The perils of short-termism
bbc.com
bbc.com
We need a positive vision. We need to be optimistic that we are addressing the environmental issues and that humans will be thriving and flourishing in 2100. Therefore, what will that look like? And what is the work we need to do to design and develop that positive future?
While I would like to raise a family one day the idea of raising children with just being capable of supporting their necessities doesn't appeal to me at all.
If I can't offer them the best start in life or be the parent I wish I had (due to a lack of resources) I would rather not have children.
The best start in life is a start.
Now as an adult I have issues that seem to stem from childhood emotional neglect that I struggle with. My sibling isn't that much better emotionally adjusted either.
I wasn't a particularly happy child but neither of them noticed or paid much attention even when they could have.
If you or your sibling regret being born I’m sorry for you.
The correct response to this is not antinatalism but anticapitalism: Why should we have a system that systematically subjects people to financial hardship for having children?
It's easily fixed with a sensibly-designed welfare state, but we don't have one because we'd rather be judgemental to the poor about wanting "luxuries" like a decent house to live in.
The defining feature of capitalism is ownership of the means of production aka capital, by a capitalist class. Socialism is common ("social") ownership of the capital, and thus the abolition of the capitalist class.
Marxists can define capitalism and socialism with precision. But when people defend capitalism and when people argue against capitalism, they are referring to different things. People defending capitalism are defending markets and "the invisible hand" as a mechanism for positive social development. People arguing against capitalism are arguing against monopolies and market distorting accumulations of wealth.
Trying to convince people that capitalism doesn't mean markets is not a good rhetorical strategy. Instead, you might accomplish your goals better by helping people realize that socialism and govt regulation can lead to stronger, healthier markets.
My overall point is that capitalists and anti-capitalists use different definitions of capitalism and therefore the arguments are doomed to futility.
Capitalists generally do not care about markets in the abstract either: what motivates them is class domination. But they don't want to state that plainly, and so dress up the discourse with talk of markets, efficiency, etc etc.
I don't know why you "other" capitalists. It doesn't seem right.
Note that losses from rental properties don't count as housing costs, that's just poor business return.
That doesn't imply "can't pay" necessarily, but when rent/mortgage payments are high, that leaves less spare cash floating around for the additional/unexpected expenses, a scary prospect.
Even those on comfortable incomes can find them unexpectedly disappear.
While toddle yoga is fluff for healthy children, it is not that expensive and baby exercising can help to the ones that have mild motoric issues. It is actually often something mom does also for herself so that her time is occupied and she meets other moms (social isolation sux, being in same room whole day sux). It is also literally mom seeing problem in her own mental state and taking steps to fix it before it affects her behavior toward kids and husband. When you are socially isolated and bored, you can stay home and be depressed or find a place with people and something that makes somewhat sense to do.
Good school, healthcare and do actually matter, you know. So that the child has also middle class future. Good school also eases out situation for parent, as bad school means the parent have to re-teach, have to work around bullying and social pressures on child to be bully or not learn.
Dual earner flexible childcare is something traditional man does not appreciate. But, mom who wants ability to fend for herself too if needed and not be dependent and helpless completely appreciates a lot. If nothing else for psychological reasons - staying home is depression inducing for a lot of reasons. And when husband dies or get sick or get unemployed, yeah, it matters a lot.
> they choose to opt out of the children having status tournament
Well, social status matter to people and always mattered. How others treat you matter a lot to you.
I looked this up, near me in SW London it looks like the cheapest monthly membership is £45pm, which is less than an average gym membership, up to £100pm for unlimited classes. I'd go for it if it was a big benefit to the baby.
> Good school, healthcare and do actually matter, you know. So that the child has also middle class future.
I don't know if it's how it was intended but this is a concise & scathing description of how class structures become entrenched.
Nail on the head. Virtue signal all you want, but I know that I'll be putting my money into making sure that any kids I have see a lot of these advantages.
If you’re familiar with the behavior genetics literature, not really. Judith Rich Harris covers it in No Two Alike and Bryan Caplan does the same in Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. Who one’s biological parents are matters enormously and after that as long as children aren’t abused they basically turn out like they’re going to turn out. Children who are adopted turn out about as similar to their adoptive siblings as to strangers and as similar to biological siblings as normal whether raised together or apart.
> So that the child has also middle class future.
Greg Clark’s work on social class persistence suggests that’s wasted effort. The heritability of social class is 0.7 in every society with records amenable to tracking lineages across generations, from Sweden, England, China, Korea and many other places. The only temporary exception was during the Cultural Revolution.
