Outside a train station near Tokyo, hundreds of people cheer as Sohei Kamiya, head of the surging nationalist party Sanseito, criticizes Japan’s rapidly growing foreign population.
As opponents, separated by uniformed police and bodyguards, accuse him of racism, Kamiya shouts back, saying he is only talking common sense.
Sanseito, while still a minor party, made big gains in July’s parliamentary election, and Kamiya’s “Japanese First” platform of anti-globalism, anti-immigration and anti-liberalism is gaining broader traction ahead of a ruling party vote Saturday that will choose the likely next prime minister.
I keep hearing racist nationalists say stuff like this worldwide, and not matter how hard I squint it remains a non sequitur.
I mean, “we have a population crisis” and “don’t let people come here” seem entirely contradictory unless you are… well, a supremacist.
Which they are, it’s just the leap that gets me. So obvious, so rarely called out and never addressed.
Without getting into discussion about how right or wrong they are those people are primarily worried about the identity of their country. They believe that sustaining the population growth by letting in big numbers of foreigners will destroy their culture. They prefer to suffer the consequences of population crisis than live in a country with different values and traditions. Is it supremacy? Sure it is. But it’s also logical.
Logical if you believe your race/identity are superior to others, which is an illogical starting premise and the root of why conservatives are always on the wrong side of history.
Doesn’t have to the superior, but one of personal preference. You like the current cultural values and know other cultures don’t necessarily share them and so fear a cultural shift.
In this case though I think you’re right that there’s a strong superiority aspect.
What’s illogical about it? How can you even apply logic to personal values and opinions?
Recognize that it is an opinion that some people may disagree with, not a fact that everyone has to accept, and act accordingly. In this case, that means not using the force of government to persecute people who disagree with your opinion.
You’re still talking about how they are wrong but not how they are illogical. You can still apply logic to lies. It doesn’t make them true but it also doesn’t make it illogical.
Wut?
No, I’m not. I am starting from the premise that there is an objective reality we all have to deal with and that different individuals have different subjective preferences, and everything else logically flows from there.
If you’re looking for a utilitarian reason to behave the way I am suggesting, I would say that when you start taking tangible objective actions against everyone who doesn’t agree with your particular subjective preferences you will give people with a variety of different subjective preferences something in common (i.e. that they are being oppressed by you) and that will eventually make them work together to stop you. On a long enough timeline, tyranny is always a losing strategy.
No, I’m not. I am starting from the premise that there is an objective reality we all have to deal with and that different individuals have different subjective preferences, and everything else logically flows from there.
That’s just something you made up. Logic doesn’t start from objective reality and preferences. It’s just a tool.
If A then B. If B then C. Therefore if A then C.
I don’t have to know what A, B and C are in some objective reality for this rule to be true. I can see you struggle to understand that logic is abstract and separate it from facts you want to apply it to but that’s just what logic is. You’re basically confusing logic with truth. To decide what is true you have to start with some objective reality and apply logic to it but you can apply logic to anything. You can apply it correctly to Harry Potter or to invalid facts. You will not reach truth but you’re reasoning can still be logical.
But it’s also logical.
In what world is “I rather die in squalor and let the entire country suffer than see people that look different than me on the street, eat some food I don’t recognize”, logical?
In a world where someone would prefer that. You can’t apply logic to preferences. When I got to a dentists for a filling I ask them not to give me local anesthesia because I prefer the pain to the numbness. 99% of people I know don’t agree. It doesn’t make my choice illogical, it just means I have different preferences.
that is a flawed analogy making it a strawman
the equivalent would be that, instead of the numbness, you rather die in 10 years from this very preventable death… the outrageous extreme of this decision flagship indicator of irrationality
It is only logical if you’re… well, a supremacist.
I mean, it requires a mental framework of how culture and identity work that is fundamentally supremacist.
Culture works by aggregation, it’s entirely unrelated to borders and it is in perpetual shift. This assumption requires misunderstanding culture from a very specific perspective.
So no, not logical.
Internally consistent, yes: make women into reproductive vessels and men into the defenders of a fossilized culture enforced through violence. That’s a consistent worldview.
But not a logical one if you apply it to reality. The difference matters.
It matters if we’re arguing who’s right. If you just want to understand their mental jump it doesn’t. Of course those people are ignorant, misinformed or have ulterior motives but their believes are often logical. It’s like not vaccinating your kids because you believe vaccines are more dangerous than the disease. Or course it’s wrong but if you really believe it, being anti-vax is logical. Where it stops being logical is in the MAGA movement. They want to drain the swamp by voting for a criminal and want to fight pedophiles by electing one. It’s just a cult, there’s no logic there. The far right movements in Europe/Japan are build on misinformation but still need to invent logical arguments.
Sure, but that’s taking the concept of what’s “logical” to absurd extremes. Any sort of paranoid delusion is logical if you accept all of its premises.
Is being antivax logical? Not at all. It requires amazing mental gymnastics to ignore centuries of scientific research. Things that are “logical if you believe them” is a great way to describe things that aren’t logical. Vaccines do not, in fact, by all available measures, cause more dangerous issues than the diseases they prevent. If your “logic” requires a rejection of the entire epistemological framework upon which shared scientific kknowledge is established it’s not “logic”, kind of by definition.
This is the same thing. Its internal consistency isn’t “logic”. It can be shown to not be logical. If you suspend yourself from that conversation, deny the parameters of anybody who disagrees with you and cherry pick your values to specifically support your instinctively desired conclusion, then it doesn’t matter how well you can through your train of thought, it’s still indefensible.
I think that’s why the MAGA thing stumps you a bit. Their train of thought isn’t any better or worse than this. It’s, in fact, identical. Information that supports it gets magnified, information that disrupts it is ignored. They are fun about it in that they add this cool temporal dimension, where that selection is applied regardless of how it was applied before, so they’re all for free speech when people tell them to shut up, all for limiting speech when people criticise them. But that’s not different to the fundamental contradiction of being concerned about a population crisis when you are trying to turn women into walking incubators but concerned about the massive influx of people when you’re trying to be racist.
It’s a lot of things, but it’s not logic.
Sure, but that’s taking the concept of what’s “logical” to absurd extremes.
No, it’s just what logic is. Anti-vaxer doesn’t have to know the science. Not knowing something doesn’t mean my reasoning lacks logic. I can invent some facts and then apply logic to them. Logic doesn’t have to operate on true statements. “All unicorns are pink and all pink animals eat clouds hence all unicorns eat clouds”.
That’s… not how that works when you make statements about the world. Your unicorn example is all well and good in a universe where there are only hypothetical animals, but you’re eliding big chunks of that chain. “Unicorns are pink” is a valid statement in the abstract, but if you’re arguing about animals in the real world that’s not where the chain starts. The chain goes: unicorns exist, unicorns are pink, all pink animals eat clouds.
