It is also true that societies are brutally darwinian. The ones that prevail are the ones that can produce the most offspring, and bring it to economic maturity.
This is the story behind the enormous success of China and India, per capita they are relatively poor but punch well above that weight since they have enormous populations. If they can sustain that population dynamic (which seems problematic actually) then it doesn't matter that they are per-capita poor. They are still nuclear superpowers with lunar missions. It doesn't matter if they are illiberal, there are more of them.
It feels like for all its faults, the global West has values worth preserving for the future, and that involves, well, going through with it and making babies.
But then I suppose, the burden of childcare should be better socialized. It used to rely more on grandparents, who would live nearby and be a good 10-20 years younger than nowadays.
But then again, you're saying, where that is in place people still don't want to have children. So maybe that doesn't work either.
> per capita they are relatively poor but punch well above that weight since they have enormous populations. If they can sustain that population dynamic (which seems problematic actually) then it doesn't matter that they are per-capita poor.
This is a line of reasoning I don't get. I mean I understand it, I just strongly disagree.
Countries are made up of people, individual people. How important is it really that a country is a "superpower" if the average person eeks out a horrible existence. To take it to a further extreme, look at the Russian empire of the late 18th/early 19th century. Russia was definitely a Great Power at that time, while also the majority of the population were slaves (there really wasn't much of a difference between serfdom and slavery) who were borderline starving, or actually starving, during that time. But rah rah Russia definitely got some nice palaces out of it at the time that certainly make great monuments today.
I'm much prefer to live in a "non-superpower" with a much better quality of life for me and the people I love.
Yeah, true. But I think the argument holds also for this utility function.
There is something about your society that you like, else you would be somewhere else. And, bluntly, if your society doesn't make babies, today, then in 20-30 years time there won't be people brought up in this culture. Either your society will go into decline for lack of said people, or will rely on immigration (assuming it's attractive to expats), eg people with different values to your society's.
It's not saying one society is better than another, only that if you think there is something good about your society (liberal rights? nukes? hell, maybe you're North Korean and like dictators!) then it takes babies to sustain it.
The default is you will get people brought up with values of most populous societies, which may or may not align with yours.
If there are a lot of working people when you retire it is easy to pay for your retirement, both in the sense that they can pay taxes and in the sense that the growing economy makes the stock market grow up which makes private defined benefit or defined contribution plans work better. Billionaires benefit from it even more than you but you do benefit from it.
Bluntly, whether you meant to or not, this comment is full of coded bigotry. It invokes images of a foreign hoard, bang at the walls of the west, threatening to dilute or destroy "our" way of life.
1. The comment you're replying to explicitly acknowledges this fact in an aside.
2. It is not full of "coded bigotry." These are simple fact that almost everyone agrees on. India has explicitly made it a goal to reduce their fertility rate over the past few decades because of the problems of overpopulation. China's economy absolutely benefits from a high population. And yet I doubt you would characterize their humans rights record as stellar. It does not mean that Indians or Chinese people are in any way inferior to Westerners. And I highly doubt that the OP would agree with that either.
3. Even if it was, that isn't a critique of the comment's argument. It just means you find it distasteful. So what?
> Even if it was, that isn't a critique of the comment's argument.
Yes, it is.
The core of their comment is "oh noes western values will be lost!" (Or as they put it: "the global West has values worth preserving for the future").
My point is, no, they won't, because fertility is dropping everywhere. We're not that special. And that this purported fear is simply rooted in age-old racist tropes of a loss of cultural identity to scary foreigners, nothing more.
Baloney. The comment might rely on some outdated information, or if you want to be uncharitable, outdated stereotypes, but that isn't bigotry. There's no need to moralize.
> It feels like for all its faults, the global West has values worth preserving for the future, and that involves, well, going through with it and making babies.
As someone childfree by choice, I care about the preservation of the global west for, at most, the next 40 years.
Continuing on the thread of my argument, you could argue that in 30-40 years time your reliance on the society and any shared values will be very high - possibly at its highest in your life (though of course I'm just guessing, I know nothing about you). And elderly care seems to be among the most commonly outsourced. So even having a fixed horizon of caring doesn't invalidate the argument.
It is also true that societies are brutally darwinian. The ones that prevail are the ones that can produce the most offspring, and bring it to economic maturity.
This is the story behind the enormous success of China and India, per capita they are relatively poor but punch well above that weight since they have enormous populations. If they can sustain that population dynamic (which seems problematic actually) then it doesn't matter that they are per-capita poor. They are still nuclear superpowers with lunar missions. It doesn't matter if they are illiberal, there are more of them.
It feels like for all its faults, the global West has values worth preserving for the future, and that involves, well, going through with it and making babies.
But then I suppose, the burden of childcare should be better socialized. It used to rely more on grandparents, who would live nearby and be a good 10-20 years younger than nowadays.
But then again, you're saying, where that is in place people still don't want to have children. So maybe that doesn't work either.