South Korea: The only middle power of its kind • Hacker News Board

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#241

Post by entropicdrifter » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

slothtrop wrote: post #180

jerkstate wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So strange to me that when UBI is discussed, pervasive automation is right around the corner to pay for it, but when birth rate decline is discussed, the only solution on the table is open borders. I wonder why that could be?

There's complete cognitive dissonance and confusion at the moment over popular notions of national prosperity. On one hand people readily agree that the GDP is an inaccurate measure of prosperity, that wealth gained mostly goes to the top and it ought not be a prime focus, while at the same time suggest that high rates of immigration are crucial to prop up said GDP. Many countries with stagnant birthrates are rather…

Well, in the cases of Japan and SK, there is the issue of elderly people beginning to commit crimes on a regular basis in recent years because prison is free and they can't afford a retirement home.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#242

Post by entropicdrifter » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

benrbray wrote: post #176

atom_arranger wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random idea: What if the votes of each age group were weighted to account for the size of that group, e.g. making the votes of 18-20 have the same weight as the votes of 40-42, even if there may be more people in the 40-42 group. This would prevent an aging population from giving too many benefits to older age groups, and would encourage policies that consider long term impacts more.

You don't need to weight the groups, since everyone experiences all ages (not counting early death). My proposal is: Multiply the number of house reps and senators by ten (for instance). Each representative now represents a district / state as well as a decade of life (for instance). When voting for an age-graded role, your vote only counts towards the decade of life that you're currently in. You can only run for a p…

>Disrupt two-party dynamics

and that's why it'll never happen without a revolution

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#243

Post by iammisc » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #169

forkLding wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually quite hard to raise the birth rate, Japan has been trying for years (see https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/Tokyo%E2%... ). The real impediment is that it is now too costly to raise more than 1-2 children and also not enough time. UN 2015 report on Japan's birth rate policy attempts: https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/events/pdf... To summarize, they've started policies a…

There's trying and then there's trying. Japan is doing the first kind, where you put some effort in, but it's kind of limp. The other kind of trying is when you put vigorous effort into making it easier to have children. Dramatically ramp up childcare support. Strongly enforce anti-discrimination laws, particularly in the case of discrimination against mothers. Forbid employers from requiring more than 40h of work pe…

> Dramatically ramp up childcare support. Strongly enforce anti-discrimination laws, particularly in the case of discrimination against mothers. Forbid employers from requiring more than 40h of work per week under certain (very high) compensation thresholds. Provide direct payments to parents that substantially offset the costs of additional children. Align housing policy with the need for larger dwellings for larger families, but still with decent commutes. Etc.

Where has this been shown to work?

By and large, the nations with more childcare support, more protections for pregnant women, etc have lower birthrates than those that don't.

For example, if we look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d..., then America seems to be the developed country with the highest birth rate despite having little of the social policies you mention.

In fact, based on that chart, it would seem the opposite is true. The less social safety net, the more kids. This makes intuitive sense since if government isn't taking care of you, you'll need children to.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#244

Post by jonpurdy » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

mathverse wrote: post #136

jonpurdy wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Korea for years and have visited Japan as well. Having lived in Toronto, South Korea (Ulsan), and now SF (Sunset), I can’t imagine a better place for a family to live than many neighbourhoods in Korea. Now that I’ve got a wife, dog, and newborn baby, we needed to purchase a car to get them around (since SF public transit isn’t good enough for this). At least in Toronto we were within a few hundred metres o…

My take on living in Korea vs Europe (I have no idea about cities in North America) 1. Noisy apartments and noisy streets typical for asian megalopolises.If you can afford to live in one of the more quality condos it's better though. 2. Commuting by subway for an 1h with 1-2 stops to change lines is dreadful during peak hours.It's worse than commuting by car from a suburb here in Europe.Michael Wolf's video captures…

1. I can see noise being an issue in Tokyo and Seoul because build quality isn't great and there's not much noise insulation. So you're heavily dependent on neighbours keeping quiet, and I was fortunate to have good ones. Funny enough, I've had far worse experiences with neighbours in both Toronto and SF despite better sound insulation.

2. I didn't mention commuting because I was referring to living locally within a neighbourhood where you don't have to leave. I didn't commute far (walked to work), and I couldn't imagine commuting with multiple line changes in either Seoul or Tokyo. It was bad enough in Toronto with just a 30 minute commute. (I won't commute ever again due to remote work so it's no longer a consideration for me.)

You're lucky to live in Europe, where the suburbs/non-downtown is much more livable and walkable than North America. In many ways, many European cities have the best of both worlds.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#245

Post by entropicdrifter » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

mjmahone17 wrote: post #130

namarie wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if the votes of each age group were weighted Because the principle of "one person, one vote" is widely (and correctly IMO) accepted.

In many places and for certain purposes (the US and the EU for instance), geographical regions have one vote, regardless of their population size. It’s unclear that an age-based distribution instead of geographic distribution would be worse. But it would probably be unrealistic to achieve without basically completely upending existing political structures.

