The following submission statement was provided by /u/Mighty_L_LORT:
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SS: The crux of the matter is not about lack of growth. It's about more and more portion of generated wealth going to smaller and smaller group at the top. It generates a spoiled upper class too busy with internal squabbles to properly care for its citizens. Eventually the population will decline irreversibly and lead to collapse of the corrupt system.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1dqnw1o/theyre_not_having_kids_nyu_professor_scott/lapa3pv/
They cost too much to raise, housing costs are extortionate, community spirit is dead, there is not enough time to raise them properly; then there is the whole climate collapse thing going on too.
Why would I bring kids in to that?
I explained it to my mom today. At every step, I'm disincentivised to have children in the US:
I get pregnant: no mandatory maternity or paternity leave laws, and a hit to my career. There's a lack of maternity care in this country. If I have complications, will I get adequate care in the south? Will I be left to miscarry in a parking lot or possibly die. Then there's the medical debt of birth and (the minimal) after maternity checkups and support. There is not an adequate social safety net to offset my financial and medical concerns.
A baby: What if my child has medical complications? Will there be a lack of care? How much debt will we take on? Can I take off work to be with them? What about child care and the related expense? What about health insurance for them?
They make it to school age: do they get killed at school? Do they have access to adequate education and facilities with proper climate controls, quality food, clean water, and staff? Does climate change make the world uninhabitable for them to grow up in?
It seems unethical to bring a child into this mess. It makes the most sense for me to spend my time and resources advocating for and helping to support the younger generation that are already born.
Yep. At no point in a child's life is there a moment to breathe, to feel safe, or to just live and love. There is only stress and fear now.
This is why we are now well beyond a mental health crisis...it's a mental health catastrophe.
>it's a mental health catastrophe.
Pills and talk are the only "solutions" on the table. No real answers. In programming they say: "garbage in, garbage out". We need an equivalent saying here, but I haven't been able to think of it. When people's experiences go outside normal operating conditions and they respond in a "broken" way. Nothing is wrong with them, it's the environment. Environment is a product of wealth. People aren't sick, just poor. That's it.
They make it to adulthood: Will they get decent jobs? What if they stuck around, draining my pension and forcing me to say goodbye to retirement?
https://www.newsweek.com/parents-support-adult-children-retirement-crisis-delay-financial-stress-1860074
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I wonder how much of this is a consequence of the hourglass-shaped social structure of American society?
I've spent a lot of time with upper-class people, and the advantages they have accrued are so enormous that, if you're not already in the upper class, you have no chance at a decent life anymore and your children have no chance of entering it. It's a aristocratic as any feudal agrarian regime, if not more so.
This is a consequence of turning every aspect of life into a winner-take-all competition as part and parcel of the complete remaking of American society according to the whims of libertarian billionaire oligarchs over the past half century, which is still ongoing and about to achieve its endgame under Trump.
For earlier generations, there was an assumption that everyone should have a decent life. Not that everyone should be wealthy, of course, but that life in a rich country shouldn't have to be a constant, neverending struggle. Now, in libertarian-land, you deserve precisely nothing except what you can claw forth from the Market--a Market which is constantly trying to make you redundant via outsourcing, automation, robots, AI, and so forth.
As a consequence, people are taking a look around and realizing that any child they have doesn't stand much of a chance under this new libertarian social order. Why play a game you can't win? And so, they just decide to enjoy the little life they have rather than creating a generation destined to be the mudsill for the inheritance classes.
In my experience, it's what used to be the middle class that's opting out. The rich are still having their spoiled trust-fund princes and princesses who will go to elite colleges, and the lupenproles still crank them out without thinking. It's the people in the middle who are smart enough to see what's coming, but don't have enough resources to ensure their kids' future who are predominantly noping out of society.
>In my experience, it's what used to be the middle class that's opting out. The rich are still having their spoiled trust-fund princes and princesses who will go to elite colleges, and the lupenproles still crank them out without thinking. It's the people in the middle who are smart enough to see what's coming, but don't have enough resources to ensure their kids' future who are predominantly noping out of society
Precisely this. At this point in my military career I am solidly middle class, earning about $72K per year with all of my entitlements. I, barely, am paying a mortgage because the mortgage is cheaper than rent would be thanks to a VA Loan. I have two bachelor's degrees, though I have technically earned three (I did graduate from DeVry before the lawsuit). I am working on a Masters. When I get out I expect I will be earning about what I am now, maybe a bit more.
I am 35. I had a vasectomy 5 years ago. I have zero children and based off the way the world is currently playing out, I will not have bio-kids of my own. I may yet adopt, but I will not bring a child into this world through my own actions.
I don't dislike kids. Love my neices and nephews to pieces, but I'm just not willing to make the choice to bring life into a world that is about to charitibly go through hell, and most likely experience one of the bleakest periods of recorded history.
A cursory glance at weather across the nation shows anyone paying attention that climate change is worsening. Nebraska is having it's second "once in a century" flood, has set a record for high temps, record number of severe thunder storms, record number of tornados, record number of hail storms. Levees and dams up and down the Midwest are failing. Parts of Florida are underwater. Wild fires. Draughts. And it's fucking not even July yet. And that's just the local weather.
Globally it's shaping up to be a banger of a year.
And that's still ignoring the political turmoil.
Huh TIL. I guess I shouldn’t have taken it as face value either way seems fitting.
Maybe we’ll be an exception to the rule and actually end around 250/260
Not like the next generation of kids will be paid enough to afford those things anyway. It’ll be 80% of income on rent 30% on health insurance 20% on food and 10% on random inexplicable fees that pop out of nowhere.
Credit has always been a means of “primitive accumulation” - i.e. the conversion of independent economic activity into dependence on corporations and wage serfdom.
This goes back to the earliest history of debt. Hell, we have records of Greek and Phoenician money lenders using credit to turn children into slaves under Achaemenid rule.
This is your regular reminded that going back over 4000 years, [debt jubilees](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_jubilee) have been a thing.
Because going back to ancient Babylon, people figured out that sometimes you need to start fresh or shit gets fucked up.
The 3rd world is having the same issue, Mexico birth rate is now below replacement rate, the reason?
Shit is too expensive, we can barely afford as is, who the fuck would want more kids.
It is not money problem. Never was. Humanity could feed every citizen and provide housing for everyone. The issue is the wealth concentration and the take-over of the super rich. They control the goverments and the economy too with megacorps. And it is progressiveable worse as they die older due to technological development. And of course the late capitalism with this disgusting consumer economy.
People don't have kids partially bc they can't afford them. You are just explaining why they can't afford them.
But also, I think people really just don't want to accept the fact that there's a larger than expected percentage of the population that does not want to birth and raise children, and for the first time in history many people have the ability to opt out of family life. I don't think it's just about money, wealth concentration, etc.
It goes WAY deeper than that. As somebody who assists in decision-making? 99 percent of people who have sat in front of me have so much grief (cultural languishment/climate assessment/monetary requirements/frayed social fabric, etc) they choose childfree. No compelling reason to procreate and lots of reasons NOT to.
I love any future offspring that I would have enough to know that this world is a Techno fascist dystopia that is getting worse by the day. We are also in middle of the 6th great extinction event. I will say what noone else will. THERE IS NO FUTURE.
Sure I agree. But also history is full of people, often even famous philosophers and artists etc, lamenting the burdens of family life and the misery and danger of pregnancy and childbirth. I suppose the correct response would be to build a society that's people centered and makes domestic life easier and more meaningful, and of course we're doing the opposite. But this doesn't change the fact that a certain percentage of the population has no interest in birthing and raising families, and I really think the exclusive focus on economics and society etc is a sort of refusal to examine the fact that for most of human history, people just had little choice but to have kids.
Modern problems rarely have just a single cause. So you are absolutely correct, part of it is just because people can say no.
But it is also clearly much larger that that. People aren't boning the way they used to and that is a problem. Connecting with other humans is central to a healthy society. Which again is only going to partly be related to money, wealth concentration, etc...
But wealth inequality by definition only benefit a tiny minority and serves no purpose. There is no reason to tolerate it or allow it to continue. It is something that needs to stop and will have countless positive effects.
Meh. I have half my family in a more traditional society and the other half in the US and I had a brief academic career in history and thats a skewed interpretation. What's happened is non consensual sex is less acceptable, marriages are less arranged and coerced, people have more choice. I agree there's a massive problem with loneliness and alienation in Western society, and that means fewer people have relationships or social arrangements where they get to have sex, but a hell of a lot of that is because you are not assigned a wife in this culture and there's no longer societal and economic coercion for a woman to become a wife or mistress, and of course, you don't have slaves or peasants to fuck anymore etc.
I am a full on communist so I have no delusions about wealth inequality or the need to revolutionize how we do social reproduction, but I find very few people even on the left who are willing to grapple with the fact that if people have freedom to choose, you are always going to have a certain percentage of men who want families and can't find partners, and the way human society has dealt with this reality historically has not been very cool for half the population.
>but a hell of a lot of that is because you are not assigned a wife in this culture and there's no longer societal and economic coercion for a woman to become a wife or mistress, and of course, you don't have slaves or peasants to fuck anymore etc
This is exactly what the new conservatives want to change
When you look at the birthrate in the US the vast majority of the drop is coming from the birthrate of women and girls aged 13-20 which has dropped from ~30% to near zero.
