Japan's Population Falls At Fastest Rate Since 1968 295
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Japan's population, excluding resident foreigners, fell at the beginning of this year at its fastest pace since comparable figures were kept in 1968, highlighting the demographic challenge to economic growth. As of Jan. 1, the number of Japanese people fell by a record 308,084 from a year earlier to 125,583,658, marking the eighth consecutive year of declines, government data showed Wednesday. The number of births fell 2.9 percent from the previous year ago to 981,202, the lowest since comparable data became available in 1974. People aged 65 or older accounted for 27.2 percent of the total population, the highest ratio on record, while the ratio of those aged 14 or younger fell to a record low of 12.7 percent, the data showed. The number of registered foreign residents increased to 2,323,428, up 6.9 percent from a year earlier, according to the data.
Japanese women can have a child or career (Score:4, Interesting)
This has really got to do with Japanese women's roles in society and opportunities.
Japanese society says to Japanese women you can either have a child or a career . Seems Japanese woman are choosing a Career.
The times are a changing my friend.....
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There is a tendency for the courts to favor the mother in custody rights.
However most divorces don't go to that extreme where they choose for joint custody. Normally when it gets that bad it is because the child is under harm with the care of the individual.
Sadly normally the father is the cause of the problem. Being that the guy is rather scummy anyways he has a hard time functioning in society. So he ends up loosing his job because he is a jerk and lazy so they fire him. Driving like a jerk so he gets
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If you loose your job, there's a good chance you'll loose your drivers license, passport and end up in jail for not paying support, even if it's not possible for you to work. Why would you ever risk that?
Funny how debtor's prisons have made their triumphant return. The ultimate fiscal insanity.
But the point is well taken. Any man signing up for the modern day husband/father shitshow needs counseling.
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If you loose your job, there's a good chance you'll loose your drivers license,
I hate it when I can't tighten my job and driver's license.
You loosen your job to stay at home and loosen your license to walking.
The US may be headed this way too (Score:5, Insightful)
As a father of 2 kids, I've performed my evolutionary duty. :-) However, there are plenty of younger people in the US who aren't, and in my opinion they're being somewhat rational. Having kids is a big risk unless you just don't give a crap -- they cost a lot of money and you have to be much more careful about maintaining your income and savings than if you were on your own. Millenials are also skipping traditional adult rites of passage like marriage, house-buying, etc. that lay the groundwork for a family. Plus, those that do have kids are having fewer, later. Generally, people are less religious, have heard of birth control, and are less worried about child mortality, therefore less inclined to have "spare" children.
Japan has a few things that are really slowing their birthrate - almost zero permanent immigration, a very slow economy for the last 20 years, a traditional society that says women can have either children or a career but not both, and a reputation for a workaholic culture. People are just so busy spending their lives at work so they can keep their jobs that having a family comes second. This is a big reversal from the 1980s/1990s...I remember growing up hearing that Japan was taking over the world. MBA programs were toying with the idea of making Japanese language study a requirement if I remember correctly. This is similar to what China is doing now, but China has the population to sustain it in my opinion.
We in the US could be headed down this road too. Imagine if we close the borders and enter a period of economic stagnation. Couple this with the trend towards unstable employment, the gig economy, etc. Back in the 50s/60s, a man could count on being employed for life by a large US company and would take on the risk of a family, kids, house, car, etc. Now (IMO) we've let the pendulum swing too far back in favor of employers and removed any loyalty/stability either side had to the other. Hopefully people will realize that they want stability again once this Second Dotcom Bubble bursts and takes many of the sharing economy employers with it.
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Unlike Japan, the US is not severely overpopulated.
You folks have plenty of room to move, while Japanese people are crowded into small amounts of useful land between mountains, which they have been known to level to get new land. Japanese population decline is no tragedy. They can afford to import guest labour in future if needed to care for the elderly.
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Unlike Japan, the US is not severely overpopulated.
Japan is not overpopulated. They've made the decision (collectively) to move everyone into cities. The Tokyo-Hiroshima region has a lot of people, but the rest is full of open space.
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Going into google maps/earth, I see a country covered in mountains, with villages and intensive farming crowded into every crevice between the mountains.
