The people shouting about low birth rates don't actually care about low birth rates.
They are using concern about low birth rates to get people riled up and trojan horse bigotry into a mainstream message to gain a base of people who will support their efforts to enforce their values on others.
IF there's a low birth rate crisis leading to a lack of workers THEN you can justify child labor
IF there's a low birth rate crisis it's because of women and THEN you can justify restricting women's rights
IF there's a low birth rate crisis "we all know what that means" THEN you can talk about replacement theory without talking about it
IF there's a low birth rate crisis THEN you can propose all manner of ludicrous things that are otherwise socially unacceptable
IF there's a low birth rate crisis THEN you can distract people from the other shit you're doing
The easiest way to prove that the people shouting about a low birth rate crisis don't actually care about birth rates is to compile a list of their solutions to the "crisis".
Are the solutions the subsidizing of childcare and healthcare or lower taxes?
Are the solutions supporting young families or punishing and demonizing women who choose not to be mothers?
The only thing the people shouting about low birth rates care about is money.
That's it. That's all.
Money.
"Civilization is going to collapse unless you elect someone who will fix the low birthrate crisis and the best solution is eliminating the capital gains tax so while you're angry and panicking please vote for this guy over here."
There is indeed some plain old bigotry and sexism at the margins but on the whole it's about money.
People do genuinely care about low birth rates. Nobody wants to use child labour, where do you even come up with this rubbish? Bigotry? What does it have to do with bigotry?
This one is particularly funny:
>IF there's a low birth rate crisis "we all know what that means" THEN you can talk about replacement theory without talking about it
For those that don't know, "replacement theory" is what the far left calls the idea that as the native population falls below replacement rate, immigration will be used to replace natives to keep up a sufficiently large workforce.
The far left assures us that this is a racist conspiracy theory and no such thing is going to happen.
At exactly the same time they say "we can't reduce migration, we have an aging population". That is not replacement theory because......? Uh?? It is different?!
>Are the solutions the subsidizing of childcare and healthcare or lower taxes?
I personally do not see how encouraging people to separate from their children at an early age so they can work would be a good idea. I'm not proposing mothers should necessarily stay home until their kids go to school but they should probably stay home for the first couple of years. There is a lot of evidence that that is beneficial for the child.
I would rather see tax credits for families with children, and much better quality institutions.
Currently, schools are just bad. They are full of ideological teachers more concerned about their unions than their pupils. They are all of a single ideological view on every issue. The results they produce year after year are getting worse. In the same time period that every other product and service available has improved by leaps and bounds, education has got worse.
So I say replace the schools and the teachers, and people will be more willing to have kids, knowing they won't be sending them off to be bullied and taught fuck all.
Correct for humanity as a whole, but incorrect for subpopulations. E.g. South Koreans probably want to continue to exist, and this is not equivalent to the landmass of South Korea being populated.
> I wonder how Island, Greenland, Norway etc. live with a population count far lower without the fear of extinction. Maybe it’s a bad idea to to look at the current birth rate anf extrapolate it in the future like it’s a constant number.
A good point. But one could also look at an ailing elephant, and say it need not worry about dying, because look, it is so much larger than a healthy kitten. Yet in a year, the elephant will be a skeleton, and the kitten will be a healthy cat. It all depends how they will handle the population drop - in a controlled way, gently reducing their numbers, or will it trigger a crisis, they let 52 million Chinese into their country, and slowly disappear as a distinct people.
> The culture? That already dies through changes in time.
By this logic a child dying or growing up is no different - both are "deaths through change". Of course the culture that Korea's culture will evolve into is much different than how Hungarian or Nigerian culture will evolve.
> The South Korean gen? Humans are pretty similar regarding their genes.
Even in a place as small and inter-connected as Europe, people have differentiated genes [1]. Globally, especially with geographic barriers, the diversity is even greater [2]. I find it extremely callous to so casually say Korean genetic distinctions aren't worth preserving, or that Koreans are interchangeable with any other people.
Article starts with "Commentators across the political spectrum" then cites many well known far-right pundits and one liberal writer you never heard of. Why this weird bothsideism? I heard one guy on the right say "we must make this the climate change of the right". This weird craze is purely a right-wing one, why feel the need to equate "both sides" on every issues?
humanity is almost certainly immune to extinction,
there are too many of us, spread out over the whole globe for anything less than a planet killing asteroid to take us all out.Even the most horribly infectious and deadly diseases are never
100% fatal to those who get it.
a low birth rate in any given culture is definitly a threat to that culture, and almost all cultures have a deep identity with they bieng
"the people", so it is easy to understand how a lot of cultural groups are feeling threatend, and certainly genocide is real.We have very clear evidence of missing y chromosone groups, and the
fact of all previous hominid species going extinct
so it's not for nothing that people worry.
