'Children of Men' is happening | Hacker News Reader

'Children of Men' is happening

edwest.substack.com

240 pointsrwmj383 comments

The article fails to mention France which is managing the low children crisis better than most. Macron moved down the compulsory school age start from 6 (primary school) down to 3 (kindergarten).

Governments should help families by providing easier access to daycares and kindergartens. Helping young parents get some rest with their first child(ren) will encourage them having more children.

I'm a parent of two young children, a 3 years old and a 6 months old. This is the hardest period of my life since high school. I'm 34 and in our circles I'm the youngest dad. Most of other dads' are in their late 30s all the way to early 50s.

Yet I do feel I'm making a difference, especially considering that I'm Italian (high longevity + few children). I've been also inspired by my choices of parenthood by the movie IDIOCRACY:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk I was delighted when I red in the Elon Musk biography that he had also saw the movie and that was also one of the reasons for being a parent of multiple kids.

>Macron moved down the compulsory school age start from 6 (primary school) down to 3 (kindergarten). Governments should help families by providing easier access to daycares and kindergartens.

How is compulsory use easier access?

I'm guessing what they mean is that it removes some of the financial barriers to parents during early childhood: they can return to work because their child is in school/daycare for most of the day, at limited to no cost to them.

Even if they aren't both working, it allows the home partner to return to being a full time homemaker, and all that that entails: pursuing hobbies or volunteer opportunities, managing the family social life, planning parties and outings, etc. All of these things are potentially much more fulfilling and life giving than spending up to a decade burning yourself to the ground waiting for multiple kids to finally be in full time school so you can have your days back.

Because now government know exactly how many kids it has to fund daycare for and where the facilities should be.

I’d even go as far as parental leave should be completely covered until there is government provided daycare, so as the decision to have kids doesn’t carry too much of an economic burden.

Disheartening to see software people praising removal of options using among all things incompetence as justification.

If you prefer to not send your kid to daycare or to continue to work while you have the option of caring for your kid, that's up to you. Where did I praised removal of options? What option is being removed here?

If you make something compulsory, a whole system springs up around meeting that compulsion.

If the government mandates kindergarten attendance, well, now it's much more important to put funding for kindergartens in your next bill.

If every parent of a three-year-old has to think about finding a kindergarten, that's a lot more political clout behind getting better kindergartens.

And so on and so forth.

That makes sense. Such a system would also have to include transportation, food, etc. It's probably a good move if the funding is there. France is wealthy enough I think.

I don’t think this will change anything statistically.

I have no numbers but as a French, I know literally nobody who have not been to school/kindergarten at 3.

Starting school at 3, while not mandatory before the law, was just the norm for barely everyone.

It’s interesting that you say this because, and this doesn’t change my opinion about its value, education is strongly correlated with a decrease in birth rates in developing and developed countries. There’s also a strong correlation between high marks at a young age and high degrees of success later in life, regardless of grades or performance in between. Taken together, Macron’s policy could actuallly harm the birth rate.

I completely agree that families should get more support. I’m just not so sure it’s necessarily that straightforward.

My own intuition is that the norm of both parents working is hard on fertility. I can't imagine what it would be like without a dedicated full-time parent.

> I’m just not so sure it’s necessarily that straightforward.

Not to sound snide, but I also don't think it's as straightforward as linking two correlative effects. High grades in school is also often predictive of economic background, race, gender etc... that themselves are correlated to birth rates. I don't see here much reason to believe that providing early childhood care would decrease birth rates.

You don’t. Correlation doesn’t equal causation, of course. My point was that GPs solution might not be enough, not that it was unviable. I tried to demonstrate that by showing that in the worst case it could potentially backfire, not that it necessarily will. I was painting in pretty broad strokes though, mostly because I don’t have any better ideas, so I could see how it just comes across as FUD.

How about we increase wages so people can afford to work less? Because we are more productive than ever. No thanks on more government-run programs for daycare facilities. No thanks to making participation mandatory at 3 years old for compulsory education outside the home. I prefer they give direct cash to parents in the form of more generous direct payments like they were doing for the last year and a half during the pandemic, thereby empowering parents to make the best decision for their own households. Idgaf about Macron until he publicly gives an account for why France was degrading its nuclear plants prematurely and failing to build more in a timely fashion. And he should also talk about what France will contribute to NATO in the form of defense budget spending as a share of GDP, along with Germany and other western European countries that were slacking off for years. He can otherwise shut up about compulsive kindgarten at 3 rather than 6, because that is subversion of parental authority.

More shitty government programs or opportunities for bad and dishonest people to indoctrinate the young from earlier ages, particularly now that some bureaucrats would want to use their responsibilities as if they constitute the power to subvert parental involvement, are a huge no from me.

We spent too much already and these politicians only gave us inflation. Now you advocate for them to have more control and say over education by recommending more of their services? Nah, way more efficient, empowering, and aligned with freedom & democracy if parents in a household just get direct cash every month rather than government-run facilities. No thanks. Way too many problems with more gov. Give cash instead, solve the problem. And foster good working environment so wages go up and people can choose to work less and still have a family.

Not rocket science

increase wages how?

Simple, just pass go, and draw a card from Chance.

Direct cash to households in the form of a guaranteed payment income, with excess collected at tax season.

> How about we increase wages so people can afford to work less?

If you want people generally to work less and earn more, how are you going to reduce the amount of work there is for them to do? Also how are you going to provide the additional goods and services these people will be able to afford (inflation? What dat?) if less work is being done to provide them? Sounds fascinating.

> Also how are you going to provide the additional goods and services these people will be able to afford

We could start manufacturing those more expensive but better quality goods, which most of people could not afford. There is no problem with manufacturing enough goods. There is problem that many people only have money for the cheapest shit which breaks easily and needs to be replaced soon which costs even more money and destroys environment.

I’m not saying you are wrong, but everyone working less and being richer is an outcome, not a policy. How do you think we should achieve that? Making higher quality goods sounds like it would take more work, not less.

It’s all very well saying “we could just”, but how would you bring about this change? How do you persuade people to want different things and make different choices? That’s the interesting question.

Whole discussion was started because your question "how are you going to provide the additional goods and services these people will be able to afford" seems nonsensical. How? With increased production. Increasing production is not a problem.

How are you going to do that though, with people working less? Why is it not a problem?

With automation or employing more people. We are not at a full production capacity now, we could produce more, but we don't because there is no demand currently for more.

The US had close to full employment. Two thirds of the unemployed find a job within 6 months, they’re not really unemployed just between jobs. Of course there are spots of higher unemployment due structural reasons that need addressing, but at the macro scale their just not going to to make an even fractional change. Not the mass scale global transformation your talking about. China is running out of in tapped labour too.

Production is expanding elsewhere in SE Asia but those countries are much smaller and taking time and a lot of capital to ramp up.

Where are all these new workers going to come from, and if they could work productively already why aren’t they?

None of this makes a lick of sense.

> Where are all these new workers going to come from, and if they could work productively already why aren’t they?

Why would they work more productively if that is not needed? They would have to make more things, which people wouldn't buy because there is overproduction. If you have order for 1000 items every week, you make 1000 items every week, even when you could make 5000 items every week. You can slow your production line, this way workers are more relaxed and you have time for maintenance. It's not like every employee out there is used at 100% utilisation, that would not be sustainable. Many times you employ as many people as you can just because it's cheaper than using more automation. If you need to produce more and can't find employes, you can pay them more. If you can't find enough employes at all, that means price per employee is so high that you can now employ some robots. Yeah, it takes time, but global change in time of employment is also not going to happen overnight.

But that all increases costs right? Who pays for it?

> Also how are you going to provide the additional goods and services these people will be able to afford

So, we provided more products to people who now have money. And now you are asking "Who will pay". Well, the people who now have the money to pay for it? That was the reason for increased production in the first place?

Most of our gains in productivity have been captured by either housing pricing or massive government bureaucracies which serve just to “employ” people and have them duffle paper around. We don’t need to work nearly as much to produce this level of comfort

While I agree we could live more simply, I feel you'd need a lot more to justify your assertions. The fact is we have access to a lot more luxuries than we did in the past. Are they necessary? No by definition. Are they even worth it? Very debatable. But to act like our lives have not changed at all except for house prices going up is dishonest.

100%. Also worth noting from Sowell how house prices did go up, but by comparison the prices per square foot relative to how our parents and grandparents started out are not too bad tbh. (They were all humble and started out in much more meager real estate than many people have now, for example 600 or 1000 or 1200 square foot living conditions vs 2500+ average now per home).

No point in per square feet if people own home not square feet. If price is up, people can't own home and they are not. This is what matters.

The point is people can afford houses if they are willing to compromise on size, in the way previous generations did. A lot are choosing to rent instead. That’s a choice.

This whole conversation has nothing to with what I said. I’m mostly talking about massive taxes and light fiscal policies that are basically transferring wealth to people with access to capital

Your comment said most of the gains in productivity have been captured by housing or government bureaucracies. This is not true. The quality of everything has gone up substantially from the coffee we drink, to the fresh produce around the calendar, to the conveniences at home. We live in a luxury society where a fresh avocado in the middle of winter is less than $1. Where we can order just about anything we need at the click of a button from around the globe. This is where our productivity has gone.

I hate it when people jingle a few trinkets and say look how good everything is. Who cares about avocado? Can you take a few months off to relax? Can you take 2 years off to change careers? Can a woman stay home to take care of her kids for a few years? Can you buy a house without paying for 30 years for it? My friends in the US pay USD3900 for daycare for 1 child.

> How about we increase wages so people can afford to work less?

Or increase taxes on capital and redistribute the gains, rather than relying on wages.

If this is done to guarantee a nice ubi and access to rigorous education opportunities based on proven merit and results year over year, sounds good to me. Great safety net, can be funded efficiently in a way that respects individuals, the Constitution, Democracy. Sounds great!!!

AFAIK French policy was driven by mothers that want to continue working. Most jobs and careers just aren't possible to do with halved working hours even if it was paid well.

That's the European approach that children belong to whole community not only their parents and the authority and the burden is shared. I don't get why are you so hell bent on having exclusive authority over your child?

> Most jobs and careers just aren't possible to do with halved working hours even if it was paid well.

Nah. That’s what people used to say abou WFH too. All this is purely due to capricious employers and institutions, not because of some natural law. If companies had their way, we’d be working 80h/week. That’s true for both low paying and high paying jobs.

> Most jobs and careers just aren't possible to do with halved working hours

I just don't buy this; it feels like a lack of imagination. Sure, today, very few firms that traditionally employ full-time, salaried employees would even consider the idea of hiring twice as many half-time workers, but there's no inherent reason why it couldn't work.

Certainly, there are hurdles: some per-employee costs are fixed regardless of how many hours they work. But this is just an argument to fix them (because they're stupid in general), not to avoid the situation. Most part-time and contract workers in the US don't get benefits like health insurance and retirement plans. But this is an argument to fix those broken programs, not throw our hands up and claim the status quo is the only option.

Corporate profits and executive pay growth is generally far outstripping the wages paid to mid- and low-level employees. There's no reason why most companies can't pay their employees more equitably, and stop with all the pay inequality garbage.

> That's the European approach that children belong to whole community not only their parents and the authority and the burden is shared. I don't get why are you so hell bent on having exclusive authority over your child?

I'm not a parent, but childhood education these days seems more about pushing government propaganda and training kids to be obedient little employees (not to mention providing much-needed free day-care for parents), than about nurturing creativity and curiosity, and giving kids the tools they need to be productive, yet critical-thinking, independent people. I look at stories of 12-year-old kids getting arrested at school for asinine reasons[0] and wonder what the hell is happening.

I don't think people need "exclusive authority" over their children in general, but I do think the current state of public (and even private, in many cases) education could easily drive parents to not want their kids to be a part of it.

[0] https://www.copblock.org/140900/stupid-reasons-police-arrest...

I suspect you're trolling, but in case you're not:

As a European, I do have a lot of community centric philosophy - but given the government (local and country) incompetence in virtually all matters of education and the universally awful opinion all teachers I know hold of the government and their interference and policies regarding education and child care - I do not think that wanting the best for your kids that you love and wanting to be able to raise them yourself with individual attention and perspective is really that strange.

If there are good schools, I have no problem with my kids going to them, as long as it doesn't interfere with their growth and education.

(My kids go to local state schools, fwiw).

It's a shame that logic didn't extend to giving autonomy to gay people to decide they wanted gay marriage without the input of greater society, then.

If the village had a say in my matters, the village can sure as hell have a say in everyone else's matters, imo.

> That's the European approach that children belong to whole community (...). I don't get why are you so hell bent on having exclusive authority over your child?

This really looks like trolling.

No one has authority over the children beyond their parents and who their parents trust at church or mosque or synagogue or temple after many decades of trusting them in public and in the community and in interactions with each other. Trying to subvert this process by leveraging state-sponsored compulsory separation at 3 years old between babe and mother is nonsense. The more this small handful of wealthy sophists think they deserve authority over a child or have authority over a child's education, insofar as the parents are not guilty of deprivation or harm per reasonable & already universal controls that exist for these things, the more there will be significant backlash against these types of ideas.

Communities don't share the burden except to the extent that the parents need it and want it and share access to their household with members of their chosen communities and faiths. That is how it works in the entire massive United States and other Western Democracies, barring these irresponsible western European countries that seem to be possessed by increasingly idiotic ideas on how much control they want over our kids but how little responsibility they will show on serious urgent matters like nuclear reactor construction and adequate defense spending. The French should be absolutely ashamed and should repent.

When a state tries a state-sponsored approach to compulsively being responsible for teaching children with a monopoly on violence, especially contrary to what the parents may want to teach their child, that becomes a cause for jihad.

The state has some minor say over laws around children when tax money is being used to supplement the costs of raising a child.

Obviously at the end of the day most of a child's upbringing is the parents' prerogative but at the same time if people want to pull the "it takes a village" bs, as a gay man who will not have children (and not use any of the resources that tax dollars goes into) I believe that certain things like a child's education _should_ be managed by the government.

If the village does not have a say in village matters, then it makes me wonder why the hell everyone was allowed a say when it came to things like gay marriage, etc.

germany has made it a law that allows every employee to reduce their working hours to 20/week (with equivalent reduced pay), it's just a matter of people making use of it.

