Bucolic Japan
https://twitter.com/DissidentRight/status/900387460978532354
I'm guessing that Mr. Derbyshire's Chinese in-laws have been extremely mean to him; else I don't quite get his hostility towards his children's motherland. He should be happy that they'll get to choose to live in the world hegemon no matter what happens during this century. But no, he keeps criticizing the empire.
To his credit, he criticizes the other, as of now foremost empire, the USA. I guess it's this small-town conservatism thing. This dream of ethnically homogeneous, small countries, tied by very strict but widely shared cultural norms, and ruled through direct citizenship participation. Yes, it's kinda nice. There's this bucolic flavor to it; and if we look at revealed preferences, people all over the world pay big bucks to visit those kind of places (Switzerland, northern Italy) every year. To the point, tourists visiting Japan is a booming industry, with over 20 million visitors last year.
But as nice as homogeneous, peaceful towns/countries are; the logic of history doesn't care. Northern Italy was this collection of small sovereign city states. Then they consolidated into a few states ruled by the biggest cities, Milan, Venice. Then Napoleon came with his steamroller and it all went to hell. The fact that Switzerland still exists has all to do with it being a bunch of (back then) unproductive real estate freezing up in the Alps, and not due to its superior government.
Anyway, to the point, Japan. I know Japan. Very well. There's no fucking way in this universe or in any of the infinite universes out there that the 21st century is the Japanese century. Yes, Japan is a fairly pleasant place to live. No crime, by our standards. Very clean; awesome infrastructure. Amazing service by workers so polite they put Victorian butlers to shame.
But Japan is dying. Japan was the first country to stop breeding (and refuse to mask it with foreign workers), so right now it has a 25% old-age population. One in four Japanese are over 65 year old geezers. Who get pensions and consume untold amounts of free healthcare. Who pays for that? Well young people; who haven't seen their salaries raise, even nominally, for decades, mostly due to raising payroll taxes. The money-printing hasn't produced any inflation, but it has produced a bubble in the stock market and prime real estate.
Young people aren't stupid, they see the writing in the wall. If Western populations have been losing testosterone due to getting their balls busted by feminism since the 1970s; modern Japanese have lost the will to live, period. 40% of Japanese are virgins by age 30, men and women. You'd think it's all the lying Western press, fake news. Oh no, I know the place. It's true, people. National decline is a scary thing. Japan is in steep decline.
Oh, but the don't have immigrants! Bullshit they don't have. Try to buy any groceries in central Tokyo and not see a Vietnamese or Bangladeshi kid in a 7/11 uniform. There's 2 million immigrants. There's foreigners everywhere. 2 million in total. Yes, of course, compared to what's going on in the West, that's nothing. Japan has a rational policy. It doesn't take "refugees". It takes workers, on their terms. Pretty harsh terms. Japan pays low salaries and makes people work really, really hard. Plenty of foreigners just won't take it. Japan is very far away, it's expensive, the language is crazy hard, there's little fun to do out there. And the sort of Japanese boss who takes foreign workers (agriculture, low-margin manufacturing and the like) are often nasty, nasty people. The conditions some workers are made to accept would make many Dubai employers blush.
Of course, that's the only way to run an immigration policy that pays for the accepting country. Japan doesn't have an immigration industry. There are no foreign foundations paying for the colonization of the country by hostile foreigners. The government doesn't fund QUANGOs to bring them. It doesn't give welfare quotas to their cities to advantage foreigners over natives. The Japanese have their country, and want to keep it. Yes, they'll take any foreigner who is willing to work for them, without making any accommodation. Japan is their country and they like it as it is. Good for them.
But... Japan is not going anywhere. Don't believe the hype over the recent GDP growth figures. It's all bullshit. Japan is losing 1 million workers every year. The electronics industry is dead. Sharp was bought by the Chinese, Toshiba is bankrupt. The videogame industry is dying, completely outdone by America's. Japan tried to start an aeronautic industry, with the much hyped Mitsubishi MRJ, but the plane sucks and Mitsubishi Aircraft is bankrupt. Japan today can only afford to eat meat because Americans like to drive Toyotas and Hondas. Japan's future is closely tied to America's. As the USA declines, so will Japan. But the USA has the best real estate in the world. You can fill the USA with Mexicans and Africans and they'll still have plenty to eat, if only. Japan though, is a bunch of volcanoes on the path of the Asian monsoon. They can barely feed 30 million people by themselves. Their economic boom only happened because they happened to be an American vassal in a strategic zone. But America will soon run out of money to feed their vassals.
