Cowbee

@Cowbee@lemm.ee

This town, in fact, has more than enough room for the two of us

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South Korea Expects Its Already-World’s-Lowest Fertility Rate to Keep Falling (time.com)

The latest forecast by Statistics Korea puts the population in 2072 at 36.2 million, a 30% decline from the current 51.7 million, even though the fertility rate may recover a bit to 0.68 in 2026. The population is expected to fall every year starting in 2025.

Cowbee,

You actually can’t, Samsung is owned and run by Chaebol. It’s essentially the same family at the top, with no sign of their power shifting.

Cowbee,

There’s also a massive and rising anti-feminist incel subculture, which the current President Yoon took power from. Women in South Korea don’t trust men in South Korea as much.

Insane work culture, huge wealth inequality, and rising anti-women movements all hurt birth rates.

Cowbee,

Unsurprisingly, a rising feminist subculture among women. Because Korea in general has been historically misogynistic, exposure to more feminist media and culture as well as societal progression has led to rises in feminism among women. As a response, men have felt threatened, and claim feminists are “going too far,” and call feminists “femi.”

An example of recent incel “controversy” is when an idol character in a video game had a frame where her index finger and thumb appeared like this: 🤏 and incels took that to be offensive to Korean Penis size, and had the man who animated that fired from Nexien. I wish I was joking.

Cowbee,

Oh, absolutely, I agree. The only thing that truly brings solace is that reactionary movements get louder when progressive movements grow stronger.

Cowbee,

In theory, yes, though the number of shares required to go against the Chaebol is just not feasible. There’s a reason South Korea specifically has a word for a specific group of Billionaire Capitalists, they are essentially untouchable.

Cowbee,

There’s little that’s legitimately out of your control. Of course, I don’t mean 1 person can topple Capitalism or anything, but 1 person can set up a union, join a protest, or set up a co-operative farm, educate others, or make meaningful grassroots change.

1 person can make a big difference in the lives of the people around them.

Cowbee,

Yep, I have found that just accepting one person’s words alone, especially in a field as politically charged as economics, is a terrible way to gain knowledge and understanding, just more misunderstanding. Pinker does a great job of being technically correct, but like the other commenters have pointed out, he is very careful of showing only some numbers and ignoring others, in order to massage a narrative that the status quo is flawed but ultimately not to be challenged.

Cowbee,

I certainly believe it! Colonization and Imperialism in particular have an absolutely brutal history. Japanese soldiers occupying China and Korea used to catch babies on bayonets, and had quotas for how many ears they cut off. Dutch occupiers of the Congo would cut off the hands of underperforming workers, including children, and give the hands to their parents.

The thing is, generally, humans are guided and shaped by material conditions, and material conditions improve with democratization and industrialization.

Cowbee,

I just want high speed rail…

Cowbee,

IP honestly holds human progress back. It’s supposed to encourage RnD, but if someone can produce something more efficiently, let them.

Cowbee,

Trust me bro, Capitalism is necessary for innovation, just trust me bro

Cowbee,

Just like most systems, at an individual level it can work for the individual. However, that’s in the context of the current, IP beholden system. Alternative forms of property ownership and control have alternative mechanics, solutions, and problems.

It would of course not be fair at all to outlaw IP at the individual level alone, without outlawing IP at the corporate level as well.

Cowbee,

The last Bezos will ship us the guillotine we chop him with, or something…

Cowbee,

The idea that workers can’t understand compound interest, as though it’s some crazy new idea, is a lie told by Capitalists to split the labor Aristocracy against the rest of the Proletariat.

Everyone knows that investing is good. Lying to engineers and doctors that they are somehow smarter and better than people who can’t afford to invest just because engineers and doctors often can afford to invest is just a way for the bourgeoisie to protect itself from a United Proletariat.

Cowbee,

You’re blaming people’s struggles with financial goals on poor planning and financial literacy, and making it a personal failure, rather than a systemic one. The reality is that people already understand basic financial literacy, but simply don’t have enough income to meet basic financial goals regardless of budget.

