191–200 of 286 posts
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Indeed and it has been a dog whistle for the eugenics crowd since the 70s. https://twitter.com/IfBooksPod/status/1603412908184309760?la...
I don't understand how my comment has anything to do with Eugenics.
> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. I disagree with this statement. Put yourself in the shoes of 25 years old and ask why don't you want to have kids? * (economic) difficult to manage finances * (economic) can't buy house, too expensive * (economic) to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off. * (sociologic)…
To quote Peter Zeihan, kids are no longer free labor for the farm, they're expensive furniture for your tiny condo that often break things.
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I don't understand how my comment has anything to do with Eugenics.
Follow the link for context. The whole overpopulation topic is an old scare with ties to eugenics
Would 15 billion people be too many? 20 billion? Are we to imagine that Earth could support an infinite number of people? Because that seems like magical thinking to me. Though a different lifestyle (vegan, low energy consumption, etc.) would probably allow the current number to get by fine.
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This is a weird take to me. Even if climate change turns out to be significantly bad, I have a hard time imagining it would be worse than most times in human history. Only a few generations ago people lived through two world wars. We could have a third world war at some point, or the AI doomers could be right, but would that stop you from having children? This feels to me like someone who doesn’t leave their house be…
Keep in mind that I've said it's one of the factors, not the only factor. But why should my standards be just better than most times in human history? That seems a low bar to me, most times in human history were miserable for the majority of people compared to the living standards I've become accustomed to. To be clear, I don't feel there is any moral duty to continue my particular genes and the world population will…
If you could be born in America in 1925 and live until 2015, would you? Or would you decline because the standard of living dropped right away with a Great Depression followed by a world war?
I agree with you that if I knew, with certainty, that my children’s lives would be filled with nothing but suffering, I would make the same choice. But a fear of a theoretical drop in a standard of living, and which may not even impact an American over the next 100 years all that much, does not seem to me like it should reach that threshold, and I suspect it is starting to for others because of the media playing into their anxieties. There are people living that lived through the holocaust and are still happy to have lived and, over their lifetime, have had fulfilled and happy lives. I suspect your children could likewise carve out a happy life, even if their standard of living is somewhat reduced.
I agree you have no moral duty to have kids, and if you don’t want them, don’t have them. But if you want them, but are not having them because you find that to be cruel to your unborn kids, I question whether that is really a rational choice.
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It's not about whether your kids will cause climate change. It's about creating children just in time for them to suffer through the collapse of civilisation.
The collapse of civilization is happening since the dawn of civilization. Jokes aside, I have heard both points made. Yours and the one from the parent poster.
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The UK's "no child benefit for children beyond the second" is a clear policy signal as to what the government wants.
The UK's government is, frankly, gone nuts . They complain about no one picking fruits from fields and empty supermarket shelves, they don't want immigration, they don't want population growth, and they don't want imports from the EU. All of that doesn't add up even in the slightest to anything that makes sense.
> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. I disagree with this statement. Put yourself in the shoes of 25 years old and ask why don't you want to have kids? * (economic) difficult to manage finances * (economic) can't buy house, too expensive * (economic) to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off. * (sociologic)…
The Bureau of Labor Statistics in the US tracks this. Average weekly hours worked as of April of this year is 34.4, or 6.9 hours a day: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm.
For IT, that would be under "Information" on that chart, so the average was 36.3 hours, or 7.3 hours a day.
In addition, the number of hours worked per day has been falling historically in the US. So if a high number of hours worked was negatively associated with birth rate, birth rate should be higher now than in the past.
As far as being laid off, the unemployment rate is as low as it has been in over half a century.
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* (sociologic) fear of climate change (will the world still be habitable in 20 years' time) or commitment to make a small positive impact on climate change by not having kids I'm not saying this is true or rational (there are actually blog posts in the rationalist community along the lines of "no, having kids does not cause climate change") but it's definitely a sentiment I've encountered.
For most people who say this, it’s just a rationalization. Acknowledging that kids are infeasible for economic reasons, like GP laid out, is just too painful and embarrassing. So the ‘environment’ fig leaf saves their dignity.
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don't forget education is expensive, and quite a few have received funding in predatory lending ways where the debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy without even receiving the degree. you need to marry, be debt free, and have a down payment (20% of 700k is 140k down) for a house to have kids. Kids need to happen before 35 for your wife; mortality increases greatly after that. You need 2 with modern medicine, or 4 c…
You think you need two children for one to make it to 18?
Add on top of that the rising drug epidemic, the removal of access to reproductive and mental health care...
[1] https://news.vcu.edu/article/2023/03/child-and-teen-mortalit...
[2] https://www.kff.org/health-reform/press-release/firearms-are...
> No obvious policy or economic factor can explain much of the decline. I mean, if people literally can't afford to have kids what do we expect to happen to the birthrate? I want kids more than anyone I know yet realistically I'm never going to have them. I'm 33 now and like most people in their early 30s I'm no where near in a stable enough position to raise kids. I mean who the hell even owns a home Here in the UK…