What then? The Japanese century? Hah. In all likelihood they'll be China's bitch in 2 or 3 decades. And China will not be kind to them. The Chinese empire used to be kind to its vassals, giving them vast amounts of money in exchange for pathetic shows of allegiance. But China doesn't have an empire now. It has a micro-managed, internet-connected demotic regime, with hundreds of thousands of people engaging in government PR. Japan better practice their kowtows very well if they want the Chinese people to show them clemency.
So again, let us not lose sight of how the modern world works. Hell, how the world has always worked. Good government is nice. But nations don't live in a vacuum. Foreign policy is as important as internal policy. It doesn't matter how well governed a nation is, if the international situation isn't good. Venice was very nice, nicer than France; Napoleon crushed it. Same for all those nice bucolic principalities across Germany. If your neighbor is big he is going to crush you, sooner or later. This is a fundamental principle of history. To that, add globalized economies today. Hardly any country is self-sufficient today, even potentially. Every single developed country today is an American satrapy. How long will the US be able to afford them? What then? Certainly not the Japanese century. Nor the Swiss century. Gentlemen, there is no Patchwork, and there will never be. The logic of Empire always applies.
Have I mentioned there's a growing community of Japanese converts to Islam? Of course it's still tiny, but it's really funny. And given the sexual market in Japan these days (40% incels, remember), there's plenty of incentives for it to grow.
84 comments
[…] Bucolic Japan […]
"Get ready for the Japanese Century"? I could understand someone making that statement back in 1987...
Napoleon would have had a harder time steamrolling Venice if Venice had had a couple hydrogen bombs. Nobody's going to conquer Japan in the next hundred years. Economically, sure, hard times are likely coming. But if Japan can keep its head and refrain from mass-importing workers to replace their people, why can't it maintain its independence and adjust to a smaller, more sustainable population?
This was the point I was interested in making...Japanese real estate doesn't seem so terrible from all the way over here.
Calling Japan independent right now is a huge stretch. It's a colony of the Seventh Fleet. And it will be a colony of whoever replaces the Seventh Fleet in the Western Pacific. Japan has plenty of plutonium, but it's negotiating giving it away. They don't even want nukes. They know they're useless if you can't even feed your people.
They are also useless if you don't have the will to use them. Japan will not have an upcoming century, no guarantee China will either or anyone will. Not bad odds on a Dark Age in a few decades And as far as population decline , the problem isn't aging its being stupid enough to build systems that require constant growth and cheap labor which nearly everyone is doing Also being willing to allow grossly overpopulated nations to decline helps , so long as there is enough food, it will reach natural equilibrium in time. An example, California where I live has a population of around 40 million and its grossly overcrowded, Japan a shade smaller has population 3x that 120 million ! Its ridiculous on its face, as you noted unsupportable and makes people miserable. Functionally the systems we have turn everywhere into an open air jail where people are consumer/inmates. People can't rebel directly for the most part and wouldn't know how to self govern if they did to what to rebel into (Caveat the Left but they have bad ideas) so they fight back the way anyone in a behavioral sink would, by not reproducing unless they are waging demographic war or are driven by cultural considerations that won't sustain the societies they are taking over anyway Its self correcting
You're pretty much on point. As George Friedman (of Stratfor) predicts, 21st century is (still) the American century. Unless the US somehow plunges into a civil war (an important caveat). Of course, he also thinks that Japan (allied with other countries, one of which, he believes, will be Turkey) will try to be resurgent around mid century. You don't believe so, apparently.
Feeding people is more or less a solved problem. Only third-world imbeciles and/or demented communists ever have trouble with it. Just because the Japanese don't feed themselves doesn't mean they can't. If they had to be autarkic in food production they might have to devote a little less land to Kobe beef and trapezoidal melons and a little more to soybeans. Big whup. I agree with 90% of what you're saying ITT/post, but this bit is silly.
Damn you Tim Berners-Lee, you sadist.
