As Japan's population shrinks, bears and boars roam among schools and shrines
latimes.com
latimes.com
I actually hope so, I wonder if culture will change and adapt and eventually find a new equilibrium, but at a much lower population. Perhaps people will enjoy reliving the experiences of people from "the crush". Perhaps they will struggle to understand the science of the artifacts that surround them and progress will effectively end - after all 10 billion people can go a lot faster than 100 million. There are no facts about the future.
That's already happened in the US.[1] The Buffalo Commons proposal, to depopulate a large part of the Great Plains and let buffalo roam, was a joke when it was first proposed in 1987. Much of the depopulation has already happened. So far, not many buffalo, but they may come back.
Small town America is slowly emptying out.[2] It has no function. Small towns existed mostly to support agriculture. Agriculture is only 3% of the US workforce. Most of the food comes from about 20% of the farms; the rest are marginal producers. Farming is doing fine; it just doesn't take many people.
"Mill towns", where one big employer dominates, die when their mill closes. These can be sizable cities, such as Youngstown, OH. More often, they're small towns with one big plant. Young people leave; old people stay and die in place.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Commons [2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023033252045794637...
We had a veggie compost section in the backyard, but there was a few rats that started hanging out there so it had do to go. Im actually really surprised that in Cupertino there is readily available places to compost food, both at their Community College (De Anza) and through their small businesses, while Alameda County (Fremont / Union City / Hayward / Newark / San Leandro / Oakland?) don't have any options at all.
I guess this also affects Milpitas because that landfill is huge, and with propositions to make it larger I would hope that they keep food out of the landfill, its a huge waste of space.
HUGE derail attempt for this conversation, sorry people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/science/e-o-wilson-half-ea...
Better food is more labor-intensive. The best-tasting eggs I've ever bought were from a grass-fed beef farmer. He'd rotate his cattle through the pastures, and move the chickens to where the cattle had been previously. The chickens would stomp through the cow waste, and eat all the bugs.
Industrial food is tasteless.
They did a similar test with mexicoke[2] which produced a similar conclusion. People prefer coke in glass bottles, and they prefer coke that they believe was made with real sugar. When both of those variables are controlled for, they actually prefer HFCS coke.
That said, we never actually eat our food double-blind so even if any perceived difference in flavor is due only to observer bias, it's still important! After all, the whole point is to please the "observer".
This also isn't to discount the difference between low and high quality versions of other foods. Grocery store tomatoes (beefsteak mostly), for example, were bred almost exclusively for shelf life and transportability, with flavor suffering as a result.
[1] http://m.seriouseats.com/2010/08/what-are-the-best-eggs-cage... [2] http://m.drinks.seriouseats.com/2011/09/the-food-lab-drinks-...
[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/10/23/358324106/don...
A better comparison would be to have a double-blind study with McDonalds and "Artisan" hamburgers, and ask participants which they prefer.
[edit: Any commentary for the downvote? impact on max-size of military aside, wouldn't a non-growing population be an advantage when many countries will be scrambling (with varying degrees of success) to scale food production to match population growth?
it always follows the same path: boom times as less people have what more people had followed by a never ending downward spiral.
The planet will be much more survivable with smaller populations too.
If people like Ray Kurzweil are right, we will all live inside computers. It won't matter what happens where. We get to simulate whatever we want.
What we're seeing now is a partial die-off.
Eventually, evolution will re-assert itself. The sub-populations who, for whatever reason, continue to grow in population will come to dominate the numbers, after the non-breeding groups die off.
E.g. in America, fertility is passing below replacement rates - on average. But the Amish population still doubles every 20 years. In 200 years, there will be hundreds of millions of Amish.
We could be looking at a world of Amish, Quiverfulls, poor tribalistic Africans, religious Muslims, and orthodox Jews. There will be very few left-liberals, the childfree movement will be gone (like the Shakers already are). Gays and other queer people may breed out of the gene pool if their modern freedom reduces the fertility of their genes.
