I talked about this article with my wife a bit this morning and wanted to entertain some thoughts about the future.
What are HN's thoughts on what happens when all populations start trending older and the use of immigrants to stop the decline runs out of steam?
Do the elderly enslave the local young populace to keep production moving?
Does the state try to incentivize the young to have children by offering state care for the new children?
Does childrearing become a function of the state?
Does the world collapse similar to the bronze age collapse and having children again becomes useful for their labor and their ability to take care of the elderly once the concept of 401ks and pensions disappear?
> Does the state try to incentivize the young to have children by offering state care for the new children?
From what I have read/listened-to, efforts by governments to incentive increased birthrates have little effect. This comes from data across different countries like Denmark/Norway & the USA.
Bronze Age collapse seems a little bit much ;D.
My bet is that the culture changes to adapt to the higher proportion of non-working age people. So more younger and older generations will move back in with each other in order to save on the biggest household expense (the house itself) and more welfare is directed towards caring for old people in tandem with the market responding by supplying more private care.
Europeans made it through ~1/3 of the population dying from The Plague, we'll make it through this _much_ less catastrophic demographic change.
>efforts by governments to incentive increased birthrates have little effect
We talking paying $24,000/child/year (equivalent in Socal) cash? Or some $4,000/child (once) pittance bonus plus a couple months extra time off at 60% pay? There isn't any gas left in the home-economy tank after a century of inflation and feminism, which is why they're globalizing labor to make up the shortfall! One cow breed is too expensive, fickle, and dangerously aggressive if pushed too hard, so it's in with a more cost effective labore... err I mean breed of cow.
Some “Europeans” thrived after the plague since there was more space for them. Imagine all the farm plots that were freed up.
Now we get to say: look at all this surplus old-age wisdom that we are about to get. In a culture which stows away the old and has no appreciation for wisdom.
Guaranteed US municipalities will condemn/domain large underpopulated areas and bulldoze before allowing housing be anything other than a debt-slave ball and chain. Yes I am that pessimistic.
No reason for doing anything that conspiratorial - today there is plenty of cheap housing that nobody can afford to live in (because of a lack of jobs in the area, those with independent incomes moving there are basically a rounding error).
* As the population ages, the elderly will pass laws and policies that favor themselves at the expense of the younger. Social services will become more and more of a burden on wage earners - even to the point of unsustainability (as long as those in power as a "ruling" block get what they believe they are owed.)
* As the elder population gradually loses their political power, the younger leaders will pass laws and policies that favor themselves at the expense of the elder. Social services will become less and less meaningful - even to the point of neglect and abject poverty for those who need it (as long as those in power as a "ruling" block get what they believe they are owed.)
Those two paths are not necessarily divergent and are quite likely sequential.
We stand a much better chance by investing in public services like transport and healthcare, planning ahead, and not depending on eternal growth. But immigration is just too irresistible for powerful people to juice their quarterly profits.
Look at the estimated population pyramids for Japan and South Korea. They're looking into absurdities like the active population having to support (as in work for and pay for) 4 times as many retirees.
It is simply impossible for that to work without some amazing breakthroughs in robotics and AI that will enable outsourcing of healthcare and elderly care. And that's just the ensuring the retirees don't die in the streets, what about everyone and everything else? What happens to the South Korean industries as they are today when their labour pool shrinks a few orders of magnitude?
My question is who operates public services like transport and healthcare if 70% of the population is retired and/or incapable of driving the transport or performing the healthcare?
Title should be the same as the article "Population falls again, but foreign residents hit 3.3 million"
Japan’s population shrank by 0.7 percent in 2023, although the net loss of 861,237 included a record high inflow of 329,535 foreign nationals.
The non-Japanese segment of the population hit its highest level yet, but the birthrate continued to slow and areas such as the northeastern prefectures of Tohoku suffered heavy losses. Only Tokyo eked out an increase in population.
As of Jan. 1, 2024, the total population was 121,561,801, according to data released by the internal affairs ministry on July 24. The figures are taken from the government’s basic resident register.
The annual shrinkage was the greatest fall since the survey began in 1968.
The population shrank in the three major metropolitan areas--Tokyo, Kansai and Nagoya--although the city of Tokyo saw an increase for the first time in three years, driven by people moving to the capital from elsewhere in Japan.
Meanwhile, the population of foreign nationals living in Japan increased by 329,535 to 3,323,374. The figure exceeded 3 million for the first time since such data became available in 2013.
Of course, Japan had an entire generation in the 90s that never got a good job and they would be in their peak years now and should be having children, but can't, so they aren't and the nation wonders why? The USA will experience the same thing because the problems of 2007 never got fixed.
instead of fixing any problems they simply rely on immigration to fill the holes. its also cheaper to import talent than train it so i dont see any reason this policy will change
It's past 2am in Japan so maybe not the best time to get answers, but as I head to bed here's my two cents.
The concrete daily-life answer is, I've virtually always found it an incredibly welcoming place. With very few occasional bits of garden-variety discrimination ("oh sorry this apartment isn't available for rent to foreigners"). But individuals are nearly always nice - obviously polite, but usually nice as well. And society in general is far more accommodating to foreigners than one might expect a society to be to ~2% of its population (putting English on road signs and so forth).
But over the years I've noticed that lots of people online are super confident that Japan is deeply racist, which is wildly at odds with my experiences here, so I've thought a lot about where that comes from. And personally my view is that racism, as the term is generally used, isn't a meaningful thing to talk about with respect to Japan. The Japanese (broadly, oversimplifying) don't see the world in terms of race - they divide the world into Japanese and non-Japanese, and things like skin color or nationality are very distant lesser concerns. And in general, they don't at all see Japanese things as better than non - Japan is mostly fascinated with foreign things, and in many contexts looks up to them as superior to local ways.
