s3unha on Warpcast

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Here's live-read for a Japanese book translated "Declaration of Localism - From Growth to Steady". https://t.ly/AHNLW H/t @vgr and his pandemic live reads where he live tweeted books as he was reading them. Cast threads UX is nowhere perfect and I'm hoping they become perfect over time.

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The author is a Japanese Philosopher, public thinker, educator, cultural critic named Tatsuru Uchida. The book is a collection of 10 essays / 10 ppl / 10 diff industries. Shared topic was population decline.

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When the book was published in 2017, JP was 10 years into discussing and putting forth solutions for population decline. Way ahead of the curve 😱 The preface is his overarching take on pop decline which he views as a civ prob that's not limited only to JP.

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For JP their pop is expected to drop from 127m to 60m, a 50% decrease over 80 years. He doesn't believe pop decline is a problem Govt or anyone can respond at scale once in motion. Pop decline is followed by shrinking mkt and existing biz models having to change or dying.

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At the time of writing, there was no national discussion around what form JP would end up with due to pop decline. I wonder what the influence of Covid is to pop decline and if he thinks any differently.

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On top of pop decline, he fears AI taking jobs. JP gets to choose their poison that they're first up to bat. He wasn't sure what industries would lose their job first but predicted manufacturing and services. If I replaced "pop decline" with "climate" the tone would sound more of less the same. Similar BIG prob.

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People predict pop declining society being prevalent around the world. Why aren't we speaking enough about this? Or are we but with diff words describing the same set of phenomena ie Degrowth theory, steady state economy etc? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_economy

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JP is first for hyper low birthrate and hyper-aging but these phenomena are sweeping all across NE Asia. No one knows what'll happen. He rants how he doesn't want to write this book but he must bcoz the professionals dont bother to discuss the issue. This is a red flag that JP society doesnt take pop decline srsly.

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Wars, econ depression, natural disasters are "normal" in the sense it can happen to any of us. A national culture that doesnt seek any solution although there's a high probability of an imminent threat is danger at another lvl. Ser you'll be appalled at the crappy responses and drama of the pandemic.

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I read once if govt cant tell ppl to have fewer kids or lower standard of living, though we're at carrying capacity, the easiest thing is to label fossil fuels = bad. https://cryptohayes.medium.com/thirst-trap-4f8b936b809e

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the malthusian view has existed for decades and it labeled pop decline = bad. the 1st essay puts for a view that pop decline is a natural and reasonable because it's the earth self correcting for sustainability.

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all adv countries except US face pop decline. 22nd century, all nations will face low birth and pop decline. it may be inevitable but def not easy to accept. The JP mind is diff from US in that JP doesnt like prepping for worst case scenarios while US values black swan thinking as demonstrated in WWII.

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He exhorts JP readers to not label those who prep for black swan as pessimists and ostracize them.

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Though pop decline is a real danger that could wipe out JP natl, local govt are not active reaching nor reaching consensus on counter plans. Cultural dynamics and their influence on decision making is real. And he may be pointing to a blindspot between top-down & bottom-up systems. A /publicgoods problem?

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JP society fears facing pessimism that leads to avoiding facing reality. Only Plan A that turns around pop decline is drawn and not Plan B, C that minimizes damage. The logic is: prepping for the worst is defeatism and defeatism leads to defeat. JP logic is not doing anything > prepping for the worst.

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To the JP psyche, reality is not created by a person but created elsewhere and happens on a person. Passive > Active. Mic drop.

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Pop decline is NOT a natural disaster but can be predicted 2 decades in adv since 95% of birth is from women 20-39 yrs old. We're taken aback by news that pop rate has hit an all time low when we could predict the decline 2 decades ago.

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JP predicted rapid pop decline in early 21st cent as early as 1980s. No one wanted to raise this issue during ATH for JP econ. Who ever thought they would lose decades. But it happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades

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Universities were the worst when it came to burying their head in the sand. Their tgt was clear: 18 year olds and that gave 18 years to prep. In 1993 Tatsuru first heard of pop decline at an Uni offsite. he was shocked because he realized no action was taken since 1975.