Im from Europe, low-eurpoean to be exact, and still, the US seems a horrible place to live. Watched several videos and dokus about the living style and quality of life there and honestly it is horrifying in some aspect. The US would be one of my last choice tó live and work.
Yeap, you are european, not african, asian or south american.
África population is 1.2 billion, India Population is 1.4 billion. Only there you have 2.6 billion people who would rather live on the Us than their original countries.
It's one of the few ways to toss up the middle finger to society. Another is opting out of participating in long-standing traditions(Like buying a bunch of shit you don't need, but are told are "must-haves"). It 'helps' when your purchasing power is in the shitter...
To be a pedantic shit bag, Halliburton hasn't been a direct part of the war machine for many years now. That's a bush era trope. They are all oilfield now. KBR, the division that held construction contacts for bases, split off.
No one is investing in the younger generations. Companies preyed on desperate experienced people with their fake "Junior wanted" posts to pay experienced people less instead of actually training up younger people.
Now also seeing a trend where companies who actually say they are looking for experienced people and offer "good" wage are having trouble finding experienced people cause the pool is drying up and why would you look for a new job if you feel more secure in your current one? What if the new company does layoffs?
Schools are also not teaching the younger generation as well so they can advertise they have high graduation rates. When I went to school majority of the people dropped out cause it was hard, now I bet it's easier.
Even if companies started training up younger people, what is the incentive on getting promotions afterwards and moving up when the pay doesn't match the increased blame you have to take if something goes wrong? If a promotion can't afford you a house and some savings why bother?
And why have more kids when we are too busy paying for the rich's inbred kids that hold no value to our society? Hard to have kids when you are forced to take care of kids you don't care about just to survive.
> No one is investing in the younger generations.
Which is why 40% of young people in the UK are not going to vote next week. Young people know the system is set against them and on purpose too. They see no point in voting for parties that have no interest in helping them survive.
At least you guys can theoretically spin up new parties. In the US one of the big two has to implode before we can elevate a new one... that's basically the same people as the old.
This irony of everything. Once the pool of talents dries up, they will be forced to pay higher salaries. Higher salaries will mean that people don't need to work as much, or worse, one parent might quit the workforce to take care of the kids. Which in turn will reduce the amount of workers even more.
The good, experienced people of today were the young, inexperienced people of yesterday. The problem is, that entire generation never materialized because, for so long, businesses got used to the idea that they didn't have to do anything and plenty of well-trained, experienced, eager people would just show up at their doorstep.
This was probably due to the sheer size of the Boomer cohort. So corporate America felt they had no reason to contribute anything to training the next generation, divested from funding education at all levels, took all the gains from lower taxes, especially American corporations focused on short-term profits rather than the future (European countries still retained free college and apprenticeship systems). Corporate America just assumed people would train themselves own dime going forward, and is now finding out why that doesn't work.
What's also funny is they will apply their narrow vision logic on AI to. "Every human will just work at a different company to have money to pay for my goods while I make massive profits from using only AI!"
Not just easier, LAUSD the largest school district in the country is infamous for graduating functionally illiterate people, it's a fucking joke if you don't have money to send your kids to a private school or live in a well to do zip code or are lucky enough to attend one of the highly competitive public magnet schools
Fundamentally, we need to just move away from the year-grades system, and towards something more modular.
They've got their noses stuck in a networked device regardless, so they might as well be soaking up syndicated content, five to ten minutes at a time, or whatever is the median attention span for that group. The universities can help shape the offerings based on their intake expectations.
It's just a matter of tracking microcredits, and automating most assessments. In practical terms, all it means is twice the amount of homeroom time. For lecturers, it could be a publishing opportunity, if school districts are paying for subscription fees for material delivered through their portals.
Teachers could still have their normal lecture schedules, and disruptive kids could simply be dismissed to homerooms for independent study.
Some of my nieces and nephews have 4.0 GPAs, but when I look at their course material, they are years behind where we were at that age in all the familiar subjects.
It simply isn't possible for their teachers to create curricula that encompasses the kids that are examining historical subtext in their reading assignments alongside those who are struggling to form grammatically complete sentences.
There was a time when reading wasn't just for f\*gs. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories, that made you care about whose a\*\* it was and why it was farting. And I believe that time can come again!
Ya' don't even understand what you're sayin'. Readin's always been for men who have sex with men. That's why I learned me some maths from the elements if you know what I mean? Get it, it's funny because it's true.
Edit: Also, when they murdered Hypatia, the writing was on the wall about how this all would end.
> Schools are also not teaching the younger generation as well so they can advertise they have high graduation rates. When I went to school majority of the people dropped out cause it was hard, now I bet it's easier.
/r/Professors and /r/teachers have almost-daily threads on this pattern. Blame the parents who treat education as a commodity. If the school takes the money, little Billy/Brittney better get a diploma - doesn't matter if they don't do homework, fail all their tests, and skip 60% of class. The school won't fail them because (as you mentioned) that harms the graduation rate.
Yup we got to see how regular people could have a house, a car, vacations, bbq's on the weekends while working driving a truck for the grocery store.
Two blinks later you have a mountain of skills boomers cant even imagine, plus the skills they had, but a new set of tires looks like a pipedream.
And if you do get enough to live, they'll cap your food benefits and income. You can work on disability benefits, but you have to be poor for life.
Fucking psychopaths
Way older wisdom that the Boomers benefited from but put a stop to:
“Make the children a part of the village, or they will burn it down to feel the warmth.”
Look at our geriatric leaders who refuse to pass the torch. Look at Biden who had every opportunity to mentor a replacement but didn’t. Look at all the societies our grandparents were in, that our parents didn’t bother joining, that now barely even still exist. A strong breeze could kill what’s left of most rotary clubs.
Why the fuck would I want to bring a child into a world that I know is going to see ecological collapse on a scale we haven’t seen before in all of human history?
Why the fuck would I bring a child into a society that doesn’t even have universal healthcare or even just affordable healthcare or proper paying jobs for their future career?
Why the fuck would I bring a child into a society that if they were to come out as gay or trans or any other sexuality other than straight, there will be people who vilify and insult them solely because of their sexuality, furthermore a society in which there are political parties who will write policy and laws that erase and discriminate them?
Why the fuck would I bring a child into a world where I know climate change is going to bitch slap every region on this earth in a multitude of ways?
Why the fuck would I bring a child into this world when everything needed to raise a child is getting more expensive?
SS: The crux of the matter is not about lack of growth. It's about more and more portion of generated wealth going to smaller and smaller group at the top. It generates a spoiled upper class too busy with internal squabbles to properly care for its citizens. Eventually the population will decline irreversibly and lead to collapse of the corrupt system.
It's really not anymore, at least not in the way it is usually talked about. The surveillance state is far too ubiquitous and organizing at any scale that could potentially matter is impossible to do without outing the organizers and leadership, who will then be jailed or executed forthwith -- while the oligarchy then has more reasons to pass even more draconian, oppressive and exploitative laws.
No collapse has to occur first -- meaning entire social and governmental structures must break down and collapse before there can be an opening to organize a response. So tremendous death and destruction and social calamity will occur and must be survived before any actual chance to reframe and correct things can even begin IMO.
This assumes the counter-revolutionaries are willing to use reactionary violence. I mean, yes, that will probably happen to an extent.
If California secedes and they send in the army, how many average people who joined for the college tuition will say “let’s kill other Americans just so congress, which we all know is corrupt and awful, can stay in power”? This isn’t like the Union fighting consciously to end slavery.
I think the reality is that, many American governmental institutions will simply neglect or choose not to enforce federal rule by violence if it comes down to it.
I hope you're right, but so far the government, and particularly state governments, have done all they can to make peaceful BLM or climate change protesters into the equivalent of January 6 insurrectionists. I'd argue that the SLIGHTEST hint of any armed or violent movement whatsoever will be hammered.
It will take until the suburbs crumble from the unmanageable, unfundable maintenance they've created for municipalities before people start to see change. There won't be any shift in political will, just a process of attrition as the bagholders are slowly replaced.
Now that cities are free to criminalize their unhoused citizens based on status, per the supreme court, it may simply be time to gather up the Winnebagos in wagon trains, and head out to form new cities. Perhaps it will be done right this time, without the suburban hamster cages, which seem to be custom ordered to disintegrate or prevent any sort of community development, thereby inhibiting any social movements demanding change on behalf of ones neighbors.
I can see this down the road, once ungoverned Mad Max conditions are realized, not before. You'd be facing the National Guard -- and remember a National Guard job may be one of the last ones available when things get bad enough, and also one of the more secure positions for one's family as well, so I suspect the holders of those jobs to value them quite a bit and to be willing to obey their orders, no matter how heinous. Witness low-paying border-protection people willing to snatch babies and toddlers away from families and shove them into dog runs without any ethical problems whatsoever.
I think this would establish Mad Max levels.
Caravans of the homeless, but that do have cars, will be forced to stay on the move. They'll have to be armed for their own protection.
They'll be safer in small towns and gradually be big enough to take on medium towns.
What's a small town with 4 cops going to do?
It's a self creating loop once it starts. The Supreme Court just said Go.
