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To me the worse problem is: While I can understand that it is an inconvenient situation to be poor (and I have some kind of compassion for them), I really canno
by wolfgke 9y ago
To me the worse problem is: While I can understand that it is an inconvenient situation to be poor (and I have some kind of compassion for them), I really cannot understand how one could even come to the idea to give rise to children if one is not in a high quantile of earning. If people applied this reproduction strategy consequently, poverty would simply die out.
- oblio 9y agoSo your solution is basically: "kill the poor".
- wolfgke 9y agoNo, quarantine the further spread of poverty.
- Quarrelsome 9y agoPoverty is not a disease, its a happening. Like falling over or getting hit by a bus. It prays upon the less agile of us so pray that one day when your agility slows you're not unlucky enough to get hit by the proverbial bus. Heck you might gain a bit of sympathy then so maybe it wouldn't be a completely bad thing...
- robertk 9y agoThat sounds like killing the poor but with extra steps. Or the South Side of Chicago.
- wolfgke 9y ago> That sounds like killing the poor but with extra steps. Doing quarantine does not kill the disease agent. That is not what quarantine is for. Quarantine is for preventing the further spread of the disease agent. For killing the disease (agent) there is the immune system or drugs such as antibiotics or virostatic agents.
- oblio 9y agoYou're either a wonderful troll, and then: kudos! or you have a very misguided idea of poverty. Poverty is not a disease, as Quarrelsome pointed out. Poverty isn't even a constant, it's dynamic. People go in and out of poverty all the time. We also don't know the correlation and the causation between poverty and various indicators such as IQ, achievements, etc. (are you poor because you have a low IQ or do you have a low IQ because you're poor? etc.) On top of that, where do you draw the line for poverty? Is it the lowest 10%? 20%? 40%? What if the statistics change next year, and I go from 40% to 30%, am I allowed to have children this year? Are my children taken away from me? Etc., etc. You haven't thought this through, or as I said, you're a wonderful troll! :)
- wolfgke 9y ago> Poverty isn't even a constant, it's dynamic. People go in and out of poverty all the time. There exist lots of diseases known to medicine that can be cured, but people can still get reinfected even after a treatment.
- ptaipale 9y agoYour comment however leads me to ponder the rhetoric: poverty is indeed not a disease, but like diseases, in modern societies it is contagious. Patterns and behaviours that make poverty deeper and more destructive are spreading from person to person and family to family, in neighbourhoods and communities. Here I mean things like appreciation of education, work, stability of families, etc. What could we do to change these patterns? (Apart from the usual recipes like making schools better. FWIW I'm from a country which has one of the most equal distributions of both income and wealth, but even this does leave a lot of people quite unhappy.)
- wolfgke 9y agoExactly my kind of reasoning. To add a point: Since we don't know the exact kind of pathogen(s) leading to poverty, but we know that poverty of parents is a strong predictor of poverty of children, this delivers a way to at least partly quarantine the poverty disease.
- ygaf 9y agoCan you point to the word "kill" in his post?
- oblio 9y agoPreventing some arbitrary part of the population from having children is basically eradicating that population, long term. I just used "kill", for simplicity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
- majewsky 9y agoI find that equation of terms troubling. If I take that argument to its logical conclusion, we are all killers because we don't get as much children as previous generations. We're effectively killing our unborn offspring by refusing to procreate.
- oblio 9y agoUmmmm.. false equivalence. You're choosing not to have children. In wolfgke's description, he's choosing for you. Big difference.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago> We're effectively killing our unborn offspring by refusing to procreate. This is a completely false definition of "killing"
- ygaf 9y agoAs is oblio's.
- ionised 9y ago> We're effectively killing our unborn offspring by refusing to procreate. No we're not. Killing requires something to exist and be alive first.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- golergka 9y agoYou're saying it as if it's something bad.
- sctb 9y agoPlease comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all, like we've already asked. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Quarrelsome 9y agojesus. Pick from: alcohol, depression, boredom, dynasty building, genetic programming. I apologise for being rude but it sounds like you have limited compassion if you haven't been able to think this one through. What do you want to do, sterilise the poor? I would remind you that despite a poor background children can and do still excel and even if they don't these children are often the backbone of our industry. You might not approve but these people are still the workforce and generation of tomorrow so you should afford their inception a little more respect and empathy.
- golergka 9y ago> What do you want to do, sterilise the poor? Reversible sterilization for everyone by default, temporary reversal for a fee. Make people pay for externalities.
- ngrilly 9y agoAre you serious?
- golergka 9y agoAbsolutely. Why not? Having children is a very expensive thing for the family and the society, but people can easily make this decision foolishly and then offload costs onto everyone else. Having children is a luxury, we only need to start treating it like one. RESPONSES (THANKS FOR THE ANTI-SPAM, HN! IT MAKES IT SO MUCH EASIER TO HAVE MEANINGFUL CONVERSATIONS) > Why are you focusing only on the financial aspect and ignoring the parents education, general behavior and mental health, and living conditions, safety and so on? All these qualities (1) heavily correlate to their wealth and (2) much harder to have any objective measure of.
- eeZah7Ux 9y agoWhy are you focusing only on the financial aspect and ignoring the parents education, general behavior and mental health, and living conditions, safety and so on?
- CrispyUmbrella 9y ago>reproduction strategy I.e. 'stick the winkie in the hoo-hah and wiggle it around'
- delerio 9y agoSo only rich people deserve to have a family? Only the rich deserve to find joy in nurturing and raising others? A lot of people, even though they don't have much, they find fulfillment in their family. If you think they shouldn't have children, that means taking away the only joy in some people's lives. Weird sentiment you have there.
- eeZah7Ux 9y agoNothing in life is due to us. There is no "deserve". Also, you are painting a false dichotomy between "rich" and "poor". A lot of middle and lower class people can raise healthy and happy children unless they have problems with mental health / violence / substance abuse & so on. > taking away the only joy in some people's lives Looking at children as a source of joy instead of a recipient of unconditional care and effort sounds very narcissistic.
- delerio 9y agoI don't understand your point. Many people find joy in raising children, it fulfills a purpose in their life. Not everyone does, but many do. There is a biological desire to procreate and continue the species.
- wolfgke 9y ago> Many people find joy in raising children, it fulfills a purpose in their life. Not everyone does, but many do. Many people find joy in other expensive hobbies, too. The difference is: Doing such a different expensive hobby won't make someone who you produced suffer because you lack the necessary financial backing.
- golergka 9y ago'Deserve' is a weird word; what do you mean by it and think that it's relevant? Raising children is a very resource and labour-heavy endeavour. Rich people have more resources and labour. It's only logical that they can afford the children while poor people don't.
- forinti 9y agoSo we should have only got Kings out of the middle ages?
- wolfgke 9y agoIf there is a sparsity of people doing other jobs, the wages of people doing them will increase (leading to the situation that the condition for "better not reproduce" disappears). That's how economy works.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago> poverty would simply die out Not at all. An economy based on competition and inequality automatically generates as many poor as needed to balance out the super rich. It's really basic math.
- CalRobert 9y agoOne could say the same for being in a high quintile of leisure time, but that doesn't stop all stressed-out rich people from having kids. Most of humanity was born to parents with no monetary income at all, and volatile access to resources and shelter. Imagine that!