The worst part is that a lot of the non oppressive things China does are actually kinda neat. They're really good at building infrastructure that does benefit the people, for example, and they're the only country that keeps the billionaire class in check, but their speech and political policies are fucking insane.

As a South American myself, I think it's really just far fewer teenage pregnancies and major cultural shifts.

I know the topic of money and affordability always comes up, but in my experience, this holds true even for couples with high income.

I think people just don't see a reason to have kids. They're expensive, a lot of work and get in the way of adult life. In a world where social pressures to procreate are minimal, entertainment and activities are far better without kids, and career driven educated people are the norm, very few people will actively want children. Only those that really see it as a calling in life, probably.

I know me and my wife almost certainly won't have kids, so we're part of this trend.

Although this is very much a global phenomenon, I think no other region on earth has plummeted quite as fast as these countries. Colombia, Chile, Peru, Argentina all were far closer to the replacement level only some 7-8 years ago. It's quite an interesting case.

supposedly the longest it can drag on is until early 2027.

But yeah, you're probably right.

I am slightly optimistic that they will get a good punishment, but the geopolitics and the corruption muddies the waters too much. It'll be a long few months

I mean, I don't know if I'm part of the trend or not as someone in his mid 20s who rarely ever drinks, but many of my mates don't drink at all, and when we hang out there's little alcohol, we also tend to play online games etc a lot. Going to a bar sounds quite bothersome and unnecessary tbh. But I don't know if I'm too old to be part of this trend.

In any case, I see little conceptual value in bars, at least to me. I can buy alcohol for stuff we do at home if I even want to drink (not often).

Which is why young people aren't drinking anymore. The space etc is simply not worth the prices.

I don't think anyone with self awareness or love for sound or music would call themselves an audiophile tbf.

This ties into a bigger issue where almost nothing related to sexuality can ever be healthy or normal to many conservatives.

Sex to these conservatives is inherently deviant and filthy. Making conscious life decisions related to sexuality or sexual identity will never be just a life decision. It will be equivalent to actively engaging in sexual acts.

Being trans to them is actively paedophilic because it exposes children to the concept of sexuality and gender. Sex ed will be paedophilic to them because it does the same. Each person's actions are not the sole thing that defines them, but also their position in society as dictated by "what it has always been". Men have always led households by marrying women and having kids, therefore men that don't are a threat.

Conservatism is quite black or white when it comes to things like identity or introspection. It is an ideology that very frequently wages war on self questioning and exploration in exchange for compliance and conformism. It's why many conservatives hate universities, scientists and partially why they hate immigrants. The entire ideology grows by appealing to people who do not want to be intellectually challenged. It's especially attractive to those that don't want to understand other ways of thinking.

Conservatism as an ideology always exploits the greatest potential weakness of the left wing: naivety, and presents itself as the "responsible" or "reasonable" solution to a reckless and harmful left wing. They frame things like empathy and humanitarianism as weaknesses rather than virtues.

It's why most of the conservative rhetoric revolves around "being taken advantage of" or "being scammed by" this or that group. They love stories about immigrants exploiting the system, cheating or stealing because it proves their worldview that what's foreign and unknown is out to get them. It is an ideology driven by fear.

And the biggest problem is that, unlike progressivism (which also has its ideological vices and weaknesses), conservatism never seeks to help the weak or empower the vulnerable. Instead it seeks to maintain the hierarchy and keep people in their place. In the US that translates to keeping immigrants weak, keeping black people down, keeping women in the kitchen, keeping white men ahead, keeping the US as an imperial power, and keeping its allies subservient.

Interesting! Thanks for the fact check. I always assumed giving money away would at best just be a temporary bandaid solution since you need a stable income to actually get out of poverty.

Of course, this isn't a problem with a stable UBI, I imagine.

The reality though is that most millionaires and really rich families and people aren't really the main problem with our current system.

Even if your family had tens of millions of dollars available while you were growing up, you're many orders of magnitude closer to a minimum wage worker than to any billionaire.

The reality is that if most societies redistributed a fraction of the wealth of their top 30 wealthiest individuals, almost no one would be harmed and thousands of people could benefit significantly.

Now, of course, if you just give money away, that's no good at improving people's lives, so it makes sense to use the money to fund hospitals and schools, to provide adequate conditions to the disabled, the elderly, single parents, the homeless and our most vulnerable. And oh, would you look at that, that's just a tax reform.

I'm from a middle upper class family, so, I never lacked any necessities but I also couldn't afford luxuries every day. But I hold no contempt for people who got to grow up living in wealth and luxury beyond what my family could afford. I hold contempt for people who could dramatically improve their entire communities' conditions and choose to evade their only tax obligations and only invest their wealth to accumulate more and more.

I think societies should at some point put a cap on wealth. No human being should be as rich as Elon Musk.