Change Coming to Japan
Japan is kind of an odd duck among the world’s democracies in that they have most of the trappings of parliamentary democracy, but when all is said and done the same party always wins. Since 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party has consistently held power except for one brief 11 month spell during which an opposition coalition controlled things. But today that’s changing as the opposition Democratic Party of Japan has swept to a clear win in parliamentary elections and already controls the upper house. Yukio Hatoyama will take over as Prime Minister.
One consequence of this prolonged period of one-party rule is that the LDP is not an especially ideological political party. It’s essentially a “party of government” patronage machine that contains diverse factions and different points of view. The Democratic Party, consequently, is more of a generic umbrella opposition grouping than a clear ideological alternative. Thus the Democrats are riding in on a tide of public discontent, but don’t seem to have articulated much in the way of a policy agenda beyond the obscure issue of bureaucracy reform. The thing that strikes outsiders about Japan is that they should probably let more immigrants in but no Japanese people seem to like that idea.
60 Responses to “Change Coming to Japan”
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August 30th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
No, thats not a common outsider view, thast just your immigration loving minority view. Immigration when there are not enough is kind of stupid. Filling a declining population with unemployed immigrants is no good just to keep the population constant does no one any good.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
The immigration criticism has always puzzled me. The main assumption seems to be that population must always grow. Since Japan’s population is shrinking, they should therefore encourage immigration.
If you don’t accept infinite population growth as a requirement, then there’s no reason for Japan to need immigration. But that assumption is rarely questioned, and I don’t understand why.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
And in Israel:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/30/world/AP-ML-Israel-Olmert.html?hp
Don’t the Israeli know they should be looking forward, not backward?
August 30th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I’m pretty sure people think Japan could use more immigrants because a country full of 70-year-olds actually needs people to work and pay taxes. Not because people are worried about keeping the population constant, you idiot.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Re: The thing that strikes outsiders about Japan is that they should probably let more immigrants in but no Japanese people seem to like that idea.
And of course, ‘outsiders’ (i.e. policymakers and journalists in Washington DC) know better than the Japanese what Japan needs. How could anyone think otherwise?
August 30th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Japan still has a large working-age population.
You’re assuming that the population structure must be a pyramid to support the retirees, i.e. that population must always grow. Instead of defending that assumption, you retreated to hyperbole (Japan has no working-age adults).
Unless you can show that it’s a fundamental requirement that a country needs 3.0 working-aged adults per retiree, rather than 1.5 or even 1.0, you’re just repeating the assumption.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Immigration “lovers” – nice echo of a common term from the civil-right era – are not a minority. This was proven in 2006, when the xenophobes thought an anti-immigrant backlash was going to propel a conservative takeover, and they woke up with a big closet full of FAIL.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
@joe: true, but they did block immigration reform… never underestimate the power of crude xenophobia.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
If the Japanese would adopt more family friendly policies (increase maternity / paternity leave, subsidize childbirth and child care), and also heavily restrict abortion, they could increase the birthrate solve their demographic problems without needing to take in any immigrants at all. Problem solved.
Seems like the natural solution, which is probably why the Yglesian hipsters dislike it.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Way to take the high ground ferg! I look forward to someone actually engaging your question…
August 30th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Working people pay taxes so that old people can eat.
Between 1990 and 2025 Japan will go from six working-age people per retiree to two.
Of course it’s not a “fundamental requirement.” But if you want to explain how this ratio is *completely irrelevant* to the welfare of Japan’s citizens, please go ahead.
As the ratio declines, workers must pay a higher tax rate or retirees must face reduced benefits. This matters. Your response? “This has always puzzled me.”
August 30th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Way to take the low road Hector!
August 30th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Thus the Democrats are riding in on a tide of public discontent, but don’t seem to have articulated much in the way of a policy agenda beyond the obscure issue of bureaucracy reform.
A) Not true. They’re going to overhaul the entire budget, increase the welfare state, decrease corporate subsidies, push for America to reduce its troop presence, liberalize trade, and allow the yen to appreciate.
B) Bureaucracy reform is not “obscure” if you happen to live in Japan – in fact, it’s the single biggest issue of the last two decades, since bureaucrats currently make all the policies with little or no political oversight.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Hey Barbar,
Where did this *completely irrelevant* come from?
