“Since 2008”
Australian dude used a home-made robot to kill himself in 2008
https://www.wired.com/2008/03/australian-man/
9 years late on a corporate model
“For an extra quarter, would you like to have your eyes scooped out by a melon baller?”
I would very much love to have the choice.
You already do.
But if you think suicide is a desirable choice, call a helpline. In all but some rare cases, your problem is disordered thinking.
Actual Japanese here, even within the dark humor context, I wholeheartedly agree with Yusuke Narita.
It’s precisely the gerontocracy in Japan why the nation is heading extremely far right. The aging oppressive population needs to retire, vacate, and leave the younger generation capable of making their choices. We are the lowest GDP first nation because of elders oppressing.
I’m glad Yusukeさん is in the 🇺🇲, but I’m afraid he’ll be deathcamped soon.
I’m thankful 28 folks read the article correctly. Fuck oppression.
Thanks for the added opinion and context.
When I read he actually used the word “seppuku”, I immediately knew that it wasn’t just suicide he was talking about. He’s also saying that the oldest generation needs to admit they screwed everything up beyond repair, and answer for it.
It’s precisely the gerontocracy in Japan why the nation is heading extremely far right.
Is it 参政党 and their ilk were mostly voted for by the younger crowds whereas the olds stayed with the LDP, at least from the exit polling I saw. I mean, for me personally, the LDP is too far right, but Sanseitou is definitely a lot further off. Some older also split to the DPFTP to show disappointment, but I’m less clear on those numbers.
People tend to conservadorism as they age, due to cognitive decline and loss of plasticity of the brain. It’s a global phenomenon and usually make them make bad decisions in regards to what’s best for the public or public interest.
That’s why I think there must be age limit to occupy public lidership roles.
Why the fuck does this publication abbreviate assisted suicide as “ass suicide”
It should obviously be ass suc
Any means you choose. Ass suicide is just a recomendation.
And why Apple is using “Liquid Glass” for “Liquid Ass”?
That could lead to pressuring people into euthananal.
Oh yes! Anything but immigration!
But seriously, I feel like this is the broad sentiment of Japanese and the non-Japanese alike. Anti- immigration right applaud Japan for “keeping their country theirs” (as if ethnic Japanese aren’t the ones who came later and displaced the local Ainus already living there), and not going on supposed national suicide, unlike the West. Not having enough babies is tantamount to suicide anyway. The narrative then becomes: either allow immigration and go on national and cultural suicide; or don’t allow immigration and not have enough babies, which is still considered national suicide. Either way is committing national suicide.
I am not naive to think that immigration has no baggage; but at the same time, if countries want to increase birth rate, then increase the wages and standard of living for young people and families to encourage more people to marry and raise families. However, the elites aren’t going to do the former because they don’t want to disappoint their shareholders. If they don’t want to do that, then allow more immigration, which they also don’t want to do.
Orrrr (and this applies to most western countries in the near future too) they could maybe kinda consider not creating conditions in which its fucking impossible to have kids?
For a lot of people, delaying to settle down and have family is a choice (like for myself), but you are right that conditions are being created to dis-incentivise raising a family.
I think South Korea could provide a model to encourage more birth rate. They created a new administrative capital city where it is more family oriented. The result? Explosion in birth rate. In the following years, other places replicated the model and South Korea as a whole experienced more birth this year for the first time in nine years.
The problem is already well underway in the west. Some potential growth has already been squandered, acting now is an emergency.
“Squandered” is carrying lots of baggage there, in particular the assumptions that population growth is a good thing, that it’s sustainable, and that the average person will be better off in a positive-growth scenario. None of those are proven. And the assumption that population reduction is bad is often because measures such as GDP (which is approximately proportional to population) drops if population does. But aggregate GDP is not the appropriate measure in such a case.
As someone in a western country now inconceivable! Heck we still have a good portion of Americans who complain about the living standards but will stay home in November or actively vote for things like deporting immigrants like that magically fixes the over arching problem
56 is the median age for home buyers in 2025 and it’s been this way for a very long time.
We’re as doomed as Japan honestly we just happen to encourage immigration lol. So I agree with you.
