8 ms·

Try this then: > that never works Citation needed.

by cwmoore 18d ago

b112 18d ago
Ah. An entirely different response, having nothing to do with whatever that 'mine,' business was. It's exceptionally simple. Endless countries around the world have given 'baby bonuses' and 'child dividends' to parents. Money has been thrown at the problem. In many cases, when such programs run, it's profitable to have children. And there's no study needed, as it is a simple fact. And yet? The birth rate keeps dropping across the entire world. As in, every single country across the entire world. You already started with a weird, what seems like perhaps snide response, where you (I guess?) read my comment and misunderstand it. Now, you're just throwing something else. How about, you engage in thoughtful consideration of what I'm saying. It's a very serious problem. We're talking about the extinction of the entire human race. And it's not a result of money. It's not. And it's very, very important to not just say "Well it seems like it's money for me, so who cares, it's money". Because this is a bigger threat than global warming, than nuclear war, then a meteor impact. In such cases, humans would survive. But if we just end up unable to have offspring? Well. Game over. We cannot risk just presuming. See here, in this very same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479324
- Animats 18d ago
  > But if we just end up unable to have offspring? Just not having enough offspring means humans fade out. Breakeven is about 2.1 children per female. We're already on that path. It's not a projection. "Peak Baby", the year with the most births, was 2012. Elementary schools have been closing for years now.
- cwmoore 17d ago
  Usually when I encounter "money never works" it's because (a) it has never been tried and (b) because of simple greed and envy. Reproductive collapse seems like a pet peeve of yours, and while I can offer about 8 billion examples to the contrary, it wasn't the discussion I thought I was participating in.
  - b112 17d ago
    Fair enough on that, but your original response did seem a bit snide. Still, if you're like me, you poke at things when bored, or just notice things you're mildly interested in when you stumble across them. If so? Please keep what I said in mind. It's not a pet peeve of mine, it's just rather startling once you assemble all the data. There are places with idealogical reasons to want to maintain birth rates, and it's been tried for decades. For example, since the 70s, Quebec has wanted to ensure the continuation of its culture, and so was quite sensitive to noticing birth rate decline. It's not like this happened all in the last decade. They've had many programs. A whole, societal approach. And before the collapse in the last 10 to 15 years, Canadian health care was absolutely the best, world class, immensely accessible. So you had: * free, excellent, easily accessible health care. the poorest of the poor having the same health care as someone wealthy * in a province and country among the top standard of living in the world * with immensely generous parental leave * with state run programs to ensure private daycare was cheap and accessible * baby bonuses at the federal level * crazy level provincial/Quebec bonuses for each child, that stacked. * at that time, if you're poor, your child would often get grants, not loans, grants to go to university or college, and it was easily accessible And it never, ever worked. Sometimes rates budged mildly, but it was just never significant. And if you look at the world, if you look at Europe, countries in which even University is free, where having a child is not a burden due to such programs? Birth rates still fell. I guess my point is, people have the wrong reason. And while you feel you have loads of personal examples to the contrary, go back 50, 70 years? Even the poorest people living in squalor in cities, had more kids and were happy to have them. I've seen couples with a smart phone worth $1500, each, and a large flat screen TV, and highly expensive personal computing gear, complain they have no money for kids. Um, no. You have enough money in all that spend, to send your kids to university if you invested just that cash for them today. It's not about wealth. Otherwise every single family at Google, Meta, would have 10 kids. It's about something else. My thoughts are there are two drives. Reproductive and sex. Men embody sex drive, women reproductive drive. Evolutionary scientists will cite the different reproductive methods both men and women have. Men can have 100s or 1000s of offspring, if they are able to bed enough women. Women can only have perhaps 10, if lucky, maybe a few more. The point is, the strategies are different. There is a lot of discussion about what separates a female human, from any other primate or mammal. For example, women don't only go into 'heat', as most larger mammals do, in the spring, they're ready all year long to have offspring. But the mechanisms are still there. And female reproductive drive is very much controlled by genetic expression, the whole process of pregnancy is hormonal (same thing). It's not much of a leap to consider that something is interfering with the female desire for offspring. Then on the male side, sperm rates are down all across the chart, all across the world. People are losing fertility. Having offspring is the rawest, most direct, strongest drive a species has. Nothing is more important for continuance. It's not really under our control. The urges people have to desire a mate, to have intercourse, those aren't conscious desires, and more than being thirsty is. So if you consider that from the female perspective, pregnancy is a drive too, what then? And no, it's not the pill. There are countries where female contraceptives are illegal, where they don't have a choice (recall I mentioned Iran? and every country in the world?). This matter is more important than dealing with anything else on our plate. Anything. Also I'm available for booking at weddings, parties, and graduations.

