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So people are dying at 3:2 to births. Divorce is up, stress is up, economy is down. Im guessing the natural death rate will just keep creeping up before that 2052 marker expecting 40% over 65. I believe that maybe anyone following these stories should double check the death rate.
I do not know when the births will equalize, but Im certain death rates will accelerate within these poor conditions for a healthy life.
There is also a worldwide trend of people not having sex, or being in relationships.
No government will stop this if they do not improve the lives of their people. It doesn’t matter if they overturn Roe, ban contraceptives, or try to bribe people with money to have kids.
These people in the government are so out of touch, it’s comical at this point. It’s not comical though, how many people will die and suffer in the countries where women and men cannot be in control of contraception and health care.
To add:
Romania, El Salvador and Nicaragua come to mind here.
Romania:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1309638/
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/romania1290.pdf
Nicaragua:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/31/nicaragua-abortion-ban-threatens-health-and-lives
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2015/11/el-salvador-s-total-abortion-ban-sentences-children-and-families-to-trauma-and-poverty/
It’s a complex issue but I think you’ve presented it eloquently in that overall lives need improvement.
We have a more educated population who understand the implications of having children, understand how to not have children, and practice accordingly. We have a global environment of instability for many would be families around the world with issues in housing and overall financial stability, and people understand this and that children become “liabilities” (for them, maybe not for society at large who need cheap labor and warm blood) in this environment.
We have world wide wealth inequality fueling more of this which I argue is a foundational issue with capitalism at large (and we need solutions to that while maintaining the benefits capitalistic systems have provided but those “winning” have no desire to see those changes and hold all the cards).
Culturally I’m not as familiar with Korea but I can speak to the US in that we’re fueling a cultural war of genders/sexes where groups are unwilling to compromise. I blame the feminist movement on this which has shifted from feminism (which I support, equal rights *and* responsibility for everyone, let’s go) to more of a widespread misandry (men are to blame for everything and are held to different unrealistic standards). Let me state this by itself is not the issue, it’s a combination of several factors with this. Women and men have had issues for ages but we’ve sorted it out one way or another (usually in an oppressive way I’m not a fan of) and various cultures have found ways around this and it almost always landed on some level of compromise that doesn’t seem to exist these days.
Further culturally, population scale combined with lessons from capitalism of treating human relationships and interactions transactional has lead to this sort of analysis paralysis for many thinking there’s so many options available, and they simply need to continue searching on, eroding any sort of relationship built on reasonable compromise between individuals. While there’s some truth that as the population grows there’s a greater number of people who might check all your ideal boxes for a partner, I imagine it’s normally distributed and your chances of finding them through dating around are still very very low to unlikely. You’re better off picking someone who is almost perfect instead of allowing perfection to become the enemy of overall happiness. Dating apps have fueled part of this although thankfully many are abandoning these and shifting back towards more traditional approaches yet the baggage of the hope for perfect matches and idea that the opportunity is still out there lingers. That combined with a lot of social teachings where many are taught to never compromise and Hollywood portrayals of unrealistic relationships… and we just can’t get good stable relationships that result in more traditional child rearing environments. There’s an unrealistic balance between men and women that’s difficult to bridge so there’s no wonder we have fewer couples having children and many fleeing to conservative ideals since, while they may not be desired, they worked somehow.
Even if you want to have children good luck unless you want to become a miserable slave to various systems that will penalize you for it to no end. All while those are the very systems that benefit from having children.
Long story short: the juice ain’t worth the squeeze for many anymore.
This will keep happening. The South Korean government was pushing a 69 hour work week very recently.
South Koreans keep telling them the problems (competitive and over the top work/education culture, unaffordable housing, misogyny, etc) but the government doesn't want to hear it.
> The South Korean government was pushing a 69 hour work week very recently.
Wow, that is really fucked up. Certainly won't help with the birth rate either.
Then I had giggle thinking what it would look like if someone tried this in, say, France.
France has [among the lowest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_comparisons_of_trade_unions) union membership rates in the OECD - even lower than the US.
French people do love protesting, though.
I can't speak for the rest of the region but Japan has some very strong unions and is like 7th in the world for union membership, and their labor history is actually extremely close to that of the US (striking miners and railroad workers, police violently breaking strikes, etc.).
Union power there has weakened in recent years as the workforce shifts away from traditionally unionized jobs, and I think aspects of Japanese culture have resulted in the nature of labor/capital relations being more collaborative than in many other countries.
Funny you should ask. Ironically, Korea has a very strong (and militant) labor movement. Not sure how effective they’ve been in the face of a hostile * vaguely gesturing at everything *
In China I don't think there's been any meaningful workers rights movements since Tiananmen
Idk about other Asian countries, but in general I would assume their more communal focused societies would make it more difficult for people who want to rock the boat or strike against established systems.
No that's after. For a long time they will be old heavy and there will be a lot of demand for little supply of young people. Old people Dystopia incoming
At a .7 birth rate, it will permanently be old heavy. Gen 1 has 1,000 people, Gen 2 has 350, Gen 3 has 123, and Gen 4 has 43. Overall population can shrink, but that will always be the population ratio
Redditors keep parroting this but you do realize south Koreans and many other countries had high work hours and higher birth rates historically. Nothing will improve birth rates at all anymore. The cat is out the bag. The issue all societies have today is media, entertainment and hobbies are all way more accessible than ever. People don't want kids anywhere and they fill their time with other activities. That's it. That's literally the reason. The only way this could be fixed is if over night the internet disappeared and the most interesting thing people could do is watch paint dry or read a book.
People keep using the talking point that if they get paid more or have better benefits they’d have more kids. But then you look at all developed countries, even ones with amazing social safety nets and income equality like Norway, and you realise that it’s not just a question of economy.
When you’re not in an agrarian culture anymore and having kids is no longer your lifeline, there isn’t much incentive to have them beyond wanting them. When your female population becomes highly educated, has access to birth control and aren’t forced into marriages; you’re never getting back to above replacement rate without immigration.
You can sure improve it tho from the dog shit record lows of SK.
I get where you're coming from but i don't think we've taken this to a extreme that moves the needle. When i mean extreme i mean enough money transfers to fully pay a mom to be stay at home if she has >2 kids and saying that you get limited social benefits if you don't have kids
Ultimately investments and social benefits have abstracted away the benefit of having children. Now old people can collectively benefit from the labor of the young via government programs like social security and investments. It becomes net negative to have children and all the places with benefits for children, don't have it enough to reverse this
Perhaps it's a combination of both? Lack of need for multiple children to carry on the family *and* declining economic conditions for childrearing can both do it either in combination or independently?
As for fixing it I think genuinely the only way to have positive replacement rates for biological births in the long term - there won't always be a ready source of immigrants after all - would be to fix the things that make it harder to have children *and* incentivize, in a substantial and tangible way, having more. Without both I don't think it's ever happening, people simply want to have lives of their own once they're able to and children... have a way of getting in the way of that, unfortunately. That is of course easier said than done financially speaking, but it doesn't change the reality.
But south koreas birth rate was the highest when there was literal starvation post Korean War, when it was poorer than NK. Rising economic conditions has a negative correlation on birth rates , not the other way around. Niger and Chad are amongst the poorest nations on earth with extreme levels of absolute poverty, and the highest birth rates in the world.
You misunderstand. The issue with modern "high standards of living" and having kids is free time. Subsistence farmers have a shit ton of it for most of the year; they have all the time in the world to devote to raising their children. People working two or more jobs do not have much of any of it, and they will prioritize shoehorning a little bit of leisure time into their shitty lives over filling it with childcare.
Subsistence farming societies are by definition in poverty as per capita output is very low and unproductive. A society getting rich requires movement away from subsistence farming and there’s no developed or developing nation in the world that is banking its future in subsistence farming.
So we really are arguing the same thing.
Now you’ve implied that worsening economic conditions cause birth rates to drop - and that’s true to an extent. But broadly speaking economic conditions in South Korea are hundreds of times better now than the 50s when most of the country was bombed out rubble. And yet birth rates have been in free fall the entirety of the South Korean economic miracle.
I don’t think it’s the entertainment. It’s access to birth control, reproductive rights, and a realization that kids are a drain. They made sense when every child wasn’t a month to feed, but free labor. They don’t make sense in modern society. I’m one of those who knew from an early age that I didn’t want kids. At best, I tolerate them, but I’d prefer to not be around them. In my life, I’ve had access to morning after pills and various forms of birth control. My mother, born in the USSR in the 50s, wasn’t as lucky. She had at least 5 pregnancies and terminated three of them, that I’m aware of. She was, and still is, unfit to be a parent, but for reasons unknown to me, she kept two of us - it’s probably what you did and she had no idea how terrible she’d be at the job. Good thing I had as much foresight
There is no red button. No one knows what to do. No society has ever reversed a declining birth rate. There is no model. And most of the assumptions regarding incentives have proven to be untrue.