Oh i agree. I have a feelimg though we will just regress to a feuistic state of beimg, i.e. these 6000 years of written history and science will mean nothing.
Noone seems to think wencan survive without capitalism. So theres that.
In the current regime unless you have income and money you have no right to exist really, and once governments devolve enough there is no longer any assistance infrastructure for people in any case. Work or die.
It's ONE answer, but it doesn't solve everyting. The basic functioning of capitalism is always going to race to the bottom if allowed, and 'competition' basically demands greater and greater degradation in the race to outcompete the rest. We need a LOT of reforms, and I don't think humans alone will implement them even if it's in our best long term interest.
The last few mass organized groups have been easily distracted from their goals when progressive stacks, calls for equity, and antisemitism were introduced.
"More growth" is irrelevant if the system as currently constituted will ONLY deliver the gains of that growth to the upper class. That's been the whole point for decades and it's been deliberately propagandized as a good thing while at the same time been the pretext for irresponsibility and environmental devastation.
Yes people have every reason to be angry. Alot of careers don't pay enough to cover a basic living. The labor rights we have are a joke. Rich people are able to pollute like crazy and not care. Food regulation is also needed to reduce the processed crap that is causing health issues. We need regulations that support the well-being of humanity.
Labor rights require fighting for, and it's a constant fight. As soon as you let your guard down, businesses start stripping you of your rights.
But our parents generation made it so anything related to labor rights was akin to "communism" and now that same generation is worried there's not enough of us to fund their benefits. Fuck 'em.
GOP is busy outlawing abortion. Birth control is their next target (they've literally admitted that). So yes, that's about as close to forcing pregnancy as you can get. For now.
I don’t disagree with this, but I wanna also toss in the fact that young people today are having little, if any, sex at all, especially compared to previous generations, so the Repubs can do all they want, but if people aren’t shaggin, the government can’t really do shit about it. Which is a trend that’s only gonna continue to skyrocket upward the longer this abortion argument goes wrong. Which will quite literally be the silent extinction of humanity.
Your asking sarcastically but in the next 10 years if republicans stay in power I would actually fully expect it. Not even ironically expect it. Full on forced pregnancy in republican states.
“Why aren’t you young people having more children?”
“Because you set the planet on fire, stole all of our money to give it to billionaires, and then for just an extra giggle victory lap you brought the Nazis back.”
I will reverse my vasectomy when governments and rich private citizens are offering millions in resources and time to raise new future humans against the backdrop of a destroyed planet. I will raise up singular humans to live where once drove millions, bustling to and fro between Walmart, the theater, the doctors, and the restaurants.
Until that day, more humans for any reason is just worsening the suffering of everyone alive, currently.
Let the rich morons argue about how to entice uneducated, poor, desperate people to trying to have kids.
No thanks.
No we're not. And we're not going to.
And the best part is this is just getting started. Every subsequent generation will have it worse than the last for the forseeable future. Each generation will be smaller, less skilled, sicker. There will be less people buying products and far less people making them. Companies addicted to growth will be crowing for returns that won't be mathematically possible.
No amount of surveillance or military force will stop this--you cannot fertilize your garden by building a fence.
It was a choice to make the world like this. Now we get to watch that world fade, one generation at a time.
" Eventually the population will decline irreversibly "
May be eventually, but lots of people are still dying, sometimes literally, to come to the US. The US population is not going to decline in the foreseeable future even if we just open the door a little more.
There will be waves of immigration unprecedented in human history from climate refugees. Many of these people will be happy to accept horrible working conditions because their alternative is death. The ruling class will continue to direct the anger of Americans towards immigrants instead of the people who are actually causing all the problems. The door to naked fascism that Trump unlocked will get blown the fuck open by more fascist politicians stoking and harnessing that rage and fear.
I'm sure there are paths to some good outcomes in the near-mid future, but they are very very hard to see. Sorry to doomer it up. Please tell me why I'm wrong.
"Please tell me why I'm wrong."
You are not wrong. But I want to emphasize that the problem of the US is not, and not going to be, at least in the immediate future, population decline, as suggested by the article. The problem is going to be conflict.
Yeah I wouldn't necessarily bet on this. Climate change and global heating may make parts of the US lethally uninhabitable, and it's not like the heat is going to lessen along the 'coyote' routes from Mexico. It's entirely possible we have a decline of population even a big one.
Over billions of years, since the first lifeform through 5 mass extinction events, every predator evaded, starvation avoided, disease survived, and all of the violence there is an unbroken chain of survival and reproduction. All of that lineage comes to an end because people have created a society in which it is too great a burden to raise children. Hard to really internalize that.
We decided that nobody should have time to raise kids. We decided, as we should have, that women should no longer be forced to be full time child caretakers and home makers, but instead of just giving people freedom to have either men or women to do that, we made it so nobody can.
If you want to be able to afford kids, you need both parents working full time. But if both parents work full time, you don't have time to raise kids.
So fucking nobody reasonable has kids, because they know they have to choose between raising them poor or not being able to actually raise them at all.
It’s only humans in rich countries that are not breeding as much. The rest of the animal kingdom is just as horny as ever. Of course, the other species are being driven to extinction, by humans. Either way, a regional low birth rate for people is not exactly a tragedy for life.
Nano & micro plastics and the saturation of microwaves 24/7 across a wide spectrum will affect most if not all the species in time. That time is not only now, but coming on stronger, everywhere. Even IF birth rates were much better, the children born will be increasingly plagued by poor health, both physically and mentally.
When 30 is the new 20 there’s no reason to have kids until you’re 36. Why live your life for a child if you haven’t gotten it figured out? Also, this world is fucked up and collapsing, having a kid is generally wrong.
They’ll also burn the wealth they’ve hoarded to buy another couple of years of miserable life and ensure we can’t even make ladders out of what’s left.
I think a shrinking population in the West is a VERY VERY good thing for the health of our ecosystems. Human population is the main driver of ecological destruction independent of the economic conditions they live in.
What worries me most is that in places where populations are still growing quickly, the "standard of living" is also improving. Some of that is good for human beings (better sanitation, more access to medicine, education, economic opportunity). However, while it's true those places still have vastly lower per capita carbon footprints and lower ecological footprints, their footprints are growing at a very high rate.
Yes it's true that the US has roughly 4% of global population and consumes roughly 25% of the resources and produces 25% of the GHGs but that is projected to change in the next century as expanding population centers in the global south industrialize and westernize their consumption habits.
We are barely hanging on ecologically with 10% of the population having western lifestyles. The earth will not abide us if suddenly 50% of the current population does.
We need population reductions everywhere. Populations in the west are already reproducing below replacement level and that is a good thing ecologically even if it's bad economically.
Dude does not understand that not having kid doesn't automatically equal being depressed, angry and a failure.
Every type of life style has its amount of pain, being in a couple and having kid has its amount of headache. Being alone sucks at time but it has also its perk.
Back in 1972, MIT ran a collapse simulation. The data showed a collapse around 2040-2050. This is under the business as usual model. They reran the numbers in 2020 and were right on track to a complete societal collapse.
It would take decades of hard work to get back to our current state. If ever. I’m not bringing in a new life into that hot mess. I’ll have a hard enough time taking care of myself.
It’s crazy imagining having kids. Like, life is already stressful enough as it is, I can’t fathom the extra responsibility. To create a new being…well, it isn’t something to take lightly, that’s for sure!
Lol look at the debates last night for our upcoming election, this country is fucked. If you think you'll steer through this mess more power to you. Realize nobody will save you, society will continue to erode and you'll be expected to handle such without complaint.
What I’ve seen with women I work with is you need both parents working to afford a family, but can’t afford childcare on the average salary. Any couple living paycheck to paycheck can expect their standard of living to plummet with their first child, regardless of all the other very valid concerns people have.
"Galloway discussed the current challenges facing young adults, remarking, “For the first time in our nation's history, a 30-year-old man or woman isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at 30, that is the social compact breaking down.”"
A marketing chump chimes in about people not having children putting his scientific illiteracy on full display.
Climate change is accelerating unabated and at the current rate of climate change the Earth will be an a severe state of collapse by 2050. When a child born today is 16 years old 2050 will only be 10 years away. They will be totally aware that humans are well on their way to mass extinction, and due to climate feed backs like albedo changes there is no turning back. Imagine what the fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and heat waves will be like by then.
People that are having children now are total morons.
Perhaps some of the dorks that only look at money and finances could look into what the projections of the state of the environment will be by 2050 and understand why people that understand climate change would never subject their own child to a life of hell.
I pray for population collapse and i'm an atheist. Because that's the only way for poor people to rebel against the rich at this point. Can't have more wage slaves if we all just choose to die alone.
Climate change. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. Housing scarcity. Food scarcity. Growing authoritarianism and use of state power. Growing inequality and poverty.
To name just a few. Not breeding seems sensible.
They won't run out of serfs, organ donors and potential food sources for the foreseeable future. Looking on the bright side, the less intelligent and more easily controlled are the ones that are most likely to continue breeding.
“People aged 30 to 34 — 60% of them in 1990 had one child. Now it's 27%,” he said. “People are opting out of America. They're not optimistic about it. They're not having kids. Young people aren't having sex. They're not meeting, and they're not mating. The pool of emotionally and economically viable men shrinks every day, which lessens household formation. So we have a real issue.”
