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To me this is the clear downside of having a competitive, efficient society: it is so competitive, and so efficient, that people correctly calculate that by byp

To me this is the clear downside of having a competitive, efficient society: it is so competitive, and so efficient, that people correctly calculate that by bypassing kids, they can save more & lose less time. That's where the the economic pressure (which societies seem to want, lest people become 'lazy') pushes the next generation. When that's what you incentivize, that's what you get - not just in Korea but all over the modern world.

seydor 4y ago
So people are optimizing. Why should they optimize for maximum population?
- simlevesque 4y ago
  Well, demographic crunches are not really enjoyable.
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    The planet is telling us that ever increasing population isn't enjoyable, either, and perhaps even less so.
    - eastbound 4y ago
      This. I’m super annoyed that countries consider depopulating as a catastrophe. Instead of immediately encouraging repopulation AND trying to deal with the climate catastrophe, why don’t we accept depopulation as a benefit and put much less pressure on the climate? In 1990, CO2 emissions equated CO2 absorption by trees. All the goals about CO2 are about coming back to 1990 levels (minus the surplus). So 1990 levels of population is what we should aim for. If a country depopulates, let’s not increase births.
      - seydor 4y ago
        If we accept this, (contrary to the hitherto used economic models of growth) then we 'll need to change priorities in economies, fund more automation, deflate all the useless real estate bubbles etc, take down excess infrastructure, switch to robust nuclear energy etc. There aren't going to be enough ppl in the future to maintain this infrastructure.
  - seydor 4y ago
    Probably not, but on the other hand we don't know it for sure cause there isn't one in recent history
    - moonchrome 4y ago
      Current economic trends are a sneak peak - inflation - money being paid out for obligations (gov. bonds -> pension funds) - not enough goods and people to cover the demand. Only much worse because the trend is increasing on both sides - old people being kept alive with expensive treatments, dropping population of working people.
      - seydor 4y ago
        There was high inflation in times of great population growth, 70s-80s
        moonchrome 4y ago
        You can have inflation for various reasons - labor shortage is one of them.
  - georgeecollins 4y ago
    Are they really that bad? There are 8 billion people on the planet. We can support more, but it makes more vulnerable to catastrophe. Japan has had these demographics for a while now but it doesn't seem like they are falling apart. Someone will say-- oh but there economy isn't growing! Better a stagnant economy than a famine or a plague.
    - hnbad 4y ago
      Most research I've seen indicates that human population will likely max out at 12 billion and then decline until it reaches a stable level. Except for a few fringe Malthusians, that is. The problem with population decline is that most countries are built around the naive assumption of perpetual growth, especially when it comes to social security and welfare systems. Of course most of this can easily be fixed by raising taxes but that would fly in the face of the general trend to give tax breaks to higher incomes, abolish wealth taxes and prefer flat tax rates over progressive ones to prevent "wealth flight".
      - skissane 4y ago
        > Most research I've seen indicates that human population will likely max out at 12 billion and then decline until it reaches a stable level. That kind of research is based on the assumption that the social/cultural trends encouraging people to have less kids continue unabated. Humans often overcompensate. It is conceivable that a country's population may decline to the point that the threat that poses to its future becomes impossible to ignore – the threat may motivate the general population to change their behaviour, and may lead to the government introducing major incentives to encourage more children. That may lead to the population decline being reversed; but, it may then be difficult to "turn off the tap" of the new culture/policies to stop the population booming again. There are also countercultural minorities (mostly ultra-conservative religious sects) who stubbornly continue to have lots of kids in spite of the social/cultural forces which discourage mainstream society from doing so. That kind of analysis generally ignores those minorities, because they are so small – true, but if they don't change their ways, eventually they will grow to become the majority, and then we'll be back to population boom again. Will they eventually change their ways? That is possible, not inevitable. Many of them have been successfully resisting pressure to change their ways for decades; if they haven't succumbed to that pressure yet, why assume it is inevitable that they eventually will? If one considers that there are multiple such countercultural minorities, even if some of them do end up changing course, all it takes is for one to stubbornly resist doing so, for it to eventually become the demographic majority.
- shitpostbot 4y ago
