You don’t have kids because it’s too expensive.
I don’t have kids because I’m immature, irresponsible, would screw it up like everything else in my life, can’t even take care of myself let alone another human, these genes aren’t worth passing on, climate change will almost certainly never be taken as seriously as it should be, and it’s not like there’s anyone that would want to have my kids anyway.
We are not the same.
And also it’s too expensive.
I don’t have kids because I find fulfillment in life without them. I get to travel, spend time on hobbies, and have a social life. I know you can technically do those things while having kids, but generally not to the same degree.
Also, I think letting our population decline a bit is probably better for our species and our planet.I get to travel, spend time on hobbies, and have a social life.
I have kids, travel, hobby, and have a social life. Introducing kids to new places, ideas, and people has given me a new perspective on them and made these activities more fun.
Also, I think letting our population decline a bit is probably better for our species and our planet.
The biggest waste producers on our planet aren’t the areas with the most people. They’re the areas with the access to the most money and the least political consequence.
The OpenAI project is a great example of this. Phenomenal consumption of domestic resources - land, minerals, energy, water - at the hands of a few thousand people. If everyone in Brazil stopped existing tomorrow, Sam Altman would still be pumping out huge plumes of CO2 and sucking up hectares of water to cool his data centers.
Similarly, the assorted wars in Europe and the Middle East - Russia/Ukraine, Israel’s genocide in Palestine, the US/Afghanistan and US/Iraq missions - have been resource hogs that vastly outstripped anything a comparable number of civilians would have consumed.
Idk what the “correct” number of humans is, but the notion that we can end the ecological degradation if the population gets cut in half really underweight the biggest drivers of the harm.
I grew up in a family with over a dozen siblings.
I didn’t have space to myself nor a quiet Saturday morning until I was 21 years old, and I did a shit-ton of parenting without my consent.
Kids suck. Childrearing sucks. My dogs are nicer, cleaner, more loving, and cuter than human children. You couldn’t pay men enough to give up my quiet, clean condo on a Saturday morning.
Also it’s too expensive.
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Yeah, actually having the coefficient of 1.4-1.7 is OK: look at France or Germany: they had these values for nearly 40 years and the population only increases
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I can’t read other people’s thoughts, sorry
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Carlson really needs to interview John Stewart again.
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Stewart pretty much destroyed his career the first time. He went from being a pretty well-respected CNN talking head to a corporate shill with a primetime slot on FOX to now being a blatant autocratic toadie and billionaires lapdog on a failed social media network.
As someone who saw the episode of Crossfire when it aired, it’s been an interesting fall.
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Even if A implies B in a classic logic sense, having A in mind doesn’t mean that one has B. If that wasn’t the case, no propaganda machine would work.
Furthermore, concern about population decline could come from a legit fear that there won’t be enough young people to fuel capitalism machine when one’s old , or that reproduction decline has a good correlation coefficient with upcoming wars.
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On the off chance that you’re being sincere, you legitimately might be on the spectrum if you both fail to see and refuse to see the subtext here. Or perhaps you’re Dutch.
You’ve been downvoted, but I agree. I always assumed that the worry about a shrinking population was because there wouldn’t be enough meat for the capitalism grinder, but now that it’s been pointed out, I definitely can see the racist implications of it.
A big driver of that population increase is war and climate refugees.
I understand this isn’t explicitly “replacement theory”
It’s just replacement theory but one step removed.
Population growth should never be a concern for a nation of immigrants. Oh no, our native citizens aren’t having enough kids to sustain macroeconomic equilibrium! Guess we better start letting some more fucking immigrants in. Why can’t we do that? Hmmm?
Who cares, let population decline for a generation or so. Maybe we will stop producing so much shit and scale back
let population decline for a generation or so
But that’s bad for the Big GDP Number
Not necessarily - less people means lower unemployment resulting in higher wages to attract people to your organization (income is directly linked to GDP). Phillips curve relationship.
Its a bitch for inflation though.
https://media.tenor.com/5F5B6IgfYWAAAAAM/game-of.gif
How do I embed the gif?
Oh no, not the economy!
Anyways…
The Economy is kinda important, especially when the big Economy Computer starts telling everyone that a downturn in Brawndo sales means they’re all homeless.
Big Economy Computer? I didn’t know USSA already have built communism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People’s_Republic_of_Walmart
With the size and scope of modern American mega-corps, we’re closer to it than you’d think. Hayek’s economic calculation problem is functionally solved.
Yeah but the GDP per capita will skyrocket.
Transforming America into Monaco.
