Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate • Hacker News Board

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#211

Post by adrianN » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 4:05 AM UTC

shadowofneptune wrote: post #133

ctoth wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something has deeply deeply changed in society for a fertility rate to go from 6 to 0.8 in 60 years Does the change necessarily have to be societal? > In 1992, a study found a global 50% decline in sperm counts in men over the previous 60 years. Multiple studies over subsequent years confirmed that initial finding, including a 2017 paper showing a 50% to 60% decline in sperm concentration between 1973 and 2011 in m…

Infertility is not the leading issue when people are asked, 'why are you not having children?'. Until it is, I don't see how it can be more important than societal barriers.

Lower sperm count and lower desire to have children might have a common cause.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#212

Post by Dalewyn » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

ctoth wrote: post #63

throwaway_4ever wrote: post #12

Something has deeply deeply changed in society for a fertility rate to go from 6 to 0.8 in 60 years, the living memory of a single life. Before, society grew with the average working age person only needing to half support an elderly retiree. Now, that same working age person will need to support more than 2 elderly retirees themselves, over 4 times the resources. Has it occurred to people that, maybe, modern fertili…

> Something has deeply deeply changed in society for a fertility rate to go from 6 to 0.8 in 60 years Does the change necessarily have to be societal? > In 1992, a study found a global 50% decline in sperm counts in men over the previous 60 years. Multiple studies over subsequent years confirmed that initial finding, including a 2017 paper showing a 50% to 60% decline in sperm concentration between 1973 and 2011 in m…

>Men today produce fewer sperm than in the past, and the sperm are less healthy. The question, then, is what could be causing this decline in fertility[0].

This has everything to do with monogamous relationships and marriages in most of the developed human world.

In the natural world, there are many factors at play that help ensure only the "healthiest" males conceive with females. Most factors are indirect, such as males physically fighting each other for a mate wherein the "fittest" male would more likely come out superior and successfully mate.

One direct factor that has been practically eradicated from humanity, however, is direct competition between sperm. Some animals and many plants are polygamous, wherein a female receives sperm (or other forms of genetic material as applicable) from multiple males. The sperm have to compete with each other to reach the egg first and conceive, this encourages males with the "healthiest" sperm to pass their genetic material onto the next generation.

Monogamous relationships and marriages as seen in humans remove this factor completely, the "fitness" of a given male human's sperm is irrelevant to conception because competition between sperm has ceased to exist. Both unfit and fit sperm alike can conceive, assuming other indirect factors at play allow for it. Indirect factors that care not for the "fitness" of sperm.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#213

Post by JetAlone » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

grog454 wrote: post #156

throwaway_4ever wrote: post #12

Something has deeply deeply changed in society for a fertility rate to go from 6 to 0.8 in 60 years, the living memory of a single life. Before, society grew with the average working age person only needing to half support an elderly retiree. Now, that same working age person will need to support more than 2 elderly retirees themselves, over 4 times the resources. Has it occurred to people that, maybe, modern fertili…

> Before, society grew with the average working age person only needing to half support an elderly retiree. Now, that same working age person will need to support more than 2 elderly retirees themselves, over 4 times the resources. There's a scary implication. If having to support more elderly causes one to produce less offspring, we have a positive feedback loop resulting in population collapse.

Yes, and immigration almost always brings tension because of cultural clash.

I think a lot of people in developed countries voluntarily or involuntarily adopt a psychological willingness to not have kids and let their culture collapse because the emotional distress of a life in a post-growth world. A world where your freedoms, privacy, and economic opportunities are shrinking, to extract temporary value and stability for the upper class, out of you and your labour/compliance. The only worldly way out of it is to basically step on the others while going up to implement these changes, which feels horrible to a naturally empathic creature like man. It's a cursed state of being.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#214

Post by mjh2539 » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 4:09 AM UTC

TbobbyZ wrote: post #92

I have 3 kids with one due at the end of the year. All are from the same woman and we’ve known each other since being teenagers. We are planning to have 5-7 total. They really add a richness to life. It’s fun to see people stare when we go out.

