03 Jul 23 Monday Briefing

in which I understand now why writing is a thing that should be goddamned paid for but oh boy I’m quite enjoying myself

“Old age is not a battle, old age is a massacre” – Philip Roth

As a Singaporean, I sit up and take notice when Channel News Asia (CNA) starts to churn out articles on a certain topic. CNA is a bellwether and a sounding board, and it is also a quasi-governmental mouthpiece (that admittedly produces very nice documentary features), but that’s for another day.

Since the start of 2023 there have been 38 articles on “ageing population” and one more just dropped today highlighting the “missing middle” in care options – tl;dr assisted co-living might not be it.

Applying a futures lens to the dilemma of a rapidly ageing population all over the world is an exercise in grimacing and resolving to mentally kick the can down the road, at least mentally. Why? For me, at least, it means confronting my own mortality, even if I only hit 37 revolutions around the sun this August. I do not have biological children, nor is there an intention to beget them, so let’s get my contribution to Singapore’s TFR clear. I am also firmly in the camp that the notion of begetting offspring as investment schemes, a very Chinese/Asian notion applied to me in the past, is an utter fail in logic. Children are hardly the ROIs such parents think they will be – buying an insurance policy in a care home provider would make way more sense.

Every country is grappling with its own demographic woes. Japan’s PM reckons that they are “standing on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society.” Modi is no doubt chuffed that India has surpassed China in terms of future economic units of production on the factory floor. The UK is all bruh we need more care workers but make them overseas cos for some reason we won’t look into, we’re not encouraging our own young to pick up that career. Singapore is definitely fretting about low TFR and the impossibility of that and the fact that one in four Singaporeans will be over 65 by 2030. People living longer but not producing as many replacement units is maths that just doesn’t add up.

Let’s take a step back and understand what this means in the age of the Anthropocene, and I’m getting Seinfeld-esque here. Warning: opinion ahead. I believe the real reason why most governments and some billionaires are shitting themselves about the longer-term is that the vehicle of growth is premised on human consumption, and if eventually you have fewer humans to serve as economic units of production and consumption… then what? Things slow down and profits fall – almost certainly. All the mega-bucks industries that we consider immutable in modern life – energy, transportation, agriculture – aren’t really so immutable if there aren’t enough humans to demand said energy, transportation and agriculture. We might actually get to… gasp… enjoy life without stripping this planet of all its resources.

Back to the more immediate needs of the near present. Pensions are going to be a riot (possibly even literally) to deal with, and we are only seeing the beginnings of these rumblings. People are going to NIMBY caregiving, governments are going to say well fine let’s raise taxes then, and both sides are going to spat. Migration from less developed to more developed countries would ease woes temporarily, but it is really only kicking the can down the road if TFR remains below replacement, and migrants’ home countries call them back to serve their own needs.

It’s all getting a bit circular now, isn’t it? One way to get a handle on such entangled situations is to think about what an ideal future scenario would look like, and work backwards using real-life events. It is a variation of a futures technique I use a lot, both in personal and professional contexts.

Peer caregiving and companionship is a good example of people doing it for themselves. Longer life expectancies also mean that, potentially, medical advances in understanding and treating neurodegenerative diseases can be applied by the time anyone born after 1980 really needs it – and us Millennials are actually doing ok, all things considered.

And, really, in an age where lifelong, backbreaking physical labour is less of a thing in developed nations, does the concept of retiring at 55 even hold water? Assuming you have a minimum of 20 good years left, what will you do to keep your senses sharp, especially if you won’t be (or have) chasing after grandchildren? The longevity economy is expected to hit trillions, so perhaps it’s time to see ageing as more of an opportunity and less of an inevitable death sentence, if you’ll excuse the pun.

I can honestly say the only things I dread about the future are the things you can’t predict. For me, specifically, that would be a terminal cancer without access to euthanasia, and a neurodegenerative disease in which the lights are on but no one’s home.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to building my digital scrapbook of memories in case the latter happens.