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Because capital has realized that as long as there are bread and circuses to distract people along with convenient targets for the less well-off to blame for th

• toomuchtodo 1y ago
  While people simultaneously scream for people to have more children. See you at terminally low total fertility rates.
  • jf22 1y ago
    I follow the pro/anti natalist space and I'm not sure if anybody is "screaming" at people to have more kids.
    • assbuttbuttass 1y ago
      How about the vice president https://apnews.com/article/jd-vance-childless-cat-ladies-birth-rates-555c0f78ef8dd4c13c88b9e8d5f0024a https://apnews.com/article/jd-vance-childless-cat-ladies-bir...
      • jf22 1y ago
        Is this "screaming?"
    • Analemma_ 1y ago
      It’s less “screaming” and more “tut-tut moralizing and shaming”. Ironically, it’s mostly from the same people who spent the previous decades going “don’t have kids you can’t afford!” and are now appalled that people took their advice.
      • js8 1y ago
        Wasn't the previous advice meant for black and muslim people, rather than WASPs?
    • otikik 1y ago
      I happen to live near a very religious community, and I share some common spaces with some of the families coming from that background (swimming pool, parks). They don't scream, but the social pressure is absolutely there.
    • toomuchtodo 1y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44423897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44423897 https://www.npr.org/2025/04/30/nx-s1-5382208/whats-behind-the-pronatalist-movement-to-boost-the-birth-rate https://www.npr.org/2025/04/30/nx-s1-5382208/whats-behind-th... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bridget-phillipson-england-daily-telegraph-britons-wales-b2779310.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bridget-phil... https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jun/25/parenting-progressive-childrearing https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jun/25/parenti... https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/may/25/american-pronatalists-malcolm-and-simone-collins https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/may/25... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/11/what-is-pronatalism-right-wing-republican https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/11/what-is-pron... https://www.vox.com/policy/363543/pronatalism-vance-birth-rates-population-decline-fertility https://www.vox.com/policy/363543/pronatalism-vance-birth-ra... https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/commentary/the-pronatalism-silicon-valley https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/commentary/the-... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/style/women-pronatalist-movement.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/style/women-pronatalist-m... https://fairerdisputations.org/have-more-kids/ https://fairerdisputations.org/have-more-kids/ https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-parental-dead-end-of-consent-morality-e4e8a8ee https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-parental-dead-end-of-consent-m... As someone who also follows pro/anti natalist space closely, I'm not worried pronatlism efforts are going to move the needle though. https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/adults-no-children-why-pew-data https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/adults-no-children-why-pew-... https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/50th-edition-spring-2025 https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/50th-edition-spring-2025 https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf
      • jf22 1y ago
        This is people talking about the issue, not "screaming."
  • NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    If you were going to have children, you'd have them regardless of what your income was. There are people in the developing world living on a dollar a day who become parents.
    • jjani 1y ago
      There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who would definitely have more children if they won the lottery tomorrow. Maybe not in your surroundings, or even in your country, but very much so elsewhere.
      • NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
        >There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who would definitely have more children if they won the lottery tomorrow. If this were true (and I don't concede that it is), then you've just stated that the minimum bribe sufficient to persuade someone to become a parent is a lottery jackpot. Mostly though, people who won lotteries would rather spend that on themselves. Demographic collapse is inevitable, and you'll die without even understanding why it happened.
        • collingreen 1y ago
          They absolutely said nothing about a minimum.
          • NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
            They did. The implicit statement is right there... if there were something significantly lesser that had the same effect, then that would be the salient example. If he had any such examples to choose from, why choose the absurdly improbable one? Well, the reason why you choose the absurdly improbable example, is because it's still the least absurd/improbable. Why does this need to be explained to you?
        • jjani 1y ago
          It is true, but they're in cultures and countries you haven't experienced. Here it's common for people who have experienced a sudden windfall to get a second child that they had been wanting to have but weren't having because of financial reasons. Zero chance this is the only place in the world where that's the case. As the other person pointed out, a lottery jackpot is also far above the minimum, it was just the most obvious example of a sudden windfall. And even then I was considering lottery jackpots here which are usually $0.5m-5m, not tens or hundreds of millions which seems common in the US (I could be wrong on that).
  • thriifvyu67866 1y ago
    In other news, Cattle are are being inseminated to not only provide milk, but also to have their children culled for meat after birth. Children have been treated like state/church assets for multiple centuries if not millennia now.
• sergeyfomkin 1y ago
  A lot of what we call work today really is just performative. As long as people stay busy, no one questions where the value goes. AI just makes it harder to hide the fact that so much of the system runs on keeping people occupied instead of actually improving their lives.
  • exe34 1y ago
    > so much of the system runs on keeping people occupied instead of actually improving their lives Could you give some examples outside of government? I would imagine the wealth owners would cut those jobs pretty quickly? I've always been told that private enterprise was so much more efficient and good at cutting waste.
    • sergeyfomkin 1y ago
      Absolutely. Take Google or Meta — both have gone through rounds of layoffs while still keeping thousands in roles focused on alignment, planning, or internal coordination. McKinsey and other big consultancies often produce reports with minimal new insight, tailored mostly to justify executive decisions. Even in finance, layers of middle office and compliance roles exist not because they’re strictly needed, but because no one wants to take on institutional risk. These aren’t government jobs — they’re high-paid, private-sector roles that persist because the system values control and optics just as much as output.
      • exe34 1y ago
        > tailored mostly to justify executive decisions > they’re high-paid, private-sector roles that persist because the system values control and optics just as much as output Sounds like you've answered your own question - these jobs are needed for the system to work. They're not "extra".