EDIT: apparently any kind of reduction is possible (even 2 hours per week) but the reduction needs to be sensible and the employer needs to agree. if they don't you can sue, and if the judges decide that your requested reduction is reasonable they must comply (i guess that means, you can ask for 2 hours a week and get it if the employer agrees, but if the employer doesn't agree you probably won't convince a judge either)

mothers wanting to send their children to kindergarten does not translate into needing to make it mandatory to do so. a better response would have been to make it a legal right (but not an obligation) combined with the necessary financial support or offer of government paid kindergarten spaces. the latter is lacking in germany for example.

Awesome idea! Nice work Germany!!

The child belongs to the community? Ha

"Most jobs"?

Hmmm... let me look around my neighborhood...

School teacher - easy; Lawyer - doable; Doctor - already done; Auto mechanic - no problem; Bank teller - easy; Construction worker...

Ok. I can't come up with any. I'm sure there must be some, but they don't come to mind. Most people work the number of hours it takes to earn the standard of living they accept. Work is never done. There's always more to do. That is never the question.

I'd prefer schools spent money better.

Preschool in my district is 4 days a week, 2.5hrs / day.

That's a JOKE. Meant only for people who don't work.

But they also got another levy on taxes for "technology" and "new buildings".

They don't need more money, they just need to better spend the money they have.

Private daycare costs around $2000/month. That's more than tuition on the university ($1000/month or so).

So I just wish that once kids are in preschool age the preschool offered something reasonable

Also, have i mentioned that public preschool is not free? On top of taxes, we pay $400/month or so for 4 days a week, 2.5hrs/day preschool. It's nuts.

Oh, and they insert a random "teacher development days" where preschool is closed. Can't they do development in summer, when the school is closed anyway?

Being a parent sux.

Yep. When every person who wants kids has to make these economic decisions their aggregate choices are reflected in population dynamics. "Just choose not to have kids then" en mass results in socio-economic states present systems are not robust against. Incentive engineering is basic economics, and no amount of rhetoric around "just have more kids" is going to change the material realities would be parents face.

Do you have kids? This reads like you don't. It reads like libertarian derp.

Getting "direct cash" that a young family could use for daycare doesn't make any difference if there's nowhere for them to spend it.

I am responsible for a household. Stop trying to invalidate an idea or a set of of propositions based on this variety of cheap ad-hominy bs. You’re trying to read between the lines of the post to see if you can neatly categorize a challenge as being part of some bucket you sneer at. That comes across as being dishonest or intellectually lazy.

Direct cash to households with kids during almost two years of pandemi has lifted many children out of poverty and given parents more freedom and flexibility. Plenty of evidence of this.

When you’re getting direct cash and wages are good and bureaucrats aren’t inflating their way to Power, you can even afford to work less so one of the parents is always around if they want. That’s how it should be and can be and will be.

> He can otherwise shut up about compulsive kindgarten at 3 rather than 6, because that is subversion of parental authority.

How does replacing one form of authoritarianism with another, perhaps preferable to some, form of authoritarianism make things better?

> More shitty government programs or opportunities for bad and dishonest people to indoctrinate the young from earlier ages, particularly now that some bureaucrats would want to use their responsibilities as if they constitute the power to subvert parental involvement, are a huge no from me.

As opposed to shitty private sector programs run by profiteers?

> We spent too much already and these politicians only gave us inflation.

What does this have to do with anything?

Why does Macrons nuclear energy policy invalidate his childcare/education policy? I'm not seeing a straight line there.

Also you complain about inflation but also want more direct cash infusions?

Because if Macron lacks wisdom for proper energy management of the people when people are in cold times and need reasonable electricity, and if he is unable to be disciplined on basic matters pertaining to defense spending and defense readiness, why on earth would anyone trust him to be wise oj compulsive state-sponsored kindgarten at 3 years old? Tearing a babe away from mother so soon to give them state-sponsored educational materials? Nah. He’s a control freak like any other bureaucrat. Otherwise it’d be straight cash to the household every month and more parental supervision. More parental choice, not less.

Direct cash infusions to households would not affect inflation. Giant bailouts for huge corporations and for huge corrupt political super pacs definitely does though. Read the book Utopia For Realists for the chapter on direct cash to households and the compiled evidence done over decades in the United States and even Canada.

> He’s a control freak like any other bureaucrat. Otherwise…

He’s a $BAD. Otherwise he’d do $THING_I_WANT.

I mean, even if both parts turn out to be true I doubt this is how it works.

Try repeating your shitpost in the light of the reality that right now, entire families are being blown apart by evil warfare between Ukraine and Russia.

So no, it's not such a simple reductionist shit-take like you're offering. Be more mature and serious or be banned. There's no more time for bullshit. We can measure the consequences of his actions and ideas by seeing the struggle of the nuclear reactors, which wouldn't have been a problem if France leadership including Macron was truly wise and privy to what the people need at a basic level - which is cheap and reliable electricity for fuck's sake.

And NATO defense spending should've been 2% of GDP for a long time, but they failed even in times of great relative peace by comparison in 2014 when they were below where they are supposed to be. No serious person, in the face of rockets obliterating their nation, could resort to such a shitty reductionist take like yours unless they were just looking to troll rather than to understand that YES, it's possible to say that someone is bad and why and how.

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-france-nuclear-reactors-macron...

How is this working out for him and France now with energy costs skyrocketing and old pipelines and new pipelines from Russia no longer guaranteed because of immaturity across the board at all levels of leadership now culminating in barbarism in 2022 of all times? So yes, it's possible to prove that Macron made bad choices, because of what the consequences are.

Why the profanity? Why the personal attack?

Why the assumption that my criticism of your criticism of the French leadership has anything to do with the war in Ukraine?

I think, friendo, you are taking this too personally. It’s just an Internet forum and I only objected to your logic.

Not at all personal. But these ideas are in a public square that influences young technologists who are impressionable and may take these ideas into their cliques and circles and sub-communities, which will then influence bad ideas further.

It's coming to an end by people advocating for the truth more aggressively in light of what's all over the news and readily accessible. You said something very immature to a serious topic and thus received a frank response. There was no personal attack though. I don't know you, so how can I attack you personally or as a person? I didn't attack you at all. Re-read the message. I told you to be more mature and to stop being immature. Because reductionist one-liners that disregard good-intentioned expositions for the sake of advocating for the truth...show immaturity. And that is much more of a personal attack, by the way, than anything I said. The entire context of the conversation was Macron and how his being a terrible leader means he should have no say in anything, let alone when a state can tear away a child from his or her parents. Ukraine was provided as an example of that, because it relates to France's defense spending as a share of GDP (which historically has not been adequate) and because of France's idiotic policies on nuclear reactors some recent years ago now coming to bite them in the ass because of, you guessed it, Macron and other "leaders" such as him. These things show awful leadership skills on their parent, and consequently are evidence for why they should not be trusted as leaders in general. Not just because his stance on education is wrong, boneheaded, and even evil. And these are urgent and important subjects on account of inaccessible energy and inadequate defense spending resulting in many lives being lost and society regressing if these things are not corrected swiftly.

Nothing personal intended friendo, it's the internet - but notice that I'm the one who in the last handful of messages has made arguments, whereas that other comment you made was not an argument. You did not contest or object to the logic.

> Not at all personal

>> Be more mature and serious or be banned

I don’t buy your good intentions. Have a lovely day!

> How about we increase wages so people can afford to work less?

Ok. How?

Looks to me like our lot has seen a whole lot of wage increase without generally working less.

I don’t even see that much early retirement, instead of getting our mountains of things.

Or is this advice only for the proletariat, who for some reason will behave differently?

The cost of living has increased proportionally, not exactly leaving a lot of room for additional retirement savings.

Plus, proper retirement saving is hard. Saving 10% in a method that negates inflation only nets you 4.5 years of income at retirement age. You’ll need to drop your living costs by over 3x to live to a median age, unless you don’t retire in the traditional sense.

There are a number of issues mixed together here so it is easy to attack. However, the main argument: direct cash with increased privatization vs public services is valid and should not be rejected out of hand. This approach could work better - at least it is not guaranteed to be worse.

You aren't...attacking anything. :) That's my view too! Allow households and taxpayers and consumers to make their best choices on which services they like, even if it's private. Let the best teams win!

"I'm having kids because of the movie Idiocracy, and inspired because Elon Musk did the same" has to be peak Poe's law[0].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Elon is America’s smartest entrepreneur.

He and the brave employees of Space X will guide life to the stars.

Are you seriously going to tell me that starting PayPal, having two divorces, 8 kids, and rolling that into Tesla and SpaceX makes someone the smartest entrepreneur? I thought entrepreneur included all parts of life. Elon is not a savior, he's smart, but he got lucky too.

I believe the parent is attempting their own demonstration of Poe's law. I was impressed by the quality (and really hope I'm not wrong).

No it wasn't a joke but also you are also blowing out of proportion my reasoning for having children. There have been dozens of reasons why I had kids. One of them, very small compared to the others, is the Idiocracy movie. The idea that smart people have less kids is dangerous for society and I wanted to "be the change that you want to see in the world". Now if you want to take that and blow it out of proportion and say THE ONLY REASON WHY YOU HAD KIDS IS WATCHING THE IDIOCRACY movie you are using Reductio ad Absurdum, you are enlarging my claims until they are absurd. Try instead to watch the movie and then comment on whether Idiocracy is applicable to real world or not.

> tell me that starting PayPal

He didn't do that.

>I've ALSO been inspired to have kids

You turned my quote in "I'm having kids because of Idiocracy"

You are using Reductio Ad Absurdum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

i doubt elon musk is actively involved in any of his children's lives

compulsory education is hardly an incentive to child bearing. if anything those who have kids wish to decide what is best for kids without state compulsions

A lot of places have bizarre over-parenting practices that add social pressures on anyone who has children. I would have been much more inclined to have children in a place that either doesn't freak out about free range children like when I grew up or has a set public system over one that makes you feel guilty for not being bio enough, not choosing the right private schools, not getting private tutors, etc, etc.

It is interesting to watch parents burn out and get divorced so their children can have a better life than the one social pressures dictate.

Before this new law, in France kindergarden already existed and 98% of children were already attending kindergarten. (It has always been free as well) I don't think this has been done to tackle the low fertility problem in France, but more to enforce a standardization of the education of young children.

say it as it is: standardization of the education for the "undesirables" so they hopefully get in line with the program.

> Macron moved down the compulsory school age start from 6 (primary school) down to 3 (kindergarten).

There’s a bit more to the story than you may think here... you also aren’t allowed to be homeschooled. It’s illegal. They ban religious practices for minors (wearing hijabs, for instance).

Some people are took that as directed at Muslim community — https://m.timesofindia.com/world/europe/france-passes-anti-r...

Also giving you children to the state to be taught is somewhat disturbing.

EDIT: By deferring to others to teach your children, they won’t learn your culture, traditions and will (statistically) be worse off than if you teach them yourself.

My wife and I settled on making less money (still more than enough), but raising our kids ourselves. It’s hard, but easily the most rewarding thing. Plus our kids are WAY ahead in most areas. Imagine, your children are learning from other children all day at school... is that better than learning from adults all day? No.

When they get older we will probably consider a “pod” or one teacher for 6-8 kids with a family we know. You can pay the teacher far more and the parents can be more involved (we can effectively dictate the curriculum). I’m also planning on having my kids help me with work by 8-10. They can learn to participate and be productive far earlier.

> will (statistically) be worse off than if you teach them yourself

This has not been determined. Homeschooling is correlated with better outcomes, but I'm quite certain causality has not been established here.

We have plenty of evidence supporting the fewer kids per teacher the better the scores.

I also suspect the more a teacher cares the better the scores.

As mentioned, from the evidence, there’s already a solid correlation.

I think with the additional details the causation is likely also there (less students per teacher, highly motivated and engaged teacher). Anyone debating that point IMO is intentionally misleading. There is a clear causation between homeschooling and better outcomes. The only “question” I’ve seen in articles (none in reality) has to do with socioeconomic status. However, if you control for that, you’ll still see better outcomes (aka homeschooled kids in socioeconomic category Y will still out perform public school kids in socioeconomic category Y)

> Anyone debating that point IMO is intentionally misleading.

No need to poison the well with unfounded accusations of bad faith.

> There is a clear causation between homeschooling and better outcomes.

As I've said, causality has not been established. Even if we stipulate that smaller class sizes have a causal positive effect, it's nowhere near enough to account for the improvement in scores when home schooling. Selection effects are most likely to dominate, as they do in almost all education research.

Home-schooling isn't solely positive, it is also associated with worse outcomes in STEM. This is not surprising as most home schoolers don't got enough STEM knowledge to properly teach the subject. The net benefit you tend to see comes when you average all grades, since STEM is a fairly small portion the net is still positive, but you still see a significant decrease in STEM ability in home-schooled kids

https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/the-homeschool-math-gap...

> There’s a bit more to the story than you may think here... you also aren’t allowed to be homeschooled. It’s illegal.

I believe this isn't correct. Homeschooling is legal in France, although restricted. You need to be able to prove your kids are receiving a proper education.

https://www.parentconcept.com/french-home-education-law

> They ban religious practices for minors (wearing hijabs, for instance).

I also think this is incorrect. Religious signs are forbidden in public school for students and teachers alike (as France is a secular country), but there's no law preventing minors practicing religion.

Ah fair. perhaps I was thinking Germany (where your child can be removed). France still has regular inspections, can be denied and you have a curriculum you must adhere to (at least tests / categories).

>Religious signs are forbidden in public school for students and teachers alike (as France is a secular country), but there's no law preventing minors practicing religion.

If you call a religiously important piece of clothing a "religious sign" then technically that's true, but not really

> (as France is a secular country)

secular mean No religion in politics that doesn't mean forcing your views how to wear your clothes on everyone.

French view is that religion has no place in school or public administration. There's a clear separation between religion and state, including public schools. That being said, the government has no matter to forcing spiritual beliefs or clothes in private space.

Homeschooling is a super american thing and tbh, should not be allowed. If you're so scared of your children ever interacting with anyone apart from you, you probably shouldn't be a parent.

The Americans value freedom more. As far as I know, only western Europe considers children as belonging to the state, not the parents.

Many Romanians who moved to places like Norway were shocked to see how children are treated there. In Sweden they have banks of the blood of all the babies since 1975 in storage forever ( https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/PKU-registret ). Scary stuff.

What about the freedom you're denying your child by excluding them from social interactions due to your mistaken puritanical attempts to 'protect' them by home schooling?

