Japan -- Geriatric Society

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by snoopy369
1) How is this? Unless you are suggesting that the negative growth is only reducing 'smart' people, this is absolutely false (patently, even). If you are, I would remind you that it's not 'smart' people, but rather 'rich' (or semi-rich) ... and if you classify Paris Hilton in the former category you have problems.

WTF did this come from? It's extremely simple: people retire. If you have more old people than young people, then either: average standard of living will go down, average amount of work done by a productive citizen will go up, retirement age will go up, or probably a combination of all three.

2) This is not meaningfully true; we're not talking reducing from 300m people to 100m people, but from 300m people to ... 295m people. That's assuming no immigration, which is highly unlikely... we're only talking about organic growth, not immigration.

Obviously the degree of the problem corresponds to the degree of the change in population growth. That doesn't refute my argument.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by David Floyd
Even better - and much more seriously - if people REFUSE to use contraception, then they don't qualify for our "humanitarian aid", ie, food and medicine.

Call me a pig headed fascist, but It blows my mind why that this isn't a rule already.

[David Floyd]

I agree, I don't understand how we can have some "moral imperative" to send free food and medicine to the Third World, when those same people consistently REFUSE to use contraceptives or make reasonable attempts to avoid spreading STDs, like AIDS. It just isn't right - my tax money shouldn't have to go to people who refuse to act in their own best interests.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Heraclitus


I hate to brake this to you but in Europe its the middle class that dosen't have any kids. Also the more educated you are the less likley you are to have offspring.

[Heraclitus]

or should I say

[Darius871]

[David Floyd]

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by VetLegion


I feel that it is a bad thing. I find it very difficult to verbalize why it would be objectively bad, so perhaps it is not.

Perhaps a better word is "unhealthy". I think "self-perpetuating" is a neccessary condition for a society to be called healthy.

So, a society that plays video games to its extinction, achieving record per capita happiness in the process, could be labeled a "good" society (for its members), but not a "healthy" society.

Re-reading what I wrote there, I realize that this workaround doesn't really explain why we should want a society to be healthy, it just employs the implicit analogy between "healthy" and "good" to hide the philosopical problem. Hey, at least I admitted

Let me try to solve it properly. Why is it "bad" that some subgroup of humanity isn't reproducing given that most of humanity is?

How about this: if I consider the average member of a group to be "good", then I have to see a reduction of number of its members as bad even if they themselves are happy about it.

[Lancer]

Originally posted by Heraclitus


Call me a pig headed fascist, but It blows my mind why that this isn't a rule already.

You are a pig headed fascist.

[Lancer]

When the ocean levels rise it might be better if there were less people to drown, that's all I got to say.

[Aeson]

People are made up of 60% water! If they all die the ocean levels will rise even higher.

[Aeson]

... of course the 40% that isn't water you could make into a mound to live on. But who wants to live on a cemetery?

[Ben Kenobi]

Tell me why it is a bad thing that we have a negative population growth (and we are talking a VERY SMALL negative population growth here, aside from Japan).

Whats 1.5/2?

That's the reason why. Can you run social assistance programs when you have each successive generation being only 3/4 the size of previous generations?

but at the moment we have more people than we need, particularly in brazil/india/china/egypt/etc.

Most of Brazil is rainforest and uninhabited. How do you decide how many people is too many?

If we're going to suggest those countries enact stringent control methods - or even, simply suggest birth control to everyone - why can't we look at our own house this way?

'Suggest' Try coercive sterilization.

I'm not suggesting limiting growth intentionally - or even asking people to have fewer kids. I'm saying, just let them have fewer kids if they want to.

That is not the way it is happening. We are pushing very hard for contraceptives and sterilization into the third world. If our approach were 'live and let be', why do we care how many children they have?

It will correct soon enough; and in the meanwhile, it will allow other countries to bleed off some of their excess growth. In fact, the only argument against it I can see is that the worst offenders in terms of excess population growth will not have as much pressure to do something about it ...

Yeah, what excess growth? Most of the world is starving for people, especially young people.

Vetlegion, there are many countries with high unemployment, and underemployment is an even larger problem. My suggestion is that, through technology, people will in the future be less needed for labor; and further, people are living longer and working longer, so fewer people over the course of time are needed, because more 60 and 70 year olds are working.

Why does technology decrease employment? Technology shifts employment. By increasing the efficiency, it means that fewer people are needed for each job, which enables more specialisation. More specialisation means we get more productivity and the cycles continue. We've been on this train for 250 years now.

Therefore, we are not suddenly going to have a labor crisis (though Japan may well be a special case.)

We are already in a labour crisis.

[David Floyd]

Yeah, what excess growth? Most of the world is starving for people, especially young people.

True, just not the part of the world that is producing them at the greatest rate. There, population growth is one of the things holding them back.

[Ben Kenobi]

Even better - and much more seriously - if people REFUSE to use contraception, then they don't qualify for our "humanitarian aid", ie, food and medicine.

Wow. That's a horrible philosophy.

We should do just the opposite. We should give them more so that they can feed their families.