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Comment by oska | Hacker News Reader

Disappointing to see the use of the word 'suffers' in the headline. It betrays a natalist ideology that appears much too frequently in the reporting of Japan's shrinking population.

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Given that none of the entitlements that western-style governments have set up work with a declining population, someone's gonna suffer alright.

Yeah, a population aging and shrinking in numbers is something that should be viewed neutrally or even celebrated...

God forbid is people express a preference for renewal of population and births...

You seem to be expressing two entirely different view points in the same post ... which one is sarcastic?

The first.

Many of the world's problems could be greatly alleviated if we collectively agreed that shrinking, not growing, our populations over time is the right thing to do. Unfortunately, nationalism incentivizes the opposite. No country's going to go first.

> No country's going to go first.

Apparently one is.

Apparently Japan is. Now that China and India have "won" that particular game, it doesn't seem worth playing.

I imagine the government will eventually take steps to try to fix this "problem". It's not exactly voluntary.

What are you talking about? Many countries have gone "first" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline#Decline_by_n...

In much of the developed world the fertility (children per woman) is barely the (slightly over) 2.0 required to sustain the population. Countries where, say, 1.0 children are born per woman is having a rapidly shrinking population, but more seriously a rapidly aging population where a smaller number of working people supports a larger and larger number of elderly.

If a country wanted to have a shrinking population, it would likely want a fertility rate of just below 2. Japan has 1.41 (!) and barely any immigration.

The solution to global population issues is making sure that poor countries with high fertility rate (4-7) are brought down to 2-2.5, something which is already happening very quickly. See e.g. Hans Rosling's famous talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeXJnOE-1gw

The solution to the low fertility rate is likely hard to change short term (cultural), but comparing countries in europe for example, it seems likely that making children reforms such as subsidized day-care, free higher education etc. would help.

Regardless, current estimates that I've seen point to the population of the Earth stabilizing at around 10 billion. People always say that we can't move from industrial to more sustainable types of farming because our current population levels couldn't be sustained. Where is that cut-off point? 1 billion? Less? I think that point is what all "enlightened" nations should be aiming for in terms of policy — the point where we could all survive comfortably without having to depend on oil-based products just to feed us. (Otherwise, it'll eventually have to happen naturally, and it won't be pretty.)

There isn't a clear distinction between "needs oil" and "sustainable". It's quite likely that there are ways (or ways to be found) to farm very efficiently without ruining the planet. Btw I think the latest prognosis was bumped to 11bn.

Right thing to do for what? Whose taxes are going to pay for the massively indebted welfare states of the West or should they default?

They should default. A few years later the investors will be back the same as before.

Actually lots of the first world population are shrinking or near flatlining.

So, what you propose is basic "you third world guys should be shrinking, not growing".

On the other hand, this first world countries, not the populous third world ones, consume most of resources and fuck the environment more...

On first-world countries and resources: that's beginning to change. Yes, on a per-capita basis, OECD nations (largely the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, NZ, Japan) consume more resources than elsewhere. China's absolutely stunning economic growth over the past 20 years has been accompanied by an equally stunning growth in resource consumption, and the country exceeded the US in CO2 emissions by 2006: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_the...

That said, I = P * A * T holds. Environmental impact is a function of population, per-capita affluence (resource consumption), and technology.

There are economic issues, as the article notes. But a gradual decline is not catastrophic. A slightly less crowded country is almost certainly a good thing in the long term.

I hear this all the time... But I don't think I have heard any actually good arguments... Why is a smaller population a good thing?

Less demand for resources, and consequently less damage to the environment?

> Less demand for resources, and consequently less damage to the environment?

While this is intuitive, it is largely incorrect. As our population has increased, we have become more efficient due to network effects. With a decreasing population, you'll experience a reduction in efficiency.

Also, at what point will you be satisfied? Ideally, with humanity extinct, we'll be using zero resources and won't be damaging the environment at all. That's the definition of misanthropy, isn't it?

> As our population has increased, we have become more efficient

The efficiencies that we've gained hasn't kept up with population growth. If it did, we wouldn't be having major issues with things like climate change, over fishing, or water shortages. Moreover, if you've read one of Bill Gates' more recent blog posts; gaining efficiencies doesn't lessen demand for resources.

http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Making-the-Modern-World

> Also, at what point will you be satisfied? Ideally, with humanity extinct,

Please re-read the post that I replied to. I was just merely giving an answer to a question: "Why is a smaller population a good thing?" You're making too many assumptions with too little data.

A smaller population allows you to devote more resources per capita while reducing the resource consumption of the population as a whole. Apart from the obvious appeal of enjoying at least comparatively luxurious allocation of public resources, this can have real benefits for a modern knowledge economy; having more educational resources to devote per-child can give your country a leg-up on those that have to use their funding on a much larger, ever-growing student body.

Put another way, which problem would you rather have: desperately trying to keep 2000 inner city youth from dropping out of a school that is halfheartedly going through the "everyone should go to college" motions and not really teaching them anything relevant or helpful to their life track so that the majority can graduate into minimum wage service jobs at best or end up on welfare or in a gang at worst, or teaching 20 everything you know about web development or some other marketable trade that can lift them out of the vicious cycle?

I don't really know anything about Japan's education system beyond serafuku, but this is the way I see the world moving in the somewhat near future as manual labor and service jobs continue to fall to automation.

The birthrate problem is advanced nations is actually a real estate problem.

Young couples can't afford a single family dwelling within a reasonable distance of job centers. As a result they rent apartments and buy cats.

A declining population eventually forces the government to create a sustainable housing situation.

True, but a fertility rate of 1.41 isn't really a gradual decline.

I thought the worry is more about the effects of an aging population.

We replaced "suffers" with "records".

I tend to agree - Japan already has a pretty large population (127 million people) for such a small island. That's about 4x what Canada has over a much, much larger land mass and far greater resources. It would seem reasonable for Japan to stabilize at around 5-10mm people. From that perspective, the headline could have been written, "Japan makes great strides towards sustainable population levels once again."

Canada is mostly un-inhabited, and Japan is quite populous.

They're about the worst countries to compare in this fashion.

Canada is very in-efficient in the way land is used and Japan is extremely efficient.

What I was trying to (and failing to do), was highlight that the basic carrying capacity of each landmass is not in sync with the existing population. For them to be at parity, Canada would increase it's population, and Japan would reduce it.

Canada is an extremely low density country. Nine tenths of the population lives within a hundred miles of the US. Most of the rest is Arctic wilderness. A more realistic comparison would be countries such as the United States, Brazil, and the countries of Europe.

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