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

#51

Post by tuatoru » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 11:43 PM UTC

pengaru wrote: post #22

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…

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…

Wow, that site is difficult to understand. I prefer the UN's World Population Prospects 2022 website.

Choose your country, chooose Probabilistic Projections, Fertility, then Births.[1]

1. https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/Birt...

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

#52

Post by waterlaw » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 11:51 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #50

waterlaw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Surrogacy will be the next big thing For most couples, the first 9 months for a child isn’t the problem, it is the costs of the following 2 decades.

Yeah. Their idea was to reduce the population until you reach a number low enough that is viable for the ecosystem. The population would then be "maintained" at a stable level. Most people would not be able to afford children.

You could make child-rearing unaffordable enough to require government assistance. Then that assistance could be limited by quota. There's a lot of things that could happen in the future. We don't really know. It's just a guess.

Another thing that In vitro fertilization solves is allowing for women to focus on their careers from age 20 - 50. If people in the future are going to live longer and be healthier, then it'd be feasible to have children (through surrogate) at the age of 50. If you'd already amassed enough wealth (or had privy to subsidies), I couldn't see why not...

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

#53

Post by throwaway_4ever » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 11:54 PM UTC

Kon-Peki wrote: post #40

waterlaw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Surrogacy will be the next big thing. Women in poorer countries will birth the children for wealthier nations. So you think women in poorer countries are willing to "pre-sell" their children? That's insanely absurd, and an absolute human rights violation if forced. No. This will not happen.

You need to look up what surrogacy means. The surrogate women is doing the "pregnancy" part, with prior agreement and IVF from a different couple.

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

#54

Post by tuatoru » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 12:09 AM UTC

dron57 wrote: post #7

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…

Most of the past century's gains in quality of life were tightly correlated with rising labor. If the population crashes, then who will do all the specialized work? Another thing to think about is excess capital and investment. With a large population, excess savings become investments into new companies, technologies, etc. Without excess savings there will be no tech industry, improvements in science, infrastructure…

TL;DR: it's more about demand than labor supply. Same result.

I don't think it is as binary as you suggest. There will be lower total saving after a delay. There will certainly be less investment more immediately.

What will happen is this.

If you borrow money to make and sell (say) shoes, and the population is doubling every 35 years (2% growth), then your market doubles in 35 years also. (You need money because your buildings and equipment wear out, if not for materials.)

Your lenders have it relatively easy in this situation, because fewer of their borrowers go bust, so interest rates (which are partly compensation for risk) are lower.

With negative population growth, your market is shrinking, so your lenders' risk of loss increases.

Anyone who still has excess savings demands higher return on investment. Fewer potential investments can jump the higher hurdle. Total investment decreases, total income decreases and everything spirals down.

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

#55

Post by tuatoru » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 12:17 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #44

rednerrus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's going to build and service the robots? Who's going to build the chips necessary to build the robots? Who's going to operate the ships required to move the parts to the destination to be assembled? Who's going to build the ships? Who's going to to secure the shipping lanes? Who's going to grow and process the food? We don't have the parts that we need now to build new cars and tractors. Can we really afford to b…

Well, there will be some jobs in robot service, but most of that work should be done by...robots. Self-driving ships don't need humans. Robots should be doing most of the ship building. Growing and processing food should be highly automated, and soon. If we have "infinite" (renewable) energy we can cut down on the chemical input and have robots plucking each weed and carefully metering out the water. The price of "or…

The working age population is a more pressing problem[1].

I don't share your blithe optimism that we can automate the millions of tasks that humans do so quickly and easily.

1. https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/20-69...

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

#56

Post by neonate » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 1:03 AM UTC

https://archive.ph/njgzy

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

#57

Post by colinmhayes » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 1:10 AM UTC

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #18

throwayyy479087 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That comparison rings backwards to me? Pakistan is a deeply troubled, dangerous, and poorly run country. Korea is one of the best places to live on Earth.

I'm pretty sure Korea has pretty shit work/life balance. And if you lose your job you're also SoL. There's still a substantial amount of instability and psychic stressors that could lead to someone not wanting kids, on top of constantly fearing war with NK

Yet it is still among the best places to live on earth.

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

#58

Post by chitowneats » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 1:11 AM UTC

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #18

throwayyy479087 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That comparison rings backwards to me? Pakistan is a deeply troubled, dangerous, and poorly run country. Korea is one of the best places to live on Earth.

I'm pretty sure Korea has pretty shit work/life balance. And if you lose your job you're also SoL. There's still a substantial amount of instability and psychic stressors that could lead to someone not wanting kids, on top of constantly fearing war with NK

I can assure you from personal experience that the average South Korean is not "constantly fearing war with NK" or anything close to it.

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

#59

Post by colinmhayes » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 1:11 AM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #42

Gibbon1 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a tenancy to forget that 60 years ago one working person would have to support a wife and several children.

It kinda amazing how we could probably point a point where productivity peaked that is how many people single working person can support. As before that depending on location pretty much everyone worked on one level or an other...

Productivity has never been higher. We're just consuming more.

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

#60

Post by onepointsixC » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 1:12 AM UTC

CatWChainsaw wrote: post #26

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…

Historically population drops were bad. When you lose population, you lose the labor required to support as many specializations, and civilization regresses. Now, though, fertilizers and modern medicine support excess human population, fossil fuels are an energy wellspring that helps reduce the need for physical labor, and AI can free people from repetitive mental work. Combine this with the fact that yes, our oversh…

You're missing the demand side and the dependents problem. AI, Automation, etc. may replace factory workers but those workers also consumed products. With less consumers you have less demand thus your revenues are doomed to shrink year on year.

Just about every society has dependents who can no longer work and younger workers who support them through tax revenue. With fewer and fewer young workers and more and more dependents you have no good options. Cutting services would be bad for the elderly and likely impossible to pass in a democratic society as they would make up the majority of the voting population. Not cutting services would accelerate flight of workers and worse birth rates as overwork youth don't have time to start their own families.