The Toxic Reality of a Post-Familial Society(aaronrenn.substack.com) |
The Toxic Reality of a Post-Familial Society(aaronrenn.substack.com) |
South Korea is a densely populated country, as is Japan (another country often cited as having an aging, low-fertility population). And people tend to move out of dense metropolises like Manhattan or SF to have children. Maybe there's something inborn to humans that causes us to seek space and resources, and if those are not available, to not have kids?
[1] https://vocal.media/geeks/the-true-history-behind-the-secret...
Make daycare, child health services and great schools universally available and cheap/free. Make it feasible and safe to get kids around dense cities quickly (excellent transit options). I suspect under these circumstances more people would be open to the idea of children.
As it stands today, having children places an unbearably high social and financial strain on people. Suburbs have been just one solution to the problem but there are others.
Yet Suburbs are the only ones I see that work. If you are thinking about having kids in the US move to the suburbs soon. Cities are not setup for you. Schools in the city are considered bad for a reason. Even if you can afford private schools, the parks are more sculpre gardens instead of swing sets. Everyone talks about the theator scene in the cities, but most of the shows wouldn't interest a child (most are not X rated). Many cities lack cheap places to eat - $40/person isn't too bad for one person, but when you have a few kids with you that price is not affordable often. How many places don't allow kids at all - not many in the suburbs, but somewhat common in the city. In the suburb you just buy a bigger car and everyone gets around - the big car won't fit in the city well, and your other options is paying a lot more on public transit because odds are there isn't a family pass, so the big car is probably cheaper.
The above is US specific (probably Canada too). I know there are a number of people from not US reading this who will tell me how it works in their city. I hope city residents read those replies and make changes before they need them.
That is probably a good idea but there are places where daycare is free and there's no evidence it makes a difference.
I make more than my dad did when he retired, yet, if I were to have kids today I could not provide the lifestyle to them that I had as a kid. And he certainly didn't make what he did at retirement when I was a child. If I had a dual income household, there would be the money to do it, but the kids would lose out on something that I considered a crucial part of my upbringing - a full time parent.
But, the perspective here is that I (and many of the people on this site) work in one of the few remaining well paying professions, whereas my dad was in a "well paying" but not "top paying" field.
It just can't be sustainable...
This isn't a new phenomenon; urban areas eat birthrates, and you can see it in records from as long ago as the 14th century. Industrialization turns urbanization up to 11.
[1] Or a rational immigration / naturalization policy, but that's another subject, and it's not really tenable for some cultures.
If you want more kids, you have to make the cost of having them lower. This means building more housing, subsidizing childcare like france and sweden, but stronger, and making higher ed affordable.
Now all that costs a lot of money. To do that, we'd need to cut spending on other things, and raise taxes. I don't buy the assertion from Zeihan and others that it's impossible though.
Off topic question, I've been using a different HN aggregation tool that isn't the front page, and I've found that some of the more interesting topics get flagged, why is that?
As the proportion of the elderly (and mentally ill elderly) increase, creating age restrictions on elderly voting may be necessary if we want to prevent these selfish behaviors from damaging the long-term viability of our own democracies.
Maybe that's nobody, maybe I'm paranoid, maybe I'm not following HN guidelines. IDK.
It is also noticeable that downvotes often come in clusters where a given post suddenly gets downvoted several times within a short time frame where there otherwise has not been any activity around that post. Whether this is caused by a bunch of ideologically-aligned users having some downtime - Compiling - or something more nefarious like sock-puppet accounts being used as ideology amplifiers is not clear and can only be investigated by Dang et al.
The up/downvoting system is one of the less successful aspects of HN, especially where it concerns downvotes. A meta-moderation system like the one used by Slashdot of old could be of help here but I suspect the site owners prefer the simplicity of the current system over one which, while more 'fair' does have the tendency to keep growing with the meta-moderators being moderated by meta-meta-moderators until it is moderators all the way down.
