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What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?

44 points by Konichivalue 4mo ago

coastalredneck 4mo ago
[dead]
Insanity 4mo ago
Necessity is the mother of innovation. I guess they’re pretty optimistic that they can automate away the humans needed to sustain an aging population. Not a bet I would be willing to take though lol.
- HerbManic 4mo ago
  I suspect this is why China is going in so hard of humanoid robots over the last few years. They have seen a potential future in Japan and are now trying to avoid this at all costs. It is big long term bet but we will know if it worked in about 20-40 years.
SV_BubbleTime 4mo ago
They’ll find it easy to keep their homogenous culture and shared traditional values. Why would the solution to “our people aren’t having enough babies” be “we should import different people to have their babies here”? Why does ever single bleeding heart liberal globalist try and ignore the deep psychological truths about human tribalism? It’s not even a bad thing, but even if it was, it’s a fact.
- ares623 4mo ago
  I think the point is we can't have our cake and eat it too. They need _someone_ (or something, if they can manage) to sustain the way of life they hold so dear. And it's not something a country can just decide on a whim like "oop looks like we really need more people tomorrow folks". What are they going to do? Import millions of people 18 years from now? Or plan ahead to make sure millions of babies are born now to grow into the people they like 18 years from now?
  - CamperBob2 4mo ago
    They need _someone_ (or something, if they can manage) to sustain the way of life they hold so dear. That's what the robots are (or, rather, will be) for. More seriously, I'm all for liberalizing immigration policy, myself, in almost every respect. But unfortunately the conservative reaction is costing us everything. It's too easy for them to use "Open borders, ooga booga!" to scare the rubes. When conservatives have nothing more to offer the future and no defense for their past, they can always fall back on that. It works. Every country will end up with its own army of MAGA zombies if it pursues this course, and Japan is no exception.
  - lmm 4mo ago
    > They need _someone_ (or something, if they can manage) to sustain the way of life they hold so dear. They don't though? Pensions will be cut. Retirements will be pushed back. Grandparents with dementia will be kept mostly-alive in their children's homes rather than getting proper care. There will be pain and suffering. But I don't see any of that pushing the country to breaking point. > And it's not something a country can just decide on a whim like "oop looks like we really need more people tomorrow folks". What are they going to do? Import millions of people 18 years from now? Or plan ahead to make sure millions of babies are born now to grow into the people they like 18 years from now? As hard as fixing a low population is, it's easier than fixing a society where trust has broken down, which is what the western countries that went hard on immigration are already starting to face.
    - vachina 4mo ago
      Yeah not sure why you’re being downvoted. Work hard on making elderly care as easy as possible, automate automatable things. Importing people is just kicking the ageing population can down the road; these immigrant will grow old one day, and then what, import even more people?
      - bulbar 4mo ago
        People from other cultures tend to have more babies.
- plaidthunder 4mo ago
  > Why would the solution to “our people aren’t having enough babies” be “we should import different people to have their babies here”? If you become poor enough and weak enough, you'll be "replaced" anyway. And not on your own terms.
  - auyez 4mo ago
    It is not necessarily true, I think it is opposite. More poorer they get, less attractive that place becomes. Especially since Japan is not rich with natural resources, there is nothing really to steal there
    - plaidthunder 4mo ago
      They become less attractive to immigrants looking to engage in economic arbitrage. They become more attractive to outside non-governmental powers looking to engage in economic arbitrage, which brings its own challenges. They have less negotiating power with wealthier countries which impacts their sovereignty. Poor countries also tend to have more internal conflict: https://gsdrc.org/professional-dev/poverty-and-conflict/ https://gsdrc.org/professional-dev/poverty-and-conflict/ If we look at this empirically it seems clear that countries that trade ethnic sameness for economic prosperity end up more stable, peaceful and capable of directing their own affairs. There could be some advantages to living in a country where strangers are also distant cousins, but they seem marginal. There could even be emotional improvements for parts of the population who feel anxious about living near people who are genetically distant from themselves, but I've not seen great evidence of that. Particularly since ethnically cohesive but poor countries tend to fall into civil war regardless. When you put it to the test and measure outcomes, there are tradeoffs that go far beyond giving up consumerism.
- jesterson 4mo ago
  [flagged]
- add-sub-mul-div 4mo ago
  Not everyone views outsiders with unease, it's actually possible to nurture curiosity over fear.
- chaostheory 4mo ago
  Because it takes 18 years to create an adult and nothing other than immigration is working at the moment. If any country was truly serious about this problem, they would end social programs for the elderly and focus that funding for families.
  - HerbManic 4mo ago
    This is one of those thing, yes that is a true statement but what do you do with that information? Would you be willing to make that call? Looks like the trolley problem in action.
    - chaostheory 4mo ago
      Yes, because otherwise your economy and country collapse sooner or later. ie everyone dies. Why do think homogenous countries like Japan and South Korea are finally opening up the immigration floodgates? Because there’s currently no other choice. The other options (directly lowering the costs of child care, lowering work hours, robots, et al) still haven’t worked. Immigration buys you time. If you don’t want immigration, but you still want to buy time then you have to end socialist entitlement programs for the elderly.
      - nec4b 4mo ago
        > If you don’t want immigration, but you still want to buy time then you have to end socialist entitlement programs for the elderly. One big downside of any kind of social programs is that it conditions the population to rely solely on the state, thinking that their payments into the system will guarantee them safety. We tend to forget for a state to exist and to provide services, it needs people. Those people need to be born, raised and cultured in order to act as a community.
- Erem 4mo ago
  > Why does ever single bleeding heart liberal globalist try and ignore the deep psychological truths about human tribalism? I'll bite. In the US, for one, every single person has an ancestor that thanked their lucky stars the locals didn't think the way that you are recommending we think today. Or an ancestor that suffered because the locals did think that way. We honor that heritage by paying it forward, lest we be lumped among the trash of history that punished the Irish, the Chinese, and the Jews for the cardinal sin of living down the street. Lot of Americans in this forum, so that's why.
  - s5300 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - Ekaros 4mo ago
    You are forgetting the natives who royally massively got screwed. Perfect example why they should have done everything possible to stop migration.
    - Erem 4mo ago
      That analogy doesn't work well. Their situation involved foreign powers enforcing jurisdiction and property claims over their land with a regular standing army; a completely different situation than modern immigration
      - moi2388 4mo ago
        Yes. Now it’s through a judicial army based on criminalising speech, and instead of based on a country, based on a religion. Because that’s so much better
