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If you’re okay living in a society of pets who sway docilely in whatever geopolitical winds come their way until some energetic bully shows up and displaces everyone, fine. I wouldn’t want to live in a society like that, and neither will most of the talented and ambitious young people. This creates a vicious cycle where your society becomes full of old people and spiritually sedentary young people. Sclerotic societies aren’t healthy for most people except for the most sclerotic, and you don’t want to live in a society full of them.
It’s not like people in such a society seem extremely happy, or satisfied. They’re stressed, corralled into a narrow path to social respect, and low-fertility aside, are sexless. Westerners who visit Korea or Japan find it charming and cozy af. But people who live and work there have very different impressions. My Korean immigrant wife came to America when she was 12 and is a scientist in America doing cutting edge basic research. Prior to that she wasn’t very good in following the narrow Korean mold of success and best case would’ve been stuck in some bugman office job at a giant conglomerate.
Also, the assumption that robots will save all the old people from having any young people to look after them is also pretty heroic, and kinda sad.
Who exactly is this "energetic bully" that's capable of wiping away a heavily automated industrialized nation with plenty of money and resources to spare for the purposes of running their automated defenses?
How exactly did they avoid the same fate, while having a comparable military base, when almost every developed country is succumbing to demographic aging?
That's all irrelevant, it's the only solution* to the problem given the failure of most natalist policies, at least until the advent of something that works, which will almost certainly be after automation makes it moot. And that's leaving aside the potential for real senolytic drugs or therapies that just make the old young again.
*Leaving aside all of us dying before this has time to happen
I assume this references Korea's history of being a subject of foreign powers like China and Japan. It's understandable though, China is so much bigger than Korea, resistance is uneconomical. And look at their geography! A peninsula that can easily be cut off by the Chinese navy, their whole country well within range of short-range ballistic missiles.
If that's the relevant comparison, then how exactly will China remain or become "energetic" when they suffer from the same demographic decline as Korea does? If they managed to retain that, somehow, why didn't Korea?
As in geopolitics, game theory makes what might otherwise be irrational, rational. Korea is a turn-key nuclear power, if they can credibly commit to nuclear retaliation no matter how costly, they're largely safe from war.
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Have you both seen Past Lives by any chance?
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