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I am the classic example of a boring suburban upbringing resulting in a penchant for the unsafe (I don't really consider myself self-destructive, but everyone e

• nopassrecover 17y ago
  It's for the best that they are prevented as much as possible from succeeding at this biological imperative (pregnancy) before they have the necessary means and capabilities.
  • rbanffy 17y ago
    We have evolved in a time that, by the time you could hunt, you were old enough to mate. Our society is much more complex than our biology expects.
    • nopassrecover 17y ago
      I do have to wonder if children were brought up socially rather than parentally. I find it hard to imagine a 14 year old being an adequate hunter.
      • araneae 17y ago
        14 year olds can be very mature if they are expected to be. Having to hunt to survive can make you learn to do it well very quickly. Also, clearly you have never lived in the Midwest. Even in some parts of modern day society 14 year old boys are adequate hunters :).
        • nopassrecover 17y ago
          Fair enough. Modern day society has guns and less predators though.
          • gcheong 17y ago
            I believe in most hunter/gatherer societies, the hunters hunt in groups with the older hunters training the younger ones.
          • deleted 17y ago
            [deleted]
  • araneae 17y ago
    Best for what or whom? All the first world countries are below replacement rate, except for the United States. We're at replacement rate only because we have fairly heavy immigration.
    • nopassrecover 17y ago
      On average I would expect increased mother and child birth fatalities for younger births and less ability to care for the children. Teenagers having babies is not the solution to birth rates.
      • abstractbill 17y ago
        Teenagers having babies is not the solution to birth rates. Agreed, but I would go further and say falling birth rates aren't a problem at all (unless you can think of something that requires more than 6 billion people to accomplish).
        • randallsquared 17y ago
          On average, people produce more than they consume. More people is therefore a good for existing people, on the average, because we all get wealthier due to them. (Not to say I'm in favor of teens having babies as a rule, by the way).
          • abstractbill 17y ago
            On average, people produce more than they consume. But we don't produce more than we consume of some resources that seem important to our modern way of life (water, oil, etc). And off the top of my head I can't think of any good reason why having more people would bring us closer to making things like fusion a reality (other than by increasing the need).
            • randallsquared 17y ago
              Well, we won't need fusion for some time; at current wealth-creation rates, fission and solar can keep us well-supplied for a century or more, even without off-planet resources, which are fairly easily available. Water for human needs is not actually very scarce; it's just slightly more expensive than we'd prefer in some locations. Even current oil prices are speeding development of alternatives, and there is a lot of shale oil to help us transition from cheap oil to cheap solar or cheap fission. France has gotten most of its electricity from nuclear fission for decades, and exports power, so it's no longer a question of feasibility -- we know exactly how to solve our energy needs for several (current) lifetimes, and it will cost about what the Iraq war already cost to switch. Basically, there are no particular shortages of anything that will necessarily be critical; the main thing we need to do to get over the hill we can see coming up is to stop braking so hard on the downslope of this hill. :)