[HN Gopher] Basement Fertility ___________________________________________________________________ Basement Fertility Author : jseliger Score : 54 points Date : 2022-06-27 18:27 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (betonit.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (betonit.substack.com) | VictorPath wrote: | After World War II a lot of public housing projects popped up, | which were nice communities for working class families. Nowadays | this is almost forgotten as public housing has been starved for | decades, and is only thought of in most communities as synonymous | with poverty and crime. This is the direction the United States | went in but not all countries. Public housing funded as it was in | the New Deal era can solve this problem as well. | DFHippie wrote: | It went this way in the US because the unique racial politics | here. I've been listening to a podcast which touches on this: | https://www.npr.org/2022/04/29/1095625161/coming-soon-code-s... | terminalcommand wrote: | Public housing using new construction technologies, I think | this is the answer. Let's build cheap high-rise buildings. We | can expand vertically why not use it. | tony_cannistra wrote: | It feels like there's an implicit "More Kids Good" tone that | pervades this. What's the "right" value for TFR? Why does it have | to be higher? Why is it bad that it is lower in some places? | | The ecosystem we exist in / that sustains us surely has a | carrying capacity. | jimbob45 wrote: | 2.1 is the right value. That's replacement rate. Anything above | is subject to healthy debate. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Replacement rate and "right" are not necessarily congruous. | | If you have the opinion that there are insufficient resources | in the world to live the lifestyle you want for yourself or | those you care about, you may think a lower fertility rate is | more "right". And if you think your tribe is in a competition | for resources with all the other tribes, then you may want a | higher fertility rate for your tribe and a lower one for the | others. | jimbob45 wrote: | Any less than 2.1 and you have to have an uncomfortable | conversation about which nation is going to be the | sacrifice. Any more and you have to worry about | overpopulation. | | That said, I'm of the opinion that we'll never really need | to have any tough conversations about birth rates because | they've fallen so drastically across the board. It seems | that it will be enough to universally encourage higher | birth rates in every nation for the foreseeable future | (with the expected outcome being that most will still | struggle to hit 2.1). | blep_ wrote: | > Any less than 2.1 and you have to have an uncomfortable | conversation about which nation is going to be the | sacrifice. | | Only if you're the sort of person who cares about such | things. I don't see any moral imperative to make sure any | particular ethnicity or culture continues. | | Before someone calls me the usual assortment of bad | things, please take a moment to consider (1) the | difference between treating existing people well and | making new people, and (2) that I mean this literally and | not in the "all the cultures besides the US should go | away" sense, and would still take this position even in | the blatantly racist "but that means you'd be a minority" | situation you're about to try to catch me with. | lotsofpulp wrote: | I think there will be some interesting conversations, | namely around women's civil rights. | | Incentivizing a woman to have a baby is extremely | expensive, and I do not think any country has come up | with an offer so attractive such that it causes birth | rates to go up. | | Which brings up 2 questions: how much does a society have | to offer women, and would that society continue to be | competitive on a global playing field relative to other | countries that might go a different way, such as | restricting women's rights and getting birth rates up by | removing women's agency. | causasui wrote: | If you trace this thread backwards to its root (by essentially | responding to every answer with "so what?"), you end up with | the question "would it a 'bad thing' if humanity were to become | extinct?" | | Anecdotally, the vast majority of people I've met - from all | walks of life and religious/political leanings - will answer | this question with an unthinking "yes, of course that's bad". | | I've been curious lately why this is. From the standpoint of | Christianity, isn't the end goal rapture followed by total | extinction anyway? From the standpoint of agnosticism/atheism, | wouldn't an extinction mean the end of human suffering? | | Why are we as a species so afraid of not being able to sustain | ourselves through a constant churning of new births? Is it just | our monkey brain ultimately calling the shots? | finiteseries wrote: | China will depopulate >50% by 2100 (conservatively) and we're | still worrying about mid 20th century concepts like carrying | capacities as if we aren't a highly advanced (and depopulating) | tool making species entirely capable of _creating_ ecosystems | wholesale and affecting said capacities. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution | tony_cannistra wrote: | Okay, and it's bad that china will depopulate? Won't every | nation, eventually? Are you making like a "suffering / loss | of life is bad" argument? It's hard to disagree with that, if | you are. (I certainly don't.) | | I think you're deriding my use of "Carrying capacity" as an | archaic concept, but your retort is that we're "creating | ecosystems." | | But, every organism within an ecosystem "creates" it just by | existing as part of it, so I'm assuming you mean "heavily | modifying it to suit our species' need for insatiable | growth." | | Taking this from that perspective, the 20th century | agricultural explosion (that you link to ) is a prime example | of how we've hijacked systems far beyond their natural | limits, to largely deleterious effect. | | That wikipedia article even enumerates some of these: | biodiversity loss, GHG emissions, etc. There are many | examples elsewhere [0]. | | Sure, there's a lot more food, and that's good for population | health and well-being. But that "good" assumes that we've | decided that large, consistent growth rates are "good." | | [0]:https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q= | imp... | User23 wrote: | Subsaharan Africa is going to keep human population growth | going to at least ten billion persons by 2100[1], even with | China[2] and the rest of the world's reduced population | growth[3]. | | [1] https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TO | T/9... | | [2] https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TO | T/1... | | [1] https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TO | T/9... | finiteseries wrote: | That isn't the measure of growth people are worried about, | tap _Growth Rate_ on each of [1], [2], and [3]. | | Subsaharan Africa was completely bypassed by the Green | Revolution and largely lacks access to basic infrastructure | like eg consistent electricity (outside portable fuel | powered generators) on the typical small, family, partly | subsistence based farm. | | It's not a solved problem with all the geographical and | political issues, but it's quite literally the world's last | frontier for trade. | screye wrote: | "More Kids (than 1st world countries are having is) Good" is | generally true. | | Social security relies of the young bearing the burden of the | old. Don't even get me started on the intangible energy of | having little kids around. Not everyone wants kids, but most | people like being a cool uncle/aunt. | | > What's the "right" value for TFR? | | Difficult problems exist in Grays. But even the most fervent | believers on either side agree that the 'right number' is | likely between and 1.5-2.5. With western TFR plummeting under | 1.5, we can safely say the the call for 'more kids' is | effectively a call for a slower decline in population; not | 'more kids'. | | > carrying capacity | | Yep, that ecosystem is called the economy and the carry | capacity is a lower bound, not an upper bound. Too few young | people is the death knell of a civilization. | | Also, population explosion is presently led by Africa in rates, | and South Asia in sheer numbers. A few dozen more/less | westerners (who're we kidding? mostly white people) isn't going | to change the numbers by much. | mordae wrote: | As was said by rossdavidh in the comments, "eyeballing the maps, | I don't see a great correlation". | | I suspect this might have something to do with perception of | supportive community rather than actual numbers. When to-be | parents feel like they are on their own and neither $jobPeople, | $friendlyPeople nor $familyPeople are actually going to help, | they might be inclined to postpone. | | Living with parents in a sane multi-generational arrangement | might translate to more support and thus more children. Living | with parents out of sheer necessity where parents look down on | their offspring for not proving themselves in the world probably | would not. | | But that does not really explain scandinavia either. | terminalcommand wrote: | I want to add a personal anecdote. I recently moved out at 26. | Before moving out I couldn't imagine bringing a girl home. You | need space and privacy to mate. | | I certainly want to live closer to my parents but the multi- | generational arrangement needs to provide space to live in, I | can't share the same flat my parents are living in, come on | it's too small. | | The problem is having a private space, not living with parents. | If parents can provide a flat with a seperate entry, even that | would work. | foogazi wrote: | > If parents can provide a flat | | Woah, why can't you, or you + 1, chip in here? | Jolter wrote: | GP states they have no ability to get a +1 while living | with parents. | | I assume that if GP had a well paid job, they would move | out to separate flat, rather than move parents into bigger | flat. Wouldn't you? | Dracophoenix wrote: | > Living with parents out of sheer necessity where parents look | down on their offspring for not proving themselves in the world | probably would not. | | Not that I condone such practices, but how does that not affect | birth rate in India? | [deleted] | Jolter wrote: | There are so many additional factors affecting fertility that | it's not even funny. | | How about making a map of countries with free/subsidized | childcare and comparing it to that fertility map? I'm pretty sure | you'd find nearly the same correlation as with "not living with | your parents". | fleddr wrote: | On Twitter, Elon Musk has been posting a lot about how people | should have more children. I'm mentioning it not because of him, | instead because it offers insight into a common misconception. | | Those threads show thousands and thousands of replies by young | people about how they can barely take care of themselves. High | cost of living, no access to housing, unaffordable healthcare, | etc. | | What is not intuitive is that this reasoning, even though it | feels so right and just, is entirely wrong. If you were to be | wealthier, you'd not have more children. Add even more wealth and | you'd have even fewer, not more. The wealthier people are, the | less children they have on average. | | The other insight you'll get is the gloomy image people have of | the future. This really needs work. As humanity we need to have a | better story than "it's all downhill from here". | Jolter wrote: | These two maps, taken in conjunction, do not provide a good | argument for housing deregulation. Even if we accept that the | maps correlate quite well (and ignore whether there is any causal | link), there is an