The end of the modern culture is one of those things that most people can see coming but few want to acknowledge. Our culture’s ending is guaranteed by college educated populations failing to reproduce at rates sufficient to sustain the population. In the end, this failure means that modern culture must end, unless it can sustain itself parasitically on a non modern culture that is fecund enough to both sustain itself and the burden of a modern culture. But based on all available evidence, modern culture is very successful at supplanting whatever traditional culture it comes across if given a level playing field. For this reason, it seems unlikely that modern culture will ever be able to moderate its own success in a manner that would enable it to be successfully parasitical.

Granted, that message of doom and gloom is not mainstream. But it is the only conclusion supported by simple math and observing what is going on around us in the world. Anyone who is capable of understanding basic logic and is aware of the world around them should be able to understand it for themselves. At least, that is what I would like to think.

In reality, it is apparent the people struggle mightily with basic logic and they are not at all keen on observing the world around them. This has recently been rubbed into my face by the reaction to Tyler Cowen’s recent musings about how the world might “stop depopulating.” Cowen’s musing are banal and even a little delusional. But at least his musings acknowledged the basic mathematical fact that this has to stop at some point or the human race will cease to exist. Nonetheless, his comment section was overrun by people mocking or otherwise uncomprehending why Professor Cowen thought “depopulating” was a problem. Apparently, simple math is a form of logic too deep and complicated for most of his readership to comprehend.

One point that was repeatedly made in the comment section particularly got under my skin and is the occasion for tonight’s rant. And that is the idea that people have been predicting for a long time that demographic issues were going lead to an economic catastrophe for Japan and yet Japan is still going strong. I have seen this argument advanced many times over the last few years and yet rarely do I see anyone explain why this is logically and observationally an absurd argument.

To rectify that, I thought I would throw together a brief explanation of why the idea that “Japan shows the demographic decline is not a problem” is absurd.

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