So the theme of the article was about the role good paying blue-collar jobs play on the social structure. When they exist, men who have them become desirable and this underpins a stability and family dynamic of sorts. When they don’t, women become more independent and the same structure of less stable.
To be clear, this isn’t an argument one way or the other, just observation. But it is interesting to see how the provider role plays out in society.
Plus, once there's an abundance of things (land, houses/apartments, etc.), numbers tend to move back up, or at least stabilize.
No, but it will mean they will go older, with less dynamic and more geriatric society, worse economic momentum, and so on.
Historically momentum (not absolute position, which depends on prior trajecory and other accidental factors) is tied to population.
When France ruled the world, it was the most populous nation in Europe (1/3 Europeans was French). When Europe in aggregate was the center of power (through colonialism, science, industry, etc), European countries were in the 10 most populous globally (along with China and India). The decline in influence of Britain, France, etc, followed their population decline - in 1950 still 4 of the top populated countries in the world were European (including Russia) and 8 of the top 20. In 2015 only Russia remains in the top 10, and soon there will be no European country in the top 20.
Similarly, when the US emerged and established itself in the international scene as a strong player and then a dominant one, it also got in the top list of most populous countries.
(Historically, China, with its huge population, was the strongest economy on the planet, until the "historical accident" of the New World in the 16th century. Now that the European momentum has stalled, it's getting back up there again).
There may possibly have been some confounding factors during the twentieth century though, like the hugely destructive war, the shift from empires being a benefit to a cost and their consequent dismantling, and numerous mass casualty and economic disruption events. Russia lost something in the region of sixteen million people to the war.
Also I think you need to be clear on absolute vs relative decline - the population of the UK hasn't declined in absolute numbers, nor has its economy, and whether you mean "size of economy" or "GDP per person".
He's talking relative. And it matters. For example stuff stops being sold/is never sold in relatively small markets. We're starting to see it with China-only products. There are many disadvantages to being a smaller economy, even if in per capita terms things are ok.
And almost all European countries, taken individually, are predicted to fall outside the top 10 by 2050 (moderate chance for 2050 and huge chance for 2100).
South Korea's fertility rate is below 1 and still dropping, for many decades. Many other countries are on a similar path. Has there been any precedent of a country recovering from such deeply negative trend once more land and houses freed up?
If you look at South Korea's population, it's still being going up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Korea#/m...
(Edit: Actually in 2020 it went down for the first time in recorded history, it seems)
Give it a few more decades, when people actually start dying off en masse (because we haven't really found a way to reliably have masses of centenaries living), and then you'll should see the population dropping. Unless they increase immigration.
What I'm saying applies once the population actually drops by a large amount.
Oh but this is exactly what I'm trying to explore with the South Korea specific example. By 2100 they are predicted by the UN* to have 1/2 of their current population. This remaining bunch will be mostly very old people, the fertile/working age fraction will be like 20% supporting 80% people too old to work or reproduce. This is already a never seen before situation (in peaceful times, at least), which you describe as "numbers tend to move back up, or at least stabilize", like we've seen this many times before, but we've never seen anything like that. Also, I'm having a very difficult time imagining a half-a-century long, continuing freefall in fertility suddenly reversing in another 5-8 decades and them all of a sudden starting to breed like rabbits in 2100, after they lose half their population. Even just to stop the freefall they would have to double the current fertility rate just to not go completely extinct around year 2150.
* https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191010-south-koreas-p...
When your main home + a vacation home cost half of what your main home would have costed 3 decades ago, and you can afford them when you're 25, that's a huge relief right there.
The big question mark to that is that the entire economy doesn't collapse and also takes down salaries with it. But South Korea is quite export oriented so they're better positioned than some other countries.
Why is there a dwindling supply?
> traditional patriarchal privileges
What are these?
That's actually more than enough to explain the skewed ratio, even though selective abortions likely also have had a noticeable impact.
