Japan has been grappling with its demographic statistics with a sense of urgency, particularly regarding its declining birth rate. In 2023, the country...
You need people who can actually do work to take care of all the old people & sustain human society. “Less People” is not by-default “more sustainable” especially not if it happens all at once; that was in fact a huge problem with cyclical famines & political turmoil in the days before mechanized agriculture.
If some asshole went around raiding hamlets for plunder, or whatever reason, yeah that would mean fewer mouths to feed in that particular area, but it also means fewer hands to bring food to harvest. Which means other regions have to contribute larger proportions of their own food-stock to sustain the needed intake of urban centers. Which means that they have less food to eat for themselves, and less to replant for the next harvest. Which pushes people on the margins of the the agricultural economy into banditry to sustain themselves, which causes us to return to the beginning of our story.
Eventually this cycle of regional depopulation leading to productivity shortfalls, leading to further regional depopulation becomes self-reinforcing & before you know it you have a country-wide catastrophe on your hand & the total implosion of existing society.
Now we aren’t dependent on mass manual agriculture these days, so famine specifically is an unlikely cause of cyclical societal collapse, but the modern world still requires that a shitload of manual physical labor get done in order to maintain the basic infrastructure that gets everything from where it is, to where it needs to be in order for us to all not die. If you don’t have people to fill those positions, then that’s work that needs to get done, that isn’t being done.
The two biggest issues off the top of my head are rural towns in Japan will continue to lose population and completely disappear, and there won’t be enough young working people paying into health care and social funds to support the old non-working population. I think there are a lot of other major negative impacts Japan will face as a country but I’m just not that knowledgable on the subject.
I assume we just have fundamentally different views on this topic because I really wish humanity would change to a more scientific and explorative approach entirely, where we expand outward into space and become a multi-planetary species, which will need a huge sustained population growth to support. I assume you don’t support that.
Old people can’t work and need someone to pay for their retirement.
If there are more old people than young people (population pyramid wrong way round) every young person needs to pay a crapton of taxes so that old folks don’t starve to death
That’s asinine, you’re treating periphery countries like they’re glorified breeding-stock for the developed world’s work-force.
Edit: To make my point more clear, the whole reason why developing nations have higher birthrates than developed ones is because they’re developing/underdeveloped. They lack access to contraceptives, and substantive access to women’s healthcare; and they also oftentimes have economies that still rely to some extent, or a large extent on non-mechanized smallholder, or subsistence agriculture. That, or they otherwise have social institutions that allow for, or require children to enter the workforce. This means that having children in those countries is often an economic boon to a family (because they can contribute to household incomes through work), and avoiding having them can be very difficult for women.
If you solve their problem of being underdeveloped, & hyper-exploited (which you should be doing if you’re a “queermunist”), then that means that they are likely also going to be in a position where they have declining birthrates because there will no longer be an object material incentive to have children, and women who don’t want to would be able to prevent it.
The idea of shoring up a declining population “through immigration” only works so long as you have an underdeveloped periphery of peoples who want to come flock to the West, or to developed nations in search of higher wages & a higher standard of living (or just avoiding Imperialist political meddling), rather than staying at home.
Well, no, birth rates are low because the reproduction of labor is unpaid labor. Yes, development is associated with lower birthrates, but only because no developed country has ever seriously tried to make reproductive labor a real job. Doing so would decrease the size of the workforce for production of commodities.
Now you’re totally right that the people migrating from the Global South are fleeing underdevelopment from imperialism, and that this is itself a factor of underdevelopment. What you haven’t considered is why the imperial core limits migration.
Racism is part of it, but only part of the larger structural base. If they allowed unlimited migration the imperial core would be filled with people from the periphery as they flee underdevelopment. This would at once reduce the availability of labor in the periphery and raise the contradictions of imperialism by making peripheral concerns into domestic concerns.
Migrants influence the society they’re part of, causing agitation against imperialism. This would, ultimately, destabilize the core and allow for development to resume without imperial meddling.
Okay, but then we can’t just frame the discussion as “increase birth rates or society collapses” because there’s a very obvious third option that they aren’t taking.
It’s not obvious. Low birth rates are completely sustainable, you just kill anyone who can’t afford to retire and can’t work anymore, and society functions perfectly well.
What? In the current system we pay retired people money based on past employment as well as just for living long enough, in most countries. Japan can no longer do that soon because without taxing their young to poverty, they just don’t have enough income to fund it.
Please explain why this is obvious. Less people seems more sustainable, not less.
You need people who can actually do work to take care of all the old people & sustain human society. “Less People” is not by-default “more sustainable” especially not if it happens all at once; that was in fact a huge problem with cyclical famines & political turmoil in the days before mechanized agriculture.
If some asshole went around raiding hamlets for plunder, or whatever reason, yeah that would mean fewer mouths to feed in that particular area, but it also means fewer hands to bring food to harvest. Which means other regions have to contribute larger proportions of their own food-stock to sustain the needed intake of urban centers. Which means that they have less food to eat for themselves, and less to replant for the next harvest. Which pushes people on the margins of the the agricultural economy into banditry to sustain themselves, which causes us to return to the beginning of our story.
