5 ms·

They don't matter because we've finally created a world where the modern peasant is as economically irrelevant as any other outdated farm or industrial equipmen

by bm3719 2y ago

They don't matter because we've finally created a world where the modern peasant is as economically irrelevant as any other outdated farm or industrial equipment. If you opened a printing press staffed by scribes with fountain pens, you'd just lose money. Same goes with hiring your modern peasant; they're simply incapable of producing net economic value thanks to centuries of engineered optimization. If you have kids, even if your partner and you are both high IQ, you're statistically more likely than not to add to this mass of economically unviable peasants unable to be top-tier in the global economy of tomorrow. Maybe that's partly why birthrates in the first and second world have plummeted, as we all kind of know this, if only tacitly.

bojan 2y ago
That at the end is a really strange take, providing a complex reason for what has a very simple explanation. The birthrates are plummeting because: * the process of pregnancy, giving birth and everything postpartum is incredibly taxing to a woman's body, and it's not surprising that women choose not to go through it now that they have a choice. * our economic system actively punishes people who do choose to have kids. * our more and more individualistic societies make the upbringing more of a chore than it used to be. It takes a village, but the village is gone.
- mjburgess 2y ago
  You've missed the main reason: children were always a pension mechanism, and today we have socialized (, and private) pensions. There's no need to have children if you think, in the end, the state (, or you bank account) will look after you.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    Birthrates are declining in places (like the US) that do not have socialized pensions. (Social Security is not that... secure. And regardless, it's existed much longer than the recent birthrate decline here.)
    - mjburgess 2y ago
      Birthrates amongst the rich have been declining since the late 19th C. "Pension" is the answer, whether it's private or otherwise.
      - bojan 2y ago
        Because rich women started getting a choice then. Very little to do with "pension".
  - bojan 2y ago
    * take it from a young parent that also knows a lot of other young parents - that's really not the reason. We are older millennials, and none of us expects to have a liveable pension anyway, we all save separately for old age if we can. * it's not the "state" that is supposed to look out for you, but your own money invested during the career. I see that money subtracted from my paycheck every month. I only want the state to provide stability and security so that money can be put to good use.
  - Akasazh 2y ago
    Also, the church used to be a motivator for people to create offspring. With secularism rising, that influence wanes.
  - Ferret7446 2y ago
    I think you're missing that people generally and innately want children, irrespective of "pension". If people aren't having children, it is because of sufficient negative incentives, not because of "pension".
- addicted 2y ago
  Agreed with 2 & 3. Not as sure about 1. People are not having as many kids. And we haven’t seen a significant uptake of other forms of child bearing either. Options such as surrogacy, etc haven’t risen as much, and while those may be expensive, neither has adoption. So it’s not just the child bearing aspect, but the raising of a child that appears to be an issue as well.
  - bojan 2y ago
    Raising of a child, absolutely, yes, but childbearing is also an issue that shouldn't be underestimated. Regarding adoption, have you checked how extremely difficult and expensive it is to adopt? Surrogacy is simply not an option in many places.
  - watwut 2y ago
    Surrogacy still requires a woman to do the childbirth thing. Just a different woman. There is no etc here, kids exist because someone was pregnant.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  > our economic system actively punishes people who do choose to have kids This is likely true in USA, but false in many other countries. There are many countries, e.g. in Europe, where people with many children have disproportionate advantages, because the state takes money from the people with few or no children and gives the money to the people with many children. Moreover, there are adequate protections for parents during pregnancy and during the following time after birth. Nevertheless, these measures had very little effect on the birth rates, except inside some restricted segments of the populations, which had a tradition of depending on such subsidies. It may be argued that for a majority of the populations these financial measures actually diminish the birth rates, because they take money mostly from the young people not having children yet, which reduces their revenues, which makes them even more reluctant to attempt to have children, due to the fear that they will not have adequate revenues to support them. Few modern people, when confronted with the fact that their revenue would be insufficient for raising 2 children, would reach the conclusion that the solution to this problem is making 6 children, in order to get enough state aid. Most will choose to make only one child or no children.
  - bojan 2y ago
    > There are many countries, e.g. in Europe, where people with many children have disproportionate advantages, because the state takes money from the people with few or no children and gives the money to the people with many children. No, the state "takes money" from the people with few or no children to ensure that there will be a functioning society even when those people can't contribute to it themselves any more. > Moreover, there are adequate protections for parents during pregnancy and during the following time after birth. While that is true, the pure biology is not something you can fully protect from (yet). There are still women for whom a childbirth turns fatal. > Nevertheless, these measures had very little effect on the birth rates, Because the measures aren't enough. For example, even despite all the measures, I end up paying € 1200 a month for about 40 hours of childcare, for two kids. Per month. That's a mortgage level of expense. And that's because they go to school now. Before that it was over € 2000, net. > It may be argued that for a majority of the populations these financial measures actually diminish the birth rates, because they take money mostly from the young people not having children yet, which reduces their revenues, which makes them even more reluctant to attempt to have children, due to the fear that they will not have adequate revenues to support them. This isn't true. Young people earn less than older people, and thus pay less taxes. What makes young people reluctant to have children are unnaturally high housing costs, not the subsidies towards parents.