        Erem 4mo ago
        I certainly don't understand all you're saying through this tortured analogy, but yes an "army" of judges that issue rulings is much, much better than an army of soldiers that issue killings
- malicka 4mo ago
  > the deep psychological truths about human tribalism … that the races should keep to themselves? Yea, I’m going to have to disagree on this one. This was pretty handily disproven by the New World. Mixing, sharing, cohabiting… this creates culture and makes us stronger. Isolation, protectionism, and fear makes us weak.
  - HerbManic 4mo ago
    Yep, there is a lot of evidence that says even nomadic tribes heavily intermingled with others because it was seen as a means of building resilience for all.
    - SV_BubbleTime 4mo ago
      There is a lot of evidence that didn’t happen all at once and funded by social programs that effectively discourage integration.
  - kmijyiyxfbklao 4mo ago
    How was it disproven by the New World? The countries that mixed (Latin America) are weaker than the country that didn't (USA)
    - malicka 4mo ago
      The USA is pretty dang diverse, and definitely mixed. That mixing is a core part of it’s culture and history, actually. And now, the country that mixed (USA) is stronger than the Old World that didn’t (Europe). Which is to say: There is no inherent psychological tribalism that makes having a diverse country impossible or ruinous; rather, this tribalism is manufactured and spread by hatemongers. The New World is a very good case study, here.
      - nec4b 4mo ago
        It's culture and values come from the dominant group. It didn't really mix equally between groups. If the dominant groups will shrink and another arises the values and the culture will change.
- arikrahman 4mo ago
  I completely agree, very well said.
- bulbar 4mo ago
  > Why would the solution to “our people aren’t having enough babies” be “we should import different people to have their babies here”? I'm not "... liberal", however there are two reasons. For one it has turned or to be very hard to convince people to "just have more babies". Second reason is that immigration workforce is available immediately, while an increase in birth rate will only help 20 years later. Even if you manage to reverse the trajectory of the birth rate, how long would it take to approach 2.0? How long until you have healthy demographics? 50, 70 years, maybe, that's just too long. > truths about human tribalism? Truth is that human are complicated and have survived for so long not because of their thumbs or their language, but because of their adaptability.
  - HerbManic 4mo ago
    It isn't just about getting it above 2.0, it is having those people in the work force. Even if you could magic up enough babies today, it would be about 20 years until they would be actively offsetting the issue. The is why demographic issues are so insidious. The problems that keep birth rates down today, end up amplifying these issues in the future further suppressing them. Eventually you hit equilibrium but it is a long way down until you get there.
- bulbar 4mo ago
  > They’ll find it easy to keep their homogenous culture and shared traditional values. Talking about homogenous culture I hope you don't live in the US, because that guys for sure never had one. US is way too big for that which is also why so many laws are still defined by the states.
- Tor3 4mo ago
  >They’ll find it easy to keep their homogenous culture and shared traditional values. That idea is a fallacy. It has never been true. All of Europe was always a melting pot for people from everywhere. Over the centuries people kept moving, immigrating and emigrating. England.. Britons, Celts, Anglo-Saxxon, Norse, Normans (which were themselves originally immigrants). And my own country? Surnames from everywhere. 40% of my language's vocabulary came from immigrants. Is that a problem? I most certainly can't see any. The idea about 'homogenous culture and shared traditional values' is as true as looking at a flower for five minutes and then claiming that "nah, it doesn't grow, it's frozen".
  - DrProtic 4mo ago
    You refer to a period where we had constant war in Europe? You literally posted an example of the opposite.
    - Tor3 4mo ago
      In what way? I included England just because those particular periods are well-known. If you look at ALL of Europe's history, all up to recent times, there's been constant movements and migrations. People with different backgrounds, moving around, a lot of movement came as trade increased (and, as it has lately been found, there was much more trade even 3k years ago than anyone had previously anticipated). If you look at a snapshot of time it looks pretty static, but let your time-tick be generations and you see constant changes.
      - nec4b 4mo ago
        It really hasn't been constant movement and migrations. Once the Germanic and Slavic tribes settled, which wasn't fun for the natives before them and certainly not for the Romans as well, the migration more or less stopped statistically speaking (exceptions were the wars).
        SV_BubbleTime 4mo ago
        Right, and this latest influx certainly outpaces anything in many generations.
- porkloin 4mo ago
  The idea that Japan is a uniquely "homogeneous culture" is honestly a modern construct anyway. Japanese culture and language has been enormously influenced by colonial and migrant presence in the country, from Chinese to Dutch to British to American, and a zillion others. Just look at the language! I don't have the exact figure in front of me, but I remember when taking Japanese language courses that something like 30% of the lexicon is loanwords from other languages (edit: I looked it up and it's apparently closer to 50%) Way higher than most other widely spoken languages on the planet. Japanese culture is legitimately _amazing_ in its capacity to absorb and domesticate outside influence, and it's unfortunate that people both in the country and abroad are so short-sighted to not see that. The Meiji and Showa era militarism benefited a lot by promoting this myth. They weren't alone, mind you. Lots of folks across the EU and the US are still falling for the same nationalist stories that their governments cooked up in the early 1900s to drive them all to war. The country _does_ have a really notable cohesion and shared identity, but the problem is in attributing that to some kind of unique isolationism rather than their long history of pluralism.
  - HerbManic 4mo ago
    I was going to say, Japans history is one that was very... combative. They fought amongst themselves heavily for a long time.
    - porkloin 4mo ago
      I think a lot of places were at various points in time, right? It's always a little easier to paint with a broad brush and lump hundreds of years into a single statement when you're talking about the history of "foreign" places that we don't learn the history of very deeply in western education. For Japan in particular, it's hard because a big part of the Meiji nationalist movements was to recast Japanese history with a heavy focus on the "bushido" and an arguably manufactured version of some points in the country's history that _were_ undoutably bloody. That yarn-spinning from 100+ years ago has actively shaped how the rest of the world thinks about Japanese history. Western governments during WW2 were happy to take that narrative and paint the entire history as blood-soaked and brutal to dehumanize their enemies. But it's not hard to find evidence of how many long stretches of internal peace existed in Japan. After the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate there was 250 years of more or less continuous peace internally. Arguably continental Europe from the middle-ages onward is more fractured and bloody in total than Japan was in the same period. Classical Greece was a zillion times more bloody.
jesterson 4mo ago
[flagged]
- ares623 4mo ago
  Is it just me or all three choices all the same outcomes? It's like the ending to Mass Effect 3.
  - jesterson 4mo ago
