterilization of half of humanity
Bill, a loyal MR reader, asks:
A freak solar event "sterilizes" the half of the planet (people, animals, etc) facing the sun. What happens?
Putting aside, the "which half" question, I would predict the collapse of many fiat currencies and the immediate insolvency of most financial institutions. Who could meet all those margin calls? Unemployment would exceed 20 percent and martial law would be declared, food rationing and guys with rifles on street corners. The affected countries would take in larger numbers of immigrants, especially young immigrants from poorer countries, to keep their societies going and to use and maintain the still-standing capital stock. Many of those immigrants might be better off in the longer run, especially if they could internalize the norms of the host country by the time the original inhabitants perished. If you let me "cheat," I'll postulate that genetic engineering is used to perpetuate the genes of the original inhabitants.
If a poor country were hit by this blast the eventual result probably would be mass starvation. There is a chance that social order would collapse across the entire globe, due mostly to contagion effects, multiple equilibria, and bad expectations.
To some of you these mental exercises may seem silly. Indeed they are silly. But what's wrong with silly? Such questions get at the stability of social order, the sources of that stability, and the general importance of demography and intergenerational relations. Those are all topics we don't think enough about. Because we're not silly enough.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 24, 2009 at 02:06 PM in Games | Permalink
Comments
If it sterilizes the female half, the answer is trivial.
Posted by: anon at Jul 24, 2009 2:23:12 PM
Tyler,
A sterile person can't meet margin calls. I had my vasectomy some years ago and it has not noticeably affected my ability to meet margin calls
Best,
David
Posted by: David R. Henderson at Jul 24, 2009 2:25:46 PM
"Those are all topics we don't think enough about. Because we're not silly enough."
A very Hansonian observation
Posted by: ao at Jul 24, 2009 2:32:26 PM
Not sure the effects would be so dire. Remember you're talking only of reproducive capabilities. During the Great Plague Europe lost a third of its inhabitants. Different Tmes, but still.
Posted by: Joe the Economist at Jul 24, 2009 2:33:11 PM
What if it is the southern hemisphere?
Posted by: JohnW at Jul 24, 2009 2:37:28 PM
We can divide the population into sections:
1) Those whose children no longer depend on them and who plan to have no more children. It will probably have very little effect on these.
2) Those who are currently raising their children. Their commitment to their children will surely remain strong despite the fact that their children are now sterile. Instincts are not "smart". Just because a person becomes aware that his child is sterile does not mean that the person will automatically take the evolutionarily optimal path and abandon the child. The parental instincts are not that smart, I think.
3) Those adults who have not had children yet and who are planning to have children. These will join group 4, taking on some of their characteristics.
4) Those adults who do not intend to have children. There are many of those in today's society. They will be little affected. It is not clear to me that (4) differ so substantially from (3) that turning (3) into (4) will lead to (say) some sort of economic collapse.
5) Children. Children do not think about the future very strongly.
As far as direct effects go, the productive population will not be different from what it would have been for about 20 years. So there will be a 20-year grace period before the direct effect of a lower working-age population kicks in. Of course, a lot of people make choices now based on the future 20 years and more down the road, so this future decline will have some immediate impact, but it's not clear to me what. The use of permanent structures will decline 20 years from now, but that accounts for only some of a structure's current value, because of the discount rate.
This is probably breaking the assumptions of the thought experiment, but the sterilized population will have a lot of incentive to accelerate research in cloning, so that in the end, they will in effect not be sterile, since they can reproduce by cloning.
Posted by: Constant at Jul 24, 2009 2:44:10 PM
Tyler wrote:
I would predict the collapse of many fiat currencies and the immediate insolvency of most financial institutions. Who could meet all those margin calls? Unemployment would exceed 20 percent and martial law would be declared, food rationing and guys with rifles on street corners.
I think this is going to happen even with normal solar activity. You're supposed to predict what would change because of the freak event.
Posted by: Bob Murphy at Jul 24, 2009 2:48:00 PM
What if it is the southern hemisphere?
As one instance, I have family in both hemispheres however you want to define them (north south; new world old world; whatever). My family-based future-orientation will not be much affected by a hemispherical sterilization because no matter what hemisphere is sterilized, I will have non-sterile family. I will, if necessary, will my property to my surviving non-sterile relatives.
Posted by: Constant at Jul 24, 2009 2:52:22 PM
Since I'm a prisoner of elite conventional wisdom, I'll say this event is all upside. (I'm assuming that the "sterilization" event doesn't affect vegetation.) There are too many people, and people have too many kids anyway, and this would solve that problem for half of humanity. The environmental benefits are great--fewer people, at least eventually, and fewer people eating meat, at least for awhile. Think of the health benefits. (Can we get the right score from CBO for that?) Unlimited immigration is an unalloyed good for the receiving country, which gets diverse perspectives, etc. It is a partial bad for the rest, because the originating country loses valuable young people despite its investment in them, so some restriction may be necessary. And it's likely that those moving to the receiving country would increase their burdens on the environment. Maybe as part of the regulations restricting emigration we can require them to agree to live poorly in their new countries?
