I think old people in the US should do this too. I actually think it would have a net positive impact.
Kind of sad death with dignity is not allowed in most places. I really dont want to be a walking corpse like my great grand parents were with Parkinson and/or alzheimers. Ill take hard drugs please. I get its hard to say goodbye to love ones but I saw them as already dead wasting away.
These people should sacrifice themselves in service of an economic system’s growth I.operative.
Capitalism is the atheists religion.
I’m not confident that courting the suggestion of suicide by bringing public attention to it is the ethical move for a journalist.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, plus consider how many people already learn Japanese as it’s considered to be a sexy language in many countries
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.
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?
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.
The problem is already well underway in the west. Some potential growth has already been squandered, acting now is an emergency.
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.
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”.
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.
What an incredibly heartless comment to make.
“Since 2008”
Australian dude used a home-made robot to kill himself in 2008
https://www.wired.com/2008/03/australian-man/
9 years late on a corporate model
“For an extra quarter, would you like to have your eyes scooped out by a melon baller?”
I would very much love to have the choice.
You already do.
But if you think suicide is a desirable choice, call a helpline. In all but some rare cases, your problem is disordered thinking.
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”.
“I didn’t mean ‘they should kill themselves’, I merely stated that the old fucks should gtfo and cease to exist. By killing themselves. Media takes things so far out of context…”
That did he write his thesis on, The Giver?
I do wish there was a way to check out early without endangering your insurance, though.
Whoops my car drove off of a bridge
Simple, don’t have insurance
taps head 🧠
You first, buddy
Ubasute (elder senicide): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubasute
left there to die
Couldn’t even do them the service of running them through with a katana. Just left them alone to suffer. Lol
Similarly, ättestupa.
