Ask HN: Why aren't the childless incentivized for not stressing global resources | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why aren't the childless incentivized for not stressing global resources

It is clear that the world population is exploding. Families with multiple children are subsidized by government while individuals who responsibly curtail their instincts to procreate and preserve global resources are in a way penalized because they never seem to enjoy the benefits for their choice.

Why is the choice to have 2..3..19 and counting..rewarded while the child less individuals who do not stress the worlds resources get nary a thanks..never mind the well deserved monetary/quality of life rewards.(example: tax dollars go to educating others children and not towards something the childfree population would enjoy)

Thoughts?

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> Families with multiple children are subsidized by government

Yeah, that's not how any of this works. Parents spend on average $10k-$20k cash per year on their children in the US.

> 2..3..19 and counting..

You should be aware that fertility rates have plummeted to below replacement rate in almost every developed country. The fertility rate in the US is currently 1.8 children per woman, meaning that if not for previously higher fertility rates in the past and immigration, the population in the US would be decreasing over time.

But other parts of the world are overcrowded..if we could redistribute population, won't we relieve hyper dense hubs and manage resources more effectively.

Yes. This will definitely happen (more than it already is), because developed countries aren't producing enough children to take care of their aging local population.

First, not having kids in no way guarantees that you will live lightly on the land. Plenty of childless people drive cars, take air plane flights for vacations, own big homes and generally live a consumerist lifestyle to the max.

Second, simply having kids does not, by itself, mean you will add all kinds of burden to the system. When I wrote a college paper some years back for an Environmental Law class, a typical American kid consumed something like 200 times the resources as a typical kid in India.

Your argument in no way holds any water. It sounds like you basically are saying you want to be personally rewarded in some way for not having kids. Generally speaking, not having kids frees you up to put your time and energy into your job and hobbies and what have you while not having to pay the costs involved in having a kid. That seems like plenty "reward" to me if you do not even want kids to begin with.

I wasn't making an argument. Listening to various points of view. Thanks for yours.

Also: what is your opinion re global warming?

Housing, for example, is a direct function of population growth. We are clearly showing strains in quality of living there. Thoughts?

Climate change has gone on since the birth of this planet's atmosphere. We have the term "Ice Age" as evidence of our knowledge that average temperatures have varied over time. The planet has been getting warmer for at least hundreds of years, having nothing to do with humans. We are adding to that, but we don't really clearly know exactly how much is due to human activity, nor do we know as well as we sometimes claim what that will lead to.

Humans are terrible about running around shrieking "The sky is falling!" News basically means bad news.

When the oil wells in Kuwait were set on fire, it was predicted that they would burn for years and be a global environmental catastrophe. When crack teams converged upon Kuwait, invented new techniques on the spot and put them out in six months, this did not get celebrated on par with the hand wringing that initially occurred. Y2K followed a similar pattern.

When things turn out okay, we consider that normal. When disaster gets averted, we often rewrite history and claim it was never a serious threat to begin with. Then we find some new thing to have conniptions about.

Climate change is real. Potential disaster due to climate change is also real. But we routinely overcome such problems and then are all Meh, no big afterwards.

"It's the end of the world as we know it -- and I feel fine."

I hear everything you are saying. And yet..with every passing day..any illusion that I may have that human beings are 'special' fades just a bit...

Having said that, I still cannot see the justifications for having children. If we can have a carbon tax for vehicles, then surely there ought to be a child tax?

Maybe there is a way to earn child credits? And they can be traded like stocks.

Example: if I earn enough child credits through responsible green living, social contributions etc(whatever the criteria may be) I can either use the credit to have my own offsprings or buy more credits to have more children or trade it with someone who can buy my credits(with a premium when bought. Example: anyone who wants to buy child credits need to pay 1.5x or double what it took for me to monetize it. This is not a free market)

Child credits can vary in value from place to place. Example: if the air quality is really lousy in a city, you would need more child credits to have and raise a child there than in a city where air is cleaner. It could be any other index.

Maybe not here in on earth..but if we find another habitable planet, would it make sense to regulate population if we are going to start from scratch there?

The data show that birth rates fall AFTER child mortality rates decline. This causes populations to surge during the period that birth rates are still high, but child mortality rates are starting to come down.

If this really concerns you, the humane and practical way to approach this is to be very pro female empowerment. Giving women reproductive rights, access to education, the ability to support themselves and a few other things (there were five in the list I saw, I am only remembering three) improves quality of life for everyone and also brings down birth rates.

If you can't see having kids, that's fine. Don't have them if you feel strongly about that. I have also seen studies that show that animals who experience severe overcrowding see an increase in things like homosexual behavior of members, presumably as a means to reduce new births.

So, I think the way you feel about this is adaptive and part of the solution. But if you want to find a means to get other people to have fewer kids, the optimal way to do that is to help women get lives and careers on par with men. Women who are educated and empowered tend to limit the number of kids they have.

I am female and I originally wanted three kids. I chose to stop at two due to health issues and other personal issues. I have several years of college and was in a more empowered position than many women. So, this is both data I have seen in college classes and first hand experience of mine that backs that up.

Best.

Hi..thanks for your thoughtful and rounded reply.

A couple of points I want to address:

1. I don't think women's empowerment has anything to with ability to have kids or the ability to have the choice to do so. Since aeons, women not only have always had reproductive control but until recently were also able to pick the genetic contributor of their offsprings..and even go as far to conceal the identity of the father.

When I started researching old herbal books, there were so many ways women were able to claim their bodies that are simply lost to them in this day and age.