And of course in this situation you need to evaluate each statement. Unicorns exist is going to be a big fat FALSE, which means you can’t claim all unicorns eat clouds and argue it’s a logical statement. It’s a meaningless statement by itself because it depends on a false assumption.
Which is my exact point. You are claiming the argument is logical because you’re assuming the only requirement is that it is internally consistent when all their premises are accepted. But the premises are false, so it’s not. I appreciate that you’re getting stuck when the chain of statements they cherry pick changes over time (see the free speech example), but they’re not meaningfully different. If you let them cherry pick the clauses they need to verify and ignore everything else they can make a consistent argument in the moment about anything, including vaccines and flat planets and jewish space lasers.
I mean, no they can’t because they suck at this. But still, they can make something close enough to one that if they speak fast and loudly enough on the Internet they can get more morons to follow their channels than to block them, so… here we are, I suppose.
“I want to protect my children and I believe that vaccine are MORE dangerous then disease so I don’t vaccinate my kids” - that’s a logical statement.
“I want lower value and I believe A < B so I choose A”. That’s logical.
In this case, to change the outcome you need to attack the facts. You have to prove that vaccines are in fact LESS dangerous and then, using the same logic, the person will conclude that he should vaccinate his kids.
“I want to protect my children and I believe that vaccine are LESS dangerous then disease so I don’t vaccinate my kids” - that’s illogical statement.
“I want lower value and I believe A < B so I choose B”. That’s illogical.
In this case you’re not going to argue the facts. The person already thinks that vaccines are LESS dangerous but his logic is wrong. You have to fix theirs logic and they will arrive a the correct conclusion.
The original case of anti-foreigner sentiment is the first case. The logic is valid, the facts are wrong. For some reason you’re not getting the difference.
Logic doesn’t have to operate on true statements.
Logic is based on facts, ie: if you jump into a pool > you will get wet.
Believing that logic is not factually-based is absolutely off-base.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure of arguments alone, independent of their topic and content.
Looks at pile of dead cultures in textbook… No, that’s not logical. That’s Jingoist dumbassery.
Like, if you start with the premise that they are right and you are wrong I guess it would be illogical to disagree with them, but that’s just a completely meaningless argument that doesn’t tell us anything too interesting about abstract reasoning nor does it have any substantive connection to factual reality that I can see
Many cultures adapt for the better / become more humanist with open migration. Think of it as enhancing your identity (which is likely just mid at best in its current form if we’re being real)
I think you missed the part where I’m not saying immigration is bad. I’m just explaining how people who oppose immigration think.
If your culture can’t stand up to outside influence was it really that great? Also, the door to the world has been opened. There’s no closing that one it’s been open. So they’d rather crash into civil unrest because ignorant people have a hard on for the old days?
So they’d rather crash into civil unrest because ignorant people have a hard on for the old days?
Yes, exactly. That’s a perfect summary.
Sorry but in the case of Japan, it’s definitely not logical. At best, they have an argument against over-tourism. But the Sanseito party acts like foreigners moving to Japan are creating a spike in crime. They literally have young women weeping through a megaphone on the street, crying that foreigners are rapists. But that’s simply not backed up by statistics. Crime per capita has not increased, and the demographic committing the most serious crimes in Japan is predominantly native Japanese.
So they are lying but their argument is “foreigners cause crime which is worse than demographic issues so we don’t want foreigners” which is logical. Logic != truth.
Pff OK if that’s the argument you want to go with, I don’t think we need to continue.
Yes, I also think that my factual statement accurately pointing out how your reasoning is flawed and how I’m right is a good way to end this discussion.
Japanese people are being fed the same kind of propaganda as UK citizens and Americans. People say ridiculous things like “What if the number of foreigners increases to 20% of the total population? Then women will be sexually assaulted.” Instead of immigrant gangs taking over apartment buildings and eating the pets it’s foreigners buying up all the land to build compounds for foreigners to live in and pooping in the streets.
But there is also a feedback loop where nationalists in Japan make the news, and it’s repeated by right wing foreigners who don’t know Japan but admired their idealized, racially pure Japan where everyone is polite and orderly and this would never happen, and then that gets repeated to Japanese people as if it were large numbers of foreigners warning them not to let immigration ruin Japan as it has ruined those other countries. Most of the Japanese people in this loop don’t understand English, and the right wing foreigners don’t understand Japanese. The reality isn’t always faithfully translated in either direction, and the language barrier makes it harder for people to realize the discrepancy.
I’d like to clarify that I had never hardly ever pooped on a street.
Is there nowhere in the world now that fascist racists are not on the rise?
It feels like we are barreling towards another world war.
I wonder if economics has anything to do with this trend worldwide. When people have to worry about their next meal every day they tend to get frustrated and finding something or someone to blame, rightly or wrongly,is a way to vent that frustration.
With more and more wealth concentrating at the top 1% it stands to reason that the population that feels frustrated is increasing quickly.
it’s a direct result of global economies. When things are bad financially the scapegoats are ALWAYS immigrants and the poor. always. every single time. “Things are tough for you? well it’s that group over there…it’s their fault!” and collectively our society in their infinite wisdom consistently fall for it hook, line, and sinker.
However unlike other countries Japan isn’t pumping out kids regardless of the scape goats. So compared to other places this rhetoric coming from them is extremely idiotic. And if a Japanese person believes this is the way forward then I hold them in lower regard than your average MAGA cultist. I didn’t think you could have a population more stupid than MAGA but Japan, good job, you proved me wrong.
Yeah the consistent and ever growing wealth gap as corporations continue to grow more profitable and people have more trouble affording food and housing is at the core of a lot of it. People are angry, but the corporations/1% are spending billions on social media, lobbying, funding certain political campaigns etc to convince people that their anger should be directed towards others around them. It’s the fault of foreigners, immigrants, minorities, women, LGBTQ, the young, the old, etc etc.
And on the other side of that, Russia has been working to stir up division in a ton of nations since the 90s and has gotten much better at it with social media, so these two groups have homogenized.
Then on the third level, the super rich billionaires like musk and Thiel want dark enlightenment, which is the collapse of society so they can create neofuedalism and run their own techno-slavery-kingdoms, so they want it just as bad.
LGBTQ, trans
What’s that “T” for again?
Ah yeah, sorry, wrote that rant while on the verge of falling asleep, thanks for the heads up
Train enthusiasts?
like how WW2 followed ten years of great depressioning
Of course: the more people feel the system isn’t working for them, the more they’re willing to vote for nontraditional candidates who promise to burn it down. More often than not, those candidates are right-wing demagogues.
