Wish we had a hell of a lot more of these in the USA. Especially pet-free apartments. Something needs to be done about the service animal loophole though, far too many people abusing that system to bring e.g. pair of pitbulls into communities that only allow small dogs or the few rare gems that allow no dogs at all.
Choosing to have a kid is a choice of the parents, not the child. You're forgetting the child is also a person, one as deserving of the same civil rights as anyone else, at least where we can give them without causing harm to the child.
Are these serious opinions? I'm sure in America they said to black folk having kids is a choice as well - you can skip the discrimination by not having a new generation.
Both concepts (white only and childfree) are the same (Exclusion of the others), and come from the same place (My right to have what I want is more important than everybody else's)
Same as it was considered bad taste to have blacks lingering around, now it is bad taste to have children running around.
This logic makes no sense. What about no smoking spaces? Basically every nation implements these and it benefits everyone (including smokers, more reasons to quit). Are you going to try and tell me "no smoking in front of the building" is the new apartheid?
Smoking and parenthood are lifestyle choices, which have consequences. Skin color is not, and shouldn't. It is not relevant to the conversation.
Childfree is a lifestyle choice which must be taxed (and already is in some countries like Germany). Parenthood is a matter of survival of our species and our economy.
Childfree absolutely isn't a choice for everyone. The idea that we should punish those who are too unattractive, disfigured, or disabled to attact potential mates, or those with medical conditions preventing them from having offspring, or those with highly heritable diseases that would negatively impact the quality of life of their offspring, is as inhumane and cruel of an idea as I could think of. There is no justification for punishing those who already have a hard enough life as-is, give them a break FFS!
I'm gonna take a stand here and say that up until extremely recently in the US, parenthood almost invariably was a deliberate decision. When abortion was legal in all 50 states and programs were available that offered free family planning services (contraceptives and abortions) to low-income households who might not otherwise have the means to access these services, parenthood became almost ubiquitously optional.
In any case, the woman has, at minimum, several months of time between the moment she becomes aware of a pregnancy and the moment a viable, live birth occurs.
Since the 70's, PP could get you in same week for an abortion. It didn't matter what the pregnant woman's skin color, income/wealth, zip code, age, disability, national origin, religious views, or any other bit of demographic data was - this was something rapidly and easily accessible to anyone with thousands of locations across the U.S.
Granted, this has regrettably changed in recent times, so I'll give you that.
On a tangent - it's so bizarre to me that when the conservatives who can almost incessantly be found talking about the importance of "small government" finally seized a modicum of real power in the US via SC majority, some of their very first actions were increasing the scope of the rules and regulations of big government. :|
Parenthood is necessary so your nation doesn't go extinct and hopefully you get a paid pension from a new generation. As the other commenter said many nations tax having a child free lifestyle just like they tax smoking.
You might apply to that anything if you want to go full individualism - from taxes to vaccines but that is not how societies work. Only on paper for the libertarian types.
I don't think making choices about child-bearing in a world with 8 billion humans in it counts as either "full individualism" or libertarian adjacent. If you want to help the world in a concrete way, breed less.
I will say this in defense of libertarian individualism: I think you should have a right to opt-out of being a citizen of any given country. The ability to do so, in practice, varies from totalitarian states where you physically cannot leave without risking being killed to western liberal democracies where you're allowed to renounce citizenship with just one condition - get another citizenship first.
While the latter is certainly extremely reasonable and humane relative to the former, that condition is still an insurmountable barrier for lower income, cognitively impaired, or otherwise vulnerable folks.
If you lack the means to obtain another citizenship, you are more or less the partial property of the government you were born into (given they are legally entitled to a portion of all your earnings), and you have no way of leaving.
That we more or less "trap" the vulnerable into partial financial servitude wherever they're born makes me mildly uncomfortable in the same manner that the concept of chattel slavery makes me deeply uncomfortable - no person or institution ought to have such dominion over another living, breathing person that the latter cannot disassociate from former.
We wax and wane about the necessity of such resulting from the social contract, but the social contract is the only contract I know of that is both serious and enforced (even if not literally defined), whilst not being one that you enter into voluntarily.
A key component of what renders a contract valid in contractual law in the US (stemming from common law) is that all parties to the contract must enter into it voluntarily, with full knowledge of it, free from coercion or deception.
