Japan's population falls by record 644,000 to 125.5M in 2021
english.kyodonews.net
english.kyodonews.net
However, Japan's GDP growth is not too different from that of similar OECD countries that have much greater rates of immigration. Many European countries also have similarly ageing populations, but their more relaxed immigration rules don't seem to make a big difference to economic growth.
So if Japan's productivity is maintained, I don't really see that a falling population is a major concern. In fact, it could even conceivably have a pay-off in terms of reduced environmental burdens and cheaper housing.
The value of land is socially created. When there's no one around, no economy, etc, it's basically worthless. Japan is rapidly approaching this point. You'll be able to get cheap land if you want to be a weird hermit, but everyone else is going to continue to flood to the cities, the only places where there will remain any sort of economy.
Not really sure how or why food would get cheaper with less people. If anything the opposite as it's more expensive to make it locally with less workers available.
Less people seems worse all around to me.
>Not really sure how or why food would get cheaper with less people. If anything the opposite as it's more expensive to make it locally with less workers available. Automation in agriculture continues to expand. And in my experience most Japanese tend to prefer locally made products despite the higher prices. This was most obvious when I saw the pile of australian steaks sitting next to a much smaller cut of domestic steak that were nearly sold out at the supermarket. Or consider that Seiko make identical watches domestically, and in SEA, but the "Made in Japan" models are only sold in Japan.
There are still ~1MM babies born in Japan every year. They will be fine with a reduction in population. They don't seem keen on expanding immigration anyway, or a demographic shift, so I don't understand the desire to push mass immigration on every nation with a declining birth rate. They're not bothering anyone by wanting to keep Japan, Japanese.
> commuting in/out is unparalleled.
Choose either one.
Also, many people have pensions that are based on their lifetime savings, investments, etc. Not all pensions are paid from current government revenues.
I've been to rural Japanese towns where it felt like there were no young people at all, only elderly, and the largest employers were related to elder care.
I suppose one aspect that might reduce the burden on the government, is that all the savings of these elderly are not going to someone's inheritance, but instead to the elder care institutions.
And then pensions and healthcare become problems.
Cheaper housing means real estate business is going to shrink with many open rooms.
Where is your optimism coming from?
GDP is kinda like measuring a programmers productivity by LOC production. It is correlated with productivity when you are not judging based on it but once people start optimizing for it it no longer correlated.
What is it that we actually want from society?
For example, if Japan's population halved, but its GDP remained constant, then each individual Japanese person would be twice as wealthy.
That's true everywhere. Inflation has been low for the last 20 years. Consequently interest rates interest rates have been low, and so asset prices have been spiralling upwards for the last 20 years. Spiralling asset prices means the price of a house is a higher multiple of your yearly income. And yes, if you happen to be at the house buying age at this time in the cycle it's downright unpleasant. We all know interest rates will likely rise, and that will cause a great deal of pain to people who maxed out their borrowings when rates are at record lows. Japan is the spiritual home of low inflation and high asset prices so it's been going on much longer there. But this has been happening in most countries, and most of them have growing populations.
I live in Australia. I find Japan's hand wringing about the "our standard of living is doomed if out population density keeps dropping" downright funny. Japan has slightly worse GDP per capita than us (which I would put down to Australia's abundant natural resources). But when it comes to population density, there is simply no comparison:
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/japan/australia...
Japan's current rate of population decline would have to continue for over a millennia before it's population density reaches ours.
* order food
* shop in a store
* stay in a hotel
* consume healthcare (particularly old-age healthcare)
The likelihood that you're using immigrant labor is 100%. Japan is hugely dependent on immigrants -- particularly those from SE asian countries (e.g. Vietnam), who provide the bulk of the low-wage, low-skill labor.
Visit any hotel in Japan, for example, and the cleaning staff will be almost exclusively non-Japanese. Even the "traditional" inns in the smallest towns usually have "trainee" labor from foreign countries.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/world/asia/japan-election...
The young have the deck stacked against them and in turn are opting to not have children.
Sounds familiar
Probably because it’s an effort at narrative building from the NY Times.
Agree the NYT is getting worse, more establishment Democrat driven now their supporters are who pays them. There is still enough institutional memory that through the naritive hit pieces there's frequently solid reporting of contradictory facts that totally undermine it in the same story.
The problem with Presidential elections is small rural states still have outsize influence via the combination of more EC votes than a population-based count AND winner-take-all elections (51% of the vote in. A state and you get 100% of that states electors) in most states.
Turn there’s the Senate. Because it’s not based on population, CA and TX have the same influence as SD and DE. Combine that with arcane super-majority rules and a defective filibuster and it’s a recipe for outright obstruction by the minority party.
The 14th amendment introduces “equal protection,” speaks specifically about representation, and says nothing about changing the makeup of the senate.
(Edit: And even if it did, the 17th amendment restates that each state gets two senators, and would supersede the 14th.)
Surely societal change must and does change the efficacy and context of law over time?
There is an obvious problem with this. Being bullied makes me feels worse but bullying others doesn't make me happy, it makes me feel even worse.
Also this isn't vengeance. It's the norm that the majority of resources should go to the majority of people. This is compounded in this case as the majority will have earned these resources through a lifetime of labor and in addition be the most in need as they are elderly.
How is this bullying?
The post-war generation is enormous and they living longer than any generation ever has. In nearly every developed country they hold the power and the capital, and they are short term focused in every possible way. They plan to drive the bus into the brick wall at full speed to protect the last few minutes they have to enjoy the ride.
Articles such as are a thinly veiled demand for fealty. Why aren't you having more children? Why aren't you buying into the world order we created?
For my part, I'm not opposed to "capitalism" in general, but I have quite a few gripes with the current implementation of it.
Capitalism is effectively an insane economic framework where the yield on capital is not allowed to become negative as that would go against the ultimately empty goal of capital accumulation.
If you consider capitalism to be a form of universal exchange then why exactly does the division of labor collapse the moment growth stops? Oh right, because capitalism and free(=freedom) markets are mutually exclusive. The interests of those who own and want to accumulate capital override those who want to exchange goods and participate in the division of labor, that is what a depression is.