    It's possible, but at this point we don't know yet how each will play out long term. EU chose to destroy itself fast, while Japan chose slow economic demise. Only time will tell how each will play out.
    - ares623 4mo ago
      Surely the tech culture on HN would prefer the "move fast and break things" approach? Faster and tighter loops right?
      - jesterson 4mo ago
        I am not sure tech approach is a right way to go if we project it at wider scale on a society or a country. Society moves at way slower pace, and wrong turns may takes decades to rectify. Needless to say wrong turns may have horrible ramifications lasting decades as well. If you'd ask me, I would certainly be against tech approach here. Lets leave it where it does play well.
    - karmakurtisaani 4mo ago
      The only thing destroying the EU is the ruse if the far right.
      - jesterson 4mo ago
        Glad you have found your favorite scapegoat.
jojobas 4mo ago
Whatever the answer to people having fewer kids is, it's not "cede your land to some other people who will". Japan's population around 1900 was mere 43 million people - when most of them were required to work the fields. Japan will be fine. Europe, on the other hand...
- outside1234 4mo ago
  This will be easy to say up until there isn’t enough money for retired folks.
  - Markoff 4mo ago
    that's already solved problem, just no country had balls to completely abolish PAYGO (Chile was closest, but they backpedaled a bit) and rely on IRA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_in_Chile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_in_Chile
- Tor3 4mo ago
  Around 1900 the median age of the Japanese population was somewhere in the twenties, in other words, they had a healthy and able work force relative to the population size. Today the median age is above 50, and there aren't many who can work the fields. In fact around here I see very old people doing that, and a lot of them can hardly walk normally, they're permanently bent.
  - pseudo0 4mo ago
    What percentage of the Japanese workforce is working in the fields? Most industrial economies are in the 1-2% range for agriculture. And someone in their 50s can easily ride a tractor. Manual labor in the fields is not a productive use of labor in a first-world economy - the fact that it's still happening demonstrates slack in the system that can be absorbed.
    - Tor3 4mo ago
      Rice fields, around here at least. That's always been very labor intensive. They do use tractors to do some of it, but around the periphery of every field it's still done manually. Rice fields are very different from wheat production. In my country strawberries are picked manually. There's yet no mechanical solution which can do what humans can, with respect to quality and more. And that's already a problem, without seasonal immigration there will be no strawberries on the market, simple as that. There are many other kind of work which still requires a young healthy work force.
eska 4mo ago
There is no “zero” immigration policy, this is a strawman. Controlled immigration is different from opening the floodgates. Also weird to admit that no country has reversed its birth rate problem, but still insist upon massive immigration being the solution.
- Erem 4mo ago
  Korea is starting to turn things around! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/25/south-korea-birth-rate-increase-rise-echo-boomers https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/25/south-korea-bi...
  - Tor3 4mo ago
    Fertility rate of 0.80.. and I thought Japan, Italy, and my own country had problems. Note however that https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/south-korea-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/south-korea-p... says 0.76, and last year was 0.75, so there's barely any change there. Catastrophically low birth rate, and maybe it's not so hard to figure out why.
  - flakiness 4mo ago
    Maybe the fertility rate has to go below zero to bounce back... Japan's rate is like 1.14 yet [1]. Hopefully Korea has figure out something more actionable [1] https://english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/77220 https://english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/77220
    - karmakurtisaani 4mo ago
      What's fertility rate below zero? Women not only have zero babies, they also sometimes kill babies of others?
      - moi2388 4mo ago
        A rate below 0.99… so less than 1 kid per 2 adults
indiandeodorant 4mo ago
[flagged]
- krapp 4mo ago
  Man this thread is like catnip for racists.
  - somewhatgoated 4mo ago
    They just can’t help themselves
  - hagbard_c 4mo ago
    Xenophobes, not racists. There is no race called 'muslim'. That this thread attracts comments from those who have migration-related problems high on their agenda is not that strange since it is dealing with the problems of the (absence of) migration. This subject has been polarised - not in the least by people calling anyone who does not agree a 'racist' - so some of the comments are extreme as well, viz. the grandparent comment about muslims and Indians. Drop the knee-jerk 'muslims and indians are !"!"#%#¤', drop the 'racist! racist! racist!' and maybe, just maybe we can discuss the subject in a more productive manner. It does need discussing because neither 'close all the borders for anyone who does not look, speak, think or believe like me' nor 'open all the borders and welcome anyone who comes in' is a viable solution. Countries which do the former end up in the backwaters of history, those which do the latter end up as a footnote.
    - krapp 4mo ago
      Lol. "xenophobes not racists" gives the same energy as "it isn't pedophilia, it's ephebophilia." Go jerk off to a Roman statue or something.
      - hagbard_c 4mo ago
        I thought this site catered to those a bit more discerning when it comes to discussing complex subjects but I seem to be mistaken. You do know the English language offers more than the few words you employ to have nuanced discussions? Quite a fitting name you chose for yourself by the way.
chainmail2029 4mo ago
>But a strict zero-immigration policy collides with one terrifying reality: No country in history has successfully reversed a falling fertility rate, and Japan shows zero signs of breaking that trend. Wrong! Korea has successfully reversed theirs starting this year due to some extreme policies benefiting families with children [1] https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2026-05-27/national/socialAffairs/Koreas-birthrate-rises-at-fastest-pace-on-record-in-Q1/2602080 https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2026-05-27/nationa... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/25/south-korea-birth-rate-increase-rise-echo-boomers https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/25/south-korea-bi...
- Tor3 4mo ago
  The worldometer statistics site doesn't fully agree with that, the Guardian reports that the rate went from 0.75 to 0.80, while worldometer states that the 2026 rate will probably end up at 0.76. At best this has kind of stopped dropping, but it is any case catastrophically low (and way worse than Japan)
- Schiendelman 4mo ago
  "Successfully reversed" would require a number over 2.0. This is just bad reporting.
seandoe 4mo ago
Make having kids a zero-cost endeavor. If that doesn't do it, make it a profitable one. It's as simple as that.
- Tor3 4mo ago
  It is not as simple as that. In my country giving birth is free. And you get economic support for every child. For most people it's still an economic burden to some extent, but for the majority it's not something which blocks them from having children. It's more that most families I know are content with having two children. It feels fine to them. But that's the families that do have children. 25% of men in my country never have children. It's not enough. A lot of families need to produce 3 children, and better if there are some with four.. and most people simply don't want that. And that's for the most part not a question of economy.
  - HerbManic 4mo ago
    And there are the increasing infertility rates as well to hamper the efforts. Personally, I would love to have a few kids but after many years of trying and all manner of treatments we have gotten nowhere at all. But that is just how if falls I guess.
