Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Brave up, get skilled there's plenty of game out there.
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India's surprise baby bust
131–140 of 1001 posts
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd call it hedonism if a couple wants to be able to go out on a date on a whim, easily take a vacation, watch adult-appropriate movies on a big TV in the living room, maintain good sleep/health habits, keep a flexible schedule unconstrained by school pickups/staying home with a sick kid, etc. These are all real examples of why people I know delayed having kids, curtailed the number they had, or never had them altoge…
And do you think this is bad?
Hedonism is bad because:
- hedonic pleasures are adaptive. The first time you experience them is incredible. The 1000th time, much less so. - chasing hedonic pleasures is counter-productive. Studies show that people who actively seek out hedonic pleasure are less happy than those that don't.
OTOH, eudaimonic pleasure (aka fulfilment, satisfaction) is much more durable.
Work, hobbies, charity work, and children are avenues towards fulfilment. Far too many rely on work to provide it for them, but that's counter-productive for most.
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, in the extreme case, human extinction seems like a pretty bad thing.
Humans are the second most populous animal on the planet. We are in no danger of extinction.
I don't know where you got that idea, but we're not even the most populous species of vertebrates on the planet (that might be chickens).
If you include arthropods, ants make it not even remotely close.
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#134This has happened to every single society [*] as it industrializes [0], and offering extensive support and incentives to parents (e.g. as has been tried in Scandinavian countries) does very little to reverse this trend [1, 2]. My hypothesis is that as societies industrialize, they afford their population more and more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children. So many people I know put of…
There's some evidence that mobile phone access is one of the biggest drivers in this. This talks about teen fertility but I'd imagine it's similar in other age categories as well.
https://homepages.uc.edu/~moscoshn/Personal_webpage/papers/S...
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#135This has happened to every single society [*] as it industrializes [0], and offering extensive support and incentives to parents (e.g. as has been tried in Scandinavian countries) does very little to reverse this trend [1, 2]. My hypothesis is that as societies industrialize, they afford their population more and more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children. So many people I know put of…
Is it hedonism if a child-free adult gets fulfillment out of nurturing and caring for others, mentoring, caring for themselves and their community? That's like, the complete opposite of the hedonistic young couple not using protection and accidentally getting pregnant.
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Re: India's surprise baby bust
#136The desire to procreate above replacement levels is probably heritable, so it will all work itself out naturally.
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
The top 1% is freaking out at the thought of population shrinking because the cogs of the machine won’t turn itself.
Top 1% are too divorced from the real world to have ever seen a cog.
But they have some ideea how many people need to work to make them that much money.
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Pain for whom? The people profiting from cheap labor probably. A pretty consistent trend throughout history is that shit rolls downhill.
What about the pain from overpopulation and a glut of uneducated labour? Doesn't that shit roll downhill, too? "The poor will always pay for it" is a thought-terminating cliche that is often trotted out in support of the status quo (or some mythical past status quo). How do you know that past status quo isn't actually worse for them than the direction things are trending? Do you think we somehow stumbled upon some gl…
What overpopulation?
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean you can always be a farrier, lineman, septic sumper, cobbler etc… What’s stopping you from being a welder or dentist?
I feel like this is a joke but honest answer: I worked ocean rescue for 4 years then lived with some tech folks in sf who were making literally 5-10x my salary. What’s stopping me? Probably some combo of wanting to one day afford a home and a family without having to move to Memphis and the a sense that I’d get bored as a welder and therefore be a bad one. Man, septic pumper tho…
> some tech folks in sf who were making literally 5-10x my salary
Don't worry. It's temporary.
Re: India's surprise baby bust
#140What's the strong case against population dwindling other than supporting aging population? Given the AI armageddon, it just makes sense to reduce the population. If there's less population, we need less production and less workers. Of course, countries have to deal with oldest population for a brief period of time.
> other than supporting aging population?
Isn't that enough? Imagine a world where a large percentage of the population are in nursing homes. A humane goal for a nursing home is 10:1 24/7. So that means 1 nurse for every 2.5 residents.
Besides that, it's all about the speed of change. Current Korean levels of population halving every generation is going to cause tremendous upheaval.
Shrinking and growing populations aren't necessarily problematic. What's problematic are populations that shrink or grow too quickly. Infrastructure adapted for N people works well for a number close to N, but not so well for 2N or 0.5N.
There aren't too many people besides Elon Musk that are significantly worried that the US's replacement rate is 1.8 compared to the 2.1 constant population level. But numbers much below that do alarm many.