See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon
> The pigeon migrated in enormous flocks, constantly searching for food, shelter, and breeding grounds, and was once the most abundant bird in North America, numbering around 3 billion, and possibly up to 5 billion.
> A slow decline between about 1800 and 1870 was followed by a rapid decline between 1870 and 1890. In 1900, the last confirmed wild bird was shot in southern Ohio.
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
Or is it feel good populist hand waving bullshit stymied by corruption and incompetence?
But that doesn't matter - I responded to your claim that they don't actually care about birthrate, because they don't fund families. But they do fund families, hinting that they probably do care about the birthrate, regardless of if their efforts are successful.
It takes very motivated thinking to say that, because a solution doesn't work, those that tried the solution don't care about the problem.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/HUN/hun...
Why only tax breaks? That won't help if the poor already pay little or nothing in taxes and still lack childcare.
It's not only tax breaks - the loans are government loans (up to $36,000) that get fully forgiven after 3 children are equivalent to a cash payment.
And the poor pay 18% tax [1], so they would also benefit from a tax break. Though the poor aren't the only target of that program, so even if they get less help from it, it doesn't follow that politicians don't care about birthrates.
> It's possible politicians in Hungary both care about low birth rates, are doing something that has an effect, yet have other motives they give a higher priority.
I mean, what am I supposed to say to this? First of all, we're not talking just about politicians - voters seemingly care about this, and are getting what they want, at least partly. As for the hearts of politicians - who knows? Maybe? We're getting into unfalsifiable territory here. At a minimum, the politicians themselves are Hungarians - presumably they care about the survival of their people, at least some of them, at least a little? At the very least the initial post's simplistic they-don't-care-because-they-don't-fund-it logic has been disproven, at least for Hungary.
It almost feels like it is trying to "They Live!" me into believing everything about it is "REPRODUCE" propaganda.
You can't do that using "OBEY" propaganda though, otherwise it becomes satirical. What I mean by that is that the article provides guidelines on what to focus on when discussing these things in typical conversations.
It reminds me of that scene of "Starship Troopers" in which an official appears and explains how to kill an insect from Klandatu by shooting at the heart, not the leg.
Does it really matter? I mean, for my silly stupid life. I don't care about birth rates. Maybe I care about the non statistical or political part. Most people would like to have a family, right? You media guys know that some people see things from a personal perspective, some from a partisan perspective and so on.
Well, I am the computer kid grown up. I am supposed to see things like a little tiny robot. To care about the big statistics things, and to care about the end of the world. Sounds like the article partially targets me!
You know what? Maybe I will fight for the insects from Klandatu instead. It seems that those guys need a help.
What about the low birth rates? Well, the article isn't about birth rates. Why should I talk about them?
like_any_other•9mo ago
croes•9mo ago
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.
like_any_other•9mo ago
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...
croes•9mo ago
Like your first link showed: There is a greater diversity between African countries than any African country to Europe.
You could break down those differences down to the village level but it’s a useless distinction and more likely the base useless racism and nationalism.
By that logic every single humans death is a loss of genetic diversity.
And thanks to international travel and migration this differences already get mixed up.
like_any_other•9mo ago
This is "how many grains of sand make a pile" territory, isn't it? You're claiming that because a change of X is negligible, it must mean that a change of 1000000*X is also negligible.
As for my first link - I couldn't find where it showed that, and even if it did, it doesn't follow that the differences are negligible (to whom?) [1]. Why does Africa having a lot of genetic human diversity, make those differences negligible?
[1] Especially since Africa has two completely different populations due to the barrier of the Sahara - of course the difference between Europeans and Arabs are smaller than between Arabs and Namibians.
dragonwriter•9mo ago
Countries aren't species, they are social constructs; they are maintained memetically, not genetically. There is no shortage of humans to assure that survival of countries that pay sufficient effort to their memetic continuity.
With present population trends, in a few centuries it might be time to be concerned about birthrates if they don't adjust thermostatically to changed global population conditions, but there is certainly no imminent threat from low birthrates.
croes•9mo ago