Last one pays the bill

All the experts say that our lovely planet Earth is overpopulated. Well, thank you smart guys from Cambridge, we knew that long ago. That’s why shops are packed in Christmas, the airports are full of people all year round and you will get caught in a very entertaining traffic jam in your city on peak time.

The funny thing though is that more than half of the world population lives between China and India. Yeah, I know what you are thinking. Sooner or later we will end up with a lovely tan and small eyes. Well, you don’t need to worry about that since we won’t see any significant changes until a few hundred years; we will be long gone by then.

But you know, I believe this thing of the overpopulation is a joke. We are not too many people on the planet, we are all just in the same place. I’ll give you a few examples. Scotland and kind of the rest of the UK - don’t mind the Brexit thing – are quite empty if looking outside the big cities. Same happens with Australia as it has a couple of big cities on the coast and the rest it’s pretty much empty. New Zealand it’s much smaller but quite underpopulated as well. And what about Canada? It's a huge and lovely country full of forests, lakes and nature. Take its famous couple of cities out, and you get quite a lot of spare space there. And what do you think about Alaska, Greenland or even Siberia? Do you know how much land is in there, just full of beautiful nature with its arms wide open ready to welcome some new inhabitants? I know, it's a bit chilly in those places but with our friend the ‘global warming’ pushing up hard, give it a couple of years and you will be kayaking like crazy on Greenland from North to South in Summertime.

No seriously, there are people out there doing some good stuff about this overpopulation thing. Some people in Spain are moving from big cities back into small towns and villages. Nowadays, with the internet and new technologies, you don’t necessarily need to be isolated in rural areas. Plus, you get a quiet environment, queue-free supermarkets, clean air and traffic-free roads, among other benefits that don’t come to my mind just now. And I’m sure that’s a movement happening in some other countries like Italy or France since like Spain, have so many lovely small towns and villages in the countryside and have nice Mediterranean weather. I'm thinking to do just the same thing myself sooner or later.

So, coming back to the main plot of this blog, the main reason why the global population grows day by day is mainly because life expectancy keeps growing up by the minute. And then I think myself, how the hell can we be living longer if day by day we are eating less healthy, the pollution is killing more people than ever before every day, the quality of the water is rubbish as it’s full of microplastics and God knows what other poison, the global warming – it’s a real thing, Trump - is heating our ass quite badly, also the bloody coronavirus made in China is messing around, the lack of free good quality health services in many countries, the stress we all suffer, provoking more suicides and heart attacks more than ever before,... Seems to me we, human beings, are pretty tough bastards since even after all these issues we keep thriving. If I were an alien trying to invade the Earth, I would think twice before setting foot among these so tough species, to be honest.

So, right now, Japan leads the list of the global life expectancy rate with an amazing 84.2 years, followed by Switzerland with 83.3 and closing the top three Spain with 83.1 years. What useful information do I get from all these data? The first thing that comes to my mind is that Godzilla chose the wrong country to attack the Earth. Now I can see why the fella didn’t succeed. Those Japanese are really hard meat to bite, my goodness!

84.2 years? Is it not too much? I mean, is that 84.2 years living kind of healthy and independent or been suffering from dementia, spending the last 15 years of your life in a care home? Because it’s a very different thing one way from the other.

Anyway, talking about Japan, I can give you some very interesting data. You know now that this lovely country has the highest life expectancy in the world but the funny thing is that it’s got one of the lowest birth rates. More specifically, it’s in the third position, starting from the very bottom of the list of global birth ratio.

See Godzilla? Now is the time to try again, my friend. These guys would be too old now to defend the country from your hungry paws.

But wait, this is getting more interesting by the minute. How the hell is that possible? I mean the birth thing. Well, according to a documentary I was watching recently, half of the population in Japan of thirty years of age, are virgin. WTF??? Yes, my friends, I was already told by my mum when I was a teenager, back in the 20th century: ‘too many hours playing videogames is not good for you, son. You need to go out and make friends’. Damn right, mum. But videogames are not the only ones to blame here. Looks like overworking is a common thing in Japan so when the fellas are off, they can’t be bothered to go out dating, they just want to chill out. To be honest, I would do the same.

Also, we need to consider that Japanese males are quite shy and they can be a bit sexists sometimes since most of them might be looking for a submissive woman who obeys, does the housekeeping tasks and raises the children. This issue has been a real problem for the Japanese government for the last few years and they have been spending millions every year, trying to get people to meet each other through special dating restaurants and stuff like that with no avail.

Nevertheless, even though Japan is a bit of a quite extreme scenario, it should be taken into consideration as a looking-glass into a plausible future for the rest of the developed countries.

My main concern here is if global life expectancy keeps going up and global birth ratio keeps going down, who the hell is going to pay our state pensions? Yeah, always the money, right? Just think about it.

You know, my mum used to say something else when I was a teenager: ‘carpe diem’. My knowledge of Latin was quite inexistent back then - more or less like now - and after a while, I could understand what she meant by that. So while I have some money in my pockets, I’m going to have a good time enjoying my life. And you can bet your ass I’m going to keep playing videogames like crazy. I need to keep myself enjoying the moment in case Godzilla reads this post and decides to pay me a visit, ;-p