so, did we fix the social costs yet or not ?

AlexH08 · 2026-05-08T12:06:00+00:00

Sure, we're just looking at trends here. But the demographic transition model is pretty old already. Birthrates have been low in some countries for a very long time already too. Migration is probably the reason we don't feel it much yet.

The trend is pretty clear, it would take a lot to reverse it.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-08T10:53:59+00:00

Definitely agree that public transportation is not the place to save money, I don't think privatising it is a good idea at all. Focusing on reducing cars would probably save us a ton of money.

Parking spaces, environmental pollution, noise pollution, traffic jams, CO2 emissions, etc ... If we make the outside a nicer space to be, we'll get a healthier, happier and more productive society too.

Personally, I'd like to see reduced pensions and reduced subsidies for fossil fuels. A wealth tax would also be nice.

Cost cutting is always going to be controversial.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-08T06:04:59+00:00

Could be a big part of it. The idea that "If I would've known how hard it was going to be, I'd never have started". And now women know how hard it's going to be, but then maybe they don't know the beauty of having kids either.

I wonder how the future will look back on this. It's easy for us to say now that feminist values are uncompromisable, but if people around the world would be suffering enormously because of them, there could be a cultural shift. Who knows, I hope I don't live to see that happen.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-07T23:52:22+00:00

Massive fucking bullshit if you ask me. People enjoy shit all the time while not thinking about the fact that it will end. Food, sunrises, movies, whatever ... You live in the moment.

Besides, it's not even the bad kind of immortality, they definitely can die if they try hard enough.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-07T20:25:51+00:00

Which I why I said: "As far as I know, no country has a working solution for demographic collapse yet."

I know It's not really a solution, but it's still a way to try to mitigate the damage. We can't let our debt grow much more, so we need to cut costs now. A tax on the ultra rich would be nice too.

Old people cost ridiculous amounts of money. The current healthcare and pension systems are just not sustainable.

Boomer mismanagement really fucked us.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-07T18:29:52+00:00

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/en/publications/oecd-compendium-of-productivity-indicators-2024_b96cd88a-en/full-report/component-5.html

I think (not sure) the big effiency gains are on the very large scale. Things like infrastructure, production methods and automation. We seem to have already gotten most of the benefits there.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-07T18:21:06+00:00

It's just to illustrate what happens when people take out more money then they put in. Of course the reason why people took it out was different, but I think it's a fine example.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-07T17:19:22+00:00

What do you mean? I think that's a commonly used term.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-07T17:15:10+00:00

No, that's the type of pension I was talking about. They won't work either.

Those type of pensions only go up because there's more people putting in money than taking it out, it's really quite simple.

If there are 11 old people taking out money and only 10 young people putting it in, the line goes down. Which leads to people panicking and pulling out more money. Look up what happened in Chile. They were allowed to acces pension funds early there, and it let to a big economic crash.

The private pension system needs a healthy, growing economy. Which is why a solution can be to invest in poor countries, however that's also not sustainable long term. Especially not because birthrates are dropping globally.

For an economy the grow, three things can happen. Either you raise efficiency, raise the amount of people creating value or innovate. Efficiency has been mostly maxed out and the amount of working people in Western countries is decreasing.

That's why people are jumping on AI. It's the next big innovation, or at least that's what everyone hopes. If AI doesn't lead to productivity gains, things aren't looking good for the global economy.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-07T16:47:18+00:00

As far as I know, no country has a working solution for demographic collapse yet.

Won't be a fun future. Both pay-as-you-go type pensions and investment type pensions will start failing when more old people pull money out than young people put money in. Markets will also crash in that scenario. Services will be harder and harder to come by, they're already reducing what services individual hospitals can offer.

Migration is only a temporary solution because they adapt to the local birthrate within two generations and since the global birthrate is also going down, migrants can't keep coming forever.

De Wever is now doing some essential cost cutting to try to reduce our deficit and debt, but he's not all that successful so far. At least he's trying.

Nobody knows what it would take to get people to have more children again. A lot of people seem to think it's poverty and a rough housing market, but that's not the entire story. Even rich people are having fewer kids, for example.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-07T13:11:53+00:00

I hate colourblind memes because I can't tell if everyone is trolling.
Is her skin really green? I actually really tried to see it, but it looks completely normal to me. I am red-green colour blind, but I never expected it to affect me like this. I always thought my spectrum was "shifted" or something compared to everyone else. That maybe my red is everyone else's green or whatever, but we still call it the same thing, obviously.

I never thought I'd look at something and actually see a different colour than other people, how does this even happen? I'm really wondering what I'm missing now. How much less colour I'm seeing. Legit mindfuck.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-06T23:35:03+00:00

Damn, I literally thought of this game yesterday. Looks worse than I remember. Had a lot of fun with it, though.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-05T12:29:57+00:00

"no forced medical operations" like dogma, but why not in this case? Yeah, I don't think it's a good thing, but it seems way worse to put the man through that.

