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France's baby bust

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Re: France's baby bust

#241

Post by DFHippie »

lalopalota wrote: post #111
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does religion play a major rile in politics in the rest of the western world? Hasn’t the growth of Islam in Europe been a large and growing political issue for the past decade? France in particular has had lot of debates about religious clothing at schools, what kind of criticism of religious ideas is and isn’t acceptable, etc. From my POV, it looks like religion is a bigger deal in European than American politics.…

> marrying across political lines now carries more opposition than across religious ones, for the majority of people Where can I learn more about this? I find it difficult to believe this is true for "the majority of people".

Eh, as an American I would say it checks out. We really hate each other.

Much of the get-out-the-vote effort on the right consists of reminding their voters why they hate the other side. This naturally pisses off the left. This leads to much angry rhetoric on the left. This rhetoric is nut-picked and put on blast by the media on the right. Etc. The situation isn't symmetric because the left has a lot of issues they're happy to run on: climate change, electoral reforms, education, health care. The right is mostly focused on their hatred of the left -- anti-wokeism, anti-CRT, anti-gender-whatever. The net effect is a lot of hatred.

Re: France's baby bust

#242

Post by t-3 »

bumby wrote: post #233
lotsofpulp wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large family is an asset in industrialized societies too, but in the long run. For example, having lots of siblings can help you later on for networking or being able to go someone to depend on, assuming a decent number of them obtain useful positions in society. But in the short term, it is a lot of sacrifice, especially for the woman who has to give birth and raise all those babies. And of course, it is a lot of…

> having lots of siblings can help you later on True, but that’s not a benefit to the people making the decision to have more children. It’s a beneficial second order effect that won’t negate the cost to the parent.

It's a benefit for agricultural households. 10+ kids are common in my family tree until the latest few generations for that reason.

Re: France's baby bust

#243

Post by pas »

immibis wrote: post #116
bluGill wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Population is on track to peak and start declining around 2050

That trend is the one thing that may still save us, but don't worry, they'll find a way to prevent that, because a decreasing population also decreases GDP and the stock market, and we can't have that.

nah. GDP growth can continue even with a fixed number of people. it'll just need more energy and more capital goods.

Re: France's baby bust

#244

Post by pas »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #236
nostromo wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The size of the English-speaking market certainly matters. Why make a $100 million video game like GTA 5 for 200 million French speakers when you can address the market of 2 billion global English speakers? (Of course, they do localize it to French after developing it in English. But not everything gets localized and usually it’s targeted primarily at the English market.)

>The size of the English-speaking market certainly matters. Meh, yo a degree yes, but not always. Korean entertainment had some international smash hits recently that went viral like Parasite, Squid Game, and All Of Us Are Dead, and they were all in Korean not in English. Quality mattes more than language.

but that's very likely also a very conscious export of South Korea, like Korean restaurants.

and to a degree France has this too with their Institut Francais (French institute) ... but of course with a negligible efficacy.

that said, as far as I know, Paris is still the top top top number 1 travel destination.

Re: France's baby bust

#245

Post by School-Cotton »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #194
School-Cotton wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME a lot of French people consider themselves to be “Catholic” if they’ve been baptized, even if they’re completely atheist.

The way to think about this is that people affiliate themselves with tribes for multiple reasons. One can philosophically not care at all about the beliefs of Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc, but for the purposes of interacting with members of their tribe, and signaling to other members of their tribe that they are in that tribe, they might still describe themselves as being “Catholic” (or whatever).

Exactly, and it’s reinforced by the fact that the two main ethnic groups in France (“ethnically French”, and North African Arabs), are distinguished by religion: the former are mostly Catholic, and the latter are virtually all Muslims. So the lines between religion and other markers of identity are blurred.

