629. The population decline of the [Japanese] is a phenomenon no one seems able to explain. And yet it's not such a complex matter if you have even a modicum of understanding of what life is all about. Reproduction, like all life, is all about sacrifice. If we take the parents as isolated individuals (as opposed to parts of a cosmic chain), they stand to gain nothing from the creation and rearing of children. The benefits they would receive in old age via means of their children's caretaking are nothing compared to the insane costs they'd have to incur to raise them in the first place, so the transaction is a net expenditure on their part, and by a vast margin. Now the hyperculture of the [Japanese] has created a consciousness of how important the rearing process is, and how costly if it is to be done right, so even when members of the [Japanese] reproduce, they only create one or two descendants, as opposed to the constant mindless shytting out of fetuses.... So that is one important factor for the [Japanese's] population decline. Without it, things would be dramatically different, since with the amount of resources a typical middle class family lavishes on a single child you could raise an entire village of [poor third world persons]... In simple terms, the [Japanese] is going for quality over quantity, and that's a major part of what's causing the decline.