This page is intended to find ways we can measure societal success. We have a related page on measuring societal failure.
In looking for ways to measure societal success for Australia, I see some good indicators.
Teen Fertility has massively declined
Many factors appear to have contributed to the 1971 statistic of 55.5 births per 1000 teen girl reducing to 14.6 births per 1000 teen girls in 2013. The factors appear to include
- Better education of teens
- Better education of parents
- Acceptance of teens accessing contraception
- Lower rates of unprotected teen sexual involvement
- Higher approachability for teens to parents
- Improved support facilities
This is in particular is an astounding achievement, especially against the tide of Media and Social Media sexualisation of everything from fashion all the may down to your toothbrush.
I’m looking for evidence on how prevalence of easily accessible pornography has influenced this. I would have expected it would inflate fertility. These statistics suggest the opposite somehow.
Available Nutrition
As an early 60’s child, everyone accepted you bought the fruit and vegetables currently “In Season”. Every kid I knew massively anticipated the availability of watermelon come summer. Shipping them, year round was unheard of.
Even many basics like bananas became scarce and very expensive for at least half of the year prior to the massive cool stores and Gas fruit preservation.
Yeah, yeah, I hear the Far-Left alarmist hype of a million starving children in Australia. I call bullshit on that. In the 60’s, 1 in 3 kids were slim, 1-2 in 30 were a little overweight and the average Primary school of 5-600 had 2-4 Obese kids. Slim is actually healthy with balanced diet.
I’m curious to see any serious data supporting this mysterious million starving children. I personally haven’t seen an underweight child in years. Just like the Alarmist Domestic Violence Fake News industry, the organisations ganing their funding to fix this huge starvation problem argue for much bigger paydays with Alarmist, Emergency campaigns.
- Are there kids with unbalanced diets? Yes
- Are there families with low incomes on tight budgets? Yes
- Are there kids with Drug addicted and alcoholic parents that refuse to pay for food? YES!
- Does every Druggie parent know they don’t have to feed their kids? ABSOBLOODYLUTELY!
The element of society demanding Druggie parents take care of their own kids is failing, of that, I agree
The food is available. The food is there. Go back just 70 years and for the last 100,000 years before that, droughts, floods, crop failures, disease and wars seriously meant Food wasn’t even available. Today, shoppers get upset because the Lady Finger bananas are all gone and they have to buy generic.
If that’s not a massive societal success, I’d like to hear better.
Reliable Infrastructure
Electricity, Phone, Mobile, Water, drainage. OK,OK, I concede NBN has been a massive failure in service standards, overcharging and implementation but outside that, think through the quality of our water, drainage, electricity, roads etc and our society has progressed.
Health
Our medical world has improved beyond sight. Albeit, with differing levels relative to your level of insurance but for the first time in the Earth’s history, you get government bones fixed, stitched up, knee replacements, hip replacements, brain surgery and heart surgery, appendix removed and all manner of diseases treated if nor repaired. The only thing I regret is the availability of hearing aids. After all those years of good service to others, you’d think I’d get some Well deserved peace and quiet!
Yes, there’s costs, tests and qualifying periods. There are delays, local availability issues etc but for the first time in history, most things can be treated. Some countries have cost subsidies via taxed funding while other countries don’t. No matter how far back you look, just a few short years ago, no matter how wealthy you were, there were no MRI’s, Ultrasounds, Defibrillators, EKG’s, CT scans, etc, we stand a far better chance of repairing defects and preventing premature death than ever.
Again, our societal positives really are on the high end of any spectrum.
Opt Out
So with all these positives, why are both men and women opting out of society? With all the improvements, why are we all hitting the Opt Out button on society. Why can’t men or women find a partner? Why are we not passing on our genetics? This is a uniquely western world thing assuming you now count Japan as highly westernised?