August 30th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
If the Japanese would adopt more family friendly policies (increase maternity / paternity leave, subsidize childbirth and child care), and also heavily restrict abortion, they could increase the birthrate solve their demographic problems without needing to take in any immigrants at all. Problem solved.
Wrong. Pro-natalist policies like you’re suggesting have a terrible track record. And restricting abortion never works.
The long-term solution to low fertility is to give women economic equality. Countries that do this, like the U.S., Scandinavia, and France, have fertility rates right around the replacement level.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
stick, ferg wrote:
If you don’t accept infinite population growth as a requirement, then there’s no reason for Japan to need immigration.
Why don’t you ask, “where did this *need immigration* come from?”
No one said Japan NEEDED immigration. People think it’s an obvious policy response to an obvious problem.
If ferg doesn’t think that the ratio of retirees to workers is completely irrelevant, then why is he puzzled by the recommendation that Japan expand immigration?
August 30th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
The long-term solution to low fertility is to give women economic equality. Countries that do this, like the U.S., Scandinavia, and France, have fertility rates right around the replacement level.
Of course, numerous woman-oppressing shitholes round the world have fertility rates appallingly in excess of replacement level, while many more enlightened jurisdictions have fertility rates in the 1.3 zone. I fail to see any connection between the two.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
If the Japanese would adopt more family friendly policies (increase maternity / paternity leave, subsidize childbirth and child care), and also heavily restrict abortion, they could increase the birthrate solve their demographic problems without needing to take in any immigrants at all. Problem solved.
Isn’t the abortion rate in Japan already pretty low?
As for the immigration issue, while I am not really opposed to immigration (being a first-generation immigrant myself, it would be a little odd if I were), I do think liberal free-trade types underestimate the extent to which it is a legitimate socio-cultural position to restrict immigration in order to preserve intact cultural identity and norms. The Japanese seem to well understand that immigration would mean slightly more “stuff” accompanied by something of a loss in cultural identity, and they’ve seemingly made their choice (though of course they could change their minds if their plans to deal with population decline don’t work as well as they hope).
And really, who needs immigrants when you have ursine robot nurses?
August 30th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
I should’ve added that I agree strongly that more family-friendly policies are a good idea, though there are a few structural barriers that could keep the birthrate lower than it would otherwise be.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Sure, barbar, the retirement issue is a big one affecting every developed country, immigration or not. And that’s the point.
No one will restore population growth to the 6:1 working-age to retiree ratio. That massive ratio is never coming back. If the Japanese can restructure to handle 2:1, more power to them. But a claim that the Japanese need a 2.5:1 ratio from immigration, rather than the projected 2:1 requires actual analysis to back it up.
August 30th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I don’t get this. Here’s some analysis: all things being equal, the higher the ratio of workers to retirees, the lower the tax rate on workers, the higher the benefits to retirees. Agreed? Agreed. So there you go. No one said there was a magic number that was *needed*. That was a rhetorical device you introduced.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Of course, numerous woman-oppressing shitholes round the world have fertility rates appallingly in excess of replacement level, while many more enlightened jurisdictions have fertility rates in the 1.3 zone. I fail to see any connection between the two.
But among rich countries – countries that have completed the “demographic transition” – there is a strong correlation between women’s economic opportunity and the fertility rate.
The obvious reason being that if women are forced to choose between careers and kids, a lot of women aren’t going to ave any kids at all…
August 30th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Isn’t the abortion rate in Japan already pretty low?
It’s about the same as in the U.S.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
“The thing that strikes outsiders about Japan is that they should probably let more immigrants in but no Japanese people seem to like that idea.”
Will certainly be interesting to see how they deal with the immigration issue given how bad their situation is demographically. With the exception of a limited scheme encouraging the Brazilian descendants of Japanese emigrants to move to the country, mostly to take up menial jobs, i don’t think they’ve made any real moves at liberalising policy. The fact that it’s not uncommon to find 3rd generation residents of Japan who are monoglot Japanese speakers and whose parents were born and raised in Japan but are refused citizenship due to their grandparents being immigrants from Korea kind of illustrates how xenophobic their society is.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
The sexism of the Japanese workplace (and culture in general), the insanely expensive real estate, the crazy education system are lower the birthrate.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
“If the Japanese would adopt more family friendly policies (increase maternity / paternity leave, subsidize childbirth and child care), and also heavily restrict abortion, they could increase the birthrate solve their demographic problems without needing to take in any immigrants at all. Problem solved.”