Re: France's baby bust

#246

Post by genman »

Scoundreller wrote: post #237
genman wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually not true. The global population exploded after industrialized nations developed after WW2 new types of high yield crops and then gave those away to non-industrialized nations.

post-Colombian exchange, adoption of potato also helped Europe as a whole. "By feeding rapidly growing populations, [it] permitted a handful of European nations to assert dominion over most of the world between 1750 and 1950." "Because potatoes were so productive, the effective result, in terms of calories, was to double Europe’s food supply." "Routine famine almost disappeared in potato country, a 2,000-mile band th…

True, partially. But the growth was much slower over longer period of time while after 50s the population of developing nations almost quadrupled in 1/2 century.

https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth

Re: France's baby bust

#247

Post by pas »

Convolutional wrote: post #182
mkoubaa wrote: post #161

> From the dawn of humanity to the eighteenth century, human life was dominated by starvation, poverty, wars, and pandemics. Actually no, human life only started to be dominated by this after the shift from hunter gatherer to agrarian societies.

Marshall Sahlins studied hunter gatherer bands, and many work less than forty hours a week. Programmers I know can't figure out how to get down to a forty hour a week workweek to survive, but these hunter gather bands in sub-Saharan Africa and the Amazon seem to have figured it out.

foraging only works if there's a sufficiently low population density. the Amazon is so plentiful it even allows these communities to stay relatively fixed, in other climates they had to move around a lot (after relatively exhausting an area)

of course we work a lot more because we want some of that economic surplus to reinvest it back into things that we think will improve our life. a relatively constant life wouldn't require that. also our decision-making and surplus distribution system is very very inefficient compared to a few hundred strong community's.

economically we can afford to build millions individual cars and houses and offices, fully furnish them, and do this again-and-again when old buildings get demolished, old stuff gets dumped into landfills.

we can afford to build tanks and bombs and then do that again and again, and to maintain standing armies.

unfortunately efficiency and longevity is just not a global concern :(

Re: France's baby bust

#248

Post by slaw »

rayiner wrote: post #225
slaw wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Study from 8 years ago. No longer true.

You think a seismic shift in those numbers happened in the last year? 81% of Americans still say they believe in god: https://news.gallup.com/poll/393737/belief-god-dips-new-low.... . It’s down only 6 percentage points since 2013.

They may still believe in god, but not pray daily.

Re: France's baby bust

#249

Post by pas »

reducesuffering wrote: post #224
throwaway2037 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. I have extensive first-hand culture experience (travel, friends, dating) with people from Indonesia, India, and China (PRC). I would broadly categorise all three as very socially conservative -- relative to other G7-level developed, liberal countries. Economics: China: Life in a mid- to mega-size city is already pretty good. Yes, it isn't 50K EUR per year, but 10K EUR per year is solid middle class. India…

> Family structures are incredibly deep and supportive -- way deeper than most highly-advanced countries. As long as you bend the knee to all of your family's beliefs. God forbid you're gay, irreligious or different religion, date someone of another caste/religion, etc...

and unfortunately that does not matter for the things the post mentions, ie. population and geopolitical dominance. :/

Re: France's baby bust

#250

Post by roncesvalles »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #103
amriksohata wrote: post #56

The changing male and female roles in society also has a part to play in any society where women are needed to work

Fully agree with the first part, disagree with the second: women elected to work, they did not needed to work. Single income family was in a way better than dual income family, the world was in a great shape in the '60-'70 when women started to move to paid jobs. Now you have a lot more workers, more leverage to employers and a lot less time spent in the family and less time to have kids when you want to build a care…

As someone born in the 90s, it does seem like I was born in the "rubble" of a great societal shift from the family to the individual as the atomic unit of evaluating someone's societal stature. Although this shift has had benefits, it made the role of a housewife that of a worthless dependent. I'm not at all lamenting that this is a bad thing. Women should obviously be able to pursue careers the same way as men.

However, it does seem that there is a lag between this change and how society is organized. There are some facts that are hard to ignore:

1. Raising young children without help is a lot of work.

2. Somebody needs to cook. Ordering 3 meals a day from a restaurant is unaffordable for most. There is also a trust/perception issue that "outside food" is not as good as homemade food.

3. If you work a full-time job you can give very little time for anything else.

Some major societal change needs to occur that invalidates one of these three points.

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