Those who consume too much alcohol or other recreational drugs often make excuses. Like “I’m no worse than many others”, “I still manage to get to work most days”, or “Let’s wait til my problem gets worse, like I can no longer walk”, or “They’ll soon make a version without bad side effects”. Such folks can benefit from associates pushing them to a
Why didn’t you mention the #1 reason for the drop in fertility: lower childhood mortality? People definitely had to have more babies when only half made it to age 15. It kind of poisons the well to leave that out, and makes the problem look twice as bad as it is.
Also, something that gets left off lists of the reasons for the drop in fertility because of Social Desirability Bias is the taboo against infanticide. When people could just kill a baby if they couldn’t support it, they likely would have been able to have more children closer to their limit of supportable offspring. Not advocating a return of infanticide, but worth noting that this was a common practice in many cultures that isn’t talked about.
A more libertarian approach might be to consider how government hinders fertility e.g. grain subsidies, laws against free-range kids - https://reason.com/tag/free-range-kids/ - et cetera, and stop doing those things.
FWIW, I'm 61 and have one biological child (raised two). I very much regret not having had many more.
I've emphasized that to both the kids I raised and encouraged them to have lots of kids.
I don't remember anyone talking that way when I was their age. We're at an extreme point historically, maybe as more people end up like me we'll encourage the next generation to change their values.
Israel is the ONLY 1st world/industrialized/high gdp per capita/whatever country with above replacement tfr. in fact not only is it above, it's well above and stable if not growing, around 2.9-3.0ish, sustainable and compatible with a healthy productive high tech and growing economy.
you'd think more people would be interested in this. you'd think. Digging down into why, is it just orthodox (no, seculars also above 2.1), is it a historical quirk, what's replicable/exportable, what can we learn, what doesn't work (muh nordic daycare), etc.
I'm one of those people happy to mostly kick this can down the road a few decades. Various countries are trying different things, and over the next few decades they'll try some more things, likely more strenuously. That seems sufficient for the time being.
The government paying people to have children is a terrible idea. We don’t want a nation of foster children, born to be a paycheck to their parents. And the government can’t afford it anyway. The mainstream culture will fall and that’s a good thing.
There is nothing magic about a global population of 8 billion. Declining fertility may simply be a deep free market signal that the world is above its equilibrium population. The assumption that the population will decline indefinitely is as ill supported as the assumption the exponential population growth would continue indefinitely. And the assumption that "Innovation will then halt." simply because population is falling is likewise ill supported. Maybe the optimal global population is 100 million or 1 billion and when the world gets to that level it will asymptotically level out. The bias to be overcome, I think, is the bias the assumes that infinite population growth is necessary.
Because I'm also interested in fertility, I was interested in the recent podcast with Agnes. Agnes was vapid. Robin kept presenting interesting aspects about fertility, and Agnes had basically nothing to offer (besides the usual subtle questioning of Robin's motives).
It might be time for Robin to move on from Agnes, she had nothing to contribute to that conversation (and so, so many others like it!). Robin should find someone else to be the podcast co-host!
What are talking about! Humanity won’t go extinct if the Global population stabilizes or shrinks slightly. In fact overpopulation poses a greater threat to Humanity than declining fertility. To think innovation somehow correlates with population growth shows brainwashing by the myths of late capitalism. As I said declining fertility in developing countries correlates with increasing education and employment opportunities for women.
In my not-inconsiderable experience Orthodox Jews love innovation. Interesting to note that Werner Sombart wanted to claim that Jewish values were a major driver of dynamic free-market capitalism. Sombart's claim is exaggerated but there is no justification for going to the opposite extreme.
Aren't all the likely causes naturally self-limiting if median income declines sufficiently? Then the question is how far it needs to decline before the trend reverses. You seem to worry that median income could decline very far before fertility reversal, but your main argument seems to be that some people have been trying hard to increase fertility without success for a century or two. But the thing is that median income has been growing that whole time, so it doesn't give us any reason to think that median income fall won't be sufficient.
Indeed, the only way I can see median income continuing to rise despite large (say 90%) drops in total population is with some sort of AI revolution, of exactly the kind you think is too unlikely to rely on.
I subscribe to the line of thinking that female education and outside work are the primary drivers of falling fertility. Secular jews in Israel are an exception, are there lessons to learn from that exception? Maybe, but I suspect it would run completely contrary to current year morality.
The reckoning will never be over fertility. It will be over WHO is fertile. There are always religious groups who are happy to breed at high rates and the whole world is far more diverse than Japan. The danger isn't that we stop breeding but that what's happening in Israel with the higher birth rate of religious Jews starts to happen to the world.
Your supposed rationalizations for addiction start off pretty ludicrous.
Then, you assume that attitudes toward individual survival scale up to humanity as a whole. While it’s easy to think of a bunch of collective social problems as something one ‘has’ to care about given how saturated the media is with things you can do next to nothing about, in reality those concerns are something opted into rather than essential.
It’s really no concern of mine if humanity persists or perishes.
Man, what are you guys even talking about? There’s 8 billion of us. Isn’t that enough? What will more people possibly do except give the rich even more choices for destitute servants?