My Australia is said to be the second-most urbanised country after Japan, but our cities more resemble Los Angeles than Tokyo. ie sprawl.
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Japan is not overpopulated
Japan imports approximately sixty percent of its food and around eighty percent of its energy (in the form of fuels.) By my definition, if a nation can't feed itself, including energy consumption, it's overpopulated. You can make up your own definitions if you like, though. M-W defines it as "the condition of having a population so dense as to cause environmental deterioration, an impaired quality of life, or a population crash". Japan mostly externalizes its environmental deterioration; Japan itself is som
Re:The US may be headed this way too (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, so by your definition, America is overpopulated, too. Carry on.
We are not dependent on foreign oil. We are choosing to burn foreign oil for probably a number of geopolitical reasons, plus the usual kickbacks etc.
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Unlike Japan, the US is not severely overpopulated.
That's not relevant to the problem of an ageing society.
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Buying a house is a problem because housing prices have risen too much. "Settling down" (getting married and such) is a lot harder if you don't have a house. When you have a house, you can start getting things you like and have places to put them. If you're planning on moving too much, acquiring assets is a net negative because you have to move them.
Re:The US may be headed this way too (Score:4, Insightful)
The only reason it's even a problem is because most Western economies are built on the next generation funding the increasingly extravagant lifestyles of the last.
So when problems like this attempt to be tackled, by say, cutting the amount of free shit old people get (i.e. by removing free bus passes, and TV licenses as well as a couple of hundred quid free money for heating from millionaire pensioners) we get absurd arguments like "I paid for it", but given that there's no money to fund it that's evidence enough that they have not in fact paid for it.
Reduction in population is probably a good thing overall, it reduces pressure on the planet's resources, it reduces competition for wealth and resources reducing conflict, and it it generally just creates greater sustainability - we don't need to build as much, we don't need to harvest as much, and in an increasingly roboticised nation like Japan the loss of labour needn't be a problem.
But economies have to change to cater to shrinking populations, and that means older generations getting what they actually paid for, rather than expecting the next generation to pay for what they think the world owes them, which is politically difficult given that those generations are typically most likely to vote because when you're sat around with nothing to do all day you have ample time to do so.
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we get absurd arguments like "I paid for it", but given that there's no money to fund it that's evidence enough that they have not in fact paid for it.
Not necessarily. Some times it's that the politicians use the money for other crap.
My grandfather had a retirement saving account. At some point the government realized that there were lots of money in those retirement savings accounts, so they socialized the pension system, moving all that money into the state budget. They then went on to spend the money, and instead used the money from the next generation to pay back the previous generation.
Now we also have shrinking generations (though not as much as Jap
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It's mostly the baby boomer generation at fault here. They were exceptionally irresponsible, financially, socially and with the environment. And they have a massive sense of entitlement, especially to property and the wealth it represents. They think they did well because they are worth half a million quid, even though most of that is tied up in the house that younger people could never afford now.
When you point out things like the environmental damage that we are now having to pay to fix, they say "it was
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Bingo. The main problem in Japan is that having children is unattractive. It's extremely expensive, often living space is limited, and it can really damage the mother's career.
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I think it is pretty simple. Most developed countries have declining birth rates to the point of population decline, this is for a variety of reasons, many of which you mention. Japan might be slightly worse for a few cultural reasons, but not by much likely. However most developed countries augment their population loss with immigration, typically from less developed countries which have less of those factors and thus a higher birthrate. As someone mentioned in a post Japan culturally is also pretty xenoph
Quick! Make them take in Middle Eastern migrants! (Score:2, Funny)
And don't compel them to assimilate or work! That'll take care of Japans problems!
I have 5 children (Score:5, Interesting)
Also at some point our health care system started spending the majority of its money on people in their last 18 months of life. There are a lot of other wealth transfers from the young to older generations, house prices, government debt... There is likely some tipping point were the share of the economy that is given to 18 - 30 year olds becomes so small that they don't feel secure enough to start a family. My suspicion is that most western countries crossed that point a while ago.
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Problem is you will always get the rationalists bleating on about how having a womb makes women worth less than men to an employer, and how children are a lifestyle choice, and why should they pay to school other people's offspring... While also complaining about immigration.