  - ponector 4mo ago
    It is as simply as that. Economic support you mentioned is never enough to cover basic needs. Better than nothing, but still require to sacrifice a lot to have an extra kid. More kids means you need a bigger house, bigger car, extra furniture, a part time job for mother to manage kids.
    - Tor3 4mo ago
      I specifically mentioned families where the economy is not a burden, and they still don't want many children. Very few will want more than two. Please note that in my country at least, as long as the economy is good enough that there aren't any real problems living, then it doesn't matter if it costs more with more children. That is not the reason.
kibwen 4mo ago
> The industry is shifting from rigid industrial arms to general-purpose robots powered by advanced AI It is not, if by "general-purpose robots" we mean humanoid robots, and by "AI" we mean LLMs. Factories will continue to be designed around robots that are designed for specific purposes and controlled by normal, predictable software.
cwyers 4mo ago
I am really shocked at the tone of so many of the comments here. Did HN become a breeding ground for xenophobia at some point? Has it always been that and is it just way more mask off now?
- moi2388 4mo ago
  Unbridled immigration doesn’t work, and that’s become pretty clear. You need limits, and integration, assimilation would be even better.
- ephimetheus 4mo ago
  I’ve noticed this too. I think it started around the time of the first round of big tech layoffs in the US, and when the US ratcheted up the price for H1B(?) visas. Seems like economic uncertainty or fear of it breeds xenophobia. Who knew
- fleroviumna 4mo ago
  [dead]
- happytoexplain 4mo ago
  A few of the comments in question have a bad tone - but most of them are reasonable opinions about valuing one's people, culturally or socially, or about the effectiveness of immigration.
- Voultapher 4mo ago
  The article paints immigration as something undoubtedly negative: > They are willing to accept a smaller economy, strained pensions, and dead rural towns as the price for keeping their core cities safe, clean, and culturally familiar. I'll not pretend that immigration is an easy, uncontroversial and solved topic. But can we maybe not equate immigration with dirty and dangerous cities? Yes that has been the rhetoric for thousands of years, but it's most often the rhetoric of those with a dubious track record of saying true things. Trump is famously anti-immigration, why trust what he says? Since 9/11 the stereotype of a terrorist in the USA has been a brown Muslim. The facts tell us the majority of domestic terrorism is done by white christian dudes. I get that xenophobia is an emotional topic for many, but that doesn't excuse racism.
theturtlemoves 4mo ago
You know, many eastern countries apparently intuitively think in cycles. The west tends to think linearly: "We're trending upwards, argh argh overpopulation, famine, death. We're trending downwards, argh argh population collapse, famine, death". Same with the perception of time. My country sees time as a line. I once had an interesting training where the instructor pointed this out. She went on to say that seeing time as a circle or a point is also an option. It wasn't until I hit the second half of life that I got a glimpse of what that looks like, personally. Perhaps subconsciously, Japan envisions that the birth rate will go up again sometime in the future and they will have preserved their identity and culture from which to build again.
- justanotherjoe 4mo ago
  Except in growth imperative system we have, to stop growing is not to not grow, it is to spiral into a cascade failure
  - theturtlemoves 4mo ago
    And then? Either we think linearly: Crash into the rocks, game over. Or circular: difficult times ahead, we'll get through them again
  - znpy 4mo ago
    Congrats you missed the point completely
  - Markoff 4mo ago
    you can still grow even with smaller richer more productive population, actually you are encouraged to be more productive with smaller population than vice versa population growth ≠ wealth growth
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
- HerbManic 4mo ago
  I do find it funny that some folks treat this is like the complete end of Japan (or whatever) nation, like you said a straight line down. But eventually it will bottom out and potentially rebound a bit. It find on the way up or at the top, and it will be fine at the bottom once the trends return but the issue really is the pain of the phase shift.
ares623 4mo ago
Everyone keeps talking "more babies. more immigration". what about "less old people" (this is a joke but I am curious if that has ever come up?)
- mc3301 4mo ago
  "fewer old people" will actually, spoiler alert, happen. Just wait about 20 years. Certain parts of Japan are gonna be completely empty.
- krackers 4mo ago
  Canada? https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-services-benefits/medical-assistance-dying.html https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-servi...
- HerbManic 4mo ago
  Eventually that will be the case but it just takes decades of the demographic bubble to work its way through.
- Ekaros 4mo ago
  Sometimes I wonder how long it is possible to keep supporting properly senile people. Or those that need constant care. At some point unless there is some massive productivity increase in care it is just not realistic anymore.
- ponector 4mo ago
  Covid-2030 is coming to help.
- Markoff 4mo ago
  [flagged]
skeledrew 4mo ago
Neither immigrants nor robots will prevent them from becoming essentially extinct as an ethno-national group if they don't do something serious to stimulate the fertility rate. They need to find the root of why Japanese aren't having kids and resolve it. I'd say it's due primarily to the collision of their values with Western values, particularly concerning family and workplace roles. The core issue is actually being faced by all developed nations, but it hits Japan really hard due to their immigration stance as well as lack of natural resources (they need to excel in providing globally scoped services).
- HerbManic 4mo ago
  I suspect part of the problem is that people are worked hard and don't really have a vision of the future that they are actively building towards as a nation. Hard work alone doesn't dissuade people from having kids but not having a positive or even constant future target combined with that can cause folks to just give up on that kind of aspiration. This is an issue that develops over decades and places like Japan, South Korea and potentially China, this is already baked in to the point that it is unstoppable. The same is coming to many other nations over the coming decades.
anovikov 4mo ago
I am not at all concerned about this problem. At this point, society mostly need people as consumers, so quality is not as important as it used to be (in democratic countries it's a bit more complicated because people vote - but this is solvable too). Because there are no resource or technology constraints that prevent solving it, just regulatory concerns, and because regulatory concerns are easy to solve in unfree countries almost by definition, and because unfree countries face this problem to a larger degree than free ones so will be also forced to act sooner, and because once they figure the solution it will become imperative for all other countries to do the same or quickly cease to exist so regulatory concerns will be quickly overcome - there is really no way this won't be satisfactorily solved.
mieses 4mo ago
as long as 2 people remain it will work out. the mindset can evolve in a crisis.
fleroviumna 4mo ago
[dead]
snambi 4mo ago
It's perfectly natural for a country to experience periods of growth and decline. Demographic and economic cycles rise and fall over time, and a period of contraction does not mean growth won't return in the future. What isn't reversible is losing a country's identity. As a foreigner, I'd rather see Japan remain Japan than become a messy cultural mix, like Europe.

