Comment by narratives1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by narratives1 | Hacker News Reader

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Are the economic conditions now the worst they’ve ever been in human history? By all accounts they seem to be among the best: your food is stable and cheap, shelter is affordable for the vast majority and it’s good shelter, a/c, electricity, etc

We’ve never had more pampered living conditions.

If the only economy in which people decide to have kids is the rarefied air of America in the 1950s when min wage could afford a home, then that’s far too narrow of living conditions for a species to propagate.

The reality is humans have always been costly, but people had them anyways for unintended + cultural reasons. When you have a child, they’re a massive productivity loss for 5+ years, so even subsistence farmer humans or hunter gatherer humans found them incredibly costly.

And the people today making great salaries in major cities could easily afford multiple kids while still being comfortable, but their lifestyle would be more modest than otherwise. People far poorer have far more children.

I could personally afford kids and I’m slightly above median household income as my wife is starting her own business. I don’t have them though, because there’s more I want to push to accomplish. That’s a very common sentiment, and it’s more to do with cultural priorities than economics.

First, I call BS on UN's "the sky is falling" propaganda. They asked if people are "having fewer children than they would like"? Hello, even Elon Musk would answer "yes" to that question, 50 kids are still too few for what he (or I, for that matter) would like to have.

Also, birth rates aren't a UNIVERSAL problem, vis-a-vis pollution some countries may benefit from less population and falling birth rates. World's population has TRIPLED in the last 75 years... Overpopulation itself is a huge disincentive for more children. The demographic issues must include overpopulation as a factor on a country-by-country basis, anything other than that is dirty politics.

I'm done with generalities, on to your comments:

> Are the economic conditions now the worst they’ve ever been in human history?

Spare time and pollution wise - yes. Both chemical and cultural pollution, both are tightly related to economics, I must add.

> And the people today making great salaries in major cities could easily afford multiple kids while still being comfortable, but their lifestyle would be more modest than otherwise.

You're missing an absolutely major and deciding factor - the rat race. It means all or nothing, it hasn't been a smooth curve for a long time. Income isn't like the volume control of your grandma radio, it's a two-way switch now - sound all the way up (no time to sleep) and sound all the way down - out of a job with unforgivable (by employers' standards) holes in your resume.

> When you have a child, they’re a massive productivity loss for 5+ years, so even subsistence farmer humans or hunter gatherer humans found them incredibly costly.

See my explanation above, there was no rat race back then, the work-time/income curve was a smooth slope. In fact, even serfs in the middle ages worked less hours - with nothing better to do, why not make kids? It's a no brainier. I guess, Africa on foreign aid is in the same basket.

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