This is like trying to give someone a band-aid to stop an arterial bleed... I respect that they're trying but it won't do anything. The hikikomori phenomenon has complex causes:
- Untreated mental health problems
- Disabilities that undermine or limit social success
- Economies with few opportunities for young people
- Over-abundance of pressure (disproportionately placed on men): for academic success and career success
- Horrible housing market (why work at a crappy job only to lose what few funds you have in rent for a tiny shared apartment? Can you blame these people for not moving out?)
- Chronic loneliness (again, worse for men)
Most hikikomoris are men and when you never leave the house there's no opportunities to meet people. If you want to have the biggest effect on these people’s lives don't focus on giving them money. Unironically get them partners. No troll, young people’s social skills have declined beyond recognition and IMO as tech people we are partly to blame for this.
Agree but with a different solution: the focus on partners is unsustainable and doesn't address a lot of the deeper rooted issues that caused their lack of socialization. It also creates a codependency, which can result in an unhealthy relationship or really devastating outcomes when the relationship ends. It basically "fixes" the problem for society but leaves individuals incredibly vulnerable.
Ideally, you would instead focus on getting them to join communities and groups. Which can be challenging, and it's also something the average person should do more. This will give them a proper support system to then take next steps on finding partners, and likely have better results from those attempts when their support system is greater than 1.
Younger people recognize this importance of community, they're joining discords they're going to meetups, they're desperately trying to connect with others but without a systemic encouragement of these groups and communities most of them struggle - the convenience of "everything online and text-based" is just too great.
Additionally, by focusing on communities over partners, you also help the average person which iirc tends to have a small friend group of around 3 people, and not at all the varied support groups we need as humans. I reckon also these friends aren't all that profound, but rather a coworker you don't mind biking with, a neighbor who likes the same sports you do, etc. This is likely also why polarization is increasing, if you don't have communities to turn to and talk things out/solve problems together, it's very easy to just start believing the most extreme takes online.
So how do you practically do that? Is there a state run harem for the young men you mention to get a partner? Maybe I just lack imagination but money to spend on outside activities seemed like an OK approach. What do you have in mind?
You don’t need to be that creative to think of ways to do this without getting into “owed sex” trap.
First thing I could think of in sixty seconds: State money can sponsor singles nights with a few free drinks for every person attending courtesy of the government. Pays for responsible security and all the appropriate safety and security.
That’s just a minute thinking, I’m sure a few hours or days work could do much better. And it’s infinitely better than just giving them money directly which will likely not drive the sort of interpersonal behaviour changes they hope to sponsor since money can go directly into the things these people are already doing with their time.
Churches, especially culty ones, have been arranging social events for young adults for ages. It’s easier to expand by getting your membership to have children with each other than by recruiting.
Just because their motives are self centered doesn’t mean that they haven’t dialed in aspects of human nature that can be leveraged for a greater cause.
while weird at first, I am reminded on the agencies focused on matching people with jobs. It's a bit similar I think! Reminds me a bit of the movie "the lobster"
It's also not all that different from dating apps. We currently rely on an external third party to show us our matches, we just assume they're providing us with a complete picture of who is around so it feels less "invasive". Creating similar, but maybe more structured isn't all that far fetched.
Threats another great idea that would be better at achieving their desired goals than just giving them individually money… heavy subsidies for relationship matchmaking services (with appropriate performance metrics and tracking of results) specifically excluding dating sites in order to foster face to face interactions.
It’s got a bias a little bit off the “isolated and not engaging” demographic they are aiming at since people who engage the services of these people tend to be trying to engage… but by heavily subsidising it they may be able to expand the audience for the services and get more of target demographic to make use of the subsidised services.
It's not just money - in the article it says "The measure also offers education, job and health support," and "It also includes an allowance for cultural experiences for teenagers."
This is the key question. "Get them partners" implies passivity on the part of the person who's being "got" a partner, and what about the person who's being "got"? This approach feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of human desire, and essentially a call for something akin to arranged marriages. I absolutely recognise the problem, but this seems like a terrible solution.
Well, the first step would be to get both men and women disconnected from virtual stimuli like porn and social media. Satisfying ones sexual and emotional needs through the screen doesn't seem like a good thing if the goal is to make young men and women get together.
It appears your idea is bias towards and directed more at men. You can't put the "porn genie" into the bottle, as VPN exists. And if they want to go beyond the screen, in South Korea, paying for sex is easy to do and find.
In regards to women, such stimuli is more diffuse, and even harder to disconnect. Women take in TV dramas, "light" sex fantasy books, sexually suggestive social media (that stays below a certain threshold), have a wider array of social networks and interactions, have easier access to sex toys (even innocent looking items), easier access to hidden or one off sexual encounters...
It's arguably not a matter that young men and women can't get together. It's more a matter of expectations, female hypergamy, materialism, social bullying, etc... Those young men are seeking to avoid being uncomfortable and social interactions they don't like or do well in. The overall mindset needs to change, to allow those men to interact with a greater choice of women and to do so more comfortably. Until then, they will just continue to socially withdrawal, VPN porn, or pay for play (including hidden as "massages" and "haircuts").
Smoking wasn't banned. It went away through awareness campaigns, higher taxes and banning it in restaurants. Things like that. Smokers didn't go to jail for smoking. Selling cigarettes wasn't banned.
So you want to ban porn sites and outlaw Hackernews or what concrete examples do you have in mind for "disconnecting from virtual stimuli like porn and social media"
Throw $100K cash every 5 years to a woman who stays married to her partner. Or possibly increase it every 5 years she's married to the same partner. Throw in an extra $100K every 5 years per child until child is 20.
Suddenly, you'll see a lot of women wanting to get married, stay married and have children.
Most problems can be solved with money. Most whining is because old men don't want to spend money to solve the problem.
I do agree that incentivizing marriage, would likely do more. Though not sure in what way would be best. Helping to make women more comfortable with staying home and raising children, might increase birth rates, but to what extent is unknown.
It might already be too late, unless something wildly drastic is done. Materialism has taken a strong hold in many societies, where significant numbers of people rather live a certain lifestyle than be burdened with raising kids.
