We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US • Hacker News Board

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#371

Post by treis » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #355

shortandsweet wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I don't understand, if population growth is stagnant or declining, how is it these housing prices are reaching such heights?

> That's what I don't understand, if population growth is stagnant or declining, how is it these housing prices are reaching such heights? Housing prices around me are directly correlated to school quality. The same house near a good school is literally 1.5x-2x the price. The supply of good public schools is very limited. A good private school is ~20-30k a year. Figure that is worth 300k, not even counting that that…

>Housing prices around me are directly correlated to school quality.

Because "school quality" is basically indistinguishable from "socio-economic status". It has little to do with the quality of buildings or teachers or other resources. It's mostly about the ability and willingness of parents to be involved in their kid's life and the standards they hold.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#372

Post by TheCoelacanth » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

wcarss wrote: post #156

lastofthemojito wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This always feels like a weird argument. In the part of Maryland (USA) that I live in, quite a few areas are named after families who lived here in colonial times, and they were granted huge swaths of land. But a descendant from one of those families today can't reasonably expect an estate of hundreds of acres. There's just not enough land to go around with the size of today's population. Obviously, that's taking it…

This mostly makes sense if real estate is already fully utilised, but it isn't. I can't speak to India, but there's a feeling broadly in North America of having "new development" and "expansion" over time. Cities are much, much larger now than they were 40 years ago, and people imagine that the new farm land subsumed and developed should be available for a similar price relative to income to what it was 'back then'.…

Real estate is only expensive in the highly utilized areas.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#373

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #266

samr71 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such doom and gloom! You really believe the future is gonna be so bad that children would be better off not existing at all? The world has huge issues, sure, but it's still far better to be alive now than any time in human history. The only way the future could be worse is if this idea becomes mainstream and the prophecy self-fulfilling.

I think this is a rather short-sighted view; The future is not guaranteed to be better, especially not when we have lots of evidence of impending (1) massive climate disruption (2) water shortage (3) political polarization (4) economic imbalance, the list goes on. Saying "the only way" the world gets worse is if we don't have children is to ignore the potential for all of those effects to grow worse. It's certainly p…

> What would your response be to a 9 year old having an existential crisis about the polar bears starving to death because of climate change, and the implications for human civilization, and civilization's apparent apathy towards that? "Don't worry kid, just make sure you have children of your own and everything will work out"?

Speaking as a new parent who did in fact have an existential crisis about this as a child, very very disappointed in both myself and the rest of us.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#374

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

hntrader wrote: post #369

thesagan wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't many hunter gatherers have easier lives? See: "According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well." Citation: "Notes on the Original Affluent Society", Man the Hunter. R.B. Lee and I. DeVore (New York: Aldine Publishing Company) pp. 85–89. Published in 1966.

Definitely not. The average life expectancy in Africa today, the poorest continent, is over 60. The average life expectancy of hunter gatherers was about 30, give or take 5 years.

Average life expectancies are very very deceptive. If lots of babies die (which was the norm for much of history), then it's gonna skew the mean massively downwards in a way that doesn't reflect the observed distribution, conditional on not dying as a baby.

For instance, my understanding is that life expectancy at age 5 in both Africa and the UK are approximately equal.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#375

Post by carapace » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 8:06 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #244

carapace wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Cold War is still going on. We are still at risk of nuclear destruction. Not only are the old weapons still around but we are making new ones for some crazy reason. (Check the Doomsday Clock, I'm not the only person who has noticed that atomic war is still threatening this planet.) You have to take the long view: For approximately a million years we lived in very stable societies (as judged by the artifacts and a…

You are dramatically underestimating the difficulty of hunter gatherer life.

Maybe. I'm no anthropologist. Most of what I know about the lives of hunter-gatherers comes from watching "The Gods Must Be Crazy". The !Kung family seemed pretty happy (before the bottle fell into their lives... but I don't want to spoil it. It's a great movie.)

