I really wish the New York Times would stop this anti-market, anti-labor spin. An article about a talent 'shortage' that mentions workers being compelled to work long hours deep into the night for modest wages. There are no shortages in a free market - just cheapskates.
Taiwan expects their engineers to work 60+ hour weeks.
Of course they are running short. This is practically slave labor.
TSMC will demand unbelievable things of a Ph.D. I cannot understand why there are any employees at all, but for love of the subject.
Read this. Read the whole thing. This is unbelievable. Maybe it is an artifact of China; I don't know.
"We all take two years to develop one generation, how come you guys can do it in one or one-and-a-half year?" And they asked if some of your customer transfer technology to you or what not? And I told him, "No," I told him that, "That's not true." I think he probably implied we steal technology from customer, the way he talk.
And I say, "I'll tell you why." I said that, "When we develop one node, basically you have some learning cycles. First, you do some simulation. And you have some idea, then you run wafers to prove that. So, you run a group of wafers according to simulation and you have some splits. The wafer runs through the fab, they come out and you measure them, you analyze them, and you try to improve and you run this again. This again, you run. So, this is learning cycle." At that time, "It takes about six learning cycle, roughly, to complete one generation." Of course, you had some short loops and not just one. I said that, "My R&D wafer in the fab run much faster than yours, because my R&D engineer works three shifts and you only work one shift. So, your R&D wafer move eight hours a day, my work/move 24-hours a day. So, my wafers go three times faster, even if you are twice smarter than me, I still beat you up." <laughter>
TSMC has turned itself into Taiwan's number one form of national security. Their employees see themselves as martyrs who are actively saving the country from being invaded by China. Same sort of motivation that islamic jihadists use.
I also heard that in Taiwan there is a lot of social prestige in working in semiconductors, like as much or more than FAANG (or whatever that's called now) or finance or university professor in US. In US there is not that same prestige for semiconductors.
But the labour market is artificially constrained by government policy relative to immigration.
If you already have full occupation and you cannot import workers you will have shortages no matter how much you get paid, people will not get a 5y degree in one month no matter how much you pay.
Step one is drawing in workers from other companies that are not willing to pay more.
In theory we could reach a point where all the workers are doing so well that even large pay won't draw them in. But companies don't wait to get anywhere near that point to start complaining about how they "can't" hire.
> There are no shortages in a free market - just cheapskates.
This is absurd, of course there are shortages. Sometimes, there is not enough of something for all you want to do, sure, some can buy their way out of it, but not all can.
The idea of "free market" (it's only a model, not reality) has an explicit anti-labor bias. The apple doesn't care about its price, but the worker does; this why it's nonsensical to treat both as commodities. But if the price of labor is determined by a divine entity (the market forces), rather than other people (capitalists), what can you do about it? Are you gonna argue with the God of invisible hand?
> Are you gonna argue with the God of invisible hand?
Especially when you consider modern talk of the invisible hand, and then go back to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and see his one reference to the invisible hand in the book is of something that is against free trade between nations.
don't believe the lies, FANG was crying to the government and journalists daily that the US didn't have enough software engineers for the better part of two decades. Then they laid off 50,000 people despite being immensely profitable.
My cousin works at TSMC in Tainan. The article aligns with everything he said to me about the work conditions and is coworkers quitting before the contracts ending.
I have a few friends in Taiwan and the working condition in general (In all domains) aren't good and the cost of living are quite high especially in Taipei.
The working culture is similar to that of Japan, so in many cases it is expected for employees to stay at work 12 hours per day, and sometimes to come work during the weekend.
Taiwan has such an incredible density of amazing companies it is no wonder they are having trouble hiring, there is huge demand for their brands. Ubiquiti and Synology are two that come to mind that I adore.
When it comes to consumer brands I can't think of any recent positive experiences with Taiwan. ASUS, MSI, Acer, HTC, and Mediatek. All have shipped a bunch of junk I have had to deal with that makes me want to swear off each of these brands.
