Turn off your brain for one second. Itโs conspiracy time, and I want you to consider this heartwarming thought: What if the root of all our troubles has been staring us right in the face this whole time?
The problem isnโt that there are too many of whichever minority scapegoat cable news is spoon-feeding your uncle this week.
๐๐ญโ๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ซ๐ ๐๐ซ๐ ๐ฃ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐ญ๐จ๐จ ๐ฆ๐๐ง๐ฒ ๐ฉ๐๐จ๐ฉ๐ฅ๐. ๐๐๐ซ๐ข๐จ๐.
Why did Boomers have it so great? They were competing with half the population.
You know that job you canโt find, house you canโt buy, family you canโt afford, that prosperity your parents and grandparents stumbled into that now feels completely out of reach? Maybe itโs because youโre dealing with over twice the demand, while the supply of the things that actually matter hasnโt scaled with it.
What if to truly ๐๐๐ค๐ ๐๐ฆ๐๐ซ๐ข๐๐ ๐๐ซ๐๐๐ญ ๐๐ ๐๐ข๐ง, you donโt need the orange man, you need the purple one? ๐๐จ๐ญ ๐๐ซ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฉ. ๐๐ก๐๐ง๐จ๐ฌ.
And sure, maybe youโre recoiling in horror at the mere suggestion because the next step after identifying the problem, โthere are too many people,โ is to start throwing around solutions.
Donโt worry. Iโve seen Soylent Green. Iโm right there with you.
Or maybe you didnโt follow step one, and your brain is still turned on. You probably have a whole list of rebuttals starting with wealth inequality and AI, and ending with a recommendation that I read Ezra Kleinโs Abundance.
To that I say: are solving those problems good for everyone, but bad for billionaires and corporations?
Yeah. Thatโs not going to happen. Itโs much easier to say there are too many people.
Weโre in that terminal stage of late-stage capitalism where the body starts consuming itself. The tumor that accounts for .1% of the body but hoards over 50% of the nutrients isnโt going to excise itself. And โthere are too many peopleโ sounds completely reasonable to the white blood cells.
And itโs only a matter of time before ๐๐ก๐๐ฒ start saying it out loud. โ๐๐ก๐๐ฒโ being the rich, powerful, and possibly a secretly lizard-person ruling class. ๐๐ก๐๐ฒ already like money and hate people. People want annoying things like food and housing. People also hold inconvenient opinions like, โMaybe donโt replace us all with AI? We need to afford those annoying things like food and housing.โ Listen to any one of โem talk for more than ten minutes and itโs clear ๐๐ก๐๐ฒโ๐ซ๐ already thinking, โThere are too many people.โ
๐๐ก๐๐ฒ simply havenโt found the right branding campaign to sell it to consumers.
If you still think this sounds far-fetched, consider this: weโre already halfway there. Ask any ๐๐๐ฉ๐ฎ๐๐ฅ๐ข๐๐๐ง. Their entire concept of ๐ฌ๐จ๐๐ข๐๐ฅ๐ข๐ฌ๐ฆ boils down to: โThat nice thing we canโt do because there are too many people.โ
Why canโt we have single-payer healthcare?
โToo many sick people.โ
Universal Pre-K?
โToo many young people.โ
Affordable college?
โToo many students.โ
Living wages?
โToo many workers.โ
Why do we need endless foreign wars?
โToo many people over there and not enough oil.โ
We already live in a Fast-Pass luxury economy because the lines are too long, and the beauty of โthere are too many peopleโ is that itโs a problem that is never actually your problem to solve. You donโt need to gather the Infinity Stones.
Given enough time, a famine solves itself.
But you personally? You can order McDonaldโs on DoorDash.
Wasnโt that basically the point of ๐๐ซ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฉ showboating an elderly woman delivering quarter-pounders?
SHE may not have a retirement plan because it got eaten alive by her husbandโs cancer treatments, but YOU can get a McFlurry delivered directly to your front door.
So just tell yourself, โThere are too many people. Besides, I gave her a good tip since my ice cream wasnโt half melted.โ
Or we could do the hard, terrifying thing and diagnose the actual disease: late-stage capitalism.
Thereโs still enough time to cut out the ravenous growth and begin extensive radiation therapy before the body decides the easiest way to survive is by sacrificing its own organs.
But ๐๐ก๐๐ฒ donโt want you to know that.