Viking Age triggered by shortage of wives? | Hacker News Reader

Viking Age triggered by shortage of wives?

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20 pointsAlex391732 comments

if this is true, then we will see soon Chineese men behaving like conquering Vikings

(ratio of men vs women is one of the highest in the world due to single child policy)

No smiley needed; I've read serious predictions that China will invade neighboring countries for water and women within a few decades.

May be one reason why Japan is working so hard to develop robot women. :-)

It seems a lot more likely that they will import water and women.

Or for women & wine

Well if you're a Christian/Catholic, water = wine.

(due to abandoning woman since they prefer men and get one child)

(ratio of men vs women is one of the highest in the world due to single child policy)

Single child policy can hardly be the reason for that.

Not by itself, but there's strong economic incentive for your one child to be a boy rather than a girl.

To say it bluntly: Sometimes girls are neglected until they die or killed outright.

I think selective abortion is more common then selective infanticide.

Abandonment is common too. My sister worked part-time in an orphanage in Xian for a year and saw a lot of sad things.

Right. And to call this "single child policy" is a nasty euphemism.

Actually, that's incorrect. There's a strong social prestige incentive for your one child to be a boy rather than a girl. There's a strong economic incentive for you to have a girl: there's a tradition of reversed dowries in China, and girls are rare, so the benefits are high.

I thought the reason they wanted boys was that they were the ones who had the means to support their parents in old age?

Perhaps that was the historical reason boys are high prestige, but modern China has huge opportunities for women (who "Hold up half the sky", as Mao put it).

China was a society of prima genitor, like Europe; boys are high prestige because they carry on your family name. All praise to the eldest son!

People who kill their own daughters for "economic" reasons stretch my ability to be non-judgmental.

Infanticide for "economic" reasons is an evolutionary adaptation common in many mammals, including humans, including in rich societies. In the US, it usually gets classified as SIDS.

I'm yet to see a convincing argument for why it's unethical.

Isn't SIDS when a baby suffocates because they are sleeping on their stomach or in a room with poor ventilation? Or are you saying it isn't as sudden and accidental as we are led to believe?

Not always accidental, apparently. Wikipedia has references.

Also, in the Netherlands, child euthanasia is openly practiced.

http://www.google.com/search?q=netherlands+euthanasia+child

280,000 hits.

Do you judge sexual abstainers?

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22abstinence+is+murder%22

I've heard people cite this as a reason from Islamic terrorism as well. Since it's common to take multiple wives in religion.

The marriage ceremony is expensive - especially in the Middle East. And in countries like Egypt have low economic growth and huge inflation in marriage prices, so males have to work long and hard into their 30es to get married. And they can't just get a girlfriend and marry her in a inexpensive ceremony with only a civil unions - the religious leaders made sure its illegal (they have a interest in preserving the expensive traditions, you see).

Most men in the Middle East can hardly afford a single wife. Only really, really rich men have harems.

Of course the reasons are way more complex.

I'll recommend this excellent article from Fareed Zakaria: The Politics of Rage: Why Do They Hate Us? http://fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/101501_why.html

It's not very common in practice though. Not enough to create demographic problems.

This is discussed in Jared Diamond's book "Collapse." (A good book, although winding.) A skewed sex-ratio was definitely one of the factors, but it would be foolish to say it was the only one. In fact, one of the theses of "Collapse" is that it is almost always a combination of multiple factors that leads to major changes in a society.

women are usually the motivation for almost all the accomplishments a man has ever achieved

I've heard this about scientists and criminals...both desist when they get married. Not far-fetched.

Anecdotally, it wasn't true of Einstein.

Well, that more or less explains a good bit of my startup motivation.

No kidding.

Viking women:

http://deafjoke.tv/wp/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/women-2007-...

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