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We only have one modern example of demographic crash to study... Japan. Total economic stagnation, spiraling population numbers, loss of anything anchored to m
by FuriouslyAdrift 4mo ago
We only have one modern example of demographic crash to study... Japan.
Total economic stagnation, spiraling population numbers, loss of anything anchored to manual labor, and an aging population.
So far, it looks to be a way for slow extinction of a culture.
- guyzero 4mo agoJapan, a country famous for no one knowing what its culture is.
- dyauspitr 4mo agoReading about it in books and watching anime won’t prevent them from going functionally extinct in less than 200 years.
- guyzero 4mo agoNo one cares. Japanese culture today is nothing like it was 200 years ago.
- functionmouse 4mo agoI care
- kordlessagain 4mo agodoubtful
- dyauspitr 4mo agoI care. I don’t want the country of Japan to be a bunch of starving geriatrics a few decades from now.
- triceratops 4mo agoI don't believe that will happen.
- dyauspitr 4mo agoIt will if nothing changes. That’s a certainty. But yes something might change.
- N_Lens 4mo agoEver heard of Malthus?
- goodpoint 4mo agoYes, a deeply flawed theory.
- trumpdong 4mo agoRight. No species has ever overpopulated itself to extinction. Certainly no human sect. Why are there statue heads on an unpopulated island anyway?
- goodpoint 4mo agoThat's plain false.
- N_Lens 4mo agoThe point is Malthus was very popular in his day and his predictions appeared iron clad, just like predictions about population collapse seem to be today. Many countries enacted population control programs due to his influence. Reality often has a funny way of evading predictions.
- throwyawayyyy 4mo agoI mean, if Japan is the world's future, isn't that kind of... good? It's not the first place I think of when I think of a failing country.
- guyzero 4mo agoJapan is not without problems related to a shrinking population i.e. https://eastasiaforum.org/2026/05/21/japans-immigration-politics-starves-restaurants-of-workers/ https://eastasiaforum.org/2026/05/21/japans-immigration-poli... but it's a problem easily solved by just letting in more immigrants.
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 4mo ago[flagged]
- guyzero 4mo agoJapan is already accepting immigrants! It's right there in the article I linked! It's just a question of raising the quota slightly. It's hardly going to solve every problem, it will keep restaurants from closing.
- 9dev 4mo ago"allowing to enter the country" and "accepting" are two very distinct things.
- guyzero 4mo agoIn English they can, in fact, be used, at times, interchangeably! https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/accept https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/accept Accept: to give admittance Why is every argument against any level of immigration that the people of Japan are unchangeably xenophobic? Japan is bringing in more immigrants than ever: https://soranews24.com/2025/08/13/foreign-population-in-japan-hits-record-high-as-japanese-population-falls-to-record-low/ https://soranews24.com/2025/08/13/foreign-population-in-japa...
- everdrive 4mo agoAh yes, the hellscape that is Japan. The Japanese are currently fleeing to South Sudan and Darfur in hopes of a better life.
- belval 4mo agoThe 42.7M tourists that went there in 2025 just enjoyed seeing the incredible decay of a dying country, a morbid fascination or sorts. /s (obviously)
- pibaker 4mo agoCancun has one of the highest murder rates in the world. But I guess we shouldn't care about it because thousands of Americans fly there for vacation every day.
- m4rtink 4mo agoYou can actually see it if you know where to look - edges of big cities but it is most visible in the countryside and smaller towns. And if you want to see how real Armageddon looks like, go visit Yubari: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%ABbari,_Hokkaido https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%ABbari,_Hokkaido The collapse was due to local coal mining no longer being viable, but it still demonstrates how it looks like when a city goes from 107000 people in 1960 to 5600 in 2025. Large empty areas where homes and factories used to be, old billboards for stuff that no longer exists, whole school buildings and gymnasiums out of use and overgrown. Most shops closed or hardly open & few remaining occupied buildings in the middle of it. Was a really special experience & the local coal mining museum was super interesting - just wondering for how long it can continue going...
- bombcar 4mo agoSeems somewhat better than Detroit. The question really is - how does an abandoned town hurt us? Sure, there may be some sympathy and loss for "what once was" (same as the pictures of the abandoned classrooms in Prypiat). The US has had similar things happen but the spread out population has given it some resiliency (many towns that "collapsed" when the mill/factory/whatever shut down continue in a strange afterlife as a suburb of a nearby city).
- Qem 4mo ago> Total economic stagnation, spiraling population numbers, loss of anything anchored to manual labor, and an aging population. And this was in a developed country well resourced to take the hit.