So what happens if you let the elderly fall off that cliff? How will society look then? Oh, you don’t have the answer? Is that because you don’t have the data yet because the experiment hasn’t concluded? What I’ve said all along?

Moron.

That’s literally any device. Goes all the way back to things like people setting up routers and not changing the default password so anyone else can get in. That’s just user error plain and simple.

You would be amazed how often “the solution to pollution is dilution”. Can’t dump that raw chemical into the water/sewer, oh no. But if you dilute it with 5000 gallons of water? Oh well now it’s at “acceptable levels”. Notice how most regulations talk about “parts per million”(PPM). Well, it turns out that when most of your regulations are written such that you only have to “properly dispose” of something if it’s above a certain concentration, you can just dilute it below that level and BAM, “safe to dispose of”.

I’m not saying this exact system worked. What I’m saying is pointing to the old vs young imbalance is disingenuous because ANY system that attempts to limit population growth will experience the same “sudden change”. Hell, any system that limits ANYTHING will eventually have “group that had it” vs “group that didn’t”. Saying “there’s a lot more old people from before we limited the population” is like telling me fire is hot.

The question shouldn’t be “is the transition perfect” but “does the system that follows actually work?”. We shouldn’t discount all systems that want to limit population growth like this because ones with better metrics could actually work. And as we’ve seen, this program DID WORK. It lowered population. Just not in socially healthy ways.

It’s just not logical to complain that if you have less of a growing population that your elderly population outnumbers them. That’s LITERALLY THE PURPOSE OF POPULATION CONTROL. To have less being born. Of course the elderly from before will outnumber them - you weren’t controlling their population!

Playing devil’s advocate here, is this really a problem? It should be obvious that if you suddenly cut population growth you’d end up with this elderly vs young imbalance eventually as the generations that reproduced freely age out. This is part of the adjustment as things reach equilibrium. Now, granted, this 1 child policy will still create the same issue moving forward but in a less drastic scale. Ideally you’d have a 2 child policy to actually replace parents 1:1 with kids. But the point is, this imbalance was bound to happen regardless and you really won’t see equilibrium until every person alive was born under the restricted policy. This is still too early to call it a failed experiment. It’s right at the most crucial part.