1w ago

Why aren't you creating more workers??

129 comments

Want higher birthrates? Just convince people that tomorrow will be better than today.
That's how you see a spike in birth rates.
To maintain a steady birthrate, just convince potential parents that the world will not be any worse for their children than it is today.
See, easy.
- Capitalist Corporations: .... hmmmm .... I guess there's no choice .... artificial human breeding it is!
  
  Capitalism would also charge for every part of the process, raising the price as some techno feudal lord thinks they can find the right balance between extinction pricing and maximum shareholder value.
  
  Then they do the calculation on the costs to raise the children and decide it's not economically viable.
  
  I feel like this is a plot of a dystopian movie somewhere where they breed artificial humans to make into slaves
  
  The robots are coming for our women. 🤖😳
- You said ban birth control and porn? Got it.
  
  Track everything people do and arrest them for unauthorised opinions? Got it.
  
  So that's why suddenly there's all this interest in banning porn
  
  Also homosexuality, except for the wealthy.
- They're taking the opposite approach.
  In the past families had a bunch of kids because they needed extra laborers to stay afloat, plus childhood mortality rates were so dire they needed spares to cover for the ones who wouldn't make it.
  We're already seeing pushes towards removing child labor laws, and RFK Jr is well on his way to ensuring death from easily preventable diseases makes a comeback.
- I mean... Shiiii. That sounds easy as hell! Jerry! Why didn't you tell us about this idea before??? You have??? We'd have to give them HOW much to do that?? Nevermind then.

This raises birth rates
- I was born with a penis but Luigi Mangione activated my ovaries
  
  Free estrogen!
  
  Allegedly.
- !lemmysilver

I'm trying to get pregnant, but it's kinda hard when you're a guy. I won't stop trying, tho. 🫡

Growing up, I was of the mindset that I would have got married and started a family by this point in my life. But as of the last few years, my thoughts have done just about a 180.
Even if I was currently with someone/married, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to raise kids in this day and age in the US (the bullet dodged me when my ex-girlfriend used plan b after we got intimate without protection). I think best case scenario for me now would be DINK, but gotta find someone that can put up with my dumpster fires first.
- Just find someone with similar dumpster fires, then you'll both burn in the passions of what you love
  Also, thanks for mentioning DINK - Double Income No Kids .... never heard of that before and now I learned something new.
  
  Currently living that live and fuck me is life easy right now. Cats instead of kids is a very tempting option.
  
  Like yuppies was a play on hippies except it stood for Young Urban Professional
- I'm loving my perfectly resonant dumpster fire he's curled up next to me right now!
- Same dink is my dream but hard to find partners who are into it, or who you like and who like you

A friend of mine has three kids and works 70 hours a week. He is not able to make enough to support his family, and social services have been cut so much that his only option is to take out a personal loan, which will only make his problem worse.
- 14 hours leaves you barely 2 hours of personal time in a day. That's barely enough to just eat and maybe relax but then if you have 3 kids even that time is gone taking care of them. How and why would anyone put themselves through this, like after the first or second kid wouldn't your own limits become apparent
  
  14 hours leaves you barely 2 hours of personal time in a day
  You've misspelled "commute"
  
  Some people find themselves in places where they lack the choice to limit themselves to two children when an accident happens. Not everyone has the resources to travel to a place where they would be able to make a choice.
- In the USA? If yes, the US is a sick country in regard to income distribution, labor laws, healthcare and public services. However, if your friend voted MAGA, zero sympathy and he/she can carry on.
  
  I don't think children should suffer regardless of who their parents voted for, I find your callousness as bad as bad as those that voted for Trump.
  
  However, if your friend voted MAGA, zero sympathy and he/she can carry on.
  Yeah those kids deserve to be neglected! Fuck em!
  
  However, if your friend voted MAGA, zero sympathy
  It's so bizarre to see liberal politician after liberal politician promise economic reforms common to the rest of the industrial world, then fail to deliver over and over again.
  And then someone sees a ghoul like Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden running at the top of the ticket, or an American Psycho like Newsom or Adams or Cuomo trying to hijack any semblance of progressive politics for their own vainglory. And they say "Nope, not supporting that garbage".
  Then everything that comes after is on their heads, somehow.
  Not on the heads of the trillionaire plutocrats setting economic policy. Or military leadership goading us into the next war. Or evangelical hucksters selling snake oil to desperate people.
  Nope. Always the fault of Joe Dirt when Obama can't win his third term.

