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. 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.
    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).

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.