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> This planet has way too many humans on it. I can get behind this. but... > I'm not sure what's supposed to be terrifying about it. So, so many things. The

> This planet has way too many humans on it. I can get behind this. but... > I'm not sure what's supposed to be terrifying about it. So, so many things. The world is not as unified as it needs to be for this to be a good thing. Population decline is Japan is a) too small to ease overall resource burden on the world, b) increasing resource burden on Japan itself, c) Japan's situation to enjoy/deal with, the rest of the world is hardly going to reward it for it. Trying to maintain a functioning economy is going to get harder with a shrinking able-bodied workforce in the near future, I would not want to be responsible for addressing that. If and when the Japanese economy collapses in the current world immigration climate, people will have little recourse too -- with their language and culture isolation so far, they'll just be stuck in their crumbling economy. One of the reasonable solutions is to increase worker mobility, and encourage economic contributors to migrate to and operate in Japan, and not worry so much about indigenous population decline. But this is a major big cultural, economic and social change to embrace, which is starting to get harder to adopt in today's increasingly isolationist rhetoric.

ekianjo 9y ago
> Trying to maintain a functioning economy is going to get harder with a shrinking able-bodied workforce in the near future, I would not want to be responsible for addressing that. Japan has way too much fluff in its economy: People working with almost zero productivity, or completely useless jobs (purely bureaucratic) or facade kind of jobs (folks just hired to stand around) - it's actually very good to see the worker base shrinking, it will bring a lot more focus in the long run, hopefully. > and not worry so much about indigenous population decline Japan became a major world power when it only had something like 40-50M inhabitants. You don't need 120 Millions folks in Japan to be a powerful country. Like, not at all.
- keerthiko 9y ago
  Good points. All economies have a lot of fluff, but yeah, it would be exciting if the shrinking workforce meant a focus on optimizing the productivity of individual workers, while the country doesn't have to deal with unemployment at the same time. Really the only issue is the short period of time in the immediate future of providing current levels of welfare to the large elderly population with a much smaller still-inefficient younger workforce facing the burden of doing so. It's possible if they figure out a good short term solution, it could put Japan into a lean diet that is really good for it in the long-run. However they also run the risk of suffering some serious long-term economic damage if this rough patch doesn't go well. Way too many things can go wrong -- if the young decide to also ditch the workforce and rely on state welfare while it lasts, or are not supported enough, or the focus goes too heavily on making babies and not on optimizing economic output, etc.

ekianjo 9y ago

> Trying to maintain a functioning economy is going to get harder with a shrinking able-bodied workforce in the near future, I would not want to be responsible for addressing that. Japan has way too much fluff in its economy: People working with almost zero productivity, or completely useless jobs (purely bureaucratic) or facade kind of jobs (folks just hired to stand around) - it's actually very good to see the worker base shrinking, it will bring a lot more focus in the long run, hopefully. > and not worry so much about indigenous population decline Japan became a major world power when it only had something like 40-50M inhabitants. You don't need 120 Millions folks in Japan to be a powerful country. Like, not at all.

keerthiko 9y ago
Good points. All economies have a lot of fluff, but yeah, it would be exciting if the shrinking workforce meant a focus on optimizing the productivity of individual workers, while the country doesn't have to deal with unemployment at the same time. Really the only issue is the short period of time in the immediate future of providing current levels of welfare to the large elderly population with a much smaller still-inefficient younger workforce facing the burden of doing so. It's possible if they figure out a good short term solution, it could put Japan into a lean diet that is really good for it in the long-run. However they also run the risk of suffering some serious long-term economic damage if this rough patch doesn't go well. Way too many things can go wrong -- if the young decide to also ditch the workforce and rely on state welfare while it lasts, or are not supported enough, or the focus goes too heavily on making babies and not on optimizing economic output, etc.