Do you feel sad for people born today?
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No. Only joy for the new parents and child. (Though I do put in work to shore up their finances, try to get them my next bonus.)
Several reasons: being a kid today is better than being a kid 20-50 years ago. Toys are cooler, parenting competence and training has broadly improved, minecraft exists, and there is some really good childrens TV.
Health risks are largely down, especially compared to 35 years ago. (Anecdotally about 10% of families around my cohort lost kids. Far fewer in the younger cohorts.)
While economic mobility is down, more people means a stronger voting block. Boomers run the world because their protests changed policy. I see indications that kids are a more competent politic than earlier generations (eg, climate and LGBTQ rights), we just need them to matter sooner.
For what it's worth, the economy is not just bad, it's breaking. If workers remain this exploited, there will soon be nobody to sell to. We are seeing large (usually stupid) interventions to try and address it, I put nontrivial odds on something sane eventually being tried.
War deaths are low and really don't seem likely to increase dramatically (see here).
Edit: I forgot to add LGBTQ rights/acceptance! While there are definitely still places that are not safe, many of them were not safe before (and that was just the status quo), I believe the risks have decreased and will continue to do so, while the medical access has improved (and that hopefully will continue, though I'm personally expecting that to get worse before it gets better. I think kids today probably get good care in 10 years, some kids 6-12 are in for a bad time.)
Toys are cooler, parenting competence and training has broadly improved, minecraft exists, and there is some really good childrens TV.
You've got a lot of good points, but I want to quibble about this one. I'm not an expert, but everything I've read about childhood development tells me toys like blocks, string, dirt/sand/water, and paper/pencils are the best toys. They are open-ended and drive critical thinking, exploration, and creativity. TV is the worst as it encourages passivity. Even when educational, TV encourages kids to sit and accept input rather than doing anything with that information. Yes, minecraft is akin to online blocks, and it does have some logic training, but it teaches in-game physics instead of letting toddlers discover real-world physics.
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Children born today will have to kill other human beings to obtain clean water within their lifetime.
It really comes down to if you think that's an acceptable world to have kids in.
I weep for the youth personally.
We already have been killing others for clean water if you think about it. Not directly but certainly through the actions of Nestle and other big corporations.
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Gf and I talk about this a lot. Both want kids but I don't know how to feel about this world anymore. I come from generational wealth so could just buy the kids houses but I feel like it's still going to be super shitty overall
Suffering from success. Jpeg
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Mix of sad and angry. I see these broodmares popping out kids and I think of the movie Idiocracy because all of the more thoughtful people I know limited how many kids they had while the people having litters of kids all seem to be short-sighted selfish assholes. The thoughtful folks worry about saving college funds for the kids. The selfish ones don't. They don't have any plans, they are too busy making babies -- and those kids are going to be predisposed to be the same way which will make matters worse for the handful of kids raised by thoughtful parents.
This comment is not grounded in any hard data besides this persons anecdote...
Statistically speaking I don't think there is a single large group of people with replacement level fertility. American racists loved dunking on blacks and latinos but they haven't been replacement level since 2010s.
Only groups who are insular communities like hasids, Mormons, certain Muslims.
Pedophilia rans rampant in these communities too...
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Yes I do. I am an anti-natalist because I care about people.
It is your right to make that choice for yourself.
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Gf and I talk about this a lot. Both want kids but I don't know how to feel about this world anymore. I come from generational wealth so could just buy the kids houses but I feel like it's still going to be super shitty overall
You'd be better off buying them bunkers with unlimited r134a and ac units !
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Mix of sad and angry. I see these broodmares popping out kids and I think of the movie Idiocracy because all of the more thoughtful people I know limited how many kids they had while the people having litters of kids all seem to be short-sighted selfish assholes. The thoughtful folks worry about saving college funds for the kids. The selfish ones don't. They don't have any plans, they are too busy making babies -- and those kids are going to be predisposed to be the same way which will make matters worse for the handful of kids raised by thoughtful parents.
