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Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy (2013)

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Re: Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy (2013)

#31

Post by anindyabd »

gdubs wrote: post #29
dkarapetyan wrote: post #24

What a silly analysis. Japanese are not having babies so the economy is doomed. Maybe less consumption and unmitigated infinite growth is not such a bad thing.

I'm reading Stewart Brand's book "Whole Earth Discipline" right now [1]. Prior to reading the book, I would have had a similar assumption. Turns out that population collapse is potentially very dangerous to the environment. Why? Because a rapid collapse in population would cause economic distress and wars over resources. During economic crisis, environmental conservation tends to (unfortunately) go out the window. An…

I don't understand. Why would a collapse in population cause wars over resources? If there are less people, shouldn't that mean that there will be more resources to go around for everyone?

Re: Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy (2013)

#32

Post by peterwwillis »

nerdo wrote: post #5

> More than half of Japanese are single. 49 percent of unmarried women and 61 of unmarried men, ages 18 to 34, are not in any kind of romantic relationship. So 12-24% of women are sharing men then? Or would this be an artifact of the age bounding and women pairing with older, not counted men?

Or have more same-sex relationships. Or the men are overemphasizing on the lack of romance in the relationship. Or the unmarried women are seeing married men. Or the statistics are flawed.

I think sharing is actually the most likely if you consider the "herbivore men" trend. If more men are unwilling to have a sexual relationship than women, it would figure that the left over "carnivore men" would need to pick up the slack, resulting in sharing.

Poor carnivores.

Re: Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy (2013)

#33

Post by unsignedint »

It's really nothing sexual, rather economical. If you plot marriage rate by their income level, you'll see it's impacting heavily for lower income group.

For women at least some good chunk of "cannot meet a suitable partner" is pretty much "can't find a suitable partner making good money" and it got to the point, that it's common things people joke about these days. :-) But here's some relevant data[1] about it from the post in the past.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579574

Re: Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy (2013)

#34

Post by VLM »

john_b wrote: post #12
VLM wrote: post #9

Isn't their current economy significantly smaller than their current population, the same problem the USA has, but worse? In that case they can either suffer eternally, shrink their population to match their economy, or expand their economy. Apparently #1 is unappealing, they're carrying out #2, and #3 has proven impossible for the past couple decades. One way to report on the future is to make a "questioning" articl…

> "Isn't their current economy significantly smaller than their current population" I'm not sure what you mean. These are apples and oranges you are comparing here.

Supply and demand. Much like the various ecological simulations of predator/prey or food/consumer.

So if you have an economy that only has space for 90M people as participants yet have 100M population, you've got a very big problem. Immigration, starvation, revolution, they'll find something to do. Or if they're mellow they'll just sit out the supposed societal mandates, after all, what else could they do?

Re: Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy (2013)

#37

Post by gdubs »

anindyabd wrote: post #31
gdubs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reading Stewart Brand's book "Whole Earth Discipline" right now [1]. Prior to reading the book, I would have had a similar assumption. Turns out that population collapse is potentially very dangerous to the environment. Why? Because a rapid collapse in population would cause economic distress and wars over resources. During economic crisis, environmental conservation tends to (unfortunately) go out the window. An…

I don't understand. Why would a collapse in population cause wars over resources? If there are less people, shouldn't that mean that there will be more resources to go around for everyone?

If the population collapse wasn't economically devastating than this would be true. But, according to the book, lower fertility rates result in an aging population that becomes an economic liability -- especially if it happens rapidly. In an economic crisis, resources become constrained even if there are technically plenty to go around. I'm sure there are examples of this in America's Great Depression.

I'm not by any means an expert in this area -- just doing the best I can to paraphrase what so far has been a very interesting and paradigm shattering book.

Re: Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy (2013)

#38

Post by srgvd »

adventured wrote: post #10

"Japanese people aren't having enough kids to sustain a healthy economy." The premise of this article is absurd, and flat out wrong. Japan's big problem is debt, currency destruction, a collapsing standard of living due to the prior two items (zero savings rate, trillions in loans to the government being paid back in debased currency, high taxes, ~45% of tax revenue being eaten by debt servicing costs, and so on). Al…

Well, the economy might sustain, but the pension system is surely doomed. Which means some drastic political fluctuations, as major (and active) voters will be stripped from their expected (and promised) wealth. And any political disturbance when you are a 3rd economy in the world with 200% GDP in debt might blow up in World's face easily.

If this debt is ever to be paid, this'll be surely done partly with funds now parked at US treasuries. And, of course, any economic issues in Japan will hit China hard as well - which is another major holder of US's debt. So, top-3 biggest economies in the World might go down in instance, sinking others with them.

Japan might try to compensate that by active foreign workforce infusions (like Europe do), - but they are a really closed society still, and their foreigners count is just under 2 mil (compare with 16 mil for, say, Russia, with comparable, though much younger on average, total population size), which is nothing.

Re: Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy (2013)

#39

Post by jameshart »

adventured wrote: post #10

"Japanese people aren't having enough kids to sustain a healthy economy." The premise of this article is absurd, and flat out wrong. Japan's big problem is debt, currency destruction, a collapsing standard of living due to the prior two items (zero savings rate, trillions in loans to the government being paid back in debased currency, high taxes, ~45% of tax revenue being eaten by debt servicing costs, and so on). Al…

Or, concisely: there's a reason GDP/capita is a widely used metric.

Re: Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy (2013)

#40

Post by shillster »

phkahler wrote: post #15
shillster wrote: post #2

Reproductive apathy is not the same as sexual.

>> Reproductive apathy is not the same as sexual. No, but this is: "More than a third of childbearing-age Japanese have never had sex: 39 percent of women and 36 percent of men, ages 18 to 34"

How does this statistic compare to other countries? I suspect its in the same ballpark everywhere.
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