Not necessarily. Look at the low birthrates amongst the European countries which generally have extremely family friendly policies.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
The sexism of the Japanese workplace (and culture in general), the insanely expensive real estate, the crazy education system are lower the birthrate.
I’m relatively ignorant about the education system’s effect on child-rearing. But yeah, you are right. Sexism is THE big thing that needs to go.
Expensive real estate is probably inevitable in a country that has a high population density and a lot of restrictions on logging, but the DPJ is going to make highways free, which will allow more people to move out the suburbs and live in larger houses. Already, per-person living space in Japan is about the same as in West Europe.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
The fact that it’s not uncommon to find 3rd generation residents of Japan who are monoglot Japanese speakers and whose parents were born and raised in Japan but are refused citizenship due to their grandparents being immigrants from Korea kind of illustrates how xenophobic their society is.
That’s a canard. Japan has no “birthright to citizenship” (neither do most European countries), but anyone who grows up in Japan can take Japanese citizenship when they reach 20 years old. A Korean-Japanese friend of mine decided to do it just a couple years ago, and it was very easy for her.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
“That’s a canard. Japan has no “birthright to citizenship” (neither do most European countries), but anyone who grows up in Japan can take Japanese citizenship when they reach 20 years old. A Korean-Japanese friend of mine decided to do it just a couple years ago, and it was very easy for her.”
Fair enough.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
So where did all this criticism of the last sentence come from? Is it otakus white-knighting Japan or people who hate immigrants coming to America?
August 30th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Why would Japan import more people? I can at least understand the argument for America, low population density and ample resources give us plenty of room to grow. Japan is an island nation, and shoring up it’s welfare net may not be the biggest population-related issue on the minds of it’s leaders. Even economic growth has to take a back seat to sustainability if you actually plan on having a future.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
What matters is the ratio of workers to nonworkers not the ratio of workers to retirees. An aging population means more retirees but fewer children. So the burden on workers isn’t greater and there is no actual “problem”.
August 30th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
So where did all this criticism of the last sentence come from?
There’s a white man’s burden aspect to the last sentence that’s irritating. After the collapse of the Anglo-American financial system, you’d think there would be some more humility before telling Japan what to do.
Plus, as soulite pointed out, Japan is densely populated enough that sustainability is a legitimate concern.
August 30th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Wrong. Pro-natalist policies like you’re suggesting have a terrible track record. And restricting abortion never works.
There’s at least one country where restricting abortion did work, and in combination with pro-natalist policies led to a population boom. Ceaucescu’s Romania was able to get the birth rate from around 2.5 children per woman to around 3.0, and all it took was virtual bans on abortion and divorce, a total ban on contraception, a 20% additional flat tax on childless people over the age of 25, uniformed police administering mandatory monthly pregnancy tests to all women of childbearing age, and requiring married couples who had not borne a child recently to testify under oath regarding their sex lives. Also, as a bonus Romania got an epidemic of deaths from illegal abortions, an army of homeless street children, and an overloaded orphanage system requiring the reuse of medical supplies from adult hospitals, which led to half of the continent’s juvenile AIDS cases. Win-win!
August 30th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
“Japan is densely populated enough that sustainability is a legitimate concern.”
It’s also a concern for Japan’s neighbors. Japan has more forest cover than pretty much any country in the world (2/3 of land area). How do they do it? By cutting down forests in neighboring countries. Japan causes serious sustainability issues for its neighbors. They’ve pretty much wiped out Thailand’s forests and are well on the way in Laos and Cambodia. And a lot of this tree cutting is for disposable chopsticks. What a waste. In Southeast Asia, they’d rather see Japan lose population.
August 30th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Scare mongering about dependency rates has a long tradition on the we have to abolish social security because its impossible to pay . Things are just not all that dramatic as all the bla bla implies, with or without immigration.
