Thread

Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm

466 points · 499 comments · rzk

mlboss · 1790816419 · focus · HN ↗
There is a very simple solution to the problem. Just add a tax to single people and childless couples or reverse give huge tax break to married and couple with kids.
In past the motive for marriage was sex and companionship which was frowned in society if out of wedlock. Now it is not frowned upon. The old constraint is gone and we need to add new constraints if we want to solve the problem.
1. yieldcrv · 1790816492 · focus · HN ↗
  thats already the status quo in the US and it isn’t curbing a decline in marriage
2. missedthecue · 1790816990 · focus · HN ↗
  A very funny but evidence backed policy would be free GLP-1s for women. A recent study showed GLP-1 use resulted in a 29 percentage point increase in the likelihood of a woman finding a relationship. A woman converting to conservative Protestantism for comparison results in a 2.7 percentage point increase.
  1. Der_Einzige · 1790817613 · focus · HN ↗
    GLP-1's are so good for society we should be giving it out for free on every street corner.
    dannyw · 1790817995 · focus · HN ↗
    GLP-1s, while being pretty miraculous as a whole, do come with risks like every other drug. There’s plenty of 1 in 10k or 100k side effects.
    Kurtzerkag has a good video about it: <a href="https://youtu.be/TYhNHX372ek?si=5ESz3ykXykyUcmYg" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/TYhNHX372ek?si=5ESz3ykXykyUcmYg
    loeg · 1790818321 · focus · HN ↗
    1 in 100k risks (0.001%) aren't an argument against something that would benefit double digit percentages of the population.
    MisterMunchkin · 1790852316 · focus · HN ↗
    Obesity has 1 in 1 side effects.
    desterothx · 1790855256 · focus · HN ↗
    Your spelling reminds me of the old Benedict Cucumberbatch jokes
    viraptor · 1790854647 · focus · HN ↗
    Korea is close to that with the looks/weight social obsession. Not free, but trivial to get with close to no checks -vs- required medical reasons in other countries. But on the other hand... it's fueling the looks/weight social obsession, which has its own downsides longterm.
    swed420 · 1790888383 · focus · HN ↗
    GLP-1 has the tradeoff of hindering enjoyment of the food you do eat, which is understandably a dealbreaker for many.
3. nojs · 1790817411 · focus · HN ↗
  Singapore already does this! There are huge housing and tax incentives.
  1. desterothx · 1790855922 · focus · HN ↗
    How do they counteract sham relationships/marriages. I assume they have to live together for a certain amount of time or something similar? If the marriage falls apart do they need to return the incentives?
4. lucb1e · 1790818832 · focus · HN ↗
  One of the best things you can do on this planet is not asking it to support another person, at least not with a comfortable lifestyle which I'm sure we'd all want. Why'd you try to soft-force people to have more children?!
  As a secondary problem, people (traditionally women, but with a two-income household it could be either party) often already can't leave a relationship because they can't support themselves and their child(ren) without the other half and so they're stuck in relationships that might either not work for them or that are downright abusive. With a big tax on leaving your partner... oof, why in the world would you want more lock-in?! Is this a manosphere control thing that I'm not aware of?
  1. mlboss · 1790822376 · focus · HN ↗
    How do you propose to solve the population crisis ? Given a choice people will always want the position of less responsibility. As a society we have agree to give sacrifices so that we can have next generation.
    incompatible · 1790825826 · focus · HN ↗
    What population crisis are you referring to? Usually, the problem is seen as the population getting too high and humanity taking more resources than is good for the planet. The global population is still increasing.
