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Beli_Mawrr t1_ix9nma6 wrote

If you're a Latvian, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, American, etc country looking to improve your demographic odds, here're a few good strategies:

  • make sure daycare is affordable and plentiful. Offer stipends to help pay for it. Lower the barriers to entry for daycare companies.

  • alternatively, make motherhood more attractive by offering equivalent stipends to families or indeed mothers who aren't working.

  • make housing affordable by building more of it and discouraging low density uses such as single family homes

  • national campaigns to make raising a family a patriotic duty. Offer tax benefits, scholarships, etc to people raising families.

These demographic changes are reversible!

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DividedContinuity t1_ixa8rjv wrote

Sounds like socialism. How is private equity supposed to profit off that?

/S

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Beli_Mawrr t1_ixa92pb wrote

ya know what's ironic is these population crunches actually are really good for the working class. That's something that's not talked about very much because it's an awkward subject.

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VoraciousTrees t1_ixaah1s wrote

I mean, it's that or see society destabilize and collapse as the rich non- workers have to cope with not having a working class providing them services.

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MrBIMC t1_ixakh9m wrote

I guess the rich hedge their bets on full automatization to ensure continuation of civilization.

We increasingly rolling into post-scarcity society, the only issue is that most of economic benefits are increasingly funneled towards the top, which makes life unaffordable for the most of society.

World economy and welfare needs a rebalance(as in UBI to provide surviveable baseline for a happy consumer), but I do not see it happening before things get really ugly with 30%+ unemployed.

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YWAK98alum t1_ixcu17h wrote

Private equity can profit handsomely from owning daycares that have a steady stream of government contracts for a vital public function.

It has less opportunity to privatize stay-at-home parenting, though. At least as of now, you can't buy equity or options in a family.

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gingerisla t1_ixal07a wrote

Fuck that, it shouldn't be anyone's "duty" to raise kids. Can't think of a worse reason to have children. Look at Ceaușescu's Romania or Nazi Germany where they made having kids a patriotic duty and see what happened.

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Beli_Mawrr t1_ixalcri wrote

Yeah, when I was writing this, I was thinking to the USSR, who even so far as gave an award to mothers (which to me seems a little bit weird but you gotta do what you gotta do). I'm not taking a strong stance on whether or not it should be encouraged, but I am saying that hand wringing about it is probably not going to do anything effective.

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alex20_202020 t1_ixba7em wrote

> gave an award to mothers

meaning medals? otherwise many states award mothers with monetary stimulus like retaining salary payment w/out working. and IMO one time payments is not that different.

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YWAK98alum t1_ixcurjv wrote

>Can't think of a worse reason to have children.

Then you lack imagination. Unfortunately, there definitely are worse reasons than civic or religious duty to have kids. Having a child because you think that it will save a failing relationship, for example.

The upside of framing it as a civic or religious duty is that it helps build the village around the family. When the rest of the community (political or religious) accepts that raising the next generation is an important obligation, it changes the mindset about helping, and parents can't be islands. Extended social support networks matter. Those communities are more likely to help with something that's a duty than something that's a personal choice (kids as vanity possessions).

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SuperGameTheory t1_ixa5sx6 wrote

Yeah but why would we want them to? I don't want more people moving into my area, turning forested land into lawns. Screw that noise. There's too many people. The breeders can calm the f down for a change. We already have 8bil people on Earth.

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Beli_Mawrr t1_ixa69c5 wrote

cities don't need to turn forested lands into lawns, they can turn lawns into Paris.

I mean going child free sounds great until you're in the country with the collapsing population. I don't think we've ever experienced that in large scale, but we're about to.

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AngryWookiee t1_ixbabnc wrote

That's what immigration Is for, to make up for having no kids. Who cares if new people aren't whatever the native culture was and don't hold the same views? It's racist to want to "preserve" the existing culture. Who cares what skin color, hair, language, or religion the new people are?

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Kingalec1 t1_ixd1by2 wrote

It's quite racist to erase the native culture of a country and replace it with another one.

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AngryWookiee t1_ixd2riu wrote

Aren't a lot of countries such as the USA based on idea of being a melting pot? How is this any different? how many different types of people are in the USA? Do you think it's racist that white people will be a minority in the USA by 2040? The culture doesn't get completey erased it just changes. It doesn't matter what color somebody's skin, hair, eyes, Are etc.

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Kingalec1 t1_ixd3dav wrote

No, it's not racist that white people will become a minority. However, it's quite racist to allow immigrants to replace the dominant culture with an admixed culture across the country due to societal changes. In addition to that, downsizing a culture for just their physical traits is kinda rude.

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AngryWookiee t1_ixdatpf wrote

I don't see how that's any diffent then the USA. At one time whites were the majority of people in states, but all cultures and people were allowed, now skin color dosen't matter and whites will be a minority by 2040.

The same thing Is happening In every developed country in the world. They will all become mixed race and their orginal culture and skin color either won't matter or will be adapted by other people.

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Beli_Mawrr t1_ixbaydy wrote

I'm of the opinion that almost all culture has value and thus value is lost if the culture is lost. For example, Mexican food is a cultural item - it would suck to lose it!

I also think it's not racist to say that some cultures are better or worse. After all, you essentially can choose your culture. I make no claims about whether immigration would improve Latvian culture, it may well, but that isn't a guarantee. For example, imagine them absorbing a culture with morally offensive values - racism, sexism, phobia of religions, etc. Such things are possible and it would be tragic to see a country's culture adopt those values due to immigration or cultural absorption.

Now to be clear here, I'm not implying that's going to happen, I'm just saying that sometimes culture may be worth preserving as its own merit.

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albeitother t1_ixcp55l wrote

this is true but doesn't take into account the cultural shift in which many more young people don't want children than previous generations

It's not the automatic expectation for couples it once was

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NYD3030 t1_ixcu8st wrote

I think most of these things are already done in large parts of Europe and have had little effect, birth rates are still very low. The reality is that most young women would rather focus on themselves and their careers than surrender their autonomy for 20+ years to someone else.

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neglectedselenium t1_ixd0jtm wrote

Just open the damn borders already. Child stimulating programs have never succeded in history, and that's good. Lax the borders. That'll also decrease poverty

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