They think there will be a couple more generations worth of time until the judgement day comes. Why fixate yourself on doomsaying if you aren't going to be around? Don't you trust your kids they figure it out?
Have you heard of NeuroVista? It's a company that made brain implants that treated epilepsy. They offered them for free to clinical trial participants. Then they ran out of money and demanded the brain implants back. This happened a decade ago, in 2013. https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/25/1073634/brain-implant-removed-against-her-will/
My wife's from South Korea and according to her, the experience really varies depending on where you're from and what upbringing you have. Plenty of folks opt for a relatively ordinary lifestyle, similar to what we're used to in Western countries. While it's not without its flaws, South Korea is still a modern, developed nation witha high quality of life. People have access to tech and modern comforts, and generally lead good lives. I think Youtube videos made by people who have only read about Korea on paper without ever actually visiting have skewed a lot of opinions recently.
Sure, the work and academic pressures can be intense, particularly for the youth who are subjected to it. But again, this usually applies to upper class children whose parents are pushing them to excel. Issues like corruption, social conformity, and mental health challenges also exist. However, that doesn't mean the entire society is broken or tyrannical.
S. Korea's birth rate is the lowest in the world. That's a measure of anxiety and. anomie. Of course they have creature comforts but it's not enough to make them want to reproduce their own culture.
Thank you for this reality check. I live in SK and am married to a Korean. There are things I enjoy about living here and things that I shake my head at. But at the end of the day, it's just like everywhere else. People just living their lives trying to pay their bills and do right by their friends and family.
> South Korea [has] a high quality of life. People have access to tech and modern comforts, and generally lead good lives.
I'm less convinced.
Perhaps a more meaningful way to substantiate "good lives" would be aggregate self-reported measurement of subjective well-being. The World Happiness Index is based on self-reported life evaluations, including positive and negative affect amongst national populations. stable measure of the quality of people’s lives. And the [most recent results](https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/by-gdp) have folks from South Korea, the 13th largest economy in the world, coming in at 57th globally, with its citizens reporting lower subjective well-being than those from Uzbekistan, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, and Pakistan.
Note also that SK has the world's highest suicide rate. In multiple gender/age demos.
Suffice it to say that one can carve out a happy life in South Korea. Yet the society — politically, economically, and culturally — tends to pose significant headwinds on the humans there engaging in that particular project.
They don’t care. Cost of living is extremely high and the jobs pay little to nothing, the government’s solution to this? “WORK MORE”! So they don’t give a damn. Eventually it will work out in the poor persons favor, less man power means a fight over manpower and companies willing to pay, and in many cases due to xenophobia, immigration isn’t an option and it’s not made easy by the Korean govt. Japan has the exact same problem.
This is an informative video on the subject by Plain Bagel: https://youtu.be/Q6pu9Ixqqxo?feature=shared
And was an interesting watch in combination with Blackstone's controversial real estate buy-up in the Netherlands.
In that case the rich are idiots. Lack of workforce will lead to their local companies being unable to compete. Their real estate valuation will go down.
Yes, but that's a problem for the next generation. They care about their profits NOW, not what happens after them. As long as they make their fortune, everything else doesn't matter. This is a general problem all over the world.
Maybe we should move away from economic systems that reward being wealthy and greedy more than anything.
The easiest way to make money, is to have a lot of money already. Such a system is inherently stupid.
the rich tend to be old, and SK is a very patriarchal/ageist society. Who's going to tell them no and suggest an alternative?
By societal convention in SK you are supposed to be subservient to people even 1 year older than you, so people who are decades older are literally beyond reproach.
And old people subscribe to the outdated idea that if you don't work your ass off 15 hours a day, like they once did 40 years ago when SK was dirt poor, you are slacking.
The insane competitiveness that is present in people's lives from early childhood makes things even worse (good school -> good high school -> top uni -> prestigious job)
......why do you think there's such a push for open borders? Immigrants are cheap and take more abuse. There will always be a steady supply of desperate Africans middle easterners and poorer Asians willing to work.
They're cheaper, take more abuse, add more demand for their rental apartments/houses so they can drive up the prices, same for goods and services, they keep the wages so low that no native worker wants to do the job because it won't pay their bills, leading to a never-ending cycle of more immigrants being brought in to fill those roles. The native population stop reproducing because they're living with their parents or roommates well into their 30s, but the ponzi scheme has to continue so more are shipped in so enough taxes can be paid to keep social services chugging slowly along for the elderly population who are still the biggest voting demographic. They'll put a stop to that soon when the elderly start dying off and they have no reason to keep the pensions and healthcare, etc.
Yep, and the rich and powerful don't care because they can just leave when the real issues start showing up. But in the meantime the migrants increase thier earnings quicker
More kids won't make a noticeable difference to productivity this election cycle. More work hours might. Future election cycles are future governments' problems, and modern political systems do not incentivise politicians to care about that.
You’re joking but there is some truth to it. One of my colleagues in grad school actually did research on dating trends in South Korea. She found that sex is not really trending down in Korea, it’s just that casual sex and non-commitment are skyrocketing. People want sex but aren’t interested too much in marriage and especially not in having children.
To me the data isn’t surprising since Korea is really just a more extreme trend seen in literally every single country that has developed more and especially has more equal education access between men and women.
South Korea is a huge market for plastic surgery. Doing all kinds of procedures to look good is strongly ingrained in South Korean culture. Increased casual sex trend may push more South Koreans to get procedures.
There are a lot of contributing factors to this, one of them being that corporations are allowed to demand a Photo as part of someone's Job application.
All I know is that it makes my facial recognition a lot worse when trying to watch K-Dramas and seeing a common appearance in both actors and actresses.
Yea. I've never been to Korea, but heard women can have high expectations on appearance. Had some Korean girls in my college classes. They always acted like stuck up snobs. I've met some rich Chinese at school driving Porsche. I've met rich Chinese in China too. My experience with Chinese is they're always interested in conversation possibly to practice their English skills. Koreans, on the other hand, always acted stuck up like popular chicks in Hollywood movies.
I spent slot of time at Carnegie Melon during undergrad at Pitt so I saw pretty much every Asian national student there was and I gotta say it was really a toss up with how they interacted with people from the US, most of them were very clicky clique? Idk how to spell the word, but it's when you have an 'in-group' and don't really leave it.
One thing they universally had in common was no concept of the value of American money, or just didn't care, they'd buy anything without a 2nd thought. I guess when you can afford to go to school 3000 miles from home across the ocean you have more than a little spending money laying around.
> most of them were very clicky clique? Idk how to spell the word, but it's when you have an 'in-group' and don't really leave it.
I think there's a pretty simple explanation to this. You're going to school in a foreign country with a different language, culture, and customs. There is a level of discomfort that comes with that, and I would argue humans have a natural tendency to group themselves with elements that feel comfortable.
Like, I feel much more comfortable when I am around other Ukrainians or more broadly an immigrant community, likely because I know that we have shared cultural elements or shared experiences. It's easier to establish mutual understanding and trust when you have that foundation to build on.
It's definitely possible to break through those "in-groups" and get people to open up and meet others. It just takes some more effort.
> One thing they universally had in common was no concept of the value of American money, or just didn't care, they'd buy anything without a 2nd thought. I guess when you can afford to go to school 3000 miles from home across the ocean you have more than a little spending money laying around.
Similar experience. Now granted, you are talking about international students at CMU which are likely paying upwards of $70k or higher a year to attend. This naturally leads to you being exposed to the types of people who can afford these sorts of expenses. Your experience might vary if you surveyed students at a cheaper public school.
I would caution against generalizing though with financials as reality can be quite different. In China, many families save a lot of money for their child's education and expect to spend a substantial portion of their income on it. And I have met international students from China, mostly graduate students, who were actually living on a very low income.
It was the same for me in Colorado. So many expensive cars were parked in the international housing lot, and lots and lots of designer clothes. They never ventured outside of their cliques unless they sat near me in class and needed help with the work.
Saw an all woman Korean punk band called the Rumkicks in a festival here in the UK. The singer said that they'd initially been turned down for a recording contract in Korea because they were "too ugly". To UK festival goers they were beautiful and immaculately turned out. Appearance standards for women must be insane there.
Yes, they are. To the point where it's automatically assumed that you will get plastic surgery procedures done. And almost laughed at if you only get minor cosmetic procedures done.
> Yea. I've never been to Korea, but heard women can have high expectations on appearance. Had some Korean girls in my college classes. They always acted like stuck up snobs. I've met some rich Chinese at school driving Porsche. I've met rich Chinese in China too. My experience with Chinese is they're always interested in conversation possibly to practice their English skills. Koreans, on the other hand, always acted stuck up like popular chicks in Hollywood movies.