  If it would be better for the society, then the society should be incentivising it, or at least making the calculation sensible. Hence the discussion
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Society wants the benefits without paying the true costs for parents to raise kids and not have the experience suck. Even in countries with robust pro natalist policies, people want less or no kids.
- spicyusername 4y ago
  At a minimum optimizing for "replacement" theoretically allows a population to continue to exist as it is (assuming all kinds of things like everyone backfills the jobs that are already filled, etc, etc) A shrinking population is terrible as there are less and less people to support existing institutions like social services, infrastructure, healthcare, etc. A very simple example is social security. It is a net wealth transfer from working age people to retirement age people. If there's not enough working age people then there is not enough to support the retirement age people.
  - seydor 4y ago
    We have to assume then that people are calculating otherwise: - Smaller population will need less infrastructure - They don't plan to support the old - Pension plans were fit for 20th century, esp. post-WW2, but they can't work anymore
    - gervwyk 4y ago
      With you on the pension fund remark, bit whats next / else?
      - seydor 4y ago
        nothing
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      > They don't plan to support the old Plot twist: They're going to become the old. They don't seem to have that as part of their calculation...
      - _nalply 4y ago
        I am sure that some do. However even if they have many children it doesn't help them if everybody else doesn't.
        4y ago
deltree7 4y ago
I'm not a religious nut, but you have to admit that religion which typically prioritizing lots of babies got this one right
- gloryjulio 4y ago
  By having ppl indoctrinated to accept being at lower caste to produce babies and contributing, where the ppl at top of the pyramid are sucking all the blood from the bottom. Yeah that would work out
  - rayiner 4y ago
    That sounds more like the modern secularism than at least Christianity or Islam. Indeed, the latter is more egalitarian. Nearly everyone can take pride in raising a family. Only a relative cognitive elite can forgo having kids to pursue a demanding career.
    - gloryjulio 4y ago
      How are Christianity or Islam more egalitarian? Don't their elites have way more power to define what the bottom feeders can do or say? How is giving ppl less right more egalitarian? What kind of backward logic are you talking about?
      - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        They're more egalitarian because there's a authority that is written. I can use the Bible or the Koran to judge the minister or the organization. I don't know if this is done in Islam, but it is in at least some strains of Christianity.
        gloryjulio 4y ago
        I am not talking about the book. I am talking about in practice. I am not even getting the nitty gitty details of things like women's rights. I am only asking one question. Has there been a time in history where there are really no elites group in the religious groups and everyone is equal? When did that happen? It's such a hypocrisy that all the religions have a good idea that we should have a god above men so that we don't worship human as god, but in the end it never translated to the practice isn't it?
hnbad 4y ago
That's a funny way of saying that people are so economically desperate (whether due to low income, lack of savings, job insecurity, weak familial ties, etc) that they delay having children. I wonder what the % of people currently in a long-term relationship looks like. Those also don't tend to do well under economic duress.
- dmix 4y ago
  South Koreans are richer than ever, so if that's the problem why aren't they having more kids? > due to low income, lack of savings, job insecurity, weak familial ties, etc Almost every couple I know who is not having kids makes good $$. It's my friends who make less and are more working class (and work longer hours at that) are the ones having kids. So that sounds like the opposite of what you're suggesting.
  - hnbad 4y ago
    > job insecurity, weak familial ties, etc Not everything is about current income. Sure, they make good money but are they able to cut hours to spend more time at home with an infant or toddler? Can one of them take a few years off work and still have their career recover from that? Will they be able to maintain their lifestyle if they have to pay for another human being? There are a lot more considerations than raw money and a higher income doesn't help with that unless you can also build up considerable savings or have a strong support network. It takes a village, and all that.
    - dmix 4y ago
