The demographic inversion, and longevity as economic policy

I do not — I do not — um, I do find it incredibly compelling.

Um, all right, I want to bring us to our final story here today and it's an important one. Um, you know, this is underlying much of what we discuss on Moonshots. So, we've noted before, you know, people are having fewer babies. We're going to see a massive drop-off in the human population, and people are now living longer and healthier. And this is changing the global demographic.

So uh here's a chart showing the growth in uh the number of people over 65 and the drop in the number of newborns 0 to age 5 on the planet. The global population over 65 is projected to grow from 852 million uh back in 2025 to 2 billion by 2060. That's more than half of all population growth over that period is coming from people over 65.

The result, at least in the old economy, is that fewer working age people supporting more retirees is going to put huge economic pressure on pensions, on healthcare in every developed economy. The only way the math works out in this future is because of the topics we discuss on this pod, right? AI and robots doing the work for missing workers, people living longer and healthier, not needing to retire, maintaining themselves as economic contributors, right? What's the reason you retire? You're in pain. Uh, you're feeling less energy, or you're forced out uh because of policy.

And this is why I say longevity is not a luxury. It's an economic policy for the century ahead. Right? An 80-year-old with the body and mind of a 50-year-old isn't a pension liability. They're a founder in this future economy. So, you've all heard the saying, you know, demographics are destiny. Well, robots that do the work and therapies that add healthy decades are rewriting destiny.

Um, gentlemen, uh, your thoughts. Salim, you want to jump in first?

Uh, very simple follow-up. I mean, this is why we need the robotaxis and the robots and so on, because we're going to need to redesign the entire concept of uh lifespan to health span to jobs. You know, the concept of education, career, retirement essentially evaporates, right? You have to have repeated cycles of learning, creation, and then taking a sabbatical, etc., etc. And longevity combined with AI totally disrupts who works, how they work, how long they work, what they do. And so it's going to completely change the game. We need to rethink that whole thing from the bottom up.

We've seen the preview with what's happening in Japan, and you need it. China is moving to robots because they have to, because of the one child policy and the population bomb that's coming towards them.

Great point. So they have to do it. They don't have a choice.

Yeah, these numbers can make the world much more interesting. Sorry.