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And, what is worse, Americans have lost most of their non-monetary social capital: large extended families, neighborhood churches, civic groups, mutual aid asso

• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• core-questions 6y ago
  Very good point. Social capital has arguably been under attack for decades. > large extended families There has been a continual anti-natalist push in the West for many years, from the propaganda side convincing people it's too much work to have kids, or that it will be way more fun to drink and party through your 30s than it will be to watch your family grow up and eventually have grandchildren; to the ever-more-easy access to abortion and birth control. Combined with the removal of all fertility-retaining social and religious structures around reproduction, the result has been a precipitous drop in the birth rate. What is not shown, however, in articles like the recent BBC one is the actual demographic makeup of the population and the birth rate faceted by various salient factors. It's certainly clear to anyone looking at that data that the demographics in 2050 or 2100 are going to make the West look unrecognizable, as there has been a massive influx of groups that still retain all of the social capital you're talking about and all of the reproductivity-enhancing structures I'm talking about. I'm all for people having control over their bodies and their reproductivity, but a complete picture of what happens to both one's own life and one's city and country is not made available to younger people who are making important life decisions in an individualistic, oftentimes solipsistic bubble. Later regrets when you're beyond the age of being able to easily have children can be turned to the profit of expensive fertility clinics, or simply silenced with quiet sadness and proxy replacements, whether they take the form of cats and boxed wine or other more expensive forms of compensation. > neighborhood churches As an ex-Christian myself, I understand the critique of Christianity-as-Science, i.e. Christianity as a system for describing the physical world, or history, or what will happen in the future is not particularly valid. However, by using heavily philosophical arguments to throw away the substance of the religion, the attendant social capital that went with it is also lost, replaced by nothing. A church is not just the words read inside of it; it's the people, the connections, the charity and acts of service, the volunteers that hold a community together and help facilitate handing the structure off to the next generation. All of this is gone, and while the critiques about specific implementations were valid, the critique of "getting together as people in an area and professing our willingness to be good people publicly to one another" cannot be made, at least not in good faith. > civic groups, mutual aid associations Note that these still exist, but they either have to be focused on utterly generic causes, or focused on particular minority groups (e.g. Chinese Benevolent Associations and so forth). In no way do I discount or discourage the actions of these groups, but it's worth noting that it would be optically impossible and even legally difficult to try to establish groups for the native or founding-stock populations in many countries in the West. > Things are never as good or as bad as they seem, but it sure seems bad right now. It's critical to remember that these situations came about in no small part because of policy decisions. It's not random, it's not unplanned, even if it is chaotic; it's the result of many hands' work, so like any complicated software system there may never appear to be any overarching unifying infrastructure other than what is papered on top of it by abstraction. Still, policy decisions like the 1965 Hart-Celler act have had ramifications that are felt in this exact way, and will continue to propagate both their negative and positive effects down through populations over time unless action is taken to prevent or revert effects that harm people and cities.
  • slavapestov 6y ago
    > There has been a continual anti-natalist push in the West for many years, from the propaganda side convincing people it's too much work to have kids, or that it will be way more fun to drink and party through your 30s than it will be to watch your family grow up and eventually have grandchildren. Combined with the easy access to abortion and birth control, and the removal of all fertility-retaining social and religious structures around reproduction, the result has been a precipitous drop in the birth rate. This ain't it, chief. How many people in their 30s are still living with roommates because cities don't build enough housing close to jobs? What about lack of affordable childcare? Or the poor social safety net in general? I guarantee this kind of thing has a lot more bearing on people's decisions to have children or not than "anti-natalist propaganda".
    • core-questions 6y ago
      > How many people in their 30s are still living with roommates because cities don't build enough housing close to jobs? I live in an extremely high cost-of-living city. Still, the people who I know who have been diligent, chose workable careers early and stuck with them, worked hard, saved, and put off creature comforts and luxury in exchange for long term essentials, have done just fine and are even thriving. The people in turn who I know who have no hope of ever buying real estate or building a family are those who never buckled down, never found their calling or settled for something un-glamorous that worked. I strongly believe that individual choices lead to individual responsibility for these situations. Abdicating your own personal responsibility to make good choices in order to propagate your own genes successfully will only result in you excluding yourself from the gene pool, which is certainly a shame for the many people of good character whom I know who fall into this category. > What about lack of affordable childcare? Or the poor social safety net in general? What about those things a hundred or 200 year ago? Were they that much better, or were people simply more willing to sacrifice, save, and accept a lower quality of life than the absolute maximum? > I guarantee this kind of thing has a lot more bearing on people's decisions to have children or not than "anti-natalist propaganda". No. Your argument is actually just a restating of the propaganda. "It's too hard because we can't get jobs that allow us to earn enough to pay other people to raise our kids, fail and bounce back with no consequences, and still lease a new car every few years while living in a top-class world city". That's your argument in a nutshell. Yes, maybe that pipe dream is not affordable, but a reasonable life in a cheaper city where you work a job that is less lofty but more secure is still achievable.
• readflaggedcomm 6y ago
  The casualties of social justice are justified, not bad.