verisimi 2y ago
Oh, I see. Life is all about one's input into the global economy. Technology has rendered it simply impossible to conceive of a higher purpose than middle management in a large corporate. Finally someone with the answers!
tycho-newman 2y ago
These are all policy choices though. None of them are ordained by nature or inevitable. Being alive is much more than being economically viable. This kind of economic thinking is alluring because it seems "objective" or "data driven" but it is really just an oversimplified model of the world. These models have long drifted from reflecting reality. Think of how DJT won two elections despite what all the data said. The data did not reflect reality. The idea that modern peasants exist or that they do not add to economic output certainly reflects the data. But the data is useless if it does not reflect reality.
- elcritch 2y ago
  Reminds me of an article by Yanis Varoufakis - a leftist economist / politician - I saw posted in an HN comment recently [1]. My interpretation of it was that the petrodollar effectively undermines middle class Americans by artificially inflating the dollar, undermining American workers with cheap imports and loss of jobs in favor of multinationals. That argument makes a lot of sense to me. The importance of financial sectors are exaggerated. Ever increasing federal debt acts as a tax on other nations though that wealth doesn't goto the average American. It skews wealth to a few sectors. E.g. The economic data is correct but measures a distorted system. > Their thinking [centrists] is hard-wired onto a misconception of how capital, trade and money move around the globe. Like the brewer who gets drunk on his own ale, centrists ended up believing their own propaganda: that we live in a world of competitive markets where money is neutral and prices adjust to balance the demand and the supply of everything. The unsophisticated Trump is, in fact, far more sophisticated than them in that he understands how raw economic power, not marginal productivity, decides who does what to whom — both domestically and internationally. 1: https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/02/21/donald-trumps-economic-masterplan-unherd/ https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/02/21/donald-trumps-econ...
- bm3719 2y ago
  Arguably, we've let metrics rule in the same way the Soviets optimized for steel and wheat production, but instead for pure economic market signals. Doing so, we see a market strongly signaling that it has a peasant surplus. Unfortunately for them, peasants are (presumably) conscious beings, so suffering ensues. If the 2024 DJT win is to be interpreted as a peasant revolt against this system, perhaps it's one that is attempting to use the non-market force of government to create new Schelling points (mostly via protectionism) that meet libidinal (more in the Mark Fisher sense, less Lyotard) desires. Procreation is literally libidinal, after all, so we can see how powerful our system's market forces must be to completely override it.
TFYS 2y ago
I don't think this is the case. I think it's about wealth inequality and the resulting centralization of power. When you concentrate all the wealth to such a small number of people, the only thing they can do with it is to buy more property. They just can't consume that much. They buy property, which means it gets more expensive for the regular people, so they are no longer able to afford it. That then means they must pay rent for everything to the extremely wealthy. That causes regular people to have less money for consumption, and the rich will use the money to buy even more property. This cycle continuously makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, and that's what's causing economic irrelevance of the masses. They can no longer afford to buy services from each other, because the rich are sucking all the wealth up and not using it to consume/buy services from regular people. Sure, they consume some luxury goods, but not enough to employ the masses. We need a huge wealth redistribution to enable regular people to buy services from each other again and make themselves relevant to each other.
tim333 2y ago
For economically irrelevant peasants they get paid a lot. GDP per capita was $82,769 in 2023, up from $39,490 in 2003. Life can still be hard due to high property prices and the like but that's another issue really.
trod1234 2y ago
Birth rates in the first and second world have plummeted because the economics are disadvantaged to the point that most of the pipeline needed to create children has been shuttered. Agency has been stripped, and psychological differences in gender have been exploited towards a for-profit business model where there will be no children. Its the same thing the USDA uses in combating the screw-worm, but we call it online dating. If you only match up against people you aren't compatible with long term, you never get to the stage where you couple up and have children. Part of that is also financial security, and there is a biological wall where after a time you can't have children. The concentration of production today has become one-sided, and lacks the ability for economic calculation. Price discovery for example has completely failed in a number of markets as a result of dark pools, and sieving of business into fewer hands through non-reserve debt issuance is occurring gradually but surely. The socialist calculation problem defined by Mises seems to be occurring, few have noticed yet because the problem by definition is chaos with no differentiating features aside from the overall volume of chaos growing. Statistics also really can't tell you anything about chaotic environments (stochastic environments). Islands of consistency within the 3-body problem as an example for the literature that applies.

