SOUTH KOREA IS OVER

What Hacker News said

Recommends virtualritz · 2025-04 · on “South Korea's 'heartbreaking' wildfires expose superaged society”

Relevant video from Kurzgesagt about South Korean birth rate and the repercussions, 3–4 generations down the line: [this video]

Recommends Etheryte · 2025-05 · on “The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates”

This is not what has happened in South Korea though. They've hit the top of the curve and pretty much every projection agrees that it's drastically downhill from here, the main disagreement is over how quickly. Kurzgesagt has a good video on this [0], they estimate that by 2060 the population of South Korea will have shrunk by 30% and will be heavily skewed towards the elderly. [0] [this video]

Recommends gambiting · 2025-05 · on “Denmark to raise retirement age to 70”

This is a nice explanation from Kurzgesagt showing precisely why South Korea is completely screwed long term, and why it's impossible to course correct through birth rate alone: [this video]

Cites em-bee · 2025-04 · on “Tech companies are telling immigrant employees on visas not to leave the U.S.”

absolutely. i just saw a documentary about that. south korea has a birthrate of 0.72. in a few generations the country will be full of elders in poverty because the pension funds have run out of money and there are not enough workers to replenish the funds. [this video]

Cites robocat · 2025-04 · on “Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse”

> doom talk Perhaps easier to say in Australia: Australia seems to be doing better than many countries so perhaps you don't recognise the problem. Japan and Italy already have some ~$0 houses due to demographics. Children from New Zealand go overseas so demographics in NZ are worse than Australia. An article[1] this morning asked: "Have you seriously considered moving to Australia in the last year?" 37% said YES (and 40% of those have 'looked into it'). This thread is started by nly in London who clearly hasn't retired yet: My mortgage runs until I'm 70 and I, like most owners now, are entirely dependent on the housing casino game continuing. I have to refinance every 5 years, so if rates sp

Cites socalgal2 · 2025-04 · on “We need more optimistic science fiction”

- Population is leveling off and dropping in some countries, This is a problem [this video] - AI is rapidly getting better. Not clear how good it gets, but if everything you do for money goes in and out over a wire, you're in trouble. Or, everything gets so abundant that we can actually have high UBI This reminds me if why I disliked to movie Elysium. They had a robots that effectively gave free perfect medical care. I didn't buy the premise of the movie that only that rich would be able to use them. Given they were robots, governments, hospitals, could and would make them readily available since ultimately it would massively lower their medical costs.

Cites gwd · 2025-05 · on “The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates”

> population there has almost perfectly levelled out at just over 51m This video would beg to differ: [this video] That said, I am inclined to disagree with his take -- when women and men are both expected to work 996, when housing takes up a huge percentage of your income, when the only way you think you can assure a good life for your children is to pay exorbitant amounts for private tutoring, then yeah, 0 or 1 seems like the best option. This may be a bit of a weird take, but I wonder if it might make sense to just explicitly make "rearing the next generation" a "public good" career choice. Some people are far more cut out, by personality and character, to raise children. Rather than trying to

Cites robocat · 2025-07 · on “Buying a Home Is Probably Even Worse Than NYTimes/NerdWallet Calculators Imply”

> crucially selling the appreciated home after XX years Selling depends on demographics, the economy, and immigration. I'm in New Zealand where a lot of workers emigrate, and NZ patches that issue up with immigration. I read about €1 houses in Italy and ¥1 houses in Japan and then watch "South Korea is over" [this video] Modelling risks is the hardest part of any investment calculation. Edit: the future value matters, and we get highly misled by looking at our experiences of historical results (especially don't expect to get the same results as your parent's generation). Personally, thinking of your house purely as an investment is undesirable. You want to live there joyfully and not have to worr