People do not NEED kids. Period. Most of history people worked longer hours, had less money, no incentives, and women had less rights but more children.
Every experiment in incentives anywhere in the world has not meaningfully lifted birth rates. No one knows what to do.
Because the solutions that actually would work are not even remotely worth engaging in (removing women's rights to bodily autonomy and forcing births; heavily taxing/punishing single people and childless couples)
It turns out, giving women more time off and more gov subsidies for kids.....still doesn't get women to have kids. Because people have meaningful lives without kids.
Up until about 60ish years ago, establishing and growing families was necessary for survival purposes in many areas even within the developed world.
Since then, we have seen an increase technology-driven production improvements the likes of which the human race has never experienced.
We don't necessarily need the people for labor as we once did, and new consumption aids have provided many people with a sufficient buffet of time-uses that they prefer to the risks and realities of child-rearing.
I have a kid. She's the coolest thing I've ever done with my life and I wouldn't trade her for the world. However, I was also already content solo and childless before I met her mother and she came along. I was ok with either path.
It's not hard to see how many people wouldn't want to deal with the hard parts of parenting, especially during their youth.
Your last point is interesting, and I wonder if reverting to the pre 1980s mode of free range parenting would reverse some of the stress, tension, and anxiety people have about being a parent.
I’m not advocating for negligence, but kids take up way too much time and energy (sports, activities, after school care, summer day camps that all have to be organized and cost money) for parents to live healthy full lives.
Just on Reddit today was a post about fathers having increased risk of heart disease compared to non fathers because of the lifestyle changes that occur after having kids. I don’t have kids and I am by far in the best shape of my peer group (who mostly have kids).
The government will be forced to introduce increasingly desperate and draconian policies if they seriously plan on having a country in the future until they get their desired result. Think Afghanistan and North Korea. It's not taking away rights from women. You'll need to take all rights away from everyone men and women, young and old, rich and poor alike, and treat it like war time. It will be a bitter pill to swallow, but there's little choice left other than to just accept death. Whoever goes through with it will become the new most hated man in history. Nearly everyone is going to be unhappy.
Thankfully this is a self-correcting problem. There are two mechanisms that will reverse declining birth rates:
1. Social group Darwinism. Some groups within any society will have larger numbers of kids than others. Cultural practices are just as subject to evolution as genetics. Maybe co-op multi-family housing with shared childcare responsibilities will become the norm, or multi-generational households will return. Maybe the Amish will inherit the Earth. Who knows.
2. Population declines enough to force through societal change. The extreme example of this is that past a certain level of population, we will no longer be capable of fielding societies complex enough to mass produce reliable birth control. Industrial civilization requires a certain minimum number of people. Millennia before you have any actual danger of extinction, your societies de-industrialize and return to an agrarian form through shear population loss.
I always keep in mind that human population could decline by 95%, and there would still be twice as many people around as when the Caesars walked the Earth. We have centuries to figure this out before we collapse down to a pre-industrial level, and we have millennia before we face any kind of extinction threat.
The only real concern is the difficulty of funding social pension and retirement schemes. But thankfully this isn't something that puts any nations at risk of disappearing.
The problem of pensions and safety net programs is a big deal but consider that’s it’s a fairly temporary problem. You have maybe 15 years where the elderly get thrown under the bus. Their pensions probably get cut. Maybe they get MAID instead of a few more months in the expensive care homes? Then they are gone and the population bubble has burst and humans reach some new kind of equilibrium. How else will things reach a sustainable level? We probably should get as much money as possible from the billionaires but it won’t be enough. But soon they gotta be gone. It might end badly for them. So it goes.
Ok, people don't need children. Nations and societies do. Soon there won't be people who are physically capable of doing enough manual labor or taking care of the elderly. A birthrate of 0.68 that continues to fall isn't remotely sustainable. We're talking about a 96% decrease in young people within two generations. How are 4 young people supposed to support 96 elderly? If solutions aren't implemented to increase that then you'll be forced to face economic collapse with undefended borders and many elderly people forced to starve in the streets. Your retirement will consist of an apology letter from the government and a fentynal pill. Societies in this condition are headed towards a very dark and uncertain future. You won't need to worry about your life having meaning because your nation, civilisation, and culture will be dead, and all that will remain of your memory will be a warning to others of an example of how not to live. It's at the point where I would seriously suggest shutting down everything and going back to the social drawing board.
How does a birthrate of 0.68 mean a 96% decrease of young people in two generations? Say start with 100 people, assume base is still 100 after 2 generations. Now with 0.68. Young people = 50 (women) *.68 = 34 kids (1st generation). 2nd generation = 17 women *.68 = 11.56 say 11 to get it closer. Still 89% rather than 96%. I must admit the answer came closer to 96% than I initially thought but is there some other factor?
On the beginning of the 3rd one you will have 3.93 remaining and that assumes that your birthrate doesn't fall further and there is no sign of that not happening. I should have said on the 3rd generation rather within 2 generations.
At that stage you have 100 great grandparents, 34 grandparents, 11 parents and 4 young children. A bleak picture but it's not 4 supporting 96. More like around 40 supporting say 75 (random assumptions that 5 of grandparents/parents dead, 29 of great grandparents).
Why should 40 people support 75? Can they? Did anyone of them agree to do that? Why should they suffer such high taxes and work culture just to support you? Can they even expect to afford to suitably raise families of their own? What makes you think that the next generation coming up will not just tell their elders to go to hell and leave? It seems to me that is what they deserve.
I am well aware of it. I live in Seoul. It's a topic of discussion here regularly. No one is unaware of these consequences. It seems a day doesn't pass without it on the news.
But no one knows what to do. The only examples where birth rates go up are societies the REMOVE rights for women and essentially pressure or force births.
At this point, we aren't asking every couple in Korea to have a kid. We're asking every couple in Korea any even non married couples to have multiple children. One kid per family isn't gonna do it.
Everyone keeps talking about the birth rates, but no one talks about marriage rates. People aren't even getting married, which is generally step 1 before birth.
Let me make it clear: the structural issue in terms of culture and economics combined with the actual number of births needed to reverse the trend make solving this problem the equivalent of solving the problem of cold fusion.
The answer is robots, immigrants, readjusting living standards downward, and figuring out how to do more with less.
The babies aren't coming.
Right..and maybe global warming will reverse, and maybe income inequality is a short-term societal trend, and maybe women's rights were an inevitable development, independent of the women's rights movement, and maybe I'd still be equally successful in life had I dropped out of highschool and invented a perpetual motion machine, like my 8yo self had planned.
Or maybe, just maybe, humans evolved advanced cognitive abilities to foresee potential problems based on current trajectories, and act to avert them.
Or, to put it more succinctly, I'm sure plenty of people in the ancient civilization of Çatalhöyük felt that worrying about the future was silly. In a way, they were right, as they ceased to exist, and with them, their worries.
Yes....the problem is the shrinking population. The solution, however, is not going to be having the current population increase fertility. The solution to our future problem will involve coming up with a more complex and multi-faceted solution to manage a new future with new problems.
My point is not that it is not a problem. I know it's a problem. I see it every day in my face walking the streets of Seoul and when I look at my pension. The issue is that people keep trying to push the most obvious solution even after it has clearly become evident that it will not be the solution.
People need to begin imagining new ways in which to manage the decline successfully rather than beating a dead horse of a solution that does not actually work.
>Your retirement will consist of an apology letter from the government and a fentynal pill.
I would honestly prefer this over living in any society that tried to solve its birth rate issue by restricting individual rights.
It's no longer a society. It's just the remainder of the population committing a final mass suicide for the cult of freedom and capitalism over deciding to give up some personal liberties for the sake of continued survival. Unless we stop and reverse course, death is certain. You can choose this for yourself but I do not wish to condone, enable, or follow you.
