8 ms·

I see the number of children a couple has as a vote on how many people should exist on earth. If you have 0 or 1 child as a couple, you are voting that there sh

• crooked-v 8y ago
  You're completely overlooking people who would want more children but don't feel they could afford them.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • Robotbeat 8y ago
    ...yup. This is probably most of my generation in their early to mid 20s, which is biologically the best time. Even if they can have one or two, they’re often busy with a degree or trying to eatablish themselves professionally. To get healthcare coverage (which is the responsible thing to do with children), you kind of have to be poor (to qualify for support) or be very successful.
    • greglindahl 8y ago
      Getting healthcare depends on where you live, not just how how successful you are. I live in California, and even before Obamacare, I could already buy healthcare for a family without being "very successful". Most Europeans are probably scratching their heads at the entire concept that you introduced. And yes, that's a part of the reason I no longer live in South Carolina, which doesn't have Obamacare.
  • kaycebasques 8y ago
    That seems implicitly related to reducing population. E.g. I’ve heard that hunter-gatherers adjusted their populations depending on whether there was lean or bountiful food. What you’re mentioning seems to be the modern equivalent of that.
    • phamilton 8y ago
      > hunter-gatherers adjusted their populations depending on whether there was lean or bountiful food I almost feel like that's self regulating. Scarcity of food results in malnourishment which if it doesn't kill anyone directly, will result in other sickness being more likely to kill people. Same with children surviving to adulthood.
      • zasz 8y ago
        It is, but some foraging societies used infanticide as well.
  • fjsolwmv 8y ago
    The number of people who are poor enough to choose to have fewwer kids, yet rich enough to maintain effective birth control, is a narrow sliver.
• pesfandiar 8y ago
  You're grossly overestimating how much an average person cares about anything outside of their family. The decision to have one or more children depends on many other factors (parents' character, their economic status, social safety, ...) before it even gets to any idealistic activism.
  • HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
    So much this. Altruistic, considerate people who hem and haw over how their decisions effect others grossly over estimate other human beings. Take a walk along the side of a high speed road and look at all the garbage thrown there. People don't give a shit.
    • greglindahl 8y ago
      Wait, so I should not worry about my personal ethics, but should only consider how shitty everyone else is? I don't think ethics works that way.
      • HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
        I never advised anyone to do anything. I just described some things I've noticed.
        • greglindahl 8y ago
          Ah. I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean, then, thanks for attempting to clarify, but I'm still completely confused. Altruistic people are generally altruistic because they want to be altruistic for their own personal pleasure, not because they expect anyone else to be like them. So how does "grossly over estimate other human beings" come into play? If anything, most altruistic people underestimate other human beings, due to exactly the thing you mention... which are things that everyone has already noticed.
          • HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
• Robotbeat 8y ago
  Disagree. There’s so many people who cannot have biological children (for many reasons), so practically speaking a large percentage of those who can should have at least 3 or the population will decline.
  • squarefoot 8y ago
    Many of us, including the planet under our feet, don't see it as a problem. https://www.populationmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Human-Population-Graph-2050-Title-1024x724.jpg https://www.populationmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03... I don't think there was anyone in the 1960s screaming "oh crap... there's only 3 billions of us around here!". We're so used to think the now and here as normal conditions that we lose focus on the global trend which is absolutely disastrous.
    • wool_gather 8y ago
      It is a bit of a problem inasmuch as core values/ideas are often (not always, but often) transmitted by family connections. So paradoxically, concern for the planet leading you to not have children could reduce the relative number of people who share your concern. Then again, there are other memes that lead not just to lack of reproduction, but directly to the death of the memeholder, so maybe it's not such a big deal. Still, just another thing to wonder/worry about.
      • squarefoot 8y ago
        Interesting point. Also culture could play a role here; it is possible that concerns about overpopulation are primarily shared among those people who are less responsible for it (living in "western" industrialized countries), so that by having less children they rather reduce the number of people sensitive to the problem than limiting overpopulation in significant figures.
        • TangoTrotFox 8y ago
          It's not just concern on this one issue. In general fertility tends to be strongly correlated with low education, low income, and high religiosity. This is true both inter and intra nationally. Think about what this means. Currently each day about 353,000 babies are born. As people who are educated, wealthy, and secular choose to not reproduce to the point of replacement - it is in a way condemning the demographics of those 353,000 children. I tend to be aligned with you in the view that Earth having fewer people would is not a problem, but at the same time demographic collapse is very much a real issue. As the only people considering these things would likely be the people that ideally should be pumping out babies left and right if we want to create a better planet not only for humanity but even for the planet itself. And as an aside this is of course not to say that no great things will come of those 353,000 born into less than desirable situations. But on average people's outcomes tend to be very strongly linked to those of their parents.
• learc83 8y ago
  Beyond that fact that the Earth's future population isn't the number one factor in the decision for most couples, 2 children is still below the replacement rate.
  • robocat 8y ago
    Strangely enough 2 is not the replacement rate. One birth per death is the replacement rate. The world population can be increased by everyone having children earlier, or dieing later. Puzzle: Every couple in Binary Town has twins (boy and girl) at age 32. Then half the population stops reproducing, but the other half change to reproducing at age 16. What happens to the population?
    • Nasrudith 8y ago
      Replacement rate depends on the death rate to be precise. If humanity had stuck with three children per couple at most throughout its entire history it would almost certainly be extinct. 2 is only the replacement rate for 'literally immortal up until a certain date' - morbidly with a corresponding high death rate the number could be 'greater than biologically the theoretical biological limits'. Binary town's birth rate would go down initially due to the loss of participation reducing the reproducing generation by half but the time between generations being cut by half would mean an effective doubling of the per person rate. Without knowing their rate of death we can't know what happens to their true population over time and it goes without saying that the assumptions will break if their reproductive strategies change yet again.
    • TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      This is the wrong way of looking at things. 2 is always the replacement rate except in the case of an immortal population. You're not considering that you reach an equilibrium between deaths and births after one generational cycle. Imagine for simplicity that everybody gives birth at 1 and dies at 4. Let's look at when people have two children, starting with a genesis population of 10. ---------------- Year 1: age 1 = 10 births = 10 deaths = 0 ---------------- Year 2: age 1 = 10 age 2 = 10 births = 10 deaths = 0 ---------------- Year 3: age 1 = 10 age 2 = 10 age 3 = 10 births = 10 deaths = 0 ---------------- Year 4: age 1 = 10 age 2 = 10 age 3 = 10 age 4 = 10 births = 10 deaths = 10 ---------------- Year 5: age 1 = 10 age 2 = 10 age 3 = 10 age 4 = 10 births = 10 deaths = 10 ---------------- Etc. The only way to see a longterm increase in population is with a birth rate > 2, and similarly the only way to see a longterm decline is a birth rate of < 2. 'Longterm' in this case meaning just one generation, at which point the equilibrium kicks in. Of course not everybody dies at the same time, but the effect is identical when you look at an average with some distribution - which is what we have. However, this also makes the assumption that everybody makes it to the age of fertility and that everybody is fertile. Both assumptions are incorrect so, in reality, the equilibrium point for population stability is even greater than 2. In reality we would expect to see a decline in population if each couple had exactly two children.
• notadoc 8y ago
  Interesting way to look at it, I have never met anyone with that particular way of thinking about children. Most people I know made decisions about having children in terms of resources. Mainly, about available time and/or money.
  • kaycebasques 8y ago
    I don’t see these two ideas as at odds with each other. Maybe people aren’t explicitly calculating that they should reduce the population, but deciding not to have children because of lack of resources seems like a subconscious vote to reduce the population, in my view.
    • Fnoord 8y ago
      There's another option besides "not having children": "having less children."
• greglindahl 8y ago
  As someone with 0 children, I disagree with you. I'm voting that I personally don't want to raise children, and think that people who don't want to have children should not have them. My brother and sister like raising children, and have 3 each. Doesn't that affinity play a large role in people's choices?
• kaycebasques 8y ago
  A lot of responses disagreeing with this idea. I’ll lend some balance and mention that I’ve had the exact same reasoning in my own plans for the future. I won’t pretend to argue that I’m normal or abnormal, though. Haven’t done any research on the topic.
  • greglindahl 8y ago
    I can totally see that you are voting on that issue with your choice, however, does that mean that everyone else is doing the same?
    • kaycebasques 8y ago
      Like I said, I’m not claiming to be normal or abnormal, meaning I don’t know if it extends to others. You’re not providing evidence to the contrary, either, so you’re word is as good as mine.
      • greglindahl 8y ago
        "This idea" is that everyone is voting, not that you personally were voting, or that I personally was voting. If you instead wanted to provide yourself as an anecdote, that's different. Sorry that I was unclear. Personal anecdotes are quite different from claiming something is a global rule. I was just trying to double-check that you were giving an anecdote.
        • kaycebasques 8y ago
          Ah, got it. Yes, I was just countering the anecdotes against this idea with my own anecdote for it. Thanks for clearing up the confusion.
          • greglindahl 8y ago
            Excellent. Thanks. I totally agree that I have a few friends who are like you: they're very concerned about the planet and that affects their childbearing plans. Me, that affects what I eat, but it didn't change my childbearing plans.
• danieltillett 8y ago
  No it is natural selection in action. Those that have children are of the future, those that don't are of the past. There is a huge shortage of smart people on the planet to solve the many problems that exist. The best way we know to create more smart people is to encourage smart people to have more children. Unfortunately we seem especially good as a society at identifying smart people and discouraging them from having children.
  • handbanana 8y ago
    Can you explain/expand on why you think it’s natural selection?
    • danieltillett 8y ago
      The number of children you have is selection (in an evolutionary sense) and because it is not a trait being selected for directly by anyone (we are not trying to breed people that want or don't children), the selection is being done by nature. The environment of humans has radically changed and we are undergoing very strong selection and adaption to this new environment. In the past the number of children you had survive to adulthood was tied to the amount of food you could bring in (as with most animals). In the new human environment the number of children you have is a consequence of how resistant you are to the cultural meme that children are undesirable.
    • phamilton 8y ago
      I think he meant more that natural selection is essentially summarized as how many children various groups have. And for some weird reason, natural selection is biasing away from "smart people".
      • dabbledash 8y ago
        I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out. Natural selection disfavors a strategy that requires significant investment in non-reproductive activity (education, career ladder-climbing) during prime reproductive years.
• dsnuh 8y ago
  How many votes have you cast?
• Apocryphon 8y ago
  You could also adopt one or more children. How does that affect this calculus?
• codingdave 8y ago
  Are you under the impression that all families exactly hit their target number of children? Some people cannot have any children, but desperately want them. Some have one or two, but want more. Some people... well, not everything is planned. I know a woman who wanted one more child, and had triplets. And that isn't even getting into people who foster and adopt children. In short, while I can see the logic in your stance... it has little bearing on the reality of creating a family.
• phkahler 8y ago
  I like the idea of SJWs voluntarily halting their genetic lines.