First, as some argue, we have been having diminishing (or even negative) returns on innovation for a while. Second, for the future of humanity, shouldn't we prioritize maintenance (including the preservation of natural ecosystems) over innovation? Third, if we really wanted more innovation, why don't we educate our children better?
Having children creates an enormous positive externality for the child- life. The positive externality for society is comparatively smaller. The parents should be compensated for this, and the receiver of the positive externality should pay the compensation. Children should not have to pay this at a young age, as this will diminish their ability to form their own families. They should have to pay their children when they are older. This payment can replace social security, killing two birds with one stone. It should be a percentage of their income, which will also incentivize parents to educate their children. Percentage based compensation will also ensure a greater incentive for parents likely to have high earning children.
The economic case for having children today is not very convincing when AGI seems so close. You could still make the utilitarian argument that more people equals more happiness and so we should make more people, but I don't see why that should motivate anyone if they prioritize their own self-interest.
The appeal of utilitarianism is that it's a system that self-interested actors can coordinate around to maximize their own expected value. But in a world where AGI has eliminated the need for humans, adding more people only serves to reduce the expected value of the people already alive (by soaking up resources), thereby decoupling self-interest from utilitarianism. So then why should anyone be motivated by the utilitarian argument for having lots of children?
I get that this question is ultimately just asking "why be a utilitarian rather than an egoist," and that's beyond the scope of the essay, but I think it's still something pro-natalists should have an answer for given that AGI seems imminent and a large portion of people are fundamentally operating on egoist morality, even if they won't say so.
Once again, a person loads up a mountain of facts and does not grasp the simple truth: in order for more babies to be born, we have to give the majority of people enough money to have them. There are reasons why we do not: the basic reason is that people who are born sooner want their wealth to have priority over that of other people, born later, to have their wealth protected.
This is a mathematical problem: a great deal of the wealth is not really there. But you can pass rules to give yourself the money anyway. This is true of Elon Musk's wealth, running into hundreds of billions of dollars, and the zoning ordinances on most buildings, because building more buildings would decrease the value of current housing. This is a problem in the developed world - it is not exclusive to the US.
The problem will go away when the faux-rich are pried loose from their grip on power. This is a ripple effect of the post war war two baby boom: there are a lot of people who are old and want their faux income to be monetized. You can't happen unless you restrict all the ways that money passes from older to younger and expands with new projects being built. Again, this is the grit on the wheels and while conservatives are leading, the charge liberal groups to less, but more than enough, to keep faux wealth to go to the old.
Again, this is a mathematical problem that needs to be taken on by an entire society. But individually, people want to continue to harvest the faux-wealth even though collectively they deny the problem because other people are not willing to give up their faux-wealth. "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree." Everyone wants someone else to give up their wealth.
This is the point where the problems of faux-wealth have reached a breaking point because fossil fuels are a large portion of the faux-wealth. And the people who want to continue to extract more than their portion of that faux wealth are a plurality of the world's developed population. However, this is the acute version of a chronic problem: the rich (and we are all the rich, though each of us thinks we are poor because there is another layer of rich, which is even richer than we are) want to get their share of faux-wealth without treating the chronic problem.
To summarize: we need to electrify the economy. This means getting fossil fuel cars off the streets. No one wants to do this because the initial part is extremely expensive. It means making public transportation better as they do in some areas of Europe and Japan. It means junking a great deal of faux-wealth that is invested in fossil fuels: including buildings and other infrastructure. It means building units of housing, which will almost certainly depreciate existing housing.
Of course, the problem will get solved, but the way to do that is to have a huge war, which will burn a great deal of the faux-wealth, and open up redevelopment on a tremendously huge scale. It is coming; the rumblings of it are being heard in Greenland and Venezuela. It will get much larger. This war will come, even though the vast majority of people want to stick their craniums in the sand and hope it will all go away. For many of them, it will: they are old enough that they will not see the destruction that an overheated atmosphere will deliver. Others will not be so lucky.
The problem with your article is that it misses the point. You have to give more to the young, but in a way so they don't spend it on gambling or other forms of zero-sum wealth accumulation. Preaching that the young should give up more freedom so that the old can cruise happily on faux-wealth is not going to cut it. People are dumb, but they're not quite so dumb as to give up freedoms so that other people can cruise to retirement.
I agree with much of this, although I admit I struggle to reconcile the desire to make childless adults lower-status with the desire to keep abortion legal. Is it your desire that abortion remains legal, but subject to greater social shaming than it currently is?
A big problem with this is our culture has no healthy way of thinking about women.
Incels and groypers think that women are stupid, manipulative, should not be able to vote, belong in the kitchen raising kids, and hate women because of these factors.