On a more positive note the newest IPCC report on climate has population decline being the biggest positive impact on climate change, so keep at it!
- How this isn't obvious and something we should collectively want is beyond me. We really don't fucking need more than 8 billion people. I don't think we need more than 1, and even that is pushing it.

why would I want to bring somebody into this world. they'd only have to fight for basic things like "let's be nice to each other" and "maybe we should pool our money to spend it on big things that benefit us all"
fuck that. I'll live my little servile life as a cog in the machine as best I can, and then I'll die. and the dumb fucks who won't stop breeding while they try to make things worse for their children will repopulate the earth
- No you don't understand. We're the most prosperous we've ever been at any point in time. There was literally no other time better than this. Life is wonderful in every way
  /s
  I'm generally a happy person but I hate people who say this.
  
  I'm right there with you. They're basically saying "things could be worse, so there's no point in wanting them better." It's a nonsensical thought-terminating cliché.
- No but you dont understand, the population is declining! It's so apocalyptic!
- This is how i feel as well. I understand im a cog in the machine, but i just want a relatively comfortable life until the sweet embrace of nothingness takes me in

im not spending a fortune to raise a child when i can barely afford eggs
- Don't worry when they get desperate enough they'll make condoms illegal
  
  Really puts the conservative war on reproductive rights in a new light, doesn't it.
- The math has changed.
  100 years ago, you'd get kids so you can afford eggs.
  
  Yeah, then child labor laws came and ruined that for everyone.
  But don't worry, soon those too will be a thing of the past!
- Nice humblebrag I guess, I'm beginning to forget what eggs even taste like

The birth rate moral panic is 100% manufactured by neoliberal capitalists who simultaneously want high consumption and low wages, which is a logical impossibilty. You cannot have a consumerist society where the average consumer lives paycheck to paycheck
- I beg to differ; you can definitely have that society; proof is: we are currently living in it!
- It's only because capitalism demands it. I am tired of people who think we need more people on this planet, we most certainly do not. There is nothing we can't do with 8 billion of us that we can do with 8 billion plus 1.
- If it's neoliberalism, why is the right always clamouring about it? I think you are misguided on your aim my friend. You are also right, the time of us having things and enjoying our leisure are in the process of being erased for the good old days of company towns and food lines.
  
  The "right" shy of outright fascists are neoliberals. The term was coined in the eighties and describes a system that like Liberalism classic works primarily off of an idea of a protected class of citizen (as opposed to lesser protected classes of non-citizen) with a series of fundemental "rights" to basic protected freedoms from government interference and choice of "style of life" based around a personal property centric system.
  Where Neo-liberalism differs is it detests the welfare state, seeks widespread government deregulation as they see it as an economic deficit, practice widespread government austerity in public programs and seeks to privatize swaths of government services to create new market sectors.
  Neo doesn't mean new in a "of the minute" kind of way. The people who came up with the distinction between liberal branches were describing the likes of Ronald Regan and Margret Thatcher.

Dumb question: do we really need more people? It feels very much like technology/productivity will allow us to support a good lifestyle with fewer people.
- The problem developed nations are currently facing is that we need enough young people working to continue to support the current population as it ages and retires. The absolute population probably doesn't need to be as big as it is (unless you plan on starting a war like Russia for example) but it's not clear how to manage a reducing population gracefully.
  
  By taxing corporations and reversing this insane wealth concentration.
  
  Certainly not by letting these dirty foreigners in the country. Those wild people with their 50 kids... wait.
  
  I think it is worth figuring out how to manage it - the alternative isn't super sustainable. The other thing is that it is like a 50 year challenge, which isn't insurmountable.
  
  Eh... there's always Ättestupa...
- We? No. Capitalism? Yes.
- It’s only a dumb question if you’re looking at all the people now. Birth rates across the board are declining and most developed countries are well below replacement. We’re just not noticing yet because people live like 80 years.
  Most population projections have us peaking in 25-50 years, then population declines. That’s not all bad but how steeply does population decline and when does it stop? How does it impact economies, politics, who had influence and power. It looks like it could be steep and disruptive, with no prediction on when it will level off.
  However if we start mitigating that, start encouraging people to have children, provide more support for raising children, give more hope to potential parents, working together for a brighter future consistently for the next 50 years perhaps we can manage the decline for least disruption. Perhaps we can find a sustainable population to level off at which is still big enough for today’s rapid advancements
- We need some more people. Much as I agree as the future is bleak, if we all simply stopped procreating then there wouldn't really be any point to anything and truly no reason to want to make the world better. Can't get to Star Trek future without a future.
  
