Every time fertility decline comes up I consistently see the same arguments about why fertility is declining: people are just not comfortable enough to want to have children. I just don’t buy this.
I have seen reasons like workspace discrimination, lack of parental leave, economic uncertainty and poverty in general used as reasons why young adults are not choosing to have children and it doesn’t quite make sense to me. Objectively along all those axis, societies have improved with time from the early 1900s and the birth rate keeps falling. Can someone help me understand why European countries keep trying to increase the comfort of their population expecting to increase birth rates? I understand social programs with payouts can be popular and perhaps paying to solve the problem is appealing to the population but I don’t see why we would expect those policies to actually increase fertility. I would understand if this was simply a case of government programs that people like even if they don’t achieve the desired outcome.
I think a much simpler microeconomic analysis explains the decline in fertility: opportunity cost. People in child-bearing age have too much other stuff with a larger expected payout than having children. For example, a lot of people might prefer to work hard to improve their socioeconomic situation or travel the word over raising children. Under this model, more government provided comfort won’t increase fertility because the vast amount of costs in child bearing comes from the opportunity cost. Even in a world without parental discrimination I would find it hard to argue that parents should automatically be promoted in their work but that may actually be the more significant cost. A parent may forgo promotion or other gains for parenting.
I am not sure what a better solution this problem is. We probably need to reframe childbearing in a different way through so that having children is not subject to this type of utilitarian analysis.
We are a planet trying to find the resources for eight billion human beings and we already know the backbone of our global agriculture solution is an unsustainable fossil-fuel-based phosphate cycle.
People choosing to not have replacement-number of children is one of the more humane ways to balance the cold equations for subsequent generations.
Although I disagree with the malthusian view on the world I still think there is a more important quantitative argument against this viewpoint. A fertility rate significantly below 2 results in an exponential decline in the population with a lag. In other words, fertility rates close to 1 (as seen in japan and korea), result in a sharp population decline a few decades later that could destabilize the society. Even if I concede the anti-human argument I don’t think the environment would benefit from a destabilizing population collapse. A slow gradual fall with rates close but not quite 2 seems like a much better alternative.
> I don’t think the environment would benefit from a destabilizing population collapse.
Hard to predict. The resulting chaos could cause outsized environmental damage. On the other hand, the environmental damage caused by wars tends to be short-term (in contrast to the damage caused by, say, fossil-fuel-based energy production and agriculture, which is perpetually-increasing damage to feed the needs of a society with a stable population and status quo).
But you're making an excellent point. I'm certainly not advocating for societal collapse. I, for one, think the risk of such is a bit overblown (societies tend to adapt, not implode, even in the face of demographic turbulence).
Besides, automation's supposed to make up for much of the labor shortfalls anyway.
malthusian bollocks, earth can sustain tens of billions of human beings, the downside that 10 acre mcmansions and huge pickup trucks will be unaffordable for the "middle class". We produce already enough resources, we waste them on allocation
Here is an example of how people in the military making policy decisions think about it[1]. This guy in particular worked as national security advisor.
My take is that it comes from nations avoiding war if they don’t think they can win anything from it. Weakness simply means you cannot stop the enemy from accomplishing their goals. Weakness is definitely not sufficient or necessary. Instead it is the perception of weakness from one party (accurate or not) that may incite violence. A better one liner would be “weakness is provocative”.
I strongly agree with your statement. Free sex and love are fine as long as there are no consequences. But sadly even with all our technology there must be consequences since we don’t know of any other way to propagate the species into the future.
For the advocates of sexual libertinism I have a question: how do you ensure male parental investment? As a society we value it and often legally demand it. I certainly could not argue for the alternative. How do you assign fathers under complete sexual liberation? A common thread is that somehow you socialize childrearing but I am seriously skeptical of the scalability of that approach beyond small tribal societies.
Society raises children. The state provides qualified parents for children which allow the parents to work and live and keep spending. You could say parents belong with their children but parents outsource raising a child now to daycare, school and social groups.
That’s a nice idea but how do you do credit assignment for childrearing purposes? Sadly even in modern society, sex is not entirely unliked from reproduction and we still expect, often legally demand, fathers invest resources in their children. I thought part of the deal with monogamy came from ensuring stable male parental investment and a good way to achieve this is through monogamy as a proxy for fatherhood.