I mean, there is no justification. You're actually harming your child. Sure, maybe you're a better maths teacher than the one in the school, but school isn't really about learning such nonsense..

The PKU-registry article you linked explains how one can opt out of having one's sample stored after the genetic screening:

> Den enskilde kan begära att begränsa hur provet får användas eller få sitt blodprov kasserat. Kassering innebär enligt biobankslagen att provet kastas eller anonymiseras

> The individual can ask to restrict how the sample may be used or have it discarded. According to the biobank law, discarding a sample involves either destroying or anonymizing it.

Non-homeschooling is probably one of the more recent developments in education in modern times, but yes, it must be this "super american thing" that can't be allowed. God forbid parents have a say in how their children are being raised.

... Recent as in our grandparents generation or what?

It was normal I think even 200 years ago.

So your argument is, random american parents know more than society in general who define educational standards because... that's how it always was?

LOL. But I mean, yeah. 80% of Americans believe in Angels and 15% of you have passports so why am I even trying.

Society tends towards least common denominator in the American political system, so one means of resisting the damage from that context is more parental choice.

Americans value diversity of thought, so we alloy children to have a wider range of lived experiences when it comes to pedagogy.

Whatever verbal logic is given to justify compulsory earlier access it will be just talk until it's actually proven that it has the effect of increasing the birthrate.

It may have the opposite effect and then we'll come up with a different verbal logic to justify why it decreased the birth rate.

Verbal logic was given to justify the war against poverty in the sixties and sixty years and trillions of dollars later USA has a higher poverty rate than then. I'm not saying it was a bad idea, just that forecasters were wrong en masse.

So this may work or not, but honestly nobody knows, and those giving verbal logic for why it will succeed are purely speculating.

Let's run the experiment then :)

The solution isn't to breed and then not (be able to) care for the own offspring (emotionally), because of low wages and an idiotic system.

If you decide to have children, care for them.

I hate this "the society as a whole has to care for the children" attitude and putting them in someone else's care as soon as possible.

Note that I do not hate children, nor parents and I don't mind spending money on education and care for children.

I just think the solution should be to work less and be able to live a meaningful life.

Later in life, children should care for their elderly parents.

This system is far superior to the "go die in a house full of old people" approach.

Mind again: I am not talking about taking care of someone with special needs like Alzheimer's etc.

I don't have children but find it interesting that one way you propose that government can make it easier for families to have children is to create services that involve the children spending even less of their childhood with their family.

I agree education of a child is very important. Not necessarily public education, although that can be quite good in some respects.

But if a government wants to make it easier to have children wouldn't it make more sense to come up with policies that allow a couple to afford to raise children on a single income? That way, one parent is always able to spend time with the children when needed.

>Governments should help families by providing easier access to daycares and kindergartens. Helping young parents get some rest with their first child(ren) will encourage them having more children.

As a new parent of a 14 month year old boy - kindergartens have very low impact on our decision to have more children. We're lucky enough that we can afford to rent an apartment for my in-laws and that they are retired so they can take care of our son. Putting him in to kindergarten at this age would be traumatic to him and to us (parents) - he's only starting to figure things out and abandoning him to a stranger who have to split their time/attention between 10 other children at this stage seems cruel. Not to mention kindergartens are disease incubators and we would probably spend first few months getting him adjusted and treating him at home while he's sick (+ catching stuff from him).

The thing that would actually impact our decision to have more children (early-mid 30s) :

- fully paid maternity leave - right now it's 100% for first 6 months and after that it's capped at national average - which is >70% pay cut for both of us

- despite both of us earning significantly above average - there's 0 decent opportunities to buy a family home right now - everything that's worth something is long gone off the market, and if something comes up people with cash to buy upfront show up faster than you can dial the ad

The rest is outside of governments control, biggest thing being wife has to give up career for a non-trivial ammount of time (even if I took out some maternity leave realistically she has to take at least 6 months off).

I suspect that retirement age plays a non-trivial part in this as well - having retired parents to fall back on as support when having multiple children while having active careers is very valuable.

>We're lucky enough that we can afford to rent an apartment for my in-laws and that they are retired so they can take care of our son. Putting him in to kindergarten at this age would be traumatic to him and to us (parents) -

So you agree that having someone extra to watch over your kids is something that's needed? For most people, that is kindergarten.

>he's only starting to figure things out and abandoning him to a stranger who have to split their time/attention between 10 other children at this stage seems cruel.

Almost every kid does this. I have, so have all other kids. It's really not that bad, your kid needs to learn to socialize eventually. It's a bit insulting to call it 'cruel' to bring your kid to kindergarten.

>Not to mention kindergartens are disease incubators and we would probably spend first few months getting him adjusted and treating him at home while he's sick (+ catching stuff from him).

Yes, that's how the human immune system is supposed to work.

Having kids for the economy and what else is selfish. Kids should not be brought to fix things screwed up by their parents and grandparents. These kids are used like the fuel cells like in The Matrix, not because there is some benefit to them, there is none btw.

Life itself is pretty hard for most people, most just don't accept truth and make up a reason to cope. Copium. It's heartbreaking seeing children fleeing their home, losing everyone they know like in Syrian and now Ukraine just in last decade.

Then there is climate change, which will be devastating in near future. Even IPCC report is manipulated by lobbying.

https://twitter.com/MrMatthewTodd/status/1490987272044703752

What is funny to me is that some people who are all about the free market fail to recognize incentives when it comes to children. Sure, there are non-monetary considerations (big ones!) but the economic costs of having children (both out of pocket and opportunity) are continuing to rise.

If you want more of something, subsidize it, either explicitly or by reducing its relative costs. Here's an off the cuff list of suggestions which would reduce the cost of children:

* Accessible free or low cost daycare/childcare

* Accessible low cost health care

* Cheaper housing near job centers

I'm sure there are more.

But how are we going to pay for all that? Consider it an investment allowing a country to continue to have a growing tax base.

Reading the article through and through, it seems that it is a given that the world's currently huge population should not be allowed to shrink, for the good of the economy.

This is an .. amazingly shortsighted take, especially when taking into consideration the resource (over-)utilization and flat-out exploitative extraction which was required just to get us this far. 1/13 of all people that have ever lived are alive right now. Maybe--just maybe--it's a good thing that the world's population will shrink over the coming decades, and quite possibly we need to disconnect our economies from unbounded growth while we're at it.

This was also my main problem with the article (I submitted it!). However this does raise the issue that we haven't found the economic model which allows population to age/decline while maintaining living standards. I guess the answer is going to be "robots".

Honestly, the model where families stayed together longer and aging parents lived with their kids as they got older is probably the closest thing to sustainable out there.

The alternative is going to be a huge amount of caretaking career opportunities.

> Honestly, the model where families stayed together longer and aging parents lived with their kids as they got older is probably the closest thing to sustainable out there.

Paraphrasing a quote from memory: modern society took an integrated solution, then divided it to create two problems.

The original context was something about factory farms. In the past farms were diversified, with animals being raised next to crops, and their waste being easily used as fertilizer. Now it's all specialized and separate: animals being raised at such density that their waste is so concentrated that it can't practically be used for anything; and crops being raised away from animals so they need chemical fertilizers that have to be produced separately.

In multi-generational house, raising young kids is easier because the grandparents can do day care, and being old is easier because the younger generations can help you once you're infirm. Separate that out and you have to pay mega $$$ for all those needs.

I don't know if that is the answer either. I live in a society where kids are duty bound to provide care for their parents and grandparents as they age. The result is many single people pushing into their thirties who never got to live their own life. When their parents pass they risk living a life devoid of meaning and with nobody to look after themselves.

Thank you for saying this. I fully agree.

In order to keep everyone fed and happy, and sustainable, we need fewer everyones.

Starting with whom?

It seems like the unborn.

Indeed, but who has to be forced to have fewer children than they’d like?

I wish I could have afforded children when I was younger. I guess I’m one of those these elevated minds have decided should not get to do that their children can have a better life. I don’t actually take it personally, but that is what’s happening here from a perspective that isn’t their own.

I don’t think our problem is scarcity. I believe our problem is living in excess.

You're making a very valid point. In the US at least, incentives are low (not zero... There's the child tax credit, but how does that stack up against an economy where two-person households work 39.5 hours each to stay in place?)

You mean fetuses?

With increasing robot productivity level, those under that rising level/threshold will not be allowed to raise children, should they have them. Those children will be raised by people of the highest productivity percentile. /s

Starting with having fewer children, which appears to shady be happening via mostly-uncoerced process(1).

(1) Debatably. Plenty of room for disagreement. Point is, we don't have to remove anyone if we just don't replace them.

Starting with the elderly, as they naturally pass away by virtue of being human, and being old.

No-one is suggesting that we actively kill people.

The article is talking about attrition (rates of reproduction are declining - fewer people are being born and the people who are here naturally age & die)

From TFA: "The next stage of the demographic transition, after a drop in mortality, is a subsequent drop in fertility (although the relationship isn’t straightforward). Family sizes fall from 5 to 6 down towards replacement level. But then they drop further — and never come back. Indeed across most of the world, outside of sub-Saharan Africa, family sizes are still shrinking, and populations ageing."

I wasn’t asking “TFA”. This is a discussion, isn’t it?

The lawyers.

Not forcing people to be parents when they don’t want to be seems like a good place to start. Giving kids (heck, adults, too!) the resources they need to avoid becoming parents (if they so chose) seems like another.

Ending tax exemptions for religious organizations (who historically oppose the above and encourage having more children so as to grow their follower count) could be another easy place to start.

Definitely sounds like a good place to start if you’re any to simply reduce the number of people.

But is that really the problem, or just the most expedient solution to a subset of minds?

Starting with attrition, no one is saying we should kill people and you know it.

I didn't imply we should kill anyone. If that's your read into it, that's on you.

What I mean to highlight about what's stated above is that it's always someone else who shouldn't have children, or someone else who shouldn't exist so that you† and yours† have it better going forward.

You must understand how that is fundamentally problematic.

Kind of akin to "you should not drink water, so that I may not run short in the future".

It's especially ironic to me that these kinds of opinions tend to come from the wealthiest, most materially-excessive societies on the planet. God forbid we just gear down together.

† general, abstract 'you'

It really is the case that some people cannot be happy while there are too many other people -- they need to live on enormous properties and drive huge gas-guzzling trucks at high speeds without ever meeting any traffic or parking contention. The presence of neighbors genuinely diminishes their well-being. From both a geometry and energy perspective, not too many people can have this life.

But it's also the case that a lot of people are happy living in Manhattan and taking the subway. Billions more people could have this life if we allowed it.

I think people whose preferences are incompatible with the vast majority of their fellow humans being alive, need to take one for the team here.

No, it's the opposite. Happyness comes from wealth, more or less. Economists are pretty much in agreement on that and their case is strong. Wealth in turn is basically "population * technology", where "technology" is broadly defined and also depends somewhat on population.

If population goes down wealth goes down, life gets harder, people get less happy. Pretty simple. Consider that in a low population world it's probably not worth being a computer programmer, because the demand for your physical labor would be higher.

It’s also weird that the article starts with something caused by this trend which is either generally, or universally, considered good - fewer wars - and then, without comment or explanation (other than a throwaway line about the sound of children), postulates the trend is bad. The example he opens the article with (!) implies there’s some upside.

EDIT: I can name two - less war and a damper on climate change, especially if pausing to figure out solutions with a lower global population will lead to a larger, permanent, global “carrying capacity” later.

I think there may be a different way to think about it:

- the larger a society / civilization. The more specialty it can support

- reducing the size of a civilization can result in a reduction of specialty.

- this can result in a reduction of capacity and effectively inflation and a reduction in technology

There are definitely other factors as well, but GDP is almost directly correlated to population. A reduction in population is effective a civilizational contraction.

If we start seeing a general reduction in population above a certain threshold (idk what that is), you may even see cascading failures. Entire technology sectors are abandoned, etc. which could result in civilization collapse.

Arguably, this is similar to what happened in the Bronze Age when the interconnected trade networks failed. Similarly, during the dark ages.

Quite possibly we are seeing one now.

Malthusian economics is an intuitive and once-popular idea, that is pretty well discredited by the the world getting a lot more pleasant to live in since Industrial Revolution England. Do people really still believe it?

They do in certain parts of academia. The message that academic models fail to predict reality isn't a popular one, hence the failure to haven anything from the 70s Malthusians "limits to growth" models.

It's not the number of people, it's how they live. Big houses, big cars, commute.

  >  it's a good thing that the world's population will shrink

Not if it happens too fast. It may very well be unstoppable. In countries like South Korea every couple has one child these days. So its population is going 1/2. If they want to correct that and return to previous level, every couple formed among those children would have to bear 4 children.

They won't.

> It's not the number of people, it's how they live. Big houses, big cars, commute

There's a whole world outside of USA.

Yeah there are enough humans. We will reach an equilibrium point. Right now that looks to be between 8 and 10 billion and that's a hell of a lot of people on a increasling resource limited planet.

This is why I'm flabbergasted by people who oppose immigration to the United States. We are lucky to be a country that young people want to move to. Additionally, I've road tripped 100k miles all over North America. One surprising thing was just how empty the place is, especially the Western US of course, but also places like Western Pennsylvania. Outside the major cities, the US is sparsely populated. I know it doesn't feel that way to people living in major metro areas or at least it didn't to me until I drove around and had a look.

You shouldn't be flabbergasted, racism isn't new or surprising in America.

I'm not surprised by racism. I'm surprised at the anti-immigration sentiment as public policy. I understand that racists vote in racist representatives, but at some point the representatives will have to make the case for more immigration to keep America young and vibrant.

It makes more sense if you understand that leaders that use racism for political gains generally don’t care about serving the public; they’re in it to advance their own ambitions or act as agents for moneyed interests. The policies they support are motivated by the desire to hold power at any cost.

This is why you see all the other vile laws against abortion and the “don’t say gay laws”… they don’t actually benefit the states at all but are a useful tool for the politicians that peddle them to stay in power.

Why would they do that, though? The thing the representatives care most about is getting re-elected. It's much easier (and productive to their interests) to point the finger at various other causes for economic decline than attempt to convince your constituents that bringing in immigrants is the solution. No one wants to be told that they are the problem, and "the other" needs to be brought in to fix it.

Many people are racist/xenophobic and don't want people of other races or cultures "taking over" their neighborhoods or towns. Even those who aren't actively racist are just resistant to change on that level, because it scares them.

An enormous part of this country does not want it to be young and vibrant if that means it isn't white, Christian, and English speaking.