It doesn't matter what stopping criterion for your family composition you use, every child that gets put on the earth has a 50% chance of being a girl. Suppose you have children until you either get 5 or until you have a boy. The possible outcomes and their probabilities are:
B (1/2), GB (1/4), GGB (1/8), GGGB (1/16), GGGGB (1/32), GGGGG (1/32)
You can't explain the difference without selective murder, lack of childcare, abortion or some other selective filtering.
> You can't explain the difference without selective murder, lack of childcare, abortion or some other selective filtering.
I'd like to add that natural birth favors boys, citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio#Natural_factor...
Not everyone will continue until they get a boy. Another child is an option, not a requirement. This is where the skew (can) come from.
The question is how likely are parents with G/GG/GGG to stop or try again.
No it can not! It's just mathematically and biologically not true, and attempts to erase a crime against humanity. The human inception process does not give a shit about your decision whether or not to put another child on this earth to decide whether the infant will be a boy or a girl.
Each child put on this earth has a ~50% chance of being either sex. It does not matter whether the parents decide to have another afterwards or not, this future child also has a ~50% chance of being either sex. The *only* variable that matters for the amount of girls that get born (in the absence of selective filtering) is the total number of children born, not whatever strategy their parents were going for.
To try and prove it to you, consider this randomized Python function:
import numpy as np
from numba import njit
@njit
def bear_children(stop_on_girl_p, stop_on_boy_p, max_children):
num_girls = num_boys = 0
while num_girls + num_boys < max_children:
child_is_girl = np.random.random() < 0.5
num_girls += child_is_girl
num_boys += not child_is_girl
r = np.random.random()
if ( child_is_girl and r < stop_on_girl_p or
not child_is_girl and r < stop_on_boy_p):
break
return [num_girls, num_boys]
def sample(n, stop_on_girl_p, stop_on_boy_p, max_children):
children = [bear_children(stop_on_girl_p, stop_on_boy_p, max_children) for _ in range(n)]
girls, boys = np.sum(children, axis=0)
return girls / boys
for max_children in np.arange(2, 5):
for stop_on_girl_p in np.linspace(0, 1, 5):
for stop_on_boy_p in np.linspace(0, 1, 5):
ratio = sample(10**6, stop_on_girl_p, stop_on_boy_p, max_children)
print(f"m {max_children}, g {stop_on_girl_p:.2f}, b {stop_on_boy_p:.2f}: {ratio: .6f}")
m 2, g 0.00, b 0.00: 0.999922
m 2, g 0.00, b 0.25: 0.995816
m 2, g 0.00, b 0.50: 1.001230
m 2, g 0.00, b 0.75: 1.001087
m 2, g 0.00, b 1.00: 0.999463
m 2, g 0.25, b 0.00: 0.997941
m 2, g 0.25, b 0.25: 0.999697
m 2, g 0.25, b 0.50: 0.999899
m 2, g 0.25, b 0.75: 0.997890
m 2, g 0.25, b 1.00: 1.001904
m 2, g 0.50, b 0.00: 0.999417
m 2, g 0.50, b 0.25: 1.002257
m 2, g 0.50, b 0.50: 0.997706
m 2, g 0.50, b 0.75: 1.003743
m 2, g 0.50, b 1.00: 1.002836
m 2, g 0.75, b 0.00: 1.001780
m 2, g 0.75, b 0.25: 1.001771
m 2, g 0.75, b 0.50: 0.997113
m 2, g 0.75, b 0.75: 1.001912
m 2, g 0.75, b 1.00: 0.998633
m 2, g 1.00, b 0.00: 1.000313
m 2, g 1.00, b 0.25: 0.997060
m 2, g 1.00, b 0.50: 1.001314
