[senectus1]

While I agree, his experience is also salient.

Ease of access to birth control and ease and safety of abortion will be having a very detectable impact on the birthrate.

Not saying they need to be restricted, just that they're very relevant data points.

[teitoklien]

it is heavily politicized, atleast for the forseable future, until society reaches a conclusion, people will lie with statistics, smear their opponents in discussion as bigots, sexists, whatever.

But sooner or later it needs to be asked and acted upon. Should society structure itself to penalise abortions, and reward births of children.

Did our old religious and conservative societies where parents and grandparents helped together to give a great childhood to 2 or more children be something we need to bring back (for folks who'll say back then kids didnt have a great childhood, aborted children have NO childhood a death for themselves that they didnt choose). Should premarital intercourse be banned again or shunned ?

Religions have brought tons of miseries causing constant conflicts between communities, wars, allowing politicians and rulers to manipulate masses.

However, they also carried laws and doctrines refined over centuries, on philosophy, morality, and most importantly societal structure.

Monogamy itself and the construct of marriage was refined and finalized in all major religions Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc across several centuries (and in some cases greater than 1000 yrs).

One must consider, why did our ancestors come to certain conclusions globally regardless of faith around societal structure? What conditions did they want to create across society, to bring about prosperity or growth. Why were certain conservative and unpopular opinions regardless were imposed on men and women alike.

We should remove all the horrible stuff, things we can leave behind that our ancestors used to do sure. but throwing everything away is also not going to lead to anything good for us in the future.

Should abortion be readily accessible simply for the sake of liberty and freedom ? Should contraceptives be widely made available and promoted ? , should families force kids to be responsible for their actions again, and first try their best to give their newly born child a better life before allowed to just throw everything apart with divorces, single parent childhood, etc. Should premarital intercourse be banned , to encourage youth to form meaningful relationship instead of coasting between new girlfriends and boyfriends every new year ?

Im not saying we should do X, but these questions will need to be asked sooner or later, if western society or even asian societies want to survive (both have ultra low birthrates, china, japan, korea, russia, even india is now going the below tfr rate and will join them far sooner than was estimated within 20 yrs).

I really love european, american and asian societies and cultures, and i dont want them to die off, or perish away. Even my own culture's TFR is 0.98 for multiple decades and its perishing away quite fast too.

Hard questions will need to be asked in the future. It's not just a matter of what feels right to our emotional minds at a moment, but rather, whats best for society and cultures itself long term.

Not to mention, housing prices need to go way down, it needs to be removed from being a speculative asset or a way to whitewash black money, its wreaking havoc on whatever remaining part of society that does want kids, but cant afford to own a home by age of 30 even with double income household. We have enough land to house the entire world in each of the major countries, yet just out of sheer regulation, greed and laziness from politicians, policymakers, and banks who are afraid of the housing market crashing and causing problems for them, they are keeping this charade up.

There are many problems that need to be solved in coming decades, I hope each of our societies solve it.

[kelseyfrog]

When people feel the game is unfair, they quit. When the game is society, the society ceases to exist.

It's wild that we find it harder to change the system than to walk away from it entirely. People opt out in a thousand small ways - refusing to have kids, refusing to participate, numbing themselves with distractions, or just mentally checking out. If the core pitch of society is "keep grinding or suffer," it’s not surprising so many people choose not to bring new life into it. Liberty and freedom aren't abstract ideals. Their real absence makes people find coping mechanisms in a world that often feels rigged.

If a society truly wants to persist, it has to give people a reason to stay - something more than survival, more than struggle, more than empty promises about meritocracy or bootstrap fantasies. Otherwise, the logic of self-preservation kicks in, and people will exercise whatever autonomy they can muster, including the right to say, "No, not this."

So, yeah, access to abortion isn't simply about individual rights in the abstract; it's a symptom and a signal. When people would rather not create new life than subject it to the current system, that's not a moral failure on their part. It's an indictment of the system itself.

TLDR; make a better society bruh.

[pyuser583]

Society has been getting better and better. The privations our parents and grandparents went though were insane.

Conscription, poverty, illiteracy, I mean wow.

By almost every conceivable metric, the world is getting better.

[kelseyfrog]

I don't disagree, but better doesn't make up for unfairness.

Inequality isn't an act of nature. No volcano or hurricane is disrupting lives. The source is human, a system we built, the society we live in. If we can't change the system that binds us, then it doesn't deserve us.

The core conceit is, "When I win, it's merit. When you lose, it's fair."

[positr0n]

I don't disagree with most of what you're saying either, but I don't see it's relevance to what GP is claiming. Was society more fair than it is now for the last few millennia of higher birth rates?

[mensetmanusman]

It’s symptoms all the way down. If the system decides it needs more births it will ban abortion, and that’s not a moral failure on the system’s part, it’s an indictment of the symptoms itself.

[ako]

Hans Rowling found that one of the best way to increase numbers of births is to reduce education for women. Or at least there’s strong correlation between both.

[kelseyfrog]

I'm not sure how useful this is. Isn't not like we're going to throttle education for women like it's a governor for fertility rate, right?