-- Herbert Stein ("Stein's Law")
Losing 0.5% every year means you lose 40% in a hundred years and 63% in two hundred years.
Young people grow, old people stop growing. To keep the economy growing, you need to keep the population young i.e. maintain a fixed young to old ratio.
If the young to old ratio drops, then the economy won't grow and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. All you need is an economic model that doesn't depend on economic growth as a bandaid for social problems.
But there is a reproduction crisis.
We have gobs and gobs of sex. What we usually don't have are gobs and gobs of children. Whether that's good or bad I think reasonable people can debate.
Im not sure why so little people migrate to Japan. Is it the policies or the language?
also did you mean to imply that culture is essentially tied to ethnicity? because it isn't.
Is the culture thinking being a X is race based or is it based on a way of life, or both?
At least back in the 80s and 90s, my US education and history books say that America is the melting pot of the world, and ideally not race based, but based on the idea of personal and religious freedom. USA as we know now began as a country of immigrants - so by definition, yes, USA still stands regardless of race and ethnicity.
Whereas, the older countries having a more homogeneous race, ethnicity, and culture, that question is a lot fuzzier.
Multiculturalism has long become one of the defining characteristics of the US.
Japan (and frankly, many other countries) are indeed ethno-states.
Edit: well, it was.
You’re tiptoeing dangerously near some very questionable ethnic/racial arguments.
Now the Japanese’s own sense of identity/culture? It’s a deeply personal and subjective matter. But national boundaries? Not at all.
country kŭn′trē noun 1) A nation or state. 2) The territory of a nation or state; land. 3) The people of a nation or state; populace. 4) The land of a person's birth or citizenship. 5) A region, territory, or large tract of land distinguishable by features of topography, biology, or culture. 6) An area or expanse outside cities and towns; a rural area. 7) The people of a district who are eligible for jury service.
nation nā′shən noun 1) A relatively large group of people organized under a single, usually independent government; a country. 2) The territory occupied by such a group of people. 3) The government of a sovereign state. 4) A people who share common customs, origins, history, and frequently language; a nationality. 5) A federation or tribe, especially one composed of Native Americans. 6) The territory occupied by such a federation or tribe.
Japan is a country with boundaries that most of the world agrees on. There is nothing innate about its location or composition.
Is he ? What's so dangerous about liking homogenous cultures and homogenous races ?
I don't want to assume too much about you, but this smells like the usual progressive tendency to glorify population-importing immigration and taboofy any discussion of it that views it in negative or critical light. There is nothing wrong about disliking foreigners on one's own land, just like there is nothing wrong about disliking guests in one's own house.
That is a massive leap from what I said. I really need you to point out where I “glorified” anything.
> There is nothing wrong about disliking foreigners on one's own land
When you put it that way…yeah something definitely sounds wrong.
The commenter you replied was questioning if a nation could maintain it's character after wholesale replacement of it's population by other people, and you said yes, and implied that thinking otherwise is dangerous.
>yeah something definitely sounds wrong
What is that something ? If I own a car or a house, I can control who gets inside that car or house, and I can exclude people on whatever basis I like, including race and culture. This is not ideal, but that's the reality. Changing it is likely to be extremly hard and violent.
A country is "owned" by it's population, if a substantial majority of it's population don't want to let certain people into it, why is that such a problem ? Do you think those same people who want to immigrate would welcome a country's worth of people into their own land, if that were to happen ? Nearly every single culture in existence values itself more than others, and feels threatened when it's numbers decrease in relation to another.
Just like Japan of 2020 is not the same as Samurai Japan of medieval times. Times change, societies change, demographics change. That is just the way things are. It's better to harness it than to reject it to the detriment of progress. See: The story of America becoming a superpower.
Hard to take a comment that starts with this seriously.
Wanting to migrate and actually being ready and willing to integrate in the target country / culture are two very different things.
In Japan, the latter is certainly not easy, and it's unclear how much would-be immigrants are ready and willing to meet that bar.
Based on my very limited Japanese (about n3 grammar , 1000 kanji, but this is anecdotal), it is indeed very difficult, and I'd clearly try an English speaking country/country where I can work in English first !
I believe it is called progressive and liberal because African Americans and Native Americans have historically been enslaved or (nearly) exterminated by Europeans in North America.
What's wrong with being ethnic-nationalist?
Europeans are amazing and should be held up high.
They should stop and reverse the importation of the third world and remain European.
Not that this is an option for all countries, specially those that don't have unified history or culture. For example with USA it might make sense for native population.
I don't have a strong opinion on immigration either way, like anything it can be a force for good or a distaster depending on how it's handled. But if there's one thing I hate, it's taboos and buzz words, mixed with hypocrisy for good measure. There is nothing inherently wrong about opposing immigration or disliking immigrants, your country is like your house, you are perfectly justified on not wanting guests in it, even if it's for 'wrong' (read : racist) reason. This doesn't mean I like or hold those opinons, but they are natural and justified, and people have the right to hold them.
Also something that should not be easily forgotten or ever forgiven is the missionary work by religious groups... Destroying cultures around world. It is sad we have not punished them for that and maybe even banned them to protect the future.
No, nearly every one of the countries I listed had simply no intention or means to colonize effectively at a profit, has nothing to do with preoccupation with continental wars.
> Also something that should not be easily forgotten or ever forgiven is the missionary work by religious groups
Again, all of the countries I mentioned had very little if not null participation in this, and yet to varying degrees they are being punished for it...
It came up for a direct vote? Or did politicians who never ran on mass immigration platforms just kinda decide to introduce legislation?
People tend to conflate the acceptance of mass immigration in western countries (by characterizing opposition as horribly racist) with tacit approval by the citizens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Hungarian_migrant_quota_r...
The general failure of anti-immigration parties to win majorities in European countries suggests that most people are either pro-immigration or at least willing to accept it.
But again, that ties back to the demonization of being against immigration. Is it _really_ reflective of true popular support if you’re going to be labeled a racist if you don’t vote the right way?
