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It's interesting that the same dynamic is playing out on a much larger scale with children. A child is far more helpless than a junior engineer - at least a ju

It's interesting that the same dynamic is playing out on a much larger scale with children. A child is far more helpless than a junior engineer - at least a junior engineer can feed themselves, wipe their own butt, avoid destroying the room, and generally keep themselves alive. Everybody wants to offload the cost of raising children to parents, because the economic benefits aren't realized for 25+ years yet the costs are very substantial (frequently, at least one parent's full-time attention, costing them an income). Prospective parents are saying "fuck that shit" and simply choosing not to have children. The long-term effects are going to be much like the effect of the software industry turning away from juniors: total collapse. When you have no workforce, you'll do no work - hell, there is just...nothing, nonexistence, no consumers either. But the fertility bust operates on a longer timescale (I think the software industry will start feeling the dearth of juniors in ~5 years, the economy as a whole won't feel the dearth of children for ~5), and it's far more fundamental. Rather than one industry disappearing, all industries will disappear, likely refactored into something that looks far different. It also reminds me of those ecological predator/prey/locust models that I studied in calculus class, where population dynamics for many species have a tendency to overshoot the carrying capacity of the environment. Each individual in the population makes their own reproductive & survival decisions, but the sum total of them leads to population collapse and a near total extinction, followed by recovery once the survivors find resources abundant again.

