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Population growth is half of the problem. I do not deny anything you have said, however... What do you make of the DINK couple that has foregone their reproduc

Population growth is half of the problem. I do not deny anything you have said, however... What do you make of the DINK couple that has foregone their reproductive rights for the sake of "environmental concerns" but still get themselves a couple of pets and treat them as upper-middleclass children. One would say, disabled children that are never going to become productive members of this society and most likely will be dead by age 16. Maybe there would be enough room in this world for the people we already have - at least for long enough that the correction in overpopulation comes from the fertility rate rather than otherwise - if those of us at the top of the pecking order would not insist on wasting so much real wealth in our natural but unexamined impulses.

wutbrodo 11y ago
This comparison is a really bad one. The amount of resources a dog consumes is very very very very far below the cost of raising a child (~$250k in the US, up to age 18). And that's just til age 18! There's another 80 years of adult life after that, and the rate of consumption only increases (especially if they themselves have children etc). I think your key error here is counting unproductivity of the pets as an issue: from the perspective of resource consumption, that's not a bad thing. This may sound like a pedantic complaint about your point, but the fact of the matter is that the average DINK couple who decides not to have kids is going to be using massively less resources, despite having a lavish lifestyle as a substitute. I agree that discretionary resource consumption is a perhaps-underrated concern when compared with raw population, but the point you're making really has nothing to do with that.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > And that's just til age 18! There's another 80 years of adult life after that Well, if you assume an average life expectancy of 98 years, but I'm not sure why you would do that.
  - wutbrodo 11y ago
    I can think of a couple of reasons: 1) I'm not obsessive enough to think that making an estimate of life expectancy far in the future is a good use of time when it has no impact on the point I'm making. 2) More directly: more than 25% of 16 y/o's are expected to live to 100[1]. We're talking in this thread about rich DINKs in high-income countries, and income and life expectancy are correlated; According to a recent study by UMich, those in the top quintile of income born in _1940_ have a life expectancy at age 55 of 90 years old[2]. It seems an extraordinary claim to say that life expectancy won't climb by (at least) another few years for the richest cohort of people in the world over the next ~century. If you're going to be childishly pedantic, at least try and be accurate. [1]http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/04/live-to-100-likely http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/04/live-to... [2] http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/04/18/the-richer-you-are-the-older-youll-get/ http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/04/18/the-richer-you-are... I'm aware that life expectancy at age 55 is not the same as LE at age 18, but at-birth life expectancy numbers aren't available broken-down by income, for obvious reasons. It turns out that (unsurprisingly), the rich have a very low mortality rate before age 55, so this doesn't particularly skew the numbers.
- TheGrassyKnoll 11y ago
  The real win is that their non-existant spawn use zero resources in the future.
shanemhansen 11y ago
I would be very interested to see an actual peer reviewed study on this. Until that happens I'm happy to throw my own uninformed opinion on the internet based off a sample size of me. My first thought would be that as a DINK with pets the resource usage of my 2 spayed and neutered dogs which weren't bred on a puppy farm is miniscule compared to even one child who goes through diapers, clothes, eventually builds a house, and will forever contribute to filling up our landfills. Furthermore that one child is unlikely to be spayed and neutered so they will contribute to exponential population pressure. Whatever the resource consumption rate is for owning spayed and neutered pets (per couple per year). It's eventually going to be dwarfed by exponentially increasing resource consumption rates of "productive members of society". I really would prefer if people would produce a little less.

wutbrodo 11y ago

This comparison is a really bad one. The amount of resources a dog consumes is very very very very far below the cost of raising a child (~$250k in the US, up to age 18). And that's just til age 18! There's another 80 years of adult life after that, and the rate of consumption only increases (especially if they themselves have children etc). I think your key error here is counting unproductivity of the pets as an issue: from the perspective of resource consumption, that's not a bad thing. This may sound like a pedantic complaint about your point, but the fact of the matter is that the average DINK couple who decides not to have kids is going to be using massively less resources, despite having a lavish lifestyle as a substitute. I agree that discretionary resource consumption is a perhaps-underrated concern when compared with raw population, but the point you're making really has nothing to do with that.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> And that's just til age 18! There's another 80 years of adult life after that Well, if you assume an average life expectancy of 98 years, but I'm not sure why you would do that.
- wutbrodo 11y ago
  I can think of a couple of reasons: 1) I'm not obsessive enough to think that making an estimate of life expectancy far in the future is a good use of time when it has no impact on the point I'm making. 2) More directly: more than 25% of 16 y/o's are expected to live to 100[1]. We're talking in this thread about rich DINKs in high-income countries, and income and life expectancy are correlated; According to a recent study by UMich, those in the top quintile of income born in _1940_ have a life expectancy at age 55 of 90 years old[2]. It seems an extraordinary claim to say that life expectancy won't climb by (at least) another few years for the richest cohort of people in the world over the next ~century. If you're going to be childishly pedantic, at least try and be accurate. [1]http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/04/live-to-100-likely http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/04/live-to... [2] http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/04/18/the-richer-you-are-the-older-youll-get/ http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/04/18/the-richer-you-are... I'm aware that life expectancy at age 55 is not the same as LE at age 18, but at-birth life expectancy numbers aren't available broken-down by income, for obvious reasons. It turns out that (unsurprisingly), the rich have a very low mortality rate before age 55, so this doesn't particularly skew the numbers.
TheGrassyKnoll 11y ago
The real win is that their non-existant spawn use zero resources in the future.

shanemhansen 11y ago

I would be very interested to see an actual peer reviewed study on this. Until that happens I'm happy to throw my own uninformed opinion on the internet based off a sample size of me. My first thought would be that as a DINK with pets the resource usage of my 2 spayed and neutered dogs which weren't bred on a puppy farm is miniscule compared to even one child who goes through diapers, clothes, eventually builds a house, and will forever contribute to filling up our landfills. Furthermore that one child is unlikely to be spayed and neutered so they will contribute to exponential population pressure. Whatever the resource consumption rate is for owning spayed and neutered pets (per couple per year). It's eventually going to be dwarfed by exponentially increasing resource consumption rates of "productive members of society". I really would prefer if people would produce a little less.