Birth control is what holds the whole thing together, that's the implied part that's not usually mentioned. I grant that IQ 145 people can get together and subconsciously arrange an equitable polycule childcare system, and they don't realize why that would be a problem for anyone else. Moving away from exceptional cases, you have what are more or less roomates, and they manage to stay roomates through birth control.
If you're wondering, "what happens to people that have a good gut feeling for fairness, but who aren't smart enough to subconsciously work out how 5 people are going to take care of a child, and who want kids," then the answer is, they are the vast majority of the population and they're not going to fit the non-monogamous system unless massive inequality (see bronze age) forces them there.
My understanding is that this is largely the reality already in the dating marketplaces we can measure (dating apps). At least every study with dating app data I have seen shows a small minority of men get the vast majority of female attention.
I always see people mentioning better employment benefits and more flexibility to increase fertility in working women. Unfortunately, I think this misses a fundamental problem with working and motherhood: opportunity cost. The more driven, promising, smart and successful a woman is, the higher her opportunity cost of having children. You also have to take into account that young people are not just working for current earnings but also investing in their skills for future earnings. It would then be reasonable for young women to simply take advantage of the more relaxed work environment for further career advancement. It’s likely what explains Europe’s low birthrates despite more generous welfare policies. Eventually as people get older their career progression stabilizes and the opportunity cost falls to the point where they can afford to have children. Notice that opportunity cost is not money per say. For example poorer working class people tend to have more children, I suspect, because their opportunity cost is lower. So, in a sense, the poorer you are the more affordable children become.
I like your approach and I agree that it should lead to better outcomes. Sadly for the less socially adept, it’s not clear to me how to get social interactions from random strangers without having both sides of the equation be uncomfortable. My experience of trying this approach just ends with two uncomfortable people and leaves me with another social misstep to haunt me at night.
Since it sounds like you want to share your experience, would you mind sharing more details of how those first encounters went and why you even decided to talk to those people in the first place? Where do you hangout that you can just casually approach and start chatting up people?
I wouldn't consider myself socially adept. At least if there's any adeptness at all, it's certainly not genetic or any natural skill, but from years of deliberate practice.
> both sides of the equation be uncomfortable.
Why should you feel uncomfortable? Unless you have malintentions, which doesn't seem to be the case, there's no reason to feel uncomfortable. You're simply expressing yourself, spreading positivity, and giving the stranger the opportunity to connect with you.
I'm a digital nomad who generally travels solo to countries, so I have no choice if I want to meet people since everyone is initially a stranger. A couple weeks ago when I entered the locker room of a gym a man saw that I was looking for something, and told me "the bathroom's that way". After returning I said "thanks" and went to my locker. The interaction could've easily ended there, and my old self would've left it at that, but then I decided to ask him where he's from. Turned out to be a really friendly guy. A couple days later I invited him out to watch a game with some of my friends, we partied till 5am or so and had a great time, and spoke about potentially traveling together to some nearby countries.
As a single man (who hates online dating), when I see a particularly pretty girl my type I'd like to meet who seems approachable, I approach. Sure most interactions won't amount to anything - maybe she has a boyfriend/husband, maybe she's not interested, maybe she's not in the mood, etc. That's fine. And by the way, maybe I won't even be interested anymore after talking to her because attraction is way more than just physical. It's a two way street. (and don't buy into this crap that politely approaching someone is "street harrassment". One of my best friends met his wife on a subway train). No need to come up with some elaborate pickup lines or whatever, just be direct and upfront with your intentions, and then say whatever's on your mind. If they don't want to talk to you, that's their right - you have no entitlement to the attention of some random stranger, so don't take it personally.
In any case, it's not rocket science, and there's no need to overcomplicate it. You don't have to try to fit some certain mold. Just be authentic and genuine, and most people will appreciate you for it (so long as you're not being like an a*hole or something obviously). One of my friends who is the best at this is one of the quirkiest guys I know with interests and humor that many might consider esoteric, but he's successful because he's genuine and confident in his own skin.
It's probably going to feel awkward at first. Just take it all in, and focus on the process. Every step out of the comfort zone is a win. The "outcome" itself is out of your control and subject to extreme randomness so don't focus too much on that. The more you do, the more confident you'll be and the easier it'll get, until the point where it's no longer a "thing" in your brain, just like you probably don't get nervous talking to your parents/siblings.
