Also...loosen immigration laws?

I know it's a very closed off nation with deep cultural roots that is very weary of outsiders...

Low birth rates are obviously not sustainable

Please explain why this is obvious. Less people seems more sustainable, not less.

Maybe this ponzi. Unfunded state pensions use workers contributions to pay current pensioners.

Less workers = less pensions.

Hey, cost of living, without rent. I'm talking about rent though.

2 rooms flats start at around CHF 1300, if you're lucky.

Edit: ah, you meant Japan side is rent and living.

Old people can’t work and need someone to pay for their retirement.

If there are more old people than young people (population pyramid wrong way round) every young person needs to pay a crapton of taxes so that old folks don’t starve to death

Because Japan doesn’t do that.

There is an -ism they’re pretty big on, it starts with R

We have machines that can do the work of 100 people in the past

I'm sure that we could make it work without killing anyone

"Unsustainable Society" No matter your opinion on current governments, humanity has been around for an awful long time, and it will likely continue to be around for significantly longer into the future of the universe. In my opinion, that's pretty cool.

In the grand scheme of things, just looking back over the past couple hundred years, the vast majority of humanity is in a better spot than we were, no matter how bad things may seem on a small time scale.

The two biggest issues off the top of my head are rural towns in Japan will continue to lose population and completely disappear, and there won't be enough young working people paying into health care and social funds to support the old non-working population. I think there are a lot of other major negative impacts Japan will face as a country but I'm just not that knowledgable on the subject.

I assume we just have fundamentally different views on this topic because I really wish humanity would change to a more scientific and explorative approach entirely, where we expand outward into space and become a multi-planetary species, which will need a huge sustained population growth to support. I assume you don't support that.

"Has almost made the planet uninhabitable" The Earth is definitely worse off since we have proliferated, but this is such a clickbaity untrue statement.

Humanity has and will continue to cause changes to the world that are negative, I agree, and that sucks. But like it or not, humanity is good at adapting and surviving, and we will be fine, even with the worldwide population overall continuing to grow for a very long time into the future.

I just disagree on the infinite growth being unsustainable thing. Humanity, in my opinion, is destined to expand to the stars where we will continue to grow Indefinitely on a time scale that actually matters to you and me.

Obviously, that could not happen if we somehow all die, but despite all the doom and gloom, I really don't think that's likely.

LoL. You think we’re gonna grow gills or something? How do you think we’ll adapt to food chain collapse?

I’m sure that life will adapt in some form, but most life in the history of this planet has not been human. And we would not be this planet’s first mass extinction event.

I think it actually fits quite well.

A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.

Meanwhile, the current pension system in most countries depend on a growing population to spread out the payments for pensioners over multiple workers.

Ponzi schemes collapse when there aren't enough investors to sustain the dividends to be paid to the existing investors. Most countries' pensions rely on an increasing amount of working age inhabitants to pay retirees and are now having issues paying out pensions due to the shift in demographics, that's why many countries have been increasing the retirement age recently.

There are 2 solutions to this.
1. Increasing birth rates, this option is not sustainable in the long term but is commonly preferred for reasons mentioned below.
2. Migration. There are currently plenty of countries with a large working-age population and a weak economy. Letting those migrate would solve the demographic issue, but is political suicide.

While the alternative is everyone who is unable to wotk is killed anyway by the apathy of the system?

We are doing what you are describing already, in the system we currently live in.

I will never have a child if they have to work 5/7ths of their life away just to scrape by like me.

That's no way to live.

Who will work in the program if they have a worker shortage?

I don't think you guys thought this out.

Because Japan doesn’t do that.

They apparently don't do procreation, either.

We need to inhabit at least one other plant on a continuous basis before we encourage exponential population growth.

We are going to be resource constrained on this planet long before we expand to others.

Of course I understand that the money that is put in is invested, but that doesn't mean the problem goes away when the system relies on the "pot" growing at a certain rate.

EDIT:

Mismanagement/poorly built systems are not the same as Ponzi schemes. Unless you think, I don’t know, US Social Security is also a Ponzi scheme?

I'm not implying that it's the same, just that the comparison fits better than you might expect.

Mismanagement/poorly built systems are not the same as Ponzi schemes

"Tell me the difference between stupid and illegal and I'll have my wife's brother arrested"

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how these funds work.

This misunderstanding is on your side. There is a method of funding pensions refered to as pay as you go (PAYG).

The goal is not to pay people with the money from new people paying into the pot.

This is exactly how many unfunded, state sponsored pension schemes function. No pot of money exists. Only the ability to collect taxes.

They invest the money and then the pot grows and that money is used to pay out.

This is true for private pension schemes run by companies and individual pension schemes. Funded pension schemes are (usually) not ponzis.

I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.

The UK State Pension is unfunded, which means that its obligations are not underpinned by an actual fund or funds. Such schemes are often referred to as “Pay As You Go” (PAYG). The pension payments made by the government for unfunded pensions are financed on an ongoing basis from National Insurance contributions and general taxation.

Hm. There is a difference.

Once crapitalists run out of "new horizons" to "expand" into, they start cannibalizing their current workforce and raise prices while lowering quality for customers.

Do not be fooled. Quality is going down because profits are going up.