Modernity may very well be self-defeating, because the future belongs to those who show up.
The "traditional" policies and politics that many people claim that are "backward" or "evil", came from eras where the most important thing was breed soldiers like there is no tomorrow to fight against other tribes, then cities, then countries...
The point of allowing men having multiple wives, but not women with multiple husbands, prohibiting homosexual relationships, virgin marriage, encouragement of marriage, prohibition of adultery, prohibition of divorce, militarism, and a long string of other policies, are geared to one simple thing: make women "pop out" babies that can pick up weapons and fight (as soon as 12 years old if needed) the fastest as possible.
Those that follow these rules, will on long term always win, out of sheer numbers and resiliency.
Africa adds 30 millions people every year. Pretty much everywhere outside of Africa is below replacement fertility.
In the 20th century, Africans were 10-15% of the world population; by the end of the 21st the could be >50%.
Similar trends have been observed elsewhere.
There's no reason to believe that Africa will be an exception from that rule.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/29/china-abandons...
> The same problem was posited for China. Yet, as their quality of life improved, the problem had, essentially, resolved itself.
It does not make sense to say the problem "resolved itself" when there was a 35 year period where the One Child Policy was in effect.
China has a long history of advanced (for the time) civilization and a high-IQ population (~105). They were backward for just a few centuries because of a series of bad ideologies - isolationism, followed by communism. For most of history China was the highest-tech civilization on Earth. All they had to do to achieve demographic transition was get back to their historical norm.
Africa has no history of advanced civilization and a low-IQ population (~75). There's reason to think they'll sustain higher birthrates than everyone else, indefinitely. To achieve demographic transition they'll have to do something they've never done before.
Not to mention that IQ is not an absolute metric - it's the median score of the entire population, and we're getting smarter as a whole, so 100 points today is "worth" more 100 years ago. Indeed, if you use the modern metrics, and apply them to the population of US - a well-developed industrialized country at the forefront of economic, scientific and technological advance - back in 1920, the average IQ would have been 80. So, if, as you claim, ~75 is such a low IQ that it would preclude these developments, then US should not exist as it is today.
By that logic gays shouldn't exist today.
It doesn't require a homosexual parent to have a homosexual kid.
Recessive alleles aren't immune to natural selection. It's just harder to purge them because they get exposed as phenotypes less often. As they become rarer and rarer (it'll manifest as a phenotype as the square of its frequency), selection weakens. Homosexuality, however, is common enough and the fitness penalty large enough that any recessives are exposed to a lot of selection, so it should be disappearing fast, but it isn't, which raises a lot of questions of what exactly causes homosexuality.
One hypothesis that seems to be fairly strong is that homosexuality is, essentially, just one manifestation of the broad altruism strategy.
Think about what makes altruism in general persist, despite it been seemingly harmful for its carriers long-term: they might not maximize the likelihood of survival of their own progeny, but in sacrificing that, they increase the likelihood of survival of progeny of people from the same family, tribe or larger community - which have a certain amount of shared genes. If you think of the natural selection game as fundamentally centered on the genes rather than their carriers ("selfish gene" etc), this strategy makes perfect sense - your altruism may result in a lot more people surviving and carrying genes shared with you, and down the line, the end result is that population in the future will be genetically more common with you than it has been otherwise - so your genes "win". If so, the tradeoff is in favor of altruism over selfishness, and altruism becomes a selected trait.
Now, homosexuality can be seen as an extreme example of that. Every homosexual pair that adopts children (and there are a lot!) is, essentially, forgoing spreading their genes directly, and spending the effort that would normally go into that on the genes of some other person. Now, in this day and age, children often get adopted across large distances; but historically, and obviously in nature, adoption would be from geographically and genetically close populations; so it's a form of altruism that can be favored by natural selection. If you unwind back even further, before family was a thing, any tribe members that don't have children of their own have more time to spend watching, feeding and protecting others' children.