This is coupled with the speed of urbanization for countries that industrialized after the second world war- the later you industrialize, the faster that industrialization happens, the more stark the transition to a childless economy.
As mentioned in the article, there is a demographic boon for that industrialized generation. Less money needed for schools, etc, more time your prime working age adults can contribute to the economy.
Except all those countries industrialized around the same generation. That generation is aging out of the workforce and there's nothing to replace them.
Zeihan posits this leads to demographic collapse, and that these countries just simply "go away" because there isn't enough children to keep the country functioning. I'm not sure how much I believe that, but I do know that nobody has a clue how to fix it. Japan has been front and center for this problem and still haven't found a way to reverse the trend.
Now how do we pay for all that? Dunno. That question is above my pay grade, but I think we'd undoubtedly have to cut spending on other priorities and raise taxes. I think that'd probably be worth it to claw out of a demographic decline.
I wonder if some kind of mandatory civil service will become necessary. I feel in the US that many people are disengaged from the rest of their communities for numerous reasons, and it would be both a direct public service and a benefit to societal cohesion for all people to experience being a servant to their cities via public works.
EDIT: I recall a documentary about certain bridges requiring security cameras due to elderly people jumping from them.
FWIW, DPRK birth rate is about 1.9, still below replacement but more than double the ROK, and much higher than PRC or Japan.
The OP, like many others, confuses governmental, economic, and philosophical ideals so that they can make a political point - one that does not contain much in the way of substance.
In the way of examples, neoliberalism [1] comes to mind.
This has nothing to do with current American politics.
I would imaging birth rates don't really make it to the top 10 list of problems in N. Korea.
If we have fewer people to operate society, we may need to conscript ourselves into being useful to the rest of our community.
Yeah.. I know the term has been basically meaningless for a while, but still.
That said, there are many American progressive movements that are not neoliberal. Just not in power.
> > The DPRK is probably the most collectivist (least individualistic) large society on the planet, so much so that it terrifies bleeding heart liberals.
Liberals are individualists. It's at the foundation of their worldview and philosophy. This is basic stuff.
DPRK is highly illiberal, un-individualistic. Engaging with DPRK culture in good faith means questioning the universality of the Western, liberal worldview. For most people, this is a non-starter (just look at this thread).
Can you break this term down for me then?
This is a good starting point on the subject, with many sources for more in-depth reading if one chooses: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/7/24/busting-4-comm...
Sure, under that model they are definitely sustainable.
The TCO for a car is thousands of dollars per year. Granted the US only has three or four cities that come close to facilitating carless society, but in those cities, I doubt public transit costs $5000 a year or more.
$100/month 12 month (2 parents + 3 kids). Of course it depends on where you live, but $100/month per person is a normal price for a monthly pass. If the kids are younger and riding with a parent the price is lower, but kids have places to go (particularity as teens!) without parents (which should be advantage of the city). When you consider the convenience of the car being ready to go when and where you want to go - unlike transit systems - it isn't hard to justify paying more (Read this as a rant about how useless most transit systems are in the US)
Which just goes road prove they are sustaining themselves.
I could buy many things for myself by putting them on my credit card - that doesn't make my spending habits sustainable.
The whole point of strong towns is that the Government financed the projects but not the maintenance, and that the suburbs can't afford the maintenance bills (at least some of them) under the current tax regime.
AnimalMuppet gave a good explanation there IMO.
You're using "liberal" in a way that differs from standard US political usage, which is all right, especially since you clearly defined what you meant by the term. But "bleeding heart" sounds very US-politics, and seems really weird with your not using liberal in the US politics sense.
[1] These "conservatives" would count as liberals by your definition - they still believe in individual rights.
> These "conservatives" would count as liberals by your definition - they still believe in individual rights.
Of course. Virtually every faction of US politics is philosophically liberal.
Based US politics :sunglasses: