[wolfgke]

To me the worse problem is: While I can understand that it is an inconvenient situation to be poor (and I have some kind of compassion for them), I really cannot understand how one could even come to the idea to give rise to children if one is not in a high quantile of earning. If people applied this reproduction strategy consequently, poverty would simply die out.

[Quarrelsome]

jesus. Pick from: alcohol, depression, boredom, dynasty building, genetic programming.

I apologise for being rude but it sounds like you have limited compassion if you haven't been able to think this one through. What do you want to do, sterilise the poor?

I would remind you that despite a poor background children can and do still excel and even if they don't these children are often the backbone of our industry. You might not approve but these people are still the workforce and generation of tomorrow so you should afford their inception a little more respect and empathy.

[eeZah7Ux]

> despite a poor background children can and do still excel

Only occasionally. And that does not justify raising children in a difficult environment!

> What do you want to do, sterilise the poor?

I agree that the parent phrased that post very poorly.

However many countries did a lot of effective work to prevent unplanned parenthood, including education and access to contraceptives and abortion rather than sterilization or punishment.

> even if they don't these children are often the backbone of our industry

This sounds like the world need enough desperate people to accept exploitative jobs or go to war and so on? I hope humanity can do better than that.

[Quarrelsome]

> Only occasionally. And that does not justify raising children in a difficult environment!

You and I both know neither of us have enough information to assert how often it happens. I am merely stating it DOES as a counter weight to effectively killing off poor geniuses or rather poor "good enoughs".

> However many countries did a lot of effective work to prevent unplanned parenthood, including education and access to contraceptives and abortion rather than sterilization or punishment.

Yes! This is the available path to us which we should take.

> This sounds like the world need enough desperate people to accept exploitative jobs or go to war and so on? I hope humanity can do better than that.

That's a very extreme way of interpreting my words. Many of these children will become construction workers, carpenters, plumbers, administrative types, catering workers, chefs, musicians, entertainers, IT admins, etc, etc, etc. I am suggesting that my parent post is underestimating the reach of some of these children and falling for the gutter-press focus on the worst case examples. Many of these people will become good enough citizens. I live in a vaguely deprived area and the kid across from me isn't educated and is definitely working class but he's learnt from his tough upbringing and has a pretty good head on his shoulders. For every worst-case example there are tons of kids like this. Baby => bathwater.

[huyt77]

Empathy doesn't come into play when we make ppl take a drivers test before we allow them to drive. Why? Cause we don't want them hurting other ppl or themselves. Same rule should apply to parenthood imho. As more data roles in like so https://m.medicalxpress.com/news/2017-06-mother-personality-...

[bjourne]

So in your opinion, poverty is a form of child abuse?

[golergka]

> What do you want to do, sterilise the poor?

Reversible sterilization for everyone by default, temporary reversal for a fee. Make people pay for externalities.

[ngrilly]

Are you serious?

[golergka]

Absolutely. Why not? Having children is a very expensive thing for the family and the society, but people can easily make this decision foolishly and then offload costs onto everyone else.

Having children is a luxury, we only need to start treating it like one.

RESPONSES

(THANKS FOR THE ANTI-SPAM, HN! IT MAKES IT SO MUCH EASIER TO HAVE MEANINGFUL CONVERSATIONS)

> Why are you focusing only on the financial aspect and ignoring the parents education, general behavior and mental health, and living conditions, safety and so on?

All these qualities (1) heavily correlate to their wealth and (2) much harder to have any objective measure of.

[Quarrelsome]

because we can't even yet justify forcing parents to abort downs babies due to the freedoms we allow our peoples. At least wait for this topic until we've managed that.

[eeZah7Ux]

Why are you focusing only on the financial aspect and ignoring the parents education, general behavior and mental health, and living conditions, safety and so on?

[delerio]

So only rich people deserve to have a family? Only the rich deserve to find joy in nurturing and raising others? A lot of people, even though they don't have much, they find fulfillment in their family. If you think they shouldn't have children, that means taking away the only joy in some people's lives. Weird sentiment you have there.

[eeZah7Ux]

Nothing in life is due to us. There is no "deserve".

Also, you are painting a false dichotomy between "rich" and "poor". A lot of middle and lower class people can raise healthy and happy children unless they have problems with mental health / violence / substance abuse & so on.

> taking away the only joy in some people's lives

Looking at children as a source of joy instead of a recipient of unconditional care and effort sounds very narcissistic.

[delerio]

I don't understand your point. Many people find joy in raising children, it fulfills a purpose in their life. Not everyone does, but many do. There is a biological desire to procreate and continue the species.

[wolfgke]

> Many people find joy in raising children, it fulfills a purpose in their life. Not everyone does, but many do.

Many people find joy in other expensive hobbies, too. The difference is: Doing such a different expensive hobby won't make someone who you produced suffer because you lack the necessary financial backing.

[golergka]

'Deserve' is a weird word; what do you mean by it and think that it's relevant?

Raising children is a very resource and labour-heavy endeavour. Rich people have more resources and labour. It's only logical that they can afford the children while poor people don't.

[CalRobert]

One could say the same for being in a high quintile of leisure time, but that doesn't stop all stressed-out rich people from having kids.