Japan has a 48-ton plutonium stockpile, likely more than anybody else except the US and Russia, the result of a fuel cycle in which they extract and concentrate plutonium from reactor fuel rods. Which is conclusive evidence of a nuclear weapons program when even attempted by anybody else. From what I can tell they dispose of 100-300 pounds or so of it a year, putting them on track to eliminate their stockpile around A.D. 2300. There's really no question they'd begin cranking out warheads within months if not weeks if forced to stand on their own two feet militarily.
It's not that easy http://agora-web.jp/archives/2022652.htmlhttp://agora-web.jp/archives/2027764.html Japan has 10 tons inside the country, the rest is outside, and the vast majority is not weapons-grade. Japan can't make a freaking airplane, it can barely run properly nuclear plants; it's not going to get nuclear weapons quickly, specially against the wish of USG.
I second this. Japan will get nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons stop empires... as long as there is a will to use them.
No they don't. What nuclear weapons is conventional warfare to attain an empire... which is why both the USSR and USA got so good at using soft power.
Prevent, that is.
As I understand it, his wife is from dissident Cantonese stock and would not identify with the ruling Han State.
Didn't he marry in Manchuria? At any rate, the Cantonese are Han, there is no ethnic discord there. Stop making stuff up.
Japanese demographic decline is eugenic. Japan is overpopulated, especially for the developing age of declining energy consumption per capita. They are wisely transitioning to a lower population. USA is doing exactly the opposite of both these things. Dysgenic breeding and immigration, and extremely unwise population growth when physical limits are about to impose pressure on the existing population level. China is not going to be the next global hegemon. They are too shystery, for just one of their problems. People impose this false narrative of a baton that gets handed off from empire to empire, most recently from Britain to USA. The future is simply going to be more multi-polar; no need for a new dominant global power, or even an especially "global" world order. USA will decline on a relative basis and China will have a lot more say, especially in their historical sphere of influence.
"Developing age of declining energy consumption" is inmiseration. It's people getting poorer, the middle class being wrecked, it's not some abstract force. The people having the most kids in Japan are most certainly not the smartest, so in that sense the new Japanese generations aren't going to be the best engineers. They'll probably look better, though. China might not be becoming a global hegemon; but they're gonna dominate the Western Pacific a lion guards his den.
China has no oil. There is not going to be a successor to the 7th fleet imposing order and calling the shots, and dominating Japan. There is simply going to be relatively more disorder.
I dont agree with everything pettis says, particularly some of his priors, such as that american markets are robust and the ipods amazon app store create value. But if even half of what he says is right about china, they'll face the complete reorganization of their capitalization or potentially worse. Unlike the japanese model which has moderate accounting for moral hazard focused on remolding individual workers rather than between capital firms, pretty much zero of any of that exists in china. Financiers often cant even explain the concept. Japanese sovereign funds invested in overseas projects can pay for many domestic projects with capital gains alone. this becomes easier if the cost basis of the japanese economy is trashed butvthe structure remains intact. there is no point in destroying your homogeneity or authority structure to goose up inaginary gdp value if gdp doesnt actually help, and if most of your workers arent actually working. something tells me theyre aiming to act like a trust fund nation, and the rest of abenomics is a theatre to avoid u.s. ire and allow the u.s. to destroy itself. there was a little known forbes writer who often mentioned this and he recently seems to have been softly shoah'd. japan seems the most sane nation. yes, their people are regressing into fungible units of capital. yes, this makes then want to die. was this ever avoidable though? whoever reaches the top is going to turn their country into a demotic death machine or work on turning all people into interchangeable capital investments on ssris. neither is a disqualifier therefore, against hegemony.
Who was this? Are the articles still available?
Maybe Eamonn Fingleton. He's over at Unz now; he cross-posted his recent Forbes stuff there. Take it with a grain of salt. He is knowledgeable about Japan, financial regulation, and trade policy. For anything having to do with the rest of Asia, he simply hasn't mastered basic facts (e.g. claiming the Harvard Business Review has a Taiwanese-language edition or that Singapore is "anti-immigration"), so he ends up in some rather dubious conclusions.
eamonn fingleton is precisely the guy. if he's at unz now he obviously posted something that made someone extremely uncomfortable. he trunp posts sometimes but 90% of his content was on jaoanese strategy
Fingleton is deranged. It's funny to read, but he's got a huge chip on his shoulder. I wonder what Japan did to him.
