Singles are strengthening society’s social bonds | Hacker News Reader

Singles are strengthening society’s social bonds

nautil.us

40 pointsdnetesn22 comments

The flip side of this phenomenon, along with the demise of the traditional family, is, those who aren't chosen as part of the hand picked family, can miss out on having one altogether. Where decades ago there were many people who had no friends besides family, today those people belong to an 'underclass' of loners. That's a worse kind of inequality than the economic inequality everyone talks about.

Niche subcultures thrive on the internet. Friendships take an amount of effort and a reasonable level of sacrifice to maintain. The internet also makes it easy to ignore other people and spend time on consuming media instead of creating and sharing experiences alongside other people. I assume this might be why let's play videos and spectator video gaming seems to be gaining in popularity.

That's one kind of lonely person, though they are not strictly lonely because often they have lots of relationships online, so they are talking to people. Often they are considered unattractive by women.

The kind I have in mind is 67 year old retired atheist man or woman living next door, unmarried, parents passed away. has 3 siblings with kids but never talks to them. Has to rely on neighbour to call him or her up at the designated time every day to make sure he or she picks it up to confirm they didn't faint in the shower.

I knew a few of these. One of them asked how to meet women because he hadn't talked to one for so long. The other struggle to say "I'm fine" every time I ask her "How're you?".

My parents is the neighbour by the way. I think the man has a son but I get the feeling his son never talks to him.

This article really annoys me, I don't really care if people have kids or not, however, all these people doing so much for society came from people who chose to do less for society and instead raise the people doing so much for society.

"As networked individuals, we have the freedom to design the community we want to live in. And if what we choose isn’t working for us, we can always try something else."

this a really disrespectful attitude to the kinds of decisions made by their parents to enable them to live such a lifestyle, I'm not saying they owe people to have children just respect that abandoning something when it doesn't suit you is not how great adults are raised, but rather children growing up secure in the knowledge that they are so loved that their parents gave up such a lifestyle to ensure that even when things aren't going well they will be loved and cared for.

We all contribute to society in our own way and it would be great if we could all be proud of what we've contributed without having to compare to others. If you're raising children cherish them, if you're single cherish that, neither decision takes anything away from the other.

Having children directly takes from childless single people (in the US) through their taxes. I know that due to the law of averages, everything is supposed to be equal, but that is a direct subsidy to the majority from a minority.

There are certainly people doing a poor job of raising children that are creating net losses, there are also others doing great jobs.

The other thing is, the single people are the very product of this subsidy, so I'm not sure how it creates any sort of moral high ground.

That's kind of the point about this holier than thou attitude I detest in the article.

actually, looking at this graph from the article, it appears that families with kids are not majority - http://static.nautil.us/8546_2f4059ce1227f021edc5d9c6f0f17dc...

There's a bit of a problem with that graph: it doesn't show what proportion of the population has children.

All this graph does is capture a point in time. It groups people into "single", "other family", "married w/o kids", and "married w/ kids". The problem is that, for instance, someone who has kids likely is a member of 3, if not all 4, of these groups at some point in his or her life. Most people start out in the "single" group, then go to the "married w/o kids" group, and then finally to the "married w/ kids" group, and then they go back to "single" or "married w/o kids", depending on whether they divorce or stay married but the kids move out. They they might end up in the "other" group in their old age.

The point is, this graph doesn't give you any idea at all what percentage of the population is having children. Not only that, it seems to be incomplete: where are the people who are divorce with either full or partial custody? They don't seem to be accounted for in any group here. That's a huge portion of the population these days! Maybe that's supposed to be covered by the "other" category, but that's such an important grouping that it really should not be relegated to "other", especially since this "other" group doesn't indicate whether there's kids there or not; it could just be cohabitors, people living in poly households, old people living together for convenience, who knows.

Presumably most of those children will be productive members of society whose contributions support your retirement... And let's not forget the benefit you [if born or raised in G20] would have received as a child. So, in essence you are as a single, paying back the benefits you enjoyed as a youth, presuming averages.

Every time there is a discussion about people without children versus people with, a bunch of childless people will make the statement about having to pay taxes for these kids. It is like they have read that statement elsewhere and then repeats it without actually thinking about it at all. I don't bother responding anymore.

