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It might be intellectually incoherent but it worked.
Obviously the modern context presents different challenges. Child mortality is not sky high anymore.
However, our society has huge coercive resources. Economically, citizens are coerced by powerful bureaucracies to fund all kinds of programs, wars, welfare. Socially, policing works via coercion. They don't just educate people on what to do, people are coerced by police wielding guns.
There's no reason to drop coercion entirely with regards to sexual relations when it's present in all other aspects of life. In fact there are extremely strong coercive systems set up for underage sex and other scenarios. One might very reasonably say that it's bizarre and inconsistent to have such harshness allocated for relatively minor problems while civilization-ending, nation-ending decline is met with a limp-wristed 'we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas, bring in more immigrants'. Imperial Japan tried coercion, they restricted female employment, banned abortion and taxed bachelors. There was modest fertility growth in an industrializing, urbanizing society albeit complicated by the war. In 1945 the US changed their constitution to give equal rights to women and Japanese fertility plummeted, never to recover.
https://x.com/SyroJaziran/status/1848973547344928887
This kind of coercion may not be the only solution but it is a solution. There could also be incentives-based solutions. Take the entire pension budget and transfer it to fund parents who raise children to certain standards. 10-15% of GDP should get things happening. But you'd have real political problems doing this, any sufficiently powerful incentive resembles coercion, it would require the same voter-proof political consensus that mass immigration enjoys in many Western countries. There'd need to be a huge, forceful redistribution of political power for this to happen, likewise with largescale cloning or any other effective solution.
Nonsense, that is perfectly coherent.
Men, Inc. wants to acquire sex for as little a price as possible (as opposed to Women, Inc., which wants to set the price of sex as high as possible). Everything either one does is downstream from that fundamental fact, which is itself downstream from human biology. (This analysis ignores men that want commitment/women who want sex, but those are statistical outliers and can be safely ignored.)
So we should expect, when men are dominant in society, that we see lots of high-quality sex at affordable prices (so lots of mistresses, sex-pro-quo/workplace sex [historically frustrated by the lack of co-ed workplaces but the prototypical example is the Casting Couch] and secret other families, the 'raise my kids/be exclusive to me while I fuck other women' polyamory, and maximally attractive [as in, 13-16 year old] brides... into marriages that bind them but doesn't protect their interests in any way); when women are dominant in society, we should expect price controls out the ass ('fight for 25', #metoo, 'if she's younger than you it's rape', the 'pay my bills while I fuck other men' polyamory, and marriages that bind men but don't protect their interests in any way).
Unless Women, Inc. is in control, in which case again, it's perfectly consistent that men be punished [more severely than for most other crimes, including murder] for an act that inherently devalues older women. Young women are competition for old women, you see, so naturally old women would seek to keep them out of the sexual marketplace so they can demand a higher price. It is quite literally just the distaff counterpart to the "state-mandated girlfriend", but that selfishness is tolerated/Women, Inc. can afford that right now, so it continues (contrast men, who are forced to support children born of statutory rape).
Not necessarily; Men, Inc. started ceding power to Women, Inc. in a major way centered around the 1900s. The suffragettes were not a violent movement. What did change was technology that brought the average woman up to the productivity of the average man- the sweatshop is an equalizing force, you see- and why lots of traditionalists get confused about the Sexual Revolution, because it was in a time of economic productivity that didn't solely advance men.
It is worth noting that the Japanese solution you mentioned above addresses both male and female selfishness according to what the balance of power in the society could bear at the time. To deal with Men, Inc. you impose heavy costs on sex (and make sure that having it with more than one woman is unaffordable); to deal with Women, Inc. you suppress their worth outside of sex (and make sure that they don't have a good life outside of a context where they're selling that sex to a man).
Since Japan has come up it might be my chance to introduce the concept of 枕営業or "makura eigyou." This term could be translated strictly as "pillow business" but in reality refers to the necessarily transactional nature of the mizu shoubai or "water trade" aka night life business such as hostess bars, etc.
Relevant to this discussion due to a 2015 case that made the news.. Essentially while long term infidelity is grounds for divorce, just sex with your friendly neighborhood hostess is not. At least not so in a way that would grant the wife a settlement. Why? Because our friendly neighborhood hostess (or whatever) works hard for the money, that's why. Just another part of the nightly grind. Sorry, wives and mothers in Japan, but at least dad was just paying for it and wasn't really in Luv.
Who says Japanese law is impenetrable? Well, I say that, but I suppose sometimes I'm wrong. All puns intended.
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