I have mentioned both before, but not in one story, but my two gurus these days are Heather Cox Richardson, the historian from Boston College, who lives in Maine, and Scott Galloway, the marketing professor who teaches at NYU’s Stern School of Business in New York, lives in London and hails from Los Angeles. The two of these great minds blend many of the life thoughts that have guided my life (I lived in Maine growing up, I spent most of my career in New York, but always had business to do in London, and I am now living in Southern California). I suppose if I could find a third guru who could bring into the equation the more complete international and emerging markets theme of my life, especially if it incorporated the antiquities side, I would have the perfect trifecta with which to guide my thinking these days. While I am searching for that missing puzzle piece, I spend a lot of time mulling over the musings of HCR and SG and I currently find myself pondering what will change the current equation of America and get us away from what I consider such an uncomfortable and cruel reality that we are living in at the moment. What makes the shift away from democracy and towards totalitarianism extra painful is the wholesale abandonment of the liberal ideologies that have been the primary fabric of my upbringing. Just today I saw yet another graph depicting the dramatic decline in Democratic Party registrations all across the nation. This is no longer a red and blue state issue and is now solidly a broad national (and perhaps global) trend that is undeniable. I could try to blame it on the overt pressures being inflicted by the Trump police state, and while I’m sure that doesn’t help the situation, I don’t believe that is all that’s in play here. It’s almost as if life is simply getting too difficult for people to care for one another in the way that we have collectively tried to do since WWII. That was a systemic version of a near-death trauma for mankind and the aftereffects of the radioactive fallout were a kinder, gentler mentality that feels to me like something that has eroded rather than grown over time. We all like to think that man in inherently good and that evil creeps in only occasionally, but history and, indeed, nature tells us otherwise. Life is a struggle for survival and continuation and self-interested competition is perhaps the overriding theme of existence. Nature prevails and grace only occasionally peeks through.
I don’t want to think of that as negativity about mankind as unpleasant as it sounds at first. But the benefits of collectivism and common good may be more an outcome of severe conditions than a natural state. If that is so, then there may be hope for us liberal-minded dreamers yet. I believe we are facing some of the most severe existential issues our species may have yet encountered. This may be a classic attempt to turn lemons into lemonade, but lets begin by describing the lemons (at least the biggest ones).
The biggest one is population. The earth currently sits with approximately 8.24 billion people as of August 2025. The world is currently growing at a rate of around 0.85% per year, adding around 70 million people annually. The world reached 8 billion people in mid-November 2022 and India (about 1.5 billion people) and China (1.4 billion) are the two most populous countries, with the United States third at 347 million. Looking ahead, the world’s population is expected to peak at about 10.3 billion around 2084, then gradually decline to 10.2 billion by 2100 . The growth rate has been steadily slowing from its peak of over 2% in the late 1960s and is projected to continue declining in the coming decades. The replacement rate of 2.1 is considered necessary for maintaining a population level. Currently the world has a global replacement rate of 2.3, but that is heavily skewed upward by the much higher (yet rapidly declining) replacement rate of 4.0 in Africa, the worst resourced area of the world. Te replacement rates in what we consider to be the most developed parts of the world are 1.6 in the U.S., 1.4 in Europe, and 1.0 in China. They are equally low across much of Asia and Latin America with India being the sort of fulcrum of world population at a 2.1 replacement rate and now the most populated country. Research published in academic journals shows that if global fertility rates remain below replacement level after 2100, population will decline dramatically. For example, if fertility converges to 1.6 children per woman (the current U.S. rate), global population could drop significantly from 2100 levels and be at the level it was during the time of Christ, 250 million, by the end of that century. The math is heavily dependent on complex issues like fertility, longevity and resource availability, but most demographers would agree that we are, at this moment nearing a peak in human population. It’s a poignant reminder that Elon Musk’s Mars rocket has just had another launch delay for technical reasons, reminding us that this planet may still be all we have with which to work.
