You can tell capitalism is super efficient and sustainable by how it totally collapses without fresh babies to sacrifice.
Progressives have made kids useless. In the distant past they could help carry firewood or gay bales around the homestead.
Industrial revolution fucked it up. Sure for a while you could send them down into the mines or get them sweeping chimneys but over time that got outlawed due to the increased danger these jobs involved.
Now, why bother having kids? You can’t do anything with them. Even worse, they play games like Minecraft. You are literally spending your money for them to virtually work in the mines where they don’t bring in any money at all!
Now, why bother having kids? You can’t do anything with them.
You mean you can’t do anything profitable with them. Maybe people should be able to have a family for other reasons than profit
Even without capitalism you need production, and children used to be part of that. Back then you would have as many kids as you could so that they could run your farm.
I’m not defending the current system, but profit isn’t the only reason the birthrate is declining in so many countries.
And the farm would largely be to feed your own family. Not profit.
Its not capitalism that causes the over leveraged ponzi scheme, its the lender of last resort they call the Bank of Japan.
In a capitalist lending system you wouldn’t get bailed out for making risky loans, so there wouldn’t be the moral hazard, or the heightened cantillon effect to profit off debt accumulation.
Taiwanese family living in Taiwan and frequent Japan prior to having kids and after having kids.
Most people are quick to point out the gruesome work culture, but honestly, that is just a small part of the total issue.
1- Japanese people culturally hate outsiders. So their immigration system is setup to almost never give a foreigner citizenship.
2- Japanese people culturally have a mindset that if you pop one out, it’s you and only you that share that burden. That means that if you’re on a train and struggling with a crying toddler that is tired of standing, nobody and I mean nobody will let you have their seat. Half the patrons will turn up their volume on their headset and the other half with mean mug/glare at you for annoying them. You wanna know the worst part. This mindset transcends to the kid’s grandparents. That’s right. The grandparents will not lift a finger to help you.
Edit: I also want to add that the burden is not even on the father, outside of the finances. The father does not need to help with any baby duties. I have met many Japanese men that has kids that has never even changed a diaper. Why the fuck would a Japanese woman want to have kids?
3- The government is not making it easy to help the families. Do you have a sleeping kid in a stroller? Well, you better hold the kid if you’re using mass transit. Elevators are an afterthought. So once you get off a train, you either have to walk an extreme distance to get to an elevator or in some instances there isn’t even an elevator at all. In some rare occasion there is a designated elevator for strollers and wheel chair access, it’s jammed packed with people who is able-bodied and can take the escalator, all of which won’t exit the elevator to let people with wheel chairs or strollers in.
I went to Osaka Universal studios and ask to rent a stroller. The guy didn’t speak English at all. We eventually used my phone to translate and he asked me my kids age. I said 5. He said, is today his birthday? I said no. He turned 5 a few weeks ago. He then poceeds to deny me from renting a stroller. I reasoned with him telling him my kid is having major jet lag and needs a place to sleep right now. He told me to just go back to the hotel to sleep because he wasn’t going to rent a stroller to me.
I love Japan and the Japanese people, but honestly they all hate kids.
After all this you still love Japan and Japanese people?
Yes absolutely. The Japanese has a heavy influence in Taiwan culture. They ruled Taiwan for 50 years. My grandparents only spoke Japanese and Taiwanese when I was growing up here.
That is why there is so much love for the Japanese people. Our cultures are pretty aligned.
What we different is how we view kids in society. In Taiwan, when my wife was visably pregnant, people from all walks of life would give up their seat for her. Even before she was visably pregnant, the government gives you a ribbon to wear and people will let you go first on an elevator and congratulate you.
The government has designated parking spots(marked in pink lines) specifically for pregnant and anyone with kids 6 and under. All larger malls are required to have a clean breastfeeding/pumping room with some malls going the extra mile and having free childcare while you pump.
The people in Taiwan view children as everyone children and everyone has an obligation to bare that burden.
While there are major upsides, the downsides is that people have opinions on how to parent your kids with some parenting for you.
I was in Kaohsiung at a beach and my 3 year old son was taking a stick and hitting it against rocks and the sand. A bunch of grandma’s felt it was too unsafe for my son to be walking around with a stick in his hand and took it out of my kid’s hands and told me that my kid could lose an eye. I know the gesture comes from a good place, but man. Mind your own business.
In the context of Capitalism, sure, Japan is in trouble.
But then again, any system that demands infinite growth within a finite system has a biological parallel… in cancer. Yes, capitalism is economic cancer.
Japan has a bright future in front of it, if it can successfully pioneer an effective degrowth system that prioritizes the lives of people over Paraiste-Class profits.
Outside of capitalism it is hard to function below replacement level because the young people have to take care of the elderly
Young people would have time to take care of the elderly if they weren’t forced to work 60+ hour weeks consistently
Inside capitalism, people aren’t having children because captialism isn’t giving them the economic capability to do so.