Eventually this cycle of regional depopulation leading to productivity shortfalls, leading to further regional depopulation becomes self-reinforcing & before you know it you have a country-wide catastrophe on your hand & the total implosion of existing society.
Now we aren’t dependent on mass manual agriculture these days, so famine specifically is an unlikely cause of cyclical societal collapse, but the modern world still requires that a shitload of manual physical labor get done in order to maintain the basic infrastructure that gets everything from where it is, to where it needs to be in order for us to all not die. If you don’t have people to fill those positions, then that’s work that needs to get done, that isn’t being done.
The two biggest issues off the top of my head are rural towns in Japan will continue to lose population and completely disappear, and there won’t be enough young working people paying into health care and social funds to support the old non-working population. I think there are a lot of other major negative impacts Japan will face as a country but I’m just not that knowledgable on the subject.
I assume we just have fundamentally different views on this topic because I really wish humanity would change to a more scientific and explorative approach entirely, where we expand outward into space and become a multi-planetary species, which will need a huge sustained population growth to support. I assume you don’t support that.
We need to inhabit at least one other plant on a continuous basis before we encourage exponential population growth.
We are going to be resource constrained on this planet long before we expand to others.
Old people can’t work and need someone to pay for their retirement.
If there are more old people than young people (population pyramid wrong way round) every young person needs to pay a crapton of taxes so that old folks don’t starve to death
Nah. Food is cheap and plentiful. We don’t need young people working in fields for old people to be fed.
You do understand that just dumping a bag of produce at grandmas door isn’t enough?
She needs to pay rent, get medical treatment and maybe even help around the house because she isn’t as nimble as before
You understand that there will still be a lot of labor available. It’s not like there will NO workers.
“A lot” is relative. If every worker has to pay for 3 people’s pensions and still have enough to live on, how do you think that will go?
Why can’t immigration replace births?
Why should it?
That’s asinine, you’re treating periphery countries like they’re glorified breeding-stock for the developed world’s work-force.
Edit: To make my point more clear, the whole reason why developing nations have higher birthrates than developed ones is because they’re developing/underdeveloped. They lack access to contraceptives, and substantive access to women’s healthcare; and they also oftentimes have economies that still rely to some extent, or a large extent on non-mechanized smallholder, or subsistence agriculture. That, or they otherwise have social institutions that allow for, or require children to enter the workforce. This means that having children in those countries is often an economic boon to a family (because they can contribute to household incomes through work), and avoiding having them can be very difficult for women.
If you solve their problem of being underdeveloped, & hyper-exploited (which you should be doing if you’re a “queermunist”), then that means that they are likely also going to be in a position where they have declining birthrates because there will no longer be an object material incentive to have children, and women who don’t want to would be able to prevent it.
The idea of shoring up a declining population “through immigration” only works so long as you have an underdeveloped periphery of peoples who want to come flock to the West, or to developed nations in search of higher wages & a higher standard of living (or just avoiding Imperialist political meddling), rather than staying at home.
Well, no, birth rates are low because the reproduction of labor is unpaid labor. Yes, development is associated with lower birthrates, but only because no developed country has ever seriously tried to make reproductive labor a real job. Doing so would decrease the size of the workforce for production of commodities.
Now you’re totally right that the people migrating from the Global South are fleeing underdevelopment from imperialism, and that this is itself a factor of underdevelopment. What you haven’t considered is why the imperial core limits migration.
Racism is part of it, but only part of the larger structural base. If they allowed unlimited migration the imperial core would be filled with people from the periphery as they flee underdevelopment. This would at once reduce the availability of labor in the periphery and raise the contradictions of imperialism by making peripheral concerns into domestic concerns.
Migrants influence the society they’re part of, causing agitation against imperialism. This would, ultimately, destabilize the core and allow for development to resume without imperial meddling.
Because Japan doesn’t do that.
There is an -ism they’re pretty big on, it starts with R
Okay, but then we can’t just frame the discussion as “increase birth rates or society collapses” because there’s a very obvious third option that they aren’t taking.
They apparently don’t do procreation, either.
It’s not obvious. Low birth rates are completely sustainable, you just kill anyone who can’t afford to retire and can’t work anymore, and society functions perfectly well.
We have machines that can do the work of 100 people in the past
I’m sure that we could make it work without killing anyone
We also consume bullshit at 100 times the rate. People will be unhappy to see that go away. But yes, we produce more than enough for everyone as is.
While the alternative is everyone who is unable to wotk is killed anyway by the apathy of the system?
We are doing what you are describing already, in the system we currently live in.
What? In the current system we pay retired people money based on past employment as well as just for living long enough, in most countries. Japan can no longer do that soon because without taxing their young to poverty, they just don’t have enough income to fund it.
If you think unemployment or SS pay a living wage you have things to go learn
I specifically didn’t mention SS and somehow you still bring the US into it in a thread about Japan.
I meant most of the world in general which is why I didn’t name any such programs by name.
?
The US isn’t the whole world. Other countries exist. We’re not even talking about the US here.