Now, you might wonder, why homosexuality rather than asexuality, since the latter would produce the same result? Evolution, due to the mechanisms that drive it, generally takes the path of the least resistance at any given point, even if it results in a very long-winded trek long-term. And it's simpler, from an evolutionary perspective, to "neutralize" the sexual drive by changing its target, than it is to switch it off completely. On top of that, there are some benefits other than children to be derived from sexuality in social species - bonding and mutual assistance, facilitating communication (as e.g. bonobos often use sex) etc.
Of course, there's also the strong possibility that it isn't purely genetic but a mix of certain genes, which may be linked to other important traits, with a certain environment (possibly even in utero).
That's a steep hill to climb.
For example the gay person becomes a village healer and can spent time on that precisely because he/she doesn't have own children to look after.
Now that this pressure is gone, we could see a huge drop in these traits over the next few centuries.
But that is separate from whether or not pressure from relatives to reproduce can be used as a mitigating strategy for the cases where these genes do result in someone being gay. And this strategy, then, would lower the amount of fitness those genes would need to provide to be viable.
That's not true. There's a number of ways variants can exist without being fit. They can be regularly created by mutation, or they can increase due to genetic drift, especially in a bottleneck scenario. And there's even more ways that a phenotype can persist while being highly unfit - if it's a side-effect of a co-evolving pathogen, being one of them, as then the human natural selection is constantly fighting it but the pathogen easily evolves even faster.
Sorry, off topic :)
Poor eyesight has no adaptive benefit. Yet many, many people need glasses. I guess it's just 'difficult' for our genes to grow a sharp eye focusing system, so they often get it wrong.
The same may be true of homosexuality. So even if there's nothing adaptive about being gay, it keeps happening because sexual tuning in the brain is a hard target to hit.
Homophobia may be an adaptation to this. It makes parents force their children to act straight even if they're gay.
Many people... in particular industrializing countries. Our genes have a great sharp eye focusing system. You won't find much myopia in a random tribe.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-a-pregnant-woma...
Just a disclaimer though: this is not at all a justification for homophobia, in the same way that the (mostly) male impulse to violence is not a justification for said violence.
From the point of view of genetic fitness, homosexuality is not adaptive. So you would think that the genes that contribute to homosexuality would be powerfully selected against, since the number of expected offspring from same sex intercourse is zero.
Yet gay people make up a sizable portion of the population, which is not at all what you would expect. Unless there is some mechanism by which homosexuals have historically had children despite their natural inclinations.
Given that some portion of anti-gay attitudes seem to be oriented toward getting them to "be more straight" (or whatever), it seems possible to me that homophobia (or at least a certain flavor of it) is an adaptation whose purpose is to get family members to pressure a gay person into having offspring, since they would have a genetic interest in those offspring.
But that is an argument about why a certain behavior might exist in humanity. It is not an argument that homophobia is okay or justified. It is not okay.
In more urban centers, however, more children often means more cost for the family. It has next to nothing to do with religion, and in fact, most of the religious teachings that seem to encourage more fertility are probably just a case of putting the cart before the horse. Those teachings were emphasized because the households that listened to them already had a strong incentive to have more children.
The future, as far as anyone is able to predict, will still have much more urban, educated, and "liberal" people than not, even if those households have fewer children individually. And this will be true so long as we remain an urban rather than an agrarian society.
E.g. saying you're left-handed is no big deal anymore. One day one's sexuality may be equally irrelevant.
If it were a matter of "relaxing", you'd expect that children raised in homosexual families would tend to be more open about flexible sexuality, and more would identify as gay, or at least as non-hetero - but that is not the case. The ratio of children becoming homosexual vs heterosexual is the same in both homosexual and heterosexual families, insofar as our studies can identify. At the same time, there have been some observed correlations between sexuality and specific genetic markers.
Really, the more interesting question at this point is whether it's mainly genetic, or mainly epigenetic.
