What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?

https://www.konichivalue.com/p/what-happens-if-japan-takes-in-zero

by Konichivalue • 2 months ago

44 155 2 months ago

Insanity• 2 months 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.

HerbManic11• 2 months 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_BubbleTime3• 2 months 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.

ares6232• 2 months 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• 2 months 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.

lmm5• 2 months 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.

plaidthunder2• 2 months 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.

auyez2• 2 months 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

add-sub-mul-div• 2 months ago

Not everyone views outsiders with unease, it's actually possible to nurture curiosity over fear.

chaostheory3• 2 months 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.

HerbManic11• 2 months 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.

Erem5• 2 months 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.

Ekaros2• 2 months ago

You are forgetting the natives who royally massively got screwed. Perfect example why they should have done everything possible to stop migration.

nec4b6• 2 months ago

And yet american culture and values are from it's dominant and founding group. All other groups were expected to assimilate and join the melting pot.

>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.

I don't think you thought it through before you wrote this. As the locals, certainly didn't want what you imply and were defeated tribe by tribe.

malicka3• 2 months 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.

HerbManic11• 2 months 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.

kmijyiyxfbklao2• 2 months ago

How was it disproven by the New World? The countries that mixed (Latin America) are weaker than the country that didn't (USA)

arikrahman2• 2 months ago

I completely agree, very well said.

bulbar9• 2 months 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.

HerbManic11• 2 months 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.

bulbar9• 2 months 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.

Tor316• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

You refer to a period where we had constant war in Europe?

You literally posted an example of the opposite.

happytoexplain3• 2 months ago

So then it's ok to uproot the flower and replace it with another one, because "it was going to change anyway"? Analogies are a distraction.

nec4b6• 2 months ago

Doesn't sound fun though.First being conquered by Romans, then Anglo Saxons, then pillaged by Vikings and the conquered again by Normans.

I'm pretty sure where ever you come from that you have a dominant groups which imposes it's culture to every other subgroup. Every country where that is not the case, you infighting and war.

_DeadFred_• 2 months ago

You are leaving out quite a bit of warfare, exploitation, rape, hatred, cultural erasure, colonization, slavers, serfdom, monarchy, religious conversion, religion erasure, and genocide in that pretty picture you paint as "All of Europe was always a melting pot for people from everywhere".

porkloin2• 2 months 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.

HerbManic11• 2 months ago

I was going to say, Japans history is one that was very... combative. They fought amongst themselves heavily for a long time.

pandaman• 2 months ago

I think you are confusing "homogeneous" with "indigenous". With the common meaning of "homogeneous" your entire post is a non sequitur. There are many different words ending with "-geneous" meaning entirely different things, you need to look at what goes before the "-genous" part.

happytoexplain3• 2 months ago

I think you're misunderstanding - "homogeneous" as a cultural description is a spatial metric, not a time metric. Homogeneous cultures indeed change across time, influenced by war and foreign media/languages, just like any culture. The point is not that they do or do not change, the point is that they do so together, largely.

The country _does_ have a really notable cohesion and shared identity

This, and race/culture, is what is meant when people say Japan is homogeneous compared to other developed nations.

nec4b6• 2 months ago

The idea that Japan is a uniquely "homogeneous culture" is honestly a modern construct anyway.

This is a very postmodern point view.

jojobas4• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

This will be easy to say up until there isn’t enough money for retired folks.

Markoff2• 2 months 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

Tor316• 2 months 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.

pseudo03• 2 months 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.

arikrahman2• 2 months ago

I completely agree.

margalabargala• 2 months ago

The quantity of people isn't relevant, it's the quantity of people by age.

Older people, en masse, become a burden. If you add another 43 million people aged over 60 on top of your 43 million from 1900, suddenly that 86 million is less productive than the original 43 million.

Currently Japan has ~41 million people aged 0-40, ~41 million aged 40-60, and ~41 million aged 60+

pezezin• 2 months ago

As an European living in Japan... no, Japan will not be fine. At least we Europeans are aware of our problems and try to look for solutions (whether we actually solve anything is another topic), the Japanese are masters of solving problems by ignoring them.

Their culture has a lot of good things, but also bad things that are leading then to the abyss, but if you watch Japanese media they never discuss any sensitive topic and always try to paint themselves as the best country in the world. Maybe they should start doing some self-criticism...

malicka3• 2 months ago

cede your land to some other people who will

This is an insane way to frame immigration reform. It isn’t “ceding” anything, it just means being OK that not every single person you know is the same race. Having some cultural exchange, growing as a person, learning about the world beyond your borders… these are virtues.

jojobas4• 2 months ago

Immigration without assimilation with number as high as required to keep Japan population from falling is unequivocally ceding. Even much more approachable cultures get non-assimilating enclaves. The immigrants won't be considered as belonging by the Japanese and won't strive to become Japanese either.

eska• 2 months 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.

