November 5, 2025

A Look at the Future of Population Collapse -- Italy and South Korea

A relative recently toured central Italy with a tour group. Hearing her talk about how empty it was, about 80% vacant homes, and how the housing was falling apart due to lack of upkeep, sparked my interest in the economics and social implications of declining populations.

A similar trend is under way in the USA. It primarily affects smaller towns in farming regions and among their primary struggles is how to maintain access to healthcare. Iowa State University has produced analyses of what separates towns that remain viable as they shrink from towns that become dysfunctional. They quantified quality of life so they could measure differences in a meaningful and consistent way. It is a fascinating read in part because unlike the CW that says towns must grow to thrive, their premise accepts that many towns will not grow and that frees the researchers to look at best practices. Their PDF is here:

https://isuaamncus122stg.blob.core.windows.net/shop/SOC3083.pdf

Looking at Italy, many of the changes seen there are simply more extreme versions of what is happening all over the USA. The BBC looked at the town of Fregona in Veneto and reports that, like in the USA, schools are closing steadily starting with grade schools and rolling into middle and high schools as the nonexistent children age.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y76483200o

Incentives have had no impact and younger couples report that the high cost of living is not the biggest influence on their family size choices -- lifestyle and career are.

Elsewhere, the world's fastest population collapse is underway in South Korea where the birth rate is at 0.73 and still falling. Some stats say it is 0.68 which points to another odd wrinkle -- the scale of population collapse is treated as a military secret. 0.68 means that for every 10,000 South Koreans in Gen Z there will be less than 3,400 in the generation they raise. Studies of South Korea show that despite relative wealth the nation's attitude toward women is a factor in the declines. Because women are paid less than men there is even more pressure on them to work longer hours. Other research outlines a kind of turbo effect where households which welcomed the advantages of two incomes 20 years ago, increased their spending and now need two incomes to maintain their lifestyle:



https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/what-we-can-learn-koreas-demographic-meltdown

How AI, robotics and the collapse of the job market plays into this remains to be seen. If AI and robotics continue to replace human workers and soldiers, it seems likely that governments and oligarchs will shift from incentivizing fertility to accepting and managing the population decline and demographics will invert from children outnumbering seniors to seniors outnumbering everyone else.

October 27, 2025

The Mastermind -- Kelly Reichardt's latest

Writer Director Kelly Reichardt is known for her minimalist films closely associated with slow cinema, many of which deal with working-class characters in small, rural communities. In her latest film, THE MASTERMIND, Josh O'Connor ('The Crown'/Netflix) plays a failed architect / family man in 1970 who slides into stealing art and ruins his life.

Like the Springsteen film, Deliver Me From Nowhere, this one centers on a 30YO male having a crisis in his life and career and who becomes increasingly isolated. Reichardt has a very confident style and it shows up in her unrushed pace and quiet scenes. O'Connor, like Jeremy Allen White, has to carry a film that is about his character's descent. He has to emote enough to let us in but not so much that it feels forced or melodramatic. O'Connor has more to work with because, unlike Bruce, his character's desperation escalates in distinct steps.

Mastermind reminded me of the Coens' "Fargo" in terms of pace and plot but with nothing played for laughs. Almost everything that Deliver Me From Nowhere gets wrong, Reichardt gets right -- the tone, the pace, the feel of authenticity and key to it all: emotional truth. Mastermind is immersive and holds you because he feels like a real person really going through a series of bad choices and we empathize with his wife, children and his mother.

I'm still pondering the socio-political aspects of an upper middle class man abusing his safety net and paying blue collar types to steal art from a public institution. Reichardt leaves nothing to chance. The stolen art is specified as having been created by Arthur Dove so I need to know more about him and his work.