Lee Kuan Yew drains your brains for short term gain

Et tu, Harry?

The paper, which projects 6.9 million people by 2030, charts the country’s strategies in managing a shrinking and ageing population.A question on Japan’s ageing society during the dialogue triggered the discussion.Mr Lee noted how Japan refused to take in migrants and that led to the situation it is facing today.Mr Lee said: "So I see a nation reduced to half in 20 years, and if it still continues with the same policy, reduced to a further half, and eventually, it is all over!"To have a nation, you must have people and you must have young people to be able to drive the economy and young people buy the products — all these gadgets and fine dining — and if you don’t have that, and you refuse migrants as the Japanese do, you will just dissolve into nothingness! I think before that comes, they may change (their) policy."A question on China’s one—child policy was also raised during the dialogue.Mr Lee said China is headed in the wrong direction with this policy as a shrinking and ageing population will mean assets, such as property prices, will go down."Property prices will go down, assets will go down. There is no younger generation to put the pressure up so I think it is heading towards the wrong direction," said Mr Lee.He added Singapore is in a similar position with its low total fertility rate but the difference is that Singapore takes in migrants to make up for the numbers.Mr Lee pointed out that authorities here maintain a "certain quality of control" and that is one reason why he feels other emerging ASEAN economies are unlikely to surpass Singapore anytime soon.Mr Lee said: "They will make progress but if you look at the per capita they have got, the differences are so wide. We have the advantage of quality control of the people who come in so we have bright Indians, bright Chinese, bright Caucasians so the increase in population means an increase in talent."

How many bright Indians and bright Chinese are there, Harry? Surely they are not infinite. And what will they do in Singapore? Well, engage in the finance and marketing rat-race and depress their fertility to 0.78, wasting valuable genes just so your property prices don't go down. Singapore is an IQ shredder.

And using Japan as a bogeyman. Japan has 120 million people. How many bright Chinese and bright Indians is Japan supposed to take in to offset their demographic decline? 10 million? Do they exist in those numbers? And what then? Would they show any allegiance towards the Japanese nation? Of course not. But what does he care? What's important is those property prices. And fine dining! Hey, didn't he have a chat with Tyler Cowen last year?

And China is wrong to restrict fertility! Of course, why on earth would China think that 1.3 billion people are enough? The fact that it doesn't have enough water or energy to cater for them surely means something? But not to Lee Kuan Yew. For all his sham rhetoric,  Singapore migrants are mostly low wage laborers. Who would build his condos if China restricts fertility?

Lee Kuan Yew is widely admired because he had the guts to stand for his tribe, the southern Chinese people in Singapore, and build a fine country for them. But that didn't last. Because the real tribe of southeastern Chinese isn't their people. It's the Money God.

This post is so spot on its perfect. Was thinking the same thing watching the interview with him. Your last paragraph is a tremendous summary. Japan remains by far the most mature of all the players here. There is no "good side" to smart people choosing fine dining over children. You can only move that problem around so much.

I think in the early days, he did try to get Singapore to reproduce, at least the "college graduates". Despite his best efforts, Singapore's fertility rate was stuck at something like 1.2. This means in a few decades, maybe a century, the city would become so weak that the neighboring Malays would move right in anyways. At least this way he gets to choose who comes in. Japan is right not to go the immigration route, but they should try to at least shoot for replacement rate of fertility. China does have a population problem now, but I think the natural fertility trend of about 1.4 for East Asia, once set in, is very difficult to reverse. Especially with the next generation of self centered only child. They should consider population stabilization instead of cutting it in half every 30 years. I am talking about at least fertility of 1.8 to stabilize the free fall.The problem of over population will be resolved as China gets richer and the baby boomers die off in a few decades. Water problem could also be resolved if they do more water reclamation and price it correctly so it is not wasted

can anyone explain why an aging shrinking population is a bad thing? housing prices go down.....and....? Why are low housing prices bad? Isn't family formation easier with lower housing prices? Don't wages go up with less population like they did after the black death? We don't need new gadgets either. We don't even need better health care. The latest medical inventions just keep you in a vegetative state longer for Medicare farmers.