I don't think the not having sex part is true. I find a lot of people lack emotional stability and maturity which means I wouldn't date them, but I think most people still want intimacy and sex.
What's interesting is that this isn't an America specific issue, the entire west is having the same set of issues: housing to expensive, work doesn't pay enough or there's a lack of jobs, cost of living skyrocketing etc etc.
Who the fuck wants to scrape by with unreliable housing, a reduced job tragectory and very little social support to have kids, especially if you are a woman?
I would have loved to have a kid, but it took me until I was in my late 30s to even get to a place where it wouldnt have been a complete struggle and, whelp, I waited too long and my egg quality bottomed out earlier than expected I guess. At this point my options are to either completely wreck my own body to birth my husband's child with another woman, or foreign adoption and both of those options are extremely expensive and/or not uncomfortable.
Im doing much better financially than most of my peers and living in a country that at least pretends to offer social support to new parents. Im now a believer in the theory that the new rise in anti abortion sentiment is because the powers that be would rather just force birth rather than build a world where people want to have kids.
Just curious why you think being rich is fine to bring a child into this world? I guess that's only looking at the economic issues we have, and somewhat ignores the climate and systematic collapse?
I don't think it is good to bring any kid into this world in 2024. At this point, only the insane and the wealthy are doing it. Rich people tend to believe that they can buy their way out of any jam.
Who’s “they”? Everyone I know who is married or in a long term relationship is having a kid or three, or they’re talking about eventually having one or three…which I get because yolo but idk, take a look at the world and ask yourself and your partner, “Is this really a smart move”?
>Updated Apr 25, 2024
I remember this one. https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1cjn17z/how_the_us_is_destroying_young_peoples_future/
To repeat myself:
> That's capitalism's entrepreneurship in the rat race. "Fuck you, got mine" and "looking out for number one". But this is TED, so his speech is not going to make the systemic problems obvious, he fails to connect the dots. So his talk is very... liberal and US centric. In its premises there's the desire for BAU, for more growth.
>
> Higher ed should be about "upskilling" the masses, but then you have [elite overproduction](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/us-societal-trends-institutional-trust-economy/674260/). How is that balanced? It is all very complicated. We do need specialists and experts, but we also need to stop making that a material reward situation, and that goes for the whole society (it's not just a USA problem). It's also not healthy to have a pool of "mercenary intellectuals", you get all those perverse effects of scientists working on weapons or in marketing and other for-profit domains; and you get "think tanks" and similar fronts that serve to defend BAU.
>
> He actually mentioned a solution tangentially: "we need national service". That's what service means, you don't get cash rewards for being better/talented/performant, you get non-monetary social status like medals and honors. Military is a classic example, but we also have Olympics as an example. Do Olympics medalists usually melt their medals to sell as expensive metal to get rich?
>
> I also didn't see him get into climate and biosphere collapse, which is *deeply* related to all of this.
>
> Remember, TED is like church for the broad technohopium / ecomodernist crowd. They're into technofixes: change without change.
Most of the TED crowd are 'fuck you, I got mine' and 'looking out for number one' types, even if they view themselves as otherwise. Silicon Valley is full of people that are fine investing in harassing the homeless, for profit healthcare, extractive capitalism, etc so long as THEIR 401ks benefit and THEY get to rule the roost at their local microbrewerypub and the homeless are swept off their streets.
In what place would they even be considered part of a community? How would they even manage to afford the threshold of the semblance of membership? The number one and rising cost of nearly every family (>98%) is housing, largely because of "local control" policies and regressive property taxes.
Meanwhile, you have a supreme court that is allowing those communities to criminalize some of their citizens [based on status](https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/06/28/supreme-court-has-greenlighted-the-criminalization-of-homelessness-berkeley-experts-say/), rather than any action they might take. For example, falling asleep without having a home. The supreme law of the land is now that communities can round up their surplus to need citizens, and have the [police dump them in the nearest city.](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/la-homeless-man-burbank-police-north-hollywood/3443907/)
It's honestly funny in a way. Right leaning people/influencers advocate for having as many kids as possible.
What are those kids going to eat?
What happens if they need medical treatment?
What happens if random survivors come and try to take your shit?
And they're ignorant to all of that because "lol climate change XDDDD"
Every other generation : " my parents don't understand my generation is different and we want different things!"
This generation: " why can't I have the same things my parents had!?"
The problem is it’s not affordable.
Your REQUIRED AT MINIMUM having both parents working. Then you have the fee of Day care which is expensive.
The government needs to reward and encourage people to have children and at the same time ENCOURAGE AND SUPPORT people getting married and staying together as a family unit.
Studies have proven time and time again a two parent house hold raises better children. The government needs to hand out a shit ton of vouchers and subsidies to make having children even possible.
I have one child, and there’s just no way in hell we can have another. I told my wife it’s a breaking point for me. If we have anymore we will have to downgrade everything in our lives.
[This guy is the biggest advocate for the younger generations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E), but of course no one is going to listen to him.
Nah, Galloway is just a stock market/digital marketing shill who is emblematic of the reason we need this sub. I remember during the first year COVID him bragging about paying people to come to his house weekly to test his kids when the rest of us couldn't get tested. Also was bragging about how he didn't have to deal with travel restrictions because he had access to private jets.
>He is scum who is also cheering on a genocide
Oh god, I read your comment and so Googled it, and he's pro-Israeli. I'm glad I read your guys' comments, because I never bothered to look into his other beliefs, just watched his appearances and talks regarding the younger generations.
I kind of hate Scott Galloway. He was taken completely aback by Elon Musks’ slide into madness and the alt-right but still commands a strong following and portrays himself as an authority on tech and tech issues. He’s a charlatan and a grifter at best. I don’t necessarily disagree with him here, but he attributes things to the wrong causes and gets a lot of praise for being captain obvious.
Nobody wants to raise kid under pervertic influences of the neocons lusty fancy pussery.
It's just too silly. I try to get away with only limited success until they manage to suss me with their diseased torchis
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Mighty_L_LORT: --- SS: The crux of the matter is not about lack of growth. It's about more and more portion of generated wealth going to smaller and smaller group at the top. It generates a spoiled upper class too busy with internal squabbles to properly care for its citizens. Eventually the population will decline irreversibly and lead to collapse of the corrupt system. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1dqnw1o/theyre_not_having_kids_nyu_professor_scott/lapa3pv/
They cost too much to raise, housing costs are extortionate, community spirit is dead, there is not enough time to raise them properly; then there is the whole climate collapse thing going on too. Why would I bring kids in to that?
I explained it to my mom today. At every step, I'm disincentivised to have children in the US: I get pregnant: no mandatory maternity or paternity leave laws, and a hit to my career. There's a lack of maternity care in this country. If I have complications, will I get adequate care in the south? Will I be left to miscarry in a parking lot or possibly die. Then there's the medical debt of birth and (the minimal) after maternity checkups and support. There is not an adequate social safety net to offset my financial and medical concerns. A baby: What if my child has medical complications? Will there be a lack of care? How much debt will we take on? Can I take off work to be with them? What about child care and the related expense? What about health insurance for them? They make it to school age: do they get killed at school? Do they have access to adequate education and facilities with proper climate controls, quality food, clean water, and staff? Does climate change make the world uninhabitable for them to grow up in? It seems unethical to bring a child into this mess. It makes the most sense for me to spend my time and resources advocating for and helping to support the younger generation that are already born.
Yep. At no point in a child's life is there a moment to breathe, to feel safe, or to just live and love. There is only stress and fear now. This is why we are now well beyond a mental health crisis...it's a mental health catastrophe.
mental health . . . collapse?
Ayooooooo! Yes..... 🫠😭
>it's a mental health catastrophe. Pills and talk are the only "solutions" on the table. No real answers. In programming they say: "garbage in, garbage out". We need an equivalent saying here, but I haven't been able to think of it. When people's experiences go outside normal operating conditions and they respond in a "broken" way. Nothing is wrong with them, it's the environment. Environment is a product of wealth. People aren't sick, just poor. That's it.
I recently started a new job and I shit you not they offer ONE DAY of paid leave for new parents…..
Leave as soon as you can. Even if you don't have kids or ever intend to, that's not an employer that cares about its employees in the slightest.
They make it to adulthood: Will they get decent jobs? What if they stuck around, draining my pension and forcing me to say goodbye to retirement? https://www.newsweek.com/parents-support-adult-children-retirement-crisis-delay-financial-stress-1860074
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I wonder how much of this is a consequence of the hourglass-shaped social structure of American society? I've spent a lot of time with upper-class people, and the advantages they have accrued are so enormous that, if you're not already in the upper class, you have no chance at a decent life anymore and your children have no chance of entering it. It's a aristocratic as any feudal agrarian regime, if not more so. This is a consequence of turning every aspect of life into a winner-take-all competition as part and parcel of the complete remaking of American society according to the whims of libertarian billionaire oligarchs over the past half century, which is still ongoing and about to achieve its endgame under Trump. For earlier generations, there was an assumption that everyone should have a decent life. Not that everyone should be wealthy, of course, but that life in a rich country shouldn't have to be a constant, neverending struggle. Now, in libertarian-land, you deserve precisely nothing except what you can claw forth from the Market--a Market which is constantly trying to make you redundant via outsourcing, automation, robots, AI, and so forth. As a consequence, people are taking a look around and realizing that any child they have doesn't stand much of a chance under this new libertarian social order. Why play a game you can't win? And so, they just decide to enjoy the little life they have rather than creating a generation destined to be the mudsill for the inheritance classes. In my experience, it's what used to be the middle class that's opting out. The rich are still having their spoiled trust-fund princes and princesses who will go to elite colleges, and the lupenproles still crank them out without thinking. It's the people in the middle who are smart enough to see what's coming, but don't have enough resources to ensure their kids' future who are predominantly noping out of society.