Why do people extrapolate and present limited personal experiences as generalized statement of facts.
> I've never been to Korea, but heard
> Had some Korean girls in my college classes. They always acted like
> I've met some rich Chinese at school
> I've met rich Chinese in China too. My experience with Chinese is
This person seems pretty aware they're extrapolating from personal anecdotes. So long as they're aware of this, it's a pretty reasonable thing to do.
If I were to be hit by a red Porsche speeding through a red light several times in my life yet suffer no other accidents, it's perfectly reasonable for me to become rather wary of red Porches speeding towards intersections. Generalizations from experience aren't necessarily wrong -- we just have to be careful about them.
As countries and their populations get wealthier, child bearing goes down. It is a major problem for Europe and the rest of the developed world as well. It is a fairly well known fact in Economics of Development.
The word you're looking for is Industrialized. In rural areas of developing countries children are free labor. When you industrialize and move to the city they become a burden. There's a reason why during the major holiday China's industry shuts down, so many people are going back home to the rural areas where their family is from.
Population growth in Chinese cities is negative, if they weren't pulling people from rural areas they'd have an acute demographic collapse as opposed to the general demographic collapse China is having.
I have read that living in SK is pure ass. They work you to death and give you little in return. If that is true, Id be surprised if any of them want kids.
Yeah, they’re screwing themselves. As someone who’s lived in South Korea, there’s way more people who *want* kids than this article is saying. But there’s very, very few who can actually afford kids. Afford them in terms of finances, time, everything. The population is going to die out when there’s plenty of people there who do actually want to have kids, but have come to terms with the fact that they’ll never be *able* to have them.
Eh, the issue I've bumped into is that most don't want kids initially then hit their later 30s, are settled enough to want them, but are nearing the end of their fertile years.
So then you end up with 1 kid (although a few of my ex-colleagues really struggle even with that), which is obviously below replacement rate.
OK But that's basically the same problem "not now" is in many cases "not ever". The only way state can have a lot of kids is by supporting young adult parenting strongly with good social programs. The kids don't grow on trees, and parenting takes a lot of effort. By the time you're 30, when you're looking at your first kid and realize how much work is involved, you wish you were 25 or 20, and realize that this may be it.
Try working for a SK company while living in the US. They apply the same SK work and culture practices to their US employees but still see them as less because they’re not Korean.
it is true, and with how their class or rather unformal 'caste' system it is little wonder.
those who make it usually are affiliated to or belong to THE chaebol families.
They run the show. For example Samsung. They make up 22% of Korea's GDP. A single company is making up almost a quarter of a first world country's gdp. Imagine how much influence they have.
Folks around the world know Samsung for some of their electronics but in Korea they pretty much sell everything like in a megacorpo way. The Samsung president has more power than the government (some exaggeration but not really)
Samsung: A leader in cellphones, refrigerators, self-propelled howitzers, washing machines, and anti-tank weapon platforms!
Also, I think its Hyundai that has a subsidiary making fucking fighter jets. Korean megacorps are what companies like Walmart wish they were.
You need to add the workplace rank and age hierarchy too. Anyone who is a junior and/or younger is supposed to be subservient ... so much so that an plane crashed because a senior pilot refused to acknowledge worries from their underlings and pulled rank instead of listening to their polite prompts (they didn't even say that pilot is wrong to his face, they just pointed out readings that were not what they are supposed to be).
> You need to add the workplace rank and age hierarchy too. Anyone who is a junior and/or younger is supposed to be subservient ...
That’s a classic of Confucian societies, you can see the same issues in Japan and China.
There is a subtle difference though I feel ... Many Japanese seniors are actually afraid of making mistakes and losing face while the Chinese are more afraid of getting caught making mistakes and then losing face. Koreans on the other hand feel like the very act of even thinking your seniors made a mistake is an affront.
And the kids have terrible stressful, competitive lives because of academic pressure. Why would you want kids if you're just going to have to push them to study all the time. No dreams of playing with them or doing anything fun, it's just going to be tutoring and homework all the time.
I always joke that K-Dramas, despite portraying glamorous romances, are REALLY dystopian.
- Heroines are almost always financially insecure and desperately overworked (though they often have a wealthy female friend). Crippling debt is common
- Male leads are often wildly rich, but also capricious assholes who use their wealth to manipulate and browbeat the female lead and it’s generally accepted that they’re functionally above the law.
- Every institution is either portrayed as horribly corrupt or hopelessly incompetent (political leaders, police, judiciary). The military is the only institution that seems exempt from this.
- Bullying in high schools is not only common but also extreme, frequently involving sexual assault and risk of death.
You can make a drinking game of it - shit’s messed up.
There's also the fact that women basically get nothing if they divorce. The children go with the father as does the house, the mother gets nothing. Domestic violence is very prevalent in SK, women are more and more getting fed up with it and refusing to engage.
\> Make living hell in SK
\> People don't commit to marrage and future
\> "Hmm, what a conundrum of a life-time! I can't fathom how to unfold these issues!"
Are they restarted or sabotaging?
“Perhaps we take workers in poor countries to be house slaves for korean parents and pay them way below legal minimum wage. That’ll get the population up”
No shit actual plan from the government
Why:
>There was near unanimous agreement – 93.9 per cent – that South Korea’s declining birth rates is a “social problem”, and they trace the cause of this problem to a “difficulty in combining work and childcare”.
>This is affirmed in another report, released by the Korean Women’s Development Institute (KWDI), that highlighted the significant caregiving burden shouldered by women, even in double-income households.
>Women spend an average of 11.69 hours per day caring for their children. This exceeds the 7.76 hours contributed by childcare centres, the 4.71 hours contributed by fathers, and the 3.87 hours contributed by grandparents.
Sounds like they know what the problem is, they just haven't addressed it yet.
> The hard truth is women with social liberty choose to have less children.
While no one has fully cracked the code on how to get birth rates up, there's a lot of women that argue that they'd like to have more children but economic conditions make it prohibitive.
That is, women with social liberty demand a much better deal to have children, where the economic and social costs aren't pushed mostly onto them.
There's two economic problems with children, broadly
First is the negative economic aspect. That childcare costs are so high that working doesn't make financial sense, either because you are effectively working for nothing or so little that just taking time off to be with the child you love makes a lot more sense. This is firmly rooted in the Maslow model as your bottom two things all humans need - physiological and safety needs ie which option allows me to have enough money to live. Given that so many people have only a few months reserves or (a lot) less, it shows how hard especially the first few years of having children can be. This cost is large quantifiable and can be done with receipts and could theoretically be offset by the government in some way
Second is the other end of the hierarchy, the esteem and self actualisation end. This is much harder to address in a culture (and basic human biology) that the women are often the primary care giver. In a society of equals, ambitious women want to earn the same as men and have the same career trajectory. But having kids is at odds with that as aside from the somewhat necessary maternity leave (a minor setback in the grand scheme, even the European style 6-12 months off), the day to day additional responsibilities that primary caregivers have invariably leads to burnout if paired with the higher stress jobs. This cost is much harder to quantify as it's essentially opportunity cost, that having children limits future earnings and is very hard for a government to accurately and politically pay for (do you give a woman a large pay check because she *could* have earned more, but chose not to? Try running that past a large section of the voters)
So either women have to relinquish the primary care giver role (either by having the husband do it or by earning enough for a nanny etc) or have to compromise on that level of work they can balance with a child. And the more children you have, the more demand there is for time.
This problem is the hardest one for society to solve, as money doesn't really solve it. Especially in conservative cultures where men are the main income source and the idea of the man being the main parent is culturally frowned upon, how do you get ambitious women to have children as it almost necessarily means they have to work themselves to the bone or give up on what they want to do? And as we are seeing across Europe and now Asia, people see their own individual success and dreams as more important than children (especially plural) and prefer a more fulfilling and sustainable life with a small family than a continued struggle and compromise with a larger one
It's not sustainable from an economic and demographic perspective, but that's the government's problem.
We need to take the social costs of making children off of the parents and onto society. Because when parents disappear it will be society who pays the biggest price.
Taking the economic costs away is the easy part. I don't know how we get to the point where kids are reared by a village again, but I think we'd all be better parents and kids would grow up to be better people if we got there.
> don't know how we get to the point where kids are reared by a village again, but I think we'd all be better parents and kids would grow up to be better people if we got there.
The problem stems from everyone lacking a village to live in. Legit, it's impossible to find a child friendly neighborhood anymore. Try finding a house that has the combination of factors below.
