Elon Musk, population collapse in India and that nonsense called end of humanity

Death and loneliness are such emotive words that they make even logical and smart people like Elon Musk sound irrational. That probably explains why, for the last few years, Musk has seemingly embarked on a mission — have as many children as possible, even if that means using IVF and multiple women.

It also probably explains why for the last few years he has been singing the doomsday song, believing himself to be the canary in one of his lithium mines. His argument: the world is headed for a population collapse. Whenever there is a report from any corner of the world that talks of a region or a country falling below the total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1, which is considered the magic number to keep the population neither growing nor declining, Musk jumps on it. His latest warnings are about India.

Quoting a report by The Economist, which argues that TFR in India is now 1.9, Musk wrote on X: “India’s birth rate has fallen below replacement. Among those most educated, India’s birth rate fell below replacement many years ago.”

The tweet, as Musk intended, had the effect he was hoping for. It got 21K retweets, 142K likes and 26 million views. The population collapse theorists jumped on it, hammering at their keyboards and sounding alarm bells. The argument is the same. The sky is falling and there are no more storks flying around with cradles in their beaks. The economic collapse is inevitable, that soon humanity will atrophy.

It is a nonsense and illogical argument, with a healthy dose of xenophobia mixed in it.

LET'S BRING IN BLACK DEATH

But first a few words about Europe of the 14th century. From 1346 to 1353, Europe suffered one of the most catastrophic and deadly disasters humanity has suffered. The plague, aka the Black Death, ravaged the continent. Between 25 million to 50 million people died. Different historians estimate it differently, but a broad consensus is that around one third of the entire population died, with some areas seeing as much as 50 to 60 per cent of the population dying in just a few years.

This “population collapse” remade Europe and transformed it from being an area of cold desolation and scarcity into a modern powerhouse. The remaking of Europe, which eventually led to the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, began with the Black Death.

While historians are still studying how the Black Death put Europe on a path to riches and glory, it is almost a consensus now that the Black Death brought structural demographic changes. These changes soon resulted in higher wages for the remaining population, more resources and a more equitable social structure. Although it is morbid to say, and somewhat crass considering the fact that people died and families wiped out, the Black Death helped Europe rise as the world’s most productive and prosperous region for the next 600 years.

This is not to say that deaths due to pandemics, or for any other reason, are a way for society to achieve prosperity. I cite the example to highlight the irrational argument that Musk and his cohort make about the population collapse. Children of Men, a movie that depicts a dystopia brought about by infertility, is a fine piece of fantasy. It is not real irrespective of whatever the nerds in Silicon Valley feel about it.

The human population is not going to collapse because of falling TFR. The TFR is falling currently because there are way too many humans on the planet. It is falling in India because our country is way too crowded and the contest for resources is so extreme that raising a kid feels exhausting. Elon Musk doesn’t understand this because he sits in his Florida home swooning over his rockets. He doesn’t know that in India even something as mundane as JCB ki khudai gathers a crowd of 1000 people, who gawk and hoot at the machine because they have nothing else to do. He doesn’t know that when our government invites applications for the job of peon, there are 1000s of PhD holders who apply for it.

IS IT SAVING HUMANITY OR JUST GOOD OLD RACE-BAITING?

Or maybe Musk knows it, but ignores it all because his warnings about civilisational doom and population collapse have nothing to do with the TFR. Instead, they are only a way to sell xenophobia involving immigrants, minorities, and people who don’t fit in.

Musk seems to have a very particular definition of civilisation, the one that underpins his talk of civilisation collapse due to falling TFR. In the last few years again and again he has obsessed over the virtues of the Anglo-Saxon world, sometimes directly and sometimes subtly by praising Greek and Roman civilisations or by arguing that Colonialism was a force of good. According to a report in The Guardian, Musk posted about race — often with an emphasis on the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon world — almost daily in January 2026. In one his posts on X, he wrote: “Whites are a rapidly dying minority.”

It is in this context that his arguments on population collapse need to be seen. His and his cohorts. Across the world, as well as in India, the brouhaha about TFR, is just a couched argument in favour of xenophobia. Humanity is not going to die if TFR turns zero or negative even for decades. The planet has way too many people, competing for resources that are dwindling way too fast. If the pressure diminishes, TFR will bounce back. Never before in the history of humanity has the planet supported over 8 billion people. In fact, just 70 years ago the population was less than 3 billion! An extra 5 billion have been added in mere decades.

The world is not looking at a population collapse. Instead, what the world might be looking at is a rearranged demographic composition. It is possible that some countries may see changes in the composition of their ethnic makeup. Some may see their social composition change. Some may see changes in religious composition.

Whether these changes are for the good or bad is a different debate, and the one worth having. How do we keep societies stable while they undergo ethnic, social, and religious changes? That is a question worth asking. But that is also a difficult question to ask because it is an emotive question dealing with words like death and loneliness. It means asking: is it the end of humanity if my bloodline dies? Or: Is it the end of humanity if I am the only white person in the village? And these are difficult questions because their answers reveal whether you are xenophobic or not.

So, instead of asking difficult questions, Musk and the like-minded theorists across the world tend to talk prophetically, hiding behind the noble aim of saving humanity from an imagined civilisational collapse. They don’t love humans or humanity. When they talk of saving the world, the country, the society, their village or mohalla, they are not arguing to save humanity. They are only trying to save their tribe, their race, their religion, and their way of life. Which is not wrong and is worth talking about. But they must be direct about it instead of portraying themselves as saviours of humanity.