What do you think makes a country, a country? I mean what makes, for instance, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia -- and what makes Norway, Norway? Let's carry out a simple thought experiment. Imagine you instantly swapped the peoples of the nations but kept everything otherwise identical. Are the people of Saudi Arabia (who now reside within the land and laws of Norway) now going to stop oppressing women? Are the people of Norway going to do the exact opposite and suddenly start oppressing their women, executing homosexuals, and all that stuff?

I'm sure you'd agree they would not. The nations would rapidly regress/evolve, depending on your worldview, to what they originally were. So it should be clear that what makes up the "people of a nation" are the people themselves - and by that you have shared cultural, ideological, and other views. And with migration and cultural assimilation this culture can grow and expand, as has been the history of much of America. On the other hand cultures can also be completely replaced. For instance, imagine Islam continues to fail to really integrate into nations and, through raw fertility rates, starts to become the dominant factor in a generally liberal nation. What do you think would happen to LGBT rights? Women's rights? Freedom of religion and expression?

Nations, in the sense of geographic locations, will probably not be going extinct anytime in the foreseeable future. But the views and values of nations, particularly those that trend towards embracing social views, are very much at risk of going extinct in the future. And the most ironic part this is that this is all completely foreseeable.

Trying another thought experiment, let's call it "boiling the frog" or "ship of Theseus".

If you introduce small quantities of immigrants into a society, gradually, and they adopt local customs, if after 100 years the native population has been replaced after integration, does it mean that the original country and its culture have disappeared?

If you take any nation today, regardless of hetero or homogeneity, it will likely scarcely resemble the culture of that nation from 50 years ago, let alone 100. Cultures changing is not really a problem and I think migration is in no way a negative when people assimilate. Assimilation, practically by definition, tends to be a host culture casting away perceived undesirable views and values, while adopting the perceived positive views and values of a migrating culture.

But a failure to assimilate, should the migrant culture become large enough, can result in the exact opposite outcome. Minority views seen as unacceptable may, over time, start to reach the point of becoming politically influential. So for instance, how likely do you think it is that a western liberal nation will criminalize homosexuality over the next 100 years? The question's ostensibly stupid. It's so far outside our trajectory and realm of thought that it seems about as likely as pigs learning to fly.

But just consider one example. Sweden today is one of the most liberal nations in the world with an extremely generous welfare state and an incredibly inviting people. They're also a very small nation of about 10 million people, not long ago it was less than 9 million. And their fertility levels have plummeted. At one point they were literally negative. And their embracing nature has also seen a near open door policy to migration, which is a big part of the reason that their population (and fertility) rates have increased. However, many of the individuals migrating are not assimilating - and hold views which are in extreme contrast to 'Swedish' views. If we assume Sweden continues along its current trajectory, it's not really out of the question to see what is today one of the most liberal nations in the world criminalizing homosexuality and beyond.

That is fundamentally what I meany by a people being exterminated. It's not the 'people' as in a genetic lineage, but the shared views and values that makeup a people. There will certainly be people that call themselves Swedes in the future. But the views and values of this nation may end up regressing (from our perspective) dramatically in the future. Centuries of progress and social development cast aside in what could be a matter of decades for a lack of fertility and a refusal to consider the implications of nonassimilating migration.

You point to Sweden, but this is still in process, and I think it is too soon to say how that will turn out.

Can you point to any historical examples of the process you are describing?

I would fully agree you with you. Newton's Third has a habit of showing up in many sociopolitical scenarios. This alone would make prediction any distance into the future effectively impossible, even if we ignore the million other variables involved. Thought I think we can at least consider which scenarios seem, at minimum, more or less likely than others.

As for examples though, we have to consider two major differences. First, extremely low fertility rates are extremely new -- even as recently as the 60s the US total fertility rate (average number of children per woman over their lifetime) had peaked at just a bit under 4. That already meant things like fertility did not really play a major role in these issues. And obviously as you go further back there is an upward trend.

The second issue is that widescale welfare systems did not exist mostly until the 20th century, and the great depression time in particular. You had things like poorhouses where people could exchange hard labor for a meal and bed, but these were extremely local and small scale systems. There would not be support for millions of foreign individuals unable to otherwise independently support themselves. As a consequence of this, mass migrations were effectively impossible. So you won't find today's scenario in the past, because it did not exist.

But I do think we can at least see rough analogs of this scenario play out practically everywhere that 'we' have colonized and decided to stay. Those were different times and war was often involved, but when you look at the times following peace things rarely got better for the natives. Once 'we' established ourselves disparities just grew over time and native views, values, and cultures were gradually relegated to an ever smaller piece of society to the point that, for instance, today in America we rarely even acknowledge Native Americans when speaking of things like 'minority representation.'

> ... for instance, today in America we rarely even acknowledge Native Americans when speaking of things like 'minority representation.'

Well, that's because 90% of them had died, mostly from diseases spread by colonists, and many in war. Even perhaps genocide. So of course there's not much of their culture left.

But if descendants of immigrants from Central and South America become the majority, that's in some way a victory for Native Americans.

"introduce small quantities" small being the key qualifier.

Yes, but what's the threshold? What's "small"?

But people are also changed by their environment, this is not a one way street. I expect immigrants to the US to gradually lose the viewpoints of their original countries and to take on the viewpoints of their adapted home. Especially the children that are born there.

Also I expect that moving from a poorer/less-educated country to a richer/more-educated country will also effect people's values and beliefs.

>>imagine Islam continues to fail to really integrate into nations and, through raw fertility rates, starts to become the dominant factor in a generally liberal nation

One fallacy in this type of speculation is to assume that Muslims in the West will continue to have the same fertility rates they did in their ancestral countries. Maybe the first generation will, certainly not the second.

Quoted on the US statue of liberty, by Emma Lazarus:

   Give me your tired, your poor,
   Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
   The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
   Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
   I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Surely you mean indígena. Indigente means homeless, or when you want to call someone that has no idea what he talks about, for instance when they talk about racial trends in Europe and North America, "indigente intelectual".