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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
-
… 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
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!”
Its basically the exact same issue happening everywhere in the western world, Japan is just a few steps further a long.
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
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.
They are really hell bent on self destruction.
that headline brilliantly conveys the absurdity of the situation
Exactly my thought. It’s crazy.
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 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
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
Is anyone making a list of those anti-foreigner countries, so we know where not to shop, where not to visit, and where not to invest in?
A better question is if you can name a country that isn’t “anti-foreigner” or don’t have a significant % of the population that’s anti-foreigner. This is a widespread problem everywhere you go, even supposedly “woke” European countries (especially those countries, really).
Sweden is becoming pretty bad in that regard too, they recently cracked down on immigration because old white people don’t like people of color.
In defence of Sweden, they did mismanage a lot of the post-2016 migration by ignoring migrants and refugees once settled, and taking a pretty relaxed approach to integration.
What in the fuck is happening. I’m disgusted that we have this plague of racism in 2025.
Vietnam seems very accepting, even towards Americans and French.
A better question would be is anyone making a list of the people financing these candidates. Id bet anything if you follow the money trail, there’s a common denominator.
Billionaires who want the working class divided against itself. Some of them might even be from other countries, but I strongly suspect any foreign influence is dwarfed by local oligarchs.
At any point they can start giving people a UBI and they will have the option to quit their jobs and raise a family.
The old ways of systemic slavery will not work as human societies progress, especially in our post scarcity world.
As the population ages out of the work force, and fewer replacements are coming in, where’s your tax base to support UBI? And if you say tax the rich, they won’t be rich long with no workers to leech off of.
I would personally consider it very shaky ground to found a family on if my ability to support them came in the form of a government stipend I have no direct control over.
Can’t we instead restore the economy to functionality rather than slapping a big “UBI” patch on the big crack in the dam?
Restoring earning power to the middle class such that a single income can support a household will give families the stability they need to start families with out handing over all the mechanisms of the economy to a single, potentially untrustworthy entity the way UBI does.
A UBI is a necessity for societies going forward.
Basically, wealth inequality is so bad now that our economies and societies no longer serve the majority of people’s needs.
So wealth redistribution is required to fix the problem, the question after realizing that is how to go about it.
We can do a one time redistribution of wealth, but without fundamentally changing the system with regulations, incomes will inevitably become imbalanced again. This is what we did after the Great Depression with the jobs program that was the national parks and highway/railroad projects.
IMO it’s better to just stop treating money like it’s harmless to allow excess accumulation. It would be better if all wealth were perpetually redistribed via a UBI, this would permanently maintain wealth equality. This is similar to what we did after the Great Depression in regards to corporate tax rates and setting a maximum profit.
UBI is the new hotness in terms of popular modern means talked about to undo the ever-growing wealth gap, but it is completely untested in the real world. It has challenges even on paper, including the ones I alluded to above involving being exceptionally susceptible income uncertainty and government corruption.
And you are right to point out that anything we do now to correct the wealth disparity problem is wasted if we don’t do enough to prevent another regression back to this same state again. I’m sure UBI could work under the right conditions, as well as many other solutions, but the real success or failure of the program will be measured based on how well and for how long it can resist attempts to dismantle it by bad-faith actors.
I am pretty sure there’s a lot of agreement here on the core of the issue, I just have doubts about UBI because it puts the fate of the most vulnerable citizens with the most easily-ignored political voice even more into the hands of their government, who often do them dirty.
It’s been tested dozens of times, and every time it is tested, it shows people are happier and healthier, and so is their community.
So it does work and is possible, and it would fix a ton of problems.
I mean at the scale at which it would be used. A small pilot program that has millions of eyes on it is not going to get undermined by bad actors because everyone is watching. It is good to create tests and pilot programs to try new economic and governance systems, but it is also important to remember that those are idealized lab conditions.
Also, consider the context of the discussion. Literally any system where money is put in the hands of those in poverty is going to immediately result in improved conditions for those people and increased local taxable economic activity. I could give them a UBI stipend, big tax rebates, increased wages, or even drop cash from planes. The point is that it is not necessarily the method that made the difference but the result. In this case the result is “get buying power to poor people”, and any system that achieves that is going to be an economic and social good.
I’m just not convinced UBI is the safe way to do that. Its an inescapable fact that any government is going to have internal forces trying to undermine its protections to enrich themselves, so it is wise to remember that any government systems we come up with that are not made highly resistant to capture are only going to serve their intended purpose temporarily.
In every study they also witness no significant drop in labor participation, and it always enriches the local community. People become more altruistic, less stressed and agitated, family relationships improve. It’s good in pretty much every single way with no discernible downsides. Please look into more studies.
There isn’t going to ever be a study that is universal until we implement it universally, so there’s literally no way to test it in the way critics want, this argument is just baseless propaganda.
I’m sure that’s true, but again, the positive outcomes you’re describing are the result of the poor peoples’ increased buying power and reduced economic uncertainty. I don’t believe the specifics of HOW they got those things makes very much of a difference, if any. UBI is one way of many to do that.
And you are again correct: there is no way to “dry run” new social programs fully. You can only create small “labs” to partially test them, which is way better than nothing, but still leaves great unknowns. The only truly tested social and economic structures are the ones we’ve seen really used in the real world.
The fact that all past models have eventually failed doesn’t necessarily mean they were bad, though. It means that they were inadequately protected and eventually were corrupted from within (not counting conquest, which I think is safe to say is outside the scope of this conversation).
When I was growing up too many people I knew wanted to move to Japan because of the technology sectors and the “modernity”. Turns out both are a lie, and after learning about Japanese work culture, it’s even worse than the USA. I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to work in Japan over an EU country outside of family reasons.
They were living 20 years in the future in 1980. They are still living 20 years in the future of 1980.
