I think we should all have dots in our hands and when it glows at the age of 30 we enter the Carousel to be renewed.
Renew! Renew!
I don’t speak Japanese, but if you follow the link to the video it starts about 18 minutes into the 20 minutes video. The professor says something and then everyone laughs.
Aren’t we all commitng mass suicide already tho? I mean, have you looked at earth lately? I mean I want to kill myself as much as the next person, maybe more, but if we are ranking demographics that should go first, my vote is for the rich not just the elderly
Aren’t we all committing mass suicide already tho?
Your comment made me so sad that we kinda are in a more capitalist way.
We’re withholding meds from old people by taking away their health insurance, not giving them any income, and pushing them into the street.
In the US, Social Security benefits is from $553-$943.
Boy we are so fucked.
That’s one of the funniest lines I’ve heard today ty
You’re welcome, I was surprised to see I’d written it. Could use polish, but you can never go home again I suppose
no
proof provided in your continued posting on lemmy
Oh that’s just to ameliorate the insanity; I’m fully resigned to the inevitability of my death and factual nature of my contribution, however minor it may be, to our collective demise
In the grande scheme of things, philosophically speaking, maybe.
It’s more of a murder/suicide
Yes you are right. I think there is a bell curve of murder culpability that starts at jeff bezo’s wedding and ends at children starving to death. No that’s wrong bell curves measure the mean and that would just be the working class. Idk what I’m trying to describe. Jeff bezos should volunteer to lead the first human expedition to set foot on the sun. There makes sense now
They are not valuable any more to capitalism.
Time to go to the Soylent factory!
You first, buddy
And he’s not even a professor of medicine or pathology, this talking authoritatively about things outside your field is really getting out of hand /s
What a radical thing to say.
He might have to talk about this with his universities ethics commission…
Oh yes! Anything but immigration!
But seriously, I feel like this is the broad sentiment of Japanese and the non-Japanese alike. Anti- immigration right applaud Japan for “keeping their country theirs” (as if ethnic Japanese aren’t the ones who came later and displaced the local Ainus already living there), and not going on supposed national suicide, unlike the West. Not having enough babies is tantamount to suicide anyway. The narrative then becomes: either allow immigration and go on national and cultural suicide; or don’t allow immigration and not have enough babies, which is still considered national suicide anyway. Either way is still committing national suicide.
I am not naive to think that immigration has no baggage; but at the same time, if countries want to increase birth rate, then increase the wages and standard of living for young people and families encourage more people to marry and raise families. However, the elites aren’t going to do the former because they don’t want to disappoint their shareholders. If they don’t want to do that, then allow more immigration, which they also don’t want to do.
I completely sympathize with the Japanese view about immigration. Their society has a lot going for it which is held up by the culture. And diversity would lead to a tragedy of the commons in many cases, like keeping public spaces clean.
However, sacrificing your elders is not exactly Japan’s culture either.
The “tragedy of the commons” was an economic thought experiment involving unmanged commons. Learn the history of how commons were actually managed through history and you’ll draw a different conclusion.
Also, don’t let the rich expropriate the commons like they did in the UK in the late 17th and all the 18th centuries. That causes all kinds of social problems, including mass (sometimes coerced) emigration.
Yeah, plus consider how many people already learn Japanese as it’s considered to be a sexy language in many countries
Orrrr (and this applies to most western countries in the near future too) they could maybe kinda consider not creating conditions in which its fucking impossible to have kids?
As someone in a western country now inconceivable! Heck we still have a good portion of Americans who complain about the living standards but will stay home in November or actively vote for things like deporting immigrants like that magically fixes the over arching problem
56 is the median age for home buyers in 2025 and it’s been this way for a very long time.
We’re as doomed as Japan honestly we just happen to encourage immigration lol. So I agree with you.
Look at the median age of first-time homebuyers, it’s less skewed. Many people make more than one home purchase in a lifetime, including whan they buy smaller places when they’re old in order to downsize, or when they buy into a retirement community.
The median age of first-time home buyers is 35, according to this: https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-median-homebuyer-age-is-now-so-old/
National Association of Realtors gives a slightly higher number.
For a lot of people, delaying to settle down and have family is a choice (like for myself), but you are right that conditions are being created to dis-incentivise raising a family.
I think South Korea could provide a model to encourage more birth rate. They created a new administrative capital city where it is more family oriented. The result? Explosion in birth rate. In the following years, other places replicated the model and South Korea as a whole experienced more birth this year for the first time in nine years.
These people should sacrifice themselves in service of an economic system’s growth I.operative.