[…] Source: Bloody Shovel […]
I agree that demographics are one of those forces that have a really great inertia, but robots and medical advances are no slouches either. Even if Japan's numbers are less, if each of their forces is commanding a fleet of a 100 drones, they will be quite terrifying to contend with. About medical advances, any prediction of the future should consider the possibility of the healthspan (time when people are functional and healthy) increasing due to advances which will make tomorrow's 70 year olds a lot more vigorous than yesterday's 70 year olds. Bowhead whales get 200 years. We should be able to do atleast as well, eventually.
Keep dreaming.
I see no evidence of viable life extension technology yet. Even if it does pan out , a good chunk of the population of Japan doesn't have the will to have sex or families or even struggle, They aren't going to fight or develop martial technology. A Japanese robot today is more likely to be designed to help the old commit suicide or as a waifu than be useful in defense Calhoun Rats in a behavioral sink just groom and die and that's what Japan is doing. It will reverse eventually but that won't happen until the conditions causing it collapse and the population declines enough. This is a way off. As for security, the simple question is "how stable is the US?" if that country becomes unable to be the world police and its a high probability event , all bets are off.
So Japan is dying. What do the Japanese think about it? Do they think about? Is it a tabu topic? Europen civilization is also dying. The Europeans largely deal with this by denying it.
They complain that the government plans to hike the age of retirement to 75.
A few intellectuals have suggested reversing industrialization and returning to a more closed system as a future solution. Its hardly in the mainstream of thought though Europeans seem to have some fight in them, there is a fair amount of quiet nationalism in some nations. Sweden's immigration restriction party is actually the largest but collusion between globalists keeps them from power as in other nations. There are signs elsewhere. In reality though every single industrialized or developed or even semi developed nation that doesn't have huge swathes of 3rd and 4th world subsistence economies like part of India for example has below replacement fertility Its a natural outcome of urban living and development and its not a bad thing unless your economic model is that of a Ponzi scheme
"hardly in the mainstream of thought" That's an interesting euphemism for "most notable proponent is a serial killer cooling his heels in Florence ADX". Which is not to say that I can dismiss Ted K's ideas out of hand. In fact he may turn out to be one of the most prescient voices of the previous century.
To be totally fair, there are voices like his that didn't involve trying to mail-bomb people. He's just the most memorable, because he was mail-bombing people.
He’s also a very compelling writer — IMO he could’ve got his stuff published even without mail-bombing people. But where’s the fun in that?
I was thinking Japan here not Ted Kaczynski here but regardless the Unabomber is not a serial killer, it wasn't sexual in nature but political
Spandrell does not like the Japanese, does he? He dreams of Japanese kowtowing missions to the Yellow Emperor. Did something like that happen ever? The last time the Japanese felt they needed food, land and resources, they took over half China and South East Asia. To make up for their lack of libido and miniature penises, they raped Nanking and prostituted Dutch and Korean ladies. The Chinese should be very worried if the Seventh Fleet leaves and they find themselves alone facing those volcanic islands. I like the Chinese people and no impoliteness intended, but be real.
Spandrell knows them a little too well, but I wish them no ill. Japan did send kowtowing envoys during the Tang dynasty, but it's been a while. You think a country with a 40% old age population is going to go on a piracy rampage over China? And you're telling me to be real? Penis size aside (though they're no smaller than any of their neighbors), the WW2 Japanese soldiers had no libido issues.
Just to be contrarian, I disagree with your image of Japan with 40% of its population over 65 as a dying country, acting like an old nursing home. Old people tend to be invisible, living in the villages or retirement homes. They are not necessarily a large burden on the economy, specially those frugal and modest Japanese elderly, and specially not in wartime. With 70 million "young" people, Japan can organize a 10 million strong army. In our era, I know, numbers are not so important. My point is that excess deaths over births does not translate into a passive, peaceful policy. Germany had negative population figures for decades just before attacked its neighbors in 1939. Hungary is losing population for decades (1% per annum!) and has an aggressive right wing government. Russia, again, is losing population but not imperial ambitions. Ukraine is waging a war. Maybe a sinking demography causes peoples to be more aggressive. If so, Japan is the most dangerous country of all. Vae China!
Germany doesn't look very aggressive, does it? The Japanese elderly get good pensions, and they go to the hospital like it's the grocery store. They will bankrupt the country and their children at this rate.
Japanese elderly bankrupting their children would be against traditional Japanese (and Asiatic) instincts. They always sacrificed themselves (even killed themselves) if it helped their families. But here I defer to Spandrell's judgment.
