South Korea is one of the leaders in technology and other fields. Also, they are one of the fastest internet providers in the whole world. The problem is that the country can truly unleash its untapped potential if the North and the South decided to unify under the leadership of the South.
South Korea: The only middle power of its kind
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Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind
#62SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea How does the developed world pull out of this ty…
> going to be one of the grand challenges of the 50 years I’m sceptical of this claim. Demand per capita grows unabated. Working lives are lengthening. A smaller population living well is economically indistinguishable, in the aggregate, from a large one living poorly. Maybe post-industrial civilisations settle into a lower-population steady state than ones requiring lots of unrefined labor. Yes, dependency ratios wi…
One factor that needs to be considered is that in Korea, as in many Asian regions, people are expected to look after their parents when they get old. Society and social security have been build around this assumption.
Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind
#63SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea How does the developed world pull out of this ty…
Invent/make artificial womb. It's already feasible I think. Probably tons of money to be made. Why it's not a thing yet? Women have many options/entertainment now and don't want to go through pregnancy especially multiple times. This coupled with fact that you have only 10 years for childbearing (before 40) and you drastically cut carrier advancement when it just started explains a lot IMO. Requiring two people to su…
Who benefits from the artificial womb? The bearing of the child is much less of a disincentive than other factors like money, space and the ultra competitive school system we have in many Asian regions.
Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If shrinking populations are okay, what is the desired population level? The answer might simply be "we don't know" here. > Right now no country seems to be able to stop this decrease in the modern/developed world. We are just currently shrinking. Why is that being treated as inherently bad , though?
> Why is that being treated as inherently bad, though? We are not making this decision completely willingly, it is more just happening and it is out of the governments control. To me this means it is risky, and can we pull out of it? How do we pull out of this shrinkage? I guess the good thing is that the developed world is all in this together, rather than only parts of it. That reduces the chance of massive dispari…
> We are not making this decision completely willingly, it is more just happening and it is out of the governments control. To me this means it is risky, and can we pull out of it? How do we pull out of this shrinkage?
Isn't all this equally true of population growth as well as shrinkage?
Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
One core issue is housing. And the core issue with housing is that prices are an arms race where everyone always wants more. Most people would have two or three kids if they felt like they could afford it. The second core issue is modern dating. That one I don't know how to fix, but the essential issue there is the dynamics of dating not requiring commitment coupled with financial security for women mean long term pa…
I'm not sure that dating "not requiring commitment" is the issue. It's difficult to commit to dating when you are time-poor and struggling to even get close to the financial trajectory that your parents were on. It's too easy to blame the kids or whatever, without considering that the kids had and have it harder in many ways than the old people did. Being a millennial in the '00s was pretty good, being a millennial a…
This is actually part of what I'm talking about. The sweet high-paying tech jobs went to a group of people that can comfortably afford to live without marrying off. They date around because they can. I know, because I got that sweet job in 2008 just at the start of the tech wave and I dated around quite a bit and the pressure to get married for financial reasons wasn't there and the social pressure to get married for its own sake wasn't either. This isn't how it looked like in the 1950s or earlier. Most people didn't date 100 different women or wait until they were 35 to start a home with someone. It's partially financial and partially societal.
At the other end of the spectrum the increasing gap between rich and poor pushed a lot of men completely out of the dating pool because they can no longer afford basic housing for themselves, so even if they would be willing to commit they don't have options.
Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Singapore has 1/10th the population of South Korea, and 1/20th the population of Japan. Singapore has less than 1% of South Korea's land mass, which is 25% of Japan. It's not a fair comparison on the scale of the infrastructure.
To be fair the Netherlands and Denmark are pretty small too.
Singapore is 728.6 km^2, while the Netherlands and South Korea are 41,865 km^2 and 100,363 km^2 respectively. The Netherlands and South Korea are much more comparable.
Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind
#67SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea How does the developed world pull out of this ty…
It's going to be hard to convince couples living in 1 bedroom apartments to cram in 2 kids just so that the country can hit replacement level fertility rates. Large urban cities just don't seem built for families, especially with the way that larger spaces are priced.
Probably true. However, on the past or even in rural India people fit parents and a number of children in small abodes. So, it’s possible. People have done it and lived, people do it and live in some places. Some people just don’t want to and don’t have to either.
Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind
#68SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea How does the developed world pull out of this ty…
One core issue is housing. And the core issue with housing is that prices are an arms race where everyone always wants more. Most people would have two or three kids if they felt like they could afford it. The second core issue is modern dating. That one I don't know how to fix, but the essential issue there is the dynamics of dating not requiring commitment coupled with financial security for women mean long term pa…
I think one of the biggest issues facing modern dating is the collapse of various socialization activities outside of work. Religion is on a decline so people don't meet at church. Hobby groups are all online now.
Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind
#69SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea How does the developed world pull out of this ty…
There is no reason to believe that 'immigration' can fix the native birth rates of South Koreans. This is an implicit assumption dreamt by the utterly deranged.
Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind
#70SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea How does the developed world pull out of this ty…
One core issue is housing. And the core issue with housing is that prices are an arms race where everyone always wants more. Most people would have two or three kids if they felt like they could afford it. The second core issue is modern dating. That one I don't know how to fix, but the essential issue there is the dynamics of dating not requiring commitment coupled with financial security for women mean long term pa…
Neither of these apply to Japan, especially Japan decades ago when their birthrate fell to around the current rate. So that’s a pretty strong data point against these theories being key factors.