ffsm8 8mo ago
The Birthrate dropping has multiple causes, none of them have any relation to the topic at hand It's a negative (from the perspective of reproduction) confluence of both social and economic developments. E.g. the death of the traditional gender roles has inevitably reduced birth rates - for multiple reasons to boot. Because on the one hand, the women has am easier time not to commit and just sleep around, consequently becoming uninteresting to men that would've preferred to make a family... But also because biologically, men are more attracted to demure women, which on average will ultimately remove even more attraction, consequently removing even more likelihood of families being built. But that's once again only one factor, you got others too... Like stagnant wages, which force younger people too abstain from making a family simply because the financial situation doesn't allow for it. And if it happens anyway, it's more then likely to end in a broken family instead of something positive Another factor is the availability of choice. Dating apps are available, statistically women all try to get into a relationship with the same 1% of men - who sleep around and cause toxicity all around. The remaining 99% become bitter and consequently... Are even less attractive to women. Just to be clear, in case someones brain has completely rotten through and interprets any blame into my comment: neither sex is responsible for this. Our society just decided to move on from gender roles, for supposedly economic reasons. The consequences are felt both for women and men, with both feeling less valued and miserable on average. Which understandably makes them less attractive to the other sex again. Still not a full list of factors at play btw, there is also the builtup of micro plastics in the men's balls, harming sperm production along with normalization of pornography, reducing the sexual frustration of people and consequently making them less driven to find partners. There is also the influencer industry, purposefully encouraging para social relationships, satisfying the social urges of a lot of people, consequently reducing the likelihood of them seeking out friendships... Reducing the likelihood of meeting other people and thus reducing the likelihood of getting a natural relationship through that. Third places have also mostly vanished, likely related to multiple of these effects to etc pp
- michaelhoney 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - collingreen 8mo ago
    Perhaps there's a constructive version of this because I agree with the sentiment but it's a little harsh - dude is obviously feeling very betrayed and left out of society and either falling down the incel tunnel or doing recruiting for it. There's some fallacies here like "anyone not acting in stereotypical Protestant gender roles must therefore be recklessly promiscuous" and that if some people don't want to have kids with some women then therefore -nobody- will do it. Good luck out there everybody - the world changes in fascinating ways and it can definitely run some folks over but try not to get jaded and fall down a despair spiral.
    - ffsm8 8mo ago
      > There's some fallacies here like "anyone not acting in stereotypical Protestant gender roles must therefore be recklessly promiscuous" That fallacy isn't in there. Also, I would like to point out that almost all women have had more then 0 sexual partners before wedding. Hence your statement would actually be kinda correct of you remove the "recklessly". And that's definitely another contributer to declining birth rates/families - because neither of them will feel remotely as committed to each other then they would've otherwise. None of these are singular causes. They're all contributing to the whole situation. Which is precisely why I never made any such fallacy in my earlier comment.
      - notpachet 8mo ago
        > Also, I would like to point out that almost all women have had more then 0 sexual partners before wedding. Hence your statement would actually be kinda correct of you remove the "recklessly". Having premarital sex is not everyone's definition of "promiscuous".
        8mo ago
Root_Denied 8mo ago
It's basically a "Tragedy of the Commons" situation across the board.
- wazoox 8mo ago
  Sort of. With the salient point that nothing really exists, but the commons. The individual is nothing without the whole society around.
  - nostrademons 8mo ago
    Also sort of. Some form of social organization seems to be necessary for humans to function. But humans are also pretty good (well - relatively speaking, it usually seems to require a war or revolution) at changing that form of social organization as technology, population, and environmental conditions change. I think this is a very likely outcome. We aren't going to get continued population growth next generation; a significant number of the people needed for it will never be born. This is going to have ripple effects across wide swaths of political and economic organization. But you'll have pockets of population that basically barricade themselves off from the wider economic world and insulate themselves from its collapse, and then the people within them, along with whatever form of social organization they happen to adopt.
overfeed 8mo ago
> When you have no workforce, you'll do no work - hell, there is just...nothing, nonexistence, no consumers either. But for a beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders https://www.insidehook.com/culture/story-tom-toro-new-yorker-climate-cartoon https://www.insidehook.com/culture/story-tom-toro-new-yorker...
qball 8mo ago
>Prospective parents are saying "fuck that shit" and simply choosing not to have children. Or in other words, they've been priced out of the market. If there will be no sociofinancial niche for their children to inhabit this is in fact the rational course of action. See also: South Korean current birth rates.
- NotMichaelBay 8mo ago
  > See also: South Korean current birth rates. For anyone wondering, the South Korean birth rate is currently ~0.7: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?country=OWID_WRL~KOR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?c...
ipaddr 8mo ago
The answer is to remove the parents. Give birth and let the state raise the child. The parents continue to work and live childless without the costs and responsibilities. Society pays and gives this group an equal playing field.
- nostrademons 8mo ago
  Kinda like in Brave New World, or The Giver - or, for that matter, in hundreds of orphanages in real life? This doesn't really work either. Having been loved by an attachment figure (usually a parent) seems to be essential to normal psychosocial development. Without it, kids can't really form bonds or groups. They never learn to trust, and without the ability to trust, they can't work in concert with other people. They end up violent and criminal. If you tried to do this society-wide, society would collapse. Everybody would simply try to grab what they could and kill everybody else.
- sam345 8mo ago
  Sarcasm I'm sure.
- jimbokun 8mo ago
  Have you ever interacted with actual Homo sapiens?
- i_think_so 8mo ago
  This is a troll, right? Ha ha? Young Anakin and Leia picnic meme? I think I've seen this movie and it does not have a happy ending.
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
  So Woman have to be pregnant for 9 months for only the state to go take the baby away. Are you gonna suggest that State enforces procreation too? This "answer" that you are saying is this close to being an Eugenics project. A govt. which has its officers arrest/detain babies because of their race and you are saying that these are the people that the babies should be left? 5-year-old boy among four students detained by ICE, according to school leaders : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwL-OBLC7is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwL-OBLC7is Also consider these people in your answer to be the slaves of the govt. because we live in a free world and yet propaganda can be so effective. I can't imagine what the propaganda can be if State raises the child. Yes, Instead of trying to make the economy affordable so that childcare can be affordable, we go ahead and let the states raise our children. Has even the notion of affordability become so foreign that we have forgotten it can exist? I sincerely hope you were joking with this message and this wasn't the first thing which came into your mind.
zombot 8mo ago
Well, that's what happens when the dollar is the idol that people worship. When society collapses because of that, we will have deserved it because we worked our asses off to create the perverse incentives that led us there.
zenware 8mo ago
That being said, a huge amount of the work being done (arguably all of it) is in support of humans. It would follow then that the more of us there are the more work is required, whereas if there were fewer of us less work is required. — I think the real concerns about birth-rate/population decline come from “borrowing against the future”, if that future never materializes then you cashed bad checks.
- drcxd 8mo ago
  In my opinion, reproduction is based on the idea "borrowing against the future", or Ponzi Scheme, because reproduction is based on the idea that "we would have a better future", but in fact, we will not.
yoz-y 8mo ago
I feel that. I am expecting my first child in a couple of months and the lack of support infrastructure makes me extremely anxious. We don’t have our family around to support us. The cost of services to take care of young children are so high that it makes almost no sense for both parents to continue working. The declining birth rates are truly no surprise.

