[Lorianne]

The article doesn’t talk about population. It discusses many other things but primarily focusses on lack of capital formation and over reliance on debt in its place.

[Vince Ferrer]

The article doesn't talk about population, but the author seems to be a Malthus adherent, and for them, population growth to the point of resource depletion is a given (but falsified). What I am expecting, a population collapse without resource scarcity, is unthinkable by a Malthusian, so I am not surprised the author doesn't mention it.

But population is critical. It is the demand side of supply and demand. People need food, shelter, etc. and more people = more demand = more GDP. Less people = less demand = less GDP. Yet our current economic model can't allow declining population and declining GDP, because it is debt based. Our money is debt based money. How does a debt based money work in a shrinking economy? It just makes the debt more unpayable.

And I believe the most important thing is that once the collapse really gets started, it will be self fueling, because the population decline will cause a never ending depression, which will cause adults to not want to have children they can't afford and can't guarantee they will have a life even equal to their own, which lowers the population, and causes greater economic contraction.