by bm3719 2y ago

bojan 2y ago

That at the end is a really strange take, providing a complex reason for what has a very simple explanation. The birthrates are plummeting because: * the process of pregnancy, giving birth and everything postpartum is incredibly taxing to a woman's body, and it's not surprising that women choose not to go through it now that they have a choice. * our economic system actively punishes people who do choose to have kids. * our more and more individualistic societies make the upbringing more of a chore than it used to be. It takes a village, but the village is gone.

mjburgess 2y ago
You've missed the main reason: children were always a pension mechanism, and today we have socialized (, and private) pensions. There's no need to have children if you think, in the end, the state (, or you bank account) will look after you.
- kelnos 2y ago
  Birthrates are declining in places (like the US) that do not have socialized pensions. (Social Security is not that... secure. And regardless, it's existed much longer than the recent birthrate decline here.)
  - mjburgess 2y ago
    Birthrates amongst the rich have been declining since the late 19th C. "Pension" is the answer, whether it's private or otherwise.
    - bojan 2y ago
      Because rich women started getting a choice then. Very little to do with "pension".
- bojan 2y ago
  * take it from a young parent that also knows a lot of other young parents - that's really not the reason. We are older millennials, and none of us expects to have a liveable pension anyway, we all save separately for old age if we can. * it's not the "state" that is supposed to look out for you, but your own money invested during the career. I see that money subtracted from my paycheck every month. I only want the state to provide stability and security so that money can be put to good use.
- Akasazh 2y ago
  Also, the church used to be a motivator for people to create offspring. With secularism rising, that influence wanes.
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  I think you're missing that people generally and innately want children, irrespective of "pension". If people aren't having children, it is because of sufficient negative incentives, not because of "pension".
addicted 2y ago
Agreed with 2 & 3. Not as sure about 1. People are not having as many kids. And we haven’t seen a significant uptake of other forms of child bearing either. Options such as surrogacy, etc haven’t risen as much, and while those may be expensive, neither has adoption. So it’s not just the child bearing aspect, but the raising of a child that appears to be an issue as well.
- bojan 2y ago
  Raising of a child, absolutely, yes, but childbearing is also an issue that shouldn't be underestimated. Regarding adoption, have you checked how extremely difficult and expensive it is to adopt? Surrogacy is simply not an option in many places.
- watwut 2y ago
  Surrogacy still requires a woman to do the childbirth thing. Just a different woman. There is no etc here, kids exist because someone was pregnant.
adrian_b 2y ago
> our economic system actively punishes people who do choose to have kids This is likely true in USA, but false in many other countries. There are many countries, e.g. in Europe, where people with many children have disproportionate advantages, because the state takes money from the people with few or no children and gives the money to the people with many children. Moreover, there are adequate protections for parents during pregnancy and during the following time after birth. Nevertheless, these measures had very little effect on the birth rates, except inside some restricted segments of the populations, which had a tradition of depending on such subsidies. It may be argued that for a majority of the populations these financial measures actually diminish the birth rates, because they take money mostly from the young people not having children yet, which reduces their revenues, which makes them even more reluctant to attempt to have children, due to the fear that they will not have adequate revenues to support them. Few modern people, when confronted with the fact that their revenue would be insufficient for raising 2 children, would reach the conclusion that the solution to this problem is making 6 children, in order to get enough state aid. Most will choose to make only one child or no children.
- bojan 2y ago
  > There are many countries, e.g. in Europe, where people with many children have disproportionate advantages, because the state takes money from the people with few or no children and gives the money to the people with many children. No, the state "takes money" from the people with few or no children to ensure that there will be a functioning society even when those people can't contribute to it themselves any more. > Moreover, there are adequate protections for parents during pregnancy and during the following time after birth. While that is true, the pure biology is not something you can fully protect from (yet). There are still women for whom a childbirth turns fatal. > Nevertheless, these measures had very little effect on the birth rates, Because the measures aren't enough. For example, even despite all the measures, I end up paying € 1200 a month for about 40 hours of childcare, for two kids. Per month. That's a mortgage level of expense. And that's because they go to school now. Before that it was over € 2000, net. > It may be argued that for a majority of the populations these financial measures actually diminish the birth rates, because they take money mostly from the young people not having children yet, which reduces their revenues, which makes them even more reluctant to attempt to have children, due to the fear that they will not have adequate revenues to support them. This isn't true. Young people earn less than older people, and thus pay less taxes. What makes young people reluctant to have children are unnaturally high housing costs, not the subsidies towards parents.