The other big issue we face that comes into my thinking is that of AI and what that will mean for mankind. Like most great advancements (think nuclear fission, electricity, internal combustion, etc.), there are both great opportunities and great fears to resolve. AI could be the prophylactic that the world needs to overcome the resource constraints that are weighing against our declining replacement rates. AI could mean a better and more productive world for mankind. But like nuclear fission, AI might have an initial human cost in terms of displacement that could be cataclysmic with unemployment so severe as to create widespread human suffering, all while scarce resources like electricity and water are diverted from human needs to server needs. AI could also overcome those initial problems and then seem to be beneficial more like the internal combustion engine, only to have debilitating impact long term on our finite planetary resources. I am not prognosticating doom (short or long term) for AI, but merely pointing out that this presents us with big existential issues that connect quite clearly with our other big population issue.
What all of that says to me is what Scott Galloway said in his column this week – what the country needs are more good ideas to solve our biggest issues…and the decline in Democratic Party roster is a sign that the Party hasn’t yet produced those badly needed new ideas. The real world problems that seem to most need solutions are housing, education, cost of living and immigration. The first one is not even on the Trump agenda. The second is being dismantled for political gain by people who are likely envious of those who are educated. The third is being lied about and probably being made much worse by nationalistic fervor (mostly tariffs). And the last is being so badly manhandled that it is actually in danger of eroding our national soul to a meaningful degree.
Galloway reminds us that America is in a housing crisis. Nearly one third of American households are “cost-burdened,” spending more than 30% of their income on housing. Half of all renters are in that position. And while more Americans own than rent (not such a great statistic globally), there are signs that dynamic could change as Gen Z enters adulthood. Clearly the peaking population is a big contributor to this problem, but the pace of population adjustment is nowhere fast enough to fix the problem. Zohran Mamdani, that dreaded NYC “socialist” that scares the daylights out of Wall Street and conservatives, spends a lot of time addressing this concern, which should remind us that some problems need to be addressed rather than denied.
Education is one of the trickier issues we face, not so much due to population (though that does not help), but perhaps especially because of AI. AI might well be an existential threat to human education (given the relatively low mental capacity of large swaths of the population), but it may also be the killer app that solves the education dilemma. It seems that what hurt us during COVID (remote learning) may help us in this brave new world of AI. Live online tutoring is one of the keys to confronting the challenge and cost of education, with artificial intelligence potentially complementing the role humans play. Here’s an example where that old bugaboo of conservatives, the teachers’ unions, could act as either a hindrance or an ultimate answer to the problem. Clearly, we need to be able to educate people in a manner that enables them to succeed and become prosperous, as well as to make them more engaged and informed citizens. Finding technology-based answers that assist in achieving that goal rather than focusing on whether kids can read the Bible in school or how the bathrooms and gyms are configured would be a great starting point for Democrats to address.
Cost of living will never be easy to solve without some versions of consumer protection and more egalitarian wealth sharing. We have to find a way to convince the brilliant and driven commercial elite that there is self-interest imbedded in keeping their consumers prosperous and satisfied. Enlightened long-term thinkers can easily justify more consumer care and feeding if they are properly incented through more enlightened rather than draconian economic regulation and policy. Democrats are generally good at complex thinking and this needs just that.
Immigration is the real flashpoint in the world these days and it takes no genius to see that this is the direct result of population growth combined with resource dislocation. As wrong-minded as I believe Republican treatment of immigrants has been of late, it is equally wrong for Democrats and liberals to deny the importance of controlling immigration in intelligent ways. We need less chaos and cruelty and more enlightened and controllable solutions. Democratic pundit James Carville (a man who once kissed me on the lips and then slapped me in the face…all at one dinner which I was paying him to attend), has a solution which is a points-based system that would not only expedite entry for high-performing talent, but also reestablish an orderly process for people who are already here.
To keep America going, we need to keep dreaming about innovative solutions to real problems and that cannot get derailed every day by Republican politics or even liberal ideology. I don’t really care if its the Democrats or Republicans who solve the problems, so long as we keep dreaming and keep moving forward.