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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

> Parents are making sacrifices which benefit society as a whole.

100%. We need people to have kids (and for it to be financially possible to do so) because kids are literally the future generations of human society, and if no one is having kids then we'll see a very rapid collapse.

This is, incidentally, why it pisses me off when people complain that their pets don't get the same kind of accommodations that children do e.g. on airplanes or in restaurants, or that tax breaks exist for children. Your pets are optional. Children are mandatory. Not everyone has to have children, but enough people do. Having children isn't just planting trees for future society to enjoy the shade of, it's literally creating that future society (to reference an old proverb).

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I don't understand this sentiment.

Farming is critical for society. However, we don't require everyone to pull on their overalls and work the land.

Security is critical for society. However, we don't expect every person to pick up their machine gun and jump in a trench.

Society is nowhere near a population level that is dangerously low. In fact, we are more concerned with overpopulation and overconsumption.

If you have children, that's great! Congratulations! Enjoy! But it was your choice - not one forced upon you by some dire social need.

You're not getting the point that, in the aggregate, it is NOT a choice to have farmers, soldiers* , and yes, parents. On an individual level it might be a choice, but society necessarily needs to be structured to get enough of each of those occupations, i.e. to have sufficient numbers of people making each of those choices. And the required population percentage of parents is at least 50X higher than for farmers and soldiers.

And overpopulation/overconsumption isn't a problem. What is a problem is unsustainable growth. Life is much more pleasant today for most people than it was centuries ago because simply having more people allows for more technological development, more sub-specialization, and better efficiencies of scale, and thus paradoxically with more people everyone can have a much higher standard of living than with fewer people. In other words, it isn't zero sum. If the world's population starts rapidly declining then that will be a significant decline in the average standard of living, not an improvement.

* I don't want to get into the argument here whether soldiers are actually necessary; let's just assume for this argument that they are, or replace them with construction workers or whatever.

>And overpopulation/overconsumption isn't a problem. What is a problem is unsustainable growth. Life is much more pleasant today for most people than it was centuries ago because simply having more people allows for more technological development, more sub-specialization, and better efficiencies of scale, and thus paradoxically with more people everyone can have a much higher standard of living than with fewer people.

The equation isn't so simple. Life is also much more pleasant today because we are enjoying benefits today at the expense of the future generations' environment. Just like governments can excessively borrow from future taxpayers and then drown them if the growth doesn't pan out, so can consumption of resources if mitigation or reversal of environmental change not favorable to humans doesn't pan out.

Also, by definition, "over"population and "over"consumption are a problem, otherwise they wouldn't be "over". All life is constrained by the parameters of the system in which it exists, including humans.

Modern technology means that 2% of the citizens of a developed country can feed the rest. That's why nobody wants/needs the average J. to farm.

Modern technology means that only a small percentage of citizens are enough to defend the rest. That's why nobody wants/needs the average J. to fight.

If all of a sudden, say, 50% of the people having children now, in developed countries, would decide to not have children, we'd probably have societal collapse. That's what happened in societies where the population went down by huge percentages in a short time span. Housing markets would collapse, education systems would collapse, healthcare systems would collapse, demand for a million types of things needed by babies and children would collapse (and taking with it many, many professions), etc.

Even if you don't want to have kids, remember:

1. You were once a kid.

2. Your lifestyle is made possible by people that choose to have kids. Especially women, who sacrifice a lot for kids. At least be respectful to them.

> If all of a sudden, say, 50% of the people having children now, in developed countries, would decide to not have children, we'd probably have societal collapse.

No, we wouldn't. We would have a massive increase in immigration to offset the difference.

> 2. Your lifestyle is made possible by people that choose to have kids. Especially women, who sacrifice a lot for kids. At least be respectful to them.

What does this have to do with anything? I guarantee part of your lifestyle is also made possible by people who can't or don't want to have children. This has nothing to do with any argument either way.

> No, we wouldn't. We would have a massive increase in immigration to offset the difference.

Sorry, but this is so naive. Or I guess, a superiority complex? Where do you think you will be able to import ~160 million people from, for the US, within a relatively short time span? With comparable cultural and educational backgrounds, skill sets, etc. This would be unprecedented in the history of the world. At least for peaceful migrations. Keep in mind that all developed countries are having demographics problems and therefore competing over migrants compatible with their current populations.

And let's not even open the can of worms of what the locals would think about such tectonic population shifts. A much smaller but similar situation happening over a longer time span (60 years) brought you Trump.

To further reinforce your point. Many countries around the world have been trying to attract people to compensate for these issues and are struggling (Japan, Australia, New Zealand).

No, and what oblio wrote completely does not apply to NZ and Aus.

Japan is completely different from NZ and Australia, which are two very multicultural countries. I've heard that Japan tries to get people in on work visas to do stuff like aged care, but will never ever let them become citizens/permanent residents. Maybe they are struggling, I don't know.

