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Personal internal desire for kids aside, there are good societal reasons not to have them. One, they are ridiculously expensive. If you're not middle class and

Personal internal desire for kids aside, there are good societal reasons not to have them. One, they are ridiculously expensive. If you're not middle class and above (what's left of it) they will cause a drastic plunge in quality of life as additional expenses, planned and unplanned, accumulate. Two, with climate change and geopolitical instability, it's both unfair to the kid to bring them into what is essentially a dying world, and also unfair to the world when their lives as an American (especially) will consume a disproportionate level of resources. Every new American adds to climate pollution and American imperialist bullying in the middle east and beyond. We're just adding more casualties in the wars to come. Three, with increasing automation and wealth concentration, social mobility is likely going to decrease even further. They will likely end up poorer and prospect-less than their parents. The USA is becoming a more feudal society where only corporate elites have worth and the growing underclass is just for exploitation. It's already bad enough for my generation, why would I want to make it worse for the next?

ketamine__ 5y ago
Climate change and pollution is not going to really effect children born now. The AQI of most large and small American cities is still quite low. College may become incredibly expensive. I think if it happens parents could invest in an ETF instead and provide their children with investment income while they pursue other opportunities.
- unknown_error 5y ago
  > Climate change and pollution is not going to really effect children born now. The AQI of most large and small American cities is still quite low. I'm not sure what AQI means in this context. Air Quality Index? I don't think anyone's arguing that to be the primary societal impact from climate change (not the same way that smog would be). It's more the cascading effects from extreme weather, drought, food & water shortages, sea level rise, wildfires, and the resulting refugeeism and geopolitical instability from all of that... to say nothing of the widespread impacts of the rest of the ecosystem (mostly harmful to existing biota, but can help a few species). If you think immigration is an issue now, wait until more of the Global South becomes even more impoverished and living on even more marginal land. > College may become incredibly expensive. I think if it happens parents could invest in an ETF instead and provide their children with investment income while they pursue other opportunities. But what other opportunities? Already college is barely a positive financial return in most majors. Right now the American economy is mostly services already, a large swatch of that in tech or finance. Either you're in that field or there is not really a pathway to social mobility anymore. That's only going to worsen with increased automation and competition from China, India, a resurgent Russia, what have you. And layer on top of that the waning of American power both as a sovereign, domestically, and as a hegemon globally, our kids -- with or without college -- will have far fewer opportunities than our parents or us, ourselves. Especially when you couple that with the looming myriad crises that come when you combine that perfect storm of climate change, economic polarization, and a general increase towards authoritarianism. There will be more "have-nots" than ever, sharing ever-smaller crumbs.
medvezhenok 5y ago
The people you can convince rationally to not have kids are also exactly the people who should be having kids - there's kind of a catch-22 there. If all the rational, reasonable people choose to not have kids for the reasons you outline above - think about what the next generation(s) are going to look like. We know that kids social values frequently correlate to their parents, so the less [environmentally conscious, ethically conscious] parents who choose to have children - the worse off we will all be in the long run.
- unknown_error 5y ago
  I don't think it's up to the "better" people to solve this problem. Our genetics and culture both evolve much less slowly than technology, and power accumulates via capital concentration much faster than via common-good consensus-building. Also, the kind of rational people we're talking about here often arise as a product of industrialized society and educational systems & cultures of knowledge. Those are the same societies that often have an outsized impact on global inequalities and climate change. If sustainability is the goal, human intellect is what got us away from it and into trouble to begin with -- not that sustainability without what we call intelligent life would be considered worthwhile, by our standards. Anyhow. You take a paleolithic ape and give it godlike powers with medieval morality, then increase their population eightfold in <200 years... it's gonna be a shitshow. All the resource-consuming things (breeding, extraction, production, warfare) scale up much better than the forces of restraint (academia, law, treaties, philosophy, self-reflection, etc.). It would happen to any species given such a sudden surge in power without planning, and we are not altogether different enough from our ancestors to prevent this. I think the "rational" people would do what little they can, if only to fill the time and provide some inkling of hope, but doing so under the assumption that the future is already lost. It's too late for a reversal that doesn't involve billions of people and animals perishing.

ketamine__ 5y ago

Climate change and pollution is not going to really effect children born now. The AQI of most large and small American cities is still quite low. College may become incredibly expensive. I think if it happens parents could invest in an ETF instead and provide their children with investment income while they pursue other opportunities.

unknown_error 5y ago
> Climate change and pollution is not going to really effect children born now. The AQI of most large and small American cities is still quite low. I'm not sure what AQI means in this context. Air Quality Index? I don't think anyone's arguing that to be the primary societal impact from climate change (not the same way that smog would be). It's more the cascading effects from extreme weather, drought, food & water shortages, sea level rise, wildfires, and the resulting refugeeism and geopolitical instability from all of that... to say nothing of the widespread impacts of the rest of the ecosystem (mostly harmful to existing biota, but can help a few species). If you think immigration is an issue now, wait until more of the Global South becomes even more impoverished and living on even more marginal land. > College may become incredibly expensive. I think if it happens parents could invest in an ETF instead and provide their children with investment income while they pursue other opportunities. But what other opportunities? Already college is barely a positive financial return in most majors. Right now the American economy is mostly services already, a large swatch of that in tech or finance. Either you're in that field or there is not really a pathway to social mobility anymore. That's only going to worsen with increased automation and competition from China, India, a resurgent Russia, what have you. And layer on top of that the waning of American power both as a sovereign, domestically, and as a hegemon globally, our kids -- with or without college -- will have far fewer opportunities than our parents or us, ourselves. Especially when you couple that with the looming myriad crises that come when you combine that perfect storm of climate change, economic polarization, and a general increase towards authoritarianism. There will be more "have-nots" than ever, sharing ever-smaller crumbs.

medvezhenok 5y ago

The people you can convince rationally to not have kids are also exactly the people who should be having kids - there's kind of a catch-22 there. If all the rational, reasonable people choose to not have kids for the reasons you outline above - think about what the next generation(s) are going to look like. We know that kids social values frequently correlate to their parents, so the less [environmentally conscious, ethically conscious] parents who choose to have children - the worse off we will all be in the long run.

unknown_error 5y ago
I don't think it's up to the "better" people to solve this problem. Our genetics and culture both evolve much less slowly than technology, and power accumulates via capital concentration much faster than via common-good consensus-building. Also, the kind of rational people we're talking about here often arise as a product of industrialized society and educational systems & cultures of knowledge. Those are the same societies that often have an outsized impact on global inequalities and climate change. If sustainability is the goal, human intellect is what got us away from it and into trouble to begin with -- not that sustainability without what we call intelligent life would be considered worthwhile, by our standards. Anyhow. You take a paleolithic ape and give it godlike powers with medieval morality, then increase their population eightfold in <200 years... it's gonna be a shitshow. All the resource-consuming things (breeding, extraction, production, warfare) scale up much better than the forces of restraint (academia, law, treaties, philosophy, self-reflection, etc.). It would happen to any species given such a sudden surge in power without planning, and we are not altogether different enough from our ancestors to prevent this. I think the "rational" people would do what little they can, if only to fill the time and provide some inkling of hope, but doing so under the assumption that the future is already lost. It's too late for a reversal that doesn't involve billions of people and animals perishing.