Not really anything to do with capitalism. If the ratio of workers to non-workers decreases without a proportionate increase in productivity, a higher proportion of workers' time has to be spent catering to the needs of non-workers. That means less time spent not working and/or less time spent producing unnecessary stuff that improves our lives like chocolate or TV shows.
I don't think this is true. I checked the stats for caloric supply and the highest value worldwide is (unsurprisingly) in North America where about 3,500 calories of food are produced per day. That is less than double what a person needs per day, so "several times" seems unlikely.
But I don't dispute the idea that we produce enough food to feed the world. But I also didn't say we didn't.
Could you comment on what I actually said, which is that an ageing population (or any situation in which there are more non-workers per worker) will result in less production being available for people on average?
This is not just about food; it is also about other necessities (such as healthcare) but also non-essentials like entertainment. The problem of an ageing population is not that we'll starve to death; it's that our quality of life will decrease.
This isn't just about food, but look at the number of people one farmer could feed 200 years ago (6 or so) vs today (150 or so). We spend a lot of our productive time today doing stuff we didn't have time for just a couple hundred years ago. We've got a long way to fall before we are unable as a species to meet our needs. Proponents of tech advances expect our productivity to increase even if the workforce shrinks. If our standard of living delines on average, either these prognosticators are incorrect or we have a huge allocation issue.
I think it is a problem if we need to have less free time, or work more for the same things that we do in our free time, because a higher proportion of worker time needs to be spent supporting people who are not working. You don't want to go back 200 years even if humanity could survive in such conditions. (And the present population probably could not survive)
That's not what I said. That site measures the output of the chain. I said we grow more food (ie plants) than humanity can eat. We feed the majority of that food to the livestock we keep that absolutely dwarfs the biomass of all wild animals. That introduces a 90%+ caloric inefficiency. If we just ate the plants, we would have to stop growing so much food, even all our industrial processes don't demand that much. But capitalism demands instead that we keep growing more food than the year before, and so it demands inefficiencies like animal ag. Any scarcity is entirely engineered. It's not an accident, it's by design. It is necessary to maximize investor return.
No, it's because people like eating meat. You may have noticed that people ate meat centuries ago before capitalism existed, and favoured it over other foods when it was available.
But I understand what you meant about growing multiples of food, now, so that's good.
Except for population to grow it requires children which also don't work, require more resources than elderly, and at the end of 20 years instead of freeing up resources (by dying like the elderly), continue to consume resources.
At the end of 20 years a child becomes an adult, who will (on average) be a net producer. It's true that children cost more in work put into raising them than older adults take in work to look after them, yet it is a fact of life that one working human is capable of producing more stuff than just that which they themselves needs or makes use of - otherwise it would be impossible to raise children. This should be obvious, and means that the problem of an increasing birth rate, from this perspective, is at most temporary.
But I didn't say we should have high birth rates, I said that the problems of low birth rates are not due to capitalism.
Land isn't unlimited. Physical resources aren't unlimited. For example while a person can manufacture more batteries, with more people on the planet each battery will be more expensive for everyone because each is vying for the same limited resources that are used to make a battery.
I also wouldn't say that low birthrate is caused by capitalism but by over population. No economic system can sustain unlimited growth. When too many are competing for too few resources, there is no time for families.
You think for-profit healthcare, including elder care, pharma care, and long-term care, aren't a huge problem with capitalism written all over it, with every layer maximizing profits and minimizing services, then I I urge you to re-assess it.
I can't really connect this comment with what you originally said. Maybe this will help clarify my position: I think countries with public health and social care, just like countries with mainly private health and social care, will have severe problems if they can't arrest the rate at which their populations are ageing. My comment explains in very general terms why I think that is the case.
Yes, this IS fine. There's too many people on this fucking planet. The only reason this is considered a problem is because capitalism and the Bible says so.
While I half agree with you, that's definitely not the only issue.
Senior citizens become people to take care of, that won't/can't work and I don't mean that in a "dear God consider the GDP" way, but literally just people who will not be contributing but still require services, in fact likely a lot more than normal.
