Miscellaneous News

In4ser said:

Just because you have a greater margin for error does not mean that it will develop a solution, assuming there is even one. If anything it might prolong the malaise of the decline and allow a smaller and less densely populated country like Japan or Korea to recover and adapt much more quickly from their fall. The large size of the Qing Empire made it difficult to enact reforms and modernize while smaller nations were able to change more quickly, like small start-ups vs big conglomerates with technological shifts.

Abundance isn't the main issue, otherwise, third-world nations wouldn't have the highest fertility rates. China had much more fertility when it was poorer and less developed. It's selectiveness. Men who don't want to marry women who don't look like Douyin models and women being hypergameous and disdain lower-status men, and so both don't settle until it's too late. They watch porn, k-pop, anime and romance novels and have unrealistic expectations of life and already live in a high pressure society to succeed. As would be parents who only want the very best for their kids, so instead of just having them, they keep waiting until they feel confident enough either in their career or wealth to do but they never find the right moment. That competitive mindset to outdo each other for status is what creates a societal bottleneck. It creates artificial scarcity of space and resources where there might not be one, as the desire to be on top, means you must impose and monopolize advantages and hinder others success. When you are poor and have few options, you make do and just go for but when you have options, you bid your time until it's too late. Perhaps this is simply a natural limiter placed on population, like a behavioral sink for humans.

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- The ability to change policies is precisely China's advantage right now, or have you not been paying attention to China being the only country able to divert real estate to manufacturing, or cracking down on big tech, or finance? Tell me which country, big or small, has been able to successfully make even a fraction of the reforms China has made? And equally important, why do you think China made them?

- Poor countries have higher birth rate because it's not about wealth alone, it's about the time-cost of expectations, it's how much time you have expend to achieve the life you expect, and it does not actually cost as much time to achieve one's expected lifestyle if they expects to be poor due to an actual lack of pathway to higher standards.

- Similarity the reason there was a baby boom after WW2 was because the war lowered everyone's expectations, so the surge in relative wealth as the war ended, combined with very low expectations from war rationing made it easy for everyone to achieve their low expectations.

This is why abundance is very important, yes people will always compare themselves with others, and the internet does promote unrealistic expectations, but at end of the day a person who only have to work 5, maybe even 4 days a week, and can easily afford everything, including housing, will have more actual, physical ability to seek out relations and start a family.

Expectations aren't linear, people don't actually hold out on relationships waiting for the perfect partner, unrealistic expectations might delay relationships, but it's the inability to achieve material expectations that prevents people from starting families. This isn't a theory, it's well known, if only from observed surge in birth rates from direct cash handouts.

Clearly Beijing understands this and it's why they went after real estate and finance and invested heavily in robotics and manufacturing. China's objective is abundance, China is the only one that actually demonstrated the agility to make structural changes to achieve it, the only one with the actual ability to achieve it, and the only one with a culture that aims to distributes wealth evenly so abudance can be experienced by everyone.

The fate of Japan and Korea isn't China's problem, they can spend all day arguing China will suffer just like them, but while they're doing that, China has already acted.

Eventine said:

Governments are mainly just looking at each other; none of them have a clue on how to solve it, so they stopped talking about it to avoid making empty promises.

But South Korea recently raised its marriage rate by ~20% in 2024; that's a significant improvement that other governments should be paying attention to, as marriage rates are one of the biggest contributors to fertility. Just for comparison, China's marriage rate dropped by ~20% in the same year.

People really underestimate the destructive effects of low fertility, mainly because they haven't experienced it for any significant period of time. Ask the Japanese, who have experienced it, and how their country went from one of the most competitive, innovative economies in the world, to a nation of dinosaurs who let every opportunity in the last twenty years slip by.

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Don't worry, we can always force pregnancies as we get rid of the hard won women rights of the last few decades, cut reproductive healthcare, push/propagandize women out the workforce into motherhood, heavily tax childlessness and much more. Individuals right cannot be above states rights.

By the way this is another state in the US

Because the heavens forbid Social Science graduates figure out the women can have children in gaps like 3 in a 10/15 year span and that usually screw TfR statistics, NO, women need to be forced to have as many children possible in the shortest time possible.

But hard problems require hard solutions.

In4ser said:

Not flexible enough, seeing how long it took to repeal the One Child Policy. As a larger and more populated country, China is like a large cruise liner, it's hard to implement change once momentum has been built up. That's why its national policies are often broad and vague lest it become pigeonholeed by a mistake. It's tectonic when things go right, but also when things go wrong.

By the way, China already has a lower fertility rate than Japan because of how fast the problem is accelerating.

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It is 10000x easier to go totalitarian and reorganize society than it is to either undo industrialism or develop genetic tech that can grow humans. It will probably be a degree of totalitarianism that has never been seen before, up to governments paying for babies and raising them in collective settings with professional caretakers, free of cost to the parents.

I think everyone will go totalitarian in the end. Whether it is a regular totalitarian AI backed dictatorship with or a "managed democracy" where only a few "citizens" who have children have rights, it's looking like a dark future.

@Eventine @tokenanalyst

In4ser said:

Nah, I think we'd self-destruct before that happens. Individualism runs deep in this country. 'Murica is not a homogenous ethnostate like China. There are too many different identities that are prioritized over the common good, like race, religion, and ideologies. I don't even know what it means to be "American" anymore. Besides, when times get tough, people become selfish, and collectivist structures tend to crumble. It will likely become a patchwork of smaller states, possibly like the Warring States/Warlord period. That said, I'm more confident about Texas than most other states (looking at you, California).


