Forget about Other Olympics
 | Ordinary - not too smart, not too dumb - people don't give a damn. The only Olympics they are interested in are the athletic events the IOC stages every leap year. On the contrary, social scientists and analysts can't wait until the next time they can wave the national flags and sing the national anthems in euphoria. That is why they are so anxious to be updated on the standings of their respective countries on a yearly basis. |
Yesterday I unenthusiastically spent the whole afternoon to compile the following tables of standings for some popular games.
Exhibit 1: Population
| Contestant | Total Population in Mil. | Rank |
| Gold: China | See Below | |
| Silver: India | 1,181 | 2 |
| Bronze: U.S. | See Below | |
| U.S. | 309 | 3 |
| China | 1,339 | 1 |
| Japan | 127 | 10 |
Exhibit 2: Population Density
| Contestant | Total Population in K | Area in Sq Mi | Population per Sq Mi | Rank |
| Gold: Macau | 542 | 11 | 48,110 | 1 |
| Silver: Monaco | 33 | 1 | 43,375 | 2 |
| Bronze: Singapore | 4,988 | 274 | 18,190 | 3 |
| U.S. | 309,212 | 3,794.101 | 81 | ca 172 |
| China | 1,338,613 | 3,704,427 | 361 | ca 74 |
| Japan | 127,380 | 145,925 | 873 | ca 32 |
Exhibit 3: GDP (Nominal)
| Contestant | GDP in Billion $ | Rank |
| Gold: U.S. | See Below | |
| Silver: Japan | See Below | |
| Bronze: China | See Below | |
| U.S. | 14,256 | 1 |
| China | 4,909 | 3 |
| Japan | 5,068 | 2 |
Exhibit 4: GDP per capita
| Contestant | GDP in Billion $ | Total Population in Mil. | GDP per capita in $ | Rank |
| Gold: Luxembourg | 52 | 1 | 103,018 | 1 |
| Silver: Norway | 383 | 5 | 78,832 | 2 |
| Bronze: Qatar | 84 | 1 | 64,102 | 3 |
| U.S. | 14,256 | 309 | 46,104 | 11 |
| China | 4,909 | 1,339 | 3,667 | ca 98 |
| Japan | 5,068 | 127 | 39,786 | ca 17 |
The Japanese, and Japan experts in foreign countries as well, have been saying that the nation is losing its vigor as a result of the shrinking and aging of population. But as I have repeatedly said, losing vigor is not the result, but the cause. They constantly turn the causal relationship upside down simply because they are totally at a loss over where to find the cause.
In the last twenty months since Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the Japanese have seen jobless rate shoot up. But they have failed to learn anything from the predicament. The lesson to have been learned is that Japan is overpopulated (not a typo) and that is basically why the nation is losing its vigor.
Here I deliberately chose the word "overpopulated." I am not saying someone in the Demographic Olympic Committee has said 873 people living in one square mile are way beyond the permissible level.
They still make believe someday they will be able to create enough jobs for the people currently out of work. They will never understand jobs are something that you cannot artificially create out of thin air.
Stubbornly defying the unmistakable signs of overpopulation, the Japanese still insist they can reinvigorate their nation once its population starts to pick up. You never become used to their breathtaking fatuity.
Some twenty years ago, an American economist described the postindustrial era something like this: "Now we are living in a service-intensive society where people take care of each other's laundry and catering." I do not think his definition always holds true with the postindustrial world, yet I do agree that it certainly applies to a nation caught in a downward spiral like Japan.
Only in that sense, I agree that population growth automatically results in GDP growth.
This way Japan might be able to recapture the silver medal from China in the not-too-distant future - only if it weren't so unrealistic to assume population can be boosted by such haphazard measures as Child Allowances and looser immigration control.
As to the question about how the government should bring down the population, I opine that basically it's none of its business how many children each individual in his/her reproduction stage wants to have. Or, should Mao Zedong have just enforced a two-child policy in 1978 to shorten the period until his country catches up with the U.S. in terms of GDP? No representative government has the right to manipulate the life of each individual citizen - because that is the tail wagging the dog.
On the part of Japan experts in the West, not a few of them have been so arrogant as to tell the Japanese how far, and how fast, they should grow, demographically and economically. But the fact of the matter remains that Japan, or any other nation for that matter, has its own right size.
I do not always believe in Adam Smith's Invisible Hand, but I do believe that over time redundant people are eliminated by natural selection. At the end of the elimination process, the demographic and economic scores will converge at the right levels.
Japan's population is believed to have stood at the neighborhood of 75 million at the beginning of the Pacific War. But by the time the suicidal war came to an end in 1945, it had decreased to somewhere around 72 million because more than 3 million people virtually committed suicide for the absurd cause of defending the national polity centered around the deity named Hirohito.
I'm inclined to call it a divine dispensation.
Now I ask you one last question: "All in all, what do you make of all these results of the Olympics?" Of course, I expect you to answer: "Absolutely nothing." After all, any figure doesn't tell the truth about the real life underlying it.
It's about time to say goodbye to other Olympics altogether.
You should wait patiently until 2012 when you will be updated on the results of the international competitions.
Footnote 1: Some of these figures are inconsistent with each other because they are sourced from IMF database, CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia entries. Therefore, years vary depending on the sources. Also they are a mixture of estimate and actual. But I don't think it matters that much.
Footnote 2: At the beginning I thought a Gini comparison might be more relevant when looking into each contestant's way of distributing wealth. But I found out no Gini data before adjustments (i.e. distortions) by "income redistribution" through taxes and welfare benefits are available. ·