I also enjoyed Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now”. The only major negative that struck me in it is that he estimates 40 MILLION people are enslaved around the world. When I lamented that estimate in a gronp post, Bill Schmidt told me about International Justice Mission which fights slavery. IJM is now my major donee.
Slavery has been part of human society since humans first organized themselves into groups. Everyone enslaved everyone else wherever possible for most of our 6K years of civilization. It's only in the past couple hundred that humans got around to figuring out that owning other humans is immoral, and in that time scale, the demise of the institution is really remarkably rapid. That it still goes on is a tragedy, of course, and should continue to be fought.
Depopulation isn't surprising given the increasing cost of raising a child and how government services replace children as the primary support for the elderly. There's also the lack of hope. I know it sounds pretentious but many aren't sure that they want to bring children into a world they perceive as going down the tubes. From my own perspective, it would help if politics wasn't seeping into every aspect of our lives. It's hard to look forward to 2024 when we might be facing the prospect of either Biden or Trump in the White House for another four years. On a lighter note, I have to wonder how a remake of "It's a Wonderful Life" would be if the character of Clarence the angel was instead played by Milton Friedman. Merry Christmas to one and all!
I think there are many factors at play in depopulation. That it closely correlates with growth of societal wealth across just about every society is both a telltale and a useful "tool." Your first point I agree with in part, but it's not just government. The emergence of "discretionary income" as a by-product of productivity growth (get beyond subsistence living and you can manage to build a nestegg rather than eking out just enough to eat and shelter every day) contributes to the lack of need for large families to support you in your later years. But, that's just one piece of it. Lives of greater ease and leisure are an option, and many choose not to have large broods of kids so that they can pursue that ease and leisure.
As for "lack of hope?" I don't think that "the world is doomed" is a broad deterrent to reproduction in the large sense. I'm sure that some staunch progressives exist who choose to to bring children into "this miserable world," but most people aren't drowning themselves all day every day in political misery. I'd suggest that having the ability to do so is actually a sign of wealth and leisure, and a lot of people simply don't have that much free time.
Again, below-replacement birth rates are ubiquitous across first-world cultures, and far-predate the Biden-Trump duality, so assigning agency to that duality is quite a bit of shoehorning. South Koreans, Japanese, Italians, Spaniards, Costa Ricans, Croatians, Cypriots, and many others aren't basing their decisions to have babies on American politics.
As to your other note - I've never seen It's A Wonderful Life, so....
See if you can squeeze in a couple of hours to check that movie out. Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart is a winning combination. And it's got a lot deeper meaning than just ho, ho, ho. If you're like me better have some tissues around at the end.
I imagine that ever since human progress (the shared/observed wisdom from which each subsequent generation lives longer and healthier) began nudging us beyond mere subsistence, there have been those who could not (or would not) contribute to progress, but who anointed themselves arbiters of "what everyone needs" - at this point, right now - and we dare not progress further out of fear for what unknowns the future may hold.
So each generation (now) has its Malthusians, and we have our own. A wise society doesn't completely ignore these warnings, but we also cannot permit irrational fears of the future to bind us to a permanent present. WASABI is not the future - it's the past. WASABI will never break the bonds of Earth's gravity well and propel us outward to our destiny. Some Other technology holds that promise, and shrinking humanity to fit a WASABI planet is backward-thinking - it is anything but progress.
Thank you, Peter, for a lovely holiday read! Merry Christmas!🎁🎄
Same to you. I figured something positive was in tune with the season :).
I also enjoyed Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now”. The only major negative that struck me in it is that he estimates 40 MILLION people are enslaved around the world. When I lamented that estimate in a gronp post, Bill Schmidt told me about International Justice Mission which fights slavery. IJM is now my major donee.
Slavery has been part of human society since humans first organized themselves into groups. Everyone enslaved everyone else wherever possible for most of our 6K years of civilization. It's only in the past couple hundred that humans got around to figuring out that owning other humans is immoral, and in that time scale, the demise of the institution is really remarkably rapid. That it still goes on is a tragedy, of course, and should continue to be fought.
Depopulation isn't surprising given the increasing cost of raising a child and how government services replace children as the primary support for the elderly. There's also the lack of hope. I know it sounds pretentious but many aren't sure that they want to bring children into a world they perceive as going down the tubes. From my own perspective, it would help if politics wasn't seeping into every aspect of our lives. It's hard to look forward to 2024 when we might be facing the prospect of either Biden or Trump in the White House for another four years. On a lighter note, I have to wonder how a remake of "It's a Wonderful Life" would be if the character of Clarence the angel was instead played by Milton Friedman. Merry Christmas to one and all!
I think there are many factors at play in depopulation. That it closely correlates with growth of societal wealth across just about every society is both a telltale and a useful "tool." Your first point I agree with in part, but it's not just government. The emergence of "discretionary income" as a by-product of productivity growth (get beyond subsistence living and you can manage to build a nestegg rather than eking out just enough to eat and shelter every day) contributes to the lack of need for large families to support you in your later years. But, that's just one piece of it. Lives of greater ease and leisure are an option, and many choose not to have large broods of kids so that they can pursue that ease and leisure.
As for "lack of hope?" I don't think that "the world is doomed" is a broad deterrent to reproduction in the large sense. I'm sure that some staunch progressives exist who choose to to bring children into "this miserable world," but most people aren't drowning themselves all day every day in political misery. I'd suggest that having the ability to do so is actually a sign of wealth and leisure, and a lot of people simply don't have that much free time.
Again, below-replacement birth rates are ubiquitous across first-world cultures, and far-predate the Biden-Trump duality, so assigning agency to that duality is quite a bit of shoehorning. South Koreans, Japanese, Italians, Spaniards, Costa Ricans, Croatians, Cypriots, and many others aren't basing their decisions to have babies on American politics.
As to your other note - I've never seen It's A Wonderful Life, so....
See if you can squeeze in a couple of hours to check that movie out. Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart is a winning combination. And it's got a lot deeper meaning than just ho, ho, ho. If you're like me better have some tissues around at the end.
Oh, I know I should watch it. It's on the list.
“That picture you took of your toes while lounging on a beach chair contains a thousand times more data than the Apollo 11 computer's capacity.”
Indeed so! Merry Christmas, Peter!
I imagine that ever since human progress (the shared/observed wisdom from which each subsequent generation lives longer and healthier) began nudging us beyond mere subsistence, there have been those who could not (or would not) contribute to progress, but who anointed themselves arbiters of "what everyone needs" - at this point, right now - and we dare not progress further out of fear for what unknowns the future may hold.
So each generation (now) has its Malthusians, and we have our own. A wise society doesn't completely ignore these warnings, but we also cannot permit irrational fears of the future to bind us to a permanent present. WASABI is not the future - it's the past. WASABI will never break the bonds of Earth's gravity well and propel us outward to our destiny. Some Other technology holds that promise, and shrinking humanity to fit a WASABI planet is backward-thinking - it is anything but progress.