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PaperclipPerfector  11d ago (text post)   2263 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 11, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I just had a conversation with someone last week about this video. I wondered at the time why they were focusing on South Korea and not Japan. It does seem strange the video says it's unprecedented and only make the most passing mention that Japan is arguably ahead on the demographic curve.

From the population pyramids, seems like if you align babyboomlet generations, 2025 Korea is roughly at the same place as 2007 Japan. Perhaps the remarkable thing is Japan managed to stabilize the base of the pyramid for a few cohorts. Seems like now Korea is facing a demographic cliff while Japan is only facing a demographic decline. With 1.2% vs 1.6% of population in the most recent cohorts. Does anyone have some color on why Japans population decline slowed and Koreas did not? Is anyone more familiar with the cultures willing to confirm or deny my impression that the South Koreans seem to be more willing to embrace automation. Maybe that can help fend of declines in raw GDP for a few more years?

Any country that passes through this population bottleneck experiences immediate and intense natural selection for increased fertility, which means that those nations that started earlier (France in the case of Europe and Japan in the case of East Asia) will revert sooner to a more sustainable birthrate. There is also more variation within Japan itself than Korea, with minorities such as Okinawans bringing up the average fertility. Lastly, Japan has in recent years implemented a more liberal immigration policy, with large numbers of Vietnamese, Filipino, Chinese, Indonesian, etc. workers (or mail-order brides) moving in to maintain the integrity of the labor force and having more children than the natives.

I keep seeing this heritability of fertility argument repeated especially with respect to France but is there any real evidence for it at all?

France was demonstrably the first country in Europe to undergo the demographic transition and has a higher fertility rate today than its neighbors (I picked a source from before the recent migration wave to eliminate that confounder).

Yes I am aware of that but one country having a slightly higher rate of a single metric really doesn’t indicate an evolutionary process

What part of this fertility is white people? Which are the only relevant for me.

Most of it.

Does anyone have some color on why Japans population decline slowed and Koreas did not?

Japan is a larger nation, with more economic opportunity, and it industrialized at a time when industrialization wasn't quite so automated- the percentage of the population that process enriched was larger.

South Korea is small, has one major city, and it industrialized at a time when automation was already a relatively solved problem- the percentage of the population that process enriched was smaller.

Both nations, as well as all Western ones (importantly, the US is the least affected), are overpopulated to varying degrees relative to their level of economic opportunity- that's why TFR is below 2 there. It's not "the young aren't doing their duty", it's that the positions that the young would grow into no longer exist and their very existence has been, for a variety of reasons, simply priced out of the market (you can also see this effect in gender relations, where women instinctively expect men to make more than them- which means that the carrying capacity of society is not equal, and furthermore that men are in surplus).

When populations shrink, capital pays more for labor- that's why, historically, massive economic booms occur after significant die-offs. What you're seeing is a slower, gentler version of that process.

The North Koreans are not capable of winning a war on South Korea and still remaining North Korea through domestic production alone- if they had enough domestic production to sustain a war they would have industrialized to the point the socioeconomic forces that hold the country together would be destroyed- too many people getting rich for the Kim regime to be able to delete.

China could do it, of course- just dump more materiel onto the NK army than they're able to carry- but then, apart from no longer being a base from which the United States could attack the Chinese mainland, what grand benefit would they get from reducing the country to rubble? Certainly not a trading partner, that's for sure, since NK has no industry and their people are poorer than China's own in the first place. It's not like Ukraine where the Russians can somewhat credibly claim they're making the territory safe for ethnic Russians; Koreans aren't Han Chinese and the two hate each other on that basis alone.

It's not "the young aren't doing their duty", it's that the positions that the young would grow into no longer exist and their very existence has been, for a variety of reasons, simply priced out of the market

If so, why there are large immigration streams and even many goverments subsidizing that immigration?

Is anyone more familiar with the cultures willing to confirm or deny my impression that the South Koreans seem to be more willing to embrace automation. Maybe that can help fend of declines in raw GDP for a few more years?

Ah yes, clearly the Korean culture will flourish with the 10 surviving Koreans atop an automated empire as opposed to millions of Koreans experiencing all the richness of the human condition in relative poverty. After all, the first question St Peter asks you is "What was your GDP?"

I guess one advantage that ROK has over Japan is the small chance of reabsorbing the DPRK. In a sort of German reunification absorption of the GDR into the FRG. This is all conditional on them managing to avoid total economic and social collapse for a few decades though.

Even if there are only 10 South Koreans left, maybe they can send the 20 million North Koreans to reeducation camps consisting of archival K-drama and K-pop to reincarnate the culture.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure if NK and SK ever unify, it won't be on SK's political or cultural terms.

After all, the first question St Peter asks you is "What was your GDP?"

Milton Friedman outcompeted St Peter in efficiency, by leveraging capitalist incentives, now like entering New Vegas you need to have proof of wealth. Turns out you CAN take it with you.

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