Often, when we look at disincentives for childbearing, we think of them in terms of opportunity costs for the individual. But if children are cumulatively being considered a societal good, we should also weigh the cumulative opportunity costs to the individuals as a societal tradeoff. It seems to me that Ron Hosh's substack (of "luxury belief" fame) generally lives up to its tagline of "general incoherence," but he raised this point/question in this post. The kids have to come from somewhere; what tradeoff(s) should society make?
Teenage pregnancy? Major tradeoff against developing the human capital of the parents and, thusly, the parents' ability to develop the human capital of the children. (And, if you want to follow the HBD line of inquiry, you might hypothesize dysgenic selection effects.)
College students? Lesser tradeoff than above, but same general issue.
20-something professionals? We're taking human capital out of the economy, just after investing in its development, rather than trying to maximize its compound interest.
Hosh also brings up geography and sexual orientation (same-sex couples using IVF is a thing), though I don't think the tradeoffs here are as clear.
Have any of you thought about this? My answer to "Which couples should be having more children" is "All the couples who don't have as many children as they want" which I don't think cleaves cleanly enough across any demographic to give a more clear tradeoff than the subsidies required to support the children not-conceived out of financial concern. But others here are more open to social engineering than I am.
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Notes -
I disagree (and, also, fuck you)
This is a good thing. Low-T dorks with sinecure wordcel jobs shouldn't be reproducing.
I agree! In fact, earning that stable job, and keeping it, should be the kind of behavior and life pattern that results in lots of mate choices.
But it isn't because of a whole host of anti-social and technology driven causes that have made hyper-individualism the basic mode of western human personal evolution.
This is exactly what @hydroacetylene is talking about - we're not reproducing enough because, at the median, everyone is stupid and selfish and not rewarding others' pro-social behavior and choices.
And this is the the issue-behind the issue of the fertility crisis - we're not really a pro-social society anymore. We like laws that say you can't shoot me in the face and you can't take my stuff, but we're not interested in creating communities (and a society, which is a meta-community) that serves a meaningful purposes. We want a shitload of personal level guarantees backed by the lethal force of the state so that we can laugh "HAHA ITS MY RIGHTS" through a mouthful of lard sandwich.
If you're a hyper-individualist, you dont really care about the people down the street so long as they aren't allowed to fuck with you and your shit. You certainly don't care about a hypothetical yet-to-be-born-maybe-baby (abortion on demand!) and you absolutely don't care about a conceptual future culture that outlives you be centuries. That's for the "lower IQ more ohrtodox religious kind" with their fake and gay ideas of absolute truth and divinity. What uncultured assholes. Trump voters, I'd bet.
What am I getting at here, besides a post-christmas eggnog fueled rant? Probably nothing. I'm closing in 1,000 comments on the Motte and I've found most of this effort to be be pointless. I've learned a lot from this website, and it gives me a lot of optimism that the Real Internet isn't dead. There are good thinkers out there.
I ran out of steam.
You already earned a 2-day ban for this post, but apparently you were on a real bender last night. Cut down on the eggnog, I am increasing your ban to 3 days. (In the spirit of Christmas, I am not extending your ban until after the new year.)
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