Like I don't want to be coy about this, the Republican Party is diametrically opposed to any kind of immigration reform that would let in more people that don't look and talk like their voters. The only policy that republicans support that might decrease their average age is anti education and anti birth control/abortion measures.

We should not continue to be surprised by this. It's what they've been saying for decades. You can't counter an irrational fear of the other with rational arguments about immigration - the racist nugget at its core just has to be nipped in the bud.

Racism isn't new in America or anywhere else in the world.

The difference between America and the rest of the world is that America has more immigrants relative to its population and in absolute terms than any other country.

Out of curiosity, can you name a non Western country less racist than America?

I wouldn't know because I'm American and only know enough about my own country to comment on it, our culture, and our politics. I don't think comparison is relevant.

Racism sucks :(

Racism is everywhere, don't act like it's unique to the USA.

Strange take. Saying that racism is not new in the US (because the discussion was about the US) is not the same thing as saying that racism is a uniquely US problem.

Open spaces are beautiful, and it's not necessarily a good thing to simply fill every area up with people.

Who are they beautiful for, if there's no people to appreciate it?

There were parts of my trip to Alaska where as far as I knew I was the only person in the forest wilderness from horizon to horizon. It was bizarre to experience absolutely no man-made noise. I found a section of Wyoming that was undisturbed land dating back in time. Not even Native Americans ever settled there. If things go to hell, I know a lot of places where I could go live a quiet life.

Edit: A picture of Alaskan Spring wilderness I took in 2005

https://imgur.com/Cm7b7EW

And if they're filled up, they're not beautiful.

for visiting, not trashing with more human. There are enough humans. We are consuming faster than things can be restored fixed, and we're heading for a population crash.

You should travel around and see if you're still worried about filling it up

Depopulation of the country-side is an issue in Spain too. But immigrants don't move there. They go to urban areas, especially when their presence is illegal. Spain tried to get immigrants from South America move into to the villages by giving them a residential permit (and even a farm, I believe), but it was not successful, AFAIK.

Is it still going on? Sounds like a good offer

Possibly. I cannot find anything on the official immigration website (https://extranjeros.inclusion.gob.es), but newspapers still write about it. Some reports are positive (exclaiming 10% of the population in targeted areas, but that turns out to be less than 20,000 people in total). Here's a recent article from El País: https://elpais.com/espana/2021-09-18/la-juventud-migrante-re.... Perhaps this website can be of help: http://volveralpueblo.org

> This is why I'm flabbergasted by people who oppose immigration to the United States.

They're opposed because to them, the United States is the people living there, not the landmass. From that point of view, adding a different people to the land worsens the crisis, not ameliorates it.

If, indeed, it is a crisis at all - nearly every country is currently at its most populous in history by far, and ecosystems are at their limits. We're nowhere near worrying about extinction from underpopulation - quite the opposite.

> ecosystems are at their limits.

This is true due to resource intensity of consumption.

It's due to resource consumption per individual, multiplied by the number of individuals. Since multiplication is commutative, both terms are equally at fault.

But since we have ample time left to change our lifestyles and societies to be more eco-friendly, there's no harm in ignoring one half of the causes, right?

Edit: To clarify, the half that is being ignored is the number of people, in the people times consumption per capita equation.

> But since we have ample time left to change our lifestyles and societies to be more eco-friendly, there's no harm in ignoring one half of the causes, right?

What exactly is being ignored?

I wonder which people are incapable of becoming Americans and why? As far as I know there are few legal restrictions at least.

The old "there's no clear line therefore there's no difference at all" trick.

Of course anyone can "become an American" (or in other words, the definition of American can be broadened to include anyone). That doesn't mean adding large numbers of new "Americans" each year (~1 million/year, for more than a decade now, even during Trump) won't change the character of the country, or increase conflict as different groups pursue their ethnic self-interest.

There is a cap to how many immigrants can become citizens. Or are you talking about something else? The back log for immigrant->citizenship is on the order of at least 10 years currently unless you have money and influence to get it short-circuited.

That would make sense if it wasn't for the fact that they are themselves descendant of immigrants :)

You believe immigration reduces the bonds of kinship? That it erases the millenia of shared history from before they immigrated?

Well that was before all the social programs we have currently. Before you were welcome, but you were also on your own, there was no social security, SNAP, etc. Most people that I know who are for limiting immigration point to that. And they have a point. I happen to think that immigrants create wealth though, they don't swallow it up on the whole.

I think you may find far fewer people than you expect to be fully anti-immigrant. I'm 100% pro immigration, and 100% anti illegal-immigration, and that has caused me to be branded as "anti-immigrant" a number of times(only online, where nuance doesn't exist)

In threads like this, everyone who is against illegal immigration is assumed to also be against legal immigration. This has no factual basis and demonstrates this isn’t a conversation, it’s political posturing.

I think part of the reason might be that "illegal immigration", in the US at least, is a legal fiction that hasn't even existed for a century. The rules are entirely arbitrary and are designed to keep the legacy majority in power. They convince people that this is the right thing to do through fear-mongering and lies, telling people that immigrants take their jobs, reduce wages, have incompatible values, destroy "our" culture, etc.

I've been doing genealogy research lately, and when my great-grandparents immigrated to the US (around 1910), the only requirement for "legal" immigration was that they entered the country at a designated port of entry and were identified and documented on entry. Around 10 years later they were US citizens (and that length of time was more due to them not feeling they needed it, than due to any bureaucratic nonsense).

I expect that if we were to re-adopt a similar system today, it would not be catastrophic in the ways the government (both the left and right) would like us to believe. So I think you are branded anti-immigrant at times because being "anti illegal-immigration" is just kinda missing the point, and shows a lack of compassion and empathy for people who immigrate in ways that don't tick the arbitrary boxes.

I'm not sure what legal fiction you are talking about: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325

The rules are not arbitrary. At least, they are only as arbitrary as literally every law is. You probably enforce similar rules in your own domain. Or maybe you are as compassionate and empathetic as you claim, and just let uninvited people stay on your property.

> and shows a lack of compassion and empathy for people who immigrate in ways that don't tick the arbitrary boxes.

It appears you have a savior complex. I'll guess you imagine illegal border crossers are all poor brown women with children fleeing gang violence, just yearning for freedom. Otherwise I'm not sure how you can talk about empathy and compassion about a group of millions of people per year who all have different experiences and motivations for illegally entering the US.

This a million times. But, the reason is clear: my demographic is terrified of being a minority. The fear of this is being stoked by Fox News and other similar media outlets. Especially in the US, the fear of reprisals from past bad deeds (slavery and Jim Crow laws) are the immediate reasons.

> my demographic is terrified of being a minority

I don't see why - in other countries throughout the world, minorities live in harmony with majorities, especially when they're ethnically very distinct, so that they are still visibly a different group even after culturally assimilating.

It is only the US where this is a source of conflict.

> I don't see why

I think the parent answers this question fairly well: many white people in the US don't want black people to be the majority, because they fear that black people will then have the power to retaliate for centuries of oppression.

And beyond that, they fear that a "new majority" will change culture and values (and as a result, law) in ways that make them uncomfortable.

This doesn't only apply to the white/black dynamic. And it's all bullshit, of course, but the people in power (who are mostly older white people) have been using effective fear-mongering tactics for decades.

>in other countries throughout the world, minorities live in harmony with majorities, especially when they're ethnically very distinct, so that they are still visibly a different group even after culturally assimilating.

>It is only the US where this is a source of conflict.

Not sure this is sarcasm or just naivety when other countries have literal wars and genocides over these RIGHT NOW

Don't worry about those people. The US still allows a larger total number of immigrants per year than any other nation in the world. Over a million people a year - basically the same as all of western Europe combined:

"In absolute numbers, the United States has a larger immigrant population than any other country, with 47 million immigrants as of 2015. This represents 19.1% of the 244 million international migrants worldwide, and 14.4% of the United States population. ...

According to the 2016 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the United States admitted a total of 1.18 million legal immigrants (618k new arrivals, 565k status adjustments) in 2016. Of these, 48% were the immediate relatives of United States citizens, 20% were family-sponsored, 13% were refugees or asylum seekers, 12% were employment-based preferences, 4.2% were part of the Diversity Immigrant Visa program..." [1]

That's roughly 3,200 new Americans every day, 365 days a year. 1/5 of the world's migrants come to one country: The USA. I personally think this is something to be proud of. We are still a nation of immigrants and though the Trump administration did try to curtail immigration, the system is still functioning and relatively robust.

Now, what to do about top international talent avoiding the country because of radical right wing politics that demonize immigrants and conservative lawmakers that consistently try to prevent people coming? I think that's a solution with an obvious answer.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_St...

I do wonder about two things, though:

Did those numbers decline meaningfully during the Trump presidency? His constituency and platform is very anti-immigrant.

Regardless of that, how many immigrants in the US feel secure in their status? I know a lot of people on H-1B visas who have been in the green card line for over a decade, and live with the constant stress of losing their job and having to leave the country nearly immediately. I also know some who are asylum seekers, and stats aren't awesome there, either; I think something like 40% of them are ultimately rejected, some after years of being in limbo. Even family-sponsored immigration can take years to work its way through the system.

So sure, we have a lot of immigrants here, but I do wonder how many of them actually feel welcome, and secure in their progress toward permanent residency or citizenship, if that's what they desire. And meanwhile, all these immigrants -- even those who have waited years and been granted green cards -- can't vote and meaningfully participate in how they are governed.

The government still owns around 50% all land in the west, so it is harder to get that land to live on. The east coast is largely built up to the mississippi because historically people needed the rivers to move cargo. Over land was really expensive and dangerous. Here's a neat map of all the federally managed lands, it supports that the west is largely empty: https://gisgeography.com/federal-lands-united-states-map/

Are you sure these people are out there besides a tiny minority? Can you name a member of Congress or Senate that opposes all immigration to the US?

Opposing immigration hardly has any support in the US, what has support is opposing certain kinds of immigration. From their point of view some immigrants can be a net negative to the country, regardless of how many children they bring with them or have, and prefer immigration to be restricted for them.

So I don't think you need to be flabbergasted because a tiny minority opposes immigration. For any idea there's a tiny minority that will believe in it.

Because we are a tribal people and don't want to be invaded by foreigners. Additionally, adding to the labor supply and suppressing wages does not help families afford to have more children. A nation should boost its domestic birth rate, and if there's a cultural problem that pushes towards declining birth rates, they should address that. Bringing in new people is not a solution it is just another problem.

Actually babies are not very good workers; I'd rather have adults who are already capable of working as employees.

A country is more than an economic zone. Culture, cohesion and community matter, not simply constant replacement through immigration.

Babies grow up to be adults. We don't need foreign workers, that's a myth for corporations to make more profits through suppressing wages.

Hire your own countrymen and women to work as employees for you. Check the male labor participation rate, there are plenty of workers available.

> A country is more than an economic zone.

This would probably come as a surprise to the likes of Mitt Romney and Donald Trump (different though they may be, there's a reason they share a political party). I've often heard the slogan, "run the government like a business" which should tell you something. And though Trump may use nativist rhetoric he never had any qualms about hiring guest workers for his own businesses.

All that is to say, while there is a constituency for such feelings, there are no real representatives for it in government.

Ok? I know you don't support those two, so why use their ideas as defense of your position? They are fools all the same, if that's how they govern and what they promote.

I'm not aware of a position that I took in that last comment. It was mostly a comment about the views of the owners of capital in America. They may be fools, but their opinions are the greatest force shaping American governance, especially now that they've greatly advanced their vision of replacing the judiciary in the US (who are now the de facto legislators), so it's important to know where they're coming from.

My own views tend toward the pragmatic - when the time comes to replace my roof, I just want someone who can do the job, because I sure don't want to.

Desire for immigration doesn't imply that you want completely uncontrolled immigration.

Maybe you want to bring in mostly educated non-criminals? Or mostly people who generally agree with the governing philosophy and our notion of freedom, so that it might not be voted away?

You realize that most of those areas don't have enough water to support large populations don't you? And it's getting worse as the west is currently experiencing a drought that could last a century or more given historical precedence and the added complications of climate change.

My gut feeling is that there's a strong correlation between rent prices and fertility rates. You can't have kids if you can't work out where to put them.

That said, I'm generally quite relaxed about the population trend: the 18th and 19th century had ballooning populations in Europe, and collapsing populations everywhere else. I don't think it's going to get to the point where there are serious overpopulation problems in the global south - at least, nowhere near what we already have in Europe.

The opposite is also true: you’re competing for housing with childless people, who can afford higher rents. Less kids=more disposable income=higher tolerance for rent increases

This article actually addresses this, and is one component of the larger problem:

"Older people tend to vote for their own self-interests, and in the case of Britain, end up controlling the government in power; voters with pensions and homes opt for lower growth and restricted housebuilding, further raising the cost of home ownership for the young and so pushing down the fertility rate still further. If we’re playing a generational blame game for the lack of children…"

> strong correlation between rent prices and fertility rates.

I assume you mean a positive correlation.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, many of the former Eastern Block countries experienced both, a reduction in fertility and too much housing. The latter because so many left for the west. So many buildings were empty that quite a bit of housing stock was removed, see e.g. [1].

[1] https://www.eisenhuettenstadt.de/Leben-Wohnen/Wohnen-und-Bau...

I agree with your gut feeling, and I disagree quite strongly with most of the sentiment found in the comments of this article, stating that the lack of children stems from selfishness or responsibility towards the planet.

High rents and other features of contemporary society make it difficult and expensive to have children. These things also make it difficult to get enough time for children, with the amount of income-generating work that's required. Then, most of the care is offloaded to professional caretakers, as this gives a significant improvement to the budgets of time and money.

My suspicion is that many who state that they skip kids due to the environment or personal reasons, actually just need a fig leaf to cover the fact that they're financially unable to support kids while maintaining a lifestyle that makes children net positive for their own quality of life. For most, this would be a pretty painful admission to make, but there's plenty of observations indicating it's true for many.

In contrast to most people here, I believe that this is actually a pretty big problem. It's not as bad as having a birthrate of 4 and sprinting into a demographic catastrophe, but economic growth in the sense of making all aspects of life better and cheaper is critical if we want to make civilization sustainable. Balanced demographics and kids raised with love, care, plenty and care from capable parents are a very important part of that. This is one of the things I actually believe the conservatives get right.

> This is one of the things I actually believe the conservatives get right.

