top 93 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 209 points 1 year ago (16 children)

Want higher birthrates? Just convince people that tomorrow will be better than today.

That's how you see a spike in birth rates.

To maintain a steady birthrate, just convince potential parents that the world will not be any worse for their children than it is today.

See, easy.

  • source
  • hideshow 16 child comments
  • [–] 84 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

    Capitalist Corporations: .... hmmmm .... I guess there's no choice .... artificial human breeding it is!

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 32 points 1 year ago

    Capitalism would also charge for every part of the process, raising the price as some techno feudal lord thinks they can find the right balance between extinction pricing and maximum shareholder value.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Then they do the calculation on the costs to raise the children and decide it's not economically viable.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    It’s always economically viable, just a matter of tracking all the expenses and adding it to the child’s debt. As soon as it’s old enough to work you can garnish it’s wages for all that unpaid debt

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It would be economically viable up to a certain age. And if you maintained a certain age average, costs could be easily maintained to sustainable levels.

    When you start analyzing the world and people as a series of costs and expenses, it's very easy to find solutions.

    As humans, we've already done that many times before .... most recently in the 1940s on an industrial scale .... we are capable of doing it again.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 66 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    You said ban birth control and porn? Got it.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Track everything people do and arrest them for unauthorised opinions? Got it.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [+] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • load more comments (-1 replies)
  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    They're taking the opposite approach.

    In the past families had a bunch of kids because they needed extra laborers to stay afloat, plus childhood mortality rates were so dire they needed spares to cover for the ones who wouldn't make it.

    We're already seeing pushes towards removing child labor laws, and RFK Jr is well on his way to ensuring death from easily preventable diseases makes a comeback.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 91 points 1 year ago* (9 children)

    I'm trying to get pregnant, but it's kinda hard when you're a guy. I won't stop trying, tho. 🫡

  • source
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 71 points 1 year ago* (9 children)

    Growing up, I was of the mindset that I would have got married and started a family by this point in my life. But as of the last few years, my thoughts have done just about a 180.

    Even if I was currently with someone/married, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to raise kids in this day and age in the US (the bullet dodged me when my ex-girlfriend used plan b after we got intimate without protection). I think best case scenario for me now would be DINK, but gotta find someone that can put up with my dumpster fires first.

  • source
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Just find someone with similar dumpster fires, then you'll both burn in the passions of what you love

    Also, thanks for mentioning DINK - Double Income No Kids .... never heard of that before and now I learned something new.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Currently living that live and fuck me is life easy right now. Cats instead of kids is a very tempting option.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Me too! Our cat is the perfect child, most of the time. Except when she pukes on the bed.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Children also do disgusting things but they usually grow out of it, whereas a cat can be joking up hairballs its entire life

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 171 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [+] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • load more comments (-1 replies)
    [–] 58 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    A friend of mine has three kids and works 70 hours a week. He is not able to make enough to support his family, and social services have been cut so much that his only option is to take out a personal loan, which will only make his problem worse.

  • source
  • hideshow 12 child comments
  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    14 hours leaves you barely 2 hours of personal time in a day. That's barely enough to just eat and maybe relax but then if you have 3 kids even that time is gone taking care of them. How and why would anyone put themselves through this, like after the first or second kid wouldn't your own limits become apparent

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    14 hours leaves you barely 2 hours of personal time in a day

    You've misspelled "commute"

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Some people find themselves in places where they lack the choice to limit themselves to two children when an accident happens. Not everyone has the resources to travel to a place where they would be able to make a choice.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    What, are you using the word places as a metaphor or literally, cause I've never heard of a location where you have to have more kids than you can afford, other than maybe villages where kids are seen as free labor

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Currently, in the US there are States were you can get an abortion and States were you cant. So, if you have an unplanned pregnancy you are kind of fucked.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    In the USA? If yes, the US is a sick country in regard to income distribution, labor laws, healthcare and public services. However, if your friend voted MAGA, zero sympathy and he/she can carry on.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [+] 24 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I’d put a baby in you. Not like through sex. just standard surgical procedure

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago

    I mean you're half right. In a zoo, the keepers care for their animals, making sure they're well fed, enriched, and healthy.

    We're being farmed. They are using us to make money from our produce (labour). They're using us to make money. We're so over exploited we simply cannot afford to have children.

  • source
  • [–] 45 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    On a more positive note the newest IPCC report on climate has population decline being the biggest positive impact on climate change, so keep at it!

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 41 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    im not spending a fortune to raise a child when i can barely afford eggs

  • source
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The math has changed.

    100 years ago, you'd get kids so you can afford eggs.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Yeah, then child labor laws came and ruined that for everyone.

    But don't worry, soon those too will be a thing of the past!

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    This, but also retirement being a thing.

    100 years ago, kids were much less of an investment than today (they'd start pulling their own financial weight at like age 6-12, not at age 20-30 like today) and they'd be the only thing making the difference between being able to retire to one of your kids' home or the poor house.

    Nowadays kids take much more money and time to get ready, and if you have no kids you can still retire and have your retirement financed by other peoples' kids. And then you even get to keep all the money you would have spent on getting your kids ready for the world, and you can spend it on yourself.

    Financially speaking, having kids used to be a necessity and now it's a pretty bad choice.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation...

    Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence, and no species can ever multiply beyond it. But in civilised society it is only among the inferior ranks of people that the scantiness of subsistence can set limits to the further multiplication of the human species; and it can do so in no other way than by destroying a great part of the children which their fruitful marriages produce.

    The liberal reward of labour, by enabling them to provide better for their children, and consequently to bring up a greater number, naturally tends to widen and extend those limits. It deserves to be remarked, too, that it necessarily does this as nearly as possible in the proportion which the demand for labour requires. If this demand is continually increasing, the reward of labour must necessarily encourage in such a manner the marriage and multiplication of labourers, as may enable them to supply that continually increasing demand by a continually increasing population.

    • Adam Smith, the father of capitalism
  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 44 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    why would I want to bring somebody into this world. they'd only have to fight for basic things like "let's be nice to each other" and "maybe we should pool our money to spend it on big things that benefit us all"

    fuck that. I'll live my little servile life as a cog in the machine as best I can, and then I'll die. and the dumb fucks who won't stop breeding while they try to make things worse for their children will repopulate the earth

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    No you don't understand. We're the most prosperous we've ever been at any point in time. There was literally no other time better than this. Life is wonderful in every way

    /s

    I'm generally a happy person but I hate people who say this.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    Born in 84, I've noticed something of a trend in my area. Late gen X and late millennials are having children, most are having two or three, but a lot of people like me born in the mid 80's aren't. While this is by no means universal, there does seem to be more people within five years of my age going without kids.

  • source
  • [–] 39 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    The birth rate moral panic is 100% manufactured by neoliberal capitalists who simultaneously want high consumption and low wages, which is a logical impossibilty. You cannot have a consumerist society where the average consumer lives paycheck to paycheck

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    It's only because capitalism demands it. I am tired of people who think we need more people on this planet, we most certainly do not. There is nothing we can't do with 8 billion of us that we can do with 8 billion plus 1.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    If it's neoliberalism, why is the right always clamouring about it? I think you are misguided on your aim my friend. You are also right, the time of us having things and enjoying our leisure are in the process of being erased for the good old days of company towns and food lines.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    The "right" shy of outright fascists are neoliberals. The term was coined in the eighties and describes a system that like Liberalism classic works primarily off of an idea of a protected class of citizen (as opposed to lesser protected classes of non-citizen) with a series of fundemental "rights" to basic protected freedoms from government interference and choice of "style of life" based around a personal property centric system.

    Where Neo-liberalism differs is it detests the welfare state, seeks widespread government deregulation as they see it as an economic deficit, practice widespread government austerity in public programs and seeks to privatize swaths of government services to create new market sectors.

    Neo doesn't mean new in a "of the minute" kind of way. The people who came up with the distinction between liberal branches were describing the likes of Ronald Regan and Margret Thatcher.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    I wish I could feel comfortable bringing children into the world.

    I really want to be a parent in my life

  • source
  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I want biological kids, and I'm right about the point in my life where it would make the most sense to have them. But whenever family asks about it, I tell them I'm not raising children in this kind of administration. They try to suggest that it's not that bad and I stand firm that they're not seeing grandbabies until the government stops being so fashy.

    Actually, millennials could probably hold our hypothetical babies hostage, see what's more important to them.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [+] -21 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Women have a biological clock on them, makes no sense waiting for different admin.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago

    I directly know multiple people who had to get what were effectively late term abortions due to pregnancy complications that would've put their lives at risk otherwise. We don't live in the US, so they were fortunate to be able to get the medical care they needed, but it underscores the scariness of the situation in the US; these risks mean that becoming pregnant in the wrong place could literally be a life or death matter. If treatment is received, even people who experience severe complications may be able to have a successful pregnancy in future. Not having access to these things risks breaking the biological clock anyway, so waiting is not unreasonable.

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments
    view more: next ›