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Comment by warner25 | Hacker News Reader

I'm fascinated by declining birth rates, especially where it's sharpest like in Japan and South Korea. Trying to imagine all the long-term consequences of it, or how it ends, is mind-bending. I do hope that it ultimately leads to places like Japan and South Korea becoming more open to immigration, especially if they also become more affordable (although even if real-estate becomes more affordable, that might be canceled out by increased costs due to labor shortages).

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Any man in those countries i can guarantee you can marry and have kids today, provided they fly to a poor country and find a woman (who is attracted and willing)

All men in well off countries have it tough.

I was shocked when I first arrived in Europe and US - how many hoops an average man has to jump through to just get shot at dating.

Men were trying to be 6ft+, 6 figure and Comedy King just to get dates with average women.

My FAANG friends (both whites, black and Asians) make lots of money when compared to average person, they are interesting and have a high IQ too. Guess what?they had zero luck with women.

It was ruthless - I just told my FAANG bros, you know what? You can skip all that and just be fit and decent human being and fly to a poor country and treat the woman with kindness, generosity and love and respect and you'll get the kids and wife you want within a few months.

And soon enough now most of them are married who took action.

You can cry as much as you want but women in developed countries have lots of options and are super risk averse and very demanding in what they want.

It's not about economy when FAANG bros who make 6 figure income are crying for basic level of attention and affection. So I'll never buy into this argument (well houses are expensive you know)

There are tons of men in country who don't even have 6 figure income yet they are married and have kids.

In West, how attractive, popular and bad boy you are matters more than how much money you've.

IDK about east asia but the US population is still growing year over year, so I think it is more specific to eastern culture.

From a recent Astral Codex Ten monthly links email:

> 54: Koreans are not okay:

https://x.com/airkatakana/status/1847964003416543478 ("83% of young korean women think of south korea as “hell” and 80% of them want to leave korea. if your mental model of south korea does not match this, it’s your mental model and not the data that is wrong")

Extrapolate to forward looking fertility rate. South Korea total fertility rate as of 2023 is 0.72.

Not just young women, but older people too (~64%). Seems hard to believe they literally think it's hell, without serious societal breakdown. Are immigration and suicide sky high?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea

> South Korea has the fourth highest suicide rate in the world and the highest among OECD countries. The elderly in South Korea are at the highest risk of suicide, but deaths from teen suicide have been rising since 2010. In 2022 suicide caused more than half of all deaths among South Koreans in their twenties. It is the leading cause of death for those between the age of 10 and 39, in line with most OECD countries.

Shouldn't it be even higher if you think your country is literally hell? Maybe they have a more optimistic idea of hell than me. I guess that squares with 3% more believing it's hell than wants to leave.

I still think this survey doesn't make sense, or at least something is lost in transactional.

Additional citations:

https://www.womenlink.or.kr/minwoo_actions/20828

In the past nine years, at least 824 women had been killed and 602 more put at risk of death due to intimate partner violence (IPV)

https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1...

A 2021 study further found that one in three Korean women have experienced domestic violence, with intimate partners responsible for 46 percent of these cases.

I wonder how these rates compare to the US?

Interesting, and that's a shame. When I lived in Seoul as an American 10 years ago[1], I loved it. Everything there seemed nicer, more functional, and safer than in any city that I've ever experienced in America. It had an attractive mix of shiny new stuff and ancient stuff. There was natural beauty even just outside of the city, easily accessible by public transit. I'd like to see them open up to immigration because my wife and I would actually consider moving our family there permanently one day if it were an option.

[1] For just a year, and on the US government payroll, so obviously a very different experience from growing up there as a Korean.

While this is probably all true -- none of it deals with culture, family, employment mobility, and social services.

I think S. Korea has a long way to go to meet up with the modern day. It can be very frustrating to see women's rights move forward globally, however glacially, and feel like you don't have those things.

declining birth rates are not a problem unless you are an aspiring empire, or if you are surrounded by enemies, or if you have a huge debt.

As GPD falls, the share of debt becomes greater and the burden falls on fewer people. So taxes must go up, productivity must go way up (death loop, adults working more and not seeking families), or welfare spend must go down

This is why debt its called generational theft.

Yeah, "surrounded by enemies" comes to mind for South Korea. I served there as an American in defense of the ROK, as generations of American troops have done since WWII, and I think it's ironic that in 100 years they might cease to exist not because of a North Korean and Chinese invasion but because their birth rate simply led to a collapse. (Although North Korea and China have their own demographic problems - I'm not sure if that defuses or heats up the situation.)

> unless you are an aspiring empire, or if you are surrounded by enemies, or if you have a huge debt.

Or if you depend on future generations to take care for older ones once they reach retirement age, which is all of them. (A savings account can't care for the elderly, so debt doesn't really have much to do with it; you can see the problem entirely while staying in real economic terms without looking at money.)

You can make up for some of that with immigration, but whether people will be very accepting of something like a >50% immigration rate over a single or two generations is also questionable.

This. Debt is just 0s on a paper. What actually matters id there are physically less people to take care of the needs of the old and everyone

Who took care of elderly people, prior to 1935 ?

If debt is just 0s, consider you haven't been out much. I dont think you'd get a good receiption for that message in 1950s germany, or today in argentina, or lebanon.

I know this seems crazy, but if a country is willing to enforce a one-child-policy might they just turn their old folks into soylent green as well?

It doesn't mesh with existing chinese culture, so I wouldn't expect this to happen in our lifetime, but it wouldn't be the first time malthusian government policy is deployed at large scale.

Or you have pension obligations. Or are concerned about your dependency ratio.

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