I agree with you and the person you're responding to, but I also understand where the anti-child-tax people are coming from. I think they come from a good place, which is "I shouldn't pay for optional activities of others" and probably some amount of "why pay for THOSE people's kids who are just a drain on society's resources (and mine personally!)".

But if "those people" (trailer park folk, the uneducated, or whoever else somebody dislikes) are going to have kids, wouldn't we all prefer that they at least get a minimum education, basic nutrition etc. so that we don't push them into being an un-educated, malnourished mob that resents the rest of society?

Public education, welfare, etc. might be broken, but that's a whole other argument.

A lot of these populations of undereducated are in areas that culturally oppose outside influences. See: cults, extremely rural Appalachia, pockets of immigrant groups opposing assimilation violently in European urban areas. Education = indoctrination to them and a loss of their cultural values. How do you teach people that may need it most when they don't want it?

This is not the case by and large but it puts a ceiling on the efforts to educate away problems with the Idiocracy trends of the world.

It's not about being right or wrong, it's about making up grievances to make themselves feel not-guilty about their life choices. Intellectual honesty had nothing to do with it

That's a matter of tax reform, not social ethics.

If it wasn't a matter of social ethics it wouldn't be a matter for tax reform...?

However, consider that in order to continue a society needs to reproduce. Children are incredibly expensive in terms of both time and money, more so in terms of time. If anything I think in its own interest society should further subsidize having children, especially if it is somehow weighted toward parents who are raising highly productive members of society. The German method of paying the mother's wages for up to 2 years seems like a good way to do that. If it's a fixed amount it encourages growth at the low end and discourages having kids at the high end, where it actually helps to disperse inheritances if people have more kids and equalize opportunities in the society.

As frustrating as other humans are (seriously, you lot ;) ), most of the best things about my life either are other humans or come from other humans.

If my relative effective tax rates are any indication, I'm heavily subsidizing the children of my siblings (not to mention their mortgages). I'm more or less okay with that. My nieces and nephews are fun people, who seem to like their weird single uncle.

One could argue those children are the very people childless single people are expecting to be paying their social security payments on retirement, as well as the people who serve as the cashiers and waiters and waitresses when they're retired and going out to eat.

Raising your children to provide services to ungrateful childless single people, spending tens of thousands of dollars worth of time, and money, and only get back a fraction of it, seems more like doing a duty than self-gratification to me.

It's strange to see childless single people claim raising children as a selfish act, and they're being martyrs performing a selfless act relying on everyone else to serve them when they're old.

>this a really disrespectful attitude to the kinds of decisions made by their parents to enable them to live such a lifestyle

Their parents chose to make those decisions, nobody forced them. The child did not choose to be born, so why should it bear any responsibility for a decision it had no part in? I can't paint your house then say "hey, I painted your house, pay me now"; our society works on the principle of contract, that I can only make you owe me something for painting your house if you actually agreed to do so beforehand.

>> our society works on the principle of contract

The principle of contract is a leaking abstraction.

Society has always worked on the principle of obligation. Parents are obligated to protect and provide for their children. Rulers in power are obligated to protect their subjects from external, physical threats. Those well off, while part of a society, are obligated to provide for those who have been hit by hard times.

This is true now, and it was also true before the idea of contract. It may be legal to have lots of kids and give them all up for adoption, but you will be ostracised by your friends and family for doing so. It may be legal for a president to stand down their military and choose not to resist a foreign invasion even when there's a good chance they could defend the country successfully, but the people will stop following the president and there's a high chance of a military coup. It's also happens when the well-off are least happy about having to contribute to society during hard times, they get rounded up and killed.

How does not being forced make a statement not disrespectful?

Not having children is a perfectly valid lifestyle choice, a childless person saying that raising children contributes less to society than they do says a lot about how they fundamentally view themselves.

It reminds me of the polar opposite of what gay man once said to me: "I love straight people, they make all the gay people" in reference to another man talking down about 'breeders'

There is another article on the front page of HN currently pointing out a surplus of young people in developing nations. So there is little if any moral imperative to produce children in this day and age - if we needed more, we could just as well import them and solve a demographic problem in the donor country as well!

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