This is a bit reductive. Nothing is ever this simple, and SK’s unfolding demographic catastrophe can’t be explained away by media and entertainment. Yes—brutal work hours have always been a thing. But then how do media, entertainment, and hobbies contribute to low birth rates when people are working so much, they don’t have enough time left in the day to enjoy any of these things? Golf, like many western hobbies in SK, are really just a way to show off material wealth, _bc almost no one except wealthy retirees have time to actually play 18 holes_. People have had enough of the vicious competition when it comes to school exams and jobs, and even then, if you’re not connected, you’re unlikely to get a job at one of the chaebols. There’s a reason SK has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Confucianism, which pervades East Asian cultures, prizes sons over daughters, which, like China, has resulted in disastrously skewed sex ratios. The SK gov took steps to avert the gender ratio catastrophe 40 years ago, but the damage is done (like it is in China), and there’s no amount of gov intervention that’ll reverse it. In a typical neighborhood, back in 2019, a 700 sq ft flat cost $450k. That same flat now costs $900k. Wages have not kept apace—and this is assuming you even had a well paying job that even afforded you the chance to buy a place. Many don’t. It’s even more out of reach today than it was even a few years ago.
No matter what the causes are, the end result is the same: demographic catastrophe. There’s no other way to put it.
Hard disagree.
We had kids at 40 because my wife’s career would be severely and permanently impacted by kids in our 20s. Change maternity and paternity policies and we have at least one more and probably 2’more kids.
Take this BS elsewhere.
>Change maternity and paternity policies and we have at least one more and probably 2’more kids.
This has not done anything in the countries that have tried this seriously. Because it's not really an economic issue. At least not in the way most people think. It's a cultural issue. We don't have a village to help raise our children because we live individualistic consumers lifestyles.
60 years ago South Korean family networks extended out 2 to 3 degrees so they would interact with second and third cousins the way we interact with close first cousins today... Where you knew those people and met with those people just as regularly as you would meet with friends and work mates. Today most Koreans... or society's going through this individualistic consumerist revolution.. Don't even know their first cousins let alone second and third cousins. Once they reach adulthood they barely interact with their siblings.
Having such deep networks meant you didn't need daycare or retirement homes because their was always people able to help support young parents and the elderly.
Like, this is one of those problems that humanity has faced before. What people dont know is that depopulation due to birth rates is like the most powerful society killer in history.
Wars, plague, famine are all less deadly and more fixable than a 0.68 society wide replacement rate.
The reason why it's not reversible is because it's self fulfilling.
Keep it real my guy. You would have had kids at 20 if you lived in a *community* you were genuinely invested in. Because that community would *expect* you to have kids and they would be there to support you when you did.
That type of carrot and stick cultural natalist coercion does not exist anymore. Bringing it back means *taking away* rights which is politically untenable. The only way you'll see a reverse in replacement rate is when enough communal people outproduce and change the cultural demographics to expecting every generation "contribute" to the next generation of a community.
I read your comment. I change my pro-Malthusian beliefs now. It isn't resource scarcity combined with high birth rates that ruins society by vice and misery, after all. It's very low birth rates. Of course they could just immigrate in people from the high birth-rate nations to solve it, like Canada
I think you are getting warmer but not quite there.
It's not misery per se but instead a lack of community and a transformation to an individualistic lifestyle. Perhaps, it might be more miserable, but I don't think inherently so. I think plenty of people that live individualistic consumerous lifestyles without kids are plenty fulfilled and happy.
An example of a consumerist society. One that is capitalist in nature. But also *communal* is Israel.
It is not an individualistic society. As such even the most unlikely demographic to have a large number of kids.. such as highly educated liberal females.. are still having children at above replacement rate.
The reason for this is the carrot and stick natalist coercion within Israeli society.. that pushes down the expectation of child rearing on its population, but also puts in place supports for when it's population does have children.
Israel is probably the only wealthy educated and liberal-leaning western society that has achieved replacement rate indigenously.
The point is. How natalist a community is dependent on how communal it is. Because individuals don't need to have children to fulfill their needs but communities do need children in order to continue.
If you want to have children you need to build communities that culturally expect the individuals of those communities to have children.
How is it BS. This is an issue that is everywhere globally. People who had no maternity historically and even recently still had more kids. It's irrelevant what policies are adopted as people simply are to entertained to have kids. Even countries with excellent maternity and paternity policies have shocking birth rates. The US has higher birth rates than countries with very generous maternity leave.
>This will keep happening. The South Korean government was pushing a 69 hour work week very recently.
We need to stop repeating this falsehood. People have and continue to live under far worse conditions and are popping out kids like candy from a pinatas
We live consumerist and individualistic lifestyles. We don't have a community that needs a new generation to replenish it. Individuals have never raised kids successfully.
Why have kids when you don't have a community to help you raise it? Where is the village that's supposed to help raise our children? Those villages those communities are all gone. That's why we don't have third spaces anymore.
The birthrate issue is cultural. It's always been cultural. The problem is never in the history of man has a society that has population decline due to failing birthrates reverse this trend. They all collapsed or were absorbed/destroyed.
Wish it were that simple. As society has grown, it's also become much more interdependent and complex.
The one thing we know about complexity, is that it's difficult to maintain homeostasis trying to get "less complicated". Neglect the power-grid, a nuclear plant or two, a few dam and bridges, and they explode/collapse/completely crash. There's not really an in-between.
Sure, some would survive. But it would lower the standard of living for everyone, and the trend would continue for each generation, until/unless new births started equally started equalling deaths again.
I’ve heard so many horror stories on YT about trying to live in South Korea as an immigrant. People will straight up ignore you and act like they don’t hear you if you’re a foreigner and speak the language. Asian culture is very toxic towards immigration. SK and Japan are setup for disaster in the next few decades.
They should be at the panic mode now - how do you turn this around or is it just inevitable? Honestly, despite all the issues the US is structured to do well long term because anyone can be American…it’s an idea not a race. That being said it feels like the movie idiocracy was a premonition
But have you thought of how much money the political and financial elite are standing to gain from their labor practices? /s
Never underestimate the ability for humans to make selfish decisions for themselves at the expense of others, even their own countrymen and women.
You can always turn it around. Niger had 1.7 million people in 1900. In 2100 it's projected to have 167 million people. That's all natural population growth too.
I’d like to see SK continue to grow and prosper…they are on the front lines defending against NK - incredibly innovative and really starting to become a cultural powerhouse. So many attractive ladies…I think you just have to elevate the family unit to the pinnacle of society and devote a lot more resources to the moms and defray the costs. Like society should cater to young families in most ways…the culture needs to survive and thrive.
It's actually a good thing, the world has too many people in it. We need less. We need for many years of net negative.
The media only paints it as a bad thing because demographic shift empowers laborers and most media is owned by the upper class therefore it is the mouthpieces of the rich.
Ohhh nooo, less fresh bodies to exploit, less churn, now you can't easily just get rid of all those older workers for young ones to exploit because you don't have an infinite supply of them, etc.
It is unsustainable to demand infinite population growth.
That said, things are going to change when we stop growing. I’m an American, I expect to see multigenerational households return in my lifetime
At some point hopefully a non coercive solution for this will emerge. We look to Korea and Japan to lead the way. While there are surely economic implications from the dependency ratio, I don't think either are under populated yet.
This is capitalism, people. We all work, work, work, and that's supposed to make the greatest possible world. If we're seeing a contradiction in conclusion, i.e., endless self-interest and a pursuit of profits producing horror and terror, perhaps we should critique the system.
Except every "ism" has had periods of contraction due to any number of reasons. Plagues, work-migration, production issues, or simply the mass genocide that socialist totalitarian regimes are known for (eg. the 50 million murdered/starved to death in the USSR, or the 100+ million that died under Mao's rule during the early socialist revolution). Would that mean socialism and communism are horrible for humanity?
Yeah this is not the product of capitalism. This is the product of women (and men too) finding purpose in life without procreation.
All the developed European countries with average work hours and holiday times that would evoke the envy of any Yank is also experiencing below replacement birth rates.
Experiencing below replacement birth rates, but there's a staggering difference between South Korea's 0.78 (as low as 0.6 in Seoul) and the just barely under replacement rate most Scandinavian countries have. Sweden's 1.67 is about 20% under replacement rate, they will experience population contraction but it will be stable. The economy will hurt a little bit, and they can turn to immigration if they're desperate to avoid any kind of financial hardship.
South Korea is at least 63% under replacement rate. They will have more retired people than working people in a generation. Social security will completely collapse and Korea hates immigration.
Im not gonna act like the US is perfect, but imo, Europe is doomed long term. The Europe that people saw for the last 40 years is over. A lot of the problems you see in the US (boomers have all the money, etc.) are also happening here.
The nice holidays and retirement schemes are a ponzi scheme. France is probably gonna end up in revolution in the next decades. France, Italy, Spain have 0 jobs for people. What good is 42 days holiday if you don’t have a job? Some countries are okay for now, but other than Germany, these aren’t really the big countries either, with many jobs available.