Posted by: Thomas at Jul 24, 2009 2:56:28 PM
Uhm, might I suggest none of the above...? If (as is suggested by the ellipsis) a global half of EVERYTHING currently able to reproduce is rendered sterile it doesn't matter what nations are dayside at that moment, in fact if it is noon in the mid-Pacific the results would be far more drastic than if it's noon over Washington DC.
The effect in most scenarios would be a rapid disappearance of megafauna as the food chain collapses when bacteria and fungi disappear, and the oxygen levels of the atmosphere begin to swing widely depending what part of the globe is getting the sun.
Even if the degree of sterilization doesn't reach to our own cellular reproduction we are still doomed. When you consider that humans are to a radical degree dependent upon their symbiotic microfauna for survival you begin to see the problem.
As currently structured, most of what we recognize as life on earth depends upon the remainder being there.
Posted by: Alger at Jul 24, 2009 3:05:44 PM
Any effect caused by the sterilization of half the world would come from losing the feeling of implicit in our caring for the future of our children, our country or humanity (even those who do not want to have children hope that their country or humanity will continue to progress and think they are contributing to such progress).
However, I think that we can see some signs of what happens with the loss of faith in the future already. Maybe I am exaggerating, but for what I have read, Russia is a country where people seem not to have much faith in the future. I read that their birth rate has plummeted and alcoholism and other bad habits is causing their death rate to increase dramatically, lowering life expectancy to third world levels. We also find that the trend for political freedom commenced during the 1990s has reversed into an authoritarian regime.
Maybe this is what we would see if half the world becomes sterilized.
I am aware that I may be exaggerating and that correlation does not imply causation. However, now that we are on the topic of silly thoughts...
Posted by: Ignacio at Jul 24, 2009 3:11:57 PM
If all the cows, the chickens, the insects, and the crops are sterilized, then you either have a small window in which to import a new ecosystem from the other hemisphere, or the immediate effect will be a large wave of emigration from the affected part of the earth. Then it would take some time before enough new life takes hold before immigration makes sense.
Posted by: mobile at Jul 24, 2009 3:12:18 PM
"Sterilizes" as in "makes sterile", or "sterilizes" as in "kills like bacteria"?
Posted by: Millian at Jul 24, 2009 3:28:29 PM
Wouldn't the effects be similar to those of then China one-child policy?
Posted by: Swedie at Jul 24, 2009 3:44:28 PM
I like the space storm article here:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127001.300-space-storm-alert-90-seconds-from-catastrophe.html?full=true
It is not silly, and it is based on a study funded by NASA. Now that is something to talk about.
Posted by: Shakes at Jul 24, 2009 3:45:54 PM
Well I'm assuming that we aren't immediately aware that the freak event happened. It's something communities start realizing is a problem after a long time of not being able to have babies or maybe sooner if sperm donors are told that they're shooting blanks. So I think there will be a huge market for fertilization or for adoption.
Other than that, there could be mass consumerism as people don't have to save up for kids and also don't have to leave wills. This money could be used to fund Social Security.
Posted by: Lawrence M at Jul 24, 2009 3:49:17 PM
I forgot the animals part! That means a real immediate catastrophe.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Jul 24, 2009 4:05:49 PM
What if it is the southern hemisphere?
The eastern and western hemispheres face the sun(once a day), the southern and northern do not(except to a 23 degree extent(once a year).
Posted by: athEIst at Jul 24, 2009 4:13:20 PM
"The affected countries would take in larger numbers of immigrants, especially young immigrants from poorer countries, to keep their societies going and to use and maintain the still-standing capital stock..."
You've got to be joking. Copulation trumps capital, every time.
Posted by: Billare at Jul 24, 2009 4:19:06 PM
@ athEIst-23.44. that decimal might not mean much to you, but it'd mean alot to a sterile chilean
Posted by: farmer at Jul 24, 2009 4:19:13 PM
I forgot the animals part!
Yeah, me too.
Posted by: Constant at Jul 24, 2009 4:30:40 PM
The price of babies would go up and the fertile half of the population would respond by making more. Equilibrium would be restored.
Posted by: anonymous at Jul 24, 2009 5:15:34 PM
Two movie notes:
This was more or less the plot of "Children of Men", and much earlier, a great Blofeld scheme to blackmail the world in "On her Majesty's Secret Service".
Posted by: JackTrade at Jul 24, 2009 5:25:53 PM
Alger for the win!! He was the only one who understood that the sterilization of the side that faced the sun meant every living thing.
Posted by: Fletcher at Jul 24, 2009 5:37:20 PM
atheist:
Knowing a little astrophysics, I disregarded the premise that our sun could emit such an unusual burst of energy and then continue to emit normally afterwards. A slightly more plausible cause would be a gamma ray burst from outside the solar system, which could come from any direction. Although a GRB would probably be energetic enough to affect the entire planet, and to cause worse than sterilization. Anyway, I thought the point was to consider consequences, not plausibility.
Posted by: JohnW at Jul 24, 2009 5:50:30 PM
