When I started this blog, worrying about falling birthrates was a white racist obsession, very distasteful or even criminal since the mainstream was then much concerned with the population bomb. It was the time of the FAO warnings of coming famine, of the Club of Rome models and Dr. Ehrlich public vasectomy after having one daughter. Amazingly (to me, seeing it happen in front of my eyes), times are changing and population collapse is being recognized to the point that now it is almost polite to talk about it in the salon. Even the ultra-sensitive German government has taken courage and dares to mention it.
As Angela Merkel pointed out in 2009, for Germany an Obama-sized stimulus was out of the question simply because its foreign creditors know there are not enough young Germans around ever to repay it. The Continent’s economic “powerhouse” has the highest proportion of childless women in Europe: One in three fräulein have checked out of the motherhood business entirely. “Germany’s working-age population is likely to decrease 30 percent over the next few decades,” says Steffen Kröhnert of the Berlin Institute for Population Development. “Rural areas will see a massive population decline and some villages will simply disappear.”The collapse of Greece's economy is now clearly attributed to its demographic collapse.
The problem with the advanced West is not that it’s broke but that it’s old and barren. Which explains why it’s broke. Take Greece, which has now become the most convenient shorthand for sovereign insolvency — “America’s heading for the same fate as Greece if we don’t change course,” etc. So Greece has a spending problem, a revenue problem, something along those lines, right? At a superficial level, yes. But the underlying issue is more primal: It has one of the lowest fertility rates on the planet. In Greece, 100 grandparents have 42 grandchildren — i.e., the family tree is upside down. In a social-democratic state where workers in “hazardous” professions (such as, er, hairdressing) retire at 50, there aren’t enough young people around to pay for your three-decade retirement. And there are unlikely ever to be again.In Israel, the fishwrap HaAretz is waging a veritable difamation war against the religious population. HaAretz hates the religious because they are having children and are spreading to secular neighborhoods. Its latest casus-belli is modest dressing for females imposed in Beyth Shemesh religious neighborhoods. Someone harassed an 8 years old American girl in the street for dressing too provocatively. I'm a Western liberal Jew, my dear daughters dress like streetwalkers, yet my heart is 100% with the Orthodox. I care nothing if an 8 years old girl's T shirt advertises "I am Hot" or "Fuck Me", they do nothing to me, but the religious are on something vitally important. The quotes are from Al Fin blog.
17 comments:
J, the girl was religious, she was wearing nothing of the sort.
IHTG is right. She probably had the temerity to show some wrist, and for this the haredim harrassed her. I doubt J will see the problems of the Jewish Taliban until it's too late (i.e. they've provoked an unwinnable war with the Arabs and/or driven out all of the secular Jews).
The girl was Modern Orthodox and dressed like it.
-s.n.
I did not say that the specific American girl in Beyth Shemesh street whose mother caused the scandal was wearing a T shirt nor anything like that. Please do read again. What I am saying that for the local Haredi modesty patrol there was something wrong in her - and I am not sure if it was her dress. For example, she seems to have an Italian sounding family name, I can well imagine that the bad people of Beyth Shemesh spread rumors about her Jewishness. I have seen things like that. I haven't heard about his father, if they proposed to integrate themselves in the community, he should be seen and heard at the beyth knesseth. There are Orthodox and there are Orthodox, may be in that specific "taliban" neighborhood they were an eyesore. I have been many times in Beyth Shemesh (mostly in Har Tov) and I haven't seen fighting nor violence. Shouting in the street is the apex of their violent behaviour, and HaAretz makes it sound like a KKK lynch mob in Selma.
מרגוליס זה איטלקי?
ודאי שלא.
בעיתון האמריקאי שציטט את הארץ היה כתוב משהו אחר שנשמע איטלקי
כך או כך, זה לא היה בגלל הבגדים הלא צנועים
It had nothing to do with dress or being Italian (Margolis is a perfectly Jewish name although they spelled it with an E at the end). Rather it was a territorial dispute:
"The new girls school that Naama attends ... is on the border between an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood and a community of modern Orthodox Jewish residents, many of them American immigrants.
