China allows couples to have three children • Hacker News Board

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#151

Post by alisonkisk » Mon, May 31, 2021, 2:02 PM UTC

waterhouse wrote: post #91

dmichulke wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For gambling it would would work if you do a "double or nothing" type of bet. Unfortunately, you'll be quickly rate limited by birth capacity, even if you somehow manage to double the amount of children per birth. Also, asymptotically, you'll still be around a 50% split.

Assuming no selective-abortion shenanigans, every child you have is expected 50% male, 50% female (barring e.g. unusual men who only produce sperm of one gender—I think that exists but is extremely rare), so there's no possible strategy that leads to an uneven gender split, probability-wise. But I think there were selective-abortion shenanigans, and that the policy was effectively in response to them. If we assume ea…

Parent was talking about having indentical multiples: 1 girl, 2 girls, 4 boys, stop.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#152

Post by alisonkisk » Mon, May 31, 2021, 2:03 PM UTC

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #105

hutzlibu wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you raise a unreported child in china? How would that work? With no papers at all and the communist buerocrats also really likes paper about everything. ?

https://thediplomat.com/2015/03/chinas-hidden-children/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/30... It's also China, where they put toxic stuff in watered down milk to make it look as foamy as protein-rich good milk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal , i.e. a place with a lot of corruption and where gaps are possible.

Are you suggesting that China is somehow unusual in poisoning the populace? Are you aware of Superfund? Nestle, who convinced mother's to starve and poison their babies with formula and dirty water that replaced and then blocked lactation?

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#153

Post by potatoman22 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 2:03 PM UTC

Rompect wrote: post #138

konart wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the power of a government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence >Robert Hinrichs Bates argues that the state itself has no violent power; rather, the people hold all the power of coercion to ensure that order and other equilibriums hold up. Should we be discussing this?

According to that argument, the capitol riot was justified.

How so?

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#154

Post by temp8964 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 2:03 PM UTC

em500 wrote: post #142

patall wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon me, but how is 100-120 sqm small? 60 sqm is small for 4 people yes, but everything else subject to how rooms are organized. We had 105 sqm growing up with 5 people and we had a very large living room + 4 bed rooms, no second bath room though.

It's small for most Americans, but not for most Europeans (especially not for European city dwellers). It's huge if you live in Hong Kong.

Well, euro birth rate is 1.5, hong kong birth rate is 1.1. We are talking about having 3 kids here. This is the context of discussion.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#155

Post by cheph » Mon, May 31, 2021, 2:05 PM UTC

lammalamma25 wrote: post #127

Every story about China should include a note that the government decides how many children its citizens are allowed to have. We've grown numb to how terrible this is.

And this: https://neveragainrightnow.com/

And this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_China#Peo...

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#156

Post by Clewza313 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #143

Clewza313 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been to Tibet, and the endless barrage of slogans and posters celebrating 和谐 and 西藏各族人民的幸福生活 are there for a reason.

Ya but is that any different than Beijing? The Chinese government has to keep the propaganda and slogans up everywhere, it’s really the only tool they know of to communicate broadly their apparent successes to the people.

It actually was, both in sheer intensity and in style. For example, in Beijing (at least when I last visited) it was kind of hard to find posters of Xi Jinping, while in Lhasa you had a lot of this kind of thing: https://imgur.com/a/GRN9VZz

Which to me seemed remarkably tone deaf (nothing like reminding Tibetans to celebrate their "liberation" and its mastermind Mao), but presumably worrying about how the message would land was not among the KPIs of the cadre responsible.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#157

Post by drdec » Mon, May 31, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

thefounder wrote: post #136

jacquesm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a sick little comment. The world is a lot larger than the rich West and historically children were what we have - in some wealthy places - a social security system for. But in many places where the state is barely functional and family ties are strong children tend to take care of their elders, because that's how it's been traditionally. The best way to reduce that factor in how many children people have is to u…

It looks like in China it's even a law[1] that old people use to take advantage of their children. Just because it's a "tradition" doesn't make it good. It's been a "tradition" to beat your wife and children as well in many parts of the world or even worse. If you are miserable why would you like to make your children's life miserable as well? [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7422934/

In the USA we have a similar law that allows older people to use the resources of younger people to survive. We call it social security.

My point is just that sometimes things seem very different in other cultures but are not so different when you drill down. In both cultures we recognize that the elderly deserve to be taken care of. We just get to that goal in different ways. Neither one is prima facie better than the other and each had advantages and disadvantages.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#158

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, May 31, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

xyzzy123 wrote: post #149

woeirua wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out that as countries develop their birth rates naturally decline and eventually turn negative without requiring the government to set the number of children you can have. Indeed Japan and others are doing almost everything possible to encourage people to have more children and cannot get their populations to return to growth.

I agree that market forces and cultural trends seem to be curbing population growth in wealthy countries. I'm just not sure it's a sign of cultural maturity; it feels like we've quietly skirted a difficult conversation through low wage growth and expensive housing, health care and education (more humans are discouraged because of bottlenecks in key supports). In theory if there were "smooth" environmental feedback th…

When there are too many deer and not enough predators in an ecosystem, the deer consume all the available food and many die from starvation, self regulating the population to a sustainable level. I see parallels to this in human economic systems.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#159

Post by yardie » Mon, May 31, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

mcculley wrote: post #107

hutzlibu wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you raise a unreported child in china? How would that work? With no papers at all and the communist buerocrats also really likes paper about everything. ?

I am amused at the phrase "communist buerocrats [sic]". I live in the United States, where a particular bastard hybrid of socialism and crony capitalism requires that every birth be well documented by bureaucrats.

It has less to do with socialism and cronyism and everything to do with your rights. Your birth certificate is your primary evidence of citizenship. Literally every right you enjoy springs from that one document.

Re: China allows couples to have three children

#160

Post by w0de0 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

simbas wrote: post #114

jp555 wrote: post #65

Good luck. With a shrunken generation of family to help due to 30+ years of one-child policy, and almost no social support (China does not really have socialized healthcare in practice) there's no one to help take care of larger families. But there is a HUGE number of rapidly aging parents and grandparents to take care of. Add a culture that puts accumulating wealth as the #1 virtue, and it becomes nearly impossible…

Your comment is a bit bigoted, the government has been paying families, not "french families", to have more kids. This isn't segregated by language at all. Everyone gets their child allowance payments, whatever their origin.

Is the origin of the policy a desire to preserve and increase Quebec’s unique culture (“French families”), or not? If so, is it bigoted to say so?