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Its always amazing to me that South Korea is economically and politically much more successful and in that result it "won" the cold war of the last 50 years wit
by rr808 1y ago
Its always amazing to me that South Korea is economically and politically much more successful and in that result it "won" the cold war of the last 50 years with its Northern counterpart. But its population is going to disappear so not much of a victory.
- fwsgonzo 1y agoYeah, I'm watching people walk around in SK and JP and I really want to visit one day. One day before it's too late. Both countries will evaporate.
- mytailorisrich 1y agoJapan's population was 44 million in 1900, it is 123 million now. South Korea's population was 25 million in 1960, it is 54 million now. We need to stop going over the top with claims of "population collapse". The 20th century to this day was abnormal at historical scale in that human population exploded like never before, and perhaps like never again and probably for the best considering how we have brought the planet to its knees.
- derektank 1y agoSouth Korea's birth rate is 0.7, which means for every 100 grandparents there will be only 12 grandchildren if things don't change. At the current pace, the South Korean population will be 32 million in 2075 and 11 million in 2125, and most of the people alive will be old. That's nearly as massive a change in the opposite direction as the drop in childhood mortality in the 20th century.
- mytailorisrich 1y agoExtrapolations over a century into the future are worthless. We need to embrace and adapt to a decrease in population because the explosion that has happened is unsustainable and so are current global population levels. That's the best, if not only, way to both get rid of poverty globally and to preserve the climate and environment. This does not mean that population should or will collapse to extra low levels...
- nec4b 1y ago>> Extrapolations over a century into the future are worthless. Its just math showing the trend and it's not worthless as it should give you something to think about. >> We need to embrace and adapt to a decrease in population Of course, but it will be painful. >> That's the best, if not only, way to both get rid of poverty globally and to preserve the climate and environment. That simple math, which you deem worthless also tells you this is impossible. There will be a small number of young active people having to support a big group of elderly. They will not have the time to solve world problems. In fact a lot of knowledge will be lost as economy will contract and there will be less people available for specialization.
- mytailorisrich 1y agoIt is not impossible. It is going to happen and it is unavoidable. Even with a constant population this will happen if people live long. We need to embrace this and use existing and new technologies to cope. We have AI, automation, robots progressing fast, this is exactly what we need in addition to investing in education. The alternative is to keep pushing for an ever growing population and to end up in Soylent Green / Blade Runner.
- nec4b 1y ago>> It is not impossible. It is going to happen and it is unavoidable. Based on history it hasn't happened. How do you know it's going to? >>The alternative is to keep pushing for an ever growing population and to end up in Soylent Green / Blade Runner. That is absolutely not the only alternative. One would be to have a stable population at the current size. Another on would be decreasing population slowly and not as drastically as it will happen in Korea. A third one would be growing it slowly. The fourth one would be oscillating around the current size, etc.
- UncleMeat 1y ago> Its just math showing the trend and it's not worthless as it should give you something to think about "The second derivative of population will remain constant for the next 100 years" is just as silly today as it was in 1925.
- MaxHoppersGhost 1y agoI suspect there will be some equilibrium reached but maybe not.
- thisislife2 1y agoYou miss the point - a larger population isn't necessarily good if most of them are not economically productive (i.e. don't have skilled working class). Are people supposed to work even in their old age, till they die?
- notTooFarGone 1y agoPlease do the math. We will likely see the collapse of SK. There will be less working people than people in their retirement. We don't know how a society can work that way as it's a first time.
- general1726 1y agoWell the problem is people in retirement, caring only about size of their pension outnumbering working age people and effectively creating positive feedback for populist parties to constantly increase pensions despite the constantly shrinking working population and tax revenue. This system can't work. This system is going to collapse. Just matter of time.
- UncleMeat 1y agoYeah it is baffling to me that people are already on the "we are doomed" phase for this. 50 years ago people were saying "we are doomed" because of overpopulation. We had people saying that the optimal number of humans on the planet was just one billion and that we had to engage in extreme measures of international oppression to force as much of the unavoidable starvation on certain populations and not others. Now we are seeing "the world is doomed" because of underpopulation (despite the fact that the world population is still growing) and we are starting to see the proposed extreme measures of rolling back women's rights in order to address this.
- xboxnolifes 1y agoNeither country will evaporate in your lifetime.