It ends up being a lot of neglected senior citizens dying in horrible ways.
I suppose if you are just thinking about things like cost of formula, diapers, clothes, education. In terms of time spent, children take less and less one on one time as each year passes. They have a finite timeline of required care.
The elderly become less and less independant, the care they require becomes more and more medical in nature, and there is no timeline. Someone with dementia can require around the clock medical care for decades.
Since more people in the world are in China and India you are probably wrong about it being the Bible. It is religious texts that encourage more reproduction for religious spreading to the masses and China just has more landmass so more people overall
It would be better to keep them integrated in communities so they can serve as elders- providing advice, supporting children and parents, and spreading their community’s history.
The care homes are the problem, not the need for care.
Of course I agree people dying is horrible, but there need to be enough people to take care of the elderly and to keep society running. Best hope for care robots I guess, although that seems dystopian too.
Good. There are too many people. Why do we want to expand on a 7billion+ population when so many of us are struggling? How about we only have as many people as we have resources for everyone having a good life?
I'm not arguing for population growth but we definitely have more than enough resources for everyone now. Scarcity isn't the problem, it's that we allow people to hoard those resources and we waste a ton of them.
When we can prove it by providing everyone the same (good) standard of life, across the entire world, then I'll believe it.
Stuff like everyone has housing, clean safe water, safe to eat food, able to escape from extreme climate swings, healthcare, vacation, parental leave, and I'm sure lots more that I'm not thinking of.
Once everyone has that, then we can look at what we can expand on
"We have enough resources" is such a shitty god damned argument. At least you didn't go "hurr durr everyone on the planet can fit in Manhattan if they just squeeze tightly".
But god damned ask yourself what kind of world you want to live in, not min maxxing the number of people alive for some absolutely incomprehensible reason.
"WE CAN SQUEEZE ONE MORE IN THERE, BOYS! SHE CAN TAKE IT!"
You people, I swear. I said specifically that I'm not arguing for increased population and yet your whole response is structured like that's exactly what I said we should do. Do you even read what you respond to or do you just scan until you find the right key word to launch into a rant?
Well if we could make everyone have a good quality of life and not destroy the environment and at the same time have more people to enjoy life and to help drive innovation and art, it would generally be for the better.
Currently a good portion of those people are barely surviving and don't have bandwidth for art or effective innovation. But that's not really the point. If people are happy and have a good quality of life, and there's no negatives, then more is better because it's more happiness.
But think about the profits! We need more people to exploit, if there aren't enough people to replace those who demand disgusting things like "actual living wages" with ones that are just happy to get any job at all, where do you think we'll end up?? We'd have to actually value workers, no, human life itself, instead of just pretending to do so while treating them all as replaceable as they are! And, most importantly, this would hurt my bottom line! I need a new yacht this year, ok? You just don't understand how important my wants truly are, ok?? So stop spreading such nonsense!
~ Pretty much every CEO out there, probably
Baby boomers also had more kids than the generation that preceded them. So did Gen X. Millennials are the first to fail to even replace their own population.
"Yeah but children are too much of a responsibility and just a headache to be around, and how am I supposed to travel/party/spend money on my hobbies with children involved? I'll just chill with my cat and my plants!"
I feel like having child in the modern age is like breeding pinkies to feed to snakes.
Genuine humanity seems like it's almost entirely absent from modern life and society just pretends it's living while it's repeating the same forms of escapism masked and marketed as lifestyles and life paths.
As if these lifestyles are psychologically marketed to condense genuine people into the false lifestyle so that they are easier to control socially and politically as a group.
I'm sick of watching authenticity get lost. Almost everything gets raped for its worth and then the new generations get born into this life thinking it's authentic.
I think the younger generations right now know how fake it all is and that there has to be a better way. The problem is they don't have the power yet. I'm really trying to stay hopeful for the midterms after seeing how many progressive candidates won in the primaries.
Things can still change. We just have to keep up the hope
No offence, but I think that if people think they can make change with votes then they don't really understand how dark reality is.
I don't think anything will ever change for real until people get over the denial of this truth and the extremely heavy weight of its surrealism.
