The societal norms and structures that promoted natalism are gone in western countries for much of the population.
Raising kids is hard work. Ideally you have them young and live close to your family so that you have grandparents to help with childcare.
But our society tells people to wait as long as possible to have kids, and to prioritize career over other things - so once people do have kids, if they ever do so, then often grandparents are too old or far away to fill that traditional role. So lots of people are stuck paying thousands a month for daycare.
Just one of many ways that our system finds innovative ways to extract money out of people for things that used to be free or part of being in a community.
Every support system, from the "family home" where the grandparents have a bed, to the woman not working and taking care of the kids, has been systematically destroyed. Now everyone is expected to work and live alone/as a couple, and they have basically no physical support for raising a child.
I think this is the main issue right here. The others being increased housing cost (you need space for kids) and increasing costs (daycare, kindergarten, nappies etc.).
I would bet this plays a large part - people today respect the difficulty in a way past parents previously did not. Birth rates are certainly declining but I would bet the rates of accidental infant/toddler death are down as well.
That said, I personally know parents that are just taunting SIDS with the way they ignore infant sleeping best practices even though they’ve read the books to know better.
Societal expectation on the care for children grew immensely over the past few generations. When I was a child, parents largely just covered the physical needs and the kids were otherwise left alone to do their own thing. I remember being bored a lot, sitting in a room or roaming the streets.
Nowadays there's a widespread expectation that parents should organize activities, drive their kids' education, just be way more involved in their lives.
That's just the thing, isn't it. You can try to oblige to all best practices and have zero kids in the process, or you can just have the kids and figure it out as you go. No matter the kid mortality rate, the second approach still wins.
The inherent difficulty in raising kids plays a significant role in my decision. Additionally, I feel we are no longer glamorising parenthood as we once did. I remember when I was a kid, before the internet was a thing, it was pretty standard to see ads that claimed parenthood was an experience filled with joy and no challenges. For the past decade or so, though, I feel that parents are much more honest when discussing parenthood's challenges. We heard about post-labour depression, financial struggles, sleepless nights, end of careers and so on. It's a radical life change, and most of us do not want to commit.
singapore gives generous subsidies to working adults with children who hire live-in helpers/nannies. the government spent a lot of money on subsidizing tertiary education and the last thing they need are adults dropping out of the workforce after earning a diploma or a degree.
many families hire a live-in helper, who is typically a low-income migrant worker from a neighbouring country. due to space constraints only the most privileged can hire two or more. as it is with asian tradition, parents primarily involve themselves in the area of discipline and education, and everything else is left to the nannies. the low-income families who cannot afford a helper or the living space for a helper suffer from a lack of enforcing discipline or providing for a growing child and low-income children often grow up maladjusted to the modern working society.
singapore unfortunately, still suffers from a low replacement rate, so the foreign domestic worker (FDW, as it is known) policy while enough to move the dial away from the danger zone that is south korea, is still not enough to ensure singapore is growing comfortably. however, at this point i don't believe allowing
(the FDW policy is generous and broad-based enough to extend to working adults with elderly, which means that subsidies for domestic help pretty much extend to working adults through a significant part of their working life. families often qualify for significant subsidies taking care of multiple generations through several decades.)
However, some of the spaces created for the legal live-in helpers [I've seen in Hong Kong and Singapore] would be considered substandard in the US. I'm talking closet size rooms with no windows big enough for a single bed and a few shelves.
If the US would allow this domestic help and possibly the same rooms, child care would be much easier.
> and live close to your family so that you have grandparents to help with childcare.
Issue with this now is how concentrated certain industries are. Here in the UK, if I want to work in software, you need to move to a handful of expensive cities. London, Oxford, Cambridge, maybe Bristol or Manchester. Maybe some others if you're happy in a non-software job. Certainly not the rural farming town I grew up in, or anywhere within hours of driving.
So people move away. And now I'm faced with either delaying kids so I can get reasonably set-up in a city where a 500sqft flat costs £300,000 or moving away from all my friends and maybe even further from my family to afford a house.
It's really not that hard. You just have to change expectations and lifestyle. I never thought of it as "work" per-se but rather an obligation and responsibility to people brought into the world. It's amazing really. It's probably not for everyone and if someone sees it the same way as doing actual work then maybe it isn't for them.
A parent is wealthy beyond money. Besides, we get tax breaks and if you're not a decent earner you get free things for being a parent.
And I guess when I say it's not that hard - what I mean is that yeah there's effort involved, often time a lot. But it is made out to be this impossible thing. It's not. You figure it out and before you know it the really hard days are over.
So yeah it's work but that shouldn't dissuade anyone from having kids. Anything good takes effort.
It doesn't last that long. Been there, done that. But yeah it's work, of course it is. What I'm saying is it isn't as difficult as it is made out to be - that is it's made out to be this impossible thing. But yeah they break your back sometimes and emotionally it can be daunting. But those very difficult early days end pretty fast.
What we did is mom pumped and put milk in bottles. She's go to be at like 7PM after a feeding off the tap and I'd take over and stay up until 2 or 3 to feed baby and change diapers every 2 or so hours. Then she'd be back at it in the early morning hours.
I could absolutely afford to have children, but have chosen not to. The main reason is that I just don't feel "called" to be a parent. When I think about (and see, from others I know who have kids) the amount of work, and complete shift in lifestyle, it takes to raise a child, I get completely turned off by the idea.
If I had a kid, I'm sure I'd love them, and derive joy from them, but I don't believe the trade off is worth it. Maybe I'll end up being wrong about that, but I'd rather grow old and regret not having kids than regret having them. I think people shouldn't have kids unless they are really sure they want to be a parent. Anything less sounds like a big mistake.
Anyhow, have you actually talked to your childless peers about this? Hopefully there are at least some with whom you feel comfortable bringing up this kind of topic, with people who will give you a thoughtful, non-judgmental answer. I think you might find that they all have a variety of reasons for not having kids, and money may not be a big factor.
"The amount of work".... oh dear. As if caring for other people is only work. From what will you get distracted by having other people around you (kids)? From Instragram? Cycling? Reading books? What intensely important things do you have to do that deserve no distraction?
Having kids is not work. It is not only joy either. It is just the natural way of being a human.
The - natural - way - of - being - a - human!!!
Natural, like sleeping. Eating.