- dyauspitr 1y agoThere are people born today that will see it evaporate.
- dijit 1y agoIf you follow much of the USSR, you’d be aware that the nations surrounding Russia were the most heavily invested in, at least those that were front facing. Estonia for example had quite a lot of investment, you’d be surprised what a regime will invest in to ensure that the optics are positive. Not saying that happened here, but it is something that has happened.
- rr808 1y agoSorry which regime? You mean the USA put money into Estonia and SK?
- dijit 1y agoRussia put money into Estonia. USA/EU might be putting money into SK. Both to “prove to the other side” that their ideology is the right one.
- rr808 1y agoOK sorry yes that makes sense. Berlin too both side lavished funds to make them look better.
- ethbr1 1y agoThe US spends about USD$4.5B per year on US troops and facilities based in South Korea. And funded what looks like ~USD$35B in post-war economic assistance. (Plus other UN funding) For that, South Korea went from being devastated by 2 wars to around the 13th largest economy in the world. Not a bad return. China and Russia were welcome to invest in North Korea...
- manuel_w 1y agoI'm not sure I understand. Estonia invested a lot? In what? Military? So the optics are positive?
- dijit 1y agoEstonia was part of the USSR, and the USSR put a lot of money into Estonia to make communism look like it was working. At the expense of other parts of the USSR.
- MaxHoppersGhost 1y agoSame thing is happening to most counties in Europe but they’re “fixing it” with immigrants. But the Germany filled with Germans will be disappearing just as South Korea is.
- jennyholzer 1y ago[flagged]
- antiimbeciles 1y ago[flagged]
- wincy 1y agoIf a Nazi says the sky is blue is that something we should also reject outright?
- justonceokay 1y agoNo but nazis have a way of presenting facts that are only relevant if you are concerned primarily with racial purity. Is Germany’s population growing because of immigrants, or is germanys “heritage” disappearing because of white replacement? If a man is hospitalized because he is having paranoid delusions about his wife cheating on him, he is still sick even if his suspicions are true.
- dns_snek 1y agoThis is the opposite of what you probably wanted to say, but if the man's wife is cheating on him then he's not experiencing paranoid delusions, so hospitalizing him and calling him sick would be a form of abusive crazy-making behavior in and of itself.
- abstractbeliefs 1y agoIt's a statement of fact, which is neutral on its own. Where it becomes a right wing talking point (or a discussion about the socio-economic future of a country) broadly comes down to how you present the causes, implications, and necessary actions. The fact that many more-developed countries having shrinking native populations is a fact that governments must reckon with in some way, and salting the earth on discussing because one faction is trying to exploit it cedes the ultimate policy decisions to them.
- pessimizer 1y agoSouth Korean politics is an absolute disaster, there's a non-zero possibility that 30 years from now, long after the Kims, people will be fleeing to the North.
- tpm 1y agoI would actually bet in 30 years the Kims will still rule the North.
- oezi 1y agoEven a birth rate as South Korea's does not mean the population will disappear over night. It will shrink. It will mean things will change. Infrastructure will be overprovisioned and housing will be cheap. It will mean other things will be prioritized by politics (such as kindergardens and work life balance). In any case it won't be a catastrophy as life in North Korea.
- seanmcdirmid 1y agoA good analogy might be the Black Death: it didn’t destroy Europe, it changed priorities, freed the serfs, started valuing labor more, and ultimately led to a stronger Europe in the future.
- oezi 1y agoIf we consider that the world had 1bn people a bit over 100 years ago, it puts many things in perspective. We have generations of time to turn things around if we think it is necessary.
- tuatoru 1y agoNo, the Black Death is not a good analogy, because it killed all ages indiscriminately. Our "plague" "kills" the young and productive - by their never being born in the first place. We are headed for something we have never seen, ever: a society dominated by old people in pure numbers terms. The worry is that it is a design for stagnation and decay rather than greater strength. (There won't be money or people to maintain infrastructure because the elders will demand healthcare.) I don't know what will happen and nor does anyone else really.
- seanmcdirmid 1y agoIt killed all but made people more valuable and, more importantly, valued in general. If kids become more rare, we will probably start treating and nurturing them better. We complain about childcare costs now but if kids are few enough society might just happily take up the bill.