And this system wildly over-represents the landowning elites as a result

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#246

Post by cheriot » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #124

calmd wrote: post #7

SK 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…

Not really. Immigration has become an issue lately because a human (or a bare-human) is worth much less. 1.000 years ago a bare illiterate human had some considerable value. He could work in the field or he could fight. More humans, more food and production. More humans, more manpower to fight your enemies. Now a bare semi-educated human is a liability. Which is why most countries are refusing their entrance. Times h…

Every child born is a "bare illiterate human". Are you also making an argument against having children?

If you want to be really draconian about it, immigration can select for people with skills where the home populate will always have the same average of innate abilities.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#247

Post by spothedog1 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #214

spothedog1 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the US has a large labor shortage that predates covid in construction, agriculture, domestic work, scientists, engineers and more. If automation comes then great but the basic principals of more people in an economy means more demand for goods and services still applies.

> Except the US has a large labor shortage No, it has less labor supplied at current prices than purchasers would prefer. Market clearing quantity at current prices being less than buyers would prefer is...the normal case of a market economy. It's only a shortage if buyers paying more wouldn't increase market clearing quantity, because of some constraint besides “you haven't offered enough money to convince more peop…

The US def has a labor shortage if it wants to stay globally competitive in some sectors. Americans will either buy strawberries from immigrants on agricultural visas, they will buy strawberries overseas or they won’t buy strawberries. There is no scenario where they buy strawberries picked by people making $30/hr.

The US tech sector can pay every software engineer 300k starting salary but at some point you’re completely hobbling the ability for new businesses to start and grow.

US has been letting in millions of IT immigrants for decades and it’s technology salaries are highest in the world. Simply put the demand created by these immigrants for more software services outstrips the increase in supply of engineers. They also start a ton of new companies so you have agglomeration effects of having more people.

Sure US companies can and should pay more but there is certainly a point where labor is expensive enough to make new growth prohibitive. The USA has much more abundant cheap labor than Europe which is why we have all the new innovative companies starting and not there. When these companies grow they produce lots of high skilled jobs as well. Think of Uber. Lots of drivers are low skilled immigrants, but the ability for a new company to have so many to drive for them spurred and entire new industry with thousands high paying tech jobs as well.

Low skilled immigration is a win win win for the USA. Americans get cheaper goods and services, a fast growing dynamic economy and hard working tax paying citizens to grow the nation and make it richer. They create huge demand for goods and services growing the US economy and market size. Low skilled immigrants may not be working the most glamorous jobs but they come to the US voluntarily knowing their children will vastly out earn them and be American. They prefer it to the situation that they left behind. These people are not financial liabilities to the USA.

None of this is an argument against higher pay, workers rights, safety standards. Uber drivers and strawberry pickers should be protected with the full force of the US government from abuse, and we should have safety nets in place to make sure they’re not destitute. Those should all be sought after. But increasing low skilled immigration makes the USA much richer overall and should be drastically increased.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#248

Post by iammisc » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #48

calmd wrote: post #7

SK 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…

> 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 pair bonding happens at a lower rate and later in life.

One way to fix it is the government deciding to highly encourage 'old-fashioned' social norms.

For example, we could have single-sex spaces, which help the sexes develop unique cultures that they then have to rely on each other for.

Or we could encourage single-income-earning, realizing more men are going to take advantage of this, and encourage more stay-at-home parenting, realizing that more women will take advantage of this (but by no means should the sex of either role be forced).

Or, we could change sex-ed curricula to focus more broadly on family formation and its importance.

Encourage church membership, since that used to constitute a large portion of the dating pool, and makes it easier for people to find others like them.

Idolize the roles of mothers and fathers and how it's a national duty.

There's lots of ways to fix it. The willpower simply isn't there. Of course, many people are in complete denial as to the root causes too. The truth is sexual attraction is fundamentally based on sexual difference. Save for a slim minority of the population, this is true across the board (yes, even in homosexual relationships). The reason why dating sucks and people can't find partners is because we've attempted to eradicate all sexual difference, but every once in a while human nature overpowers even this, and we see phenomena which our current culture cannot explain but is easily explainable in the larger context of the human condition (for example, the popularity of 50 shades of grey amongst women, or the popularity of 'seduction culture' and the manosphere amongst men).

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#249

Post by otabdeveloper4 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

calmd wrote: post #7

SK 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…

> 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.

They'll have to unite with North Korea eventually. Make of that what you will.

Re: South Korea: The only middle power of its kind

#250

Post by yongjik » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #124

calmd wrote: post #7

SK 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…

Not really. Immigration has become an issue lately because a human (or a bare-human) is worth much less. 1.000 years ago a bare illiterate human had some considerable value. He could work in the field or he could fight. More humans, more food and production. More humans, more manpower to fight your enemies. Now a bare semi-educated human is a liability. Which is why most countries are refusing their entrance. Times h…

The real world is not some dystopian SF ruled by cool kids wearing shiny armor. The world's economy is still run by people consuming goods and services, creating demands - declining population is not an insurmountable problem but it does pose a huge challenge for any nation's economy.

Fewer people -> fewer sales for Ioniq and Galaxy S -> less money made by these companies -> less money available for industrial research -> worse technology for your servers, drones, military satellites, submarines, whatever -> lose the war.