assumption that the author is not stating | plainly: that housing deregulation leads to young people being | able to move out of their parent's basement. | | Look at the Scandinavian, very deep green countries at the top of | the map. They all have strictly regulated construction processes, | with political involvement in city planning. It takes many long | years of project planning before you can put a spade in the | ground in Stockholm. What's more, there is government meddling in | rent setting - they are not free markets. Still, they seem to do | OK? | | I don't know what the author has against housing regulations but | this argument is missing some part. | dybber wrote: | Exactly living with your parents has more to do about culture | and local customs. | dorchadas wrote: | This might be highly dependent on where you're at. I know | many in Dublin who still live with their parents because | there's _nowhere_ available (everything 's gone to short-term | lets) at anything reasonably resembling a decent price. | foogazi wrote: | > Perusing this map, Richard Hanania remarks | | Record-scratch: I associate that name with dumb twitter takes | rossdavidh wrote: | It would have been good to see an x-y plot of living with parents | vs. fertility. Eyeballing the maps he showed, I don't see a great | correlation. Scandinavia has mediocre fertility compared to the | rest of Europe, but the lowest percentage living with their | parents. Other nations like Greece do satisfy his hypothesis, but | a real test would be to plot those two percentages on an x-y plot | and see how well they correlate (or calculate an R-squared, or | both). | _armchair wrote: | I took down the data manually and got a correlation coefficient | of -0.28. I'm not sure whether it's even reasonable to expect | the relationship to be linear but IIRC that level of | correlation is about as high as you get in the social sciences. | sjburt wrote: | https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRhDMqe8boEY... | | I don't see any correlation at all. | mikkergp wrote: | Is there a version of economic thought that doesn't necessitate | constant population growth? Why is low fertility rate seen as a | bad thing? Often engineering is argued in terms of tradeoffs or | meeting certain requirements. Rather than follow economic | theories that depend on growth, can we develop economic theories | that adapt to the trends of the population rather than the other | way around(Musks' need for cheap labor not withstanding). Is | there a version of the world where we have less people with a | collective higher quality of life, particularly as technology | improves individual productivity? What about the vintage-futurism | economic dream of 10 hour workweeks? | olegious wrote: | Less people isn't a bad thing as long as the demographic | distribution within the smaller population is healthy- meaning | it is shaped like a pyramid, a wide base of young and working | age people and smaller numbers of old people non-working people | on the top. | | The problem for many first world countries today is that their | populations are shaped like upside down pyramids- many old | people and people nearing retirement age and much fewer young | and working age people. Why is this a problem? The working age | population represents the tax and production base that supports | the non-working and non-tax contributing older population, the | non-working young people represent the replacement for the | working age people that will eventually retire. | mikkergp wrote: | Part of my question would be how to deal with the pyramid. | The pyramid should get less pronounced as time goes on as | birth rates normalize. Basic human needs industries like | clothing, food and shelter should't need that many people to | support the retired. Health care may need some intervention. | | I guess part of the problem is maybe some of this is too much | like socialism and/or being able to give non-working persons | actual dollars. | fleddr wrote: | The wide base of young people in the healthy pyramid will | eventually grow old. Since it was wide, it means to keep the | pyramid healthy, multiples of young people would need to be | added. Whom will also grow old, needing even more young | people. | notriddle wrote: | Or most people need to die before they get old. | fleddr wrote: | Maybe we can rephrase it as "visiting the metaverse". | ozim wrote: | Problem is that our whole economic system is basically a Ponzi | scheme. You get your payoff when you are selling stocks on your | retirement to "next fool in chain" so 20-30 year olds. | | Land, houses will not go up in value if there would be not | enough people to buy them. While yes people migrate to the | cities or to areas like Randstad and while yes there is housing | shortage in such areas but if immigration from rural areas | drops a lot there is going to be drop in housing prices. | | More people have more diverse needs which creates demand - more | people more demand - easier to have higher quality of life if | it is easier to find 100 customers to come to your shop than 10 | customers. | | People are not starting new grocery shops in rural areas | because it is good investment - mostly it is that they already | live there and have possibility to make additional income on | property they own. | | People are starting new grocery shops in big cities even if | they have to lease property to do so, because they still can | profit on top of that. | ozim wrote: | To complete comment I have to add one more thought. | | Infinite growth is also required for high quality of life | unfortunately. | | Once there is no promise of future earnings by spending now - | we start going into zero sum game. Living in a society where | every day you have to worry about not loosing piece of pie is | really a bad life to live. | | Less people means lower pressure to find new ways of getting | resources - if there is enough people on earth we might have | enough money to get resources from astro-mining if needed. | vanviegen wrote: | I don't buy that line of thinking. | | People can still (on average) have career growth by taking | an ever larger piece of the pie. And then they retire/die, | leaving more pie for the young ones. | | Also, we have the tech to make this pie comfortably big. | BirAdam wrote: | It's not just a Ponzi scheme due to population growth | pressure and the old cashing out. It's also a Ponzi scheme | because younger folks are literally paying for the older | folks through taxation. Low interest rates also | disincentivize saving while subsidizing the accumulation of | debt, and spurring more investment into asset classes (land | and stocks mostly). This creates a Ponzi like effect where in | as long as people keep responding to the incentives, number | goes up. | | A population drop implodes all of it. Of course, presently, | it may already be collapsing. When it does, I don't think | that the Fed is going to respond by tightening and letting | things correct to a healthier slow growth sustainable economy | funded through real savings and value production. They will | most likely immediately attempt to reinflate the bubbles with | negative rates (0.00% FOMC, < 10% reserve requirement, and | purchase operations on the open market). | missedthecue wrote: | Capitalism doesn't require for constant population growth. But | public pension schemes do. And there are geopolitical | advantages to being bigger than your foes. | | Look at Japan. Japan's population has been on the decline for | about 1.5 generations. They still get as much food, shelter, | and entertainment as any other developed economy. They have | hobbies, travel, discretionary income... The worries there | aren't about capitalism failing. | | Demographic collapse just has a lot of nasty social | consequences in general. An inverted pyramid spells pain for | future generations. | cs137 wrote: | Public pensions are pretty much gone these days, for better | or worse. | | I don't think an inverted pyramid is as bad as it sounds. | It's a check against ageism and falling wages (there's no | longer a horde of hungry young people who want the jobs) and, | given how little of the work people do is actually necessary | --white-collar jobs are 85% sending passive-aggressive emails | --I think society can afford it. It might be the only thing | that provides enough value of labor to keep conditions | relatively humane. | missedthecue wrote: | By public pension, I mean what we in the US call Social | Security. Most developed economies have an equivalent. | lotsofpulp wrote: | > Public pensions are pretty much gone these days, for | better or worse. | | Taxpayer funded (which is what "public" generally means) | pensions are basically the only defined benefit pensions | left in the US. I do not know of a single city, county, | state, or federal government that has gotten rid of them, | especially not for cops. | dragonwriter wrote: | "public pensions" usually refers to schemes like social | security in the US. | | "public _employee_ pensions" are a different thing. | | (But neither is gone, in general or in the US, though | more and more government employee positions in the US are | relying more on defined contribution retirement plans and | less on defined benefit pensions.) | bell-cot wrote: | If the inverted pyramid is in an "old-fashioned" economy | and society, where the great majority of adults generally | work hard until the last few years of their lives, and | families mostly do their own service work, then the | inverted pyramid might not be a serious problem. | | But if you're hoping for something closer to the modern, | Western ideal - education until age ~25, work until age | ~60, retirement until age ~90 - then the inverted pyramid | is going to need at least one of: | | (1) Armies of imported service workers - to staff all the | nursing homes, retirement homes, cruise ships, restaurants, | etc. that the huge "top" of that pyramid need / want. | | (2) Armies of robots so advanced that they can fill the | great majority of those jobs. WithOUT requiring an extra | army of humans to build, pay for, maintain, run, etc. those | service worker robots. | | (3) Huge changes in medical technology and social | expectations, so that most of those service workers are | never needed. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Defined benefit pension schemes only require constant | population growth because the decision makers want to use the | assumption that there will be constant economic growth, in | order to make the obligations seem like they cost less. | | They could easily assume 0% expected return on investment, | but that would make it so the cash expenses today would | explode, to the same level that they would if they simply | paid employees the cash. Which is why politicians like to run | on campaigns promising lower taxes, and in order to achieve | that, they assume future economic growth so that instead of | paying someone $10 today, the government can pay $1, and rely | on economic growth to provide the other $9 (assuming | purchasing power of the currency remains the same, which it | will not). | bombcar wrote: | Defined benefit would work fine if the benefit defined was | "comfortable living space, slop kitchen, basic healthcare, | and a golf course" - as those can be provided at some | fraction of the requirements for a defined _money_ benefit | pension. | 015a wrote: | The US, and similarly many other western countries, hasn't been | at the replacement fertility rate since ~1970 [1]. Relative to | the years previous, its been pretty stable, but still not at | the replacement rate: around 1.8, versus 2.1-2.2. | | That's 50 years; a decent chunk of time. | | By the way; its important to note that the replacement | fertility rate changes over time. Today, in