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Comment by judge2020 | Hacker News Reader

judge2020

The externality of this is that fewer women are having kids. Even if it's overall a good situation for the individuals, in 30 or 60 years we may see the overall quality of life dwindle as the population stagnates or begins to decline. Economic growth is a byproduct of population growth. This doesn't bode well for the US if it means its population could soon become similar to that of Japan's, where the average age is elderly with fewer and fewer young adults available to participate in innovation and economic growth.

I'm not saying that any of this is bad in general, just that the U.S., and probably the world in aggregate, has paved its own path to a stagnant economy and an eventual declining population. And this isn't the fault of the individuals choosing this path, just that wealthy capitalists have put their own needs over incentivizing people to keep the world populated and participate in the end game of motherhood/fatherhood.

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> in 30 or 60 years we may see the overall quality of life dwindle as the population stagnates or begins to decline

Already happening. Even in developing countries. Less productive young people in the work force, more unproductive old people depending on social security and whatnot. Everything's gonna be fine until the money runs out. Gigantic economic disaster in the making.

There is no nation without natalism.

> This doesn't bode well for the US if it means its population could soon become similar to that of Japan's

It will. As will every other country if nothing is done to heavily incentivize motherhood and family formation.

When I say this people usually downvote me to oblivion for some reason. Maybe they think I'm making this up. Well, I'm not. They should read what actual japanese government officials have been saying about this. They use the word "extinction".

Let me explain then.

Automation, increased productivity continue to rise at least as fast. Not clear we won't be fine simply because of that.

And No we do not have to chase the Malthusian Catastrophe to 'win'. We can do it other ways. Quelling consumerism. Reigning in capitalism. Sensibly designing cities.

The Japanese talk only of extinction of the pure Japan, which is on the face of it a racist policy. Not a real strong point in the argument. Japan will persist, with a normal mix of people from around the world creating a new culture that they want. Not something frozen in time that the octogenarians of Japan worship and cling onto.

> The Japanese talk only of extinction of the pure Japan

> Japan will persist

> with a normal mix of people from around the world

> creating a new culture

So what you're saying is the actual japanese people will go extinct and all the immigrants who actually have children will replace them and create a new japanese culture.

And you see nothing wrong with that at all.

That's typical hyperbole, and not moving the discussion forward.

Nobody, not even the Japanese government expects that. They are anticipating a difficulty maintaining their culture against mixing with the world. Which has actually been going on for 70 years now, and continues at a breakneck pace.

Japanese people will come to include all sorts of people, who will happily live together and move forward. Without our permission or control, as folks all over the world do.

> Nobody, not even the Japanese government expects that.

Are you sure?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64373950

> They are anticipating a difficulty maintaining their culture against mixing with the world.

Of course. If you don't have children, then you need immigration from countries that do. That will obviously change your culture.

A nation is made up of people of a shared origin, history, culture, ethnicity, language. If you replace the people with immigrants and they create a new culture, the nation is no more.

> Japanese people will come to include all sorts of people, who will happily live together and move forward.

That's like saying white people will come to include all sorts of people.

Culture is changing constantly; the idea that there's a fixed point there is absurd, because again, there is nothing inherent to a nation other than lines drawn on an arbitrary map.

White people already do include all sorts of people -- whiteness is, obviously, not a single unified ethnicity, national, cultural, linguistic, or historical background but an aesthetic conception of someone's skin color. Because ethnostatism is stupid and intellectually inconsistent.

> > The Japanese talk only of extinction of the pure Japan

> > Japan will persist

The point is that they aren't doing well on the "persist" front. https://apnews.com/article/japan-birth-rate-record-low-popul...

Why would there be anything wrong with it? This is the way cultures and people have changed since time immemorial.

> This is the way cultures and people have changed since time immemorial.

Yeah, because some empire came and killed your people off and conquered your lands and enslaved your survivors and erased your culture so they could replace it their own.

Not because people wiped themselves off the map because they wouldn't have children.

Cultures are and always have been constantly shifting and changing; conquest is one method of that happening, as you point out, but is far from the only one. Immigration, emigration, catastrophe, technological progress, climate change... all result in the movement of people and the shifting of national and cultural boundaries.

No culture is "erased" as a result of this. Even if Japan fails to have children, Japanese culture and the Japanese nation will continue. It will look different, certainly. But there's nothing magical or better about the way things used to be simply because they used to be that way. Change is inevitable, and more than that, it is good.

