Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate
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Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate
#2Going by just their pop culture it’s not apparent to me that this is concern to them.
Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate
#3Going by just their pop culture it’s not apparent to me that this is concern to them.
Can you substantiate this point? What do you mean?
Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate
#4Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate
#5It is always unclear to me if this is a bad thing.
In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off, or does it just look like a decline when you look at the country in aggregate? There is no shortage of squandered talent in the world. So many people work below their capability because there are just more people than opportunities. It seems like it’s not a problem to keep running the modern world, even with a fraction of the current world population.
And besides, many smart folks think we are deep into overshoot, not just on carbon emissions, but on almost every resource we use to run the global economy. If we are beyond the carrying capacity of the planet, then we either need to become massively more efficient or just have massively fewer people on the planet. And given that there is no current hope of sustainable living on any other planet, seems like lowering birth rates can only be a good thing that will give us some chance of surviving our ecological bottleneck.
Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate
#6It is always unclear to me if this is a bad thing. In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off, or does it just look like a decline when you look at the country in aggregate? There is no shortage of squandered talent in the world. So many people work below their capability because there are just more people than opportunities. It seems like it’s not a problem to keep running the modern world, even with…
As population size decreases there will be less viable niche markets and less opportunity.
Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate
#7It is always unclear to me if this is a bad thing. In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off, or does it just look like a decline when you look at the country in aggregate? There is no shortage of squandered talent in the world. So many people work below their capability because there are just more people than opportunities. It seems like it’s not a problem to keep running the modern world, even with…
Most of the past century's gains in quality of life were tightly correlated with rising labor. If the population crashes, then who will do all the specialized work? Another thing to think about is excess capital and investment. With a large population, excess savings become investments into new companies, technologies, etc. Without excess savings there will be no tech industry, improvements in science, infrastructure investments or much of anything interesting.
Environmentalists say that fewer people will be good for the environment. But what about investments and research into green energy and carbon removal? Those will simply not happen unless the economy is still growing.
Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate
#8It is always unclear to me if this is a bad thing. In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off, or does it just look like a decline when you look at the country in aggregate? There is no shortage of squandered talent in the world. So many people work below their capability because there are just more people than opportunities. It seems like it’s not a problem to keep running the modern world, even with…
Everything is fine if reality and expectations are in line. But many societies are projecting economic growth at levels that have historically been underpinned by the increase in demand from sheer population growth, as well as the increase in supply of labor.
Edit: The other issue is tribal. The global tribe has lots of sufficient labor and young people to offset decreasing numbers of young South Koreans, but humans are not fungible. There will be many types of conflict due to cultural differences, as well as shifting power dynamics and the resulting lack of acceptance of newcomers on the same level as native tribe members, etc.
Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate
#9It is always unclear to me if this is a bad thing. In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off, or does it just look like a decline when you look at the country in aggregate? There is no shortage of squandered talent in the world. So many people work below their capability because there are just more people than opportunities. It seems like it’s not a problem to keep running the modern world, even with…
> It is always unclear to me if this is a bad thing.
In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off, or does it just look like a decline when you look at the country in aggregate? There is no shortage of squandered talent in the world. So many people work below their capability because there are just more people than opportunities. It seems like it’s not a problem to keep running the modern world, even with a fraction of the current world population.
It's debatable. Population declines are good for the environment. But rapid drops has cultural, political, economic and geopolitical consequences. e.g. South Korea doesn't really trust NK or China or that they can't really be a manufacturing economy without young workers.
Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate
#10It is always unclear to me if this is a bad thing. In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off, or does it just look like a decline when you look at the country in aggregate? There is no shortage of squandered talent in the world. So many people work below their capability because there are just more people than opportunities. It seems like it’s not a problem to keep running the modern world, even with…
It's simple, in commerce terms it directly implies lower future consumption, lower future labour supply and consequently lower value to investors. Losing economic strength will be a very large concern for any country.