Recalcitrant mothers.
All we needed was Elon Musk who raised the alarm (as if the USA had a much better fertility rate. They don't reach 2.0 either, and they only reach slightly higher than Italy because of immigrants), and the topic it served. Italy, they say, will disappear unless a bulwark of young people emerges to defend the homeland. And despite the stupid management, we need to ask ourselves some questions about the problem.
Because I really don't think it's just a Western problem. The decrease in the birth rate also concerns countries that have little Western, such as China or Japan, it concerns Russia (where the situation is terrible), it even concerns countries such as South Korea and recently we have seen the addition of Korea of the North.
What do North Korea, China, the USA and Europe have in common? The puzzle will seem difficult, when by adding North Korea we have added a country that seems to be alien compared to the others.
But things aren't like that. There is something that all these countries have in common. Something that can be expressed in two different ways, one quantitative and one qualitative.
To frame it, let's start by asking a question to Elon Musk, whose surname already sounds like a brand of pheromone perfume. This photo portrays a Twitter employee who sleeps in the office during the night, to comply with the workload imposed by the new boss, a certain Elon Musk.
Now, I'm not against any kind of fetishism. If someone decides to have sex with a blindfolded girl (very BDSM) on the office floor, or feels stimulated by the company seats, I have no problem. I am absolutely open-minded: in 30 years in the offices of multinationals, I have seen affairs take place everywhere. I had to reattach fiber cables to a switch, because a kind lady had decided to hang herself from a bundle of cables. Which are not already robust. And I hope he didn't lick them.
But let's give up: that one didn't reproduce, not that night. And if we add that he doesn't reproduce in the hour and a half he takes to go home, and is almost certainly available to answer the phone at night and on weekends, I can approximate the chance of reproducing with 3-5% of useful time in "free time", i.e. holidays.
Dear Musk, how do you think this young lady could reproduce? With a meeting on Teams? Is this a new feature from Microsoft?
And I would also like to ask Kim the crybaby who asks women to have more children:
do you think these are reproducing? And when? I understand that uniform fetishes exist. But I estimate that, between long tours of duty, guards and everything, these ladies (whom you, dear "Leader", force to take the pill) those ladies there are not reproducing.
You're starting to see, I think, what the point is.
What countries with low fertility rates, including North Korea, have in common is the amount of time that is asked of individuals, an amount of time in which they cannot screw and cannot raise children.
Of course, each country takes time away from individuals in different ways. In North Korea, the backbreaking shifts and the militarization of women of reproductive age come from the state. In South Korea, the other side of the sky, (as well as in Japan, for example), it comes from the economic system.
In the West, where it is not allowed to criticize entrepreneurs or insinuate that they cause enormous damage, the deprivation of reproductive time comes from the economic system.
I know it may seem like the usual talk about free time, but the specific time in which you fuck your wife with gusto is not "normal" free time. It's a more free time than usual.
- Off-the-wall children, as well as children you don't have to look after.
- No work, and no risk of phone calls from work.
- An end-of-work de-stress cycle. Arriving home, barely eating and going to bed together is not de-stressing.
But now the weekend is no longer a weekend, but the moment in which you can think about work without colleagues around, the children are no longer out all day but prefer to stay on the sofa with their mobile phone/tablet, etc. There was a time when wives simply closed the dishwasher/washing machine, undressed and went to bed. Today they have to plan the week because the kids can no longer go to the bathroom if their mother doesn't accompany them in the car, etc.
Result: reproductive time equal to almost zero. Nowadays, and the birth data by month also says so, we only reproduce on holidays.
To be precise, the Christmas and Easter holidays are devastating, while it seems that the summer holidays have no significant effects. Let's say it's the winter and spring holidays that create the big peaks. The fact that in December there is a minimum and in January a peak explains to us what the hell happens in houses for Easter. I'll give you the eggs.
Now, the fact that reproduction is distributed across two main holidays (Easter and Christmas) already tells us a lot, but it begs the question "what about summer"? Why don't summer holidays bring children, while winter and spring holidays are so powerful?
So, let's refine the theories. We see that there is a correlation between months of certain holidays and months of fertilization. Something is still missing.
Let's make a guess. On some holidays Italians are happier than on others. The problem with measuring the happiness rate is that, for example, in various societies declaring oneself unhappy is difficult, or considered a loser. So, what can we do?
We can use the opposite of happiness, which is the rate of depression.
I will then compare the rate of depression with the birth rate. Let's see if there are any surprises.
I don't know what you think, but it seems that there is an inverse correlation between the rate of depression and the birth rate. OOOOOPS.
Now we can try to compare the number of overtime hours with the birth rate:
Here the data is not complete, but from the data we have, the math seems to add up: overtime is bad for the birth rate, but unhappiness is especially bad for the birth rate.
Obviously, I don't know what else I should say: a quick look at the data is enough to notice that there are two simple factors to identify, which slow down the birth rate:
- unhappiness'
- overtime at work
for this reason, my personal opinion on Elon Musk is
dear Elon, when you talk about infertility and birthrate, you and other entrepreneurs are not part of the solution, but part of the problem. Shut up, asshole.(1)
while in the case of Italian monthly data, my advice to Italians is to have better summer holidays.
(1) I remind you that I considered him an overrated idiot when the progressive press still made him an example of a brilliant and innovative entrepreneur. So I can afford it.