News flash for wealthy authoritarian parasites around the world, because you all seem ignorant of this fact:
Declining birthrates are a direct result of the simple fact that more people all the time decide that they have no desire to bring children into this world, and that in turn is a direct result of the fact that you’ve turned this world into a warped, corrupt, toxic, authoritarian shithole.
You have no one to blame but yourselves.
I disagree. There’s a lot of reasons why people don’t have children, including:
- emotional devastated youth (abandoned by parents, addicted to smartphones, misunderstood by society)
- people can’t find partners for this reason
- too much stress from too much work
- wages are barely keeping up with inflation, and I project they will in fact not keep up in the long term in the US due to missing labor protections and decreasing demand for labor.
- rising cost of living because politically, nobody really cares about the population.
edit: sorry i realized i made these points US-specific but you were talking about russia, sorry.
They aren’t necessarily US specific. Wages not keeping up with inflation and rising cost of living is a factor from South Korea to Japan to Singapore as well. Some countries muck it up themselves like China with their one child policy back in the day (even the Chinese fertility rate has dipped below 2.2, I think).
Well, it’s only a very, very recent problem in Japan. They had stagnation for decades. Little to no change in wages, little to no change in prices. In 2011, I was making something like 33,000 USD per year there and living very comfortably with ample savings and what the Japanese considered to be a large apartment. It’s a pretty affordable country, aside from travel. Or if you want to live in a fancy place in a desirable big city neighborhood.
(And yes, I have been to Japan since then and know that things have changed somewhat. It’s still cheap compared to the US. Food is so cheap, it’s amazing what you can get.)
- Women get educated
- Women get their own money
- Women get control over reproductive rights and tools
So much of our world is based around women keeping it on the rails without receiving credit for their efforts.
The strongest correlating factor around whether a child born into the world will starve to death or not is whether the mother has a basic education. It outweighs even regional data.
In a developing country rates also go down with civilization as people learn how not to breed like bacteria. But once it’s about choice, that starts to be a good list. I’d almost list safety as a common theme in them. And in Russia… yeah.
No - actually I was talking worldwide. Russia’s just a notable example.
And I would say that all of the things you listed are, directly or indirectly, consequences of the fact that wealthy authoritarian parasites have warped societies to their benefit regardless of the harm done to others, so are actually examples of exactly what I’m talking about.
rising cost of living because politically, nobody really cares about the population
Well, interest rates were just raised to 19% in Russia. So good luck financing anything.
One point I want to add: Throughout most of human history, it was economically beneficial to have lots of children. They were your retirement plan (and cheap labor).
In most developed countries, this is no longer the case. People who want children get one or two, just to scratch the itch, but that’s not enough to sustain the population (without migration).
You say you disagree but all those points seem to fall under what they were arguing for.
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My wife and I both work over 40 hour weeks. We are pretty comfortable especially compared to our friends and family members and we are not even close to buying a house and don’t have time to raise a kid and still think it’s too expensive to do so.
And if the world were a just place instead of a twisted shithole designed to maximize the privilege of a relative few wealthy and empowered parasites, you could work fewer hours, make the same or even more money and afford a house.
But instead the system has been warped so that you have to work long hours for insufficient pay and still can’t afford a decent life, and all so that a relative few executives, board nembers, bankers, investors and politicians can siphon off the bulk of the wealth you generate so that they can buy more houses and bigger yachts.
I REALLY wish it weren’t against TOS to log into my Fedia.io account, and my piefed account to upvote you 3 times.
It’s weird just how much he looks like Michael Keaton there.
industrialization is linked with lower birth rates. Its probably because people need room to breath to fuck around.
If only there was something he could do to reduce the death rate in Russia
Maybe barred windows? So many people seem to die from falling through windows there, apparently all terrible accidents
Orrrrr…and hear me out…they buy better tanks, and train their military so they don’t take so many casualties.
I mean, longshot here, but I GUESS they could technically stop trying to invade Ukraine, retreat their troops back into proper russia borders, and sign a peace treaty…naaaahhhhh, that would never work! If it were THAT easy, they never would have chose to start a war they would lose so badly at! SURELY they only started this war because there was a good reason, right?..right?..guys?
What are you talking about? Day 935 of the 3 day war is going great!
have they considered not sending everyone to ukraine to die?
