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The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

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Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#161

Post by spacemadness »

steveBK123 wrote: post #146
sseagull wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on, but this in particular > people tend to not live near parents anymore so they lose free childcare For some reason I don't see this mentioned as often, but I've always felt it a significant root cause (among many of course). Childcare is really expensive, but it used to be "free". I grew up with grandparents/aunts/uncles/older cousins available to baby sit me. But now very much of my cohort have moved away fr…

It fits with everything in the rich world, especially the west, especially the US which is - replacing family/community/social/etc systems with pay-as-you-go solutions. And this is one of many areas it falls apart.

One of the major unspoken costs of having hotbeds of industry and the opportunity cost associated for not being in those hotbeds. Hotbeds are great for the entrepreneur but it still costs a hell of a lot in other ways that would otherwise enrich society.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#162

Post by bryanlarsen »

Kivern7 wrote: post #152
bryanlarsen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children are a massive asset for tax-payers. Money is a claim on the production of a country. Without that production, money is just a useless piece of paper or useless entry in a bank database. And for a country to produce, it needs people of working age. More concretely, let's suppose you're 92 and you need full time nursing care. You still have retirements savings so should be able to pay for it. Now let's say the…

Nobody thinks like this. Not a single intelligent, successful, prosperous woman is going to be even slightly motivated to have a baby over the long-term viability and credibility of fiat currency, whereas I personally know of two people who only exist because their welfare-dependent mother impulsively took advantage of a government cash bonus by getting knocked up by a man she barely knew, and then promptly did so ag…

We're not asking mothers to think like this. We're asking legislators to think like this.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#163

Post by spacemadness »

Tade0 wrote: post #85

I don't think it's that and it's more about how conscious a decision it is nowadays. It's not the future - it's the attitude towards it. Teen pregnancies are at an all time low everywhere in the developed world and it's not just thanks to the availability of contraception, but also a generational shift in attitudes towards risk taking. Overall people are having children later and therefore fewer because they feel tha…

Could it be perhaps that they need to be established first and feel like talking less risks because the future feels uncertain like the essay suggests? “People don’t want to take risks” seems like half an answer and isn’t finding root cause. When things feel crazy, people control what they can, establish routines, and perhaps take less risks.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#164

Post by spacemadness »

_dark_matter_ wrote: post #15
hectorchu wrote: post #2

This post argues that collapsing birth rates aren’t just about housing or money — they’re a rational response to the sense that the future is unstable, meaningless, or even dangerous. It introduces the concept of “temporal inflation” — the idea that just like money loses value in hyperinflation, time loses value when people can’t trust the future. Would love to hear if this resonates with others.

Is this AI generated?

Yes, and it still gets replies. Maybe from other bots. Welcome to our dumb future.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#165

Post by pearlsontheroad »

gwd wrote: post #77
pearlsontheroad wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Even though I'm childless, taxes I've paid my whole life help finance public schools which I'll never use.

> which I'll never use. Your younger co-workers will have been educated in public schools you paid for. If you're an employer, the people you hire will have been educated with public schools you paid for. When you retire, the people paying your retirement and running the country you live in will have been educated by the public schools you paid for. When you're sick, loads of the research on how to cure you and keep…

Agree 100%. Not saying I don't benefit indirectly from public education. In fact, I actually feel good about contributing to the education of my fellow citizens. My comment was related to the insinuation that childfree choice is "too inexpensive". What's next, let's tax childfree people more than parents?

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#166

Post by gilbetron »

ryandrake wrote: post #135
gilbetron wrote: post #121

Two things I think are the main drivers, one is easy access to effective birth control (I consider this a great thing) and that is often mentioned. I think the other thing, though, is it is much easier to be entertained these days. People don't understand how boring it was 30+ years ago. I'll go back and play games with my son from when I was young and the games almost always are much more dull than I remember. There…

The college prep rat race is insane today compared to when I was a kid. It’s become a 10+ year effort to check all the checkboxes. 1995: Have > 3.8 GPA, take the SAT, get a good enough score, write some decent sounding bullshit on an application essay, and bam: you have a shot at a top school. 2025: Start taking AP courses in middle school. Take and excel at advanced science and math classes for 4 years. Take 3 years…

To those non-parents, or older parents, or parents of small kids, this is not an exaggeration. My son (a sophomore) is taking the exact same classes as I did in high school, except he is taking an AP course as a junior, and probably 2 as a senior. He has a 3.9 ish GPA so far. He is, in general, doing better than I was, and I got into a top 25 university. I've had comments from counselors and teachers saying, "oh, so is he not really on a college trajectory?" Insane and destructive. The thing is, at the same time, colleges have gotten easier overall. My brother is a professor and he has largely retired because he has gotten sick of, "I know the student is failing the class because they didn't do the work, but can you please just pass them anyway?" from university leadership.

