
For many young South Koreans, dating is too expensive, or too dangerous - ryan_j_naughton
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/11/asia/south-korea-dating-intl/index.html
======
mschuster91
ITT: people advocating for forced arranged marriages. Jeez, what the hell?

Not to dig into such petty stuff as human rights which entirely forbid
arranged marriages, that would be too easy, but as if that would even solve
the problem that is literally described in the article, people having _no
time_ to develop meaningful relationships or interpersonal skill because in a
cutthroat environment all that matters is more useless "certifications" and
working one's ass off in underpaid crap jobs just to survive, much less afford
a date?

Fix minimum wages, overtime limits and job supplies, and (young) people will
start procreating all on their own!

~~~
deepakkarki
Arranged marriage != forced marrige.

Majority of marriages in south east Asia and India are arranged marriages.
There's nothing unethical about it.

~~~
mschuster91
> There's nothing unethical about it.

In many countries, the husband has a legal right to demand sex from his wife
and rape in a marriage is not a crime either - in fact, even "civilized"
countries such as Germany had it until recently, it took us Germans until 1998
to finally make marital rape a crime. One of the politicians in favor of
keeping it legal actually ended up being our current Interior Minister but ah
well, I digress... point is, the line between arranged and outright forced
marriage is thin, very thin.

~~~
deepakkarki
But it has nothing to do with arranged marriages. I know Indians in the US who
have gotten into an arranged marriage, and obviously the local rules apply.
OTOH if marital rape in not a crime in some country, it might as well be
committed whether or not it was an arranged marriage.

------
kerng
Interesting how illicit filming during intercourse is one of the reasons young
people don't want to enter an intimate relationship. There must be quite the
horror stories floating around.

------
dillonmckay
It is interesting that the majority of these young adults’ spare time is spent
looking for better jobs and certificate training, with no time to pursue
romantic relationships.

------
RickJWagner
Dating, crime, housing, education... so much is dependent on a good economic
foundation.

JFK was right when he said a rising tide lifts all boats. Every politician
everywhere should make this a foundation of their platform.

------
blfr
When we keep animals in zoos and they refuse to breed, we consider this proof
that their conditions are poor or even unacceptable. When TFRs plummet across
the developed world, young people stop having sex, many consider this good
because of overpopulation.

It's not good. Our civilization is quickly becoming inhospitable to humans.

~~~
_Microft
TFR (total fertility rate) plummets because it _used to be necessary_ that it
was way higher when the child mortality rate was higher - and indeed a
decreased in fertility rate follows a decrease in child mortality with a few
years of delay.

Having a child used to be a random experiment and you _needed to make sure_
that one makes it through to care for you when you will be old or sick.
Pensions, health and welfare systems and much better child mortality rates
make it _unnecessary_ to have many children. A replacement fertility rate of
slightly over 2.0-2.1 is/would be fine in developed countries.

~~~
duchenne
But, in South Korea, the replacement fertility rate is already lower than 1,
and it keeps decreasing every year.

~~~
_Microft
By the way: if someone wants to look up (total) fertility rates, _Our World In
Data_ has you covered, of course:

[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-
un?tab...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-
un?tab=chart&time=1950..2015&country=IRN+OWID_WRL+KOR+DEU+GBR+USA)

(You can change the countries displayed by clicking the (+) sign on the right
hand side of the graph. I preselected UK, US, Germany, Iran and South Korea
here.)

------
qwerty9876
They do want to date alright. When you interview a random person on the street
they're lying both to the interviewer and themselves.

The problem for men is that the women generally don't think the average man is
good enough.

The problem for women is that they're mostly lusting after and eventually, in
the long run, sharing the same top 20% men.

If you're a man, it's a winner takes all market. Either almost all women
desire you, or not a single one does.

Arranged marriage used to solve this.

~~~
awaythrowwwww
I see the "women go after 20% of men" line repeated over and over again as if
it's some sort of self-evident truth. Aside from the fact that people who spew
this line generally go on to justify why women's agency should be reduced
("enforced monogamy" or whatever that means), I have never seen any evidence
for this stat. And no, how people behave on dating sites is not an accurate
representation of social dynamics at large. It takes a certain kind of
personality to go on dating sites and American men and women on Okcupid don't
represent all men and women in the world. Dating apps also highly bias the way
you engage people with undisclosed algorithms and shady practices aiming at
maximizing your time on their apps. They don't have people's best interests at
heart and influence them as part of their business model.

But seriously, think about the implications of these numbers: do 8 women just
patiently wait in line for 2 men, doing literally nothing in the meantime
while the remaining 8 men just stare at their feet or something? Is it
something that people think actually happens in real life?

~~~
scarmig
I mean, the 80/20 rule is seen in all kinds of places. Probably the top 20%
[0] of men are involved in the 80% of heterosexual sexual couplings, with the
remaining 80% of men being involved in the other 80%.