m 2, g 1.00, b 0.75: 0.997819
m 2, g 1.00, b 1.00: 1.003839
m 3, g 0.00, b 0.00: 0.999760
m 3, g 0.00, b 0.25: 1.000058
m 3, g 0.00, b 0.50: 0.999769
m 3, g 0.00, b 0.75: 1.003119
m 3, g 0.00, b 1.00: 0.999096
m 3, g 0.25, b 0.00: 1.000912
m 3, g 0.25, b 0.25: 0.999597
m 3, g 0.25, b 0.50: 1.000687
m 3, g 0.25, b 0.75: 1.001384
m 3, g 0.25, b 1.00: 1.001542
m 3, g 0.50, b 0.00: 0.999007
m 3, g 0.50, b 0.25: 0.999736
m 3, g 0.50, b 0.50: 1.001971
m 3, g 0.50, b 0.75: 0.999555
m 3, g 0.50, b 1.00: 1.000360
m 3, g 0.75, b 0.00: 0.999272
m 3, g 0.75, b 0.25: 1.001740
m 3, g 0.75, b 0.50: 1.001187
m 3, g 0.75, b 0.75: 0.998134
m 3, g 0.75, b 1.00: 1.002759
m 3, g 1.00, b 0.00: 1.002063
m 3, g 1.00, b 0.25: 1.002451
m 3, g 1.00, b 0.50: 0.999767
m 3, g 1.00, b 0.75: 0.999704
m 3, g 1.00, b 1.00: 1.003851
m 4, g 0.00, b 0.00: 0.999863
m 4, g 0.00, b 0.25: 0.998141
m 4, g 0.00, b 0.50: 1.000851
m 4, g 0.00, b 0.75: 0.999944
m 4, g 0.00, b 1.00: 0.999089
m 4, g 0.25, b 0.00: 1.001894
m 4, g 0.25, b 0.25: 0.998684
m 4, g 0.25, b 0.50: 0.999523
m 4, g 0.25, b 0.75: 1.000608
m 4, g 0.25, b 1.00: 1.003503
m 4, g 0.50, b 0.00: 1.000178
m 4, g 0.50, b 0.25: 0.998415
m 4, g 0.50, b 0.50: 1.000846
m 4, g 0.50, b 0.75: 0.999193
m 4, g 0.50, b 1.00: 0.998043
m 4, g 0.75, b 0.00: 0.999524
m 4, g 0.75, b 0.25: 0.999053
m 4, g 0.75, b 0.50: 0.996726
m 4, g 0.75, b 0.75: 1.000306
m 4, g 0.75, b 1.00: 1.000998
m 4, g 1.00, b 0.00: 0.999759
m 4, g 1.00, b 0.25: 1.000097
m 4, g 1.00, b 0.50: 1.000577
m 4, g 1.00, b 0.75: 0.999687
m 4, g 1.00, b 1.00: 0.996829When a couple has G, what's the probability they'll want to go for GX? When the couple has GG, what's the probability they'll want to go for GGX?
It doesn't matter that X is 50% boy 50% girl - in fact, it being 50/50 is why the bias ends up towards more G.
Edit: Ah wait I think I have something backwards in my head, I need to come back to this later. But I do want to mention that the estimated at-birth ratio in humans is more like 51:49, not 50:50
boys = 100000 girls 99350
boys = 100000 girls 100333
boys = 100000 girls 101195
In this process you will always get 1 boy, obviously. But you have a (1/2)^k * (1/2) chance of getting k girls before your first boy. Thus the expected number of girls is
Sum[k * (1/2)^k * (1/2), k, 0, inf]
Here are the results when the number of max births per family is dropped to 2:
boys = 74861 girls 75166
boys = 74752 girls 75464
boys = 75047 girls 74933If one was raised in a patriarchal setup, maybe. But some societies have already a third or even fifth generation that never knew this.
>We are seeing a sociological experiment in action across the globe.
The extinction of a world view in which gender equality is considered a "sociological experiment"?
Yes, exactly! We can already observe the effects through such metrics as marriage rate and birth rate in e.g. Germany or South Korea.
> The extinction of a world view in which gender equality is considered a "sociological experiment"?
I sense some negativity, could I have formulated it in a more neutral way? Any historically new social reform e.g. tax-payer-funded health care or tuition is in a way an experiment. Also I am not sure we will ever achieve true gender equality. For example in prison population to name one metric.