You cannot influence without being influenced.
Why not? China has massive influence in many countries, and they seem to retain a lot of their culture while suppressing any internal change/dissent. It would seem to me that many European countries have simply decided they would like to be influenced for whatever reason, not that they are compelled to by some universal rule.
No not really. For starters, who determines what is the “true” culture or what the goals even are?
Mass immigration explores the space very differently, in a way that is sudden and discontinues.I think it's reasonable for people to worry that they're being replaced, because that's actually what's (more or less) happening.
My issue is the entitlement that goes hand in hand with this mentality. Everyone replaces someone. What makes me so special that I get to go, “oh no you don’t, all cultural change ends with me and my friends unless I specifically sanction the change”?
People made room for me, after all.
Civilizational: Respect for rights of minorities, rule of law rather than of the strong, willingness to work and pay taxes, valuing education.
Superficial: Cuisine, dress, artistic taste, ritual formalities of religion.
Few governments have had success splitting immigration policy priorities along these lines, though some have had the wisdom to at least try.
Or maybe you meant "rigid"?
I went to Vietnam before the pandemic and lot's of hip coffee shops are basically exact clones of something you'd find in Portland.
This seems a remarkably false dichotomy.
These are neither purely traditional nor fully globally assimilationist.
Singapore, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin and San Antonio, TX, Vancouver, Sydney, London, Berlin, Miami, and Rio all come to mind. Those are among the larger cities, there are also smaller and more outlying regions.
People have always moved, migrated, and interacted. Quite often peaceably, as the alternative is extraordinarily destructive.
Is the problem that immigration drags down economies?
Or that it leads to gentrification?
You know, all those lazy Polish plumbers coming over and stealing all those British jobs....
Sounds like you've found a cause for every problem you see.
You need to brush up on your history my friend. The number of times the island has changed hands runs counter to your point, and the current inhabitants certainly aren’t some continuation of an ancient people.
Rome held it, the Britons held it, the Picts invaded from Ireland, the Angles and Saxons had it after beating the Picts and killing the Britons…the list goes on. There isn’t some sacred ancient culture at stake and I’m sure the groups that were kicked out by the current inhabitants would take umbrage with your point if they could speak up.
I’m not even going to dive into “London is a miserable failure.” That’s just another hand wavy talking point. I’m not even sure by what metrics you’d measure how London is a “miserable failure.”
"Gaijin" gets played up in weeby debates -- by people who are looking for reasons to be offended -- as some hugely significant cultural deviation, but it's honestly more like "foreigner" in practical usage. That word can be incredibly rude, or completely innocuous in different contexts. As can 外人. It's more accurate to say that both words mean "foreigner", but 外国人 is the PC version that renders you safe from criticism.
(The irony, of course, is that no matter where you go you'll hear plenty of borderline racist policy talk with the sweetest of language.)
More than 20% of people living in Canada are immigrants.
Immigration rates have increased since the data above.
Brazil is an interesting one, because a significant number of "Brazilians" in Japan are supposedly descendants of Japanese who had immigrated to Brazil, but then came back. But even they experience degrees of discrimination despite being ethnically Japanese.
Anecdote, but my Japanese American friend (ethnically 100% Japanese but born and raised in the US, and pretty much culturally 90%+ American) went back to Japan. He too experienced discrimination.
There is lot of pressure to conform to the generally accepted social norms.
Anyway, it's not really Japan specific. I'm not sure why people always say this about Japan when other Asian countries have an even lower immigrant population. In Taiwan it's just over 1%. In Mainland China it's even much lower. Korea has slightly immigrants than Japan but it's no where near levels of Australia or the US. There's a weird obsession with Japan in Western countries and Japanese culture and politics often get stereotyped without people actually understanding much about it. The assumption that it's unusual for a country not to have (uncontrolled) mass immigration is in itself an amusing one to me.
Only a few thousand per year bother. There's actually hundreds of thousands of eligible long-term residents in Japan who could acquire citizenship on paper, but the criteria (particularly the renunciation of other citizenships) are burdensome enough that even some people born in Japan who have lived there their whole lives who could become citizens opt not to.
In particular, starting at 1m04s, the interviewer says "I hear it's hard to become Japanese". And the naturalized person answers, "the more and more I read about it on the English net, I realized there's so much misinformation about it that you really couldn't trust anything that was written English about naturalization."
He's talking about people like you. He spends the whole video in particular debunking almost every point you made.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30363116
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29362936
The downside is that the people leaving also tend to be the most capable of producing that change so the brain/skills-drain is self-perpetuating once it starts.
Some % of people, yes. But not everyone leaves. As long as enough brilliant people remain and there can be economic and scientific progress breaking the shackles of a millennia of rule, things can become right. These things are slow and take time though.
Their society is very closed, allowing immigrants to take only very low paid low value works. Immigrants have almost no possibility of growth, and very a very bad set of labor rights (apparently everybody has this later problem, even though the set of rights for Japanese and immigrants is different, one does not seem to be strictly worse than the other).
The result of the immigration at the 90's was that people came back worse-off than they gone.
Actually, the very existence of cities and countrysides goes against this idea (and there is indeed open space in Japan.)
It's not. It has the 11th most populous country in the world. Sure, it ranks lower in terms of area but it's still much larger than a median nation state. Japan is actually slightly larger than Germany. Nobody ever says Germany is a pretty small country.
In terms of immigration, even in Canada (very open to other cultures, more tolerant of them than the US), to become a citizen, there are tests to be passed, including either french or english literacy.
This is to ensure that all citizens can communication with one another, and also, to understand local laws. And, essentially, local customs.
In Canada (and the US), this means people are expected to not be racist, or biased, and there are laws against this.
One may debate the effectiveness of these laws, however my point is that once here? People caught behaving if there is a caste system here, will be prosecuted.
Beyond this, public schools, TV, movies, etc teach that all are equal. Sometimes, it takes a third generation immigrant to be "fully" localized, but eventually the parent culture is but a distant memory.
This is reinforced by the surrounding culture, which doesn't care about caste systems.