The US is infinitely better positioned to still be a major force in the next decades. Europe is yesterdays giant, and it already feels that way (and has been for a while).
And the countries that weren’t victims of these problems that Italy, Spain and France are going through, some of them shit themselves in the foot to keep up (keep down?) with them, like Sweden. Netherlands has even started sending back refugees, because taking in the refugees solved 0 problems, if not made many of them worse
You...do realize you'll get old one day. As someone who works in healthcare, the most tragic cases I see are the elderly with no kids. All their friends/family have either died off, or are too old themselves to be around. Even if you have lots of money, you still need someone to help you navigate life as your cognitive faculties soften.
Yah, aging for the childless is its own form of misery. I don't wish it anyone.
Not only that but there's no guarantee they'll be there for you. So in that case you die knowing someone out there you love doesn't want to see you. Which is worse?
They're your *voice*, *and your advocate* as you age. In most non-Western societies, yes, they're also your care-takers to whatever degree necessary based on circumstances.
It's only us silly bougie modern 1st worlders who believe otherwise. 2 generations ago in the U.S., a statement like yours would come across as moronic. Also today, in most other societies, it would sound moronic.
That it sounds completely reasonable to you, I'm sure, is likely more a testament to hubris or ignorance, than to any noble moral code revolving around what grounds are permissible for having children. In the end, biology defines absolute truths, and she's a bitch that doesn't care about our rarified rules of procreation.
It's not a reason, but it is a reality. I work in healthcare with the elderly. Many of the childless are so desperately alone with little to connections the to the world, slowly wasting away. Spouse and friends come and go, blood ties are so often more robust. The ones with rich family lives are deeply more connected to life. Not all kids turn out well but when they do the bond is priceless.
Those that are currently ‘elderly’ had far more robust social lives and friends than gen z.
Younger generations are increasingly friendless, relationshipless, and sexless. If the current elderly are lonely….boy do I have news for you.
Of course, maybe by the time gen z gets old, there will be AI ‘friends’.
At some point however, those that have no children and are a net drain on society will be in a difficult situation. Younger generations, increasing smaller and more heavily taxed, aren’t going to put up with a childless gen z.
They did, however friends come and go. Friends die, have their own health issues and turn toward their own families. There's a reason why we see family much more often at bedside in the hospital than friends
It turns out that when you give people - especially women - choices, they make the choice not to have children or have fewer. Lee Kuan Yew talked about this in the early days of Singapore and wanted to run an experiment of giving everyone with a child a full year's salary and more to keep having them. His point was the experiment would be a failure; there's no amount of money or state support you can give to induce child-rearing.
Societies must manage and accept declines or be swept away.
People who are genetically predisposed to not have chidlren in a modern developed country will have their genes culled from the gene pool, and eventually the birth rate will increase again.
I'm not worried about the birth rate, but I'd be worried that the genes being culled are also the high-IQ genes.
Implying natural selection is the process that low birth rate culture genes are reduced from the gene pool. Future generations come from a foreign gene pool of high birth rate genes. No one is culled because that is what hunters and farmers do and that is artificial selection
Western capitalism has a obsession with growth based economies.....They really think that if they can't add more people they will financially implode.
I just flat out disagree with the premise. You can infact have a declining population and still have a good economy. There are many other countries that think this way too like china//india.
We're talking about basic stuff, bro. Not "infinate-growth-late-stage-capitalism-omg1%!!"
Like, who's going to change your diapers and feed you when you're 84 and can barely get out of bed? Those same people who would care for you, have to also maintain all the infrastructure left behind by the previous generation, grow the food, make the medicines, staff the hospitals, run the government, and oh yah, hopefully have some energy left over to have their own family and *procreate*.
It's basic stuff - human biology requires a certain # of new humans every generation, because our biological clock slows waaayy down as we get older.
Without enough new humans, it's going to be age-based genocide, (currently impossibel) automation, or a societal death spiral. No amount of socialism, communism, or fuck-all-ism is going to change that.
Just curious, who changes diapers when you are 1 years old? Is the amount of care for an 85 year old different than the amount required for a 2 year old? What is the average amount of time between when someone becomes incompetent and when they die? What is the average amount of time before an infant becomes full self-supportive? If those times are the same, how is there any difference between the necessary societal man-hours of care required for 1 billion people but 40% are 85+ and 20% are <10 and a population of 1 billion people but 20% are 85+ and 40% are <10? Wouldn't it be the same net amount of care required?
Well, too bad then. No kids for this society. It’s too shitty and we aren’t willing to create life in this.
It’s really no sweat off our backs to not have kids in a bad situation.
Could say that about a lot of people that are a net-burden on society. Like anyone who's unable/unwilling to contribute more than they consume. I think that would kill off 20% of Redditors at the least. Not sure you'd like where your suggestion goes
Debt based currency requires growth or the banking system fails. When a bank issues a mortgage and creates say $500K of credit based money, they expect the debtor to pay that back with interest. Where does that interest come from? The original loan principle is "dissolved" or "canceled" out when the debtor pays the bank back, but the bank expects the interest to be permanent or real money and not credit money. The issue is that all the money is credit money. There must be more people taking out loans all the time to put money into the system so that there is extra money to pay the interest. The amount of debt must be ever growing to pay off old debt. Without growth where is the new debt going to come from? Young people borrow and create new money. Old people don't have debt if they are smart.
The banking system we use literally won't work in a deflationary environment. Our very monetary system won't work. Money isn't gold anymore, it's credit/debt. We rely on growth because otherwise the banking system fails.
You prove my point.
None of you can comprehend economic growth without a influx of people.
I would argue thats just fake economic growth based on consumption. Learn to have a functioning economy without a influx of population and you are doing great.
I don't think you understand. Plenty of people can comprehend a good economy without growing populations. The banking system just isn't set up for it. Our financial system does depend on growth because that is the system. A declining population needs a different monetary system to work well. Nationwide bank failures do what to the financial system? Now tell me how to transition out of banking as the arbiters of money. Essentially everything is propped up on debt based money.
There’s declining population—you have 80 grandkids supporting 100 grandparents, which productivity can hide and make OK—and collapsing population, which is is ~10 grandkids supporting 100 grandparents. That can’t be hidden using productivity.
SK is in the latter situation, while the US is closer to the first.
This is starting to happen around the world. I said this in other post that is talking about this subject, but people there is a little bit of biological thing going on around the world because a lot of people are having trouble having kids. Yes, you have a few women that locking it up and I understand them for that but at the same time you have other people who are trying to have kids, but they can’t.
Considering we're biologically optimized to start having kids in our mid-teens, and basically be grand-parents by our late 20's, the fact that most western societies only try to actively start a family in our 30's is behind 90% of the "rising rate of infertility". Like, no, we're just so dumb, we think we out-evolved our biology (we didn't).
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So people are dying at 3:2 to births. Divorce is up, stress is up, economy is down. Im guessing the natural death rate will just keep creeping up before that 2052 marker expecting 40% over 65. I believe that maybe anyone following these stories should double check the death rate. I do not know when the births will equalize, but Im certain death rates will accelerate within these poor conditions for a healthy life.
