Comment Re:Or foregoing kids altogether (Score 1) 342
Fair enough. I don't disagree. It would be expensive to provide incentives to rich, smart people. But perhaps it won't be too hard to provide incentives to poor, smart people
Fair enough. I don't disagree. It would be expensive to provide incentives to rich, smart people. But perhaps it won't be too hard to provide incentives to poor, smart people
> In today's developed countries, there are lots of benefits to not having kids, so people who are smart, intelligent, and wealthy are increasingly avoiding them. Meanwhile, the people likely to have the most kids are people who are less intelligent, poor, have less resources, etc.
If we, as a society, really believe this reasoning, then there are ways to realign incentives, at least until someone screams: eugenics... because that's what it is.
> If you think I was trying to claim freezing eggs will lead to the decline of human intelligence you're an idiot.
I don't post based on what you think. I have no access to that info nor should I be expected to. I post based on what you post.
Personally, I thought that the opposite is true...that people who have kids are selfish (and I may yet be one among those selfish people - not decided yet)... since they are adding kids to a planet that can do with a lot fewer of them.
The "replenishment" argument has not made sense in centuries. Not having a baby is the most green thing one can do. Babies have bigger carbon footprints than *anything* else you can have and most probably (unless some revolution of green technologies hits soon) more than everything else you do.
Parents having children later in life also exerts some downward pressure on population growth, even if we retain fertility rates. So more power to those who choose this technology.
Yes, but something tells me that these women would not be wanting to have 3 kids like you, perhaps just the token kid to be a parent at all... or at most two. You can do that at a grandparent age.
At a later age, I also imagine that a parent would be a bit more wise about being a parent... and generally have a better understanding about how to deal with people, kids or otherwise. A more emotionally mature household might also effect kids differently.
I am just speculating of course. I wonder what the stats are on fertility rates of parents who start late and take this route. I also wonder what the performance stats of kids are when raised by older parents. I know autism risk goes up, among other things... but that's for unfrozen eggs of natural late motherhood. We know that kids of young parents (as in teen mothers) don't do as well, intellectually, as those from older parents. Does that relationship taper off? or does it continue linearly?
This is a fairly common pattern for studies. You have a strong suspicion. Then you do a study, which is to collect and analyze the data systematically. That way, a principled debate may be had and further efforts may refine our understanding. Without basing it on data and method, it will just be a shouting match; your opinion against mine. Politics & ideologies vs. science.
The common understanding of science - that scientists do studies without some an expectation of results at some level, and simply walk into results in complete serendipity, is a myth. The purpose of studies is also to quantify the strength of expected relationship with a probability of error.
So yes, doing studies for things you might consider to be common truths is not silly at all.
The thing is: this is not *true* capitalism. Adam Smith's core assumption about capitalism working was about people providing services NOT being able to co-ordinate among themselves, price-fix, create non-compete agreements and form monopolies. If anyone is lobbying, buying laws etc. we are no longer talking about capitalism or free market.
What we see now in advanced (or at least, complicated) markets is not pure capitalism at all. The only relevance of the term today is that it is used as an emotional term in political rhetoric... like freedom. Same goes for *true* communism. Neither is feasible or sensible in the world we live.
And it is not a choice between these two extremes either. What we have today is something much more complex, with almost a combination of every economic idea that ever was. We need another ground breaking economist to make sense of this all.
> The Western world decided to shift from a growth system, where women bear and raise children and the able bodied population slowly increases, to a system where the women enter the work force and children are few in number.
I will try to give a greater context than what a reading of actuary tables might give a young insurance agent. The roots of the current condition are far deeper than any single social revolution of any generation.
Yes, women entering the work force had an effect of natural decline in population growth. They were a sort of reserve capacity. Yes, this eventually will have a depressing effect on the economy. We still have some more reserve capacity, namely, expanding the work years of the population in reasonable ways by creating new opportunities for the elderly to be productive and remain engaged in society and be dependent for fewer years. After exhausting that last bit of reserve, we will perhaps truly stagnate.
However, relying on population growth is no longer sustainable. The human population has not slowly increased in the last few centuries, it had *exploded*. UK, for instance, increased its population by 2x in 1500 years (0-1500) and 20x in the 500 years after. While I am not suggesting that it should implode, it must go into a decline for centuries to come if we expect to thrive on this planet, long term. The environmental pressure and resource drainage initiated by your generation, and continued by ours, is spectacular. The difference between the environmental footprint of poor rural nations and the most prosperous nations today is 100-150x.