And indeed a heck of a lot of the elderly kill themselves so not to be a burden, but modern morals indicate that as forbidden. So you also have parental fidelity, which indicates that children out to support parents. Combine the two for interesting results.
Filial piety is not a new thing. In fact it's a traditional instinct. The trouble is that in Japan, traditional instincts are in a more dire decline than the population. Not as bad as the West, of course; I'd say they're twenty to thirty years behind us on moral rot. But in any event, most of the old generation now are young enough to be more-or-less Americanised. Stop and think about it: Would young people in a country with healthy traditional instincts in-tact be failing to marry and breed? Blame the economy all you want, but it never stopped poor third-worlders from pumping out babies they can't afford (yet), and it certainly didn't stop the current Japanese generation's grandparents (or great-grandparents).
Trust me, the CCP would love it if most Chinese believed that. But most warfare now is economic and Japan isn't excelling at it, is it?
So how do you get to this point, long term? What are the causes? Here are a few possible answers, to illustrate what kind of question I'm asking: - The Japanese birth/death ratio is so absurd because they have an inherent contradiction in their culture and their biology. The Japanese spirit has always been obsessed with sexual perversity, and this is the natural end-state - once you celebrate enough perversity, people just stop having sex, because it's too disgusting. - The Japanese economic situation severely curtails the possibility and the rewards for having children. Salarymen literally work themselves to death for an ever-shrinking slice of the pie, leaving them with less and less time and energy for family formation, as well as co-opting their identities to make them part of the machine. The 80's were like Singapore on steroids, and this is the long-term effect; at some point, instead of screwing up the pressure to another notch, the new generation just checks out. - This is a long-term effect of losing the War; Japan both lost almost all of a generation of young men (carrying, to some extent, the traditions of their fathers with them into the grave), and at the same time was overmastered and completely destroyed and re-integrated by a foreign power hostile to autochtonic Japan; what we see here are the long-term effects of Weimar Japan. - This is a long-term effect of Fascism, win or lose; a country has a burst of vitality under a newly Fascist regime (put together, more often than not, as a reaction against internal decay in the first place), but at the cost of borrowing from the future, as it were, because maintaining that pitch of vitality is unsustainable and exhausts the nation, possibly except if there can be continual cultural (and possibly geographical) expansion. I don't know which, or which mixture of these, it might be. It might even be something else entirely. But I figure we'd do well to figure it out, especially if it's the last one - if that's true, it does rather put a damper on the advice that Fascism is a healthy response to Multiculturalism.
>it does rather put a damper on the advice that Fascism is a healthy response to Multiculturalism. Well, if you declare war on the whole world and lose, it sure isn't.
Well, Japan-specific explanations are not so relevant, I think, since the entire developed world is below replacement. There are also a lot of other countries the have ultra-low fertility (> 1.5). So the immediate cause is 'being a developed country in 2017', but a good explanation why that's a problem is harder to find. Spandrell has his explanation of female sexual behaviour, but I find that to be insufficient, personally; it's likely part of the explanation, but people were stressing out about possible sub-replacement population growth in the 30s. Then the baby boom ended that concern everywhere until fertility fell off a cliff in the period 1970-1990. This makes me think an economic explanation is at least as important (and probably something that'd produce easier and quicker solutions than taking the vote away from women, which is probably what you'd have to do if you wanted to reinstitute 1848-style patriarchy). I think stuff like Peter Turchin's Structural-Demographic theory is the most promising approach in this regard.
It is kinda interesting that a lot, if not all, of the formerly Fascist countries have ultra-low fertility; Italy, Japan, Austria, Germany are all at the very low end. Fascist-adjacent countries pre WWII (authoritarian right regimes) are the same, with Spain, Portugal, Greece, Poland, Hungary and Romania all below 1.5. (there are non-authoritarian countries with the same problem, of course). The interwar democratic countries, like the Nordics, Netherlands, the UK and France generally, but not always, do better. Research on fertility has increased quite a bit since the scale of the problem has become apparent, but the researchers are in the main not very adventurous when searching for explanations. One credible explanation I've seen for ultra-low as opposed to just low fertility is that the ultra-low fertility countries have family support systems that presuppose traditional families (ie. male breadwinner), while low-fertility countries generally have systems that are individually targeted, so that women feel safer in having children even if their marriage/relationship ends, and that let them still have the prospect of a career.