I once had a friend who slapped his wife in the face once. I was shocked when I learned about this. He was very ashamed and explained that he felt completely powerless, she was shaming him he is not a real man because he earns so little and one day he broken down and - not being able to defend himself verbally - he nervously slapped her. This whole event made me sad. It's not like I justify his action, it's clear what he did was wrong and he knew this well, but cases like these get into statistics and then people make up all kinds of uninformed conclusions.
I am missing the proof of causation here. One can equally assume that a good social safety net reduces demand to have children as providers in old age. Or that access to higher education for women lets them make a) more informed decisions or b) not rely on a male partner to provide for them.
> I sense some negativity, could I have formulated it in a more neutral way?
You could have shown that your causation is actually that, not just a correlation :)
That sounds distressingly redpilled to me...
I don't have demographics for China, but in the west there's no particular shortage of hardworking <demographic-other-than-socially-dominant-male>'s doing reasonably well in the market. And their representation in the "hardworking professional successful person" pool is growing over time. That's good, right?
Isn't maybe a better hypothesis that there's an identifiable population of MEN unwilling to work hard if they don't get essentially unfair access to success, and complaining about it? Seems like maybe that's where the solution needs to be addressed?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-...
Seems totally reasonable to think that not have the potential to be a husband/father would affect how men view the payoff of gaining higher social status. You can't write that off as "Der der redpill!"
In fact the gender ratio among 15-24 year old chinese (the peak of the one child gender curve) is 1.17. That's not low, but it's hardly a strong effect either. In particular those 17% of citizens having trouble finding a mate seems like a rather smaller effect than the significantly larger increase in workforce participation among their more numerous female coworkers.
So China loses a few men who check out because they can't get a date, and gains women by the truckload (no, I don't have demographics) who are entering the workforce. I still don't see why this is a social problem.
So I look to other people trying to claim this is a social problem, and I'm sorry, I see a lot of "der der redpill" and not much else. If this is a serious economic argument, then please make it.
Do you think it might be useful information to consider that years of China's one-child policy and strong cultural preferences might have combined to create a serious skew in the gender ratio? India has a related issue. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-...
Again, you're absolutely correct that this sounds like an utterly repellent expression of privilege and sexism. It's just worth perhaps considering that demographic context might be considered by some to be relevant.
Now, I think there's a real discussion to be had there, sure. But the post above sounded a lot more like MRA whining.
It just might be worth considering that what is in one context baseless sexist whining might in another be an accurate observation of the effects of decades of policy and the suggestion of a control group. Some readers might take this as an opportunity to check their assumptions and refer to relevant data.
I recognize that this is a matter of opinion, and thus reasonable people might differ. Again, you are inconvertibly correct in every single moral and ethical dimension!
For my own part, I don't think you were guilty of what the other commenter accused you of. I think they over-aggressively pattern-matched some rhetoric you used and responded with something canned.
If we are talking a country of a billion people, we are talking a multi-hundred-million-person imbalance developing. When young men with poorly developed decision-making skills get it in their head that nothing they do along traditional paths matters because they will never woo a partner, they begin to take less “traditional” routes to fixing their personal problems, like war and crime.
Alternatively, and much less apocalyptically, a median hetero man in China will spend 17% less time in a committed relationship than one in the Germany (or wherever). Stated that way it doesn't really sound that bad.
I repeat AGAIN, that you're invoking what seems to me to be an incel fantasy, that some men are going to "win" and that those that don't will be "forever destined" to being alone. And no, the truth is that most people (everywhere!) spend a bunch of their lives lonely, but sometimes find relationships, and that love is hard work, finding happiness takes effort, and mopey excuse-making helps no one.
And in particular, the brand of mopey excuse-making I'm seeing here gets really toxic really fast.
"Hey, Guy from China, suck it up, you are only going to be 17% more lonely than the average German man. We have better things to mope about than your socioeconomic situation in a country that literally invades every aspect of your socioeconomic means of production."
Now that you have to compete for a dwindling supply of the opposite sex just to have more responsibilities without any traditional patriarchal privileges it makes it less attractive.
New forms of entertainment and "socializing" eliminate the boredom.
We are seeing a sociological experiment in action across the globe.