3 ms·

To not be would be utter madness. For those who can and opt not to, they are perpetuating the tragedy of the commons. We face the largest demographic crisis ev

To not be would be utter madness. For those who can and opt not to, they are perpetuating the tragedy of the commons. We face the largest demographic crisis ever and we're passing the problem onto the young while draining them via taxation, whislt demanding ever increasing benefits in an all out land grab. In 1950 the ratio of those paying into the system versus withdrawing was 15:1, were now at 2:1.

lazyasciiart 11mo ago
The demographic crisis of refusing to allow young people and families into the country? You want people to have kids so that we can keep America white?
- whatsupdog 11mo ago
  90% of those crossing the border illegally are men. Watch any video on YouTube documenting illegal crossings and you'll see
  - lazyasciiart 11mo ago
    Does that have something to do with what I said?
    - whatsupdog 11mo ago
      How does letting in millions of only men cause a sustainable population growth?
      - lazyasciiart 11mo ago
        How does the set of people who arrive illegally overlap with the set of people that would come if we let them in legally, given that we can define the set that is allowed in legally?
- beeflet 11mo ago
  Why not? It's not like every country in the world can rely on immigration and brain drain. Don't you think it is alarming that the country can't produce enough people to maintain a stable-state population and instead has to rely on a parasitic strategy?
  - lazyasciiart 11mo ago
    Not intrinsically alarming, no. If I thought the country should be self-sufficient in isolation then there are many weak points I’d prioritize before birth rate.
- pfannkuchen 11mo ago
  America has a more liberal immigration policy than practically anywhere else on the planet, as evidenced by the massive change in demographics over a mere half century. You would like it to go faster? Please go advocate for the Chinese to take immigrants from everywhere on earth at the same time, which they currently do not at all. Or do you not care about that for some reason?
  - lazyasciiart 11mo ago
    The topic was “Americans must have babies because we need more young people”. There are plenty of young people who would move here but aren’t allowed in - would you like to disagree with that? Or address it in any way whatsoever?
    - pfannkuchen 11mo ago
      Do you think there is any chance that the characteristics of human territories are determined in significant part by the natural tendencies of their inhabitants? Do you think there is any chance that there is a diverse set of natural tendencies among humans, clustered by what sort of environmental filters those humans passed through? For example, surviving “trying to kill you” winter every year for thousands of years in a row with survivor man tier technology, where planning and tool design/making are critical, vs not? I’m literally asking if you think there’s no chance, and if so, how do you know that? Was it scientifically proven? I’ve looked long and hard for that, and gosh I just couldn’t find where that ever happened. If there is a chance, though, then we are gambling at (further) becoming Brazil in order to save the comfort of one single generation of old people. Yeah I think I’ll pass on that, thanks. As for alternate solutions. We could allocate available resources based on how many descendants the old person produced. Why should we tolerate free riders and make the young produced by others pay for them? Let them be in old people dorms. Let them have insufficient medical care. It isn’t worth risking the quality of the country over, obviously. And if we use the scheme I mentioned, then they aren’t anybody’s grandparents, anyway. Who will fight for them? The values you hold, the ones you are defending right now, are western values. Your type seems so sure that the newcomers can be brainwashed to think like we do. Good luck with that! Egalitarianism is not the norm historically or globally. It certainly isn’t the human default.
generativenoise 11mo ago
The problem is the draining by taxation, not the absolute number of productive people. It is far from evident what size of real productive population is needed to sustain a society. With modern tools it does feel like it could be in the realm of sub 10% of the population. This will get even more wild if the techno-optimists are correct. Depending on how close we are to biophysical bounds trying to increase the population to the historically required productive ratios is just going to make living conditions worse for the average person.
deadbolt 11mo ago
Alright, so why are so many adults not having children, and what do you think should be done to address it? I have my own ideas, but I'd love to hear your opinion.
- roenxi 11mo ago
  There seems to be a fairly strong correlation between wealth and childlessness, so the obvious guess is that the world is getting wealthier. Exactly why that stops people having kids is a bit unclear to me though. Maybe being a parent is one of those things that is a harder sacrifice to make the more alternative comforts have to be given up.
  - sigwinch 11mo ago
    This is not true. In the west, the wealthiest do have higher fertility. https://ifstudies.org/blog/more-money-more-babies-whats-the-relationship-between-income-fertility https://ifstudies.org/blog/more-money-more-babies-whats-the-...
    - roenxi 11mo ago
      It is true. That article doesn't really back up the idea that wealthy families have more children and in most of the graphs you can actually see fertility has dropped off with income. Eg, in Figure 1 it looks like the only demographic consistently meeting the replacement rate are low income women in certain cultural groups and a marginal number of wealthy migrants. It is obvious [0] that more wealth -> less children. The effect enormous. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
      - sigwinch 11mo ago
        The topmost graph on Wikipedia is about GDP, and when it comes to children-per-village, you’re absolutely right. But down some is the J graph, which looks like the American graph in the link I posted.
- 11mo ago

lazyasciiart 11mo ago

The demographic crisis of refusing to allow young people and families into the country? You want people to have kids so that we can keep America white?

