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On Car Seats as Contraception

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Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#11

Post by samwillis »

superchroma wrote: post #7
secondbreakfast wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that there are too many people. Have you read much about the Malthus/George debates? Malthus has now been wrong for 200 years (and counting).

There are whales full of plastic and the rain isn't safe to drink. How can adding more humans help??

We can have population growth and still solve the impending environmental disaster.

On top of that, a declining human population results is an increasing young:old ratio. Fewer younger working age people supporting an increasingly older population. Socially and economically that will be a disaster, which will make solving ecological issues significantly harder.

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#12

Post by mantas »

superchroma wrote: post #7
secondbreakfast wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that there are too many people. Have you read much about the Malthus/George debates? Malthus has now been wrong for 200 years (and counting).

There are whales full of plastic and the rain isn't safe to drink. How can adding more humans help??

If people who understand these issues don't procreate, then people who don't understand this will dominate and keep ruining earth into... ground?

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#13

Post by jollyllama »

h2odragon wrote: post #3

This is about child safety seats; not the big bench seats that cars used to have where one could more easily arrange the act of conception, than one can in modern cars with bucket seats, consoles, and etc. You could get farther in the back seat of a '72 Cuda than you could on a minivan bench seat.

Yeah, I've thought before about how those track with the birth rate decline.

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#14

Post by graywh »

samwillis wrote: post #11
superchroma wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are whales full of plastic and the rain isn't safe to drink. How can adding more humans help??

We can have population growth and still solve the impending environmental disaster. On top of that, a declining human population results is an increasing young:old ratio. Fewer younger working age people supporting an increasingly older population. Socially and economically that will be a disaster, which will make solving ecological issues significantly harder.

> We can have population growth and still solve the impending environmental disaster.

But will we?

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#15

Post by Gravityloss »

h2odragon wrote: post #3

This is about child safety seats; not the big bench seats that cars used to have where one could more easily arrange the act of conception, than one can in modern cars with bucket seats, consoles, and etc. You could get farther in the back seat of a '72 Cuda than you could on a minivan bench seat.

Well, the child seat in the back seat is also in the way of conception of siblings, so there's both...

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#16

Post by burlesona »

This resonates with me. It’s beyond tedious to get the kids in and out of the car seats all the time, and needing to buy a larger car to fit more than two kids gave me significant pause. We eventually decided to have more kids, and the positives far outweigh the negatives for us, but to this day the hassle of loading and unloading the car to go places is the single biggest negative experience of raising children. It adds an extra 5-10 minutes on each end of every trip compared to adults just being able to get in and out on their own.

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#17

Post by lolchildren »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #4
superchroma wrote: post #2

Quoted post unavailable.

Stop making something as wonderful as children into an -ist. While you may be correct that we have too many people, calling humans who want to or do reproduce--we are not unique in our biological needs to do just that--"natalists" is just a short hop to demonization or worse. Or have you already made that hop, perhaps?

No post body was provided.

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#18

Post by fps »

There are plenty of narrow car seats that will fit 3 across in any car. I ran 3 Diono Radians in the back seat of a second gen Prius and there was plenty of space. Car seats and cars are the least expensive part of raising young children.

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#19

Post by superchroma »

secondbreakfast wrote: post #9
superchroma wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are whales full of plastic and the rain isn't safe to drink. How can adding more humans help??

Reminds me of the George Carlin bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdSi9NW5u3E Humor aside, it's a depressing worldview to me that each marginal human is a net negative. I take the opposite view, that each human is a net positive - and we need all the brainpower we can get to solve all of our problems.

We could solve a lot of our problems right now if people were prepared to change how they live and accept a decent amount more responsibility (e.g. sort waste by hand, etc.). Scaling up problems typically hasn't helped, and you get novel issues at large scale (e.g. parasites and diseases thrive due to monoculture in huge farms). As Bill Burr noted, we could all drive tanks to work if there weren't as many of us. It's cynical, but there's more room for largesse at small scale.

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#20

Post by antiterra »

> Enthusiasm for these laws has not been curbed by studies showing that child car seats are no more effective than seat belts in preventing death or serious injury for children above age two (e.g. Levitt 2008, Doyle and Levitt 2010).

Like many of the other Freakonomics conclusions, this one is at best oversimplified, and at worst actively dangerous. To simply quote it as uncontested fact is ridiculously incompetent.

For convenience, I’ll just link to the breathless (but sourced) assessment of the earlier study by a pediatrician at https://thecarseatlady.com/freakonomics-fallacy-an-economist...

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