It won't be until it's far too late that they realize there are not enough young people around and they personally are fucked by it. It takes 25+ years to make a doctor, minimum.
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Problem is you will always get the rationalists bleating on
Ahh, now I finally understand AmiMoJo. Being rational is a negative in your opinion.
It seems to me that you are either intentionally misunderstanding or actually do not (want to) understand. Let's face it: all people are both rational and irrational. I am, you are, AmiMoJo is, everybody is. For instance, the rational thing is to treat one's body well and both eat healthy and exercise enough. Yet most people do not do that. Because for whatever "irrational" reason people choose not to. My understanding of AmiMoJo's complaints about rationalists is about people for instance claiming that ea
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The replacement rate is higher than 2. This because a minority of people die prematurely before being able to reproduce (or reproduce as much as they otherwise would have). This means that in Western countries the replacement rate is about 2.1. Obviously it's higher in developing countries. Worldwide, the average replacement rate is 2.3 [wikipedia.org].
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Parenting is a complex decision based on logic, love, and reptilian need (did a neanderthal ever say "i need to get humping, replacement rate and all that"). You're basically asking "i can only view this complex decision along these lines... please explain your reasoning"... I think this is a "if you need to ask you might not understand the answer" question.
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Watch videos on YouTube about renting a (minuscule) apartment in Japan. It's insane.
Robots! (Score:2)
Not sure how yet, but somehow robots will be involved in the solution.
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A Failed System (Score:5, Interesting)
You spend your entire school life studying your ass off. You aren't supposed to do much outside of school except study. Having a relationship is discouraged to the extreme.
Then you get a job where you work 12 to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. You have no time to actually meet someone so the odds of having a relationship are slim. Added bonus. Your boss will treat you like shit. Everything you do will be criticized. I guess it's some mistaken belief that you'll work even harder.
On the unlikely event you find and marry someone at work, she has to quit her job and have babies. You get to keep working 12 to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. So if, by some miracle, you have children, you'll never see them.
No wonder young people are rejecting the entire social system and hiding from the world or committing suicide.
Re:A Failed System (Score:5, Informative)
You must know that it's not typical for people to work 12 to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week...
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All we need is hard work myth.
Success comes from hard work, but it also comes from being smart, creative, efficient, lucky and knowing the right people.
America and Asia are stuck on the Hard Work = success and failure means you didn't work hard enough.
Our value as a human being isn't based on how much money we have or what we do. Just because we are willing to do a job that is hard to fill.
Our value is based on how we handle our lives.
If you are working flipping burgers. You probably made dozens of people
de-evolution ? (Score:2)
My neighbor, Robert Klark Graham, founder of the 'Nobel Sperm Bank' had a favorite slogan: "The smarter you are, the more children you should have." He would publish that as an advert in various Mensa publications. I attended some of his talks which were always uplifting and positive, but I never heard him mention the corollary to his slogan. (i.e. 'what about other people?')
In any case, we seem to have got that obvious evolutionary lesson backward. Certain populations reproduce like bunnies while the smart
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Normally the stereotype smart guy not getting the girl. Is due to some other flaws not because they are smart.
However family planning is a new concept where it makes more personal economic since to have less children then more, while good for the economy on a large scale. However right now we are faced with overpopulation as a stresser too. We cannot afford to use up the resources faster then they can be made and we need to preserve for the next generation.
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Good for them (Score:2, Interesting)
They seem to be the only country that's adapting to mineral and energy depletion. Other countries will have a rude awakening in a couple of years.
Let's open the borders! That'll fix it. (Score:2, Funny)
Because all people are exactly the same, and Somalia is exactly the same as Japan.
We should learn from their example (Score:4, Insightful)
The rest of the world could learn from their example and allow the earth's population to drop naturally.
