Thread

September 2026: The world today, as seen by one Polish guy

522 points · 391 comments · marjancek

roenxi · 1790756315 · focus · HN ↗
> Every generation believes it is living through the end of something.
Many generations are. Last century saw the collapse of the British and Soviet empires - titans by any measure - through mismanagement. Europe as an international power was also broken (compared to how they used to be). I can easily imagine 1900s me fleeing to America in fear of the end times and feeling quite justified in his choices with hindsight. Less obvious where to run to these days as the US not-an-empire looks like it may crumble.
Most of the people who died didn't get an opportunity to complain, so we live with some serious survivorship bias on how bad things got.
1. Maxion · 1790756968 · focus · HN ↗
  > Less obvious where to run to these days as the US not-an-empire looks like it may crumble.
  Depending on what you're running for China is in some senses kinda what the US was back in the day, except there's no land so no easy way for them to accept migrants. These day and age migrants also aren't very accepted anywhere.
  1. GlacierFox · 1790757072 · focus · HN ↗
    There's no land in China?
    lompad · 1790761522 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, not the kind of land where you can just massacre the natives and steal it for free without ever seeing consequences for that abominable behavior. Which is what I suppose they're referring to.
    GlacierFox · 1790956187 · focus · HN ↗
    That wasn't what they're referring to. What are you talking about? They're literally talking about land for migrants. Literally the comment says that.
  2. realharo · 1790757569 · focus · HN ↗
    China is facing many of the same problems that the rest of the world is, with demographic decline, slowing growth, etc.
    bsoqk · 1790757743 · focus · HN ↗
    Those problems could be solved with a careful migratory policy (ie what America did back in the day because it was economically impossible for the entire third world to fly there; today, this could be enforced with laws)
    somenameforme · 1790759300 · focus · HN ↗
    The issue with demographic decline is not just quantity of people, but also quality of people. China (and any country) will want individuals that speak the language, are culturally compatible, with useful skills, and so on. The limited number of people any country can draw on once you consider this starts to make it clear that migration doesn't solve anything.
    And even with migration, if those migrants don't themselves end up with high fertility rates then you've done nothing but kick the can, and not especially far. Because of all of these issues, I think there's approximately a 100% chance that China will do the equal but opposite of the one-child-policy should their demographic issues fail to start reversing more naturally.
    teiferer · 1790760266 · focus · HN ↗
    > The issue with demographic decline is not just quantity of people, but also quality of people
    "Quality of people". Spoken like a true tech person.
    Johanx64 · 1790761721 · focus · HN ↗
    When a company hires people, will it take in just anyone with a pulse?
    Tech people look at things in terms of - is this true or not.
    And "Quality of People" is perfectly accurate description.
    How it makes you feel about it completely irrelevant.
    teiferer · 1790798819 · focus · HN ↗
    A person can be a bad fit for a job. Using the term "low quality person" is still a terrible way to express that.
    Let us know which company you are having hiring responsibilities for, then people can draw conclusions where to apply (or avoid it).
    inglor_cz · 1790769171 · focus · HN ↗
    Spoken like someone who does not want to play useless word games.
    Would you choose an employee, or worse, a spouse, with no positive qualities? If no, you are judging people by their qualities too.
    tancop · 1790780089 · focus · HN ↗
    Saying quality is different than qualities plural. It's the kind of language used by rationalist[1] or HBD/eugenics adjacent movements that believe each person's value to society can be reduced to a single number. Too close to fascism for comfort.
    That's obviously not the case in this context but it can get confusing so you should just avoid it. There are legit reasons to be suspicious of anyone talking like that. It's better to say "expected economic value" or "readiness to integrate" when talking about immigrants so you don't get mistaken for a racist.
    [1] Used here as a slur.
    inglor_cz · 1790790523 · focus · HN ↗
    No one in this discussion except you expressed the idea that quality of a human can be expressed by a single number.
    A more natural concept of overall human quality would be something like a linear combination of individual qualities in a multidimensional space.
    a. Smart person - good, positive coefficient.
    b. Diligent person - good, positive coefficient.
    c. But works for the mob as a money launderer - bad, very high negative coefficient, probably high enough to drag the overall combination under the neutral hyperplane, so to say.
    Etc. etc.
    teiferer · 1790798605 · focus · HN ↗
    Sure, but it doesn't work like that in public discourse and it's hard to believe that you are oblivious to that.