I work with a lot of high-end CS graduates, and some are great, but few of them blow my socks off.

Our education is just messed up right now.

(By the way, it is possible for a high school student to graduate with an entire year's college credits via AP classes)

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#167

Post by Balgair »

drewbug01 wrote: post #122
Balgair wrote: post #120

I think a more humane (and likely more successful) way out of this is to not try to convince the childless to have children at all, but to try to convince those with children to have more. So, I'll pose this question to HN and see what you all say: If you have kids, why not more? (if you're too old/young, just imagine you're the right age) I'll go first: We'd both like to have more kids, but we honestly don't have th…

> I think a more humane (and likely more successful) way out of this is to not try to convince the childless to have children at all, but to try to convince those with children to have more. > So, I'll pose this question to HN and see what you all say: If you have kids, why not more? (if you're too old/young, just imagine you're the right age) > I'll go first: We'd both like to have more kids, but we honestly don't h…

My bad about not being more clear here.

I was looking for the perspectives of others, not to conclusively answer the question. I thought it would be polite to offer my own first.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#168

Post by johnea »

dinfinity wrote: post #105
Tade0 wrote: post #85

I don't think it's that and it's more about how conscious a decision it is nowadays. It's not the future - it's the attitude towards it. Teen pregnancies are at an all time low everywhere in the developed world and it's not just thanks to the availability of contraception, but also a generational shift in attitudes towards risk taking. Overall people are having children later and therefore fewer because they feel tha…

> 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 "environmental service" (to put this in the money = purpose in life perspective) is massively over burdened.

My personal opinion is that there is no such thing as "purpose in life", we just grew from the mud here. But I think there is a general awareness among people with some exposure to the state of the planet that we're trashing the place, and that's mostly due to there being way too many humans.

Even if a person can't put their finger on it, there is a general feeling that the future holds a dubious opportunity to flourish.

Therefore less kids.

I also believe that raising a child takes a lot of time and effort, and modern first world youth just aren't interested in spending that much time away from their phones.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#169

Post by toomuchtodo »

bradlys wrote: post #147
UncleMeat wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it is absolutely baffling to me that the discussion of teen pregnancy never seems to come up in these "oh no birth rates are down" discussions. Like, you told us that a substantial portion of these births were bad for society (and I generally agree) and now you are freaking out that the number of births went down?

Most people aren’t aware - especially in educated UMC circles like this one - how much the birth rate relied on teenage moms. The birthrate for educated folks has been below replacement for a long time. Teenage moms probably aren’t in their mind cause they were raised among other UMC folks and it just doesn’t happen there. The US has been below replacement overall for even longer. We’ve relied on immigration for 50+…

~40% of annual pregnancies in the US and internationally are unintended (per the Guttmacher Institute and the UN, respectively). When women can prevent unintended pregnancy, of course total fertility rate will decline to a neutral rate below replacement rate. The population exploded because women were not empowered, and now they are. Economic systems built around this anomaly in human history are structurally flawed, and will need to adapt.

Kids incur exceptional opportunity and real costs, and are unnecessary for a fulfilling life, so this outcome should not be surprising.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#170

Post by chuankl »

kaibee wrote: post #83
hectorchu wrote: post #2

This post argues that collapsing birth rates aren’t just about housing or money — they’re a rational response to the sense that the future is unstable, meaningless, or even dangerous. It introduces the concept of “temporal inflation” — the idea that just like money loses value in hyperinflation, time loses value when people can’t trust the future. Would love to hear if this resonates with others.

> Yes, kids are expensive. But countries like Korea and Singapore are pouring money into incentives and still seeing fertility drop to record lows. This is what you're missing. They are not. When the Titanic hit the iceberg, you could have gone from 0 people bailing water on the ship with buckets to the whole complement of crew and passengers (if you had enough buckets). You could talk about how there's now thousands…

> Well, we took the "slack" out of the system and sold it. Without really being aware of its value.

I think this is the key insight, on this specific topic and many others.

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