Secondly: we have a population of about 8 million now. The future is very crowded. To bring us to a comfortable carrying capacity, it will take 4-5 generations of draconian population control.

When I was younger, I studied in school about how women's education and empowerment would increase their opportunities in the world and how their reproductive window in time would shrink to fit in other enriching aspects of living.

And yet, population increased.

Even as more women enter the workforce, the biggest gripe is lack of child care or time off after child birth or not being able to compete with men because their having to be caregivers works against them.

This tells me that getting into workforce doesn't stop women from having children that they might have had if they weren't economically empowered.

If anything, employed women are forced to be 'super moms' saddled with guilt and high child care bills and a lot of other baggage. It tells me that empowerment must be decoupled from childbearing role of women.

Neither should be used to define how a woman feels.

Having said that(and as a woman), there is a certain biological imperative most women feel to be mothers. I don't think this would be changed by education or work or empowerment. To a large extent, it is individual. It is not a right. It is a choice. And all choices we make, we ought to be accountable for..

Next..tech and modern medical advancements have caused women even in their 40s and 50s to have children. Geriatric pregnancies are more common now as are IVF and surrogacy and genetic screenings etc.

I find it very interesting that with all the strides in women's empowerment, reduced mortality, longer life span and many other factors, population and desire to procreate hasn't waned. It tells me that unless having children..or more than one per person(or with a credit system) or incentivizing the childless, population won't hit the brakes.

What certainly doesn't work is subsidizing those who choose to have multiple children. If robots and AI take over mundane jobs and bigger jobs of running our world..if our life spans increases and our cells don't age as drastically, what is the need to keep adding to the world population especially when resources are constrained?

Thanks for your replies and indulging my curiosity re other pov. Regards.

I don't think most women are as empowered as you seem to think they are. I don't believe a job per se equals "female empowerment." I also don't think we know what actual "carrying capacity" for the planet is.

Best regards.

In the United States or outside?

Both. From what I gather, some European countries have a decent track record, but the U.S. and many other countries have a pretty sucktastic situation for women.

I feel like we should first define 'empowerment' first. There is gender empowerment, economic empowerment, workplace empowerment, personal empowerment, legal empowerment etc.

Also..one would imagine that a gay person is also less empowered than a heterosexual person. But you can't empower them by 'granting them education' or 'opening job markets'. A child is less empowered than an adult.

A handicapped person is less empowered than a relatively healthier and whole individual.

A child's empowerment comes from growing up. Etc.

So when you say that women's empowerment comes from education and job prospects, I have to conclude that you meant economic empowerment of women that would bring down population.

Which is a little confusing to me... How is giving women more access to wealth and taking them to economic parity with men going to make them want to procreate less?

In fact, it has only empowered more women to become single parents. Which has increased global population. Social nets have only encouraged people to want to increase the number of offsprings.

So there is a fundamental logical disconnect here. Staring down the abyss that is a resource constrained future world, we are only making things worse.

I am only even more convinced now that those who refrain from proceating should be incentivized and those who do have children should be facing the economic consequences of their choices.

Our economic system is based on growth, I believe.

Population growth increases demand for goods and services. This generates new jobs, venture opportunities and increases the value of existing assets such as real estate and securities. Overall population growth creates a positive spiral in the economic sense.

Of course none of this takes into account that we live in a world with limited resources. And there is no incentive to do so - as long as you have sufficient assets that stand to rise in value. It's the people who have the least that suffer the most from overpopulation.

I think all things being equal, growth in population is a wash. In a static economy I would think that one more adult will on average and at scale contribute about as much as they consume.

AFAIU our economic system (or at least our expectations of it) is based on productivity growth--more output for an equivalent input of labor. The additional output gains are the basic source of wealth creation.

For various reasons I think it's easier to maintain robust productivity growth with a growing population. Workers reach maximum productivity age 40-50.[1] Also, if you want the 40- to 50-year-olds of tomorrow to be at the top of their game you want them to begin learning to use their tools today.

So an aging population has an increasing proportion of workers past their prime and, worse, those people will be even less productive with newer technology than workers about to enter their prime productivity years.

If the population is shrinking then things are worse because now there are fewer workers paying for services for the elderly. But that's a different sort of issue, I think.

Alternatively, we could just kill old people. Then we might even be able to sustain high productivity growth even as the population shrinks. But I suspect old people might be critical for sociological reasons; society might be much less stable in their absence.

[1] https://blog-imfdirect.imf.org/2016/12/09/why-productivity-g...

What if

1. most work done by today is done by robots?

2. Anti aging improves and life span increases?

Why should they be? Look at it from the other side:

They clearly have no interest after they themselves pass on. Their failure to contribute children hurts whatever civilization they're a part of, because they haven't created more taxable human beings, more workers, more artists, or more scientists.

Why reward such selfishness?

That is an interesting point of view.

I want to play along.

So..what about imperfect offsprings of those who play the procreation game? What do we do with them?

Imperfect offspring are still useful for a society, they just are maybe suited at different things. Both a strong but dumb person and a frail but smart person are useful in their own ways. :)

In a society, non productive members do not contribute.

Birds: if in a nest, there are healthy fledglings and a runt, the weakest will be pushed out of the nest by the others because it is a drain on resources.

Big Cats: as big cats age and become frail, they will leave the group and stay back alone to die hidden. This is so they don't slow down the rest of the group. Also..their death will attract predators and scavengers endangering the rest.

And yet, altruism shows up in many ways in nature. Yet, altruism is weaker with human beings and when resources are scarce, there seems to be no will to optimize it.

Why are humans different..even to our detriment?

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