If you go back into the early history of conservatism, there was a breed of conservative that wanted to protect traditional social relations against the social dislocation of early capitalism.

The problem is, the people doing the social dislocation, the people doing the enclosures and clearances, were also those who benefited the most from the traditional social relations, aristocrats, etc. So the idea developed in two divergent directions: the first, the conservatives, who tried to protect traditional society by moral education, enforcement, entreaty, etc, the second, the early socialists, who tried to protect traditional society by protecting traditional social relations (usually land rights) through politics.

As you can imagine, this cuts in opposite directions: the first group would want to protect, for instance, traditional aristocratic privilege, while the second might want to abrogate it, in order to prevent an aristocrat from taking their land. Both sides would be seeing themselves as 'conserving' the status quo.

This was all about three hundred years ago in the UK, or much less in Spain, or Mexico, or Russia. The current dominance of 'conservative liberals' in all nations shows that the first direction, where you protect the veneer of tradition while allowing unfettered capitalism to trash its innards, won out. The last socialist revolutionaries of the old sort were people like Zapata, protecting their societies against the encroaching Haciendas. Today, there is nothing left to protect, so that's why modern socialists don't have much truck with whatever shreds of traditional culture remain.

Developed societies seem to be shifting into a more "selfish" paradigm, where the question of the day is "what can this situation really do for me?". Day to day actions are framed in these terms, and the result is that raising children becomes a harder and harder question to justify in this paradigm. Even in this thread, having kids is seen through this odd eugenics-style paradigm of - well, I have to counteract the balance of idiocracy style effects and have a responsibility to carry on my family's genetic material.

Children are expensive. Children take away a lot of your otherwise "free" time (although spending time with them can hardly be considered an objective "waste"). Grandparents don't want to put in the time either, they want to go on cruises and fully "enjoy" their life (along the paradigm of "what can this really do for me?").

Ultimately we end up with parents who want to offload their kids, stuffing them into (expensive) daycares earlier and earlier (despite what research says are negative effects of such early child separation). We have lost the traditional support system of older generations being around, living with new parents, and helping in a meaningful and impactful way with child raising. We have prioritized large inefficient housing, mostly as an investment vehicle, and have discounted the less economically-linked investment and rewards that come from raising children.

In any case, this is a perfect storm for dropping fertility rates, and it seems at this point these factors are so ingrained in developed economies that it can be considered a natural consequence of a population who has pivoted towards wealth building and economic priority.

Despite this shift towards selfish economic efficiency, is anyone really happier? Really really tough to say.

I can say that despite the cost, the career impact it had, and the completely changed dynamic of how I spend my time - raising kids has been the highlight of my life. I've never really been one for considering pure economic and personal efficiency though, and I've noticed I'm more and more of an outlier among my social circle.

> Developed societies seem to be shifting into a more "selfish" paradigm, where the question of the day is "what can this situation really do for me?"

I think that's not well supported as the source of the problem, even to the extent it may arguably be true: developed societies tend to have adopted strong social support mechanism, so that having lots of kids so that you have a chance that someone will be willing to support you in your old age is no longer necessary. That's also why some very rich countries are seeing less of the dropoff in natural population growth for their level of development; they also happen to be the ones with weaker social support systems.

Though, I remember having a conversation with some classmates in college, and the only one that said they enjoyed their childhood was the one who had been "outsourced". The rest of us just remembered being mostly bored.

Having kids is the "selfish" thing to do, especially in this thread. The economy and country will suffer, so bringing more sentient without their consent. These kids already have jobs ready for them, to fix things that their ancestors screwed up and now have a much bigger older population.

The rich and famous celebrities are asking to have more kids because they will need these cells to run their factory and sell product services. Economy needs to grow every year only for them.

Climate crisis also going to be extremely cruel to all species and these kids have to suffer the consequences of all the previous humans. Bringing them here is way too selfish. Even IPCC report was watered down.

https://scientistrebellion.com/we-leaked-the-upcoming-ipcc-r...

Additionally life is hard, cruel to many.

It's always others' needs. There might be many reasons to have kids but none of them is for the benefit of the potential kid.

Yeah. My son is 3, I'm very glad to know him. But looking at the world? Probably, I've just created suffering.

I mean, beyond the suffering of being a parent to a 3 year old ;)

Please disabuse yourself of these sentiments. There has never been a better time to be alive and your three year old will have a far better life than you or I. Climate change is a problem but there will be solutions.

Takes like that don't help IMO. In a way it was better in the past when people thought life was awful but that's just the way it is, you just do your job and live your life. Ironically, as life has gotten better we think more that suffering isn't inevitable, and if suffering isn't inevitable we should prevent it. Which the easiest way to do that, is to just not have kids.

> your three year old will have a far better life than you or I. Climate change is a problem but there will be solutions.

To be frank, this is completely false and may be you are getting wrong information. Climate change is already in irreversible state, there is no solution. Period.

Gov and corporations are not even trying to minimise it, just delaying until last moment. Humans will survive but it will be dystopian. The kids will suffer the worst. This is not exaggeration. Rich will just stay in gated community.

> Grandparents don't want to put in the time either

Is that really the case?

The grandparents I know are all super eager to get grandchild time and go pretty far out of their way to make that easy for the parents. In the US and Europe anyway, I don’t know that many people elsewhere but I would assume it’s the same.

Especially in the US, geography can make it difficult but I don’t see that as a lack of motivation.

Maybe my sample is skewed but it’s definitely not all wealthy/educated/tech people.

When it comes to having children, there's plenty of selfishness on both sides of the decision.

I agree that people who remain childless often do so for some of the selfish reasons you describe, but let's not pretend that having a child is a selfless act. Many people have children because they believe doing so will give their lives meaning, because they want to carry on their family name/line, because they are afraid there will be no one to take care of them when they get old. They do so because they feel pressured by their family and friends to "join the club". They feel pressured by their parents to give them grandchildren. And hell, some people have kids by accident, due to a lack of family planning or education.

How many people decide to have a child because they want to enrich their communities, to help with future demographics and the future economy?

He's not saying it's selfish to not have children, he's saying the decision making process relies on determining the usefulness of a given activity, and kids rarely score high there. In the past it worked differently, I suppose at least partly these things were done because of tradition or because of religious encouragement. In the past they weren't doing it in some way that was significantly less selfish than us, but whatever reason they did it for the system would continue unlike it is today

While I found things to like in the article, the comparison to ‘Children of Men’ is very strained. In the book women couldn’t get pregnant for unspecified reasons, but they desperately wanted to. The world the article refers to is one in which people choose not to have children generally for economic reasons.

I'm not sure the two motivations are that different in effect. If you can't have kids for medical reasons vs you can't because it's ruinously expensive what really is the difference?

> you can't because it's ruinously expensive

Crudely speaking, birth rates in poor countries are higher than in rich countries. An within countries, birth rates amongst the poor tend to be higher than the rich.

A country having high GDP or personal income doesn't mean that things like housing, healthcare, childcare, or education are more affordable. For things like that where the buyer tends to have low leverage in the transaction costs tend to climb with ability to pay. In countries with strong lending infrastructure that goes past the limits of cash and into what buyers can borrow. This decomposes to local communities too, in my city incomes are high relative to most of the US but cost of labor and all of the above services are also expensive. Median household income isn't enough to afford a 3 bedroom place to live so you can imagine that's causing some problems.

That's not really the point the parent is making.

People who are infertile do not bear children, period.

People who are poor often do have children, and in greater numbers, due to a variety of factors. The fact that they have trouble supporting those children is besides the point. The children are still born.

This is where the Children of Men analogy gets a bit strained. Today, fewer people have children because fewer people want to, not because they're biologically unable.

It’s not that expensive. To be honest having kids make you make a lot of fiscally responsible decisions. It separates the wheat from the chaff.

That said as soon as my kids are 18 I’m getting a really expensive sports car, but maybe a used one because years of parenting have ruined my ability to wastefully spend money.

It doesn't have to be that expensive in terms of dollars (although there's often strong social pressure to spend all your disposable income on private preschools/travel soccer/expensive colleges), but it's very expensive in terms of time. And for higher income people, that time commitment has a much higher opportunity cost.

If you can afford a "really expensive" sports car then I'm not sure your reference on fiscal responsibility is comparable to what most people experience. Assuming you're talking about a non-special used Ferrari or something, that's $200k + $20k a year. Most people have trouble coming up with $200k for a down payment and are nowhere near dropping that on a car. Preschool is $25k a year though, so in a sense the upkeep there is higher.

Why would you live anywhere that preschool is $25k a year? I'm happy to pay a little more tax so that all children in my country (Germany) get exactly the same chance.

It's where I grew up so density of family is a big reason not to move. Social policy in places like Germany does sound like a better overall deal than what we have in the US, hopefully we can shore things up here because most people don't even really have the option to move even if they wanted to.

Yeah sorry, I was assuming 'tech worker' and 'enough money to choose where to live' in that statement which I guess doesn't apply to everyone, but I suspect applies to the majority of HN users..

No, for me it’s a corvette. I guess it’s the same price as a Model S but if I don’t get the C8 it’s gonna be a C6 for about $25-40k

Once I had kids (found out we were expecting) I stopped fucking around, bought a condo within a month, and I was from that day on a mission to make money. Didn’t give a shit about hours, didn’t give a shit about free sodas, it was all how much does it pay?

If anyone offered me $5k/yr more I’d quit on the spot. Whenever a recruiter called, I was interested.

In a way kids are expensive but to me the kick in the pants it gave me led to making far more money and honing my mind and realizing what’s important and what isn’t.

I’m a few years beyond you and my expensive sports car was really cheap (a saturn sky). But I 100% agree with your sentiment. When I found we were pregnant in the mid 80s I stopped all screwing around and got to work. It’s was a necessary transition.

The book is tragic in a different way - it’s our inevitable extinction being portrayed.

In real life we may see some of the nasty sociopolitical consequences of that, but they aren’t irreversible. We can repopulate the depopulated regions, we can restart farming there (now with more automation and better quality of life). We don’t necessarily share the fate of the humanity of the book.

The West has already made its choice. We have chosen to do nothing about declining birth rates among the native population and have instead chosen to supplement the population with immigration from developing nations, or whatever term you wish to use for those countries where birth rates are still high. The numbers are plain to see. Where once an extended family was the norm (it takes a village…) now families are atomised. 2 parent or increasingly 1 parent families. Even when an extended family exists (grandparents are still alive, everyone is still married and on friendly terms) it is common for people to move to where the work is. This may be many minutes or hours away from the new offspring.

There really isn't much of a choice, and even then it's not a long term solution. From the article:

"Morland talks of the trilemma facing ageing nations, whereby you can have two of the three: ethnic continuity, a thriving economy or a comfortable lifestyle without the huge stress of mixing child-raising and a modern economy. Israel has sacrificed the latter, Japan has chosen to take the economic hit, while Britain’s leaders have given up its ethnic continuity. But that, alas, was a short-term solution, since young immigrants don’t magically avoid the fate of Father Time any more than the rest of us do."

What's wrong with immigration as a solution to birth rates

In homogenous societies like japan, Sweden, and Denmark it usually leads to a lot of ethnic contradictions once the immigrant population passes a certain threshold.

Once has to wonder whether it’s healthy when more than 50% of your population feels alienated by the country and often has more loyalty and love for the homeland he or she fled.

The immigration system of most European countries is also very broken. More than 60% of immigrants to France don’t even have a high school education and gun crime in Sweden is now among the highest in Europe (despite being the lowest in the 90s) due to Somali gangs.

People are tribal and not every country was birthed as a “melting pot” like the US or Canada. These days the words integration and assimilation are considered racist when talking about immigrants so societies in these countries will simply further polarize.

Do you think immigration has disadvantages? Could you name them?

For some people the disadvantages outweigh the advantages (like offering a solution to birth rates, provided low birth rates are a problem). Immigrants and their descendants can and have swung election results. Nothing wrong with this but for some people this is too big of a disadvantage.

This shouldn't surprise you, there are many countries with very little immigration, very strict immigration laws, and low birth rates, so for them the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, and they are not even democracies.

Immigration is much more complex than a yes/no or a 0-100 scale. What cultures do the immigrants come from? How is the host culture's traits for integrating them? What persons from the foreign society actually become immigrants?

The USA is historically incredibly successful in attracting and integrating immigrants that go on to have great success. While e.g. Sweden appears to have an alarmingly high proportion of immigrants that go on to act in ways that are detrimental to their society. There might exist examples that illustrate the example in a way that's even more obvious.

It causes political dissent, for example see Brexit.

> We have chosen to do nothing about declining birth rates among the native population and have instead chosen to supplement the population with immigration from developing nations, or whatever term you wish to use for those countries where birth rates are still high.

It's a temporary solution at best because birth rates are falling worldwide and doing so much faster than expected. [1]

> Even when an extended family exists (grandparents are still alive, everyone is still married and on friendly terms) it is common for people to move to where the work is.

Do you mean to imply that people are forced to move to where the work is or that they choose to move there? Because that makes a big difference.

[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545397/empty-planet...

“…it is common for people to move to where the work is.”

This really resonates. In my 30-40’s peer group, zero of them live in or near their home city/town. Some grandparents have been financially successful enough that they bought a second home to be near their grandchildren, but the “new norm” seems to be both parents work full time to make ends meet without any other parenting support.

As a corollary to this: it's perhaps not surprising that the remaining conflict we do see is spearheaded by our increasingly aged heads of state, men and women who grew up in the shadow of WW2 and the peak of the Cold War.

Yet in the article he says “ The upside is that — and this is admittedly a strange time to suggest it — the world is going to be a lot less violent”.

Saddam Hussein was hardly a teenager when he invaded Kuwait, and Putin is no spring chicken. I don’t know what the answer is, but I suspect this guy doesn’t either.

It’s a shame though, since the collapse of the Soviet Union the share of the worlds population dying in warfare has collapsed. It was already on a strong downward trend after the end of WW2. Let’s hope Ukraine is an outlier.

I think woodruffw meant that the conflict in the Old World might be spearheaded by those people who still have a romantic infatuation by war, which has been steadily declining since like WW1 but manages to hold on in some capacity to these days. Eventually we'll get to the point where people – contemporary young people, future born people – would not see physical violence as a means of settling political disagreements. Partly because they would know how precious life is in a low-fertility environment.

Ever heard of a Second Congo War? Of course, not. Who ever cares about what happens in Africa, right?

