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Notes -
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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