Sure, sometimes kids stress you. But then, nature has made sure that you'll mostly remember the good moments. You don't have to be overly perfect to have kids. Just don't be an overly bad person and talk to them often. Whatever environment they get born in: they will be ok with it. You don't need to be grandiose. Do what you naturally can, what you enjoy. And they'll enjoy it.
Humans are made to adapt to having kids. Kids are made to adapt to non-perfect parents. Just avoid the obviously bad stuff and all is good. Your life is good. You looking back on your life will be good.
Natural way of being a human is shitting under a tree and sleeping on this tree, and certainly isn't writing a comment on this site. I couldn't care less of arguments based on some kind of naturalistic fallacy.
Sleeping in a bed in a house is certainly the way humans prefer it. But thinking a society with not enough kids can survive and thrive, on the other hand, is wrong, because it is biologically impossible. It’s not a fallacy, it’s harsh truth.
There probably is a society where there are "not enough kids", but it certainly does not come remotely close to current one with over 8 billion humans scraping for resources.
The problem is just that we don't live in ONE society having 8 billion members, but in about two hundred different ones. And being in one of those that are in decline is not exactly a good feeling.
Until the global birth rate is sub-replacement for generations, there's no point in even having this conversation. If the issue is that the "right" kind of people ("native" people in advanced economies) aren't having children, but the "wrong" kind (aka the Global South, immigrants, etc.), then that's just racism. There's no baby shortage -- the ethnic makeup of humanity is simply changing and we will need to erase most of those artificial borders in order to survive. We ARE a single society, and pretending that we're not is a mutual suicide pact.
So when your company is going broke you don't care and are happy because in TV they said that the economy is growing? Are you a company-racist because you want your company to be healthy and non declining? Are you not trading with and appreciating other companies because you only love your own?
The same is with countries and their societies.
I will not be that defeatist to say "my country/my region/my continent can go down because there are others". And to say that is not racist.
Not really sure what you're getting at exactly, but I think you're comparing countries in the world to firms in a market, with the point that I must obviously care about my country's fortunes relative to other countries?
In the current order, I sort of do, but that whole Westphalian order of "countries" is artificial (and also relatively new in its specifics, though of course kingdoms and empires go back far longer): we're all related and share one biosphere, and more recently we share one globalized economy. The truth is that we will sink or swim together -- if we have abandoned houses in Peoria because American-born people aren't having their own children, that is an opportunity to house people who come from somewhere without enough housing or infrastructure. The only barrier to this happening is our suicidal apartheid regime of borders and passports that's even newer than the Westphalian system!
Borders are not erected to help you, an ordinary citizen. They are there to divide you against the ordinary citizens on the other side of them.
> "The amount of work".... oh dear. As if caring for other people is only work. From what will you get distracted by having other people around you (kids)? From Instragram? Cycling? Reading books?
What if they prefer Instagram, Cycling and Reading Books rather than raising children? Why are you so concerned about other people's lifestyles? Are you going to pay their rent or help them with their chores?
I decided to have a child, and it was a conscious decision I made with my partner, fully aware that our previous lifestyle would be no more. Deciding not to have a child would have been equally as valid.
I find it funny that this discussion elicits so much passion from people that decided to have children. Do you need validation from other people to justify your own decisions?
Whenever I am asked about it, I say that you should not have children unless you are absolutely certain that you want a child in your life, and that your life is stable enough to accommodate one. The world sucks even in the best of times. To condemn someone to existence when their lives will be made more difficult is selfish and cruel.
No children: no society. Or: a very old, geriatric, undynamic, fearful society with no innovation. Simple.
What happened that after a few hundred thousand years of having families we suddendly need to be "absolutely certain" to have kids? Human nature is the EXACT other way round. What we currently see is an outgrow of pure hedonism. It kills societies (literally, at least in the sense of "no new life").
Concerning "being fully aware that our previous lifestyle would be no more": this in itself partly shows the problem. So our casual life choices are in such a way that it is completely uncompatible with having a family? Sure - when you're 20, you might not be ready. But do we, as a society, promote lifestyles that even when you're 30 are impossible to combine with having kids? Then maybe our lifestyle as a society is wrong, what we tell ourselves to be "good life" is wrong.
And then again... maybe we take having kids too seriously? I really can't say having missed out on much since having kids (and no, we have no nanny). We simply did the stuff people "fear". We went out for dinner together two weeks after our first one was born (together with the baby). And we repeated, until today. We went on those 10 hour flights. We explored foreign countries. We visit museums with modern art. We spent months abroad. Is it always easy? Nope. But it was, overall, not too different from the life before. Kids get used to stuff, parents get used to stuff. Most of us can do it if we let go of the instagrammy thought of having to be perfect. And this is how society always was and always will be.
EDIT:
In the current medical climate where child mortality is very, very low, of course, as a society we CAN afford to have less kids overall. And as long there are a few people who LIKE to have 3 or more kids, we can afford to have some more people having no kids as all. I don't promote growing society ad infinitum. But having sub-replacement birth rates will NOT make our countries better for sure (and the economy is my very LAST concern). France 10-15 years ago can lead as an example with a healthy rate of births, wealth and personal freedom.
In my view, having children without being prepared for them is the most hedonistic thing one can do - creating people for your own reasons without a clear way of supporting them.
As someone without children, I find it strange that I'm perceived as living some hedonistic lifestyle. There are indeed material concerns when it comes to the idea of children, but they tend more towards maintaining housing and especially for me who has some medical needs, health insurance. I'm certainly not traveling all the time or living it up with a fancy brunch every weekend; I'm actually quite happy with a modest living arrangement and diet, but even that seems to get more expensive as time goes on, and my job tenures get shorter as the layoffs come quicker.
You don't feel like you've missed out on much since having children and I think that's a great attitude; I don't feel like I've missed out on much since not having children. We can both be correct in this because we are each our own people with our own wants.
Well, of course, I am not getting at you personally, as I don't know you. And of course I am not getting angry at people around me for not having kids (do I know their reasons well?). I speak more about society as a whole.
Much of what you write are modernity made problems. When we are really getting deep into what is going on, then YOU/ME/WE should not be living on our own alone anyway. YOU/ME/WE, in a healthy society, should be living in a multigenerational home where close to NOTHING changes if there is one more kid running around. OF COURSE having kids is a much more difficult choice when we all have to live on our own, only together with our partner (with which we also have to maintain a PERFECT relationship because there is no other person around or to go to to cool down a bit anyway), we all have to pay for our housing ALONE, plus taxes, plus (in many countries) health insurance, childcare etc. . A more humanly organized society would have much more of us simply live together, share more stuff. But most of us have to start at zero. Which some say is "fair". But in reality, it is making us poorer. Financially, emotionally.
