Disease kills over half the world's population, what happens next?

[Kuciwalker]

I agree with Dauphin's analysis 100%.

[dannubis]

Re: Disease kills over half the world's population, what happens next?

Originally posted by Dauphin
I would have thought that it would be a good thing...

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by TCO
Imagine having a 50% chance of death.

Actually, the chance of death is 100%

[dannubis]

[BeBMan]

Re: Disease kills over half the world's population, what happens next?

Originally posted by Dauphin

Best of all, it would probably reduce the risk to the environment.

Half of the world population laying around dead can't be that good for the environment. And it's probably bad for investors

[BeBMan]

Plus, what if disaster kills the other half? Then we're pretty screwed

[Chemical Ollie]

Someone would invent a cure and become billionaire.

[Space05us]

Old people raise your kids.

Weak and poor people clean your toilets.

If they disappear then others will have to become old, weak, and poor to take their place. In the end there will still be old people, there will still be weak people, and there will still be poor people. Simply put they are in demand by society. Nothing will change, there will just be fewer people for a couple of decades.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Same as in the black death. Society as we know it collapses, and eventually gets built back up.

I've heard theories that the black death actually helped jump start the renaissance. With half the people dead, wealth was concentrated into far fewer hands. Those people were better able to fund the arts and science, etc.

[KrazyHorse]

With half the people dead, wealth was concentrated into far fewer hands. Those people were better able to fund the arts and science, etc.

This makes absolutely no sense. I'm not claiming that the original argument you heard was crap, but your distillation of it is.

[BlackCat]

It would be a bit problematic if it was the female part of the pop that died.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

With half the people dead, wealth was concentrated into far fewer hands. Those people were better able to fund the arts and science, etc.

This makes absolutely no sense. I'm not claiming that the original argument you heard was crap, but your distillation of it is.

You're right, it's the distillation.

The theory is that the sudden huge decrease in available manpower led to a large increase in wages, and thus the standard of living rose for most Europeans after the pandemic.

[KrazyHorse]

The other side of that is that the owners of the suddenly abundant resource (land) found themselves poorer.

And the landholders are precisely the people you'd expect to "fund the arts and science [sic], etc" in medieval Europe.

Which is why I don't understand what he is referring to at all.

[KrazyHorse]

As proof of this consider that the plague decades were marked, at least in England, by legislation placing a ceiling on wages as landholders attempted to stop the rapid real wage increases.

[Lazerus]

Some borderline comedians get a whole new wealth of material