Singapore's is pretty unsuccessful - back when it was called SDU, it was jokingly referenced as "Single, Desperate, and Ugly", and these were well educated women. I doubt hikikomori would place well.
You also forgot that their women are unapologetically not interested in the average Korean man. Because of the insane requirements put on women who marry (take care of both sets of parents and husband), most are simply refusing to date or settle down.
Their nightclubs frequently ban foreigners, ostensibly due to "risk of crime or violence" but absolutely in practice because they know that foreigners do quite well, too well in most clubs.
One of the girls in my poly pod (I am both poly and lesbian), I'll call her 'Y', is South Korean and bisexual, and has repeatedly stated she'd rather die alone than to be stuck with an average Korean man. It seems like family pressure is the only reason left for South Korean women to give into the absolute shit deal that marriage is for them.
90% of South Korean women have plastic surgery, but less than 5% of South Korean men do the same. Due to this, South Korean women now outclass South Korean men in attractiveness. The solution is simple; ban cosmetic surgery. Then there will be more average South Korean women to settle down with the average South Korean men.
The Wikipedia page appears to have been edited 1 day ago to say that 91% of women age 30-39 have had plastic surgery, though the cited source says 31%.
This seems to define attraction between two people as some sort of "match how hot out of 10" game. I'd suggest that that's a overly simplistic understanding of how attraction and dating works.
I was a shut-in for a few years and lack of money is one of the biggest obstacles to get out of that situation. You want to take a welding class? You need money. You want to take an online class? You need money. Keeping friends and getting a partner without money is extremely hard as you need money to do most social things.
Despite that, I think a straight up cash allowance is the wrong approach. Only thing that helped me was getting a job so maybe some kind of jobs program would be better, in my opinion. It will help some people improve their lives so if a similar program were to be implemented where I live I wouldn't oppose but it will allow others to dig their roots even deeper into misery.
There are many accounts of people roughly defined as “NEET” having what's roughly defined as “relationships”. It doesn't change much, and doesn't automatically make life easier.
You can't simply "give them partners", because what's fueling many of the things that you described at the top is materialism, female hypergamy, cultural/social pressures, inbreeding/purity ideology (pure blood), xenophobia, etc...
Presenting a female partner won't take away her expectations (including expensive wedding fantasies and high class lifestyle), her family's expectations, expected social duties, etc...
And I will shed light on the elephant in the room, that many who have not lived in South Korea don't know about, but paying for sex is cheap and easy to find everywhere. Many such men would rather pay for sex, than be burdened with all the duties and expectations that a female partner would bring.
A significant percentage of South Korea's problem is their own xenophobia and Korean ethnic nationalism (pure blood ideology). Which goes to extremes, and is even bias against other Asians, who don't look Korean enough or are proven not to have Korean blood. Where with other countries, they can offset low birth rates, marriage partners, and their tax base with immigration, South Korea won't.
Consequently, until the mind set changes, South Korea is steadily heading towards massive population reduction. Until only a small number of the "purest" are left, and a significant number like it that way.
They don't really go into the terms of the allowance, but if use it or lose it encouraged some just to go to the movies and eat at a cafeteria a few times a week from now on, it would probably have a better effect for a lot less money than most of the attempts at social programs I have seen.
Whether it is used is probably also a helpful metric.
> IMO as tech people we are partly to blame for this.
This was happening way before tech was taking off. This trend was already booming in the 1990s. Robert Putnam wrote his book about social capital decline before the year 2000 - way before the social media and tech explosion.
Tech is hardly the cause. Capitalism is to blame. Capitalism. Say it with me, capitalism. The further we atomize people - the more capitalism thrives. (No unions, no broader labor movements, etc.)
You seem to be knowing a thing or two about this. Do you see movements among those men similar to what's happening in western societies with "incel" movements and the like, i.e. radicalization online?
As a reclusive person I will tell you a big part of it is not having financial security and therefore not having social status or good health. I don't have the time or energy and it's uncomfortable telling people how your life is going. Your bank account really is your status to a large degree. Low status, health issues, no extra energy, I don't really want to be around other people anyway.
This seems like the most realistic take. They are not voluntarily reclusive but rather ostracized/excluded for being failures/losers relative to the social standards of their societies.
Subsidies don't seem so bad. (If done right, they'll have to figure that out.) Even if they don't solve the whole problem immediately.
As long as we're sharing anecdotes... I won't speak for everybody, but I definitely am "voluntarily reclusive", so this measure would do absolutely nothing if I lived in South Korea. Zero fucks given about what the society thinks: I work remotely, live a comfortable life, and have no desire to see anyone. It's just how my brain is hardwired and has been that way forever, no amount of money would fix it (even if I wanted to).
Softwired! I was the same for many many years but changed as I grew older. The mindset you have is not bad in any way, I enjoyed my life then just the same as I do now.
The brain changes over time, so subsidies or other solutions could still have an impact.
I would say the main issue is that these people have very bad self esteem problems coupled with being introverts and the modern online worlds ability to endlessly distract you.
In the past, pre-internet most of these people couldn't live like this, they'd be forced out of their homes from boredom, but with the internet that's just no longer true.
The only way to fix it is to fix peoples self esteem, but these are likely the last people in the world who'd willingly go to something like therapy, I can't imagine subsidies are really going to help.
Yeah I don't think it's a good idea either. A person in the situation you describe unfortunately is also likely to have a bad self-image. There's no guarantee that a conversation with a stranger is going to go well for them. If the person they have dinner with reacts negatively in some way it may upset them a great deal and reinforce their negative self-beliefs.
What they need is more money in the bank and perhaps access to counseling services. (That's the best I can come up with, at any rate.)
More money doesn't mean self improvement or being better at handling the opposite sex, outside of "pay for play". It can simply mean more money to spend on one's hobbies, addictions, and vices.
Maybe being temperamentally an introvert has little connection with social status, but you pointed to something I haven't thought about before: how low social status can lead to seclusion. I wonder if there's been studies on that.
Yes but in this case you'd be sharing a meal with people who share your experience. They will understand your struggles since they are also struggling.
This just shows how little you have actually thought about the matter. Another deprived person does not negate the deprivation. Two wrongs don't make a right. Ignoring the root of the problem is only postponing the solution.