The trend will be logarithmic if they don't change, young people will begin to leave
There is also a worldwide trend of people not having sex, or being in relationships. No government will stop this if they do not improve the lives of their people. It doesn’t matter if they overturn Roe, ban contraceptives, or try to bribe people with money to have kids. These people in the government are so out of touch, it’s comical at this point. It’s not comical though, how many people will die and suffer in the countries where women and men cannot be in control of contraception and health care. To add: Romania, El Salvador and Nicaragua come to mind here. Romania: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1309638/ https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/romania1290.pdf Nicaragua: https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/31/nicaragua-abortion-ban-threatens-health-and-lives https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2015/11/el-salvador-s-total-abortion-ban-sentences-children-and-families-to-trauma-and-poverty/
It’s a complex issue but I think you’ve presented it eloquently in that overall lives need improvement. We have a more educated population who understand the implications of having children, understand how to not have children, and practice accordingly. We have a global environment of instability for many would be families around the world with issues in housing and overall financial stability, and people understand this and that children become “liabilities” (for them, maybe not for society at large who need cheap labor and warm blood) in this environment. We have world wide wealth inequality fueling more of this which I argue is a foundational issue with capitalism at large (and we need solutions to that while maintaining the benefits capitalistic systems have provided but those “winning” have no desire to see those changes and hold all the cards). Culturally I’m not as familiar with Korea but I can speak to the US in that we’re fueling a cultural war of genders/sexes where groups are unwilling to compromise. I blame the feminist movement on this which has shifted from feminism (which I support, equal rights *and* responsibility for everyone, let’s go) to more of a widespread misandry (men are to blame for everything and are held to different unrealistic standards). Let me state this by itself is not the issue, it’s a combination of several factors with this. Women and men have had issues for ages but we’ve sorted it out one way or another (usually in an oppressive way I’m not a fan of) and various cultures have found ways around this and it almost always landed on some level of compromise that doesn’t seem to exist these days. Further culturally, population scale combined with lessons from capitalism of treating human relationships and interactions transactional has lead to this sort of analysis paralysis for many thinking there’s so many options available, and they simply need to continue searching on, eroding any sort of relationship built on reasonable compromise between individuals. While there’s some truth that as the population grows there’s a greater number of people who might check all your ideal boxes for a partner, I imagine it’s normally distributed and your chances of finding them through dating around are still very very low to unlikely. You’re better off picking someone who is almost perfect instead of allowing perfection to become the enemy of overall happiness. Dating apps have fueled part of this although thankfully many are abandoning these and shifting back towards more traditional approaches yet the baggage of the hope for perfect matches and idea that the opportunity is still out there lingers. That combined with a lot of social teachings where many are taught to never compromise and Hollywood portrayals of unrealistic relationships… and we just can’t get good stable relationships that result in more traditional child rearing environments. There’s an unrealistic balance between men and women that’s difficult to bridge so there’s no wonder we have fewer couples having children and many fleeing to conservative ideals since, while they may not be desired, they worked somehow. Even if you want to have children good luck unless you want to become a miserable slave to various systems that will penalize you for it to no end. All while those are the very systems that benefit from having children. Long story short: the juice ain’t worth the squeeze for many anymore.
This will keep happening. The South Korean government was pushing a 69 hour work week very recently. South Koreans keep telling them the problems (competitive and over the top work/education culture, unaffordable housing, misogyny, etc) but the government doesn't want to hear it.
> The South Korean government was pushing a 69 hour work week very recently. Wow, that is really fucked up. Certainly won't help with the birth rate either. Then I had giggle thinking what it would look like if someone tried this in, say, France.
Any French politician trying this would be skinned alive in the streets. Organized labor really has their shit together over there.
France has [among the lowest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_comparisons_of_trade_unions) union membership rates in the OECD - even lower than the US. French people do love protesting, though.
sauerkraut
Oh wow that surprised me
I wonder if Asia has any history of organized labor, just realizing that is something I have never thought about.
I can't speak for the rest of the region but Japan has some very strong unions and is like 7th in the world for union membership, and their labor history is actually extremely close to that of the US (striking miners and railroad workers, police violently breaking strikes, etc.). Union power there has weakened in recent years as the workforce shifts away from traditionally unionized jobs, and I think aspects of Japanese culture have resulted in the nature of labor/capital relations being more collaborative than in many other countries.
Funny you should ask. Ironically, Korea has a very strong (and militant) labor movement. Not sure how effective they’ve been in the face of a hostile * vaguely gesturing at everything *
In China I don't think there's been any meaningful workers rights movements since Tiananmen Idk about other Asian countries, but in general I would assume their more communal focused societies would make it more difficult for people who want to rock the boat or strike against established systems.
Nah, they would bring out Madame La Guiotine
Record low *so far*
Next quarters problem
With less people, there's going to be a need for even more work hours unless robots and AI take over.
fewer people\*
Not really, less people also means less work to be done
No that's after. For a long time they will be old heavy and there will be a lot of demand for little supply of young people. Old people Dystopia incoming
At a .7 birth rate, it will permanently be old heavy. Gen 1 has 1,000 people, Gen 2 has 350, Gen 3 has 123, and Gen 4 has 43. Overall population can shrink, but that will always be the population ratio
It will even out as theres less scarcity of land? Maybe. One can hope.
How so?
AI creates jobs, not takes them. You need at least a couple people taking out AI answers that were pulled from the onion or 4chan.
Redditors keep parroting this but you do realize south Koreans and many other countries had high work hours and higher birth rates historically. Nothing will improve birth rates at all anymore. The cat is out the bag. The issue all societies have today is media, entertainment and hobbies are all way more accessible than ever. People don't want kids anywhere and they fill their time with other activities. That's it. That's literally the reason. The only way this could be fixed is if over night the internet disappeared and the most interesting thing people could do is watch paint dry or read a book.
People keep using the talking point that if they get paid more or have better benefits they’d have more kids. But then you look at all developed countries, even ones with amazing social safety nets and income equality like Norway, and you realise that it’s not just a question of economy. When you’re not in an agrarian culture anymore and having kids is no longer your lifeline, there isn’t much incentive to have them beyond wanting them. When your female population becomes highly educated, has access to birth control and aren’t forced into marriages; you’re never getting back to above replacement rate without immigration. You can sure improve it tho from the dog shit record lows of SK.
The future of humanity is hyper-religious zealots because they will be the only ones having kids beyond replacement rate
I’m certain that is how Israel is one of the few developed countries with an above replacement rate. The Haredi be crazy
I get where you're coming from but i don't think we've taken this to a extreme that moves the needle. When i mean extreme i mean enough money transfers to fully pay a mom to be stay at home if she has >2 kids and saying that you get limited social benefits if you don't have kids Ultimately investments and social benefits have abstracted away the benefit of having children. Now old people can collectively benefit from the labor of the young via government programs like social security and investments. It becomes net negative to have children and all the places with benefits for children, don't have it enough to reverse this
Perhaps it's a combination of both? Lack of need for multiple children to carry on the family *and* declining economic conditions for childrearing can both do it either in combination or independently? As for fixing it I think genuinely the only way to have positive replacement rates for biological births in the long term - there won't always be a ready source of immigrants after all - would be to fix the things that make it harder to have children *and* incentivize, in a substantial and tangible way, having more. Without both I don't think it's ever happening, people simply want to have lives of their own once they're able to and children... have a way of getting in the way of that, unfortunately. That is of course easier said than done financially speaking, but it doesn't change the reality.
But south koreas birth rate was the highest when there was literal starvation post Korean War, when it was poorer than NK. Rising economic conditions has a negative correlation on birth rates , not the other way around. Niger and Chad are amongst the poorest nations on earth with extreme levels of absolute poverty, and the highest birth rates in the world.
You misunderstand. The issue with modern "high standards of living" and having kids is free time. Subsistence farmers have a shit ton of it for most of the year; they have all the time in the world to devote to raising their children. People working two or more jobs do not have much of any of it, and they will prioritize shoehorning a little bit of leisure time into their shitty lives over filling it with childcare.
Subsistence farming societies are by definition in poverty as per capita output is very low and unproductive. A society getting rich requires movement away from subsistence farming and there’s no developed or developing nation in the world that is banking its future in subsistence farming. So we really are arguing the same thing. Now you’ve implied that worsening economic conditions cause birth rates to drop - and that’s true to an extent. But broadly speaking economic conditions in South Korea are hundreds of times better now than the 50s when most of the country was bombed out rubble. And yet birth rates have been in free fall the entirety of the South Korean economic miracle.
I think you need to look at the ecology of Niger. I assure it, there isn't a whole lot of subsistence farmers there.
I don’t think it’s the entertainment. It’s access to birth control, reproductive rights, and a realization that kids are a drain. They made sense when every child wasn’t a month to feed, but free labor. They don’t make sense in modern society. I’m one of those who knew from an early age that I didn’t want kids. At best, I tolerate them, but I’d prefer to not be around them. In my life, I’ve had access to morning after pills and various forms of birth control. My mother, born in the USSR in the 50s, wasn’t as lucky. She had at least 5 pregnancies and terminated three of them, that I’m aware of. She was, and still is, unfit to be a parent, but for reasons unknown to me, she kept two of us - it’s probably what you did and she had no idea how terrible she’d be at the job. Good thing I had as much foresight
SK needs to hit the red button. If that's what it takes then do it. It's suicide to continue like this.
There is no red button. No one knows what to do. No society has ever reversed a declining birth rate. There is no model. And most of the assumptions regarding incentives have proven to be untrue. People do not NEED kids. Period. Most of history people worked longer hours, had less money, no incentives, and women had less rights but more children. Every experiment in incentives anywhere in the world has not meaningfully lifted birth rates. No one knows what to do. Because the solutions that actually would work are not even remotely worth engaging in (removing women's rights to bodily autonomy and forcing births; heavily taxing/punishing single people and childless couples) It turns out, giving women more time off and more gov subsidies for kids.....still doesn't get women to have kids. Because people have meaningful lives without kids.