the US, infant | mortality rates are half that in 1970 and prior, in basically | every category. Ideally, obviously, the replacement rate will | approach 2.0. | | Is there a version of economic thought that doesn't necessitate | constant population growth? How about the one we're living? You | can make the argument that the world is falling apart, or the | economy, or we're at the end of a totally normal 80-100 year | economic cycle, or maybe everything is fine, that's all | supposition. What's real is; we're still going. | | The short answer to your question is: historically: No. Empires | fall when population growth stalls. When empires fall, a LOT of | people die, and a lot more suffer. The dream of "isolated | sustainable communes" doesn't work at scale. If your argument | is some variation of: the human population shouldn't be at | scale; then feel free to remove yourself from the equation as a | start down that path, but realistically, we're all here, we | have the system we have. | | However, I tend to believe that the better argument is: we | found that version of economic thought which _can_ work in the | face of stagnating population growth. Its the one we have; it | does work, not perfectly, in fact quite poorly, but we 'll | never know how bad the alternate realities are. In effect, MMT. | | Its extremely and critically important to recognize that | technology has jumped more in the last thirty years than in the | thousands of years prior. Our relationship to it, as | individuals and as a society, is still evolving, and that | evolution is happening in the face of declining western | populations. Technology amplifies individual productivity; so | why are we all still working 40 hour weeks? Momentum primarily, | but more specifically: our population only recently started | plateauing. We needed technology to keep up; its the only way. | But as population plateaus, technology will naturally take over | more. Its not just "fewer people can do more"; it goes from | "fewer people can do more for more people" to "fewer people can | do more for fewer people", which naturally means they have to | do less. | | MMT plays into that because: technology is expensive. If we're | entering a world where our options are: build a $50B water | barrier around Miami or let the city drown, we can't afford to | worry about the status of our gold reserves, or whether the | blockchain is up today. We wouldn't have the money; we'd chose | not to build it; billions of dollars in infrastructure, land, | and people would be destroyed; and the economy would be worse | off, not better, than if we had just said "blank check do it" | and then dealt with the ramifications of that decision | tomorrow. | | That doesn't mean there won't be ramifications. There always | are in complex systems. But people get so focused on the | reality we're living, to say "if only we'd have stuck to the | way we used to do it", without recognizing that its just as | possible you, and all your friends, and all your friends' | friends, would not be alive if we had stuck to that old system. | | Here's the biggest kink though; generally, well-implemented MMT | (which much like well-implemented communism, hasn't been done, | but has been written about to great lengths) requires close | coordination between monetary and legislative policy; something | our government is engineered to not do. We're seeing the | impacts of this miscoordination now; there's a strong argument | that the biggest source of inflation today has less to with | money printing or interest rates, and more to do with core | productivity in the sectors experiencing that inflation | (energy: oil processing, housing: home building, public transit | construction, etc). Core productivity (more factories, more | construction, automation, etc) can oftentimes be solved with | cheap, targeted money; but the Fed is currently engaged in a | show of raising interest rates. Its the one lever they have; | every problem is a screw, they have their directive: a hammer. | I don't feel this is doom and gloom, today; a lot of the issues | we're experiencing are, truly, just the delayed echoes of COVID | which will die out, raising interest rates will legitimately | help some sources of inflation, and the legislature has | demonstrated interest in providing cheap money for productivity | improvements (build back better). But, its still how the Fed | operates; they have their doctrine and their lever, and its | easy to imagine a future where more coordination is necessary | to push through massive spending in response to major issues | like the climate crisis, declining water supplies, etc, without | either succumbing to the crisis, or creating a new economic | crisis. | | [1] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ | thefz wrote: | Because we need to rely on new people financing the economy | with money we don't have yet because it is all gone up in | smoke. | dfxm12 wrote: | _Why is low fertility rate seen as a bad thing?_ | | It's mostly seen as a bad thing in the lens of ethnic | nationalist ideology that low fertility rates will change the | demographics of a country (see Great Replacement [0]). | | After all, if Musk (and other capitalists) needed, they can get | labor from other countries south of America's borders, but | there is a push to not make these workers Americans! This isn't | an issue only in America either. | | 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement | [deleted] | antiverse wrote: | >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement | | >[...] is a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory | [...] | | Native Americans would disagree. | cgrealy wrote: | The "Great Replacement" theory originated in the 2010s and | is specifically about white people being replaced (in case | anyone was in any doubt, it's racist bullshit). | | It's a (bullshit paranoid) predictive theory