As far as I know nvidia does not make motherboards. Asrock is former ASUS and appears to be a budget alternative to ASUS and let me tell you that in my experience they are also hot garbage.
In a developed country low birth rates are the norm. The exception is certain religious subgroups within these countries. Notably Mormons with 50% higher fertility rates than average in most counties surveyed:
These two groups also have high defection rates of around 50%, but if current trends continue (always a big if in demographic studies) most people in the future developed world will either belong to strongly religious groups or be former members of such groups.
I myself am secular, strongly so. My wife is just as strongly religious and her fertility rate is over three times our national average at her insistence which I voluntarily agreed to. I’m concerned that us secularists have no good answer to why anyone should have children and as I result I can see secularism dying out long term, which I consider a philosophical tragedy. If anyone has any answers I’d love to hear them, unless the only answer is, oddly enough Augustine’s religious and Schopenhauer’s secular retort that the voluntary extinction of humanity would be the most supreme achievement of the will:
Regardless of the validity of such arguments, in my mind they fail the Darwinian test and will be eliminated by the ruthless and indifferent force of biological evolution.
You should read books by Eric Kaufmann, specifically "Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth".
It predicts exactly as you say, that countries will continue to become more religious, not less, the current trend of secularization is but a short lived burst in history.
Irreligion is a demographic/social dead end, it will only dramatically accelerate with AI entertainment. Imagine a virtual AI harem on demand for any willing male, more beautiful than any human female, not only understands every nerdy random topic you can come up with, but is patient enough to discuss with you for hours, and of course no risk of divorce/disloyalty. A simple mirror will be found from the female side too.
The groups most resistant, are those who reject modern communications technology, like the Amish.
In the end it is natural selection at work. Irreligious people are maladapted to the modern environment. Its ironic, but also beautiful in a sense.
However, society generally doesn't function by having pure religious ultraconservatives (See starving Afghanis). Israel's secular workers produce most of the GDP and high-tech industries. In the end, the stable equilibrium, will be a majority religious population that continues to reproduce, but each generation, a substantial amount defect to secularism, and go work in the cities, to continue the economy. The secular won't really reproduce, but the nation as a whole does.
The math doesn't work though. 50% defection rate and only 50% higher birth rates won't work. If the average woman has 2 children, the religious subgroup one would have 3. On average, 1.5 of those would defect, so the average woman produces more members of her group.
This is borne out by the data. If you look at the ASRI, from 1990 to 2008, the percentage of LDS (and other similar groups) has remained stable in the US.
Only Islam and Buddhism saw (very minor) growth, the rest was a massive surge in secularism.
Well, this generation is basically the first where being gay is socially acceptable.
Presumably a lot of gay people in the past mostly were forced to remain closeted and end up marrying/reproducing with the opposite sex.
Now that being gay is socially acceptable, it remains an open question of whether gay people will ultimately select themselves out of the gene pool or not. In my opinion, it seems likely that it will happen for the same reason that OP thinks it will happen for secular people.
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia – a group of genetic disorders – appears to increase rates of same-sex attraction in women, while possibly decreasing its incidence in men: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7082355/ (both findings make sense if we view it as a biological promoter of gynephilia, sexual attraction to women)
I think it is likely a complex mixture of both biological and social causes, and the nature:nurture ratio likely varies between individual cases.
Selective pressures may alter the incidence of some of those biological causes over time, although there is no guarantee. Whatever social causative factors exist may also vary in incidence over time, in response to societal changes.
The other factor to consider, is that with continuing advances in medical technology, it may be possible to interfere with some of these biological causal pathways: for example, if it is true that maternal anti-NLGN4Y antibodies are a major cause of having same-sex attracted sons, then if a test for those antibodies became widely available, it might influence the fertility decisions of some women; eventually, some kind of "anti-antibody" might be developed, so a woman who wished to reduce her odds of bearing same-sex attracted sons could take it to reduce her own anti-NLGN4Y levels.