> Even if Japan fails to have children, Japanese culture and the Japanese nation will continue.

No. Nations are a collection of people with shared ethnicity, land, culture, language, history. If the japanese people disappear, the nation will also disappear. It's not going to magically continue just because the country of Japan is still there. Can't have a nation without its people.

No. Nations are lines drawn on a map. The people inside need have nothing in common other than geographic proximity.

Japan will exist as long as people live there and call it Japan. It has nothing to do with ethnicity, land, culture, or history.

Nonsense.

> nation

> A people who share common customs, origins, history, and frequently language

There are nations without states. There are also nation states. The latter is more precise than country which does not imply any dominant ethnic group.

If you don’t have the intellectual capacity to continue that’s okay. I understand ethnostatists get easily confused by ambiguity and historical fact.

I'm not confused at all. I have no reason to doubt my understanding of things at this time. First you redefined words and contradicted dictionary and encyclopedic definitions of simple concepts and terms. Now you're calling me a stupid, confused, mentally incapable "ethnostatist". This borders on gaslighting.

More alarmist hyperbole. I know of several Japanese families in my hometown, come here to study, and they are doing fine.

So what? My hometown was literally built by the japanese. My parents worked with japanese their entire lives. Sometimes I go to a restaurant and I hear people speaking japanese nearby. They're all doing fine too.

Doesn't change the fact birth rates in Japan are below replacement. Am I missing something here?

Extinction means more than 'below replacement'. Things change; culture changes. It's the lowering population figures that will require change that the octogenarians fear, not actual non-existence of a Japanese people. All the rest of this thread has been disingenuous hyperbole based on that.

I saw a Javan Rhinos the other day. He seemed to be doing pretty good.

If economic growth is a byproduct of population growth, then we need to find new patterns for economic growth. There was never a future in which human populations would (or could) increase forever.

Blaming wealthy capitalists for ruining motherhood/fatherhood seems rather conspiratorial. Why do you believe men and women are not rational actors working in their own self-interest? Again, women want jobs not because capitalists forced them to participate in the workforce, but because being forced to be a dependent of the men in your life truly sucks.

And this discussion in the context of women having jobs is my problem with the framing. Forcing women to be birthing factories permanently hitched to a man for their own safety and security is a worse outcome than the cessation of economic or population growth.

> Forcing women to be birthing factories permanently hitched to a man for their own safety and security is a worse outcome than the cessation of economic or population growth.

Worse for whom? For women personally, probably. For nations? For the species? I don't know.

I thought nations and the species were composed of women, so what is worse for women is probably worse for them too. Or are women outside of nations and the species?

Come on. Life depends on reproduction to sustain itself. That's completely at odds with the current status quo where both men and women postpone or even forgo reproduction for economic reasons. How are you supposed to have a human race if it doesn't reproduce?

What's good for the individual does not necessarily align with what's good for the collective.

There are 8 billion people on the planet and the population is still growing. Concern trolling about the future of humanity itself is pretty dumb given that, don't you think?

Though maybe not quite as silly as claiming that the individual desires of women don't matter but the individual desires of men do, given that there are more women than men. Certainly women's voices compromise more of the collective than men's voices, given there are more women, hmm?

> Concern trolling about the future of humanity itself is pretty dumb given that, don't you think?

No, I don't think so. It's still growing for now because there are still countries with birth rates above replacement. It is slowing down though. It's expected to peak and start its decline at the end of this century.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/07/1122272

I'm framing this in the sense that capitalism forced nearly all women into the workforce. Without any women in the workforce, a woman could be a full-time mother to their child. Now, they must work to achieve the same level of pay and standard of living as when men were paid enough to sustain a family at home off their single paycheck.

It's not a bad thing that women are able to become independent today with no spouse or children. In fact I agree that it's better now that women are no longer literally forced to find a man to live separate from their parents. It's just bad that capitalism made it impossible to be a mother without two incomes (as in, forcing both parental figures to have enough of an income to provide for the child). To add, this is partially what the school system is for - not just to educate the workforce of the future, but to babysit them during the day so that their parents can work their 9-5.

Women wanted to enter the workforce. No one (capitalism, capitalists, men) forced them to do so. That is why your framing is bad.

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