I'm a NZer, and like the USA we certainly don't struggle to attract immigrants, and even so, non-European immigrants are not just welcome, they're the majority. I'm not aware that immigration settings are that way to keep the population growing; rather the aim is to bring in people with skills that are in shortage or to do low-paid jobs that locals don't want, especially aged care and fruit picking (equivalently: keep wages and prices low). The fertility rate is 1.81, but the population is growing fairly quickly.

Same in Australia. In fact, Australia is even more desirable (probably because of the higher wages).

> Sorry, but this is so naive. Or I guess, a superiority complex?

Or basic knowledge of immigration statistics.

Visa applications vastly outnumber the amount issued. Of the 330 million people living in the US, ~45 million are foreign born. Increasing the amount of allowed immigration could easily make that number larger.

This wouldn't have to happen in a short time span. 50% fewer people having children doesn't mean 160 million people disappear overnight. It means that the number of yearly births goes from 3.8 million to 1.9 million. About 1 million immigrants arrive each year currently [1]. Doubling immigration would make for a stable population. This is more than achievable.

In fact, this dynamic already exists in the US, and has existed for years now. The US's birth rate is below replacement rates. But the US continues to have a growing population due to immigration.

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-finding....

> If all of a sudden, say, 50% of the people having children now...

This is assuming that people are only having children out of a sense of duty. Do you think that 50% of parents are having children out of some sense of duty to society?

> 2. Your lifestyle is made possible by people that choose to have kids. Especially women, who sacrifice a lot for kids. At least be respectful to them.

I reread my comment a couple times and I don't see where I was disrespectful.

This is anecdotal, but I have never had a friend confide in me that they had a child for the social good of procreation. All of my friends have had children because they wanted to have children. My wife and I are planning on having a child because we want to have a child. If you told me that society didn't require me to have a child, I wouldn't care one bit.

So my question to you is "if there was no social need for a child, would you still have one?" If the answer is "yes," I don't see how you can claim that you are performing some heroic deed to mankind. And calling that out is not disrespectful.

Yeah, but why do you want to have a child? You're literally programmed by billions of years of natural selection to fulfill the biological imperative of reproduction. It's not as much of a free choice as you might think. And thus:

> If you told me that society didn't require me to have a child, I wouldn't care one bit.

is unlikely, because if having children actually were not required for the survival of the species, then it's much less likely that you'd ever even wanted to have one in the first place. The species needs to continue thus we want to have children. So the answer to your question:

> Do you think that 50% of parents are having children out of some sense of duty to society?

is yes. Note that nowhere here is it required for parents to be conscious of the duty that they're fulfilling, merely that they fulfill it nevertheless. Species with much less brainpower than us, even those with no brainpower whatsoever, are nevertheless doing exactly the same thing as we are and propagating their species.

> It's not as much of a free choice as you might think

Many people make that choice.

You've addressed precisely 0% of the arguments in my post with this reply.

If having children is such a biological urge (and I would agree that it is indeed a biological urge), why would society have to incentivize it?

Society should only incentivize children if society has a need for those children and nobody wants to have them. Society should not incentivize individual desires.

Society fundamentally has to be structured in such a way that enough people can afford to have children for society to be able to continue. And given that society does have a need for children and that economic conditions are currently looking like not enough will be produced, incentivization is required. And indeed is happening, very widely.

Keep in mind that despite reproduction being a biological urge, a lot of people nevertheless will not have children if they can't financially support them because they know they will contributing to a low quality of life not just for themselves but for their offspring as well.

> Modern technology

Modern technology means that we need much less labor than we previously did, while doing much more. That rate is increasing. Jobs are disappearing.

Why do we need to add so many people? We are at almost 8 billion and growing very rapidly.

> If all of a sudden, say, 50% of the people having children now, in developed countries, would decide to not have children, we'd probably have societal collapse

Maybe. Maybe not. Because the effects won't be felt for a while. It's possible that society would collapse, but it is also possible (and very likely) that it would adapt.

If it turns out that we can't adapt to this, then it means that humanity's days are numbered anyway. Because we can't keep growing indefinitely. One day this cycle has to end, one way or another.

> We are at almost 8 billion and growing very rapidly

The "growing very rapidly" part is not true (1). The main reason the world population is still growing is that people live longer. Only relatively few countries still have out of control natality, mainly in Africa. The world's fertility rate is now at 2.4 (2) children per woman.

(Of course, these are just projections and imply some speculation. Things could still turn around.)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...

> If all of a sudden, say, 50% of the people having children now, in developed countries, would decide to not have children, we'd probably have societal collapse. That's what happened in societies where the population went down by huge percentages in a short time span. Housing markets would collapse, education systems would collapse, healthcare systems would collapse, demand for a million types of things needed by babies and children would collapse (and taking with it many, many professions), etc.

Yes, and? Understand that a housing market "collapsing" means the price of housing becomes substantially more affordable. Same with education. This is a huge part of why Europe is able to subsidize its education so heavily on a per-student basis. The share of the population that is enrolled in university in Germany is about half the share of the US enrolled in university in the US (at least, pre-COVID).

