{"id":20634,"date":"2016-05-16T10:50:20","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T15:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20634"},"modified":"2016-05-16T10:50:20","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T15:50:20","slug":"if-geography-and-demographics-are-destiny-who-will-be-the-winners-and-losers-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20634","title":{"rendered":"If Geography and Demographics Are Destiny, Who Will Be the Winners and Losers in 2025?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oftwominds.com\/blogmay16\/geography5-16.html\">If Geography and Demographics Are Destiny, Who Will Be the Winners and Losers in 2025?<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><i>Owning any asset in poorly positioned nations is an inherently risky bet going forward.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>The dictum \u201cdemographics is destiny\u201d proposes that all the complexities of finance, society and politics are ultimately guided by demographics:<\/b>\u00a0the relative size of each generation, birth rates, death rates, etc.<\/p>\n<p>For example, an oversized generation of retirees and an undersized generation of workers to support them has far-reaching consequences that can\u2019t be legislated away.<\/p>\n<p>The influence of demographics isn\u2019t limited to pension costs. Some analysts have made the case that oversized generations of young men align all too well with the launching of wars.<\/p>\n<p>The point is that birth\/death rates\u2014low and high&#8211;have consequences that impact national destinies for decades.<\/p>\n<p><b>Another school holds that geography is destiny:<\/b>\u00a0if a nation\u2019s geography is favorable, the barriers to prosperity and stability are low, while the barrier is high for nations with unfavorable geography.<\/p>\n<p>Peter Zeihan, author of the 2014 book,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1455583685\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1455583685&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=charleshughsm-20&amp;linkId=XP6A7DOENHMC5IFL\" target=\"_blank\">The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder<\/a>, lists the core geographic attributes that are either favorable or unfavorable in ways that influence a nation\u2019s long-term prosperity and built-in geopolitical challenges.<\/p>\n<p>What does geography have to do with prosperity, stability and geopolitical risks?<\/p>\n<p>Navigable rivers that reach deep into productive interior regions lower costs of transport dramatically, while natural harbors enable low-cost access to international markets via ships.<\/p>\n<p>Natural barriers to invasion such as oceans, deserts and mountain ranges dictate whether a nation must spend heavily on military defense of the homeland or whether the cost of defense is lightened by favorable geography.<\/p>\n<p>Zeihan extends geography into the political realm, noting that nations with difficult-to-defend borders require a strong central government to organize taxation and defense, while nations with few contiguous threats (for example,\u00a0 the U.S.) can be governed in a more decentralized fashion.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If Geography and Demographics Are Destiny, Who Will Be the Winners and Losers in 2025? Owning any asset in poorly positioned nations is an inherently risky bet going forward. The dictum \u201cdemographics is destiny\u201d proposes that all the complexities of finance, society and politics are ultimately guided by demographics:\u00a0the relative size of each generation, birth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[39,9866,127,13834,2889,13833,13835,13832,4924,690],"class_list":["post-20634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-assets","tag-birth-rate","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-death-rate","tag-demographics","tag-destiny","tag-generations","tag-geography","tag-oftwominds","tag-risk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20635,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20634\/revisions\/20635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}