People and citizens are assets like farm cattle. The nation is the middle man, and the wealthy do business with the nation for their own objectives and agendas. Citizens are like kids in a play pen, put their by the wealthy, so that they can do the real work and play the real game in reality without the citizens causing too much trouble or issues.
As citizens we are groomed and taught not to understand the real game and real reality. Our success, the American or western success we are groomed to want and achieve is usually not Human success. John Stockwell, a CIA whistleblower said it well, "...they are using people for purpose that is not their actual purpose..."
Left right and center are all just tools to be abused. And no one wants to truly face honest reality when they can just Netflix or scroll reality away. Our ill-gotten privileges are a major problem to the human species. They aren't rights, and they aren't good, they are a veil that masks us from reality and keeps us pacified as cattle while they use us. Kind of like a pimp abusing their hooker with drugs so that they will submit to wealthy Johns that use them. And in the end most of gains from the transaction go to the pimp (nation), which just get re entered into the economy of the pimp and the wealthy, not the hookers(citizens). Money will be used to keep the hooker in the figurative playpen though... That's what we get as citizens, occasional novelty on our free-range farm solely to give us the perfect level on centent so that people don't wake up to the reality.
Our nations are outdated and I think trump is actually a puppet in place to distract while they build up modern infrastructure of surveillance and policing to regain control in modern times. And I think they don't mind human and social sacrifices during this process. In fact part of the process is probably specifically depopulating.
I really think we are groomed from birth into something far darker than anyone wants to admit because weight of the truth is literally the weight of the whole universes authentic reality. Nothing is going to change until people are willing to wake up completely, not half way, and not via votes or charity. Truth is harsh and real sacrifices need to be made and not many are willing to make them because truth is fucking terrifying.
This doesn't need to be "conspiracy" either, it could just simply be a side effect that grew stronger than the initial foundation without being noticed. There's not even a need to say there is some elite mastermind group - that's not a requisite for this idea to be truth.
Oh, I do. The main difference is this: they simply don't want it as much as they want other things. And it is, of course, due to ideological and cultural reasons, mostly (sometimes it's trauma too, which is understandable).
That's just not true at all. They simply can't afford it and see how screwed up the world is and are cautious about bringing a life into this world responsibly.
Source: on the younger side wanting to start a family but none of my friends or I can afford it and we talk about it often
My guy, of all my close friends I know a single couple with kids. Everyone else is struggling to stay afloat. Aside from that one couple, the others are more or less all just making ends meet as is.
I can't imagine many of them are really thinking "this month was really tight between food prices going way up, rent going up, and my wages staying the same. Y'know what we really need right now? A $10k medical bill to have a baby delivered, having to move to a larger apartment, buying all sorts of furniture, clothes, and services, and then another mouth to feed for the next 18 years. Then maybe we'll do it another 2 or 3 times!"
83 Comments
iatenine@piefed.social · 121 pts · 11h
Not even close to true
https://www.populationpyramid.org/region/world
yucandu@lemmy.world · 52 pts · 10h
well 1 out of 23 humans checking to see if random internet claims are true is better odds than i expected, well done sir
protist@retrofed.com · 14 pts · 11h
Maybe true if you're comparing 60+ to under 5
Hobo@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 9h
If you select North America and slide the slider between 2050 and 2080 it looks like a face opening their mouth and screaming.
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 10h
1950's America with that flared base!
jacksilver@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 50m
Its really only Africa that bucks the trend if you Iook region by region.
yesman@lemmy.world · 50 pts · 11h
Low birth rates are a crisis for capitalism, not humanity. And if you count brown countries, it's not even happening.
Pension schemes are not a biological imperative.
FishFace@piefed.social · -2 pts · 9h
Not really anything to do with capitalism. If the ratio of workers to non-workers decreases without a proportionate increase in productivity, a higher proportion of workers' time has to be spent catering to the needs of non-workers. That means less time spent not working and/or less time spent producing unnecessary stuff that improves our lives like chocolate or TV shows.
jerkface@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 6h
We grow several times more food than humanity can possibly eat. We don't have a productivity or resource shortage. We have an allocation error.
