Economics

Prediction: the fall on fertility rates on developed economies does not actually indicate prosperity, just the fact that a large % of both male/female population works 40+ hours a week.

Hence the fertility rate will go back up as soon as the workweek is shortened to 4 days.

I believe Japan has been testing this exact hypothesis

writing stuff about tech + decentralization over on blog.thumbsup.me

Yes! I was actually reacting to these news. 

It suddenly clicked how what I'd been taught regarding demographic transitions might actually have been a colonialist bias, and that perhaps increasing gdp per capita is just not worth it.

And yet we do literal human sacrifices for the sake of increasing that stupid number...

You and I can increase GDP per capita by passing $100 back and forth all day every day (as long as we invoice it). I love that example, which I’ve also seen as “ancaps paying each other for kicks to the balls will boost the GDP” because it perfectly exemplifies how bad of a metric GDP is. It incentivizes terrible behaviour, runs counter to useful metrics like infant mortality, life expectancy, and broadly assessed life satisfaction data. Basically whether you’re measuring for happiness or birth rate capitalism is hurting not helping.