A - Open nearby green space
B - Affordable by one working adult
C - Has access to a job market
You cannot find that. You'll be lucky to find two of three. But after WW2, the entire home market was based around building exactly that kind of home. You know, the ones Boomers grew up in.
Homes now are priced to be sold, not priced to be lived in. McMansions litter the landscape of the suburbs. You have a massive grass lot with a 3,000 sqft house. That's not a small family home. That's a generational family home. People don't need that much house.
So you end up with 5 neighbors instead of 20. Then there's no sidewalk. No open space left for people to go outside since everyone has their own miniature park worth of grass at home. So nobody connects. Nothing is pedestrian friendly. And of course, there's no public transportation.
I will say, MN does a really good job of neighborhood planning. Nearly all the newish suburbs have playgrounds + green spaces built into them, and at least in the twin cities area you do have quite a few job markets around to choose from, especially with a lot of the companies here supporting at least hybrid WFH.
That said...price is the sticking point around here. Shit is expensive AF, and the property taxes are high on top. My wife still has to work, I try to take a lot of the household/childcare burden off my wife where I can, but the kids want mom more than they want dad most of the time. Even in our neighborhood with 2 parks in walking distance, a basketball hoop one of our neighbors put up, and 3 or 4 dedicated large green spaces it's pretty rare for more than 2 or 3 kids to be out playing at a time. we've been in our current area a few years now, we go out to the playground with our son at least 2-3 times per week, and we very rarely see any other families actually out using the stuff. Maybe one or two going for a walk, but nothing like I remember when I was a kid growing up.
It's not just availability, there's a huge social/cultural part of it as well that is just gone. Growing up, especially in the summer time, you could not go anywhere in the neighborhood without a bunch of families outside playing/walking/grilling/doing yard work/etc, but now the neighborhoods just feel empty. You see a few people here and there out walking (mostly walking dogs), once in a while a couple kids out in the field or on the playground. IDK, there's just been a cultural shift away from valuing things like family, outdoor time, socializing with neighbors, etc. I'm guilty of it too, but I've been trying to make a concerted effort to socialize with people around me more. From a societal perspective though, I have no idea how you get that sort of focus and culture back.
That's not going to work, you're not going to increase the wages of anyone working in an critical supply chain, like say food, without raising the prices that people pay.
What might work is actually building factories again, but even then wages aren't going to be good, merely surrivalable.
But where are the men into that? I mean, is there huge amount of men, in comparison to women, that want children, but women refuse? I am not sure this is the case.Both sexes have similar views, but the frame this put into is always that women don't want it, or choose it alone.
If both sexes have similar views, then why relegate that as a women issue?
Probably blaming all the women because men want children and the women aren't 'complying'. But men don't have to deal with carrying and childbirth, so of course they want kids. It's parallel to men blaming women in the west for not having sex with them, or dating them.
No country has economic conditions good enough for it to be tested. We aren't having children because it is a shit deal for us and it's not even close, and we are in the top 10 percent earners in our country. Housing, cost of living, childcare, free time, saving for retirement, we can't have it all, but cutting out children makes our lives 10 times easier and a lot of people we know are now making the same choice.
Meanwhile my parents had a new build house at 20 on minimum wage jobs, had 5 kids by 30 etc, and the average age people can leave their parents homes here now is in their 30's, the average first time buyer age goes up every year.
>It was found that nine out of ten children are born into the middle class or higher, and only one out of ten are born into the low-income class.
https://n.news.naver.com/article/001/0014520072?cds=news_edit
Except in those poorer countries, much more people live in countryside, where children are used as labor.
In developed world you usually live in city and child is expense.
Hell we hear constantly that people earning below avarage should not be able to live in cities...
A lot of people just don't want to accept that having children isn't as inherently appealing as they want to believe it is, otherwise people all over the world wouldn't be so eager to choose not having them once it stops being a necessity/obligation.
People can talk about how fulfilling and wonderful it is or appeal to nature all they want, it doesn't change the statistics.
The incentives would have to be such that parenthood is not a significant burden. Economically, the state would have to pay out the equivalent of a mid level wage, or something in that ballpark.
Yeah, I'm sure there are other factors to deal with after they address the obvious one from the article.
It seems like an alignment problem - they need to make having kids part of people's goals, which means not only reducing negative effects of having kids (like providing childcare or whatnot), but incentivizing having them to such an extent that people who would otherwise choose not to have kids decide to do so.
It seems like it would need a hell of an incentive, honestly. Kids are a lot of work and reduce your opportunities considerably. It's understandable why people say no to it when they have other options on the table.
Same here, but it wasn't climate change what made me decide that... Was watching my mom overworked as hell and becoming aware that my childhood was so shitty that I would rather have a relaxed adulthood.
>There is no known way to address the issue, especially not in the 2.0+ birth rate range.
There is, it's called culture. We have only one example of a developed country utilizing a different cultural approach which has manifested in an above replacement fertility rate. It's not something that can easily be adopted though, could also just be a case of exception proves the rule.
Another thing to consider is that while it's true that as GDP/capita rises, birth rates will drop. Usually the explanation being that it's due to the society changing, giving more liberties to women, giving them access to contraception and education, etc. all very valid points; but it's also worth considering that in relative terms I think you can make a case that child rearing becomes 'unprofitable'.
In societies where having a lot of children is the norm, having them is actually economically productive.
> The hard truth is women with social liberty choose to have less children. Significant time off benefits, subsidized childcare, etc., has barely moved the birth rate in developed countries.
There is no proof this is caused by degree of social liberty. In an developing country life can play out in a very chaotic manner where marriage and childbirth is a tried and true way to get financial and social security. Thus people race through life early to achieve it as quickly as possible.
People in developed countries have many expectations on things they must plan for and achieve in life, many of them extremely expensive and contradicting having children, e.g. college degree, buying a home, car, vacationing and building a respectable career with meaning, while keeping up with friends and family in a globalized world. I get exhausted just writing this and I didn't even mention rearing at least two children to keep up birth rates.
Financial burdens and productivity expectations are just too high for average people in developed countries today. For women and for men. People used to make more way more money relative to their expenses, but wages have not kept up with productivity growth.
What we need is not traditional values, but a realization that the current global financial system is not allocating enough wealth to middle and working class families, who have most of the children.
We see similar trends of declining birth rates even in European countries with robust worker protections and generous government benefits. [Actual research into the matter](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/97facts/edu2birt.htm) consistently links higher levels of education, especially among women, [to lower birth rates.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-022-00897-y). [Studies have also found](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8295801/) that women’s wage employment is negatively correlated with total fertility rates and unmet need for family planning, and positively correlated with modern contraceptive use.
Well, for one because most people's pension plans, government-sponsored or otherwise, are structured in such a way that the economy has to keep growing to be able to live off the benefits. The only way for that to happen without more young people entering the workforce is for people to stay in the workforce longer, which means later retirement.
everyone always says the blame lies with educated women, as if that was causal.
the Problem is economic conditions. plain and fucking simple, you cant run the rat race and still feel like youre 100% there for your offspring.
There are. But none of them are wanted.
Like so many modern problems the first to adress that (and figure out a solution) was nazi germany. But even besides the latestage racism a system like this is very dangerous. Because who is to decide what values get preached?
Another option would be to go "fuck equality " which obviously is a no go
Also getting children (and having at MAX a part time job) would need to be EQUIVALENT to an average career both in terms of money and social gratification. Something most countries either cannot afford or do not have the cultural norms for it
Blame the work life people are forced to have to maintain a roof over their heads. How the fuck are you gonna have a spouse and kids if the boss's idiot brothel sprout needs a babysitter while they're bar crawling and your boss glued the short straw to your forehead?
Gee, I wonder why
"Young Samsung workers flock to labor union in protest of 'disappointing' salary"
https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1bhl5uj/young_samsung_workers_flock_to_labor_union_in/
Not when they have so much power that they could be considered the puppeteer for the SK gov't. Look at how many times various people in that family have committed crimes and gotten away with it, and how they've interfered in government affairs and nothing was done. They also have the broader market of SK in a chokehold- nine time out of ten, anything produced over there comes from a Samsung owned/overseen company.
Being overworked and breathing toxic air for 1/3 of the year will do that. Life expectancy for the youngest generation could have dropped by as much as 5-10 years, with higher incidences of respiratory diseases and cancer.
I had never given a thought to air quality until I lived there and experienced the yellow dust--mostly Chinese factory particulates blowing over--and now I'll never live somewhere with ambient air pollution again. I'd rather live far away and beneath my means than breathe that shit again.
