4 ms·

Singapore, as well as South Korea and in part China and Japan have a few things in common. A work yourself to death culture, paired with the expectation to fore

Singapore, as well as South Korea and in part China and Japan have a few things in common. A work yourself to death culture, paired with the expectation to forever take care of your parents/in-laws. Not exactly a fertile ground to start a family on. And that doesn't even go into gender expectations. My take on this is that the current performance culture we've been living since the 80s where we worship the economy over anything else is biting us in the ass. We value work over family and children. We even dare to call them an "opportunity cost". We should return to a single income society. A modern version of it that is not gendered. A single full-time income should be enough to run the basics of a family. Fail to deliver this and there will be no families. In general we should work less and enjoy life more. Otherwise, what is the point? The point of technical progress should be less labor needed. But this progress is never paid out because we keep using that room to make up new bullshit jobs to produce garbage products we don't need. A dutch economist once calculated that about 40-50% of the world economy is bullshit. Busy-keep, non-essential, a replacement for boredom. Anyway, a system that advocates for dual incomes, job insecurity and high retirement ages that sees children as a distraction to optimal performance will cease to exist. Children are the most valuable "product" in society, yet we care about it the least.

shrimp_emoji 2y ago
The key misconception here is that people want a single-income household and to have kids, and they've been Shanghaied out of this idyllic state of affairs by The Economy. No. It's revealed preference, reflected worldwide. People think being single-income sucks. People think having kids sucks. They'll tell you they want to have kids and this and that if only it were "affordable", even when it's more affordable than it ever was for their parents. What their parent really had was a lack of contraception and other options; otherwise, they wouldn't've had kids and blamed it on something else the way you'd explain why you don't go to the gym more often. The way the world used to work has been a Ponzi scheme, and we've only now unlocked the ability to change the channel. So no. There is no going back. And, even if there was, we'd only roll forward again since the fate of that lifestyle is to be defeated by your Bullshit Economy. It's a dead end. The only way is forward: growing posthumans in pods. We're only like 100 or 200 years away from that, and we'll make it there easily under a widening demographic pyramid.
- iteratethis 2y ago
  Well, if you put it that way, what is the point of humans anyway? The human part of any hybrid would be the weak part as it comes to performance. And since we don't care about typical human things, like family, why bother with a human part at all?

shrimp_emoji 2y ago

The key misconception here is that people want a single-income household and to have kids, and they've been Shanghaied out of this idyllic state of affairs by The Economy. No. It's revealed preference, reflected worldwide. People think being single-income sucks. People think having kids sucks. They'll tell you they want to have kids and this and that if only it were "affordable", even when it's more affordable than it ever was for their parents. What their parent really had was a lack of contraception and other options; otherwise, they wouldn't've had kids and blamed it on something else the way you'd explain why you don't go to the gym more often. The way the world used to work has been a Ponzi scheme, and we've only now unlocked the ability to change the channel. So no. There is no going back. And, even if there was, we'd only roll forward again since the fate of that lifestyle is to be defeated by your Bullshit Economy. It's a dead end. The only way is forward: growing posthumans in pods. We're only like 100 or 200 years away from that, and we'll make it there easily under a widening demographic pyramid.

iteratethis 2y ago
Well, if you put it that way, what is the point of humans anyway? The human part of any hybrid would be the weak part as it comes to performance. And since we don't care about typical human things, like family, why bother with a human part at all?