It's bad if you're a greedy old fuck who wants to get rents from your property holdings.

Take the case of Japan, 120 million strong, with a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 1.4. In something like a century or less, the new born rate will be as if the country only has 20 or 30 million. Never mind property prices, Japan will cease to be much of a power in East Asia or the world. The older, infertile people won't die off until much later, so with every passing generation, while the "equilibrium" population is low and getting lower, the total population will remain much higher, masking the gravity of the problem. The Parsis of India has the highest IQ in the world. They average 120, higher than the jews, but they have low TFR and now number in the hundred thousands and will soon be extinct as they marry outside they race and fail to breed. China has a big base, so for a while, it would seem to go in the right direction as over population issues are resolved this way, but I got the feeling that TFR for China, once they are fully urbanized, will be lower then even Japan, maybe below 1. So in a century, the youngest population will be as though the country has 150 million (cut in half in every generation, assuming 25 years per generation), about the size of Japan today. It would cease to be a first order power.

I was a little off with my math. it should be 75 million instead of 150 million in a century for China.

Who gives a crap about being a world power, besides greedy old fucks? If Japan brings 20 million Indonesians, or Chinese to their country, Japan will still cease to be a world power anyway, because the workers won't give a shit about Japan, will undermine anything Japanese about the whole place, and they will drive down living wages, further undermining the fertility rate. You can cease to be a world power, but keep the nation, and perhaps start again in some time, or cease to be a world power, and become a third world Balkanized shithole. And anyway, being a "world power" is a relative thing. All advanced nations are losing their native high IQ populations. Who is going to replace Japan's place? The Philippines? Give me a break. Japan won't lose it's relative status. A USA where 40% of the population is Mexican will become a 40% Mexico.

I never said to solve the problem with immigration. But to say this trend of drastically below replacement rate is OK is just plain irresponsible.

Low fertility rates in Japan are a problem, but not an insurmountable one because they're not forced to engage in a breeding contest for demographic hegemony over the Japanese islands. As the population shrinks, family formation will become more affordable and their birth rates will move back upwards. It's also likely that segments of the Japanese population have higher fertility and will become more prominent in the future (I've unfortunately not seen any breakdowns of Japanese TFR any more detailed than by the equivalents of states).

You cannot have a more empty place then Russia, with huge swaths of land and the population the size of Japan. Did you see them at above replacement rates? Or how about Canada, you cannot by more empty then Canada. What is their TFR?

That's a very stupid thing to say. It's not about land, it's about arable land, food production, water and other resources. Most of Russia and Canada is totally unproductive arctic wasteland. And anyway the fertility rate won't come back. Today it doesn't make economic sense to have more than 2 children for the vast majority of people. Hell, we make our women work outside the home. How is one supposed to afford big families? And 30% of the population is psychologically fucked up and unable/unwilling to marry. That's not going to change in short term. There's only two solutions: you lose population and deal with it, or you let third world barbarians to prop up the land rents of old fucks so they can get see their savings grow for the last 10 years before they die. Then the whole world becomes South America.

For your information, Canada is a big exporter of grain, bread basket for the world. While it is true that much of the country is frozen much of the year, there are loads of minerals which could be exchanged for everything under the sun. Water and other resources per capita is the envy of most of the world. If crowding was a concern for Japan, this issue does not exist for Canada. I was responding to Jehu who expected the TFR to change once the population drops. Canada is an example that shows this is not going to happen. So instead of complaining about over population in this thread, you have now resigned your self to say nothing could be done about depopulation. I would call that progress :)

The birth rate in the modern world is control by how much freedom and status you give your women. Low status = high birth rate. High status = low birthrate. The left even admits as such as they view exporting feminism to India as birth control for the nation. This is also why very strict religions groups who lower the status of their women reproduce in huge numbers.