Africa is one of the few places that doesn't have a birthrate problem.

Because they have a very high child mortality. When child mortality goes down, birthrates plummet.

Ultra orthodox women in Israel have the highest life expectancy and a negligible child mortality rate but they’re having more kids than any African country.

Oman is a fairly developed country and they have twice as many kids per woman compared to poor Ukraine and almost-starving North Korea.

Cultural background is a huge influence in fertility. African immigrants in Europe have more children the poorer they are, the opposite of locals.

The birth rate in Oman has collapsed since the 90s to a bit above replacement level.

You’re right about the Haredi though. Congratulations, on a discussion of demographics across billions of people, you found one community of less than 2 million that buck the trend. Good for you.

Cultural background can have an influence, sure, but generally not enough to have a macro level effect. Hence the global trend.

Yes I have, it was horrible with millions dead. Few wars are not horrible whether in Africa or anywhere else. The fact remains that globally deaths per 10k people due to war was in serious decline at that time.

Putin was born in 1952. If he were 10 years older he his first hand experience of the terror of war might have prevented him from starting this one.

Kim Jong Un is not old (nor his sister). Putin was only 8 during the Cuban Missile Crisis so he only sees a caricature.

I'm not sure a younger generation growing up without fear of nuclear war is a safer thing. I suspect that most of the current heads of state being old and belligerant is correlation rather than causation.

Don't worry, there will be inexpensive automated drones to do the killing soon enough.

Kim Jong Un is a funny case. There's a reason we call North Korea the "hermit kingdom."

Putin was a child during the missile crisis, but he cut his teeth in the KGB of the 70s and 80s. His mentors and leaders were, in all likelihood, veterans of the Great Patriotic War.

(To be clear: I don't think that the risk of war ends with the deaths of these particular generations of leaders. But I do think we're seeing a particularly outmoded approach to war at the moment.)

> "(To be clear: I don't think that the risk of war ends with the deaths of these particular generations of leaders. But I do think we're seeing a particularly outmoded approach to war at the moment.)"

It will still be older people calling the shots, since they have had time to accumulate power and rise in the ranks, but the risk of war increases with the elders of future generations because they have no direct experience or cultural memory of its horrors; "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."

The high fertility rate in Israel is almost entirely due to the country's Haredi ultra-Orthodox Jews. Among them women are tightly controlled, abortion is murder and birth control is taboo. Consequently, the average fertility rate per woman is 7.1. That's one way of solving the fertility crisis, but perhaps not a good one.

There's also the matter of the government paying them welfare, permanently, to engage in religious studies.

Israel is barreling toward religious extremism.

Thats a feature, not a bug. Israel will probably become the first democratic country were “outbreed them” was a successful political strategy.

The ultra orthodox are a solid voting block That currenty controls 15 out of the 120 seats in the Knesset. they almost always align with the far-right religious zionists or the right-wing Likud. Right wing governments encourage their growth while working to decrease that of Muslims.

And it has worked very well. The Israeli left, which dominated politics until the 80s has been decimated since their voter base is not having children. The country is going right, fast. The ultra-orthodox also secure the Jewish majority in Jerusalem and Israel, an added bonus.

Without sounding condescending or anything... Literate, successful people don't do many (if any) children because:

1) They reckon that things like "growing a family" are not the "meaning of life"

2) They value their time and respect the child, so they feel responsibilities on both sides

This is by all means a 1st world problem and immigration is a natural way to address the problem IMO.

In Sweden it’s not that uncommon to have three kids, even among the crowd you referred to. We also have good childcare that doesn’t cost a fortune for the family, and state-provided parental leave with very good terms. More countries could do like this if they wanted too.

I value my time but I can still choose to give some (a lot) of that time to my kids. That time doesn’t feel wasted to me. I have also not given up on all of my own interests.

As for the meaning of life – it is what you make of it, really. And that’s true regardless of whether one has kids or not.

> In Sweden it’s not that uncommon to have three kids, even among the crowd you referred to.

This graph tells a different story. What is your interpretation?

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SWE/sweden/birth-rate#....

That many people do not reproduce at all.

My understanding from the previous comment, is that you were pushing a different narrative, specifically that ppl are having more children than in the past because welfare and child care, etc.

The graph says that’s not the case.

God we agree.

Ah. No in the past people had way more children. My grandpa for example had 10 siblings.

I see. Interesting.

>Among them women are tightly controlled,

What does this actually mean? You say this like women have no agency. They may not follow a typical set of rules, but to reduce their choices to 'the result of being tightly controlled' is very insulting. There are actual reasons many of these communities intentionally have many children

It's not either or. People who grow up in fundamentalist communities may have their own agency but still be tightly controlled.

In a sort of backwards way, it's almost like people in their 30s need to be offered a secure mini-retirement to feel like it's reasonable to have kids. (Not to mention housing being a pain.)

Kids are frighteningly expensive. If I had none, I’d live in a bigger house, have more free time and would be much more free to move to pursue better opportunities than I am now. In many places your first consideration when looking for a house is which school your kids are going to.

I explain it to people of reproductive age as such: Kids cost roughly $270k (2022 inflation adjusted from earlier USDA data) to raise from birth to 18. Each child. Can you afford a Supercar or a fancy boat? If not, how can you afford a kid? And more than one? Good. Luck.

Could probably afford one with a 18 year installment plan. ;-) Also, hand-me-downs.

> Kids cost roughly $270k (2022 inflation adjusted from earlier USDA data) to raise from birth to 18. Each child. Can you afford a Supercar or a fancy boat? If not, how can you afford a kid?

an 18 year auto loan sounds like a bad idea. but $15k (nominal) per year is less than state university tuition.

Back out from current housing, healthcare, food, fuel and other non discretionary costs to what wage/income you’d need to be in the black including the cost of children. Last I checked, the math doesn’t pencil out until you’re hitting ~$50k-$60k/year, a bit below median income ($67k/year), and you’re cutting it really close.

Reasoning from first principles is depressing sometimes.

https://www.zippia.com/research/should-i-have-a-baby/

> If I had none, I’d live in a bigger house

This alone says a lot.

If you were to step outside society and design something from the ground up, one of your easiest assumptions would be "larger families should have easier access to larger housing", wherein reality the exact opposite is true.

An aggressive federal housing construction plan targeting families would do an untold amount of good.

This was basically what women being stay at home mothers and full time homemakers was. And it is certainly a good thing that women are no longer socially forced into that role. But rather than adjusting to the doubling of the labor force, the government continued to maintain this policy of full time employment being 40 hours per week. Economic feedback then made sure that having two incomes was no longer a choice, with most of the surplus being channeled upwards as housing rent. Looking at the big picture, modern full time employment should actually be somewhere around 15 hours per week.

I'm glad the author mention Czech Republic. We have baby boom here. Well lockdowns affect births quite a lot a guess. I personally know about ten families with 2-3 children (oldest 5y) that are our close friends and we meet regularly. We are able to make home kindergartens quite easily (many parents prefer it over regular kindergartens with nonsense covid restrictions).

Our gonverment supports mothers financialy 4 years if you choose lower monthly pays. Usually it is 30 months.

Also we are quite ignorant to trends like "having children is not ecological" or "there are more than 2 genders" or "same rights for same sex couples". At the end it doesn't matter. Those ideologies just support death, no life and eventually die with time. Which is exactly the problem that is described in article.

It's much the same in Germany. We get similar benefits (well, for the mother) and the other points are largely non-issues.

Not much to complain about.

Humans have an instinctive drive to optimize genetic survival. Without it, we would not exist. One of the control mechanisms for this is our instinct for reproduction. We constantly access future availability of resources, attractiveness to high quality mates, and probability of a new child surviving to bear children of their own with high quality mates. The industrial revolution, with its massive increase in productivity and technological advancement, dramatically altered the survival cost function that humans must now optimize. A measly 200 years has not been enough time for our instinctual optimization algorithm to adapt. As a result, I believe we are seeing over-compensation for higher resources and lower mortality, which is most apparent in countries with the highest per-capita GDP (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#/media/Fi...) where parents are over-delaying childbirth because they perceive an opportunity to improve their economic standing, improve their mate selection, and take better care of a smaller number of children. We even see this happening with immigrants from low-GDP countries who move to high-GDP countries and converge towards the lower fertility rate of their new country. I expect we will eventually adapt, but it will likely require a conscious override of instinct if we want to avoid a massive population decline in the process.

They can dress it up however they want, but we used to have a world where women would stay home with children and teach them life skills and a near army of moms available to keep an eye on neighborhoods. Now we have both parents working full time and side hustles while their kids play Roblox.

We have so many problems and a system (in the US) that just seems bought and paid. I’m starting to think my time would be better spent trying to raise a small army than spend time fighting this system from the inside.

There's hyperbole and then there's the idea that 7,000 deaths - or even 10 times that amount - is going to have any permanent effect on a population of 145,000,000 people. There are 785,000 18 year old males alone in Russia. There are 748,000 17 year olds. They could lose all the 18 year olds and replace them next year.

I understand there is a real discussion to be had about population growth and Russia as a whole. But the basic premise is a bit exaggerated.

I don't understand why people are always panicking about negative fertility numbers and declining populations. Surely it's a good thing, right?

Many theories of economic growth say that it is fundamentally generated by new ideas. When you have fewer people, you have fewer new ideas. So innovation might slow: in some models it even reverses.

Is innovation slowing necessarily a bad thing?

I don't have any articles to back this shower though up, but I assume people fear becoming the English post pax-romana. Being in a world where you can't even conceive to rebuild something your ancestors built is a bit disturbing. If you're not progressing, you're backsliding.

Innovation exists because of a need to find a way to support a growing population. We don't need to be continuously innovating. It's OK to take a break.

It’s ok for individuals to take a break. But is it ok for a generation to take a break?

How are skills passed two generations into the future? We would have to start over.

Skills have _not_ been passed on, greed made people outsource in a lot of areas, with disastrous consequences as far as knowledge preservation is concerned.

We have so many people who's ability to contribute is under utilized. Surely elevating these people is a more efficient way to capitalize on the resources invested.

New ideas just aren't generated uniformly at a rate of say, 0.001 per person per year.

They are generated by highly educated people with genetic ability, who also have the means for a stable adulthood and at least a modicum of free time to develop their curiosities.

Not to mention the means to go into science. Very frequently another industry will pay more, and that person never becomes a scientist/researcher.

My understanding is that part of this panic is due to how society is structured somewhat as a pyramid scheme. Social benefits to retirees are expected to come from the economic productivity of a younger working class. Large businesses which are designed to make high-level execs wealthy at the expense of their lowest-level employees require a steady stream of fresh meat. I think some of the economic changes we're seeing is related to declining fertility rates.

I've also seen economic growth as piggybacking on population growth. There's another disadvantage to diminishing population, of course: care of the elderly.

We’ve borrowed trillions of dollars from future generations, and have guaranteed ourselves trillions more in retirement benefits.

If the population goes down, each individual is going to have a massive burden of debt and taxation to shoulder. And you can imagine a scenario where this creates a feedback loop of dramatic economic decline.

Who is going to pay your pension and wipe your incontinent butt? Population decline may be fine but we need new economic and social models to support an older population.

Its good for the planet, but in the short to medium term people are worried that the burden of caring for a growing elderly population (who control the politics and capital) will fall on a dwindling number of youthful taxpayers

As with everything, it has pros and cons. If you care more about the environment than the economy, then I guess it's a good thing.

The problem is that we have structured our entire system essentially as a pyramid scheme, where the ever more children coming from behind will mean that the standard of living keeps increasing.

As with every pyramid scheme, once enrollment stops, then the pyramid collapses.

I think theoretically, it's not necessarily about more and more children being born, but rather about productivity increasing. As long as generations manage to be increasingly more productive, then the pyramid keeps going. Obviously, population and output are heavily correlated, hence the issue.

Given how bleak the outlook is at the moment for the people coming into their parenthood years, I don't think anyone can blame them for not wanting to procreate.

i always thought 'underpopulation' was more of a demand side problem?

Children are expensive and take time to raise. It's no wonder that much of the world asks "why even have kids," where being childfree is positively correlated with increases in education and income. As the world population gets more educated, I don't really see this trend reversing.

Even if people were given free healthcare, pre/post-natal care, childcare, etc, I doubt this would incentivize enough people to have enough kids, as the money and time required to raise kids still does not change. If you really want to get into unethical ways to increase the birth rate, you would ban abortions (which China seems to be toying with [0]) and provide no sex education, effectively forcing people to have children. I wonder if we'll see more countries push towards something like that as the birth rate continues to decline.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_China#cite_note-au...

>>> The upside is that — and this is admittedly a strange time to suggest it — the world is going to be a lot less violent.

This only makes sense if the population declines faster than the habitability of the earth does.

I don't think that's even cost to where we are...

And the same claim is void if warfare will turn to be drone/remote-based.

At least you can still WFR (work from rubble).

You refer to nuclear war? It would be awful, without a doubt, especially at a full scale, but even a full scale nuke exchange would not come close to rendering the world uninhabitable. Many of the 50's scenarios on nuclear winter were exaggerated. (a good thing overall if it helped prevent people from pushing certain buttons or turning certain keys)

Nah, just global warming and environmental destruction.

Related, a few months ago Dr. Brickell provided a fascinating discussion about this topic.[1]

A minor note, when I was in Japan I heard the term obachan as mildly derogatory slang for old people (e.g., the old lady who throws elbows if you are in her way). I hadn't heard of the similar term rougai referenced in this article.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNqCRvDbCVI

I often recall a quote, the author of which I've forgotten, when I read about population decline. "There were around 1B people in 1900, and few would say the world was empty back then."

No doubt it will be a hard adjustment, but those that are around could enjoy a better quality of life than we do as long as you don't define quality as 'inexpensive junk'. More natural resources and open space per capita is pretty nice in itself.

What are the countries and cultures bucking the trend? It might be useful to understand what the world will look like in 50 years.

Some parts of sub-Saharan Africa still have high fertility, but those who have seen increased economic development have also seen at least the start of the same demographic transition.

Last time I checked population growth forecasts, the models mostly predict worldwide population contraction within a century.

Substantial increases in longevity could delay that, but avoiding it entirely would take fairly substantial efforts to encourage more children.

As someone with a single child, I'd say substantially improved childcare provisions would be necessary, but insufficient - I could afford a lot of childcare, but having a child is still a lot of work.

Efforts to normalise more help, might help, but some of the options that might help in that respect (e.g. more au pairs, live in aid) are actively countered by high house prices.

