PrimalDual

2 yıl öncediscuss

Although I disagree with the malthusian view on the world I still think there is a more important quantitative argument against this viewpoint. A fertility rate significantly below 2 results in an exponential decline in the population with a lag. In other words, fertility rates close to 1 (as seen in japan and korea), result in a sharp population decline a few decades later that could destabilize the society. Even if I concede the anti-human argument I don’t think the environment would benefit from a destabilizing population collapse. A slow gradual fall with rates close but not quite 2 seems like a much better alternative.

PrimalDual

2 yıl öncediscuss

Every time fertility decline comes up I consistently see the same arguments about why fertility is declining: people are just not comfortable enough to want to have children. I just don’t buy this.

I have seen reasons like workspace discrimination, lack of parental leave, economic uncertainty and poverty in general used as reasons why young adults are not choosing to have children and it doesn’t quite make sense to me. Objectively along all those axis, societies have improved with time from the early 1900s and the birth rate keeps falling. Can someone help me understand why European countries keep trying to increase the comfort of their population expecting to increase birth rates? I understand social programs with payouts can be popular and perhaps paying to solve the problem is appealing to the population but I don’t see why we would expect those policies to actually increase fertility. I would understand if this was simply a case of government programs that people like even if they don’t achieve the desired outcome.

I think a much simpler microeconomic analysis explains the decline in fertility: opportunity cost. People in child-bearing age have too much other stuff with a larger expected payout than having children. For example, a lot of people might prefer to work hard to improve their socioeconomic situation or travel the word over raising children. Under this model, more government provided comfort won’t increase fertility because the vast amount of costs in child bearing comes from the opportunity cost. Even in a world without parental discrimination I would find it hard to argue that parents should automatically be promoted in their work but that may actually be the more significant cost. A parent may forgo promotion or other gains for parenting.

I am not sure what a better solution this problem is. We probably need to reframe childbearing in a different way through so that having children is not subject to this type of utilitarian analysis.

PrimalDual

3 yıl öncediscuss

Here is an example of how people in the military making policy decisions think about it[1]. This guy in particular worked as national security advisor.

My take is that it comes from nations avoiding war if they don’t think they can win anything from it. Weakness simply means you cannot stop the enemy from accomplishing their goals. Weakness is definitely not sufficient or necessary. Instead it is the perception of weakness from one party (accurate or not) that may incite violence. A better one liner would be “weakness is provocative”.

[1]https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/17/us-miliitary-strategy-g...

PrimalDual

5 yıl öncediscuss

I strongly agree with your statement. Free sex and love are fine as long as there are no consequences. But sadly even with all our technology there must be consequences since we don’t know of any other way to propagate the species into the future.

For the advocates of sexual libertinism I have a question: how do you ensure male parental investment? As a society we value it and often legally demand it. I certainly could not argue for the alternative. How do you assign fathers under complete sexual liberation? A common thread is that somehow you socialize childrearing but I am seriously skeptical of the scalability of that approach beyond small tribal societies.

PrimalDual

5 yıl öncediscuss

That’s a nice idea but how do you do credit assignment for childrearing purposes? Sadly even in modern society, sex is not entirely unliked from reproduction and we still expect, often legally demand, fathers invest resources in their children. I thought part of the deal with monogamy came from ensuring stable male parental investment and a good way to achieve this is through monogamy as a proxy for fatherhood.

PrimalDual

5 yıl öncediscuss

My understanding is that this is largely the reality already in the dating marketplaces we can measure (dating apps). At least every study with dating app data I have seen shows a small minority of men get the vast majority of female attention.

PrimalDual

5 yıl öncediscuss

I always see people mentioning better employment benefits and more flexibility to increase fertility in working women. Unfortunately, I think this misses a fundamental problem with working and motherhood: opportunity cost. The more driven, promising, smart and successful a woman is, the higher her opportunity cost of having children. You also have to take into account that young people are not just working for current earnings but also investing in their skills for future earnings. It would then be reasonable for young women to simply take advantage of the more relaxed work environment for further career advancement. It’s likely what explains Europe’s low birthrates despite more generous welfare policies. Eventually as people get older their career progression stabilizes and the opportunity cost falls to the point where they can afford to have children. Notice that opportunity cost is not money per say. For example poorer working class people tend to have more children, I suspect, because their opportunity cost is lower. So, in a sense, the poorer you are the more affordable children become.

PrimalDual

5 yıl öncediscuss

I like your approach and I agree that it should lead to better outcomes. Sadly for the less socially adept, it’s not clear to me how to get social interactions from random strangers without having both sides of the equation be uncomfortable. My experience of trying this approach just ends with two uncomfortable people and leaves me with another social misstep to haunt me at night.

Since it sounds like you want to share your experience, would you mind sharing more details of how those first encounters went and why you even decided to talk to those people in the first place? Where do you hangout that you can just casually approach and start chatting up people?

PrimalDual

5 yıl öncediscuss

An element that is often missing from the conversation is the opportunity cost of the employee. A significant portion of a worker’s compensation should to go paying his opportunity cost. I think that despite similar productivity and the recent rise in remote work, an employee’s opportunity cost is reduced if they move to a remote mountain town.

PrimalDual

5 yıl öncediscuss

I agree with your approach to the point I think it’s the only way to really tackle loneliness and making friends. You just have to talk to strangers, often about nothing.

Unfortunately for the less socially trained, the advice in the article seems pretty daunting. It reminds me of of the quote “people won’t remember what you said but they’ll remember how you made then feel”. I am pretty sure I’ve made a few people feel awkward or mildly uncomfortable in my time trying to do this.

Naturally, I’ve gotten better but since it’s not something I do frequently I’m still pretty bad at it. I really wish there were a systematic way to train talking to strangers in an environment where it’s ok to make minor social missteps. Unfortunately it seems to me that such an environment is some stage of development that I missed at an earlier age. Is there some way forward that doesn’t just involve eating the losses as a cost of learning?

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