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Legalize polygyny for rich men who can financially support multiple wives. Japan's population decline appears to be caused not by women giving birth to fewer c

• WJW 4y ago
  Is "we don't want to" not a valid reason anymore?
  • hsn915 4y ago
    What is it that you don't want to? Give birth?
    • WJW 4y ago
      Children. Edit to make it a more substantive point: me and my spouse are currently 35 and 36 years old and after much deliberation together (as well as observations of friends who did have children) we don't think our lives would be substantially improved by having children.
      • hsn915 4y ago
        The vast majority of women who end up single and childless into their forties don't do it by choice. At least not directly. They _want_ to find a partner and have children; they just didn't succeed at making the right decisions in their life to end up in that desired destination.
        • Dalewyn 4y ago
          Arranged marriages, known as "omiai", are still a thing in Japan, especially if someone is desperate for a marriage. If a man or woman doesn't marry, that is in the vast majority of cases by choice.
        • WJW 4y ago
          Perhaps things are different in Japan then, over here in Western Europe that is definitely not the main reason.
        • eggsmediumrare 4y ago
          Yikes
        • Dracophoenix 4y ago
          > they just didn't succeed at making the right decisions What would those decisions be?
          • majikaja 4y ago
            Not putting enough effort to look like the girls in the idol groups
      • geraldwhen 4y ago
        Future generations will replace you and your wife with those who think quite differently. If you feel that your values or culture are worth preserving, you have kids. Observing someone else’s family and deciding that you don’t enjoy their kids is the saddest way to decide not to have a family, and indicates a deep lack of parental empathy. Your kids are nothing like other kids, for all values of “your”.
        • satvikpendem 4y ago
          So what? I'm not going to live my life for future generations, we only have a limited amount of time in this universe and personally, I don't want to waste it having and raising children for the next couple of decades. I know what one would rebut with, that it's "your" kids and that there's a lot of fun in raising children, and that may be true, but again it is not something that appeals to me and many other people these days.
          • nec4b 4y ago
            That fine as long as you realize somebody else's children will have to take care of you when you wont be able to. And if enough people would think the same way as you do, than there certainly wouldn't be enough children to take care of the elderly generations.
            • satvikpendem 4y ago
              Humean ethics don't seem to work particularly well in day-to-day society. If I have enough retirement savings, I will hire said children to take care of me either way, as there is no guarantee my own children would take care of me anyway.
              • nec4b 4y ago
                Of course you can pay them, but they still have to come from somewhere.
        • majewsky 4y ago
      • rayiner 4y ago
        > we don’t think our lives would be substantially improved by having children. By that logic you should evade your taxes and park in handicapped spots. Having kids isn’t an individual choice, it’s a social obligation like paying taxes. And that’s not a moralistic point but a basic economic one. Any sustainable society needs people to have and raise 2.1 children on average. That’s self-evidently true in subsistence agricultural societies. But our society is still closer to those than to some hypothetical post-scarcity one where robots do all the work and replacement humans are created in artificial wombs. We can afford some people to be childless, but it can’t become a widespread thing. You can paper over that temporarily with immigration, but you’re really just outsourcing a key social function to immigrants. Those immigrants then have to bear the burden of raising kids a toxically individualistic society that’s hostile to children.
        • sph 4y ago
          > Having kids isn’t an individual choice, it’s a social obligation like paying taxes. I get what you mean, but fuck that idea into the flaming sun. All we need now is the state and society to force us to have children, on a planet with 8 billion souls. Fuck that idea. Do whatever you want with your life, but don't go forcing it on other people and saying it's "social obligation". When has individual choice become a radical, antisocial idea?
          • rayiner 4y ago
            > Fuck that idea. It’s not an “idea.” It’s like saying “paying taxes is a social obligation” or “having a job if you’re able bodied is a social obligation.” At bottom those assertions rest on factual observations about society and the economy. If everyone evaded taxes civilization as we know it would quickly collapse. If able bodied people dropped out of the work force en masse, the economy would collapse. If we found out that the last child had been born in America, your retirement funds would quickly tank. These are such fundamental facts that societies have added a moral or religious gloss to them, but the underlying facts don’t go away even if you strip away that gloss. If you won’t do those things, someone else will have to pick up your slack. Unless your retirement plan consists of hoarding canned food and ammo, or perhaps drifting out to sea when you can no longer work, you’re going to be depending on the children of the people who did the work of raising kids. And until we have robots that can wipe old people’s asses, that’s going to be an inescapable fact of society. > Do whatever you want with your life, but don't go forcing it on other people and saying it's "social obligation". Now that’s an “idea.” > When has individual choice become a radical, antisocial idea? You’ve got it backward. Until five minutes ago, everyone agreed that everyone has a social obligation to carry out the various work necessary for society to function. “Do whatever you want with your life” is a blip in human cultural history. It’s a blip even in the history of western civilization. And to date every society to adopt that notion has essentially doomed itself to obsolescence.