Inequality breeds resentment, it’s hardwired in our brains. And resentful people are easily led to blame minorities, something hateful and/or power hungry can use for political gains. The ones causing the inequality are more than happy to help this process asking as it usually keeps them from being blamed.
And as in the current political and economic system the inequality globally can only increase, blame and hate is what you get.
Its so depressing, swap just a few nouns around and it reads exactly like an article about the UK
Is there nowhere in the world now that fascist racists are not on the rise?
Yes. This is a Western capitalism thing; Chinese politics has only recently discovered rightwing nationalism and there are plenty of non-Western thriving democracies in, say, South America.
This has to be one of the most absurd claims I’ve seen in a while. You go on to contradict yourself in your second sentence. And still get it wrong. China didn’t just discover bigotry. They’ve been dealing with it since before the founding of the United States or capitalism for that matter.
South America full of thriving democracies? Are we talking about the authoritarian one Trump is paying to torture innocent undocumented. Or is it the fascist one Trump is talking about sending 20 billion to bail out their flailing populist leadership. Or is it the one that got lucky and woke up enough last minute to unseat their burgeoning fascist and take him to trial? But still chock full of the descendants of nazi german expats. Or was it all the tiny ones around them. That have to deal with all of them and the narco cartels. Regularly having elected leaders slaughtered. Hell even Mexico is struggling with that. And I’d say their leadership is far better that what we have here.
It’s got nothing to do with the west or capitalism. Though the West and capitalism has done very little to actually help the situation. Tribalism and xenophobic bigotry are basic human nature unfortunately.
China didn’t just discover bigotry. They’ve been dealing with it since before the founding of the United States or capitalism for that matter.
Good thing I didn’t say “bigotry,” then, I said “rightwing nationalism.” Also I think it was clear I was referring to the modern PRC, not past Chinese polities. It’s no coincidence that the Uighur genocide, an aggressive posture towards Taiwan and budding pro-natalism all came within the same general time period. China will eventually have to deal with fascism, but they’re not barreling towards it like Western capitalist countries are because their history under capitalism is shorter and fascism hasn’t had time to metastasize yet.
South America full of thriving democracies?
Again literally not what I said. I said there are plenty of thriving democracies in the world, and gave an example of one place where they exist. The existence of non-democratic countries in South America doesn’t contradict this statement.
Or is it the one that got lucky and woke up enough last minute to unseat their burgeoning fascist and take him to trial?
Yes, that one.
But still chock full of the descendants of nazi german expats.
That has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. Like, at all. What’s even your point here?
That have to deal with all of them and the narco cartels.
Fun fact: Homicide rates across South and Central America has been decreasing hard this last decade. Sure the cartels are a massive problem, but they’re a massive problem that’s getting better
It’s got nothing to do with the west or capitalism.
Authoritarianism has nothing to do with the West or capitalism, but fascism specifically is a phenomenon that requires established capitalism.
The fact that you didn’t use the term does not change the fact that it’s what you’re describing.Even if you choose to call it something, it isn’t.
We are not here to play Calvin Ball with you. It’s also quite obvious that people are getting irritated by your kayfabe.
Even if you choose to call it something, it isn’t.
It literally is. Nationalism is a relatively new idea, emerging during the late 18th century. The concept of a French nation or a Chinese nation is a very recent thing, and either way I was very clearly talking about the modern PRC not the fucking Qing dynasty.
Mariana trench.
That’s because our elected leaders are barreling us towards a war. It’s good for the economy…
Come on up to Canada, amigo.
Just don’t acknowledge Alberta and it’s all good
You mean USA-light?
The global collapsing of communism was always inevitable.
There has always been 1 of 2 choices countries would make when it finally arrived.
-
Abandon the system of capital and embrace socialism
-
Quintuple down on all the worst aspects of capitalism by fully embracing fascism and dooming your society to total collapse
-
Japanese people are extremely racist. They genuinely put republicans to shame.
The open secret of most Asian societies!
I’ve known several people who are half Japanese and whose grandmothers would never forgive them for that fact. They’d love all the cousins and shit on them. It’s really sad.
… and just like the USA, it’s all populism, rage baiting and ZERO actual solutions
As it turns out, we are all human and are all vulnerable to the same psychological manipulations. No country is immune without active resistance.
yes but the more ignorant a population is, the easier the target
It’s very easy to judge from the outside looking in. Every country has a version of MAGA. But there are probably people around the world who also sees the entire USA as MAGA, in the same way this post sees Japan as dominated by racists.
I was comparing the racist japanese candidate with the trump clown show
Yes, that’s how these things manifest. I don’t disagree. When I said “this post”, I didn’t mean yours, but the post in general, with all the replies. Some are saying the Japanese hate children, or they wouldn’t go there anymore because of the anti-foreigner stance, or that everyone is overworked.
It’s social media, if you get a half assed knee jerk reaction you got lucky… there are no intelligent discussions going on here
Japan’s population crisis is caused by its young people being too overworked and overcharged to want to have children. Their population by age is becoming very top-heavy which means that the young are paying a lot to keep the old alive.
The solution to this (apart from don’t get into such a situation) is to import young workers to even out your population spread and to raise wages in line with the cost of living and raising a family.
They appear to be shouting “Damn foreigners! Coming over here and making all our elderly live longer than we can economically support them! Overworking our breeding generation so they don’t want kids! Curse those foreigners!”
(overworks and robs an entire generation to death)
“Why would foreigners do this?”
Also I’m almost getting tired of posting this brilliant illustration but sheesh, if the jingoistic authoritarian entitlement clan isn’t using the same playbook every. Time.
It really is the best illustration of exactly what’s happening.
I’m not sure I like this comic because it suggests:
- The immigrant worker is absent a cookie not the other way around
- That the working class is dimwitted and easily hoodwinked into racism
I think both assumptions are actually copes by a middle class who, afraid to look at its own complicity in neoliberalism, find’s easier to condemn the common people as racist and intellectually deficient.
In actuality I think the working class is intuitively aware that their disfranchisement is directly connected to policies like immigration. Along with the opening up of global markets which had a disruptive affect on wages the policy of open immigration has kept wages low and fractured communities and a common sense of culture.
- The immigrant worker is absent a cookie not the other way around
Statistically and visibly just how it is. Those dudes work two jobs that are both really bad to live in a shithole, because they have no choice.
- That the working class is dimwitted and easily hoodwinked into racism
'Member WWII, or WWI, or the various imperial wars before that? I 'member. The prejudices are intuitive alright.
I think not acknowledging that both are true and happen over and over again is a cope. The subset of middle class people who realise what’s going on are that way, because they’re basically working class people, but for whatever reason are privileged enough to spend time actually learning and understanding.
