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South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

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Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#231

Post by dragonwriter »

tablespoon wrote: post #171
dragonwriter wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. Its kind of amazing how often people make judgements based on extrapolating demographic trends over much longer terms than there is any reason to think that they will hold, and then as soon as they fail turn around and do the same thing based on the new demograp…

> OTOH, most of the arguments I’ve seen for it actually being important (in the near term) are the kind where you scratch the surface and underneath is pure racism, so I’m not all that concerned. Can you go into more detail on that? In some respects "demographic suicide" solved with immigration has many (but not all) of the characteristics of colonization, and I think it's a reasonable speculation that colonized and…

> Can you go into more detail on that?

A typical example is a two-step argument equating race/biological heritage with culture and/or ethnic identity coupled with appeals to an imperative to preserve culture and/ot ethnic identity.

Something like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28051854

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#232

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

novok wrote: post #195
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's trying and then there's trying. Japan is doing the first kind, where you put some effort in, but it's kind of limp. The other kind of trying is when you put vigorous effort into making it easier to have children. Dramatically ramp up childcare support. Strongly enforce anti-discrimination laws, particularly in the case of discrimination against mothers. Forbid employers from requiring more than 40h of work pe…

I think the real changes needed are also politically unpopular with a bunch of old people and other politically powerful classes. Making children more viable for the young will probably mean making real estate not a good investment for one example, making house spouse / the homer simpson lifestyle more viable, thus reducing the labor force and increasing the cost of labor and so on. For now, it's easier to kick the c…

This is right too. Although on some level one suspects parts of this problem are self correcting over a longer timescale. If the predicted population implosions begin to manifest, there will also be a corresponding decrease in the demand for housing, and a corresponding increase in wages paid to labor as it becomes more scarce. These trends will make having children easier. I know it's hard to picture that world but many times it has come to pass that we have arrived after twenty years at a world that would have been hard to predict.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#233

Post by UncleOxidant »

calmd wrote: post #7

SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea How does the developed world pull out of this ty…

SK doesn't have a large amount of land to grow into which means real estate is expensive which in turn limits population growth (people have less kids when real estate is expensive). SK has one of the highest population densities in the world [1] Having a stable population with that kind of constraint on land seems like a good thing.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/south-korea-popu...

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#234

Post by oezi »

Clewza313 wrote: post #104
yorwba wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economically, Japan's GDP per capita (measured in 2010 US$) was 39,240 in 1991 and grew to 49,000 in 2019, a 25% increase. Yes, it's slower growth than before, but slow growth is still growth, not stagnation. For comparison, New Zealand was at 38,345 in 2019: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?end=2020... (also threw in the graph for South Korea)

During that time the USD has suffered around 88% inflation measures by CPI, so in real terms that implies they're going backwards.

When my parents went to Japan in the eighties they were shocked that coffee in Tokyo was 4 times as expensive as in Germany. When I visited in 2016 I was similarly shocked that a vending machine Coca Cola costs half of what it costs in Germany. Japan's deflation has led the country to be very affordable.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#235

Post by fleaaaa »

mathverse wrote: post #160
keewee7 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is immigration but with high barrier to entry. I live in Denmark, a country portrayed as anti-immigrant by American and British media. However there is no opposition to educated professional immigrants from India, China, Iran and Eastern Europe. Brain drain of these countries could be a problem but countries like India and Iran are probably producing many more highly educated individuals than they can do…

You cant just easily immigrate to CJK countries.You will not become a part of the society.That's just impossible.Not even those of us that married koreans,speak the language and know the customs are that accepted in the society.We are tolerated and easily live and work there but you will never become korean or japanese or chinese. You will always be the "foreigner".