Reduction in demand results in diminished GDP which freaks out economists, but it doesn't result in a decline in GDP per capita. There are fewer people producing, but there are also fewer mouths to feed.

Everyone should be respectful to all women.

I don’t think many people understand the abuse and contempt childless women face for their choices. This thread and the comments demanding medals of honor for the breeders is very triggering to me.

Parents can also be nasty selfish and self absorbed. Many parents raise children so badly that they are a burden to society. Who is counting those?

> Farming is critical for society. However, we don't require everyone to pull on their overalls and work the land

US society heavily subsidizes farming at the government level

Also, "we don't require everyone to pull on their overalls and work the land" is flat out just a bad argument, because modern farming with its high degree of mechanization and vast efficiencies of scale doesn't remotely work like that. Go back several centuries though before modern farming technological development and the majority of people are in fact doing manual farmwork out of necessity.

Good point. That was probably not the best example :) Though I would point out that government subsidies are more to do with the guarantee of the food supply and less to do with incentivizing individuals to work the farms.

My point was more around the parent comment that "society generally needs X, therefore anyone doing X should be applauded"

We have a huge number of needs in society - and yes, that includes enough children to keep the future viable. However, I disagree that on an individual level, having children is fulfilling some duty.

> Society is nowhere near a population level that is dangerously low.

I'd suggest looking into the economics of social security (even if you won't need it, most people will), as well as what happens to societies with plummeting birth rates.

Both the examples you mentioned are cases where everyone in society pays to help those that do perform those roles. They seem like poor choices for counterpoints to helping people who are raising children.

I also think it's stupid to resent parents; they need the time for the kids, who aren't at fault in any of this.

That said, why do you assume we all care about having a future society? Frankly I only care about existing humans. The species is irrelevant to me.

It doesn't matter if you personally don't care; society as a whole cares about its self-perpetuation.

Also, your life is gonna be pretty damn bleak in your twilight years if everyone stops having children now. There will be no one to take care of the old people, no one to farm the food, etc. Every single job that keeps society up and running would have to be performed exclusively by elderly people, many of whom would be in no condition to work and would in fact need to be cared for rather than being able to care for others through work. Good luck with that.

If you don’t care about the future of humanity then why care about progress at all? Why care about any species. Why care about pollution or climate change or anything?

Humanity is likely to decide continue having kids regardless of what I feel about it, and since I care about humans, I feel the obligation to protect those kids and their descendants. And similarly for other species.

This seems to directly contradict your previous statement? It's not clear to me now what you're even trying to argue.

I wish people would stop smoking. But since they likely won't, I feel the obligation to fund lung cancer research, to help the future cancer patients.

I wish people would stop having children. But since they likely won't, I feel the obligation to keep the environment reasonably clean, to help the future humans.

yes i care about the quality of life for current and future humans but do not care about the perpetuation of humanity as a concept

if humanity came to a slow end, probably aided by robots in its twilight, that would be fine

Ok. Lets say I don't care about your property rights. When you're not home, I can just walk into your home and take whatever I want. Obviously, I can't, because the society we live in values property rights and help people uphold theirs. The fact that there exist selfish individuals that don't care about society as a whole (and it's future) is irrelevant. As a society, we decide what things are important to us and everyone gets to help support those, like it or not.

Huh? You're not allowed to walk into someone's home and steal their stuff because we have something called a legal system that will punish you.

There is nothing in our legal system that compels you to care about future generations -- at least not in the way you're proclaiming.

These childless workers are 100% entitled to their opinions about equitable compensation -- and they're entitled to lobby for these changes as well.

The person I responded to was saying they didn't care about the future of the species.

I was replying that we, as a society, DO care about the future of the species. We put laws in place to help further it's survival, mostly around supporting the currently existing children (tax breaks, education, etc), but also around helping people have more children (FMLA).

The reason those laws exist really isn't that different from the laws that support property rights; they support things we, as a society, value.

Yes, but I don't see how that applies to the subject matter at hand. There is no law that says an employer has to provide extra financial support to parents in extenuating circumstances like this.

> As a society, we decide what things are important to us and everyone gets to help support those, like it or not.

If GP doesn't care about supporting parents or future generations (and he is in a position to make this decision), it's certainly his prerogative to not do so.

I think you misunderstood the meaning of the word ‘mandatory’

Pets are optional ? I didn't expect myself to hate this statement so much

Optional for the continuation of society. Like say Elon going to Mars, he could take a pet. Pets provide some good, but they are not essential. Notice in poorer societies pets don’t enjoy the same privileged position they do in wealthy societies.

pets are required? i think most people who have kids agree that once you have kids you care a lot less about your pets than you did before

> Pets are optional ? I didn't expect myself to hate this statement so much

They are just as optional as kids.

Some of the comments here make it sound like they come from an alternate post-apocalyptic reality where they are trying to re-populate the planet. Not from this reality. You know, the one were we have a planet struggling to support the current and ever increasing population.

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