FishFace@piefed.social · 3 pts · 5h
I don't think this is true. I checked the stats for caloric supply and the highest value worldwide is (unsurprisingly) in North America where about 3,500 calories of food are produced per day. That is less than double what a person needs per day, so "several times" seems unlikely.
But I don't dispute the idea that we produce enough food to feed the world. But I also didn't say we didn't.
Could you comment on what I actually said, which is that an ageing population (or any situation in which there are more non-workers per worker) will result in less production being available for people on average?
This is not just about food; it is also about other necessities (such as healthcare) but also non-essentials like entertainment. The problem of an ageing population is not that we'll starve to death; it's that our quality of life will decrease.
Kaerkob@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 4h
This isn't just about food, but look at the number of people one farmer could feed 200 years ago (6 or so) vs today (150 or so). We spend a lot of our productive time today doing stuff we didn't have time for just a couple hundred years ago. We've got a long way to fall before we are unable as a species to meet our needs. Proponents of tech advances expect our productivity to increase even if the workforce shrinks. If our standard of living delines on average, either these prognosticators are incorrect or we have a huge allocation issue.
FishFace@piefed.social · 1 pts · 53m
I think it is a problem if we need to have less free time, or work more for the same things that we do in our free time, because a higher proportion of worker time needs to be spent supporting people who are not working. You don't want to go back 200 years even if humanity could survive in such conditions. (And the present population probably could not survive)
jerkface@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 1h
That's not what I said. That site measures the output of the chain. I said we grow more food (ie plants) than humanity can eat. We feed the majority of that food to the livestock we keep that absolutely dwarfs the biomass of all wild animals. That introduces a 90%+ caloric inefficiency. If we just ate the plants, we would have to stop growing so much food, even all our industrial processes don't demand that much. But capitalism demands instead that we keep growing more food than the year before, and so it demands inefficiencies like animal ag. Any scarcity is entirely engineered. It's not an accident, it's by design. It is necessary to maximize investor return.
FishFace@piefed.social · 1 pts · 51m
No, it's because people like eating meat. You may have noticed that people ate meat centuries ago before capitalism existed, and favoured it over other foods when it was available.
But I understand what you meant about growing multiples of food, now, so that's good.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 8h
Except for population to grow it requires children which also don't work, require more resources than elderly, and at the end of 20 years instead of freeing up resources (by dying like the elderly), continue to consume resources.
FishFace@piefed.social · 4 pts · 7h
At the end of 20 years a child becomes an adult, who will (on average) be a net producer. It's true that children cost more in work put into raising them than older adults take in work to look after them, yet it is a fact of life that one working human is capable of producing more stuff than just that which they themselves needs or makes use of - otherwise it would be impossible to raise children. This should be obvious, and means that the problem of an increasing birth rate, from this perspective, is at most temporary.
But I didn't say we should have high birth rates, I said that the problems of low birth rates are not due to capitalism.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 6h
Land isn't unlimited. Physical resources aren't unlimited. For example while a person can manufacture more batteries, with more people on the planet each battery will be more expensive for everyone because each is vying for the same limited resources that are used to make a battery.
I also wouldn't say that low birthrate is caused by capitalism but by over population. No economic system can sustain unlimited growth. When too many are competing for too few resources, there is no time for families.
FishFace@piefed.social · 3 pts · 5h
You are not talking about what I was talking about, my friend.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 6h
You think for-profit healthcare, including elder care, pharma care, and long-term care, aren't a huge problem with capitalism written all over it, with every layer maximizing profits and minimizing services, then I I urge you to re-assess it.
FishFace@piefed.social · 3 pts · 5h
I can't really connect this comment with what you originally said. Maybe this will help clarify my position: I think countries with public health and social care, just like countries with mainly private health and social care, will have severe problems if they can't arrest the rate at which their populations are ageing. My comment explains in very general terms why I think that is the case.
socsa@piefed.social · -1 pts · 6h
Who gives a shit. I'll be dead.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 5h
The tricky part of being in society is that we want systems that work for more than just ourselves: It's not a purely transactional relationship.