Capitalism is the atheists religion.
Counterpoint: Everyone who ever attended yale should commit mass suicide
I know this is meant to be a joke but it is incentive.
We you meaning “pertinent” or “appropriate”? Incentive has always been a noun in my experience.
*insensitive 🤦🏻♀️
no idea what I was thinking
Your subconscious was farming those up-doots.
Just asking out of curiosity, but if that occurred, would that actually solve the problem of population decline?
To be clear I’m not advocating for this, I’m just trying to understand the what’s going on.
No. This would have lots of weird impacts. In the countryside, a lot of employees are quite old. A lot also do childcare for their grandkids at least some of the time. A lot of farmers would be gone as well. There’s also a lot of paperwork that suddenly needs to be done grinding a lot of government to a halt. A lot of businesses as well since, from what I’ve seen form friends’ older relatives dying, a lot of people do NOT have their shit in order and Japan has lots of small businesses and sole proprietorships.
Depending upon the wording of the policies and suicide, life insurance companies might have big issues or families might have huge monetary issues. I guess we can pretend they don’t all die at once and clog up the whole morgue and funeral infrastructure which is a whole other thing.
The religious and political implications could be interesting. Bhuddist gravesites in Japan for family graves tend to be very expensive to buy and maintain.
I could actually keep going for a while, but the short version is that, at least in the short term, it would likely do more harm than good. This says nothing of the actual emotional impact on people.
Thanks, it’s seemed that his “solution” was off.
Well it would free up a lot of resources that could be redirected to free child care.
but it seems more like people are being over worked and underpaid. They just can’t afford to spend time or money on kids
Grandparents are a major source of free childcare
My wife and I make decent money and could afford a kid, but we do not have the time.
We are both working over 40 hour weeks.
We have the time and money but we don’t like kids. Most of the population decline is because more and more people realize they don’t need kids to be happy.
My wife and I mainly worry about what will happen to us when we are very elderly.
I think having kids as a retirement plan is pretty selfish. I would rather save money so that when I’m old I can afford proper assistance. This of course is not a valid option everywhere but where I live nursing homes are good and affordable and euthanasia is legal.
I think the problem is that there might not be people to staff those nursing homes.
No, staffing will not be a problem. Those jobs are fairly easy to access (you only need some courses and certification), are not dangerous or highly stressful, and will not be replaced by AI or automation. Worst case scenario we will import nurses from developing countries. The only issue can be founding but in countries with stable social security retirements will cover most of the cost. If you’re living in country with weak social security you will be fucked and kids may be necessary.
The article is from 2023 and the source is a anti abortion site. The big red flag for me was the tweet from Pierre Pollievre saying how Conservatives are there to help people.
From what I’ve seen when Japanese people saw the footage and context of the conversation they do believe it was more about older generation moving on.
Dr Narita has now told The New York Times his comments were “taken out of context”, and the paper reported that he added “they related to demands for older people in leadership positions to make way for the younger generation”.
Actual Japanese here, even within the dark humor context, I wholeheartedly agree with Yusuke Narita.
It’s precisely the gerontocracy in Japan why the nation is heading extremely far right. The aging oppressive population needs to retire, vacate, and leave the younger generation capable of making their choices. We are the lowest GDP first nation because of elders oppressing.
I’m glad Yusukeさん is in the 🇺🇲, but I’m afraid he’ll be deathcamped soon.
I’m thankful 28 folks read the article correctly. Fuck oppression.
What on Earth is with the links.
A link to a Lemmy micro-opinion, a link to a Sega video, and a link to some random article.
People tend to conservadorism as they age, due to cognitive decline and loss of plasticity of the brain. It’s a global phenomenon and usually make them make bad decisions in regards to what’s best for the public or public interest.
That’s why I think there must be age limit to occupy public lidership roles.
Thanks for the added opinion and context.
When I read he actually used the word “seppuku”, I immediately knew that it wasn’t just suicide he was talking about. He’s also saying that the oldest generation needs to admit they screwed everything up beyond repair, and answer for it.
It’s precisely the gerontocracy in Japan why the nation is heading extremely far right.
Is it 参政党 and their ilk were mostly voted for by the younger crowds whereas the olds stayed with the LDP, at least from the exit polling I saw. I mean, for me personally, the LDP is too far right, but Sanseitou is definitely a lot further off. Some older also split to the DPFTP to show disappointment, but I’m less clear on those numbers.
I’m not confident that courting the suggestion of suicide by bringing public attention to it is the ethical move for a journalist.