I’m not sure I like this comic because it suggests:
The immigrant worker is absent a cookie not the other way around That the working class is dimwitted and easily hoodwinked into racism
So you dislike it because it’s real and accurate? I don’t understand, it could not be more accurate and straight forward for a comic
I think the cookie represents entitlements or government services granted to citizens.
The wealthy person has oodles of subsidies and tax breaks, but is trying to scare the working person by talking about the immigrant seeking equality.
That is literally the messaging from corporate media sources. The comic doesn’t really get into whether the working person believes it or not, to me it’s more about the messaging used by the wealthy.
I don’t actually think global markets or immigration are inherently bad things. It’s vastly superior to nationalism and rigid borders. The problems are entirely caused capital and the exploitation of workers, hence the plate overflowing with cookies. The wealthy are the problem, not immigrants.
The cookie could just be stuff in general. Rich people have lots for no reason, workers have a little or none depending on whether their ancestors were from a lucky region.
I think the cookie represents entitlements or government services granted to citizens.
No, the cookie is just employment (money for work)
Then why does the rich bald guy have so many? He doesn’t do shit.
Funny math. Here’s a pretty nice explainer.
TBF it’s not a universally agreed on theory, but it’s plausible and can produce the exact real distribution of wealth with minimal changes.
nepo baby
Boomers of the world consumed all resources and pulled up all ladders behind them. American Boomers are especially oblivious to their roles in creating the current world, and seemingly oblivious to concepts like basic empathy. Their entire worldview is a function of how they can best benefit. “Generation Me,” was the perfect tag.
Got mine, fuck you
Japan’s population crisis is caused by its young people being too overworked and overcharged to want to have children
While this may be a contributing factor, there is obviously more to it. Japanese workers actually work less than the OECD average hours per year. Take a look at a handful of countries such as: Mexico, South Korea, United States, Finland, Germany, and Japan (generally representative of their respective regions and income levels)
Then compare those country’s hours worked to their fertility rate
Mexico works the most hours of any of those countries by far, only behind Colombia in terms of hours worked, yet has the highest fertility rate of any countries I listed
South Korea works a lot of hours, second highest of those countries, just above the US. They have by far the lowest birth rate. A bit over half that of Italy and Japan, the 2nd and 3rd lowest birthrate countries, yet both Italy and Japan work far less hours than South Korea
Germany and Finland, famed for their quality of life and lower working hours, both have relatively low fertility rates. Far less than the US and Mexico, countries with far more hours worked, and far fewer legal protections to workers - especially pregnant women
In short, when comparing different countries, I don’t see a substantial correlation between hours worked and fertility rate
I mean its basically the exact same issue happening everywhere in the western world, Japan is just a few steps further a long.
Basically, a shrinking population is good for the people, because there’s fewer people among which to divide the resources that the land can provide, so on average that should mean more resources for people, in other words a lower cost of living (since cost of living depends on resource availability). And it also means that there’s less supply of human labor on the labor market, and by the rule of Supply and demand that means that the prices for human labor (wages) are gonna go up, i.e. people are gonna get paid better for what they do.
That intuitively makes sense, because if your country has 10 million people instead of 100 million, then your CEOs and companies are better gonna treat your workers better or they’re gonna strike, and since there’s fewer other people to replace those workers, their strike would have greater impact and therefore more power.
on top of that, you can’t just assume that there will be a high demand of human labor in the future. You have to assume that automation is going to reduce jobs, so if you don’t also reduce the number of workers, you’re gonna face an unemployment crisis, and that can be very bad for the workers.
More humans = more demand for labor, because there are more needs.
And humans are a resource too, a very important one nowadays. And more humans = more specialization.
deleted by creator
Japan will be the test case for declining populations. They will be the first to show us the consequences and the right and wrong ways to deal with the issue.
Short of Malthusian disasters, I don’t think any sort of economy in human history has had to deal with this.
The nazi party is funded by Russia btw and there’s so much propaganda in Japan rn its insane. One major piece still making news is that foreign tourists dont pay their hospital bills and losing “Japan so much money”. The amount of unpaid bills was 400k usd that year and foreign tourists revenue was 58 BILLION usd. That’s 0.00069% loss of total revenue.
This constant propaganda around the world is so depressing and not because its there but because truth is right next to it and nobody’s looking.
funded by Russia btw
This constant propaganda around the world is so depressing and not because its there but because truth is right next to it and nobody’s looking.
That much is obvious. Japan only has miniscule amount of foreigners compared to other countries but somehow managed to also have been stoken up with anti-foreign sentiment. It’s all the dark money flowing into social media algorithms brainwashing people. And the truth is that data is the new gold. Personal information is not only commodified but also weaponised. However, as you said, the truth is next to it but nobody is looking.
Here’s a bit of a rant.
Japanese people have notoriously been xenophobic, racist, or ignorant… but they also tend to be quiet and polite since the war, so they’ve really cleaned up their image.
They’ve also had their egos constantly stroked with all the TV networks showing stupid shows where all the foreigners are SO AMAZED by Japanese culture. Same with all these social media content. It’s really annoying. Being proud of your culture and heritage shouldn’t need recognition by foreigners and it certainly shouldn’t need belittling of others.
Not saying that everyone is a racist. Not by a long shot. It’s just that this kind of self-centered, xenophobic ember had been kept alive in a non-negligible number of people. And I feel like now, there is this perfect environment for which the shitty few to really have themselves heard for maximum exposure and influence. It sucks.
They are really hell bent on self destruction.
that headline brilliantly conveys the absurdity of the situation
Exactly my thought. It’s crazy.
They are having a population crisis … an aging boomer generation that just won’t die and their many children who will add to the aging population while the generations after these groups had fewer children. The population is now full of old people with very few young Japanese to take care of them.
It won’t matter how nationalist they want to be … they’re stuck with the problem of having a huge aging population and far too few young people.
Whether they like it or not, if they want to maintain the country’s current level of development, they’re going to need young people from somewhere else to fill the gaps.
Or they could fix their sex problem
That is a solution … but you have to wait about 50 - 70 years to see the result
Racism and xenophobia aside, how many humans do we need? Our poor earth. A declining population is probably an ok thing. I think it’s the capitalist class ringing the alarm bell as they see their profit forecasts take a blow. How many hundreds of millions should that island hold?
I’m all for persons voluntarily opting to have fewer (or no) progeny. Certainly, that is my intent.
But, Malthus was wrong on so many levels, and regulating reproductive activity even with the best of intent is going to be abused by eugenicists for genocide.
The already posted SK vid explains how the current social systems in most countries need at least replacement birth rates. It might be possible to have a society that could survive less-than-replacement birth rates, but I don’t see how.
but I don’t see how.