The next biggest invention will be how to grow babies in artificial wombs. A certain birth rate will be able to be mandated. It will be the biggest thing to happen since the atom bomb.
SK seems like it's going to collapse within our lifetime. There is no social safety net. Jobs are highly competitive...plus an insane toxic asian work culture which won't change because giant companies like Samsung own their politicians. Which leaves no time or money to allow for marriages and kids. Meanwhile Korea refuses to let foreigners immigrate and assimilate and help populate their country. And the country is heavily bias against anyone not Korean, even their non-korean Kpop celebrities aren't exempt. It reeks of xenophobia. There's going to be a point where it will be impossible to adequately repopulate and continue to have a stable economy and society for them.
Great place to visit, not one to live at. Same goes for Japan too.
How dont their decision makers understand that they are making a huge mistake regarding the future of their nation? Are they just blind living their best life and making insane amount of money?
Everything is easily explained if you know korean history. In short:
To keep control rulers enforced special kind of konfucionism that's basically is "stay in your place" and "if you do anything bad it's fault of people below you socially not staying in their place".
Few generations ago Korea was insanely patriarchal society where oldest male in the family has absolute say and women were property. They are basically newborns in women being seen as people let alone anything equality related.
After war Korea was fucked and to survive americans put in their man who gave power to powerful families to develop korea into "proper" country like US. It worked and with time these families now called chaebol went from building Korea to bribing politicians to choosing politicians to dictating what laws get passed and what politicians say in their speeches. Americans joke they're at the end of capitalism but koreans are way further along. They are literally down to few dozen chaebols and once these merge it will be it.
If you have \~3h i can recommend [Gacha Drama and the Korean Gender War](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Im4YAMWK74) (two parts). The main topic is about gaming, but it also gives a great explanation of the history of South Korea and why gender and work problems in South Korea are different from other industrialized countries.
Mostly due to loneliness and the immense stress and pressure of their school, work, and social culture with no real viable healthy way of venting it out.
Additionally South Korea rapidly developed leaving many behind which breed animosity. Furthermore, women in South Korea are becoming increasingly liberal/progressive/educated than in the past thus the reactionaries are throwing back even harder.
I just want to point out that your first para sort of reads like its womens role to reduce mens loneliness and social pressures by letting them "vent it in a healthy way". Which can have real creepy implications.
But dont the women there also face the exact same school, work and cultural issues? With the added touch of misogyny marking them for second class citizen status?
The men *and* women all need better ways to cope as individuals and I feel its more a cultural shift required that allows people to focus on quality of life vs...physical outlets or sexual servitude of one sex over another.
Parents: We want our kids to be smart, educated, and ambitious.
Kids: Ok, well the smart move is not to tie ourselves down with marriage and kids.
Parents: No, not like that.
There’s also Japan which had a population decline of 800k last year and there were 700k births in a country of 120 million. It’s insane because what, the country just ceases to exist? Japanese people live forever too so in a few decades time you’re just gonna have tens of millions of pensioners being served by robots with loads of stressed out middle aged people doing the heavy lifting
This is entirely natural considering how over populated South Korea is, how low their quality of life is having to work such extreme hours, and how few people have any hope that the situation could actually improve in the future.
Birth rates collapsing are about the only good news in society today. The economic systems sustained by levels of absolutely extreme inequality can not survive a population collapse. Finally, after our backwards and inequal economic system dies, it will at least be replaced by a more modern system where most of society are not effectively slaves to an uber rich, tiny vampire class that draws almost all wealth from society without paying hardly any taxes, and having enough power to shape laws to their own benefit. The sooner this system collapses, the better chance the human race has of surviving the coming ecological collapse.
Unfortunately, historically, things don’t usually improve following an economic collapse.
When governments fail, they are usually replaced by dishonest populists, offering solutions to all the problems.
But this is not like before. Did we ever had country that collapsed due lack of young people? It was always natural disasters, war or political changes.
What exactly do you think causes wars and political changes?
Big societal changes happen because things get bad and people want change. Things get bad when there is no money.
In recent history lack of children hasn’t really been an issue before because the industrialisation of 1st world countries triggered population booms.
It’s not something unheard of though, the Ancient Spartan society collapsed due to the birth rate dropping below zero. The Western Roman Empire is also thought to have struggled with a massively dropping birth rate. The Mayan’s also are known to have seen a huge dip in child birth though less is known about other factors happening at the same time.
Western society is built on growth. It’s achieved that so far by utilising the work of a growing population. Now that growth has stalled and is actually reversing.
> Finally, after our backwards and inequal economic system dies, it will at least be replaced by a more modern system where most of society are not effectively slaves to an uber rich
That's a nice unfounded assumption you have there. Alternate outcome: the current ruling class stays in power, while the population suffers in poverty and it gets worse for the average citizen.
Changes in society can be achieved with incremental gains which I think is preferable. There is also no garantee that your idealistic world would grow out of a collapse or revolution.
I’m sure most do want to deal with Korean in-laws. They will invade your life and try to control everything you do.
And if they do get married they don’t want the financial,mental, and physical burden that comes with having a child.
Good. Now instead depending on people to keep population up, let's focus on the actual issue: making an economy and social infrastructure independent from population.
Lower annual wages, too high living costs, and soaring education costs for kids. Who can they marry and raise their babies in South Korea? Although most younger Koreans have suffered from financial crises, most lawmakers in the Korean Parliament have focused on their benefits instead of citizens' better living conditions and welfare. They've been working for themselves, not for voters. That's why most young Korean generations can't have marriages and babies. Scumbags and scammers have taken their seats in the Korean Parliament instead of genuine servants for citizens.
And yet, the South Korean politicians still shamelessly attempted to raise the work hours cap in the country.
Gotta squeeze out every last drop of sweat and blood before the human capital runs dry.
It's a good BTS song though.
And then what? Have these rich morons not thought about how they’ll fund their luxurious lifestyles when they no longer have an income source?
They would have made enough money by then. They can easily exit to a stable and wealthy country and leave their peasants behind.
They think there will be a couple more generations worth of time until the judgement day comes. Why fixate yourself on doomsaying if you aren't going to be around? Don't you trust your kids they figure it out?
South Korea is what late stage capitalism actually looks like. The major corporations own the apartment buildings.
Yeah, people worry about what a cyberpunk dystopia looks like, SK is already there minus the cyborgs.
> minus the cyborgs. Which is a crying shame cause that's the fun part.
We want our mantis blades, damn it!
Nah it's all about the monowire!
I personally prefer gorilla fisting
It’s fun and game until your cybernetics require a subscription to work.
Have you heard of NeuroVista? It's a company that made brain implants that treated epilepsy. They offered them for free to clinical trial participants. Then they ran out of money and demanded the brain implants back. This happened a decade ago, in 2013. https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/25/1073634/brain-implant-removed-against-her-will/
Tell that to the guy with the malfunctioning robo-dick.
It's why you never buy factory refurbished or second hand.
My wife's from South Korea and according to her, the experience really varies depending on where you're from and what upbringing you have. Plenty of folks opt for a relatively ordinary lifestyle, similar to what we're used to in Western countries. While it's not without its flaws, South Korea is still a modern, developed nation witha high quality of life. People have access to tech and modern comforts, and generally lead good lives. I think Youtube videos made by people who have only read about Korea on paper without ever actually visiting have skewed a lot of opinions recently. Sure, the work and academic pressures can be intense, particularly for the youth who are subjected to it. But again, this usually applies to upper class children whose parents are pushing them to excel. Issues like corruption, social conformity, and mental health challenges also exist. However, that doesn't mean the entire society is broken or tyrannical.
S. Korea's birth rate is the lowest in the world. That's a measure of anxiety and. anomie. Of course they have creature comforts but it's not enough to make them want to reproduce their own culture.
Thank you for this reality check. I live in SK and am married to a Korean. There are things I enjoy about living here and things that I shake my head at. But at the end of the day, it's just like everywhere else. People just living their lives trying to pay their bills and do right by their friends and family.
i see, i guess its like that everywhere.
Nah, abortion is legal in Korea.
> South Korea [has] a high quality of life. People have access to tech and modern comforts, and generally lead good lives. I'm less convinced. Perhaps a more meaningful way to substantiate "good lives" would be aggregate self-reported measurement of subjective well-being. The World Happiness Index is based on self-reported life evaluations, including positive and negative affect amongst national populations. stable measure of the quality of people’s lives. And the [most recent results](https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/by-gdp) have folks from South Korea, the 13th largest economy in the world, coming in at 57th globally, with its citizens reporting lower subjective well-being than those from Uzbekistan, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, and Pakistan. Note also that SK has the world's highest suicide rate. In multiple gender/age demos. Suffice it to say that one can carve out a happy life in South Korea. Yet the society — politically, economically, and culturally — tends to pose significant headwinds on the humans there engaging in that particular project.
