[zimablue]

The downside is that it forces people who don't want children to pay for other people's children, at a time when we should be trying to reduce the population and not increase it. Having children is not a public service, it's closer to pollution and I object so much to subsidising it.

[adimitrov]

That's very short sighted. Population doesn't permeate the ether like a perfect gas, and we're not all indistinct like the molecules of such a gas.

Whether the current global population levels are unsustainable is up for debate. What is not up for debate, and is already apparent in Western nations as well as other booming economies such as China and Japan are the severe implications of demographic change and the disruptive effect of an aging population on a nation's economy.

This is why making babies in rich countries makes economic sense. If you want to fight overpopulation, then you need to fight for women's rights and education in countries where birth rates are too high. For every baby that you're not having, 20 others are born into poverty.

[zimablue]

It's only "economic sense" in a VERY narrow viewpoint where you assume that you're going to disallow immigration AND assume that your social security system is offset by a generation AND assume that economic measures like GDP/etc are important. I'd change those three before pushing the "increase population" button.

Japan had low growth and higher happiness for a couple of decades now.

Even taking all that, economically useful != right. It's economically useful to burn the forests and raise the oceans but it's not right.

[adimitrov]

Immigration is not disallowed. In many European economies, birth rates have been below replacement for decades, and immigration has been the only thing propping up populations. Recent events notwithstanding.

Japan is facing a demographic crisis[1]. Among developed nations, their problem is the most extreme because of very low rates of immigration, and a continuously dwindling replacement rate.

Nobody's talking about increasing population. We're well below replacement rate, and that's terrifying. The environment is not going to be helped by developed nations collapsing under their own demographic weight.

To reiterate my point: abstaining from having children in the West does a) nothing to reduce overpopulation b) severely impacts local economic capacity without benefit to the environment. Said economic capacity is currently at the forefront of developing sustainable energy models.

In order to reduce overpopulation, fighting for women's education and women's rights has proven far more valuable.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.de/japan-fertility-crisis-2017-4...

[rayiner]

I’m okay with not subsidizing having kids if kids in the future don’t have to pay social security, dividends, etc., for people who didn’t have kids.

[zimablue]

This is a choice we made in how we structure our governments though that doesn't make much sense on it's own.

We could easily have a system where each generation pays for its OWN social security, you just let the government screw you by spending the current account on wars.

Population is a much bigger question than a specific, stupid government fiscal policy.

[rayiner]

Unless you "save for retirement" by putting canned food in a basement, all you're doing is arranging for some sort of entitlement to a share of the production of a future generation of workers. That's true whether you're talking about social security paid with tax dollars, dividends paid on stock holdings, etc. Those are all abstractions over an arrangement in which a working generation gives up some of the surplus of its labor to the retired generation.

[zimablue]

That's a good point and fairly true I think but there are some caveats that limit it's application to this argument as in (do we want more american kids). 1. It's not only the production, we also work for tangibleassets, mostly housing like you said storable food, machinery etc. That's relevant because if population decreased all of these would become cheaper. To take to the extreme - 1000,000 humans in the near future could probably sustain an incredible standard of living assisted by robots. Pragmatically, if I owned a house my outgoings would be tiny. 2. You're paying for the work of ANY future generation, it absolutely doesn't have to be American. Most of the most expensive things (electronics, cars) are already produced abroad. Food, haircuts and social care are a fraction and only decreasing.

So social security doesn't have to be that shape and an equally large young American population isn't necessary to sustain the current older population. Deeper than this thread but I guess relevant, a lot of hours go into producing products for the 1%, or jobs which don't make sense which our system protects because it's built around having 100% employment so we force you into a min. wage job in order to pay the rest of your income in benefits from taxes on the top percent. If our system didn't optimize to 100% employment and had more extensive welfare you'd see much higher unemployment and the trains would still run.

[wpietri]

That's one way to look at it, as if children are some sort of luxury good like a BMW or a labradoodle. The other way to look at it is that all adults were once children, so anything we do to support all children is fair.

I think the flaw with your framing is it's essentially ahistorical. The only way we all got here is by having ancestors. We all consumed quite a lot of resources getting to adulthood. If you're all that concerned about improper subsidies, surely you're eager pay back, with interest, the large one that you've received?

[zimablue]

There are two big problems with your argument.

One: Your parents taking time off benefits them a lot more than you. It might benefit you a bit but it doesn't benefit you to see your dad from 0-3 months and not your mum, you're too young to know. People assume that it's a big benefit but actually I'd imagine having your parents somewhat around from the ages of 1-3 is far more important than constantly around from 0-1.

The other flaw is bigger really, basically it's a logical fallacy. Read my point to the other comment with this argument, it doesn't actually make sense. You can't expect people to be in favour of the conditions that lead to their existence, if you were the product of rape you should be pro rape? What if we were a species where all birth was via the rape and murder of the father, you'd still be telling people they're ethically obliged to be in favour of reproduction? Just because someone has benefited from something which had something else in the chain of causation doesn't mean that they have to be in favour of that thing. I benefitted massively from the colonial history of my country, for example.

[wpietri]

Oh, well if your best evidence is you imagining things, you can see how I'm not going to invest a lot in this reply.

I'll clear up one misunderstanding, though. The point isn't that one should be in favor of the particular conditions of one's birth. It's that one should be in favor of the continued existence of humanity, and do so such that the conditions for future humans are at least as good. Basically, Rawls' veil of ignorance.

By the way, I don't think your misunderstanding was an honest one. If you get to the point that you're suggesting your opponents must be pro-rape, maybe that's a sign you're too wound up to have a good discussion.

[gehsty]

Why should we be reducing the population? I’ve seen this mentioned a few times in this thread and I just don’t get it.

Also, so many things are subsidised by governments that if you were to pick and chose what you approve of by you paying for it and not using it then you’ll not use much.

On the softer side of things, having kids is a good thing, supporting people as much as possible when they have kids with flexible paid leave is a good thing, and I hope more companies and countries continue to improve levels of support for new parents.