      When you make $100k vs $50k that usually means your skillset is in higher demand and rarer, so you have better long term job security. Working class people don't have that luxury. So yes I think people who earn more have better job security and ability to support a spouse during mat leave. I also live in Canada with liberal mat leave laws so that's not an issue. If anything the biggest pressure on my wealthy urban friends vs working class suburban/small town people is a) cost of housing and b) lack of savings. But OP said "a competitive and maximally efficient society" dissuades kids. First, a competitive economy should generate plenty of housing for people with the $$ to pay for it. Secondly, an efficient economy should provide plenty of ways to save/invest beyond just housing. The public stock market is highly exclusive and controlled. The primary other way (besides housing/stocks) is investing in or starting a small business. New small business rates have declined in recent years. Housing is the only game in town for most people and what politicians spend 90% of focus on incentivizing in capital markets + culturally, but keep supply artificially limited. So if anything regressive policies which prevent competition/efficiency leads to less kids.
akira2501 4y ago
I have a hard time rectifying the idea that Korea's economy is highly state managed and largely operated by monopolies with a society "so efficient and competitive" that people are opting out of humanity in order to compete and store money. I almost think you have it entirely backwards. In a society where competition and choice is so severely limited you see people adopt these strategies because there is far less room to make a mistake or to engage with economically sub optimal decisions like having a child. I think you're seeing this effect creep into the US as well, as we've allowed more mergers and acquisitions financed by cheap interest from the Fed that people are effectively feeling this same squeeze here. Plus, I don't think people are at all effectively factoring in the consequences of the lock downs and crash of small businesses that were associated with it. This is a government monopoly problem, not a lazy population problem.
nugget 4y ago
Children have value in the hyperefficient society you describe, but it's emotional rather than monetary. It's hard to compare abstract, future emotional upside to dollars spent on diapers and sleepless hours lost to infant childcare in the here and now. Society does a poor job helping young people understand how to balance investment into children, friends, family, and community against investment into professional work which often results in more immediate and measurable results.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-murder-and-the-meaning-life/201102/new-study-parental-love-is-merely-cognitive-dissonance https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-murder-and-the-m... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797610397057 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797610397057
nine_k 4y ago
It very much depends on how the society (your peer group, your parents, etc) defines success. In societies, having many kids is seen as a sign of success; ideally not just the number but also their prosperity. In other societies, personal consumption and personal display of wealth and influence prevail; likely it's the case of the urbanized part of the SK society. For obvious natural reasons, the trait of not having kids is self-eliminating. Those who don't care that their culture will end with them will be outnumbered and eventually replaced by those who do.
yongjik 4y ago
If it were actually efficient we'd see less issues. I'd say the Korean economy is hyper-competitive but fairly inefficient. Lots of social problems because people who secured a nice, well-paying job don't want competitions and will do everything to block others from getting the same job. All the way from lawyers limiting the number of lawyers, to doctors doing the same thing, to full-time factory workers discriminating against part-time workers in the same factory. So (1) there are fewer and fewer decent jobs, and (2) once you fall off the "correct career path" for any reason, there's no way to get back, or at least that's the universal perception. So everybody fights tooth and nail to keep whatever they already have, which further distorts the market, and the cycle continues. Disclaimer: have been living in the US since 2011, so my understanding is from reading news and stuff.
- skissane 4y ago
  > If it were actually efficient we'd see less issues. I'd say the Korean economy is hyper-competitive but fairly inefficient. I remember once visiting the head office in Seoul of a major South Korean firm – they had a rather large development team working on some rather quotidian internal corporate needs (identity management, corporate intranet/portal, etc). And yet, they were being subjected to the kind of limitations one would expect only on some classified national security project – e.g. Internet access blocked so they couldn't access StackOverflow/etc, personal electronic devices had to be put in lockers at the building security desk, etc. The restrictions were very obviously impeding their productivity. It appeared that the company's management was very paranoid about corporate espionage, to a degree which seemed out of place given the actual business this company did. A Korean colleague told me that a lot of South Korean companies were like that. His theory was that senior management at many firms is dominated by retired military officers, who take from their military background a culture of secrecy which may well be justified in the military, defence contractors, super-high-tech firms such as leading-node semiconductor fabrication, etc–but isn't appropriate for your average business, and this particular firm wasn't doing anything like that. What do I know, but his theory seemed plausible to me.

