Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

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I'd argue that sustainability (and then to a lesser degree, growth) is arguably the single most important value in any culture. Because the best of cultures that can't sustain itself will "lose" to the worst of cultures that can. The ideal of a culture, at least in my mind, is not one of a snapshot of hedonism or liberty, but of a long-term sustained healthy society.

Western culture already has driven fertility rates well below replacement. Alongside that we also have skyrocketing obesity rates, skyrocketing rates of mental illness and drug dependence/abuse, plummeting testosterone levels, the end of the Flynn Effect, governmental approval ratings approaching zero, and more. Our culture, in its current form, is not even remotely close to sustainable.

There has to be some meet in the middle between "Follow the ancient holy book, or die!" and "Let's hedonize ourselves out of existence." As both those extremes mostly feel like two opposite ends of a horse-shoe, to me.

>Western culture already has driven fertility rates well below replacement.

Yes but it's clear it's not 'western culture' but 'industrial economy'. It's happening everywhere. Eg. Iranian TFR dropped off a cliff since the 80s.

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/466445/Fertility-at-below-r...

Kids used to be income generators, now they're a luxury.

In the 80s Iran had a fertility rate of 6+ and was one of the fastest growing countries in the world. So fast in fact that it scared their political leadership, so they 'pulled a China', a much less well known one. [1] They started putting out massive propaganda against large families, introduced widespread birth control measures (and mandates), and so on.

And, like China, it worked too well. Their birth rate fertility rate dropped from above 6 to below 3 in less than a decade. But then it kept falling, to the point of unsustainability. They realized they'd made a huge mistake so they began efforts to try to reverse it. Yet, like China, that has generally been a complete failure.

This is one of the most insidious things about fertility rates. They're not terribly difficult to send low, even to extinction trajectory low. But getting them back up is something that nobody has yet managed to achieve.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning_in_Iran

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