Tax the F out of the rich and give it to child-bearing families. The amount is based on the rate of decline. Hand it out as a monthly stipend, and enforce checks for kids’ quality of life.
Free government-staffed daycare.
3 Months Paid Paternity/Maternity, guaranteed jobs.
Free Fertility Clinics.
It’s going to be expensive AF for a generation or two.
That’s not how to survive with less-than-replacement birth rates, that’s how to get higher-than-replacement birth rates (possibly without immigration). (I will admit that I was unclear that I meant “I don’t see how” to long-term sustain population decreases.)
But, absolutely, to get more birth, you need to have lots of support for child-raising, so that it is seen as more joyful than it is stressful. I know SK is having problems getting the political (or even democratic) will to implement those things, and even if they did all of that today AND birth rate immediately soared, they’d still have a “demographic squeeze” that their current economy can’t sustain.
I don’t think Japan is facing the demographic squeeze, yet. I don’t think you’d find much support for these “COMMUNIST” ideas among Kamiya’s followers, tho.
It’s tunable. You don’t need to exceed, you can run at 99.95 and slowly back down.
Still going to have the geriatric problem, but that seems more approachable.
It might be possible to have a society that could survive less-than-replacement birth rates, but I don’t see how.
I want to add that historically, in the US from 1680 to 1880, the population has grown by approximately 3% annually. Source
(In the table, since the growth rate given is per 10-year interval, you have to divide it by 10, roughly, to get 3% annual growth)
This suggests that it should be possible (at least in theory) that the population can shrink at the same speed, i.e. 3% annually. This would mean an average fertility rate around 0.66 children/woman. Currently, in most western nations, it’s around 1.4, while 2.1 would be “replacement levels”, i.e where the population numbers stagnate.
The reason why i think you can have a 3% annual population decline is because it’s kinda symmetric: instead of a surplus in children (which eat and consume resources but don’t contribute through their labor power), you have a surplus of old people (which, mostly, also consume resources but don’t work). So, the situation is kinda symmetric, and that’s why i suggest that it should be possible.
because it’s kinda symmetric
That’s not what I’ve been told, but I’m not an expert.
I imagine part of that is due to an interaction with economics, particularly inflation. A 3% inflation is considered healthy, but a 3% deflation is almost certainly a monetary system in a death spiral.
This vid explains the situation better than I can (it’s about South Korea but Japan is basically in the same boat)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk
From a higher abstraction vantage point, you are not wrong, but you are basically advocating for entire countries to disappear
If the entire country wants to enact policies and cultures that would lead to their disappearance then who are we to tell them otherwise?
rational people?
But you are being disingenuous here… it’s not the entirety of Japan, same as the entirety of Murica did not choose to swim in the sewer with MAGA… yet they are forced to by a loud minority and a push over majority
I think we should at least warn them; perhaps they don’t have enough information to connect that outcome to their currently preferred policies. I.e. they don’t actually “want to enact policies and cultures that would lead to their disappearance”. Preventing persons from unintentionally harming themselves seems like a good thing.
Preventing persons from harming others (unintentionally or not) seems like a moral imperative. And, I think there are probably SK citizens that don’t consent to the current policies that will be harmed.
But, at the end of the day, I don’t have any action items. I see it mostly as a cautionary tale to drive my own policy preferences.
Welcome to the era of Misinformation
Why do you think we are here? getting people to vote against their own benefit is how we get Billionaires and eventually devolve into fascism before we step into another WW
Yeah, the hostile information environment is … tough. But, until we figure out how to navigate it, we won’t have a truly global society, and I’m not sure that separate, non-hostile communities/associations/syndicates are a stable configuration.
Critical thinking skills are part of that, but exercising them as a defense in that environment is not something you can sustain indefinitely. Everyone needs time to rest and everyone is going to make mistakes.
but you are basically advocating for entire countries to disappear
In biology, a species is considered threatened if there’s fewer than 200 individuals of that species around.
Here’s your short reminder that south korea has 52 million people, so even if people almost stop having children for a generation or two and the population stabilizes at 5 million people, which is 1/10 of what it currently is, it’s still very far away from extinction.
ugh… watch the video and then come back once you ditch the pedantry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk
if a country of 52 is reduced to 5, they would literally roll back to per-industrial living
It’s a delicate feedback loop. Statisticians say that once you reach a certain decline rate, you end up exponentially shrinking and lose most of your middle-aged population in a couple of decades. The lower ages continue to decimate, and the geriatrics end up living in poverty.
Especially in Japan where the reproductive numbers are already barely sustaining.
Taxes have to skyrocket to keep things running, the economy and real estate go fallow. It’s a particularly nasty downward spiral they paint. Supposedly, even if you try to recover, people won’t be able to afford to have kids and they’d need to be having a LOT of kids each. Could be some horrible forced breeding shit if a few generations just to keep us from dropping to unsustainable levels.
Ideally, you evenly distribute the young, working people that are available on Earth. Japan has too few, Africa has gobs. (Although I don’t even know if the trickle of foreigners they’re taking in are from high-birth places)
Unfortunately, whatever the local majority group is is against whatever group isn’t, and that’s how you get history, and history happening again.
I’m not sure how many people Earth will hold in the future, but we can look at historical data. Source
We know that worldwide human population was around 300 million for most of the medieval age (500 AD to 1500 AD). That was sustainable, i.e. people lived like that for a thousand years without incurring some ecological catastrophe. I’m not sure whether it’s needed to return to these numbers, but it’s certainly possible.
Is it possible there wasn’t much census data between 500 AD and 1500 AD in the regions we’re seeing a big explosion of people?
There’s indeed not much data for the medieval age, at least not in Europe, but we know data from the roman empire and the modern age, and we can extrapolate what happened in the thousand years between.
Well it’s also the pension system that will become hard to financially sustain. Generally you want the population to at least kind of replace itself to avoid economic upheaval.
While true, that’s an inherently unsustainable model. Pensions need to be self-sustaining, rather than relying on the next generation to pay for them. It’s ridiculous that one generation basically got a free generation and now every generation afterwards is paying the previous generation’s retirement
There’s the quantatitve thing of currency, but also simply the reality that people actually have to work to provide the things the retired people need. In this case the money issue is modeling a more intrinsic issue. With fewer young workers the retirement age has to go up to maintain a viable ratio of non-workers to workers. Yes technology and such can also help things for the better, but roughly that’s the state of things.
There’s the quantatitve thing of currency, but also simply the reality that people actually have to work to provide the things the retired people need. In this case the money issue is modeling a more intrinsic issue.
It’s good that people consider the reality behind the fiction that money is. Money is literally paper, it’s made-up literature. Reality, however, is real.