The west’s population boom in the 50s to 80s only occurred because a single wage earner could, with a high school education and a wage just a little over minimum wage, be able to own a decent home, have a non-working SAH spouse, several kids, two cars in the driveway, and still have enough left over for a decent holiday once a year as well as save generously for retirement.
This all got stolen from these latest generations. What 90+% of the population was once capable of achieving is now only (largely) available to less than 20% of GenZ. A large proportion have given up on retirement, home ownership, or children. And this is WITH degrees and extensive career experience.
If you want to solve population crashes, start with income inequality: start taxing the wealthy and bring back a 90+% top tax rate. Get this money back into the hands of people who actually generate that wealth, and families will follow.
Is cancer really cancer if the rest of the body can adapt and grow faster than it? You describe capitalism as a finite system and then heavily imply that we’re near the outer boundary of that system or that all current and future resources are almost depleted.
You describe capitalism as a finite system
No, I did not. Capitalism demands infinite growth. This planet is a finite system
and then heavily imply that we’re near the outer boundary of that system or that all current and future resources are almost depleted.
I don’t imply. I simply state a known fact. Anyone with even a passing exposure to economics and resource extraction would be very familiar with this fact.
For example, 100 years ago, the energy within a barrel of oil could extract an additional 300 barrels of oil from the ground. These days, despite technology that has made the process massively more efficient, we get barely 10 barrels of oil out of the ground for that same amount of energy expended.
These days same goes for almost every other resource you could possibly shake a stick at, from minerals such as steel and copper, over harvested materials such as fish and wood, and all the way down to agriculture, where the topsoil that almost all of our crops depend on will be completely depleted within the next 60 years, and will be depleted in most agricultural regions within the next 20-40.
Capitalism is a cancer, and it’s killing the planet.
The fact that our planet’s resources are finite is a matter of physics. Capitalism may come up with some innovation or another that adds more lifespan to it, the way that digital spaces and the financial industry have done, or it may have another global war that creates room for a new period of traditional growth at the cost of countless lives, but it will inevitably hit an insurmountable wall.
How about they stop being so god damn xenophobic and let more foreigners become citizens? Surely a larger population of younger people would help the situation?
“It’s so expensive to have children in Japan that birthrate is further declining.”
I swear to God these people couldn’t connect the dots with a GPS.
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They don’t care about it getting worse. because global warming is their answer to every goal they have.
It’s the classic “we don’t care if the valley floods, we live on the hill” mentality. They think that if/when the world devolves into chaos that they’ll be safe because they’re well off.
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It was the government doing window guidance that caused their mess, how do you blame the people who made successful companies that gave Japan its first world living standard?
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Surely if they just instill good Christian moral values like forced birth, racism, and tribal isolationism all their problems will be solved.
I hear that welcoming migrants is a great way to address this problem…
one of the more racist nations on earth, i wish them a very happy depopulation and dissolution… kampai!
While I do not share the sentiment of “let them finally die”, I am very curious what will win: wanting to survive as a country and society or that bullshit worldview they are known for by anyone who learns anything more about Japan than just cool tech-anime-sake combo
I do hope they will change and survive. Ikkyu Sojun has earned a very special place in my heart (the one, who was a monk, son of emperor, who got a particular letter from his mother that is now famous among anyone who learns anything about Buddhism in Japan)
they are literally killing their own population growth with their racist national policies, I’m not killin em, but hey, sucks to suck
What if the population is stabilizing? Unlimited growth is death. Anyone who thinks differently hasn’t looked at how life works. That a population that undergoes a huge increase crashes due to starvation and disease. This is observable from bacteria to humans. It could be Japan is entering a stable period where needs and resources are predictable and known. Sounds like a higher standard of living to me. The downside is the huge geriatric population will need more and more resources until that situation becomes part of the new stable norm.
Stagnant is how a capitalist mindset sees it. They can’t stand that since their scam depends on unlimited growth. So of course any take on this from the stand point of greed would think its a terrible thing for a population to shrink to fit its resources not keep growing to allow ever increasing profits.
The downside is the huge geriatric population will need more and more resources until that situation becomes part of the new stable norm.
That exactly is the problem. When half the population is too old to work, who’s going to be providing for them all? Someone still needs to produce stuff.
It could be Japan is entering a stable period where needs and resources are predictable and known. Sounds like a higher standard of living to me.
Good luck predicting human needs and behaviour.
I still don’t understand the obsession. Not everything has to be a ponzi scheme where line go up. Things can shrink, it’s ok. Not everything lasts forever. At some point you can abandon areas and let them decay.
I fully agree, but also, the whole concept of a pension plan only works if the next generation pays it forwards. Meaning this generation is paying for the current retired group, and no one will pay for them.
This problem is not isolated to Japan. Countries all across the world are facing the same issue and have been for a number of years.
Create a shitty, miserable, society with no rights or support, and people do not want to bring children into it… who’d guess?
The flannel has been wrung dry to the detriment of the working class; there is no where to go, no more water to squeeze from them. This is global society / capitalism falling apart.
Exactly its not some mysterious problem no matter how much the government and media try to frame it as one, people of the age to have kids have no time for kids and no money for kids so no wonder they have no desire for kids.