August 30th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I don’t know, but wouldn’t immigration to Japan require a population of folks beating down the doors to get in? Japan has the most insular culture of the developed democracies. Even Americans aren’t really comfortable staying there for long periods, and the Japanese are in love with American popular culture.
There’s just no tradition in Japan of immigrants “turning Japanese.” And given their other traditions, one is unlikely to develop. Japanese nationalism isn’t expansive enough to allow for immigrants to naturalize.
August 30th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
[...] http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/08/change-coming-to-japan.phpExpensive real estate is probably inevitable in a country that has a high population density and a lot of restrictions on logging, but the DPJ is going to make highways free, which will allow more people to move out the suburbs and live … Japan has no “birthright to citizenship” (neither do most European countries), but anyone who grows up in Japan can take Japanese citizenship when they reach 20 years old. A Korean-Japanese friend of mine decided to do it just a couple … [...]
August 30th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
It’s hard to think of a more ideological major party than the SAP of 1932-1976.
August 30th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
In Sweden, haven’t the Social Democrats dominated the Swedish Parliament to almost (if not quite) as great an extent as the LDP has dominated the Diet? Since most of us are at least somewhat left-of-center, we’re likely to see something more sinister in the LDP’s longterm conservative dominance than in the Social Democrats’ longterm social democratic dominance, but to what extent can one really say that Japan is an odd duck among democracies?
August 30th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Political science is quite dominated by US scholars, so democracy theory has a habit to look at the US as basis and look negative on deviations. The Japanese are evil because they didnt pass the “regime change” criteria to proof they are a good democracy. Think of the speach Obama gave in Gahna(?), he copied right off the regime change book.
Liberal democracy is a fuzzy concept, and sometimes the liberal and the democracy part are even in conflict.
I also live in a one party staate by the way, Bavaria, forever ruled by the CSU.
August 30th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
“The thing that strikes outsiders about Japan is that they should probably let more immigrants in but no Japanese people seem to like that idea.”
Yeah, because the global elite should make fundamental decisions about Japan rather than the Japanese voters.
Really, isn’t Japan a sort of rogue state that sets a bad example for voters in the rest of the world by showing them that they don’t have to put up with everything that Davos attendees advise them to do?
August 30th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Matt@#37
Depends on the time scale you are talking about. One branch of my family from Taiwan moved to Japan when Taiwan was part of Japan. They have Japanese citizenship and more or less totally assimilated at this point. (Like other Taiwanese, they were “encouraged” to adopted Japanese name. They just weren’t forced to change it back after the war like other Taiwanese)
Taiwan was part of Japan from 1895 to 1945(or 1952), not much longer compares to Korea (1945). Korean had more representation in Japanese Imperial Diet than Taiwanese. (Dozens of Koreans in House of Peer, compared to single one from Taiwan, etc.)
My understanding is that both Korean governments are part of problems for Korean-Japanese to naturalize.
One story I heard was South Koreans won’t allow (young_)male to renounce citizenship until they complete their (2 and half year)military service first. And Japanese won’t give them citizenship until they received confirmation from other governments that they had renounced the former
citizenship. My understanding of RoK army conscripts is that it’s tough and hazing is popular, especially for people who are “outside of mainstream.” I imagine telling people “I am putting in my 2 and half year so I can become Japanese>’ would endear one to others in South Korea. That’s if they speak Korean to began with.
August 30th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
[...] UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias [...]
August 30th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
As a current resident of Japan, I can tell you that Japan’s immigration policies are definitely NOT friendly, and there are lots of abuses of guest workers that happen as well. Being white and American, I have about the best position possible, but lots of SE Asians or South Americans don’t.
Japan already has too few working-age people to pay for the current pensions, and it will only get worse. Having a birhrate below replacement level isn’t bad — in fact, would probably be good — if it weren’t so low. The country needs a little extra tax income to pad the birthrate a bit in order to have a soft landing, rather than a hard crash.