> Where do you hangout that you can just casually approach and start chatting up people?
Anywhere is fair game - parks, cafes, gym, street, whatever. Just be respectful.
An element that is often missing from the conversation is the opportunity cost of the employee. A significant portion of a worker’s compensation should to go paying his opportunity cost. I think that despite similar productivity and the recent rise in remote work, an employee’s opportunity cost is reduced if they move to a remote mountain town.
I agree with your approach to the point I think it’s the only way to really tackle loneliness and making friends. You just have to talk to strangers, often about nothing.
Unfortunately for the less socially trained, the advice in the article seems pretty daunting. It reminds me of of the quote “people won’t remember what you said but they’ll remember how you made then feel”. I am pretty sure I’ve made a few people feel awkward or mildly uncomfortable in my time trying to do this.
Naturally, I’ve gotten better but since it’s not something I do frequently I’m still pretty bad at it. I really wish there were a systematic way to train talking to strangers in an environment where it’s ok to make minor social missteps. Unfortunately it seems to me that such an environment is some stage of development that I missed at an earlier age. Is there some way forward that doesn’t just involve eating the losses as a cost of learning?
> Is there some way forward that doesn’t just involve eating the losses as a cost of learning?
I've always felt that Toastmasters and improv were good ways forward, depending on individual preference (formal/businessy vs comedic). The popular conception is that the former is all about public speaking and the latter comedy but most people I know who have gotten into either went to improve their general socializing/banter skill (I haven't participated in either, just relaying anecdata)
I've found the opposite by working in a sales position.
I'm introverted, so it sometimes felt like torture getting through some days. I felt dizzy and drained after 10+ hours of talking, pitching and trying to close sometimes hundreds of strangers over one day.
People do buy based on emotion, you'll see the progression from feature to benefit to emotional benefit in most structured sales cycles. The best sales people make customers feel great and tie it to the product. You need to learn about what they're looking for and why, it's rarely 'one size fits all.'
You learn tricks and learn to have fun. I realized mental fortitude and positive socialization is really hard work, not just disposition as I wrote it off before. You can set goals for yourself and learn from having an actual point of success. And you don't eat without achievement, in my case at least. Just pick a product that you actually believe in and makes lives and the world better (and has a good commission model).
I frankly don’t understand why we would want to reintroduce a predator like this. From the article it seems the only benefit they bring is to control deer populations at the expense of farmers and causing discomfort to the general population. Instead of having wolves why not simply have humans hunt the excess deer? If you can test the game for undesirable pathogens it could even be a good business opportunity. Ultimately humans are always in control of the environment even if we choose to do nothing. Our technology and resources are too great to claim we have “unmanaged wilderness”.
One issue is that hunters hunt differently than wolves and other natural predators. Predators go after the old, the sick, the weak, the young. Hunters almost exclusively go after the health. Not only is that changing the distribution of the gene pool, it also isn't effective population control. We'd need to force hunters to go after a bunch of fawns instead.
There can also be unintended consequences to human culling, besides long-term genetic changes. There's one example of when they started culling a elephants in Kruger National Park. The Park had too many elephants and so they had to kill some of the herd. However, they tended to kill only adults, leaving a lot of juveniles around. The problem is that, once juvenile males reach adulthood, they leave the family herd and hang out with an older male. The older male teaches the younger males about surviving in the wild. And, importantly, self-control. Male elephants periodically go through an extreme spike of testosterone (called musth) that can cause very aggressive behavior. The young males learn from the older male to control themselves. If there aren't any older males around, they don't get this knowledge, and will be prone to violence. After that culling, there was a large spike in incidents of these rogue elephants attacking villages and rhinoceroses. In short, culling can change the behavior of the animal population immediately and for the worse. Not sure how relevant that is to white-tailed deer, but it's something to consider.
The video ("How Wolves Change Rivers") states that humans had previously failed to control the deer. You could pay more humans hundreds of millions of dollars a year to patrol every one of these areas. Or you could simply let the wolves do it.
I think yours is a very reasonable argument. I guess in the end it comes down to preference: do we prefer a world with wolves in the forests, where farmers have to keep guard dogs an maybe loose some animals, or do we prefer one where there a no predators in the wild, intensive farming is unhindered, and we cull herbivore population through established quotas to maintain some equilibrium?