Great news! It doesn't affect you either way, so we know your opinion on the matter is completely unbiased. That's excellent.
anarchy79@lemmy.world · 37 pts · 9h
Yes, this IS fine. There's too many people on this fucking planet. The only reason this is considered a problem is because capitalism and the Bible says so.
No other reason. Period.
terranoid@lemmy.cafe · 19 pts · 8h
While I half agree with you, that's definitely not the only issue.
Senior citizens become people to take care of, that won't/can't work and I don't mean that in a "dear God consider the GDP" way, but literally just people who will not be contributing but still require services, in fact likely a lot more than normal.
It ends up being a lot of neglected senior citizens dying in horrible ways.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 8h
Children need more resources to raise than seniors take.
mig@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 3h
I suppose if you are just thinking about things like cost of formula, diapers, clothes, education. In terms of time spent, children take less and less one on one time as each year passes. They have a finite timeline of required care.
The elderly become less and less independant, the care they require becomes more and more medical in nature, and there is no timeline. Someone with dementia can require around the clock medical care for decades.
Einskjaldi@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2h
Yes, the medical care is 1000x more than cost of food and things.
Gold_E_Lox@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 4h
yes and theres more old poeple than children, thats like, the whole point of the post??
shiroininja@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2h
Not with modern lifespans, 75-95 take a ton of care and are unable to contribute
Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 6h
Since more people in the world are in China and India you are probably wrong about it being the Bible. It is religious texts that encourage more reproduction for religious spreading to the masses and China just has more landmass so more people overall
bryophile@lemmy.zip · 36 pts · 12h
After all this time humanity finally created a world with high life expectancy, just to start wondering now whether we should.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 22 pts · 12h
As long as that high lifespan comes with a high healthspan, it shouldn't be a problem.
bryophile@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 7h
True, but that's not the case yet. Old people generally need healthcare and other services (provided by young people).
And they don't provide anything in return from their care homes. Honestly, it's best to just send them off on an ice floe.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 4h
It would be better to keep them integrated in communities so they can serve as elders- providing advice, supporting children and parents, and spreading their community’s history.
The care homes are the problem, not the need for care.
bryophile@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 4h
True, that would be even better but sounds like communism so it won't happen. I would certainly prefer it
theparadox@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 11h
...and it only cost the sustainability of the lower class and the entire global south.
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 11h
We fucked the climate up enough for it to cost the next generations the global north as well
theparadox@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 4h
That's quite an achievement. We're so awesome!
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 11h
Of course we should. People dying is horrible. Anyone who thinks otherwise can opt in to check out.
spankysalmon@fedinsfw.app · 4 pts · 9h
If only that were legal in many places.
bryophile@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 7h
Of course I agree people dying is horrible, but there need to be enough people to take care of the elderly and to keep society running. Best hope for care robots I guess, although that seems dystopian too.
mrmisses@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 11h
Good. There are too many people. Why do we want to expand on a 7billion+ population when so many of us are struggling? How about we only have as many people as we have resources for everyone having a good life?
krashmo@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 10h
I'm not arguing for population growth but we definitely have more than enough resources for everyone now. Scarcity isn't the problem, it's that we allow people to hoard those resources and we waste a ton of them.
mrmisses@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 10h
When we can prove it by providing everyone the same (good) standard of life, across the entire world, then I'll believe it.
Stuff like everyone has housing, clean safe water, safe to eat food, able to escape from extreme climate swings, healthcare, vacation, parental leave, and I'm sure lots more that I'm not thinking of.
Once everyone has that, then we can look at what we can expand on
boatswain@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 3h
We will never have that as long as we live in a capitalist society
anarchy79@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 9h
"We have enough resources" is such a shitty god damned argument. At least you didn't go "hurr durr everyone on the planet can fit in Manhattan if they just squeeze tightly".
But god damned ask yourself what kind of world you want to live in, not min maxxing the number of people alive for some absolutely incomprehensible reason.