But some humans seem to be immune to the reproductive trap of modern life, and they take advantage of the abundance available in developed countries to have lots of children. These people will make up the future of post second demographic transition[1] humanity.
It seems like a lot of these people are incredibly religious (Amish, Haredi, Hutterites, Mennonites). But perhaps there are non-religious people in this group as well.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition#Second_...
Regarding religious people though: religiosity is a heritable trait. Not perfectly heritable, but heritable nonetheless. So if religious people have above replacement fertility and secular people don't, then the religiosity of the population as a whole should shift upward over time. It might take a long time, but that would seem to be the implication.
Evolution often can't work fast enough to thwart the pace of technology.
My only concern is welfarism, where modern political dogma insists that everyone must have equal income, irrespective of the personal investment they and their parents put into their developing their productivity.
“Look at nurses, they believe their income will be cut if we let in Filipinos and Indonesians,” said Katsuyuki Yakushiji, a sociologist at Toyo University in Tokyo. “They also say that these people can’t speak Japanese well and that could be risky. Yet, at the same time, they complain about severe overwork and say we need to add nurses.”</i>
On one hand a defiance, even in the face of Armageddon. On the other it reflects worldwide general negativity, in this case xenophobia under the guise of overzealous job protection, as noone is worried that there will be more nurses per se, just as long as they are not... the "other kind"
It's also expected that people don't want their wages depressed by imported labor.
A democratic government enforcing the above ideals (if supported by a majority of citizens) is expected. That's why Japan is exploring automation instead of immigration for its workforce.
EDIT: @krapp (HN is throttling my posting ability)
Japan is overhauling immigration, but only as a last resort:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-12-07/immigrati...
The premise that Japan would rather automate than allow immigration seems to be kind of a false dichotomy, since Japan is exploring immigration as well[0].
Culturally, in general, it may be true that Japanese people would rather have fewer foreigners than more foreigners, but the actual policies of the government seem to be slightly more pragmatic regarding automation versus immigration.
[0]https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/01/06/national/social...
Or look at America, the world's biggest melting pot. Just because Japan has a preference for their own ethnicity (like most other countries around the world, India, China, most of Europe, etc.) doesn't mean they aren't wrong and IMO not on the wrong side of history. People I know here in the US have no issue having real friends, people they hang out with and regard as equals, who are ethnically Asian, Indian, African. In other countries, this simply wouldn't happen.
Oh stop it. We aren't a melting pot. We are nation with nearly 80% white population. And there has been tons of anti-immigration laws in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_immigration_to_the_Unite...
Yes, the cities have some diversity, but most of the country doesn't. The vast majority of towns/rural districts/counties/etc are 95%+ white. There are a few that are 95%+ black and 95%+ native/hispanic.
> People I know here in the US have no issue having real friends, people they hang out with and regard as equals, who are ethnically Asian, Indian, African.
And we also have racial strife, violence, etc. We also wiped out the natives, put japanese americans in camps, had pogroms against the chinese, enslaved and brutalized blacks, etc. Go read about the LA riots.
The US is one economic collapse from major racial hatred and violence. Go read about what happened to the chinese in the US and the mass lynchings during economic strife. As long as the bubble keeps getting inflated, everyone will behave more or less. If that bubble ever pops and there is an economic crisis, you'll see what american is really like.
The US is 61.6% white, 17.6% hispanic/latino, 13.3% black, and 5.6% asian.
Source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00
Drawing on techniques from social network analysis, PRRI’s 2013 American Values Survey asked respondents to identify as many as seven people with whom they had discussed important matters in the six months prior to the survey. The results reveal just how segregated white social circles are.
Overall, the social networks of whites are a remarkable 91 percent white. White American social networks are only one percent black, one percent Hispanic, one percent Asian or Pacific Islander, one percent mixed race, and one percent other race. In fact, fully three-quarters (75 percent) of whites have entirely white social networks without any minority presence. This level of social-network racial homogeneity among whites is significantly higher than among black Americans (65 percent) or Hispanic Americans (46 percent).
