<story><title>Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.</title><url>http://www.economist.com/node/21526350?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/asiasloneyhearts</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lionhearted</author><text>I have a theory that I haven&apos;t found expounded before. It came from a combination of travel through 60+ countries, living and working and interacting with local people on a pretty intimate level sometimes, and study of &lt;i&gt;lots&lt;/i&gt; of history.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s going to be controversial and maybe even shocking, so brace yourself for a moment before reacting please.&lt;p&gt;I think peaceful societies self-destruct.&lt;p&gt;With a few notable exceptions that require a geography suitable to isolationism, long term peace has historically been achieved through your country or one of your ally&apos;s having military supremacy over the rest of your neighbors.&lt;p&gt;Obviously, diplomacy can keep the peace for long periods of time, even human lifetimes, but eventually incidents happen when there&apos;s a hothead in one government, and then that&apos;s when the military supremacy determines whether you get attacked or not.&lt;p&gt;Anyways, I&apos;ve found the more a country renounces war and gets further away from it, the more birth rates go down. You get an explosion of commerce and art for ~30 to ~70 years, and then the society self-destructs.&lt;p&gt;No longer forced to confront mortality and with no externally unifying cause, people start living for luxury, pleasure, and consumption. They stop having children. Birth rates fall off.&lt;p&gt;Eventually, this destroys a country&apos;s economy, the military supremacy fades, and one of their neighbors comes in and cleans house, and the cycle begins anew.&lt;p&gt;This has happened many times through history. It&apos;s happening in Japan right now. If I became an advisor to anyone in the Japanese government, I&apos;d advocate two things as chief priorities - (1) exceedingly good relations with China, and (2) re-militarize.&lt;p&gt;Then join the next war they can on America&apos;s or China&apos;s side. Combined with some standard messages of nationalism/strength/growth/unity, birth rates would almost certainly increase.</text></comment>
<story><title>Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious.</title><url>http://www.economist.com/node/21526350?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/asiasloneyhearts</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>burgerbrain</author><text>Good for them.  More people need to reject this archaic sexist tradition.  Legal enforcement of the fantasy notion of &quot;true love for life&quot; is damn near barbaric.&lt;p&gt;If you and your partner can swing it, more power to you, but social pressure on &lt;i&gt;others&lt;/i&gt; to place themselves into &lt;i&gt;legally binding situations&lt;/i&gt; revolving around this notion is something that need to die.&lt;p&gt;In the west (at least the states) these are legally binding arrangements that are &lt;i&gt;heavily&lt;/i&gt; biased against males, but if women are rejecting that in Asia then all the better.</text></comment>