Such doom and gloom! You really believe the future is gonna be so bad that children would be better off not existing at all?
The world has huge issues, sure, but it's still far better to be alive now than any time in human history. The only way the future could be worse is if this idea becomes mainstream and the prophecy self-fulfilling.
>The world has huge issues, sure, but it's still far better to be alive now than any time in human history. The only way the future could be worse is if this idea becomes mainstream and the prophecy self-fulfilling.
What if automation and outsourcing to cheaper countries leads to a widening income/wealth gap such that you're always scraping by and any hiccup along the way will cause you to have to start depending on very unreliable social safety nets?
I think people earning $20 an hour commuting 2 hours each day to work are capable of doing the calculations of figuring out they will probably never build wealth such that they don't have to worry about sacrificing a vacation if their kid breaks their arm or losing their job because their kid became sick and having no family around to help shoulder the burden.
People's wages didn't stagnate because the idea of a worse future became mainstream, wages stagnated because the supply and demand equation for labor shifted negatively for wage earners. People then started thinking about a worse future once they saw friends and family de railed by unexpected medical expenses, or laid off and never rehired at a comparable wage, etc.
I think this is a rather short-sighted view; The future is not guaranteed to be better, especially not when we have lots of evidence of impending (1) massive climate disruption (2) water shortage (3) political polarization (4) economic imbalance, the list goes on.
Saying "the only way" the world gets worse is if we don't have children is to ignore the potential for all of those effects to grow worse. It's certainly possible that we may overcome them and human life will continue on its merry way, but it's very unreasonable to ignore all these difficulties and the psychological effects they can have on new parents.... And on new children.
What would your response be to a 9 year old having an existential crisis about the polar bears starving to death because of climate change, and the implications for human civilization, and civilization's apparent apathy towards that? "Don't worry kid, just make sure you have children of your own and everything will work out"?
> What would your response be to a 9 year old having an existential crisis about the polar bears starving to death because of climate change, and the implications for human civilization, and civilization's apparent apathy towards that? "Don't worry kid, just make sure you have children of your own and everything will work out"?
Speaking as a new parent who did in fact have an existential crisis about this as a child, very very disappointed in both myself and the rest of us.
All of the things you listed are solvable problems, with hundreds of thousands of people working tirelessly to solve them. Fear porn about the impending collapse of everything helps no one, and is the reason why that the 9 year old is having an existential crisis about polar bears at all.
Should we worry about these things? Absolutely! But the incessant hysteria is counter productive. Us ceasing having children in a form of civilizational suicide is not a solution.
> All of the things you listed are solvable problems [...] But the incessant hysteria is counter productive. Us ceasing having children in a form of civilizational suicide is not a solution.
I absolutely agree! I'm not an anti-natalist, nor do I think not having children is necessarily the correct choice, either morally or for these hypothetical childrens' well-being: my point was merely that the issue is more complex than "just have kids and sort the problems out" or "don't have any kids because these problems are impossible to sort out." I apologize if I failed in this, but I was just seeking to highlight the empathy needed to understand the reluctance many (myself included) have around the idea of having kids.
Too often I think those who have reservations about having children are told "Oh just get over it," or "You're being dramatic," which does nothing to address the underlying concerns these would-be parents have, and in fact can just make those concerns worse because they feel like nobody is truly paying attention to those concerns. Which just exacerbates them.
The world has huge issues, sure, but it's still far better to be alive now than any time in human history. The only way the future could be worse is if this idea becomes mainstream and the prophecy self-fulfilling.