I don’t know. It works for AA. Alcoholics understand other Alcoholics like no other. Having someone the same social status eating, fellowship, brainstorming, can be uplifting. At least that’s my experience.
> I am an alcoholic that didn’t go to meetings. Now I do.
I'm glad it worked for you but no where did I shit on AA or going to AA. You and everyone else really got this all wrong.
edit might as well postt he rest of this:
I merely pointed out that there are those who DONT GO. My friends sister is dead at 45 from drinking. Went to AA once said it was a joke and never went back, tried therapy didn't keep up. Family friends step daughter died at 37 from organ failure from heavy constant drinking. She never had any desire to seek help as if on a suicide mission. Lord knows those families tried to get them help. (Never mind the locals at the bar I knew who drank themselves to death in their 50's/60's with their pension money.
So excuse me if I pointed out that no, AA isn't or doesn't work for everyone. Many simply don't go for whatever reason.
And I am intimately familiar with mental illness and addiction both personally and surrounded by it via family and friends. So don't think I misunderstand the op, you or your path's to recovery.
You are reading Hacker News. While I don't know your personal situation, the odds are strongly in favor of your personally making at least 3 times the average person. which is to say you have a spending problem not an income problem. I get it, I like my toys and luxury as well, but I know a few people who are living and raising kids on less than the average income and they are not doing that bad in life.
HN is a free to access website, that anyone interested in tech can stumble across at any time and access with any personal budget (assuming they've landed an web capable device)
I was in high school with a basically non-existent budget when I first found this site, I'd trust someone here who says "Yeah, I'm not financially stable" - seems like the average income here is no longer relevant at that point.
I've been around long enough to know there are a lot of people who claim they are not financially stable despite making far more than average. I know one person who said "We are so poor the bank wouldn't give us a loan for a brand new Mustang so we had to pay cash".
There are for sure poor people in the world, but most of them are not reading HN.
When you are in high school or college you are financially secure (baring bad luck - an accident could cause significant brain damage at any time...) since we trust you will finish your education and get a job. We also trust that in high school your family is feeding you, and in college you can get plenty of student loans (too many really, but that is a different subject). You don't have a lot of money to work with, but is not financially insecure, just a known low point in life.
Right, because there is no such thing as a technically skilled person on earth who does low paying contracts and knows about HN.
I am trying to get the VMs feature of aidev.codes out (also a bit of a reskin) since hundreds of people signed up for the website builder and tried it but only three people were willing to pay a dollar or more and about one other submitted a bug report. Credit purchases currently disabled because it was mainly used by one guy to test credit cards. Also everyone seemed to want to build complex applications with backend code. So I ran out of money and couldn't really market it and decided to just focus on the ability to generate and host back end code on GPT-4 powered VMs. This is basically working in the dev version, but still some bugs and other things to do, and haven't been able to focus on it the last month (although making progress bit by bit) because I have been busy doing low paying contracts from Upwork and reddit to pay rent (I did not have time for an extended search to pick up a high paying contract and got these within days which I consider an achievement).
So I built a program that automatically writes queries on the fly for an MS ADX database, and optionally will generate arbitrary graphs, based on a user question. And now another system that integrates Slack and document question answering with semantic search (using llamaindex/gpt-index). Both for $1000 or less and within one or two weeks.
I believe that a competitive rate for these tasks would be more like ten times that much, in some markets. But for Upwork and reddit, it's closer to what I billed if you want to be able to pick something up fast. Also I would rather make these my own businesses if I was not desperate for the cash to pay rent/bills.
All it takes to continue being poor is to start being poor and need to pick up work fast. Or just not have a friend to seed your startup. Or maybe my whole problem in life is just making ugly websites by hand instead of using a template.
I actually think I am probably doing it wrong because I see people with less technical skill and integrity focusing on raising money instead of solving problems and having all of their needs easily met.
At the moment I am just sort of praying that the guy from Reddit doesn't turn out to be a crook or something and actually pays me the rest of what he owes. Which I don't really think he is but he really should acknowledge messages faster on Slack.
you have made an intentional decision to "not work for the man". I hope it works out for you. If you were not willing for the (hopefully short term) quality of life costs you could get a regular job with some boring company (finance, insurance, manufacturing...) and work 9-5 with a great salary. Best of luck.
But it was your decision to not go for as much money as you could.
When I lived in Oxford, UK (as a broke student) one of the cheapest places to get dinner on my street was a restaurant with a few very long tables with benches on each side. It was usually pretty full, so you’d always meet interesting people if you were the kind of person to walk in there in the first place.
They didn’t pay you to do so though.
I haven’t found many places like this later in my life, which is too bad. I’m currently on the island of Réunion, which I understand used to have very similar setups, but not many are left. For all I know the one in Oxford doesn’t exist anymore; I last went there almost 2 decades ago.
I think that style is still somewhat common in high density, high turnover places (stadiums, festivals, beer gardens, etc.)
I happened to eat at a place like that in Boston last night, except for the part about it being inexpensive. It was TimeOut over near Fenway Park (a baseball stadium). All the tables were just long slabs of wood in the center of an old warehouse while food and drink vendors were all around the outside. Get your food/drink and grab a spot on the long tables.
Between Cowley & Divinity and the Tesco Express on Cowley if I remember correctly. Looking around on street view I can’t seem to find it :( maybe it was where there is now an Oodles according to Google maps but my memory’s hazy. Perhaps it was further down on Cowley and I’m misremembering.
I love this idea in principle, but when our school ran something similar to connect grad students who didn't have the opportunity to socialize due to covid remote work, I got a feeling some of them just showed up for the free coffee (we did free coffee chats instead of meals) and just weren't that interested in the social aspect.
You can't give people free stuff and then complain when they only come for free stuff. That was literally the whole tactic - that people will come for the free stuff, and some of them might also engage in the secondary activity.
Would that be a problem? I mean, you want them to socialize, and they'll do for a while, even if not for "the right reasons".
If some of them do so more because the free coffee is that valuable to them, what's the downside with letting them have the free coffee you wanted to give away anyhow? Imho that would be a good opportunity to get them more support, not a problem with that approach.