So my point is, we don't care, and we should not care. What we should do, is simply take applicants and be done with it.
You do not have to apply through your government, you can get a job and apply directly.
Now, are there Indian immigrants in the US, with consulting firms or companies, only accepting applications based upon caste?
Well, that's discrimination, has nothing to do with immigration laws, instead employement laws, and can be prosecuted.
And yes, it can be proven.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_Harlem_and_the_Lost_Hi...
Where is this happening? I assure you, most non-Indians have zero idea about caste and couldn't care less.
Therefore, I gather that this is happening from other Indians in the US? In other words, you leave India to escape poverty and presumably racism, but then.. decide to live in predominantly Indian neighborhoods where they are racist, do buildness with, and work for, racist people?!
Here is a strong suggestion. Don't live near these fools, don't work for them. Don't move to the US, and then, try to create an Indian culture and neighborhood in the US.
Instead, just become American. Merge with the culture, and no more racist Indians.
Are you Indian, NRI or Someone from west learning about India from the western press?
Edit: You also mentioned that Dalit experience worse discrimination in US than in India! Where did you get that from? I'd just like to understand your overall point of view.
Policy, lack of space... not desire
https://m.economictimes.com/nri/visa-and-immigration/the-cur...
Countries should begin to manage the draw down of population rather than see it as calamity. It will happen either way.
Some tourists always end up staying and contributing to population growth: meet a local, get married, the usual.
The most common origin of the foreign spouse is from China (where naturalization is much more difficult if not impossible), followed by Korea and the Philippines (where there are fewer job opportunities).
> And with no roadmap to reopen for the rest of the year at least
The PM just indicated otherwise this week.
> don't want foreigners at all and not because of health concerns.
Well, the sentiment is that foreigners = don’t wear mask. And don’t wear mask = health concerns.
Japanese people will be caught with masks in a middle of the forest with no one around for miles. Most of the Japanese population is vaccinated now, but the vast majority of people don’t wear masks, whereas an order of magnitude more of foreigners disproportionately do not wear masks.
https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/uiwit7/getting_t...
Think that number is incredibly small, only a couple thousand at most.
Both Italy and Japan are in the worst possible position, in terms of aging population, than any other "non-small" developed nation.
Some projections from the national statistic institute (ISTAT), which I cannot find online right now, project ~50M people by 2050, down ~10M from current levels.
But ultimately this is good news. Population cannot keep increasing and evidence is that it is unsustainably high now. So Less pressure on the environment, more space, hopefully increased productivity and wealth per capital (by harnessing automation).
Japan specifically is overcrowded (coubtry is not that big and most of it is actually montains with people crowded in coastal plains), so this is an opportunity to increase individuals' quality of life.
Less people is good for a strained planet, and this sort of population decline is the least harmful option for realizing a more steady state world (versus unsustainable growth).
My hypothesis is that population growth is so embedded in the common psyche, from economics to culture and religion, that suggesting otherwise is anathema and rejected by Pavlovian reflex.
You declare that we have “too many people” and “need fewer humans” — but don’t demonstrate that’s true. It seems more like an article of faith among a certain crowd.
But to people who don’t think that’s true, saying we need fewer people and enacting policies to achieve that seems dangerous: you’re trying to destroy other people’s families for no reason but your religious beliefs.
Isn’t it dangerous to have large numbers of people we’re going to just let die when resources are further constrained? It seems a lot safer to argue for family planning for all but the most capable and emotionally invested parents and let everyone else age out with a decent quality of life to responsibly transition to a lower human run rate. No one is arguing for eugenics, family destruction, or similar distasteful policies.
You haven’t shown anything like this — merely asserted it based on unrelated facts.
You cited raw numbers, but eg, portion of humanity in starvation conditions has gone down as population went up, because the increased wealth of nations allowed for feeding more people.
Neither unintended pregnancies nor a fraction of children in foster care seems like something that is solved by having fewer people. In fact, that will get worse (like hunger) as society regresses and we are less wealthy as nations.
> No one is arguing for eugenics, family destruction, or similar distasteful policies.
You are: Planned Parenthood was founded by a noted eugenicist; the policies to support your vision require massive taxes that stress the young and prevent them from breeding even if they otherwise would want to; etc.
You’re just denying your role in that destruction through social policy based on some kind of religious apocalyptic fantasy.
We have a global climate and environmental crisis in a world where most human beings are still quite poor and with population still increasing.
We're being told that we should travel less, eat less meat, this, that, when most people on Earth actually still struggle to afford these things (I.e. consumption per capita is increasing as people leave abject poverty worldwide)
Believing that global population level is fine is not even an article of faith, it simply is denial of reality because it is something some people somehow simply refuse to hear.
Lastly, no-one here suggests that we should kill people or whatnot. In Japan and other developed countries population is decreasing naturally, let's just let it instead of panicking.
Your entire argument is “an authority told me so!” and from there you treat it as an article of faith.
You’re also ignoring that more people has led to less poverty and the current world is the richest it has ever been — ie, the data which shows more people is good. Global hunger has precipitously fallen, as we’ve had more people and richer nations capable of more aid.
> In Japan and other developed countries population is decreasing naturally, let's just let it instead of panicking.
It’s decreasing as a result of policies chosen which stress the young and cause them not to breed — saying “well, less people is good, so let’s keep the abuse!” is monstrous.
Only if you consider resources are unlimited, and the environment has no value.
If you put available non-renewable resources and the environment on the balance sheet, the result is different.
Okay — so show me that.
What exactly is different if you account for more people making us the wealthiest, least starving time in history?
How exactly is the outcome negative?
What exactly means that fewer people is the solution to our problems, when historically the opposite has been true?
Again, you’re not showing me that — you’re asserting it as an article of faith you expect me to just believe on your say so.
For instance, in the case of global warming, there will be migration of populations, raise of ocean level, extreme weather events, all of this will have a cost that we'll have to pay eventually.
All of this has to be taken into account if you want to assess the merit and sustainability of our production system and demographic growth.