    That 19 year old dark skinned refugee from Syria who has just arrived in Poland in 2015, doesn't speak the language, is physically fit, basic school education, quite some trauma to process though. That's what the far right racist nationlists there would have called a low quality human. Don't use their language if you don't want to be associated with their views.
    And indeed, if their trauma is not processed and they are left in a ghetto with other traumatized folks, that's a recipe for violence to eventually erupt. But if they get help by a psychologiest and a chance to integrate, they can contribute to society immensely, build a life, become the best neighbors you could wish for.
    Now, what is the "quality" of such a person? Or maybe rather: What is the quality of how we treat them.
    inglor_cz · 1790799453 · focus · HN ↗
    Regular economic immigration processes, which is what is mainly being discussed here, are usually centered around measurable skills and other traits such as criminal record.
    BTW you don't know many Syrians if you consider them dark skinned. They are classical Mediterranean people, the whitest of all Arabic-speaking nations. You won't be able to tell a random Syrian from a random Greek.
    jaza · 1790761633 · focus · HN ↗
    "The equal but opposite of the one-child-policy" is easier said than done. A brute-force approach worked for stopping more babies (I don't know if it's true, but what I heard back was that back in the 80s Chinese officials literally killed unauthorised babies moments after they were born - that's probably exaggerated, however they really did carry out forced sterilisations and forced abortions). It wouldn't work so well for creating more babies. You can't force people to have more children. Many countries are offering financial incentives for producing babies right now - cash at birth, free house, free childcare, etc - with limited success. I don't see how China could deliver (hahaha aren't I punny) a significantly different result if it goes down that same road.
    ben_w · 1790764740 · focus · HN ↗
    > You can't force people to have more children.
    There's a difference between "it would be evil to" and "it is impossible to".
    Barring medical issues, it is absolutely possible force this. There's even some jurisdictions where it's not a crime.
    If I read these two maps right, China's the only place, out of those where marital rape is not a crime, that abortion is not also prohibited:
    - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marital_rape_laws_by_country.svg" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marital_rape_laws_by_coun...
    - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Abortion_Laws.svg" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Abortion_Laws.svg
    (That said, I don't know how up to date such maps are, and have no way to verify laws; don't suggest machine translation from Chinese to English, it is bad).
    red_admiral · 1790769417 · focus · HN ↗
    > You can't force people to have more children.
    "People" here means women, and womens' rights are a very recent thing in world history. With a sufficiently evil and authoritarian government, it might be possible. It certainly has been tried in the 20th century: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Honour_of_the_German_Mother" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Honour_of_the_German_...
    somenameforme · 1790816666 · focus · HN ↗
    No, people means people. It takes two people to have a child, and the man has the exact same ethical, legal, and financial responsibilities to the child, pretty much everywhere in the world, until the child reaches adulthood. I also don't think conferring some sort of state award or honor on mothers who have multiple children is evil or authoritarian. In general I think it's quite a nice and appropriate idea as having children is ultimately the core civic responsibility of all people. It's literally the only way that a society, and on a larger level - species, can continue to exist.
    So 'motivating' people to have more children is rather the opposite of evil, though obviously some means can be more or less ethical. In the short-run children are an economic burden, but in the long-run you have complete and catastrophic collapse, in all ways - including economic, without a surprisingly large number of children. The government that takes short-term wins in exchange for accepting a long-term collapse of a civilization is failing society in every single way. I still don't know if I'd call that 'evil', but it's certainly far closer to it than one that looks to ensure that there's a next chapter for the civilization that it's supposed to be the leader of.
    somenameforme · 1790775438 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think it'd be especially hard. Ban contraception, economic coercion, mandatory family planning at a certain age and you're probably already there. For the economic coercion part there are endless forms it could take. An obvious one would be a 'national sustainability' tax assessed on the number of children one has (adjusted for minimum age) - 40% for 0, 20% for 1, 0% for 2, - 10% for 3, and so on.
    Another way would be to fine companies and local jurisdictions if their average number of children per employee/resident is below 2.1 or whatever, similar in spirit to Japan's 'metabo laws.' You could also require companies prioritize employment, beyond a minimal standard, based on the number of children per employee, and so on.
  3. weinzierl · 1790758027 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree in a sense, and the writing for this has been on the wall for some time. In my circles, many learned some Mandarin at one point or another.
