Black Death and Population
There seems to be quite a lot concern about the population these days. A lot of concern about a lot of people. Crazy crack-pots who want lots of babies, racists worrying about increasing the birth-rate of babies who are of a white persuasion, and dinks who decide to get all self-righteous because they decided not to have kids.
Quite simply you have a lot of people using and misusing information for their own ill-gotten means. Not to mention a nice dose of either idiocy or brain vacancy. There was one particular idea that was spread around that immediately sparked my interest. I was trying to tackle the complicated relationship between modern social institutions and social disasters of the past. Interestingly told from the perspective of one who has no idea how modern society and economics works along with an elementary school history report. A general summation of the idea.
It is ok to have a declining birth-rate in today’s society because the Black Death killed a lot of people and the quality of life after the event improved.
I assume that the reasoning behind this is that both a falling birth-rate and a 25 to 50% death rate due to disease will both tend to lower a population. Unfortunately a low birth rate and the Black Death really aren’t that comparable. To compare economic and social reactions of the 14th Century and the 21st Century is just downright ridiculous.
First and foremost, exactly how ‘wonderful’ was it post Black Death? Well to be quite honest, like before the Black Death, it sucked. We are talking about the 1300’s here. No one bathes, food shortages occur all the time, people throw the contents of their chamber pots out into the streets and blood-letting was still the prescribed cure for just about anything that ails you.
There were a few positive aspects to the lives of those post Black Death. For one thing, more hospitals were built. (We’ll say the thought counts on this one because you still weren’t able to find anything resembling healthcare.) More jobs were available within the cities, a lot of dead people will create a lot of job openings, and the authorities tried to clean up the cities by closing the public baths. Ok well that one is more a negative because it stopped even more people from bathing but more points for effort right? They also created a more regulated system of prostitution, mostly so they could tax the sex workers, call it the titty tax of 1382. (Actually I don’t know the exact year.)
The negative aspects outweigh the positive however. Entire towns and economies collapsed, trade was crippled. But wait! There were more jobs! That’s good for the economy! This is where you run into problems trying to compare to societies that exist with a seven hundred years apart. Economies of today are international, economies of the 1300’s were local. This morning I had some orange juice for breakfast, those oranges came from Florida. Poured it into a class that was designed in Sweden and then actually created in Denmark. Put on my clothes that came from a combination Indonesia and Bangladesh, then I hopped on my computer that has various components built across Japan and Korea before being finally assembled in China. Sometimes I think the only thing in my apartment made in Canada, is well me, even my boyfriend is an import.
The 1300’s however were quite different, you had a glass of milk from the goat you milked that morning, you made your own clothes, weaving thread from the wool you might have sheared from you own sheep. Wanted a pair of shoes? You went to the shoe cobbler just down the street, screw your fancy Nikes.
If most of what you manufacture is exported and most of what you use is imported. Trade collapse is a disaster, when trade collapsed in the 1300’s it wasn’t so bad because there wasn’t really that much trade involved in the everyday life of the citizens.
For sake of argument we’ll re-create the Black Death, say that a quarter of the population dies tomorrow. And hey, look at this you get your boss’s job. More money equals a better quality of life right? Not so much. You might be able to buy a new home because hey houses are dirt cheap! A quarter of the population died, whole families have disappeared, think of all those empty houses. All those empty houses bringing down the value of the entire housing market. Too bad your house isn’t worth anything anymore huh? Don’t bother buying a car, even the domestic car companies are completely collapsing due to the lost revenue of exports. The stock market is a joke all the corporations are going under. Going under? Well how many corporations can you name that don’t operate internationally? Wait, you say your company exports/imports internationally? Enjoy your unemployment.
The same situation just cannot create the same responses, we quite honestly live in a different (economic) world.
That said a slowly declining birth rate cannot be looked upon as a “same situation” scenario as the Black Death. The Black Death killed by some estimates 50% of the population in about four years. Even if we stopped everyone in the world from reproducing, it would take years before it really made a dent in the population. In western countries it would take about half a lifetime to remove half the population. Some AIDS ravaged countries in Africa, such as Central African Republic would be hit hard, fast, but we are still talking of a time span over 20 years.
A non-existent birth rate also cuts the population from only one age group. Not surprisingly bacteria doesn’t really care what age group you’re in. You’re a twenty-two year old in the prime of your life? It’s still going to kill you. During the plague just as many infants and elderly died, along with many in-between. When you just cut out the new additions you create an ever increasingly aging population, and when you get really old you become dependent on the younger population to take care of you. Your cooking, your cleaning and making sure you take all your pills on time. Even now everyone (ie government and businesses) is freaking out because they have no idea how they are going to be able to support all of the baby boomers as this huge chunk of the population is tottering towards their final resting place.
Actually I think I have it figured out. If you cull from one end you have to cull from the other. We just have to remove the people who need help from the population: say seventy-five for mandatory euthanasia? Who’s with me?
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