3 ms·

Why do these nations need to keep growing in population as opposed to shrinking to a more sustainable one?

• ozim 4y ago
  Shrinking to “more sustainable one” sounds like - “let already living old people die on the streets”. These people are already there and decline rate seems tragically unsustainable. Shrinking population would be somewhat OK if it would be organic.
  • lmm 4y ago
    The shrinking population in Japan is absolutely organic. I suspect panicking about it (certainly if it extends to e.g. opening up to immigration) is doing more damage than the actual population decline does.
• unity1001 4y ago
  Japan is not shrinking. Its nose-diving.
• RestlessMind 4y ago
  1. Because you don't shrink uniformly. Shrinkage is unevenly distributed over the age groups. In simpler terms, you will have a shrunk society with a lot of old people and very few young ones. Who will run the society in that case? TFA talks about a specific instance of that problem in detail, but also provides useful overall stats where profitable businesses are shuttering down only because there are no humans to run them. 2. This shrinking will be painful as our current structure relies on young caring for old, either directly as part of families or indirectly via tax-funded social programs. If there are not enough young people to pay taxes for the welfare, what should we do about the old ones? Let them die? Let them rot away in loneliness[1]? Force them to work till they die[2]? Or nudge them towards euthanasia like Canada does[3]? [1] another recent NYT article on this subject: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/health/elderly-living-alone.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/health/elderly-living-alo... [2] see the debate about raising medicare age to 67 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32528647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32528647