August 30th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
O)f course restricting abortion works! I was in my twenties in the sixties when it was still illegal, and having abortion be illegal certainly does increase births! It’s not like marijuana, you know, that you can grow up in the attic! If you don’t have a connection to an abortionist, you’ll have the kid. And the guy’ll marry you. That’s how very many marriages and very many kids got born. None of my classmates in grade school or high school died from a botched abortion. Now, some of us did know where and how to find abortionists, in Mexico, for example–and Chicago, I still know the street. But it was a long way, it cost a lot, it was scary, and that’s enough to settle it for most people. And having a baby is with rare exceptions very good for a woman’s health, especially avoiding breast cancer. So even if she didn’t really want to have a baby, it’s a natural process, it’s really no big deal. And a girl could always fall back on the law–’I couldn’t do that, honey, it’s illegal!’ (From standing outside an abortion mill every Saturday handing out addresses of places to get help, I can tell you that the majority of women who enter do so reluctantly. You can read the body language like a book. Just go stand and don’t talk from your agenda! Just go look!) In fact, women in the US need such a law to protect them from pressure to abort just as much as Muslim women need a law against the burqa to protect them from pressure to wear it. Or so the argument goes for burqas, which I myself would leave alone and let women fight that fight on their own. Cause it’s way more painful to be made to feel undressed in front of a group of strangers than to feel overdressed. But not the life of their child. Women who abort with less than full enthusiasm court a lifetime of sadness. Of less than happiness.Of mental problems. Of regret. It sucks. Ask me how I know.
August 30th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Maybe Japan can get immigrants from Sweden, Sweden from Canada, Canada from Korea… No! Immigrants are supposed to come from 3rd world countries, no?
For your information, Mr. 1st world Yglesias, many 3rd world countries have started their own demographic transitions so you might as well start developing an economic system that does not rely on pouching human resources from those poorer than yourself. While you are at it, develop an ideology that does not rely on immigration to prove to yourselves how tolerant and non-racist you are.
August 30th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Re: For your information, Mr. 1st world Yglesias, many 3rd world countries have started their own demographic transitions so you might as well start developing an economic system that does not rely on pouching human resources from those poorer than yourself. While you are at it, develop an ideology that does not rely on immigration to prove to yourselves how tolerant and non-racist you
Not gonna happen, Lupita. America will collapse of its own contradiction long before it will understand the underlying reasons for that collapse. And the then-unemployed bloggers like Mr. Yglesias will be standing by with a dumb and bewildered look on their face as civilization collapses around them.
August 30th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
“None of my classmates in grade school or high school died from a botched abortion.”
Good enough for me! You know what they say: if it doesn’t happen at Jan Baker’s high school, it just doesn’t happen.
“So even if she didn’t really want to have a baby, it’s a natural process, it’s really no big deal.”
I would love to watch you say “It’s no big deal!” to a pregnant teenager whose parents will kick her out of the house for having sex, or to a pregnant woman whose partner has skipped town, or to an unemployed pregnant woman who doesn’t know how she’s going to support her baby. I think I could sell tickets to that.
“In fact, women in the US need such a law to protect them from pressure to abort just as much as Muslim women need a law against the burqa to protect them from pressure to wear it.”
You’ve got it backwards. A law against abortion would equivalent to the Taliban’s laws mandating that women wear the burqa. Like you, the Taliban decreed that it was actually liberating women to take away their self-determination and all the awful pressure it brings. I think you’ll find that most women don’t find that a very persuasive argument.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:10 am
Clearly, Japan should take in huge numbers of immigrants. Hey, that has worked wonders for California’s budget!
August 31st, 2009 at 9:56 am
History is going to overtake this discussion. It’s already begun. South Korea’s Planned Parenthood has changed its name and its mission; no more abortions–and thinks it has time to come out with a new pro-natalist program for the next five year plan (twenty five percent of all the time they have for the generation cohort entering the optimum fertility years now). It just has a few little hurdles to overcome, as Planned Parenthood’s president mentions: Korean women no longer want to marry, and find motherhood an imposition, just as they were taught, aggresively taught, in the last four five year plans since South Korea got on the family planning bandwagon. Planned Parenthood has no idea what to do about that except throw money at it–which already didn’t work in Sweden or Germany or Italy or name a dozen more.
