Late Stage Capitalism

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South Korea politician blames women for rising male suicides (www.bbc.com)

submitted 4 months ago by rainpizza@lemmygrad.ml to c/latestagecapitalism@lemmygrad.ml

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I thought this was an onion article but guess what? It is real.

They are blaming literally anyone except the true culprits: capitalism...

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[–] Addfwyn@lemmygrad.ml 16 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Not surprised. Their current president is basically this writ large, one of his campaign promises was to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality. And he was elected.

If I recall he also wanted to remove the 100 hour/week working limit. I spent a few months in the ROK (and the DPRK) during grad school and you couldn't pay me to live there. They make the Japanese work-life balance look healthy.

This guy just seems pretty standard for politicians there now honestly.

[–] rainpizza@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Besides the wild things described in the article, I was surprised to read the following crazy nonsense:

At the same time, a government think tank recommended that girls start school earlier than boys, so that classmates would be more attracted to each other by the time they were ready to marry.

[–] Addfwyn@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 4 months ago

Doesn't surprise me in the least. Another way they decided to fix their birth rate was by giving one time lump payments to new parents. Which would definitely never be abused.

I can't imagine working 100+ hour weeks is having any impact on their ability to have kids or anything like that.

[–] landlords_morghulis@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

How can we write policy to make the kids hornier?

lol, yeah, that line is beyond insane.

[–] Darkerseid@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

It's now planning on doing the opposite thanks to labor pushback. Now 4 day work weeks are being planned

https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.amp.asp?newsIdx=376708

[–] Addfwyn@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 4 months ago

That's tentatively great to hear, though I am honestly surprised that they got that pushed through there.

Now whether or not it will actually happen is something I'd like to keep an eye on. As an example, the employers side citing the freaking games industry as a good model of work-life balance is absolutely ludicrious. Hopefully the trade unions get more traction on their proposals instead.

Not Korea, but we have a similiar work culture with a lot of the same issues and been trying all sorts of reforms to cut back on people literally dropping dead from overwork and while there are some improvements, a lot hasn't stuck. People often don't report their working hours correctly, work without clocking in, and management sometimes looks the other way if they are benefiting.

Admittedly, our efforts were pretty lackluster. We tried a Premium Friday for a while that encouraged companies to give their employees the last friday of the month off. Besides having as much impact as a pizza party, I don't know a single company that did it.