This gent won’t be awarded any gold stars by feminists, but makes several points worth mulling, including if all the smart gals go to college and then grad school thus burning up child bearing years in academia they are essentially dumbing down the population if less stellar lasses have kids early and often, among other bon mots:
What is the word for “A dying place to leave”?
Posted on 6 April 2025 by E.M.Smith
We have names for places to start (origin) and end at (destination) but…
What is the name for a place in decay, but not dead yet, when it is time to leave?
So many words, yet I can’t think of one. Phrases, yes. “Get out of Dodge”, “Get while the getting is good”, “bail out”. Words for desirable places to go too. “Party town”, “Nirvana”, “Golden city”, “Destination”. Names for bad places to not ever go: “Hell town”, “skid row”, “slums”.
But what is the word for a place that WAS a good place, fell on hard times, and now it is time to leave before it is a “Ghost Town”? Crickets.
I wonder what that says about human language. We can see, and name, the good times, the good destinations, the dead places that were once good (“ghost towns”), even bad places to avoid like “skid row”, but I can’t think of any English word for “a place to leave now as it is about to die”. Not yet a skid row or a ghost town, but a dying place on the way there. Is it just me, or must we indulge circumlocutions to “get there” in English? Somehow “Undesirable neighborhood” or “Urban decay area” don’t quite cut it. And “Democrat hell hole” while accurate doesn’t “work” for about 1/2 of the country.
I think we need a new world for an “over ripe and decaying” city area.
Here’s a tour of parts of Japan when the “rural get away” turned sour after the City Folks ran short of cash:
Yeah, blond girl hooks up with Japanese guy and becomes EwTuber. Good on her. And him.
BUT it does illustrate the issue. What do we call Detroit? Yeah, I know “Motor City” or “Mo Town”…. but when it is shrinking by 1/2? When neighborhoods are being bulldozed because nobody lives there anymore and police costs to watch them are too high? “Urban Blight” doesn’t cut it. Civilization extirpation area is just too clinical.
But as ever more areas of Modern Countries suffer population declines and eventual abandonment, we need a name for this process.
All over the world, large populations of successful countries are suffering massive population declines. “Why” is pretty simple. Women can have babies, or they can spend their “20’s” and early “30’s” fighting the corporate advancement war. “Feminism” has said “forget having children, fight for corporate dominance”. Oh Well. BUT, a necessary consequence of this is that population drops, civilizations collapse, and the growth of “Ghost towns” will increase.
I just think we ought to have a word for it.
FWIW: This “isn’t about me”. Part of Economics (my major) is demographics. One of the bits of demographics I learned in University was that population growth was inversely related to the education level of women. It is pretty simple, really, if you spend from 18 (graduated high school in the USA) to 22 (graduated undergraduate school in the USA) or worse 24 to 26 getting an advanced degree; THEN entered the corporate Rate Race for another 4 to 6 years: As a woman you have now “hit the wall” of 30 and exited the primary reproductive ages.
Yes, in theory, with In Vitro Fertilization and all sorts of other very expensive interventions you MIGHT have A child… but the reality is that very rarely does that happen. “Processional women” are typically about 3 or 4 kids behind the “bare foot and pregnant” cohort of uneducated women. Please realize “I have no dog in this fight”. My spouse is college educated and we have 2 children together. I’m happy with this. But it does not change the math.
Dad and Mum (both not high school graduates) had 4 kids. Their parents (not “educated” at all) had 13 and 9 respectively. That’s how it works. My “2 kids” (now 30 somethings) have 2 kids between them… both from the son and not the daughter… We’re a prime example of how “more education means fewer children” especially for women (Daughter was graduated with honors… and has zero…)
Reality Just Is.
I make no value judgement on any of this. It just is.
One Darwinian consequence of this is that, over thousands of years, women will become stupider. (NOT my desired outcome. I love brilliant women.) BUT regularly “culling” brilliant women from the gene pool, either in total via zero kids or via genetic drift by them having 1 or 2 kids while the “bare foot and pregnant” girl has 3 or 5 or 9… eventually the genetic selection for “dumber and pregnant” will win.
To the extent this is sex linked, women get dumb. To the extent it is not sex linked and can not become such then everyone will, on average, become dumber. Darwinian Selection is NOT for the ‘Best” it is for the most surviving offspring. We have made “intelligence” correlate with lower “Darwinian Survival” via fewer or no children from smart woman. So it will be “selected against” in Darwinian terms.
Have I mentioned that Economics is named “The Dismal Science” precisely because it is the science that deals with Demographics? Or that “reality just is”?
Either the “advanced societies” decide that women having children is a highly valued thing; or our societies become a footnote in history. We cease to exist culturally.
Realize this is NOT a hypothetical. Europe is already having a demographic catastrophy. Not nearly enough children and way too many retired people. The UK, and USA are not far behind. South Korea is likely a “dead man walking” demographically at this point, and Japan is not much better. Even China has far too few babies per adult. They are shrinking now and accelerating. Basically any place where education and job opportunities for women are high, has a bad demographics outcome set in stone at this point. (Because the children born This Year are a fixed cohort and can not be changed. Ditto last year and the year before…)
You do NOT have to LIKE IT to see that it IS reality. That Italy, for example, has a HUGE 60+ population and a very low “under 10 y.o” population is “just the facts”. AND it can not be changed at this point. Maybe next year but not in this one as there is at least a 9 month lag between action and demographic changes,,,,
This will become increasingly important over time.
So what are the words for this all?
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2025/04/06/what-is-the-word-for-a-dying-place-to-leave/
