I understand that what I'm about to say is probably out of step with the majority opinion here but I think this view is still worth expressing and debating. I believe this problem is a reality that desperately needs to be addressed.

The country of South Korea is said to be facing "national extinction" due to their extremely low birthrates. At the current rate, the next generation will be roughly one third the size of the current one, shrinking the South Korean population far below anything necessary for the current infrastructure to function. This is a huge problem that no one is talking about.

I brought it up to my friend and his dad who are from South Korea and they made some interesting points as to why this is happening. They said:

• South Koreans face an extremely demanding work life. Now that women are almost universally forced to work, motherhood has become nearly impossible. South Korean women simply don't have the time to fulfil their duties as both an employee and a mother.

• South Korea is a very market driven society. Having a child is seen as a determent to personal economic security. Parents are also sometimes discriminated against in the workplace.

• No woman is ever raised with motherhood in mind anymore. Before Korean independence, raising the next generation was considered a sacred role in line with the old Confucian way of thinking. Since then, the role of woman has shifted from motherhood to economic productivity. Women who decide to be mothers used to be cherished, but now they're considered lazy or wasting their time. Being a parent is seen as a senseless luxury.

• South Korean media promotes feminine men and "sexy, fast" lifestyles over more grounded and family oriented ones. Masculinity has almost no presence in South Korean entertainment.

All these elements seem to come together into a common narrative: the mechanisms that increase economic productivity are detrimental to the long-term existence of society.

Now I think of our own country. I see how young people are going to college or hustling instead of getting married. I see how a basic starter home is unaffordable to anyone under the age of 40 in most places. I see the amount of men giving up on life in massive numbers and the women who don't seem to think the vast majority of men are worth marrying in their current financial state. It's a slow moving disaster. Our country and the entire western-inspired world (just about every first world country) is a generation or two away from total demographic implosion. Imagine if half the people around you disappeared today and what that would do to your local economy. Now imagine that happening on such a large scale.

So what's the solution? Socialist countries all seem to have the same problems, along with the million others that come from economic planning. If we look to "healthy" countries, they seem to have a lot of qualities that would repulse the majority in the west. They're "repressive" and underdeveloped according to the standards we've cultivated for ourselves.

So it's a real catch-22. We like the lifestyle that comes with the modern world, but that lifestyle is not feasible in the long term. What tends to survive is static, small scale economies that take part in an unchanging social order. The economy only survives when it's forced to be part of a complete image of society. But that's a hard sell.

I'm just rambling at this point but I wanted to put my thoughts out there to hopefully improve on them. This is just where I'm at right now. Hopefully there's a better option I'm not aware of.