    The difference from the past is that the US has always been a melting pot, while China is pretty much a closed society. If you’d emigrated to the US, you always had a good chance of blending into that diverse society no matter where you came from. Assimilating into the homogeneous Chinese society will take generations.
    For me it’ll be either the westernmost end of Europe or one of the better parts of South America, in the hope that they will prosper modestly in the shadows of the upcoming conflicts.
    vidarh · 1790759355 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm very curious how China will adapt over the next couple of decades. Their population has started contracting, and it's clear the government has seen the fertility rate as a problem for some time. There's no obvious way for them to keep economic growth going without either finding a solution to something nobody else has managed to solve (getting the fertility rate back up), or opening up for more immigration. Either will take significant changes.
    pjc50 · 1790761204 · focus · HN ↗
    > finding a solution to something nobody else has managed to solve
    In the 21st century, that is definitely something I'd bet on China for being able to do. Across all sorts of problems.
    The solution is going to be paying people. No, more than that. No, keep going. Higher. Market-clearing price.
    ben_w · 1790764072 · focus · HN ↗
    That's a capitalist solution; China has that option if they want it, but also they have those "reeducation" camps so it could get very Handmaid's Tale.
    vidarh · 1790768560 · focus · HN ↗
    The question is how high that price is, and whether it is viable. We don't know. And secondly, whether or not the consequences will be workable for a cohesive society whether because women choose to have children only for financial reasons or get coerced into it for the same reasons.
    It could get very dark very quickly if it turns out to be too hard to induce enough people who actually would want children under the right circumstances to choose to have them.
    maxglute · 1790761616 · focus · HN ↗
    Fertility really 20/30+ year away problem.
    PRC growth now based on educated population, which exploded, not total population. Reality is every tertiary median to upper middle class wage is more productive than 10 undereducated peasants... the ones first to age out. There's like 200-400m+ bluntly useless mouths dragging down productivity/per capital metrics, the only saving grace they did NOT get rich before old, i.e. poor old so it's cheap(ish) in terms of resources (but not labour) to support them. Put it this way, PRC is generating OECD combined in tertiary, disproportionately STEM, they have backlog of 200m births from last 20+ years that still haven't got their masters/phds... at 60% and increasing tertiary we're going 100m+ high end talent, aka the greatest high end human dividend in recorded history who will be in workforce for until 2060s, i.e. so far out its hard to project based on present realities, only they have no shortage of advanced economy growth potential. Like if you throw all projected US newborns + immigration into STEM... PRC would still come out FAR ahead. There is no contest, unless AGI displaces everyone.
    TFR real issue probably 30 year out. There will be some rebound, current crashing TFR because so many entering tertiary last few years = delay family formation. Women going to turn 35-40 and realize they want kids... and have them, especially considering 1:4 dependency ratio also = 4:1 wealth transfer + property going other way when previous generation (with high savings rate) dies. But won't get to replacement level. Then it's matter of what bad levers PRC willing to pull - pro natal fertility policies does not incentivize 2.1 TFR... and no one has tried punitive policies, i.e. limit wealth/property transfers to families with 2 kids... all sorts of inducements liberal societies haven't... or politically can't try. Or immigration, test tube babies, who knows. But IMO they try punitive policies first. That's really the only thing that no one has tried, and we know from wealthy Muslim countries with oil money, religious incentive, domestic help... aka every support imaginable, TFR is below 2 or trending towards it.
    vidarh · 1790768369 · focus · HN ↗
    Fertility is a right now problem for China - it's population has started dropping - its largest cohort is just a few years from being out of child-bearing age, and its fertility rate is one of the lowest in the world, and it will take decades to reverse that even if we knew today how to do it.
    This isn't just a question of dropping labour, but also a question of the consequent reduction in economic demand.
    Which is why China started reacting to the low fertility rate already in 2013 by abolishing the agency responsible for enforcing the one child policy, followed by ending the policy in 2015, replacing it with a 2 child policy, which failed to have the desired effect, followed by a 3 child policy in 2021, followed a month later by removing all penalties for having even more children.
    China's workforce also is at most years from starting to contract excluding any immigration - the cohorts retiring are close to the size of those entering the workforce and the cohorts retiring will be increasing for another 20-30 years, while the ones entering the workforce will be decreasing for the same period even if they somehow figured out how to reverse it today.
    maxglute · 1790800334 · focus · HN ↗
    I am not saying policy makers have not been responding, I'm saying it's not existential urgent to bring out never before punitive natal tools. It's still not pressing problem for decades, now is feeling out phase, i.e. doing simple things like dropping policies or trying to clean up childcare involution.