But Japan does always, always see non-Japanese things as other, and separate. And as such people are often quick to, say, attribute differences of opinion to "oh I guess that's how foreigners see this, but I'm Japanese so I see it differently", and such. And when one is on the receiving end of that, and constantly treated as separate, it can feel like racism (though I think it's misleading to model it that way).
Oh, last thing to add is that regardless of how they see or treat foreigners, the median Japanese person nearly always harbors some level of dread at the thought of talking to a foreigner, since that means using English. ~Every Japanese adult took 6-10 years of English in school, and in most cases they are almost entirely unable to use it in conversation for various reasons, so many people here view using English the way I'd feel about suddenly being given a quiz in my worst subject from high school. As such, tourists who go around using English may mistake people's reactions for standoffishness or hostility - but if you live here and learn even the most absolute basic Japanese, you find everyone melts and things go fine.
I haven't officially been a resident but have spent a ton of time in almost all areas of Japan. It's extremely location dependent but in my experiences in rural Japan as a gaijin there can be some initial coldness in interactions but if you show even the least amount of effort to speak the language and respect the culture that coldness evaporates.
It’s a mix. I’m general if you respect their customs and the way of life, people in general will treat you well. Even if someone doesn’t like you they will try to treat you well, since Japan is supposed to be a polite society and treating others poorly also reflects poorly on an individual.
That being said, it does come with it's own share of “foreigners not allowed or welcome” experiences. There’s also racial undertones to those experiences, where some set of people will have worse experience than others.
As a resident of Japan for over a decade I have been treated the same as any Japanese person. Many of my paler obviously American/European friends think they get treated differently but they work/live in the "English teaching" bubble. I like to think that bubble is just like that to everyone involved (this is opinion and I haven't walked in their shoes). Then again, if you're looking for something to complain about you'll find it.
Very positive. On the rare occasion I feel like negative experiences are due to ignorance not malice. It’s easily balanced out by “positive racism”, e.g. some stranger at a bar paying for my beer because he never spoke Japanese with a white guy in his life.
Real racism in Japan is about Chinese and Koreans. Non-Asians make up less than 1% and just aren’t relevant, e.g. racist parties never talk about them in speaker announcements from busses.
The way I've heard it is the people are nice, but the government is racist and reactionary as all get out. Apparently their electoral system has this weird setup that entrenches conservative old dudes who fight against change tooth and nail.
Do you think traveling to Japan would slow its globalization? Do you think Japan is not globalized already? I am curious why you think that globalization would hurt Japan (you used the word: ruined).
You could substitute the word gentrify for globalization. I think the commentor just means that there's a cost when enough immigrants come to a place. I wouldn't call it ruined like they did but it definitely does cause change and some things are lost to the mixture.
I think the word gentrify makes a lot more sense, good point.
I think mixing human cultures can be very complex (human social culture is certainly some form of a complex system) and you're correct that it can cause a lot of change and possibly danger like culture getting erased. When cultural integration is done well, it can cause a lot of beautiful things to happen: appreciation and love of the culture(s), sharing the culture, and fusions of culture.
Please note: The above is a lot harder said than done.
> with this current global trend of mass immigration, we are seeing - in every single case - the loss of high-trust cooperating populations of ethnically homogeneous people to ruinous hellscapes of filth, violence, conflict, etc.
You really think this is a modern “problem” (if a problem at all)?All empires throughout history (Egyptian, Persian, Roman) left deep cultural changes that still can be felt today. Thinking that only an “economic globalization” without people moving to more prosperous lands could occur is the pipe dream.
Japan already has the four horsemen of globalization though: coca cola, mcdonalds, kfc, and pizza hut. There's a certain point where it stops doing anything however. Go to the pizza hut in Giza with the pyramid view. It's still very much Egypt on the street.
It seems like some folks in this thread are conflating globalization with ultra-powerful organizations using their capital and influence to spread to the rest of the world. Other countries are simply untapped resources in their eyes. More folks to consume their products & services.
I think the two can be the same, however, that does not mean they are the same.
If oligarchs in one country spread to another its only because the other country already has power structures for an oligarchy in place. For the people on the ground living under an oligarchy it hardly matters what the nationality is of this oligarchy, they all read the same material.
> there is a long list of long-dead languages that attests to this.
Look up Ainu and Okinawan languages - Japanese is the dominant language that drove its neighbors' cultures to extinct. It has more native speakers than French, German, or Italian. The Japanese culture is not going anywhere.
Most of the time, those "globalization is ruining beautiful Japanese culture" arguments sound like a mixture of orientalism and xenophobic dog-whistle, i.e., "Isn't it nice that there's a country where only its one native ethnic group is considered the true members and all else are at best second-class citizens?"
That line of reasoning is that countries are only for the people born to them, so if you allow other cultures into a country it will destroy the country. It is an easy way to deflect blame for your country's problems onto an already marginalized minority.
> Countries are for the people living in them, regardless of where they were born.
If the country is composed of people who don't want to give up their culture or ethnic majority to foreign migrants, then shutting down foreign migration is completely justified. Thank you for admitting that.
Sad. I can't think of anything more anti-diversity than this "diversify all the things" fad! Soon you will go to Asia or South America, only to find little america...
What are HN's thoughts on what happens when all populations start trending older and the use of immigrants to stop the decline runs out of steam?
Do the elderly enslave the local young populace to keep production moving?
Does the state try to incentivize the young to have children by offering state care for the new children?
Does childrearing become a function of the state?
Does the world collapse similar to the bronze age collapse and having children again becomes useful for their labor and their ability to take care of the elderly once the concept of 401ks and pensions disappear?
Thoughts? Different ideas?