Putting it another way, we're rich because we were given a huge loan in the form of natural resources and a hospitable environment, but this is ending. Unfortunately, there's no perpetual growth in a finite world. This is a mathematical truth.
Sure — so show me the actual account.
You’re just hand-waving about possible costs without showing they’re unsustainable on reasonable timelines OR that fewer people would help the problem at all.
That’s not a rational basis to want fewer humans.
> this is ending. Unfortunately, there's no perpetual growth in a finite world. This is a mathematical truth.
Discussing abstract concepts like limits without showing that we’re near those limits is merely dogmatic belief — it doesn’t justify anything.
That’s nihilistic fantasy.
There are plenty of references on the topic. You can start with "The limits to growth" which is 50 years old and which is revisited from time to time.
https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/the-limits-to-growth-...
Regarding global warming, you can look up "Kaya identity": https://theconversation.com/curb-population-growth-to-tackle...
It's impossible to give exact prediction and timelines, but it's certain that the perpetual growth model isn't sustainable and most likely, limits will materialise within the next decades.
Then arguing we need fewer people now based on that isn’t reasonable.
> it's certain that the perpetual growth model isn't sustainable
In the same sense that heat death of the universe will eventually happen — but isn’t necessarily relevant to us here and now.
> most likely, limits will materialise within the next decades
How can you conclude that when you previously said you can’t “ give exact prediction and timelines”?
To me, you seem to be repeating the same “the world is ending!” nihilism that has always permeated society.
Because I read "the limits to growth", the IPCC report summary, and various authors on the topic and that's what they say based on actual data. And I'm yet to find quantified arguments that say otherwise. You're the one whose ideas are based on faith, not me.
> To me, you seem to be repeating the same “the world is ending!” nihilism that has always permeated society.
No, because 1. I don't think the world is ending, just that current growth will stop one way or another, because it's not sustainable and limits are within sight 2. it's not about nihilism but predictions based on numerous data, which are more accurate and comprehensive than what was available in the past
Except both the links you provided and your own comment admits those aren’t terribly accurate predictions and most of them are a ways out — with huge error bars.
They also don’t attempt to address factors we know are going to happen, like increased technical prowess that come with a larger population.
If you have an actual quantitative source and model with that prediction, then post it. But you haven’t.
> I read "the limits to growth", the IPCC report summary, and various authors on the topic and that's what they say based on actual data.
Then you should cite that — because you haven’t so far.
> 1. I don't think the world is ending, just that current growth will stop one way or another, because it's not sustainable and limits are within sight
“The world (as you know it) is ending!”
I’d find you more credible if you owned what you were saying.
> saying we need fewer people and enacting policies to achieve that seems dangerous: you’re trying to destroy other people’s families for no reason but your religious beliefs
Trying to conflate a natural (or at least unintended [1]) population drop with some deliberate policy of "family destruction" is the height of dishonesty.
[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/10/18/national/social... Japan’s total fertility rate [..] stood at 1.36 [..] The government aims to raise the rate to 1.8.
Your sibling comments (including the one you support) are arguing that we should continue policies which abuse the young to the point they are too distressed to breed because we have “too many people”. That would be animal abuse if I did it to cows: intentionally abusing a herd so they were too distressed to procreate.
I think you not admitting that I’m responding to sentiments expressed in this very thread is dishonest.
Fertility rate: Finland 1.35, Austria 1.46, Switzerland 1.48, Norway 1.53, Kenya 3.4, Nigeria 5.3, Somalia 5.98: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
Quality of life rank: Finland 11/80, Austria 13/80, Switzerland 1/80, Norway 3/80, Kenya 79/80, Nigeria 80/80, Somalia unranked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index
Quality of life and fertility seem to be very strongly anti-correlated. It does not seem like any sort of "policies which abuse the young" are needed to reduce population - education, gender equality, and some baseline material security suffice.
That the countries least desirable to live in have the highest fertility, and that there is a global ecological catastrophe slowly unfolding, are both well-documented common knowledge, that you became instantly ignorant of when they became inconvenient to your argument.
I would ask you to explain why you think "policies which abuse the young" are what people have in mind, or why they are needed, when obviously what has been shown to work and is popular is raising living standards. But I won't, because given the above, I already know the answer: it's much easier to argue for perpetual population growth if you can pretend the only alternative is "abuse the young to the point they are too distressed to breed".
I find it strange you can’t show me actual support for that then, after my repeated requests — are you sure it’s not a widely held dogmatic belief?
> I would ask you to explain why you think "policies which abuse the young" are what people have in mind, or why they are needed, when obviously what has been shown to work and is popular is raising living standards.
Surveys of young people point to financial distress as why they don’t have children.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/upshot/americans-are-havi...
The entire system is set up in a way which is crushing the middle class (in the US and likely other developed nations), causing them to choose not to breed. The evidence suggests that people aren’t having as many kids as they would like due to policies which harm them (eg, high taxes) — policies which people support here despite knowing that they’re driving those outcomes.
> I already know the answer: it's much easier to argue for perpetual population growth if you can pretend the only alternative is "abuse the young to the point they are too distressed to breed".
This is you creating a strawman to avoid recognizing the negative impacts of your own policy and the harms it’s causing to humanity.
Modern extinction rates average around 100 E/MSY. This means birds, mammals and amphibians have been going extinct 100 to 1000 times faster than we would expect. - https://ourworldindata.org/extinctions#are-we-heading-for-a-...
Just under 3% of the world's land remains ecologically intact [..] The study paints a gloomier picture than previous analyses of wilderness areas, focused on human impact on habitat, which estimated that 20 to 40% of the earth's terrestrial surface has been little affected by humans. - https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/15/world/intact-ecosystems-repor...
I.e. the overly optimistic studies showed that ~70% of Earth's land has been significantly affected by humans.
> Surveys of young people point to financial distress as why they don’t have children.
Clearly young people in Somalia are financially better off then, and we should emulate their policies.
Okay — why is that a catastrophe to which the solution is reducing human population?
> Clearly young people in Somalia are financially better off then, and we should emulate their policies.
Sarcasm doesn’t detract from my point that policy and cultural choices in developed nations dominate why people aren’t having kids.
