Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The global fertility rate is falling

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 881 posts

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#771

Post by Multicomp »

Thorrez wrote: post #581
irrational wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way. The 285 around Atlanta is 66 miles long. The 5 and 405 around downtown Portland can be driven in under 10 minutes under ideal circumstances. Also, your google map link for Portland is bizarre. I honestly have no idea what that route is supposed to represent. It definitely isn’t any route someone would take who was trying to circle downtown Portland.

Both of those routes are trying to contain the tall buildings inside and the single family homes outside. If you expand the route I drew around Atlanta very much in any direction you start to include single family homes. 285 around Atalanta encloses forests and suburbs, a lot more than just downtown.

Anecdote I was told, shows how quickly cities can grow into metroplexes.

Back when Interstate 285 was built, it was a 2 lane road out in the middle of nowhere for the truckers going from Florida north to be able to bypass Atlanta traffic.

Kids could play hopscotch for multiple minutes to hours before moving off to the let the singular car go by.

285 was the orbit of pluto, separating sleepy suburbs from the great flyover nothingness that people ascribe to the empty swathes of, say, Nevada (?).

Nowadays, 285 is more like going from outer core of earth to inner core. Moving from 285s westernmost terminus further west, the analogy of Pluto's orbit is more like Carrollton GA.

Atlanta the city is small. Atlanta as natives know it is large.

Dallas-Forth Worth TX is a twin sister in terms of growth rate but also bigger on an absolute scale.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#772

Post by mf_tomb »

lazyjones wrote: post #547
ddorian43 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should end civilization ?

No, we can just let the nihilistic and self-centered people go extinct. It's good for the gene pool.

What could possibly be more self-centered than forcing someone to exist without their consent as a retirement plan?

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#773

Post by civilized »

fiblye wrote: post #363
creato wrote: post #345

It is disturbing that people take for granted that this is an economic problem. This thread is full of people lamenting the fact that we could support X times as many people as we do now if we all just sacrifice Y. When I look around the world today, I think the biggest resource that is lacking is economic opportunity. Huge swathes of people are desperate, angry, and depressed, I think because there is no opportunity…

> The demand for labor will go up, the supply will go down. Bad for the investor class looking for profits, good for reducing economic inequality. People will be able to profit from labor again. I'm not so sure about that. Loads of wealth is consolidated at the top, both in terms of economic class and age. People who got their jobs and attained management positions after barely graduating high school are demanding ba…

> There are already endless reports of there being insufficient workers for agricultural jobs, nursing, teachers, etc. Wages haven't risen to meet the demand. They've remained stagnant or dropped in the long term. Meanwhile, those at the top are richer than ever.

Who do you think is responsible for those reports? It's employers who have enough labor for now, but foresee a more competitive labor market in the future & don't want to have to raise wages.

> People are already getting paid more being unemployed. Employers are trying to get people to work for them again while offering them less than unemployment pays. They're not even trying to compete because they know people are going to come desperately crawling back.

People don't eternally just walk around in blind terror of being unemployed, irrespective of the labor market. If the labor market gets tight, economics and history indicate that wages will adjust.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#774

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

ako wrote: post #655
zeepzeep wrote: post #510

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?

Yeah, probably.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#775

Post by conanbatt »

creato wrote: post #345

It is disturbing that people take for granted that this is an economic problem. This thread is full of people lamenting the fact that we could support X times as many people as we do now if we all just sacrifice Y. When I look around the world today, I think the biggest resource that is lacking is economic opportunity. Huge swathes of people are desperate, angry, and depressed, I think because there is no opportunity…

Pretty sad how this lie has propagated and caused so much misery and frankly mental disorders. Theres no better time to be born than today, period. All the rest are ravings of a madman.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#776

Post by aluth »

gxon wrote: post #373
creato wrote: post #345

It is disturbing that people take for granted that this is an economic problem. This thread is full of people lamenting the fact that we could support X times as many people as we do now if we all just sacrifice Y. When I look around the world today, I think the biggest resource that is lacking is economic opportunity. Huge swathes of people are desperate, angry, and depressed, I think because there is no opportunity…

To add to that, even if we can technically support a lot more people with the sustainable resources we have, which I personally doubt, getting close to our max capacity means we will have zero wiggle room when things go wrong. With climate change accelerating and guaranteed to cause drastic changes to our environment, a lot of things will go wrong at the same time. The analogy I like is your income/spending ratio. Ye…

> Anyway, if you're choosing to have kids, one is enough. The real winners adopt.

Not from an evolutionary standpoint, lol

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#777

Post by conanbatt »

greggman3 wrote: post #553
creato wrote: post #345

It is disturbing that people take for granted that this is an economic problem. This thread is full of people lamenting the fact that we could support X times as many people as we do now if we all just sacrifice Y. When I look around the world today, I think the biggest resource that is lacking is economic opportunity. Huge swathes of people are desperate, angry, and depressed, I think because there is no opportunity…

I see this idea here in several places. Effectively "more money = more kids" There is ZERO evidence that's the case. In fact all evidence points to the opposite. The more money people have the less likely they are to have children. I'm not suggesting that we should therefore lower people's incomes. Only suggesting that the idea that his has anything do with lacking economic opportunity has zero basis in fact. The ric…

Adam Smith mentions explicitly in 1776 how "women of stature tire after having 2 or 3 children, if any at all. Poor women have up to 20" (couldn't find the literal quote).

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#778

Post by ido »

Batman8675309 wrote: post #743
ido wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more so when people have to juggle kids and a career. I think this is mostly in the first 5-10 years, when the kids grow a bit older it should start getting easier.

That's up to 10 years of hell though

I don't know your kids but with mine it's a year or 2 of sleepless nights per child & then having to deal with temper tantrums & occasional other annoyances. Even in the roughest years I'm not sure the cons exceed the pros.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#779

Post by nickbauman »

nostromo wrote: post #391
gregfjohnson wrote: post #357

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…

This is a bit like hearing a successful startup founder speak about the joys of success. It’s absolutely correct, but it’s also just one data point. Keep in mind, most of the lonely old people you see have children. And I’m not sure it’s a good, caring thing to tell childless people that they will be lonely in old age, because it need not be true.

I read somewhere, (I think it was USA Today, no less) that almost half adult children in the US have no meaningful contact with their parents. Many of them have parents who do not even know where their children live.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#780

Post by odrekf »

menybuvico wrote: post #643
iso1631 wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have a billion dollars worth of shares in amazon, hell you can have a billion dollars in cash. It isn't going to wipe your ass in a nursing home. Someone young will. If the people who do the work are downtrodden enough why would they bother participating in your scheme?

This is the one thing people seem to forget; people who work in places like nursing homes rarely do so because they have a dream of wiping old people's asses for a living. Instead, they do it because they need the money. In a society where there are plenty of other well-paying jobs to be had, working at a nursing home won't be the popular choice. I expect the future to be interesting.

Some people have vocation for taking care of the old and the sick. Yes, they do it for the money, but they could have chosen something else, and yet they chose nursing because to them it is rewarding. Job satisfaction and doing good things for others are very important indicators for happiness.
Post reply on HN