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02-26-2016, 10:09 AM   #1
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Japan's Population DECLINED 2010 - 2015!!

This article from Asia Times (also reported by many other news aggregators) describes the challenge facing Japan's government and central bank as they try to stimulate their economy - and paints a fairly grim picture for future internal economic growth. It is worth thinking about for we residents of developed economies as how it affects our particular photography gear interest near term and for our own potential issues in coming decades. Economic demand and power must inevitably shift to faster growing regions of the world, and with that their preferences will take precedence over ours.

Happy Friday.

02-26-2016, 10:32 AM   #2
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QuoteOriginally posted by monochrome Quote
Happy Friday.
There are projections that the global population will peak something this century. Russia's depopulation resembles an extrapolation of what Detroit and Buffalo have gone through. Europe's growth has come from immigration (legal and illegal, temporary and permanent), but eventually the supply of impoverished educated people of working age will dry up. Birthrates have declined in China (relaxation of restrictions on family size may not reverse the long-term trend) and India; when women are finally emancipated in the world of Islam, birthrates in the rest of the world will also decline.

At the microeconomic level, increasing productivity can balance out decreasing revenue, but it requires a different management mindset. For national governments, I suspect it will also take a very different outlook on how to govern. So, in my opinion, the world (or even Japan) isn't doomed, but we are in for decades of grief. Mind you, when hasn't there been man-made grief in the world?
02-26-2016, 10:48 AM - 1 Like   #3
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At some point we'll have a stable population, and no economic growth over all, but economic shifts with changes in technology etc. The problems with projecting expanding populations forever and economic growth forever based on expanding populations, well, I'd have to ask, does anyone actually believe that can happen?

At some point, the world will need to become civilized.... and stable, zero population growth at a sustainable level, and economic growth only through technological advances allowing the same number of people to have more wealth.

The other possibility is that humans continue to expand until they've figured out how to use every bit of the planet to sustain human populations at the expense of all other life forms. At that point we'll be eating chemical conceptions created in food factories that have become capable of chemically producing all of life's necessities without the help of other organisms, most of the sunlight hitting the earth will be directed at solar farms, creating the energy need to bi-pass plant and animal co-dependency, and the world will essentially be one huge industrial park.

And if we don't get the psychopaths out of our economic system, that's exactly where we will end up. Eating chemically produced green slime and living in cages. That will be the end result of unrestricted capitalism. Those who have learned to benefit from the destruction of life, will always have more money and influence than those who favour conservation and control, in a system that believes those with the most money should have the most power.

The genetically programmed human belief is that humans should survive above all other life forms. It's a race to see what happens first, the genetic imperative fulfills it's mission and eliminates all competition to human life on every level, or we become civilized enough to accept restrictions regardless of how "wrong" they might feel on an emotional level. My assessment would be way to many, from fundamentalist religious types, to just plain slaves to their genetic conditioning and too few understand the long term consequences of that approach to living... it's all a question of how long it takes before we all essentially develop a bhudhist like respect for all life, and that's just not going to happen. It took 7,000 years of civilization to come to that understanding in India, and with the success of a new wealthy class dependant on exploitation, they are quickly losing it. Places like Europe and the Americas are thousands of years behind, and India is back sliding.

SO maybe, Japan has got it right.

Last edited by normhead; 02-26-2016 at 11:00 AM.
02-26-2016, 10:56 AM   #4
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QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
And if we don't get the psychopaths out of our economic system, that's exactly where we will end up. Eating chemically produced green slime and living in cages. That will be the end result of unrestricted capitalism.
So, kind of like the typical commuter living in Mississauga? Which reminds me, I need to go upstairs and find some leftovers to heat up for lunch.

02-26-2016, 11:06 AM   #5
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Yikes!
02-26-2016, 12:32 PM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
At some point we'll have a stable population, and no economic growth over all, but economic shifts with changes in technology etc. The problems with projecting expanding populations forever and economic growth forever based on expanding populations, well, I'd have to ask, does anyone actually believe that can happen?

At some point, the world will need to become civilized.... and stable, zero population growth at a sustainable level, and economic growth only through technological advances allowing the same number of people to have more wealth.

