Thread

Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm

466 points · 499 comments · rzk

janalsncm · 1790819453 · focus · HN ↗
In principle this can be a lot better than regular dating apps.
Tinder doesn’t know if they were successful or not. They just know you stopped opening the app. In fact they are incentivized not to make matches that lead to marriage, because then you will stop paying.
The government knows whether you got married and stayed married, and given the social cost of divorce, they are pretty incentivized to keep people married.
1. derangedHorse · 1790822474 · focus · HN ↗
  > given the social cost of divorce
  I think they're more concerned about their fertility rate and labor force. A 0.87 total fertility rate for 2025 [1] is pretty bad.
  [1] <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-12/singapore-low-fertility-rate-existential-challenge/106397470" rel="nofollow">https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-12/singapore-low-fertili...
  1. yutter4 · 1790822990 · focus · HN ↗
    Western governments don't seem at all concerned about this, unfortunately. They no longer represent the people, they represent the economy. And the economy is far more interested in importing millions of unskilled adult migrants from developing countries who are immediately eligible for debt, rent, mortgages, and low-paying jobs to prop up the GDP, rather than a crying baby that will leech on public services for 18 years beforehand. Culture, stability, safety, happiness, long-term prosperity and survival be damned.
    roenxi · 1790823769 · focus · HN ↗
    What aspect of that do you want them to be concerned about? The bigger concern was population growth, it is nearly impossible for living standards to keep rising if the population is growing exponentially - at some point the number of new mouths overwhelmed the ability to produce food and some sort of underclass has to form. We need at least stabilisation at some point and it seems the easiest way to achieve that is to wobble between growth and decay.
    We have all the tools for population decline to work out fine. The economy is run mainly by capital and it seems like we're decoupling military power from number of soldiers.
    aprilthird2021 · 1790831690 · focus · HN ↗
    > And the economy is far more interested in importing millions of unskilled adult migrants from developing countries who are immediately eligible for debt, rent, mortgages, and low-paying jobs to prop up the GDP, rather than a crying baby that will leech on public services for 18 years beforehand.
    This is such a wrong idea about immigration and the economy and how it grows that it's almost more funny than sad.
    No Western government is growing its economy through sectors primarily staffed with low wage workers. The US, for example has seen much of its growth in the tech sector. And as it's had huge numbers of immigrants to meet the demand caused by tech growth, real wages in that sector have risen for nearly a decade. And they outpace wage growth in many other sectors over that time.
    But regardless of that, when an economic sector grows it's able to convert human productivity into returns beyond the pay of those humans. And often that growth allows the return rate over productivity to increase over time, making it more attractive for a business to hire more and raise wages. In such a market, when a population doesn't grow, there needs to be workers from either outside the country or imported in. You can't just have mandated degrowth of growing businesses. That's worse than communism
    yutter4 · 1790834990 · focus · HN ↗
    >In such a market, when a population doesn't grow, there needs to be workers from either outside the country or imported in. You can't just have mandated degrowth of growing businesses.
    It's not mandated degrowth, it's natural. The people do not exist, no government is mandating that. You do not just get to import millions of foreigners to grow your slop app.
    I would far sooner have natural highs and lows in economic metrics as our population naturally adjusts to its environment than to have a corporatist multiethnic hellscape that holds "line must go up" as its founding truth. My children deserve a homeland, not an arbitrary economic zone surrounded by strangers in which to pay taxes.
    aprilthird2021 · 1790839979 · focus · HN ↗
    Mandated or not, degrowth of businesses would be disastrous for the people of any country. Your children won't have much of a future in your homeland if there are no economic opportunities for them when they are adults. They might even leave the homeland for good finding those opportunities elsewhere and becoming immigrants themselves. A tale as old as time for nearly every country whose economy hits the toilet the way you think the government should force it to
    lmz · 1790832113 · focus · HN ↗
    Believe me, if you ask the locals there they would mostly say the same thing about their government too.
    djtango · 1790834761 · focus · HN ↗
    In Singapore?
    I think it is hard to find many places right now in today's environment where people feel their government look after their interests. But you can definitely do a lot worse than what citizens of Singapore actually get...
    At the top of my head the only places I can think of where citizens get a comparably good deal are Switzerland, Dubai, Norway maybe Monaco (don't actually know on this one).
    lmz · 1790837337 · focus · HN ↗
    Most countries don't import (and naturalize) as many foreigners while expecting the locals to serve national service. There's also this quip from a minister some time ago: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37627269" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37627269
    aleph_minus_one · 1790855264 · focus · HN ↗
    > But you can definitely do a lot worse than what citizens of Singapore actually get...
