4 ms·

The low fertility trap: An analysis of the great worldwide baby bust

23 points by barry-cotter 3y ago

thriftwy 3y ago
[flagged]
- CBLT 3y ago
  I think it's fair to include the rest of the sentence as context: > In its illiberal guise, protantalism can be motivated by an ugly ethno-nationalist undercurrent which views pronatalism as a means of avoiding what it perceives to be the evils of mass-immigration, which is seen in catastrophic terms as tantamount to ethnic replacement and racial/civilisational suicide I don't really understand your point, however. What about the article's views are you objecting to?
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    Encouraging open borders and mass immigration is not the only permitted immigration policy. Most countries in the world, including large and economically developed ones like Japan and China, do not have this policy. In fact, even developed countries in the West do not have such policy codified into law - quite the contrary. It is highly disingenous to suggest that it is the only option and to preemptively scold the reader for thinking any other options may be considered. Even worse when it is done in such form and in an article suggested to be a pop science piece instead of a political pamphlet. The quoted statement will never ever pass a NPOV check.
    - downWidOutaFite 3y ago
      We are different than those other countries. We are a nation of immigrants. It is one of the things that makes us great. Those that want to prevent migration from "shithole countries" are anti American.
      - thriftwy 3y ago
        That's exactly what I'm talking about: injecting one specific strong political position into a pop sci text. Moreover, I would also downvote an article filled with American messiah complex for a single reason that I don't live there so it is irrelevant and confusing. Nowhere in the article does it say it's not applicable to other countries, moveover it can't stop talking about the whole planet.
- omniglottal 3y ago
  You're being bad for the community. But thanks for including a well - spoken, albeit opinionated reply, in your otherwise rude, projecting, and downright censorious comment.
verisimi 3y ago
> I will state my thesis baldly at the beginning: there is a large overlap between the things that underpin long-standing worldwide birth-rate declines and the things that underpin our prosperity. Yes... well, that won't work forever, will it?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
In the prosperity-eats-birth-rate scenario, the society is prosperous but individuals aren't having babies. Maybe fewer births aren't due to prosperity itself but the complexities it brings - including for those who aren't prosperous. In the US, poor people are also having fewer babies. Like success, poverty consumes much time but it does so with far less hope. With that combo, the most fundamental resources of future-building (ex: consideration, dreaming) become scarce.
anonreeeeplor 3y ago
It is not “racist” to observe that if the inbound population is high and the native population isn’t reproducing that it is a replacement. People need to stop allowing themselves to get shamed into not stating facts, personal observations, math and logic. This author is non credible.
- downWidOutaFite 3y ago
  How is it not racist to think of shifting racial demographics as the end of civilization? We are a proud nation of immigrants. America is an idea not an ethnicity.
  - hacknewslogin 3y ago
    I think you answered your own question.
- piva00 3y ago
  The issue is what replacement means, no? The racist tone of it comes from "replacement of white people" being an endeavour conspired by the State to dislodge white people, instead of a natural state of affairs where immigrants have a higher fertility rate than the native population. Characterising such state of affairs as "the end of civilisation" then becomes extremely racist. Discourse does not exist in a vacuum, replacement has a semantic meaning in this discourse apart from the literal one...
  - anonreeeeplor 3y ago
    Elon Musk is saying this openly on twitter. It’s not racist. It’s mainstream discussion.
    - piva00 3y ago
      > It’s not racist. It’s mainstream discussion. Those are not opposites, it can be a racist mainstream discussion. What does Elon Musk have to do with the argument?
vintermann 3y ago
I've done genealogy lately, and I've found out something that surprised me (but in retrospect, shouldn't have): It works the other way too. It's not just wealthier people having less kids, it's families staying wealthier because they have few kids. Most of my ancestors were fairly poor, but it made a big difference whether they shared their inheritance with one sibling or with eight. It seems to have had a snowball effect too: it wasn't just that they inherited money, it was that they could use that money to get more money - and not necessarily even by working. There was plenty of rent-extraction in the 19th century which you didn't need to be a factory owner to do. And maybe there we are at the heart of the fertility issue: when owning stuff makes a larger difference to your kids' wealth than their own ability to work, you are effectively hurting the kids you already have when you decide to have one more kid. And it starts long before they get an inheritance.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  > Oh, I have 3 kids and no money. Why can't I have no kids and 3 money!? - Homer Simpson That all seems fairly apparent to me - perhaps people have just become more numerate/economically savvy.
  - vintermann 3y ago
    Yes, when you focus on the costs of raising kids, which are high today. But they weren't always as high, especially not the marginal costs of one more kid. Also, the key point is that when people's wealth are based mainly on work actually getting done, as on a farm with room to expand, then you get richer with more kids. It's when access to capital becomes more important - including as land becomes expensive - that you get poorer with more kids.
thiago_fm 3y ago
We don't need more people in the world, there's enough. People like Elon that are raising some fake concerns about fertility always have something in common: are hysterical. We need to bring rationality in this debate. Why the hell do we need humans in every corner in the earth, and possibly universe? Procreation isn't a real need like food and water, nobody dies if they don't fuck. Humans need to stop this need of controlling the fate of the universe, it's really sickening. Mind your life and your own business, stop thinking that you need to save humanity. I bet this "heroism" behaviour will be diagnosed as a disease in a few decades and are deeply rooted in child development issues or just genetics.
- nathanaldensr 3y ago
  If you think falling birthrates are "fake issues" then you have no idea what you're talking about and haven't done a smidgen of research on the topic. The West relies on debt-fueled economies that require ever-increasing GDP. This is in direct opposition to shrinking prime-age workforces. I'm not going to go much more into this here as the information is trivially available to anyone online.
  - fuzzfactor 3y ago
    >We don't need more people in the world, there's enough. True. But beyond that, this has always been true at any point in the history and prehistory of mankind. >The West relies on debt-fueled economies that require ever-increasing GDP. Also equally true, but that only goes back as far as the history of the "West" alone. Unless you also want to include all the other intervals and regions where debt-fueled economies have come & gone since before prehistory, but that still doesn't quite make it true at any point in history. No big deal. Equally true. But two true things do not have to make equal sense, or even make sense at all sometimes.
  - theironhammer 3y ago
    What about Japan? Aren't they doing ok? Sure there's issues with not enough people to look after the old folks but I haven't heard any rhetoric like we do in the Anglosphere. Demographic Apocalypse seems largely a scare tactic by neoliberal/neocons to distract from the real reason: Immigration is to suppress wage demands.
johnea 3y ago
> as taxes to pay for health care and pensions for all those seniors eat into her salary Of course "her" taxes will have to be high, because OBVIOUSLY Elon needs another trillion$!! This argument is an analogue of the argument that: "it's not the 3 people that own as much as 1/2 of the US population, its THOSE people living 6 people in a van that are stealing your middle class prosperity" If you're really worried about being "replaced", maybe you should worry about the wealth of 50M people being replaced by 1 person...

