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

#201

Post by jtbayly » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:49 AM UTC

waterlaw wrote: post #35

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…

Surrogacy will be the next big thing. Women in poorer countries will birth the children for wealthier nations. This will aid in the reduction of family formation in poorer countries and serve as population control. While ensuring no one country becomes too populated. H.G. Wells pointed out that we cannot have population control in one nation of the world, but not another. It must be worldwide, or it'd result in sever…

No post body was provided.

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

#202

Post by Dalewyn » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:50 AM UTC

DSingularity wrote: post #131

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.

Why not one kid and try to use the excess parenting bandwidth to equip him/her to face the new world and maybe even fix it a bit?

Not to detract, but "one kid" would only make the problem worse because a woman needs to give birth to at least two children in order for population counts at large to maintain parity.

That is, one kid per woman halves the population. If the axiom is at least maintaining, ideally growing the population, every woman needs to give birth to at least two and ideally three or more kids.

Of course, this isn't to say I'm telling other people what to do regarding offspring, because I hate that kind of intrusive attitude. I've already decided I'm having no kids, because fuck the human world; and anyone who comes bitching at me about it one way or another can take a hike and pound sand. So I'm not going to be hypocritical and turn around and tell other people what to do in the bedroom.

But if the purpose for all the noise behind childbearing is to take population count trends out of the negatives, advising "one kid" not only doesn't help solve the problem but actively makes it worse.

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

#203

Post by jonhohle » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:50 AM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #135

mrcartmeneses wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding twins, doctors like to implant two embryos to give a better chance of successful insemination per procedure.

I was told by an OB that this was no longer done in the US since the Octo mom spectacle.

It certainly is still done in the US. The Dr. may prompt you to ask and then feign concern about complications to CYA.

Source: I'm a dad of 8yo fraternal twins.

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

#204

Post by agentwiggles » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:53 AM UTC

fshr wrote: post #175

agentwiggles wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's less about preserving sparkling blue eyes and more about the negative effects of a declining population on a country's economy. Sam Harris had a guest (Peter Zeihan) a few episodes ago who talked about the downsides of population decline, and he was pretty interesting. One of the key points he made that seemed fairly intuitive is that as your population declines you eventually wind up with significantly…

Sam's a smart guy. He gets a lot right. Sometimes he has blind spots that make him seem alarmist. > I think it's less about preserving sparkling blue eyes and more about the negative effects of a declining population on a country's economy. Good thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration is a thing > One of the key points he made that seemed fairly intuitive is that as your population declines you eventually win…

Minor nitpick - Sam is not the one making these points in the referenced episode - it's the guest who wrote a book on the topic. In fact Sam brought another guy onto this show to act as a backstop, admitting up front that he didn't feel he knew enough about the topic to have a deep conversation without some help. The other guy pushed back on various points that Zeihan made and it's a pretty interesting discussion.

As for immigration, no arguments there. But that point leads back to the question of why a society hits population decline in the first place. Presumably the same things that cause your "native" population to stop reproducing eventually affects your immigrants after a generation or so, so while it can definitely slow the population decline, it's not a full solution.

To your point about the loss of deep expertise - I think the problem is still worth thinking about. Yes, we can make new experts. And those experts might even be more productive than the last generation of experts. But at the end of the day, it takes longer to make them, and you still have less.

I'm not sure how much I agree with Zeihan, but he makes some interesting points which I hadn't previously considered.

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

#205

Post by LAC-Tech » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:53 AM UTC

faeriechangling wrote: post #76

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…

Talking about “developed countries” here, not SK specifically. Is declining fertility really such a societal and evolutionary danger when we’re talking 1.4-1.5? If you think of us all as one race, the human race, the fact that a few corners of the world are declining in fertility is arguably an environmental victory that could soften some crises’s in the future. We are like 99.9% genetically similar, why risk gutting…

the fact that a few corners of the world are declining in fertility

Every corner of the world is declining in fertility, from South Korea to Niger.

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

#206

Post by FBISurveillance » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:56 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…

Apologies for ranting but this topic resonates too much.

Housing prices are 9x salary vs 4.5x salary in the 70s and it takes a while to save up. Personal data point: it took me winning an IPO lottery to start thinking about having kids for real. Having kids while earning minimal wage? Terrifying, especially in the US where getting yourself or your kid sick could bankrupt you in the blink of an eye - and if you want multiple kids you increase the risk.

So we think we have to have it all before we start trying having kids and have no sense of community whatsoever. Societal focus on hedonism and career leaves little to no time to raise kids. And at the end of the day you end up having no support from the society that slowly but surely ages.

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

#207

Post by Kon-Peki » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:57 AM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #81

gumby wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> somebody's going need to turn you on your side every few hours when you're in that old folks home - what happens if there aren't enough people to do those jobs? Obviously we will have robots doing that job! Elder care is already a major area of robotics effort in Japan. And if the robots don't get there? Well, it's not terrible. A smaller population doesn't need as many buildings erected, or crops grown etc. Some p…

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.

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

#208

Post by faeriechangling » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:58 AM UTC

_aavaa_ wrote: post #115

faeriechangling wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about “developed countries” here, not SK specifically. Is declining fertility really such a societal and evolutionary danger when we’re talking 1.4-1.5? If you think of us all as one race, the human race, the fact that a few corners of the world are declining in fertility is arguably an environmental victory that could soften some crises’s in the future. We are like 99.9% genetically similar, why risk gutting…

> If you think of us all as one race, the human race, the fact that a few corners of the world are declining in fertility It is not a few corners of the world. It is currently "developed countries", but we have no reason to believe that the non-"developed countries" will do any better. > is arguably an environmental victory that could soften some crises’s in the future. We are like 99.9% genetically similar, why risk…

Regarding the idea I’m taking a blase Attitude. My arguments allow for two separate defences against this argument. Both that humans are not very genetically different so a change in genetics should hardly affect culture, and that culture isn’t dependent on genetics. How blase can I be while preparing two different defences against your allegations?

Regarding argument 1, I will say there is no problem with the supply of people, global population is growing. It doesn’t need to grow everywhere simultaniously, insisting that it must will inevitably lead to a bias towards population growth. The population HAS to shrink somewhere for things to stay stable, since it will invariably grow in a few places, and at this point the growing countries outweigh the shrinking ones sharply.

With 2, I’ll expand on this argument. Unrestrained pollution will lead to a future where the earth warms which can rapidly leading to famine and population decline after an era of sharp population growth. You are worried about a decline in children in a set of countries, but that problem is a lot less of a problem when it’s happening in a few countries, than when it’s happening in every country at the same time. Then things go worse for every individual country involved, as immigration is not an option.

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

#209

Post by adrianN » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 4:01 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.

The other difference now is that we're pretty close to wiping out crucial ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest and show no signs of taking climate change as seriously as we should.

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

#210

Post by refurb » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 4:02 AM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #5

It is always unclear to me if this is a bad thing. In a shrinking population, are individual people worse off, or does it just look like a decline when you look at the country in aggregate? There is no shortage of squandered talent in the world. So many people work below their capability because there are just more people than opportunities. It seems like it’s not a problem to keep running the modern world, even with…

There is nothing wrong with it as long as people are prepared for the effects: higher taxes combined with reduced social benefits (as fewer workers support more retired). A stagnant or declining standard of living. A house that goes down in value not up over time. More challenging education for children as schools are closed and consolidated.