about the | modern day that has nothing to do with the historical | genocide of Native Americans by white people. | antiverse wrote: | There's nothing really inherently racist about it, or | bullshit. Mass immigration is a serious subject matter, | one that deserves scrutiny and ruthless questioning. | Avoiding the questions by calling it racist doesn't make | it go away. | | It's been around for a lot longer than 2010. It has been | a popular subject matter in Europe for decades [1]. I | guess someone just decided to finally put a more | official, catchy title to it and publish books. Does this | particular author have a racist tone? Perhaps they do. | But ask an average European citizen back in late 80s, 90s | and they'd tell you what's up without skipping a beat. | It's something you can see from a mile away. Pleading | ignorance won't help. | | [1] Your media won't tell you this, so don't be | surprised. Talk to a handful of locals to get a sample | for how people really feel about things. It's a much | better barometer than getting your news from something | like Voice of America. | darkarmani wrote: | > There's nothing really inherently racist about it, or | bullshit. | | It's the same argument wielded to discriminate against | immigrants. It was used against the Irish, Italians, and | Polish in NY City to name a few. Each group was "ruining | America". It takes 3 generations to assimilate, but | everyone anti-immigration wants them to "speak American" | in one generation. | cgrealy wrote: | "mass immigration" != "great replacement" | | The "Great Replacement" specifically talks about this as | being a deliberate plan by "wealthy elites", and again, | is racist paranoid bullshit. | | If you're going to talk about a specific thing, you can't | just generalise it to every concern around immigration. | | And while there are genuine concerns around immigration, | like housing capacity, how to help migrants settle in, | etc., most "people on the street" are just complaining | about lazy immigrants who are simultaneously "stealing | our jobs" and going on benefit. | bombcar wrote: | Importing workers fails for the world as a whole, and the | number of countries that easy importation works for is _also_ | declining. | moonchrome wrote: | >Why is low fertility rate seen as a bad thing? | | Because you'll live way past your productive years and the | things you will consume (services, goods, medical, etc.) still | need to be produced/done by someone. | | The automation aspect in economy has been way overestimated - | truck drivers were supposed to be automated 5 years ago, | meanwhile we are facing real world issues because of truck | driver shortages. | | Even jobs that were considered trivial to automate like cashers | are still performed by humans - after decades of self checkout | tech. | | Unless your retirement plan is a shotgun barrell - you need the | next generation to both live their lives comfortably and | provide for you. | tablespoon wrote: | > The automation aspect in economy has been way overestimated | - truck drivers were supposed to be automated 5 years ago, | meanwhile we are facing real world issues because of truck | driver shortages. | | I wonder how much of that shortage is due to over-hyped | predictions about future automation? The predictions don't | pan out but succeed at discouraging people from joining the | profession. | | > Even jobs that were considered trivial to automate like | cashers are still performed by humans - after decades of self | checkout tech. | | Self-checkout is not actually automation. It's just | outsourcing the job of cashier to a customer who then works | for free. | rndmize wrote: | > meanwhile we are facing real world issues because of truck | driver shortages. | | Not really. It feels like every few months we get another | piece decrying the lack of truck drivers, only for it to | gloss over issues of pay. There is no shortage of truck | drivers; there's a shortage of places that don't try to | exploit them. | entropi wrote: | Ok, but you realize this requires indefinite exponential | growth, right? | tablespoon wrote: | > Ok, but you realize this requires indefinite exponential | growth, right? | | No, it probably just means population declines need be very | slow and graceful (e.g. very close to steady-state) in | order to not create big labor shortages simultaneous with | large retiree populations. | moonchrome wrote: | Why ? You're not living forever - and nobody is arguing for | high fertility rates. Having 2-3 kids per generation sounds | perfectly sustainable. 0 or 1 does not. | entropi wrote: | So, imagine x couples, each of whom has 3 kids in their | lifetimes. In 80 years, there are now 3x/2 couples. In | 160, there are 9x/4. There are now 11 billion people. | Every 150 or so years, having 3 kids roughly doubles the | population. (A better model would be a birth/death | process with a #kids distribution with a mean 3 and death | age with a mean 80, but not necessary to make my point, I | think.) | | This is exponantial growth. | moonchrome wrote: | Not everyone survives or has children - which is why I | said 2-3 - it has to be above 2 for replacement, it's not | a new concept - lookup replacement fertility rate | vanviegen wrote: | > Even jobs that were considered trivial to automate like | cashers are still performed by humans - after decades of self | checkout tech. | | That's no longer true in my part of the world. In the | supermarkets I frequent, I'm pretty sure that well over 2/3 | of revenue is self-scanned. | | Change often takes multiple decades. That doesn't mean it's | not happening. | xnx wrote: | I'd love an economic system that championed efficiency over | growth. | bombcar wrote: | I've seen arguments that almost _all_ of the economic growth | over the last 100+ years is directly attributable to | population growth and very little else. | gruez wrote: | Source? That