Yes, as people are disabled through aging, they eventually stop “producing” more than is necessary to sustain them. People with excess “production” have to transfer it to them. This can take various forms, but both a “self-sustaining pension” and a U.S. style “social security fund” use money as this method of transfer; the former is a bit more abstracted since interest / market gains (rather than direct contribution) are used, but it’s still the same flow. Making disabled care a cultural norm is even more direct, but also has a lot of coordination problems, and the people with excess production are often geographically (and socially) separated from the people with production deficits.
Of course, the ideal is not just about discontinuing labor participation due to disability, but because we actually want some time insofar as we can afford it.
A mark of, ideally, a bit of ‘overproduction’ is that we can work fewer hours and/or fewer years. If our ambitions and capabilities allow us to work 32 hour workweeks for a decade and then nope on out on retirement in our 30s for the rest of our lives, that would be a pretty good economic state to be in. A fantasy in practical terms, but a concept to keep in mind as a hypothetical if we ever do manage amazing ‘productivity’ without enough ‘ambition’ to consume it all.
I think that if that ever comes, it will be because “retirement” is/becomes a time when you still have excess production but you aren’t maximizing production, or that instead of 32hr/wk for 10 years, we do 8hr/wk for 40 years, with 3-5 years in there for pivot+retrain or relax+restore+refocus.
I doubt I’ll live to see it, tho.
Another fair point, that we could be targeting a more distributed “retirement” instead of taking it all at the end. How we model it so that we are comfortable with the concept wild be interesting… when and if we ever get there
you’re wrongly assuming that pensions have to be paid by labor taxes. there is no natural law of the universe that forces that. introduce taxes on the rich and pensions will be easily paid for.
I think you may be underestimating how much pensions cost on a yearly basis. In the Netherlands it totals over 50 billion euros each year, half of which is paid through labor taxes. I’m not sure we could easily squeeze that amount out of the 1% every year 🤔
“Population crisis” is a myth, created by people who want cheap labor. What’s the crisis? What’s so bad about a declining population number? Spell it out!
It’s also possible they are racist.
But if the choice were between racist and greedy, I’m going to bet on greedy 100% of the time.
What’s so bad about a declining population number?
The biggest issue is probably not being able to play pensions or have people care for the older generation.
Correct. When we hear concerns about a declining population, the concern (typically) isn’t that a population should always be rising, or even that it shouldn’t shrink, it’s more about the long-term economic stability of the age distribution of a population within the demographic pyramid. If your demography skews significantly older, you’re going to have fewer working age people supporting your economy and more post-retirement age people needing to be supported. This can do double damage to government revenue in particular, as they will see a simultaneous decrease in tax income and an increase in pension payouts, and this can lead to a sharp contraction in the available share of the budget for all of the other government priorities.
It’s a bit ironic in this case, as this is pretty common in developed economies, and typically the way you would offset this is via immigration, as that allows you to tailor your requirements to exactly what you need to balance your demography, and so anti-immigration sentiment is only likely to cause a more severe spiral.
The biggest issue is probably not being able to play pensions
…and that means retirees will literally starve and live on the streets? I don’t think it will. It will just be less luxurious.
have people care for the older generation.
So wages in care work are rising?
Who exactly will work those jobs?
Anyone. That’s how the labor market works. There aren’t going to be zero people capable of doing the work, they’re just going to be rare.
The same amount of work needs to be done to keep the economy running as it is, so you’re stretching those people out over a lot of additional jobs. How many jobs do you expect a young person to take simultaneously before they decide “this sucks, I’m emigrating to Canada where you only have to work one lifetime before getting to retire”?
Yeah, or, hear me out on this crazy theory: the supply of labor is low, so wages rise and young people can finally earn more money on just one job?
And then all those bullshit jobs that are not actually producing value get cut?
It wouldn’t be the same amount of jobs.
There is a limit to how much work you can get out of a fixed group of people no matter how much money you throw at them. If you ask me to build a thousand houses in an hour I’ll say “I can’t do that” and it won’t matter if you offer me a billion dollars to do it, I can’t do it.
The reason the population crisis in Japan is called a population crisis is because it is threatening to go past that threshold. It wouldn’t be a crisis otherwise.
…and that means retirees will literally starve and live on the streets? I don’t think it will. It will just be less luxurious.
you might think that japanese boomers have generational wealth in form of real estate. this is not really the case, especially for rural population. houses aren’t built to last, lose value like motherfucker and are commonly demolished after 20-30 years, in part because people don’t like second hand, in part because there’s no point of building anything sturdier if typhoon or earthquake takes it. there is some newer construction that is intended to last longer, but it’s not a very common thing. so a reverse mortgage type thing won’t exist there, and yeah lots of people will get shafted by these conditions
Not to mention that with a declining population the value of real estate is likely going to decline as well since there’s less demand for it. Especially in those rural areas, people are moving to the cities.
…and that means retirees will literally starve and live on the streets? I don’t think it will. It will just be less luxurious.
They won’t starve and live in the streets because something will change before society reaches that stage, but theoretically it’s not impossible. In Japan, for example, a significant chunk (unsure if a majority) of homeless people are elderly men.
If you keep taking out more than was put in the fund to fund the larger population in retirement, at some point there’s just nothing left.
so wages in care work are rising?
Who can pay those higher wages? The impoverished older generation? Or three state that is not able to keep up with the costs of pensions?
The crisis isn’t simply from a declining total population number. It’s from the demographic shape of that population. Here’s Japan’s population pyramid. As you can see, it’s not really a pyramid - it’s heavily weighted at the older end. As people continue to age that big bulge reaches retirement, and then you have more people retired than you have people still of working age. This causes a number of problems.
This causes a number of problems.
Yes, I’m asking you (or other people making the argument that population decline is so bad) to list them.
You’re still missing the basic point by talking about the “population decline.” The crisis is not the decline. The crisis is the age distribution.
Here’s a page discussing some of the specific problems of an inverted population pyramid, and it uses Japan as a specific example of a population facing this.
I still don’t see how that’s an issue. Just spend less money on elderly people?
I wish everyone worked in logistics for just like, a year or so. When you grasp how big and complex the systems are and how fragile they are to even small disruptions, you get immediately why demographic changes and population disruptions are incredibly scary.
A nation in Asia collapsing economically doesn’t mean “less people so less expenses” it actually creates ripple effects that can lead to millions of people starving on another continent.
One would think we’d all have a clue after COVID. The supply chain shocks reverberated for years.
I would have thought a single ship getting stuck in a canal basically bringing the world to a standstill would have woken people up, but we treated it like a funny meme 😭
are incredibly scary.
