Is there really no other way to go around demographic ratios except by importing young people? Why can't we make economy work with less working people per retiree?
Automation is more likely to add rent-seeking to the status quo than improve conditions for society.
The West has got very used to living off cash cows.
The other option is to invest abroad, and repatriate the profit. Which is something else Japan has done, the Chinese are doing, and the West seems to have forgotten how to do.
In other words, colonialism. I wouldn't say the West "has forgotten"; they are still extremely good at it with careful financial engineering, they can operate it without looking like slave drivers.
The problem is there is only so many places you can invest and the west has burned enough bridges where any sovereign nation is incredibly careful when taking money from the west.
> Why can't we make economy work with less working people per retiree?
> It is a discovery, a study of the feedback mechanisms that lead to certain distributions of resources.
We usually try to create rules of trade and property rights that prevent things like famine and violent conflict. This is because certain sets of rules would inevitably lead to these things. What rules produce the most stability and health are not known, figuring those out is a process of discovery, it is not up to people which rules work and which rules don't because what actually works with regard to distribution of resources depends on how the natural world works.
> what actually works with regard to distribution of resources
for example, we could say that china is doing economics much better than the west (growing faster, better infrastructure, better education, more dynamism etc), if you wanted to say "what works" but im not sure most people here would want to follow that path...
i feel there is an inherent political aspect that arises in economics that is being ignored... but maybe im just crazy?
What works is largely about what you're trying to achieve, which is why when you see people trying to achieve things other than what I said, you wind up with mass famine, forced migration, shortages, and unnecessary expense. You see these things because they're not trying to avoid these things, they have other goals in mind.
There is a political aspect to economics, in that those who want to siphon resources away from efficient distribution and towards their goals will use political machinery to coerce a population. You see this in many instances, ranging from holodomor to artificially inflated drug prices in the US.