"WE CAN SQUEEZE ONE MORE IN THERE, BOYS! SHE CAN TAKE IT!"
For WHAT?! WHY?!
jerkface@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 6h
Did I miss something? You said it is a "shitty" argument, but you never state what is wrong with it.
krashmo@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3h
You people, I swear. I said specifically that I'm not arguing for increased population and yet your whole response is structured like that's exactly what I said we should do. Do you even read what you respond to or do you just scan until you find the right key word to launch into a rant?
CannonFodder@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 8h
Well if we could make everyone have a good quality of life and not destroy the environment and at the same time have more people to enjoy life and to help drive innovation and art, it would generally be for the better.
fireweed@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 7h
I don't think you comprehend exactly how large a number 7 billion actually is. There's plenty of innovation and art potential already.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 3h
Currently a good portion of those people are barely surviving and don't have bandwidth for art or effective innovation. But that's not really the point. If people are happy and have a good quality of life, and there's no negatives, then more is better because it's more happiness.
Einhornyordle@feddit.org · 4 pts · 10h
But think about the profits! We need more people to exploit, if there aren't enough people to replace those who demand disgusting things like "actual living wages" with ones that are just happy to get any job at all, where do you think we'll end up?? We'd have to actually value workers, no, human life itself, instead of just pretending to do so while treating them all as replaceable as they are! And, most importantly, this would hurt my bottom line! I need a new yacht this year, ok? You just don't understand how important my wants truly are, ok?? So stop spreading such nonsense! ~ Pretty much every CEO out there, probably
chunes@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 6h
So what's your alternative? Infinite growth?
nehal3m@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 6h
Term limits on life.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3h
Limits on wealth.
Shanmugha@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 5h
Oh no, who did this? (sarcasm. a few people have gone out of their way to ensure everyone else's suffering)
jerkface@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 7h
Not just fine, good.
fodor@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 2h
How to say you don't understand sustainability without saying you don't understand it. :-)
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 5h
I don't owe the future anything.
I don't give a fuck if our species survives. Why should I?
Everything ends someday.
potpotato@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 5h
The issue is we don’t just go straight from point A to B, rather there’s a long period of suffering.
shiroininja@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2h
It’ll be fine. The baby boom our grandparents cane from was an anomaly
SippyCup@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18m
Baby boomers also had more kids than the generation that preceded them. So did Gen X. Millennials are the first to fail to even replace their own population.
Tabula_stercore@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 11h
It is indeed fine. In 1900 there were about 1.6 milliard people, versus the 8.3 today.
anarchy79@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 9h
Oh no we are running out of people!
FarceOfWill@infosec.pub · 4 pts · 12h
OAPs is 60-100, young children is...0-10 at most.
Should be 4x as many if we can stop people dying needlessly.
umbrella@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 3h
ok let's revolt before it's too late for the planet then?
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 12h
What's your beef sports fan?
RockBottom@feddit.org · 4 pts · 11h
That dog never had puppies?
itisileclerk@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2h
People live longer. 100 years ago 50 year old man was old.
GolfFoxtrotLima@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 9h
Senior citizens do not out number young people, however there is almost as many senior citizens as young people and that may be some cause for concern
Drusas@fedia.io · 3 pts · 7h
Young kids, not all young people.
ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world · -46 pts · 12h
"Yeah but children are too much of a responsibility and just a headache to be around, and how am I supposed to travel/party/spend money on my hobbies with children involved? I'll just chill with my cat and my plants!"
mushroommunk@lemmy.today · 39 pts · 12h
If you think that's why people aren't having kids you need to actually go talk to young adults more.
IAmYouButYouDontKnowYet@reddthat.com · 14 pts · 11h
I feel like having child in the modern age is like breeding pinkies to feed to snakes.
Genuine humanity seems like it's almost entirely absent from modern life and society just pretends it's living while it's repeating the same forms of escapism masked and marketed as lifestyles and life paths.
As if these lifestyles are psychologically marketed to condense genuine people into the false lifestyle so that they are easier to control socially and politically as a group.