In fact I'm a 30-something man who lives in a multi-generational household (with my parents). I'm under the impression that it's not considered an attractive quality.
You are right: it is not considered attractive. I myself do, as an example, not live in one (that said: all family lives in my region). Because we as a society somehow made "independence" the "cool" way to live.
I was thinking it was a behavioral evolution thing - demonstrating status and suitability as a mate; that sort of thing. But really it just seems like a waste of money if your needs are modest. I only need a room really. The funny thing is that I went through the trouble of buying a house before I realized that.
> What happened that after a few hundred thousand years of having families we suddendly need to be "absolutely certain" to have kids? Human nature is the EXACT other way round.
Human nature was to live out as a hunter-gatherer in some African savannah. Why would this hold any power over how people choose to live their lives in the Year of our Lord 2024?
> Concerning "being fully aware that our previous lifestyle would be no more": this in itself partly shows the problem.
You sound oddly interested in how I make life changing decisions that don't affect you in any way.
This is another example of a thought pattern often encountered. The thought of "being free to do what ever I feel like" and not caring.... is a meme.
> Human nature was to live out as a hunter-gatherer in some African savannah. Why would this hold any power over how people choose to live their lives in the Year of our Lord 2024?
You are taking a thing where Humans have proven to be quite flexible (the style of living) and bring it to a discussion that is, at its base, biological (no babies: no society). Sure, we can now say that it all doesn't matter if our more and more babyless societies go to die.... but is this really the way to go on?
I do not know you personally, but I reply to what you say because it is not only you who says it, but seems to exemplify what at least I see as a problem in society. I recognise thought patterns that I've heard before.
>And then again... maybe we take having kids too seriously? I really can't say having missed out on much since having kids (and no, we have no nanny). We simply did the stuff people "fear".
I'd commend you for that. Not helicopter parenting is the way to go.
The natural way of being a human for thousands of years was to hunt and gather, and then die before 40. But that didn't stop us from progressing past that point.
I was in a similar boat but did end up having a son recently with my wife. I am still pretty sure that I would be happy without kids but I am also happy with a kid. One thing I think people do tend to overestimate is how much work kids will be in the long term. Yes, short term is crazy, the first couple of years are very intense. But they become more and more independent each year and grow into an equal member of your family. Think about your own parents. I don't think mine were significantly constrained in their life after we turned 10. I mean if you think you'd want to go one month long solo travels each years that's a different story but otherwise kids can be pretty independent. I stayed home alone for a week because I didn't want to go on family holiday when I was 15.
If kids stay one year olds forever no one would have kids, you'd go insane. But that's not the case.
I just don't have any interest in kids. They're expensive and they require a ton of sacrifice. I'd rather travel, golf, do hobbies and generally enjoy my life. The only people that seem to want me to have babies are my parents so they can have grand kids... too which I've told them "Thank you for having me, but that's not a valid reason for me to sacrifice my life". I don't really care about the preservation of the human species. I'm going to be dead in the next 40 years or so, why should I care?
Whenever I encounter this attitude I like to remind that person that they should have no voice, whatsoever, in what happens in government and politics anymore. I don't want people who are self-selecting themselves out of the future having any say in what happens for my children. It's fine that you don't want kids, enjoy the golf course I guess. But in general I will discount your opinions to zero on anything else of consequence.
Some parents boast about how they'd impetuously shoot anyone who threatened their offspring. Here you are excluding those who leave behind only ideas and creative works from having a say in the future, in case that threatens your offspring. Reproduction makes people slightly crazy. First it's must have sex, then it's must protect the brood. I resent being manipulated by these mindless instincts, which serve only DNA. Your apparent vision of the purpose of life is a dichotomy between reproducing and golf.
They aren’t mindless. They’re what preserve the species and the arts and the culture and the science etc etc. I’m sorry you feel resentful about normal human instincts.
That's different, then, if it's a thoughtful project carried out in the cause of culture. But then why disenfranchise all the creative and science types, just because their only offspring are the ideas that they nurture? They're doing basically the same thing, they're still investing in the future, and less randomly as well (since you can't ethically control the ideas of your actual flesh and blood children by any means beyond suggestions).
Also, instincts are nothing to be proud of, they're just dumped on us by nature.
>Also, instincts are nothing to be proud of, they're just dumped on us by nature.
But instincts are something to be proud of. They're a product of extremely complex processes that occur over incredible timescales. At a minimum that's remarkable and interesting.
It makes perfect sense. Their preference set is limited to their own desires, for as long as they are terrestrially bound. They have no skin in the game for ensuring that things are functional after they die. Why should I listen to someone who only cares about their own gratification?
This strikes me as not dissimilar to religious people who are terrified of atheists because, without God, they must have no reason not to become mass murderers.
There are many people with kids who have revealed the value they place on the sustainability of the environment, democratic society, or the economy through the lifetime of their children, let alone their children's children, to be zero. Why would you assume that the childless are any more selfish, as a group? Why can one not care about the continuance and betterment of humanity without one's own direct descendents being involved?
Wow, that's a pretty extreme interpretation of all this.
Like a sibling poster, it reminds me of all the religious people who claim that atheists can't be moral because we don't have a god to guide us.
I do have skin in the game, even without kids. On a basic level, I care about the rest of my life, which hopefully will last another 50 years. I care about the planet and about future generations because that's the right thing to do, because short-termism and excessive consumption is a cancer.
And even if I won't have kids, I have nieces and nephews, and I have dear friends who have children. I want them to be able to grow up and live in a good, safe, comfortable world.
Frankly I find your point of view profoundly condescending and insulting. You don't need to have children to care about the future.
There's a bunch of old people that have kids that also very clearly don't give a damn about preserving the world for the next generation. Should they also not be allowed to vote?
Hell, I would bet that childfree people are more likely to support "future-preserving" plans than parents, on average. I'm thinking climate change, Fridays For Future.
Anecdotally, of the 4 sets of parents I know well enough to know their political opinions, none of them are really concerned about preserving the world for their children. I'm vegan, car-free, childfree and vote for the "green" options.
In your system of morality some guy who's condom broke or a rapist are more moral than someone who is infertile, and you are so sure of it you propose taxation to pile on top. Maybe you should reconsider if it makes perfect sense.
GP didn't write a moral judgement, but a practical one. People who don't have/care for kids don't have long-term skin in the game, therefore their influence on the shape of future society should be downweighed. There is a logic to that.