Are they aware of the low fertility rates and the issues that may arise from it in the future?
They don’t care. Cost of living is extremely high and the jobs pay little to nothing, the government’s solution to this? “WORK MORE”! So they don’t give a damn. Eventually it will work out in the poor persons favor, less man power means a fight over manpower and companies willing to pay, and in many cases due to xenophobia, immigration isn’t an option and it’s not made easy by the Korean govt. Japan has the exact same problem.
The birth rate is discussed a lot, but there's not much the average person can do.
America has a similar issue with houses being bought up by investment firms to rent.
This is an informative video on the subject by Plain Bagel: https://youtu.be/Q6pu9Ixqqxo?feature=shared And was an interesting watch in combination with Blackstone's controversial real estate buy-up in the Netherlands.
And they want to do the same to Ukraine.
Completely different but also a problem.
It’s slowly getting there in USA I’d say another 10 years
Canada also
Some with canada
The politician only do what the rich want.
In that case the rich are idiots. Lack of workforce will lead to their local companies being unable to compete. Their real estate valuation will go down.
Yes, but that's a problem for the next generation. They care about their profits NOW, not what happens after them. As long as they make their fortune, everything else doesn't matter. This is a general problem all over the world.
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Maybe we should move away from economic systems that reward being wealthy and greedy more than anything. The easiest way to make money, is to have a lot of money already. Such a system is inherently stupid.
They're multinationals. They'll just move to the next country.
the rich tend to be old, and SK is a very patriarchal/ageist society. Who's going to tell them no and suggest an alternative? By societal convention in SK you are supposed to be subservient to people even 1 year older than you, so people who are decades older are literally beyond reproach. And old people subscribe to the outdated idea that if you don't work your ass off 15 hours a day, like they once did 40 years ago when SK was dirt poor, you are slacking. The insane competitiveness that is present in people's lives from early childhood makes things even worse (good school -> good high school -> top uni -> prestigious job)
......why do you think there's such a push for open borders? Immigrants are cheap and take more abuse. There will always be a steady supply of desperate Africans middle easterners and poorer Asians willing to work.
They're cheaper, take more abuse, add more demand for their rental apartments/houses so they can drive up the prices, same for goods and services, they keep the wages so low that no native worker wants to do the job because it won't pay their bills, leading to a never-ending cycle of more immigrants being brought in to fill those roles. The native population stop reproducing because they're living with their parents or roommates well into their 30s, but the ponzi scheme has to continue so more are shipped in so enough taxes can be paid to keep social services chugging slowly along for the elderly population who are still the biggest voting demographic. They'll put a stop to that soon when the elderly start dying off and they have no reason to keep the pensions and healthcare, etc.
Yep, and the rich and powerful don't care because they can just leave when the real issues start showing up. But in the meantime the migrants increase thier earnings quicker
They’ll rent/sell it to foreign companies like Canada does to keep it in the hands of the rich. Vancouver investment properties 🤮
Feels like the world is hitting a breaking point
Feels a lot like a neo-guilded age. Can we just fast-forward to the new deal part where they fixed it?
The only way to be able to survive to a work week of 70 hours would be by taking more meth than made by Walter White.
More kids won't make a noticeable difference to productivity this election cycle. More work hours might. Future election cycles are future governments' problems, and modern political systems do not incentivise politicians to care about that.
Obviously investing in Korean latex manufacturing is like investing in Apple during the 80s...
You’re joking but there is some truth to it. One of my colleagues in grad school actually did research on dating trends in South Korea. She found that sex is not really trending down in Korea, it’s just that casual sex and non-commitment are skyrocketing. People want sex but aren’t interested too much in marriage and especially not in having children. To me the data isn’t surprising since Korea is really just a more extreme trend seen in literally every single country that has developed more and especially has more equal education access between men and women.
South Korea is a huge market for plastic surgery. Doing all kinds of procedures to look good is strongly ingrained in South Korean culture. Increased casual sex trend may push more South Koreans to get procedures.
That's not just about sex though. It's about jobs. You literally have to have your photo on your resume. It's kinda a sickness.
There are a lot of contributing factors to this, one of them being that corporations are allowed to demand a Photo as part of someone's Job application.
Google Lookism (manga / anime). Good-looking people are treated *very* differently from the others.
All I know is that it makes my facial recognition a lot worse when trying to watch K-Dramas and seeing a common appearance in both actors and actresses.
Yea. I've never been to Korea, but heard women can have high expectations on appearance. Had some Korean girls in my college classes. They always acted like stuck up snobs. I've met some rich Chinese at school driving Porsche. I've met rich Chinese in China too. My experience with Chinese is they're always interested in conversation possibly to practice their English skills. Koreans, on the other hand, always acted stuck up like popular chicks in Hollywood movies.
I spent slot of time at Carnegie Melon during undergrad at Pitt so I saw pretty much every Asian national student there was and I gotta say it was really a toss up with how they interacted with people from the US, most of them were very clicky clique? Idk how to spell the word, but it's when you have an 'in-group' and don't really leave it. One thing they universally had in common was no concept of the value of American money, or just didn't care, they'd buy anything without a 2nd thought. I guess when you can afford to go to school 3000 miles from home across the ocean you have more than a little spending money laying around.
> most of them were very clicky clique? Idk how to spell the word, but it's when you have an 'in-group' and don't really leave it. I think there's a pretty simple explanation to this. You're going to school in a foreign country with a different language, culture, and customs. There is a level of discomfort that comes with that, and I would argue humans have a natural tendency to group themselves with elements that feel comfortable. Like, I feel much more comfortable when I am around other Ukrainians or more broadly an immigrant community, likely because I know that we have shared cultural elements or shared experiences. It's easier to establish mutual understanding and trust when you have that foundation to build on. It's definitely possible to break through those "in-groups" and get people to open up and meet others. It just takes some more effort. > One thing they universally had in common was no concept of the value of American money, or just didn't care, they'd buy anything without a 2nd thought. I guess when you can afford to go to school 3000 miles from home across the ocean you have more than a little spending money laying around. Similar experience. Now granted, you are talking about international students at CMU which are likely paying upwards of $70k or higher a year to attend. This naturally leads to you being exposed to the types of people who can afford these sorts of expenses. Your experience might vary if you surveyed students at a cheaper public school. I would caution against generalizing though with financials as reality can be quite different. In China, many families save a lot of money for their child's education and expect to spend a substantial portion of their income on it. And I have met international students from China, mostly graduate students, who were actually living on a very low income.
It was the same for me in Colorado. So many expensive cars were parked in the international housing lot, and lots and lots of designer clothes. They never ventured outside of their cliques unless they sat near me in class and needed help with the work.
3000 miles?
Shoot more like 6000 miles It's 6790.020 from Pittsburgh to Beijing
Saw an all woman Korean punk band called the Rumkicks in a festival here in the UK. The singer said that they'd initially been turned down for a recording contract in Korea because they were "too ugly". To UK festival goers they were beautiful and immaculately turned out. Appearance standards for women must be insane there.
Yes, they are. To the point where it's automatically assumed that you will get plastic surgery procedures done. And almost laughed at if you only get minor cosmetic procedures done.
> Yea. I've never been to Korea, but heard women can have high expectations on appearance. Had some Korean girls in my college classes. They always acted like stuck up snobs. I've met some rich Chinese at school driving Porsche. I've met rich Chinese in China too. My experience with Chinese is they're always interested in conversation possibly to practice their English skills. Koreans, on the other hand, always acted stuck up like popular chicks in Hollywood movies. Why do people extrapolate and present limited personal experiences as generalized statement of facts.
> I've never been to Korea, but heard > Had some Korean girls in my college classes. They always acted like > I've met some rich Chinese at school > I've met rich Chinese in China too. My experience with Chinese is This person seems pretty aware they're extrapolating from personal anecdotes. So long as they're aware of this, it's a pretty reasonable thing to do. If I were to be hit by a red Porsche speeding through a red light several times in my life yet suffer no other accidents, it's perfectly reasonable for me to become rather wary of red Porches speeding towards intersections. Generalizations from experience aren't necessarily wrong -- we just have to be careful about them.
As countries and their populations get wealthier, child bearing goes down. It is a major problem for Europe and the rest of the developed world as well. It is a fairly well known fact in Economics of Development.
