When he proposed snapping to wipe out half of humanity, Thanos was actually acting on a solution to the central problem of Economics, that is, that people have unlimited desires but only limited resources to fulfill those desires. His argument was straightforward, halving the population would leave greater resources for the leftovers to satiate their desires. But how does halving human labour look from an economic perspective?
In the short term, production activity would fall but not exactly by 50 percent because industries will make adjustments to produce more than is in the capacity of the available workforce. Thus, there's a definite increase in productivity per capita. However, halving the number of people in the world economy would lead to a reduction in GDP of over 50 percent, which consequently means shrinkage in per capita GDP post Thanos snap. This gap between increasing productivity and decreasing GDP is bridged by a humongous fall in the general price level (simply because there's half as much demand to an unchanged supply).
In the long term, the Thanos Snap doesn't do as much good. There'd be half the number of innovators earlier, which means that the pace of technological progression–something that most of our lives depend upon–will be seriously arrested.
So is this measure the right thing to do? What do Nobel laureates say about it? Are there other ways of ensuring greater use of resources?
In order to know more about the wider impacts this so called 'halving' could have on the wider economy, check out the video below:
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