    sneed-oil · 1790867059 · focus · HN ↗
    The problem in most first world countries is that there are not enough workers to take care of the aging population
    lucb1e · 1790898200 · focus · HN ↗
    But it's also self-evident that if we always need more young people than old, so that the old are taken care of, then we need an infinite amount of people. So long as we don't have a second earth (or asteroid mining or whatever), that seems like a much bigger problem than that old people have to wipe their own butts. Yes, I'm well aware that includes myself and that I might legit not be able to take care of myself properly. Getting old sucks either way. A stable population (or a slight shrinkage until we're at a sustainable level, insofar as we should want to manually steer that anyway) seems like a much better solution than to have old and young people suffer because there's not enough resources for anyone
    The population crisis is that the current population isn't sustainable: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day (and most of those haven't a rich lifestyle yet; most people on HN are in the top 10% worldwide income). We need either to become more sustainable per capita, have fewer capita, or get more earths. Any solution is fine. Otherwise, we'll run out, and the remaining 90% of people get a lot of undeserved worldsuck
    Note that we are already doing what you want: world population is projected to increase by 25% (!) in the next 75 years. At the same time, we're lifting people out of poverty (<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-in-extreme-poverty?tab=line&country=OWID_WRL~CHN~IND~USA~IDN~PAK" rel="nofollow">https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-in-ex...) which causes them to be able to buy more stuff, live richer lives, and be less sustainable (e.g. visible on a CO2 chart for the same countries: <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?country=OWID_WRL~USA~IND~CHN~IDN~PAK" rel="nofollow">https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?c...). Which is fair right? Why shouldn't they get to live like us. But we can't go on like this; something has to give.
    More people isn't helpful for at least another century. Let's evaluate the baby-making situation in 2100 and work on the real problems we face today
    [deleted] · 1790898060 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    vlyan · 1790919867 · focus · HN ↗
    >How do you propose to solve the population crisis ?
    by accepting that it is unsolvable. you will not fix it with incentives, disincentives, and government-funded nagging. fixing the population crisis requires undoing urbanization and education. good luck with that.
    quertyrecord74 · 1790956160 · focus · HN ↗
    the sustainable population is 3 billion for earth. we are already way too much.
5. croes · 1790818929 · focus · HN ↗
  That’s how you get loveless marriages and kids whose purpose is being a tax break.
  Good wages, enough free time, affordable housing, free child care, universal healthcare.
  That’s the better way.
  There plenty of people who want to marry and get kids but they don’t have enough time and money.
  1. mlboss · 1790822138 · focus · HN ↗
    History will disagree. People used to have multiple children with far less resources and education. It is a well known phenomenon that more affluence lead to less children.
    croes · 1790830150 · focus · HN ↗
    In history having children wasn’t decision based like it is now.
    Now it‘s easy to have sex without the risk of getting pregnant unwanted.
    So know you have to provide the right environment so people want to have children.
    Back then the choice was much more limited.
    fragmede · 1790832353 · focus · HN ↗
    If we want to recreate those conditions, we need to: Cut the power and Internet for an unknown period, stop the sales of condoms, and give away alcohol.
    croes · 1790864425 · focus · HN ↗
    That would raise the birthrates but I don’t think women would be so happy about it.
    godwinson__4-8 · 1790835179 · focus · HN ↗
    Because children were an economic good - a source of labor and something that could be exchanged.
    Also most children died before adulthood.
    If you are affluent with each additional kid the risks more rapidly outweigh the rewards. Since all of us are generally more affluent now it is quite sensible to avoid having many kids.
    The history around childbirth is really very brutal and grim. We should be having less kids. It's a positive sign for our species, like having less blood spilled over religious conflicts.
    People who have kids because they don't know what else to do with their lives are probably raising children that are going to turn into unpleasant adults. I'm not sure why I would want to incentivize more kids where I would not relish the parents undergoing mitosis either. If someone wants to reproduce have at it, but why should I be excited by this? If "hell is other people" then what are other people's kids?
    akk0 · 1790859854 · focus · HN ↗
    Because somebody needs to grow your crops, sew your clothes, lay your fiber optic cable, synthesize your medication and cut your hair?
    godwinson__4-8 · 1790864453 · focus · HN ↗
    Between all the excess in the economy (which will only grow as less people are born) and increasing levels of automation, I'm going to give that a hard no.