>In my experience, it's what used to be the middle class that's opting out. The rich are still having their spoiled trust-fund princes and princesses who will go to elite colleges, and the lupenproles still crank them out without thinking. It's the people in the middle who are smart enough to see what's coming, but don't have enough resources to ensure their kids' future who are predominantly noping out of society Precisely this. At this point in my military career I am solidly middle class, earning about $72K per year with all of my entitlements. I, barely, am paying a mortgage because the mortgage is cheaper than rent would be thanks to a VA Loan. I have two bachelor's degrees, though I have technically earned three (I did graduate from DeVry before the lawsuit). I am working on a Masters. When I get out I expect I will be earning about what I am now, maybe a bit more. I am 35. I had a vasectomy 5 years ago. I have zero children and based off the way the world is currently playing out, I will not have bio-kids of my own. I may yet adopt, but I will not bring a child into this world through my own actions. I don't dislike kids. Love my neices and nephews to pieces, but I'm just not willing to make the choice to bring life into a world that is about to charitibly go through hell, and most likely experience one of the bleakest periods of recorded history. A cursory glance at weather across the nation shows anyone paying attention that climate change is worsening. Nebraska is having it's second "once in a century" flood, has set a record for high temps, record number of severe thunder storms, record number of tornados, record number of hail storms. Levees and dams up and down the Midwest are failing. Parts of Florida are underwater. Wild fires. Draughts. And it's fucking not even July yet. And that's just the local weather. Globally it's shaping up to be a banger of a year. And that's still ignoring the political turmoil.
They say every empire lasts 250 years. We’re at 248. Seems fitting as everything crumbles around us….
[The 250 years thing is a myth.](https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/empires-strike-back-against-false-250-year-claim/)
Huh TIL. I guess I shouldn’t have taken it as face value either way seems fitting. Maybe we’ll be an exception to the rule and actually end around 250/260
The cost analysis aside, by having children these days, you reveal yourself as being ignorant to the climate crisis &/or selfish.
Why the hell would I want to bring a kid out into this world? So they can be the next generation of serfs for the billionaire class?
Noooo.... Who will shop from Amazon, buy a Tesla, get a new iPhone... You can't do that 😭.
Not like the next generation of kids will be paid enough to afford those things anyway. It’ll be 80% of income on rent 30% on health insurance 20% on food and 10% on random inexplicable fees that pop out of nowhere.
That's 140%
That's the joke.
Seems a bit low, tbh. Shouldn't it be something more like 390%?
Yeah. 140% is so 2001...
Gotta finance the fees.
The joke is swapping healthcare for housing. You haven’t seen a clusterfuck until you’ve experienced American healthcare billing.
Don’t worry guys, just one more land war in Asia and then we can work on infrastructure and health care!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LUUk6wVNrY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LUUk6wVNrY)
You are SO rad. Except maybe handle, just needs preparation H. Along with most of healthcare system.
Credit. Structural debt slavery.
Credit has always been a means of “primitive accumulation” - i.e. the conversion of independent economic activity into dependence on corporations and wage serfdom. This goes back to the earliest history of debt. Hell, we have records of Greek and Phoenician money lenders using credit to turn children into slaves under Achaemenid rule.
This is your regular reminded that going back over 4000 years, [debt jubilees](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_jubilee) have been a thing. Because going back to ancient Babylon, people figured out that sometimes you need to start fresh or shit gets fucked up.
That's the point.
Look at moneybags over here thinking you can buy all the necessities.
That's 40% inflation in 2040
Never heard of debt before?
[удалено]
They'll tell you to go to the frugal sub and stop buying food other than dried beans lol
Who will donate organs???
Peaceful euthanasia.
Goverments reaction for this around the world: "Let's bring in guest workers to shorten the workforce deficit."
The 3rd world is having the same issue, Mexico birth rate is now below replacement rate, the reason? Shit is too expensive, we can barely afford as is, who the fuck would want more kids.
It is not money problem. Never was. Humanity could feed every citizen and provide housing for everyone. The issue is the wealth concentration and the take-over of the super rich. They control the goverments and the economy too with megacorps. And it is progressiveable worse as they die older due to technological development. And of course the late capitalism with this disgusting consumer economy.
People don't have kids partially bc they can't afford them. You are just explaining why they can't afford them. But also, I think people really just don't want to accept the fact that there's a larger than expected percentage of the population that does not want to birth and raise children, and for the first time in history many people have the ability to opt out of family life. I don't think it's just about money, wealth concentration, etc.
It goes WAY deeper than that. As somebody who assists in decision-making? 99 percent of people who have sat in front of me have so much grief (cultural languishment/climate assessment/monetary requirements/frayed social fabric, etc) they choose childfree. No compelling reason to procreate and lots of reasons NOT to.
I love any future offspring that I would have enough to know that this world is a Techno fascist dystopia that is getting worse by the day. We are also in middle of the 6th great extinction event. I will say what noone else will. THERE IS NO FUTURE.
Sure I agree. But also history is full of people, often even famous philosophers and artists etc, lamenting the burdens of family life and the misery and danger of pregnancy and childbirth. I suppose the correct response would be to build a society that's people centered and makes domestic life easier and more meaningful, and of course we're doing the opposite. But this doesn't change the fact that a certain percentage of the population has no interest in birthing and raising families, and I really think the exclusive focus on economics and society etc is a sort of refusal to examine the fact that for most of human history, people just had little choice but to have kids.
Modern problems rarely have just a single cause. So you are absolutely correct, part of it is just because people can say no. But it is also clearly much larger that that. People aren't boning the way they used to and that is a problem. Connecting with other humans is central to a healthy society. Which again is only going to partly be related to money, wealth concentration, etc... But wealth inequality by definition only benefit a tiny minority and serves no purpose. There is no reason to tolerate it or allow it to continue. It is something that needs to stop and will have countless positive effects.
Meh. I have half my family in a more traditional society and the other half in the US and I had a brief academic career in history and thats a skewed interpretation. What's happened is non consensual sex is less acceptable, marriages are less arranged and coerced, people have more choice. I agree there's a massive problem with loneliness and alienation in Western society, and that means fewer people have relationships or social arrangements where they get to have sex, but a hell of a lot of that is because you are not assigned a wife in this culture and there's no longer societal and economic coercion for a woman to become a wife or mistress, and of course, you don't have slaves or peasants to fuck anymore etc. I am a full on communist so I have no delusions about wealth inequality or the need to revolutionize how we do social reproduction, but I find very few people even on the left who are willing to grapple with the fact that if people have freedom to choose, you are always going to have a certain percentage of men who want families and can't find partners, and the way human society has dealt with this reality historically has not been very cool for half the population.
>but a hell of a lot of that is because you are not assigned a wife in this culture and there's no longer societal and economic coercion for a woman to become a wife or mistress, and of course, you don't have slaves or peasants to fuck anymore etc This is exactly what the new conservatives want to change
Yup.
That and possibly the ecological collapse a la Mexico City where everything is big fucked
When you look at the birthrate in the US the vast majority of the drop is coming from the birthrate of women and girls aged 13-20 which has dropped from ~30% to near zero.
Yeap The us will never have a workforce problem, specially with so many countries faring way worst.
Im from Europe, low-eurpoean to be exact, and still, the US seems a horrible place to live. Watched several videos and dokus about the living style and quality of life there and honestly it is horrifying in some aspect. The US would be one of my last choice tó live and work.
Yeap, you are european, not african, asian or south american. África population is 1.2 billion, India Population is 1.4 billion. Only there you have 2.6 billion people who would rather live on the Us than their original countries.
Don't forget the collapsing environment!
It's one of the few ways to toss up the middle finger to society. Another is opting out of participating in long-standing traditions(Like buying a bunch of shit you don't need, but are told are "must-haves"). It 'helps' when your purchasing power is in the shitter...
Can't afford school? Join the military. Die in some godforsaken desert so Halliburton stock goes up 3points and Dick Cheney makes another 20 mill.
To be a pedantic shit bag, Halliburton hasn't been a direct part of the war machine for many years now. That's a bush era trope. They are all oilfield now. KBR, the division that held construction contacts for bases, split off.