Would that be the worst thing in the world? Probably not
that’s not how capitalism works. if you’re not selling enough shit you find a way to make the same people buy more or pay more. line must go up. no scaling back. line must go up.
But, now hear me out…what if it doesn’t…
I don’t understand… Are you saying, line go down? I’ve never heard of such a thing
You’ve never seen my bank account …
hahaha… haha… ok now that we laughed at that ridiculously absurd idea, let’s watch the line go up.
If line stays flat? Things kinda gradually get shittier for a while.
If line goes down? Economic collapse. Riots in the street. Civil anarchy. Homelessness and crime will skyrocket.
Those of you who have never taken an economics class think this is satire.
The problem is when corporate profits go up but wages stay flat or go down. Or when wages go up for some but not for others.
Make it so that families can afford to have one parent stay at home all day while the other parent does some basic shit off of a high school education for a job they just walked in off the street for.
Maybe you can solve the problem by letting immigrants in
Our leaders wouldn’t mind that except that immigrants might come from countries where they grew up with access to banned books…
I don’t think that racism boils down to red scare or whatever you are implying. Racism has a long tradition like the Asian Exclamation Act from 1924
I’m implying that our leaders don’t want immigrants for the same reason they gut our educational funding, and that they attack our librarians. An educated population scares them.
The average immigrant has been educated (by school or by life) outside our controlling parties’ spans of influence.
I’m from a country with a very narrow span of acceptable political ideas. The average imported person will expand our horizons, and weaken our fragile belief that our current two party system serves our best interests.
be for real. our leaders don’t want immigrant people because they [the leaders] are white supremacists and/or want the support of white supremacists. they don’t like poor, uneducated immigrant people either (in fact they hate them even more!)
Short term solution. As countries become more affluent the birth rate tends to drop. Globally countries are generally becoming more affluent. So you’ll just shift the problem and run out of immigrants.
Not for decades tho .
Letting Indians into the US will bring back “Indians” as the majority population. No not decades. For centuries you will not run out of immigrants.
At least there is no reason to build higher fences
India has 1.8 BEEELLION population. Do you want a flood ? Almost no Indian would voluntarily giveup migrating to the US or any Western country. Indian politics and situation is corrupt and terrible. And not many people are willing to go through the pain and crap that is living day-to-day in India.
Assimilation would be an issue but I feel like it’s a solvable issue. And we don’t need to open the floodgates, just open up the tap a little bit more.
“Short term” here meaning probably “at least a generation” lol
Even absolute best case scenario, 3rd world countries are faaaaaaaaaaaaar away from the level of affluence where birth rates are declining.
That wouldn’t solve any issues, it would just replace to population
The problem is not having enough young people to balance out the eventually aging of the GenX and Millennial generations. If things get too top heavy on the elderly side, the entire house of cards that is consumer and service driven capitalism tends to start toppling over. Immigration has traditionally helped in this regard by providing younger labor and tax base when native populations fail to keep up.
So wait, when all the boomers die and it topples over, does housing get affordable again?
By raiding and gutting SocialCare, Medicaid and Medicare and government emergency funds, the US Govt and State govt and other govt orgs have been running up the debt like crazy. Only way that debt and spending continues is by having a working population that steadily grows and increases each individual output while cutting back what they can consume.
Starvation wages and rampant inflation is easy way for govt and private orgs to extract wealth from the working populace.
Hmm, yes; replace a population of immigrants with checks notes another population of immigrants. Yes indeed that is somehow a problem.
/s
Especially in the US this ‘worry’ is ridiculous and a dogwhistle.
the one that built the country has every reason to govern who gets to live with them and who doesn’t
What issues are you having in mind?
After a century of telling people work, career, consumption and wealth are the most important thing in their life, business leaders are now shocked people will prioritize work, career, consumption and wealth over having many children.
Furthermore, after cutting programs for making child care, health care and education affordable, politicians are wondering why people don’t bring as much children into the world that need a lot of health care, child care and education.
Government in the 1940s: “Here, we’re demolishing black and rural neighborhoods to give returning veterans a cheap suburban housing stock. Also, we’re doing big industrial jobs programs and ramping up our domestic manufacturing base.”
Baby Boom Happens
Government in 2020s: “Here, we’re larding you up with debt all through your twenties and turning every facet of life into a micro payment we can ratchet upwards on a whim.”
Baby Bust Happens
Hmm, will Gen Z become known as the Busters?
I kinda like that
Already known as the roommate generation.
There was a time when a man with a highschool education could work a single full-time job to buy a house and support a stay at home partner and 2 children. Bring that back and you’ll probably get more babies.