Any solution that increases feminism isn't really a solution. You just end up with even more people fit only for soylent.
blaming individual factors for tfr is like searching for perfectly spherical floating square cows. you can discuss the marginal benefits of compared incremental solutions which will all fail. none of it matters high iq populations have evolved to defer childbirth psychologically. the only adequate countermeasure is to provide state subsidies at a profit point to tge individual, for high iq people to have children. the incentive structure must mirror the malthusian environment.
Sure, although I note that you're more or less blaming an individual factor at the end of your comment. Even though you can't perfectly separate out individual factors, there is very clearly a strong trend across all advanced economies, across a wide variety of cultures. There is a systemic effect here that while not monocausal or easily explained we should be able to figure out. In my experience understanding the problem is necessary when trying to solve it, especially when the problem is a big and complicated one.
Perversion has been in Japan forever and they had tons of babies in the past. What has happened is everywhere the West has touched is dying , the cause is modernity. People need tradition and culture and family and heritage and these things are anathema to the consumer state. Treat people as consumer cogs m, shove them into cities and soon they stop having children And to note how fast this happens, the TFR of Turkish Gastarbeiters in Germany and 2nd Generation Latinos in the US is about the same as Whites.
I think you're largely right, but I still think it's interesting to inquire as to why Japan is on the leading edge of this phenomenon. It might yield insight that's more universally applicable.
It's not really. Fertility figures are worse in Germany; but they've been masking those with Gastarbeiters for decades. The Japanese are just a tad worse at self-deception.
It's pretty clear why German TFR sucks; as a people they hate themselves with a deep passion. Though that kind of makes my point.
Certainly not the case in Japan! They think as a people they're the hottest stuff.
Ironically, the best explanation for Japan's low birthrate is that it's too traditional, especially where marriage is concerned. In countries that have half-adopted feminism but expectations for marriage are still very traditional, TFR tends to be in the 1.2 - 1.5 range. See places like Italy and Poland. Women don't want to get married in such cultures. Also, these cultures tend to frown on bastardy, so women are unlikely to conceive out of wedlock. In countries that have fully embraced feminism, TFR tends to be around 1.7 - 1.9. Bastardy is fully tolerated (single mothers are "heroes"), and women like to get married, knowing that marriage is structured entirely to their benefit, and while married, they often produce children. Only in countries that have entirely rejected feminism is TFR 2 . The exception, perhaps, is Israel, though the birthrate there is being driven by ultra-Orthodox who have entirely rejected feminism.
Yes, that's a good point. Although I do want to look at the ethnic breakdown of Scandinavian birth rates.
That's a rather involved topic. Immigrants and their children increase the TFR in Scandinavian countries by a maximum of around .10, usually closer to .05, and usually that number is declining as immigrant fertility converges. Only Sweden really has the number of non-European immigrants where they could make a marked difference in the fertility rate, I think. I couldn't readily find the Swedish numbers for immigrant births, which are likely to be the highest. These are my calculations for % of total births 2012 for Norway, immigrant or child of immigrant mother: Asia West: 5.3% Asia East: 3.1% Africa: 4.1% EU West: 3.5% EU East: 4.9% EU Other: 2.2% Rest of the world is around 1%. Total immigrant mother births are around 23%. This is high compared to the % of immigrants in the population, of course, since most immigrants are of child-bearing age. Given that the political climate on (non-western) immigration in Scandinavia seems to be shifting to favour a more restrictive stance, I don't think you'll see a marked increase in the non-EU numbers,
''Ironically, the best explanation for Japan’s low birthrate is that it’s too traditional, especially where marriage is concerned.'' I predict that given selection and genotypic frequency that there will be future recovery after all maladaptive genes are purged.
Eh? Too traditional? If you want to increase your TFR, why would anyone look at Sweden even if they have 0.3 points more than you. Should you not look at Afghanistan which has a TFR that is 6 times higher than yours? And does anyone in his right mind claim that Afghanistan is not "too traditional"? As Spandrell says, we need to look at the ethnic breakdown of Swedish TFR. I am willing to bet my rent money that the Somalis, Muslims etc in Sweden have a TFR that is possibly 2.5 and that's what's driving the average up.