> Good school also eases out situation for parent, as bad school means the parent have to re-teach, have to work around bullying and social pressures on child to be bully or not learn.
Sympathetic as I am to the idea of schools for children who want to learn, where the unusually studious or intelligent would actually be challenged, crap schools have incredibly small effects on educational attainment, as do great ones.
Great schools are schools with great students, not great teachers. Teachers can have a temporary, marginal effect but the difference between a school where the average student is ... average, and one where you need to be in the top decile to be admitted is enormous. It’s almost all selection effects, not treatment effects.
It just so happens that parents in those situations deal with them, often by moving kids elsewhere or by having to spend a lot of extra effort and money to overcome that. When you have good teacher, the extra effort and money are just not needed.
Tutors exist for a reason and yes they make difference. Some schools produce kids that are on average good at later math, other schools produce kids that just don't (same city, same socioeconic background, different leadership). Somehow one city is strong in producing young programmers while other is not.
> Greg Clark’s work on social class persistence suggests that’s wasted effort. The heritability of social class is 0.7 in every society with records amenable to tracking lineages across generations, from Sweden, England, China, Korea and many other places.
The inequality as difference between poor and rich in USA right now is getting bigger. The middle class is lowering its numbers. The society is just not the same as it used to and is not actually reproducing the exact same classes.
I did had friends from weaker schools that struggled academically in college. They needed a lot of extra tutoring and help to overcome that. Some did overcomed it, so no they were not stupid and yes it evened out, but they had it much harder and had limited options on choice of major.
The worst off were those whose high school was too easy and were shocked by the system that required them to study hard things and study a lot. Yes, some parents will avoid those schools like a plague and cluster kids in different schools. It is not because they are all stupid.
Parents can make a small short run difference through massive effort, if they really want to. It just doesn’t matter in the end.
What you can make a long term difference in is how fondly your children remember their childhood, if their parents were there, loved them, and were happy, rather than tired, stressed and angry.
The parental success being hereditary is not merely random, it is because parents put a lot of effort into making sure kids do end up the same. Intervening when things go wrong is one of ways how it happens. Changing school when peers or teachers are bad is also how it happens. If you don't care and kid don't care and you are fine with it, the kid will grow up into person that don't care when when left on own devices.
The tutor makes difference when preparing for tests that decide which school you go to. You being yourself when you actually finished the degree and you being yourself when you did not is not the same for jobs that require degree. In many jobs and societies, credentials, the degree and school and network do matter. Which is why those with resource push for those credentials.
When you don't know high school math well, you will have hard time in those STEM classes that require difficult math. They are difficult enough for students from good schools, those from bad schools were literally drawning. It makes difference between finishing it and having access to those jobs and not finishing it and not having that access. I don't know how in your school, but ours kicked a lot of people out on these.
You know who is in worst economic situation in USA right now? Students who did not managed to finish college, but do have debt.
...which is not because social class is genetic, but because the things you do while raising your child are, by and large, the things of your social class.
If you say, "Well, my child will be middle-class either way, so I don't have to worry!" and do nothing to help them...then they don't get the middle-class upbringing.
Sure, there are still aspects of "being middle-class" that come along "for free," but there's enough that requires actual effort on the parents' part that your apparent philosophy would be quite counterproductive.
I don’t know exactly what the contributors to high social class are but intelligence and conscientiousness are no doubt among them and they’re highly heritable.
There are aspects of being middle class that come for free, they’re the ones children are born with. That’s why adoptive siblings are as similar in their educational outcomes as strangers and biological siblings are far more similar.
The mechanism is genetic, not cultural. If you can disprove it there’s a lot of publications in it for you.
I'm not completely convinced, but you certainly raise some good points.
However, I do have some questions. What, exactly, is it that you say "maintains its behavior" in that way? Because from my perspective, what we have is not obviously a single thing that can be said to track across all those shifts for a given individual or family, but rather a metric that maintains a high degree of stability from generation A to generation A+1—and thus, a moderate degree of stability to generation A+2, and so on.
Furthermore, my understanding of that 0.7 number is that it's true for the US, now, not something that's static worldwide and across history.
Finally, I would note that there's probably just as much publication in conclusively proving it is genetic.
Good for microbiome, too. Lazy parenting is (usually) good parenting.
In your case it is because work gives you happiness and totally nothing to do with material things.
Majority of women live without expensive holidays and expensive cars. Majority of men live without expensive car and men are more car-focused and tend to be the ones who control the car when car is in family. Most people, neither males nor females go to expensive restaurants.
You know what else second income does? No one can tell you that he earned money and you are wasting them. It means that you can leave when relationship goes bad. It means you can handle when husband goes sick or dies. It means that you are less vulnerable and safer.
