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Tokyo's Government Is Building Its Own Dating App to Combat Falling Birthrates

time.com

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Re: Tokyo's Government Is Building Its Own Dating App to Combat Falling Birthrates

#41

Post by kevinventullo »

mvc wrote: post #10

Maybe a public service dating app makes sense. The alignment of incentives are all wrong for private dating apps. They obviously lose when you find someone and pair up so they're incentivised not to find a match.

Perhaps the government could directly incentivize dating apps to create “good” matches by including an optional field on marriage registrations indicating on which app, if any, the couple met. The government could then pay the companies directly a kind of bounty per couple (or tax credit or something).

Unlike other incentive systems, I feel like this one would be harder to abuse since there’s a fair amount of friction to getting married.

Re: Tokyo's Government Is Building Its Own Dating App to Combat Falling Birthrates

#42

Post by Detrytus »

CJefferson wrote: post #35
TOMDM wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are wealthier and healthier today than almost any other point in history. Better times than now are a blip in the grand scheme of things. We have a huge number of social ills that contribute towards peoples reasons for not wanting children, but wealth and physical health are not among them.

If you are looking at "all of history", for most of history it was usual for one person in a couple to spend most of their time at home, which is very hard to do now while covering rent.

Actually, for most of history it was common for everyone to simply WORK AT HOME, as farmers. And that was a job for whole family, including children as young as 6 years old.

Re: Tokyo's Government Is Building Its Own Dating App to Combat Falling Birthrates

#43

Post by mensetmanusman »

GordonS wrote: post #37
mensetmanusman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drive to procreate is the sex drive, we only recently decided to decouple them in abstraction due to technology.

I'm not sure that's true; it's possible for a woman to desperately want a baby, but still have a low libido and have little interest in sex just for fun.

Low libido is evolutionarily informed to also signal that now is not the right time to procreate.

In this light, it’s not surprising that hormonal birth control, which tells the body it can’t have a baby now, very often reduces libido.

Re: Tokyo's Government Is Building Its Own Dating App to Combat Falling Birthrates

#44

Post by averageRoyalty »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #34
LeanderK wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “go outside and play, come back for dinner” why is this impractical? EDIT: I'm getting downvoted but I am seriously not sure. I don't have kids right now but its part of how I intend to raise them when I get them.

People who are misinformed by watching too much news will call the cops on kids without grownups near by. This is somewhat rare, but it feeds into a real culture of misinformation where parents think this happens enough to fear letting them roam. The feedback loop self reinforces because of lack of education - many people don’t realize the more news they consume the less they know about the statistics on the ground.…

The rarity here cannot be overstated. I enjoy stories like this - in the same way someone who enjoys true crime doesn't actually support murder - and they're heavily overreportd but quite uncommon.

If you want to let your kids go out and play it's unlikely you'll have issue. I suspect for many it's just an excuse to plonk their kids in front of the iPad all day.

Re: Tokyo's Government Is Building Its Own Dating App to Combat Falling Birthrates

#45

Post by foobarbecue »

lolc wrote: post #26
foobarbecue wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the concept, but it seems impossible in practice. How on earth would the billing system work? If it's self-reporting, no one will report. It's interesting how "honor system" can work for certain in-person businesses, but I don't think it could ever work for a dating app.

I've been thinking an escrow system could work. On signup, you pledge to donate to a charity when you leave. Candidates won't be able to get back their funds, they can only release them. Once they have a mate, their mate would make sure the money is released. The platform could take a cut to finance their operations. The amount pledged and the charity could be public for extra virtue signaling.

Oh wow! That's brilliant! I think it could work.

Re: Tokyo's Government Is Building Its Own Dating App to Combat Falling Birthrates

#46

Post by averageRoyalty »

beretguy wrote: post #15

Give people 6 hour workday with mandatory no-overtime and the problem will fix itself. It’s not rocket science.

In Japan? If you did that, the economy would immediately fall over. I don't think you're very well informed on this subject matter.

Re: Tokyo's Government Is Building Its Own Dating App to Combat Falling Birthrates

#47

Post by Brian_K_White »

LeanderK wrote: post #11
CalRobert wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that our increasingly lonely lives and fraying communities mean much less of a support network. Parenting is also exhausting now that “go outside and play, come back for dinner” is impractical (for various reasons good or bad).

> “go outside and play, come back for dinner” why is this impractical? EDIT: I'm getting downvoted but I am seriously not sure. I don't have kids right now but its part of how I intend to raise them when I get them.

In the US it will be because of other people, who will call child protective services, who will then come and destroy the family.

Re: Tokyo's Government Is Building Its Own Dating App to Combat Falling Birthrates

#48

Post by PaulHoule »

nox101 wrote: post #23
mvc wrote: post #10

Maybe a public service dating app makes sense. The alignment of incentives are all wrong for private dating apps. They obviously lose when you find someone and pair up so they're incentivised not to find a match.

This is commonly repeated but I don’t think it has any basis in reality. Dating apps compete. the one your friends tell you they met their partner is the one you sign up for.

At least here in the states they have all been bought up by

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match.com

Re: Tokyo's Government Is Building Its Own Dating App to Combat Falling Birthrates

#49

Post by Detrytus »

GordonS wrote: post #37
mensetmanusman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drive to procreate is the sex drive, we only recently decided to decouple them in abstraction due to technology.

I'm not sure that's true; it's possible for a woman to desperately want a baby, but still have a low libido and have little interest in sex just for fun.

Yes, but usually one baby is enough to satisfy that drive, which is not enough to keep the population from shrinking. And recently some women decide to have 0 babies, and settle for a dog or cat instead. I've heard them using terms like "dog-child" or "cat-child", or "cross-species family" :)

Re: Tokyo's Government Is Building Its Own Dating App to Combat Falling Birthrates

#50

Post by harry_ord »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #36
admissionsguy wrote: post #21

I know that a government’s primary objective is to perpetuate itself and grow, but other than that, what is wrong with a declining population? Especially as young people concentrate in urban centres which remain dynamic. People often quote the need for workforce to maintain the extravagant lifestyles of the retirees, but they will not starve in any case, will they? And if everywhere has Japan’s birthbrate, you get to…

Nothing wrong with population decline. This is concern with the derivative of population decline. We are about to live through an inverted black plague where the population goes down the rollercoaster, every industry is disrupted because of no labor force, BUT the vast majority of people left are old instead of young and fit (after the plague). I’m surprised Hollywood hasn’t jumped at the opportunity to portray what’…

We had children of men which I guess is a dramatisation of what is happening
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