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The global fertility rate is falling

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Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#651
post #626
post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These children didn't exist before you made them, so who exactly are you massively sacrificing your freedom for?

The children who exist after you made them.

But they don't exist at the moment you make them, so before they exist you have no reason to sacrifice anything for _them_ because there is no _them_.

If you give up a job to move somewhere to move to a city to meet your future partner, you didn't sacrifice your job for them, at least not in the sense that any nobility can be derived from that act. You gave something up, yes, but not for _a person_ because you don't even know them yet. You can make sacrifices for a person that you have personal love for, but you cannot have personal love for someone who doesn't exist yet.

Once the children exist you can make sacrifices for them of course. But at the moment of choosing to have kids, you are not making sacrifices in the same sense (unless you are having kids for the good of society etc.). So deciding to have kids, even if you have to give something up, is not some selfless or noble act, as parent said.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#653
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that many Americans, self included, never heard of FGM until immigrants brought it into to our country. > you seem to think that everyone in these countries is the same Your words, not mine. Everyone is an individual. I think many of these individuals should fix their own countries before fleeing to mine. They are not the meek and downtrodden. Every one at the university has blown through at least $125K o…

FGM is not merely an "immigrant issue" in the US: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/02/fgm-happened... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-religion-fgm/us-woman... Never mind that the United States specifically also has a tradition of male genital mutilation, so ... you know. Why should I have the personal responsibility to "fix" my county? Just because I happened to be born there? Seems like a weird ta…

You were raised to a healthy adulthood, and educated you to a point where you are internationally employable. Your parents/neighbors/society didn't have to do that. There are a lot of places on this earth where mom and pop would have sold you into the sex trade or worse. After all of that, skipping off to Indonesia to get yours just sounds kind of mercenary to me.

Blue collar vs white collar makes no difference. I'm not really interested in bringing more mercenaries to my country. Instead of building-up the place, they will operate just like the paperclip maximizers that employ them: flee to another country as soon as the market changes.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#655

The Hacker News comment section tends to be factual, rational, and logical. So - this may be out of place, but here goes. When making decisions about whether or not to have children, we operate in a state of partial information. (This is of course true of all decisions.) I would like to contribute a bit of information. I'm 66, and have three children and four grandchildren. My adult children are the most wonderful pe…

> whether to start trying to have a family is a BIG-ASS decision, with life-long consequences It especially has life-long consequences for the children! I wouldn't want to put children in this world. I don't think the future world is a nice place to grow up in, even the current world isn't. IMO it's selfish to make kids just to feel fulfilled and not be lonely.

If your parents were deciding right now if they wanted to create you or not, would you tell them that you do not want to exist?

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#656

The Hacker News comment section tends to be factual, rational, and logical. So - this may be out of place, but here goes. When making decisions about whether or not to have children, we operate in a state of partial information. (This is of course true of all decisions.) I would like to contribute a bit of information. I'm 66, and have three children and four grandchildren. My adult children are the most wonderful pe…

> whether to start trying to have a family is a BIG-ASS decision, with life-long consequences It especially has life-long consequences for the children! I wouldn't want to put children in this world. I don't think the future world is a nice place to grow up in, even the current world isn't. IMO it's selfish to make kids just to feel fulfilled and not be lonely.

If sensible people refuse to have children and morons continue to have several, then we will be in an even worse situation down the line

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#657
post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether to start trying to have a family is a BIG-ASS decision, with life-long consequences It especially has life-long consequences for the children! I wouldn't want to put children in this world. I don't think the future world is a nice place to grow up in, even the current world isn't. IMO it's selfish to make kids just to feel fulfilled and not be lonely.

If your parents were deciding right now if they wanted to create you or not, would you tell them that you do not want to exist?

Yes. Would have caused less pain on both sides.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#658
post #131

Millennials can’t afford to move out of Mom & Dad’s basement, get married, and have kids. Our society is profoundly sick, both figuratively and now literally.

We have the same effects in Europe (even more pronounced than in the US) and Millenials here can absolutely afford to move out and generally do, so that seems to not be relevant.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#659
post #583

The Hacker News comment section tends to be factual, rational, and logical. So - this may be out of place, but here goes. When making decisions about whether or not to have children, we operate in a state of partial information. (This is of course true of all decisions.) I would like to contribute a bit of information. I'm 66, and have three children and four grandchildren. My adult children are the most wonderful pe…

There was this post not too long ago by lordleft which I thought was really beautiful and resonated with me. The decision to have kids is a lot like the decision to continue living. There is no logical basis for it. Or rather, any latticework of logic you erect to justify this choice is based on a foundation that has nothing to do with reason. It is an emotional and spiritual desire to live and love, and give more li…

Oh! That beautifully captures my own thinking about this, and I've expanded on that over the years.

For instance, that desire and that decision aren't a guarantee that you will end up having biological children, nor that having them will bring you happiness. Barring medical or financial conditions, there are so many other reasons why one ends up not having them, a lot of them being circumstantial and outside of an individual's control e.g. who gets to cross your path, who becomes your partner, a cultural context, events affecting your family and so on.

That deep emotional and spiritual desire to live and love as a foundational directive, also pushes you to reflect, shape and reshape your personal story and your identity as you move through life. It sparks existential questions to which insights only come through time and the compounding of experience. This is a most deeply individual aspect of living.

In a way, that same desire isn't binary. It's not one or the either. It includes doubt and leaning back and forth between stances depending on one's circumstances and experience. Like a bell curve, some will feel deeply bereft if they remain childless, many will consider that a scenario with a worthwhile alternative for parenthood is just as valid an option to them, and some have a deep sated desire to remain child free.

Reflecting and reconsidering doesn't stop when one has become a parent either. Many will vocally state that parenthood - or remaining without children - was the best thing they did in life, but there are also those that deeply regret their choice. As culture, past and present, tends to emphasis the importance of having children and espouses the merits of parenthood, this is only discussed in a most apprehensive manner, which leads to misguided generalisations and dismissive tropes. This renders an important part of our human condition moot: that personal responsibility is inevitably bounded by constraints which are necessarily outside the control of an individual.

There are many ways to self-actualize that emotional and spiritual desire to live and love, and having and raising biological children is one of many possible pathways. And so, the framework of values and beliefs you've developed which underpins and drives your own personal narrative, doesn't necessarily apply to the lives of anyone else.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#660
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't even seen this scenario play out yet. I'm from the region and I don't think it will turn into some Fallout-type scenario, but I think it will definitely impact the well-being of all citizens in these countries, some 20-30 years from now. It's hard to say yet if/how these countries will recover.

I live in Croatia. Its population has been shrinking since 1991. Almost 30 years of unchecked population decline and it's still not an apocalyptic hellhole. In spite of entrenched corruption and other issues, standards of living and wages have gone up, even as the government does everything it can to destroy nascent industry and chase that tourism nickle. The more old people die, the more domestic opportunity there i…

Those aren't related. I'm from Romania, which has:

1. A higher population population than Croatia. 2. Higher emigration than Croatia. 3. A lower fertility rate than Croatia.

And yes, the economy is going up despite people becoming old, dying, or just leaving the country. But the reason for that is temporary, it's because Croatia, just like Romania, is still a developing country, you're converting low productivity workers to higher productivity ones.

But how long do you think this can last? What happens when active people are 1/3rd of the population or less and there are no more easy gains to be had?

I just said that things won't look like in Fallout, so why are you even mentioning "apocalyptic hellhole"?

A country doesn't lose 20% or more of its population without major changes happening. It's extremely optimistic to hope that there won't be at least some major negative changes.

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