Links:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/08/self-seg...
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2014/08/cr...
You can explain the whites who have no connection to any nonwhite by saying that nonwhites tend to be concentrated in particular areas such as Louisiana or New York City, but that makes the nonwhites look significantly more integrated compared to the whites.
I love how people love to pretend that the US is some kind of idealized place. It isn't.
I mean look at all the Black Lives Matter stuff. Look at asians complaining about quotas in colleges and lack of opportunities in hollywood/etc. The same with hispanics.
Only the US has had major success integrating on a national scale. There are parts of England, major cities in France and Germany are pretty good, but the countryside is still divided. And much of the countryside is still divided in the US, too, it's just that there is a visible contrast for us to speak out against.
While US may be an ethnic melting pot, it is steeped in WASPy culture (apologies for the racial term).
Europe while bland food-wise is far more diverse (linguistically atleast), so there is more to "preserve".
Russia seems to remember the days of Eastern Orthodox vs the Vatican (now repeated by Putin et.al).
India is, diverse yes, but those who make it out are mostly the outputs of a colonial system which wanted to replicate WASPs. Kind of the same thing in Africa.
China is kind of asserting its own culture, but Mao's men didn't leave much tradition behind to stand on. The schizophrenia is now quite visible; but then it's not clear if it would have been better if Chiang Kai Shek held on to power.
Japan is slightly bit better, but the tradition seems to have become frozen, and quite irrelevant. I'm not sure if it was more fluid before Meiji.
Perhaps, the reason why the Anglo-American world is so fond of diverse peoples is its task - for the better or worse - of synthesizing a universal culture.
Either you haven't travelled very much, or you have but spent most of your time in resorts and tourist attractions.
Suppose we let dogs breed randomly. Soon, there would be no poodles. There would be no golden retrievers. There would only be mutts.
Suppose we let bison and cattle breed freely. Pure bison would soon become extinct.
Invasive species all over the world are forming hybrids. Many pure original native species are being lost to these hybrids. Do we care? I think many people do care. It makes just as much sense to bemoan the loss of people who look Irish or German. Genuine light hair and eyes are going away. As recessive traits, they may pop up rarely, and much more rarely in combination.
It doesn't make the population younger/healthier, nor does it expand the local consumer base.
That's like saying it's built into humans to murder and rape. Some 'innate' human behaviours are actually based in circumstance. And even if our xenophobia is truly something we're born with, not cultured into, we can still aspire to be better. We can make it our culture to aim higher.
Which is a myth. And especially in the case of Japan where the only people willing to learn the language are going to be those who are more educated/successful.
And from all accounts Japan is going to start suffering from the effects of an ageing population far quicker than it will take humanity to develop robotic technology capable of cooking food, caring, cleaning etc to a level equivalent to that of a human.
In Japan the main fear comes probably from China, since it's a lot easier for Chinese people to learn Japanese (similar characters) than for occidental people, and there is also a "relatively" high inmigration from poor Chinese people.
E.g. look at the nonexisting problems Japan has with Islamic terrorism or non-integrating foreigners forming ghettos v.s. say France.
There are a lot more Japanese in Japan than there are foreigners. Similarly, blacks in the US "only" commit a little under half of murders... but they are much much less than half of the population.
That's obviously true isn't? If the intention is to import workers then clearly the supply of labor will increase which means wages will fall. When it's the rich advocating for their class interest (cheap labor and easy outsourcing) somehow they get away with claiming they're selfless. When it's the middle class advocating for itself apparently we call it "xenophobia".
What does Katsuyuki Yakushiji think about removing his tenure and exposing Japanese sociologists to cut-rate competition from the Philippines or Indonesia?
That's not a myth. It's readily apparent in every country with Japanese and non-Japanese populations.
Why?