      • PedroBatista 4y ago
        What’s the timeframe of that analysis? What if the analysis turns out completely wrong? Did you weighted the downside as good as you did your analysis?
      • michaelgrosner2 4y ago
        It's better to have a terrible 5-6 years dealing with diapers and strollers in your 30s than spend 30 years in your 50s to 80s alone.
        • satvikpendem 4y ago
          There is no guarantee your children will visit or take care of you in old age, and if you're having children due to the above reason, that is a very poor reason indeed to have children, as it seems to be more of an argument for the parent's well being, rather than the child's. If you don't want to be alone, cultivate lifelong friends.
          • anon291 4y ago
            These are all novel cultural values not common in any traditional society with normal birth rates. In fact, this attitude is one reason why birth rates are so low. It is totally normal to expect children to care for you in your old age. The guarantee is that other people can and should ostracize people for not caring for their parents. When an acquaintance tells me they don't visit/call/care for their parents with pride, I make a mental note to not be friends with that person. If you can't keep the most basic relationships straight... that's not a great sign, realistically.
            • satvikpendem 4y ago
              That is certainly...one opinion. You don't know what those people have been through, they could have had abusive parents for example and don't talk to them anymore. If the parents don't take care of the child well when raising them, I consider it more than fair to not take care of them in old age (or even simply once the child leaves the nest, so to speak). Taking care of one's parents is not an immutable law of nature (indeed, many if not most organisms simply breed and leave their children), nor should it be. That you implicitly "make a mental note to not be friends with that person" is quite telling indeed.
        • midoridensha 4y ago
          If you're still pushing your kid around in a stroller at age 6, something is very wrong.
• hsn915 4y ago
  It hasn't been two minutes and I already have a downvote. I understand many people do not "like" this kind of solution because it conflicts with modern people's sensibilities. But consider what the future would look like if you don't increase the birth rate: Already one third of the population is over 65. Japan has about 120 million people. When you normally hear this number you imagine a country full with lots of human resources, but the fact that a large portion of these people are retirees. This is already causing a alrge portion of young men to checkout of society because they see no economic prospect for themselves. Can you imagine what the situation will be like when that portion reaches 50% percent? Perhaps in only a few decades. The trend will accelerate: even more people will checkout of the ecnonomy, making things worse for everyone.
  • csydas 4y ago
    I think you're being downvoted because people consider your original comment poorly constructed and poorly thought out. That men can participate in polygamy does nothing to encourage birthrates; what is the incentive of the wives to want children? What is the incentive for the man here to want children? Unless it's implied in your idea that the purpose of marriage is to produce children, polygamy solves nothing here. If that is the presumption that the arrangement requires children, how does this counteract the very common reasons for not having children? - It's extremely time consuming and life changing; you have to commit substantial time or resources (or both) to ensuring the child is cared for - A person or persons simply don't want children - There isn't a strong reason to have children outside of one's own desire to do so (there isn't incentive to maintain a lineage of successors, build out an army of loyal subjects, and so on for the grand majority of people anymore) - Even within religions, the impetus for having children just isn't emphasized in many sects like it was in the past - Social mobility, while nowhere near perfect, is far more achievable via other arrangements or even to a degree with personal effort; it won't be the peasant to noble move that existed previously, but it's more possible than it has been in the past (though social mobility is still ridiculously difficult and fraught with discrimination and exploitation, so understand I am not at all saying that it's in a good spot) Your idea doesn't really address any of the actual reasons a lot of people hold off from having children, it just presents a suggestion to "legalize polygamy for rich men", implying that this somehow addresses the many reasons that people aren't having children. Your follow-up comment here I think also misses a lot of points as to why people check out and undermines the idea that society can incentivize its way out of these problems. If the problem is a bleak economic future for people, trying to utilize childbirth as a pyramid scheme to overcome this economic uncertainty isn't really a great idea, as that means you need to somehow convince the children of the already checked-out persons that "no, really, it's a great system. Ignore why your parents are so miserable, it will be different for you for reasons." I don't think you can just economically incentivize your way out of a declining population, not in any meaningful way aside from temporary trends which will fade. If the root cause of the issue is poor economic conditions and unstable comfortable living conditions, you need to first understand why those are happening in the first place. If it turns out that it's because only a select group have the economic stability to support a life that includes children and this select group is not a huge portion of the population, aside from mandating child birth, you haven't actually given incentive to make more children, you just have given special status to the already elite. > But consider what the future would look like if you don't increase the birth rate: I have, and I imagine we probably see more adoption of universal income and automation, and far more acceptance of such a system and interest in keeping such a system where you don't need to struggle for basic needs in place by investing time and effort into the system. There's a lot of this which of course is fantastical thoughts right now, but we're already seeing this in many nations, and the quality of life in these places is pretty good while birthrates are just "so-so".