Same here. At our parish there are tons of families with 5+ kids. It's like an oasis.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#215

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 4:11 AM UTC

throwaway_4ever wrote: post #12

Something has deeply deeply changed in society for a fertility rate to go from 6 to 0.8 in 60 years, the living memory of a single life. Before, society grew with the average working age person only needing to half support an elderly retiree. Now, that same working age person will need to support more than 2 elderly retirees themselves, over 4 times the resources. Has it occurred to people that, maybe, modern fertili…

> Has it occurred to people that, maybe, modern fertility is a tragedy of the commons? If everyone chooses to act in their own interest, society is worse off than collectively pressuring to have more kids?

Of course. Malthusianism, eugenics.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#216

Post by qqqwerty » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 4:12 AM UTC

thunderbird120 wrote: post #71

pengaru wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's just a lump in the population vs. age graph and you're fixating on the back side of the lump as if it's inevitably going towards zero. After the lump passes through South Koreans will look around and see a lack of traffic congestion, abundance of housing, lack of competitors for their now abundant resources, and lack of disproportionately large population of unproductive elderly dependents. Wanna guess what h…

>Wanna guess what happens in that welcoming environment? My guess is people feel inclined to make some babies. I would assume the exact opposite given that this will probably probably crank up pressure on working-aged people as more and more old people need to be supported by fewer and fewer young. I would also assume a significant exodus of the young to places with actual opportunities rather than a country sized re…

This feels like a non-issue. The boomer generation is probably one of the wealthiest generations in history. And the younger generations have for the most part been fairly underemployed. Feels like there is more than enough slack in the labor markets to handle the extra work, and taxes could be targeted towards the wealth assets of the boomers (stocks, real estate, etc...).

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#217

Post by fomine3 » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 4:15 AM UTC

Kon-Peki wrote: post #207

remarkEon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion of retirees dying alone surrounded by robots doesn’t strike you, at all, as kinda weird and dystopic?

> retirees dying alone surrounded by robots You’re describing modern Japan, FYI.

Unfortunately not yet. Lower salary workers work hard to care them now.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#218

Post by mullingitover » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 4:19 AM UTC

nxm wrote: post #147

mrcartmeneses wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gives a child a normal childhood and saves them from a system of foster care that can never fully meet the needs of a child?

Much respect to those who adopt, but bloodlines matter

Counterpoint: our species has very little genetic diversity, we’re all pretty closely related. The odds that there’s there’s something unique or special about any one person’s lineage is pretty low.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#219

Post by orwin » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 4:20 AM UTC

acdha wrote: post #79

amrocha wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Declining birth rates have nothing to do with oppressing women. Worker exploitation, poor social safety net, and wealth disparity are squarely to blame.

> Declining birth rates have nothing to do with oppressing women. I think the point was the opposite: countries with limited respect and opportunities for women have higher birth rates because women have less control over whether they have children and if good careers aren’t an option anyway there’s less opportunity cost to staying home with a child.

You mean countries like France ?

Just implement a repartition retirement system and small incentive per child which diminish after the third, boom, 2.1 fertility rate for most of the 21rst century.

At least for now, the destruction of our retirement system and our current trend towards capitalization is already killing our fertility rate, and the idiots pushing this will once again realize this too late, because this is what they do.

Re: Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

#220

Post by xeromal » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 4:25 AM UTC

legutierr wrote: post #170

decafninja wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching her friends and my friends' wives go through it, we've been scared off. Add to that, the usual HN phenomenon that we're observing how the world and our countries (USA & Korea) seem be going down the toilet, and that makes us feel hesitant to bring a new human being into the world, especially when there are kids already here that could use a loving family.

The world has always been going down the toilet. The only difference now is that we have higher visibility of and lower tolerance for the bullshit. You shouldn’t be so pessimistic.

I agree with you in many ways, but I think humanity has never had this level of capability to destroy the earth. We'll either be unable to breathe freely or lose most of civilization in a nuclear war by the end of the century.