seydor 4y ago

So people are optimizing. Why should they optimize for maximum population?

simlevesque 4y ago
Well, demographic crunches are not really enjoyable.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  The planet is telling us that ever increasing population isn't enjoyable, either, and perhaps even less so.
  - eastbound 4y ago
    This. I’m super annoyed that countries consider depopulating as a catastrophe. Instead of immediately encouraging repopulation AND trying to deal with the climate catastrophe, why don’t we accept depopulation as a benefit and put much less pressure on the climate? In 1990, CO2 emissions equated CO2 absorption by trees. All the goals about CO2 are about coming back to 1990 levels (minus the surplus). So 1990 levels of population is what we should aim for. If a country depopulates, let’s not increase births.
    - seydor 4y ago
      If we accept this, (contrary to the hitherto used economic models of growth) then we 'll need to change priorities in economies, fund more automation, deflate all the useless real estate bubbles etc, take down excess infrastructure, switch to robust nuclear energy etc. There aren't going to be enough ppl in the future to maintain this infrastructure.
- seydor 4y ago
  Probably not, but on the other hand we don't know it for sure cause there isn't one in recent history
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    Current economic trends are a sneak peak - inflation - money being paid out for obligations (gov. bonds -> pension funds) - not enough goods and people to cover the demand. Only much worse because the trend is increasing on both sides - old people being kept alive with expensive treatments, dropping population of working people.
    - seydor 4y ago
      There was high inflation in times of great population growth, 70s-80s
      - moonchrome 4y ago
        You can have inflation for various reasons - labor shortage is one of them.
- georgeecollins 4y ago
  Are they really that bad? There are 8 billion people on the planet. We can support more, but it makes more vulnerable to catastrophe. Japan has had these demographics for a while now but it doesn't seem like they are falling apart. Someone will say-- oh but there economy isn't growing! Better a stagnant economy than a famine or a plague.
  - hnbad 4y ago
    Most research I've seen indicates that human population will likely max out at 12 billion and then decline until it reaches a stable level. Except for a few fringe Malthusians, that is. The problem with population decline is that most countries are built around the naive assumption of perpetual growth, especially when it comes to social security and welfare systems. Of course most of this can easily be fixed by raising taxes but that would fly in the face of the general trend to give tax breaks to higher incomes, abolish wealth taxes and prefer flat tax rates over progressive ones to prevent "wealth flight".
    - skissane 4y ago
      > Most research I've seen indicates that human population will likely max out at 12 billion and then decline until it reaches a stable level. That kind of research is based on the assumption that the social/cultural trends encouraging people to have less kids continue unabated. Humans often overcompensate. It is conceivable that a country's population may decline to the point that the threat that poses to its future becomes impossible to ignore – the threat may motivate the general population to change their behaviour, and may lead to the government introducing major incentives to encourage more children. That may lead to the population decline being reversed; but, it may then be difficult to "turn off the tap" of the new culture/policies to stop the population booming again. There are also countercultural minorities (mostly ultra-conservative religious sects) who stubbornly continue to have lots of kids in spite of the social/cultural forces which discourage mainstream society from doing so. That kind of analysis generally ignores those minorities, because they are so small – true, but if they don't change their ways, eventually they will grow to become the majority, and then we'll be back to population boom again. Will they eventually change their ways? That is possible, not inevitable. Many of them have been successfully resisting pressure to change their ways for decades; if they haven't succumbed to that pressure yet, why assume it is inevitable that they eventually will? If one considers that there are multiple such countercultural minorities, even if some of them do end up changing course, all it takes is for one to stubbornly resist doing so, for it to eventually become the demographic majority.
shitpostbot 4y ago
If it would be better for the society, then the society should be incentivising it, or at least making the calculation sensible. Hence the discussion
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Society wants the benefits without paying the true costs for parents to raise kids and not have the experience suck. Even in countries with robust pro natalist policies, people want less or no kids.
spicyusername 4y ago
At a minimum optimizing for "replacement" theoretically allows a population to continue to exist as it is (assuming all kinds of things like everyone backfills the jobs that are already filled, etc, etc) A shrinking population is terrible as there are less and less people to support existing institutions like social services, infrastructure, healthcare, etc. A very simple example is social security. It is a net wealth transfer from working age people to retirement age people. If there's not enough working age people then there is not enough to support the retirement age people.
- seydor 4y ago
  We have to assume then that people are calculating otherwise: - Smaller population will need less infrastructure - They don't plan to support the old - Pension plans were fit for 20th century, esp. post-WW2, but they can't work anymore
  - gervwyk 4y ago
    With you on the pension fund remark, bit whats next / else?
    - seydor 4y ago
      nothing
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    > They don't plan to support the old Plot twist: They're going to become the old. They don't seem to have that as part of their calculation...
    - _nalply 4y ago
      I am sure that some do. However even if they have many children it doesn't help them if everybody else doesn't.
      - 4y ago