> some guy who's condom broke
Yes, this is how a lot of families are made. Unplanned != unwanted != unloved.
> or a rapist are more moral than someone who is infertile
Again, not about morality. GP's logic isn't about whether one's good or bad, but whether one has skin in the game of continued improvement of society and civilization.
But I guess a better way of scoping it is whether or not the person is a parent (EDIT: or in legal terms, caregiver?). Infertile people can become parents too (and that could be an indication of extra special caring about the future generation). And then people can be biological parents, but not actual parents, e.g. if they give their child away.
But the definition on "skin in the game" varies from person to person. Plenty of people with kids don't consider them as skin in the game. Plenty of people without kids have lots of skin in the game.
Sure you can. The parent was describing a heuristic they apply. If I don't know you, but need to quickly judge whether or not you're likely to care about future over immediate-term, you being a parent is... not the worst proxy I could use.
FWIW, I don't exactly agree with the poster on this. I feel that parents are biased towards near-term almost by definition: caring and nurturing children is an immediate job. Whether or not a typical non-parent is likely to be a "fuck you, got mine" kind of person, I find that parents tend to become more of a "fuck you, my kids got theirs" kind of people. Not out of ill intent - just more of "concrete needs of my kids today trump abstract speculative needs of their generation a few decades from now".
I think it's a bit more than that. The person upthread goes a bit farther than just whether or not someone cares about the future or not. It sounds like they've basically judged all childless people as hedonists who would gladly burn down the world as long as we get in one last round of golf.
Maybe that person doesn't really believe that, but if so, should probably be clearer about their position and not resort to veiled personal attacks.
Been stewing on this comment. You are right, I think, for roughly half of the parents in my peer group. They do indeed act with a "fuck you, my kids got theirs" attitude. But I think the heuristic still works, because the near term things that those parents care about tend to be highly correlated with what makes sense in the long term. Another comment, in this dumpster fire of a thread that I started, noted that becoming a parent makes you crazy. Alas, I think becoming a parent makes you normal. After all, everyone has a parent.
This might surprise you, but people can care about other people that aren't their blood relatives. Don't play morally superior just because you decided to procreate.
I think I would word it differently, but I more or less agree. Skin in the game is important.
Particularly with people who are old with no kids, I don't think they are totally cynical, but they do seem to have an incentive to vote society into schemes where they are taken care of by younger people, at no cost to themselves or their descendants. For instance they could decide the government needs to take out a massive 30 year loan to pay for care homes to be built.
But I also think that just because you have kids, that doesn't mean you're completely aligned with a longer term future. There's going to be a lot of desperate older people needing help from the few young people who are left, and that goes regardless of whether they made any of those young people. I mean sure, if you have kids you are less likely to be as short-termist as a childless old person.
I think it's a major issue that doesn't get talked about enough. People are happy to say "oh but plenty of old people care about society" which is true, but there's also plenty of foreigners who care about society, who can't vote. And it ignores the actual problem that we will be facing, which is that there will be fewer working people supporting older, non-working people. We need a system for equitable power sharing between generations.
> Their preference set is limited to their own desires, for as long as they are terrestrially bound.
This exact same sentence could be used to describe parents who bring children into a world rapidly becoming less hospitable due to climate change, the full extent of which they won't be alive to suffer.
> I will discount your opinions to zero on anything else of consequence
I’d settle for a much higher tax rate for the voluntarily childless to very inadequately offset the lack of contributing to the next generation. Probably the best way to implement this is that the child tax credit should be much bigger.
I'm impressed by the idea that it's even possible to stop people in general from having kids. In 1974 there were 4 billion people, and we were worried about overpopulation, with scare stories in the media on the theme of "standing room only". Now we are 8 billion, and worrying about low birth rates, even in China (see the "lying flat" trend). So, get back to me when we're down to 4 billion again and I'll consider supporting financial incentives to support future human life, but right now I don't see an existential threat from low birth rates. I do however think that it's really cool that people have the capacity to refrain from having kids when they know that it's a bad idea in their specific circumstances. I like this because it shows the malthusian overpopulation doom-mongers to be wrong, and they were getting annoying.
I already pay tax that ends up paying your child support money, builds kindergartens for you, funds schools, even though I have no kids. But no, let's punish me more because I don't fit your view of the world by raising my taxes more, even though I benefit from the existing ones a lot less than you do already.
You seem to have not read what I replied to. It is punishment if I pay MORE taxes than those with children, just because I don't have any, even though those with children benefit more from taxes, taxes that I already pay.
> You seem to have not read what I replied to. It is punishment if I pay MORE taxes than those with children, just because I don't have any, even though those with children benefit more from taxes, taxes that I already pay.
Think if it this way: in the childlessness-tax scenario, the parents would be paying society in-kind by raising kid(s), and you'd paying society with money instead. You're both paying, just in different ways.
Taxes also aren't some kind of payment-in-exchange for services thing. It's foolish to complain about programs because you don't personally benefit from them.
That kind of already happens in countries where government monetarily supports families with children since it's tax money. But the effective difference in taxes isn't probably that large.
It's just peanuts compared to having one less job for a while.
Maybe that is what to do, give tax credits on the order of an income. That way you are basically tax free while having young children, but you'll still want a job when they are a little bit older.
If we really want to go down this route we should do away with parenting. Children our are future therefore the government will be responsible for producing and raising children to meet our necessary societal workforce quotas. Parenting is a messy business that introduces too many quality control issues. Our glorious future means we must have only perfectly standard issue babies that conform to exact government measurements and standards. Men must donate sperm and women will be artificially impregnated until we can figure out how to grow test tube babies.
> If we really want to go down this route we should do away with parenting. Children our are future therefore the government will be responsible for producing and raising children to meet our necessary societal workforce quotas.
Come on, that's just idiotic sarcasm that doesn't even understand the GP's point, let alone actually skewer it. It's as stupid as trying to mock childfree people by sarcastically advocating a total ban on having children, like in ZPG (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069530/).
> Whenever I encounter this attitude I like to remind that person that they should have no voice, whatsoever, in what happens in government and politics anymore. I don't want people who are self-selecting themselves out of the future having any say in what happens for my children.
And you said we should deny political rights to people without children, a pretty mundane life choice all things considered. You're a straight up fascist plain and simple. Good job.
I weep for your offspring as they're probably poisoned by your brand of cruel morality.