    People who have a pronounced anti-surveillance stance will strongly object this claim.
    dyauspitr · 1790838336 · focus · HN ↗
    The same immigrants that started 50% of all American unicorns?
    watwut · 1790851237 · focus · HN ↗
    Unicorns that are now destroying America, its democracy and threated to take rest of the world along. So, it might not be all that great argument.
    aprilthird2021 · 1790907144 · focus · HN ↗
    You think successful tech companies are destroying America?
    watwut · 1790951245 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, I think Thiel, Musk and the rest of them are deliberately trying to destroy both democracy and America as such. I think so, because they are openly talking about it.
    pjc50 · 1790855090 · focus · HN ↗
    People forget that e.g. Andy Grove, Intel founder, was a refugee from the Nazis.
    someonebaggy · 1790859759 · focus · HN ↗
    And Elon Musk is an illegal immigrant from South Africa.
    dyauspitr · 1790887019 · focus · HN ↗
    And importantly because a lot of the opposition to immigrants is generally racial, Indian founders have founded something like 20% of all unicorns in the US while being only 1.5% of the population.
    yutter4 · 1790953960 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    roncesvalles · 1790841657 · focus · HN ↗
    >importing millions of unskilled adult migrants
    There is no Western country importing unskilled immigrants.
    The "yield" from crying babies is not 100%. Some will die before their productive years, some will succumb to disabilities, addictions, delinquency, or simply choose not to study and work.
    Importing an immigrant cuts away all that "shrinkage", at zero cost to the receiving country (their country of birth bore that cost). It's such a good deal it's a no brainer, basically a tree that grows money. Not to mention it's immediate. Crying babies have a 18-22 year lag time.
    Also, government incentives to have children usually stimulates immigrants and poor people anyway, if your argument is purely ethnoracial. You may as well take the 23-year-old Indian or Algerian dude. There is very little the government can do to make a white couple in Connecticut have babies.
    modo_mario · 1790843063 · focus · HN ↗
    >There is no Western country importing unskilled immigrants.
    That was exactly what govs did here in western europe for our mines (to strikebreak) and what they do for harbour workers and few other industries still. It also incidentally makes up most of the migrants coming in even if they aren't technically imported. Sufficient open doors, incentives and looking the other way to form the expectation of likely settlement ends up amounting to the same though.
    >The "yield" from crying babies is not 100%. Some will die before their productive years, some will succumb to disabilities, addictions, delinquency, or simply choose not to study and work. Importing an immigrant cuts away all that "shrinkage", at zero cost to the receiving country (their country of birth bore that cost). It's such a good deal it's a no brainer, basically like planting a tree that grows money. Not to mention it's immediate. Crying babies have a 18-22 year lag time.
    I can only feel utter disgust at that kind of rethoric. The idea that a state works for it's citizens and a nationstate advances it's nation(s) is anathema replaced with treating people like fungibles economic tokens.
    It also doesn't hold up since the lifetime contribution of your average non-eu migrant ends up negative in more expansive studies. (With extreme variance between origins.)
    What's next? Are we going to have shortsighted economists pushing citizens to emigrate again when they don't fill their desired economic roles (like the UK did during windrush times) and replace from abroad to maximise their average economic output?
    andai · 1790853016 · focus · HN ↗
    >There is no Western country importing unskilled immigrants.
    Well, there's at least one getting ready to send them back.
    <a href="https://www.restorebritain.org.uk/pp_mass_deportations_legitimacy_legality_and_logistics" rel="nofollow">https://www.restorebritain.org.uk/pp_mass_deportations_legit...
    roncesvalles · 1790854702 · focus · HN ↗
    Illegal immigrants don't count, that's a law enforcement issue. The counterexample to "there is no country where murder is legal" is not a link to murder stats.
    yutter4 · 1790900138 · focus · HN ↗
    >There is no Western country importing unskilled immigrants.
    False. We have unknown numbers of illegal immigrants being ushered in by governments every day; rampant fraud by foreigners, especially students, working in unskilled positions for cash or using a friend's ID; and we have many "skilled" migrants with rubbish qualifications that reveal themselves to be a sham the moment they go to work (potentially at great cost or risk to others). Don't tell me we aren't importing unskilled foreigners when almost every Uber and delivery driver I've had for the last 15 years has been an Indian.