Try this then: > that never works Citation needed.

by cwmoore 18d ago

Try this then: > that never works Citation needed.

b112 18d ago

Ah. An entirely different response, having nothing to do with whatever that 'mine,' business was. It's exceptionally simple. Endless countries around the world have given 'baby bonuses' and 'child dividends' to parents. Money has been thrown at the problem. In many cases, when such programs run, it's profitable to have children. And there's no study needed, as it is a simple fact. And yet? The birth rate keeps dropping across the entire world. As in, every single country across the entire world. You already started with a weird, what seems like perhaps snide response, where you (I guess?) read my comment and misunderstand it. Now, you're just throwing something else. How about, you engage in thoughtful consideration of what I'm saying. It's a very serious problem. We're talking about the extinction of the entire human race. And it's not a result of money. It's not. And it's very, very important to not just say "Well it seems like it's money for me, so who cares, it's money". Because this is a bigger threat than global warming, than nuclear war, then a meteor impact. In such cases, humans would survive. But if we just end up unable to have offspring? Well. Game over. We cannot risk just presuming. See here, in this very same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479324

Animats 18d ago
> But if we just end up unable to have offspring? Just not having enough offspring means humans fade out. Breakeven is about 2.1 children per female. We're already on that path. It's not a projection. "Peak Baby", the year with the most births, was 2012. Elementary schools have been closing for years now.
cwmoore 17d ago
Usually when I encounter "money never works" it's because (a) it has never been tried and (b) because of simple greed and envy. Reproductive collapse seems like a pet peeve of yours, and while I can offer about 8 billion examples to the contrary, it wasn't the discussion I thought I was participating in.
- b112 17d ago
  Fair enough on that, but your original response did seem a bit snide. Still, if you're like me, you poke at things when bored, or just notice things you're mildly interested in when you stumble across them. If so? Please keep what I said in mind. It's not a pet peeve of mine, it's just rather startling once you assemble all the data. There are places with idealogical reasons to want to maintain birth rates, and it's been tried for decades. For example, since the 70s, Quebec has wanted to ensure the continuation of its culture, and so was quite sensitive to noticing birth rate decline. It's not like this happened all in the last decade. They've had many programs. A whole, societal approach. And before the collapse in the last 10 to 15 years, Canadian health care was absolutely the best, world class, immensely accessible. So you had: * free, excellent, easily accessible health care. the poorest of the poor having the same health care as someone wealthy * in a province and country among the top standard of living in the world * with immensely generous parental leave * with state run programs to ensure private daycare was cheap and accessible * baby bonuses at the federal level * crazy level provincial/Quebec bonuses for each child, that stacked. * at that time, if you're poor, your child would often get grants, not loans, grants to go to university or college, and it was easily accessible And it never, ever worked. Sometimes rates budged mildly, but it was just never significant. And if you look at the world, if you look at Europe, countries in which even University is free, where having a child is not a burden due to such programs? Birth rates still fell. I guess my point is, people have the wrong reason. And while you feel you have loads of personal examples to the contrary, go back 50, 70 years? Even the poorest people living in squalor in cities, had more kids and were happy to have them. I've seen couples with a smart phone worth $1500, each, and a large flat screen TV, and highly expensive personal computing gear, complain they have no money for kids. Um, no. You have enough money in all that spend, to send your kids to university if you invested just that cash for them today. It's not about wealth. Otherwise every single family at Google, Meta, would have 10 kids. It's about something else. My thoughts are there are two drives. Reproductive and sex. Men embody sex drive, women reproductive drive. Evolutionary scientists will cite the different reproductive methods both men and women have. Men can have 100s or 1000s of offspring, if they are able to bed enough women. Women can only have perhaps 10, if lucky, maybe a few more. The point is, the strategies are different. There is a lot of discussion about what separates a female human, from any other primate or mammal. For example, women don't only go into 'heat', as most larger mammals do, in the spring, they're ready all year long to have offspring. But the mechanisms are still there. And female reproductive drive is very much controlled by genetic expression, the whole process of pregnancy is hormonal (same thing). It's not much of a leap to consider that something is interfering with the female desire for offspring. Then on the male side, sperm rates are down all across the chart, all across the world. People are losing fertility. Having offspring is the rawest, most direct, strongest drive a species has. Nothing is more important for continuance. It's not really under our control. The urges people have to desire a mate, to have intercourse, those aren't conscious desires, and more than being thirsty is. So if you consider that from the female perspective, pregnancy is a drive too, what then? And no, it's not the pill. There are countries where female contraceptives are illegal, where they don't have a choice (recall I mentioned Iran? and every country in the world?). This matter is more important than dealing with anything else on our plate. Anything. Also I'm available for booking at weddings, parties, and graduations.