This concept can work outside the context of a school, as various coffee shops and social gatherings are conducive to it. Doesn't have to be coffee, could be wine and cheese, beers from around the world, or other light offerings.
The "trick" to it, in regards to dating opportunities, is the place has to be quietly accepted as a "safe" hookup spot, as well as have a good setup for people to move around and talk to each other. What I mean by setup, is the design of the place. Like having lots of benches or chairs in a row or parallel to each other, not facing (can make people uncomfortable when approached by strangers) or far across from each other (which can cause yelling as hard for people to hear each other), where people can easily sit next to each other. It also must be accepted or encouraged by the staff, managers, or owners that people there, even though strangers, can approach and talk to each other. Bad behavior is not accepted, but polite talking is.
It's tricky, because women will avoid or condemn a place that gets a bad reputation (which is easy to create on social media), be it deserved or not. The place has to be considered safe, cheap, respectful, welcoming, and fun. The combination of such appears hard to get right, so can be hard to find. Places that are good for such socializing, can also be surprising and unexpected ones. And when people do find them, they tend to be quiet about them, to avoid it getting a bad reputation (which can ruin it).
Many places that seem like they could or should work for socializing or hookups, often are actually bad. Be it the design (separate tables that are far apart) or the environment that's created (talking to strangers discouraged). For instance, if those managing it or owners are overly protective or strict, then people may come just and only for say the coffee. No talking to others, drink up, then leave or be nearly completely absorbed into a computer or smartphone. The environment, which encourages and allows polite socializing, has to be created and maintained.
In the same spirit as this we have a “donut buddy” system in slack that randomly pairs you with someone from another org. Some user entered topics are listed such as entertainment and cuisine to kickstart conversations. It’s been a great way to humanize things. I’d love to do this in person.
Minor expansion: The bot handles the calendar coordination, too. Meets are 30 minutes and finish with a screenshot posted to the channel and end of the year there's a collage that's created. I'm fond of the stats.
My workplace had something like this and everyone opted out.
I didn't realize everyone had opted out until I got matched with the same person several times in a row. Turns out we were the only two people still left in it.
Which is funny because the company did those Myers-Briggs tests and I scored as one of the most introverted people in the company.
Edit: And no, I don't put much stock in that sort of personality test, but the company did it and it was interesting to see the results, especially compared against "This is where most of your coworkers landed and here's you"
I don't know about a meal, but a coffee would be good. But that is a small point. This would be kinda of cool. I have two small kids and I don't know if anyone else is like myself or my wife, but we don't really have friends anymore. All my connection with other adults is my wife, her family and co-workers. But co-workers are just work place connections. I wonder if other people with young kids would find this useful? I mean, my wife and I enjoy each other's company, but we don't really have any non-family and non-work connections. It would be nice to have a conversation with another adult that isn't about uncle jimbo's DUI he got last weekend or a work project.
schedule some play dates with people at school/daycare. play dates are as much for the parents as they are for the kids. Many of the family friends my wife and I have were actually made by our kids being friends at school first.
I can't imagine this going any other way than a program dominated by the mostly socially uncomfortable types of people, resulting in "going out out to eat" but going to a cafe and sitting separately and on their phone the whole time.
When you have to add so many rules and regulations you know it's not going to work. You can't force human interaction, is something that naturally happens (through common interests, goals and ideologies, spending lot of time together, etc.) or it doesn't.
Some people will. However most people are enough more social that they will attempt a conversation. If you only put two people together than silence will happen. However if you can get 4 new people at a table odds are at least 2 will start a conversation and the rest will join at least a little.
I used to go to such 4 random people paired up for a meal, then a different 4 next month. (back before work form home my office had a system to match people like that - even though it was a work sponsored program we almost never talked about work even when there was senior management at the table). Even though I'm the silent type there was always a conversation that I ended up joining in. Sure it was work for me to join the conversation, but it was still worth it.
Adding more people often results in more socially awkward, bullying, peer pressure, etc... type situations. Women often put pressure on each other, as to who they "should date" and so unrealistic expectations and hypergamy takes hold, where only the top 20% of men are "good" enough. Even if those women are of "lower ranking" and can't hold on to top ranking men (for more than a night or as a booty call).
Often getting men and women alone together, but in a public setting (so the women feel safe), and putting a time limit on it can work better. Give them an hour, and see if there are any sparks. If not, let them go there separate ways, to find others they can talk to. In that way, there is no obvious peer pressure being exerted on who they "should" choose, it's a matter of chemistry between them.
I said 4 people, not 20. I know what you are saying, and I think around 4 is about right. Less and you start to think about romance and while that can be good not everyone needs it and destroying a marriage is not the goal. More and it is too easy to tune out.
The wrong two women together (or combination of people) can start the peer pressure, bullying, or hypergamy dynamic. Nobody can accurately predict in advance which combination will be troublesome or force their preferences on others. This is why there is the famous term, cock-blocking. It doesn't always happen, but it appears to happen at a high percentage or too often. You can only remove "group dynamics", when there isn't a group involved.
You also appear to condemn romance, which would make matchmaking or seeing if there is any authentic attraction pointless. The group or leader can decide who should date whom based on their own preferences (which can differ from the woman involved), status, looks, fashion, performances, and or dominance (person taking control of the group). Thus back to peer pressure, bullying, and hypergamy.
The problem with "hooking people up" in that way, is the person chosen (approved of) by the group, may not be who the woman really wants or is naturally attracted to. Often, this "forced" kind of coupling goes nowhere (as lacking romance), or leads to just short time dating (as not really each others type). Many women can go along with what they think the group or leader of it wants, and do what is "expected", but can be quietly dissatisfied or prefer something else.
If it's going to be a random group of people, it might as well be a party, club, or other get together. Which would leave the socially awkward (men or women) at the same disadvantage they always have. At least in a big party, they can kind of "hide in plain sight", encounter new people that approach them, or jump to a new random person when they don't like the conversation or vibe.
Allowing just 2 people to meet in public, where both can leave the setting at any time, often results in couplings based on authentic attraction. Of course, nothing is perfect or guaranteed, and such couplings can fail too. However, it's based on what those 2 adult people wanted and decided to do, versus any group pressure or interference.
