Quote: (07-08-2017 12:59 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:
This is my beef with the "breed or die" crowd, too.
I'm no environmentalist dickhead, but it's pretty obvious that there are finite resources on this planet, sheer geographical space being the least disputable.
A slowly depleting population is only an issue if you continue on with expanding-population-political-policies, which is part of the reason that so many companies (banks in particular) are desperate for breakneck speed immigration into under-replacement-birth rate Western nations. If you're in the business of manufacturing prams or turning suburban blocks into apartment buildings (or if you're a banker financing all of these things) then increasing the consumer base by all means necessary is top priority, and who gives a shit of that causes the middle class to descend into barbarism. You'll be living in a gated community upstate anyway, and if things get really bad then you'll move to another civilised country like Japan.
Any plan that relies on adopting hardcore r-select strategies "for the continuation of our greatness" is utterly misplaced. The West didn't become great by outbreeding Indians or Chinese or South Americans. It became great by careful planning and acting in unison toward the shared goal of a greater society. Or in other words, by k-select behavioural traits.
I would concede that an ageing population (like the boomers) creates a hostile political landscape for future planning because too many voters aim their power toward propping up the current regime for just long that they can die in comfort before the world falls to shit, but even with continuing low birth rates it seems like we as a civilisation are learning from that lesson and evolving politically to think more of the bigger picture and less about our own greedy selves. The defining question of our nations will be whether the k-selects are willing to throw off the tyranny of the r-selects.
That's the only relevant question in the world right now.
I don't see what the problem is either. A quick google tells me there were about 70 million Japanese in 1940, there's about 125 million now.
Recently the Australian Bureau of statistics announced the population of Australia is over half born overseas or born to parents from overseas. Tell me how they're going to assimilate when they outnumber the people they're supposes to be assimilating too. Japan for all it's problems is still Japanese.
(Not discounting the immigrants to Australia who are from england etc. who have a similar cultural background BTW, similar not the same).
EDIT: And Australia just clocked over 25 million citizens too. It's a big country physically, but the really habitable bits are mostly on the coasts.