Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[smjjames]

Now, there is a later-state fertility rate increase that we've noticed here and there, but I'm not necessarily sure if that is local population fertility increase or related to migration.

Where exactly? Just wondering here.

[nenjin]

I love how, in a country with this much income and wealth disparity, this much mass consumption of resources, that free market kooks have the temerity to tell someone that's choosing not to reproduce that they're being "selfish." More like "How dare you not create another drone to spend money and make someone else wealthier! You selfish bastard!"

I also start to get pretty annoyed with friends who are breeders who complain about their bills when they have 2+ kids. It's like "You have a choice to stop spawning, you know. You wanted the big house and the gaggle of children, remember?"

For my case, after watching my parents get divorced at a very early age, I paid attention to the quality of marriages and relationships around me from thereon out. And I generally did not like what I saw. People are fine when they're dating, they're free to stay or go, some hurt feelings maybe but everyone more or less gets out clean. Marriage and children change the whole game. Plenty of people have happy marriages. But it's a gamble.

[Reelya]

The idea that reduced fertility is due to being crushed by capitalism isn't really borne out by any statistics. High income means lower birthrates across the board.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/

I'm also quite amazed that anyone who considers themselves on the side of feminism would hold up low birth rates as some alarmist thing. What is the solution? Women back in the kitchen where they belong? Women's access to paid work, but especially college education is what is most closely correlated with low birth rates. Low birth rates are because women have the choice now.

[smjjames]

Probably also borne (heh) out by the fact that despite our low birthrate mirroring that of elsewhere in the world, our (as in the US) population is actually still growing and is vibrant due to immigrants. So, immigration is definetly going to alter the actual picture at any given point.

[wierd]

Most areas of Pripyat are not very radioactive---is that area especially close to the nuclear plant or something?

Then explain falling birthrates in even the poorest places in the world.

Yes, the whole having time is a factor, as does having the money, but the falling birthrate has no correlation to how rich a country is or whatever.

I've been ninja'd horribly, but yes the demographic transition is a thing. Birthrates naturally fall as a country industrializes and modernizes, for a wide variety of reasons (not least of which are increased costs of living in industrial cities and increased likelihood of survival to adulthood for children)

Pripyat is not directly in proximity, but that is still not reason to exclude.

Here's a satellite image of the reactor complex circa 2007, or about a decade ago (before the new vault was installed). Radiation levels at the time were very very dangerous.



See all that lovely vegetation?

[Reelya]

The idea that capitalism is crushing the birthrate also flies in the face of history. Things used to be shitty, and people had next to nothing, and were crushed under the burden of subsistence living. Birthrates were astronomical.

There are also capitalist places where you only earn $1 a day, and working conditions are abysmal, and birthrates in those places are also astronomical.

Also, the working classes, crushed by capitalism in the USA have much higher birth rates than people higher-up in the system. If anything, deprivation and large families are closely connected, not opposed.

If anything, the complaint that about working too much making it hard to find time to have children, and this is all the fault of capitalism, sounds like a white middle class socialist idea. Would a black working-class activist see things that way?

[wierd]

Social pressure to reproduce is/was very high in your examples, which are mostly promulgated by a wealthy elite.

See for instance, the very notion of "Proletariat" --- Only good for having children (for the purposes of meeting labor needs.)

People were systemically excluded from having "good things" in much of the places or periods you cite. See for instance, the "Consumptive laws" in much of feudal europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law

People had attained the highest level of living they were *allowed* to attain, which was abysmal. They were told to reproduce like rabbits to inflate the ranks of their king's armies, and to produce lots of goods for him to sell to other wealthy/connected families.  They were forbidden from owning what they produced.

Today, people are at least in theory-- capable of attaining a very high quality of living legally, and people are willing to work to death to attain it.

Apples and oranges are both fruit, but they are not the same thing.  Comparing feudal societies with modern cosmopolitan ones is apples and oranges.

[smjjames]

Reelya wasn't comparing Feudal societies, he was talking about societies right now. Why even would he be talking about feudal societies when we have been talking in the context of right now.

[Dorsidwarf]

Because reelya mentions that it was true historically as well as today and a wire clearly got crossed somewhere

[wierd]

Reelya wasn't comparing Feudal societies, he was talking about societies right now. Why even would he be talking about feudal societies when we have been talking in the context of right now.

Oh, I dont know.. Maybe this sentence, in its context?

Things used to be shitty, and people had next to nothing, and were crushed under the burden of subsistence living. Birthrates were astronomical.

To me, that pretty clearly is describing feudal society in recent history. Again, sumptuary laws prohibited accumulation of quality hereditary goods, religious and political pressure was there to reproduce like rabbits, and-- people had a LOT more time than Reelya likes to let on.  Unless the king was planning an invasion, the whole winter was usually spent looking at your wife indoors, and looking for things to do.  Spring and summer were spent aggressively growing crops and tending herds.

These days, there is no "down season."

So,--- again-- Apples--- ORANGES.

[smjjames]

Okay yeah, I guess a wire got crossed somewhere and thought he was referring to a different part of the post.

Still, you don't have to go so far back as Feudal times, in the 18th and 19th centuries there were plenty of places crushed under subsistence living.

[wierd]

Sumptuary law existed well into the 17th century in much of Europe.  You dont just flip a switch on that kind of thing.

[Dorsidwarf]

Reelya wasn't comparing Feudal societies, he was talking about societies right now. Why even would he be talking about feudal societies when we have been talking in the context of right now.

Oh, I dont know.. Maybe this sentence, in its context?

Things used to be shitty, and people had next to nothing, and were crushed under the burden of subsistence living. Birthrates were astronomical.

To me, that pretty clearly is describing feudal society in recent history. Again, sumptuary laws prohibited accumulation of quality hereditary goods, religious and political pressure was there to reproduce like rabbits, and-- people had a LOT more time than Reelya likes to let on.  Unless the king was planning an invasion, the whole winter was usually spent looking at your wife indoors, and looking for things to do.  Spring and summer were spent aggressively growing crops and tending herds.

These days, there is no "down season."

So,--- again-- Apples--- ORANGES.

On the other hand you’re still ignoring the fact that reelya also explicitly mentioned the fact that the outcome is largely the same despite the very different situation in many modern capitalist locations

[smjjames]

To take the 'no down season' bit, why aren't wealthy people breeding like rabbits? They'd have plenty of 'down season' to have sex if they wanted to.

The most obvious answer is probably that they choose not to breed like rabbits despite being wealthy enough to support it.

[wierd]

Religious and political pressure to breed like rabbits is still extant.

See for instance, in south american catholicism, or just catholicism in general.

https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=5370

You will likely find a rather interesting correlation between secularism, and lower birth rates, tied with improved contraception.

However, that does not disqualify that people are having LESS SEX as well.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-millennials-less-sex-20160802-snap-story.html
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170508-the-many-reasons-that-people-are-having-less-sex