See, I think it's all moot because human labor will shortly cease to matter. But ignoring that:
The people who are opting for pregnancy in a considered manner, especially those who want to go through IVF and potentially embryo selection, want a baby more than is the norm, or they wouldn't bother. People who adopt instead of accepting being childless probably want kids more than average after all.
Likewise, I would expect implants to suppress the birth rate vs oral contraception, because the implant has to be intentionally removed by a doctor, while the pill might just run out or be forgotten (or "forgotten" with some subconscious drive toward having children).
My exam in about a dozen hours leaves me well prepared to field that point. You know why implants are offered in the first place? It's precisely because they reduce unwanted births.
Some poor 18 year old girl is scared of being knocked up? We give her an IUD. A 26 yo woman, we ask her if is planning a family. No? Or a 36 yo who says she's got 3 kids and not one more? Then an IUD, or perhaps an implant, which can be trivially removed for any reason, let alone if they desire kids.
Leaving aside total birth rates, where I expect changes to be minor, this is also helping mitigate dysgenics. A lower class girl with low time preferences has far lower odds of being knocked up again by her deadbeat boyfriend, and then has every opportunity to remove it when she legitimately feels ready.
See, I think it's all moot because human labor will shortly cease to matter.
Labor isn't the only reason it can be good to have children and grandchildren. Maybe they'll be good, interesting people. Human labor would also cease to matter if there were no humans, but most people don't want that.
The people who are opting for pregnancy in a considered manner, especially those who want to go through IVF and potentially embryo selection, want a baby more than is the norm, or they wouldn't bother.
Yes, and that's fine, if someone is already doing IVF, then embryo selection makes sense. I was pushing back about the claim above that "everyone except some religious extremists and the dirt poor (who should and in many nations will get it for free) will do it," which sounds awfully extreme, and I would certainly not want that to become a base level expectation at anywhere near our current level of technology.
I wasn't necessarily saying that IUDs and implants are bad, just that any impediment that requires expert removal will likely reduce births.
Anecdote: despite being 32 and married when I had my first child, I would probably not have had children if I had to intentionally make plans about it ahead of time, vs putting off turning in the renewal paperwork for the oral contraception. We got stable jobs and house because we had a child, not the other way around. Otherwise, we would probably still be wandering around erratically employed and houseless.
This is the kind of marginal situation pro-natalists seem most interested in pushing on. People who are basically pro-social, educated, able to form a stable relationship, mid twenties or older, but aren't in any hurry to settle down and have kids, because that would be a hard change. Short time preference selects for irresponsibly having sex without forethought or precautions. Long time preference selects for planning for and then having the number of kids the person actually wants. But there are a lot of people in the middle who don't necessarily want to raise a baby in the medium term, because babies are hard, but kind of know it would be better to form a family than not.
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Gaashk 10mo ago·Edited 10mo ago
People who are basically pro-social, educated, able to form a stable relationship, mid twenties or older, but aren't in any hurry to settle down and have kids, because that would be a hard change.
Which is why family formation happens far more often when socioeconomic conditions are "pro-social, educated enough, able to form a stable relationship, mid-teens or older". Robbing the young of their youth- or in this case taxing it into the fucking ground with the excuse of [insert your favorite here]- has significant and very real costs on time frames long enough that they become very easy to impose, yet very difficult to rectify, through democratic means (especially because the education-managerial complex has become a welfare system so large that any attempt to reduce it would tear any democratic government apart, and that's before considering that destroying this system of welfare would overwhelmingly affect women).
As such, the youth are getting the message "you'll never be considered a[n adult] human being[, the definition of which implies you're] able to start a family until you're well past your reproductive years" loud and clear, and they settle on playing video games until they die. This state of affairs is then subsidized by exactly the wrong people: that being "middle-class families who had children 30 years ago", and they aren't exactly energized to change things since they tend to be the kind of people who believe that nothing is wrong with this system in the first place specifically because they were the last generation to escape its consequences as children and the first generation of adults to benefit from the welfare.
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Notes -
See, I think it's all moot because human labor will shortly cease to matter. But ignoring that:
The people who are opting for pregnancy in a considered manner, especially those who want to go through IVF and potentially embryo selection, want a baby more than is the norm, or they wouldn't bother. People who adopt instead of accepting being childless probably want kids more than average after all.
My exam in about a dozen hours leaves me well prepared to field that point. You know why implants are offered in the first place? It's precisely because they reduce unwanted births.
Some poor 18 year old girl is scared of being knocked up? We give her an IUD. A 26 yo woman, we ask her if is planning a family. No? Or a 36 yo who says she's got 3 kids and not one more? Then an IUD, or perhaps an implant, which can be trivially removed for any reason, let alone if they desire kids.
Leaving aside total birth rates, where I expect changes to be minor, this is also helping mitigate dysgenics. A lower class girl with low time preferences has far lower odds of being knocked up again by her deadbeat boyfriend, and then has every opportunity to remove it when she legitimately feels ready.
Labor isn't the only reason it can be good to have children and grandchildren. Maybe they'll be good, interesting people. Human labor would also cease to matter if there were no humans, but most people don't want that.
Yes, and that's fine, if someone is already doing IVF, then embryo selection makes sense. I was pushing back about the claim above that "everyone except some religious extremists and the dirt poor (who should and in many nations will get it for free) will do it," which sounds awfully extreme, and I would certainly not want that to become a base level expectation at anywhere near our current level of technology.
I wasn't necessarily saying that IUDs and implants are bad, just that any impediment that requires expert removal will likely reduce births.
Anecdote: despite being 32 and married when I had my first child, I would probably not have had children if I had to intentionally make plans about it ahead of time, vs putting off turning in the renewal paperwork for the oral contraception. We got stable jobs and house because we had a child, not the other way around. Otherwise, we would probably still be wandering around erratically employed and houseless.
This is the kind of marginal situation pro-natalists seem most interested in pushing on. People who are basically pro-social, educated, able to form a stable relationship, mid twenties or older, but aren't in any hurry to settle down and have kids, because that would be a hard change. Short time preference selects for irresponsibly having sex without forethought or precautions. Long time preference selects for planning for and then having the number of kids the person actually wants. But there are a lot of people in the middle who don't necessarily want to raise a baby in the medium term, because babies are hard, but kind of know it would be better to form a family than not.
Which is why family formation happens far more often when socioeconomic conditions are "pro-social, educated enough, able to form a stable relationship, mid-teens or older". Robbing the young of their youth- or in this case taxing it into the fucking ground with the excuse of [insert your favorite here]- has significant and very real costs on time frames long enough that they become very easy to impose, yet very difficult to rectify, through democratic means (especially because the education-managerial complex has become a welfare system so large that any attempt to reduce it would tear any democratic government apart, and that's before considering that destroying this system of welfare would overwhelmingly affect women).
As such, the youth are getting the message "you'll never be considered a[n adult] human being[, the definition of which implies you're] able to start a family until you're well past your reproductive years" loud and clear, and they settle on playing video games until they die. This state of affairs is then subsidized by exactly the wrong people: that being "middle-class families who had children 30 years ago", and they aren't exactly energized to change things since they tend to be the kind of people who believe that nothing is wrong with this system in the first place specifically because they were the last generation to escape its consequences as children and the first generation of adults to benefit from the welfare.
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