At this point they don’t even need to go to Ukraine anymore, they have Ukraine at home to deal with
That’s right! Ukraine comes to you!
Every day, that final bullet comes closer and closer to putins head.
That’s something, at least.
I want to show more empathy, but the dude made the choice to start a new war in the nuclear era when we cannot afford war anymore. (And yes, I’m aware he’s not the first.)
I wonder sometimes if we face a choice between strictly rejecting his kind (war starters) from our species, or accept that our species is destined to cease to exist.
“his kind” I a agree with that…Hitler, Putin, the Spanish kings, the Federalism kings, the various Chinese rulers that ended in massacres same for the Japanese. The Egypt old assholes and their new assholes. The Mexican government and the drug lords who rule Mexico and South America. Trump, George Bush. Sadam Hussain, fuck face who ended up under the sea like the little mermaid from the Taliban. Etc etc. it’s a sea of just asshole after asshole. I agree with you. As soon as a leader seems off, the constitutions should allow the people to swiftly remove them. There are plenty of brilliant minds around, there’s no need to put forward the worst ones.
Nah, he needs babies for the meat grinder.
Wow that sounds terrible… Especially with encouraging employers to increase birth rates, a lot of sexual assault/harassment is going to be swept under the rug.
Yeah, that seems to be the point. He’s again appealing to his macho fascist supporters by further enabling abusive behaviour. Domestic violence has been decriminalized for years already in Russia, violence against outgroups is allowed/encouraged, they have a national snitch on your neighbour system, … It’s become a true fascist society.
Newsflash. We’re talking about conservative Russia here. It already was :/.
It can always get worse.
I miss the innocence of my younger self when I thought the ending of the Russian World War Z POV was a bit phobic and not prescient.
It’s Russia, after all. Their entire history has been often summarised as “… and then things got worse”.
Yo, you think Republicans aren’t listening and taking notes? In fact they WOULD encourage sexual assaults. at work and everywhere else - gotta produce babies. It’s how they roll.
Also they think it’s their only hope of sex, because nobody willingly chooses them.
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If he’s concerned about the population, he can just stop sending young men off to war…
Seriously! Stop sending off the young men who could be fathers to die in Ukraine. At some point Ukraine will have killed over 1 million of these people that should never have had to leave home.
Plus the estimated million+ who smartly fled Russia in the first year of the war.
He is not concerned about the population, he is concerned about not having enough young men to send off to war.
Not until he’s gotten through all of the peasants who live in the countryside.
“Being very busy at work is not a valid reason, but a lame excuse. You can engage in procreation during breaks because life flies by too quickly,” he remarked
Yes, birth rates are falling because nobody has time to fuck. That’s definitely the problem…
Well of coarse they don’t have time to fuck…they’re all too busy filling out paperwork for all the dead bodies that keep piling up.
Yep because as everyone knows the biggest time consumer associated with raising children is the conception. After those few minutes, you never need time for the children ever again.
I.e. “Time flies when you’re not having fuck?”
If the fertility rate remains below 2, it will become harder and harder to wage war. And if it femains below 2 long enough there will be nobody left to wage war (or die in it).
So please sacrifice your precious time, health and money for your future children. Do it for the love of war!
They’re doing a great job of removing young men already…
Soon enough all those ads about hot Russian women near me might become a reality!
They’ll be advertising in China with all those extra men.
The discrepancy is lower than reported because rural families just didn’t report female infants, but regardless, don’t give them ideas, they might just buy some slave soldiers from Xi.
Don’t forget the inability of the rich to keep you in poverty wages when there aren’t 50 people waiting to replace you at every job!
I’m kinda skeptical that the constraining factor on Russia’s fertility rate is frequency of sex.
I’d also add that I don’t know if this is necessarily the best move the Kremlin could be making from a propaganda standpoint, given that this is wartime and soldiers are being sent to the front. Back during WW2, there was a substantial bit of sex-oriented propaganda that took the form of mostly-pornographic material trying to get soldiers worried that wives would be sleeping with other men back home while they were away (or sometimes with other soldiers from other allied countries). I’d wonder whether the Kremlin putting out material like this is liable to help recreate a similar psychological warfare push, just…on themselves.