Idiocracy was a documentary
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Actually kind of jealous, because they will have AI just do healthcare on every single human, and they will have AI teachers and so on.
EDIT: Did I mention fucking UBI?
The rich would never allow the poors to be taken care of in such a way. You're not thinking like a true capitalist !
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Yes, climate change, microplatics in brains and balls and mountain fresh water and pollution all around.
Oh and forget about ever owning your house except you inherit.
And all of it is man-made.
There's enough land in the world for every single adult human to have 2 acres. Pretty crazy. Then we have people living in actual closets that cost 2k a month. Crazy.
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You are born in the very very very best stretch the human race has ever known.
We have solutions for almost every problem which exists today.
Wars are at an historical low point.
Chances are good you've never been even experienced war first hand.
Housing is expensive, yes. But chances are you're reading this on a couch or bed in a home, heated (or cooled), with a working stove, light at night and a fridge with edibles in it. And lets not talk about your immediate almost unrestricted access to all of human knowledge.
That would be unbelievable, impossible even during 99.9% of human history. (Or somewhere near this figure)
You should stop doomscrolling and start reading the real human history.
All of human knowledge at your fingertips. And this is what you chose to distill from it.
What? Are you stupid? Realism with a tinge of optimism in this thread clearly designed to be a crying, woe-is-me circle-jerk? Get with it man! /s
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I dont care what people do. But they should put a little more thought into it other than "I human. Must make babby". I can guarantee you a very large amount of the population thinks this way.
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We already have been killing others for clean water if you think about it. Not directly but certainly through the actions of Nestle and other big corporations.
I'm talking about children born today in rich countries
Nobody's gonna escape this
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Born 1949 would be awesome. After world war, then Woodstock, cheap housing, fucked up the world with their plastics, dead before its getting hot. These mfs had the best timespan ever.
If youre white, definitely. I'd probably choose to be born in early 70s so I could have gotten into computing when it first become available outside of labs.
But yeah capitalism only works for the already-haves. If youre late to the party fuck you. Why didn't you buy a house when you were 12, idiot ?
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Gf and I talk about this a lot. Both want kids but I don't know how to feel about this world anymore. I come from generational wealth so could just buy the kids houses but I feel like it's still going to be super shitty overall
You have money, your kids will be fine. The rest of our kids will be screwed by your kids.
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IMO climate change is kind of a different beast than hardships from the past.
Tell it to the young American men who were drafted into the Vietnam War, and were dead 3 months after receiving their notices to report.
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Gf and I talk about this a lot. Both want kids but I don't know how to feel about this world anymore. I come from generational wealth so could just buy the kids houses but I feel like it's still going to be super shitty overall
Adopt. There are kids who need good homes and you are in a position to provide one.
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I personally cringe when I hear a friend js having a kid. All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it. Hell id definitely have been better off being born 20 years earlier, but these new kids are REALLY screwed unless they have super rich parents.
"Nothing new under the sun" I suppose!
Partly yes.
If I could choose, I would take 10 years earlier than I was actually born.
At least I could have experienced the early internet for longer. -
Tell it to the young American men who were drafted into the Vietnam War, and were dead 3 months after receiving their notices to report.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Your point? Climate change has the potential to affect every living thing on the planet. Even the horrors of world war 2 didn't have that kind of reach. Additionally, humans eventually have to stop fighting when enough of them are dead. Climate change is a threat that humanity can unleash but be potentially unable to stop. Like I said, a different kind of beast.
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Adopt. There are kids who need good homes and you are in a position to provide one.
wrote last edited by [email protected]That may be true. But there is a difference between giving away a free home to a random in need vs your own offspring.
I would without a doubt give away my kidney to my mother or father.
Not so much for a random if I was given the choice.As we don't know how much ressources OP has, I wouldnt want to jump to conclusions. Maybe they'd have only enough to buy a house/flat for a child, maybe two (which is still much).
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You have money, your kids will be fine. The rest of our kids will be screwed by your kids.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I like to think my family has always paid it forward and I would raise my kids to be the same
That was a really fucked up comment honestly lol