Erem5• 2 months ago

Korea is starting to turn things around! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/25/south-korea-bi...

Tor316• 2 months 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-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• 2 months 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

Tor316• 2 months ago

Japan's population is dropping like a stone. Since I first arrived here some years ago the population has gone down by several millions. Countries which have more immigration (like my native one, also with a low birth rate) manage to keep up the population size, and, equally important, manage to keep the median age somewhat lower (the median age in Japan is now above 50).

If immigration is not a solution, then I assume you mean that reversing the birth rate problem is the way to go. Can't disagree there, but how do you propose to do that? No country with a birth rate below 2 seems to have been able to come up with a way to "fix" that.

(The worldometer site makes it easy to look up and compare various countries: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/japan-populat...)

bulbar9• 2 months ago

The main problem is that solutions would be very expensive and, unfortunately, politicians don't get (re-)elected to solve problems that manifest over the span of decades.

HerbManic11• 2 months ago

The unfortunate flip side of this is that when you bring in a lot of immigrants, it can keep a lot of markets pumped up far beyond what the markets would usually dictate.

Here in Australia, we tipped below replacement rate in 1976 and it has never recovered, we just increase immigration to cover the gap. Culturally this has been brilliant but economically it has made some oddities in that housing is through the roof as there is far more customers for it than their would have been otherwise. But it does provide a lot of younger workers that manage to keep the pension system going and the demand on that system is only going to grow for decades to come.

The alternative is that you restrict immigration and we end up in the Japan position. A crumbling pension system and a lack of people to keep ever maintenance up of a lot of infrastructure and sheer labor availability.

I have wondered that as this situation grows globally, what happens when a lot of nations that have typically had a lot of emigration end up shutting the tap off as yhey feel they need their people more in their country? They can starve others of immigrants and potentially become a large political tool in decades to come. Interesting times ahead.

It is the difference between a solution and a predicament. A solution fixes the issue, a predicament has only response merely that try to take the least bad path down. This looks like a predicament.

I do fear for the younger folks, the kids and a generation or two afterwards nowadays as they are going to end up lumped with this mess. But after that things should settle down into a new stable phase. This isn't the end of civilizations it is just a re-calibration, it just take generations to occur.

chaostheory3• 2 months ago

weird to admit that no country has reversed its birth rate problem, but still insist upon massive immigration being the solution.

How exactly is this weird when you don’t want your population to decline? Like it or not, every modern economic system whether it’s capitalism or socialism relies on population growth.

bulbar9• 2 months ago

Also weird to admit that no country has reversed its birth rate problem, but still insist upon massive immigration being the solution.

Because those "floodgates" for the most part have never existed and are just fear inducing rhetoric. Immigration has always been insignificant in terms of the whole population and therefore can not solve systemic problems alone.

fastball• 2 months ago

How do you define insignificant? From 1950 to 2000 (50 years), the foreign born percentage of the UK doubled from 4% to 8%. In the 20 years after that, the percentage doubled again to 16%. In the five years since 2020, the percentage has increased another 4 points to ~20%.

Not only is 13 million people not "insignificant" in my book, but clearly the trend is accelerating.

diericx• 2 months ago

The US opened the border significantly during the Biden administration and it caused plenty of issues worth worrying about. I think that is a good example of opening the floodgates. But if you mean only in terms of affecting the population numbers then prob irrelevant.

Retric2• 2 months ago

no country has reversed its birth rate problem.

America has, it reversed below subsistence rate birth rates. More importantly despite some years of negative population growth the net long term trend is slow population growth.

So despite both issues the long term trend is slow net population growth. Thus significantly below subsistence birth rates where flipped from a massive issue to a non issue.

Gud• 2 months ago

So it hasn’t?

saltyoldman2• 2 months ago

In the united states the birthrate problem is largely climate change panic (which is not a reason to not have kids because other populations / immigrants start accelerating their birth rates), and then because of heavy migration and other market factors, home prices have skyrocketed. Many couples don't want to have kids until they at least buy their "starter house".

I'm not very familiar with Japan's problems, but I think it's different. I think it has more to do with some kind of never growing up adults.

doctorwho422• 2 months ago

Well their economy isn't helping; they export a ton because it is more profitable to export than to sell domestically.

Their work culture actually rivals the US for toxicity.

And they dove into the modern technological society fully before anyone other than maybe Korea... Who is also having birth rate problems

armada651• 2 months ago

I guess we're ready to blame anything but work hours, no one has time to take care of kids anymore. The correlation between industrialization and falling birth rates has long been established, but it's just shrugged off as a "that's just the way it is" rather than taking a serious look at the 8-hour work day.

lovich• 2 months ago

There is no “zero” immigration policy, this is a strawman.