Genes for being gay are linked to 3 things: higher attractiveness, higher promiscuity, gayness. That is why its able to still exist after thousands of years. Its evolutionarily advantageous for gene propagation: https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/10/18/139687/genes-lin...
I doubt non-religious people are ever going to die out completely.
But, it is plausible they are going to transition from being the population majority (in most rich countries) to being a minority. That is going to challenge popular narratives of secularism's "historical victory"
What if the eventual triumph of pro-fecundity religious conservatism results in runaway population growth? You can't fit 1 trillion humans on this planet, and it would be a living hell even if you could–but space colonisation might turn out to be a massive escape valve. In such a scenario, it is possible we could end up with secular people being a small minority of the total human population, yet simultaneously many times more of them (in absolute numbers) than currently exist.
> These two groups also have high defection rates of around 50%
Not even close. Orthodox Jews is closer to 15%, and of those a majority stay within the Jewish community, but are less Orthodox. i.e. still religious just less so (eg. observe the major holidays, but not necessarily the day to day stuff, or maybe some of the day to day stuff that feels meaningful to them, but not everything).
> I can see secularism dying out long term, which I consider a philosophical tragedy.
Fallacy of the excluded middle. There's something in between Orthodox and completely secular.
You are also ignoring the dynamics - people are constantly shifting, there is never a stable equilibrium.
If you see a non religious society as dying out, does that not make you think that perhaps secularism is incorrect? What functional society would let itself die out?
> These two groups also have high defection rates of around 50%,
Mormons and Modern Orthodox Judaism may well have high defection rates, but there are other conservative religious subcultures with much lower defection rates: both the Old Order Amish, and Hasidic/Haredi/ultra-Orthodox Judaism, have retention rates >80% (sometimes even >90%, depending on whose figures you go by).
Why the difference in defection/retention rates? I think a big factor is both groups are more segregated from the mainstream – linguistically, geographically, and by lifestyle – which makes defection more costly, and hence discourages it. A related factor is that they both ostracise apostates – although, contrary to some perceptions, neither (in practice) completely bans contact between apostates and their families still inside, but they do put various limitations and restrictions on it.
> but if current trends continue (always a big if in demographic studies)
The idea that Old Order Amish or ultra-Orthodox Jews are some day going to abandon their established way of life is rather low. I don't think it would happen without some major external stressor forcing them into it – and even then, many of them will do everything they can to resist.
I think current trends of secularisation and social liberalisation are likely to plateau at some point (probably very soon if not already). Secular progressive daydreams of "total victory" – religious conservatives dwindle and die out – are unlikely to ever come to pass.
> I’m concerned that us secularists have no good answer to why anyone should have children and as I result I can see secularism dying out long term, which I consider a philosophical tragedy. If anyone has any answers I’d love to hear them,
How do you define "secularism"? It is possible to believe in the existence of the "supernatural" yet also believe that mainstream society should strive for neutrality on questions about its nature – does that count as "secular"? In principle, I can't see why such a belief can't be pro-fecundity. It probably still can't compete at that with religious ultra-conservatives, but it still could do much better in that department than the current secular mainstream does.
>I myself am secular, strongly so. My wife is just as strongly religious and her fertility rate is over three times our national average at her insistence which I voluntarily agreed to. I’m concerned that us secularists have no good answer to why anyone should have children and as I result I can see secularism dying out long term, which I consider a philosophical tragedy.
Exactly: within a few centuries, most people will be extremely religious. However, with geopolitical struggles, the ubiquity of nuclear weapons, and the inability of religious extremists to get along with others, we'll end up with a planet-scale nuclear war that will extinguish human civilization.
Many ultra-religious groups, that survive and thrive long term, know to build 'pressure valves' that allow discontents to peacefully leave.
The Amish have a rumspringa that gives every youth a chance to see the outside world, and choose to come back or not. I think about 10% don't come back, and that statistic has been stable for a long time.
The ultra-religious don't tend to accumulate much economic power, regardless of population size. So the constant waves of secular defects, despite being minority, could continue to heavily affect political and technical decision making, moderating religious influences.