would imply total factor productivity didn't | grow at all "over the last 100+ years", which seems | doubtful given all the innovations brought about during | that time period. | mellavora wrote: | I don't have a source, nor do I fully believe the | original poster, but do consider: | | 7x population growth, shift from 80% rural to 90% urban. | Where "rural" is low economic engagement and "urban" is a | job-holder. shift from single-earning families to dual- | earner, where again a stay-at-home mom does not increase | the size of the economy while a working one does (and | please, I know this is unfair and the tremendous value a | full time Mom provides). | | Multiple these three shifts and you get a pretty big | increase in the economy, with zero increase in | productivity. | bombcar wrote: | That's the basic argument, which I don't have at hand, | but there have been some very specific "improvement in | output" moments in history but those are in the long past | and most of what we have now over time is basically the | same as growth of population _in the US_. | w______roy wrote: | So many things wrong with this. First, making all your policy | decisions around maximizing reproduction seems really myopic. | Many places are overpopulated and straining global | infrastructure. And regulations keep people safe--what does it | matter if I have four kids if two of them die from lead | poisoning? | hunglee2 wrote: | I believe OP is making the general case that our commitment to | nuclear family living raises the cost of raising a family as | there are no economies of scale compared to multi-generational | living. A moments thought about it, and he's clearly correct | divbzero wrote: | I think OP is focusing on a different core thesis -- that | moving in with parents is not conducive to having babies. | | But what you describe definitely rings true. Many of my friends | grew up with two working parents in a nuclear family and didn't | realize how incredibly tough that is until they started having | kids themselves. | hunglee2 wrote: | yes you might be right, I may have rushed to a conclusion. | Multi-generational is clearly our natural state, our evolved | state. Only last hundred years since we atomised the family, | begins to make sense why we are dying out | cs137 wrote: | Cities have always been population reducers: below | replacement fertility, with migrants from the countryside | increasing the population. This was true 2000 years ago and | it's true now. It's hard to say for sure why this is, but | I'd imagine it's that urban people have more awareness of | economic inequality. Rural people suffer from it, but they | don't see it on a daily basis, so they aren't constantly | reminded of the disadvantages that 99% of them will inherit | in the way urban people are. | | These days, not only is the world population more urban, | but people are also more consistently aware of the | inequality problem. People are realizing they have no hope | of providing the best opportunities for their children, and | are deciding not to have them. I don't see that as a bad | thing. Voluntary population decline might be the best | outcome for humanity at this point, at least until we get | our political, economic, and ecological shit together. We | don't need 10 billion humans to be on the planet; we need | to get through this era of war and capitalism without | making ourselves extinct. | lotsofpulp wrote: | What is an evolved state? I assume almost all people live | in multi generational households because they cannot afford | not to. | | My ideal is grandparents a few houses down, within a couple | minutes walking distance. | hunglee2 wrote: | Evolved as in the true meaning of the term - Darwinian | evolution. Homo Sapiens have live and grow and die in | extended kinship groups, this has been the case for 99.9% | of the time we have been around - and if we go further | back to pre-human times, we likely lived in those kinship | groups too. We only collapsed this structure since | industrialisation / urbanisation - last hundred, maybe | two hundred years | mattgreenrocks wrote: | I'll go further and say the nuclear family as a default is | harmful. A few years into raising my kid (who has no health | issues) convinced me of this. It can be quite isolating and | lonely. I cannot imagine what it is like for parents of | children who have more significant needs to both work and try | to run a nuclear family. | corrral wrote: | There's a lot of tension between an economic environment | that rewards high levels of mobility, and desire to live | near/in a strong local web of friends and relatives who can | help support you. | ayngg wrote: | I'm not sure if it is the case that there is a commitment to | nuclear family structure as it seems things are trending even | further towards the atomized scale with more single parent | households and many people delaying marriage and a family or | even going child free. | | I can't speak for elsewhere, but American society seems to | incentivize against the factors that allow for high fertility. | I think it is also apparent in Asia with the Sampo/ Satori | generation phenomenon in Korea and Japan respectively. | lotsofpulp wrote: | I think a big component of rising opportunity cost for raising | families is simply the fact that women now have opportunities. | | A lot of societies are about to find out the burden women were | implicitly carrying simply because they had no choice, either | due to lack of financial independence, birth control, or civil | rights. | hunglee2 wrote: | yes, this is absolutely true. Hans Rosling did one his most | well know presentations on the the impact of female education | to the eradication of poverty via two mechanism - female | entry into the market economy + reduction in the number of | births. That said though, all developed economies are now so | far down this road that we are below the