23 points by barry-cotter 3y ago

thriftwy 3y ago

[flagged]

CBLT 3y ago
I think it's fair to include the rest of the sentence as context: > In its illiberal guise, protantalism can be motivated by an ugly ethno-nationalist undercurrent which views pronatalism as a means of avoiding what it perceives to be the evils of mass-immigration, which is seen in catastrophic terms as tantamount to ethnic replacement and racial/civilisational suicide I don't really understand your point, however. What about the article's views are you objecting to?
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Encouraging open borders and mass immigration is not the only permitted immigration policy. Most countries in the world, including large and economically developed ones like Japan and China, do not have this policy. In fact, even developed countries in the West do not have such policy codified into law - quite the contrary. It is highly disingenous to suggest that it is the only option and to preemptively scold the reader for thinking any other options may be considered. Even worse when it is done in such form and in an article suggested to be a pop science piece instead of a political pamphlet. The quoted statement will never ever pass a NPOV check.
  - downWidOutaFite 3y ago
    We are different than those other countries. We are a nation of immigrants. It is one of the things that makes us great. Those that want to prevent migration from "shithole countries" are anti American.
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      That's exactly what I'm talking about: injecting one specific strong political position into a pop sci text. Moreover, I would also downvote an article filled with American messiah complex for a single reason that I don't live there so it is irrelevant and confusing. Nowhere in the article does it say it's not applicable to other countries, moveover it can't stop talking about the whole planet.
omniglottal 3y ago
You're being bad for the community. But thanks for including a well - spoken, albeit opinionated reply, in your otherwise rude, projecting, and downright censorious comment.

verisimi 3y ago

> I will state my thesis baldly at the beginning: there is a large overlap between the things that underpin long-standing worldwide birth-rate declines and the things that underpin our prosperity. Yes... well, that won't work forever, will it?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

In the prosperity-eats-birth-rate scenario, the society is prosperous but individuals aren't having babies. Maybe fewer births aren't due to prosperity itself but the complexities it brings - including for those who aren't prosperous. In the US, poor people are also having fewer babies. Like success, poverty consumes much time but it does so with far less hope. With that combo, the most fundamental resources of future-building (ex: consideration, dreaming) become scarce.