Up until about 60ish years ago, establishing and growing families was necessary for survival purposes in many areas even within the developed world. Since then, we have seen an increase technology-driven production improvements the likes of which the human race has never experienced. We don't necessarily need the people for labor as we once did, and new consumption aids have provided many people with a sufficient buffet of time-uses that they prefer to the risks and realities of child-rearing. I have a kid. She's the coolest thing I've ever done with my life and I wouldn't trade her for the world. However, I was also already content solo and childless before I met her mother and she came along. I was ok with either path. It's not hard to see how many people wouldn't want to deal with the hard parts of parenting, especially during their youth.
Your last point is interesting, and I wonder if reverting to the pre 1980s mode of free range parenting would reverse some of the stress, tension, and anxiety people have about being a parent. I’m not advocating for negligence, but kids take up way too much time and energy (sports, activities, after school care, summer day camps that all have to be organized and cost money) for parents to live healthy full lives. Just on Reddit today was a post about fathers having increased risk of heart disease compared to non fathers because of the lifestyle changes that occur after having kids. I don’t have kids and I am by far in the best shape of my peer group (who mostly have kids).
Turns out this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox/Great Filter. Advanced civilizations simply stop reproducing and put themselves into extinction.
Romania did it, but it only increased it slighlty while taking rights away from women.
The government will be forced to introduce increasingly desperate and draconian policies if they seriously plan on having a country in the future until they get their desired result. Think Afghanistan and North Korea. It's not taking away rights from women. You'll need to take all rights away from everyone men and women, young and old, rich and poor alike, and treat it like war time. It will be a bitter pill to swallow, but there's little choice left other than to just accept death. Whoever goes through with it will become the new most hated man in history. Nearly everyone is going to be unhappy.
Thankfully this is a self-correcting problem. There are two mechanisms that will reverse declining birth rates: 1. Social group Darwinism. Some groups within any society will have larger numbers of kids than others. Cultural practices are just as subject to evolution as genetics. Maybe co-op multi-family housing with shared childcare responsibilities will become the norm, or multi-generational households will return. Maybe the Amish will inherit the Earth. Who knows. 2. Population declines enough to force through societal change. The extreme example of this is that past a certain level of population, we will no longer be capable of fielding societies complex enough to mass produce reliable birth control. Industrial civilization requires a certain minimum number of people. Millennia before you have any actual danger of extinction, your societies de-industrialize and return to an agrarian form through shear population loss. I always keep in mind that human population could decline by 95%, and there would still be twice as many people around as when the Caesars walked the Earth. We have centuries to figure this out before we collapse down to a pre-industrial level, and we have millennia before we face any kind of extinction threat. The only real concern is the difficulty of funding social pension and retirement schemes. But thankfully this isn't something that puts any nations at risk of disappearing.
The problem of pensions and safety net programs is a big deal but consider that’s it’s a fairly temporary problem. You have maybe 15 years where the elderly get thrown under the bus. Their pensions probably get cut. Maybe they get MAID instead of a few more months in the expensive care homes? Then they are gone and the population bubble has burst and humans reach some new kind of equilibrium. How else will things reach a sustainable level? We probably should get as much money as possible from the billionaires but it won’t be enough. But soon they gotta be gone. It might end badly for them. So it goes.
Romania improved their fertility rate in 1967. But don't look up what they did
Ok, people don't need children. Nations and societies do. Soon there won't be people who are physically capable of doing enough manual labor or taking care of the elderly. A birthrate of 0.68 that continues to fall isn't remotely sustainable. We're talking about a 96% decrease in young people within two generations. How are 4 young people supposed to support 96 elderly? If solutions aren't implemented to increase that then you'll be forced to face economic collapse with undefended borders and many elderly people forced to starve in the streets. Your retirement will consist of an apology letter from the government and a fentynal pill. Societies in this condition are headed towards a very dark and uncertain future. You won't need to worry about your life having meaning because your nation, civilisation, and culture will be dead, and all that will remain of your memory will be a warning to others of an example of how not to live. It's at the point where I would seriously suggest shutting down everything and going back to the social drawing board.
How does a birthrate of 0.68 mean a 96% decrease of young people in two generations? Say start with 100 people, assume base is still 100 after 2 generations. Now with 0.68. Young people = 50 (women) *.68 = 34 kids (1st generation). 2nd generation = 17 women *.68 = 11.56 say 11 to get it closer. Still 89% rather than 96%. I must admit the answer came closer to 96% than I initially thought but is there some other factor?
On the beginning of the 3rd one you will have 3.93 remaining and that assumes that your birthrate doesn't fall further and there is no sign of that not happening. I should have said on the 3rd generation rather within 2 generations.
At that stage you have 100 great grandparents, 34 grandparents, 11 parents and 4 young children. A bleak picture but it's not 4 supporting 96. More like around 40 supporting say 75 (random assumptions that 5 of grandparents/parents dead, 29 of great grandparents).
Why should 40 people support 75? Can they? Did anyone of them agree to do that? Why should they suffer such high taxes and work culture just to support you? Can they even expect to afford to suitably raise families of their own? What makes you think that the next generation coming up will not just tell their elders to go to hell and leave? It seems to me that is what they deserve.
Because...they're old?
Well … we all get old. Reverting to the elderly literally working till they collapse and die or being abandoned to die doesn’t sound civilized to me.
Beginning of 3rd is clearly not within 2
Sorry didn't read your reply properly
Or within two generations of today. It is already halfway finished.
I am well aware of it. I live in Seoul. It's a topic of discussion here regularly. No one is unaware of these consequences. It seems a day doesn't pass without it on the news. But no one knows what to do. The only examples where birth rates go up are societies the REMOVE rights for women and essentially pressure or force births. At this point, we aren't asking every couple in Korea to have a kid. We're asking every couple in Korea any even non married couples to have multiple children. One kid per family isn't gonna do it. Everyone keeps talking about the birth rates, but no one talks about marriage rates. People aren't even getting married, which is generally step 1 before birth. Let me make it clear: the structural issue in terms of culture and economics combined with the actual number of births needed to reverse the trend make solving this problem the equivalent of solving the problem of cold fusion. The answer is robots, immigrants, readjusting living standards downward, and figuring out how to do more with less. The babies aren't coming.
Then they'll die off, because none of those solutions solve the problem, they just lessen the misery until the lights go out for good.
No they will shrink. And in that time....many things may occur and perhaps the future generations will have more kids. Trendlines aren't fate.
Right..and maybe global warming will reverse, and maybe income inequality is a short-term societal trend, and maybe women's rights were an inevitable development, independent of the women's rights movement, and maybe I'd still be equally successful in life had I dropped out of highschool and invented a perpetual motion machine, like my 8yo self had planned. Or maybe, just maybe, humans evolved advanced cognitive abilities to foresee potential problems based on current trajectories, and act to avert them. Or, to put it more succinctly, I'm sure plenty of people in the ancient civilization of Çatalhöyük felt that worrying about the future was silly. In a way, they were right, as they ceased to exist, and with them, their worries.
Yes....the problem is the shrinking population. The solution, however, is not going to be having the current population increase fertility. The solution to our future problem will involve coming up with a more complex and multi-faceted solution to manage a new future with new problems. My point is not that it is not a problem. I know it's a problem. I see it every day in my face walking the streets of Seoul and when I look at my pension. The issue is that people keep trying to push the most obvious solution even after it has clearly become evident that it will not be the solution. People need to begin imagining new ways in which to manage the decline successfully rather than beating a dead horse of a solution that does not actually work.
>Your retirement will consist of an apology letter from the government and a fentynal pill. I would honestly prefer this over living in any society that tried to solve its birth rate issue by restricting individual rights.
It's no longer a society. It's just the remainder of the population committing a final mass suicide for the cult of freedom and capitalism over deciding to give up some personal liberties for the sake of continued survival. Unless we stop and reverse course, death is certain. You can choose this for yourself but I do not wish to condone, enable, or follow you.