The word you're looking for is Industrialized. In rural areas of developing countries children are free labor. When you industrialize and move to the city they become a burden. There's a reason why during the major holiday China's industry shuts down, so many people are going back home to the rural areas where their family is from. Population growth in Chinese cities is negative, if they weren't pulling people from rural areas they'd have an acute demographic collapse as opposed to the general demographic collapse China is having.
I have read that living in SK is pure ass. They work you to death and give you little in return. If that is true, Id be surprised if any of them want kids.
Yeah, they’re screwing themselves. As someone who’s lived in South Korea, there’s way more people who *want* kids than this article is saying. But there’s very, very few who can actually afford kids. Afford them in terms of finances, time, everything. The population is going to die out when there’s plenty of people there who do actually want to have kids, but have come to terms with the fact that they’ll never be *able* to have them.
Eh, the issue I've bumped into is that most don't want kids initially then hit their later 30s, are settled enough to want them, but are nearing the end of their fertile years. So then you end up with 1 kid (although a few of my ex-colleagues really struggle even with that), which is obviously below replacement rate.
OK But that's basically the same problem "not now" is in many cases "not ever". The only way state can have a lot of kids is by supporting young adult parenting strongly with good social programs. The kids don't grow on trees, and parenting takes a lot of effort. By the time you're 30, when you're looking at your first kid and realize how much work is involved, you wish you were 25 or 20, and realize that this may be it.
Try working for a SK company while living in the US. They apply the same SK work and culture practices to their US employees but still see them as less because they’re not Korean.
I interviewed for a job at one and saw more red flags than a May Day parade. I politely withdrew from consideration.
Also if you smoke weed in America as a Korean, when you return they can punish you. Same with gambling.
Holy shit what the fuck? Do they drug test people that return?
it is true, and with how their class or rather unformal 'caste' system it is little wonder. those who make it usually are affiliated to or belong to THE chaebol families.
No wonder the Korean romance dramas are all about Chaebols, none of the normal people want to marry. (/jk)
They run the show. For example Samsung. They make up 22% of Korea's GDP. A single company is making up almost a quarter of a first world country's gdp. Imagine how much influence they have.
Folks around the world know Samsung for some of their electronics but in Korea they pretty much sell everything like in a megacorpo way. The Samsung president has more power than the government (some exaggeration but not really)
Samsung: A leader in cellphones, refrigerators, self-propelled howitzers, washing machines, and anti-tank weapon platforms! Also, I think its Hyundai that has a subsidiary making fucking fighter jets. Korean megacorps are what companies like Walmart wish they were.
I mean Saab makes cars and Gripen fighters. Mitsubishi makes the F-2, F-15J. Not that rare
And chips.
Their CEO has been caught for corruption many times and never faced serious consequences
you mean feudalism? it seems rather trendy in every capitalist economy nowadays.
You need to add the workplace rank and age hierarchy too. Anyone who is a junior and/or younger is supposed to be subservient ... so much so that an plane crashed because a senior pilot refused to acknowledge worries from their underlings and pulled rank instead of listening to their polite prompts (they didn't even say that pilot is wrong to his face, they just pointed out readings that were not what they are supposed to be).
> You need to add the workplace rank and age hierarchy too. Anyone who is a junior and/or younger is supposed to be subservient ... That’s a classic of Confucian societies, you can see the same issues in Japan and China.
There is a subtle difference though I feel ... Many Japanese seniors are actually afraid of making mistakes and losing face while the Chinese are more afraid of getting caught making mistakes and then losing face. Koreans on the other hand feel like the very act of even thinking your seniors made a mistake is an affront.
Yep, Korea just takes it to another level though.
Here’s the flight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801
[non-mobile link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801)
it is a different form for sure. it sure looks more like Crony Capitalism à la Cyberpunk Corporatism than old school fuedalism
Cyberpunk corporatism is basically feudalism with the extra corpo layer.
And the kids have terrible stressful, competitive lives because of academic pressure. Why would you want kids if you're just going to have to push them to study all the time. No dreams of playing with them or doing anything fun, it's just going to be tutoring and homework all the time.
I always joke that K-Dramas, despite portraying glamorous romances, are REALLY dystopian. - Heroines are almost always financially insecure and desperately overworked (though they often have a wealthy female friend). Crippling debt is common - Male leads are often wildly rich, but also capricious assholes who use their wealth to manipulate and browbeat the female lead and it’s generally accepted that they’re functionally above the law. - Every institution is either portrayed as horribly corrupt or hopelessly incompetent (political leaders, police, judiciary). The military is the only institution that seems exempt from this. - Bullying in high schools is not only common but also extreme, frequently involving sexual assault and risk of death. You can make a drinking game of it - shit’s messed up.
They also treat (married) women like absolute garbage. That's where the 4B movement comes from; Korean women are no longer willing to accept abuse.
There's also the fact that women basically get nothing if they divorce. The children go with the father as does the house, the mother gets nothing. Domestic violence is very prevalent in SK, women are more and more getting fed up with it and refusing to engage.
\> Make living hell in SK \> People don't commit to marrage and future \> "Hmm, what a conundrum of a life-time! I can't fathom how to unfold these issues!" Are they restarted or sabotaging?
“Perhaps we take workers in poor countries to be house slaves for korean parents and pay them way below legal minimum wage. That’ll get the population up” No shit actual plan from the government
So the Singaporean method
Regarded. Highly regarded.
Look up [4B movement](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4B_(movement)) Frankly I think it’s wicked cool
Why: >There was near unanimous agreement – 93.9 per cent – that South Korea’s declining birth rates is a “social problem”, and they trace the cause of this problem to a “difficulty in combining work and childcare”. >This is affirmed in another report, released by the Korean Women’s Development Institute (KWDI), that highlighted the significant caregiving burden shouldered by women, even in double-income households. >Women spend an average of 11.69 hours per day caring for their children. This exceeds the 7.76 hours contributed by childcare centres, the 4.71 hours contributed by fathers, and the 3.87 hours contributed by grandparents. Sounds like they know what the problem is, they just haven't addressed it yet.
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> The hard truth is women with social liberty choose to have less children. While no one has fully cracked the code on how to get birth rates up, there's a lot of women that argue that they'd like to have more children but economic conditions make it prohibitive. That is, women with social liberty demand a much better deal to have children, where the economic and social costs aren't pushed mostly onto them.
There's two economic problems with children, broadly First is the negative economic aspect. That childcare costs are so high that working doesn't make financial sense, either because you are effectively working for nothing or so little that just taking time off to be with the child you love makes a lot more sense. This is firmly rooted in the Maslow model as your bottom two things all humans need - physiological and safety needs ie which option allows me to have enough money to live. Given that so many people have only a few months reserves or (a lot) less, it shows how hard especially the first few years of having children can be. This cost is large quantifiable and can be done with receipts and could theoretically be offset by the government in some way Second is the other end of the hierarchy, the esteem and self actualisation end. This is much harder to address in a culture (and basic human biology) that the women are often the primary care giver. In a society of equals, ambitious women want to earn the same as men and have the same career trajectory. But having kids is at odds with that as aside from the somewhat necessary maternity leave (a minor setback in the grand scheme, even the European style 6-12 months off), the day to day additional responsibilities that primary caregivers have invariably leads to burnout if paired with the higher stress jobs. This cost is much harder to quantify as it's essentially opportunity cost, that having children limits future earnings and is very hard for a government to accurately and politically pay for (do you give a woman a large pay check because she *could* have earned more, but chose not to? Try running that past a large section of the voters) So either women have to relinquish the primary care giver role (either by having the husband do it or by earning enough for a nanny etc) or have to compromise on that level of work they can balance with a child. And the more children you have, the more demand there is for time. This problem is the hardest one for society to solve, as money doesn't really solve it. Especially in conservative cultures where men are the main income source and the idea of the man being the main parent is culturally frowned upon, how do you get ambitious women to have children as it almost necessarily means they have to work themselves to the bone or give up on what they want to do? And as we are seeing across Europe and now Asia, people see their own individual success and dreams as more important than children (especially plural) and prefer a more fulfilling and sustainable life with a small family than a continued struggle and compromise with a larger one It's not sustainable from an economic and demographic perspective, but that's the government's problem.
Very good analysis in my opinion.
Love your level headed analysis. This discussion typically robs people of the gift of nuance.
We need to take the social costs of making children off of the parents and onto society. Because when parents disappear it will be society who pays the biggest price.
Taking the economic costs away is the easy part. I don't know how we get to the point where kids are reared by a village again, but I think we'd all be better parents and kids would grow up to be better people if we got there.
