• Dengalicious@lemmygrad.ml
    0·
    2 days ago

    An economy that doesn’t rely on consumption and is based on needs instead can easily function with a decreasing population. A decreasing population isn’t a bad thing at all if a society properly and sustainably shifts towards increased automation but we can already see that that will not happen in any capitalist country. Automation has and will allow the world to function without population increases for the first time but of course capitalist nations will only realize that true shifts to automation is necessary far, far too late, if ever. Instead they will stupidly promote having more children to increase consumption as the only solution.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
      0·
      1 day ago

      Meanwhile, we see automation in China increasing rapidly and being put directly towards social use. This is such a great illustration of how technology use ends up being shaped by the political system.

      • Dengalicious@lemmygrad.ml
        0·
        1 day ago

        Absolutely. The issue is not a falling population, that is not necessarily a bad thing on its own. The issue is the socio-economic system

  • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
    0·
    2 days ago

    I hate Kurzgesagt too much to be able to bring myself to watch this video. Do you mind summarizing it for us?

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
      0·
      2 days ago

      South Korea is facing a demographic crisis, characterized by a record low fertility rate. This is leading to a shrinking and aging population, which is expected to cause economic collapse due to a reduced workforce and depleted pension funds. Socially, this may cause loneliness and cultural decline.

      As communities shrink, particularly in rural areas, there will be less funding available for maintaining infrastructure. This could lead to the abandonment of smaller communities as the country prioritizes its metropolitan areas. A smaller workforce means reduced tax revenue for the government. Simultaneously, the government will need to support a large elderly population, which may force cuts to essential services such as hospitals and social benefits. The regime may also struggle to maintain its military.

        • Carl [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          These days the lower levels of the Ryugong Hotel are even opened up! I hope that something changes and allows the peninsula to come under one government again in our lifetime - even if they do “one country two systems” a free SK would be far better than a US puppet state SK.

      • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
        0·
        2 days ago

        Thanks! So nothing particularly new or interesting. There’s a lot of this sort of demographic doomsaying nowadays, and much of it has a bit of a fascistic undertone to me. Some people i think are definitely obsessed with birth rates for the wrong reasons. Not saying that the negative economic and social consequences aren’t real, but i think there’s also a lot of hyperbolic fearmongering.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
          0·
          2 days ago

          I think the most significant part is that liberals are now acknowledging how fucked up late stage neoliberal hell is. They obviously fail to identify the source of the problems, but it’s definitely more of an admission than I would’ve expected to see.

          • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
            0·
            2 days ago

            I think it’s because liberals are becoming more and more indistinguishable from fascists. Fascists have been concern trolling about East Asian birth rates for a long time now, for them it’s nothing new.

            The source of the problem is something they cannot identify because it would mean acknowledging the inherent unsustainability of a system that produces chronic overwork, social alienation, hyper-competitiveness for the purpose of maximizing exploitation, exorbitant costs of living, and a general detachment of humans from their humanity by building artificial identities around consumption and being viewed as being only as valuable as the value they can generate for capital.

            Under these conditions it is no wonder people have either no time for a family, insufficient material means to support one, or simply no desire to take on the immense additional financial and psychological burden in addition to the burden already placed on them by having to exist in this economic system. All of these social and demographic problems that people talk about when they raise alarms about low birth rates are really downstream from the fundamental economic issues, which continue to fester and to produce increasingly severe contradictions, especially in places like Japan and Occupied Korea.