44 points by Konichivalue 4mo ago

[dead]

Necessity is the mother of innovation. I guess they’re pretty optimistic that they can automate away the humans needed to sustain an aging population. Not a bet I would be willing to take though lol.

HerbManic 4mo ago
I suspect this is why China is going in so hard of humanoid robots over the last few years. They have seen a potential future in Japan and are now trying to avoid this at all costs. It is big long term bet but we will know if it worked in about 20-40 years.

SV_BubbleTime 4mo ago

They’ll find it easy to keep their homogenous culture and shared traditional values. Why would the solution to “our people aren’t having enough babies” be “we should import different people to have their babies here”? Why does ever single bleeding heart liberal globalist try and ignore the deep psychological truths about human tribalism? It’s not even a bad thing, but even if it was, it’s a fact.

ares623 4mo ago
I think the point is we can't have our cake and eat it too. They need _someone_ (or something, if they can manage) to sustain the way of life they hold so dear. And it's not something a country can just decide on a whim like "oop looks like we really need more people tomorrow folks". What are they going to do? Import millions of people 18 years from now? Or plan ahead to make sure millions of babies are born now to grow into the people they like 18 years from now?
- CamperBob2 4mo ago
  They need _someone_ (or something, if they can manage) to sustain the way of life they hold so dear. That's what the robots are (or, rather, will be) for. More seriously, I'm all for liberalizing immigration policy, myself, in almost every respect. But unfortunately the conservative reaction is costing us everything. It's too easy for them to use "Open borders, ooga booga!" to scare the rubes. When conservatives have nothing more to offer the future and no defense for their past, they can always fall back on that. It works. Every country will end up with its own army of MAGA zombies if it pursues this course, and Japan is no exception.
- lmm 4mo ago
  > They need _someone_ (or something, if they can manage) to sustain the way of life they hold so dear. They don't though? Pensions will be cut. Retirements will be pushed back. Grandparents with dementia will be kept mostly-alive in their children's homes rather than getting proper care. There will be pain and suffering. But I don't see any of that pushing the country to breaking point. > And it's not something a country can just decide on a whim like "oop looks like we really need more people tomorrow folks". What are they going to do? Import millions of people 18 years from now? Or plan ahead to make sure millions of babies are born now to grow into the people they like 18 years from now? As hard as fixing a low population is, it's easier than fixing a society where trust has broken down, which is what the western countries that went hard on immigration are already starting to face.
  - vachina 4mo ago
    Yeah not sure why you’re being downvoted. Work hard on making elderly care as easy as possible, automate automatable things. Importing people is just kicking the ageing population can down the road; these immigrant will grow old one day, and then what, import even more people?
    - bulbar 4mo ago
      People from other cultures tend to have more babies.
plaidthunder 4mo ago
> Why would the solution to “our people aren’t having enough babies” be “we should import different people to have their babies here”? If you become poor enough and weak enough, you'll be "replaced" anyway. And not on your own terms.
- auyez 4mo ago
  It is not necessarily true, I think it is opposite. More poorer they get, less attractive that place becomes. Especially since Japan is not rich with natural resources, there is nothing really to steal there
  - plaidthunder 4mo ago
    They become less attractive to immigrants looking to engage in economic arbitrage. They become more attractive to outside non-governmental powers looking to engage in economic arbitrage, which brings its own challenges. They have less negotiating power with wealthier countries which impacts their sovereignty. Poor countries also tend to have more internal conflict: https://gsdrc.org/professional-dev/poverty-and-conflict/ https://gsdrc.org/professional-dev/poverty-and-conflict/ If we look at this empirically it seems clear that countries that trade ethnic sameness for economic prosperity end up more stable, peaceful and capable of directing their own affairs. There could be some advantages to living in a country where strangers are also distant cousins, but they seem marginal. There could even be emotional improvements for parts of the population who feel anxious about living near people who are genetically distant from themselves, but I've not seen great evidence of that. Particularly since ethnically cohesive but poor countries tend to fall into civil war regardless. When you put it to the test and measure outcomes, there are tradeoffs that go far beyond giving up consumerism.
jesterson 4mo ago
[flagged]
add-sub-mul-div 4mo ago
Not everyone views outsiders with unease, it's actually possible to nurture curiosity over fear.
chaostheory 4mo ago
Because it takes 18 years to create an adult and nothing other than immigration is working at the moment. If any country was truly serious about this problem, they would end social programs for the elderly and focus that funding for families.
- HerbManic 4mo ago
  This is one of those thing, yes that is a true statement but what do you do with that information? Would you be willing to make that call? Looks like the trolley problem in action.
  - chaostheory 4mo ago
    Yes, because otherwise your economy and country collapse sooner or later. ie everyone dies. Why do think homogenous countries like Japan and South Korea are finally opening up the immigration floodgates? Because there’s currently no other choice. The other options (directly lowering the costs of child care, lowering work hours, robots, et al) still haven’t worked. Immigration buys you time. If you don’t want immigration, but you still want to buy time then you have to end socialist entitlement programs for the elderly.
    - nec4b 4mo ago
      > If you don’t want immigration, but you still want to buy time then you have to end socialist entitlement programs for the elderly. One big downside of any kind of social programs is that it conditions the population to rely solely on the state, thinking that their payments into the system will guarantee them safety. We tend to forget for a state to exist and to provide services, it needs people. Those people need to be born, raised and cultured in order to act as a community.
Erem 4mo ago
> Why does ever single bleeding heart liberal globalist try and ignore the deep psychological truths about human tribalism? I'll bite. In the US, for one, every single person has an ancestor that thanked their lucky stars the locals didn't think the way that you are recommending we think today. Or an ancestor that suffered because the locals did think that way. We honor that heritage by paying it forward, lest we be lumped among the trash of history that punished the Irish, the Chinese, and the Jews for the cardinal sin of living down the street. Lot of Americans in this forum, so that's why.
- s5300 4mo ago
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- Ekaros 4mo ago
  You are forgetting the natives who royally massively got screwed. Perfect example why they should have done everything possible to stop migration.
  - Erem 4mo ago
    That analogy doesn't work well. Their situation involved foreign powers enforcing jurisdiction and property claims over their land with a regular standing army; a completely different situation than modern immigration
    - moi2388 4mo ago