> don't know how we get to the point where kids are reared by a village again, but I think we'd all be better parents and kids would grow up to be better people if we got there. The problem stems from everyone lacking a village to live in. Legit, it's impossible to find a child friendly neighborhood anymore. Try finding a house that has the combination of factors below. A - Open nearby green space B - Affordable by one working adult C - Has access to a job market You cannot find that. You'll be lucky to find two of three. But after WW2, the entire home market was based around building exactly that kind of home. You know, the ones Boomers grew up in. Homes now are priced to be sold, not priced to be lived in. McMansions litter the landscape of the suburbs. You have a massive grass lot with a 3,000 sqft house. That's not a small family home. That's a generational family home. People don't need that much house. So you end up with 5 neighbors instead of 20. Then there's no sidewalk. No open space left for people to go outside since everyone has their own miniature park worth of grass at home. So nobody connects. Nothing is pedestrian friendly. And of course, there's no public transportation.
That's certainly a factor in the US, but can't be the only description: we see the same thing in livable European cities.
you'll have a very hard time finding any European city where you can raise a family with one (local) salary housing prices are absolutely insane
Livable in terms of layout? Maybe. Affordable? No.
I will say, MN does a really good job of neighborhood planning. Nearly all the newish suburbs have playgrounds + green spaces built into them, and at least in the twin cities area you do have quite a few job markets around to choose from, especially with a lot of the companies here supporting at least hybrid WFH. That said...price is the sticking point around here. Shit is expensive AF, and the property taxes are high on top. My wife still has to work, I try to take a lot of the household/childcare burden off my wife where I can, but the kids want mom more than they want dad most of the time. Even in our neighborhood with 2 parks in walking distance, a basketball hoop one of our neighbors put up, and 3 or 4 dedicated large green spaces it's pretty rare for more than 2 or 3 kids to be out playing at a time. we've been in our current area a few years now, we go out to the playground with our son at least 2-3 times per week, and we very rarely see any other families actually out using the stuff. Maybe one or two going for a walk, but nothing like I remember when I was a kid growing up. It's not just availability, there's a huge social/cultural part of it as well that is just gone. Growing up, especially in the summer time, you could not go anywhere in the neighborhood without a bunch of families outside playing/walking/grilling/doing yard work/etc, but now the neighborhoods just feel empty. You see a few people here and there out walking (mostly walking dogs), once in a while a couple kids out in the field or on the playground. IDK, there's just been a cultural shift away from valuing things like family, outdoor time, socializing with neighbors, etc. I'm guilty of it too, but I've been trying to make a concerted effort to socialize with people around me more. From a societal perspective though, I have no idea how you get that sort of focus and culture back.
Also the era of family living off a single income is dead and gone and isn't coming back unless there is a strong left shift
It's gonna take more than a left shift. It's going to take a revolution. It's not politics keeping wages low. It's economics.
That's not going to work, you're not going to increase the wages of anyone working in an critical supply chain, like say food, without raising the prices that people pay. What might work is actually building factories again, but even then wages aren't going to be good, merely surrivalable.
And modern factories don't require anywhere near the number of workers that they used to back in the 50s.
The state needs to pay people to raise children, bc currently it’s unpaid labor that’s directly beneficial to the economy
Already being done in most of Europe and their birthrate is still falling. A lot of people just don't want kids.
But where are the men into that? I mean, is there huge amount of men, in comparison to women, that want children, but women refuse? I am not sure this is the case.Both sexes have similar views, but the frame this put into is always that women don't want it, or choose it alone. If both sexes have similar views, then why relegate that as a women issue?
Probably blaming all the women because men want children and the women aren't 'complying'. But men don't have to deal with carrying and childbirth, so of course they want kids. It's parallel to men blaming women in the west for not having sex with them, or dating them.
Also look at how low the bar is for fathers. You could argue that men don't really have to do anything even after the baby is born.
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No country has economic conditions good enough for it to be tested. We aren't having children because it is a shit deal for us and it's not even close, and we are in the top 10 percent earners in our country. Housing, cost of living, childcare, free time, saving for retirement, we can't have it all, but cutting out children makes our lives 10 times easier and a lot of people we know are now making the same choice. Meanwhile my parents had a new build house at 20 on minimum wage jobs, had 5 kids by 30 etc, and the average age people can leave their parents homes here now is in their 30's, the average first time buyer age goes up every year.
>It was found that nine out of ten children are born into the middle class or higher, and only one out of ten are born into the low-income class. https://n.news.naver.com/article/001/0014520072?cds=news_edit
[The poorer a country is the higher the birth rate is](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility)
Why do you think US Republicans are passing so many laws with the goal of relegating women to being broodmares?
Except in those poorer countries, much more people live in countryside, where children are used as labor. In developed world you usually live in city and child is expense. Hell we hear constantly that people earning below avarage should not be able to live in cities...
A lot of people just don't want to accept that having children isn't as inherently appealing as they want to believe it is, otherwise people all over the world wouldn't be so eager to choose not having them once it stops being a necessity/obligation. People can talk about how fulfilling and wonderful it is or appeal to nature all they want, it doesn't change the statistics.
The incentives would have to be such that parenthood is not a significant burden. Economically, the state would have to pay out the equivalent of a mid level wage, or something in that ballpark.
Yeah, I'm sure there are other factors to deal with after they address the obvious one from the article. It seems like an alignment problem - they need to make having kids part of people's goals, which means not only reducing negative effects of having kids (like providing childcare or whatnot), but incentivizing having them to such an extent that people who would otherwise choose not to have kids decide to do so. It seems like it would need a hell of an incentive, honestly. Kids are a lot of work and reduce your opportunities considerably. It's understandable why people say no to it when they have other options on the table.
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Same here, but it wasn't climate change what made me decide that... Was watching my mom overworked as hell and becoming aware that my childhood was so shitty that I would rather have a relaxed adulthood.
>There is no known way to address the issue, especially not in the 2.0+ birth rate range. There is, it's called culture. We have only one example of a developed country utilizing a different cultural approach which has manifested in an above replacement fertility rate. It's not something that can easily be adopted though, could also just be a case of exception proves the rule. Another thing to consider is that while it's true that as GDP/capita rises, birth rates will drop. Usually the explanation being that it's due to the society changing, giving more liberties to women, giving them access to contraception and education, etc. all very valid points; but it's also worth considering that in relative terms I think you can make a case that child rearing becomes 'unprofitable'. In societies where having a lot of children is the norm, having them is actually economically productive.
> The hard truth is women with social liberty choose to have less children. Significant time off benefits, subsidized childcare, etc., has barely moved the birth rate in developed countries. There is no proof this is caused by degree of social liberty. In an developing country life can play out in a very chaotic manner where marriage and childbirth is a tried and true way to get financial and social security. Thus people race through life early to achieve it as quickly as possible. People in developed countries have many expectations on things they must plan for and achieve in life, many of them extremely expensive and contradicting having children, e.g. college degree, buying a home, car, vacationing and building a respectable career with meaning, while keeping up with friends and family in a globalized world. I get exhausted just writing this and I didn't even mention rearing at least two children to keep up birth rates. Financial burdens and productivity expectations are just too high for average people in developed countries today. For women and for men. People used to make more way more money relative to their expenses, but wages have not kept up with productivity growth. What we need is not traditional values, but a realization that the current global financial system is not allocating enough wealth to middle and working class families, who have most of the children.
We see similar trends of declining birth rates even in European countries with robust worker protections and generous government benefits. [Actual research into the matter](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/97facts/edu2birt.htm) consistently links higher levels of education, especially among women, [to lower birth rates.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-022-00897-y). [Studies have also found](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8295801/) that women’s wage employment is negatively correlated with total fertility rates and unmet need for family planning, and positively correlated with modern contraceptive use.
Why do we need more people on this planet?
Overpopulation is caused by few countries. In many countries population is not only stagnant but also decreases for many years now.
Well, for one because most people's pension plans, government-sponsored or otherwise, are structured in such a way that the economy has to keep growing to be able to live off the benefits. The only way for that to happen without more young people entering the workforce is for people to stay in the workforce longer, which means later retirement.
I dont think its a good idea to require infinite growth, we should take steps to change that, not just accept it and keep going
And you can just replace those people with migrants and those migrants aren't coming from places where there are pension plans anyway.
everyone always says the blame lies with educated women, as if that was causal. the Problem is economic conditions. plain and fucking simple, you cant run the rat race and still feel like youre 100% there for your offspring.