It's actually people like you that have no regard for other people's wishes and desires, a downright hostile attitude towards people who live different lifestyles from you and who force their own lifestyle onto others as the "one true way of living", that should be removed from the ability to vote, imo.
Absolutely well said. I agree a 100%. If someone wants to be selfish, let him be, but don’t expect the rest of us to give much credence to his opinions since he very well doesn’t care about our society.
Because parents can't be selfish too? We all have our motivations for doing what we do. People's drive to have children can be selfish. Their drive to not have children can be selfish. There can be selflessness mixed in to either scenario.
Equating not wanting to have children with not caring about society is absurd. While we're throwing around ridiculous ideas: if anyone should have no say in politics of society, it's people who make these kinds of blanket judgments.
> That is bizarre. Someone disagrees with you so all their political rights should be removed? What?
You're misunderstanding him. I think it's more on the line of "freeloaders shouldn't have a say on what work gets done."
The GGP literally said "I don't really care about the preservation of the human species. I'm going to be dead in the next 40 years or so, why should I care?" If someone has that attitude, and explicitly rejects responsibility to go all-in on selfishness, they've pretty clearly given up the moral right to be part of decision-making for the future.
No, they haven't. Again, that's just you saying that because of their disagreement they should have their political rights removed. You are misunderstanding me, in thinking I'm misunderstanding him. I'm understanding him exactly, and I'm saying that saying you "don't really care about the preservation of the human species" is an opinion and that you and GP are bizarrely claiming that those with that opinion should have their political rights removed.
> No, they haven't. Again, that's just you saying that because of their disagreement they should have their political rights removed.
I think there's two aspects where you misunderstand:
1. The original comment is ambiguous about whether they think their "voice...in what happens in government and politics" should be formally removed, voluntarily given up, or just passively ignored.
2. I think simplistically framing this as mere "disagreement" fails to capture what's actually being discussed, and ignores important aspects of governance. It's sort of (but not exactly) like the question if insurrectionists should keep their places in the government they're subverting (e.g. should the Confederate States have kept their seats in Congress, ability to vote for the presidency, have it's members hold important positions in the US government, etc. while they were rebelling)?
> I don't really care about the preservation of the human species. I'm going to be dead in the next 40 years or so, why should I care?
If most Homo sapiens had the same attitude, the species would have gone extinct since forever lol.
You can have any personal goal you'd like, but from the evolution perspective, the purpose of any living organism is to survive and to reproduce, hence preserving its own species. That's why.
The funniest bits about this sort of argument is that I often see people become completely estranged from their parents because the attitude of 'I need my children to take care of me when I'm older' is like a package deal for a whole host of other shitty behaviors.
Oh I mean you have an obligation to be a parent that your kids would want to take care of.
I don't talk to my parents and have no interest in taking care of them, because, like you said, they are horrendous people. I think you're right that the entitlement to your kids time is something that comes with poor parenting.
That doesn't mean that on-net people's kids won't take care of them. Like everything with your kids, it's a two way street.
If they work for money and use it to pay the children to care for them, what difference does it make if they also have kids or not? Why would your kids have to be the ones to care for you for it to “even out”? In that argument, is daycare banned because the child is not cared for by the parents of the child? What if one of the parents dies? Is it ok to pay for help then?
You do realise this system is unsustainable, though ? We just cannot grow infinitely just because .end of life care costs money.
We are way too many, and the #1 source of global warming is human activity. At one point we'll have to stop growing, so the system of how we pay for elderly care has to change.
We don't have to grow infinitely. Population collapse comes with a huge host of problems though.
The problem of elder care isn't purely financial. It's not the model of paying that's the problem. At the end of the day, (kinda oversimplified) money represents a fractional value of the work output of a population. The output of the population depends on the number of people working in productive roles. The value of the currency is related to the consistent output of services and confidence in the existence of your country.
Shifting over an increasing fraction of your population to elder-care is non productive. It has a tension with both stability of currency and value of currency.
This is a false belief, that is increasingly common. Even if you're paying people to take care of you in old age, you are in fact contributing nothing while they are contributing everything. You will be only a burden, because the money is fake and in physical reality not worth anything. It is only in imagined reality that the money is worth anything, because it is something people agree to work for. Future workers will not be so dumb as to waste their life caring for somebody they are not related to, that are not a friend in any way, for no other benefit than fake "money". When the majority of elderly are childless, the cost of elder care and all other labour will increase faster than your bank account can ever keep up. It was different before atomisation of people, there was an exchange in the idea of "society" and "money". Now those concepts are only used to leech, abuse and destroy young working people, so why would they keep playing that foolish game?
Previous generations built the cities, farms, railroads and universities that we all use today. Just because somebody is no longer working does not mean that you are not still benefiting from work they did.
That's a false myth, used to guilt young workers to more easily leech from them. The food you eat today was not farmed by the people who are old now. Your consumer products were made in China, not by the elderly. The infrastructure you use has been repaved and remade several times during the decades that have passed since old people worked.
Except for a few relics, nothing remains today of what the elderly made. The exception being real estate, and that's why the elderly demand to each become a millionaire to let go of any of their real estate.
It's not like today's elderly worked to build something for future generations. They worked to benefit themselves at the moment.
In general when somebody comes to you selling guilt and murky reasons to why you are indebted to them, that's an enemy and a scammer, seeking to leech from honest people. Whether that's an employer, a generation of elderly, the government, a guild or whoever.
That's not giving away your money. That's just saying you will.
You need to either give it to someone all in cash, or transfer all the money in whatever bank accounts you have into someone else's account. Until then, you are a hypocrite.
That's how all money is created. Now it's up to you if you value that note I've issued, or if you value another note that the elderly issued before you were born. All money is created out of thin air in the form of debt notes. All money is debt notes. It can be used as a tool to grease the gears of a common economy, or it can be used as a tool by those in power to enslave others. Like a skilled worker with a good education having to work for 30 or 50 years at extremely high productivity to afford shelter, while an elderly person of today can become a millionaire without lifting a finger because of some real estate he inherited in the 80s – thanks to the monetary system pumping out newly inflated currency chiefly through real estate debt.
Yeah I know. Cash is just paper, that happens to have an agreed upon value by the majority of the population. And the money in a bank account is just a number in a database that happens to have an agreed upon value by the majority of the population.
Your hackernews comment just happens to be some text in a database that has a value which is NOT agreed upon by the majority of the population.
