491–500 of 881 posts
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I'm not sure having children so you won't be lonely in old age is a good thing.
Well, you're going against the forces of history itself, when say such things. People have been thinking along these lines forever.
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A lot of those people alone in care homes have children. They just don't care. You can never know what the future holds so make reasonable plans but above all just enjoy your life and make yourself useful while you can. You have a therapist so you're not really selling the whole child lifestyle to me.
Therapy ≠ dysfunction
- Who pays tax in a massively aged world?
- Who pays for healthcare for the elderly?
- Who looks after the elderly?
- Will people still be able to retire from work?
I welcome a declining population. Because the climate will benefit and the poor will be less so, and the threat of war would diminish. I would hope this, at least, because I'd like to believe that fewer lives would place more value on the lives of others.
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A reducing labor population really won't help the working class. First of all, you'll be able to kiss your retirement bye bye. Second of all, you would likely see decline of the economy in real terms. This will cause huge dysfunctions in capitalism, as there will not be an efficient way to invest.
If your retirement was predicated on a forever swelling population lifting your boat, then you actually didn't save enough to retire. Secure retirements shouldn't rely on paygo systems and infinite growth.
Obviously a forever swelling population is not model we can or should try to sustain, but reaching some kind of replacement-level equilibrium is sustainable and is much healthier for workers' and retirees' economic health.
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I can drive around the entirety of downtown Portland in about 5-10 minutes (depending on traffic). It would take at least an hour to drive around downtown Atlanta.
Maybe most people in Portland live outside of downtown. Or maybe Portland just has better traffic management. This route around downtown Portland Google estimates will take 22 minutes: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/45.49314,-122.6699199/45.492... This route around downtown and midtown Atlanta Google estimates will take 25 minutes: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/33.7440027,-84.4006901/33.74...
The 5 and 405 around downtown Portland can be driven in under 10 minutes under ideal circumstances.
Also, your google map link for Portland is bizarre. I honestly have no idea what that route is supposed to represent. It definitely isn’t any route someone would take who was trying to circle downtown Portland.
This may be unpopular, but I already feel the earth is well beyond it’s ideal human population capacity. We are straining resources because of our bad policies and practices and politics.
This is the popular view, reinforced by lots of different bits of media and pop culture. It's also wrong. Enough food is already produced right now to feed every person on Earth [1]. Most estimates furthermore put the Earth's carrying capacity at around 2 billion more people than we already have [2]. The problems that people think of when they think of "overpopulation" are the result of insufficient distribution syst…
The Hacker News comment section tends to be factual, rational, and logical. So - this may be out of place, but here goes. When making decisions about whether or not to have children, we operate in a state of partial information. (This is of course true of all decisions.) I would like to contribute a bit of information. I'm 66, and have three children and four grandchildren. My adult children are the most wonderful pe…
It’s incredible how relevant and hard to answer some of the early questions are. What are waves? How do objects maintain flight? It’s not just that, but the nature of the questions. They know what waves and wings are, but they want to know things about them. That’s kind of the pinnacle of human intelligence right there. The ability to care to, and then to ask, such interesting and important questions. There would be no progress without wondering about things that matter, or things with significant answers anyway.
I’d have a lot less grey hair if it weren’t for my kids but things like this are what made my life matter. I love this about kids, and I enjoyed your comment.
It is disturbing that people take for granted that this is an economic problem. This thread is full of people lamenting the fact that we could support X times as many people as we do now if we all just sacrifice Y. When I look around the world today, I think the biggest resource that is lacking is economic opportunity. Huge swathes of people are desperate, angry, and depressed, I think because there is no opportunity…
We are on the cusp of the next step of humanity (if we don't kill ourselves first). I think this story lays out how that could look: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
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A reducing labor population really won't help the working class. First of all, you'll be able to kiss your retirement bye bye. Second of all, you would likely see decline of the economy in real terms. This will cause huge dysfunctions in capitalism, as there will not be an efficient way to invest.
If your retirement was predicated on a forever swelling population lifting your boat, then you actually didn't save enough to retire. Secure retirements shouldn't rely on paygo systems and infinite growth.
One aspect this article does not address at all is the massive sex ratio imbalance in India and China (for different reasons) at around 1,100 men for every 1000 women. This means there are 100 million girls less today in these countries alone, finding a suitable partner becomes harder and there are lesser number of couples will be there in the first place who can have kids The 2.1 replacement is perhaps not adequate…
>>This means there are 100 million girls less today in these countries alone Actual numbers are way off the real numbers. In my kids school you can see a very noticeably difference in the count of boys and girls in any standard and section. It's noticeable to a point, if you walk in to a classroom you can see at least visually boys outnumber girls by a good enough difference. I also refuse to believe this due to infa…
Even in the extreme scenario where all families stopped would stop having kids after the birth of a daughter, the expected number of male children would equal the expected number of female children. And even if say 52 percent of babies born are boys, you won't ever get a male excess of the discussed magnitude (1100 men for every 1000 women) this way.
You can try a Scala simulation here: https://pastebin.com/4US9a6aE.