I'm not condemning romance. I'm saying don't put that pressure one, let it happen.
I agree that sometimes you will get a bad mix, but that won't happen every time.
The idea is every month you have a different group of 4 you meet with for an hour. Small enough that the "wall flowers" cannot hide, often enough that they get pressure to contribute to the conversation. Often enough that the socially awkward will get some practice, but not so often that they get overwhelmed and quit. Low pressure to find someone to marry (include some married people in the groups), but still meeting enough people that there is a chance to find someone in a couple years.
Nothing is perfect, but given South Korea's goals I think it can help. (south Korea has other problems not touched on of course)
Sometimes, I think there is a sort of social "pre-filter" that occurs that helps to keep people "safe" when meeting new people (e.g., go to a friend's party and someone is friends with someone). This isn't perfect, but over the years it's helped considerably. I totally wholeheartedly agree that meeting new people is a great thing.
But in practice, this could lead to quite a few people getting screwed over in some way shape or form by people with terrible agendas. :(
isn't this what meetup.com was made for? Not sure if it still exists but socializing events with strangers was what it was all about.
To have any hope of getting people out of their bedroom you're going to have to remove all data connections. The endorphin release from a browser/app is enough to keep people satisfied being alone, you're going to have to remove that and get them to seek it elsewhere.
That on top of the $490 could work, but likely minimal results with the free meal/social outting alone for reclusive type.
Side thought tho, if the allowance was included, in addition to the free meal with a stranger, it could potentially increase birth rates, which would then benefit their economy.
Edit: Just saw it'd be for ages 9-24... thought it was for adults. Hopefully teen pregnancies would be avoided
I had a similar idea when I was in Vancouver - get people who would like a home-cooked meal to sit down for dinner with new immigrants looking to practice English. I mostly thought of students, but anyone could participate.
It is unfortunate that no one has found a way to replicate or imitate the lifestyle of living on a college campus. I very much miss dormitory style living and the social aspect of it. While I'm happy to have my own living space that is much larger than any dorm room, I miss all the novelty and variety that the dorms brought to my life.
Not quite the same, but hostels give me a similar vibe. Sometimes I'll book a private room in a hostel even though it's more expensive than an entire Airbnb apartment. Makes it much easier to have things to do.
The founder of WeWork was talking about creating this kind of housing- private bedrooms (and mainly bathrooms too), kitchen, living rooms shared. A monthly fee for frequent cleaning of public spaces, because voluntary efforts not so successful.
An issue would be maintaining the age segregation of a college. Single adults of all ages may want to move in.
Sufficiently affluent senior communities are pretty much private universities without the professors, and with larger rooms. Complete with frankly surprisingly good food that everybody complains about and more facilities than anybody actually uses.
Dorms are pretty unique. A bunch of people same age, going through same experience, in a shared living space. I'd be interested in how this is replicated in a medium-sized city.
There’s an apartment building in my town that works that way - shared bathroom and kitchen and common spaces, with personal bedrooms. My buddy used to live there, it was kind of organized as artist housing, there was a ton of resident art up in the halls and on the grounds - wouldn’t work for me, I need control over my space, but he made the most of it. Helped that it was cheap, and he was a portrait photographer, I think.
This website is from Ziz cult-ist Gwen Danielson, an actual crazy cultist with arrest records, involved in an attempted murder by sword.
Feel free to google them.
'Anna has repeatedly advised people to abandon their own rationality and judgment and steer away from Ziz’s and my ideas on the basis that we wear black clothing, the clothing of our religion (vegan sith) and political cluster (vegan anarchotranshumanists), and have “dangerous ideas”.' -Your link
"Their arrest stems from a demonstration at Westminster Woods that left counselors and guests there rattled. On Nov. 15, 2019, the four blocked the exit to the woodsy retreat with a box truck, shuttle bus and Toyota Prius, and emerged wearing black robes, gloves and Anonymous-style Guy Fawkes masks. Two of them carried walkie-talkies, one wore a body camera and another had pepper spray, according to the initial arrest report.
The situation escalated when a Westminster Woods employee reported that one of the protesters was armed."[0]
"In November of 2022, three associates of Ziz (Somnulence “Somni” Logencia, Emma Borhanian, and someone going by the alias “Suri Dao”) got into a violent conflict with their landlord in Vallejo, California, according to court records and news reports. Somni stabbed the landlord in the back with a sword, and the landlord shot Somni and Emma. Emma died, and Somni and Suri were arrested. Ziz and Gwen were seen by police at the scene, alive."[1]
Yes, I have some minimal knowledge about this cult - please disregard the first link. This was just lazy phone googling for some reference. The second link however is solid.
The stance of large parts of the EA/rationalist/Bay Area scene towards abuse is still very troubling. This rabbit hole goes substantially deep.
i'd like to see subsidies for people to start families
screw taking out loans to feed money to the college cartels
the equivalent of any bachelors degree is available online, minus lab hours - but you can actually get that if you really want it
have people finish with their education by or before ~18 y/o. people who would have earned meritocratic scholarships can instead be subsidized to start a family and have children for the next ~10 years, this would allow more of the best to have more children -> a breeding experiment with a good outcome
Australia has had a ‘baby bonus’ for about 20 years now. It’s something like $2000 now, and is intended to subsidise the costs of child rearing, and bolster the country’s fertility rate.
It received some criticism when a small number of parents were reported to have bought flat screen TVs, but that was just a politicised attack on welfare recipients, who obviously don’t deserve our hard earned tax dollars, and should continue suffering in abject destitution.
There are arguments that our large amount of incoming immigration has shielded us from demographic decline, but I don't think it's wise to rely on that forever.
US isn't on track to have any issues with this. We already subsidize children in massive ways. Half of my property tax goes to schools. Happy to give it, but it is a LOT of money (I don't have kids).
> Happy to give it, but it is a LOT of money (I don't have kids).
All workers pay lots of money into Social Security but are not retired - that's the deal we get for living in society - some of our tax money gets spent on things we don't directly benefit from, or possibly oppose. Pacifists taxes fund the war machine.