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Now you know why the corporate backers of Republicans want to use their platform to outlaw abortion and birth control.
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I always thought about it as a way to secretly promote gay agenda. If contraceptives were to be banned, I would’ve become celibate or gay
You don’t “become” gay for outside reasons. It just doesn’t work what way. You might be bi now, but due to societal pressure you haven’t felt safe to explore it.
I mean I have some same-sex attraction, but I’m not seeking actual experience. IDK if it’s everyone’s case, but I am speaking for myself
Ask Nicolae Ceaușescu what happens next
GOP: “that’s okay, just trap them to have children and make abortion illegal.”
Remember JD Vance said that childless individuals “should not have as much of a voice.”
People who fuck couches should have less of a voice
🥲
Remember JD Vance said that childless individuals “should not have as much of a voice.”
So the reasoning behind this is probably “childless individuals don’t have to think about the future as much”.
The natural extension of that reasoning is that older people should have their voting/political power diminished (since they won’t be around as long)
I gotta say, a part of me sees the latter as being worth the former… I know it goes against many principles of government, etc. etc. but it certainly is tempting. Any armchair political scientists want to chime in?
Reminds me of the CEO who took a giant paycut so everyone in his company can earn 70k/yr minimum. Guess what some of his employees started doing. They started to have kids.
People like him should be the norm, not an anomaly. In a system in full support of greed, only the greedy are meant to thrive unfortunately.
I’d just adopt more dogs. Who would want drooling grimlins running around draining your bank account destroyed your social life.
As if dogs aren’t this.
Still worth it! Nothing beats the companion of a good dog, especially in hard times.
Our parents. good for them that most of us make it through that stage eventually.
It’s definitely a decision. I don’t judge if others want kids, good for them. Infact it’s fun to load them up on sugar, teach them a few fun tricks, maybe give them some loud toys and send them home with the parents happy and very very unruly.
I have my fun and sometimes the expression on my sister’s face is so funny.
Unfortunately, that man (Dan Price) ended up being charged with assault later down the road, which I’ve seen used as an “argument” against the pay cut as just “well he’s a bad person, so obviously that’s a bad idea too.”
I recall it being brought up on an old Fox News clip from an interview they’d done with someone a few years back, but I can’t seem to find it anymore. Could also just be my memory being a bit hazy though.
Regardless, who could have guessed that paying your workers a fair cut of their labor’s value would make them capable of supporting themselves in a capitalist society? /s
Where can I get some of that $1200 rent that isn’t in the middle of some hillbilly backwater?
I had a 2 bedroom in Albuquerque for 1100 last year, with horrible noise pollution but still.
I’m stuck in my 2 bedroom townhouse apartment hybrid for 1125 because a studio around me is 1200 a month (or anywhere in range of my office). I live alone, and sleep on my couch, I don’t need the rooms, but I can’t leave.
Great job capitalism!
Lots of great smaller towns in the middle of the country. Usually pretty progressive too if you stay in town.
Name them
Fayetteville Arkansas, Salina Kansas. Ames Iowa, Birmingham Alabama. That’s a few. There’s plenty more.
I lived in Ames. There’s nothing great about it. The local government hates the college, and passes laws that fuck up the town just to spite them. ISU students are more than 50% of the population of the town. All of the apartments rent from August to August. Get there any other month, and your lease goes until August. This means that everyone in town is moving the same day. Worst town I’ve ever lived in.
smaller towns
Birmingham Alabama
That’s a fair sight bigger than a town. In fact these are all major cities in their respective areas.
Fair but much smaller than larger metros. Birmingham is definitely a bit large.
Get a lotta roommates.
Ignoring the elephant in the room called “Child Care.” Often that’s more expensive than housing.
*Happy post-soviet country noises*
Got some good child care stuff.
jokes on billionaires, because of your shitty greed there wont be anyone left to buy your worthless junk
They will be long dead before any of this matters, so I doubt they will care.
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Is it just the dick swinging thing about having the largest number on paper?
Glances at Elon Musk
I think so, yes.
I think they have other plans like seeding mars with their semen, transporting their consciousness to a robot or cryofreezing themselves until infinite life becomes available to billionaires.
or cryofreezing themselves
I’ll help, I have a large chest-type freezer. I bet we can fit 2-3 billionaires in there. Probably a half dozen if we process them first, it’s a start!
When did we go from “baby boom” to “this is the correct population level we should sustain”. A boom eventually gets a correction
when it became clear that the people who “weren’t having enough kids” were white, it’s been white supremacy this whole time