Fertility is declining rapidly across Africa:

https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/dramatic-drop-fertility-acr...

I remember something I read from the 1970s which suggested that the Earth’s carrying capacity was about 2.1 billion. That number of humans could be sustained indefinitely. Going higher than that would result in environmental degradation that would reduce the carrying capacity. We are now at that point and the population will go higher in spite of the the low birth rates. Every day we diminish the environment and de-terraform the Earth.

I am fine with the population declining naturally over time. I wish the Western countries could do more to absorb additional immigrants. This would have a positive effect for their own aging demographics but also worldwide as money flows to home countries.

I will probably die about the time population reaches the peak. I have always felt that that peak will be a difficult time because of poverty and demographics. Nothing we are doing now is preparing well for that time.

>> Russia is dying.

Fertility rate worldwide has plummeted and the population has peaked. Including these as war relate statistics is disingenuous.

On a different note, population reduction is good for the environment and long term survival of the species but terrible for the economy and wealth - especially of some countries.

Is it bad for wealth? I had read that the Black Plague that took out 1/3 of the European population actually made people (the survivors, of course) wealthier.

That was a very temporary effect due to lords competing for workers. Eventually the king stepped in and stopped it. 'The same thing would probably happen now too.

See: California and other states prevent rent increases during the pandemic.

>"but terrible for the economy and wealth"

If the economy is based more and more on automation maybe it is possible to keep smaller population at even higher living standard and UBI. We might loose few by then trillionaires in a process but who really gives a shit about those.

Population has not peaked, it is still expected to continue rising to 10 Billion.

The point is that Russia's fertility rate is particularly low, and Russia can't really afford a long term compounding effect of their already low rate, with the loss of a significant number of young men. While that is unlikely to affect their thinking about the war in the short term, the article has a point that the perceived impact may well be higher when families are generally smaller.

That one piece of good news. When it comes to fertility, babies, and even deaths ... wars just don't matter. Even WW2 made a tiny dent in world population.

> I reflected on why the referendum had become a footnote in history rather than the trigger for violent conflict

Because all the propaganda around catalan independence is bullshit.

It gas nothing to do with gray hair, which, BTW, are mostly tourists, mostly from UK, people that can afford to travel in autumn and that don't enjoy the same climate, if not much better, of catalonia at their homes (or if they can afford to travel go somewhere else, because they are not old!)

https://www.thenewfederalist.eu/i-have-never-supported-catal...

No, it's not. 'Children of Men' is about infertility; this article is about voluntary population decline (people choosing to have fewer children, an entire subject on its own). This is a bit of clickbait, of course.

The reality seems grimmer than a post apocalyptic movie then - in that imagined future, there is no choice; in actual reality, it seems that individuals have chosen not to reproduce in spite of having the biological ability to do so.

It is more than just a click bait, to me it reads as a deliberate attempt to draw a conclusion that a decreased population size in certain countries is linked to biological fertility.

Really it is but a step away from reading like some Alex Jones crazy talking and selling bone broth.

“in Catalonia around the time of that province’s comical attempts at independence in 2017[…]”

If the author wanted to look like an asshole, I guess mission accomplished?

Also, it’s quite ridiculous to claim this was somehow just a matter of age, since there’s a reason for only finding old people at Port bou, most young people from Port Bou are in Barcelona, where colleges are…

Even young people didn’t want war, because here there’s an ingrained distrust of the military, since twice in Barcelonas history the canons built to protect it were turned around and used to raze it to the ground by the people sworn to protect it.

Right now, having children is a nightmare financially. Most of my friends simply can't afford it, and are wise enough not to.

If the government wants to avoid disaster, they need to make changes to fix this reality. Example: add a k% tax on everyone, and a x% tax reduction per child you are the legal guardian of, up to y children. Use the money raised to subsidize day cares, public schools, etc.

Make the idea of having a kid less awful and people will do it. (That wasn't meant to be a double-entendre but I'll take it).

These demographic figures - both their severity and their broad, global reach - are why I believe deflation and not inflation is what we should expect from our economies.

I don't doubt that in the near term all manner of inflationary paroxysms will be employed in a desperate attempt to stave off this inevitable result ... but the big picture, globally, is deflation.

At least for me and my spouse, we need stability. It is impossible to raise 2 children when you know you are going to be a slave to the bank for 30 years and have no guarantees of job and healthcare.

If healthcare alone would have been taken care of, we might have considered 2 kids. But for now, I hesitate to have even 1.

It's not impossible to raise children in these conditions. I just turned 40 and have an 8 1/2 and 6 1/2 year old in the living room next to me reading books to each other.

There are 2 of them, and one of me. I am 'enslaved' to the bank for the next 20 something years. I am self-employed in the trades. I have very solid foundation in fixing and building things, which seems to survive many economic downturns as things that are needed to be done, are needed to be done regardless if a booming market or not - You just may face a bit more competition at that point.

Not ranting against you, or picking on your decisioning - Obviously it is a super-personal choice, and I'm glad thoughts have been put in place about many factors involved.

That being said, I've heard "I'm going to wait until I am 100% fully stable and secure to do **" my entire life. While I will agree that there are certain conditions and 'times of lives' that are extremely bad* ideas to do large things, especially when it comes into involving other dependents, I really don't think 100% stability is ever achievable.

You or your significant other could be taken out by a car tomorrow, or be caught in a fire, or even hit by lightening.

Obviously I had my first child when I was in the lower 30's -- for me, I'm finding this to be a very nice timeframe that worked in my life. I was far less stable than I am now, in the conventional sense of having a savings account, or owning a house, and I've managed to both purchase a house, and while hardly rich by any conventional notions of the world, when the car(s) break, or the house needs a roof, I am able to have those things done by either paying $ outright, or using prior life skills to offset the labor charges of those things making them more financially easier to swallow. My point is, now I am 40. They are still pretty little, and yeah, children require an insane amount of work and energy input to not only 'maintain', but 120% of what you have to offer to really enjoy the experience. I, personally, wouldn't want to be any older than I am now while having children at the ages they are - Advil is frequently consumed by now, part of growing up rolling around on a skateboard, part doing manual trades for (most) of my working life thus far, and part just being 40 and out of the 'Spring Chicken' age.

Time goes by, and with it, we get older. There is no way of changing that. The other factors in modern life, the money, the housing, the 'stability' can ebb and flow both by actions of your own and by actions too varied to even account for -- But time goes one direction.

I wish you the best, and strongly suggest if you want to have a child, and it's not 'the worst time possible' to do as such (drug addictions, homeless, uh, similar things) then perhaps ditch some of the fear of 'stability' (that truly very few have; none if you acknowledge life can end at any time for any of us) and get to doing the living!

Hard times happen to many; Even us single parent folk (and yeah, it makes things a bit harder, that's for sure) but I can promise you, if you care and you're willing to put the effort in, boy, it's worth it!

I love children. But I cannot take care of them. Spouse and I have made the conscious decision of not ever going for more than 1. We just cannot afford it.

I understand your concerns, and many share them. However, stability is an illusion. Everything changes, and more often than not, that's a good thing.

Healthcare is important, everyone deserves that, kid or not. - Europe has that figured out more so than the (richer) US. But you don't need a massive house to raise two kids (although a bit of garden would help).

I'd say to wait for a state that you could call "stability" may be imply a wait until it's too late; your decision making should incorporate other factors such as your biological age, your levels of energy and support potentially available from grandparents where still applicable. If you map all of these out over time, you will see that while jon stability may or may not improve most other facctors will worsen irreversibly.

I think there is are different kinds of stability.

The problem in America is the rat race never ends and that it is FAR TOO EASY to lose your hard earned wealth. Lawsuits, divorce, healthcare costs, daycare, tutoring all suck money away very quickly.

Furthermore, laws are set up in a way that can take away your earning potential. A small criminal records from 20 years ago can affect your career at a private business. A loss of drivers license will impede you from getting to work. A health issue will get you disability and FMLA but set you behind in the corporate rat race so fast that you will regret it.

In America, the fall is precipitous. You could have been a model citizen for 40 years of your life. But only one slip up (say a critical health diagnosis) and you are on the slippery slope down.

This, as opposed to Asian countries which have a free market and yet, the fall is not precipitous. In most other countries, if you have been a model citizen for 40 years, it's very hard for your life to fall apart.

I think there will be more war. In the future wars will be fought with drones - you don't sacrifice many young people.

One could make an argument that fertility rate of 1.8 is a good thing. There is a better control of the labour market using immigration. Automation won't hurt that much.

I would argue that increasing the retirement age is in the best interest of the aging population. Because if too much of the population is retired, then there won't be enough workers to provide the goods and services for those retired people.

Other than a rambling rant is there a real connection to the book amongst all of the verbiage?

Russia will then have the opportunity to welcome the climate refugees in the next 10 years. I think Russia will be more temperate and there will be opportunity for lots of farming work.

> a comfortable lifestyle without the huge stress of mixing child-raising and a modern economy.

Can someone please tell what does he mean exactly by that sentence?

China must be delighted. They can easily make use of the vast, almost completely depopulated, and resource-rich Russian far east.

The US has a vast, almost completely depopulated “west Midwest” filled with resources: Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Alaska etc

Something like 45% of the US geography is essentially unpopulated - with tons of resources.

It’s nice, I guess, but America’s economic growth comes from the overpopulated areas: Silicon Valley, Manhattan, Austin, etc.

I’m not directly disagreeing with you. Obviously both America and China can be happy !

I guess it depends how you define resources.

The severe droughts in that area mean limited water and grassland for grazing.

I can’t see any major development beyond what’s there already with limited water.

Some minor growth comes with the cyclical oil booms but coal is politically dead.

China's population growth is about to flatline too.

China's one child policy means China has had a particularly low fertility rate for decades. Even now, it's "up" to 1.6. That's lower than Russia, which is far from replacement level. Child policy only takes effect after something like 20-25 years. So China's population will be well into decline before the first effect of canceling the one-child policy will be observed, in 2030-2035 (2010 - 2015 + 20 years).

Additionally Health services in China don't match those in the West, so they will lose people far faster.

China is in a much worse state than even Eastern Europe when it comes to population. It doesn't look like it, but China went into decline 3 years ago and will not stop declining until at least 2060. And it will be quite a steep decline starting in 2030 or so.

A problem that will solve itself. Since parental preference is now the primary determinant of family size it will come under Nature's lens. There will be huge negative selection pressure exerted against non-breeders and their genes will be swept out of the gene pool en masse. Fertility will recover, likely within less than 10 generations or 300 years and we will be back to growth - and to ravaging the planet like never before.

Oh no, a trend! I bet it carries on forever no matter what!!

Birth rates have been declining in the West since the late 1950s/early 1960s. Of course it won't carry on forever, because there is a point where you must have children in order to survive. And survive is what people do best.

This is excellent news! We are already over the carrying capacity for the Earth. We just have to figure out how to structure our economies. "fixing" fertility is fixing the wrong problem.

>Russia is dying. In just the first week of Putin’s war, the country lost somewhere between 2,000 and 6,000 men, according to western sources, an immense and needless tragedy for the poor families left behind to grieve.

>country does not have enough men to spare.

144 million people live in Russia. This war is a terrible tragedy but it will not depopulate the country. It won't even depopulate Ukraine through casualties, although it's having a fair effect due to refugees (44M population, millions of refugees). Putin does not care about the families of the fallen, he is playing Civilization and you can't expand your borders without moving your pieces.

Will the population decline fast enough to save the planet? Seems doubtful. We use far too many resources and the population will increase for a while until it will start decreasing.

What consequences will this have for real estate?

Many people who bought a house in their 30s thinking they’re going to flip it in 30 years for 4x their purchase price are going to be in for a surprise.

It's the time and age of antinatalists. ;)

“Britain Stands Alone”

The developed world seems to be trapped in cultural values that are incompatible with children. Emergent culture is downstream from incentives, and the incentives are all wrong.

The west broke the entire 'family' equation by nationalizating elder care (social welfare, retirement homes) and introducing the concept of a nuclear family. People still spend the same on elder care (in taxes instead of in person), but without any personal connection to those they contribute to.

Children = retirement was a big part of the incentive. Kids took care of you once you reached 60. The last 20-30 years of your life were glorious. "Respect your elders" meant that you get served food, chauffeured around and enjoy being an angel in the eyes of your grandkids. This same thing made being a parent easier, because the grand parents helped out. Moving away from this has made being a parent harder and worsened the long term incentives.

American infrastructure and the 'nuclear-ness' of upbringing also plays a role. It forces parents to invest an insane number for hours into their kids for even the most basic shit. The soccer mom meme is a direct result of unsustainably built suburbs and separation of responsibility. I grew up in dense communities, where all my friends lived within a 5 minutes walk from my house. I didn't even need to leave my building. The playgrounds were within eyesight of at least 1 parent, who would periodically peek to make sure the kids were still there. This allowed my parents to leave us unsupervised at a much younger age. The elder kids would walk the younger kids home from school. Younger grandparents were happy to be babysitters for kids from the entire community for free. Moving away from wide-social-webs and towards nuclear units has destroyed all of this. This put burden of parenting entirely on the shoulders of 2 (sometimes single) working parents who're working more than 40 hr/each. Ofc having children sounds unappealing.

Then there are the impossibly high standards of being a parent as portrayed in the western media (especially educated circles). Your job as a parent is to make sure your child doesn't become a total loser. That's it. Anything more is extra. Kids are expensive because every parent is expected push their child into Harvard. Let kids be kids, most of them are going to have mediocre careers and no amount effort is going to change that fact.

Today, other people's children as seen as 'their burden'. Society needs to start seeing children as the total societal advantage that they are. The young are the ones who do the heavy lifting and keep the $$ coming for an economy. Their taxes subsidize the lifestyles of the old. They create new art and media that most amazes us. They are an endless source of optimism and liberal (in terms of being liberated), unlike the cynical and conversative (in a sort of jaded failure averse resignation) ways of the old. Not everyone enjoys being a parent, but a majority enjoy being the cool uncle/aunt. At a societal level, children bring joy that is obvious to everyone who chooses to look.

But, as long as we encourage the 'everyone outside my tiny circle of concern is a chore' mentality borne from nuclear thought, the incentives will continue to discourage tolerating children in society as a whole.

I'm not too worried. Just like how mRNA vaccines were a technology that was mostly ready for prime-time and was just waiting for a pressing scenario I think that artificial wombs are mostly a solved problem and are the solution to this situation.

