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Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

cnn.com

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Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#11

Post by jeeeb »

anovikov wrote: post #4
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not pay to bring immigrants who can start their families without caring much about making them to bear japanese children in the first place? that sounds like you want human ovens because your own machines are outdated. That is..... uh... bad lets say i am given incentive to move to japan and start a family there, i would contribute to the workforce, the children would be "japanese" anyway because they would be bo…

Japanese don't want non-Japanese (non-Yamato) people in there. Even 1/4 non-Yamato people face discrimination, and half-Japanese essentially have sub-human status. Even if the other half comes from richest and most civilised countries on Earth. Also seriously, no foreigners understand Japan. I don't think this is a country someone from the outside can really integrate there.

Say what!? I think you have an image of Japan stuck in the 19050’s.

I lived there for years and have known many people with mixed heritage, including my own children. Many choose to live in Japan because they feel comfortable there and that it is their home.

Modern Japan has millions of immigrants, and is thankfully free of the weird borderline eugenics stuff you’re proposing in your first comment.

Making babies isn’t an end goal. Children need to be raised in loving caring families in order to thrive.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#12

Post by fwlr »

In times of crisis during war, countries may draft men into combat to fight against their will. If this fertility crisis keeps up, I wonder if we will see a similar kind of draft for women to breed. It seems unconscionable but literal existential risks can drive countries to do a lot of unconscionable things.

(Immigration isn’t the answer, their fertility rate also gets depressed just like the native population. All it achieves is to balance the birth/death rate on paper for the year.)

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#13

Post by anovikov »

zarzavat wrote: post #5
anovikov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese don't want non-Japanese (non-Yamato) people in there. Even 1/4 non-Yamato people face discrimination, and half-Japanese essentially have sub-human status. Even if the other half comes from richest and most civilised countries on Earth. Also seriously, no foreigners understand Japan. I don't think this is a country someone from the outside can really integrate there.

Maybe Japanese society deserves to go extinct? If Japanese people are not willing to reproduce at anything close to replacement rate, and they are not willing to accept intermarriage with outside cultures, then the logical conclusion is that “Japan” is a cultural dead end that will eventually cease to exist. I say this as someone who quite likes Japan.

Thing is, that is common for all "true" Asian cultures. Maybe, for all non-Abrahamic cultures even. Before demographic transition, people of all countries multiplied because they had no way around it (no contraception) and because they had to (kids used as working hands from early age and funded their parents in the old age). When demographic transition happened, in Abrahamic cultures, people still sort-of continued to multiply because it was the God's will to multiply and procreate, and fill the Earth, they saw it as sort of a sin to avoid that duty.

To Chinese or Japanese, God said nothing, so they simply stopped having kids once they could stop and once they had nothing pressing them to.

Only difference in our (Western) perception of China and Japan in this sense is that we see this process in China positively and Japan, negatively... That's of course cynical but true.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#14

Post by PebblesHD »

anovikov wrote: post #4
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not pay to bring immigrants who can start their families without caring much about making them to bear japanese children in the first place? that sounds like you want human ovens because your own machines are outdated. That is..... uh... bad lets say i am given incentive to move to japan and start a family there, i would contribute to the workforce, the children would be "japanese" anyway because they would be bo…

Japanese don't want non-Japanese (non-Yamato) people in there. Even 1/4 non-Yamato people face discrimination, and half-Japanese essentially have sub-human status. Even if the other half comes from richest and most civilised countries on Earth. Also seriously, no foreigners understand Japan. I don't think this is a country someone from the outside can really integrate there.

That’s a fairly uncharitable way of phrasing it. You can live a perfectly reasonable life in Japan as a permanent resident, even one of english heritage, without too much trouble from discrimination. I may not live there full time but over the years I've lived there part of the year I’ve made friends and advanced my career all the same as my native Japanese coworkers and associates.

Yes, there is some juvenile behaviour from people who are prejudiced against foreigners and even mixed descent residents, but that happens in many countries including my native Australia. As with those places, the vast majority of people are perfectly agreeable and will cause you no grief.