So my point was, since you don't seem to also agree that your money is valuable, please give all your cash to someone who does. And please transfer all the money in your bank accounts to someone else's bank account that does value those numbers.
> Cash is just paper, that happens to have an agreed upon value by the majority of the population.
There really is no such agreement, it is a belief system. And you know that "the majority of the population" has had no say in monetary policy, nor do they understand it. There is no democracy involved and has never been. Billions of dollars, euros and etc are conjured out of thin air and into the hands of the chosen ones as we speak.
Before cash started to rule everything around us, people would carry letters from kings, princes or other nobles, that would instruct subjects to provide the bearer with horses, lodging and hospitality. For example if they were travelling. Or if they were to lead a project. People had to work by decree, people received their benefits and etc by decree.
Just as the rulers today create an endless amount of money out of thin air, monarchs of the past would create noble titles out of thin air. With rights to estates and the servitude of the people who were born there and etc. People defending that oppressive and invented aristocracy system would say "it is the will and decree of God", just like you're now saying that today's oppressive and invented monetary system "is the will of the majority". Because most will always defend the status quo, no matter what.
If the money value is the will of the people, then when did the majority decide they wanted to have high inflation and even hyper inflation? I don't remember any such vote in any country, do you?
> There really is no such agreement, it is a belief system.
If everyone believes it, do they not agree on the same thing?
> And you know that "the majority of the population" has had no say in monetary policy, nor do they understand it.....
I never said they did. It doesn't change the fact that most people still value $1 the same amount.
> If the money value is the will of the people
I never said it was their will, I said they mutually agree to it's value.
> then when did the majority decide they wanted to have high inflation and even hyper inflation?
They didn't. The value of money (or anything) may go up and down over time, for any reason. But in a single moment most people will agree to the value of $1.
But anyway, back to my only point, since you think money is worthless, why don't you give all your money away? Why are you keeping it?
So until you give all your cash away, and transfer all the money in your bank accounts to someone else's bank account, you will remain a hypocrite.
If that's what you're stuck on, I'll gladly let you stay mentally stuck there.
> So until you give all your cash away, and transfer all the money in your bank accounts to someone else's bank account, you will remain a hypocrite.
Except for short-term liquidity you can be damn sure that I don't keep any fiat money in my possession, and neither should anybody else. That's why the stock market keeps going up, everybody wants to get rid off inflation currency as quick as they can.
I guess my incredible hypocrisy is much worse than the geriatric rulers completely destroying the wealth of their nations in less than a generation by enslaving young workers with their fake monetary system.
It’s a normal and perfectly healthy reason to have children if you also love and cherish them. I would bet the number of parents having children for the sole and totally disinterested benefit of the children is approximately zero. The OP not caring about humanity tells me they’re profoundly selfish and therefore probably not capable of the love and cherish part though.
No, it's an incredibly selfish reason to have children.
Certainly people have children for a variety of reasons, but if a big one is "who else will take care of me when I get old?", that's incredibly selfish, and not healthy at all. Loving and cherishing your children regardless doesn't change that.
I love how you've somehow twisted the person upthread's words into the idea that they don't care about humanity. This entire subthread is bizarre.
I respect my father more for telling me he actively doesn't place care expectations on me in his old age. "I made you, you are not responsible for me but I am responsible for you".
Does that mean I won't care for him? Of course not, but it's good to know I haven't come into existence just for that.
You can care about humanity without needing to want to have kids.
Why are we acting like everyone's lifestyle preferences are of paramount importance to everyone else's existence? OP is not taking from any other parents here, and there are still plenty more humans to make more humans.
Is there a hidden fear here that having an enjoyable childless life will somehow spread everywhere and we all die in a generation?
Well, someone will have to take care of him. If it's not his children then probably some nurse in a nursing home. And guess what? That nurse is also someone's child. No children today equals labor shortage tomorrow.
This is one of the most selfish arguments you can make for having kids. You just want someone to take care of you when you are old. If we'll ever have capable robots, you people can stop having children.
Assuming those people are being compensated for the elder care they provide, why is that selfish?
I remember my grandmother moving in with us for a while when I was a kid. It was miserable. Our house wasn't set up for another bedroom. My parents were both stressed out about it and it put a strain on their relationship. My grandmother certainly wasn't thrilled with the situation.
Certainly not all elder care situations are like that, but I bet grandma would have been way more comfortable in an assisted living situation, where people who are trained could have seen to her needs. And my immediate family would have been way more comfortable too.
> Assuming those people are being compensated for the elder care they provide, why is that selfish?
The thing is that an elderly person in care can never compensate those who take care of them, because they do not work and do not produce anything. They can only scam their caretakers by paying with fake fiat money that was allocated to the elderly before their care takers were even born.
I was mainly just challenging the assertion that having children, with at least part of the motivation being care in old age, is selfish.
I interpreted this as not "I will have children so my children can look after me", but rather "I will have children so there will be younger people around, who can (amongst other things) look after older people and do other important things".
Based on that way of looking at it, I think that not having children but still benefiting from younger people is more selfish than not having children and benefitting from younger people (if either of these is indeed selfish).
Basically, I was questioning why it is more selfish to use a resource while contributing to that resource, rather than not contributing but still using.
Put another way, who is more selfish - a farmer who buys some vegetables, or a software developer who buys some vegetables? Yes, they are both paying for them, so they are not directly exploiting anyone. But if no-one wanted to be a farmer, then there would be no vegetables.
Yes, I know this analogy is a stretch, but hopefully you get what I mean. Anyway, I don't think that either having or not having children is inherently "selfish", but there are almost certainly selfish motivations for each.
People's taxes do not cover their EoL care, full stop.
If we are paying the fair market cost of hiring someone to be a carer, the cost of having them not do something else has to be realized. This will mean that cost of carers will skyrocket, meaning that people's care becomes more expensive. If we start to pay the true cost -- and have it paid directly -- then when population collapse happens, a ton of the elderly will die on the street.
Technically that makes everyone who's over the age of 60 a sort of parasite. That doesn't mean we look down on them.
Is a childless teacher refusing to do their part to create the next generation? Arguably a good teacher can have more impact on society than any parent will. How about someone who invents a technology that has decades long repercussions.
George Washington didn't have children. Was he a parasite taking just the benefits from society?
I've got kids, but I'm not naive enough to think that people without kids are all parasites. I think a healthy society has a balance of people doing different things - raising children needs a huge amount of attention and emotional labour, and it's definitely not for everyone. But you can contribute to society in other ways.