Look at the median age of first-time homebuyers, it’s less skewed. Many people make more than one home purchase in a lifetime, including whan they buy smaller places when they’re old in order to downsize, or when they buy into a retirement community.
The median age of first-time home buyers is 35, according to this: https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-median-homebuyer-age-is-now-so-old/
National Association of Realtors gives a slightly higher number.
Yeah, plus consider how many people already learn Japanese as it’s considered to be a sexy language in many countries
I completely sympathize with the Japanese view about immigration. Their society has a lot going for it which is held up by the culture. And diversity would lead to a tragedy of the commons in many cases, like keeping public spaces clean.
However, sacrificing your elders is not exactly Japan’s culture either.
The “tragedy of the commons” was an economic thought experiment involving unmanged commons. Learn the history of how commons were actually managed through history and you’ll draw a different conclusion.
Also, don’t let the rich expropriate the commons like they did in the UK in the late 17th and all the 18th centuries. That causes all kinds of social problems, including mass (sometimes coerced) emigration.
Counterpoint: Everyone who ever attended yale should commit mass suicide
I know this is meant to be a joke but it is incentive.
If you’ve ever seen Thank You for Smoking and appreciated the dark political satire, check out Boomsday from Christopher Buckley by the same author, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomsday_(novel)
Cassandra Devine, “a morally superior twenty-nine-year-old PR chick” and moonlit angry blogger, incites generational warfare when she proposes that the financially nonviable Baby Boomers be given incentives (free Botox, no estate tax) to kill themselves at 70. The proposal, meant only as a catalyst for debate on the issue, catches the approval of millions of citizens, chief among them an ambitious presidential candidate, Senator Randolph Jepperson.
It’s been a decade or more since I last read it, but I remember it being pretty funny and insightful.
It’s a good book. And I remember them to be good to read back to back.
Dr Narita has now told The New York Times his comments were “taken out of context”, and the paper reported that he added “they related to demands for older people in leadership positions to make way for the younger generation”.
“I didn’t mean ‘they should kill themselves’, I merely stated that the old fucks should gtfo and cease to exist. By killing themselves. Media takes things so far out of context…”
He might have to talk about this with his universities ethics commission…
Oh hey, I’ve read that Vonnegut story.
We are what we pretend to be?
Just asking out of curiosity, but if that occurred, would that actually solve the problem of population decline?
To be clear I’m not advocating for this, I’m just trying to understand the what’s going on.
Well it would free up a lot of resources that could be redirected to free child care.
but it seems more like people are being over worked and underpaid. They just can’t afford to spend time or money on kids
Grandparents are a major source of free childcare
My wife and I make decent money and could afford a kid, but we do not have the time.
We are both working over 40 hour weeks.
We have the time and money but we don’t like kids. Most of the population decline is because more and more people realize they don’t need kids to be happy.
My wife and I mainly worry about what will happen to us when we are very elderly.
I think having kids as a retirement plan is pretty selfish. I would rather save money so that when I’m old I can afford proper assistance. This of course is not a valid option everywhere but where I live nursing homes are good and affordable and euthanasia is legal.
I think the problem is that there might not be people to staff those nursing homes.
No, staffing will not be a problem. Those jobs are fairly easy to access (you only need some courses and certification), are not dangerous or highly stressful, and will not be replaced by AI or automation. Worst case scenario we will import nurses from developing countries. The only issue can be founding but in countries with stable social security retirements will cover most of the cost. If you’re living in country with weak social security you will be fucked and kids may be necessary.
No. This would have lots of weird impacts. In the countryside, a lot of employees are quite old. A lot also do childcare for their grandkids at least some of the time. A lot of farmers would be gone as well. There’s also a lot of paperwork that suddenly needs to be done grinding a lot of government to a halt. A lot of businesses as well since, from what I’ve seen form friends’ older relatives dying, a lot of people do NOT have their shit in order and Japan has lots of small businesses and sole proprietorships.
Depending upon the wording of the policies and suicide, life insurance companies might have big issues or families might have huge monetary issues. I guess we can pretend they don’t all die at once and clog up the whole morgue and funeral infrastructure which is a whole other thing.