Your analysis may be correct, unfortunately, the train had left the station, the horse left the barn. In the U.S. even the ultra religious, who had large number of kids, after a few generations, ultimately lose their great grand kids to the cathedral. Only in places like Utah where the Mormons own everything, were they able to hold out. Outside of U.S. we are seeing even more secular leanings for the other high IQ countries. Even the place where women have relatively low status, like South Korea and Japan, you don't see high fertility. and I don't think the other Western countries are going back to even the Korean model of female status any time soon.

Population collapse inevitably leads to societal collapse within a few generations. All of the West's physical and infrastructure has been built with the implicit assumption of a steady or growing population to use/maintain it. Furthermore, the population collapse is not symmetrical across social classes; the most productive are hit the hardest, unless they have resiliency through religion. Unfortunately, pretty much all of the world's religions (mine excepted, of course) have been built leaning on Malthusian privation as an implicit assumption. In a situation where there is enough for all to receive according to their needs and have a comfortable studio apartment with plenty of ramen noodles, protein powder, hand lotion and bandwidth, the religions collapse, taking social conventions and communication protocols right along with them. Since some of those conventions and protocols include family formation and maintenance, the population collapses. Of course, we had this nailed a long time ago, in typically terse form: "it was not the Jews that kept Shabbat, it was Shabbat which kept the Jews." In any case, I digress-with the collapse of all this stuff, the most productive part of society is hardest hit, causing a positive feedback loop of decay and falling productivity and failing infrastructure. If automation can compensate for the latter (of which I am unsure-see Detroit, Birmingham, Flint, etc.) it can't compensate for social decay. See the Chinese and their new society of brotherless, sisterless, auntless, uncleless, cousinless jerkoffs. LKY is trying to make the worst of a shitty situation, the roots of which are inherently outside his scope of practice (he is a social engineer, not a prophet.) The fact that some of the shittiness is expressed as falling real estate values and the depreciating portfolios of rich old fucks, and that any solution addressing the roots would cause real estate values and portfolios to appreciate doesn't mean that this is the main motivator or issue at hand.

Not really. Birth rates in Muslim countries such as Iran are plummeting right along. It is not at all a question of low vs. high status. It is a question of men and women playing realistic gender roles while united in an overarching common enterprise. I mean, your doctor isn't of lower status than your lawyer, just because you wouldn't consult him for legal advice.

I think it's worth pointing out here that at least as Moldbug sees it, the corporate states of the future will act just like Singapore. That is they'd be "greedy old fucks", as you put it. They would not be interested in preserving a nation as such. Fnargls all, they worship the money god. The point is that their Fnargldom works for the people, generally. As for the population declines due to birth control and feminism, they will not last forever. Fnargl-states will be effective, unlike democracy. So, to the extent they see population decline as a problem, they will work to ameliorate it (as Lee Kuan Yew is doing). They will do whatever it takes to get the smart and hardworking subjects they want. Currently, the cheapest means is brain-draining other countries; that's what Yew is doing. Perhaps in future it will not be. If the cheapest means is paying women large sums to gestate expensively created embryos, who will then be adopted out to good environments homes, and expensively schooled, then they will do that. In the long run, the only certainty is that evolution will continue and we will evolve (or design ourselves) the trait of wanting children.

I don't know of this imaginary corporate state you are talking about. Even in the ultra controlling (by Western country standard) Singapore, there is only so much that could be done by LKY, and that is the state. The corporations inside Singapore does not act in this coercive manner. Maybe someday this corporate state will come to be, but right now it is a fantasy in your head. Culturally, the West is not pre-disposed to tolerate coercion from the companies they work for. There are plenty of examples where human resources runs low in the area where the company works. The company just pick up and move to a new location instead of coercing the local population to make more.

Evolution does not requires that the highest IQ group wins, nor does it require high tech and high degree of civilization, just ones who leaves the most offspring.. If all the high IQ countries are emptying out, the Africans, etc, would simply move in and they will represent the future of humanity.

The trend won't continue forever. After awhile, all the olds demanding handouts from the government will die off and young people will say, "Finally! My tax burden is lifted, property prices are low, and land is cheap! Let's start a family." Trends do not continue into perpetuity.