Obviously, NSFW images:
https://www.psywarrior.com/sexandprop.html
I won’t embed the images in this comment, but some extracts of text as an example.
A second set of six see-through cards depicts French soldiers dying of wounds, with one soldier holding a photo of a woman. The initial printing was about 400,000 of each card and they were dropped from early May to early June 1940. The see-through sexual scenes depict a soldier and a nude woman sitting on a bed; a soldier and nude woman lying on a bed; a smiling soldier and a crying woman sitting on a bed, both partially clothed; a soldier sitting on a couch with a woman on his lap; a soldier standing and nude woman sitting in a salon; and a soldier, nude girl, and angry mother standing in a room.
A third set of six German propaganda “see-through” cards for French troops were inscribed “Les mylords a l’etape” (“Gentlemen at rest ”), and depicted dead or dying French soldiers on the ground, with hidden pictures showing nude or partially nude women when held to the light. These cards were prepared but never disseminated.
A fourth set of five “Les mylords a l’etape” see-through cards depicted three French soldiers crushed under rubble and the usual scenes of French women with British soldiers when held to the light. These cards were prepared but never disseminated. A sixth card might exist but has not been found as yet.
Another “divide and conquer” leaflet depicts a British Army officer holding the breast of a semi-naked French woman while her husband is shown in a front-line trench peeping out from behind barbed wire. These leaflets were produced during the “Phony War” of 1940 in an attempt to convince the French that they were being sacrificed at the Front while the British vacationed with their women behind the lines.
The Germans produced another two sets of see-through leaflets in 1940. The first consisted of seven cards and the text “Les mylords a l’etape,” (“Gentlemen at rest.”). Once again, the cards show dying French troops and British soldiers with French women. A second set of five cards shows three French soldiers crushed under rubble while the British officers play with the French women.
The Germans used the same see-through propaganda once again in 1944 to divide the British from their American allies. The method was cruder. While in the earlier full-color cards they had cleverly placed one sheet on top of another to make a very clear picture when the light came through, this time they simply printed the front and the back so that when the light came through the two sides were combined. The cards were on a cheap paper sized about 4 x 6-inches. They printed four series of leaflets on a very thin paper with crude see-through images and text. They are AW33 through AW36, each we believe with additional leaflets with an added a-e. This would seem to indicate 24 leaflets in all, though we cannot be sure that the Germans used all the available codes. The leaflets of the first three series show a dead Tommy lying on his back, lying face down in barbed wire, or in the barbed wire staring wide-eyed at the viewer. The secret images show an American soldier raping a girl, fondling partially undressed women, or having sex with a nude woman on a bed. The messages are short. Examples are, “Your fight / his warfare,” “While you face death,” “Die! / to keep him living,” “Your allies are assisting you / on all fronts” and Where are your Yanks?” These leaflets were designed for Allied troops on the Western Front by the German Skorpion West propaganda organization. It is believed they were printed by the German propaganda company in Paris.
All “The Girl you Left Behind” leaflets are crude drawing in a monotone. These leaflets told the story of the mythical Sam Levy; a Jew who was growing rich and enjoying the favors of a Christian girl while her boyfriend was fighting on the front lines.
The final leaflet depicts seems to be the final one in the set. Vivian and Bill are in bed and Frank enters, cane in hand. Text on the front is:
In walked a man in a soldier’s uniform…
Text on the back is:
BILL THE CONQUEROR. “It is better to have a high-paving defense job than to be torn to piece by an enemy shell,” thought home front warrior Bill Turner when he jauntily pocketed his fat paycheck. He couldn’t help laughing at how he had fooled the Draft Board. Besides, he had another good reason to be in a happy mood. Lovely Vivian Hope, the girl he adored, had hinted that she might accept him, when the other day he had asked her out of a clear sky to marry him. Vivian was working in the same plant as stenographer. and she and Bill Turner had been much together for some time. But between her and Bill stood Frank Merritt to whom she had promised herself. Two years ago - it seemed ages to Vivian - Frank had been shipped overseas to face shells and bullets and perhaps die for the cause of ambitious politicians and war profiteers. For over eight months, Vivian had not heard from Frank. Could he be among the missing? So many young chaps would never return. Perhaps it was a bit reckless of her to ask Bill up to her furnished room on her twenty-fourth birthday to a dainty little dinner she prepared herself. Bill was in good form that night. He had been reading so much in the papers about reconnoitering patrols, shock action, assaulting parties and combined operations that he felt the urge to vie with the best soldier at the front. And “his war” in the seclusion of a scented bedroom was so easy to conduct compared with the hardships and constant danger of death hundreds of thousands of his countrymen were facing every day. However, even the greatest strategists sometimes overlook a trifling but decisive precautionary measure. Bill had forgotten to lock the door. Suddenly it burst open and in walked a man in a soldier’s uniform. It was Frank Merritt, who badly wounded had been taken prisoner-of-war. For months, he had been lying in a hospital between life and death before being finally exchanged when his condition had improved. Frank came rushing home to surprise Vivian on her birthday - only to find all his happiness shattered to pieces by a draft dodger. have you seen the other pictures of “HOME FRONT WARRIORS”? AI-159-11-44.