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Unis cont to increase their admission capacity, staff, budget and salary. They built up a system that would give them hell 18 years later for 18 years. No one could refute "strike when the iron's hot."

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Pre-Covid 2017, 112/660 17% higher ed institutions were in financial trouble and 21 were in danger of being bankruptcy by 2019. It must be way worse post-Covid.

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TIL you can risk hedge all you want w/o correctly accounting for the culture & society as a risk factor. pop decline is not about winning but minimizing dmg.

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3 major factors influence upcoming recession (minus Covid at this point in time): pop decline, AI, [nation-state]-first policies.

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industries he projects will soon suffer mass unemployment: finance, trad media esp natl newspaper & tv.

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interesting—he believes book publishing will be the last industry to resist an inevitable shrinking workforce. it was the earliest to face reality, and it's budget is way smaller than other media. self-publishing is readily available. books are lindy because it's existed prior to capitalism. lindy != job creation

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all biz models that presuppose a mass market will eventually disappear 🤨 i wonder if this happens at a diff rate for SEA & Africa JP projects biz tgting seniors and poor will thrive. biz tgting poor are biz models that increase in profit as poverty increases. are streaming services this way? 🧐

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finance is a moneygame that doesnt generate any value. mkts cant exist with only professional fin bros. /degens, WSB and money printer brrr in a few years is going to rock your world 🫥

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you need mkts, road, comms, common currency, lang, metrology, biz ethics in order for stable econ activities to exist. econ activites are formed on a foundation of trust. put another way, you cant have health economies w/o trust https://warpcast.com/ho/0x583892ab

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High vol of $, products & services does not mean a society is mature. He doesn't know he's throwing shade at both modern econ in developed mkts and dysfunctional frontier mkts.

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The chpt ends w/ an opinion that the last system standing will be the most mature system. It feels like a moral appeal. Done with preface and onto the next chapter!

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Chp 1 is written by a biologist, Kiyohiko Ikeda. In 30 yrs, aging population won't be a prob and only low birth and pop decline will remain. It's all about carrying capacity. If we see a pop explosion in nature, it's not carrying capacity that's increased but some factor that repressed pop has disappeared.

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Will stop and come back in a few. Thanks for reading.

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Picking up from where I left yesterday. The majority of animals are conservative when switching habitats. Mammals are the exception that tend to mass migrate when pop density rises relative to carrying capacity. most that migrate die and few that remain tend to survive.

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Unlike chimps and gorillas that stayed put, Homo Sapiens migrated out of Africa. For the Homo genus, stress was another cause for migration. Increased food supply meant an increasing pop and improvements in hunting, gathering tech quickened reaching carrying capacity. The surplus pop would hit the road again. Repeat.

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There were two choices: remain hunter-gathers and hold pop or start farming for increased pop. Societal makeup changed from a small group of skilled hunter-gatherers with static carrying capacity to larger group = more labor = increased carrying capacity through effort. Farming found a virtuous cycle.

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Violence exploded after humans entered an agrarian society as humans became weary of famine and pillaging. A society would exert violence both externally and internally. Internal violence was used to enforce law and order as society now was above the Dunbar #. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sovereign_Individual

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Like today, when humans solved the production prob, the distribution prob followed. Letter, law, and ready violence led to classes—Rousseau's moral inequality. In 3-4 millennia humans came up with taxes, currency, world religion, social class, and dictatorship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality

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Some of these social devices have taken root ie currency, religion. Others have faded into history ie social class, empires. Because 4 millennia is a speck in the greater history of mankind, it's more rational to assume existing social systems will change than remain the same.

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Pop growth gradually increased till early 18th cent in spite of war, famine and pandemic. Mid 18th cent was inflection pt and pop shot straight up. The industrial, energy, scientific revolutions & efficient food production sharply increased humanity's carrying capacity. Laborers increased in cities. Enter capitalism.