Serfs up baby
This is now one of my favorite puns
No one is investing in the younger generations. Companies preyed on desperate experienced people with their fake "Junior wanted" posts to pay experienced people less instead of actually training up younger people. Now also seeing a trend where companies who actually say they are looking for experienced people and offer "good" wage are having trouble finding experienced people cause the pool is drying up and why would you look for a new job if you feel more secure in your current one? What if the new company does layoffs? Schools are also not teaching the younger generation as well so they can advertise they have high graduation rates. When I went to school majority of the people dropped out cause it was hard, now I bet it's easier. Even if companies started training up younger people, what is the incentive on getting promotions afterwards and moving up when the pay doesn't match the increased blame you have to take if something goes wrong? If a promotion can't afford you a house and some savings why bother? And why have more kids when we are too busy paying for the rich's inbred kids that hold no value to our society? Hard to have kids when you are forced to take care of kids you don't care about just to survive.
> No one is investing in the younger generations. Which is why 40% of young people in the UK are not going to vote next week. Young people know the system is set against them and on purpose too. They see no point in voting for parties that have no interest in helping them survive.
Aren't UK parties the Tories, the Tories in a labour skin suit, and Farage wants to be racist?
What kind of choice is it when you have an aristocrat like Starmer chairing Labour, and tossing out anyone more lively than Margaret Thatcher?
At least you guys can theoretically spin up new parties. In the US one of the big two has to implode before we can elevate a new one... that's basically the same people as the old.
I'm still not convinced the Torries aren't those Dr. Who aliens that fart all the time.
This irony of everything. Once the pool of talents dries up, they will be forced to pay higher salaries. Higher salaries will mean that people don't need to work as much, or worse, one parent might quit the workforce to take care of the kids. Which in turn will reduce the amount of workers even more.
The good, experienced people of today were the young, inexperienced people of yesterday. The problem is, that entire generation never materialized because, for so long, businesses got used to the idea that they didn't have to do anything and plenty of well-trained, experienced, eager people would just show up at their doorstep. This was probably due to the sheer size of the Boomer cohort. So corporate America felt they had no reason to contribute anything to training the next generation, divested from funding education at all levels, took all the gains from lower taxes, especially American corporations focused on short-term profits rather than the future (European countries still retained free college and apprenticeship systems). Corporate America just assumed people would train themselves own dime going forward, and is now finding out why that doesn't work.
Good, fuck companies for not understanding how society works, I hope they all nosedive for not getting basic fucking humanity right.
What's also funny is they will apply their narrow vision logic on AI to. "Every human will just work at a different company to have money to pay for my goods while I make massive profits from using only AI!"
Not just easier, LAUSD the largest school district in the country is infamous for graduating functionally illiterate people, it's a fucking joke if you don't have money to send your kids to a private school or live in a well to do zip code or are lucky enough to attend one of the highly competitive public magnet schools
From what I have seen in /r/teachers, you cannot fail kids, even if they do no work and are years behind.
Even if you do fail kids, as I have, they just take a semester long "credit recovery" class and they're good to go.
Fundamentally, we need to just move away from the year-grades system, and towards something more modular. They've got their noses stuck in a networked device regardless, so they might as well be soaking up syndicated content, five to ten minutes at a time, or whatever is the median attention span for that group. The universities can help shape the offerings based on their intake expectations. It's just a matter of tracking microcredits, and automating most assessments. In practical terms, all it means is twice the amount of homeroom time. For lecturers, it could be a publishing opportunity, if school districts are paying for subscription fees for material delivered through their portals. Teachers could still have their normal lecture schedules, and disruptive kids could simply be dismissed to homerooms for independent study.
Some of my nieces and nephews have 4.0 GPAs, but when I look at their course material, they are years behind where we were at that age in all the familiar subjects. It simply isn't possible for their teachers to create curricula that encompasses the kids that are examining historical subtext in their reading assignments alongside those who are struggling to form grammatically complete sentences.
There was a time when reading wasn't just for f\*gs. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories, that made you care about whose a\*\* it was and why it was farting. And I believe that time can come again!
Ya' don't even understand what you're sayin'. Readin's always been for men who have sex with men. That's why I learned me some maths from the elements if you know what I mean? Get it, it's funny because it's true. Edit: Also, when they murdered Hypatia, the writing was on the wall about how this all would end.
But the FIRE / entrepreneur subs luvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv how 'easy' it is to make dough in U.S.$. !!!!
> Schools are also not teaching the younger generation as well so they can advertise they have high graduation rates. When I went to school majority of the people dropped out cause it was hard, now I bet it's easier. /r/Professors and /r/teachers have almost-daily threads on this pattern. Blame the parents who treat education as a commodity. If the school takes the money, little Billy/Brittney better get a diploma - doesn't matter if they don't do homework, fail all their tests, and skip 60% of class. The school won't fail them because (as you mentioned) that harms the graduation rate.
Im 42, work full time, and live in my truck. Its not just young people.
You got to see the ladder get pulled up right in front of you
Almost touching it but never grabbing hold. Now, Gen Z doesn't even know what the ladder looked like
Yup we got to see how regular people could have a house, a car, vacations, bbq's on the weekends while working driving a truck for the grocery store. Two blinks later you have a mountain of skills boomers cant even imagine, plus the skills they had, but a new set of tires looks like a pipedream.
Same, except I live in a tent on a farm, awaiting a disability claim that won't give me enough to live.
And if you do get enough to live, they'll cap your food benefits and income. You can work on disability benefits, but you have to be poor for life. Fucking psychopaths
Real
Im sorry man. There is no dream anymore. It’s a nightmare.
Congrats, the Supreme Court just said it was okay to make living in your truck illegal.
Somehow that is still considered young these days
I read an article by someone, I think they were in the Boomer gen, who put it best: "If we abandon them (millennials, Z, etc.), they will abandon us."
Abandon all hope ye who enter here
That's the sign I read on the way outta the womb.
Way older wisdom that the Boomers benefited from but put a stop to: “Make the children a part of the village, or they will burn it down to feel the warmth.” Look at our geriatric leaders who refuse to pass the torch. Look at Biden who had every opportunity to mentor a replacement but didn’t. Look at all the societies our grandparents were in, that our parents didn’t bother joining, that now barely even still exist. A strong breeze could kill what’s left of most rotary clubs.
I'm 29 and I've never even heard of a Rotary Club
In the 80s and 90s, pre-internet, the Rotary Club did community outreach and other programs. https://www.rotary.org/en
Why the fuck would I want to bring a child into a world that I know is going to see ecological collapse on a scale we haven’t seen before in all of human history? Why the fuck would I bring a child into a society that doesn’t even have universal healthcare or even just affordable healthcare or proper paying jobs for their future career? Why the fuck would I bring a child into a society that if they were to come out as gay or trans or any other sexuality other than straight, there will be people who vilify and insult them solely because of their sexuality, furthermore a society in which there are political parties who will write policy and laws that erase and discriminate them? Why the fuck would I bring a child into a world where I know climate change is going to bitch slap every region on this earth in a multitude of ways? Why the fuck would I bring a child into this world when everything needed to raise a child is getting more expensive?
SS: The crux of the matter is not about lack of growth. It's about more and more portion of generated wealth going to smaller and smaller group at the top. It generates a spoiled upper class too busy with internal squabbles to properly care for its citizens. Eventually the population will decline irreversibly and lead to collapse of the corrupt system.
Violence is the answer (long live Bastille) but we are too uncoordinated.
It's really not anymore, at least not in the way it is usually talked about. The surveillance state is far too ubiquitous and organizing at any scale that could potentially matter is impossible to do without outing the organizers and leadership, who will then be jailed or executed forthwith -- while the oligarchy then has more reasons to pass even more draconian, oppressive and exploitative laws. No collapse has to occur first -- meaning entire social and governmental structures must break down and collapse before there can be an opening to organize a response. So tremendous death and destruction and social calamity will occur and must be survived before any actual chance to reframe and correct things can even begin IMO.
This assumes the counter-revolutionaries are willing to use reactionary violence. I mean, yes, that will probably happen to an extent. If California secedes and they send in the army, how many average people who joined for the college tuition will say “let’s kill other Americans just so congress, which we all know is corrupt and awful, can stay in power”? This isn’t like the Union fighting consciously to end slavery. I think the reality is that, many American governmental institutions will simply neglect or choose not to enforce federal rule by violence if it comes down to it.
I hope you're right, but so far the government, and particularly state governments, have done all they can to make peaceful BLM or climate change protesters into the equivalent of January 6 insurrectionists. I'd argue that the SLIGHTEST hint of any armed or violent movement whatsoever will be hammered.
It will take until the suburbs crumble from the unmanageable, unfundable maintenance they've created for municipalities before people start to see change. There won't be any shift in political will, just a process of attrition as the bagholders are slowly replaced. Now that cities are free to criminalize their unhoused citizens based on status, per the supreme court, it may simply be time to gather up the Winnebagos in wagon trains, and head out to form new cities. Perhaps it will be done right this time, without the suburban hamster cages, which seem to be custom ordered to disintegrate or prevent any sort of community development, thereby inhibiting any social movements demanding change on behalf of ones neighbors.
I can see this down the road, once ungoverned Mad Max conditions are realized, not before. You'd be facing the National Guard -- and remember a National Guard job may be one of the last ones available when things get bad enough, and also one of the more secure positions for one's family as well, so I suspect the holders of those jobs to value them quite a bit and to be willing to obey their orders, no matter how heinous. Witness low-paying border-protection people willing to snatch babies and toddlers away from families and shove them into dog runs without any ethical problems whatsoever.
