"I anticipate a great deal of migration and movement in the future. Developed countries won’t have a choice, eventually: the current methods by which modern developed democracies structure socialized services, such as medical care and welfare for the elderly, are unsustainable without at least maintaining population levels.

Japan, for example, is beginning to face serious population issues because their elderly massively outnumber their youth — and the elderly disproportionately utilize social services and programs intended to benefit the disadvantaged. The United States has known about the sustainability issue within our Social Security program for decades: there are not enough young people to support the old. Europe is well-known for the extent of “socialized” services that the government provides, but also has the lowest birthrates in the world.

Developed countries are victims of their own success. Their large economies enable the elaborate social mechanisms we’ve developed to benefit our respective peoples... But neither the economy nor those service mechanisms are sustainable without sufficient workforce, and that same large economy disincentivizes high birth rates.

So what is the solution here? Developed countries have too few children, developing countries have too many, and the solution seems obvious.

The United States is suspected to have dipped below a 2.0 replacement-level birthrate since the last census, yet has successfully delayed this crisis through immigration policy. It’s hard to remember, given the current levels of political toxicity, but the United States still accepts more immigrants legally than any other country in the world. We don’t have to have high birthrates here; we can just benefit from other countries’ unsustainable growth and maintain our own economy in the meantime. Canada, New Zealand, and Australia have taken similar strategies.

But immigration isn’t the answer for everyone, unfortunately... because racism. Eastern Europe, suffering from both low birth rates and high levels of emigration, ironically finds their extant populations unwelcoming of migrants trying to do the same. The Japanese are so unwelcoming of other people that they’d literally rather build robots than welcome foreigners into Japan (and automation brings its own dilemmas). Western Europe opened its arms to refugees for many economic reasons, including alleviating their population issue — and the far-right is growing quickly there, feeding off of fears of immigrants.

These regions are doomed to growing pains until they figure out how to welcome external populations to boost their demographic imbalances. This next Great Migration is going to happen no matter what, and has probably already begun. Developed countries are going to need to figure out how to manage it to their benefit."

"Japan’s model is currently the poster child for a terrible demographic situation. There are some serious problems that they’ll need to face in the near future as a result of their demographics problem — a problem which other developed countries have better solved by letting other peoples in. Two pensioners for every worker? A debt-to-GDP ratio over 200%? A perilously low birth rate, even compared to other developed countries? Robots and automation may alleviate some of the labor burden on the young, but you just can’t automate hospice care. Yet, Japan insists on maintaining its ethnic makeup (over 98% ethnic Japanese) when importing Filipino nurses would work just as well, and contribute to solving all of the above."