Nor do they have the money to throw at it, since they are already in the throes of an aging society being fed by fewer and fewer younger workers. It’s too late. Maybe they’ll figure that out in the next five year plan, when the ticking time bomb will leave only ten years to really get it together with that cohort, that last, precious cohort. Go here for a link to an interview with Choi Seon-jeong that gives the details of their laughable new “plan.” http://mercatornet.com/articles/view/koreas_population_crisis/
Or take China. China is ‘re-thinking’ its Gold Plan, the forced One-Child policy. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/chinas-second-thoughts-on-the-one-child-policy/article1261063/
But like South Korea, it’s too slow, no go, bro. Thanks to human pride and this madness with planning, they want to introduce a new, two-child policy, but they’re limiting it to only those cohorts they designate, adult children from one-child households only may “apply” for the “permit” to reproduce again. China, true to its rules, is still penalizing people who just want to have another baby (one hundred thousand dollar equivalent fine–see the article, it’s a riot, a little story about us idiot humans and our idiot “plans”!).
And yet they sit looking at the numbers: In Shanghai, in 1979, when they began their great project, there were seven workers for every retired person. Now there 1.6 and falling and it’s the same all over China excepting a couple of pockets in the deep mountains. And yet the impending disaster has not sunk in enough to free them from their all-too-human failure, the desire to save face. To never admit they were wrong. They will take China to hell first.
You can’t plan a family. The concept, Rationalism’s nasty kitten, was flawed from the beginning. You can plan barbeques, you can plan a piano lesson, but human reproduction is fragile, even more fragile than among the other primates, who are amazingly skittish. You have to encourage it with all your heart–and legislative power, and culture–and then pray. This is the lesson we must learn, in a very short time! The economy does work like a ponzi scheme, and all we can do is take the next step and prepare to expand (we’re on our way, but we haven’t realized what the universe is offering us, if we only have a little faith). That, or die. Because staying at zero population can only be done with severe and crude government control, as in China and its shameful forced abortions. And then one little screw up, one little catastrophe, and the burner has to be turned up a notch–and then we find we can’t. We humans don’t work that way. Love and dignity are real and biological, sexual desire between men and women is precious and easily disengaged (witness not only Japan’s low birth rate but its new low rate of intersexual intercourse). When we are taught and taught hard that career is everything for a woman, and motherhood (parenthood)is dumb and also “bad” for the “Earth Goddess,” when we are subjected over and over, by every magazine and movie and subway ad, to gratuitous sexual stimulation to sell products, when real marriage is replaced by a dog-license as temporary as anyone likes, we human beings have to react somehow to the torture. We will stop reproducing. And we have. In country after country. Japan is only one.
We, in the US, with a hanging-on barely replacement level of births (and that thanks only to the Mexicans!)still have a chance, if we now, now, now take a position in favor of heterosexual marriage and against birth control of all forms except natural, meaning don’t have sex if you don’t want a child. No abortion. And no porn. Then we might have a chance to keep desire between men and women alive.
It’s actually the plan we had, back in the day, before we let these false freedoms, these false entitlements, in the house. Nobody has a “right” to unfettered sexual activity untethered to reproduction and responsibility, and societies that survive know it.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:35 am
Everybody should get children to reduce the likelyhood of breast cancer, getting 20 children of which half die is natural, lets do it !
August 31st, 2009 at 11:39 am
Re: against birth control of all forms except natural, meaning don’t have sex if you don’t want a child.
Huh?
That isn’t ‘natural’ birth control. Natural Family Planning revolves around having sex only during the woman’s infertile periods, and when practiced correctly it can be highly effective. Witness Poland. NB: I think that hormonal contraception is a good thing, and I don’t oppose it. The case against abortion is not that it reduces the birth rate, it is that it constitutes homicide.
Your viewpoint that ‘don’t have sex unless you want a child’ is _not_ endorsed by any religious body except some Anabaptist sects. Even the Vatican and the Patriarchate of Moscow, which oppose artificial birth control, endorse Natural Family Planning.
It’s true that we do not have a ‘right’ to completely risk-free sexual activity, but we do have a right to try to take reasonable and moral steps to minimize the risk of pregnancy in our romantic relationships. Hormonal contraception is such a reasonable, moral, and responsible way to plan and regulate family size.