Cowbee,

There are significant differences, but yes, in a way. Class conflict has always been at the core of modern human history, and when the bourgeoisie and Proletariat teamed up against the Aristocracy, Capital was transfered from the hands of the microscopically few to the hands of much more. However, this is an incomplete transfer of power, and as Capital consolidates, it trends back to a form of Feudalism.

Cowbee,

Fair, thanks for sharing! In my case, I tend to like very lightly roasted coffee, so sometimes several months of waiting are necessary.

Cowbee,

There are people siding with Nazis and reporting this post for doxxing, lol

Cowbee,

Per Capita, in total, Per capita per year, or total per year? Each of these 4 types has a different answer, and the Nazis were higher in nearly every metric of slaughter.

The US is bad. The US has never been fully fascist, despite flirting with it. Nazi Germany was perhaps the most evil and oppressive country to ever exist in history, and certainly was for the 20th century.

What exactly is your point? Nazis are bad, but so is the US? I don’t think too many people on Lemmy are fans of the US, but to insinuate that the Nazis are somehow more palatable by being compared to the US is absurd.

Cowbee,

Odd to call it “winning,” but the answer is “historical total.” The US has murdered tens of millions more over its several hundred year history than Nazi Germany killed in the less than half a century it existed.

It isn’t sanity to pretend that hundreds of years of brutal history are equally comparable to an extremely condensed period of the single most brutal country to exist in modern history. Nazism is far more evil than liberalism, even if liberalism is still inevitably evil.

Cowbee,

Imagine getting mad at someone saying Nazis are bad. I wouldn’t be caught dead getting upset that someone was saying Nazis are bad, lmao

Cowbee,

It’s all strange. What’s the point? “Hmmm, you think Nazis are bad? Have you considered that other countries are bad but significantly less bad? Checkmate!” It’s just terminally online.

Cowbee,

That’s the biggest thing for me. If I can get a similar phone to work in the US with no stability or functional compromises, I’m happy.

Cowbee,

Economic systems absolutely affect development, but again, you’re comparing a country that was a backwater nation completely undeveloped come the start of the 20th century with a country that has always been at or near the top of the list of industrialized nations. The starting points aren’t even in the slightest.

Secondly, the banning of alternative political parties was indeed antidemocratic, but the party didn’t select who you could vote for. Factions were banned by Lenin, supposed to be temporary, but this continued until 1989.

Historical accounts actually disagree with you saying candidates were preselected. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_democracy Pat Sloan in particular mentions that anyone could be elected, at the local level. Perhaps what you’re referring to is that those above the local Soviets were made up of those elected at local Soviets, and thus people couldn’t directly run for higher Soviets? Either way, definitely flawed, but not the same as what you’re saying.

Democracy is a sliding scale, I would say the Soviet Democratic model was still democratic, but less than many other countries. The US is technically more democratic, but many absolute positions cannot be voted on, such as the Supreme Court. There isn’t a currently existing country with fantastic democracy, unfortunately.

Cowbee,

Yes, I agree with that crux, never disagreed with it. I still think it was functionally democratic, it’s not like the top controlled every aspect of society. Often times the elections with the most impact on your personal lives are the local elections, and that’s where Workers did in fact have control.

Again, though, I’ve never argued for repeating the USSR. I just think that we can learn from what worked and what didn’t to create a better system of leftist organization, and the fact that so much went right and so much went wrong is exceptionally useful data. We know what not to replicate democratically, and we know that guaranteeing Healthcare and education, and investing heavily in building residential plots and urbanization at the public level, does tremendous work in reducing poverty and homelessness.

At the end of the day, I’m NOT an ML, nor am I a USSR Stan. I’m a leftist, and more importantly I’m anti-tendency, and think each country will have a different path to worker liberation. As such, we should learn as much as possible from previous Socialist attempts and structures to create a better future.

Do you disagree with that notion?

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