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
• mslansn 1y ago
  I can assure you “capital” is really happy with the dirt cheap labour that immigration brings. The destruction of the lower class is not their concern.
  • lenerdenator 1y ago
    They're even happier with AI labor because it doesn't require nearly the costs of human labor.
    • collingreen 1y ago
      For now! Vendor lock in for your workforce might end up biting folks with this approach when the bills start coming due and they enshittify
  • dragonwriter 1y ago
    Part of the reason capital likes anti-immigrant politics is that the end policy result isn't getting rid of unempowered labor, its reducing more people to unempowered labor for capital, rather it is via detention in public facilities that provide labor, directly or indirectly, for private efforts, detention in private facilities that can have work requirements, or "temporary passes" that give the employer control of status. [0] [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-administration-working-temporary-pass-immigrants-farm-industries-rcna215806 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-administr...
• keybored 1y ago
  That’s very simplified but the base reason is correct.
  • keybored 1y ago
    > That’s very simplified but the base reason is correct. Case in point: the “but capitalists don’t form a group”/“Why workweek had been shortened to 40h then? No gays, no imigrants back then?” on this submission.
• stego-tech 1y ago
  Asked and answered right here. Also worth providing context: * When we asked the same question in the 2010s with productivity gains from technology, it was the gays and the immigrants that were the reason we couldn’t * When we asked the same question in the 2000s with productivity gains from technology, it was the gays and the immigrants and the Iraq War that were the reason we couldn’t (until the housing crisis) * When asked in the 90s, it was the gays, the immigrants, and budget shortfalls that were the reasons we couldn’t (nevermind continued tax cuts) * When asked in the 80s, it was the gays, the immigrants, and the Soviets as cause for not shortening workweeks I can go back for several more decades this way. It’s seemingly always the fault of minority groups that we can’t roll back workweeks and reclaim leisure time, rather than the fault of the monied elite demanding ever more for themselves. Until enough people acknowledge and accept this, I get to spend my time fighting to exist rather than all of us enjoying more community and leisure time together.
  • ponector 1y ago
    Why workweek had been shortened to 40h then? No gays, no imigrants back then? Imagine how productive economy will become if 996 workweek will become mandatory!
    • stego-tech 1y ago
      …seriously? Cannot tell if you’re being serious or just shitposting. Here, an old-fashioned LMGTFY: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2015/10/how-did-the-40-hour-work-week-become-standard/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2015/10/how-did-the-40-hour-... Wikipedia has a far more gruesome and comprehensive history of the US Labor movement, like the history of the NLRB, anti-union efforts in the 1860-1930s, the Coal Wars, Battle of Blair Mountain, etc. Everyone should know this history, at the very least so they can understand the harm that comes from delaying action further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
    • _DeadFred_ 1y ago
      Unironically what half of HN thikn peak futurism in America should be, hyper optimized: https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1lo783l/hows_this_legal_a_mcdonalds_worker_is_filmed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1lo783l/hows_...
• bko 1y ago
  Capital isn't a group of people. What does this mean? People who own capital? Like there is some proxy sent to Blackrock about "should we shorten the work week to 4 days" and they vote on it. As someone with a 401k, I must have missed that one. What's with this low quality comment. If you have nothing productive to add, don't comment. Or try to make a change yourself. Start a business and try a 4 day work week. Everyone should love it according to your world view and you could just be slightly less "greedy" and hire immigrants and trans folks and every other 'misfortunate' soul.
  • tharmas 1y ago
    "We need more sheep to fleece" cried the Wolf.
    • throwpoaster 1y ago
      Fleecing sheep doesn’t hurt them. Especially during the summer they really love it.
      • tharmas 1y ago
        so do the MAGAts apparently. Make Amerikkka GILDED Again!
  • fzeroracer 1y ago
    Capital is a group of people. It is a few shared dynasties, people who have hoovered up the majority of wealth, the folks running private equity, the shrinking number of real estate developers that own a larger and larger share of all apartments. Your line about 'just start a business' is something people say but never actually execute on themselves. Try making a store to compete with Amazon, a or a grocer to compete with our consolidated giants. They can and will use the economy of massive scale they have to crush your business into oblivion, taking a short term loss to maintain a death grip on the market That's capital.
    • gruez 1y ago
• gruez 1y ago
  >convenient targets for the less well-off to blame for their misfortune (immigrants, trans folks) Immigrants maybe, but nobody in the rust belt thinks their town is being hollowed out and flooded with fentanyl because of trans people. That's not to say they have no grievances against trans people, but to think that the right think trans people are "to blame for this misfortune" shows a huge ignorance of the right's politics.
  • venturd 1y ago
    [flagged]
  • sundaeofshock 1y ago
    Evangelicals have expectations of very strict gender roles in the traditional family. The “collapse” of the traditional family is why we have social and economic problems in the United States. Trans-women are the biggest threat to their ideas gender roles, so an important part of the right absolutely blames trans people for their misfortune.
    • gruez 1y ago
      >The “collapse” of the traditional family is why we have social and economic problems in the United States. You're making the same mistake as the parent comment, by conflating social issues with economic ones. Evangelicals have a lot to hate about trans people on the social front, but I'm not aware of any that thinks the decline of American manufacturing is due to trans people. At best it's something like "low birth rates is shrinking the labor force", but even that's more social than economic.
  • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
    > to think that the right think trans people are "to blame for this misfortune" shows a huge ignorance of the right's politics They're pointing out the use of Goldsteins to distract from the root cause of the issue (increasing wealth inequality) and get a significant fraction of the general population to believe the problem is more directly caused by immigrants than changes in legislation that allow for more corporate abuse. It's moot that trans people aren't a reasonable cause of economic problems because they are a distraction from economic problem.s