The left thinks women are basically akin to men, the differences are purely socialized, and that marriages should be purely egalitarian. They like women because they think women are liberating themselves from false socialized standards.
The 'chivalrous' right also thinks that women are stupid, belong in the kitchen, and should not be working, but they cloak this in old fashioned 'my wife is so much better than me' rhetoric.
To women, the incel mentality seems hateful and scary, and the 'chivalrous right' perspective seems patronizing and condescending. Therefore, they default to the left perspective, and try to act like men. This is going to lead to falling birthrates. We need some modern way of partitioning gender roles in a way that does not completely ignore biology but is also not hostile, hateful, or anachronistic.
I think moral pressure will only work so much. What with contraception and abortion freely available. Where I think one could get a hit at AWFULs is when one would reverse Bismarck's old age insurance scheme.
At the moment, both public and private options are based on life time earnings. IE if you are lower to middle class, you pay taxes and dues on your salary, and part of the dues will form the basis for paying your old age pension.
If you are middle to upper class, you of course buy a lot of stocks, pay real estate mortgages and pay back borrowed capital for real estate purchases, and buy private insurance. All of that is also paid by your life-time earnings.
Obviously, your life-time earnings are higher without more kids, all things staying the same. Whatever class you become to belong to.
However, what if INSTEAD the society paid you pension based on TOTAL tax and dues revenues of ALL your biological (or adopted?) offspring in 1st-nth generation, for as long as you live? And at that same time, taxed more aggressively the income coming from the Bismarck pension and old-age private income? In other words, move the old age pensions from the social domain to a greater extent into familial domain.
Wouldn't it be fun to see what would then become of all those gay, lesbian and non-binary people? As well as the AWFULs?
I too am always very happy to hear that someone is "expecting." But I do not feel correct in making someone who has not had children or does not intend to have children feel bad about that decision. I can't know the circumstances that went into their decision.
I have three adult children and three grandchildren and have been married happily for 40 years. But a lot of good fortune and luck led to our having an extended family that provides us a great deal of purpose and joy. It doesn't always work out that way.
Interesting and provocative as usual. In your essay you seemingly ignore the most important element of parenthood (flagrantly obvious in the online photo of your daughter hugging your shoulder): love.
Natural selection will "soon" (within a century or so) neutralize the predicted population collapse. Assuming no real catastrophes, the joy children provide will ultimately substitute for the original factor behind children (sex feels good).
First, as some argue, we have been having diminishing (or even negative) returns on innovation for a while. Second, for the future of humanity, shouldn't we prioritize maintenance (including the preservation of natural ecosystems) over innovation? Third, if we really wanted more innovation, why don't we educate our children better?
Having children creates an enormous positive externality for the child- life. The positive externality for society is comparatively smaller. The parents should be compensated for this, and the receiver of the positive externality should pay the compensation. Children should not have to pay this at a young age, as this will diminish their ability to form their own families. They should have to pay their children when they are older. This payment can replace social security, killing two birds with one stone. It should be a percentage of their income, which will also incentivize parents to educate their children. Percentage based compensation will also ensure a greater incentive for parents likely to have high earning children.
The economic case for having children today is not very convincing when AGI seems so close. You could still make the utilitarian argument that more people equals more happiness and so we should make more people, but I don't see why that should motivate anyone if they prioritize their own self-interest.
The appeal of utilitarianism is that it's a system that self-interested actors can coordinate around to maximize their own expected value. But in a world where AGI has eliminated the need for humans, adding more people only serves to reduce the expected value of the people already alive (by soaking up resources), thereby decoupling self-interest from utilitarianism. So then why should anyone be motivated by the utilitarian argument for having lots of children?
I get that this question is ultimately just asking "why be a utilitarian rather than an egoist," and that's beyond the scope of the essay, but I think it's still something pro-natalists should have an answer for given that AGI seems imminent and a large portion of people are fundamentally operating on egoist morality, even if they won't say so.
Once again, a person loads up a mountain of facts and does not grasp the simple truth: in order for more babies to be born, we have to give the majority of people enough money to have them. There are reasons why we do not: the basic reason is that people who are born sooner want their wealth to have priority over that of other people, born later, to have their wealth protected.
This is a mathematical problem: a great deal of the wealth is not really there. But you can pass rules to give yourself the money anyway. This is true of Elon Musk's wealth, running into hundreds of billions of dollars, and the zoning ordinances on most buildings, because building more buildings would decrease the value of current housing. This is a problem in the developed world - it is not exclusive to the US.
The problem will go away when the faux-rich are pried loose from their grip on power. This is a ripple effect of the post war war two baby boom: there are a lot of people who are old and want their faux income to be monetized. You can't happen unless you restrict all the ways that money passes from older to younger and expands with new projects being built. Again, this is the grit on the wheels and while conservatives are leading, the charge liberal groups to less, but more than enough, to keep faux wealth to go to the old.