ffsm8 8mo ago

The Birthrate dropping has multiple causes, none of them have any relation to the topic at hand It's a negative (from the perspective of reproduction) confluence of both social and economic developments. E.g. the death of the traditional gender roles has inevitably reduced birth rates - for multiple reasons to boot. Because on the one hand, the women has am easier time not to commit and just sleep around, consequently becoming uninteresting to men that would've preferred to make a family... But also because biologically, men are more attracted to demure women, which on average will ultimately remove even more attraction, consequently removing even more likelihood of families being built. But that's once again only one factor, you got others too... Like stagnant wages, which force younger people too abstain from making a family simply because the financial situation doesn't allow for it. And if it happens anyway, it's more then likely to end in a broken family instead of something positive Another factor is the availability of choice. Dating apps are available, statistically women all try to get into a relationship with the same 1% of men - who sleep around and cause toxicity all around. The remaining 99% become bitter and consequently... Are even less attractive to women. Just to be clear, in case someones brain has completely rotten through and interprets any blame into my comment: neither sex is responsible for this. Our society just decided to move on from gender roles, for supposedly economic reasons. The consequences are felt both for women and men, with both feeling less valued and miserable on average. Which understandably makes them less attractive to the other sex again. Still not a full list of factors at play btw, there is also the builtup of micro plastics in the men's balls, harming sperm production along with normalization of pornography, reducing the sexual frustration of people and consequently making them less driven to find partners. There is also the influencer industry, purposefully encouraging para social relationships, satisfying the social urges of a lot of people, consequently reducing the likelihood of them seeking out friendships... Reducing the likelihood of meeting other people and thus reducing the likelihood of getting a natural relationship through that. Third places have also mostly vanished, likely related to multiple of these effects to etc pp

michaelhoney 8mo ago
[flagged]
- collingreen 8mo ago
  Perhaps there's a constructive version of this because I agree with the sentiment but it's a little harsh - dude is obviously feeling very betrayed and left out of society and either falling down the incel tunnel or doing recruiting for it. There's some fallacies here like "anyone not acting in stereotypical Protestant gender roles must therefore be recklessly promiscuous" and that if some people don't want to have kids with some women then therefore -nobody- will do it. Good luck out there everybody - the world changes in fascinating ways and it can definitely run some folks over but try not to get jaded and fall down a despair spiral.
  - ffsm8 8mo ago
    > There's some fallacies here like "anyone not acting in stereotypical Protestant gender roles must therefore be recklessly promiscuous" That fallacy isn't in there. Also, I would like to point out that almost all women have had more then 0 sexual partners before wedding. Hence your statement would actually be kinda correct of you remove the "recklessly". And that's definitely another contributer to declining birth rates/families - because neither of them will feel remotely as committed to each other then they would've otherwise. None of these are singular causes. They're all contributing to the whole situation. Which is precisely why I never made any such fallacy in my earlier comment.
    - notpachet 8mo ago
      > Also, I would like to point out that almost all women have had more then 0 sexual partners before wedding. Hence your statement would actually be kinda correct of you remove the "recklessly". Having premarital sex is not everyone's definition of "promiscuous".
      - 8mo ago

Root_Denied 8mo ago

It's basically a "Tragedy of the Commons" situation across the board.

