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Comment by devbent | Hacker News Reader

The odds of society staying stable and current social trends continuing over 25 generations is pretty much 0.

25 generations is over 600 years!

Exactly. Making policy decisions now for what the world will look like in 600 years is absurd. Humanity has proven to be quite bad at making good policy decisions for the current generation, much less 5 or 10 generations from now.

There are policies from 600 years ago that are in effect and beneficial. Like the Magna Carta [0], which was 800 years ago, and its derivatives.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

Fair point. Though I wonder how much the original authors/participants were thinking about the long impact of history vs the more immediate needs and impacts. (In the great tradition of internet commenting, this statement was made with minimal detailed knowledge. Perhaps the authors were primarily focused on the long sweep of history.)

I do think my original point still stands that we seem to be quite bad at making good decisions for more immediate generations. Considering our rather pressing current challenges (climate change, continued warfare, etc.) I'd settle for getting the next few generations in a better place before thinking about 25 generations from now.

It’s not a 25 generations from now problem. South Korea expects that in just 50 years, they’ll have a 25% smaller population where a near-majority of people are over 65.

I wasn't arguing that falling populations is something we only need to worry about 25 generations from now. I was saying we should probably look at solving problems in a more immediate time-frame.

For South Korea specifically, the population challenges are probably more immediate than other countries.

It's been going on for three generations now with no signs of stopping, so we're already 10%+ there.

Not saying the trend will 100% continue, but looking how hard is life for a young person in an ageing society it appears to be self-perpetuating.

You'd need something to put all those old people holding all the votes and wealth out of the picture.

[0] Global population growth rate peaked in 1963 and is now at a level last seen before WW2.

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