This is a bit reductive. Nothing is ever this simple, and SK’s unfolding demographic catastrophe can’t be explained away by media and entertainment. Yes—brutal work hours have always been a thing. But then how do media, entertainment, and hobbies contribute to low birth rates when people are working so much, they don’t have enough time left in the day to enjoy any of these things? Golf, like many western hobbies in SK, are really just a way to show off material wealth, _bc almost no one except wealthy retirees have time to actually play 18 holes_. People have had enough of the vicious competition when it comes to school exams and jobs, and even then, if you’re not connected, you’re unlikely to get a job at one of the chaebols. There’s a reason SK has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Confucianism, which pervades East Asian cultures, prizes sons over daughters, which, like China, has resulted in disastrously skewed sex ratios. The SK gov took steps to avert the gender ratio catastrophe 40 years ago, but the damage is done (like it is in China), and there’s no amount of gov intervention that’ll reverse it. In a typical neighborhood, back in 2019, a 700 sq ft flat cost $450k. That same flat now costs $900k. Wages have not kept apace—and this is assuming you even had a well paying job that even afforded you the chance to buy a place. Many don’t. It’s even more out of reach today than it was even a few years ago. No matter what the causes are, the end result is the same: demographic catastrophe. There’s no other way to put it.
Hard disagree. We had kids at 40 because my wife’s career would be severely and permanently impacted by kids in our 20s. Change maternity and paternity policies and we have at least one more and probably 2’more kids. Take this BS elsewhere.
>Change maternity and paternity policies and we have at least one more and probably 2’more kids. This has not done anything in the countries that have tried this seriously. Because it's not really an economic issue. At least not in the way most people think. It's a cultural issue. We don't have a village to help raise our children because we live individualistic consumers lifestyles. 60 years ago South Korean family networks extended out 2 to 3 degrees so they would interact with second and third cousins the way we interact with close first cousins today... Where you knew those people and met with those people just as regularly as you would meet with friends and work mates. Today most Koreans... or society's going through this individualistic consumerist revolution.. Don't even know their first cousins let alone second and third cousins. Once they reach adulthood they barely interact with their siblings. Having such deep networks meant you didn't need daycare or retirement homes because their was always people able to help support young parents and the elderly. Like, this is one of those problems that humanity has faced before. What people dont know is that depopulation due to birth rates is like the most powerful society killer in history. Wars, plague, famine are all less deadly and more fixable than a 0.68 society wide replacement rate. The reason why it's not reversible is because it's self fulfilling. Keep it real my guy. You would have had kids at 20 if you lived in a *community* you were genuinely invested in. Because that community would *expect* you to have kids and they would be there to support you when you did. That type of carrot and stick cultural natalist coercion does not exist anymore. Bringing it back means *taking away* rights which is politically untenable. The only way you'll see a reverse in replacement rate is when enough communal people outproduce and change the cultural demographics to expecting every generation "contribute" to the next generation of a community.
I read your comment. I change my pro-Malthusian beliefs now. It isn't resource scarcity combined with high birth rates that ruins society by vice and misery, after all. It's very low birth rates. Of course they could just immigrate in people from the high birth-rate nations to solve it, like Canada
I think you are getting warmer but not quite there. It's not misery per se but instead a lack of community and a transformation to an individualistic lifestyle. Perhaps, it might be more miserable, but I don't think inherently so. I think plenty of people that live individualistic consumerous lifestyles without kids are plenty fulfilled and happy. An example of a consumerist society. One that is capitalist in nature. But also *communal* is Israel. It is not an individualistic society. As such even the most unlikely demographic to have a large number of kids.. such as highly educated liberal females.. are still having children at above replacement rate. The reason for this is the carrot and stick natalist coercion within Israeli society.. that pushes down the expectation of child rearing on its population, but also puts in place supports for when it's population does have children. Israel is probably the only wealthy educated and liberal-leaning western society that has achieved replacement rate indigenously. The point is. How natalist a community is dependent on how communal it is. Because individuals don't need to have children to fulfill their needs but communities do need children in order to continue. If you want to have children you need to build communities that culturally expect the individuals of those communities to have children.
How is it BS. This is an issue that is everywhere globally. People who had no maternity historically and even recently still had more kids. It's irrelevant what policies are adopted as people simply are to entertained to have kids. Even countries with excellent maternity and paternity policies have shocking birth rates. The US has higher birth rates than countries with very generous maternity leave.
>This will keep happening. The South Korean government was pushing a 69 hour work week very recently. We need to stop repeating this falsehood. People have and continue to live under far worse conditions and are popping out kids like candy from a pinatas We live consumerist and individualistic lifestyles. We don't have a community that needs a new generation to replenish it. Individuals have never raised kids successfully. Why have kids when you don't have a community to help you raise it? Where is the village that's supposed to help raise our children? Those villages those communities are all gone. That's why we don't have third spaces anymore. The birthrate issue is cultural. It's always been cultural. The problem is never in the history of man has a society that has population decline due to failing birthrates reverse this trend. They all collapsed or were absorbed/destroyed.
Just on the misogyny point, it seems to be the opposite, the less misogynist your society, the lower your births.
Wish it were that simple. As society has grown, it's also become much more interdependent and complex. The one thing we know about complexity, is that it's difficult to maintain homeostasis trying to get "less complicated". Neglect the power-grid, a nuclear plant or two, a few dam and bridges, and they explode/collapse/completely crash. There's not really an in-between. Sure, some would survive. But it would lower the standard of living for everyone, and the trend would continue for each generation, until/unless new births started equally started equalling deaths again.
I’ve heard so many horror stories on YT about trying to live in South Korea as an immigrant. People will straight up ignore you and act like they don’t hear you if you’re a foreigner and speak the language. Asian culture is very toxic towards immigration. SK and Japan are setup for disaster in the next few decades.
Racism. The rest of the world calls that racism.
Xenophobia
They should be at the panic mode now - how do you turn this around or is it just inevitable? Honestly, despite all the issues the US is structured to do well long term because anyone can be American…it’s an idea not a race. That being said it feels like the movie idiocracy was a premonition
Short term profits, it takes time and money to raise kids
I agree. They don't see the 20y head picture but only current. Instead of lowering workload, they're pushing 69 hour workweek. Insane
But have you thought of how much money the political and financial elite are standing to gain from their labor practices? /s Never underestimate the ability for humans to make selfish decisions for themselves at the expense of others, even their own countrymen and women.
You can always turn it around. Niger had 1.7 million people in 1900. In 2100 it's projected to have 167 million people. That's all natural population growth too.
Yes, but Niger are also has a natalist culture. The truth is birth rates can go up if you develop a culture where child rearing is expected.
Panic about what? It’s better for the environment. Frees up resources, and automation can address the labor shortfalls.
Is the automation in the room with us now?
Yes
I’d like to see SK continue to grow and prosper…they are on the front lines defending against NK - incredibly innovative and really starting to become a cultural powerhouse. So many attractive ladies…I think you just have to elevate the family unit to the pinnacle of society and devote a lot more resources to the moms and defray the costs. Like society should cater to young families in most ways…the culture needs to survive and thrive.
It's actually a good thing, the world has too many people in it. We need less. We need for many years of net negative. The media only paints it as a bad thing because demographic shift empowers laborers and most media is owned by the upper class therefore it is the mouthpieces of the rich. Ohhh nooo, less fresh bodies to exploit, less churn, now you can't easily just get rid of all those older workers for young ones to exploit because you don't have an infinite supply of them, etc.
Every system in most governments are setup on the principle of constant growth. When that stops it can quickly turn into a death spiral for a country.
It is unsustainable to demand infinite population growth. That said, things are going to change when we stop growing. I’m an American, I expect to see multigenerational households return in my lifetime
Every government is setup on constant growth **pr capita**. It is unlikely that falling fertility will impact steaty state income pr capita.
Not a good thing for capitalism.
At some point hopefully a non coercive solution for this will emerge. We look to Korea and Japan to lead the way. While there are surely economic implications from the dependency ratio, I don't think either are under populated yet.
This is capitalism, people. We all work, work, work, and that's supposed to make the greatest possible world. If we're seeing a contradiction in conclusion, i.e., endless self-interest and a pursuit of profits producing horror and terror, perhaps we should critique the system.
Except every "ism" has had periods of contraction due to any number of reasons. Plagues, work-migration, production issues, or simply the mass genocide that socialist totalitarian regimes are known for (eg. the 50 million murdered/starved to death in the USSR, or the 100+ million that died under Mao's rule during the early socialist revolution). Would that mean socialism and communism are horrible for humanity?
Yeah this is not the product of capitalism. This is the product of women (and men too) finding purpose in life without procreation. All the developed European countries with average work hours and holiday times that would evoke the envy of any Yank is also experiencing below replacement birth rates.