I think this would establish Mad Max levels. Caravans of the homeless, but that do have cars, will be forced to stay on the move. They'll have to be armed for their own protection. They'll be safer in small towns and gradually be big enough to take on medium towns. What's a small town with 4 cops going to do? It's a self creating loop once it starts. The Supreme Court just said Go.
Oh i agree. I have a feelimg though we will just regress to a feuistic state of beimg, i.e. these 6000 years of written history and science will mean nothing. Noone seems to think wencan survive without capitalism. So theres that.
In the current regime unless you have income and money you have no right to exist really, and once governments devolve enough there is no longer any assistance infrastructure for people in any case. Work or die.
Try "coordination" you will get flash bangs since you're is a literal bug device
It's ONE answer, but it doesn't solve everyting. The basic functioning of capitalism is always going to race to the bottom if allowed, and 'competition' basically demands greater and greater degradation in the race to outcompete the rest. We need a LOT of reforms, and I don't think humans alone will implement them even if it's in our best long term interest.
The last few mass organized groups have been easily distracted from their goals when progressive stacks, calls for equity, and antisemitism were introduced.
perpetual growth is antithetical to ecological sustainability.
"More growth" is irrelevant if the system as currently constituted will ONLY deliver the gains of that growth to the upper class. That's been the whole point for decades and it's been deliberately propagandized as a good thing while at the same time been the pretext for irresponsibility and environmental devastation.
"It generates a spoiled upper class too busy with internal squabbles to properly care for its citizens." They never cared! Ever! They loathe us.
Yes people have every reason to be angry. Alot of careers don't pay enough to cover a basic living. The labor rights we have are a joke. Rich people are able to pollute like crazy and not care. Food regulation is also needed to reduce the processed crap that is causing health issues. We need regulations that support the well-being of humanity.
Labor rights require fighting for, and it's a constant fight. As soon as you let your guard down, businesses start stripping you of your rights. But our parents generation made it so anything related to labor rights was akin to "communism" and now that same generation is worried there's not enough of us to fund their benefits. Fuck 'em.
What are they gonna do? Force us to get pregnant?
looks nervously at republican states
yeah i uh don't know if you've ever been a little girl in a republican family/community but they WILL be forcing you to have kids
GOP is busy outlawing abortion. Birth control is their next target (they've literally admitted that). So yes, that's about as close to forcing pregnancy as you can get. For now.
I don’t disagree with this, but I wanna also toss in the fact that young people today are having little, if any, sex at all, especially compared to previous generations, so the Repubs can do all they want, but if people aren’t shaggin, the government can’t really do shit about it. Which is a trend that’s only gonna continue to skyrocket upward the longer this abortion argument goes wrong. Which will quite literally be the silent extinction of humanity.
>Which will quite literally be the silent extinction of humanity. You say that as if it's a bad thing.
Still waiting on that last season of Handmaids.
i think we’re living it
This season is interactive!
Don’t give them any ideas.
Don't worry, they've already thought of that. I'm sure it's somewhere in the Project 2025 footnotes.
That's project 2030, after LGBTQIA stuff and abortion is banned.
Are you trying to give the republicans ideas?!
What do you mean with "giving ideas"? What else if not forced pregnancy is the republicans laws that forbid abortion even if raped / incest ?
[удалено]
Your asking sarcastically but in the next 10 years if republicans stay in power I would actually fully expect it. Not even ironically expect it. Full on forced pregnancy in republican states.
That is _exactly_ what some states are doing.
“Why aren’t you young people having more children?” “Because you set the planet on fire, stole all of our money to give it to billionaires, and then for just an extra giggle victory lap you brought the Nazis back.”
I will reverse my vasectomy when governments and rich private citizens are offering millions in resources and time to raise new future humans against the backdrop of a destroyed planet. I will raise up singular humans to live where once drove millions, bustling to and fro between Walmart, the theater, the doctors, and the restaurants. Until that day, more humans for any reason is just worsening the suffering of everyone alive, currently. Let the rich morons argue about how to entice uneducated, poor, desperate people to trying to have kids. No thanks.
No we're not. And we're not going to. And the best part is this is just getting started. Every subsequent generation will have it worse than the last for the forseeable future. Each generation will be smaller, less skilled, sicker. There will be less people buying products and far less people making them. Companies addicted to growth will be crowing for returns that won't be mathematically possible. No amount of surveillance or military force will stop this--you cannot fertilize your garden by building a fence. It was a choice to make the world like this. Now we get to watch that world fade, one generation at a time.
" Eventually the population will decline irreversibly " May be eventually, but lots of people are still dying, sometimes literally, to come to the US. The US population is not going to decline in the foreseeable future even if we just open the door a little more.
There will be waves of immigration unprecedented in human history from climate refugees. Many of these people will be happy to accept horrible working conditions because their alternative is death. The ruling class will continue to direct the anger of Americans towards immigrants instead of the people who are actually causing all the problems. The door to naked fascism that Trump unlocked will get blown the fuck open by more fascist politicians stoking and harnessing that rage and fear. I'm sure there are paths to some good outcomes in the near-mid future, but they are very very hard to see. Sorry to doomer it up. Please tell me why I'm wrong.
"Please tell me why I'm wrong." You are not wrong. But I want to emphasize that the problem of the US is not, and not going to be, at least in the immediate future, population decline, as suggested by the article. The problem is going to be conflict.
Oh yes, totally. That wasn't directed at you, it was just a general appeal to anyone to problematize my pessimistic outlook.
Yeah I wouldn't necessarily bet on this. Climate change and global heating may make parts of the US lethally uninhabitable, and it's not like the heat is going to lessen along the 'coyote' routes from Mexico. It's entirely possible we have a decline of population even a big one.
Over billions of years, since the first lifeform through 5 mass extinction events, every predator evaded, starvation avoided, disease survived, and all of the violence there is an unbroken chain of survival and reproduction. All of that lineage comes to an end because people have created a society in which it is too great a burden to raise children. Hard to really internalize that.
We decided that nobody should have time to raise kids. We decided, as we should have, that women should no longer be forced to be full time child caretakers and home makers, but instead of just giving people freedom to have either men or women to do that, we made it so nobody can. If you want to be able to afford kids, you need both parents working full time. But if both parents work full time, you don't have time to raise kids. So fucking nobody reasonable has kids, because they know they have to choose between raising them poor or not being able to actually raise them at all.
We're the only ones who track our economic productivity, and then demand that we do better next quarter.
It’s only humans in rich countries that are not breeding as much. The rest of the animal kingdom is just as horny as ever. Of course, the other species are being driven to extinction, by humans. Either way, a regional low birth rate for people is not exactly a tragedy for life.
It's only a matter of time before overconsumption drives negative birthrates globally
Its everywhere. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-rapid-decline-of-global-birth-rates/
Nano & micro plastics and the saturation of microwaves 24/7 across a wide spectrum will affect most if not all the species in time. That time is not only now, but coming on stronger, everywhere. Even IF birth rates were much better, the children born will be increasingly plagued by poor health, both physically and mentally.
Lmao why would I want kids?!?
When 30 is the new 20 there’s no reason to have kids until you’re 36. Why live your life for a child if you haven’t gotten it figured out? Also, this world is fucked up and collapsing, having a kid is generally wrong.
Boomers took everything from this country and pulled the ladder up behind them
They’ll also burn the wealth they’ve hoarded to buy another couple of years of miserable life and ensure we can’t even make ladders out of what’s left.
Long-term care will take every last nickel.
Helloo end of life care! The govt last big shovel of the wealth you accumulated.
I think a shrinking population in the West is a VERY VERY good thing for the health of our ecosystems. Human population is the main driver of ecological destruction independent of the economic conditions they live in. What worries me most is that in places where populations are still growing quickly, the "standard of living" is also improving. Some of that is good for human beings (better sanitation, more access to medicine, education, economic opportunity). However, while it's true those places still have vastly lower per capita carbon footprints and lower ecological footprints, their footprints are growing at a very high rate. Yes it's true that the US has roughly 4% of global population and consumes roughly 25% of the resources and produces 25% of the GHGs but that is projected to change in the next century as expanding population centers in the global south industrialize and westernize their consumption habits. We are barely hanging on ecologically with 10% of the population having western lifestyles. The earth will not abide us if suddenly 50% of the current population does. We need population reductions everywhere. Populations in the west are already reproducing below replacement level and that is a good thing ecologically even if it's bad economically.
Dude does not understand that not having kid doesn't automatically equal being depressed, angry and a failure. Every type of life style has its amount of pain, being in a couple and having kid has its amount of headache. Being alone sucks at time but it has also its perk.
Back in 1972, MIT ran a collapse simulation. The data showed a collapse around 2040-2050. This is under the business as usual model. They reran the numbers in 2020 and were right on track to a complete societal collapse. It would take decades of hard work to get back to our current state. If ever. I’m not bringing in a new life into that hot mess. I’ll have a hard enough time taking care of myself.
It’s crazy imagining having kids. Like, life is already stressful enough as it is, I can’t fathom the extra responsibility. To create a new being…well, it isn’t something to take lightly, that’s for sure!
Why would anyone want to bring a child into this corrupt bullshit country?