> Technically that makes everyone who's over the age of 60 a sort of parasite. That doesn't mean we look down on them.
No, they just frontloaded their contribution. Nothing in the definition says that it has to perfectly meter out its contribution to the symbiosis so that there's never a second where it's not giving some little portion.
> Is a childless teacher refusing to do their part to create the next generation?
I've seen what teachers do, firsthand. It'd be better for everyone if they just sat it out and did nothing. So they're pretty far into the negative.
> but I'm not naive enough to think that people without kids are all parasites.
Nothing naive about it. It's just the definition of parasitism. Taking from the host, giving nothing in return. Sure, some may have some medical issues that prevent it... they have my sympathy. Maybe that's Georgie W's excuse, dunno. But for those that make it a choice, yes, 110% parasite.
> I think a healthy society has a balance of people doing different things
There's nothing healthy about a society that doesn't make the next generation.
> and it's definitely not for everyone.
The trouble is that it really is for everyone. If you think that someone else can have children for you, then you don't get to make society. Which might be a bit of a problem for you, considering that you live in it.
> Technically, that makes you a sort of parasite. You have no trouble taking your share of the benefits that come from living in our society, but refuse to do your part to create the next generation of people who would comprise that society.
The benefits of living in society are generally paid for by OP's tax money, not some imaginary bonds that theoretical children will repay some day afterwards. On the other hand the epithet you used could be easily applied to poor people having bunch of children while on welfare...
> The benefits OP will take in his old age will largely be paid by the children of his generation.
Bringing up the children of OP's generation is paid by OP's taxes. Moreover, parents probably pay less, not more taxes for having children in a lot of western countries.
> You have no trouble taking your share of the benefits that come from living in our society
They didn't ask to be born, did they? Why should that accident of existence saddle them with obligations to birth others? This is such a shallow "yet you participate in society" argument.
It's also a zero-sum argument. Participating in society is likely to amount to giving, not taking. It's like Marxists thinking there's only so much wealth to go round and thus anyone who has any should feel ashamed.
The argument could be made that those who have children are the parasites, selfishly diverting resources to the useless ineffectual new humans that they've made for the fun of it. This argument would be nonsense too, but it wouldn't be worse than the other one.
Yes, how selfish. Giving birth to and raising the children that will grow the food you will eat when you're too old and decrepit to do it yourself.
Do you all just plan on suicide whenever you feel you've hit your peak? Or will you go on, and just look at those who provide for you as suckers too unlucky to have skipped the grift?
I mean, I'm not judging here, but it's clearly parasite behavior.
I will set aside money during my productive years and pay for food when I'm old. Just because the food is not made by fruit of my loins doesn't mean I'm being a parasite.
He is working, creating value for society, capturing only a portion of the value he creates, and deploying that value through consumption of experiences and services.
The fact that you would prefer he spent his money on children, instead of on other experiences, is irrelevant. Your desire to control other peoples spending, and to vilify them, for it, shows only that you are an immoral, authoritarian, asshole, and that you do not respect other people.
It is somewhat sad, that an immoral, authoritarian, freedom, hating, asshole, such as yourself might have children. I only hope that women are able to recognize that you are a monster, and that you do not respect other people.
> It is somewhat sad, that an immoral, authoritarian, freedom, hating, asshole, such as yourself might have children. I
Already have two. My daughter tells me she wants to have six. That seems ambitious, I'd be happy if she has three.
I guess from your perspective this really is sad. That makes me happier than I already was. If you weren't so sad, maybe you could do something about it. My descendants will tell each other stories and legends of the sad childless people who couldn't be bothered to shape society and create the next generation of people, and how they'd just throw barbless insults at those who did.
This is where the difference between affordability and safety come in.
Obviously someone making that much could afford to have kids, but assuming tech hub (e.g. SF) cost of living, it’ll take a few years of salary like that to accrue enough financial padding to be certain that a chain of unfortunate events won’t put them out on the street once the cost of raising a family is added in.
This is why you see a lot of high earners waiting until the last second to have kids, if they do. Financial security like you have while making good money without kids is hard to let go of.
Birthrate by income levels is approaching a dumbbell distribution in industrialized nations. Lower income people have kids due to the lack of options, while ultra-high income people have kids due to the need for heirs (and they can afford to completely offload childcare to dedicated high-quality staff). Those in the middle are stuck because having children is a net negative to the continuation of career advancement, especially women due the unavoidable need for parental leave. The commitmments required to raising children, especially newborns, will disrupt travel plans which is a significant component of the typical middle class lifestyle. Childcare will also cost a significant sum of money, sometimes as much as mortgage payments in high CoL areas, without completely relieving the parents of their duties.
> without completely relieving the parents of their duties.
That's an underappreciated point. Kids in daycares and kindergartens get sick a lot. Those places are pathogen swapping grounds. Especially early on, you may have your kid 2 weeks in, 2 weeks out on average. And the "on average" is a killer, too - you can't schedule when your kid will get sick, so you're effectively on-call all the time anyway, and have to have a job compatible with you just taking off in the middle of the day and getting a day or two of leave, on the spot, at random.
My net worth is north of 5 or 6 million now, on a good day. My salary is mid 5 figures with TC. You just happened to hit a proverbial jackpot, in another sense. You don't think I haven't had my share of exes? You don't think I've ever tried to settle down? You had blind luck in your romantic endeavors. But please don't wear that as some sort of weird badge of honor, it cheapens the whole thing, in my honest opinion.
It could simply be that child rearing and career success are substitute goods, at least for a plurality of the population. I don't like admitting that, but it seems reasonable to suspect.
I'll speak as someone that waited until almost 40 to have kids and who feels, in hindsight, I was being completely selfish. I prioritized my career, my travel, my sleeping in, my social life, my leisure, etc. As soon as you become a parent, you realize you shorted yourself and your kid shared time on earth together. I also just don't have the energy or physical ability to play like I would have at a younger age. It's not something you can really grapple with or consider the magnitude of as a childless person purposely avoiding/delaying it. I don't think it's necessarily intentionally selfish in the moment, as you're living it, but later sometimes you get to reflect back and see your decisions as what they really where with the clarity of hindsight and you'll understand what you really did. It's a weird thing that happens and I think part of the whole "wisdom with age" thing. I think I was just being selfish. All the travel and me stuff I did in my 20s-30s is not really very important, my identity as a parent to the humans I created is my identity now, It's the only part of my identity I really care very much about. Sure I still have hobbies and travel and stuff but it's on an entirely different plane of importance.