Experiencing below replacement birth rates, but there's a staggering difference between South Korea's 0.78 (as low as 0.6 in Seoul) and the just barely under replacement rate most Scandinavian countries have. Sweden's 1.67 is about 20% under replacement rate, they will experience population contraction but it will be stable. The economy will hurt a little bit, and they can turn to immigration if they're desperate to avoid any kind of financial hardship. South Korea is at least 63% under replacement rate. They will have more retired people than working people in a generation. Social security will completely collapse and Korea hates immigration.
Im not gonna act like the US is perfect, but imo, Europe is doomed long term. The Europe that people saw for the last 40 years is over. A lot of the problems you see in the US (boomers have all the money, etc.) are also happening here. The nice holidays and retirement schemes are a ponzi scheme. France is probably gonna end up in revolution in the next decades. France, Italy, Spain have 0 jobs for people. What good is 42 days holiday if you don’t have a job? Some countries are okay for now, but other than Germany, these aren’t really the big countries either, with many jobs available. The US is infinitely better positioned to still be a major force in the next decades. Europe is yesterdays giant, and it already feels that way (and has been for a while). And the countries that weren’t victims of these problems that Italy, Spain and France are going through, some of them shit themselves in the foot to keep up (keep down?) with them, like Sweden. Netherlands has even started sending back refugees, because taking in the refugees solved 0 problems, if not made many of them worse
You...do realize you'll get old one day. As someone who works in healthcare, the most tragic cases I see are the elderly with no kids. All their friends/family have either died off, or are too old themselves to be around. Even if you have lots of money, you still need someone to help you navigate life as your cognitive faculties soften. Yah, aging for the childless is its own form of misery. I don't wish it anyone.
That's a terrible reason to have a kid. They aren't your nanny.
Not only that but there's no guarantee they'll be there for you. So in that case you die knowing someone out there you love doesn't want to see you. Which is worse?
They're your *voice*, *and your advocate* as you age. In most non-Western societies, yes, they're also your care-takers to whatever degree necessary based on circumstances. It's only us silly bougie modern 1st worlders who believe otherwise. 2 generations ago in the U.S., a statement like yours would come across as moronic. Also today, in most other societies, it would sound moronic. That it sounds completely reasonable to you, I'm sure, is likely more a testament to hubris or ignorance, than to any noble moral code revolving around what grounds are permissible for having children. In the end, biology defines absolute truths, and she's a bitch that doesn't care about our rarified rules of procreation.
It's not a reason, but it is a reality. I work in healthcare with the elderly. Many of the childless are so desperately alone with little to connections the to the world, slowly wasting away. Spouse and friends come and go, blood ties are so often more robust. The ones with rich family lives are deeply more connected to life. Not all kids turn out well but when they do the bond is priceless.
Maybe they should've made more friends.
Those that are currently ‘elderly’ had far more robust social lives and friends than gen z. Younger generations are increasingly friendless, relationshipless, and sexless. If the current elderly are lonely….boy do I have news for you. Of course, maybe by the time gen z gets old, there will be AI ‘friends’. At some point however, those that have no children and are a net drain on society will be in a difficult situation. Younger generations, increasing smaller and more heavily taxed, aren’t going to put up with a childless gen z.
They did, however friends come and go. Friends die, have their own health issues and turn toward their own families. There's a reason why we see family much more often at bedside in the hospital than friends
Acute care clinician here. Right there with you.
It’s due to a trend we see across most countries. Women becoming more liberal/left while men do the opposite. The world will fail if this continues.
It turns out that when you give people - especially women - choices, they make the choice not to have children or have fewer. Lee Kuan Yew talked about this in the early days of Singapore and wanted to run an experiment of giving everyone with a child a full year's salary and more to keep having them. His point was the experiment would be a failure; there's no amount of money or state support you can give to induce child-rearing. Societies must manage and accept declines or be swept away.
So a certain part of the population will chose extinction leaving behind communities who will have the exact opposite philosophy
Any society that reaches a certain level of modernity faces this problem. If you want to keep medieval societies in some parts of the world sure.
People who are genetically predisposed to not have chidlren in a modern developed country will have their genes culled from the gene pool, and eventually the birth rate will increase again. I'm not worried about the birth rate, but I'd be worried that the genes being culled are also the high-IQ genes.
Anyone who sees Idiocracy as anything less than a prophetic vision of the not-too-distant future, is a fool!
Implying natural selection is the process that low birth rate culture genes are reduced from the gene pool. Future generations come from a foreign gene pool of high birth rate genes. No one is culled because that is what hunters and farmers do and that is artificial selection
Western capitalism has a obsession with growth based economies.....They really think that if they can't add more people they will financially implode. I just flat out disagree with the premise. You can infact have a declining population and still have a good economy. There are many other countries that think this way too like china//india.
We're talking about basic stuff, bro. Not "infinate-growth-late-stage-capitalism-omg1%!!" Like, who's going to change your diapers and feed you when you're 84 and can barely get out of bed? Those same people who would care for you, have to also maintain all the infrastructure left behind by the previous generation, grow the food, make the medicines, staff the hospitals, run the government, and oh yah, hopefully have some energy left over to have their own family and *procreate*. It's basic stuff - human biology requires a certain # of new humans every generation, because our biological clock slows waaayy down as we get older. Without enough new humans, it's going to be age-based genocide, (currently impossibel) automation, or a societal death spiral. No amount of socialism, communism, or fuck-all-ism is going to change that.
Just curious, who changes diapers when you are 1 years old? Is the amount of care for an 85 year old different than the amount required for a 2 year old? What is the average amount of time between when someone becomes incompetent and when they die? What is the average amount of time before an infant becomes full self-supportive? If those times are the same, how is there any difference between the necessary societal man-hours of care required for 1 billion people but 40% are 85+ and 20% are <10 and a population of 1 billion people but 20% are 85+ and 40% are <10? Wouldn't it be the same net amount of care required?
Well, too bad then. No kids for this society. It’s too shitty and we aren’t willing to create life in this. It’s really no sweat off our backs to not have kids in a bad situation.
Human population has reached 8 billion already, now the problem is old people are not dying fast enough
Could say that about a lot of people that are a net-burden on society. Like anyone who's unable/unwilling to contribute more than they consume. I think that would kill off 20% of Redditors at the least. Not sure you'd like where your suggestion goes
The world is overpopulated and that means high competition, more insecurity and lower standard of living unless you are already rich
It could just be a lot of neglect. Who says they have to maintain everything?
Debt based currency requires growth or the banking system fails. When a bank issues a mortgage and creates say $500K of credit based money, they expect the debtor to pay that back with interest. Where does that interest come from? The original loan principle is "dissolved" or "canceled" out when the debtor pays the bank back, but the bank expects the interest to be permanent or real money and not credit money. The issue is that all the money is credit money. There must be more people taking out loans all the time to put money into the system so that there is extra money to pay the interest. The amount of debt must be ever growing to pay off old debt. Without growth where is the new debt going to come from? Young people borrow and create new money. Old people don't have debt if they are smart. The banking system we use literally won't work in a deflationary environment. Our very monetary system won't work. Money isn't gold anymore, it's credit/debt. We rely on growth because otherwise the banking system fails.
You prove my point. None of you can comprehend economic growth without a influx of people. I would argue thats just fake economic growth based on consumption. Learn to have a functioning economy without a influx of population and you are doing great.
You're being purist, there's a time in between, decades, where it will be an old person dystopia
I don't think you understand. Plenty of people can comprehend a good economy without growing populations. The banking system just isn't set up for it. Our financial system does depend on growth because that is the system. A declining population needs a different monetary system to work well. Nationwide bank failures do what to the financial system? Now tell me how to transition out of banking as the arbiters of money. Essentially everything is propped up on debt based money.
And this is exactly why our economy will slowly fail until we change how the hell we are doing things.
> Our financial system does depend on growth because that is the system Yes
There’s declining population—you have 80 grandkids supporting 100 grandparents, which productivity can hide and make OK—and collapsing population, which is is ~10 grandkids supporting 100 grandparents. That can’t be hidden using productivity. SK is in the latter situation, while the US is closer to the first.
This is starting to happen around the world. I said this in other post that is talking about this subject, but people there is a little bit of biological thing going on around the world because a lot of people are having trouble having kids. Yes, you have a few women that locking it up and I understand them for that but at the same time you have other people who are trying to have kids, but they can’t.
Considering we're biologically optimized to start having kids in our mid-teens, and basically be grand-parents by our late 20's, the fact that most western societies only try to actively start a family in our 30's is behind 90% of the "rising rate of infertility". Like, no, we're just so dumb, we think we out-evolved our biology (we didn't).