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Comment by intopieces | Hacker News Reader

>Why would a city actually want kids?

School districts want kids for the same reason start-ups want customers: it's hard to scale with smaller demand. Yesterday when I was in SF, I saw a sign hanging on the fence of a schoolyard: "SUPPORT YOUR SCHOOL - BUY SCHOOL LUNCHES!" Apparently, so few students were buying school lunches (and instead bringing their own) that it was becoming more expensive to provide it for the ones that do buy it.

Children who grow up in a city go on to invest in that city. Children also require services that drive the local economy, from babysitting to clothing/toys/food.

I know you don't like sitting next to a table full of kids at a restaurant. Me neither. But children are necessary components of a thriving community.

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What if SF has so much external demand that it doesn't need to generate any internal demand? As in, who cares whether anyone grows up in the city, because the job market is so strong that every available living space will be taken by someone from out of town? What happens in 30 years when there are almost no kids in the city and almost no adults are ''from'' San Francisco? Does it even matter? Maybe this is just a harbinger of things to come as the birth rate declines more broadly.

You mean what if tech is forever? It's not forever. We thought it would be forever in '99 and it collapsed. The truth is, we don't know what the future will be like, but we can be almost certain that it will include children because there will always be some people who want children. So dismantling the support system for them (or letting it die slowly) is just asking for trouble, and is short sighted. Besides, you're underestimating the value of the children's economy. From birth to move out (let's say 18), many industries serve children, including quite a few that are startups.

> We thought it would be forever in '99 and it collapsed

damn, you're right. if only the tech industry were still around.

The fact that a boom might turn into a bust is an even better reason not to encourage people to start families in a particular location.

The problem with that logic is that it leads to gold-rush/mining cities which become ghost towns when their main driver goes away.

I'm not saying that all of The city would disappear, but a flood of people leaving the city, driven out by a bust that will eventually happen, could leave large areas completely empty. That gives rise to higher crime, which increases stress on a police force that doesn't have as much taxpayer-funded support as it did before.

You need people of all ages to keep a city thriving.

because that external demand could disappear tomorrow if fashions change

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