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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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in 50 years we aren't going to have the manpower needed to maintain the services we depend on.

50 years? Probably optimistic. The problem is pressing now with Boomers - the largest generation - retiring. The amount of healthcare money eaten up by the old is disproportionate and there isn't an equally large generation behind them to balance them out.

Canada already has a healthcare crunch and privatization or not is the topic of the day. It's probably only going to get worse from here. I heard some alarming population estimates for Japan in 2050, let alone 2070.

There's some hope that robotics and automation are going to stave off the impact. Life extension/anti-aging tech will probably be too late for the most part.

If we get AGI then no point in trying to predict the world after that.

But more to the point, Gen Z is the smallest generation (in the west) yet. Even if they started popping out kids like particularly horny rabbits there will be a protracted squeeze waiting on those kids to become productive citizens. And they don't seem to be having kids. So that's whence my 'fifty years' vague estimate comes from.

Will we even have enough people with the capacity to keep an increasingly advanced civilization functional?