      Yes. Now it’s through a judicial army based on criminalising speech, and instead of based on a country, based on a religion. Because that’s so much better
      - Erem 4mo ago
        I certainly don't understand all you're saying through this tortured analogy, but yes an "army" of judges that issue rulings is much, much better than an army of soldiers that issue killings
malicka 4mo ago
> the deep psychological truths about human tribalism … that the races should keep to themselves? Yea, I’m going to have to disagree on this one. This was pretty handily disproven by the New World. Mixing, sharing, cohabiting… this creates culture and makes us stronger. Isolation, protectionism, and fear makes us weak.
- HerbManic 4mo ago
  Yep, there is a lot of evidence that says even nomadic tribes heavily intermingled with others because it was seen as a means of building resilience for all.
  - SV_BubbleTime 4mo ago
    There is a lot of evidence that didn’t happen all at once and funded by social programs that effectively discourage integration.
- kmijyiyxfbklao 4mo ago
  How was it disproven by the New World? The countries that mixed (Latin America) are weaker than the country that didn't (USA)
  - malicka 4mo ago
    The USA is pretty dang diverse, and definitely mixed. That mixing is a core part of it’s culture and history, actually. And now, the country that mixed (USA) is stronger than the Old World that didn’t (Europe). Which is to say: There is no inherent psychological tribalism that makes having a diverse country impossible or ruinous; rather, this tribalism is manufactured and spread by hatemongers. The New World is a very good case study, here.
    - nec4b 4mo ago
      It's culture and values come from the dominant group. It didn't really mix equally between groups. If the dominant groups will shrink and another arises the values and the culture will change.
arikrahman 4mo ago
I completely agree, very well said.
bulbar 4mo ago
> Why would the solution to “our people aren’t having enough babies” be “we should import different people to have their babies here”? I'm not "... liberal", however there are two reasons. For one it has turned or to be very hard to convince people to "just have more babies". Second reason is that immigration workforce is available immediately, while an increase in birth rate will only help 20 years later. Even if you manage to reverse the trajectory of the birth rate, how long would it take to approach 2.0? How long until you have healthy demographics? 50, 70 years, maybe, that's just too long. > truths about human tribalism? Truth is that human are complicated and have survived for so long not because of their thumbs or their language, but because of their adaptability.
- HerbManic 4mo ago
  It isn't just about getting it above 2.0, it is having those people in the work force. Even if you could magic up enough babies today, it would be about 20 years until they would be actively offsetting the issue. The is why demographic issues are so insidious. The problems that keep birth rates down today, end up amplifying these issues in the future further suppressing them. Eventually you hit equilibrium but it is a long way down until you get there.
bulbar 4mo ago
> They’ll find it easy to keep their homogenous culture and shared traditional values. Talking about homogenous culture I hope you don't live in the US, because that guys for sure never had one. US is way too big for that which is also why so many laws are still defined by the states.
Tor3 4mo ago
>They’ll find it easy to keep their homogenous culture and shared traditional values. That idea is a fallacy. It has never been true. All of Europe was always a melting pot for people from everywhere. Over the centuries people kept moving, immigrating and emigrating. England.. Britons, Celts, Anglo-Saxxon, Norse, Normans (which were themselves originally immigrants). And my own country? Surnames from everywhere. 40% of my language's vocabulary came from immigrants. Is that a problem? I most certainly can't see any. The idea about 'homogenous culture and shared traditional values' is as true as looking at a flower for five minutes and then claiming that "nah, it doesn't grow, it's frozen".
- DrProtic 4mo ago
  You refer to a period where we had constant war in Europe? You literally posted an example of the opposite.
  - Tor3 4mo ago
    In what way? I included England just because those particular periods are well-known. If you look at ALL of Europe's history, all up to recent times, there's been constant movements and migrations. People with different backgrounds, moving around, a lot of movement came as trade increased (and, as it has lately been found, there was much more trade even 3k years ago than anyone had previously anticipated). If you look at a snapshot of time it looks pretty static, but let your time-tick be generations and you see constant changes.
    - nec4b 4mo ago
      It really hasn't been constant movement and migrations. Once the Germanic and Slavic tribes settled, which wasn't fun for the natives before them and certainly not for the Romans as well, the migration more or less stopped statistically speaking (exceptions were the wars).
      - SV_BubbleTime 4mo ago
        Right, and this latest influx certainly outpaces anything in many generations.
porkloin 4mo ago
The idea that Japan is a uniquely "homogeneous culture" is honestly a modern construct anyway. Japanese culture and language has been enormously influenced by colonial and migrant presence in the country, from Chinese to Dutch to British to American, and a zillion others. Just look at the language! I don't have the exact figure in front of me, but I remember when taking Japanese language courses that something like 30% of the lexicon is loanwords from other languages (edit: I looked it up and it's apparently closer to 50%) Way higher than most other widely spoken languages on the planet. Japanese culture is legitimately _amazing_ in its capacity to absorb and domesticate outside influence, and it's unfortunate that people both in the country and abroad are so short-sighted to not see that. The Meiji and Showa era militarism benefited a lot by promoting this myth. They weren't alone, mind you. Lots of folks across the EU and the US are still falling for the same nationalist stories that their governments cooked up in the early 1900s to drive them all to war. The country _does_ have a really notable cohesion and shared identity, but the problem is in attributing that to some kind of unique isolationism rather than their long history of pluralism.
- HerbManic 4mo ago
  I was going to say, Japans history is one that was very... combative. They fought amongst themselves heavily for a long time.
  - porkloin 4mo ago
    I think a lot of places were at various points in time, right? It's always a little easier to paint with a broad brush and lump hundreds of years into a single statement when you're talking about the history of "foreign" places that we don't learn the history of very deeply in western education. For Japan in particular, it's hard because a big part of the Meiji nationalist movements was to recast Japanese history with a heavy focus on the "bushido" and an arguably manufactured version of some points in the country's history that _were_ undoutably bloody. That yarn-spinning from 100+ years ago has actively shaped how the rest of the world thinks about Japanese history. Western governments during WW2 were happy to take that narrative and paint the entire history as blood-soaked and brutal to dehumanize their enemies. But it's not hard to find evidence of how many long stretches of internal peace existed in Japan. After the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate there was 250 years of more or less continuous peace internally. Arguably continental Europe from the middle-ages onward is more fractured and bloody in total than Japan was in the same period. Classical Greece was a zillion times more bloody.