We at least ought to stop calling it a "contract" and start calling it what it really is - Demands for involuntary tributes to the ruling elites (who benefits more from taxpayer dollars - the poor and needy, or Lockheed Martin executives?), that you must comply with under threat of force, up to and including lethal if you resist the wrong way.
I'm not saying the alternative is simple, but it seems unjust to me that human societies force their most vulnerable people into subservient economic relationships with governments (that have lengthy track records of using those very same tax dollars to perform horrific and flagrant atrocities against humanity, like drone bombing weddings, abducting and torturing innocent people, etc), based purely on where they're born.
Animals don't engage in this kind of depravity - why must we?
I hope the societies of the distant future look back on our current system of government and see it for the barbaric, medieval, and inhumane institution it really was.
Pension, lol. Social Security is a pyramid scheme and the only condition in which it was sustainable was "infinite growth in a finite world", which isn't even remotely realistic.
I am already 100% confident I will never see a penny from it, and as a result, I'm saving and investing so aggressively that I'll be on track for my investment income to exceed my FAANG income before I'm 40.
Relying on unsustainable government wealth redistribution programs is cargo cult behavior.
"Smoking and parenthood are lifestyle choices, which have consequences. Skin color is not, and shouldn't. It is not relevant to the conversation"
You are mixing up many different unrelated topics here.
Smoking is [mostly] a choice. You used it for an analogy. You explained why it is good to have smoking laws. Then you act like this is part of the conversation on the same level as childfree zones. Smoking is a personal and a public health issue. You getting cancer is expensive for everyone, your non smoking flatmate getting smoking derived cancer is a tragedy (and expensive for everyone) Definitely not in the same level as ruckus, dirt and destruction of property.
Parenthood as in "how many children will someone have" is [mostly] a choice. But there are many reasons for society benefitting parenthood in spite of exclusionists (How to call them NIMBYS?)
-> Children are expensive for parents. CONVERSELY, they are fantastic for economy. Parents are forced to work because they MUST SPEND. Not that they want, they MUST pay for food, care, health, education, clothing, entertaiment.
-> Housing is a very important current issue. Not only in the US. In the few countries I have cared to pay attention, there is the pertinent mafia who has (unofficially exclusive) permission to build, and they naturally build less than required: it is obvious, less supply, better prices. Then add the "investors", buying all property to rent it. Now add the NIMBYS to that humanitary tragedy.
-> There comes a point when the rich country population is unsustainable, and the immigration floodgates are opened. (Cheap labor, anyone?) US and Canada are there already. If not done correctly, that creates many more social issues for everybody (even the immigrants)
I [mostly] don't disagree with what you've written here. I think you misinterpreted my point. I'm not trying to say smoking and parenthood are the exact same, I'm trying to say wanting to take a date out for a nice meal with no screaming infants and racial segregation are absolutely NOT the same.
I live in apartments in Austin. The only reason people get dogs is because everyone else has one. And there are plenty of instances of untrained and abused animals. My downstairs neighbor keeps a dog so loud its bark can be heard through a concrete floor. It barks at all hours of the day, night, and early morning. It's because these neighbors are inconsiderate assholes. The apartment complex management shrugs their shoulders. Hipster ghetto and I'm breaking my lease.
> I live in apartments in Austin. The only reason people get dogs is because everyone else has one.
I don’t know if I’m parsing this correctly. Are you saying that the only reason people get dogs in your particular apartment building in Austin is because everyone else has one?
Or are you saying that, in general, the only reason that people get dogs is because everyone else has one? The latter just isn’t correct. And I can’t speak to your particular apartment building, but I’d expect it’s not true for everyone there either.
What’s wrong with pitbulls? Every one I’ve met is a sweet little thing.
And I know the stats on dog attacks. Something like 10 a year from pitbulls could easily be down to owners buying them specifically to use them as weapons and training them as such.
Since you're aware of the statistics, how can you reconcile that only pitbulls seem to have bad owners? Wouldn't we assume a more normal distribution of bad owners across breeds, making golden retrievers, great danes, or bloodhounds just as likely to maim and kill other pets or children?
I don't really have a strong opinion on the subject, but in my life, Doberman Pinchers and German Shepherds have gone through phases of being seen as dangerous breeds as well. My suspicion is that owners who desire aggressive dogs also tune into this and train their dogs accordingly.