They are using concern about low birth rates to get people riled up and trojan horse bigotry into a mainstream message to gain a base of people who will support their efforts to enforce their values on others.
IF there's a low birth rate crisis leading to a lack of workers THEN you can justify child labor
IF there's a low birth rate crisis it's because of women and THEN you can justify restricting women's rights
IF there's a low birth rate crisis "we all know what that means" THEN you can talk about replacement theory without talking about it
IF there's a low birth rate crisis THEN you can propose all manner of ludicrous things that are otherwise socially unacceptable
IF there's a low birth rate crisis THEN you can distract people from the other shit you're doing
The easiest way to prove that the people shouting about a low birth rate crisis don't actually care about birth rates is to compile a list of their solutions to the "crisis".
Are the solutions the subsidizing of childcare and healthcare or lower taxes?
Are the solutions supporting young families or punishing and demonizing women who choose not to be mothers?
The only thing the people shouting about low birth rates care about is money.
That's it. That's all.
Money.
"Civilization is going to collapse unless you elect someone who will fix the low birthrate crisis and the best solution is eliminating the capital gains tax so while you're angry and panicking please vote for this guy over here."
There is indeed some plain old bigotry and sexism at the margins but on the whole it's about money.
Hungary subsidizes young families via tax breaks (on those families, not in general) and loan forgiveness, yes: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47192612
People do genuinely care about low birth rates. Nobody wants to use child labour, where do you even come up with this rubbish? Bigotry? What does it have to do with bigotry?
This one is particularly funny:
>IF there's a low birth rate crisis "we all know what that means" THEN you can talk about replacement theory without talking about it
For those that don't know, "replacement theory" is what the far left calls the idea that as the native population falls below replacement rate, immigration will be used to replace natives to keep up a sufficiently large workforce.
The far left assures us that this is a racist conspiracy theory and no such thing is going to happen.
At exactly the same time they say "we can't reduce migration, we have an aging population". That is not replacement theory because......? Uh?? It is different?!
>Are the solutions the subsidizing of childcare and healthcare or lower taxes?
I personally do not see how encouraging people to separate from their children at an early age so they can work would be a good idea. I'm not proposing mothers should necessarily stay home until their kids go to school but they should probably stay home for the first couple of years. There is a lot of evidence that that is beneficial for the child.
I would rather see tax credits for families with children, and much better quality institutions.
Currently, schools are just bad. They are full of ideological teachers more concerned about their unions than their pupils. They are all of a single ideological view on every issue. The results they produce year after year are getting worse. In the same time period that every other product and service available has improved by leaps and bounds, education has got worse.
So I say replace the schools and the teachers, and people will be more willing to have kids, knowing they won't be sending them off to be bullied and taught fuck all.
I wonder how Island, Greenland, Norway etc. live with a population count far lower without the fear of extinction.
Maybe it’s a bad idea to to look at the current birth rate anf extrapolate it in the future like it’s a constant number.
And even if, what exactly goes extinct?
The people living in a country?
Unlikely, others will occupy the space.
The culture?
That already dies through changes in time. The South Koreas now has few in common with the South Koreans from 100, 200, 500 etc years ago.
The South Korean gen?
Humans are pretty similar regarding their genes. There isn’t really a loss or you could say the same about the gene pool of every village or city.
A good point. But one could also look at an ailing elephant, and say it need not worry about dying, because look, it is so much larger than a healthy kitten. Yet in a year, the elephant will be a skeleton, and the kitten will be a healthy cat. It all depends how they will handle the population drop - in a controlled way, gently reducing their numbers, or will it trigger a crisis, they let 52 million Chinese into their country, and slowly disappear as a distinct people.
> The culture? That already dies through changes in time.
By this logic a child dying or growing up is no different - both are "deaths through change". Of course the culture that Korea's culture will evolve into is much different than how Hungarian or Nigerian culture will evolve.
> The South Korean gen? Humans are pretty similar regarding their genes.
Even in a place as small and inter-connected as Europe, people have differentiated genes [1]. Globally, especially with geographic barriers, the diversity is even greater [2]. I find it extremely callous to so casually say Korean genetic distinctions aren't worth preserving, or that Koreans are interchangeable with any other people.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2735096/
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Principal_compon...