And what happens when the majority of the country all but de-populates? Will China invade? Will the US be asked to open military bases?
I haven't lived in Japan - others can tell you if it is a nice place to live even with a slowly declining population.
Maybe that's different in the tech world.
I have yet to see any discrimination, compared to Australia where my wife(Japanese) regularly had issues.
As with any "rules", there are exceptions. But the above has been my experience (month-long travels totaling several years).
Meanwhile, the U.S has no problems yelling out racist slurs or discriminating against others quite blatantly.
Sorry for brevity, this only a HN comment but here are some highlights.
The main reasons are low birth rate and low immigration and due to various factors :
Low birth rate : Fewer / later marriage, Poor work/life balance, Small living space, Hight costs of raising children
Low immigration : Japanese people view themselves as "uniform" (which is debatable), Country closed to foreigners for two centuries
I remember insurance paying at lesst part of the birth costs, but my wife had an atypical pregnancy. I seem to remember having to pay then getting money back. At work now, I will find out.
Also the monthly stipend is only ~1万. The stipend and free medical lasts until middle school(maybe not sure when it cuts off but elementary school students are covered).
Of course. And if an area is severely depopulated, one of the easiest ways to populate it and simultaneously discourage opportunism would be to plop a US military base down. "Easy" because it's doable, there are already bases, and protocols, and familiarity.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/19/thousands-prot...
The existing bases are in sparsely populated areas. Even so, they're deeply unpopular, mainly because the servicemen have a bad habit of raping and murdering the locals.
Adding more bases to boost the population would be political suicide.
An ideal scenario in my opinion, would be for the Japanese to automate a purely defensive military along with their workforce. Japan could go back to being that demon island that no one dares to invade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
> Will China invade?
Why would they invade? China and the rest of the world is doing what japan is. What japan is doing is moving to cities and depopulating their rural areas. Young people and even old people want to live in cities.
You are misreading the article.
It won't all depopulate. No, but I wouldn't be shocked to see claims over Okinawa (which is not depopulated). No, but I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S. is eventually allowed to consolidate its bases into one in Okinawa.
They make money through investments in emerging economies like India. They are investing in young emerging populations just not their own.
Historically it always has been reverse.
This scenario is possible if two things happen: weak Japanese self-defense from depopulation, and a successful closing of US bases by either Japanese citizens who resent their presence, or US isolationism.
For most of Japan's history they have had an isolationist stance to the outside world. Obviously this was not the case from between Commander Perry and the end of World War II. With respect to China, for hundreds of years Japan was considered a quasi-vassal state to various Chinese Emperors.
This is a serious question. I often wonder why something that worked for millions of years, is suddenly not working.
Of course there are the Hikkikomori issue (young people who shut themselves in their room and never leave) and Soushoku danshi (men who take no interest in pursuing the opposite sex and forming relationships), two rather small factors reducing the birth rate further.
But ultimately I think the economic issues are the biggest. Japan just isn't prosperous anymore, and people don't feel wealthy enough.
That's my two cents, at least.
Some new proxy will take place of the old, or we'll be more directly selected based on a "wants kids" desire. Given the huge world population, the needed trait likely exists. In time, it will become near-universal.
Firstly, what is the "This" in "This is why"? "Non-religious groups of people will just die off"? "Religious zealots are taking over Japan as non-religious inhabitants dwindle"? None of this is sane.
Secondly, modern religious interpretations do not dictate that women must stay at home and pump out babies. That bigoted stereotype is rooted in a warped view of some religions' beliefs about the role of sex in society. The stereotype is also rooted in extremist interpretations of some religions, but those extremist interpretations are not representative of what is going on in Japan[0]. Perpetuating this bigoted stereotype isn't helping any argument.
Thirdly, just because people are born into a highly devout religious family does not mean they stay religious. I submit myself as an example of a person born into a religious family but turned agnostic.