Now, there are also other ultra-religious groups, like the Haredim, who like to
1. Receive government benefits.
2. Reject military service
3. Grab political power
These groups will heavily destabilize their host nation, as they have already done to Israel. An Israel dominated by the Haredim, who don't fight, and don't pay much in taxes, and where all the secular have fleed. Will probably quickly get defeated by its neighbours, and start the exile all over again.
The "effective" population will equalize much faster. SK has extremely high longevity, which is a success, but it means that 9 million of those are already de-facto out of the workforce and are a liability, not an (economic or military) asset.
North Korea has really low longevity, which is bad, but it means that more of those 25 million are young.
Lots of people just don't want to have children that much. It doesn't matter what incentives they are given. They'd rather hang out with their friends until old age.
Lots of people don't consider their opposite-sex equal to be attractive enough to want to marry them that much either.
one big incentive would be to shut down social security or old age pensions, as to make people more self-reliant for their own sustainment instead of an abstract system of relying on other future abiding citizens, a system that in most countries is near bankruptcy bcs people lost one drive to create the next generation. tragedy of the commons?
While demographics can be a slow turning ship, it is ridiculous to project 3 generations ahead. As is demonstrated by your 'expected figure' of a 94% decline.
> treating men and women like they are the same is the first problem
Russia is rather socially conservative and their birth rates are low as well. It's quite a stretch to blame low birth rates on gender equality given the scope of cultures and societies where low birth rates have been a problem. Some other common factor would seem much more likely. Maybe economic incentives.
Unless you also think Russia is too progressive for you tastes. If so, what does your ideal social system look like with respect to the enforcement of gender roles, where women are expected to bear 3 or more children? What would enforcement of these roles look like in the society you're envisaging?
If you could honestly and clearly answer those questions I'd be very impressed. Then, I would follow it up with: and do you think many people would enjoy living in the society you've just dreamed up?
If yes, is there a status quo ante that was similar to what you're describing (seems likely given that women's emancipation is fairly recent and lots of different patriarchal structures have been tried out over the millennia)? Can you try to trace out why that status quo was left behind in favor of where we are now?
If no, how do you plan to persuade people to live less comfortably so that birth rates are as high as you'd like to see them? Persuasion is your only tool, because you've already said that you don't think government is the answer, and, without persuasion, you'd need to use force. To use force you'd need the government to act in some capacity, or at least _not_ act in a way that's complicit e.g. by not prosecuting honor killings carried out against anti-natalist daughters and sisters or at least condoning discrimination against childless women.
I think you have assumed the worst from my comment.
A culture where both men and women are expected to work and have the same roles and responsibilities is the worst treatment. It does not respect gender differences and strength differences.
> I think you have assumed the worst from my comment.
I assumed that you are against gender equality. Gender equality meaning that men and women are given the freedom to do as they wish without being sanctioned. I think you'll find that men and women tend to gravitate toward very different lifestyles in the most egalitarian societies - look at gender ratios in various job fields in Norway or Sweden - but life is much easier for those men and women who are not typical. It seems rather wasteful to organize society around the needs of 80% while forcing 20% into a box that doesn't fit them. Better to let people self sort.
If you think gender equality means that women are being sanctioned for doing traditionally womanly things like home making or mothering I'd have to ask where you got the information that led you to that conclusion because it doesn't fit with my own experiences growing up in the United States.
> A culture where both men and women are expected to work and have the same roles and responsibilities is the worst treatment. It does not respect gender differences and strength differences.
This comment is just a roundabout way of saying that you believe gender equality is bad.
> You asked me to quote birth rates so I looked up birth rates of Russian minorities.
Why minorities? What makes them substantially different from, say, an Orthodox white Russian who lives in St. Petersburg, or one who lives in Yakutia for that matter?
They are conservative, do not have modern interpretations of gender equality, and have higher birth rates.