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Capitalism went from local to global because capitalists seek cheap labor. TIL global capitalism is predicated on arbitrage. Global capitalism needs pop and resources esp energy to cont increasing.

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Biologically, all animal pop increase when carrying capacity increases. Society is based on this ecological principle whether world empires or global capitalism, until modern JP. It's the first time where increasing carrying capacity doesn't increase pop.

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When low birthrate expands to a global scale, capitalism, as we know it, will come to an end. Capitalism scales, until it doesn't 😕 It's comforting to know this is the discussion we've been having; OTOH I'm nervous not being sure abt the influence of Covid (money printing and all) on our past trajectory.

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The biologist author takes comfort in the fact that while pop decline may be a disaster for JP, after awhile pop will stabilize as biology returns to it's normal state. Bearish short term, bullish long.

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Pop decreased in JP coz females refused to exchange their happiness for raising children. Regardless of economic status, no one fell for this fantasy. He projects females in developed countries will end up on the same path. World pop will peak around 2100 and decrease. It will normalize between 2200 and 2300 around 5b

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Until then there's this icky transition period and the accompanying vicious cycle: Low birth in JP -> shortage of labor -> rising wages -> move factory to country w/ cheaper labor OR hire cheaper oversea laborers in JP -> wages fall in JP.

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If you're from the countryside it's rational to move back & farm to be self-sufficient. Then create a community w/ others like you. As long as you stay within the Dunbar #, autonomy and order are maintained. The collective grows stronger with every exchange.

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Mutual cooperation. A throwback to the hunter-gather days except the primary means of production is farming. Sounds like 21st century homesteading for NE Asians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_the_Good_Life

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He believes with increasing migrant workers Japan will end up multiethnic, monocultural in 2-3 years. The JP language will play the primary role in upholding monoculture. A pretty diff vision of the future considering that in places like France we are starting see cracks and conflicts around culture.

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Whether pop decline or AI removing jobs, the most important question is "who's buying?" and UBI is a solution to maintain demand. Is there an alternative system to UBI for a populous country? Unless govt control human liquidity, everyone would want to go live somewhere w/ UBI.

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For this biologist, the curtain is closing on capitalism as is. Two questions are the most impt: 1. what is the rate at which the curtain closes? 2. what's our attitude towards it? I'm not confident future generations will accept an econ that ebbs and flows as it inversely moves with its population.

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Chp 2 we've got Tomohiro Inoue a macroeconomist. Starts w/ common macro economic numbers: - JP: 0.9% avg real growth rate for 2 decades - US & many developed countries: hovered around 2% avg real growth rate for 2 decades

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Developing countries tend to rapidly expand production facilities aka capital for growth rate. It's hard for a developed nation to maintain a high growth rate but with tech innovations, they can maintain a gradual econ growth as long as ppl research, invent, and discover. tech progress and econ growth don't stop.

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Abenomics aimed for 2% "natural" growth as JP econ had a growth rate below that for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abenomics

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If JP cont to decline the biggest responsibility lies with a failed fiscal & fin policy. However, this isn't just a supply side prob as JP orgs are highly inefficient when it comes to production. The world is moving towards intellectual capitalism where intellectual power, not a nation's (labor) headcount, matters.

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And JP's intellectual power is in danger. The decline of intellectual power & lack of science/tech will have a bigger negative influence on JP than low birth rate or an aging pop. Exciting! But I'll stop live-casting until next time.

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Let's jump right in. General purpose techs (GPTs 🤨) and their apps ushered in tech revolutions. The ongoing digital revolution differs from previous revolutions in that it doesn't bring abundance to all laborers but leads to the great decoupling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_of_wages_from_productivity

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The move from hunter-gatherer to an agrarian society swung from specialized to general. The move from 2nd to 3rd industrial revolution swung from general to specialized. Where are we now? 3rd revolution introduced zero marginal cost as software ate the world. https://a16z.com/why-software-is-eating-the-world/

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Discussions on AGI timelines, states who control AGI controls the future, changes AGI will bring to prod structures, etc follows 🥱 It feels like speculation from 20 years ago but it's only been 7 years. ChatGPT was released a bit over a year ago, and it's had a lasting impact on changing all our expectations 🤯

