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Comment by albertgoeswoof | Hacker News Reader

Birth rates are dropping globally and we’re all living longer. The local answer for counties like South Korea is immigration from areas that have higher birth rates.

With climate change likely to affect the habitability of many of our current settlements, as a species we’ll need to support massive migration shifts over the next few hundred years.

So the problem kind of solves itself if we manage migration and resources correctly.

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Swedish authorities did write a report about this about a decade ago[1]. Long story short: The immigration approach won't really work as different people have cultural differences, educational differences, ambitions and life-goals, and it's unlikely that there will be enough compatible people that are actually interested in the openings that actually exist.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20170216060417/https://www.tillv...

Apart from that, simply replacing the population also presents quite a few challenges that are likely to result in a very infected and polarized debate regarding the future direction of the societies that such replacement takes place in.

That being said, I believe you're right about the fact that there's going to be a lot of migrations going on around the Globe for the next few hundred years. It's just not automatically going to solve the birth rate issue.

This assumption that countries need population growth is insane. Humans are not bacteria, we should not pursue endless population growth. What we need is serious investments in technology to make elder care easier.

What are we if not bigger bacteria?

Brains with the tech to directly modify our DNA [0] with a deliberate plan in mind and not just following the slow gradient descent of evolution.

[0] technically, if not legally or morally

What happens when the bacteria eats all the available food?

Humans, with the ability, if not collective desire, to plan 50-100 years in advance.

So we don't fix the stupid economic system in place and throw immigrants at the problem, all the while making their origin countries even worse since it's now deprived of the ones bright enough to qualify for skilled labour... doesn't sound like the best of plans.

Bright people have a whole world to move to, not just South Korea. For example, I went from the UK to Germany, and my sister-in-law went from the Philippines to the UK.

What about "not bright" people?

Personally? I’m in favour of anyone being free to move anywhere anywhen. I don’t see opposite sides of international borders as being more substantially different than different regions within any single country, likewise corresponding movement of people.

That's my point, I too went from a 3rd-world country to a developed one, haven't seen many people doing the opposite.

I know at least five people who are either doing that now or have done that for a while in the past.

Rich countries pay a lot, poor countries are growth opportunities — in both the personal and business senses of the phrase.

> The local answer for counties like South Korea is immigration from areas that have higher birth rates.

Why is that the answer? This creates its own problems as well, especially in countries like Korea that are extremely homogeneous.

Realistically the global population cannot keep growing so we'll need to adapt to stagnant and potentially decreasing (at least for some time) population at some point.

So IMHO the best long term answer for countries facing this now is to accept it and to start changing paradigms and the economy instead of trying to keep on growing the population.

> The local answer for counties like South Korea is immigration from areas that have higher birth rates.

It's not as if people and culture where fungible. Multiculturalism is just a naive dream that as been elevated as a dogma in certain countries, but it doesn't work on the ground.

What do you mean it doesn’t work on the ground? Culture is completely fungible, humans have migrated constantly and continuously changed culture, it’s how ideas and technology has transferred and persisted all over the globe.

Do you think your ancestors would recognise your culture? Will your descendants?

(Hint: They would/will not.)

Not the grandparent, but I'll add some points anyway:

Replacing large parts of a country's population, culture and traditions won't be possible without 1) societal changes affecting the existing population and 2) societal changes affecting the migrant population. In the end, neither the existing population nor the migrant population are likely to be happy about the end result.

1) Being a part of a cultural minority is a very different experience from being a part of the majority population, and the experience of simply having one's expected but unborn children/siblings replaced as suggested, would, to put it plainly, fuck with a lot of peoples' minds by messing with peoples' sense of belonging, identity, and general trust of society. In other words, if societal cohesion is a priority then replacing the populace will be tricky; many countries have raging debate about immigrants despite having an immigrant population of less than 5%. Imagine the debates if that number was steadily increasing and approaching 50%. My guess is it won't be pretty.

2) Whenever this topic is brought up, the main issue is usually that modern society needs to import workers in order to fill the positions open at the bottom; the existing populace is progressing upwards, since employees are scarcer and wages go up; while the low-paying jobs get filled by immigrants. The problem is that the migrant populace probably aren't really aiming for those jobs; moving halfway across the World to clean toilets simply isn't what most people want, and since linguistical, educational and cultural differences will shut the doors for more than a generation (assuming we don't get _much_ better at integrating migrants into our societies), migration won't provide what many migrants are looking for.

It is definitely possible to compensate for falling birth-rates by the means of immigration. It just won't be a drop-in replacement and it won't be easy. In the end, especially considering other issues, I'd say it's time to have a look at having a look at how to structure our societies in order to manage declining birth rates over an extended period of time. Migration is not inherently bad, and cultures can and will continue to evolve, but importing people to handle the shittiest of jobs available simply isn't a good way of welcoming anyone into your own society.

I agree with your point but I have to point out that many cultures have remained distinct after hundreds if not thousands of years of immersion in other cultures. Which is an amazing feat.

However people are both fickle and in many cases easily influenceable by populists and in-group/out-group is the oldest trick in the book. And it still works.

So there is definitely a big risk there.

You probably follow a religion that came from some Arabian desert. There’s no way that would happen if multiculturalism wasn’t a historical reality. It’s not something woke people invented.

I find comments like this one deeply insulting. Societal problems that countries like Korea face are a no joke and cant be easily solved by "bringing people over".

You just need to look at Brexit/Trump to find that most people don't like migration very much, especially at scale.

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