    If you want to spawn children under the theory that they can sew my clothes be my guest. I assume you did not mean to confine this benefit to yourself given the other things you lumped it with.
    I have no interest in bringing a soul into this world to satisfy anyone's economic interest. If you disagree that's your prerogative. Historically the only thing more dangerous than having kids is trying to control who has kids. So do what you will. Just don't ask I be excited for you to raise children under such a flimsy theory.
  2. TFNA · 1790823784 · focus · HN ↗
    > Good wages, enough free time, affordable housing, free child care, universal healthcare.
    Nordic countries did this. Birthrates have been declining regardless. Even Gulf Arab countries which are an even more enviable welfare state, and have considerable religious-cultural emphasis on childraising, too, have seen declining birthrates.
    SXX · 1790831825 · focus · HN ↗
    Birthrates decline is unrelated process which is just stronger than those incentives.
    Do you aware how expensive Nordic countries are to live in and have social life even counting all the free stuff?
    And gulf arab countries are basically even worse in this regard.
    fragmede · 1790832415 · focus · HN ↗
    It's simpler than that. People need to have hope for the future. With the climate going to shit, who wants to subject a child to that?
    TFNA · 1790834658 · focus · HN ↗
    You might want to get out more. Climate-change concerns are amplified online like many other kinds of activism, but if you travel countries with declining birthrates, you'll rarely hear people IRL speaking of them.
    viraptor · 1790855270 · focus · HN ↗
    A lot of this is just a difference in topics for conversations - local/global. See: us talking here about a Singapore dating app, when likely neither of us two is in Singapore and at least one is already married. On the other hand, people in my circle are worried about the climate change concerns and we're aware of that... but it's not often a topic of conversation. It's not the concern that's amplified, just the topic is more frequent. But it doesn't mean I'm not seriously worried about my kid having to migrate in later life due to local agriculture becoming not viable at scale, one of the dumb wars turning into ww3, or just dying due to one of the current climate effects turning into a feedback loop that we can't survive within the next few generations.
    nemo · 1790860876 · focus · HN ↗
    Not everyone is well informed about the realities of climate change, but many are and it's a concern I hear from normal people from the US, Europe, and Asia that I've met. Some bury their heads in the sand, and if you do you'll ignore others who haven't, but it's a very legitimate concern for people with a basic awareness of reality. Things have gotten far worse in my lifetime, probably older people are more concerned since we can see the changes more clearly, but not all young people are deluded or ignorant about the reality of climate change.
    mlboss · 1790900367 · focus · HN ↗
    What better way to solve challenges by getting rid of the generation that created it and letting new generation come and build a better world.
    TFNA · 1790832634 · focus · HN ↗
    Gulf Arab countries are not expensive for locals. They are provided with housing, a sinecure job. They drive multiple new-model cars. Nearly every family can afford a Filipino nanny, a cook and South Asian coolies for other labor. And food costs are some of the lowest in the developed world, much less than Europe.
    mrweasel · 1790845773 · focus · HN ↗
    The strongest indicator of declining birthrates isn't living expences, it's the education level of women in a society. Highly educated women, with good, high earning jobs have less children.
    boelboel · 1790876281 · focus · HN ↗
    Highly educated women with high earning jobs don't really have fewer children. It's the women who are above average educated with above average earning. The first category would be graduate degrees/specialised degrees with an earning above 200K in most parts of America (well above it in the vhcol areas and lower in lcol areas) while the second is those earning 70-120K in most parts of America with a bachelor education or some less wanted graduate degrees (again a bit higher in vhcol areas).
    Very high educated well earning women can offload their duties to others even the getting pregnant part these days. Educated women also tend to have a higher desire for large families, I know families with large amounts of engineers/lawyers/doctors where almost all get more than 2 children.