I think it's clear though that the ordering of QoL goes roughly:

Wealthy City/Farm > Hunter-Gatherer > Poor City/Farm

So for about a million years most people had it pretty good, then for about ten thousand years most people had it pretty bad, and then the last hundred years or so many people have gone from bad to good conditions, but many still endure pretty bad conditions.

If we could somehow compare the subjective quality of life of the people of Sentinel Island and the people of Manhattan Island I suspect that the least happy Sentinelese folks would be happier than the least happy New Yorkers.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#376

Post by globular-toast » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 8:06 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #351

globular-toast wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your ancestors were just fucking without contraception. They weren't trying to "pass on the torch" or anything silly like that.

Historical creation myths seem to say otherwise. E.g. those referring to seed, or fruit of the loins, or commandments to multiply.

Even if we are to believe that humans need to be commanded to reproduce, you're talking about the last few thousand years, not 3 billion.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#377

Post by hinkley » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 8:09 PM UTC

The reason people have sex at the end of the adventure movie is because the heroes just went through a harrowing experience together, possibly almost dying.

Sex falls under “life affirming activities”. It’s not a movie trope, it’s a human trope.

This last year has been a shit show. You get people vaccinated and employed and people will hear their biological clocks again. There will be a rebound effect, and there will come a time when 5th grade teachers are temporarily working as 4th or 3rd grade teachers because there are few 5th graders this year but a bumper crop coming up behind them.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#378

Post by nonameiguess » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #361

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have neither the "Malthusian or environmentalist worldview" nor the opposite, which seems to be dangerously close to a "nationalist or eugenics worldview". In other words: any grievances about birth rate on a population-wide level run the risk of spurning legislation or other changes with the purpose of forcing (with varying level of vehemence) individuals to make reproductive choices they otherwise wouldn't. Speci…

Perhaps this is a marker of the divide in worldviews. If we can't develop a country and a society people willingly want to have kids in, what is it for?

People do want to have kids, but the physical process of going through pregnancy and birth is brutal and dangerous. The people who have to do it quite rationally don't want to do it four times in the same decade once they have any other choice, even if it would be socially optimal. The best thing we can do at this point is develop the technology to create babies outside of human wombs.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#379

Post by hntrader » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 8:14 PM UTC

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #374

hntrader wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not. The average life expectancy in Africa today, the poorest continent, is over 60. The average life expectancy of hunter gatherers was about 30, give or take 5 years.

Average life expectancies are very very deceptive. If lots of babies die (which was the norm for much of history), then it's gonna skew the mean massively downwards in a way that doesn't reflect the observed distribution, conditional on not dying as a baby. For instance, my understanding is that life expectancy at age 5 in both Africa and the UK are approximately equal.

"approximately equal"

Right, because of basic modern medical care, which hunter gatherers don't have, often dying of problems with their teeth in their 20s, untreated infections, etc.

And that's only one of a deluge of reasons as to why hunter gatherer life was much more difficult than modern life, even modern life in relatively poor countries.

We can have a debate about whether life is easier in current South Sudan versus prehistory hunter gatherer tribes. Beyond that there's no debate to be had.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#380

Post by nonameiguess » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

opwieurposiu wrote: post #217

ianai wrote: post #41

This is probably mostly covid related. But I personally don’t even consider kids. Kids are a life long commitment. I’d only make that commitment if I felt long term stability or at least optimism. Austerity and cynicism dominate the US right now though. It’s a recipe for strife, struggle, and things that rip families and countries apart. It doesn’t have to be this way in the US.

I did not want to have kids. Then one day I realized that for the past 3 billion years my ancestors had been passing the torch. I was not going to be the one to let down the team. I felt a duty to give my genes a chance to fight it out in darwin's cage match. I can not guarantee my genes will win, but if I fail to reproduce I guarantee they will lose. Looking back, I am not sure this justification makes any sense, bu…

I've never had kids, but I have many sisters and cousins who have, so my genes have already been passed on.

I'm personally mostly indifferent and sometimes want my own, but it's my wife's choice more than mine and she has medical issues that would make pregnancy extremely unpleasant and dangerous.