A WIN discussion June 2025. See it HERE. For the last two hundred years we have been constantly warned about the dangers of overpopulation. Yet the real tipping point lies elsewhere: the world is entering an era of demographic decline. From China to Japan, from Europe to the United States, the number of births is plummeting, societies are ageing and imbalances are accumulating. This far from insignificant change is shaking up the economy, work, social relations and even the very foundations of our societies.`
Going against the grain of all the alarmist rhetoric on overpopulation, our speaker this week is the author of an essay which debunks the myths of neo-Malthusianism and places the demographic question in its proper context: that of a capitalism that has reached maturity, and whose very logic is slowing down the renewal of generations. Raymond Debord explored possible ways out of this impasse, and imagined a model in which demography once again becomes a force for progress rather than a factor of decline.
Raymond Debord is a French sociologist and author of Toward of world without children? (2025), The individual versus society (2023), and Should we do away with the family? (2022).