Where the stat kind of fails flat is that the same is true of the top 20% of
women.

That said, the model (with no statement being made of how much that model
reflects reality) being described is sequential monogamy. One of the top 20%
men will continuously have one or two partners, switching them out for new
ones; the rest of the men will only rarely get a partner; and women will fall
between those two. Matching them percentile-to-percentile, the average number
of new partners in some timespan for a given percentile for women will be
larger for women than for men, up until some crossover percentile X% at which
point men will have more partners.

I do think that if a person's primary mode of dating is through online apps,
they end up with a skewed mental model of what dating is like. They are,
however, already the main mode of new relationships being formed, and perhaps
are still increasing in importance.

[0] "Top 20%" being defined as the 20% of men who have the most sexual
partners

~~~
awaythrowwwww
"I mean, the 80/20 rule is seen in all kinds of places"

Sorry, repeating the same point won't make it any more true. Still haven't
seen any evidence for this stat, only American stereotypes.

It's hard to track people's sex lives for obvious logistical/ethical reasons,
but the most accurate study I've read on that was about teenagers in a high-
school in a small rural town, so a closed environment that's easy to control.
Forgot the link, will track it down if you're interested. But basically the
"sex encounter" graph was fairly evenly spread and evenly balanced between men
and women. Sure enough there were "clusters" but they were engaged _with each
other_ , not monopolizing 80% of everyone.

As it turns out, if your social circle is made up of sociosexually
unrestricted people, everyone involved is going to have lots of sex. If it's
made up of restricted people, few people are going to have encounters. But one
person or two keeping all women in a sort of "serial monogamous schedule"
while they do liteally nothing else? That doesn't make sense and I've never
seen it happen, nor have I read any actual scientific study about this.

~~~
qwerty9876
Dating in real life within a small(ish) social circle and modern online dating
where the available pool is literally millions of people is completely
different

~~~
awaythrowwwww
Online dating is a tiny, tiny blip in the world of dating. _Dating_ itself is
a uniquely American practice and a tiny, tiny blip in the world of sociosexual
dynamics. People meet, hook up with and bond with each other in all sorts of
creative ways that goes way beyond Tinder, Bumble and Okcupid. If your only
outlook on this stuff is through the lens of apps owned by shady companies
optimizing for user engagement, you're going to have a skewed and miserable
worldview.

~~~
qwerty9876
Online dating is the only dating for many young people nowadays. Alcohol used
to be a major factor in finding a partner but young people are drinking less
and less by the year.

The social skills of the youth are also getting worse due to smartphones,
leading to less interaction in schools at workplaces etc

------
dsr_
"It's the economy, stupid." \-- Bill Clinton's major campaign slogan.

To reiterate from the article: unemployment is high. Wages are low. Prices are
high.

Improve the economic well-being of the median person, and what will happen?
People will be more confident in their futures, have more leisure time, and
will be happier.

Every school of economics agrees on this. They differ in what they recommend
to achieve it.

~~~
FabHK
FWIW, the US unemployment rate is quite low at the moment.

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE/](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE/)

~~~
dsr_
I don't see your point. Is the article about the US population not dating, or
the South Korean population not dating?

~~~
FabHK
Sorry, I wasn't paying attention.

For South Korea, unemployment is quite low at 3.8%, but youth unemployment is
over 10%:

[https://tradingeconomics.com/south-korea/youth-
unemployment-...](https://tradingeconomics.com/south-korea/youth-unemployment-
rate)

------
wolfgke
Just a consideration: for many centuries (at least in Germany), arranged
marriages were quite a success story, while love marriage are a quite modern
invention.

Perhaps if dating is too time-intensive for these people, they should
(somewhat) go back to arranged marriages. Also, if one otherwise has to go on
many dates, arranged dates/marriages are probably less expensive. Finally,
this should also increase the safety aspects that, according to the article,
many young people fear.

~~~
deng
> for many centuries (at least in Germany), arranged marriages were quite a
> success story

For men, yes.

~~~
wyoh
Why "for men". You think men are happier than women in arranged marriages?!

~~~
deng
> Why "for men". You think men are happier than women in arranged marriages?!

As long as they have all the money and can have lovers, how is that even a
question?

~~~
scarmig
Being responsible for making the money is different from having the agency to
spend the money. It's fairly common for cultures to grant that role to the
woman of the household.

Not sure if that's the case in historic Germanic regions, but it's a crutch to
take the principle "women are universally oppressed by men" and believe that's
all you need in order to make any statement about gender across all of time
and space.

~~~
deng
> Not sure if that's the case in historic Germanic regions

It wasn't (aside from food and other common needs).

> it's a crutch to take the principle "women are universally oppressed by men"

I did not say that. The OP spoke of centuries where arranged marriages were
common in Germany, and there's no doubt that women did not have equal rights
during that time. The crutch here is to define "success of marriages" through
fertility rates and number of divorces.