Japan and Korea(can’t remember their names at the time but pretty sure it wasn’t those two) were famously hermit kingdoms until the US showed up and threatened war if they wouldn’t trade.

The first Medal of Honors awarded for combat internationally were given to US soldiers who ended up fighting the Koreans shortly after the civil war because of their desire to keep foreigners out[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_expedition_to_Ko...

red-iron-pine2• 2 months ago

there is no birth rate solution.

but if you want to keep the economy functioning, you need to do something. immigration is something.

chainmail2029• 2 months 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/nationa... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/25/south-korea-bi...

Tor316• 2 months 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)

Schiendelman4• 2 months ago

"Successfully reversed" would require a number over 2.0. This is just bad reporting.

seandoe• 2 months 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.

Tor316• 2 months 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.

HerbManic11• 2 months 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.

ponector2• 2 months 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.

TheDong• 2 months ago

Children cost hundred's of thousands of dollars to raise, and that doesn't even count the opportunity cost of your own career progression as you have to spend a year of sleepless nights and possibly have one or both parents reduce their work hours to care for the child.

The Japanese government already struggles to pay out pensions with its aging population, healthcare and pension costs are both rising, where do you propose the money for this comes from?

Should the government increase its already high tax rate from up-to-50% to up-to-90% and take money from the childless to give to parents?

Should the government replace your salary if you quit your job to raise a kid (since after-all that is a cost of the endeavor)?

If you're just talking about "giving birth", I assure you the cost to give birth is already close to free, the government already covers that, and various cities have local parent stipends which make it "profitable" in a sense.

But the real cost of giving birth is not the giving birth, it's the millions of yen you then need to spend over the next 18 years to raise and educate the child, not to mention the cost of possibly dying during childbirth.

lmm5• 2 months ago

Should the government increase its already high tax rate from up-to-50% to up-to-90% and take money from the childless to give to parents?

Yes

Should the government replace your salary if you quit your job to raise a kid (since after-all that is a cost of the endeavor)?

Yes

If you're just talking about "giving birth", I assure you the cost to give birth is already close to free, the government already covers that, and various cities have local parent stipends which make it "profitable" in a sense.

Yes and no. There are a zillion different support programs where you have to fill out a 4 page form in triplicate and submit to city hall to get $80 3 months later. Childbirth is induced regardless of medical necessity because there's one programme that covers medical costs up to the scheduled due date and another programme that covers medical costs after birth, but if you need medical care after your due date with the baby still unborn then you fall through the cracks. The country badly needs to replace its patchwork subsidy program with simply including childbirth under normal medical insurance.

HerbManic11• 2 months ago

This touches on a core part of this. Don't think about it from a money point of view but form a labor/time point of view.

There is just not enough labor/time for people to have kids and also sustain the elderly that can no longer contribute to the same degree.

jalapenoj• 2 months ago

No, slash the entitlements, children become the pension. You can’t solve this with taxes because those come from the youth anyway.

skeledrew2• 2 months ago

It's as simple as that.

Not really. Cultural values is a huge factor, and that was seriously upended when the US invaded and occupied them.

kibwen2• 2 months 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• 2 months 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?

moi23884• 2 months ago

Unbridled immigration doesn’t work, and that’s become pretty clear.

You need limits, and integration, assimilation would be even better.

ephimetheus• 2 months 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

happytoexplain3• 2 months 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• 2 months 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.

laserdancepony• 2 months ago

Not everyone on HN is from SF, sometimes you also get reasonable opinions here.

theturtlemoves2• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

Except in growth imperative system we have, to stop growing is not to not grow, it is to spiral into a cascade failure

theturtlemoves2• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

Congrats you missed the point completely

Markoff2• 2 months 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

HerbManic11• 2 months 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.

bestouff2• 2 months ago

Yeah sure. It never happened that a great civilization completely collapsed.

ludicrousdispla• 2 months ago

> You know, many eastern countries apparently intuitively think in cycles.

"a turtle that retracts its head will later extend it"

ares6232• 2 months 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?)

krackers• 2 months ago

Canada? https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-servi...

mc3301• 2 months ago

"fewer old people" will actually, spoiler alert, happen. Just wait about 20 years. Certain parts of Japan are gonna be completely empty.

HerbManic11• 2 months ago

Eventually that will be the case but it just takes decades of the demographic bubble to work its way through.

Ekaros2• 2 months 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.

ponector2• 2 months ago

Covid-2030 is coming to help.

skeledrew2• 2 months 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).

HerbManic11• 2 months 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• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

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

snambi• 2 months 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.

What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?

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