wazoox 8mo ago
Sort of. With the salient point that nothing really exists, but the commons. The individual is nothing without the whole society around.
- nostrademons 8mo ago
  Also sort of. Some form of social organization seems to be necessary for humans to function. But humans are also pretty good (well - relatively speaking, it usually seems to require a war or revolution) at changing that form of social organization as technology, population, and environmental conditions change. I think this is a very likely outcome. We aren't going to get continued population growth next generation; a significant number of the people needed for it will never be born. This is going to have ripple effects across wide swaths of political and economic organization. But you'll have pockets of population that basically barricade themselves off from the wider economic world and insulate themselves from its collapse, and then the people within them, along with whatever form of social organization they happen to adopt.

overfeed 8mo ago

> When you have no workforce, you'll do no work - hell, there is just...nothing, nonexistence, no consumers either. But for a beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders https://www.insidehook.com/culture/story-tom-toro-new-yorker-climate-cartoon https://www.insidehook.com/culture/story-tom-toro-new-yorker...

qball 8mo ago

>Prospective parents are saying "fuck that shit" and simply choosing not to have children. Or in other words, they've been priced out of the market. If there will be no sociofinancial niche for their children to inhabit this is in fact the rational course of action. See also: South Korean current birth rates.

NotMichaelBay 8mo ago
> See also: South Korean current birth rates. For anyone wondering, the South Korean birth rate is currently ~0.7: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?country=OWID_WRL~KOR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?c...

ipaddr 8mo ago

The answer is to remove the parents. Give birth and let the state raise the child. The parents continue to work and live childless without the costs and responsibilities. Society pays and gives this group an equal playing field.

nostrademons 8mo ago
Kinda like in Brave New World, or The Giver - or, for that matter, in hundreds of orphanages in real life? This doesn't really work either. Having been loved by an attachment figure (usually a parent) seems to be essential to normal psychosocial development. Without it, kids can't really form bonds or groups. They never learn to trust, and without the ability to trust, they can't work in concert with other people. They end up violent and criminal. If you tried to do this society-wide, society would collapse. Everybody would simply try to grab what they could and kill everybody else.
sam345 8mo ago
Sarcasm I'm sure.
jimbokun 8mo ago
Have you ever interacted with actual Homo sapiens?
i_think_so 8mo ago
This is a troll, right? Ha ha? Young Anakin and Leia picnic meme? I think I've seen this movie and it does not have a happy ending.
Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
So Woman have to be pregnant for 9 months for only the state to go take the baby away. Are you gonna suggest that State enforces procreation too? This "answer" that you are saying is this close to being an Eugenics project. A govt. which has its officers arrest/detain babies because of their race and you are saying that these are the people that the babies should be left? 5-year-old boy among four students detained by ICE, according to school leaders : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwL-OBLC7is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwL-OBLC7is Also consider these people in your answer to be the slaves of the govt. because we live in a free world and yet propaganda can be so effective. I can't imagine what the propaganda can be if State raises the child. Yes, Instead of trying to make the economy affordable so that childcare can be affordable, we go ahead and let the states raise our children. Has even the notion of affordability become so foreign that we have forgotten it can exist? I sincerely hope you were joking with this message and this wasn't the first thing which came into your mind.

zombot 8mo ago

Well, that's what happens when the dollar is the idol that people worship. When society collapses because of that, we will have deserved it because we worked our asses off to create the perverse incentives that led us there.

zenware 8mo ago

That being said, a huge amount of the work being done (arguably all of it) is in support of humans. It would follow then that the more of us there are the more work is required, whereas if there were fewer of us less work is required. — I think the real concerns about birth-rate/population decline come from “borrowing against the future”, if that future never materializes then you cashed bad checks.

drcxd 8mo ago
In my opinion, reproduction is based on the idea "borrowing against the future", or Ponzi Scheme, because reproduction is based on the idea that "we would have a better future", but in fact, we will not.

yoz-y 8mo ago

I feel that. I am expecting my first child in a couple of months and the lack of support infrastructure makes me extremely anxious. We don’t have our family around to support us. The cost of services to take care of young children are so high that it makes almost no sense for both parents to continue working. The declining birth rates are truly no surprise.