[0]Edit: It is also not fair to take the extremist minority interpretation from anywhere and apply it broadly everywhere, not just Japan. Hopefully it is self-evident why without me having to bring up other ugly examples.
modern religious interpretations
do not dictate that
He's not making a normative statement that religions should place women in this/that/the other role. He's making a factual statement: those social groups that do demand that women's role is primarily in reproduction will outbreed everybody. This is an undeniable and empirically observable fact, whether you turned agnostic or not.
It's playing out already in the kindergardens and primary schools in my hometown already: most children are Muslims, with burka wearing mothers. Yet less than 1/3, probably less than 1/4 of the population is Muslim, the rest is white, highly educated yuppies, GLBTQ whatever ... who all have 0 children.
That's not even close to what I read when I saw:
> will rule the world
That seems extremely normative to me.
In fact, I honestly fail to see any facts presented in the one sentence I responded to.
There are a lot of debatable nuanced points between the factual statement of having more kids and the conclusion of ruling the world. There are no connecting-the-dots arguments in the post I responded to. If Animats wanted to mean the fact you bring up, she/he would have just said the fact. But that is not what happened. Taking the simplest interpretation of Animats's one entirely-normative sentence, it is an extreme opinion that expresses a large contempt/disdain for organized religion.
I really hope you examine your post, and evaluate how and why you took Animats' opinion and managed to somehow extract a fact from it. And that's whether I turned agnostic or not.
The exact name and nature of the "Maxim gun" changes from era to era, but the basic premise holds. There are ways to provide security, and even assert dominance, that do not rely on massive population numbers. In fact, looking at the world history of the past several centuries, one could say that relying on massive population numbers have been a losing strategy for pretty much everyone who tried it for long.
Incidentally, that line is from a humor piece, "The Modern Traveller", by Hilaire Belloc.[1] Read chapter VI for the context.
Having plenty of firepower does not help much in counterinsurgencies. There's nobody to aim it at. "Nation-building" from the outside has a success rate of zero.[2]
[1] https://archive.org/stream/moderntraveller00belluoft [2] http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/is...
As far as counterinsurgencies go, it doesn't matter. US (and other countries) are not waging wars in places like Syria and Iraq for the sake of their survival. They could withdraw entirely tomorrow, and not much would change for them. Those insurgencies are not an existential threat.
>“[Nippon Kaigi] have worked steadily and stealthily with local politicians and political lobbies to oppose things like gender equality, recognition of war crimes and the comfort women [sex slaves during WWII], women using their maiden names after marriage etc. It’s anti-this and anti-that but has no vision of the future.”
>[T]heir goal may be to alter radically the parts of the constitution which define marriage and the rights of wives, thus, “rolling back sexual equality and making Japan a country pleasant for cranky old men, like themselves.”
Otherwise we are saying our population size is a magic number that must always be stable or go upwards irrespective of economic conditions. It makes no sense at all. What is the basis of such reasoning? Are not recessions in house prices and share prices a net positive for younger people?
Populations should decline sometimes. Unless we believe we're immune from the laws of biology.
As for those religious groups that believe promulgating their population is a solution, they are likely to meet a bloody and desperate end. You should notice that despite Africa's incredible birth rates for example, it is also the least densely populated Continent. War, famine and disease.
Some of the middle east is going to implode when the oil price gets too high and we should stand by and allow it to happen. Doing nothing is absolutely the smart choice. I think this perspective is the only way to prevent contagions of disease, violence and war from spreading around the world. There are alternatives but the mindset of people in the West will not find those acceptable at present e.g. voluntary sterilizations, genetic engineering.
We need to totally reject Wilsonianism if we are to prosper in the 21st century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilsonianism
I think this is something the right and left can actually agree wholeheartedly on.
Yarvin has a great quote on this subject:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv...
"Fascism no longer exists. It's as dead as Odinism.
...
What's alive is the ideological system that defeated fascism -- which committed plenty of atrocities of its own. Of our own. When we think about crimes from the last century, it seems more relevant to think about the crimes we committed, not those they committed.