The religious and political implications could be interesting. Bhuddist gravesites in Japan for family graves tend to be very expensive to buy and maintain.
I could actually keep going for a while, but the short version is that, at least in the short term, it would likely do more harm than good. This says nothing of the actual emotional impact on people.
Thanks, it’s seemed that his “solution” was off.
Aha. Before committing mass suicide, they might want to use the next 75 years to invent robot caregivers. That’d be another option to deal with old people.
Who’s paying for it? All the old people going to work?
Well, for one, the people who are old in 75 years, haven’t even all finished school as of today. They’re going to have to pay for it and manufacture them themselves while they’re young (which is today), or it won’t be a thing once they’re old.
Well, sure. But they don’t have time to pay for it or manufacture them right now, because they need to work hard to make sure the current old people get their pensions.
Nothing wrong with the system - if people die young enough and there’s enough young people. But a nationalized pension system like most developed countries have is a huge burden once the population ages too much, and the fact that people are regularly living to be over 80 isn’t helping it.
They do. While economy in general hasn’t exactly flourished in the last years, they’re still fine and can afford it, while still doing lots of other stuff. This is going to become a big issue in the future if not addressed. But we’re not there yet. I mean I’m not advocation for doing nothing here. It certainly needs to be solved. I’m nust questioning whether disembowelment at the age of 65 is the best bath forward here.
Honestly? We can’t eventually afford to pay for everyone’s retirement.
American system with the 401Ks and stuff is looking better by the day, as there you’re supposed to earn your pension and it keeps earning interest while you’re still working. It’s still not an ideal system, but if you take that, increase the tax benefits, and in addition to employer matching, add government matching…
Of course what good is money when there’s nobody to work and actually produce things… But at least it would take most of the burden off young people.
Right now, 12% of what I earn goes to the pension system to fund current retirees. This is going by the full salary fund not gross income, because in Estonia, gross income isn’t actually gross income (there are employer side taxes so us employees don’t think about how much our income is really taxed). The funniest thing of course is that “social tax” only comes out of salaries, never dividends. So while they’ll say companies are paying it, it’s directly based on what the company’s paying it’s employees. In all honesty, it’s the employees paying it via reduced gross salaries.
So 12% isn’t much, but consider that in 1994 the retirement age was 60 for men and 55 for women. In 1998 it was decided that by 2016 it would be 63 for both. In 2009 they decided it’d be 65 by 2026. Starting 2027 it’ll rise as life expectancy rises. National pension prediction calculator says my estimated retirement age is 69. In all reality, I don’t expect to ever be able to retire, not on national pension anyway. There won’t be enough young people to pay for my retirement. But I have to keep paying for the current old people, who got to retire at 63, some of them even younger. Amazing system.
Most European countries impremented comprehensive welfare states after the end of WW1 or WW2 despite their economies being in horrendous shape (and there being far less median wealth then than there is now).
That makes it obvious that this is an argument over spending priorities, not over affordability per se.
but we could isolate and study those old people to determine what nutrients they have that might be extracted for our personal use!
The article is from 2023 and the source is a anti abortion site. The big red flag for me was the tweet from Pierre Pollievre saying how Conservatives are there to help people.
From what I’ve seen when Japanese people saw the footage and context of the conversation they do believe it was more about older generation moving on.
Dr Narita has now told The New York Times his comments were “taken out of context”, and the paper reported that he added “they related to demands for older people in leadership positions to make way for the younger generation”.
Old people in Japan should commit mass suicide says random asshole idiot
Just because he’s something something from Yale doesn’t mean he’s right or even an authority on the subject. With the statement he made it’s fairly obvious that he’s an idiot and likely a psychopath soooooo why is the press giving this any attention?
Heck, I could argue that by giving this attention, some people might be tempted to implement this idea, this article it just plain stupid.
I’m not confident that courting the suggestion of suicide by bringing public attention to it is the ethical move for a journalist.
I was kinda hoping I’d read the article and it would be a modern day “a modest proposal” but it doesn’t seem to be and now I’m sad.