He brags about Eugenics but unintentionally creates a race of Orcs. I thought Elves were supposed to be the master race!

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It is possible for a "managed democracy" to emerge where a few are 'citizens' who form a military-administrator class, a substantial remainder are "nationals" who form the skilled labor backbone and everyone else are "residents" with no rights and form a labor underclass.

If you thought this is impossible, that was essentially the state of affairs from 1920-1960 in a low tech version so there's actual historical precedent.

FairAndUnbiased said:

It is 10000x easier to go totalitarian and reorganize society than it is to either undo industrialism or develop genetic tech that can grow humans. It will probably be a degree of totalitarianism that has never been seen before, up to governments paying for babies and raising them in collective settings with professional caretakers, free of cost to the parents.

I think everyone will go totalitarian in the end. Whether it is a regular totalitarian AI backed dictatorship with or a "managed democracy" where only a few "citizens" who have children have rights, it's looking like a dark future.

@Eventine @tokenanalyst

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FairAndUnbiased said:

It is possible for a "managed democracy" to emerge where a few are 'citizens' who form a military-administrator class, a substantial remainder are "nationals" who form the skilled labor backbone and everyone else are "residents" with no rights and form a labor underclass.

If you thought this is impossible, that was essentially the state of affairs from 1920-1960 in a low tech version so there's actual historical precedent.

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Well, the China hysteria it was what give the US Mr. Trump and the current tariff situation. Who knows where the population hysteria will lead the world.

FairAndUnbiased said:

It is 10000x easier to go totalitarian and reorganize society than it is to either undo industrialism or develop genetic tech that can grow humans. It will probably be a degree of totalitarianism that has never been seen before, up to governments paying for babies and raising them in collective settings with professional caretakers, free of cost to the parents.

I think everyone will go totalitarian in the end. Whether it is a regular totalitarian AI backed dictatorship with or a "managed democracy" where only a few "citizens" who have children have rights, it's looking like a dark future.

@Eventine @tokenanalyst

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What's funny is you don't need all this. You just need to do what Beijing has always done to obtain the effect it wants. Education and propaganda.

The current generation of 25+ people are largely a lost cause as they have already formulated their mind set based on their generation's education and propaganda, which was to have less kids, get better careers, and be more selfish. At best, they can be convinced through incentives to not completely crash the birth rate, but correcting their already formed world views will be difficult, if not impossible.

But the <10 years old population can be influenced through proper education and media propaganda. This will create a demographic gap, but only for about 15 years, because China's demographics problems won't hit until ~15-20 years later, by which time today's <10 years old population will be having children, who in turn will mature in 10-15 years into the work force. China can tank a decade and a half of economic slow down, before the next generation is ready to take up the task.

The main problem facing China today is not "lack of material abundance." As stated before, people in much poorer countries have tons of children. Material abundance isn't really the key to fertility unless your country literally cannot feed itself. The key is the culture of people - especially women - choosing to be "single, free, and fancy." Because they're afraid of pain / hard work, terrified of losing social status, and contemptuous towards family values.

You cannot correct a problem like this via financial incentives alone. No amount of making it easier to have children & buy houses will incentivize people who resent any sort of limit to their freedom to get married or have children. You have to actually change the culture, like what Trump is doing - although in a rather clumsy way because it's not easy for him to take over all the media propaganda in the US, while it is much easier for the Chinese government to do so.

To start, stop all those feminists on Chinese social media telling women to prioritize themselves and not get married or have kids because "all men are terrible."

Eventine said:

People really underestimate the destructive effects of low fertility, mainly because they haven't experienced it for any significant period of time. Ask the Japanese, who have experienced it, and how their country went from one of the most competitive, innovative economies in the world, to a nation of dinosaurs who let every opportunity in the last twenty years slip by.

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I think the American’s sabotages of Japanese tech sector played a much much bigger role in Japan’s decline. Look up what happened to Toshiba.

LMAO looks like the chihuahua country is starting to regret their decision. They now want to normalise relations with PRC!

In4ser said:

I would, too. That's the problem! Everyone would do it. Over time, more and more people's babies would follow trends and look and be more and more similar. This would likely cause the genetic pool to shrink ever more as it's not the immediate disaster that's often the most dangerous, but the one that is far away, that people become too complacent until they can no longer reverse it.

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I disagree. I think people will optimize traits for their children based on their own interests, passions and biases, leading to a Zerg like branching of specialized features - meaning more or just as much diversity as now, but with higher individual peaks.

E.g. children engineered for performance in:
- Sports, e.g. swimming / basketball / football / weightlifting, etc. (all have different optimal traits)
- Music / literature / arts
- STEM fields
- Combat
- Appearance (likely a common trait for all of the above)
- Different intellectual / personality traits
- Other features

It would be the equivalent of 2-3x'ing today's talent distribution, where today's above average would be the competitive equivalent of a white kid in an asian majority school

Eventine said:

People really underestimate the destructive effects of low fertility, mainly because they haven't experienced it for any significant period of time. Ask the Japanese, who have experienced it, and how their country went from one of the most competitive, innovative economies in the world, to a nation of dinosaurs who let every opportunity in the last twenty years slip by.

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Low fertility paired with electoral democracy means rule by the elderly, for the elderly. Luckily, China has a better political system and can still make policies for the future, even if the young are not the majority. Pensioners aren't going to overthrow the government

A society can remain culturally young and nimble, even if there's lots of old people. You just have to restrict their political participation. The communist party system is perfect for that as the lower level positions will always go to younger people who can then move up the ladder. In an election, the sheer mass of the elderly is going to cause them to take over all relevant positions and calcify society