I'm going to steer clear of the gender inequality debate. It has been hijacked by reactionary comparison-justifying women trying to claim there are no differences between men and women and try to fight gender inequality without having an accurate idea of what gender equality looks like.
Instead, I'm going to claim if the strength of women cannot be respected, their abilities are not recognized, and their high functioning roles as mothers are not honored, and yet the male obligations are held in higher regard, the female will be stretched too thin in trying to have equal authority and importance in matters. This is pure distortion and not rectifiable by authority.
> They are conservative, do not have modern interpretations of gender equality, and have higher birth rates.
What are their un-modern interpretations of gender equality that you'd like to see emulated in the USA, Australia and Western Europe?
It's also curious that you're noting that some groups have high birth rates, also global population growth is still rising, while also worrying about underpopulation. The subtext is that you're concerned about white and northeast Asian people in particular yes? That would fit into a worldview that's been called "Human Biodiversity" (HBD) iirc?
If you weren't familiar with HBD people, the gist is that they think that western European and northeast Asian people should be preserved because their genes are precious.
I can remember reading Steve Sailor and some other such HBD people when I was younger and feeling persuaded by them at first -- easy because I'm white and blonde haired and blue eyed so they appealed to my vanity lol. After thinking on it for a few years however, I came to the conclusion that HBD is just a weird little religion that hasn't actually thought much about the consequences of its propositions beyond some romantic vision of a glorious Evropean golden age -- that their proposed policies would never be able to create, since they'd destroy everything unique and interesting about the same groups that they want so badly to 'save' from themselves.
Secondarily, why do you think birthrates need to be increased above replacement level? A lower population along with technological developments, particularly recent ones around improving AI, would likely create much higher standards of living so long as the correct economic policies were laid into place.
> I'm going to steer clear of the gender inequality debate. It has been hijacked by reactionary comparison-justifying women trying to claim there are no differences between men and women and try to fight gender inequality without having an accurate idea of what gender equality looks like.
Any examples of this that aren't just Twitter hot takes? Gender roles are alive and well all over the world. People today, in some ways more than ever, revel in adhering to them. IME it's just seen as taboo to try to force people to adhere to them.
> Instead, I'm going to claim if the strength of women cannot be respected, their abilities are not recognized, and their high functioning roles as mothers are not honored, and yet the male obligations are held in higher regard, the female will be stretched too thin in trying to have equal authority and importance in matters. This is pure distortion and not rectifiable by authority.
The point is that every group has outliers. 80% of women might have dispositions that lend themselves very well to mothering but some 20% will have dispositions that lend themselves better to other things. Similarly about 80% of men seem drawn to developing stereotypically masculine traits, but some 20% will have a more stereotypically feminine disposition. It makes no sense to attempt to organize all of society around pretending that 100% of men and 100% of women fit into the same mould as that 80%. It's equally delusional to the idea that men and women have no differences at all.
It's trivial to measure just about any trait that varies between the sexes and notice that they form two overlapping normal distributions. You've accused 'modernity' of pretending that the distributions overlap completely while simultaneously pretending that the distributions have no overlap at all.
You're on HN so you probably like technological development. Human efforts are wasted when we don't let people do what suits them. Technological development will move more quickly if we aren't wasteful.
My husband and I have a child and I would be more open to having a few more if we could maintain our standard of living on his salary alone. Despite my strange propensity for studying extremist literature online and then trying to de-radicalize people I'm otherwise pretty normal so I'd hazard a guess that fixing economic inequality would do as much to drive up birth rates as abolishing gender equality, but the former would cause much less human suffering.
> You have seriously misunderstood the entire premise of my comment and created a shadow of it that you are now fighting.
Okay.
> Feminism is a hate masquerading as a fight for women's rights. And I am not engaging any further.
But then you follow up with this, which makes me even more confident that I didn't misunderstand you. From the start my impression has been that you're a little shy about saying exactly what you mean, thus my attempts to read between the lines so that we can have a real direct conversation in lieu of beating around the bush so to speak.