An ethnic breakdown of Scandinavian stats is likely going to be difficult, as before it wasn't politically forbidden to collect such things there wasn't any need for it ("Yep, 99 % Swedish births this year too"). There might be some indirect ways like data looking at citizenship, the Statistical Central Bureau likely has something like that, though I haven't seen any and the whole thing is just too depressing to look closely at. But Sweden has been an outlier fertility-wise since before mass migration. We had far higher fertility in the seventies than, I think, pretty much all other European countries. Certainly it wasn't Somalis propping up the numbers then. From personal experience most of my peers, those who aren't loser males, have gotten children and settle at two or maaaaaaaybe three. That seems to be typical, if not average. As for immigrants you see *a lot* of baby carriages in the shittiest suburbs. Mainly from the sort of people who cover their women up and not so much from other non-whites like Persians, Arabs, Turks or regular Africans. Though they don't seem common enough that they'd bump the birthrate by several tenths of a kid. I doubt that the secular type Muslims who arrived in the nineties have 2,5 kids per woman. Their daughters look about as whorish, or more, than any other group's. Not really sure how to square those observations. It is entirely possible that Swedish fertility was high in the seventies through eighties and now have dropped due to family formation being a whole lot less affordable and that my peer group just have unusually many children due to being the sort of upper middle class that can afford to live isolated from diversity. To me it looks like evidence for Wency's assertion above. If you're going to have female autonomy you have to gear the entire society around their needs in order for them to have near replacement level fertility. Which will be subject to other fertility limiting factors like running out of money or nice neighborhoods to raise families in. Considering what Sweden was like in the seventies (high trust, homogenity, lots of living space, lots of work and like 5th richest country in the world) those conditions aren't exactly replicable for any country today even if they wanted to try to boost fertility. It's a bit like advising someone to break out of poverty by winning the lottery.
TFR for Swedish-born women in 2011 was 1.88, there aren't enough second-generation immigrants of childbearing age yet to influence that number a whole lot. I can't find any good hard numbers for second-gen immigrant TFR, but research reports indicate that it converges towards the national level pretty sharply, just like everywhere else.
"Ironically, the best explanation for a country's high rate of incarceration is that it's too anti-crime. In countries that have fostered the development of a criminal racial underclass, but still expect the law to be followed, incarceration rates tend to be high. See places like the U.S.A.. Criminals don't want to follow the law in such countries. Also, these countries tend to frown on racial self-defence, so the criminal racial underclass is unlikely to be eliminated." Your explanation is a bad explanation because it is poorly-framed, even if the essence of it is sound. You are, if I may be trite, blaming the victim. The best explanation is that Japan is not sufficiently traditional. The broader issue with your explanation is that (even if you do not mean it to do so) it excuses whoredom and niggerdom, removing the impetus to fix those problems, and, more importantly, to adjust the underlying conditions that enabled them. If you present the problem this way, you create fertile ground for people to conclude that the solution is more whores and more niggers.
The third one.
A surface understanding of Japanese society, probably glimpsed from imageboard truisms (let me guess, they watch too many gosh darn cartoons?) and a miserable understanding of economic matters do not make you a foreign policy expert. Pretty annoying to read someone as misinformed on all matters he delves into. acting so self assured. But hey, that's all NrX articles in a nutshell.
Before I ban you, I lived long years there, I speak the language better than you speak English. But hey, don't let me distract you from watching more cartoons.
Perhaps you should read his blog archives a bit more before commentating. No one shall save us.
The Foremost Japanophile cum islamophobe among the Hindus does not seem too happy about your description of Japan https://twitter.com/Rjrasva/status/900793847156027392
When did I compare the TFR? Note that China's is higher (1.7 vs. 1.4, as per the article, and not his fake science link), but that's not the point. China right now has 19x as much births as Japan. In 20 years that's 19x more 20 year olds. But that's not the point. The problem is Japan can't ship a miserable regional airplane. I understand India wants a good ally, but let's be real here. And again, China wishes India no ill, it's all politics.
Its odd, it really does feel like India thinks a lot more about China than vice versa.
Of course India thinks a lot more about China than vice versa, How can it be any other way? Doesn't Canada think a lot more about the United States than vice versa? When you are a mouse lying next to a dragon, don't you want to make sure you know what the Dragon is up to. It is simple survival instinct.