What is fascism? It's exactly what everyone thinks it is. The conventional wisdom is perfectly correct. Our historians have a merciless, laser-sharp understanding of everything bad that fascism was and everything it did wrong. What hasn't been done is turning this same laser on our own institutions."
That Tony Blair and Donald Rumsfeld are not in fear of a Nuremberg trial situation is not a positive statement about our society. The fact is not that our systems are rotten, but that they have been eroding for quite some time, longer than people today suspect.
[1] Rising GDP means you can hide the fact that income distribution is getting more and more lopsided. Having soft internal boarders (AKA Zoning/Gated communities) to make sure that the rabble doesn't see how the other 0.1% lives also helps.
[2] Same GDP but 30% fewer mouths means 100/70 = 1.43 or 40% more per person on average.
That is correct. Satoshi would very likely agree.
Look at the advantages of a moderate fall in population growth*
- Less pressure on housing. People can have less debt or obtain a shelter with savings.
- Reforming the terrific quantity of old, used resources into raw materials can much more easily supply the inputs for new products and services. Recycling is often much cheaper than people appreciate, in the case of copper and some other metals it is a closed loop. That is: more things can exist made out of copper over time while the net amount of the copper in the system remains stable. Think of how most aluminum cans get cycled back into... more aluminum cans and at such a rate.
- Pressure on wages increases. The economy becomes leaner but also more efficient as more price signaling information percolates through the system. It's like a fat person who has hit the gym.
I could go on but just these are major positives! It is perfectly possible to have a healthy growth rate under the conditions I mention. Historically wage increases and major economic booms occurred in times of deflation.
Why then is there such a set against recession, against natural population declines? Why is it depicted as a monster?
The answer is probably short sighted political decision making coupled with crony capitalism. The truth is that our economy is more biological organism than mechanical contraption and right now it has heart disease from acting like a glutton.
The only consolation I can offer is that things that cannot go on, don't. The gold standard was not necessarily a good idea but the monetary system we have at present may be worse.
> The reason neoliberals dislike this is because for that to happen you need to confront the fact that income distribution is politically mediated not equably allocated by the magic hand.
To my eyes a neoliberal is often a civil servant in government who orders a road building contract to be awarded to a company which he also owns through a series of shells (or a family member). American congress is apparently much more efficient than other governments because this appears to occur without the shell companies because it is not defined as corruption. They are not government or business but a quantum superposition of both. You could probably name some names if you wanted to but I won't here.
> Rising GDP means you can hide the fact that income distribution is getting more and more lopsided. Having soft internal boarders (AKA Zoning/Gated communities) to make sure that the rabble doesn't see how the other 0.1% lives also helps.
So I've noticed! Hard working working class kids or lower middle class strivers aren't doing terribly well. A large portion of millennials think that 20k or 30k is a lot of money. It isn't. In real terms they're making less than their parents.
The fact is that since 2008, with few exceptions, the 'success stories' I've been seeing are primarily backed by the bank of Mom & Dad. Free houses, paid vacations, tution loans paid off etc. If the middle classes believe in meritocracy, they certainly don't extend that belief to their children. Many hard working and intelligent entrants to the job market are barely making ends meet. The ones I know live like students five, ten years after graduation.
Of course this trend existed before 2008, but it has been particularly stark since then. Economists wonder why innovation is in decline, and companies why cars and cinema ticket sales are in decline. The answer is simple but uncomfortable, which is that the kids can't catch a break even when they've skillfully negotiated most hoops and networked every contact known to them. Then lots of others see this and basically give up to subsist on welfare.
Honestly the biggest "fuck you" today a person could give to the system, is starting their own business without debt or not getting a mortgage. The good news is lots of young people are waking up, the bad news is their many of them and most of their parents are deep in la la land.
* Obviously there are limits to my reasoning! It works within bounds and I believe it is appropriate for our present situation.