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How Singapore's government-run dating service works

255 points · 369 comments · danielfoster

  1. water-data-dude · · focus · HN ↗
    You know, there's probably fewer perverse incentives with a government run dating service. Obviously I can imagine ways it could suck, but when I compare them to how commercial dating services are run it's hard to see how they could do a _worse_ job.
    1. pcthrowaway · · focus · HN ↗
      If people are oriented towards traditional relationships, then pairing people up younger probably leads to higher overall fertility rate in the population, so I could see governments with existentially declining fertility rates (read: almost all of them) taking an interest in actually providing a successful service here (unlike the commercial dating apps).

      Of course, a lack of a match is not the only thing that prevents people from having kids, but I'm curious what the impact of an optimal matching service would be on fertility rates.

      edit: I think governments might do well to provide funding for dating apps (whether privately or publicly owned) based on how many matches from the app actually lead to children. Completely flip the classical incentives on their head. Should be easy enough to ask if newborns were a product of a participating app as part of the birth certification process.

      1. expedition32 · · focus · HN ↗
        What is a traditional relationship? Fathers selling their daughter off?
        1. Retric · · focus · HN ↗
          People having “large” numbers of children.

          The modern trend of most families with 0-2 kids isn’t sustainable. We don’t need to go back to 5+ being the norm but a self stable society needs to be able to offset non parents thus requiring 3+ children families to be quite common.

          1. hypfer · · focus · HN ↗
            For that, one prerequisite would be housing that can house such families.

            Which, in times of working from home, means 4 bedrooms, 2 offices, 1 living room.

            Ideally with walls not built from paper mache, so that they can actually be used for encapsulation of different requirements.

            1. sacado2 · · focus · HN ↗
              Not everyone works from home. But if you do, you can live in unexpensive areas of your country, so it's a non-issue.
              1. hypfer · · focus · HN ↗
                Well I mean the whole discussion was about "why is the fertility rate so low it should not be so low".

                So that does sound like it is very much an issue. To someone, anyway. I don't really care. I have no horse in this race.

                __

                To cover the expected pedantic reply:

                Of course technically it's everyone's problem. But just because it technically affects you doesn't mean that you have to emotionally involve yourself in stupid online discussions that don't comprehend systemic views and mistake them for personal whining.

              2. b3ing · · focus · HN ↗
                Until you get laid off or they do RTO, then it’s move back to the big city
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