The ultra-Orthodox consider the school an encroachment on their territory. Dozens of black-hatted men jeer and physically accost the girls almost daily, the students say."
Humans are tribal and the differences between tribes that are deadly enemies to each other can be invisible to outsiders - go to Northern Ireland and see if you as an outsider can tell Catholics and Protestants apart. To a Nuteri Karta, a Modern Orthodox American Jew is just as much an enemy as a skinhead - either you are part of their tribe or you are not - close does not count.
K
"either you are part of their tribe or you are not - close does not count."
This is an excellent reason not to cede any more power to the haredim and to fight back against their encroachment on the freedoms of the non-haredim.
my dear daughters dress like streetwalkers
Can you share some pics?
my dear daughters dress like streetwalkers
Can you share some pics?
Why pictures? Friday night is approaching. Tel Aviv alcohol valley welcomes you.
J,
I used to be focused on the consequences of falling birth rates in the West. You and me are kindred spirits in that way. What we see now in Europe, I've long feared since I noticed the implications of this pattern -- around '99 or so. Back then I knew nothing about the how or the why, now I do.
However, after I *got* it, somehow I also stopped caring so much. Low birth rates --> evolution for religiosity and people who really dig kids. Now is now. The people I care the most for to survive -- civilized, liberal responsible educated middle class -- are the least interested in saving themselves. In fact, they will fight you and make you lose status (or your job) if you'd ever make your feelings public. That's not worth stressing for.
While we're here on earth, I decided we'd best have some fun. Like Sailer and Roissy, I now watch the madness, just without the sadness. I never want to become one of those angry guys who jumps on every bad news item to vent his spleen. After all, life's still too good to be depressed about all the bad things.
Happy New Year all!
--Maciano
I dont share your hedonist philosophy, Maciano. But in this turn of years you are should enjoy and forget. I wish you a sober next year!
The question is, what is to be done about it. Is it unfixable, or can people be incentivised to reproduce again.
Anon
No, people cannot be incentivated to reproduce. The incentives already offered in many countries such as Germany are very generous, almost impossible to top. Yet there are ineffective.
People will reproduce in nature, that is, when life is more uncertain, dangerous, difficult. Just as overabundance of free food like today is not good for our health and we grow grotesquely obese, we have evolved to prosper in conditions of scarcity and occasional famine.
Since we cannot go back to nature, we need to create social frameworks that mimic nature. The Jewish Orthodox and the Amish and other religious groups are succeeding. They are ridiculed as retrograde and ignorant and fanatic, but they on something.
Other than to prop up social welfare schemes or as cannon fodder (or in Israel's case to compete with the Palestinians' population growth), what's so bad about population decrease? Quality of life is higher in that there is less competition for jobs, lower real estate prices, etc. Social welfare could be re-worked and/or reduced, and less cannon fodder for stupid foreign adventures that provide no valuable return is a good thing. Also, the ultra-Orthodox population sort of goes against J's idea that scarcity promotes reproduction. The ultra-Orthodox had large families in impoverished Eastern Europe and continue to have them in the wealthier West. Moreover, late 19th c. residents of the U.S. and Canada had on average both a higher standard of living than Europeans of that time as well as larger families.
"...what's so bad about population decrease?"
Let me count the ways. You and your folk are not living in an island by yourself but in an island peopled by many different and competing tribes. You disoccupy one square mile for a second and next it is fully peopled by the neighbor. If not by another tribe, by another species, say rats.
If you become a minority in a diverse society, your fate is sealed: you will be sent to the reservations. Ultimately, your kind will disappear, with your culture and your songs.
There is nothing bad in dying off, except the bad feeling that our enemies will rejoice with our demise. I read somewhere that in Dachau concentration camp the immates were hanging themselves in the lavatory and each morning their corpses had to be identified and so on. The Germans put up a noticeboard in the lavatory specifying the procedure of orderly suicide: You had leave your shoes and uniform in a certain neat way, you had to write your name and number in a carton and hang it on your hand to easy identification, and so on. German Jews read and followed the orders, while the jackals were laughing. I would try to survive if only to defeat the beasts.
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