I think you lack a reply now that data agreed with me.
I do agree with the general sentiment on this, but it's unfortunately kind of ignoring the huge, short and medium term social problems this population decline will bring about.
Specifically, in many places, much of infrastructure (social and otherwise) was designed on assumptions of growth.
Re-engineering entire countries infrastructure to meet these new demographics deals is going to be costly. Even to the "blood in the streets" level in some cases, I believe.
Moreover, if you accept that population cannot increase infinitely in a finite world, the transition will have to happen one day. So the sooner the better and rich, developed countries are equipped to deal with it.
The expanionists that recognize some of the ponzi qualities of how a lot of the modern welfare states are stacked. That those systems will begin to fail if populations don't perpetually increase enough. They dread that population decline is going to wreck how the welfare state functions (lie to voters, over promise on entitlements, pray population keeps expanding forever so new workers can pay for retiring workers, kick the can down the road; Japan has done this for two decades for example, the US is actively doing it, and lots of affluent European nations are doing it).
It forces a reckoning with very poor decisions from the past, the bill comes due, and almost nobody likes that.
Predictable population expansion helps politicians paper over a lot of various fiscal mistakes (they rely heavily on fiscal lies to function, telling people things that are irrational fiscally but popular). Britain, France, Japan, the US - four of the world's largest economies, and they all function by using the same scam (pull future potential output forward, eat it / distribute it today, fake the present standard of living for re-election at the cost of the future context). These are things for example Macron has wrestled with frequently in France, and absolutely no politician in the US wants to go anywhere near talking about how the trajectory on entitlements is going to bankrupt the US Government de facto (requiring forever low rates from the Fed, $50t in new debt over the next 30 years, and leading to a raft of bad follow-on things economically).
Older people are, on average, much less healthy and need more medical attention. IDK if this can be solved by medical/nursing robots, but we almost certainly do not have enough living medical professionals to care for countries whose average age climbs over 50.
I don't see any solid evidence that the planet is "strained" or, if it is, that it has anything to do with population. People have been talking about overpopulation since before I was born. I think people who go for that stuff have a dim view of humanity and that's where their beliefs come from, not from any kind of serious empirical analysis.
> Civilization is humans, who are animals, pretending they are not animals. This pretending is often very hard. — slibhb
Anti-humanism is the wrong characterization. It’s the lack of self awareness and self preservation in aggregate as a species that is repulsive imho.
I don't think it's a serious analysis that predicts that mankind will go extinct due to overpopulation. People who have that view truly are anti-humanists. They view humans as rapacious monsters that inevitably exploit and harm other living things and the planet.
The truth is that we don't know what humans will make of the planet. Maybe the pessimists are right. But it's a higher form of behavior than pessimism to live your life in a way that confirms that mankind is good.
And while I personally don’t share the more optimistic side of the argument, I’m definitely sympathetic to the second part, specially when I see the moralistic arguments against poor nations trying to create wealth, by those who already depleted their own, and are also mostly enjoying the fruits of poor nations resources in form of cheap goods.
But it's the wealthy nations that are the ones undergoing population decline. And instead of being praised for their responsible family planning, they are told "No! You must grow! And by 'grow' we mean import people from abroad."
Of course we didn't starve to death and this fear was completely unfounded.
The problems we face today of course have nothing to do with that. They stem rather from excessive CO2 emissions, and these emissions are dominated by rich nations with relatively small populations. This could have been limited and prevented in the 1970s but people made other choices.
It's possible that there is some point where over population is a real problem, but that is not now, and we can solve our most pressing problems in other ways.
This crisi is caused by excessive exploitation of resources, which is still increasing because of a compounded effect: we're rightly eradicating poverty and we're more and more.
So yes we are feeding everyone, among other improvements, but we are destroying the planet in the process.
Even we're the efforts we're making in rich the consumption of resources is not really decreasing while it is increasing in developing countries.
Population is the root cause of the problem.
I don't see why this is controversial. Less people enjoying a better life in a better environment sounds like an ideal world.
I agree with the sentiment of this comment regarding the end state, but I fear the transition will be a disaster. Demographic changes are of course happening at very different stages around the world. Many 1st world countries are seeing dramatically shrinking populations, but many third world countries are exploding - Nigeria is expected to nearly double their population to 400 million by 2050. The shift and resource wars thèse changes will cause will result in a lot of suffering.
> Japan specifically is overcrowded
Not really. A few of Japan's megacities are overcrowded, but tons of other areas have seen rapid depopulation and demographic collapse where there are hardly any young people.
And your taxes and your version of IRS are just insane. We have a relative, a single mother, who is making 15K EUR a year, and they are going after her because her accountant used a wrong category when she paid taxes 5 years ago, so now she has to pay 10K eur fine for that year and 5K for the next (basically a whole year of income).
Another relative is a medical professional making 88K EUR in private practice, but he pays 55% in income taxes.
Another friend was making 14K EUR per year coding C#. He moved to the US since, now making 10x of that.
It's absolutely insane. I have zero surprise young people are fleeing.
The old William Gibson quote about "the future is here its just not evenly distributed yet."
It's easy to design a tax system, it's hard to predict its long-term effects.
If you talk about tech, maybe. But I don't think the salary situation in Italy is that bleak if we look at the whole economy and account for purchasing power parity. Using OECD's number for 2019, household disposable income incl. social transfers in kind, in US dollars/capita at current prices and PPPs for the countries you mentioned are:
Italy: 31.7k
Norway: 40.1k
Germany: 41.0k
Switzerland: 41.1k
United States: 54.9k
https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm?co...
I am talking about young professionals, they make a lot more money than that in Norway, Switzerland, USA. We know a Yoga teacher in Switzerland who makes 150 eur/hr, for example.
When using it, it doesn't matter if the person makes 150 euros an hour if it costs them that much for a meal but the person in Italy only has to work half as long for a meal.
If a person in Italy makes just enough to live comfortably, you can compare that to a person in Norway who makes just enough to live comfortably. But if a person wants a new iPhone on top of that, they're gonna be paying around $1250 whether they're in Norway or in Italy ($1295 in Norway, $1253 in Italy).