whatsupdog 11mo ago
90% of those crossing the border illegally are men. Watch any video on YouTube documenting illegal crossings and you'll see
- lazyasciiart 11mo ago
  Does that have something to do with what I said?
  - whatsupdog 11mo ago
    How does letting in millions of only men cause a sustainable population growth?
    - lazyasciiart 11mo ago
      How does the set of people who arrive illegally overlap with the set of people that would come if we let them in legally, given that we can define the set that is allowed in legally?
beeflet 11mo ago
Why not? It's not like every country in the world can rely on immigration and brain drain. Don't you think it is alarming that the country can't produce enough people to maintain a stable-state population and instead has to rely on a parasitic strategy?
- lazyasciiart 11mo ago
  Not intrinsically alarming, no. If I thought the country should be self-sufficient in isolation then there are many weak points I’d prioritize before birth rate.
pfannkuchen 11mo ago
America has a more liberal immigration policy than practically anywhere else on the planet, as evidenced by the massive change in demographics over a mere half century. You would like it to go faster? Please go advocate for the Chinese to take immigrants from everywhere on earth at the same time, which they currently do not at all. Or do you not care about that for some reason?
- lazyasciiart 11mo ago
  The topic was “Americans must have babies because we need more young people”. There are plenty of young people who would move here but aren’t allowed in - would you like to disagree with that? Or address it in any way whatsoever?
  - pfannkuchen 11mo ago
    Do you think there is any chance that the characteristics of human territories are determined in significant part by the natural tendencies of their inhabitants? Do you think there is any chance that there is a diverse set of natural tendencies among humans, clustered by what sort of environmental filters those humans passed through? For example, surviving “trying to kill you” winter every year for thousands of years in a row with survivor man tier technology, where planning and tool design/making are critical, vs not? I’m literally asking if you think there’s no chance, and if so, how do you know that? Was it scientifically proven? I’ve looked long and hard for that, and gosh I just couldn’t find where that ever happened. If there is a chance, though, then we are gambling at (further) becoming Brazil in order to save the comfort of one single generation of old people. Yeah I think I’ll pass on that, thanks. As for alternate solutions. We could allocate available resources based on how many descendants the old person produced. Why should we tolerate free riders and make the young produced by others pay for them? Let them be in old people dorms. Let them have insufficient medical care. It isn’t worth risking the quality of the country over, obviously. And if we use the scheme I mentioned, then they aren’t anybody’s grandparents, anyway. Who will fight for them? The values you hold, the ones you are defending right now, are western values. Your type seems so sure that the newcomers can be brainwashed to think like we do. Good luck with that! Egalitarianism is not the norm historically or globally. It certainly isn’t the human default.

generativenoise 11mo ago

The problem is the draining by taxation, not the absolute number of productive people. It is far from evident what size of real productive population is needed to sustain a society. With modern tools it does feel like it could be in the realm of sub 10% of the population. This will get even more wild if the techno-optimists are correct. Depending on how close we are to biophysical bounds trying to increase the population to the historically required productive ratios is just going to make living conditions worse for the average person.

deadbolt 11mo ago

Alright, so why are so many adults not having children, and what do you think should be done to address it? I have my own ideas, but I'd love to hear your opinion.

roenxi 11mo ago
There seems to be a fairly strong correlation between wealth and childlessness, so the obvious guess is that the world is getting wealthier. Exactly why that stops people having kids is a bit unclear to me though. Maybe being a parent is one of those things that is a harder sacrifice to make the more alternative comforts have to be given up.
- sigwinch 11mo ago
  This is not true. In the west, the wealthiest do have higher fertility. https://ifstudies.org/blog/more-money-more-babies-whats-the-relationship-between-income-fertility https://ifstudies.org/blog/more-money-more-babies-whats-the-...
  - roenxi 11mo ago
    It is true. That article doesn't really back up the idea that wealthy families have more children and in most of the graphs you can actually see fertility has dropped off with income. Eg, in Figure 1 it looks like the only demographic consistently meeting the replacement rate are low income women in certain cultural groups and a marginal number of wealthy migrants. It is obvious [0] that more wealth -> less children. The effect enormous. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
    - sigwinch 11mo ago
      The topmost graph on Wikipedia is about GDP, and when it comes to children-per-village, you’re absolutely right. But down some is the J graph, which looks like the American graph in the link I posted.
11mo ago