\You nailed it. India desperately wants a good ally and Japan is what the Hindu nationalists have homed into as their silver bullet. It is unbearable for a Hindu nationalist to contemplate that Japan may not be the proverbial silver bullet. As for China not wishing India ill and it all being politics. It is true, yes! But it is also irrelevant. The Lion after all does not wish the Deer ill. The Deer just happens to be the Lion's food. The Hindus are freaking Doomed.
But China, for all practical purposes, has no use for Indian lands, etc. The points of contention are relatively minor and imo, mostly caused by the Indian government as it seeks to adhere to a consistently anti-Chinese position. From my perspective, its just confusing, it feels like India is intent on trying to pick a fight to prove its value or something. Indirectly, I'm sure that the extension of Chinese power may harm India economically and culturally especially through Pakistan, but this is hardly the direct threat that other nations may have to deal with. China has theoretically more reason to fight with Russia than with India.
Caused by the Indian government? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! You guys basically give Pakistan the nukes, fund a Marxist insurgency in Central India, surround India with your String of Pearls, Grab Aksai Chin in 1962 and you try to pull this "caused by the Indian government" with a straight face? I mean where do you guys get off? What effrontery! What Gall! You could teach the world a lesson in Chutzpah! This is like borrowing the neighbor's car for your family vacation and then giving him a bill for all the fuel you put in it during the afore-mentioned vacation?
Oh please. If you stopped constantly volunteering to potentially being an launching airstrikes/missiles into China, no one would care. As for "surrounding with String of Pearls", that's part of the economic/cultural issue I mentioned: but its not specifically meant to harm anyone, its simply a vector for fiscal gain. There are plenty of opportunities for cooperation. As far as I see it, its one party not playing ball and being pretty emotional about what could be a fairly practical matter of money and influence.
I'm sure a deal could be arranged which included serving the Dalai Lama's head on a box.
I don't agree on the string of pearls. Those can and will be used for military purposes as in ports of call for naval ships. I see you homed in on this while ignoring the other points I mentioned.
And then China will conquer the rest of the world, because they did that historically and have an immense martial tradition of colonizing people and wasting money seeking to bring the light of the Middle Kingdom to benighted tribes who only need the gifts that Confucius seeks to give them through his wisdom. Oh wait, they didn't. The mentality is completely absent, for good reason.
Granted that China has not gone around colonising with a European zeal . Let's hope it stays that way. Intentions can change overnight. Why did you give Pakistan the nukes if not to fuck with us?
"Why did you give Pakistan the nukes if not to fuck with us?" To fuck with us. India's just stuck in the middle on that one.
India was a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Chinese action towards India prior to the 90's was predicated on India's de-facto alliance with the former Soviet Union. Basically you guys sided with the Soviet "deviationists" who were our mortal enemies from the 60's up until the end of the 80's and all Chinese policy pursued was predicated on undermining the Soviet Union at any opportunity with India simply being collateral damage. China attempted to make peaceful overtures towards India during the 90's and 2000's but by this point, India was already set on a pre-determined course and good relations were not to be. This isn't because anything that China had done, but rather Indian perceptions of itself vis-à-vis China. Everything that China did to screw over India, America has basically done the same if not worse. The reason why India could repair it's relations with the US but not China is not because of any continued Chinese belligerence which has really amounted to nothing in the past two decades but because India views itself both as a rival and in some ways superior. They haven't reached that level of wishful thinking with the United States yet, so India was willing to cut deals and let bygones be bygones as long as the US was publically willing to inflate Indian egos.
I think that better US-India relations, as compared to US-China relations, have a lot to do with our (American) preference for colorful clothing, beads, and gurus like that Hell's-Angel-looking guy with the #1 ornament hanging from a chain around his neck that was just imprisoned leading to massive riots -- you know, the stuff that George Harrison was into. So, my advice to China is to encourage its leaders to grow their hair longer and wear cool Bruce Lee style headbands. Also, work out more and get Yin-Yang symbols tattooed in red and black on your upper arms. That kind of thing.
Looks like Hindu right wing is following you quite extensively Spandrell. The Islamophobe cum Japanophile was reacting to this tweet https://twitter.com/dragonflayer\_/status/900702512998563845 Needless to state, your post is causing some consternation among all the Japanophiles
Interestingly, commenter "John" says exactly what you're saying now in 2013: https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/witch-hunts-east-and-west/#comment-2546
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