    Absolutely no actual Westerner is making the arguments that you have, by the way. You have revealed yourself as a foreigner trying to subvert our way of life. We don't care about a baby's "lag time", we love our children and couldn't care less if economic metrics don't. We certainly don't believe we "may as well" take in millions of Indians or Algerians to meet arbitrary economic goals rather than maintaining a harmonious and prosperous homeland for our White children. You cannot put a price on that.
    aprilthird2021 · 1790906994 · focus · HN ↗
    > Don't tell me we aren't importing unskilled foreigners when almost every Uber and delivery driver I've had for the last 15 years has been an Indian.
    Indian people are the richest ethnic group in the US.
    Maybe your anecdotes and perceptions aren't the sum total of reality
    yutter4 · 1790909506 · focus · HN ↗
    How is that related to my observation?
    aprilthird2021 · 1790932486 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you think unskilled foreigners have become the wealthiest group in the US bc Ubering and gas stations pay a ton of money? Or are your anecdotes just not representative of the country as a whole. Most of the economy and skilled labor is done by people you never meet or interact with
    yutter4 · 1790953681 · focus · HN ↗
    Why are you implying that the two are mutually exclusive though? It can be true that Indians are relatively wealthy as a group in the West and also that there are a staggering number of Indian drivers in taxi and delivery roles. I've seen it with my own eyes, I don't think there's any number of tech CEOs you can list that would make me believe that this unrelated phenomenon isn't real.
    aprilthird2021 · 1790955662 · focus · HN ↗
    But the median income is higher than any other ethnic group. Like I said, who you see is a small crazy tiny fraction of who is actually making the economy productive. Every time you say "I seen it with my own eyes" it's further proof you don't understand the economy or how society works. Most stats we have show people what they don't see: ultimately immigrants to this country are economically productive and we choose skilled immigrants with high median wages who make a brighter future for any next generation.
    yutter4 · 1790986621 · focus · HN ↗
    Who cares? I don't understand how this is relevant to the discussion.
    Even if we grant that Indian doctors and CEOs and other high earners are a net positive, what does that have to do with the reality that we have a huge number of foreigners (especially Indians) working menial jobs that require only basic qualifications at best. Drivers, hospitality, retail, etc.
    Are you implying that we can't filter these beforehand, so we must accept a random young Indian man without any way of knowing if he is a nuclear physicist or a 60 IQ dropout?
    We do not appear to be choosing skilled immigrants. We've just opened the floodgates to foreigners, many of whom clearly (and occasionally offensively) have no desirable skills nor willingness or capacity to cooperate in a clean and safe White society with long-term outlooks.
    aprilthird2021 · 1791019386 · focus · HN ↗
    It's relevant because it's proof that we are selecting skilled foreign immigrants. That is the only way they would have the highest median income in the US.
    You saw some drivers, retail workers, etc. who are Indian and you assume it's massive and huge amounts of such people when in reality they are a small fraction of the Indian immigrants in the US (as stats prove). They can be the brothers or other family members of such people as our immigration system let's skilled immigrants bring over certain family members as an incentive to attract them.
    If you can accept statistics, you'll see your perception is wrong. If you can't then who can help you see reality? The sky can be purple if you want to live that way then
    AnnikaL · 1790913058 · focus · HN ↗
    University students are presumably not "unskilled" --- they're learning some skills at university, and probably got admitted on the basis of some skills! Maybe the jobs they are working are unskilled, but that's not what we were talking about.
    Also, talking about "maintaining a homeland for white children" is eerily reminiscent of the white supremacist 'fourteen words' slogan: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words
    yutter4 · 1790918637 · focus · HN ↗
    There is nothing eerie about people wanting the best for their children. Fuck you and fuck off.
    Read those fourteen words. What sick freak would not want that? To object to that is to be openly racist and genocidal towards White people. It is the most natural, healthy sentiment a person can express, especially if White himself.
    AnnikaL · 1791167519 · focus · HN ↗
    I think it is good for people to want the best for their children. It doesn't follow that one should care more about some children who aren't related to you than about other unrelated children, because of their skin color.
    dominicrose · 1790844844 · focus · HN ↗
    It's sad and hard to admit that we're shaped by our government and the result is 1984-ugly.
    nisegami · 1790864189 · focus · HN ↗
    There are really fringe perspectives out there that imagine capitalism as a living entity of which we individual humans are simply parts of the whole. Governments that represent the economy over the people are exactly what you'd expect if that were true.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.