Comment by Zelmor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zelmor | Hacker News Reader

I personally have no issues with this. Now, if you are in the family raising-house purchasing lifestyle, I do understand the need for permanent work and stability, and wish you the best in finding that field of work!

As for a subcontractor, however, I enjoy high mobility. The client sucks? Stick to it until the next release cycle and work for another one the next week. You like working remotely? Look for a full-time client that offers that, or work for multiple who enjoys not having to pay rent for your ass in their offices.

The trick is to find a company, or consortium, which actively seeks clients and offer them services. This means they are constantly "recruiting" and moving people in-between projects. You don't have to be an employee within said company, you just have to be able to bill your hours to said company/consortium. Having my own company allows me to seek clients within the EU as well as overseas, if I wish to work those hours. It also allows me to drive prices higher than average, since I provide the advantage of "disposable workforce". That later part would be an issue, if I wasn't in connection with such company groups I mentioned earlier.

Your mileage may vary. I have to put it forth that I have no desire for kids, or owning my own house, so that removes a lot of stress and monetary obligations. I understand this is not the norm, though I do not understand why. We have it way better with my partner than couples with kids, and our observations over the years enforced our hunch that people generally start families because they have no idea where they want to go in life. So they try new things, which is nice, but maybe they should start with raising vegetables in their gardens, which is a daily, year-around responsibility. You gotta water and check for weeds, invaders every day, no matter how tired you might feel. If you give up two months in because the kale died due to overwatering and you never checking resources online, or the brussel sprouts never started budding because you never checked that in needs sulfur in the ground, well, maybe raising kids ain't for you either.

A society that does not produce enough offspring will go extinct and be replaced by one that does.

Don't worry, you'll long dead by then.

We will, but the government won't. And because the government needs to keep tax income flowing, it will promote native procreation.

> We will, but the government won't. And because the government needs to keep tax income flowing, it will promote native procreation.

I disagree with this, and I cite reality as proof: what western governments are actually successfully promoting native procreation? Governments might give some lip-service to native procreation, but they sure don't do much, and as a result, people aren't procreating. Look at Japan for instance: they're in NPG now, so whatever half-hearted attempts the government is making aren't having much of an effect. Even here in the US we'd be NPG if it weren't for immigrants.

What exactly does the government do to promote native procreation anyway? Here again in the US, I sure don't see much. I see 1) a child tax credit that doesn't amount to much if you're not poor, and certainly doesn't come close to making up for the cost of having a kid; 2) different tax treatment for married couples, but while this gives you a small benefit if one partner doesn't work, it ends up being a big penalty if both work. On the other hand, I see: 1) government-run public schools which are an utter disaster, where you can expect your kids to be tormented to the point of suicide; 2) government enforcers arresting parents who let their kids play outside for "child neglect"; 3) astronomical college tuition costs and a student-loan trap; 4) fewer and fewer jobs, meaning you're more and more likely to have your kids living with you well into adulthood and beyond and unable to take care of themselves; 5) astronomical day-care costs so that one partner's entire income is used just so they can leave the kid in day-care while they work; 6) companies which penalize workers and their long-term careers for taking time off for raising kids (which is why people work just to pay for day-care in #5); 7) a horrible and expensive healthcare system where you'll get socked with thousands or tens of thousands in medical bills just for having a single kid, even with insurance; 8) a high possibility of divorce (probably contributed to greatly by all these societal stressors I mentioned above), which would leave one parent struggling to raise the kid(s) by themselves with a single income.

All in all, having kids is a gigantic risk, an enormous expense, and the government isn't helping much with it, and instead is making it much more expensive and risky with its actions (e.g., by giving us a terrible and expensive healthcare system).

That's probably not the insult you think it is, to people that have kids that they love.

What about people who have kids they don't love? I knew someone like this; she was an older lady (50s at the time), with a really wonderful personality but disabled. She had one son from a prior marriage. She finally had to break off all contact with him when it became obvious that he was only hanging around her trying to convince her to sign over power-of-attorney of herself and her social security benefits to him so he could take all her money. He was a sociopath.

Not necessarily. People make kids because of the instinct to not let their genes die. As a computer programmer who do not want to have kids can switch to Gene editing or any computational medical related domain which works on immortality. The advantage is constant motivation to work because of the chance(seems good as of now) of attaining immortality, which is the same reason why people create kids to prolong our consciousness.

I've never understood this idea of creating kids as a means of immortality or prolonging consciousness. Your kids aren't you, and they don't even think like you. Even Plato complained about the younger generation having poor values! Kids (esp. teenagers) are infamous for rebellion against their parents, and generational differences clearly show that your kids are not at all likely to think like you or have the same values. You might think you'll be able to guide and shape your kid, but all of history proves this wrong.

Children's are the closest to resembling our selves and it is the only choice we have now to prolong our consciousness as of now. But once we have immortality only, i guess people will have kids only if both are in madly love and not for the fear of extinction.

Having kids with the futile hope of somehow "prolonging your consciousness" through them seems pretty silly to me. The main valid reason I see for anyone to have kids (esp. in a hypothetical future where we've achieved biological immortality) is simply because they like kids. Some people are like that, just like some people like cats and some people like dogs and some people like parrots and some people like fish. Some people really seem to like being around kids. But not everyone does, in fact it seems like most people don't.

As I house owner, I've been taking issue with the common thread on the internet that suggests that buying a house is a financial trap. It can be, of course, depending on where you live and your financial habits/situation.

I don't know where you live in the EU, but in the Netherlands, where I live, paying mortgage can be as affordable as renting. So, unless you're in the nomad lifestyle, you still gotta pay a fixed monthly housing cost, unless you live on the streets or with your parents. Both options sound terrible to me. So the stable income/expense cash-flow need to be there anyway.

There are a lot of obligations of owning a home, such as ongoing maintenance that some consider enjoyable (and promptly forgotten) but some do not. To each his own.

My personal emphasis is on mobility, not the ROI of renting or buying. When shit hits the fan, I would like to be able to move countries/continents without leaving behind a bad investment.

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