[kelseyfrog]

The system has no morals, but every person operating within it does. If the system demands what it needs from us without regard for morality, it's on us, as moral agents, to refuse compliance. The system can demand what it wants, but no one is obliged to give it anything.

If the point is that the system will coerce what it needs from us, then it deserves not merely to perish, but to be destroyed, actively, deliberately, and ruthlessly. If births are the air it breathes, let us suffocate it by refusing to bear its children. Let it choke on its own demands.

[coldtea]

>The system has no morals, but every person operating within it does.

Most people just have whatever morals the system gives them.

[nothercastle]

Abortion won’t change the game you would have to ban condoms and birth control

[Teever]

If you can't successfully ban cannabis and cocaine (in prisons no less). You can't effectively ban condoms and birth control

[teitoklien]

Things should be made better I agree, But at the same time.

Every single generation before ours had worse life outcomes in everyway than us. They had lower lifespans, struggled with food insecurity, Lack of travel accomodations, no access to education for the majority, nothing.

Yet if you speak to anyone from those generation or even from our generation who have lives similar to them, they have far more positivity and energy. (and higher fertility and birth rates)

More things, "non meritocracy", "bootstrap fantasies", those things arent the problem.

People of our generation and the one before, are just always whining complaining, too lazy. I dont want to believe that either, but it is the truth.

Our freedom to do anything and everything, abort children easily, control birth planning easily, making casual sex the norm, etc, making housing unaffordable to keep this stupid real estate based bubble alive for banks, and politicians alive under garb of "Regulation" and "NIMBYism".

Are 100% much more contributing to all of this. Than nihilism, doomism, etc.

Give people better things, more money, better lifestyle, and more freedoms and no societal pressure to have kids, people are just opting for the "DINK" philosophy, Double Income No Kids.... , spend on expensive cars, better homes, more travel, but no... no kids.

Go observe every major society, the top 10% of each society in almost all of them have a pretty decent life with good savings and sense of security, freedom to not overwork too much. This is the top 10% populist politicians villify as having everything.

Now go look at the birth rates of that top 10% in EVERY major society its lower than the rest of the 90%.

More money, more affordability are not linked to birth rates at all, except for a teensy minority who overthinks things and calculates 1000 different decisions from climate change to their wealth to their partner's loyalty, to decide if they want kids. They are not the majority

No amount of motivation, higher incomes, etc will reverse this trend of birth declines, (however governments and society should strongly work towards giving people higher income, less overworking, more motivation to be optimistic not for boosting birth rates, because it wont, but simply because its the duty of public servants, politicians, policymakers and the state that serves the society in return for the society serving the state with loyalty)

TLDR; make better society yes, but even that will just lead to even fewer kids, make a more responsible society while improving people's lives.

[pempem]

Have you ever seen that meme about having less days off than a medieval peasant?

Yes, I can get chicago, new york, italian, or tokyo style pizza from my phone, in about an hour in a city that is none of those places. Still even my weekends include work. A strong effort in high school, college, grad school and at my jobs has led to fairly regular weekend work and working after putting the LOs down for bedtime, not connecting or socializing.

The answer isn't fewer rights. Its more.

[teitoklien]

No one’s stopping you from not working on weekends, for most high income earners people who do it, it’s purely the obsession with no end to wanting more (other than those who live paycheck to paycheck and need those weekends due to having multiple jobs, that is indeed a tragedy and should be a policy priority for gov to fix).

But tell me this, If society is overworking so much.

How is the average screen time of an american adult around 4-5 hours per day ? thats 8-10 hours per couple per day. Are you saying most of that time spent on facebook, tiktok, youtube and instagram overworking time ?

Do americans work hard ? absolutely way more than europeans who have a much better work life balance, tons of holidays, maternity leave, paternity leave, none of which america has.

Chinese and american workers are some of the hardest workers on earth.

Then tell me this. How is it that western europe with better work life balance has even worse birth rates (significantly worse for significantly many more years) than america ?

Western Europe already has more rights and it doesnt work. Whatever semblance of sanity they have in birth rates (as horrible as those metrics are) most of the children are born to single income regressive households mostly north african, morocon, and pakistani immigrants in western europe and uk. So, if you exclude those, the birth rates of families with more rights, more work life balance, is even worse than the official stats.

Rights or no rights isnt the issue, but a discussion on what’s promoted by society should be had, more rights doesnt mean more children. Coercion, promotion of ideals, behavioural nudging are standard things every single country and its government does, (a good book on this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State)

So More rights, more work life balance while are amazing ideals that society should definitely work on, like it has for thousands of years with on average significant better results if one sees growth in 100 yr cycles.

More rights is not the solution to birth rates, atleast its not the existing bottleneck in most western societies and cultures that’s for sure.

[listenallyall]

Lol, what you define as "work" is not even close to the "work" assigned to a medieval peasant. In his eyes, you have 7 days off a week.

[kelseyfrog]

Empirically, how well does the "we have it better off now" response work against feelings of an unfair system. Does it tend to change perspective in your experience?