Only to people like you, whose job depends on it. If a nation half way around the globe has economic troubles, I don’t think that’s going to impact me much…
Glad to know you live somewhere outside of supply chains and distribution, must be nice being entirely self-sufficient and having the ability to feed yourself if the grocery stores don’t have your tendies and pizza rolls or essential medications or antibiotics or anesthesia if you have medical problems. Must be nice knowing you don’t need to worry about fueling your vehicles or having packaging for your products or having electricity or internet.
I’m sure your entire community is also equally content and satisfied with being off-grid, and if the food stops being imported, everyone will be calm and happy.
Letting old people suffer in poverty or die of treatable illnesses even though they were promised a decent retirement seems like a bad solution to me, and if it’s happening it’s exactly the sort of thing I’d call a symptom of a “crisis.” And unlikely to go over well with the population at large.
Just let them fend for themselves. That should totally work. I’ll let my 96 year old grandma know that she’s gonna have to hold a bake sale to pay for dinner tonight.
Also, your solution is to spend less money on elderly people, while at the same time there is a growing population of elderly people.
Are you seriously this stupid?
When an overwhelming proportion of the population is elderly, an overwhelming proportion of the working age populations earnings have to will go to support them. This is measured by an economic ratio known as the dependency ratio which is going to get out of hand for countries like Japan. The strain on public finances paying for pensions and healthcare reduces quality of life for everyone in the country and depresses economic growth as young people working to support the countries elderly population and their own parents have less to invest in the wider economy.
There’s an excellent video that explains all the ramifications of populations decline and it’s not only an economical nightmare but also a cultural obliteration as well over time. They use South Korea as an example but mention that even the US is heading this way but has another decade or so before it gets really bad.
if this is all true it makes me wonder how can a country like Russia continue to exist? is it because old people just die and no one cares?
It’s a massive problem when you have an older population outnumbering a younger population. We have a system that is built and designed around a certain number of able-bodied workers supporting the structures that this labor is built on.
It doesn’t even take very much to wreck economies and send nations into depressions or catastrophic collapse. Wartime in history has hurt small percentages of populations and caused this effect, but the declining birthrates we’re seeing around the world are going to be worse in the long run than even all the plagues and wars if the trend continues.
The problem is nobody can talk about it because so many authoritarians and fascists have coopted the issue and made it about ethnicity and immigration. This is a huge problem so don’t let the narratives spin you around.
Our problem is, once again, lack of community. In a world of information and isolationism, we’re not nurturing each other in positive ways, we’re not sharing love and empathy, we’re not helping each other so why would anyone want to have kids? To say nothing of the incredible costs of living that are basically preventing people from even having free-time, much less 18 years of focus on raising another human being. We don’t have paid leave, we don’t have wages that can support a growing family, we don’t have child-care and healthcare in much of the world, we don’t have incentives to bring children into the world and even for people who have all that lined up, there’s a lot of dread and pessimism towards what the future will be like, so people are also making a moral decision not to inflict more suffering on people who didn’t consent to being born.
I don’t see a solution that doesn’t involve major social reform. Cities will crumble, economies will collapse, and maybe eventually something better will come from it.
Ok, but all of the things you listed are reasons why I would like this kind of economic system to decline. It’s what’s creating these circumstances and problems in the first place.
The problem is that the “decline” is going to be accompanied by a mountain of people living in miserable squalor or simply dying. That’s the crisis that needs a solution. If a change in economic systems can solve it then sure, do that, but coming up with the details of how that’ll work is the hard part.
I’m not sure how people here can say they’re against genocide in other countries while praising and fantasizing about the collapse of society. The death and suffering would outweigh anything we’ve seen so far before any kind of equilibrium is reached.
I guess you can just go ahead and have your apocalypse fantasies, you will probably continue to live in comfort even as countless people are displaced and made refugees from population decline, environmental changes and the wars that will be sparked as a result.
It’s not so much the decline but the ageing. A society mostly consisting of OAPs can’t support itself.
Here’s a simple problem from it: taxes.
If the infrastructure was built to main x people but there’s suddenly a huge drop in how many can pay taxes, then you can’t maintain the infrastructure.
Say you made trains for a population for a million people. But in a single generation it’s going to drop to about 700,000 people.
Those 700k are now going to have to pay nearly 1/3 more just to keep the same trains running. Drop that population further another generation and the cost will only go up. Yet you can’t just not have the trains because the existing people still need transportation.
Now multiply that problem to everything else that needs maintenance and is essential in a modern society - universal healthcare (which gets an added extra cost of older people costing more than younger), sewage, roads, natural disaster mitigation, etc. Even taxing the rich like crazy won’t make up for it if it’s bad enough, and that’s in a system where you assume the population goes down because basically everyone has at least one kid. What Japan is facing is most of the population having no kids, and this is after there being a baby boom at some point. That’s an extremely steep drop.
That’s not even getting into the housing issues with such a densely designed cityscape like Japan has. If there’s too many apartments, they’ll just start closing down at some point rather than just going down in cost because apartments act kind of like a micro city in costs, and a lack of tenants because there’s just no people to fill the space is the same issue as the trains mentioned earlier. This one takes longer to manifest though.
Those 700k are now going to have to pay nearly 1/3 more just to keep the same trains running.
That’s assuming you only tax income.
Even taxing the rich like crazy won’t make up for it if it’s bad enough
Yep, not buying it. Let’s tax them like crazy first, for 20-40 years and when that has actually failed, we can talk about next steps.
That’s assuming you only tax income.
No, it’s not. The maintenance still has to be paid somehow, whether that’s from a VAT, income tax, inheritance taxes, etc. Either way, taxes will go up because there’s less people but the same amount of infrastructure.
Yep, not buying it.
You’re not buying… Basic math? Well, if you want small numbers as an example (and we’ll even make it so in the example the rich would be paying a lot now so it’s more fair):
There are ten people: 1 (Sherry) has 10 pieces of candy, 8 with 1 pieces of candy, and 1 with no candy. The amount they have resets at the end of every year after tribute.
They must pay the candy monster 10 pieces of candy every year or it’ll eat them. Currently, Sherry gives 8 pieces, 8 people give 25% a piece, and Bob gives none.
Next year, some people decide to “move”. There’s now 5 people, including Bob and Sherry.
In order to make the required tribute, Sherry gives 9 pieces, 3 others give 33% a piece, and Bob still can’t give any.
Next year, more people leave. There’s now 3 people, including Bob and Sherry.
How much should Sherry give this year, and how much will she have left after giving versus the other person (excluding Bob)?
This little math problem is basically a simplified version of the population collapse problem. In reality, it’s worse, because with less people, there’s less candy (money) generated for everyone, including Sherry, but the candy monster (infrastructure) will still ask for the same tribute.