I don't know you, but when I read your responses I can't help but imagine that you're in a dark place. When life has hurt us in some way it's easy to project that negativity out onto the world, but a part of healing is separating what's inside of us versus what's outside. I hope we can all get there. Sending good vibes.
> Russia is rather socially conservative and their birth rates are low as well
Russia looks conservative compare to Europe or western world more broadly, but liberal compare to most countries in Africa and Middle East (where birth rates are higher). See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Inequality_Index
They used to be communist. Communism generally gave women much more equality than most traditional societies. While Russia may be more conservative now, I think the effects take at least one or two generations to permeate through a society.
> They used to be communist. Communism generally gave women much more equality than most traditional societies
Only partially true. Yes, women were equal to men in many regards, being accepted to work in pretty much positions (there were even women fighting in the army during the big wars), had the same rights and etc. but, and this is a massive but, it was on top of their "traditional" roles, and the opposite didn't apply. Meaning that women were equal and free to work as whatever, but also expected that women fulfil the vast majority of traditionally female roles (nursing, teaching, etc.) while also being the primary caretaker of children. As an example, maternity leave in the Eastern Block was usually 1 year and more (e.g. in Bulgaria it was 1+1+1 years, and still is but with massive caveats for 2nd and 3rd year around money), while paternity leave was practically non-existent. Spousal relations were also pretty conservative (e.g. domestic abuse, up to and including marital rape, was fine).
So women were more equal in some, mostly economic, aspects, but not at all in other, mostly social aspects.
I think you're onto something, but I think capitalism is the cause. Especially looking back at former communist countries, and comparing them with today. They had higher birthrates despite opportunities being often gender equal (communist countries sometimes being more progressive than the West) and both parents working (although there probably was more leisure time). AFAICT every post-communist country had a birtrate drop after switch to capitalism, and it wasn't accompanied with the cultural change in gender roles or equality (these happen more gradually).
Capitalism sees human labor as a resource to be exploited, and that is a powerful incentive (especially to educated women) to avoid procreation and family life. You want to work on your career early, and young people make the best labor.
This is absolutely a governmental issue- S Korea and the US are similar in that people are having fewer children in these places because having children is prohibitively expensive. Having children is prohibitively expensive because income inequality is at an all time high - a smaller and smaller portion of people are able to capture more and more of the resources. Income inequality is a direct result of government policy and can be mediated with changes to those policies. It's happened before, and it can happen again.
Are the birth rates higher among rich people? My impression is that they have fewer children. Historically, More materials and wealth means less children.
Can govt really cause people to have more children? Or can they just remove roadblocks? I would go with the latter. The former is a social problem.
This is a pretend cope. People had more children during the Great Depression than they do now. Ethiopians during a 10 year famine had more children than Westerners do now.
Life is expensive. Kids are even more expensive. With both partners working, having a kid is one hell of a pandora's box regarding costs, care etc. People have a high expectation of what is a reasonable standard of living for their kids, which pushes the age when they try (if ever) further and further as well.
It sure as hell is a money issue. Just not a cheap one.
Agreed it's culture. some cultures have ten kids and they work the farm. Kids are quite cheap if you don't have the attitude of each kid needs new clothes, car, and college. In fact they can sort of become free and cheap labor if you're ever been to certain family restaurants and their child waited on you who was around 13 yelling back to the cook your order.
Charities asking for money use images of desperate and needy women and children in there advertising campaigns kind of discourages the will to bring more into this world. Having two handfuls of children used to get gov. handouts equal to an exec's pay but I don't know if times have changed and those social programs are gone.
Funny, many of the places with the lowest birth rates are actually very socially conservative, with poor track records on gender equality. Japan, Korea, Russia, etc.
I've heard people argue the exact opposite - intense work cultures tire out the male working class. That combined with a gender culture that discourages women being forward with their intentions, and no way to meet people of other genders socially, means it becomes difficult to actually meet or date people. There is a lack of free time, a lack of opportunity, and a lack of motivation.
Frankly, it sounds to me like the issue would be solved by bringing in better working conditions.
A practical 4 day work week might do the job. It’s also not impossible that there are environmental contaminants or changes to what people do which are causing the trend.
Even simple things like office culture and the perception of falling behind might be enough to skew the stats. If I care for my career, taking 5 years off doesn’t sound like the best idea - despite being the practical early childhood window for a family of 2-3.
I'm not as intimately familiar with South Korea as I am with Japan, but they share a lot of parallels, and Japan is set up in such a way that it just grinds people down, monopolizes a lot of their time, and boxes them in. I really don't blame them for not projecting themselves into their own future.
Working culture (not conditions) are a factor indeed. We are driven to have more and therefore work more. This also means having less room for children.
But family institutions are less stable now then they have been before. I blame overwork for this, and also commercialism that has taken away needs of a nurtured family. This is not a govt problem.
I blame people's expectations, and also women's rights.
People point to poor nations, or the Great Depression, as times or places when people had/have more kids. But peoples' expectations are different there. People during the Depression didn't expect to send their kids to college, for instance; usually, they just put them to work on the farm, or in factories. These days, we don't allow child labor, and want kids to get an education for some strange reason, and that all costs money.
Women's rights and contraception are also a big issue. A century ago, women didn't have any rights. Their husbands could beat them if they got drunk and mad, and it was OK. Women couldn't have real jobs. Basically they were slaves. They could (usually) choose whom to marry, but it was a crapshoot, and divorce was usually unobtainable, plus women couldn't survive on their own very well. Plus contraception wasn't very good. These days, for some strange reason, this has changed and women now have rights, and aren't stuck being slaves to their husbands, so they have the ability to choose whether to marry at all (!), and how many kids to have, if any.
If we want people to have lots of kids again, we need to make women 2nd-class citizens without the ability to have gainful employment, we have to ban good contraception and divorce, we have to allow spousal abuse, and we have to allow children to be forced to work in dangerous and dirty factories.
The reason is called social progress. Even though some people are reactionary and idolise "the golden age", whenever they imagine it being, in general most developed societies have seen massive social progress. Rolling it back so that women can get back to being baby-making machines is... impractical and cruel.
In many western countries the reason why people aren't having as many kids as before is because it's too expensive, and because housing is too expensive. You aren't going to have children, if you're still living in your parent's basement, or sharing an apt with roommates.
Childcare in the US, for example, is outrageously expensive. If you aren't lucky enough to have a grandparent or other relative do it for free, or for nominal compensation, your childcare cost is prohibitively expensive. In many cases it's so expensive, that it's more cost effective for the parent with lower salary to quit and stay home. Hopefully programs like the free childcare New York City is offering become more common.
Housing costs prohibit lots of things including getting married (unless the wife is also to work). Lack of social institutions destruct having children.
When these two problems are combined, a more socialist mindset would burden govt to resolve with subsidized housing and childcare. This is not a sustainable social system.
It seems like a simpler explanation is that a greater portion of the population lives in cities and a smaller portion of the population works primarily in agriculture and similar industries where children serve as free(ish) labor.
I don't know all the factors involved, but I know as an engineer if I have a choice of 2 or more places to work, I'm strongly incented to go live in a place that is NOT under invasion/blockade threat by China.
Plus Taiwan is an island. It would be much harder to get in or out, in wartime, than say Ukraine. Harder to reinforce and resupply.
Granted, maybe you'd have enough time to escape, but maybe you wouldn't, and either way I wouldnt want to grow a family there or friendships if that dark cloud loomed overhead, threatening the loss of all. Plenty of other places to live and work instead.
Now... if they offered 5X more pay than anywhere else, then sure, maybe. ;-)
they're running low but maybe it's paretto that only the super interested die hard nerd love of the engineering are remain. It's been the same culture awhile and we have TSMC nvidia amd gigabyte asus lists go on and on so clearly something is being done right especially with chips motherboards and Gpus.
