Comments by "jdg" (@jdg9999) on "Explained with Dom" channel.

  1. Similar process plays out everywhere, this is just a more extreme example. Cities have various productive capabiltiies that make them worth having (art, culture, technology) but they are effectively "powered" by people, and are not self sustaining, they "use up" not just surrounding natural resources, but surrounding human resources. Capital cities use up even more, and even suck people and resources away from other cities. In traditional societies (Britain 300 years ago, Japan 400 years ago, China 1000 years ago etc), cities were important, but the vast majority of the population lived rurally. This worked because excess rural population (just like excess rural food production) could move to the cities. The trouble is that now in developed countries, the vast majority of the population lives in cities, meaning they "use up" a huge number of people that need to be replenished, but now that only a small number of people live rurally, they are effectively sucking rural areas dry so that the rural areas are no longer self sustaining either (everyone knows about the general trend of young people moving to cities and leaving rural communities empty, whether it be Italy or Japan or South Korea) The West "solves" this by turning the "suck in people from rural areas to cities" to "suck in people from developing countries to developed countries vi massive immigration", however this solution creates its own problems (cultural balkanization and national identity destruction and the fact that it's basically a ponzi, since developing countries eventually become developed countries and you run out of people to import). However for Korea and Japan, while they avoid the loss of identity and homeland for the native population by not importing large numbers of immigrants, that means their demographic issues will hit them much harder. However, in the long run, Korea will still be Korea, even with a smaller population, which will eventually stabilize at lower densities as the culture changes and only the pro natal people are left. Meanwhile Britain will no longer be Britain, France will no longer be France, the populations that created them will be replaced by people with no real historical connection to them, and their unique cultures and histories will disappear.
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