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The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

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Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#151

Post by pfannkuchen »

stego-tech wrote: post #143
h2zizzle wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a single, gay man. During two of my last major existential crises, for about two weeks following, I noticed a marked turn of my thoughts and feelings towards having (biological) children. Stuff like, "If I'd had a kid at such-and-such age, how old would they be now?", "How would I manage if a child was suddenly in my life?", and "Oh god, my line stops with me panic ". For a number of reasons, I am extremely unlik…

For what it's worth, I'm also a single gay man and think similarly at times about the path not taken, and why I chose not to adopt as I had originally planned in my 20s. It sucks, but I'm content with being the cool Uncle to my niblings and providing external support to my siblings as needed. Society needs more than just parents in order for children to thrive, and I believe queer folk are ideally suited to fill in a…

Disclaimer: my thought process tends to be somewhat autistic, I don’t mean any offense. As a non gay man I am just curious to hear your perspective.

From a strictly biological perspective, I think it could be argued that gay “sex” isn’t actually sex. Like, what makes it sex? Is it sex for pleasure? Or is it something adjacent to sex? That has some commonalities with sex, but isn’t actually sex. Like there is a part of sex missing from the equation. Why do we still call it sex?

I kind of assume it’s the kind of thing hardly anyone thinks about and the notion of thinking about it will just make everyone angry. Sorry!

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#152

Post by oh_my_goodness »

WalterBright wrote: post #147
oh_my_goodness wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'In a free market society, wealth is created, it is not "concentrated".' That's a theory from economists. Economists have a lot of theories.

It's a fact, not a theory. The wealth in the economy did not exist 100 years ago. Therefore it must have been created. And where did Musk's money come from? Who did he transfer it from?

Come on. Sometimes wealth gets created. Sometimes wealth just gets moved around. That is a fact.

Musk's wealth is mostly notional. Most of it is based on people's guesses about the future of electric cars and so forth. It's not clear yet whether that is creation or transfer or what.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#153

Post by jay_kyburz »

WalterBright wrote: post #147
oh_my_goodness wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'In a free market society, wealth is created, it is not "concentrated".' That's a theory from economists. Economists have a lot of theories.

It's a fact, not a theory. The wealth in the economy did not exist 100 years ago. Therefore it must have been created. And where did Musk's money come from? Who did he transfer it from?

Some wealth is created. People build new things and sell them. Video Games or Programming Languages for example.

Some wealth is just transferred, like rent or interest.

It would be nice if everybody had somewhere to live for free, unfortunately, most people have to pay rent or interest on a mortgage to those that came before them.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#154

Post by cindyllm »

stego-tech wrote: post #148
chrisco255 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fertility rate is falling everywhere, even countries that have extensive childcare and maternity/paternity leave. Sweden grants 68 weeks of shared parental leave and their TFR is at 1.45. There is nothing authentic about porn, what a strange comment. Sure, it hacks the reward system of the brain in the same way that a slot machine does, but this does absolutely nothing to promote families.

> There is nothing authentic about porn, what a strange comment. Sure, it hacks the reward system of the brain in the same way that a slot machine does, but this does absolutely nothing to promote families. Disagree on both. Pornography, like any media, has a multitude of styles and types that can evoke different sets of emotions from the viewer. It's an art form that speaks uniquely to each individual, and I've foun…

[dead]

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#155

Post by SJC_Hacker »

WalterBright wrote: post #129
Arainach wrote: post #7

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

> will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves. Historically that's never been a requirement for people to make children. Poor people have tended to be pretty prolific. > hoarding more and more of the wealth In a free market society, wealth is created, it is not "concentrated".

> In a free market society, wealth is created, it is not "concentrated".

The free market hasn't figured out how to create more land. Especially arable land.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#156

Post by SJC_Hacker »

WalterBright wrote: post #147
oh_my_goodness wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'In a free market society, wealth is created, it is not "concentrated".' That's a theory from economists. Economists have a lot of theories.

It's a fact, not a theory. The wealth in the economy did not exist 100 years ago. Therefore it must have been created. And where did Musk's money come from? Who did he transfer it from?

If I cut down trees to build a house, then I may have created "wealth" but I've also destroyed trees. Now the net affect may be that wealth has increased, but it may also have an effect which actually destroys wealth like for instance if those trees existed on a hill, and the roots were holding the soil in place, the act of cutting down

"Free market" economics does not capture this destruction of value. It only cares that some value was extracted out of the trees in the form of a new home sale, etc.

I'm sure all those slaves brought over to the New World created tremendous wealth, but I'm also pretty sure they would have rather preferred to stay in Africa.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#158

Post by cowpig »

WalterBright wrote: post #129
Arainach wrote: post #7

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

> will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves. Historically that's never been a requirement for people to make children. Poor people have tended to be pretty prolific. > hoarding more and more of the wealth In a free market society, wealth is created, it is not "concentrated".

How do you define "free market"?

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#159

Post by swat535 »

stego-tech wrote: post #86

Funny, I just wrapped a blog post about this: https://green.spacedino.net/i-dont-worry-about-population-de... Good presentation by the author that reaffirms my own opinions about the topic, specifically that while it sucks and cripples the social welfare programs our (deceased) elders built on the theory of continued population and productivity growth, it's also an issue we can fix with coordination between powers an…

Here is an uncomfortable truth: religious people produce more children, regardless of their income, social welfare status and living conditions. They are thought from birth that marriage, family and children are gifts from "God".

In fact, Christians make it a _requirement_ to be "open to life" (i.e have children) before they agree to marry you in Church (in addition to banning contraceptives, abortions and porn).

They also believe that pursuit of wealth, status and greed is a sin and one should focus his attention inward , towards "God", "Family", and "Charity".. disincentivizing people from dedicating their lives to their careers and missing their chances of having kids. is it no surprise then, that they ten to have larger families?

What I'm trying to highlight here, isn't a celebration of religious practices but the fact that we need a massive cultural shift, first and foremost to resolve this issue and if I'm being honest, I don't see this happening anytime soon.. at least not in our hyper capitalist society.

I'm not sure many people (especially women) are willing to sacrifice their lifestyles, career aspirations and goals to have children.

Unless people are taught from birth that having kids is their sole purpose in life and that family, motherhood and communities are deeply celebrated by society, they will opt out of having kids.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#160

Post by krapht »

ok_dad wrote: post #144
marssaxman wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This did not stop people in the past. You read of three-room New York tenements holding families of ten, or families with half a dozen children living in a single-room frontier cabin, and this was considered commonplace. My parents raised eleven children in a typical four-bedroom suburban tract house. I wonder why modern people would be different?

Because we have an expectation for more space. Pretty simple, no one wants to go backwards to when we lived in single room tenements with a wife pumping out babies for a decade in a row. Also, no one can afford a four bedroom home with twelve occupants on a single income like in the 50s.

You couldn't in the 50s either. You just made do.
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