Fuck this narrative. Decreased birth rates is a major success
Why are you of that opinion? Something like 30% of Japan’s population is over 65. Low birth rates are obviously not sustainable for them and will have extreme issues for their country if it continues.
So the solution is to rip off souls from the non-existence aether, bring them to this ever-bizarre world in order to condemn them, like Sisyphus, to a lifetime pushing of a social boulder which is fated to always go downhill? (In other words, why the unborn should sustain the faults of an unsustainable society that weren’t their faults to begin with?)
“Unsustainable Society” No matter your opinion on current governments, humanity has been around for an awful long time, and it will likely continue to be around for significantly longer into the future of the universe. In my opinion, that’s pretty cool.
In the grand scheme of things, just looking back over the past couple hundred years, the vast majority of humanity is in a better spot than we were, no matter how bad things may seem on a small time scale.
Low birth rates are obviously not sustainable
Please explain why this is obvious. Less people seems more sustainable, not less.
Old people can’t work and need someone to pay for their retirement.
If there are more old people than young people (population pyramid wrong way round) every young person needs to pay a crapton of taxes so that old folks don’t starve to death
It’s not obvious. Low birth rates are completely sustainable, you just kill anyone who can’t afford to retire and can’t work anymore, and society functions perfectly well.
Decent first step, but it’s going to take an actual investment in making parenthood desirable.
Parenthood is already desirable. There’s a biological drive and social conditioning to desire it for most people. The disincentives have just become overwhelming. Children take a hell of a lot of resources. Every aspect of modern society has drained all the time, money, energy, emotional resiliance, social support, etc that people need.
I’m logically aware that’s the case for other people, but I find it perplexing why often times. I was sterilized in my mid 20s, and I haven’t ever regretted it.
Affordable housing, better working conditions, less working hours, efficient healthcare and better pay. It’s not hard goddamn it.
What governments and corporations never understand and will never want to understand is that …
… it isn’t about the quantity of life … or even the quantity of people who are alive or are born
… it’s about the quality of life
If everyone lives a comfortable, safe and fulfilling life without risk of poverty or losing everything they have, then they are more likely to have children and raise them to become productive people who will contribute to society.
Otherwise if you don’t take care of people, they will either have no children or a bunch of children that will all grow up to become a burden to society.
If everyone lives a comfortable, safe and fulfilling life without risk of poverty or losing everything they have, then they are more likely to have children and raise them to become productive people who will contribute to society.
You would assume that, but is it really true? The countries with the safest and most comfortable lives, in Scandinavia, have the lowest birth rates. The countries with the least safe and comfortable lives, in Africa, have the highest birth rates.
Well, countries with higher birthrates have a third option that is essentially negligible in those with lower birthrates, which is not even making it to adulthood. Effectively still less children end up becoming productive members of society. And together with that, due to less available social services, often a goal of having children survive is so they can take care of the parent when they’re older.
As soon as infant mortality becomes a non-factor, birthrates decline drastically as well. And since children are no longer largely seen as a “life assurance” for when parents are older, and the society’s demands for productive members is higher as well, the focus really does shift to the quality of the life and the two types of reasons to have kids are harder to compare. But even among developed nations you can see differences in fertility rates.
Maybe I’m reading into this wrong, but I think the interpretation of fertility statistics may be underestimating/overlooking how much rape and sexual violence contributes to the high fertility rates we’re seeing in impoverished countries struggling with widespread violence.
Countries like the ones in Scandinavia have lower rape statistics and access to abortion which could explain a lot about those numbers and why they are the way they are. Again, it’s a just hypothesis, but one worth mentioning I think.
Maybe we should be less focused on making more people, and more focused on enabling living people to work together to meet each other’s needs?
People will have children. But the only thing that pushes the nationalistic desires to have a positive birth rate is the zealotry around eternal 3%+ growth of financial product. That needs a growing consumer base.
We could be achieving an economic degrowth while simultaneously increasing the standard of living. Instead we have tech billionaires, a venture capitalist class, and a war on women’s(as well everyone else’s) bodily autonomy.
Wait until they will discover affordable housing thing.
Wait until you find out it is normal to tip your landlord there
Only once in my life have I got my damage deposit back. That is tipping the landlord a lot of money. The time I got it back was in a terrible situation and I had leverage over the parasite.
Housing is pretty affordable in Japan since housing in Japan is not an investment, it depreciates like a car (only the land has value, the house ontop of it has literally negative value since it’s assumed anyone will want to bulldoze it), and their lax zoning allows for continual densification to happen.
ya it’s funny when you watch some videos about “small apartments” in tokyo and only to realize they are still more cheaper and spacious than some NA options in big cities.
Not in Tokyo, but farther out in Tokyo’s residential cities (outside the 23 wards like Chiba and Saitama)
It’s even cheaper the farther you get from train stations. There’s a 30 minute walk “cliff” where residential land prices plummet when you’re more than 30 minutes walk away from a train station.
If I lived in Tokyo, though, I certainly wouldn’t want to be a 30+ minute walk from a train station. That makes leaving home a pretty big task.
