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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

#81

Post by imtringued »

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…

>not enough people young enough to do the work needed to support the population too old to work

I don't see the problem though. We have a gerontocracy where most of the power has been concentrated by an unusually old generation. If there was a problem they could have done a lot to solve this problem. I mean, why expect the powerless young to solve the problems of the powerful old?

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

#82

Post by imtringued »

barry-cotter wrote: post #31
akasakahakada wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you think people are a problem why not be the solution in your own life?

As others have said, the average fertility rate is below replacement, so if you talk to an average person "being the solution" is already the case.

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

#83

Post by anovikov »

Turskarama wrote: post #68
anovikov wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with "crisis in Western societies". It happens everywhere , including in countries that saw a super massive, skyrocketing (10x+ in one generation) increase of median effective incomes. Simply called a "demographic transition": people are not having kids because they can avoid it (contraception) and because there are no social or economic forces coercing them to have kids. Kids can only meaningful…

>It has nothing to do with "crisis in Western societies" Yes, which is why I said RICH countries, not western countries. It would have been strange for me to focus on western countries, given that this thread is about Japan. >and because there are no social or economic forces coercing them to have kids. This is kind of implying that the primary reason people have children is for economic reasons, but in wealthy count…

Well, if you take the world overall, birth rates are beyond doubt falling (and are now at or near replacement ratio), while wealth is beyond doubt improving fast and has been for several generations virtually nonstop (even major events like Great Depression or WWII did not stop economic growth for the world overall due to being largely regional).

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

#84

Post by imtringued »

ekianjo wrote: post #62
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? Strawman. We are merely talking about not dropping to zero too fast

The population is projected to stop growing by 2100 and even then we will have reached a population of 10 billion.

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

#85

Post by imtringued »

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.

If that wasn't true then most of the advancements in the 20th century wouldn't have happened.

We didn't rely on some superior gene pool, instead we just educated our children in a way that exceeded our expectations.

Also, not raising children means people have more time to spend on technological progress.

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

#86

Post by imtringued »

Xcelerate wrote: post #26
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, rogu…

I don't know why people go from one extreme to the other. There is zero risk of humanity disappearing because of a lack of birth rates.

The shrinking growth rates are problematic for wealthy old people because they realise that their money represents economic power over other people, but if those other people don't exist, then their economic power will be worth much less than they deluded themselves it is. Indulging in the desires of these special interest groups makes no sense for the continued survival of humanity. If anything it makes it harder for humanity to survive as we run the risk of faster resource depletion. If you believe in mars colonies and so on, you would want our society to survive the next 1000 years and not prioritise the next quarter so an old person can retire from their stock returns.

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

#87

Post by imtringued »

throwaway290 wrote: post #48
Xcelerate wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, rogu…

> better to stop reproducing and just let things end peacefully? Prisoner's dilemma, I guess. If everyone stops reproducing, the people who keep at it secure more resources for their offspring.

They don't. Look at African countries with up to seven children per family.

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

#88

Post by imtringued »

mlhpdx wrote: post #46
FpUser wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many having kids is unaffordable I guess you will have to create kids farms. So much to look forward to.

As the population drops resources become more accessible. The problem solves itself.

The problem is wealthy people want to be even wealthier. Telling them they will be less wealthy won't make them happy.

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

#89

Post by ekianjo »

imtringued wrote: post #84
ekianjo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How unhinged is it to call the lack of exponential population growth a crisis? Strawman. We are merely talking about not dropping to zero too fast

The population is projected to stop growing by 2100 and even then we will have reached a population of 10 billion.

that's on the global level. In specific countries the drop is going to happen way sooner.

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

#90

Post by ekianjo »

swexbe wrote: post #76
ekianjo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would seem we live in a world where it's simply too difficult, too unfordable, too little time, and too many problems to have children at a rate These reasons are a lie. The parents of boomers had less disposable income than we do, they were living in a generation devastated by war(s) and they had very much longer working hours that we do now. We have just decided that we don't want to have children, it's not be…

It’s both much more expensive and more time consuming to have a child today compared to <60s.

more expensive compared to what? You have to compare with the median income of people before the 60s too, which was a fraction of what we earn today.
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