Instead everyone falls back on knee-jerk beliefs that
- We need exponentially growing economies, which require exponentially growing populations, which are impossible to sustain on a finite planet
- Going to Mars will somehow alleviate overpopulation on Earth
- Populations are leveling off, which isn't related to the problem that we are over the planet's carrying capacity, drawing down and depleting resources
- Too few young people won't be able to support older ones, despite increases in productivity that allow 2% of the population to do what used to take 25%, to use the example of farming
- Lowering the population means eugenics or racism
- Human nature [insert opinion about human nature]
- Fusion or some other technology will save us (without population control it extends the overshoot leading to collapse)
- etc
All of the above beliefs are demonstrably wrong. There's no reason we can't allow the population to decrease without hurting anyone or any economy by simply having fewer children. Everyone would live in a world of more abundance per person. There would be as much culture as before and the species' chances of survival would increase.
The challenge is doing it. Step one is disabusing ourselves of the above beliefs.
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It's widely known birth rate reduces with the increase of the standards of living. Right now population growth is mainly driven by India and Africa. India looks like it will stabilize in the medium term, Africa doesn't look good in the near future.
To sum up, many countries ha
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It's widely known birth rate reduces with the increase of the standards of living.
Not fundamentally standard of living, but rather female education.
Although those two tend to be correlated as well.
e.g.
http://www.economist.com/node/... [economist.com]
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The rest of the world could learn from their example and allow the earth's population to drop naturally.
Except that's not what Japan is doing. They're trying various things to try to get their population to stop falling. Of course, they're trying everything but admitting that their make-work culture is bullshit...
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- Going to Mars will somehow alleviate overpopulation on Earth
Going to Mars is meant to prevent rapid underpopulation of Earth the next time a major disaster occurs, it wont do anything for overpopulation.
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Should have said rapid underpopulation of the human race, wont help Earth much...
13.5 million people (Score:2)
Who ... wants to live in such close proximity to that many people?
Apparently 13.5 million [wikipedia.org] people do.
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Who ... wants to live in such close proximity to that many people?
Apparently 13.5 million [wikipedia.org] people do.
Nobody lives there anymore. Its too crowded.
(As Yogi Berra would have said.)
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Because cities are where the jobs are. People don't want to live in cities, but most people prefer living in the outskirts of a large city and spending half their lives commuting to a job in the center than living with space in the forest.
Given the choice, I (and many others) would choose to live in a large house in a small town or village, and have a short congestion-free journey to work or work remotely.
If i live outside the major cities, i can afford a much larger house which includes dedicated space for
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Japan is trying to solve this with new public transport links.
For example, about a decade a go a new train line called the Tsukuba Express was built. It runs right into central Tokyo, partly underground and mostly elevated. When proposed it looked like a train to nowhere, but when you examined the plans you could see that they were going to build whole new towns along it too. Now it's hugely popular, people get to live outside the endless, unbroken cityscape of Tokyo and it's a huge success.
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It's not a problem when it's peaceful... but it means the death toll gets crazy high whenever a radioactive monster or space armada attacks the city.
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It's not a problem when it's peaceful... but it means the death toll gets crazy high whenever a radioactive monster or space armada attacks the city.
This is why you need to upgrade to Tokyo 3 first. Tokyo 1 and 2 just don't cut it.
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Have you seen Tokyo's population? That city could definitely use a decrease. Who the fuck wants to live in such close proximity to that many people?
I found it more tolerable to live close t that many people than to live close to any other people, including my own. The Japanese nature is ideally suited to living in close quarters. Even though it's not overall a crowded country - it's all small villages and unpopulated wilderness when you go out of town - they enjoy living close to each other.
Re:This is good news. (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you seen Tokyo's population? That city could definitely use a decrease. Who the fuck wants to live in such close proximity to that many people?
I found it more tolerable to live close t that many people than to live close to any other people, including my own. The Japanese nature is ideally suited to living in close quarters. Even though it's not overall a crowded country - it's all small villages and unpopulated wilderness when you go out of town - they enjoy living close to each other.
That's because Japanese culture, in general, understands manners and social graces. Things Americans wouldn't think twice about are major faux pas in Japanese society.
Americans seem to think that if they are kind to a stranger, if they yield, if they voluntarily allow someone else to be first ... if they say "excuse me" and actually give the other person a second to move instead of immediately invading their personal space like it was not a polite request but a warning ... if they decide that blocking high-traffic doorways, hallways and other narrow shared public spaces might be rude ... if they show any sort of respect to another person especially one they don't know, who is not their boss in any way ... well then they lose at least ten points.
