Comment by nickd2001 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nickd2001 | Hacker News Reader

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Couple of thoughts. (1) To me, immigration can indeed fill the gap. An endless supply of people wish to leave poorer , or hotter (which is a problem with climate change) countries, for richer ones. This will hurt the poorer countries that end up with an ageing population. OTOH if those poorer countries are becoming too hot to live in, that's a good move for people , although awful for those left behind. (2) Cost of raising kids - in my experience the richer people are the more they seem to worry. Maybe those of us raised on less are simply used to being creative about getting by on less, and unfazed by the prospect. To use your 2 examples- music lessons can be had in many ways, often cheap/almost free such as joining a community music group where people will pass on skills. Disneyland - hardly essential, or any form of hardship for a child to miss out on that, IMHO. There are many ways to have a meaningful life, get plenty of education etc, without spending a fortune. While housing has gone up a lot, my parents' generation will say that in the past there were housing booms too, followed by super high interest rates, and everything else used to take relatively more of income, including food and clothes. A difference then was public transport was better in many ways and cheaper, so a car not as essential. I think the main difference now is peoples' expectations. Since the planet can't sustain ever-increasing consumption habits, probably its a good thing people are having less kids.

As I pointed out already, it is not in fact endless, and most of those poorer countries are steadily becoming richer. South Korea used to be poor as shit, not so much anymore. Eastern Europe has improved massively, parts of it have caught up to parts of Western Europe. China isn't nearly as poor as it was a few decades ago either.

I was thinking of countries more like India and Nigeria, both of which, despite becoming richer and having lower fertility themselves, have populations projected to exceed China's, and both projected to become too hot to live in without big problems. Its not literally an "endless" supply, but its easily enough to cover gaps in the west. If fertility fell 75% in the west, could probably fill it with people from those countries. And that might be a win-win in certain ways. The west then doesn't have an aging population. People in too hot countries get to move. The suffering happens to old people left in poor hot countries, which is a sad thing. In the end yes you are correct its not endless, but this must be a very long way off.

I think endless supply of "brown" people is going to become limited supply of brow immigration because voices in rich western countries are not going to see that as win-win.

Do you foresee a massive upsurge in racism then? I hope not, and that over time people will become more sensible about seeing those who look different from them as simply "other people". In the UK, some of the most racist people are dying out and being replaced with people who are used to growing up in a multi-ethnic society and having friends that look different. There was some hoo-hah a couple years back when politicians wanted to stir up racism and the England football team was having none if it, they are a bunch of young lads of many colours who value each other equally, as it should be. OTOH unfortunately we now have right-wing politicians who themselves are non-white who are trying to stir up racism against people the same colour as them.

I'm in Canada and pro-immigration young demographics liberal leaning are starting to signal against immigration - too much inflows driving costs up (housing which I think UK understands). PoC right-wing politicians and if UK constituent anything like Canadian conservatives, it reflects lots of immigrant PoCs have, fuck you, got mine, attitude towards new immigrants. They didn't claw their way to the west from global south, to "suffer" mass inflow from global south diminishing perks of the west. They like their priveledge as well. Maybe we can sort out cost of living crisis that reduces immigration friction, but I suspect not, because the fuck you, got mine interests runs deep.

human capitals in these countries is not distribuited the same as in the western world or even most of asia. Thats reality under the luxury belief that anybody can be "integrated"

Yeah, there's a upper bound to skilled labour production in developing countries unless they massively improve education, but that's also an enviroment correlated with better development and less outflows. But there's plenty of bodies, IMO not everyone has luxury to prioritize skilled immigration like Anglo countries (who themselves lose cream to US), and even Anglo countries might eventually have to settle for less skilled if what is needed is just bodies to keep economy growing. Even if productiity return is subpar.

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