Live data from Hacker News

Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

governance.fyi

221–230 of 316 posts

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think Musk and Andreesseen are who most people would associate with the concept of pronatalism. Musk is for sure. Doesn't he have like 100 kids because he's constantly trying to get women to become pregnant by his sperm?

I associate the concept of pronatalism with also wanting to be involved in your kids' lives, which Musk seems to have no interest in.

>I associate the concept of pronatalism with also wanting to be involved in your kids' lives

Then don't because it's just wrong. Very few, if any, of the "more babies, bigger families" types have any interest in or concern for the children after they're born. In fact they're usually the ones fighting tooth and nail to prevent any kinds of programs or services that might help the resulting children and families.

For them it's just a pure numbers game/bizarre sexual fetish disguised as a philosophy.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I could afford to live 15 minutes from the office I 100% would go to an office. I live ~20 minutes away from my job and you eventually get tired of that, too. Car maintenance, bad weather, bad drivers, etc. grind you down little by little everyday.

I live ~30 minutes from the city center, and the office locations I've had for the past ten years or so. I enjoy sitting on the tram/bus, reading a book and getting into the "work time now" mindset. Having half an hour to relax, look at the scenery, the people, and so on, is always nice.

Time to chill out and read was definitely my favorite part about commuting by train (SEPTA). Unfortunately it also ate a lot of my time, but it was time I could spend reading so I didn't really mind that too much.

> getting into the "work time now" mindset

This is actually the reason I never liked WFH. I don't want to be in the work mindset at home, it degrades my ability to relax at home.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#223

Unfortunately this is an argument from the wrong angle, because it assumes what the pronatalists 'mean' by their belief. It's the same way that arguing with Musk about being a free speech maximalist is fundamentally a failed argument, because he doesn't actually believe in free speech. The silicon valley pronatalist stance is because they want to be patriarchs in full control of their family. They want absolute contr…

Do you think anti-natalism is or should be the default for humans?

What does your question have to do with OP's post? Did OP suggest an "anti-natalist" view, whatever that means?

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#224

If I could afford to live 15 minutes from the office I 100% would go to an office. But housing, transportation, daycare costs make that impractical. If they really want me in the office, companies need to engage on these issues in the metros they live in. They need to clear NIMBY barriers to urban housing, support transit, and good parental leave.

Not to mention safe neighborhood!

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#225
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deciding whether to have a child seems much less about finding the time for sex, than about thinking you have the time and resources for actually raising the child that you would have. The actual act is a rounding error in the time requirement.

I disagree. It is completely irrelevant if you can "afford" raising a child. Your children are not gonna die because you "can't afford" them in ANY western democracy once you have them. Actual affordability of children has zero direct effect on fertility, the only thing that really matters here is "perceived affordability" (=> and by implication, effect on lifestyle)! So if you can "trick" people into having more sex…

I can't speak for anyone else.

Me and the wife only decided to have a child after finances were in order. If finances were not in order we wouldn't have had a child.

Affordability was definitely a factor.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#226
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"RTO is sexist" is a hell of a take.

Why? The data supports it. Women were more likely to leave during RTO efforts than men. WFH being a massive boon for workers with childcare responsibilities or medical issues is widely recognized; there’s a reason why there was a baby boom during the pandemic. A lot of the backlash against WFH workers was blatantly sexist; remember all the rage against those “day in the life of a remote worker” type TikToks? Note how…

Women being more likely to leave than men because of a policy does not inherently make that policy sexist. You could say the same thing about a policy that requires police officers in full patrol kit be able to scale an 8' wall or drag a certain amount of weight a certain distance in a given time frame - that instituting that policy in a department that didn't have it previously would result in more women leaving than men doesn't make the policy sexist unless it's both actually unnecessary for the job and implementation with sexist intent.

Those meme-level DITL and older hustle culture stuff are two completely different things, targeting different audiences, and using different methods, so it makes sense that people would have two different reactions to them, even if you think both of them are stupid?

Are there any reports of someone moving their company from WFH to full RTO in order to get women writ large to leave their company? I think it's much more likely that capital owners just want their building full so they don't lose their investments, business owners and executives don't like WFH for various reasons including the extremely overblown risk of overemployment, managers on average want to micromanage and find it easier in-office, and there's no public health backstop to justify WFH like there was 5 years ago.

Separately but related, I don't think there's anything wrong with a factory worker getting paid $18/hr watching someone spread 2 hours of work over 7 hours in the office with two catered meals plus snacks and making jokes about "email jobs" not being real. I probably watched all the DITL things that went truly viral and the comments were never any more sexist than any other viral video on the internet.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think those groups are as distinct as you're implying, certainly not in the US. I think there is considerable overlap, in the form of people who believe in the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory. Essentially "we need to make sure there are enough white babies so that white people can outbreed ." That thought is inherently eugenicist because it implicitly holds that white people are "better" in some way. "C…

I guess I would like a distinction because I personally would like to avoid population collapse, thus I am pro-natalist in wanting a replacement level fertility, and I would prefer if that fertility was well distributed rather than highly concentrated in the most conservative religious folk. I do fear what will happen if we continue to shrink, it has to stop somewhere.

That's why I specified the US, where the population is still growing, and the remnants/echoes of the baby boom aren't as stark. I don't think it looks like we're headed for population collapse, and if we are, it's far enough in the future to course correct pretty gently.

I have less insight into the culture of natalists in countries like Japan or South Korea where their population pyramids are heavily inverted. I don't know what they're doing to address their age demographic issues, nor do I have any ideas for what they should do.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#228

If I could afford to live 15 minutes from the office I 100% would go to an office. But housing, transportation, daycare costs make that impractical. If they really want me in the office, companies need to engage on these issues in the metros they live in. They need to clear NIMBY barriers to urban housing, support transit, and good parental leave.

Companies could also do this the way they used to - satellite offices and similar.

In fact, I've never actually commuted into the city for a job, it's always been suburb to suburb commutes - part of the problem there has been it's not worth moving for a job that lasts on average 3-5 years.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is a secret 3rd solution that alleviates most of these issues: mass transit

Mass Transit isn't the solution on its own. It needs to be Mass Transit PLUS people living around mass transit stops. Mass Transit will never, ever, ever work in rural areas where houses are 2-5 miles apart from each other. It would barely work in suburbs, and only certain kinds like bus transit. You're never going to get a subway to work in the suburbs. Mass Transit is great for cities though, we should be building…

Trolleys and Regional Rail work great in the Philadelphia suburbs. When the state actually gives SEPTA funding so they can keep their vehicles up to date and pay their workers fairly

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were thus more likely to be in an economic position where they felt comfortable having another child. Just a reminder that if you pull up a chart of countries with the highest birth rates, they all have poor economic conditions. If the theory that a better economy correlates with more babies then countries like South Korea would have the world's highest birth rate.

There is evidence that improved economic conditions and flexible work arrangements increase fertility in meaningful amounts. Is it enough to achieve 2.1 replacement rate? It isn't, but the evidence is robust that wealthier people do have higher fertility in some circumstances. TLDR Fertility declines as countries urbanize, income rises, and women are educated and empowered to make more affirmed fertility choices, but…

I suspect that if you have a situation where people's "situation" (to use the word twice) doesn't change much from year to year but they feel they're slipping behind/worse (e.g, inflation but everything else is basically the same) - you'll find a decline in the birthrate.

If you have a situation where suddenly your life improves noticeably, birthrates will rise - even if the first group is always better off than the second. It's relative.

So WFH may have contributed to a birth rate rise simply because people felt more secure and more in control (or better) than they did before.

Post reply on HN