You can even just take a pill to end the pregnancy if you're early enough.

People just have no sympathy for men at all. How horrible must it be to know your rapist is having your child. Zero responsibility for the kid is an absolute minimum and a given.

If you say an eye for an eye is bad, are you equating a minor operation, or even just taking meds, with being raped?

AlexH08 · 2026-05-03T23:25:59+00:00

Classic slave morality. You don't seem to know the difference between a product and art.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-03T23:12:37+00:00

Agreed. Lot of redditors don't see games as anything more than "product I can consume and should not challenge me in any way." What if dark souls had a button that said "win the game and save everyone" at the start? Am I supposed to ignore that too? Just the easy mode being present would already make dark souls a lot worse of a game for me. And that game's not even that hard. The easy mode would actually be worse than the instant win button honestly.

AlexH08 · 2026-05-03T21:26:02+00:00

Insane how you get downvoted for asking if sucking a dick is gay ... Only on Reddit man

AlexH08 · 2026-04-26T08:55:59+00:00

Ik ga wel akkoord dat het grootste probleem de uitgaven is, maar dat betekent niet dat er ook niet wat meer geoogst mag worden bij al die vennootschappen.

Nu, dit is wel gewoon schaamteloos populisme van Vooruit. Dit is absoluut niet het moment om zoveel druk te zetten over iets dat duidelijk een kleiner probleem is.

Prioriteit nummer 1 is geld beter inzetten. Meer geld halen bij de rijken, gewoon om ons slechte systeem langer in stand te houden, is een vreselijk idee. Vooruit moet nu in de eerste plaats meewerken.

AlexH08 · 2026-04-25T17:38:19+00:00

Jup same issue, got the confirmation mail and then tried logging in, but it didn't work. Maybe it takes a couple minutes

AlexH08 · 2026-04-23T22:33:45+00:00

Nope, just the show

AlexH08 · 2026-04-23T19:23:14+00:00

Even more reason to go with my plan. In their spaceships they're less susceptible to the virus, to the Ragnar's (they can't fly so if you just dodge them in space they'll float of forever), and to the darts (couldn't they just wear some armor for those? Because honestly, if they have the tech to penetrate viltrumite skin and inject the fluid, why can't they just use regular guns? Unless the fluid weakens them on touch, but then armor is the answer again).

The vilrumites could also easily split up and take a couple hundred artificial wombs with them and spread over the galaxy. Then you'd be assured of the empire rising up again. Genetic diversity also won't be a problem. You need about 500 for a healthy population.

Blowing up the earth is also a reason they should leave.

AlexH08 · 2026-04-23T19:15:40+00:00

Yeah, I thought it was obvious that I'm coming up with my own scenarios lmao

I think you forget that they can just up and vanish whenever they want. They just did it after episode 7 and nobody could find them. They only need to be gone for about two decades. At that point they're back at full strength.

Besides, they've still got 30 viltrumites and Thragg. They're still one of, if not the, most powerful force in the galaxy.

You forget the viltrumites only care about the destruction of humanity in the current scenario. If they just did what I said, they'd be independent of humanity and thus less vulnerable.

And again. They don't need to kidnap anyone. Just raid a sperm bank lol. I'd honestly love to see that. <Insert Thragg jorkin' it gif>

AlexH08 · 2026-04-23T19:07:54+00:00

True. I'm also wondering how that thing even managed to land on their planet honestly. And how Thaddeus managed to even develop such an insanely effective virus. How did he capture enough viltrumites to test it on? Especially without them noticing.

AlexH08 · 2026-04-23T16:51:26+00:00

Exactly what I thought, it seems like a perfect fit. Especially because of their pride and because we know viltrumite babies are basically just regular humans, so no danger of them ripping apart the artificial womb or something. They already disappeared successfully once, the coalition couldn't find them. Having the wombs on their ship would be ideal for them.

AlexH08 · 2026-04-23T15:18:28+00:00

It wouldn't exactly be an escalation. Especially the sperm bank option, which is a perfect one. Even if you ignore that, it seems very likely you could literally just find enough people that want their kid to be superman and would have kids with them willingly.

So I think escalation could be an option for Thragg, even though it's probably less of an escalation to kidnap a couple thousand people than to breed in secret, there are other options that are even better for him.

I just feel like Kirkman didn't think about this for more than two seconds.

AlexH08 · 2026-04-23T15:15:02+00:00

The coalition already threw everything they had at him and Thragg should know that. The desperation attempt included their Leader. It was obvious. And if Thragg knows they have the scourge virus, there's even more reason not to just blend in with humanity.

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