• astrange 4y ago
  Do Japanese women want that? The traditional household arrangement is the man is at the office 24/7, the wife gets his paychecks and uses them to raise the children and occasionally go on vacations, and the man gets an allowance (but doesn't go on the vacations because he has to be at the office). Not much room for a harem there.
  • hsn915 4y ago
    There are many rich people in Japan who can afford to have multiple wives and support all of them financially. Some of them might do that in secret with a mistress but in the current social and political environment they probably wouldn't have children with their mistresses.
    • astrange 4y ago
      Do the wives have to hang out with each other or does he just alternating visiting each one of them in different apartments? Either one would be an example of "things women don't actually enjoy". Though Takehiro Sakurai and Aya Hirano both had career limiting scandals about dating 3+ people at the same time, so I guess some people try it.
    • snozolli 4y ago
      An ex's mother was a concubine. It's traditionally pretty normal for a married couple to drift apart over the years. People marry for appearances, social status, and to raise a family. They then seek gratification elsewhere. The men who engage in this aren't looking to knock up more women. They already have a mother to their children. They want gratifying sex and emotional connection.
  • majikaja 4y ago
    I've seen some posts by Japanese women suggesting they would be open to being the second wives of wealthy men but I'm not sure if they are the kind of women that rich men would be interested in.
• EliRivers 4y ago
  caused by... an increase in the number of childless women. Has there not also been an increase in the number of childless men? Or are men having as many children as they did decades ago, and it's only the women who are having fewer?
  • hsn915 4y ago
    Men don't get pregnant. A man and two women can give birth to 10 children (5 each). A woman and two men cannot do the same.
    • csydas 4y ago
      I want to respond to this as I think you just have a fundamental misunderstanding on how wealth, relationships, and childbirth can be related. A child is not made by the equation (One Female Parent + One Male Parent) + Marriage = Child. This is not the actual requirement. It just requires sperm + ovum + body to carry the organism to birth. I interpret your comments here as attempting to take a purely logical/fact based approach, but you tie yourself to an unnecessary old fashioned notion of one man and one woman in a contractual union. A woman and two men can absolutely be parents by inseminating the woman's eggs with their sperm and having someone else carry it, or artificial/manual insemination involving other women. I don't think you take your idea of efficiency here anywhere near the much more natural and sensible conclusion of "for-hire birthers", which already happens. A person, regardless of how they identify, should be allowed to do this; for simplicity sake though, I don't see why you don't mention this in your model -- a rich woman, paying for successors, and having multiple male partners who meets her scrutiny/desires raising the children and passing on genes/knowledge/personality traits. You can suggest that your ideas imply this possibility, but frankly speaking I don't accept this suggestion; if you meant it, you would just say as such and/or use neutral terms for identifying the progenitors in your examples.
    • midoridensha 4y ago
      That's ridiculous. Next you'll try to tell me that 9 women can't have 1 child in a month. Any corporate manager can tell you otherwise.
• slothtrop 4y ago
  > Legalize polygyny for rich men who can financially support multiple wives. Rich men already have offspring from multiple women if they want, without having to marry. I fail to see what the advantage would be.
  • hsn915 4y ago
    Removing stigma
    • slothtrop 4y ago
      If it's legal + acceptable for all men, then it undermines the advantage of the elite in this regard. Plus I don't think "stigma" matters to them at all.
      • Aeolun 4y ago
        The elite need more workers. Why would they care?
        • slothtrop 4y ago
          The elite already have immigration.