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Comment by nautilius | Hacker News Reader

So what you're saying is: you're expecting parents to simultaneously work as much as singles do, and 'in their free time' raise the next generation of people that can wipe your ass in 60 years when you expect someone to take care of you?

Alternatively, you can vow to never take any service/product/support/technology from anyone of a younger generation. Then it would be fair.

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Yes, why would should we expect less of people because of choices they made external to the workplace? If someone volunteers at a homeless shelter, should they get slack analogous to parents because they're doing something beneficial to society outside of work? If someone is single, but contributes to lots of valuable open source projects, should they get the same benefit as parents? There are plenty of things that people do outside of the workplace that benefit society. Furthermore childless people still pay taxes to fund public schools and other services for the young, they're already contributing towards other people's child rearing.

Also, think of this from the employer's perspective: if parent's output is smaller than childless people it's in their incentive to hire childless people over people with families.

I’ll repeat it for you: Alternatively, you can vow to never take any service/product/support/technology from anyone of a younger generation.

Everything else is freeloading.

If a childless person buys a coffee from a teenage barista they're freeloading how? They're not taking a service, they're paying for it with money.

Childless people already subsidize parents by paying taxes to public education and other children's services that they will never make use of. By your logic, parents should stop freeloading off the taxes of childless people and shoulder the entire burden of these services.

It’s freeloading because you are relying on someone else putting in the work and money to raise that person. That’s an externality you just take for granted - it works because the social norm so far was that everyone contributes to the social contract ‘survival of the species’. If that contract vanishes, it’s time to introduce payment to the producers of the working force that you then can hire - parents.

What you do now is to say ‘I pay the cab driver, and of course I expect someone else to provide the car free of charge so that I can take advantage of it. I assume it just falls from the sky’.

I don’t know where you get the impression that it’s for the fun of parents that kids get an education. Maybe it didn’t occur to you, but parents pay taxes, as do their children.

1. Those children don't need much particular upbringing to wipe asses.

2. They will be compensated for the ass-wipings.

3. The majority of the children's service will be to their parents, not me.

So why should I give others a pass and do their share of the work so they are free to produce a series of systems to take care of them and not me?

Yeah, but they need someone to bring them up.

So if you agree that ass wipers need to be compensated, you will surely agree that the producers of ass wipers need to be compensated?

But sure, as I outlined above, if you vow to never use a service/invention/technology/etc from anyone younger than you are, by all means, then you are indeed not a freeloader. How’s that working out so far (unless you’re 20)?

Everything is else is you freeloading and relying on someone else to do the work for you.

Why isn’t it possible for both groups to have an equal work life balance?

It is possible. Don't work extra hours just because you don't have responsibilities waiting for you at home.

It sure is, if you adjust for that at work. If you don't, you're expecting parents to work (at least) two jobs.

If that's an issue for you then don't be a parent. Or have one of you be a stay-at-home parent. Or get a job with fewer hours.

The unspoken assumption here is that people without kids aren't doing anything outside of their work that might be considered "work". They just choose to spend their time on different things.

Parents really aren't special.

Oh I’d be happy to speak that out openly. And it’s easy to test: what are you doing that is so essential that it will ensure that there are still humans in 100 years, and how many hours do you put into this?

Because clearly there is a shortage of people on this planet... Indeed, humans are on the verge of extinction!

Gosh this has got to be one of the most entitled attitudes I've come across in a long while.

Haha, says the freeloader who expects the world to organize around their needs!

But you didn’t answer my question: what is your grandiose contribution to this world? What do you do for others, without which humanity would go extinct within 100 years? Some open source project to organize your music collection?

Also - I don’t have a problem with parenting, I have a problem with freeloaders.

Raising the next generation of people who pay singeltons' salaries and make their lives possible is different from indoor rock climbing and slamming avocado toast, and relatively at least it very much is special.

You have a very curious view of childless/single people. Gosh, this must be the first time I've seen someone use "avocado toast" other than a parody of these kind of views.

And ironically, I actually spent many years volunteering as a scout leader and some youth computer initiatives shrug

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