    > started dropping
    This presumes PRC wants to maintain 1.4b baseline - imo it doesn't. Currently only ~800m people are actually productive. Initial decades of population drop will be disproportionately shedding bottom quantiles of old / uneducated / could not be incorporated into modern economy. Bluntly they're useless bodies - there's a reason PRC has 200m farmers... when 20m +machines will do. Or 100m other make work jobs for idle aunties and uncles. If PRC not aiming to maintain 1.4b... frankly considering mainland resource stress per capita they shouldn't, then it's fine and preferable to bleed pop for a while.
    > reduction in economic demand.
    No, this orthodox economic idiocy. The bottom 2 quantile constitutes like 5-10% of GDP. They are/will never big sources of demand to be begin with. More than offset by generating 100m productive advanced workers who has 10-20 times the income/spending power. Of course not all demand same, but in aggregate better to trade a 4 rural grand parents living on pittance of governance transfer and savings for tier1-2 stem chad who will add more value and out spend lifelong vs turnip eaters. Cohorts are not economically equal, sometimes grossly so. Of course you can't simply liquidate them, but doesn't mean governance will miss them when they expire.
    > years from starting to contract
    Consider 2 framings:
    1. orthodox: PRC workforce decrease by 30%. Line must go down. 2. reality: PRC workforce optimizes to be 100% more productive with 30% less head count, by trimming all the fake work jobs doubling their their productive staff. Line goes up.
    Again cohort size less important than cohort profile/productivity/composition etc. On way out - mostly old, unskilled, farmers, informal workers - the who gamut of make work economy that nets single digit percent of GDP that gov BEGRUDINGLY supports because people need jobs - it does not mean state/economy needs those people. Many of these are jobs that policy makers wanted to automate away for years but could't, like PRC agri literally being held hostage for years to cater to small plot armer inefficiency.
    The only real labour shortage is skilled bluecollar/vocational, and that's mostly because new gen Chinese kids are too proud to work dirty jobs, hence contradictory youth unemployment problem. There's plenty of domestic bodies to staff workshop and worksites. PRC just in mass tertiary transition cultural adjustment period where grad would rather do flexible gig economy while looking for god job than demean themselves with peasant work. This new phenomenon, scaled to tertiary explosion timelines, they'll eventually give up / come around.
    Now of course long term demographic / fertility management important and pop cannot crash too hard. But understand PRC now, all the involution, costs, delay to family formation is because they front loaded talent generation so hard that there is fancy degrees + air conditioned jobs mismatch. In 20-30 years structural forces that converge is pop down, housing cheap from oversupply, wealth transfers, signs of future labor shortage... i.e. all signals that stack up to say, if you have kid now, they going to be cheap to raise and guaranteed job in future by virtue of no competition. Basically inverse of current decision making.
    Again that just shifts curve - does not get to replacement, like ultimately countries that don't want mass immigration have to figure out other inducements. But that's too in future to usefully project, i.e. we could be spamming test tube babies in state orphanages.
  4. neal_jones · 1790758181 · focus · HN ↗
    I assumed there would be plenty of land in China, is just completely remote or do I just have a completely incorrect perspective on China (generally speaking I’m sure I do, I’ve live my life on the other side of the planet)
    pjc50 · 1790759396 · focus · HN ↗
    There is .. with the last of the subsistence farmers already living on it. There is basically no good unoccupied agricultural land in the world. The American settlers never appreciated how much work disease did in creating a seemingly empty space for them.
    vidarh · 1790759592 · focus · HN ↗
    There's plenty of land in China. There aren't plenty of empty plots that would be attractive for people to farm. I'm not so sure that has much relevance to modern immigration, though.
  5. vidarh · 1790760144 · focus · HN ↗
    China's population is dropping, so to the extent they had housing for their peak population, they will have increasing capacity to accept migrants. Their fertility rate has dropped to 1, one of the lowest in the world, despite having now lifted all restrictions on number of children and actively encouraging larger families, so it will become a precarious problem for them soon.
    China's migration policies have been extremely strict, so to what extent they will be able to loosen that up without political upheaval is still an open question. So far they've only loosened up the restrictions on internal migration.

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