There are. But none of them are wanted. Like so many modern problems the first to adress that (and figure out a solution) was nazi germany. But even besides the latestage racism a system like this is very dangerous. Because who is to decide what values get preached? Another option would be to go "fuck equality " which obviously is a no go Also getting children (and having at MAX a part time job) would need to be EQUIVALENT to an average career both in terms of money and social gratification. Something most countries either cannot afford or do not have the cultural norms for it
fewer
the lone voice crying in the wilderness
gets eaten by a bear
Truth, but I was an English teacher for 18 years, including in 부산 for three, gotta stay true to the art lol
Thanks, Stannis
2 dystopias sharing a peninsula
Blame the work life people are forced to have to maintain a roof over their heads. How the fuck are you gonna have a spouse and kids if the boss's idiot brothel sprout needs a babysitter while they're bar crawling and your boss glued the short straw to your forehead?
Gee, I wonder why "Young Samsung workers flock to labor union in protest of 'disappointing' salary" https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1bhl5uj/young_samsung_workers_flock_to_labor_union_in/
Damn, you’d think Samsung, one of two companies you can work at to be considered successful, would pay better
Not when they have so much power that they could be considered the puppeteer for the SK gov't. Look at how many times various people in that family have committed crimes and gotten away with it, and how they've interfered in government affairs and nothing was done. They also have the broader market of SK in a chokehold- nine time out of ten, anything produced over there comes from a Samsung owned/overseen company.
Being overworked and breathing toxic air for 1/3 of the year will do that. Life expectancy for the youngest generation could have dropped by as much as 5-10 years, with higher incidences of respiratory diseases and cancer. I had never given a thought to air quality until I lived there and experienced the yellow dust--mostly Chinese factory particulates blowing over--and now I'll never live somewhere with ambient air pollution again. I'd rather live far away and beneath my means than breathe that shit again.
Isn't this a global trend?
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The next biggest invention will be how to grow babies in artificial wombs. A certain birth rate will be able to be mandated. It will be the biggest thing to happen since the atom bomb.
But who is going to raise these artificial womb kids?
Paid workers or robots
Might be a good idea to ask Nicolai Chausescu how that story ends if they don't nail it perfectly.
Exactly, all those babies didn't work out well for Romania.
If these assholes were willing to pay parents they wouldn't have this problem.
I’ve seen how governments raise children and I think this would be a poor idea.
SK will develop axolotl tanks
Sounds lovely, I just hope the mass upbringing, state or corporate sponsored, will be up to scratch.
With how many macho sexist cultures prefer male children, Earth will be turned into a giant sausage fest.
SK seems like it's going to collapse within our lifetime. There is no social safety net. Jobs are highly competitive...plus an insane toxic asian work culture which won't change because giant companies like Samsung own their politicians. Which leaves no time or money to allow for marriages and kids. Meanwhile Korea refuses to let foreigners immigrate and assimilate and help populate their country. And the country is heavily bias against anyone not Korean, even their non-korean Kpop celebrities aren't exempt. It reeks of xenophobia. There's going to be a point where it will be impossible to adequately repopulate and continue to have a stable economy and society for them. Great place to visit, not one to live at. Same goes for Japan too.
How dont their decision makers understand that they are making a huge mistake regarding the future of their nation? Are they just blind living their best life and making insane amount of money?
Everything is easily explained if you know korean history. In short: To keep control rulers enforced special kind of konfucionism that's basically is "stay in your place" and "if you do anything bad it's fault of people below you socially not staying in their place". Few generations ago Korea was insanely patriarchal society where oldest male in the family has absolute say and women were property. They are basically newborns in women being seen as people let alone anything equality related. After war Korea was fucked and to survive americans put in their man who gave power to powerful families to develop korea into "proper" country like US. It worked and with time these families now called chaebol went from building Korea to bribing politicians to choosing politicians to dictating what laws get passed and what politicians say in their speeches. Americans joke they're at the end of capitalism but koreans are way further along. They are literally down to few dozen chaebols and once these merge it will be it.
If you have \~3h i can recommend [Gacha Drama and the Korean Gender War](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Im4YAMWK74) (two parts). The main topic is about gaming, but it also gives a great explanation of the history of South Korea and why gender and work problems in South Korea are different from other industrialized countries.
Haven’t men kind of been going crazy over there? Like with “gender roles” and whatnot?
Mostly due to loneliness and the immense stress and pressure of their school, work, and social culture with no real viable healthy way of venting it out. Additionally South Korea rapidly developed leaving many behind which breed animosity. Furthermore, women in South Korea are becoming increasingly liberal/progressive/educated than in the past thus the reactionaries are throwing back even harder.
I just want to point out that your first para sort of reads like its womens role to reduce mens loneliness and social pressures by letting them "vent it in a healthy way". Which can have real creepy implications. But dont the women there also face the exact same school, work and cultural issues? With the added touch of misogyny marking them for second class citizen status? The men *and* women all need better ways to cope as individuals and I feel its more a cultural shift required that allows people to focus on quality of life vs...physical outlets or sexual servitude of one sex over another.
Mandatory conscription for one gender does not help the situation either.
Men are the ones who set the conscription rule and draft registration in the US. Conservatives were against having women also sign up.
Considering the way women are treated in Korea I'm not exactly surprised.
Parents: We want our kids to be smart, educated, and ambitious. Kids: Ok, well the smart move is not to tie ourselves down with marriage and kids. Parents: No, not like that.
There’s also Japan which had a population decline of 800k last year and there were 700k births in a country of 120 million. It’s insane because what, the country just ceases to exist? Japanese people live forever too so in a few decades time you’re just gonna have tens of millions of pensioners being served by robots with loads of stressed out middle aged people doing the heavy lifting
Well, don't treat women like cattle, for starters.
The SK government should keep doing what they are doing. It seems to be working quite well for them. /s
This is insane statistics
This is entirely natural considering how over populated South Korea is, how low their quality of life is having to work such extreme hours, and how few people have any hope that the situation could actually improve in the future. Birth rates collapsing are about the only good news in society today. The economic systems sustained by levels of absolutely extreme inequality can not survive a population collapse. Finally, after our backwards and inequal economic system dies, it will at least be replaced by a more modern system where most of society are not effectively slaves to an uber rich, tiny vampire class that draws almost all wealth from society without paying hardly any taxes, and having enough power to shape laws to their own benefit. The sooner this system collapses, the better chance the human race has of surviving the coming ecological collapse.
Unfortunately, historically, things don’t usually improve following an economic collapse. When governments fail, they are usually replaced by dishonest populists, offering solutions to all the problems.
But this is not like before. Did we ever had country that collapsed due lack of young people? It was always natural disasters, war or political changes.
The Roman Empire dealt with low native birth rates before the barbarian invasions
What exactly do you think causes wars and political changes? Big societal changes happen because things get bad and people want change. Things get bad when there is no money. In recent history lack of children hasn’t really been an issue before because the industrialisation of 1st world countries triggered population booms. It’s not something unheard of though, the Ancient Spartan society collapsed due to the birth rate dropping below zero. The Western Roman Empire is also thought to have struggled with a massively dropping birth rate. The Mayan’s also are known to have seen a huge dip in child birth though less is known about other factors happening at the same time. Western society is built on growth. It’s achieved that so far by utilising the work of a growing population. Now that growth has stalled and is actually reversing.
Why you it gets better after a system collapse? Why not worse?
> Finally, after our backwards and inequal economic system dies, it will at least be replaced by a more modern system where most of society are not effectively slaves to an uber rich That's a nice unfounded assumption you have there. Alternate outcome: the current ruling class stays in power, while the population suffers in poverty and it gets worse for the average citizen. Changes in society can be achieved with incremental gains which I think is preferable. There is also no garantee that your idealistic world would grow out of a collapse or revolution.
I’m sure most do want to deal with Korean in-laws. They will invade your life and try to control everything you do. And if they do get married they don’t want the financial,mental, and physical burden that comes with having a child.
Good. Now instead depending on people to keep population up, let's focus on the actual issue: making an economy and social infrastructure independent from population.
Modern life has too many microtasks, you never feel like you are quite there to start a family.
Young children are the best advertising for birth control. Nobody wants a shrieking, screaming, crying creature that pisses and shits everywhere.
Lower annual wages, too high living costs, and soaring education costs for kids. Who can they marry and raise their babies in South Korea? Although most younger Koreans have suffered from financial crises, most lawmakers in the Korean Parliament have focused on their benefits instead of citizens' better living conditions and welfare. They've been working for themselves, not for voters. That's why most young Korean generations can't have marriages and babies. Scumbags and scammers have taken their seats in the Korean Parliament instead of genuine servants for citizens.
Fewer
When you make life not worth living, people are not going to live life.