Demography is Destiny?

To a certain extent, yes. Mark Steyn writes about the impossible situation of China, who has created a culture that prefers one-child families. Such a culture will create adults that are comfortable with a solitary life. They've grown up with both mother and father working; the majority of their social interactions will be with classmates (largely of the same, or near, age), paid care-givers, and a few older relatives, all doting on the sole person who will pass on their genes - or not.

That's not a culture friendly to creating larger families - and, when I was young, who would have ever considered a two-child family as "larger"?

In less than a century, China has morphed from a culture in which the bride's family had to pony up a substantial dowry, to one in which even the plainest, dullest girl can have her choice of attractive would-be grooms.

Other than using their surplus men, who can never create a Chinese family, as the bulwark of an increasingly aggressive military, what can China do?

This connection between population changes and political upheaval is not a new phenomenon.

I found this shocker on Louder with Crowder - the sex ratio in Sweden is even worse than the one in China - find out why.

The French Revolution was, in part, precipitated by the dramatic increase in population during the 18th century. During that same time period, the price of consumer goods, such as bread, had increased dramatically.

The urban population had their wages held down by the competition from the swelling population. A few bad years in the crop production was all that was needed to jack up talk of revolution.

To a certain extent, the fervor for revolt was amped up by the Americans' success in overthrowing the government. But the biggest part of that resentment of the nobility was DRIVEN BY THEIR OWN ACTIONS (today's Progressive Elite might want to take note):

Like the higher clergy, the wealthy nobles of the Old Regime, the second estate, were increasingly unpopular. Although less than 2 percent of the population, they held about 20 percent of the land. They had virtual exemption from taxation and monopolized army commissions and appointments to high ecclesiastical office.

The French aristocracy, however, was not a single social unit but a series of differing groups. At the top were the hereditary nobles—a few descended from royalty or from feudal lords of the Middle Ages but more from families ennobled within the past two or three centuries. These “nobles of the sword” tended to view most of their countrymen, including the lesser nobility, as vulgar upstarts.

Below the nobility of the sword came the “nobility of the robe,” including the justices of the parlements and other courts and a host of other officials. The nobles of the robe, or their ancestors, had originally become nobles by buying their offices. But since these offices were then handed down from father to son, the mercenary origins of their status had become somewhat obscured over time.

By the late eighteenth century there was often little practical distinction between the nobility of the robe and of the sword; marriages between members of the two groups were common. On the whole, the nobles of the robe were, in fact, richer than the nobles of the sword, and their firm hold on key governmental positions gave them more power and influence.

Many noblemen, however, had little wealth, power, or glamor. They belonged to the lowest level of French aristocracy—the hobereaux, the “little falcons.” In an effort to conserve at least part of their traditional status, almost all of the hobereaux insisted on the meticulous collection of the surviving feudal and manorial dues from the peasantry.

The bolded sections might well give the Progressive Elite some concern; their own lifestyles are disturbingly close to that description. 

I've long enjoyed reading about statistics and the relationship between a country's demographics and their history. I was an oddball in my History classes, but it's paying off now,