201–210 of 226 posts
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I feel like the costs are U-shaped.. 0-5 childcare, then 18-22 college right?
College is quite cheap in many, many parts of the world where birth rates are still quite low - specifically in most of Europe, but also in Japan, Korea, at least compared to the USA.
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The future being grimdark isn't new, that's true. But humanity had so much finding out to do. Average material conditions haven't moved steadily forwards, no, but humanity has been overall rising. Science and technology developing, insights to the natural world happening & spreading, cultural elements forming & flourishing. The powers that be in the world were quite regionalized, had their fingers in only small pies:…
> Progress has tapered down. Maybe you can argue that it's slower now than it was in the late 20th century. But it's still far faster than it was at any other point in history. You may think we're locked on course, but we're far less locked on course than we were in medieval times or pretty much any other time in history. Changes in medieval times happened, but took centuries, and those advocating for change got burn…
But the past was decoupled. There were many pasts, moving at different paces, in different ways. We don't know what most of these pasts were even a thousand years ago, for the majority of life on earth! We have such a eurocentric view of history, have such incredibly poor knowledge of how most of humanity (by area at least) lived, what was really happening, what life was like, how people saw the world and saw history & time.
Theres still many things happening, sure. But the dominant themes of the world today trace to Thomas Pikerty Capital in the 21st Century overarching economics, something he shows happening over a 250 year arch. The many free hands of the world are reduced to many many less hands than before.
The locality of power is gone. The availability of new lands and new resources to tap into has peaked. We have gobsmacking amounts of people and we don't know what to do to harness this bios-power, we don't have true missions available for people to get up to, and almost no governments are able to generate good causes and good trouble to get themselves up to. We devolve into shitty posturing and jingoism as purpose and exploration/expansion (and alas yes imperialism) fade away, after a time of great prosperity & strong social character.
We're at the end of a lot of curves. It's so so so unclear how incremental GDP rising is supposed to tide us over spiritually. Especially when such a lions share of the GDP is captured by such monsters at the top, when no government or system seems willing to set the sparks of motivation to get the populations excited and moving on their own.
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It's amazing that we had oodles of "population growth will cause mass-starvation, we need global policy to limit the population to the current size" worries on the run up from 2B to 8B and now we've got "population decline will cause mass-starvation, we need global policy to limit the population to the current size" worries. And the global population isn't falling. Birth rates are only below replacement among certain…
birth rates are below replacement in the majority of countries now. Global birth rate is down to 2.24 this year, and 2.11 is the baseline for maintaining the population. I'd bet a tremendous amount of money that we cross the threshold by 2030.
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Worse: the costs are front-loaded and (all but) must come early-ish in your life. The opportunity cost—the shadow, if you will, that the cost of children casts on your future retirement savings—is enormous . It’s way larger than the nominal cost. Big ouch.
I feel like the costs are U-shaped.. 0-5 childcare, then 18-22 college right?
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It's how society will break down without a younger generation in quantity that is paying for social security, earning taxes for society, etc.
Oh well, just have to accept that there won't be retirement, only burning your savings and then euthanasia. Better have fun while you can afford it.
We are enough people on the planet. Why does this read like we have to have kids? I'm completly fine not having kids surprise \o/
It's how society will break down without a younger generation in quantity that is paying for social security, earning taxes for society, etc.
And something people mention without mentioning everything else.
The existing system 'worked' because we grew from a few million to 8 Billion. If we 'stagnate' at 8, its no longer sustainable, therefore it was never sustainable if its only sustainable with constent growth.
Nonetheless, automatisation is not stopping anyway. We will solve a lot of theese problems with robots and ai. The bigger the problem, the bigger the pressure.
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> We've become too cautious for our own good. Depends on what you expect for the future. A lot of those children have a hard time thinking of what kind of job they'll be able to do. Most of them seem to land on "influencer" or something. I know it is contentious, but there is a very real chance that a large part of humanity will cease to be able to add significant (economic) value in the somewhat near future. You may…
> a large part of humanity will cease to be able to add significant (economic) value Which, of course, is our "special purpose" in life. Why would people even exist if they weren't going to contribute to shareholder value? I completely agree that more people is not good, but for completely different reasons: there are WAY too many already. Our primate species has so overpopulated the planet that every single "environ…
I didn't say that. But the reality is that people who add no economic value are a problem for our societies as they are structured today.
But yes, overpopulation is also an issue with regard to pressure on the environment.
Something to think about instead of more or fewer humans is: what would be the ideal number of humans (at various points in the future)? It strays into eugenics pretty quickly, but it does force you to think about the fundamental elements such as ethics when dealing with these matters.
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College is quite cheap in many, many parts of the world where birth rates are still quite low - specifically in most of Europe, but also in Japan, Korea, at least compared to the USA.
Yes but those places (esp Europe) have youth unemployment / underemployment problems so similar issue with the next generation taking longer to establish themselves financially stable
Funny, not a single mention of the collapse of communities as a possible contributing factor. Strong communities provided support to young parents and also pressured them to have kids.