In order to make the required tribute, Sherry gives 9 pieces, 3 others give 33% a piece, and Bob still can’t give any.
This little math problem is basically a simplified version of the population collapse problem.
the candy monster (infrastructure) will still ask for the same tribute.
Yeah, you’re doing the math wrong, because maintenance cost goes down the less people there are. And the share of actually critical work is way less than what’s actually being… worked, so shifting some parts of the luxury production to critical production is trivial, it just needs to be done and the people doing the critical work need to be paid well enough to make the switch.
That’s it.
Yeah, you’re doing the math wrong, because maintenance cost goes down the less people there are.
Do you have evidence for that? Because I already explained how it doesn’t earlier.
A half full train still runs the same track and route. A half used sewage system still needs to be filtered, cleaned, and repaired. Half used roads are still fully exposed to the elements. Half used buildings still degrade from time. Half empty buses are still used to get around.
The medical systems in this case, like I mentioned earlier, however, only go up in use.
Because I already explained how it doesn’t earlier.
You didn’t explain it, you asserted that it does and then gave no evidence.
A half full train still runs the same track and route. A half used sewage system still needs to be filtered, cleaned, and repaired. Half used roads are still fully exposed to the elements. Half used buildings still degrade from time. Half empty buses are still used to get around.
I want the actual numbers, as proof.
I want you to actually look up, how much it actually costs citizens and society to have for example, running and sewage. I want you to actually calculate how much that would go up.
Like…
Half used buildings still degrade from time.
Nobody will do this. They will use the 50% of the buildings at 100%. Same maintenance cost.
For example, let’s say everyone’s electricity bill is 50$… Out of your wage of what 1500$? 2000$? So if population declines by 10% and the electricity bill goes up by 10% or 5$ you’re telling that it will collapse the nation?
And while all of that happens: keep in mind that real estate value and prices will go down. Less people means less need for living space. It means it will be cheaper to move to cities, with higher concentrations of people in areas that already have infrastructure, that’s already mostly paid for.
If you want that type of detailed analysis report then, I give you two options:
- Pay me, because that shit takes a lot of time.
- Actually look up that exact information yourself from existing reports and back up your own initial claims with exact numbers. Inexact questions will result in estimated answers. If you actually want to know the truth, try to prove yourself wrong instead of asking something in a random thread and not even looking into all the answers you get, instead repeating your own assertions.
As for your other hyperbolia:
For example, let’s say everyone’s electricity bill is 50$… Out of your wage of what 1500$? 2000$? So if population declines by 10% and the electricity bill goes up by 10% or 5$ you’re telling that it will collapse the nation?
The issue isn’t that places on Japan are facing a 10% population decline. It’s that they’re facing a 50+% generational decline. That distinction is important because if it was only the elderly population that dropped, there actually wouldn’t be as much financial stress or labor issues to support systems as currently, where the elderly population grows massive while the younger one shrinks drastically.
It isn’t a 500¥ increase that’s the issue, it’s the rise of everything that’ll be the issue, especially since the elderly will be the overwhelming majority.
And while all of that happens: keep in mind that real estate value and prices will go down. Less people means less need for living space. It means it will be cheaper to move to cities, with higher concentrations of people in areas that already have infrastructure, that’s already mostly paid for.
That’s not how modern real estate works. Cities would become more expensive to move into - because it’ll have the higher infrastructure costs, it’ll be mostly filled with the elderly, but most importantly, because many apartments will be shutdown due to growing vacancies making it unprofitable. If modern cities were mostly houses, then everything would actually be great. But because they’re mostly apartments, it becomes an issue. If anything, it’ll be cheaper to move out of the cities, because public transportation will be underfunded anyway, and infrastructure costs in rural areas will become lower because rural areas are designed for smaller populations and less people, unlike cities. Cities will just keep getting more expensive to maintain - that’s an effect you can already see in multiple countries.
okay then i guess you should think about what rate of population decline is acceptable? like, you’re saying the current rate is unacceptable; where do you draw the limit and why?
Ideally they are matched to productivity and wage rates. So if productivity goes up 50%, and wages go up 50% (pw), with population being (k), then I think ideally it would be
K(-r%)=pw(r%)
But, humans don’t follow consistent rules in that particular way, so just somewhere around pw.
Alternatively, if they stagnate equally, that would be sustainable too. Not much decline or increase.
yeah but productivity already has gone up a lot in the past few decades. So … does that mean we could have a smaller working population?
A smaller general population.
The whole issue really is the baby boom threw things out of balance.
It’s actually scary how quick they’re rising. I live in Japan, and I once heard them at a intersection nearby on a car giving a speech. I hated how they speak. They sounded like they were heavily appealing to the emotion and used a lot of sentence final particles like ne, in a tone that sounded half-aggressive and also… very conservative in a way. They were talking some shit about how Japanese people should come first and that we should “protect Japan”, as if there was some sort of foreign force trying to tear Japan down to pieces. What’s worse was that there were actually people cheering for them. I actually wanted to go downstairs to shout at them but I restrained myself from doing that. I still sort of regret not going there to shout at them.
Their society will collapse from this racism in a generation or so. No point in correcting people who can’t see the writing on the wall. As much as the current regime tries to deny it, immigrants have been the strength of the US.
That party is minority. So yeah, fuck them. But what about the rest of the people in the country? There are many well intentioned folks in Japan, some of them have some xenophobic beliefs, but that doesn’t mean they’ll all never learn.
But they haven’t learned.
They’re scared. If you believe the info out there, population collapse is imminent. Someone shouting out patriotism, rallying the people, is probably a comforting thought to them. They need someone to blame, the outsiders are easiest.
When people don’t feel they can afford the time and money to have kids, populations break and noone is addressing it. The world could probably stand to have some population regulation back down from 8bil, but this isn’t the way :(
They need someone to blame, the outsiders are easiest.
The first sign of a feeble mind.
Alas, it’s so ubiquitous :(
It’s absolutely horrifying how effective it is to stand in front of a group of people, name their fears and then suggest ill-concieved solutions to the fears. They’re so desperate for someone to come along and solve their problems that they don’t want to think critically about what is being said. Humanity as a whole is just so easy to control.
More people need to raise hell about this group because they also have members who deny the Nanking Massacre.
So do Japanese history school books, they call it the Nanjing incident and divide the numbers of murdered by 10-ish
Japan is also led by a right wing government, just not as anti-immigration as these guys
I can’t say for sure regarding the textbooks because my kids aren’t old enough to have learned about it, and I grew up in Canada.
And yes, you’re definitely right about the government as well. At least they care about how they look to the world. Sanseito, on the other hand, don’t give a shit.