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Tech revolutions helped humans to escape the Malthusian trap. Output > pop growth. But the prosperity and benefit of tech revolutions weren't distributed evenly across the globe and led to the Great Divergence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence

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The 2nd and 3rd ind revolutions brought big changes but it didn't change fundamental structures. Humans still live in a mechanized econ that when analyzed by a solow model, growth comes out to 2% over the long run. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solow%E2%80%93Swan_model

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The author believes it's possible to exceed the periods of high economic growth from the past w/ machine economies. H/t e/acc 👀 Apply AK model to machine economies, and you'll see growth rate increase each year instead of sustained x% growth over time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK_model

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JP benefited from the first Great Divergence and enjoyed a prosperous 20th century, BUT lost the digital revolution—most digital services in JP are provided by MANGA.

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The author expresses a lot of FUD abt JP's future. - JP's renowned customer xp can be replaced by robots Made Outside JP. - JP may not be able to defend itself against E Asian military threats. - The threat JP will be left behind w/ AI is too real.

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In 2017, JP govt didn't take measures. But post-Covid they're attempting to tackle these issues: - Setup Digital Agency and appointed a Minister for Digital Transformation - Moving towards less regulation for AI, crypto, etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Agency

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But, it's not all roses. https://www.nbr.org/publication/overcoming-japans-uphill-battle-toward-digital-transformation/

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Two reasons are put forth as to why JP lacks intellectual power: 1. JP co's and uni's can't attract global talent and can't retain local talent. 2. JP work culture has excessive amounts of meaningless work ie paper-pushing, socializing after work hrs, long work hrs uncorrelated to high output, compliance etc

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Conclusion: when it comes to productivity, meaningless work can produce effects equal or greater than pop decline. Off to the next chapter!

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Next we have Kosuke Motani, a regional economist. He wants to challenge common and deep misconceptions JP hold about pop decline.

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There are several v interesting charts in this chp but I won't be sharing them as words will appear as jibberish. 😥

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"Locales are underdeveloped compared to cities." Regional inequality is predicated on population increase. Census data from 2010-2015 shows, the only region w/ smooth pop increase is Tokyo Metropolis & 7 regions have tiny increases. Inequality isn't expanding between locales v cities. It's Tokyo Met v everywhere else

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There's a catch. The elderly make up most of the rapid pop expansion in Tokyo. Ppl tend to mistakenly correlate pop increase w/ working pop or taxpayers. Out of the 360k pop increase in Tokyo Met between 5 yrs, 2/3 is above 75y, remaining 1/3 is 65y-74y, and 30k pop decreased <64y.

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Tokyo centralization is accelerating Out of the 2.13m >75y pop increase in JP, 1/3 increased in Tokyo Met. Add the 3 large city areas of Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Shiga, Nara, Aichi then 1.3m or 61% pop increase of >75y happens in cities.

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>75y pop increase of the 3 oldest prefectures (Akita, Shimane, Kochi) is 20k and less than 1% of all JP. Shimane, for ex, has more >75y dying than increasing. The minute increase is from city-dwellers who are returning home or enrolling in long term care facilities.

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Since many Shimane youth left to cities during the high growth period, there's no aging pop now. The absolute elderly pop will shrink. It doesn't mean the % of elderly will drop in Shimane but the burden of medical welfare will decline YoY. For Tokyo Met, their absolute elderly pop shrinks in a few decades.

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That's all for today!

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I'm back. Let's jump right in. These facts run opposite to the belief that "aging is worse in underdeveloped regions."

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An aging rate metric that includes >= 65y is inaccurate because the demand for elderly medical welfare is correlated to the absolute pop of >=75y. If pop >=75y decreases then the medical welfare burden decreases no matter how high the rate. If pop >=75y increases then the burden increases regardless how low the rate.

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The aging rate isn't meaningless; it's meaningful when comparing country-to-country but not when comparing admin district or local govt to each other.

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