
Japan's aging population could actually be good news - eugenesia
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24822-japans-ageing-population-could-actually-be-good-news.html
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didgeoridoo
> But fewer people in future will mean it has more living space, more arable
> land per head, and a higher quality of life, says Eberstadt. Its demands on
> the planet for food and other resources will also lessen.

Different day, same Malthusian bullshit. These people can only think of humans
as net negative parasites on the planet, rather than individual agents with a
positive expected value to society. Density is GOOD — it leads to cross-
pollination of ideas and the advancement of the world. Yes, the planet is on a
path that will require us to eventually get smarter about resource
consumption. Advocating fewer people on Earth is the most harmful & naive way
to solve that problem.

If your life raft is sinking, do you try to patch it, or do you throw someone
overboard? Your instinctual answer says a lot about the type of person you
are.

[edit: I'd remove the last paragraph if it weren't intellectually dishonest to
do so. I feel like it's causing people to miss my main point. It was written
more out of anger than reason. Please ignore.]

~~~
Daishiman
> Different day, same Malthusian bullshit.

We are currently experiencing a human-induced mass extinction event and
reduction of biodiversity comparable to the largest natural catastrophes in
the planet. The way things are going, by the end of the century most of the
large mammalian predators will be definitely extinct, and if carbon emissions
are not reduced by the end of the century, by which we should become a carbon-
_negative_ society, the oceans will not be able to support most of the base of
its food chain.

I question your valuation of human society above the base of the biological
systems that support its very existence. A large population living in a
humongous wasteland is of dubious utility for its inhabitants.

I reckon you haven't been able to see the true impacts of humans on most of
the ecosystems in the planet. Ultimately, I think you're confusing density
with population; a large population is not a requirement for a dense
population. Furthermore, the percentage of the population that contributes to
innovation is a very, very restricted subset of it.

~~~
revelation
I don't get it. The ecosystem is not a constant system. It is summary
randomness, guided by evolution. Whatever you are trying to preserve, be
assured new randomness will happily take its place.

~~~
wtracy
The current randomness supports human life. I'm not so sure that whatever
replaces it will too.

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rayiner
Here's the problem I see with both population decline and life extension: lots
of research indicates that the creative peak happens from 20-40 or so.
Geniuses rarely continue to be the same level of productive after that. In
other words, progress is probably better served by giving two people the
chance to live 50 years than one person the chance to live 100, though
resource consumption is about the same. An aging society, one without new
generations of people with new ideas, is not a vital and creative one.
Progress is served by turnover.

~~~
gwern
> Here's the problem I see with both population decline and life extension:
> lots of research indicates that the creative peak happens from 20-40 or so.

I'm not sure that's as clear as you think it is. There's a number of issues
and confounds which mean that simply plotting age vs achievement can be very
misleading. Check out "Age and Outstanding Achievement: What do We Know After
a Century of Research?"
[http://www.resources.emartin.net/blog/docs/AgeAchievement.pd...](http://www.resources.emartin.net/blog/docs/AgeAchievement.pdf)
, Simonton 1988

~~~
ggreer
I get a DNS lookup failure for that domain. It looks like the correct URL is
[http://resources.emartin.net/blog/docs/AgeAchievement.pdf](http://resources.emartin.net/blog/docs/AgeAchievement.pdf)

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guard-of-terra
In countries where fertility rate is much under 2.0, people tend to have two
opinions on demographics:

1) If you don't have enough (read: a lot of) money then don't have children.
If you're not ready to spend all your time on children while still making
enough money then don't have children. If you're not the model family then
don't have children. If we think you're not the best parent possible then
don't have children. You better not have your children too late and certainly
not too early. And yes, we're going to take your child away the first moment
we suspect something from above violated.

2) People are so damn selfish, they don't understand that their prime
happiness is their children, they spend their lives on themself and so we're
all going to die as a nation and as an economy.

Surprisingly enough we often see both at the same time in one individual. More
often than not.

~~~
sliverstorm
People's individual choices don't always line up with their beliefs about what
the country as a whole should do.

I am told BART was approved by a whole lot of voters who liked the idea of
_everybody else_ using BART, so they could have less traffic on the roads.
Nobody was voting for BART so they could use it themselves. (Or so the story
goes).

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guard-of-terra
I also think of this problem as about an elective one.

Imagine you have half voters over 65.

Why would they care about innovation or ecology or whatever common good? They
would only care about getting their cut of social security. This way they can
easily throw a society off the cliff if it happens tomorrow. They don't care
about tomorrow.

Yeah, and they also like to tell youth how to live their life. Especially in
the areas themself can no longer do anything. This can lead to repressive and
suffocating societal changes.

~~~
eddiedunn
Are you an idiot? Are you seriously suggesting that just because someone is
over 65 they stop giving a shit about the planet, society and/or the greater
good?

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w1ntermute
1\. Overcrowding in Japan is largely due to such a large percentage of the
population congregating in Tokyo. If the Japanese economy (and thus
population) were more decentralized, this wouldn't be such a big problem.

2\. A lot of the reasons for the high cost of living has to do with
protectionism. For example, the rice farmer lobby benefits from very high
tariffs on imported rice. Most of the rice farmers are old men, so more young
people (or the existing young people being more politically engaged) could
actually help fix this problem.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
With regard to #2, Japan has a food security problem that will be alleviated
by a lower population. Cramming more people in and becoming even more
vulnerable to a disruption in shipping is an obviously bad idea.

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themgt
It's the "Children of Men" solution to the automation/jobs crisis.

~~~
gojomo
And yet: something that bothers me about that book/movie is that its portrayal
of the labor/immigration dynamics seems exactly backward.

Without a fresh supply of young workers, but _with_ all the
factories/tools/capital/housing that supported a larger population, the
benefit of incremental workers becomes gigantic.

The winning regions in such a scenario would be those that welcome massive
immigration to maintain production.

Even assuming some xenophobic fear arising from the uniqueness of the zero-
fertility situation, nations like the UK or US, that already have the benefit
of worldwide adoption of its language (and cultural exports), and functioning
beachhead immigrant communities of all types, would in such a scenario be most
likely to recognize that immigrants could soften the pains of a population-
shortage.

Keeping immigrants out would require even more of the dwindling population
wasted on 'guard labor', and even more empty buildings/communities and idle
factories. And to the extent that there are culture clashes – there's now
plenty of space to congregate in voluntarily-segregated communities, but still
within the same national boundaries for easier trade.

So while I loved a lot about the 'Children of Men' story/movie, its economics
were all wrong.

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lkrubner
Interesting:

"Japan has the world's oldest population, with a median age of 46 years, an
average lifespan of 84, and a quarter of the population over 65. "

That is a very old population!

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TheAldGarde
This comes without surprise. A higher median age for any population is usually
indicative of higher quality of life.

There's a good TedTalks video on the subject. There's also a good book called
Common Wealth written by Jeff Sachs that covers this.

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squirejons
an aging population means GDP will decline!

Ziss is unspeakable! Ziss is an unmitigated disaster for corporate profits!

GDP uber alles!

Ve must force japan to take in immigrants! For ze sake of corporate profits!
GDP uber alles!