jesterson 4mo ago

[flagged]

ares623 4mo ago
Is it just me or all three choices all the same outcomes? It's like the ending to Mass Effect 3.
- jesterson 4mo ago
  It's possible, but at this point we don't know yet how each will play out long term. EU chose to destroy itself fast, while Japan chose slow economic demise. Only time will tell how each will play out.
  - ares623 4mo ago
    Surely the tech culture on HN would prefer the "move fast and break things" approach? Faster and tighter loops right?
    - jesterson 4mo ago
      I am not sure tech approach is a right way to go if we project it at wider scale on a society or a country. Society moves at way slower pace, and wrong turns may takes decades to rectify. Needless to say wrong turns may have horrible ramifications lasting decades as well. If you'd ask me, I would certainly be against tech approach here. Lets leave it where it does play well.
  - karmakurtisaani 4mo ago
    The only thing destroying the EU is the ruse if the far right.
    - jesterson 4mo ago
      Glad you have found your favorite scapegoat.

jojobas 4mo ago

Whatever the answer to people having fewer kids is, it's not "cede your land to some other people who will". Japan's population around 1900 was mere 43 million people - when most of them were required to work the fields. Japan will be fine. Europe, on the other hand...

outside1234 4mo ago
This will be easy to say up until there isn’t enough money for retired folks.
- Markoff 4mo ago
  that's already solved problem, just no country had balls to completely abolish PAYGO (Chile was closest, but they backpedaled a bit) and rely on IRA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_in_Chile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_in_Chile
Tor3 4mo ago
Around 1900 the median age of the Japanese population was somewhere in the twenties, in other words, they had a healthy and able work force relative to the population size. Today the median age is above 50, and there aren't many who can work the fields. In fact around here I see very old people doing that, and a lot of them can hardly walk normally, they're permanently bent.
- pseudo0 4mo ago
  What percentage of the Japanese workforce is working in the fields? Most industrial economies are in the 1-2% range for agriculture. And someone in their 50s can easily ride a tractor. Manual labor in the fields is not a productive use of labor in a first-world economy - the fact that it's still happening demonstrates slack in the system that can be absorbed.
  - Tor3 4mo ago
    Rice fields, around here at least. That's always been very labor intensive. They do use tractors to do some of it, but around the periphery of every field it's still done manually. Rice fields are very different from wheat production. In my country strawberries are picked manually. There's yet no mechanical solution which can do what humans can, with respect to quality and more. And that's already a problem, without seasonal immigration there will be no strawberries on the market, simple as that. There are many other kind of work which still requires a young healthy work force.

eska 4mo ago

There is no “zero” immigration policy, this is a strawman. Controlled immigration is different from opening the floodgates. Also weird to admit that no country has reversed its birth rate problem, but still insist upon massive immigration being the solution.

Erem 4mo ago
Korea is starting to turn things around! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/25/south-korea-birth-rate-increase-rise-echo-boomers https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/25/south-korea-bi...
- Tor3 4mo ago
  Fertility rate of 0.80.. and I thought Japan, Italy, and my own country had problems. Note however that https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/south-korea-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/south-korea-p... says 0.76, and last year was 0.75, so there's barely any change there. Catastrophically low birth rate, and maybe it's not so hard to figure out why.
- flakiness 4mo ago
  Maybe the fertility rate has to go below zero to bounce back... Japan's rate is like 1.14 yet [1]. Hopefully Korea has figure out something more actionable [1] https://english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/77220 https://english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/77220
  - karmakurtisaani 4mo ago
    What's fertility rate below zero? Women not only have zero babies, they also sometimes kill babies of others?
    - moi2388 4mo ago
      A rate below 0.99… so less than 1 kid per 2 adults

indiandeodorant 4mo ago

[flagged]

krapp 4mo ago
Man this thread is like catnip for racists.
- somewhatgoated 4mo ago
  They just can’t help themselves
- hagbard_c 4mo ago
  Xenophobes, not racists. There is no race called 'muslim'. That this thread attracts comments from those who have migration-related problems high on their agenda is not that strange since it is dealing with the problems of the (absence of) migration. This subject has been polarised - not in the least by people calling anyone who does not agree a 'racist' - so some of the comments are extreme as well, viz. the grandparent comment about muslims and Indians. Drop the knee-jerk 'muslims and indians are !"!"#%#¤', drop the 'racist! racist! racist!' and maybe, just maybe we can discuss the subject in a more productive manner. It does need discussing because neither 'close all the borders for anyone who does not look, speak, think or believe like me' nor 'open all the borders and welcome anyone who comes in' is a viable solution. Countries which do the former end up in the backwaters of history, those which do the latter end up as a footnote.
  - krapp 4mo ago
    Lol. "xenophobes not racists" gives the same energy as "it isn't pedophilia, it's ephebophilia." Go jerk off to a Roman statue or something.
    - hagbard_c 4mo ago
      I thought this site catered to those a bit more discerning when it comes to discussing complex subjects but I seem to be mistaken. You do know the English language offers more than the few words you employ to have nuanced discussions? Quite a fitting name you chose for yourself by the way.

chainmail2029 4mo ago

>But a strict zero-immigration policy collides with one terrifying reality: No country in history has successfully reversed a falling fertility rate, and Japan shows zero signs of breaking that trend. Wrong! Korea has successfully reversed theirs starting this year due to some extreme policies benefiting families with children [1] https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2026-05-27/national/socialAffairs/Koreas-birthrate-rises-at-fastest-pace-on-record-in-Q1/2602080 https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2026-05-27/nationa... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/25/south-korea-birth-rate-increase-rise-echo-boomers https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/25/south-korea-bi...

Tor3 4mo ago
The worldometer statistics site doesn't fully agree with that, the Guardian reports that the rate went from 0.75 to 0.80, while worldometer states that the 2026 rate will probably end up at 0.76. At best this has kind of stopped dropping, but it is any case catastrophically low (and way worse than Japan)
Schiendelman 4mo ago
"Successfully reversed" would require a number over 2.0. This is just bad reporting.

seandoe 4mo ago

Make having kids a zero-cost endeavor. If that doesn't do it, make it a profitable one. It's as simple as that.