The western (and especially US) experience of abundance since WWII is also anomalous. It relied on the huge productivity differentials from the rest of the world. Now the world is slowly equalizing as the other populations also tap into their reserve capacities. So once again, to expect beyond the prosperity of your generation, baring another fundamental technology revolution, is not reasonable.
We will stagnate. But in context of what humanity went through, through our history (wars, disease, famine, ignorance), current "stagnation", which may last for centuries, is not that horrible, just mildly annoying. So we won't have even larger houses, trinkets and whatever that we don't really need. Is it really that natural or sustainable for everyone to want vacations on the other side of the planet? We still will lead relatively secure, healthy & engaged lives and that's enough.
The world was stagnant for much of its history. The growth spurt, the adolescence of mankind, from the industrial revolution onward, will have to slow at some point. The economists are simply wrong to target growth to the exclusion or detriment of everything else (in human growth terms - its wishing for Gigantism or taking steroids: ultimately the piper needs to be paid). It is OK for humans to settle down at this standard of living. We can think of growth once again, after it is viable to leave this planet. Now, more than ever, it is important for humanity to understand satisfaction.
> They are devised by 20-35 year old academics with little teaching experience and a desperate need to get enough publications to be put on tenure track.
Do you have any evidence to back that up?
It is extremely difficult for young academics to get published without data.
Otherwise, I am calling a BS on your post because there are no such things as 20 year old academics. So it appears that you are pulling things from air. And that would be ironical, since you are the one posting data free assertions.
That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. We all read 1984. You don't seem to understand when to apply it. That also goes to the poster with Niemoller quote above.
I suggest you actually read about Singapore. They have the finest schools in the world and have the most well educated and most well informed public – by objective metrics. They have highest levels of Internet access with no political censorship. They don't have a problem of propaganda. Its not even relevant for a small multicultural city state (with heavy international traffic, no less) that Singapore is. I'd say Singaporeans know world history and world affairs a lot better than citizens of any country, including your own. You should leave your cliches at the door while discussing Singapore. You could not have picked a worse target. If I knew how to get a job there, I would move there.
First, they came for... what?
There is no progressive erosion of civil liberties (as you would understand them in US) in Singapore AFAIK. To lose something gradually, you first have to have it. They were always like this and did not get worse.
> 90% of US murders are committed by blacks against blacks
That's not true. I think you are confusing total homicide rate with intra-racial homicide rate.
"93% of black victims murdered by blacks"
The actual figure is 52%.
"According to the US Department of Justice, blacks accounted for 52.5% of homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008, with whites 45.3% and Native Americans and Asians 2.2%"
That said, homicide rate in African-Americans is still very high - "The offending rate for blacks was almost 8 times higher than whites, and the victim rate 6 times higher".
> Draconian punishments for even minor offenses will make a place safe, doesn't mean that they are doing it right.
Incarceration rates per 100K
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Singapore: 230
US: 716
Capital punishment:
It was true that a couple of decades ago, they did this a lot (ranked 2nd then). Now they seem to be doing it 5 - 10 times less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
4 were executed in 2011. None in 2010.
When I was in US, I was very puzzled at the lack of empathy in public discourse towards prison rape. This was especially surprising since US leads the world in incarceration rate (3.5 times the supposedly âoeevery thing is a crimeâ Singapore) - so it is not even as if prison is reserved for the worst of the worst, with non-violent offenders frequently jailed, let alone the argument of punishing as sentenced and nothing more.
However, I don't understand your chain of reasoning. You argued that there is significant amount of rape when prisons are taken in account and then go on to say...
> Rape has the lowest occurrence rate in the US of any violent crimeâ.
> Men are several times more likely to be KILLED.
Clearly not, even with just using numbers you list.
According to Human Rights Watch though
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/200...
âoe4.5 percent of the state and federal prisoners surveyed reported sexual victimization in the past 12 months. Given a national prison population of 1,570,861, the BJS findings suggest that in one year alone more than 70,000 prisoners were sexually abused.â
According to this somewhat dated stats...
http://www.oneinfourusa.org/st...
Rape is far, far more common compared to homicide, anywhere in the world.
> You can either listen to the gender issues folks, who make it sound like violence against women is a HUGE CRISIS, or you can read the BJS statistics. Women have been, and continue to be, a protected class in the US.
Yes, it has declined according to BJS. But the starting numbers are so high, that it is still considered a large problem.
UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker. -- Michael Jay Tucker