Again, this is a mathematical problem that needs to be taken on by an entire society. But individually, people want to continue to harvest the faux-wealth even though collectively they deny the problem because other people are not willing to give up their faux-wealth. "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree." Everyone wants someone else to give up their wealth.
This is the point where the problems of faux-wealth have reached a breaking point because fossil fuels are a large portion of the faux-wealth. And the people who want to continue to extract more than their portion of that faux wealth are a plurality of the world's developed population. However, this is the acute version of a chronic problem: the rich (and we are all the rich, though each of us thinks we are poor because there is another layer of rich, which is even richer than we are) want to get their share of faux-wealth without treating the chronic problem.
To summarize: we need to electrify the economy. This means getting fossil fuel cars off the streets. No one wants to do this because the initial part is extremely expensive. It means making public transportation better as they do in some areas of Europe and Japan. It means junking a great deal of faux-wealth that is invested in fossil fuels: including buildings and other infrastructure. It means building units of housing, which will almost certainly depreciate existing housing.
Of course, the problem will get solved, but the way to do that is to have a huge war, which will burn a great deal of the faux-wealth, and open up redevelopment on a tremendously huge scale. It is coming; the rumblings of it are being heard in Greenland and Venezuela. It will get much larger. This war will come, even though the vast majority of people want to stick their craniums in the sand and hope it will all go away. For many of them, it will: they are old enough that they will not see the destruction that an overheated atmosphere will deliver. Others will not be so lucky.
The problem with your article is that it misses the point. You have to give more to the young, but in a way so they don't spend it on gambling or other forms of zero-sum wealth accumulation. Preaching that the young should give up more freedom so that the old can cruise happily on faux-wealth is not going to cut it. People are dumb, but they're not quite so dumb as to give up freedoms so that other people can cruise to retirement.
I agree with much of this, although I admit I struggle to reconcile the desire to make childless adults lower-status with the desire to keep abortion legal. Is it your desire that abortion remains legal, but subject to greater social shaming than it currently is?
A big problem with this is our culture has no healthy way of thinking about women.
Incels and groypers think that women are stupid, manipulative, should not be able to vote, belong in the kitchen raising kids, and hate women because of these factors.
The left thinks women are basically akin to men, the differences are purely socialized, and that marriages should be purely egalitarian. They like women because they think women are liberating themselves from false socialized standards.
The 'chivalrous' right also thinks that women are stupid, belong in the kitchen, and should not be working, but they cloak this in old fashioned 'my wife is so much better than me' rhetoric.
To women, the incel mentality seems hateful and scary, and the 'chivalrous right' perspective seems patronizing and condescending. Therefore, they default to the left perspective, and try to act like men. This is going to lead to falling birthrates. We need some modern way of partitioning gender roles in a way that does not completely ignore biology but is also not hostile, hateful, or anachronistic.
I think moral pressure will only work so much. What with contraception and abortion freely available. Where I think one could get a hit at AWFULs is when one would reverse Bismarck's old age insurance scheme.
At the moment, both public and private options are based on life time earnings. IE if you are lower to middle class, you pay taxes and dues on your salary, and part of the dues will form the basis for paying your old age pension.
If you are middle to upper class, you of course buy a lot of stocks, pay real estate mortgages and pay back borrowed capital for real estate purchases, and buy private insurance. All of that is also paid by your life-time earnings.
Obviously, your life-time earnings are higher without more kids, all things staying the same. Whatever class you become to belong to.
However, what if INSTEAD the society paid you pension based on TOTAL tax and dues revenues of ALL your biological (or adopted?) offspring in 1st-nth generation, for as long as you live? And at that same time, taxed more aggressively the income coming from the Bismarck pension and old-age private income? In other words, move the old age pensions from the social domain to a greater extent into familial domain.
Wouldn't it be fun to see what would then become of all those gay, lesbian and non-binary people? As well as the AWFULs?
I too am always very happy to hear that someone is "expecting." But I do not feel correct in making someone who has not had children or does not intend to have children feel bad about that decision. I can't know the circumstances that went into their decision.
I have three adult children and three grandchildren and have been married happily for 40 years. But a lot of good fortune and luck led to our having an extended family that provides us a great deal of purpose and joy. It doesn't always work out that way.
Interesting and provocative as usual. In your essay you seemingly ignore the most important element of parenthood (flagrantly obvious in the online photo of your daughter hugging your shoulder): love.
Natural selection will "soon" (within a century or so) neutralize the predicted population collapse. Assuming no real catastrophes, the joy children provide will ultimately substitute for the original factor behind children (sex feels good).