Difference on appearance will always be there unless the gene is mixed till the degree you can't tell the race. As in exact opposite position of yours, I think it's just a thing that can't be addressed in our life time, though I might be wrong.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#236

Post by sandworm101 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #135
csomar wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Immigration has become an issue lately because a human (or a bare-human) is worth much less. 1.000 years ago a bare illiterate human had some considerable value. He could work in the field or he could fight. More humans, more food and production. More humans, more manpower to fight your enemies. Now a bare semi-educated human is a liability. Which is why most countries are refusing their entrance. Times h…

There's only so much juice you can squeeze out of a shrinking workforce, though. And as retirees continue to make up a larger portion of the popular vote - they'll continue to demand more from a shrinking workforce. At some point (I imagine in my lifetime) - the straw will break the camel's back.

>> juice you can squeeze out of a shrinking workforce

On the assumption that the economy is based on a workforce. An economy can be based on paper assets. An "innovation nation" that makes GDP out of intellectual property assets, banking and offshore investments could sustain itself without the need for an ever-growing labor force. SK isn't Luxembourg, but nor is it India.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Luxembourg

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#237

Post by jeffreyrogers »

spothedog1 wrote: post #190
csomar wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Immigration has become an issue lately because a human (or a bare-human) is worth much less. 1.000 years ago a bare illiterate human had some considerable value. He could work in the field or he could fight. More humans, more food and production. More humans, more manpower to fight your enemies. Now a bare semi-educated human is a liability. Which is why most countries are refusing their entrance. Times h…

This is inaccurate. More people, even low skilled ones are still a huge benefit to your society. They buy goods and services in the local economy increasing demand and work tax paying jobs. Immigrants children grow up to greatly out earn their parents pay way more in taxes than they their parents. The only immigrant group that could be considered a liability are older low skilled workers who have passed the age to ha…

> The reason certain countries don’t like immigration is because a conservative faction wants to keep society in place.

This is so simplified that it is basically false. There are a range of reasons for not supporting immigration, but basically no one wants to "keep society in place". I will note that the USA had historically low immigration in the post-war period that was associated with rapidly rising wellbeing[0].

[0]: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/Ann...

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#238

Post by jeffreyrogers »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #229
nostromo wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their point is that is becoming less and less true and will likely be false soon. Most labor simply isn't worth as much as it used to be. This is evident in stagnant wages and the view of large families not as assets but as liabilities. You can try to spur local demand by expanding your population (via birth or immigration) but what we really care about is GDP per capita. Most very populous countries are not wealthy.

> Most labor simply isn't worth as much as it used to be. This is evident in stagnant wages You're assuming an efficient market, which we've long known is a flawed assumption.

Where is that assumption? I'm not seeing it in the claim.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#239

Post by closeparen »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13
calmd wrote: post #7

SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea How does the developed world pull out of this ty…

> going to be one of the grand challenges of the 50 years I’m sceptical of this claim. Demand per capita grows unabated. Working lives are lengthening. A smaller population living well is economically indistinguishable, in the aggregate, from a large one living poorly. Maybe post-industrial civilisations settle into a lower-population steady state than ones requiring lots of unrefined labor. Yes, dependency ratios wi…

Young people consume things that can be made at scale. The march of technology makes the things we buy cheaper, better, and more abundant. At the same time, it makes labor related to the production of that technology more valuable.

Old people consume 1:1 care. And as medical technology improves, elderly people survive increasingly complex conditions requiring increasingly labor-intensive management. At the same time, work with scalable impact is still getting more valuable, so 1:1 care positions have to pay more to win workers, so 1:1 care gets more expensive (cost disease).

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#240

Post by second--shift »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #153
1-6 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a fast internet provider is all relative. If you only had to maintain the landmass equivalent to the state of Indiana, you can quickly upgrade everyone's infrastructure. The government also initially started the telecommunications projects, now they're all transitioned to the private sector. North and South Korea are complementary in economic capability. Some even go as far at to conclude that the reunification…

What' the average internet speed in Indiana?

pretty poor, as a percentage of land mass.

not too bad, as a percentage of population.

Most of Indiana by land is (very) rural, and in probably half of counties the fastest internet available will be sub 10Mbps.

In the major metro areas, Verizon/Frontier, Comcast, and AT&T "compete" and provide 1Gbps, with Frontier at least offering FTTH. I pay $60/month for 400/400 fiber.

source: i worked for a (rural) ISP in Indiana.

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