I'm sick of watching authenticity get lost. Almost everything gets raped for its worth and then the new generations get born into this life thinking it's authentic.
mushroommunk@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 11h
I think the younger generations right now know how fake it all is and that there has to be a better way. The problem is they don't have the power yet. I'm really trying to stay hopeful for the midterms after seeing how many progressive candidates won in the primaries.
Things can still change. We just have to keep up the hope
IAmYouButYouDontKnowYet@reddthat.com · 3 pts · 10h
No offence, but I think that if people think they can make change with votes then they don't really understand how dark reality is.
I don't think anything will ever change for real until people get over the denial of this truth and the extremely heavy weight of its surrealism.
People and citizens are assets like farm cattle. The nation is the middle man, and the wealthy do business with the nation for their own objectives and agendas. Citizens are like kids in a play pen, put their by the wealthy, so that they can do the real work and play the real game in reality without the citizens causing too much trouble or issues.
As citizens we are groomed and taught not to understand the real game and real reality. Our success, the American or western success we are groomed to want and achieve is usually not Human success. John Stockwell, a CIA whistleblower said it well, "...they are using people for purpose that is not their actual purpose..."
Left right and center are all just tools to be abused. And no one wants to truly face honest reality when they can just Netflix or scroll reality away. Our ill-gotten privileges are a major problem to the human species. They aren't rights, and they aren't good, they are a veil that masks us from reality and keeps us pacified as cattle while they use us. Kind of like a pimp abusing their hooker with drugs so that they will submit to wealthy Johns that use them. And in the end most of gains from the transaction go to the pimp (nation), which just get re entered into the economy of the pimp and the wealthy, not the hookers(citizens). Money will be used to keep the hooker in the figurative playpen though... That's what we get as citizens, occasional novelty on our free-range farm solely to give us the perfect level on centent so that people don't wake up to the reality.
Our nations are outdated and I think trump is actually a puppet in place to distract while they build up modern infrastructure of surveillance and policing to regain control in modern times. And I think they don't mind human and social sacrifices during this process. In fact part of the process is probably specifically depopulating.
I really think we are groomed from birth into something far darker than anyone wants to admit because weight of the truth is literally the weight of the whole universes authentic reality. Nothing is going to change until people are willing to wake up completely, not half way, and not via votes or charity. Truth is harsh and real sacrifices need to be made and not many are willing to make them because truth is fucking terrifying.
This doesn't need to be "conspiracy" either, it could just simply be a side effect that grew stronger than the initial foundation without being noticed. There's not even a need to say there is some elite mastermind group - that's not a requisite for this idea to be truth.
ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world · -26 pts · 12h
Oh, I do. The main difference is this: they simply don't want it as much as they want other things. And it is, of course, due to ideological and cultural reasons, mostly (sometimes it's trauma too, which is understandable).
mushroommunk@lemmy.today · 16 pts · 12h
That's just not true at all. They simply can't afford it and see how screwed up the world is and are cautious about bringing a life into this world responsibly.
Source: on the younger side wanting to start a family but none of my friends or I can afford it and we talk about it often
MufinMcFlufin@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 11h
My guy, of all my close friends I know a single couple with kids. Everyone else is struggling to stay afloat. Aside from that one couple, the others are more or less all just making ends meet as is.
I can't imagine many of them are really thinking "this month was really tight between food prices going way up, rent going up, and my wages staying the same. Y'know what we really need right now? A $10k medical bill to have a baby delivered, having to move to a larger apartment, buying all sorts of furniture, clothes, and services, and then another mouth to feed for the next 18 years. Then maybe we'll do it another 2 or 3 times!"
IAmYouButYouDontKnowYet@reddthat.com · 6 pts · 11h
I literally can't afford my life week to week as a middle aged single person. I should t be retiring in 25 years. 😂
I can't even afford hobbies that aren't free and don't require gas.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 12h
You couldn't possibly come up with a dumber take, even if you tried.
amoeba@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 11h
To be fair, this is at least 50% of the reason I’m not having kids right now. I’m sure this perspective is not representative of everyone though.
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 9h
Username checks out, what a wack take