I'm not making an argument against it, I'm just saying I already spend an insane amount of my money subsidizing kids, and the US already has pretty good policies for this.
this doesn't seem like a lot tbh. What is it afterwards? Is it expected that the woman abandons her job and only cares for the child? There are a lot of costs involved
Laughable peanuts. What's the realistic burden of raising a child from 0 to 22 years in a developed country (including college)? $300-500k last I checked, possibly even more.
It's going to happen. Societies around the world are going to start to realize that babies are the most valuable commodity for their continued survival, and parents will have to be incentivized well beyond the couple thousand dollars or so that is the norm today.
What "survival" are you talking about? There are more than 8 billion humans on Earth, more than at any point in history, in fact to the point where other ecosystems of the planet are threatened.
In most developed societies fewer and fewer babies are being born every year, well below the replacement number. The 8 billion people are going to age and will soon be unable to work. Who is going to support them?
The current band-aid fix is importing people from developing countries. But those countries themselves will run into the same problem soon enough.
With gains in worker productivity, we should be able to support more people per worker than we previously did. The strain on the economy is a problem of failure to adapt economic policy, not intrinsic to population growth leveling out.
Infinite population growth was never going to be sustainable. If you went back in time and told Malthus that in sufficiently prosperous societies people ended up having fewer children, he would have jumped for joy, as it's vastly preferable to society growing until all resources are depleted, then dying off in droves due to overpopulation.
This is a problem of broken economic models that assume infinite population growth. Not a problem of “societies” or of “survival”. Economics will need to change and hopefully we will reach a global population level that is more sustainable.
Here’s a thought: in the mid-1970s the global population was half what it is today. Did the world desperately need double the population it had back then or was society doing just fine?
Most countries' state pensions systems ("social security" in the US) aren't built with the expectation of ininite population growth, but merely of sustained population over generations.
You can't grow forever. Getting to a sustainable place today is better than blowing the problem up and making it even harder in 50, 100 years when it's even more lopsided.
The issue was caused by too many kids. Those kids are now getting old.
population collapse is a big issue for the world. in the west we've become too savvy with just importing people to offset our falling birth rate, but this is causing lower birth rates and high brain drain in the countries we source from. its a global issue
you've been misinformed, likely by a teacher or professor. most of us have been at some point on this issue.
if a population pyramid is too top heavy, the economy won't be able to function
resources are getting more abundant as we get better at using them, not less, and we are at no risk whatsoever of running out of them. people are producing more resources per value with their work than ever before and its only increasing.
no its a terrible thing, you've been misinformed, likely by a teacher or professor. most of us have been at some point on this issue.
if a population pyramid is too top heavy, the economy won't be able to function
resources are getting more abundant as we get better at using them, not less, and we are at no risk whatsoever of running out of them. people are producing more resources per value with their work than ever before and its only increasing.
Lets hope they spend it on being social! Going to social events, clubs, get togethers, etc.
Thing is though, when I think of when I was 17, I spent almost every penny of every paycheck at my job on video games and movies, and all my friends were the same way.
I have to imagine there's some sort of requirement to continue receiving the allowance, otherwise isn't this just giving them $450 to spend on more anime figurines?
Giving money is nice, but I wonder how much of the problem is due to the incredible pressure put on young people by the traditional Korean society. Dating seems to be closed off to a large number of Koreans who don't see a path toward marriage and economic prosperity.
Interestingly, a lot of Korean woman seem to think the best place to start a family is ... right here in America! The gender ratio of immigrants to America from South Korea isn't 50-50 as one would expect but closer to 60% women. For Japan, another state struggling with fertility and youth isolation, this ratio is about 75%.
I'm a South Korean woman living in US but I've been traveling to visit family more, and I have a great deal of opposite anecdotes.
There is a huge "trad" blow up on tiktok and other social media in South Korea right now.
A lot of the western reporting on South Korea is highly highly skewed. It's a society that demands a lot from both women and men (for better or worse). For example, in America a lot more women get plastic surgery, however I know many more korean MEN than women that have plastic surgery.
the "tradwife" trend is ... kind of refreshing. I was really confused to meet one in real life last month, I couldn't tell that she was being serious, I thought she was being a caricature of what she thought I wanted to hear. Like always steering the conversation towards things involving cooking, sewing, in the most contrived ways.
It seems a bit like caricature to me to be honest, but I think there is a deep desire among a large part of the population to have normal gender roles and relationships.
One might argue that new generations are sufficiently distanced from actual traditional lifestyles to treat them as fairy tales, and that it's just a surface level understanding, a cosplay.
One could easily argue the opposite too no? That new generations are surrounded by the effects of the breaking down of gender roles, and are looking to the past/other societies for an alternate model.
I am quite sure that “break down of gender roles” happened so long ago that modern person doesn't really understand that the whole experience of the world is different in a different era or place. They picture themselves as they are, only in clothing they are familiar with from media products or history book illustrations.
Say, you are in a traditional agricultural society in less than perfect climate. Then you have to sweat your guts out working on crops as much as they need, each year, from childhood to the old age. It's not an option, it's not a choice. Illness or “feelings” are not an excuse. And then bad weather can turn the hard work of many months into almost nothing.
Say, you are in a traditional patriarchal family. It is a solid productive unit, not an association of “individuals”. If it is good, it's good, if it is bad, it's bad. Everyone shares the fate. Of course, there are many possible ways for the person to act, but the frame that define the common base for all actions is set in that manner.
Even more so, the description of people as “individuals” that have “feelings” have itself appeared not so long ago, in a specific age and place. Different ones need people who think differently.
calling them "normal" gender roles and relationships is rather loaded, insinuating that other forms of gender roles are in some way abnormal. "traditional" seems a more appropriate term.
turns out she was simultaneously really proud of her work and interests, while also wanting that kind of relationship
like it wasn't "I can cook, and clean, shoutout to the patriarchy!"
it was "my friend is a chef and I love helping her with her clients", "I love making jewelry but I found my flow state the most in sewing!" just like, oh ok, what a coincidence. whats behind door number 3? cleaning! wow.
but then I was like, you know what? its refreshing. I could enjoy that choice, my amusement had only come from being around women that spend a lot of energy making their whole identity about being something less refreshing. Going as far as to denigrate anyone that requests or chooses traditional roles. That’s the opposite of choice.
