Groups | Search | Server Info | Login | Register

Groups > hfx.general > #232797

Re: Comfort is Not Progress

Show all headers | View raw

On 2026-05-09 5:16 p.m., HRM Resident wrote:
> James Warren <jwwarren987@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Eh? When did this ever happen? Will it happen?
>>
>      It's happening now, not as a prediction.
> 
>      South Korea has the highest per capita income
> in its history and a fertility rate of 0.72 --
> the lowest ever recorded for a large economy.
> Young Koreans are not failing to reproduce
> because of poverty or disease.  They are
> declining to reproduce because the baseline
> comfort of a childless life is preferable to
> the difficulty of raising one.  Comfort won
> the argument that evolution spent a billion
> years making unloseable.
> 
>      Japan has entire industries built around
> the social withdrawal of young men -- hikikomori
> -- who find the friction of ordinary social
> life intolerably uncomfortable and opt out
> entirely.  Again, not poverty.  Comfort plus
> friction equals exit.
> 
>      The United States has seen a thirty year
> decline in the number of young people who
> have ever held a job, cooked a meal, driven
> a car, or left the house without a plan.
> The metrics on frustration tolerance, delayed
> gratification and willingness to persist
> through difficulty have moved consistently
> in one direction.  Canada mirrored this.
> 
>      These are not people who are suffering.
> They are people for whom the ordinary
> difficulty of being alive has become
> optional, and who have taken the option.
> That's comfort decoupling from the engine
> that produced it, and it's well underway.
> 

So what is the problem? Affluence correlates with low birthrate.
Society will adjust to a smaller population. Constant growth is
not sustainable forever.

Back to hfx.general | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Find similar

Thread

Comfort is Not Progress HRM Resident <protonalias.sliver907@passinbox.com > - 2026-05-08 17:04 +0000
  Re: Comfort is Not Progress James Warren <jwwarren987@gmail.com> - 2026-05-08 14:46 -0300
    Re: Comfort is Not Progress HRM Resident <protonalias.sliver907@passinbox.com > - 2026-05-08 23:47 +0000
      Re: Comfort is Not Progress James Warren <jwwarren987@gmail.com> - 2026-05-08 21:20 -0300
        Re: Comfort is Not Progress HRM Resident <protonalias.sliver907@passinbox.com > - 2026-05-09 12:02 +0000
          Re: Comfort is Not Progress James Warren <jwwarren987@gmail.com> - 2026-05-09 11:07 -0300
            Re: Comfort is Not Progress HRM Resident <protonalias.sliver907@passinbox.com > - 2026-05-09 20:16 +0000
              Re: Comfort is Not Progress James Warren <jwwarren987@gmail.com> - 2026-05-09 18:25 -0300

csiph-web