South Korea's fertility rate hit 0.9 births per woman, and the government tried dating camps to boost it. Jim Penman says policies like these will fail because governments can't legislate their way out of demographic collapse. Real change comes from what ordinary people think and do, not from laws.
South Korea's birth rate's gone back up for the first time. 0.9, yeah. They've actually started doing government dating camps for people. Let me make you a very powerful prediction. This is not going to work. It's not a matter of government policy. The whole problem people have is they think the solution is government. If you just place the right laws, everything— we have this belief system that government controls everything. Well, actual fact, it's just not correct. What governments can do— governments can stop you being prosperous. You can turn South Korea into North Korea if you just have the government that actually cracks down on free speech and enterprise and everything else. But basically, fundamentally, ordinary people, their attitudes, their abilities, their behavior is what changes society. Got to understand the people, not the government.
Rising mental illness and falling birth rates have the same cause, it is this.....