Another Propaganda-Abschnitts-Offizier leaflet depicts a smiling naked British girl rolling up her stocking while a U.S. Army Staff-sergeant fixes his tie nearby. Text on the front is:
While you are away.
The back depicts a disfigured British soldier dead on the battlefield. The text is:
The Yanks are ‘lend-leasing’ your women. Their pockets full of cash and no work to do, the boys from overseas are having the time of their lives in Merry Old England. And what young woman, single or married, could resist such “handsome brute from the wide open spaces” to have dinner with, a cocktail at some nightclub, and afterwards… Anyway, so numerous have become the scandals that all England is talking about them now. Most of you are convinced that the war will be over in four months. Too bad if it should hit you in the last minute.
This leaflet is actually rather clever. It mentions “Lend-lease,” a program where the United States sent weapons and materiel to Great Britain to be paid for after the war. It talks about pockets full of money, which would remind the British of their saying about the Yanks, “overpaid. oversexed, and over here.” Finally, the term “wide open spaces” reminds us that many Europeans believed that America was still the land where the “Cowboys and Indians” rode the open plains. The leaflet is coded AI-046-8-44.
The Government of Japan attempted many times to alienate the allied forces protecting Australia. The Japanese aimed their “Divide and conquer” tactics at the Aussie Troops fighting in New Guinea and Papua.
On one full-color anti-American leaflet, we find a slick American officer holding a young semi-exposed lady who is in the process of struggling for her freedom. We see some buttocks and cleavage. A ragged Australian soldier stands on a depiction of New Guinea. Text over him is, “Australia screams.” The Aussie: “What was that scream. Something up?” Meanwhile the American officer tries to quiet his victim and says, "The Yank: “Sh…Sh…Quiet Girlie, Calm yourself. He’ll be on the next casualty list. No worry.”
That article was absolutely fascinating. I knew that leafleting was a common propaganda tactic, never thought about it using nudity and sex. Had heard of Tokyo Rose and Jane Fonda.
(Most) humans love having sex. Sex is widely considered to be very good and enjoyable. So the fact that birth rates are declining says a lot about the state of the world.
It’s possible to have sex and still not have kids…
I think the point is that incentivizing people to have more sex isn’t the answer to a declining birth rate.
Incentivising people to bone amidst falling birth rates is like addressing a broken leg by handing out painkillers.
I know
Russian navy:
oh god… seamen… seamen everywhere, in every compartment, inescapable. The seamen pervade everything. Save yourselves. And use cold water to get the stains out.
Need fresh bodies for the burger mill.
Those damn juicy Advent burgers
Finally, my hitting on that hot coworker isn’t inappropriate but patriotic.
does putin think two women can make a baby?
Probably not. But have you considered one male authority figure and a cohort of female underlings?
I think I tasted a bit of bile in the back of my throat when I read your comment.
In 4.5 months, actually!
I don’t know if he thinks that…but I would love to watch them try! Maybe throw in some oils, and handcuffs? I mean, I’m not even worried about the baby. I just want to see the ladies do their thing.
Just go crank it to some porn. We didn’t need to read that.
Depending on the industry banging your coworkers will not increase the birth rate.
I’d hate to be HR.
I wonder if they even have what we think of as HR in Russia.
HR has been rebranded “having relations” in Russia.
Because HR has no friends?