deltree7 4y ago

I'm not a religious nut, but you have to admit that religion which typically prioritizing lots of babies got this one right

gloryjulio 4y ago
By having ppl indoctrinated to accept being at lower caste to produce babies and contributing, where the ppl at top of the pyramid are sucking all the blood from the bottom. Yeah that would work out
- rayiner 4y ago
  That sounds more like the modern secularism than at least Christianity or Islam. Indeed, the latter is more egalitarian. Nearly everyone can take pride in raising a family. Only a relative cognitive elite can forgo having kids to pursue a demanding career.
  - gloryjulio 4y ago
    How are Christianity or Islam more egalitarian? Don't their elites have way more power to define what the bottom feeders can do or say? How is giving ppl less right more egalitarian? What kind of backward logic are you talking about?
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      They're more egalitarian because there's a authority that is written. I can use the Bible or the Koran to judge the minister or the organization. I don't know if this is done in Islam, but it is in at least some strains of Christianity.
      - gloryjulio 4y ago
        I am not talking about the book. I am talking about in practice. I am not even getting the nitty gitty details of things like women's rights. I am only asking one question. Has there been a time in history where there are really no elites group in the religious groups and everyone is equal? When did that happen? It's such a hypocrisy that all the religions have a good idea that we should have a god above men so that we don't worship human as god, but in the end it never translated to the practice isn't it?

hnbad 4y ago

That's a funny way of saying that people are so economically desperate (whether due to low income, lack of savings, job insecurity, weak familial ties, etc) that they delay having children. I wonder what the % of people currently in a long-term relationship looks like. Those also don't tend to do well under economic duress.

dmix 4y ago
South Koreans are richer than ever, so if that's the problem why aren't they having more kids? > due to low income, lack of savings, job insecurity, weak familial ties, etc Almost every couple I know who is not having kids makes good $$. It's my friends who make less and are more working class (and work longer hours at that) are the ones having kids. So that sounds like the opposite of what you're suggesting.
- hnbad 4y ago
  > job insecurity, weak familial ties, etc Not everything is about current income. Sure, they make good money but are they able to cut hours to spend more time at home with an infant or toddler? Can one of them take a few years off work and still have their career recover from that? Will they be able to maintain their lifestyle if they have to pay for another human being? There are a lot more considerations than raw money and a higher income doesn't help with that unless you can also build up considerable savings or have a strong support network. It takes a village, and all that.
  - dmix 4y ago
    When you make $100k vs $50k that usually means your skillset is in higher demand and rarer, so you have better long term job security. Working class people don't have that luxury. So yes I think people who earn more have better job security and ability to support a spouse during mat leave. I also live in Canada with liberal mat leave laws so that's not an issue. If anything the biggest pressure on my wealthy urban friends vs working class suburban/small town people is a) cost of housing and b) lack of savings. But OP said "a competitive and maximally efficient society" dissuades kids. First, a competitive economy should generate plenty of housing for people with the $$ to pay for it. Secondly, an efficient economy should provide plenty of ways to save/invest beyond just housing. The public stock market is highly exclusive and controlled. The primary other way (besides housing/stocks) is investing in or starting a small business. New small business rates have declined in recent years. Housing is the only game in town for most people and what politicians spend 90% of focus on incentivizing in capital markets + culturally, but keep supply artificially limited. So if anything regressive policies which prevent competition/efficiency leads to less kids.