Your argument, aside from being ignorant of theology, demographics, history and human biology, is also rather environmentally irresponsible. The human population was growing very rapidly before the advent of the Pill, and if we returned to those halcyon days today, we would very quickly hit a population of 15 billion or more, and would run out of natural resources very quickly. The best way to have a healthy birth rate (of just replacement level or slightly under, to allow a gradual decline in population pressure) would be to combine the banning of elective abortion with cheap and easily available contraception and financial support for mothers with children. And, surpirse surprise, it also happens to be the _moral_ way.
August 31st, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Seems like the natural solution, which is probably why the Yglesian hipsters dislike it.
How are state subsidies to increase the total population of the planet (and thus the corresponding resource burden) more natural than just letting people in?
And what’s with this “hipsters” thing?
August 31st, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Jan,
In your first comment your whole message was that pregnancy was “no big deal,” that women really love being pregnant and hate abortions, and so on. When I pointed out how unbelievably simplistic that is, your response was … to change the subject entirely. Now it’s a woman’s responsibility to repopulate the planet, her preferences be damned? Are you sure you want to cede that ground so easily?
While you work on that one, sure, I’ll respond to your population argument. The world is bursting with people. As Hector (Hector!!) points out, we have far too many people as it is, and it’s going to kill almost everybody—born and unborn!—pretty quickly unless we practice some population control. Now, as it happens, the population explosion is unevenly distributed: in the developed world, where raising children is extremely expensive and child mortality rates are low, there are less children being born than in the third world. Insofar as developed societies need workers, they will overcome their aversion to immigration and import them. This is already happening; China is receiving immigration from Africa, for instance. This is not ideal, and involves a great deal of suffering by and exploitation of the third world, but it beats your solution for everyone, everywhere to have more babies, which would destroy civilization in short order.
I’ll also point out that your argument—that declining birth rates are due to our depraved, entitled, rationalistic society—doesn’t even cohere. Japan is not the United States; it’s a much more traditional society, with much less importance placed on women’s professional careers, and with some pretty heavy restrictions on pornography. (In China, pornography is banned completely.) So, what’s your explanation for why sex is on the decline in Japan? Better yet, what’s your explanation for why that isn’t the case here in the US?
August 31st, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Re: with some pretty heavy restrictions on pornography.
Huh?
I wouldn’t know, neither being Japanese nor a porn consumer, but I’ve heard that the Japanese are famous for being avid consumers of some rather creepy porn.
I don’t deny, by the way, that Japan’s birth rate is too low. I do think that Jan’s solution would be much much worse than the problem it purports to solve (and is something that not even the Theology of the Body* proponents at their loopiest would argue for). A total fertility rate of 1.3 is a problem but it’s much better than (on a global level) a fertility rate of 4.0.
*Theology of the Body = Humanae Vitae on weed.
August 31st, 2009 at 3:18 pm
“I wouldn’t know, neither being Japanese nor a porn consumer, but I’ve heard that the Japanese are famous for being avid consumers of some rather creepy porn.”
In Japan, it’s illegal to portray the genitals in pornography; they have to be fuzzed out, including in that infamous “creepy porn.” It’s unfuzzed for export to the West.
It’s also illegal to sell sex toys that look like genitals, which is why Japanese vibrators are shaped like cute rabbits and dolphins, or Hello Kitty.
August 31st, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Damn -10 tz… responding to Anthony (#30), immigration has always been a hot button on this blog, which Matt proceeded to push as a seeming non sequitur at the end of his post.
He notes that the LDP and Democratic Party policies don’t seem to stray far from dicking with the government bureaucracy… and finishes with an issue that he thinks should be a major policy discussion, even though “no” Japanese seem to want what I presume Matt feels should be the result of that discussion.
So, why have it? For the teachable moment? When I think through the various notable political idiosyncrasies of nations, I think Japan’s immigration and naturalization policy rates as one they can be left to solve or screw up on their own.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I love how 1 little observation from Matt can set off tirades about “Yglesian hipsters”, “1st world elite”, and “Davos attendees.” Not to mention rants against almost the whole of modernity.
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:18 pm
I know I’m late on this (I was on vacation), but in some ways the creepiness of Japanese porn is precisely due to their restrictions. Essentially, because most depictions of more standard sexuality are censored, Japanese porn got weirder to satisfy pornographic desires without depicting “regular” sex.