Tor3 4mo ago
It is not as simple as that. In my country giving birth is free. And you get economic support for every child. For most people it's still an economic burden to some extent, but for the majority it's not something which blocks them from having children. It's more that most families I know are content with having two children. It feels fine to them. But that's the families that do have children. 25% of men in my country never have children. It's not enough. A lot of families need to produce 3 children, and better if there are some with four.. and most people simply don't want that. And that's for the most part not a question of economy.
- HerbManic 4mo ago
  And there are the increasing infertility rates as well to hamper the efforts. Personally, I would love to have a few kids but after many years of trying and all manner of treatments we have gotten nowhere at all. But that is just how if falls I guess.
- ponector 4mo ago
  It is as simply as that. Economic support you mentioned is never enough to cover basic needs. Better than nothing, but still require to sacrifice a lot to have an extra kid. More kids means you need a bigger house, bigger car, extra furniture, a part time job for mother to manage kids.
  - Tor3 4mo ago
    I specifically mentioned families where the economy is not a burden, and they still don't want many children. Very few will want more than two. Please note that in my country at least, as long as the economy is good enough that there aren't any real problems living, then it doesn't matter if it costs more with more children. That is not the reason.

kibwen 4mo ago

> The industry is shifting from rigid industrial arms to general-purpose robots powered by advanced AI It is not, if by "general-purpose robots" we mean humanoid robots, and by "AI" we mean LLMs. Factories will continue to be designed around robots that are designed for specific purposes and controlled by normal, predictable software.

cwyers 4mo ago

I am really shocked at the tone of so many of the comments here. Did HN become a breeding ground for xenophobia at some point? Has it always been that and is it just way more mask off now?

moi2388 4mo ago
Unbridled immigration doesn’t work, and that’s become pretty clear. You need limits, and integration, assimilation would be even better.
ephimetheus 4mo ago
I’ve noticed this too. I think it started around the time of the first round of big tech layoffs in the US, and when the US ratcheted up the price for H1B(?) visas. Seems like economic uncertainty or fear of it breeds xenophobia. Who knew
fleroviumna 4mo ago
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happytoexplain 4mo ago
A few of the comments in question have a bad tone - but most of them are reasonable opinions about valuing one's people, culturally or socially, or about the effectiveness of immigration.
Voultapher 4mo ago
The article paints immigration as something undoubtedly negative: > They are willing to accept a smaller economy, strained pensions, and dead rural towns as the price for keeping their core cities safe, clean, and culturally familiar. I'll not pretend that immigration is an easy, uncontroversial and solved topic. But can we maybe not equate immigration with dirty and dangerous cities? Yes that has been the rhetoric for thousands of years, but it's most often the rhetoric of those with a dubious track record of saying true things. Trump is famously anti-immigration, why trust what he says? Since 9/11 the stereotype of a terrorist in the USA has been a brown Muslim. The facts tell us the majority of domestic terrorism is done by white christian dudes. I get that xenophobia is an emotional topic for many, but that doesn't excuse racism.

theturtlemoves 4mo ago

You know, many eastern countries apparently intuitively think in cycles. The west tends to think linearly: "We're trending upwards, argh argh overpopulation, famine, death. We're trending downwards, argh argh population collapse, famine, death". Same with the perception of time. My country sees time as a line. I once had an interesting training where the instructor pointed this out. She went on to say that seeing time as a circle or a point is also an option. It wasn't until I hit the second half of life that I got a glimpse of what that looks like, personally. Perhaps subconsciously, Japan envisions that the birth rate will go up again sometime in the future and they will have preserved their identity and culture from which to build again.

justanotherjoe 4mo ago
Except in growth imperative system we have, to stop growing is not to not grow, it is to spiral into a cascade failure
- theturtlemoves 4mo ago
  And then? Either we think linearly: Crash into the rocks, game over. Or circular: difficult times ahead, we'll get through them again
- znpy 4mo ago
  Congrats you missed the point completely
- Markoff 4mo ago
  you can still grow even with smaller richer more productive population, actually you are encouraged to be more productive with smaller population than vice versa population growth ≠ wealth growth
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
HerbManic 4mo ago
I do find it funny that some folks treat this is like the complete end of Japan (or whatever) nation, like you said a straight line down. But eventually it will bottom out and potentially rebound a bit. It find on the way up or at the top, and it will be fine at the bottom once the trends return but the issue really is the pain of the phase shift.

ares623 4mo ago

Everyone keeps talking "more babies. more immigration". what about "less old people" (this is a joke but I am curious if that has ever come up?)

mc3301 4mo ago
"fewer old people" will actually, spoiler alert, happen. Just wait about 20 years. Certain parts of Japan are gonna be completely empty.
krackers 4mo ago
Canada? https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-services-benefits/medical-assistance-dying.html https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-servi...
HerbManic 4mo ago
Eventually that will be the case but it just takes decades of the demographic bubble to work its way through.
Ekaros 4mo ago
Sometimes I wonder how long it is possible to keep supporting properly senile people. Or those that need constant care. At some point unless there is some massive productivity increase in care it is just not realistic anymore.
ponector 4mo ago
Covid-2030 is coming to help.
Markoff 4mo ago
[flagged]

skeledrew 4mo ago

Neither immigrants nor robots will prevent them from becoming essentially extinct as an ethno-national group if they don't do something serious to stimulate the fertility rate. They need to find the root of why Japanese aren't having kids and resolve it. I'd say it's due primarily to the collision of their values with Western values, particularly concerning family and workplace roles. The core issue is actually being faced by all developed nations, but it hits Japan really hard due to their immigration stance as well as lack of natural resources (they need to excel in providing globally scoped services).

HerbManic 4mo ago
I suspect part of the problem is that people are worked hard and don't really have a vision of the future that they are actively building towards as a nation. Hard work alone doesn't dissuade people from having kids but not having a positive or even constant future target combined with that can cause folks to just give up on that kind of aspiration. This is an issue that develops over decades and places like Japan, South Korea and potentially China, this is already baked in to the point that it is unstoppable. The same is coming to many other nations over the coming decades.

anovikov 4mo ago

I am not at all concerned about this problem. At this point, society mostly need people as consumers, so quality is not as important as it used to be (in democratic countries it's a bit more complicated because people vote - but this is solvable too). Because there are no resource or technology constraints that prevent solving it, just regulatory concerns, and because regulatory concerns are easy to solve in unfree countries almost by definition, and because unfree countries face this problem to a larger degree than free ones so will be also forced to act sooner, and because once they figure the solution it will become imperative for all other countries to do the same or quickly cease to exist so regulatory concerns will be quickly overcome - there is really no way this won't be satisfactorily solved.

mieses 4mo ago

as long as 2 people remain it will work out. the mindset can evolve in a crisis.

fleroviumna 4mo ago

[dead]

snambi 4mo ago

It's perfectly natural for a country to experience periods of growth and decline. Demographic and economic cycles rise and fall over time, and a period of contraction does not mean growth won't return in the future. What isn't reversible is losing a country's identity. As a foreigner, I'd rather see Japan remain Japan than become a messy cultural mix, like Europe.