Americans don't think of these things as common courtesy - that was a generation or two ago. Now, Americans think of these things as acts of subservience, a tacit admission that someone else is better than you. They have confused self-centeredness with individuality. So they think that "who will take your shit without serious challenge" is the real measure of self-hood and significance. Ask any American who has ever worked a job in retail. So it's no wonder that Japanese are better at living closely together with less (though certainly not zero) stress overall.
The real issue with Americans is they're generally so very provincial. They tend not to have personally experienced foreign cultures and don't think much about multiple ways to do things. This is a major flaw because the whole American Melting Pot concept is based on conscious awareness, not mindless obedience from lack of other known options. Plenty of cultures other than the Japanese can highlight this, it's just that this one was on-topic.
Re:This is good news. (Score:5, Insightful)
While there's definitely some truth to this, a large part of it is also that Japanese tend to be much passive aggressive. So, the whole subway groping phenomenon is so pervasive that basically nothing is done about it. And those who want to raise awareness? They use kawai imagery because even anti-groping messages have to be cube.
Talk about pot calling the kettle black. Japan is massive provincial, xenophobic, sexist, and generally peaceful based upon a system of mindless obedience. The American Melting Pot concept is not base on conscious awareness as much as constant exposure which happens in cities but not most of rural America. This does not translate into wholly self-centeredness but there's definitely a lot more of it and more awareness of it in American tourists--consider how few Americans leave the country and see how much that creates a huge bias.
In any case, the Japanese crave cities like a lot of people crave cities: it's the best place to have a sustainable career with a substantial income. It's why the East/West coasts in the US have so many people. The main difference is that in the US the vast majority of the rest of the space is wide, open space. In Japan, it's mountains. It's little wonder a greater percentage might cluster around cities that have been heavily leveled/terraced. The other major point, of course, is having 125 million people in so small a space,
regardless.
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Re:Testosterone levels (Score:4, Interesting)
The natural end result of psychopathic capitalism, https://www.anabolicmen.com/st... [anabolicmen.com], the endless rabid dog, eat rabid dog (sane healthy dogs do not eat each other) stress cycle. The whole of government and society orientated to exploitation of the majority to feed the insatiable psychopathic greed of the minority, produces the stresses which cripple the long term outcome for those societies. Why they fuck would you choose to feed your children to the fires of psychopathic capitalism, just say no, seriously what do you lose, stress and worry until the day you die for children you force into a self destructive system that will endeavour to prey upon them (seriously that is the current goal, prey upon as many others as possible to be celebrated and worshipped by main stream media), this versus well, nothing but something close to living your life as an overgrown teenager until the very end, just don't 'believe' the marketing, spend big to reproduce or die 'er' 'um' forgotten (like so what and like it wont happen anyhow), no support from children (like they will even be able to afford it, no full time employment, no home ownership) or the happiness of your children (watching them die in for profit wars, see them bankrupted by health care costs and most likely living a life of poverty). Billion of years of past and billions of years of future, either life is worth more than a mud monkey experience (serving the greed of those more anti-social than your are) or why play the fucking game.
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Right on the money! ;-)
Don't know why you're getting shit.
But seriously, Japan just beat the rest of the world to the endgame of the current system. And hey, this isn't the first time in history where people say "fuck it," and quit. I'm right there with those evil people refusing to breed, pretty much for the reasons you put down. Once the power structures at large become visible in all walks of life, you feel the cage, and unless you can find a way to ensure security (or you are one of the few with true p
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Re:Testosterone levels (Score:5, Insightful)
People are having fewer children because we're so productive and good at keeping them alive, there isn't as much incentive to spawn half a dozen or more for extra farm labor. Household productivity is likewise vastly improved to the point where women can work part or full time outside of the house without the household falling into complete disarray so most of them don't want to sit around being a baby factory either. And its a good thing as well. The world doesn't need even more people when we haven't figured out how to make sure that the ones we have are all at a reasonable baseline and not committing various atrocities towards one and other.
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I look at the state where I live (Connecticut), and I see a place where all of the manufacturing and office jobs continue to disappear and keep getting replaced with low wage service jobs. We're quickly getting to a point where the only people left will be a handful of wealthy retired business owners and their families, and a bunch of poor folks offering services for these people.