I think that the development of artificial wombs with a dash of genetic customization will lead to a new baby boom in the next 10-20 years.

Warning: whining ahead. What are countries really doing to promote "fertility"? The impression we get is that it's difficult, tiresome, thankless, expensive, and opens you up to systemic abuse from schools (especially pre-schools and post-secondary education), healthcare providers, and various other institutions designed to suck money from your pockets. You get to live isolated in single-family single-generation households with little to no help from family and friends; the only help you get is what you can pay for. Anything that goes wrong is Your Fault. And no one cares if you are struggling. It's Your Fault for choosing to have children. Why should your elite hyper-intelligent childless megabrain coworkers take on any burden to accommodate your needs? Children are a luxury, after all.

Isn't it a wonder why we can't get fertility rates up?

Western governments attempting to raise birth rates are like fat people trying to lose weight: "We've tried nothing and it didn't work!"

Its not Children of Men thats happening, its Elysium (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIBtePb-dGY).

Nobody wants to go backwards in terms of tech, creature comforts and things like that so you wont see people returning to farm the land and live off the land like you used to see just a hundred years ago.

Everyone here is almost certainly playing their part in building the future and that means less people are needed on the planet. Brains appears to be beating brawn, which is why you get paid high wages.

It fun how golden billion’s boomers, after grabbing whole planet wealth and creating a globalised totalitarian system to brainwash its own people and squeeze resources from peripheral nations are now expect less violent and calm future with new kids playing on streets (among 7 usd/hour workers who can only repay out 2 meters of lands they presumablyown.

Older men declare war, but it is the youth that must fight and die.

> they must shudder at the thought that in the average week the country loses another 2,000 through population decline

Anecdotally, it seems a surprising number of these young men are already fathers (of children they could barely support). Furthermore, there is a male surplus built into birth rates, and the number of men is not the limiting factor in population growth.

It's quite obvious the reason is economic. Establishing healthy families is really difficult.

> that there is almost no civil war in countries where 55 per cent or more of the population is aged over thirty.’

Correlation, not causation.

The articles hint at some strong factors for causation.

> ‘While it cannot be said that youthfulness “causes” war,’ he writes, ‘or that maturity “causes” peace, a society’s age structure creates background conditions against which other things either do or don’t spark conflict.’

Literally the next sentence.

That sentence does nothing to explain causation.

In case someone is still wondering about this.

A plausible correlation would be; a spike in population growth would cause both an excess of young men, and a shortage of resources (which is a cause for war).

> ‘While it cannot be said that youthfulness “causes” war,’ he writes, ‘or that maturity “causes” peace...

Have more children. Have them early if possible.

I’m a first-generation child of immigrant parents. So is my wife. In our families, we have a lot of cousins around our age. Many are childless. Similar story amongst our circle of friends.

In Canada, we’ve supplemented our low birth rate and labour force with immigration. We’re small enough that it can continue to work for a while. But given the investment made by our immigrant parents and by our government, it behooves us to work hard, contribute to society and pay back that debt.

Yet, with fewer children, we’re losing the opportunity for those returns. If our parents came for a better life, we should keep making more smart children, with the capacity for new ideas and innovation, in an environment that fosters and promotes that.

Given all of the places in the world, we won the genetic lottery. Makes little sense to squander it.

I also reject the notion that humanity is a cancer on the planet. Growth is the route to solving our problems.

> Have them early if possible.

The two most important factors in having successful children are: 1. having two parents and 2. having older parents at child birth.

There’s a ton of data on this. Maybe it’s correlation only, but it also makes sense. Parenting is too difficult for a single person. And waiting until you’re established and stable will give your kids a better environment for growth.

The age might very well be correlation, not causation.

Wealthy 50-years-olds having their firstborns, then promptly leaving them vast inheritance — boom! you get “successful” children merely because they got quite a boost. Meanwhile, you don't see not-so-wealthy 50-years-olds having new kids because they had them already at 25 and that was enough.

Also, there is a whole host of implications from having kids earlier. Like, you being just 30 when they go to school — or young adults having 65-year-old parents to care of when they'd be rather establishing their own life.

I’m not just talking about wealth…

Look at our prison population and you’ll find people raised by a very young single parent.

Look at people that graduate from university and you’ll see the opposite.

It strongly correlates with just about any measure you can think of. And it is true across race, gender, immigration status, etc.

If I gave you my mom’s phone number, do you think you could call and chat with her about this for a bit?

If stability arrives only in your mid to late 30s, leaving only a handful of fertile years (assuming no prior medical problems picked-up in younger life) then it stands to reason that a women will be far less successful at producing a large family than one in say, her early 20s. For men, I would agree with you. But then the calculation is rather different.

It's a pretty delicate balancing act, and one that's getting harder because of the increasing complexity of modern society.

The issue is that differentiated careers - ones where you are hard to replace, your company will pay you more than commodity wages, and they'll give you time off for a sick kid because replacing you will cost more than just letting you take a day off when necessary - require a long period of time to become differentiated and hard to replace. That could be spending your 20s in med school and residency, or in law school and being an associate, or bouncing between lower-level engineering jobs before you get the experience needed to tackle big projects. But in most fields, it does take up most of your 20s, which means you really only get stability, trust, and the ability to downshift for family life in your 30s.

Ideally, on a societal level, you should be able to raise a family on one of those "commodity" wages. But that's not happening, largely because many of the necessities of life - housing, health care, and education - have become differentiated professions where owners and practitioners can get premium wages. We need to allow shantytowns and village doctors again before we can have large amounts of people having kids in their 20s.

> two most important factors in having successful children are: 1. having two parents and 2. having older parents at child birth.

This ignores the genetic confounding.

The reason "older parents" have "successful kids" is because those same parents have genes which make their kids successful. Decades of twin studies have shown that parenting really doesn't matter, but parents do (because of the genes they impart).

Parenting younger in life is a much better experience for everyone. The real problem is that nobody is stable anymore at a younger age.

Is it really? What makes it better? My mother was 22 when I born. I went through a lot of pain as a child because of her an my dad’s emotional issues (I don’t blame them, they were young.) It took me until my late 20s to really work through some of the crap I went through as a child. Compare that to my cousin who’s parents were in their mid to late 30s. He’s had a much more stable life than I had. He’s already got a much better head start in life than me, and I think a big component of that was the maturity of his parents.

How much of an input did your parents have in your mom's selection of her husband?

Very good point. Back in the day in my culture you had multi generation families living in the same house. This helps everyone, parents get more people to help, the children grow around respective role models (uncles, grandfather, etc. for boys, aunts, grandmother, etc. for girls), etc. It still exists for some people, but less common.

Today things are so messed up, the economy, the push in secular cultures to even destroy the nuclear family, all this is taking a toll on society. Eventually it might be too late to recover.

As far as age is concerned, just doing a Google search shows there's a ton of data both in support and against having kids at various ages. There is no single dimension called "success", there are all kinds of health, economic, and educational considerations and they're all impacted in different ways by age. Furthermore it also looks like where the study was conducted plays a big role, which leads me to think this is more of a correlation than a causation. Studies in Europe seem to focus a lot more on health in which case being younger seems to be the best time to have kids. Studies in the U.S. seem to focus a lot more on crime and educational attainment, in which case being older seems to be the best time to have kids.

Waiting to have kids is the worst advice you can give someone. It’s a very difficult thing to have kids to begin with (contrary to what the “abstinence only” crowd would have you believe) and waiting can be the difference between having kids and heartbreak.

> contrary to what the “abstinence only” crowd would have you believe

Sounds like a straw man fallacy. My faith both advocates for abstinence before marriage, and getting marriage as soon as it viable (physically, mentally, financially, etc.).

I agree with this. I wasn’t ready to have kids at 30. I had my son at 33. Only now am I entering some stability in my career. I am very fortunate to have made wise decisions in my youth that shaped my trajectory. I made the most of the opportunities I had. I’ve squandered many too.

I don’t actually wish I had my son earlier. I’m happy with our current situation. I’m able to give him access to a plethora of resources and attention so he can flourish. He’s turning 4 this year. I wish I could make more of him because I think this world is better with him in it, than not.

No, I said “early if possible” only because we cannot change the realities of biology. My wife is the same age as me, and we can likely have 1 more before she’s “done.” If we could have 3 or 4 with ease, we would.

An alternative solution would be for men to marry young. It’s a reasonable solution. But my wife’s age and maturity is a huge benefit too. She wasn’t ready to be a mom at 25 or 30.

It’s a difficult dilemma and balancing act.

Older parents are good for financial health. Less so for biological health.

This is a take that I hadn’t really thought about, so thank you for writing this.

You’re welcome. Lots of negative comments and downvoting on my comment, so I’m glad at least one person understood what I was trying to say.

We are just coming out of a pandemic that is not actually over and has wreaked havoc on our health and economy. It’s pretty indisputable that the world and future sucks in a lot of ways right now.

But if the world is going to end (I.e. climate change, WW3, population decline), would you rather go out with a whimper, or your head held high knowing you did your best to build that bright and positive future we all want?

> Have more children. Have them early if possible

and condemn them to overcome all the mistakes young parents (and possibly economically challenged parents, with many more mouths to feed) make also due to lack of experience

That's a grim take.

We wouldn't be here if our ancestors didn't face hardship.

Our evolutionary cousins (eg. gazelle) are still being born and hunted on the savannah and many will get eaten alive. I think we've got it pretty good, all things considered.

When I had no money I didn't wish that I'd never been born. My parents didn't have college degrees or loads of resources.

Wishing for an ideal environment to raise children is pretty much a modern invention that doesn't correlate to history and nature.

Life isn't as bad as the news and the zeitgeist keep telling us. People are paid to make us feel this way.

> That's a grim take

reality is grim

> Our evolutionary cousins (eg. gazelle) are still being born and hunted

because they have no choice.

We do.

> When I had no money I didn't wish that I'd never been born

"make a lot of poor kids. They won't wish to never be born"

doesn't sound like good advertisement to me...

> My parents didn't have college degrees or loads of resources

That's why they had a lot of kids.

I am not talking about "reverse darwinism" which is BS, but about the fact that even the gazelle you talked about know that focusing on a few individuals is the key to helping your offspring. They make a lot of them, so that some of them sill survive.

It's very simple logic.

> Wishing for an ideal environment to raise children is pretty much a modern invention that doesn't correlate to history and nature.

We agree on this: you have to be young and reckless to not consider all the things that could go wrong before actually doing them.

What's the end game? Even if we continue to grow population now, we can't forever. At some point we have to reach a solution for a population equilibrium.

> Have more children. Have them early if possible.

People can't afford to do either.

I know. We need to do better to help everyone with this problem. But I prefer to face these difficulties with an optimistic mindset, rather than resign myself to being powerless against the grim reality.

Have no children. Never have them.

Unless you’re wealthy and/or live in an are insulated from the effects, you’re signing kids up for a world that is going to be drastically different and worse due to climate change.

> Have more children. Have them early if possible.

Pretty complicated when the housing market and labour market are such that, on average:

* You don't own a house (= less money)

* You only have a fixed-term contract (= low financial stability, banks less likely to lend you money)

* To get a job, you will likely have to move away from family/relatives (= no support network)

* You & your partner likely have to work full-time (= less time for child care)

Humans have done a pretty good job of overcoming the planet's carrying capacity through social and technological means. At some point, human's current organization and ability hits a limit and there is a period of stagnation, or regression. To me, and to others, these are not hopeful times. In the world that I live in, the best means I have to support myself also disconnect me from real community.

Living in the Bay Area, there is no real sense of permanence. Many people are here because salaries are so high, but if they don't stay high they will need to leave. Many people are pushed out because the area has become so unaffordable. Many of my closest friends live day to day not knowing if their visa will be renewed. A friend at my company just relocated to Vancouver because he didn't luck out in the visa lottery. I have several friends who are looking to leave because they cannot provide stability for their children. I myself am renting. I would like to stay here permanently, but the houses on my street have doubled in price (not value) over the last two years. I still may be able to afford to buy one, but the idea of paying more than 10k/month for an 1300 square foot house is hard to swallow.

California of course has tried to address these problems, and has been trying to address them for a long time. Overall, these efforts have been a failure sometimes doing more harm than good (see prop 13). California hasn't even been able to build a functioning high speed rail system even though it has been fully funded for over 20 years. The society that made these places does not seem to be the society that we need to fix their problems.

We have many people, with many ideas. We don't need more people to keep having new ideas. We just need to provide a stable environment for the people that we do have, and give them the space to express themselves.

Edit: btw, if it is true that new ideas are what we need, then the best way forward is adoption. What better way to get a new idea into a desirable place?

> Have them early if possible.

Children raising children has got to be one of the biggest jokes that nature plays on us.

How are we not a cancer on the planet, though? We are literally responsible for the 6th largest mass extinction in history, based on greed for fossil fuels, animal products & rearing unnecessary children who serve the Need Machine (life/DNA) needlessly, and this is with all the knowledge and technology we have, in fact the more we had and the more we destroyed to get here.

We are like addicts to the drug of life, too scared of admiting we have to stop spawning other addicts as a mean to an unreachable end. We do not accomplish anything by "creating a need and satisfying it". We do not accomplish anything by creating every problem and solving some of them (or even all of them).

Life is a cancer on this planet. Life is extractive of the natural resources. Name a single life form that leaves the planet “better” than if it had not been there?

Is your preference that Earth be devoid of life? Looks like Mars or Venus? And nothing of consequence exists there?

That’s obviously not what you meant, but it’s the natural extension of your argument.

If you think about it, the planet doesn’t give a shit if we live or die. It is not sentient. Neither does the Sun, nor the Milky Way, or the other galaxies. Whether we live or die, blow the planet up or not, is irrelevant to it all.

Somehow, humanity was given a gift. By God or the universe, but you have to admit that it’s pretty miraculous. And the fact that you and I are debating each other about the merits of humanity’s continued existence over the Internet is pretty wild too. But again, it is insignificant to the overall timeline of the universe.

Given that it’s all meaningless, why not spend your time here giving it meaning? If you believe we are a cancer, why not spend your time ensuring that you are not that cancer?

Furthermore, children are a fantastic way to continue contributing to society’s search for meaning. If you don’t want to have children, to me that indicates that you don’t feel you provide value.

I’m here to tell you that you do. And that you’d probably be a good parent, that would produce a child that also provides value.

Or not. Your decision. :-)

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