Capitalism is the best we’ve got. Even North Korea has acknowledged this. With other systems people starve en masse. My hope is that we get over the taboo of regulation. Capitalism fucks up real-estate and wealth distribution. And health-care should 100% be government funded.
It seems like you already understand some of the limitations of capitalism. Look into why regulation has gradually been rolled back in the US since the 70s. Why did politicians start to agree with corporate execs demands for lower regulation. Keywords to look up - regulatory capture.
On a separate point, there’s plenty of famines that have occurred in capitalist economies due to capitalist exploitation - that is make more money, at the cost of of creating a famine. Some estimates put the deaths due to famines under capitalism higher than those under socialism. I used to simply know only of the famines under socialism and not know of the famines under capitalism.
Finally the capitalism we live in since the Great Depression is significantly different than the capitalism before it. Socialists, actual Marxists in western counties, yes the US included, were actively involved in the policies that created the welfare states across the west along with the regulatory regime. Some of FDR’s economic advisors were Marxian economists.
That was the compromise to save capitalism from imminent worker revolution. The unregulated, no-safety-net version of the system had lead to the conditions for such revolution. The socialist policies that averted the revolution in have slowly been dismantled over time and the system is reverting to the pre-Great Depression state. Faster in some countries than others.
If you want to reform capitalism to the point where it can no longer revert to economic liberalism (free market fundamentalism), you’d have to almost completely eliminate wealth accumulation. You could only do that by changing the ownership of the means of production. E.g. all employees in all corporations become equal owners (or controllers) of the machines and therefore the decisions on sharing the wealth those machines produce, instead of those decisions being made by a tiny number of major shareholders. You’d also have to significantly expand the industries operated by the government. At that point you end up with socialism. And yes socialism doesn’t mean central planning and no markets. Capitalism doesn’t mean no central planning and just markets. We do plenty of central planning in capitalist economies across governments and large corporations.
I’m not asking you to change your mind today. Just pointing out a few things to look into in case you haven’t.
Seems super likely that capitalism is going to be a major factor in our extinction. Maybe we could have a bit less of it and actually survive as a species
I actually agree with this. Capitalism presumes infinite resources.
The major shareholders have voted down your proposal.
Even if they did want children, without the support systems, it may not be feasible for them to have kids. Having them might mean choosing to starve or go without a house.
Even if you’re in a country with a public health care system, a sick/young child means having to take time off work to care for them.
Countries all across the world
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
Isn’t it interesting that the more “developed” countries have the lowest birth rates.
It’s what follows education. It’s the largely uneducated areas of the world that still raw dog like there’s no tomorrow.
So apparently under Sharia law, Muslim men can have anal sex with a girl under 8, and vaginal with a girl over 8.
And Muslims can openly lie about what is and isn’t true under Sharia law???
No, Muslims cannot openly lie about what is and isn’t true under sharia law. Islamic jurisprudence is a thing. It’s pretty important to Muslims to know what they can or can’t do.
There are different traditions (remember - there are Sunnis and Shias as the largest groups, some more obscure splinters, and splinters off of Sunni and Shia). Not everyone accepts the same Hadith, and there are, ya know, like more than thirteen centuries of interpretations and various schools. (Like, people get Islamic law degrees - that’s kinda why the medieval Muslim world was pretty well known for education, you needed the madrassas to be teaching people this stuff)
I have never heard the idea that anal sex was permissible in Islam. The Hadith cited in my link I think are direct enough that basically all traditions would accept them outright.
I don’t understand the 8 years old distinction bit (maybe something to do with the heinous child rape involved in bacha bazi - but that would not be considered permissible by Islamic scholars)
nothing about the idea of having children appeals to me in the slightest
Me neither 😆 and now my son is 5 y old
We discovered him about 4 month after creation…
Everyone has their opinions and circumstances, but anecdotally my time with children has been some of the happiest.
I love my kids and my life with them. People who pridefully claim they don’t want children is similar to people being prideful of not eating pizza.
No one gives a shit about your preferences.
your preferences about my preferences can suck my balls
fear of decline
Damn there must be so much evolution now
But I bet they will continue to work people to the bone as a point of pride…like I wonder what could be contributing to this problem.
Yeah, and in a city with no greenery for kids to play in and afraid to let the kids out of their sight for 1 minute.
Why not just promote immigration. America seems to not have that problem
A culture of xenophobia
Javan has a lot of anger towards tourists too but people still vacation there. Seems the war is a scar that needs healing. I can tell you I still haven’t healed from emotion scars from decades ago. The difference between Japan and Hawaii is land accumulation. Japan has a lot of abandoned area that would benefit from immigration. A cultural town would be an idea. Lots of Americans in one area. It’s 2025 and we weren’t even around during the Vietnam or Cold War. I mean the change needs to happen somehow and it’s mutually beneficial. Maybe after trump leaves office tho
imagine being so racist that it forces your country to fall apart. they made their own bed, time for some laying in it.
Its their country. Let them decide.
