3 ms·

Porn and contraceptives did a lot of damage. It used to be that deciding to conceive made parents get their child into schooling and a lifelong career. Instuti

Porn and contraceptives did a lot of damage. It used to be that deciding to conceive made parents get their child into schooling and a lifelong career. Instutions were built and maintainted to support inflow of children and stable corporations were kept alfoat by a growing populace. Making conception optional for sex has knocked over most of the stability there was in the west and people are scrambling to replace it with electronics and authority. Tack on top of that, these country wide changes were not made by local governments, but by factories and corporations gradually dragging in the tools to break our society. And immigration on top to plug the gaps. Something's gone terribly wrong with the West and there's no weasling out of it. It's time to stand up.

toyg 3y ago
> Instutions were built and maintainted to support inflow of children and stable corporations were kept alfoat by a growing populace. It's absurd to attribute the failure of modern capitalism to demographic flows or contraception. Western corporations were relatively stable only because the rate of technological disruption was lower and, more importantly, the rate of overall financialization of the economy was so much lower. Capital moved very slowly, and financial instruments were few, often strictly regulated. Most capital was in steady manufacturing and agriculture business, rather than in volatile service industries. That made for a view of the economy where businesses were an institutional part of society, with roles and responsibilities and connections to locality. Once technological disruption and financialization accelerated, unshackled capital steamrolled society into doing what it's best for capital pretty much all the time, demographics be damned. Part of the push towards later and later parenthood is due to the increased specialization necessary to tech-intensive capital-fuelled businesses, requiring longer and longer training times and complete dedication for several years on top of that - all to earn unstable jobs that disappear very shortly, thanks to more and more automation. Yes, something is broken in the West: the needs of capital have trumped the needs of people for two generations, and now we're paying the price for it. You won't fix this through demographic tinkering, but through societal and political change. In fact, increasing demographic pressure on Western societies, at this point, is courting disaster.
hector_vasquez 3y ago
> And immigration on top to plug the gaps. And there it is. This narrative that immigration hasn't been a constant and deciding factor in the development of the West (and pretty much everywhere else) is so wild. Stability of an insular population is the absolute exception of history.

toyg 3y ago

> Instutions were built and maintainted to support inflow of children and stable corporations were kept alfoat by a growing populace. It's absurd to attribute the failure of modern capitalism to demographic flows or contraception. Western corporations were relatively stable only because the rate of technological disruption was lower and, more importantly, the rate of overall financialization of the economy was so much lower. Capital moved very slowly, and financial instruments were few, often strictly regulated. Most capital was in steady manufacturing and agriculture business, rather than in volatile service industries. That made for a view of the economy where businesses were an institutional part of society, with roles and responsibilities and connections to locality. Once technological disruption and financialization accelerated, unshackled capital steamrolled society into doing what it's best for capital pretty much all the time, demographics be damned. Part of the push towards later and later parenthood is due to the increased specialization necessary to tech-intensive capital-fuelled businesses, requiring longer and longer training times and complete dedication for several years on top of that - all to earn unstable jobs that disappear very shortly, thanks to more and more automation. Yes, something is broken in the West: the needs of capital have trumped the needs of people for two generations, and now we're paying the price for it. You won't fix this through demographic tinkering, but through societal and political change. In fact, increasing demographic pressure on Western societies, at this point, is courting disaster.

hector_vasquez 3y ago

> And immigration on top to plug the gaps. And there it is. This narrative that immigration hasn't been a constant and deciding factor in the development of the West (and pretty much everywhere else) is so wild. Stability of an insular population is the absolute exception of history.