What plastic surgery do Korean men get? I've heard that double eyelid surgery is very common for Korean women, so I'm surprised you know more men who have had plastic surgery.
Anecdotal but when I lived there, I had a few female coworkers who confided to me that they only wanted to date foreigners because they felt trapped by the cultural expectations that came with dating a Japanese man. So, yes it might be a factor :)
Correct, cheating is basically normalized among men in east and south east Asia. Western mens liberalism and lower rates of cheating are among the many reasons why westerners are popular there.
People like to fantasize about “The Orient” when reading topics like those, but the problem is the same across the whole globalized society. We may ask why it became so pronounced in Asia, or we may have a realization that this is the actual future everyone's heading, but it's certainly not some “traditional” thing (unless, of course, there was a tradition like that I have no idea about).
One reason I ask is because if one is just looking at the Korean-American population as a whole, there are a couple other factors that could be leading to the gender imbalance:
- Mothers raising their kids in U.S. while the father works in Korea
- Historic immigration after the Korean War, during which a large portion of the male population was wiped out
-- hard to say if this will work - i know - visit - people who have not left the house in over a year - they are very genius people who never made - to Samsung or LG or other chaebol - many have gained a lot of weight or are unhappy with appearance - genius and "ugly" - depressed - in Korean culture - not good --
Ah, a little light carrotsnack, after which the beatings can continue until working moral improves.
A society so hostile, that people withdraw from it completely is surely able to change the situation, without any changes to itself.
I think the best idea would be hikikomori villages. As in standalone towns, were the rest of society is forbidden to enter. Allow them to start something fresh, untainted by the old horror.
William Gibson's /Idoru/ runs with this concept but, somewhat counterproductively in this context, as a virtual version of the old Kowloon Walled City "in" Hong Kong, where hikikomori socialize, strategize about shared goals, wheel and deal, etc.
We actually tried something similar when I ran Tinfoil - people worked really hard and started getting burnt out because they weren’t “getting away from it” at home.
Roughly once a month or two, we would pick a 3-day weekend (we made sure to have a 3-day holiday every month anyway) and would reimburse employees up to $80 for doing something that was “outside their norm.” Could be almost anything, but couldn’t be material (i.e. buying a video game). Nobody was forced to, of course, and if people wanted to stay home they could, but we found that folks were much more willing to get out and try something new if it was on the company dime.
Plus, then people would inevitably come back with stories to tell their colleagues, which sort of spiraled into encouraging that behavior in the future. We even ended up with an internal wiki page of ideas of “what to do” with your reimbursement weekends, all of which involved getting out and doing things outside or with other people. Not everyone participated every time, but it was definitely one of our most-beloved benefits.
Once in a while I'll see news from Korea get blown out of proportion and make it to the front page of HN when the same topic didn't even make it to the front page of Korean news.
This article made it sound like the government will just start paying loners so I had to look up some Korean sources. Apparently, S.Korean government already has a program to financially help "at-risk youths" from households below median income and either not in school or have frequent trouble with the law. The news is now saying they'll include reclusive youths in the program. The article doesn't really say the criteria to qualify but it's not like the government will handout allowances to millions of loners like the title makes it seem.
The affordability for sure helps a small cohort but there are a lot of other reasons not to leave the house that have yet to be addressed. Some of these can’t be addressed by government as there are fundamentally decentralized yet aligned issues relating to culture among other things (for example, SK really shuns baldness [1] so they don’t go outside).
A Korean movie was making the rounds at film festivals over a decade ago called Castaway on the Moon.
The setup: office drone gets fired, has debts, tries to jump off a bridge. He washes up on a river island, can’t get off, and decides to become a hermit. Somehow befriends a shut-in woman (she can see him from her window with a telephoto lens).
This thread reminds me of that movie (might still be on YouTube) and that this has been a known problem for some time.
Honestly I hope this works . It is very close to universal basic income and the justification for UBI will just become larger and larger. What I feel that we will be in situations where smaller and smaller amounts of people are able to be ridiculously productive .
Taxes vary but 16k usually falls in the lowest tax bracket. The marginal federal tax rate at that bracket is 10%. Minus various deductions your take home is still 4 figures.
If the take home was 490, it was a very bad deal and basically a bursary (which meant you had to have a part time job to support yourself) and not a stipend. Check out Ph.D. stipends (search for chemistry).
Stipends are meant to be enough to live on (even if barely -- most of the time barely). 490 below livable (even with roommates rent is already 300-400).
It's interesting how "hikikomori" got into common English usage, and now this Japanese word is being used to describe South Korean youths. I would have expected Koreans to have their own word for this condition.
It's a wonderful peak into how languages might have evolved in the past.
One day a bard is passing through some village or other and, having recently traveled to the far east, tells stories of the reclusive hikikomori of Japan. A young fella at the tavern hears the stories and is inspired to grow up to be a bard himself so he too can travel to the far east. But! He goes a little too far south and - mistaking the Yellow Sea for the Sea of Japan - swims across to the Korean peninsula bringing an invasive new word in his pocket.
Obviously they do as it is just as common in South Korea as Japan. I have never heard of the word hikikomoro before. It's definitely not in common English usage at all. Otaku is what I hear in Korea. Recluse is English.
So they're going to help them leave the house... by paying them $490/month as long as they stay indoors. Interesting.
Now, I agree with other commenters that these recluses are probably suffering economic hardship and can't afford to flit about the city like a HBO sitcom. So I think that this welfare initiative is probably going to be a great benefit to them... but measuring how many of them leave the house is probably a bad metric, and they'll probably shut this program down once they see that the recluses remained reclusive. Oh well.
A lot of people pooh poohing seem to think that the solution is all or nothing. All conditions have a spectrum, and maybe this would be pointless for people deep on the spectrum, it might be enough to push people on the edge to go out and socialize a bit. It will not turn them into the life of the party but maybe just give some of them a bit more social. Whether the price point is correct, or there is enough ROI on the money put in will have to be seen, but there is nothing 'obvious' that it would fail.