The other possibility is that humans continue to expand until they've figured out how to use every bit of the planet to sustain human populations at the expense of all other life forms. At that point we'll be eating chemical conceptions created in food factories that have become capable of chemically producing all of life's necessities without the help of other organisms, most of the sunlight hitting the earth will be directed at solar farms, creating the energy need to bi-pass plant and animal co-dependency, and the world will essentially be one huge industrial park.

And if we don't get the psychopaths out of our economic system, that's exactly where we will end up. Eating chemically produced green slime and living in cages. That will be the end result of unrestricted capitalism. Those who have learned to benefit from the destruction of life, will always have more money and influence than those who favour conservation and control, in a system that believes those with the most money should have the most power.

The genetically programmed human belief is that humans should survive above all other life forms. It's a race to see what happens first, the genetic imperative fulfills it's mission and eliminates all competition to human life on every level, or we become civilized enough to accept restrictions regardless of how "wrong" they might feel on an emotional level. My assessment would be way to many, from fundamentalist religious types, to just plain slaves to their genetic conditioning and too few understand the long term consequences of that approach to living... it's all a question of how long it takes before we all essentially develop a bhudhist like respect for all life, and that's just not going to happen. It took 7,000 years of civilization to come to that understanding in India, and with the success of a new wealthy class dependant on exploitation, they are quickly losing it. Places like Europe and the Americas are thousands of years behind, and India is back sliding.

SO maybe, Japan has got it right.
Norm, such a cheerful fellow you are. Time to go out hunting and gathering again.
02-26-2016, 12:32 PM - 1 Like   #7
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02-26-2016, 01:18 PM   #8
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QuoteOriginally posted by waterfall Quote
Norm, such a cheerful fellow you are. Time to go out hunting and gathering again.
Already done, hunting fungus , lichen, dead leave and moss for photos. It'll take a few millennia before we are technologically advanced for them to figure out how to make money in South Algonquin where I live.

I'm safe.
02-26-2016, 01:22 PM   #9
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Same here at 47 degrees north latitude.
02-26-2016, 02:03 PM   #10
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QuoteOriginally posted by waterfall Quote
Time to go out hunting and gathering again.
You know, I wasn't really raised by wolves in a log cabin, but most of the lumber my Dad used to build the house I grew up in came from trees he cut down himself, we lived with my uncle for a year in a house without electricity while our house was being built (including my first four months of Grade 1) and I couldn't flush a toilet at home until I was 13 because my Dad didn't install a septic system until then. Personally, I think capitalism beats the hell out of mercantilism, feudalism and even life in a society of hunters and gatherers. If I have to eat green slime and live in a cage in order to avoid using a chamber pot and Aladdin lamps to read by, I'm okay with it.
02-26-2016, 02:09 PM   #11
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Let's just all agree to not go there. Anything is bad taken to its self-interested extreme. What we've done wrong the last 150 years is systematically eliminate humility and the fear of God. *


* Which is probably going to get me in trouble. A Higher Power then.
02-26-2016, 02:57 PM   #12
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QuoteOriginally posted by monochrome Quote
Let's just all agree to not go there
Agreed.
02-26-2016, 05:47 PM   #13
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I'm strongly in favor of negative population growth as long as it's the result of a voluntary decline in birth rates.
02-26-2016, 06:21 PM   #14
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QuoteOriginally posted by dadipentak Quote
I'm strongly in favor of negative population growth as long as it's the result of a voluntary decline in birth rates.
In theory I agree - as long as someone else's population is negative. I was in college in the early 70's when ZPG and The Coming Ice Age (reals? Global Cooling? Dude.) were all the rage. Problem in the real world is, people go away but their debt doesn't. Static (or rising) Debt / Fewer People = Deflation. The only viable solution is massive reflation.

I don't want to be on the short end of either of those sticks.

Last edited by monochrome; 02-26-2016 at 06:36 PM.
02-26-2016, 06:27 PM   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by dadipentak Quote
I'm strongly in favor of negative population growth as long as it's the result of a voluntary decline in birth rates.
Then there's the other side of that, the smart ones have one or two kids, the dumb ones have 12. We seem to have a built in self destruct mechanism. And then there's what we do in North America, we have a very high standard of living therefore a very low birth rate. So we bring in lots of immigrants. The we complain, because they're immigrants.
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