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On Car Seats as Contraception

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Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#21

Post by AyyWS »

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??

Pyramids were built with slave labor. Poor sanitation lead to the black plague. Imagine if they all stopped having kids, because they thought Egyptian slavery would never end and the black plague was insurmountable?

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#22

Post by giantg2 »

While I feel we need to be gradually reducing the number of people on the planet (can anyone point me to the number of humans earth can sustainably support?), I agree with what the article is saying.

It seems to me one of the biggest things is the pace of change and potential for criminal charges. Especially considering that many people are likely breaking the laws (not just car seats, but supervision, etc), with no ill effects, and the laws are only selectively enforced. Is there an actual net benefit? And all the while parents have to keep up with increasing and changing laws, which I doubt many do. There's a risk of civil or criminal penalties related to children, and increasing costs (including mental) associated with compliance.

I have a truck. You cannot have more than one rear facing seat in the back if you have two adults in the front. When I was a kid (not too long ago) I was riding without a booster seat well before age 8 and we'd occasionally ride with a friend's family in a station wagon or SUV with the add-on cargo seats. It wasn't unusual to occasionally ride in a pickup bed on private roads, or pile 8-9 people in the old Caprice for short (Another thing to point out that many might not know is that the state has an interest in your children and they merely entrust you to raise them to their standards and can take them away if you don't. Many people feel their children are their own to raise as they see fit, but it's more akin to a title of a house - the government owns the rights to the property and merely gives you title to use is so long as you comply with their will/laws.

Edit: why disagree?

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#23

Post by renox »

Very funny: we had a hard time finding a car wide enough to accomodate three child safety seats without being too long to park.. Now our children are getting older so this is less an issue, but (Europeans) car are still quite bad for three children: the one in the middle has often a reduced place and/or an unconfortable seat.

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#24

Post by aaron695 »

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

#25

Post by ErikVandeWater »

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 could always allow more legal immigration.

Some countries don't have unfunded liabilities that can share some of their population so we can keep the Ponzi scheme going.

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#26

Post by throw003away »

giantg2 wrote: post #22

While I feel we need to be gradually reducing the number of people on the planet (can anyone point me to the number of humans earth can sustainably support?), I agree with what the article is saying. It seems to me one of the biggest things is the pace of change and potential for criminal charges. Especially considering that many people are likely breaking the laws (not just car seats, but supervision, etc), with no…

> Especially considering that many people are likely breaking the laws (not just car seats, but supervision, etc), with no ill effects

Car accidents are the #1 cause of death of kids in Mexico. People have 0 literacy about car seats there.

> I was riding without a booster seat well before age 8 and we'd occasionally ride with a friend's family in a station wagon or SUV with the add-on cargo seats.

This story could have been very different if your car was hit and you were disabled because of, I don't know, something totally preventable.

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#27

Post by Someone1234 »

renox wrote: post #23

Very funny: we had a hard time finding a car wide enough to accomodate three child safety seats without being too long to park.. Now our children are getting older so this is less an issue, but (Europeans) car are still quite bad for three children: the one in the middle has often a reduced place and/or an unconfortable seat.

People who haven't actually tried, or haven't had kids at all, really don't grasp how problematic three car seats across actually is. Car seats are wider than most adults, and there's little standardization (either car or seat design).

So you're often left looking for articles or anecdotes that list both specific vehicles with a specific make/model of car seat. It does exist, it is just painful and annoying.

Even shops that sell car seats and will let you "test fit" them rarely have three of the same model to demo.

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#28

Post by mguerville »

burlesona wrote: post #16

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…

With one single child I barely notice, but thinking about it it does probably take 2-3 minutes so your 5-10 minutes estimates is probably spot on for multiple kids. Living in a midwestern city and relying on street parking I do dread the loading/unloading in the winter, has there been any attempt at improving this product category on the speed of use dimension?

Re: On Car Seats as Contraception

#29

Post by ErikVandeWater »

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.

Some people are certainly not contributing much brainpower. If only the smartest people were having kids I could see this being true.
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