anonreeeeplor 3y ago

It is not “racist” to observe that if the inbound population is high and the native population isn’t reproducing that it is a replacement. People need to stop allowing themselves to get shamed into not stating facts, personal observations, math and logic. This author is non credible.

downWidOutaFite 3y ago
How is it not racist to think of shifting racial demographics as the end of civilization? We are a proud nation of immigrants. America is an idea not an ethnicity.
- hacknewslogin 3y ago
  I think you answered your own question.
piva00 3y ago
The issue is what replacement means, no? The racist tone of it comes from "replacement of white people" being an endeavour conspired by the State to dislodge white people, instead of a natural state of affairs where immigrants have a higher fertility rate than the native population. Characterising such state of affairs as "the end of civilisation" then becomes extremely racist. Discourse does not exist in a vacuum, replacement has a semantic meaning in this discourse apart from the literal one...
- anonreeeeplor 3y ago
  Elon Musk is saying this openly on twitter. It’s not racist. It’s mainstream discussion.
  - piva00 3y ago
    > It’s not racist. It’s mainstream discussion. Those are not opposites, it can be a racist mainstream discussion. What does Elon Musk have to do with the argument?

vintermann 3y ago

I've done genealogy lately, and I've found out something that surprised me (but in retrospect, shouldn't have): It works the other way too. It's not just wealthier people having less kids, it's families staying wealthier because they have few kids. Most of my ancestors were fairly poor, but it made a big difference whether they shared their inheritance with one sibling or with eight. It seems to have had a snowball effect too: it wasn't just that they inherited money, it was that they could use that money to get more money - and not necessarily even by working. There was plenty of rent-extraction in the 19th century which you didn't need to be a factory owner to do. And maybe there we are at the heart of the fertility issue: when owning stuff makes a larger difference to your kids' wealth than their own ability to work, you are effectively hurting the kids you already have when you decide to have one more kid. And it starts long before they get an inheritance.

hotpotamus 3y ago
> Oh, I have 3 kids and no money. Why can't I have no kids and 3 money!? - Homer Simpson That all seems fairly apparent to me - perhaps people have just become more numerate/economically savvy.
- vintermann 3y ago
  Yes, when you focus on the costs of raising kids, which are high today. But they weren't always as high, especially not the marginal costs of one more kid. Also, the key point is that when people's wealth are based mainly on work actually getting done, as on a farm with room to expand, then you get richer with more kids. It's when access to capital becomes more important - including as land becomes expensive - that you get poorer with more kids.

thiago_fm 3y ago

We don't need more people in the world, there's enough. People like Elon that are raising some fake concerns about fertility always have something in common: are hysterical. We need to bring rationality in this debate. Why the hell do we need humans in every corner in the earth, and possibly universe? Procreation isn't a real need like food and water, nobody dies if they don't fuck. Humans need to stop this need of controlling the fate of the universe, it's really sickening. Mind your life and your own business, stop thinking that you need to save humanity. I bet this "heroism" behaviour will be diagnosed as a disease in a few decades and are deeply rooted in child development issues or just genetics.

nathanaldensr 3y ago
If you think falling birthrates are "fake issues" then you have no idea what you're talking about and haven't done a smidgen of research on the topic. The West relies on debt-fueled economies that require ever-increasing GDP. This is in direct opposition to shrinking prime-age workforces. I'm not going to go much more into this here as the information is trivially available to anyone online.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  >We don't need more people in the world, there's enough. True. But beyond that, this has always been true at any point in the history and prehistory of mankind. >The West relies on debt-fueled economies that require ever-increasing GDP. Also equally true, but that only goes back as far as the history of the "West" alone. Unless you also want to include all the other intervals and regions where debt-fueled economies have come & gone since before prehistory, but that still doesn't quite make it true at any point in history. No big deal. Equally true. But two true things do not have to make equal sense, or even make sense at all sometimes.
- theironhammer 3y ago
  What about Japan? Aren't they doing ok? Sure there's issues with not enough people to look after the old folks but I haven't heard any rhetoric like we do in the Anglosphere. Demographic Apocalypse seems largely a scare tactic by neoliberal/neocons to distract from the real reason: Immigration is to suppress wage demands.

johnea 3y ago

> as taxes to pay for health care and pensions for all those seniors eat into her salary Of course "her" taxes will have to be high, because OBVIOUSLY Elon needs another trillion$!! This argument is an analogue of the argument that: "it's not the 3 people that own as much as 1/2 of the US population, its THOSE people living 6 people in a van that are stealing your middle class prosperity" If you're really worried about being "replaced", maybe you should worry about the wealth of 50M people being replaced by 1 person...