replacement rate and | will die out in a few generations without a course correction | Jolter wrote: | Yet populations across Europe are not shrinking. Birth | rates may go up and down but people still want to move | there. Seems to work, so far. | | To use the phrase "die out" stinks 30's Germany to me, and | I think you could stand to think twice before using such | verbiage. | yoyohello13 wrote: | What is that course correction going to be? Unfortunately, | it seems like the US is choosing to reduce opportunities | for women, rather that reducing the economic burden of | raising a family. | hunglee2 wrote: | no idea, there have been no examples of any country | successfully reversing declining fertility rate. In fact, | it seems only massive unplanned societal disruption - | famine, war, invasion - increases the rate. Iraq for | instance has had a population boom since the two US led | invasions, 50% of its population are now under the age of | 15. | Jolter wrote: | Wait - it almost seems like you think having a higher | birth rate would be _good_ for America? How so? | watwut wrote: | Iraq is country where women don't get to say how many | children they have. Husband decides that and has power to | force what he wants. | ismail wrote: | A Typical WEIRD (western, educated, industrialised, rich, | democratic) finding. For much of human history children have been | raised in multi-generational homes. Just being raised by parents | is relatively new. I recall reading in a book [0] that proposes | this as one of the reasons we have such an issue with mental | health etc. with our children. This also seriously hampers | learning as wisdom is not passed down. | | [0] free to play | xyzzyz wrote: | In fact, Caplan discovered the so-called Hajnal line, and when | it was first suggested by Hajnal, being to its south and east | was associated with _high_ fertility, not low, like today. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line | | There is a lot of evidence that high rates of living with | parents south of Hajnal line is largely about sociocultural | practices instead of economic conditions, and it goes back | centuries, see eg. Individualism and the Western Liberal | Tradition: Evolutionary Origins, History, and Prospects for the | Future, by Kevin MacDonald. | fleddr wrote: | What is striking in this development is the destruction of our | social fabric. | | From African village model to the nuclear family is a massive | step, made possible by the nation state. Arguably this | impoverishes community/extended family life. The most extreme | form can regularly be read in the news: somebody found dead in | their home, undetected for weeks or months. | | But not even that is enough. Even within the scope of the | nuclear family are we further individualizing. Each partner in | the couple is to be fully economically independent from the | other. Note that I'm not suggesting any traditional angle here, | I'm purely talking about individualism in general. Even within | our very own family, we no longer dare to rely on each other, | to be dependent on each other. | | If I were to pick a cliche busy urban family, they have very | few shared moments. They may not even eat together. They relax | on their own individual device, often in separate rooms. And we | outsource care for both our young and the old. | | We drifted far from our roots. | bombcar wrote: | A huge difference is even a few generations ago, the "growing | family" would be the one owning the house, and grandparents | (their parents) would move in _with them_ - now it 's inverted; | only the grandparents have a house or can afford one, and so the | "growing" or potentially growing family is living with them. | | It doesn't seem as much a difference but it is a really big one. | lotsofpulp wrote: | If I were a woman, there is no way I would entertain the idea | of having kids without my name on the title or lease of the | house. | [deleted] | antisthenes wrote: | And if I were a man, there's no way I would just let a house | become marital property if I owned it outright before the | marriage, especially considering how family courts screw men | over. | | That's a surefire way to homelessness, unless you are very | (SV engineer or doctor) rich. | lotsofpulp wrote: | That is an issue for each couple to work through | themselves, but I was more alluding to inhabiting a home | belonging to your partner's parents, not to your partner. | watwut wrote: | The property acquired before marriage is yours after | divorce. The split part are properties acquired during | marriage, unless you have prenup that says otherwise for | some reason. | | That has zero to do with whether it is safe to move into | in-laws house when you are entering vulnerable period of | pregnancy and being primary caregiver for small kids. | Because both severely limit your economic options even in | best conditions. | antiverse wrote: | Why is this comment downvoted? It's literally what goes | through the minds of parents of newly weds and weds-to-be. | Let's not beat around the bush and be upfront about it. | helen___keller wrote: | Off topic. GP and the response from female POV are | regarding living in the elders' house, not the husbands | house. | antiverse wrote: | That distinction is not worth burying the comment. It was | an earnest response, and a valid one at that. | watwut wrote: | How did all those whole generations of parents and grandparents | lost their houses and who took those houses? | bombcar wrote: | Back then they didn't lose houses, they sold them because | they didn't need them anymore, and moved in with kids for | eldercare, basically. | | Houses weren't limited in availability, other things were the | limiting factors - and sometimes "move in with" would mean | moving in next door or into what were called "mother-in-law" | houses. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-27 23:00 UTC)