  I don't think I mean a complete stop. I mean like a managed approach of tax incentives that over time encourage smaller families. Predicting and paying for degrees or training so we have a workforce that can fit into the economy easily. And a targeted immigration policy scaled to supplement gaps in the workforce or population.

I mean you're half right. In a zoo, the keepers care for their animals, making sure they're well fed, enriched, and healthy.
We're being farmed. They are using us to make money from our produce (labour). They're using us to make money. We're so over exploited we simply cannot afford to have children.

By choice.
Not my choice tbh.
- I’d put a baby in you. Not like through sex. just standard surgical procedure
  
  Elon, that’s enough. Go home.
  
  ಠ_ಠ
  
  Oh! Could we keep it in my thigh? I want a fun new conversation piece!
- Yeah Captivity

I want biological kids, and I'm right about the point in my life where it would make the most sense to have them. But whenever family asks about it, I tell them I'm not raising children in this kind of administration. They try to suggest that it's not that bad and I stand firm that they're not seeing grandbabies until the government stops being so fashy.
Actually, millennials could probably hold our hypothetical babies hostage, see what's more important to them.
- Actually, millennials could probably hold our hypothetical babies hostage
  Given how many kids are in some combination of foster systems, detention centers, corrections programs, or concentration camps, maybe millennials need to start finding the actual babies and liberating them.
- Women have a biological clock on them, makes no sense waiting for different admin.
  
  I directly know multiple people who had to get what were effectively late term abortions due to pregnancy complications that would've put their lives at risk otherwise. We don't live in the US, so they were fortunate to be able to get the medical care they needed, but it underscores the scariness of the situation in the US; these risks mean that becoming pregnant in the wrong place could literally be a life or death matter. If treatment is received, even people who experience severe complications may be able to have a successful pregnancy in future. Not having access to these things risks breaking the biological clock anyway, so waiting is not unreasonable.
  
  Not disagreeing with your point, but women can have children until menopause. It gets riskier and harder but not as much as most people commonly believe. "Biological clock" is a largely made up concept.

A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation...
Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence, and no species can ever multiply beyond it. But in civilised society it is only among the inferior ranks of people that the scantiness of subsistence can set limits to the further multiplication of the human species; and it can do so in no other way than by destroying a great part of the children which their fruitful marriages produce.
The liberal reward of labour, by enabling them to provide better for their children, and consequently to bring up a greater number, naturally tends to widen and extend those limits. It deserves to be remarked, too, that it necessarily does this as nearly as possible in the proportion which the demand for labour requires. If this demand is continually increasing, the reward of labour must necessarily encourage in such a manner the marriage and multiplication of labourers, as may enable them to supply that continually increasing demand by a continually increasing population.
Adam Smith, the father of capitalism
- They hate Smith almost as much as Marx

Born in 84, I've noticed something of a trend in my area. Late gen X and late millennials are having children, most are having two or three, but a lot of people like me born in the mid 80's aren't. While this is by no means universal, there does seem to be more people within five years of my age going without kids.

I love this person's glasses.
- Ok. But what is the mouth
  
  A finger

I wish I could feel comfortable bringing children into the world.
I really want to be a parent in my life

I don't want to bring kids in this world that will inevitably grow up with a father when I take out all my frustration and grievances on members of the ruling class.
They're gonna wish I used a guillotine.

Also, maybe 8 billion is "enough". Not breeding is only a problem for the economy. Capitalism needs perpetual growth, there is no end game, just more, of everything, forever.

Proud owner of a tubal litigation here
- I'm genuinely afraid to get vasectomy, thinking "this is just a phase and l might change my mind later"
  
  I suffer post vasectomy pain syndrome that comes and goes randomly over the pass of months, and still, it worth.

Frames like that are excellent birth control.
- idk im kinda into it
- Nah, those frames are awesome.

129 comments