Culturally, as long as you aren’t going out of your way to be particularly individualistic, you can participate pretty much the same as everywhere else. Of course, like many older workplaces elsewhere, you’ll have a harder time if you want to be unique and stand out.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#15

Post by marsven_422 »

anovikov wrote: post #2

Why not bring in many immigrant women and have them bear Japanese children through IVF as surrogates, with eggs and sperm selected randomly from a collection of healthy, successful Japanese donors? And then pay for their upbringing in government-sponsored facilities. Because there is usually more than 1 kid born through IVF, say 1.5, and about 65% of IVFs result in a life birth with usual miscarriage terms being very…

[dead]

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#16

Post by allisdust »

anovikov wrote: post #2

Why not bring in many immigrant women and have them bear Japanese children through IVF as surrogates, with eggs and sperm selected randomly from a collection of healthy, successful Japanese donors? And then pay for their upbringing in government-sponsored facilities. Because there is usually more than 1 kid born through IVF, say 1.5, and about 65% of IVFs result in a life birth with usual miscarriage terms being very…

Because kids (and in general humans) are not robots and need love of their parents ? Instead of exploiting immigrants for their wombs, let them in like any other non robotic thinking society does.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#17

Post by hackerlight »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #3
anovikov wrote: post #2

Why not bring in many immigrant women and have them bear Japanese children through IVF as surrogates, with eggs and sperm selected randomly from a collection of healthy, successful Japanese donors? And then pay for their upbringing in government-sponsored facilities. Because there is usually more than 1 kid born through IVF, say 1.5, and about 65% of IVFs result in a life birth with usual miscarriage terms being very…

why not pay to bring immigrants who can start their families without caring much about making them to bear japanese children in the first place? that sounds like you want human ovens because your own machines are outdated. That is..... uh... bad lets say i am given incentive to move to japan and start a family there, i would contribute to the workforce, the children would be "japanese" anyway because they would be bo…

I'd prefer it if Japan had open borders. But absent this ideal scenario, that doesn't mean that "human ovens" is bad in an absolute sense. Poor people would get lots of money that they otherwise couldn't get. That is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. You only think it's bad because you subjectively dislike the aesthetics of it and you decide on the behalf of poor people that being lifted out of poverty isn't sufficiently good to outweigh your aesthetic dislike of the reason they were lifted out of poverty.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#18

Post by ta1312135 »

admissionsguy wrote: post #10

How unhinged is it to call the lack of exponential population growth a crisis? There are enough (way too many in fact) people already. The social and economic mechanisms just have to adapt to the steady-state or even decreasing population levels. We should be grateful it is happening spontaneously, instead of having to think of instituting invasive policies to limit growth.

How unhinged is it to call the lack of exponential population growth a crisis?

That is not what is being called a crisis.

Fertility rate being *far* below replacement (1.3 vs 2.1) is being called a crisis.

If the population falls to quickly the ratio of young to old gets unbalanced and there are not enough people young enough to do the work needed to support the population too old to work. All the products and services like food and healthcare that the old consume still need to be physically produced regardless of nominal price, so simply saying "save more money for retirement" is not a solution.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#19

Post by markdown »

fwlr wrote: post #12

In times of crisis during war, countries may draft men into combat to fight against their will. If this fertility crisis keeps up, I wonder if we will see a similar kind of draft for women to breed. It seems unconscionable but literal existential risks can drive countries to do a lot of unconscionable things. (Immigration isn’t the answer, their fertility rate also gets depressed just like the native population. All…

You only need to gain immigrants to do work that natives won't. You don't need those immigrants to breed, no more than you need the natives to keep breeding.

As more and more jobs become obsolete, a country will be able to run just fine on fewer people, so long as there are enough people to do the work that can't be automated.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#20

Post by gorwell »

anovikov wrote: post #2

Why not bring in many immigrant women and have them bear Japanese children through IVF as surrogates, with eggs and sperm selected randomly from a collection of healthy, successful Japanese donors? And then pay for their upbringing in government-sponsored facilities. Because there is usually more than 1 kid born through IVF, say 1.5, and about 65% of IVFs result in a life birth with usual miscarriage terms being very…

There's a great book called Brave New World that explores something like that.
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