So it seems to me that the calculation is a bit more complex than just some purchasing power parity factor. Even if $1 in Italy was $2 in Norway adjusted for PPP, I would much rather be making $8000/month in Norway than $4000/month in Italy because the price of luxury goods don't vary as wildly as the price of cost-of-living stuff.
Or is my understanding wrong?
Switzerland can be a nice place for people to work hard when they are young and then move back home to start a family (or business.)
Also note that the difference between the US and Germany is also about 30%. Again, nothing to scoff at, but at the same time not remotely high enough to depopulate Germany.
Possibly they were receiving 45% net, which is plausible but that is because you are paying for pension and social security, not income taxes.
It is true anyway that IT is vastly underpaid in Italy compared to the rest of the world, and that the agenzia delle entrate is insanely harsh.
Less people => less economic opportunity => weaker economy => lower wages. Aging population => greater healthcare need, less people => taxes raised to make up the program revenue shortfall.
In Canada the Atlantic provinces through the 90s-00s emptied out for various economic reasons with young people going elsewhere for economic opportunity. It's remarkable to see that their sales taxes and income taxes in the area are much higher than BC, one of the economic powerhouses of Canadian federation.
Very hard to get out of this. I think the only solution really is to open up the taps for immigration. Eventually the relative affordability of the declining area can help this. Nova Scotia just pushed past the $1M mark. The relative affordability of the area, growing acceptance of WFH policies and absurdly stupid expensive real estate everywhere else likely helped.
Are they for jobs, or even for shops/businesses?
some examples of no-foreigner signs: from 2014 [1], 2018 [2], COVID [3] [4], New Years Eve 2021 [5]
[0] http://thejapanwanko.sub.jp/?p=3255
[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2014/03/09/discrimination_n_49...
[2] https://twitter.com/altinsiderfy/status/1014099884348092418
[3] https://twitter.com/345triangle/status/1238776189482754048
[4] https://mobile.twitter.com/sanji_kinchan/status/122956825814...
[5] https://mobile.twitter.com/arudoudebito/status/1477052668963...
But even India is heading for TFR under 2.0.
Subsaharan Africa can, on the other hand, reach up to 4 billion people before the end of the century; almost half of entire humanity.
You can't think of citizenship in the normal way. You have to think of it within the context of the Schengen. Those people even have an easier time moving on out of the Schengen to, say, Canada or the US.
Surely both those statements cannot be true.
It seems like the answer is of great importance since potentially the fate of humanity depends on it, yet I seldom see it discussed seriously or at least as seriously as anything else like climate change.
[0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1483484932961972227?lang...
Hasn't this myth been busted repeatedly over centuries since the Industrial Revolution?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/japan-population
I do think the WPR's projection is a little weird though. They see almost no change in the birth rate until about 2078... not sure how they concluded that.
"There's trilemma facing ageing nations, whereby you can have two of the three: ethnic continuity, a thriving economy or a comfortable lifestyle without the huge stress of mixing child-raising and a modern economy. Israel has sacrificed the latter, Japan has chosen to take the economic hit, while Britain’s leaders have given up its ethnic continuity. But that, alas, was a short-term solution, since young immigrants don’t magically avoid the fate of Father Time any more than the rest of us do."
Perhaps it’s ok for the human race to reduce in numbers to help heal the planet?
Population reduction is a very strong signal for the government to change its behavior and yet… they still behave the same for decades: long work hours, non-existent immigration policy, lack of support for working women, little job opportunities for young people, etc.
Yeah, that is what an ageing society feels like. Only in Japan and Italy, it's 10x worse than other places because they had no immigration for a long time.
As we age and population declines more, we will have to assume that basics of society will become dysfunctional as there just aren't any workers to work in those areas anymore.
I think it mostly has to do with social atomization. Cultures have always supported marriage and childcare. That's less true around the world. As a result people are getting married less often and having fewer children, often against their own desires.
Yet I have no trust in any governing body that exists when we do.
But, and in spite of the clear challenges this already does and will create, ultimately, is it really a problem?
The countryside sure get it really hard though.
Russia: https://www.livepopulation.com/images/chart_age_russia.png
Japan: https://www.livepopulation.com/images/chart_age_japan.png
From:
Just my personal thoughts, this comment is not meant to include any judgement opinion.
Another interesting idea, is that over the long-term, cultures that allow their members the freedom not to have children, may be overrun peacefully or forcefully by those that don't, or that at least, provide larger incentives to have children. Moreover, again over a long enough time horizon, people's who naturally don't have the inclination to have children, will disappear from the gene pool, making having children (all other things equals) the most common and culturally sensible option.
I also know there's a tendency in more developed (or at least wealthier) countries that as they become more prosperous their populations have fewer children. I'm sure there's multiple reasons, but in the US it can be difficult to have children and support them in a single income. Yet at early ages daycare alone can eat into a significant part of someone's takehome salary. That economic equation puts some downward pressure on the # of kids.
Worse, I was watching the Japanese news (~6 years ago) which had a discussion where an economist pointed out that while wages have stagnated since the late 1980's, base taxes have gone up from 2.5% to 22%. The younger generations now have elder parents asking why they aren't being taken on trips around the world like they supported their parents, and the answer is simple: no one can afford it, let alone afford to have children.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/india/japan-pm-kishida-announc...
Obviously, there are pros and cons to this. Cheap housing, but no transfer of wealth to later generations through housing. Even if your parents die, the estate they leave you is subject to a death tax, so you lose even more of what wealth they might have built for you.
I think the biggest factor to do with the decrease in birth rates is that school and work are so demanding over there. People can't relax well enough unless they find themselves in the graceful employment of western-style companies. Not everyone is a salaryman, but enough that it makes family life challenging.
Aside from that, you've also got the brain drain of urbanization, where most rural villages are outright dying as people migrate to Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto/Fukuoka.
All this said, I'd still live there in a heartbeat. You will never live in a more affordable, safe, convenient city as Tokyo. No other city even comes close.