  3. matrix87 · 1790832030 · focus · HN ↗
    brute force scales a lot better than nuance
6. sankhao · 1790826927 · focus · HN ↗
  My pet theory is that "in the past" the motive for having kids was having someone look after you in your old age and not simply starve to death. In the modern world we think we have money to take care of that problem. But money is useless without kids to give it to, so nothing has changed. My solution is to make the age of retirement to be 90 years old, minus 10 years per kid.
7. itake · 1790829433 · focus · HN ↗
  The USA has a flavor of this: tax discounts for married couples and kids.
  But your proposal really f's over people with real trauma and medical conditions that prevent them from having kids. I've met several people that don't want kids due to the trauma they endured as children or men and women that are just infertile.
  1. pikma · 1790831896 · focus · HN ↗
    In the US, if both partners earn similar wages, they pay more taxes once they marry. So it's a tax penalty.
    pvdebbe · 1790836662 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think you're forced to file jointly?
    ctchocula · 1790847795 · focus · HN ↗
    Married filing separately (MFS) tax brackets are just MFS divided by 2, which is worse than Individual tax brackets.
    Also various things get cut in half e.g. SALT cap phase-out income limit, mortgage deduction limit that MFS is almost never worth it except in a few niche situations and it acts as a last resort option if you are no longer on speaking terms with your spouse but haven't divorced yet, yet need to file taxes for the year.
    itake · 1790844336 · focus · HN ↗
    You’re not forced to file jointly, but you don’t get the same benefits of 1 high earner and 1 home maker experiences.
8. fendy3002 · 1790838812 · focus · HN ↗
  you need a very high tax at the start, and a huge discount for it to be interesting, since raising children is a big time and money sink.
9. Grombobulous · 1790856110 · focus · HN ↗
  A few things:
  First, I don’t think we can reduce past marriage motives in the way you describe as different cultures have had varying views of marriage and sex throughout human history.
  Next, has it been proven that monetary incentives increase childbirth? I thought I’ve read things showing that it doesn’t do a lot to influence birth rates. E.g., Sweden has some pretty generous time off and support policies for having kids and their birth rate is really not much higher than other less supportive countries of comparable status (wealthy, developed countries).
  Finally, I dispute the idea of a “problem” existing in the first place. I think the long-term survival of the human race is more likely with a smaller population than at present. When I see news about birth rates plummeting in third world countries as they develop, I feel relieved, not worried.
  I think it’s easier to deal with population loss than it is to deal with overpopulation, too much carbon emissions due to high population, habitat destruction due to continued human habitat expansion, etc.
  My mini-conspiracy theory would be that it’s mostly corporate interests that don’t want the population to go down. During the plague, the population was cut dramatically and as a result wages were higher for 100 years due to a labor shortage. Corporations just want more underpaid labor and more customers. I submit the idea that maybe individuals aren’t actually better off with a constantly increasing population.
  I’ve also noticed that, at least in the US, the political cohort most concerned about solving low childbirth is doing the least to support higher childbirth. They disinvest in education and are against no-tuition community college and university, they are against universal no-tuition childcare, they are against paid parental leave (the US mandates zero days of paid parental leave on a federal level), they are against medically necessary abortions in emergency situations during child-rearing, they are against immigration which also increases US population and birth rate, they are against universal healthcare, they’re against sustainable population growth through urbanism, public transit, and renewable energy, preferring single family home car-dependent and environmental destructive sprawl development.
  In other words, find your political representative in your jurisdiction that talks a lot about needing to have more babies and see if they’ve ever talked about raising the minimum wage or taxing billionaires to fund better access to education, nutrition, child care, time off, healthcare, public transit, etc.
10. quertyrecord74 · 1790956079 · focus · HN ↗
  but why? why punish singles?
  1. mlboss · 1790957891 · focus · HN ↗
    One argument will be that society invested lot of resources in bringing up the "singles" but now it is their time to take up the responsibility. Extra tax seems like a easy way out.

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