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Comment by room500 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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...

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

> 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....

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).

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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