Do you live there? Why not?
Many people will take a crap English teaching job to land there and then interview on that visa to land a job in their desired sector, but knowing the language is crucial. This kind of visa abuse is also highly frowned upon.
So, who knows. I might still end up where I want to work in time, but right now it's been crickets between emails with the founder.
8-10 billion people are taxing the planet. Climate change, plastic use that ends up everywhere, …
Just last week, I was told that if we were to place the entire human population next to each other, we would take this and this insignificant space on just one continent.
Apparently, overpopulation is a myth perpetuated by a shadowy group championed by Bill Gates himself, and they are the ones responsible for my disagreement with the fact that "they" (said group of global elite) are trying to reduce the population in order to control the world.
Without elaborate socio-political analysis, falling back to simple biology, one model says there are "K"-type populations and "N"-type populations.. it explains a lot right there.
But 50 years ago someone could say (and it’s virtually guaranteed someone did say) that 4 billion is too many. Because 4 billion at the time was the largest number of people simultanously alive on our little planet. It was twice as many as there were just 50 years before.
And I bet in 1922, people were thinking that 2 billion is to many. We had just left behind a devastating war and an even more lethal pandemic. It mustve appeared that the planet just cannot bear 2 billion of us.
So, when you say the world population should go down a bit, do you mean down to 7, to 5, or to 1 billion? Why not 200 million. We were about as many during the Roman Empire and still perfectly capable of astonishing feats of war and devastation.
Look at all the coal we burn,
Climate change is unavoidable at this point…
pollution of the oceans, encroachment onto wildlife, etc.
Humans have done a lot of damage.
also, we grow chickens in cages, overfish the oceans…
Anyway, I’m really amazed that I have to go into detail… I thought we were all on the same page for the “human footprint “ on the planet
We are on the same page on the some things, but not all.
You say we burn too much coal. I say that too. We are on the same page.
I say we need to burn less coal. You say there need to be fewer of us. We are not on the same page.
The thing is, we already are burning less coal. Much less. The US has burned 1 billion tons annually between 2000 and 2010. Now we burn half of that.
We did not need to reduce our population by half in order to achieve that.
We can achieve lots of similar things without reducing our population.
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/global-coal-pla...
40% of electricity globally is generated with coal.
US per capita CO2 emissions are still high. If all 8 billion people got to live like the average American, we’d have an even bigger problem.
That does not mean we need to be fewer. Just like the US could reduce its coal consumption by a factor of 2 (and more will come), the rest of the world can do that too. The technology is here. Everywhere you read, they say it's more economical to build a new solar power plant than to operate an existing coal plant. That may be an exaggeration, but solar is getting very competitive. Coal is on its way out.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/265507/global-coal-consu...
Solar is 3% of electricity
Japan is many things.
Not cutthroat is not among those things.
Sure, we have a better choice of who we see and when as it comes to doctors, but you're also footing the cost more for that privilege.
The only mind-boggling thing about their system is that hospitals close on the weekends. Like…???????
Yeah healthcare is great in Japan. Almost to the point where it’s not an active concern on trying to obtain it. It exists and you pay for it in the way the fire department exists and you pay for it (via taxes
The more layers you put in between a patient and a rendered service, the more money you're wasting at each tier. Insurance doesn't make sense for anyone except the people selling it, and they've gotten so rich now that they're entrenched and won't dare let that change.
Think about it, all the hallmarks of Japanese society, tradition, respect, how will those survive if there's a relentless onslaught of foreigners who do not understand or believe in those values. Part of what made Japan was their ability to guard themselves from foreign encroachment and only incorporate elements of western culture that worked for them.
I'm talking about skilled workers that are willing to assimilate. I haven't taught myself Japanese for nothing. I'm not going to go over there and turn it into Texas.
But that leniency only comes into effect when you prove without question that it's near impossible to source local talent to fill a job, and the Japanese are extremely educated, so you're usually going to find companies will hire domestically before gambling on someone from the west who's used to superior salaries in USD.
Even if you're the world's best, your salary will drop to about 1/2 or 1/3 of what you can make in the US.
So, the problem is the homogeneous white rural population. Immigration is the ideal solution. They are the least susceptible to evangelicals.
Japanese schoolteachers and the Japanese school curriculum spend a lot of time drilling correct social behavior in the classroom. You are socialized to obey the rules. You are socialized to think its bad to not follow the rules. You are socialized into being cohesive with the group.
I mean there is more to this. Their society as a whole has decided this is an acceptable task for schools to undertake and participate in it actively. But it’s the machine that keeps it going.
Also bullying is a feature not a bug, despite all modern attempts to squash it.
Is this a typo?
Look at it as an experiment. See what happens if you allow mass immigration. If you don't like the result, do what you'd do with any other policy - change it. ...Although I guess you'd be stuck with the immigrants you already imported. And they'd probably vote to continue immigration, as they have in the US.. in that sense, this is one policy choice that is largely irreversible.
Sweden, Canada and others have already done that experiment.
Sweden, constant riots and exponential increase in crime...
Edit - Canada is an OK place to live, it's definitely become far worse in my lifetime though (mainly because of affordability). The plus side is tons of nature, if you're into that (I live in a mountain town but if I leave this town it's for Europe, not anywhere else in Canada).
Heterogeneity is not a homogenous quality, it can vary with spikes or with smooth curvature of slow population inflows over decades.
How stringent can these rules be, when the US has 13.7% foreign born population (counting only 1st generation immigrants)? And how stringently can they be enforced, when 11.4 million of those immigrants are there illegally?
Source: https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/immigration/
This is xenophobic at best and borderline racist.
The US govnt is fraught with disfunction not because people look different, but probably because it's a highly capitalistic society that limits the hands of government control over its citizens, which in turn cause the "poorly run" state that you're observing.
Why is third world brain drain the only palatable solution to population decline? What about programs that encourage native reproduction?
Obviously, this problem is more systemic than what immigration outright fixes. As to what steps are needed to rectify it, I couldn't say, nor would I dare to as a third party gaijin.
> native reproduction
You really are a piece of work!