Most of humanity was born to parents with no monetary income at all, and volatile access to resources and shelter. Imagine that!

[wolfgke]

> One could say the same for being in a high quintile of leisure time, but that doesn't stop all stressed-out rich people from having kids.

Which I consider independently from my main argument as a stupid idea.

[CalRobert]

You made an argument?

[eeZah7Ux]

> poverty would simply die out

Not at all. An economy based on competition and inequality automatically generates as many poor as needed to balance out the super rich. It's really basic math.

[forinti]

So we should have only got Kings out of the middle ages?

[wolfgke]

If there is a sparsity of people doing other jobs, the wages of people doing them will increase (leading to the situation that the condition for "better not reproduce" disappears). That's how economy works.

[CrispyUmbrella]

>reproduction strategy

I.e. 'stick the winkie in the hoo-hah and wiggle it around'

[oblio]

So your solution is basically: "kill the poor".

[ygaf]

Can you point to the word "kill" in his post?

[oblio]

Preventing some arbitrary part of the population from having children is basically eradicating that population, long term. I just used "kill", for simplicity.

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

[majewsky]

I find that equation of terms troubling. If I take that argument to its logical conclusion, we are all killers because we don't get as much children as previous generations. We're effectively killing our unborn offspring by refusing to procreate.

[eeZah7Ux]

> We're effectively killing our unborn offspring by refusing to procreate.

This is a completely false definition of "killing"

[ygaf]

As is oblio's.

[ionised]

> We're effectively killing our unborn offspring by refusing to procreate.

No we're not.

Killing requires something to exist and be alive first.

[oblio]

Ummmm.. false equivalence.

You're choosing not to have children. In wolfgke's description, he's choosing for you.

Big difference.

[wolfgke]

No, quarantine the further spread of poverty.

[oblio]

You're either a wonderful troll, and then: kudos! or you have a very misguided idea of poverty.

Poverty is not a disease, as Quarrelsome pointed out.

Poverty isn't even a constant, it's dynamic. People go in and out of poverty all the time.

We also don't know the correlation and the causation between poverty and various indicators such as IQ, achievements, etc. (are you poor because you have a low IQ or do you have a low IQ because you're poor? etc.)

On top of that, where do you draw the line for poverty? Is it the lowest 10%? 20%? 40%? What if the statistics change next year, and I go from 40% to 30%, am I allowed to have children this year? Are my children taken away from me?

Etc., etc.

You haven't thought this through, or as I said, you're a wonderful troll! :)

[ptaipale]

Your comment however leads me to ponder the rhetoric: poverty is indeed not a disease, but like diseases, in modern societies it is contagious. Patterns and behaviours that make poverty deeper and more destructive are spreading from person to person and family to family, in neighbourhoods and communities.

Here I mean things like appreciation of education, work, stability of families, etc.

What could we do to change these patterns? (Apart from the usual recipes like making schools better. FWIW I'm from a country which has one of the most equal distributions of both income and wealth, but even this does leave a lot of people quite unhappy.)

[oblio]

My guess is that the best investments are in education and social welfare. Basically try to get people who are down up and keep people who are up from falling down during their worst moments (temporary loss of income, depression due to loss of loved ones, etc.).

Besides this, I guess the next best investment is in refining democracy and its safeguards, as well as the actual government, so that:

a) lobbying by corporations and very rich and powerful individuals doesn't corrupt the system

b) the system is as efficient as possible (there's always going to be inefficiencies but you'd want most of the tax money to actually be used for what they're meant instead of administrative overhead)

More than that, there's not much we can do. After all, at some point we have to rely on free will :)

[wolfgke]

Exactly my kind of reasoning. To add a point: Since we don't know the exact kind of pathogen(s) leading to poverty, but we know that poverty of parents is a strong predictor of poverty of children, this delivers a way to at least partly quarantine the poverty disease.

[ptaipale]

Yes, poverty of parents is predictor of poverty of children, but for a large part, it isn't about money. It's about those contagious factors - for instance, how much the parents want their children to do well in school, how much they care about it. So fixing the poverty metric isn't going to change this, something else might.

At least what I read about the number of poor black American kids growing without a father: it's shocking. There seems to be a widespread collapse of culture of having a stable kernel family. What could be done about it?

[wolfgke]

> Poverty isn't even a constant, it's dynamic. People go in and out of poverty all the time.

There exist lots of diseases known to medicine that can be cured, but people can still get reinfected even after a treatment.

[Quarrelsome]

Poverty is not a disease, its a happening. Like falling over or getting hit by a bus. It prays upon the less agile of us so pray that one day when your agility slows you're not unlucky enough to get hit by the proverbial bus.

Heck you might gain a bit of sympathy then so maybe it wouldn't be a completely bad thing...

[robertk]

That sounds like killing the poor but with extra steps.

Or the South Side of Chicago.

[wolfgke]

> That sounds like killing the poor but with extra steps.

Doing quarantine does not kill the disease agent. That is not what quarantine is for. Quarantine is for preventing the further spread of the disease agent.

For killing the disease (agent) there is the immune system or drugs such as antibiotics or virostatic agents.