What if someone is not waiting on anything and just doesn't want to have kids out of any number of reasons? It's alright if you have regrets, but I don't see it as selfish if you never intended to have kids in the first place.
Well, this is kind of the camp I was in. I never wanted kids, so I said and thought. I knew my wife was kind of on the fence; so I knew it was a possibility. But I was actually kind of expecting her to either A) just one day tell me she had been thinking and wanted a kid or, B) what I actually hoped at the time, her clock would stop ticking while we were busy doing us and the decision would be made due to that. We had long agreed that if we ever did do it, we'd try but if fertility was ever an issue we wouldn't pursue IVF or adoption; we'd just consider it a sign from the universe and live our lives happily childfree. But then, we (ok she) was diagnosed and overcame a huge medical issue and it had us re-evaluate our thoughts on family/life/everything in the process.
Also noteworthy is that I don't project an opinion of selfishness on others; it's what I feel of myself. I can say also, now having a lot of friends that also waited for whatever reason, it's not uncommon in this cohort. It's also very common that people wait then run into fertility issues and the feeling hits harder for them. We've known a ton of people that struggle hard with that, more-so if having kids was already on your must-do list and you just delayed it too long.
So to answer your question more directly, I don't think the person you described is selfish. They may however realize they were if they ever decided to actually have kids and perhaps have some regret do to that.
And you depend on doctors and sewerage workers and programmers and garbage men and police officers and soldiers and physicists and so on. Is it selfish not to become all of these things yourself?
As long as you participate actively in society by working, you are doing your part and are not being selfish.
And my taxes go towards (in most countries) supporting that. Also, the children are not obligated to take care of me. They can choose it as a profession and I will gladly pay them for it, just as I gladly pay any professional in my life for cutting my hair or helping my children if they have trouble at school (even though they themselves do not have to have children and are helping them instead of the other way around). Are the people providing services also selfish for providing them?
Why? Anyone paying taxes to the state has fully earned their right to exist, especially if the state has a welfare system.
Not having children isn't even a new concept. People have done it since time immemorial. What if they had multiple children and then lost them all to the statistically high child mortality rates? Were they being selfish by not furthering their lineage due to external circumstances?
Off the top of my head: not being able to biologically, thinking that they are not able to provide worthy living conditions for the children, abuse in childhood and being afraid of exhibiting the same behaviour, having sick parents/siblings who need a lot of care leaving no time for children, not wanting to increase the burden on the planet... or just plain having the freedom of choice.
It's not a blanket rule and it's more about how you'll feel about yourself, realizing you've been selfish, than it is projecting outwards that anyone without kids must be selfish; that's certainly not the case.
These seem like very clear exceptions and reasons. Take it as a general sentiment, I'm not trying to footnote everything I write online to consider every possible circumstance any human could conceivably encounter. I think you should have known these are clearly not selfish acts. Biologically infertile being selfish? Come on dude.
OK, it sounds like your experience was selfish simply because later ON you had children, and the time you spent alone was time you could've had with your eventual children.
But what of someone who will not have children at all? How is it, literally (in the definition of the word), "selfish" to not have children? From whom are you robbing experience? What is being "taken away" and from whom?
If you want kids, its selfish to bring the other party into existence. Life isn't all great, and you don't have a choice in whether or not you're born.
If you don't want kids, its selfish because you are not supporting the society (other party) that supports your existence. If we don't have kids above the replacement rate, society doesn't continue. If you are fine with that great, but its hypocritical if you plan to continue to benefit from society in your own life.
What of the people that have children but those children do not contribute in any meaningful way to society? Is the implication here that every child born must somehow be a net-positive to society?
I see what you're saying about the replacement rate, but I don't see how, on a smaller scale, someone choosing to not have children is a selfish act within the context of a society that is not yet below "replacement" level.
"I'm not giving anyone else a chance" -- there is no "anyone else". There is nothing being robbed, as there is no other party that literally exists in the universe.
What I hear from millennials is "life is suffering, our future is doomed (global warming, mass extinction, insane politics, increasing loneliness), why would I force some kid to have to grow up in this shit world just for my own fulfillment?"
Which is crazy. Because no one had a life harder than the previous generations.
The amount of technological progress in the past decade is staggering. So many infrastructure issues are now just automated, that we don’t have to think about.
It’s a great time to be alive. And a great time to give someone else that opportunity to experience it too.
Looking at long term trends, the only single thing I can be sure of is the future won't look like the present.
I am currently experiencing a strong drive to start a family. Lets say I get very lucky and cause a pregnancy tomorrow; kid comes out 9 months later, 21 years (± whatever for when school starts), they graduate university and… it's not predictable in the slightest. We might have single-atom transistors as standard, or the factories might be too expensive to mass produce them. We might have solved all genetic conditions, or research might have stalled with Moore's Law. AI might be good enough to make human labour uneconomical, which is a separate issue to if we will arrange our economies to make this a utopia or a dystopia, or it might not. Even without AI, internet connectivity and robotics is enough to make Amazon Mechanical Turk more like its namesake, with the same impact on cost-cutting and outsourcing to whoever has an internet connection. Genetics research, even if limited to no-growth-in-computing scenarios, may also make it affordable for small and dumb terrorist groups to attempt DIY genocides, and even if they fail at their goal that may still cause megadeaths… but we may well also have defences against it, either biological or surveillance. Similar issues for drones and high-powered lasers. We've already got government-affordable ways to put literally every human on the planet under 24/7 surveillance, and that's likely to get cheap enough for organised crime to automate blackmail, but we also already have people doing that with generative AI and the social responses (let alone the legislative) could be almost anything. 3D printed houses and boats are both realities now, will we finally witness large-scale seasteading, or is that fundamentally untenable?
And that's all assuming no world-ending, or even just economy-ending, catastrophes of any kind — no paperclip optimisers, no nuclear wars, no peak-${insert-resource-here}, no environmental issues causing 1e9-scale migration.
Media has them mind broke. The material conditions climate change / etc will inflict on them are nothing compared to the material conditions our ancestors endured before the creation of modern technology.
"Boo hoo, the weather is shitty and some people are moving around because of it" he says, as he doesn't have to worry about Bubonic Plague or Genghis Khan.
I wish people didn't mind people moving around, but (a) the UK gets worried about mere tens of thousands, and (b) "some people" in the case of climate-change induced changes to farming output would, with current economics, be "about three times the total population of Earth when the Black Death started".
