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It's all well and good telling parents to do better, but this situation could only have arose in the first place because there is some kind of systemic reason f

It's all well and good telling parents to do better, but this situation could only have arose in the first place because there is some kind of systemic reason for parents to not really care about the wellbeing of their offspring. Is this parental nihilism downstream of ideology, or the other way around?

geerlingguy 1y ago
I think it's because parenting is hard (always has been, some aspects like having to be a helicopter parent to not have CPS called on you in the US maybe make it harder). And screens are easy.
mschuster91 1y ago
> this situation could only have arose in the first place because there is some kind of systemic reason for parents to not really care about the wellbeing of their offspring. Yeah, guess what, like needing to work 2 full-time 40 hour jobs and having to deal with commute and chores on top of that, not to mention overtime or on-call. Modern capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with raising children, but by the time it crashes down it will be too late. But hey, the current generation of Boomers enjoys a stonks-go-up portfolio.
- aianus 1y ago
  My parents and grandparents grew up in communism and they had to work full time jobs (and help bring in the harvest in the fall) with a side of hours standing in queues to buy meat. Meanwhile modern capitalism will allow me to work as little as I want after a decade or two of accumulating capital. Huge improvement all in all
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    > Meanwhile modern capitalism will allow me to work as little as I want after a decade or two of accumulating capital. That's not an improvement at a societal scale, that's the thing. Without those in working age actually working and generating economic activity, the system becomes nothing more than a house of cards waiting to collapse. Capitalism, especially modern rabid capitalism, depends on the illusion of infinite growth - an illusion that can only fail, given modern demographic trends and resource scarcity. And it is completely unsuited for the coming era when a lot of work will be done outright by machines.
bobxmax 1y ago
It's the anxiety generation. Parents are now terrified of paedophiles and traumas. My generation needed TV commercials reminding our parents we exist.
nielsbot 1y ago
Do you have any theories about those “systemic reasons”? Curious what they might be. Secondly—Do you always take the stairs when available or the elevator?
- OgsyedIE 1y ago
  People self report not having kids because of monetary concerns en masse but poverty didn't have this effect on natalism in the past. I think there is an ideological component. Because continental philosophy in the wake of the world wars has alerted us to the fungibility of every asset class regardless of abstraction, all kinds of religiosity and spirituality have declined. Schumpeter, Buffett, Fisher and Derrida are all in agreement that this is all there is and all there ever will be. This has produced an antithesis in the public mind to value quality over quantity. In our rapidly changing economy, however, quality over quantity approaches lead to a lot of wait-and-see outcomes. If you can conceive of reproduction by people as a capital good produced by a business then you'll be shocked at how well the notion of a capital strike fits the outcomes.

geerlingguy 1y ago

I think it's because parenting is hard (always has been, some aspects like having to be a helicopter parent to not have CPS called on you in the US maybe make it harder). And screens are easy.

mschuster91 1y ago

> this situation could only have arose in the first place because there is some kind of systemic reason for parents to not really care about the wellbeing of their offspring. Yeah, guess what, like needing to work 2 full-time 40 hour jobs and having to deal with commute and chores on top of that, not to mention overtime or on-call. Modern capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with raising children, but by the time it crashes down it will be too late. But hey, the current generation of Boomers enjoys a stonks-go-up portfolio.

aianus 1y ago
My parents and grandparents grew up in communism and they had to work full time jobs (and help bring in the harvest in the fall) with a side of hours standing in queues to buy meat. Meanwhile modern capitalism will allow me to work as little as I want after a decade or two of accumulating capital. Huge improvement all in all
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > Meanwhile modern capitalism will allow me to work as little as I want after a decade or two of accumulating capital. That's not an improvement at a societal scale, that's the thing. Without those in working age actually working and generating economic activity, the system becomes nothing more than a house of cards waiting to collapse. Capitalism, especially modern rabid capitalism, depends on the illusion of infinite growth - an illusion that can only fail, given modern demographic trends and resource scarcity. And it is completely unsuited for the coming era when a lot of work will be done outright by machines.

bobxmax 1y ago

It's the anxiety generation. Parents are now terrified of paedophiles and traumas. My generation needed TV commercials reminding our parents we exist.

nielsbot 1y ago

Do you have any theories about those “systemic reasons”? Curious what they might be. Secondly—Do you always take the stairs when available or the elevator?

OgsyedIE 1y ago
People self report not having kids because of monetary concerns en masse but poverty didn't have this effect on natalism in the past. I think there is an ideological component. Because continental philosophy in the wake of the world wars has alerted us to the fungibility of every asset class regardless of abstraction, all kinds of religiosity and spirituality have declined. Schumpeter, Buffett, Fisher and Derrida are all in agreement that this is all there is and all there ever will be. This has produced an antithesis in the public mind to value quality over quantity. In our rapidly changing economy, however, quality over quantity approaches lead to a lot of wait-and-see outcomes. If you can conceive of reproduction by people as a capital good produced by a business then you'll be shocked at how well the notion of a capital strike fits the outcomes.