If the purpose of all this pro-Natalist talk is to reduce women back to lives in kitchens, at least be honest and say so. But if it’s about the noble and lofty goal of preserving civilization, I think 8 billion ought to do it
Why didn’t you mention the #1 reason for the drop in fertility: lower childhood mortality? People definitely had to have more babies when only half made it to age 15. It kind of poisons the well to leave that out, and makes the problem look twice as bad as it is.
Also, something that gets left off lists of the reasons for the drop in fertility because of Social Desirability Bias is the taboo against infanticide. When people could just kill a baby if they couldn’t support it, they likely would have been able to have more children closer to their limit of supportable offspring. Not advocating a return of infanticide, but worth noting that this was a common practice in many cultures that isn’t talked about.
A more libertarian approach might be to consider how government hinders fertility e.g. grain subsidies, laws against free-range kids - https://reason.com/tag/free-range-kids/ - et cetera, and stop doing those things.
FWIW, I'm 61 and have one biological child (raised two). I very much regret not having had many more.
I've emphasized that to both the kids I raised and encouraged them to have lots of kids.
I don't remember anyone talking that way when I was their age. We're at an extreme point historically, maybe as more people end up like me we'll encourage the next generation to change their values.
Israel is the ONLY 1st world/industrialized/high gdp per capita/whatever country with above replacement tfr. in fact not only is it above, it's well above and stable if not growing, around 2.9-3.0ish, sustainable and compatible with a healthy productive high tech and growing economy.
you'd think more people would be interested in this. you'd think. Digging down into why, is it just orthodox (no, seculars also above 2.1), is it a historical quirk, what's replicable/exportable, what can we learn, what doesn't work (muh nordic daycare), etc.
But no one cares.
I'm one of those people happy to mostly kick this can down the road a few decades. Various countries are trying different things, and over the next few decades they'll try some more things, likely more strenuously. That seems sufficient for the time being.
The government paying people to have children is a terrible idea. We don’t want a nation of foster children, born to be a paycheck to their parents. And the government can’t afford it anyway. The mainstream culture will fall and that’s a good thing.
There is nothing magic about a global population of 8 billion. Declining fertility may simply be a deep free market signal that the world is above its equilibrium population. The assumption that the population will decline indefinitely is as ill supported as the assumption the exponential population growth would continue indefinitely. And the assumption that "Innovation will then halt." simply because population is falling is likewise ill supported. Maybe the optimal global population is 100 million or 1 billion and when the world gets to that level it will asymptotically level out. The bias to be overcome, I think, is the bias the assumes that infinite population growth is necessary.
Because I'm also interested in fertility, I was interested in the recent podcast with Agnes. Agnes was vapid. Robin kept presenting interesting aspects about fertility, and Agnes had basically nothing to offer (besides the usual subtle questioning of Robin's motives).
It might be time for Robin to move on from Agnes, she had nothing to contribute to that conversation (and so, so many others like it!). Robin should find someone else to be the podcast co-host!
What are talking about! Humanity won’t go extinct if the Global population stabilizes or shrinks slightly. In fact overpopulation poses a greater threat to Humanity than declining fertility. To think innovation somehow correlates with population growth shows brainwashing by the myths of late capitalism. As I said declining fertility in developing countries correlates with increasing education and employment opportunities for women.
In my not-inconsiderable experience Orthodox Jews love innovation. Interesting to note that Werner Sombart wanted to claim that Jewish values were a major driver of dynamic free-market capitalism. Sombart's claim is exaggerated but there is no justification for going to the opposite extreme.
Aren't all the likely causes naturally self-limiting if median income declines sufficiently? Then the question is how far it needs to decline before the trend reverses. You seem to worry that median income could decline very far before fertility reversal, but your main argument seems to be that some people have been trying hard to increase fertility without success for a century or two. But the thing is that median income has been growing that whole time, so it doesn't give us any reason to think that median income fall won't be sufficient.
Indeed, the only way I can see median income continuing to rise despite large (say 90%) drops in total population is with some sort of AI revolution, of exactly the kind you think is too unlikely to rely on.
I subscribe to the line of thinking that female education and outside work are the primary drivers of falling fertility. Secular jews in Israel are an exception, are there lessons to learn from that exception? Maybe, but I suspect it would run completely contrary to current year morality.
Seems easier to just redesign our economic system so that it doesn't rely on an ever-expanding population.
The reckoning will never be over fertility. It will be over WHO is fertile. There are always religious groups who are happy to breed at high rates and the whole world is far more diverse than Japan. The danger isn't that we stop breeding but that what's happening in Israel with the higher birth rate of religious Jews starts to happen to the world.
Your supposed rationalizations for addiction start off pretty ludicrous.
Then, you assume that attitudes toward individual survival scale up to humanity as a whole. While it’s easy to think of a bunch of collective social problems as something one ‘has’ to care about given how saturated the media is with things you can do next to nothing about, in reality those concerns are something opted into rather than essential.
It’s really no concern of mine if humanity persists or perishes.
Man, what are you guys even talking about? There’s 8 billion of us. Isn’t that enough? What will more people possibly do except give the rich even more choices for destitute servants?
If the purpose of all this pro-Natalist talk is to reduce women back to lives in kitchens, at least be honest and say so. But if it’s about the noble and lofty goal of preserving civilization, I think 8 billion ought to do it