So, yeah, I'm not really interested in having a bunch of kids knowing that they will likely end up washing the dogs and manicurin
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You know, in the USA, you are free to move to where the jobs are......?
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That's silly...there are plenty of jobs in the US, they just may not be located in Connecticut like the OP was talking about....
There are jobs in the US, you just may have to move to another state to get the job and wages, and cost of living you desire.
It is pretty simple really....you just can't be scared to move a few 100 miles or more away from mommy and daddy.
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People are having fewer children because we're so productive and good at keeping them alive, there isn't as much incentive to spawn half a dozen or more for extra farm labor.
I suppose that having no children at all is a subset of having fewer children.
But we are become so productive that going out of existence is the goal? I'm guessing that personal productivity is not the only reason for negative population growth.
There are many reasons that people might decide not to have children, or even avoid entanglements with the opposite sex. Google "Dried Fish woman" and "Herbivore man", both social changes in Japan. Here's the Wikipedia pages for the herbivore men, couldn't fin
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But the game is broken and I won't play. Not in the US anyway.
Don't sell the rest of the West short. Did you know that there is a feminist ideology based snow plowing system in Sweden? https://heatst.com/world/femin... [heatst.com] It appears that clearning the roads is pandering to the Patriarchy, and since women are more likely to walk and bicycle, (their stupid assumption) the orders came down that the roads get plowed last, the sidewalks first. Didn't work for some reason.
One of the most amusing and stupid things about humanity is that no matter the political leaning - left
Re:Testosterone levels (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh for fucks sake, quit it with this nonsense. This whole "exploitation of the majority for the minority" fits any form of government. Do you think the common man lived any better under the various feudal systems that predate the modern capitalist economies?
No, but that's no reason to "quit it" with what you call "this nonsense". The simple fact is that constant vigilance is the price of freedom precisely because human nature has not changed. Things are much better for the average person today than it was then, but the way we are living now (as a species) is unsustainable and is destroying our habitat. We can't just rest on our laurels because things are better today than they were during the dark ages.
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People are having fewer children because we're so productive and good at keeping them alive, there isn't as much incentive to spawn half a dozen or more for extra farm labor. Household productivity is likewise vastly improved to the point where women can work part or full time outside of the house without the household falling into complete disarray so most of them don't want to sit around being a baby factory either. And its a good thing as well. The world doesn't need even more people when we haven't figured out how to make sure that the ones we have are all at a reasonable baseline and not committing various atrocities towards one and other.
Honnestly, I think you forgot the most important reason : We have Birth control now
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"People are having fewer children"
No, they're not. Not globally, for sure.
Yeah, Japan, Western Europe, the US of A - also some Eastern European countries fit the profile of "diminishing population". So what? that's more than compensated by Africa, most of Asia, maybe South America (too lazy to look at the data). World's population is booming despite the reduction in western civilization countries.
Want to stop population reduction? Carefully select and allow immigrants in, without yelling "omg they gonna ste
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This went to a very dark place, fast.
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You are a fucking nutcase.
There folks is the opinion of a Consumer Sucker destined to live their life perpetually in debt so they can have the life the advertisers tell them they should have so the companies can sell them ever more shit they don't need to keep the money train rolling.
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Sorry to blow your mind, but the USA is BEHIND Japan on penis size:
https://www.pri.org/stories/20... [pri.org]
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That's what happens when you don't adopt the metric system.
Re:Tiny penis + NEET = doomed population (Score:4, Funny)
But they have the biggest dick as president. That must count for something.
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Your doing it wrong.
Exactly. (Score:2, Funny)
It's not like Tokyo is going "holy shit 13 million people is not enough! More births please!"
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Yup. People act like a decreasing population is a disaster, but the reverse true. Put bluntly there are too many people on this planet. We can either reduce our population, as Japan is doing, or suffer the consequences (see India, Africa etc). Japan is living proof that this can be done in comfortably, despite the dire warnings from economists and politicians with an investment in the perpetual growth con.
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Put bluntly, you are a fucked-up moron.
