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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

#21

Post by seanmcdirmid »

bpodgursky wrote: post #9

It's worth noting that Japan has higher fertility right now than any peer country in the region, their collapse just started a bit earlier than China/Korea/Taiwan. Believe it or not, Japan is vastly better situated than South Korea or China for what's about to happen.

They got rich before their population started declining. I guess demographics is china’s biggest challenge in making it from a middle income economy to a high income one. However, if they follow Japan’s lead, they will invest in higher productivity via automation.

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

#22

Post by 64bittechie »

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…

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

#23

Post by 64bittechie »

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…

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

#24

Post by choonway »

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.

On the contrary, there is not enough people. you need to have enough babies so that we can _statistically_ cultivate a large enough talent pool - which we need to develop the next gen tech.

You can't let rich/talented hoard resources so that they can pour inordinate resources to their one kid and 'expect' them to inherit the talent. Nature simply doesn't work this way.

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

#25

Post by IIAOPSW »

markdown wrote: post #19
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.

>You don't need those immigrants to breed

Yeah, but maybe you want them ;)

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

#26

Post by Xcelerate »

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…

> but literal existential risks

Unpopular opinion (and playing devil’s advocate since I have two kids), but is it necessarily a bad thing if people stop wanting to have children and the human race just gradually disappears? There are a lot of other types of potential existential threats on the horizon that might be unsolvable and could entail a significant amount of suffering (e.g. global warming, super viruses, rogue AI)—perhaps it’s better to stop reproducing and just let things end peacefully? I can’t thing of a great argument for forcing societies to continue having children if they no longer wish to do so. Sure, you’ll have some “who will take care of all the elderly in 50 years?” but you could plan a bit for that and the problem would only last for one generation.

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

#27

Post by akasakahakada »

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.

Agree. Earth as a whole do not lack human, just the matter of imbalanced distribution. More people simply means more pollution and waste. People should consider the idea of "continues growth" as an illness.

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

#28

Post by Turskarama »

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…

>(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.)

What? The reason low fertility is bad is that you end up with a proportionally small working age population, immigration doesn't "solve" low birth rates but it does solve the problem low birth rates cause. In fact it does it even better, because you have a proportionally lower number of children who are just as unproductive as retirees.

The reason Japan doesn't have much immigration is because they have, shall we say, a strong desire to remain purely Japanese and don't believe immigrants can become truly Japanese.

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

#29

Post by danybittel »

ta1312135 wrote: post #18
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 servic…

So the crisis is that there are not enough products and services for an aging population. That's a different crisis than low birth rates, that should be solved differently.

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

#30

Post by FpUser »

choonway wrote: post #24
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.

On the contrary, there is not enough people. you need to have enough babies so that we can _statistically_ cultivate a large enough talent pool - which we need to develop the next gen tech. You can't let rich/talented hoard resources so that they can pour inordinate resources to their one kid and 'expect' them to inherit the talent. Nature simply doesn't work this way.

>"which we need to develop the next gen tech."

So how many do we need exactly? I think we have more than enough on Earth. Problem is that we are quite busy fucking up each other's life using this "next gen tech".

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