verisimi 2y ago

Oh, I see. Life is all about one's input into the global economy. Technology has rendered it simply impossible to conceive of a higher purpose than middle management in a large corporate. Finally someone with the answers!

tycho-newman 2y ago

These are all policy choices though. None of them are ordained by nature or inevitable. Being alive is much more than being economically viable. This kind of economic thinking is alluring because it seems "objective" or "data driven" but it is really just an oversimplified model of the world. These models have long drifted from reflecting reality. Think of how DJT won two elections despite what all the data said. The data did not reflect reality. The idea that modern peasants exist or that they do not add to economic output certainly reflects the data. But the data is useless if it does not reflect reality.

elcritch 2y ago
Reminds me of an article by Yanis Varoufakis - a leftist economist / politician - I saw posted in an HN comment recently [1]. My interpretation of it was that the petrodollar effectively undermines middle class Americans by artificially inflating the dollar, undermining American workers with cheap imports and loss of jobs in favor of multinationals. That argument makes a lot of sense to me. The importance of financial sectors are exaggerated. Ever increasing federal debt acts as a tax on other nations though that wealth doesn't goto the average American. It skews wealth to a few sectors. E.g. The economic data is correct but measures a distorted system. > Their thinking [centrists] is hard-wired onto a misconception of how capital, trade and money move around the globe. Like the brewer who gets drunk on his own ale, centrists ended up believing their own propaganda: that we live in a world of competitive markets where money is neutral and prices adjust to balance the demand and the supply of everything. The unsophisticated Trump is, in fact, far more sophisticated than them in that he understands how raw economic power, not marginal productivity, decides who does what to whom — both domestically and internationally. 1: https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/02/21/donald-trumps-economic-masterplan-unherd/ https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/02/21/donald-trumps-econ...
bm3719 2y ago
Arguably, we've let metrics rule in the same way the Soviets optimized for steel and wheat production, but instead for pure economic market signals. Doing so, we see a market strongly signaling that it has a peasant surplus. Unfortunately for them, peasants are (presumably) conscious beings, so suffering ensues. If the 2024 DJT win is to be interpreted as a peasant revolt against this system, perhaps it's one that is attempting to use the non-market force of government to create new Schelling points (mostly via protectionism) that meet libidinal (more in the Mark Fisher sense, less Lyotard) desires. Procreation is literally libidinal, after all, so we can see how powerful our system's market forces must be to completely override it.

TFYS 2y ago

I don't think this is the case. I think it's about wealth inequality and the resulting centralization of power. When you concentrate all the wealth to such a small number of people, the only thing they can do with it is to buy more property. They just can't consume that much. They buy property, which means it gets more expensive for the regular people, so they are no longer able to afford it. That then means they must pay rent for everything to the extremely wealthy. That causes regular people to have less money for consumption, and the rich will use the money to buy even more property. This cycle continuously makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, and that's what's causing economic irrelevance of the masses. They can no longer afford to buy services from each other, because the rich are sucking all the wealth up and not using it to consume/buy services from regular people. Sure, they consume some luxury goods, but not enough to employ the masses. We need a huge wealth redistribution to enable regular people to buy services from each other again and make themselves relevant to each other.

tim333 2y ago

For economically irrelevant peasants they get paid a lot. GDP per capita was $82,769 in 2023, up from $39,490 in 2003. Life can still be hard due to high property prices and the like but that's another issue really.

trod1234 2y ago

Birth rates in the first and second world have plummeted because the economics are disadvantaged to the point that most of the pipeline needed to create children has been shuttered. Agency has been stripped, and psychological differences in gender have been exploited towards a for-profit business model where there will be no children. Its the same thing the USDA uses in combating the screw-worm, but we call it online dating. If you only match up against people you aren't compatible with long term, you never get to the stage where you couple up and have children. Part of that is also financial security, and there is a biological wall where after a time you can't have children. The concentration of production today has become one-sided, and lacks the ability for economic calculation. Price discovery for example has completely failed in a number of markets as a result of dark pools, and sieving of business into fewer hands through non-reserve debt issuance is occurring gradually but surely. The socialist calculation problem defined by Mises seems to be occurring, few have noticed yet because the problem by definition is chaos with no differentiating features aside from the overall volume of chaos growing. Statistics also really can't tell you anything about chaotic environments (stochastic environments). Islands of consistency within the 3-body problem as an example for the literature that applies.