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Yup. People act like a decreasing population is a disaster, but the reverse true. Put bluntly there are too many people on this planet
Sustainable carrying capacity of the planet is not static.
Single individuals in industrialized countries consume the resources of dozens of people in poor countries.
Production, management and availability of technology and resources dominate outcomes much more so than counts of living humans.
either reduce our population, as Japan is doing, or suffer the consequences (see India, Africa etc).
Or you can spend 30 seconds thumbing through lists of countries by actual population density and realize the premise of this argument does not hold up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Japan is living proof that this can be done in comfortably, despite the dire warnings from economists and politicians with an investment in the perpetual growth con.
Japan "comfortably" has the worlds
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Robot elder care.
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Age care will be a nurse, a doctor on call and many new robots. Or care at home with robot and a nurse or doctor visiting as needed.
Beds will be made by robots, food delivered by robots, friendly robots will sit with old people and alert to any changes.
A lot of kitchen workers, cleaners, laundry workers in shifts will just not be needed.
Ne
Re: You realize people die, right? (Score:2)
Old people are known for dying - but older and older as technology improves. It's not at all a problem that will literally die out, as in the next 20 years we are probably looking at a 2x life extension for anyone under 60 today.
Re: (Score:2)
The old people will die off. Problem solved.
If they don't, then clearly the economy, infrastructure, etc. is there to support them at the same (or higher) ratio as before. So what's the problem?
We need fewer people on this planet. We're well over 7 billion now. Even 1 billion would be sustainable and very resilient.
Not in misery (Score:2)
Hell I don't see people WANTING to live that long in old age misery.
The point you are missing is that there will be no "old age misery" until close to 150.
If you could feel like you were 40-50 until you reached about 130-140... why would you NOT want to do that?
It upends a lot of systems though, and drastically changes calculations around retirement.
Best prepare for it now though.
Re: (Score:3)
The actual goods and services consumed by pensioners will still be produced by the contemporary work force. The funding is just bookkeeping. If the number of consumers vs producers are too far off then at least one of the sides will suffer, no matter how you stack it.
Unless productivity per man-hour suddenly shoots up. It just might, but that's a pretty scary bet.
There is also a downside to a savings-heavy approach: a greater portion of the economy is owned and governed according to the interest of pension
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The actual goods and services consumed by pensioners will still be produced by the contemporary work force. The funding is just bookkeeping.
Not completely. If a person was foolish enough to not plan for retirement, they might have to live on Social Security. But that is a pittance. Many of us invested and saved and took advantage of every opportunity to provide for retirement.
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*Nothing* happened in 1968. That's when they started keeping detailed records of the population growth rate. Things were a mess in the post war years, so it took them a while to get back on track.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Because the Rape of Nanking was such a respectable display of humility and positive culture.
Please tell me liberal academia isn't churning out people with this degree of self-loathing and gullible stupidity.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe if we started respecting and encouraging other people's culture rather than always invading and destroying they would flourish. Our arrogance is totally destructive.
It was truly terrible how America, with no provocation at all suddenly decided, "HEY!, let's go and destroy teh culture of Japan. They haven't done a damn thing to us, but that's pretty suspicious, and no doubt.
The historical record is clear. America, for no reason whatsoever, decided to attack the most pacifistic country in the world, that being Japan. A massacre indeed, as Japan had no navy or army, and was completely defenseless.
Seriously, at some level, self loathing and self hatred becomes indisti
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Have you always been an illiterate moron, or is this a result of the regular beatings your mother gives you for being fucked up?
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not equivalent (Score:2)
> It should go OK as long as they don't let Christians in. They want people who want to support and be part of the society. Cristians are mandated by their belief to undermine non-Christian societies and when they have sufficient numbers take over.
While to certain extent this is true there is a big difference between what all but a tiny minority of Christians would want. Firstly very few of them oppose secular democratic governments. They would be happy to convert all the non-Christians that they can, but still have a secular government employing people of all faiths and representing everyone. Secondly all but a few support equal rights for all, whatever religion. They would not want non-Christians to be unable to testify in court against Christans,
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Never underestimate Godzilla.
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It won't make a dent in overpopulation and it will destroy them.
Just like in Europe.