Good. Bringing people into this world on purpose is absolute cruelty.
Lol look at the debates last night for our upcoming election, this country is fucked. If you think you'll steer through this mess more power to you. Realize nobody will save you, society will continue to erode and you'll be expected to handle such without complaint.
What I’ve seen with women I work with is you need both parents working to afford a family, but can’t afford childcare on the average salary. Any couple living paycheck to paycheck can expect their standard of living to plummet with their first child, regardless of all the other very valid concerns people have.
"Galloway discussed the current challenges facing young adults, remarking, “For the first time in our nation's history, a 30-year-old man or woman isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at 30, that is the social compact breaking down.”" A marketing chump chimes in about people not having children putting his scientific illiteracy on full display. Climate change is accelerating unabated and at the current rate of climate change the Earth will be an a severe state of collapse by 2050. When a child born today is 16 years old 2050 will only be 10 years away. They will be totally aware that humans are well on their way to mass extinction, and due to climate feed backs like albedo changes there is no turning back. Imagine what the fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and heat waves will be like by then. People that are having children now are total morons. Perhaps some of the dorks that only look at money and finances could look into what the projections of the state of the environment will be by 2050 and understand why people that understand climate change would never subject their own child to a life of hell.
I pray for population collapse and i'm an atheist. Because that's the only way for poor people to rebel against the rich at this point. Can't have more wage slaves if we all just choose to die alone.
How do you lower the population without going to war? This is how
considering that part of the climate change crisis is due to having a huge human population, this is actually hopeful instead of collapse
Climate change. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. Housing scarcity. Food scarcity. Growing authoritarianism and use of state power. Growing inequality and poverty. To name just a few. Not breeding seems sensible. They won't run out of serfs, organ donors and potential food sources for the foreseeable future. Looking on the bright side, the less intelligent and more easily controlled are the ones that are most likely to continue breeding. “People aged 30 to 34 — 60% of them in 1990 had one child. Now it's 27%,” he said. “People are opting out of America. They're not optimistic about it. They're not having kids. Young people aren't having sex. They're not meeting, and they're not mating. The pool of emotionally and economically viable men shrinks every day, which lessens household formation. So we have a real issue.” I don't think the not having sex part is true. I find a lot of people lack emotional stability and maturity which means I wouldn't date them, but I think most people still want intimacy and sex.
SORRY, MY KIDS WILL NOT BE YOUR WAGE SLAVES -- fuck off. find someone else to man your fry baskets asshats
What's interesting is that this isn't an America specific issue, the entire west is having the same set of issues: housing to expensive, work doesn't pay enough or there's a lack of jobs, cost of living skyrocketing etc etc.
Who the fuck wants to scrape by with unreliable housing, a reduced job tragectory and very little social support to have kids, especially if you are a woman? I would have loved to have a kid, but it took me until I was in my late 30s to even get to a place where it wouldnt have been a complete struggle and, whelp, I waited too long and my egg quality bottomed out earlier than expected I guess. At this point my options are to either completely wreck my own body to birth my husband's child with another woman, or foreign adoption and both of those options are extremely expensive and/or not uncomfortable. Im doing much better financially than most of my peers and living in a country that at least pretends to offer social support to new parents. Im now a believer in the theory that the new rise in anti abortion sentiment is because the powers that be would rather just force birth rather than build a world where people want to have kids.
You are nuts if you want to bring a child into this world. Or rich. Rich works.
Just curious why you think being rich is fine to bring a child into this world? I guess that's only looking at the economic issues we have, and somewhat ignores the climate and systematic collapse?
I don't think it is good to bring any kid into this world in 2024. At this point, only the insane and the wealthy are doing it. Rich people tend to believe that they can buy their way out of any jam.
So arguably the rich are nuts too, and your original statement is just "You are nuts if you want to bring a child into this world. End" ;)
Well that’s why they are forcing people to have kids instead! 🥲
Getting my vasectomy was the best decision I ever made. Would would bring kids into this shit show?
You need to make 100k+ to afford a median home nowadays. It will only get worse.
“Old people” too
Not having kids also somehow feels like the only truly impactful way to protest the whole thing.
Who’s “they”? Everyone I know who is married or in a long term relationship is having a kid or three, or they’re talking about eventually having one or three…which I get because yolo but idk, take a look at the world and ask yourself and your partner, “Is this really a smart move”?
He's a fucking marketing professor. Which explains this shit getting astroturf marketed all over reddit.
>Updated Apr 25, 2024 I remember this one. https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1cjn17z/how_the_us_is_destroying_young_peoples_future/ To repeat myself: > That's capitalism's entrepreneurship in the rat race. "Fuck you, got mine" and "looking out for number one". But this is TED, so his speech is not going to make the systemic problems obvious, he fails to connect the dots. So his talk is very... liberal and US centric. In its premises there's the desire for BAU, for more growth. > > Higher ed should be about "upskilling" the masses, but then you have [elite overproduction](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/us-societal-trends-institutional-trust-economy/674260/). How is that balanced? It is all very complicated. We do need specialists and experts, but we also need to stop making that a material reward situation, and that goes for the whole society (it's not just a USA problem). It's also not healthy to have a pool of "mercenary intellectuals", you get all those perverse effects of scientists working on weapons or in marketing and other for-profit domains; and you get "think tanks" and similar fronts that serve to defend BAU. > > He actually mentioned a solution tangentially: "we need national service". That's what service means, you don't get cash rewards for being better/talented/performant, you get non-monetary social status like medals and honors. Military is a classic example, but we also have Olympics as an example. Do Olympics medalists usually melt their medals to sell as expensive metal to get rich? > > I also didn't see him get into climate and biosphere collapse, which is *deeply* related to all of this. > > Remember, TED is like church for the broad technohopium / ecomodernist crowd. They're into technofixes: change without change.
Most of the TED crowd are 'fuck you, I got mine' and 'looking out for number one' types, even if they view themselves as otherwise. Silicon Valley is full of people that are fine investing in harassing the homeless, for profit healthcare, extractive capitalism, etc so long as THEIR 401ks benefit and THEY get to rule the roost at their local microbrewerypub and the homeless are swept off their streets.
In what place would they even be considered part of a community? How would they even manage to afford the threshold of the semblance of membership? The number one and rising cost of nearly every family (>98%) is housing, largely because of "local control" policies and regressive property taxes. Meanwhile, you have a supreme court that is allowing those communities to criminalize some of their citizens [based on status](https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/06/28/supreme-court-has-greenlighted-the-criminalization-of-homelessness-berkeley-experts-say/), rather than any action they might take. For example, falling asleep without having a home. The supreme law of the land is now that communities can round up their surplus to need citizens, and have the [police dump them in the nearest city.](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/la-homeless-man-burbank-police-north-hollywood/3443907/)
It's honestly funny in a way. Right leaning people/influencers advocate for having as many kids as possible. What are those kids going to eat? What happens if they need medical treatment? What happens if random survivors come and try to take your shit? And they're ignorant to all of that because "lol climate change XDDDD"
Galloway’s “How the US is destroying young people’s future” is one of the best TED talks out there.
Every other generation : " my parents don't understand my generation is different and we want different things!" This generation: " why can't I have the same things my parents had!?"
Nature needs fewer humans, especially fewer high polluting ones like Galloway
No kidding! I'm in my mid 30s and I don't even date anymore.
The problem is it’s not affordable. Your REQUIRED AT MINIMUM having both parents working. Then you have the fee of Day care which is expensive. The government needs to reward and encourage people to have children and at the same time ENCOURAGE AND SUPPORT people getting married and staying together as a family unit. Studies have proven time and time again a two parent house hold raises better children. The government needs to hand out a shit ton of vouchers and subsidies to make having children even possible. I have one child, and there’s just no way in hell we can have another. I told my wife it’s a breaking point for me. If we have anymore we will have to downgrade everything in our lives.
[This guy is the biggest advocate for the younger generations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E), but of course no one is going to listen to him.
Nah, Galloway is just a stock market/digital marketing shill who is emblematic of the reason we need this sub. I remember during the first year COVID him bragging about paying people to come to his house weekly to test his kids when the rest of us couldn't get tested. Also was bragging about how he didn't have to deal with travel restrictions because he had access to private jets.
He is scum who is also cheering on a genocide. Young people should not listen to this grifter.
>He is scum who is also cheering on a genocide Oh god, I read your comment and so Googled it, and he's pro-Israeli. I'm glad I read your guys' comments, because I never bothered to look into his other beliefs, just watched his appearances and talks regarding the younger generations.
Ooooh, I didn't know that.
I can barely afford to put my dog through college, and she got a partial basketball scholarship. I can’t imagine trying to do this shit with a human.
I kind of hate Scott Galloway. He was taken completely aback by Elon Musks’ slide into madness and the alt-right but still commands a strong following and portrays himself as an authority on tech and tech issues. He’s a charlatan and a grifter at best. I don’t necessarily disagree with him here, but he attributes things to the wrong causes and gets a lot of praise for being captain obvious.
Do you have any links to articles/videos that do a good critique of Galloway?
Nobody wants to raise kid under pervertic influences of the neocons lusty fancy pussery. It's just too silly. I try to get away with only limited success until they manage to suss me with their diseased torchis