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Having a baby should be expensive. There are nearly 8Bn people in the world; "making more people" is not a problem that the human race has. The problems we do h
by gaius 9y ago
Having a baby should be expensive. There are nearly 8Bn people in the world; "making more people" is not a problem that the human race has. The problems we do have with pollution, climate change, resource depletion, extinction of other species, food and water supplies are entirely caused by there being too many of us competing for too little of everything else. This is especially the case in the US where individuals are extremely high-impact on the environment in terms of natural resources consumed and pollution generated. Those externalities have a real cost attached, that isn't reflected in the current price, which would be much much higher if parents had to pay their child's say CO2 impact up front.
- theaeolist 9y agoYou are arguing against overpopulation and nobody would disagree with you. What you should argue is that extortionate hospital bills and overall poor natal health care are an effective and humane way to fight overpopulation. Can you?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- zxcmx 9y agoI find it hard to read your argument and not feel that the nations and individuals who follow your advice will be replaced by those who don't. I suppose this is "wrongthink" and I'm troubled by it because it's hard not to feel it's semantically close to nationalism and racism. In the anglosphere though, fertility is universally below replacement already. This is also true in countries where the cost of birth is much less than the U.S. Everyone is making up the shortfall with immigration. To follow your argument through to its conclusion we should also make immigration to wealthier countries more difficult and expensive because it comes with a corresponding increase in personal resource consumption. Still troubling.
- dictum 9y ago> Having a baby should be expensive (...) This is especially the case in the US where individuals are extremely high-impact on the environment in terms of natural resources consumed and pollution generated. So those who benefit the most from resource depletion (i.e. those who can afford the hypothetical Baby Tax) would be free to have as many babies as they want, while the poor, already impeded in most activities and burdened by the cost of livinng, would make a sacrifice. Sorry if my reading is too harsh.
- gaius 9y agoSo those who benefit the most from resource depletion (i.e. those who can afford the hypothetical Baby Tax) Not if it was configured appropriately. In Sweden for example if you pay a fine for bad driving, it's not a fixed amount but a percentage of your income.
- mcintyre1994 9y agoInteresting post. Getting specific, is your proposal that having a child is taxed as a % of income?
- 2ion 9y ago> So those who benefit the most from resource depletion (i.e. those who can afford the hypothetical Baby Tax) would be free to have as many babies as they want, while the poor, already impeded in most activities and burdened by the cost of livinng, would make a sacrifice. Yes. Because those population strata, not only in the US but across the world, produce the bulk of population with no education, high ecological impact, and scarred by social depravation. It doesn't advance humanity toward an 22nd century-appropriate standard of living to raise a vast population of people who are to become even more utterly worthless in the face of automation and extreme competition even among the elite of the 1st world. It is beyond me how humanists can support unlimited population growth/"self expression of the individual/right to give birth" when that populuation growth is going to drive countries and continents toward a demographic and social catastrophe. Then again, my personal opinion is we are already on track and about to arrive there on schedule, so what gives.
- thriftwy 9y agoYou're barking at a wrong tree here. Absolute absolute majority of children in poverty and without access to education are born outside the USA. You solve nothing other than being explicitly mean to (I assume) your compatriots. See if it gets you anywhere in the long run. Let me repeat it for you: you've got two arguments and they're in major conflict. You can't use both and neither one holds water sole.
- thriftwy 9y agoStill, people who have the least money have it cheapest. An illegal immigrant will be probably treated for free in most countries immigrants flock to. If you use money as human worth, which is IMO questionable, you should see a conflict here. Who gets really screwed here is lower middle class as usual.
- gaius 9y agomoney as human worth Money is just a token of exchange. What if a certain amount the baby tax was hypothecated to planting trees, to offset the extra CO2 that that individual would produce? You can quite literally figure out how many trees/how much land you need, get the prices and work backwards from there to arrive at a cash amount.
- thriftwy 9y agoThat's a brave little theory. There's just a tiny obstacle of forcing people in Africa, India and Middle East to comply. (If they don't, it's no longer a plan but a play)
- grecy 9y agoI spent two years in Latin America (all over) and now have been through West Africa in the last 18 months. The more I think on this topic, the more I strongly believe the only chance we have as a species is to do something about overpopulation. We need to seriously start thinking about population control. I genuinely believe China were on to something with their one child policy. Yes, it has some horrible side effects, though I think they are less-bad than a planet with 20+ billion people on it. It's going to be an extremely unpopular thing to talk about, and it's probably going to take generations before people come around to the idea, which is why we need to start now.