[SpicyLemonZest]

A little. The real perspective shift happens when people learn how to stop comparing their lives to stories about other people they’ll never meet, but that’s a harder and more general lesson. The idea that medieval peasants had more free time than me comes from the same place as the idea that everyone could afford a house in the 1950s, or the idea that everyone I see on Instagram is living more vibrant lives than me.

[teitoklien]

the mindset you're discussing isnt whats driving this for majority of people (im myself young and in my 20s). its a problem in your extremely small bubble of leftist spaces which i've often heard this doomism being argued.

World has never been that fair, its a work in progress that has been going on since 1000s of years heck probably 100,000s for humans.

First there was Anarchy / Stateless Societies (Pre-Leviathan), then came the notion of leviathan / Authoritarian Centralization the idea that letting a state get run by a ruler and his nobles would lead to a more stable state (the era of kings and emperors since last several centuries),

then came Theocratic or Feudal Orders : Society governed by divine rule or hierarchical feudal obligations. Middle Ages in Europe, dynastic China, Islamic Caliphates.

then Absolute Monarchy / Early Nation-States then Constitutionalism / Enlightenment Liberalism then came Democracy (but anti minority and primarily majoritarian with tons of political violence on minorities, still can see it in places like bangladesh, malaysia (singapore itself was born out of violence on such a non-malay minority) )

then came Liberal Democracy / Republic Which is what most western europeans, americans, indians, japan, etc live under or atleast the ideals its politicians promise to follow and do follow majority of the time.

Everything you and enjoy in our lives was created and improved upon by people before us, life has never been 'fair' nor will ever reach that utopian ideal of fair ever. Nor has it ever been the limiter on birth rates or growing societies.

It's just an excuse (sorry I'm not saying your concerns are invalid, but only that you share it with every human who has ever existed across time, and this has never been the bottleneck for our current problem with birth rates)

The problems are more behavioural in kind, and the norms that have arised rather than unfair system, psycological issues like that.

[kelseyfrog]

Can you explain how all of this is supposed to make me feel like it's worth opting in to? It sounds like this society is fundamentally broken. Why support something I don't believe in?

Make a society worth believing in.

[evilsetg]

We have to find a new equilibrium for fertility that does not depend on opression of women. This could very well mean we need more rights, most of all more stable, plannable lifes i think. The old opressive ways of ensuring fertility are gone and without major societal upheaval they will not come back. I think that is good and we should focus on alternative solutions.

[acdha]

> Every single generation before ours had worse life outcomes in everyway than us. They had lower lifespans, struggled with food insecurity, Lack of travel accomodations, no access to education for the majority, nothing.

What’s your definition of our generation? What you described is true of multiple generations, and flat out wrong for things like lifespan in the United States which has been declining.

[thrownearacc]

> folks who'll say back then kids didnt have a great childhood

If you count a 11 year girl child to be raped by and then married to her 60 year old (maybe wealthy) relative then yeah she indeed had a fucking fabulous childhood.

> penalise abortions, and reward births of children

For fuck's sake - there's a difference between a teen abortion and an adult abortion! But then you wouldn't understand why one "aborts"! Oh you do understand but you want that decision to be "society's" - not that person in whose body a fucking foetus is growing!

I mean is the moronity this common? For fuck's sake, freedom to abort is not what is killing the birthrate - it's the way our economy and other aspects of society is going haywire - and the way wealth and benefits are tricking up, not down, the work culture for example the way that is forcing people to work day and night and yet they can't own a house - among other things. Goodness!

[teitoklien]

Who said I'm for or promoting teenage pregnancies ????? No woman should be allowed to be married off to someone until they are 18 especially with that kind of age gap.

Marrying under 18s with 30-40 yr olds is not a solution and diabolical, no major religion even recommends that.

We need to restructure our society so that men and women aged 20-25 yrs old, can have a easy access to owning their own homes, with sustainable careers and occupation.

We need to make children before college postgraduation studies or even higher studies like phd not only more acceptable but the norm.

Pedophilia should not be encouraged and most sane societies have been vehemently against what you're saying (including me).

This cycle of people having kids after 35 yrs old, needs to be fixed that is the disaster.

> I mean is the moronity this common? For fuck's sake, freedom to abort is not what is killing the birthrate - it's the way our economy and other aspects of society is going haywire - and the way wealth and benefits are tricking up, not down, the work culture for example the way that is forcing people to work day and night and yet they can't own a house - among other things. Goodness!

I agree with what you said, but abortion is also causing the issues, its been normalized that its ok if majority of men and women attempt to have their first kid after 30 (it should not be this way). Premarital sex, casual sex and one night stands has destroyed the whole notion of commitment between man and a woman. Our Instagram feeds that constantly glorify unattainable photoshopped beauty from select actresses and actors influencing the masses all the time, has made expectations of men and women delusional.

There are many issues, and some of the main ones are what you described correctly , with it being overworking people, not giving 20 yr old stable careers instead keeping them stuck in gigwork, internships, and no career growth or help. They must be rectified, our society has enough wealth to fix this.

[intended]

Why use a bot to write this?

[teitoklien]

not a single line from it is written by a bot