Because they aren't perfectly good. Humans eliminate predators around the world because they threaten our livestock and public safety. If we actively wanted to cull deer populations with minimum effort it takes very little effort trap or poison them en masse versus trying to track them with rifles.
But some people find it to be a fun activity to kill wildlife and thus the whole culture of huntsman persists. People pay for the recreation of hunting. It actually makes some communities money - private citizens cull the deer while paying for the privilege.
1. I doubt we have the technology to automate deer hunting yet; however, it would be very useful to have drones hunt the deer and have humans pickup the spoils. I did say it would be great if we could buy hunted deer as long as it’s tested for the nasty pathogens wildlife tends to have.
2.Having humans hunt the deer is preferable because they obey laws, don’t scare people, wont eat the farmer’s animals and, again, we also get to keep the meat.
Hunting is decreasing in popularity, possibly due to awareness of CWD.
And I don't think there are people clamoring for venison. If you have friends or family that enjoy hunting, you can get quite a bit of venison for free. The best cuts are tasty, if your processor is good the summer sausage or hot sticks will be good, but I ate ground venison sloppy joes and chili not that many times before I personally never want it again.
> Having humans hunt the deer is preferable because they obey laws, don’t scare people,
Hunters are scary. Not that Hunters as people are scary, but I would avoid wilderness where I know there to be hunters active, even if I am wearing blaze orange. Accidents happen. Probably more often to the hunters themselves than to strangers, but they do happen.
A few people saw a wolf a handful of few times in an area I regularly walked through one summer, and I started carrying a bat if I was alone, but mainly trying to walk with dogs or another person. Both can be scary, even though both are less likely to harm you then a car.
All hunters obey laws?, well, maybe sometimes, some of them
Exploit natural resources in a space created specifically to protect natural resources from been looted is perverse. If you kill deer and use its meat, suddenly Yellowstone is turned into another meat farm. There are thousands of meat farms but only one yellowstone. Soon, somebody will start pushing to chop some old trees to manage correctly the wood supply. There is no return from this ideology. Human greed is endless
Wolves with access to wild preys and stable groups will eat only a small percentage of domestic animals. If we pay local hunters for removing deer meat, we'll need to pay again a second time to the same hunters/farmers to compensate the increase in cattle deaths or to kill the sudden excess of wolves. With luck the same cow will not be reported as killed and re-killed again by wolves 5 times in its entire life (Paying the same animal several times has happened before).
Result of doing things complicated having a simple solution: You'll need to pay more taxes
We have the technology for spying millions of people day and night, managing home lights and closing doors from thousands of miles of distance. Why professional farmers (that do not have another thing to do in their journey as keeping an eye on their cattle), are still unable to watch for their animals, and keep them safe at night? Wolves can't open a padlock.
> Instead of having wolves why not simply have humans hunt the excess deer?
Because wolves are much smart for this job and provide benefical collateral effects in a miriad of ways that humans can't; and they do it 365 days a year. Is like comparing traveling in bullet train with a wheelbarrow.
I have seen reasons like workspace discrimination, lack of parental leave, economic uncertainty and poverty in general used as reasons why young adults are not choosing to have children and it doesn’t quite make sense to me. Objectively along all those axis, societies have improved with time from the early 1900s and the birth rate keeps falling. Can someone help me understand why European countries keep trying to increase the comfort of their population expecting to increase birth rates? I understand social programs with payouts can be popular and perhaps paying to solve the problem is appealing to the population but I don’t see why we would expect those policies to actually increase fertility. I would understand if this was simply a case of government programs that people like even if they don’t achieve the desired outcome.
I think a much simpler microeconomic analysis explains the decline in fertility: opportunity cost. People in child-bearing age have too much other stuff with a larger expected payout than having children. For example, a lot of people might prefer to work hard to improve their socioeconomic situation or travel the word over raising children. Under this model, more government provided comfort won’t increase fertility because the vast amount of costs in child bearing comes from the opportunity cost. Even in a world without parental discrimination I would find it hard to argue that parents should automatically be promoted in their work but that may actually be the more significant cost. A parent may forgo promotion or other gains for parenting.
I am not sure what a better solution this problem is. We probably need to reframe childbearing in a different way through so that having children is not subject to this type of utilitarian analysis.