That seems significantly preferable to a rent-based system. While you're not investing any assets in your home like you would if you owned it, at least you're not hemorrhaging cash like you do when you're renting.
> While you're not investing any assets in your home like you would if you owned it, at least you're not hemorrhaging cash like you do when you're renting.
Unless you have to borrow money to make the payment. And god forbid they do something like invest it in more real estate, or worse, lose the investment and owe the government tax.
I just read this a couple weeks ago, it's called The Real Reason South Koreans Aren't Having Babies. If this article is accurate, I doubt a small subsidy is going to change things. It kind of feels like the gender wars have gotten out of control over there on both sides.
Worth a read at least.
Maybe some sort of required social service (beyond the required military), especially in the SK countryside where it is badly needed?
Only anecdotal, but I went from massively introverted to a more-or-less well adjusted social adult after three years in the peace corps (coincidentally in South Korea). My work in a rural health center required me daily to interact with dozens of people who needed me in a language I was struggling to learn. In the process, I grew to enjoy socializing for the first time and have benefitted from the experience ever since.
Doesn't hurt to try, but I don't think giving money to a depressed isolated person will change their ways. They've "pulled back" and somehow manage to get by financially without putting in any effort.
Anyway, I recently read that if one is to project SK's birth rate far into the future, the country ceases to exist: 94% population decrease. There was also an article describing a rural area where for the first time in 25(!) years, a baby was born.
I am not surprised at a rural area where babies are rare.
The thing is opportunity is generally far greater in the cities. People who aren't failures will generally move to the cities, the rural areas have few people of an age to be reproducing.
Reading the article, and the top comments here on HN it feels like an incredible myopia people have against obvious solutions that are staring them in the face. Here’s my solution to solve social isolation, that will never be implemented in South Korea or in the current Zeitgist but will definitely work and possibly future generations will lay in shock that we did not do this (In fact we active prevented this):
Create a brotherhood organization, force every male who’s not gainfully employed to join that organization. If they don’t join they go to jail.
The fact that no one even suggests some solution in this form shows to me the irrational bias against forcing people to do stuff. Sometimes people of their own volition make bad decisions, this might be mental health or a host of other reasons. Sometimes the solution to the problem if the very thing those people are desperately avoiding and at those times, as someone who knows better, you force them to do what they don’t want and they will be happier for it.
I will be the first to admit, this solution won’t work for everyone. There is small percentage (probably as small as 0.1%) who actually don’t need constant social contact and are isolating for other reasons. They might also be geniuses (Gregory Perelman comes to mind). The rest crave social contact, probably need it much more than the average human, and they’re just not getting it because they’ve fallen into a hole and taking small steps to dig yourself out gives huge amounts of negative feedback that they would rather not try. In such a case a higher authority like the government should just force them out of their hole and they’ll thank you for it. The crazy thing is a hundred years ago, this was known everywhere. People were basically not allowed to be alone. In primitive Europe, (around 1600-1700s), if a man was seen idle he was put to work under the law. Every man till around 1900s was forced to be a part of multiple social structures, from your guild, to church, to family, to neighbour hood communities and it was often illegal to not be a part of these structures nor was it clear why one would choose to not be in these structures. Sometimes these structures were enforced by law (such as guilds) and sometimes with social pressure (such as church), but all these structures forced men to have regular contact in multiple forms, multiple times a day. Since late 1950s, most of these structures across the world have vanished and people have suffered with modern afflictions that were very rare in the past. The solutions are still the same, and giving people money, incentivizing sex etc is a bandaid not a long term solution.
My favorite argument is the seatbelt argument. If car dealerships sold cars without seatbelts, but charged $1,000 to upgrade to included seatbelts - how many people would die due to it?
Your point (if we take this discussion in very very good faith and keep it theoretical) is similar - will people make the best choice for themselves, or is it better to have rules/requirements to push them towards decisions that will benefit them?
Funny enough this is close to what the Puritans did in New England. Just familyhood instead of brotherhood.
> Everyone was compelled by law to live in families. Town officials would search the town for single people and, if found, order them to join a family; if they refused, they were sent to jail.
(and the average family size at the time was a little over 9 children)
Communist countries did that. Except the brotherhood were state factories. If you refused to get a job (which you were guaranteed to get, as "full employment" was a core tenet of the system), you were sent to jail to wisen up.
So instead of looking for the root cause of the problem (probably many factors, not just one), the government is doing what a stupid government is always doing: throw some money at the problem hoping it will be effective enough to win the next election. It is not solving any problem, just rolling it for later.
SK has a huge demographic problem; this one cannot be fixed later, when people are in their 40-es or even 50-es they cannot have babies anymore. Also giving money to 9 year old to socialize is weird, one would rather have them do team activities like sport or boy/girl/mixed scout, not give money - what financial culture does a 9-year old have?
>one would rather have them do team activities like sport or boy/girl/mixed scout
Plenty of developed countries where mixed team activities are the norm and the fertility rates aren't looking that much better once you filter first/second generation immigrants (including, many are already bordering on Japan's levels).
Having them do sports together until the age of 18 isn't going to solve the increasing cost of milestones, consumerism, increasing standards pushed by multimedia, crushing work cultures, pushing the norm to 30+, and more. Several of the aforementioned countries don't have half of these and still sit at 1.6 or less, while continuing to drop.
I am considering team sports as a way to (secondary) socialize, not to produce kids. Same for boy scout type of activities, in my experience people that do activities in nature get stronger spirits and are better at handling adverse conditions - for example kids in the Switzerland or Finland do a lot of outside activities at school.
- Untreated mental health problems
- Disabilities that undermine or limit social success
- Economies with few opportunities for young people
- Over-abundance of pressure (disproportionately placed on men): for academic success and career success
- Horrible housing market (why work at a crappy job only to lose what few funds you have in rent for a tiny shared apartment? Can you blame these people for not moving out?)
- Chronic loneliness (again, worse for men)
Most hikikomoris are men and when you never leave the house there's no opportunities to meet people. If you want to have the biggest effect on these people’s lives don't focus on giving them money. Unironically get them partners. No troll, young people’s social skills have declined beyond recognition and IMO as tech people we are partly to blame for this.