That's not "very frugal and minimalistic lifestyle", that's just living for 95%+ of the world population. It's not so bad.
>>> frugal and minimalist lifestyle (no fancy car, no expensive holidays, no eating at restaurants etc)
This sounds like a very normal lifestyle to me. I have a "cheap" car (but have one nonetheless), I go to restaurants maybe 2 times a year (and not expensive ones; cooking myself is often much better), my holidays remains rather expensive though (around 1500 euros for the whole family).
Now, to make a joke : once you have kids, you don't have much time to enjoy a luxury car, expensive restaurants, or expensive holidays : all those little humans want is quality time with me (preferably, all my time) :-) You can also easily have cheap baby sitting in the form of a smart phone :-) (end of the joke)
2) Internet dating
3) Write about your quest. Publicize it.
1) Lots and lots of women want to be stay at home moms and they disproportionately go to some kind of religious service and are part of an associated community. Alternatively move to Utah. Even if you don’t want to marry religious there are ex-Mormon women who are still into children because that’s the culture.
2) If your internet dating profile says you’re seriously looking to get married you will attract entirely different people from the less serious dating/hook up crowd. And if you message women in other, more traditional countries you’ll find plenty of women who would be more than happy to be housewives in the US.
3) Have you heard of the Polgar sisters, who are all chess champions? Their father found their mother by looking for someone to run an experiment in child rearing. If you’re willing to be loud about your quest for a housewife you’ll definitely find one.
Internet dating is awful. My standards are too high.
The truth is finding a suitable mother is very far down my list of priorities. I know I could easily find one, but probably not a beautiful one. I don't think it's worth putting that much effort into something that is ultimately putting my heart into the hands of another person. Computers don't lie and cheat. I have sex with women but none of them are suitable to receive my support to raise children.
For a small part of the world's population, that's mostly true, everywhere else it is not.
> Why should childless individuals care all that much about how issues like global warming and growing economic inequality will affect future generations
Apparently they do though, many of those who demonstrate (FFF etc.) are still in school.
Isn't that where most people get their idea of family life from?
Housing is a good example. Yes, housing prices in coastal cities have spiraled out of the reach of middle class people. Yet, there are thousands, even tens of thousands, of affordable cities all throughout the South and Midwest. The "problem" with those areas is that they are perceived as undesirable places to live. Again - a want, not a need.
The issue of inequality is a separate one and not the direct point that I am making. I'm simply saying that throughout all of human history, people were far poorer and yet still had children. Even today, the majority of the world's population is poorer than the poorest in the west. Clearly the main reason Western people aren't having kids today is not because they legitimately can't afford it - there are other cultural factors at play.
I don't see how that can be if the core costs - rent, medical care, education have all skyrocketed.
Diapers going down in price by 15% doesn't really help if at the same the price of college goes from $15k to $150k.
Wages are shit in a lottt of those places. Rents are reasonable as a % of SF programmer income I suppose, but the picture is a little different if it's mostly walmart jobs or nothing available.
The areas with high unemployment and high social problems are perceived as undesirable places to live in for a reason. Of course I don't need to live in area with low alcoholism rates, low unemployment and low amount of social problems. But I want to live there for good reasons, namely better chance for me and my kids to not become unemployed and hopeless.
What you don't have is a paradise where everything is cheap, there is a lot of employment and other opportunities and people somehow refuse to go to in the long term. You have cheap places where there is basically single major employer or low earning industry.
I am not saying that people always have it perfectly right, but in the long term and on average, the mass moves where it makes sense to move to. Those places then become more expensive.
Future conquests (Inca, etc) were aided by the devastation of disease that wiped out stove populations.
Our situation isn’t so different. Look at how quickly the Soviet state degraded into near anarchy and what happened when the pieces stabilized.
How do you define “suffer”?
They lost their previous lifestyle and creature comforts. Their public infrastructure fell into disrepair and the ability to build its like was lost. Trade networks were disrupted and many products and materials became unavailable. They lost much of their power and wealth (lands, houses, possessions, businesses, ...). Many were killed. In Rome proper foreign invaders came and demanded tribute, sacked their city, tortured them for information about where their wealth was hidden, stripped all of their public buildings of valuables, and so on.
The difference today is that intellectual property is more highly valued. When law and order breaks down, software, for example, has zero marginal value.
a) they have a lot of influence over how humanity reacts to existential threats
b) they're nowhere near as concerned about the collapse of civilisation as everyone else.
Can you name a few decisions that were actually made only with 100 year outcomes in mind and not to solve current problems?