akira2501 4y ago

I have a hard time rectifying the idea that Korea's economy is highly state managed and largely operated by monopolies with a society "so efficient and competitive" that people are opting out of humanity in order to compete and store money. I almost think you have it entirely backwards. In a society where competition and choice is so severely limited you see people adopt these strategies because there is far less room to make a mistake or to engage with economically sub optimal decisions like having a child. I think you're seeing this effect creep into the US as well, as we've allowed more mergers and acquisitions financed by cheap interest from the Fed that people are effectively feeling this same squeeze here. Plus, I don't think people are at all effectively factoring in the consequences of the lock downs and crash of small businesses that were associated with it. This is a government monopoly problem, not a lazy population problem.

nugget 4y ago

Children have value in the hyperefficient society you describe, but it's emotional rather than monetary. It's hard to compare abstract, future emotional upside to dollars spent on diapers and sleepless hours lost to infant childcare in the here and now. Society does a poor job helping young people understand how to balance investment into children, friends, family, and community against investment into professional work which often results in more immediate and measurable results.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-murder-and-the-meaning-life/201102/new-study-parental-love-is-merely-cognitive-dissonance https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-murder-and-the-m... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797610397057 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797610397057

nine_k 4y ago

It very much depends on how the society (your peer group, your parents, etc) defines success. In societies, having many kids is seen as a sign of success; ideally not just the number but also their prosperity. In other societies, personal consumption and personal display of wealth and influence prevail; likely it's the case of the urbanized part of the SK society. For obvious natural reasons, the trait of not having kids is self-eliminating. Those who don't care that their culture will end with them will be outnumbered and eventually replaced by those who do.

yongjik 4y ago

If it were actually efficient we'd see less issues. I'd say the Korean economy is hyper-competitive but fairly inefficient. Lots of social problems because people who secured a nice, well-paying job don't want competitions and will do everything to block others from getting the same job. All the way from lawyers limiting the number of lawyers, to doctors doing the same thing, to full-time factory workers discriminating against part-time workers in the same factory. So (1) there are fewer and fewer decent jobs, and (2) once you fall off the "correct career path" for any reason, there's no way to get back, or at least that's the universal perception. So everybody fights tooth and nail to keep whatever they already have, which further distorts the market, and the cycle continues. Disclaimer: have been living in the US since 2011, so my understanding is from reading news and stuff.

skissane 4y ago
> If it were actually efficient we'd see less issues. I'd say the Korean economy is hyper-competitive but fairly inefficient. I remember once visiting the head office in Seoul of a major South Korean firm – they had a rather large development team working on some rather quotidian internal corporate needs (identity management, corporate intranet/portal, etc). And yet, they were being subjected to the kind of limitations one would expect only on some classified national security project – e.g. Internet access blocked so they couldn't access StackOverflow/etc, personal electronic devices had to be put in lockers at the building security desk, etc. The restrictions were very obviously impeding their productivity. It appeared that the company's management was very paranoid about corporate espionage, to a degree which seemed out of place given the actual business this company did. A Korean colleague told me that a lot of South Korean companies were like that. His theory was that senior management at many firms is dominated by retired military officers, who take from their military background a culture of secrecy which may well be justified in the military, defence contractors, super-high-tech firms such as leading-node semiconductor fabrication, etc–but isn't appropriate for your average business, and this particular firm wasn't doing anything like that. What do I know, but his theory seemed plausible to me.