In a lot of other rural places on Earth, even if they are in poverty, there is usually a decent amount of activity even if some buildings are abandoned. There are families (often very large ones with many kids), drunk hooligans, outgoing salt of the earth types.
Rural Japan in contrast is quiet, mostly elderly, and more culturally “refined” at least on its face. And if you go wandering around, even as a very conspicuous foreigner, because of the language barrier and general cultural introversion, the few people you do see will mostly politely ignore you or not initiate conversation. Similarly while buildings may be abandoned and overgrown with plants there is usually very little trash (not counting what was simply left there, think more like plastic bags and empty beer bottles from teens hanging out) and no graffiti.
Other places that may be obviously in decline have evidence of a future and continued habitation, even if bleak, from young people vandalizing abandoned places, families going about their day, and confused middle aged folks trying to ask why you are even visiting their place and if you’re lost. In rural Japan, especially if you don’t speak Japanese, it’s more like you are a ghost wandering around a place resigned to evaporate, whose remaining inhabitants stoically continue on their peaceful day to day.
Villages with less than 10 full time residents, collapsing buildings, overgrown vegetation and roaming animals.
He was writing about sovereignty within one's own consciousness and I'm not referencing this particular context in this case (although they probably are related) but more generally how "the hinterlands" provide a place away from the beam of focus that a society maintains.
Almost by definition these places feel forgotten but once you get over the unnerving sense of separation and isolation from everything, your imagination seems to recover some of its creativity. That creativity then fills in the gaps visually to create an aesthetically pleasing setting even if it didn't feel that way at first.
Appreciate the aesthetics vs rust belt and cottage country.
In a way an abandoned village is just another type of zen garden…
They have a massively ageing population, which is the true problem.
In 2060, over 40% of the population will be pensioners requiring payouts, according to the japanese health ministry.
And yes, they have low birth rates and no population growth (whether via immigration or otherwise). This is actually going to bite them at some point.
> They have a massively ageing population, which is the true problem.
The true problem is exponential growth resulting in exponential destruction of the environment, no matter how much you fiddle with the factors. People act like if we (by some unlikely miracle) get a handle on CO2 emissions that it will all be smooth sailing from then on. The sad reality is that pollution, destruction of species and habitat, and depletion of non-renewable resources, until now has been driven almost entirely by factors other than climate change.
> In 2060, over 40% of the population will be pensioners requiring payouts, according to the japanese health ministry.
That sounds good, good thing they have been transitioning to a sustainable society and economy rather than stacking the pyramid ever higher to delay the inevitable. You know global population is expected to level by that time then fall, right?
> And yes, they have low birth rates and no population growth (whether via immigration or otherwise). This is actually going to bite them at some point.
This is what the pyramid schemers (the "experts", the banks, the billionaires, the neolibs) have been crying wolf about for decades. Sure it isn't simple, but they are managing it. And it will bite everybody pretty soon. What would be nice is if, when it bites, we haven't driven societies and the environment to the absolute limit into a brick wall before that, but instead let populations in highly consuming countries naturally peak and decline, and manage that gracefully.
An ever shrinking population of productive people (percentage-wise) is going to have to provide goods and services for an ever growing population of people who can no longer work.
It’s a huge burden. Taxes will be higher - which will have all the associated consequences.
What if we tip the scale to young more and treat them fairer? What if we start moving some of the services to the young instead of the old?
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2020/03/shr...
It's not a unique Japan problem tbf. The young people are getting shafted all over the world.
If the issue is wealth disparity, then why only target the elderly not the young people who are wealthy as well?
And the elderly largely don't work, because they can't anymore.
Shifting services means the elderly will get poorer. Which given the high wealth level they have in developed countries relative to the young is not a catastrophe. However it would be a huge adjustment to expectations downward, since the elderly would have the rug pulled out from under them. Whereas the young haven't yet had a chance to adjust their expectations up since they haven't had money yet. Hence the political settlement.
For a prosaic example, in many US states funding for public universities has been cut to pay for public sector pensions in the past thirty years. This has shifted educational costs to the young in exchange for maintaining the benefits of retirees. This is an example of shifting services from young to old.
The actual amount of goods and services produced will be lesser and/or be stretched thinner.
The only real way to combat it is to import young people from places with a mostly young population and getting them productive to make up for the productivity shortfall.
Actually my rhetorical question is only half wrong. People, young and old, are selfish. They are however not at all ignorant about who butters their bread. If you want to increase spending on the young, then you need more young to vote for that.
If anything the growing ranks of the elderly guarantee a greater share of public spending will go towards them. From a growth perspective, that's a vicious cycle. From a fairness perspective... well it kinda makes sense that larger cohorts should get more spending in a democratic society. I get there's a lot of nuance, but this is the gist afaict.
Japan has PPP per capita income more than twice as high as China, 5x India. The idea it can't possibly pay more to take care of its elderly and infirm otherwise its society will collapse is up there with the most ludicrous wall street craziness I've ever heard. And they've already been ousted as shysters, mind you, because they've been repeating the same thing for a generation now. Because what they are really scared of as I said is people waking up to the fact that their pyramid scheme isn't the only way to do things.
Seems to me that by the time we reach a global crunch, countries like Japan that will already be a generation or two into addressing this problem and restructuring their societies and economies to cope without ever increasing population will be in a far better position than those continuing to push unsustainable growth to defer the inevitable.
I have heard many more ludicrous things. Japan is already heavily indebted and as relative per capita productivity will decrease significantly while while taxes increase there won’t be necessarily that many incentives for young people to stay in the country further exacerbating the problem.
> their pyramid scheme isn't the only way to do things.
Any suggestions?
> better position than those continuing to push unsustainable growth to defer the inevitable.
Or far worse.
> without ever increasing population
Who said anything about ever increasing population? Why are you even saying that?
The problem is a severe decrease in population accompanied by a similarly severe increase in average age.
And it seems to be often times very pro-climate action positions that take this contradictory position that population must continue to increase. I don't know what to make of that other than either they don't really care about climate change, or they want commoners to have a dwindling piece of the pie while the top end continues to get richer, but either way they don't seem to really care about environmental impact of humans.
It's one of the slowest ways to reduce our carbon emissions. If by 2070 population (in some country) is 30% lower than today that's a dramatic change. But the effect on the environment (land use, carbon emissions etc) is likely not more than 30%, and that's not much!
By 2070 most developed countries in the world are supposed to have net zero carbon emissions. That target is not going to be significantly easier to reach with 30% lower population.
I don't think I estimated it anywhere, so I don't think I am. And in fact I was not just talking about CO2 emissions and climate change, to the contrary I explicitly said actually that climate change is one of a long, long, long list of massive environmental problems we're facing. That's the thing, even if we do "solve" climate change somehow, we're not remotely in the clear.
Reducing (or just not growing) population makes everything easier. CO2 emissions. Land required for food, lithium and other minerals and metals required for cars and computers and batteries and buildings, farming and housing footprint, clean water. Everything. No other measure is as staggeringly effective in reducing the human footprint on the environment as not increasing population.
> It's one of the slowest ways to reduce our carbon emissions. If by 2070 population (in some country) is 30% lower than today that's a dramatic change. But the effect on the environment (land use, carbon emissions etc) is likely not more than 30%, and that's not much!
It's compounding and it certainly is an issue. US CO2 emissions peaked 50 years ago if population was stable.