If you’re an owner who wants an attack dog pitbulls will be on your short list along side German Shepherds. Now, there are definitely some breeds that don’t have it in them to attack (and if they do it’s less likely to be reported). Even if you get bitten by a chihuahua you’re not super likely to file a police report. And I will admit that you would be hard pressed to get a French Bulldog or Pug to hurt someone. But I don’t think pitbulls deserve to be singled out.
I've known a lot of German Shepherds (>10), and while they tend to be incredibly protective of their owners and their home, they don't seem to have the externally-directed aggression that I've seen from pitbulls. YMMV of course.
Also, FWIW, the only dogs I have been bitten by were a Chihuahua and a Pomeranian.
There is more to this than immediate comfort or being childish.
On one hand is taking responsibility for your kid and ensuring they are not a nuisance for other people. You should not outsource your responsibilities.
On the other hand understanding that kids are not full grown adults and that raising one is hard. It's also about understanding that if everyone stops having kids society will collapse in a couple of decades.
I responded slow to you on this, as I'm not entirely sure on direction.
I certainly was too vague in my opening post. Not wanting to be around someone is, all told, fine. When I say "can't handle kids being around," I'm largely talking about the ones that have adult tantrums.
My main concern is we seem to have taken the view that parents are "outsourcing their responsibilities." But, so has society, as a whole. It isn't any individual's responsibility to make sure kids have a safe place to be kids. Both loudly and quietly. It is, ultimately, everyone's. As such, if you build a place that you don't let kids in, don't be surprised when the kids don't know how to behave in that place.
So much "public space" has been reduced to isolated pseudo private islands where people want to be out, but also want everyone else to not be there. I'm not saying we should all be one communal table, but I do hate that we all seem to always want the private booths, if you will.
I'm somewhat sympathetic. Especially so as I know this can range heavily in impact on folks. Such that wanting a place reserved for low noise makes sense. Educating kids on how to act in those environments is important, and can't be done by forbidding them from being there. Often you are left with adults that then don't know how to act in those places, either.
I have on rare occasion asked parents of kids to be more mindful, I received the sort of vitriol one should expect from parents who have thus far failed to instil manners into their kids. Not once has any good come from it - so I have given up. There is no education happening there and there is clearly nothing I can do about it. Parents especially seem oblivious to noise of own kids. For the cafe, instead of making judgment calls on a case by case basis which can cause insult to the parents it's simply easier to have a blanket ban. I could see it being a problem if the cafe was the only place in existence, but children can practice their manners elsewhere, there are plenty of other places for them to go. I don't see how having one additional place would improve their manners.
I'd argue the point is not to "ask the parents to mind their kids," but to engage with the kids. This could be as simple as saying hello for some kids, as they almost certainly haven't really registered that there are others around. It could be broadcasting good behavior. It could be all of the above.
The easy push back is it isn't your responsibility. I'm rather uninterested in apportioning who should do what. It is in your interest to help, though. However you can.
The harder pushback will be that some parents won't like you engaging with their kids. That is an education that we somehow seriously perverted in our culture. Letting the village raise the kids takes education and engagement all around.
Giving the kids a direct talking to is even less productive, I don’t know what fantasifull world you preside but it bears little semblance to what I perceive to be reality. In the US you have no idea how the parents will react when acting as advocates for the kids, enough will act violently to make it a very bad idea.
I fully grant that having kids changes the dynamics. A lot. But I'm not saying to scold or "having a direct talking" with the kids. I'm saying to engage. It works far better than you give credit there.
Now. I also fully grant that I may be speaking from privilege. Mayhap something about me looks more approachable for whatever reason. I lament that I don't know how to spread whatever that is.
It used to be if a kid was misbehaving or damaging property, you could, as a random adult, tell them to stop. Now, you can't dare speak without the potential of an ugly confrontation because you dared talk to their little price or princess.
If that's the norm, I'd rather not have stranger's kids around in public spaces.
Similarly, it used to be that a village raised the kids. We somehow shifted that so that the liability and work is to be borne by the immediate parents, and them alone.
It used to be that children were the retirement plan, now that retirements are funded with pooled financial instruments that direct link has been severed. Now the benefit of educating children is pooled but the cost is individualized, some people are figuring that they can optimize their personal gain by minimizing their own investment in their children.
I'd push that you could equally frame the narrative that many external entities found ways to extract profit out of neighborhoods? Easy examples are small shops that used to have much of the profit go local.
Sadly, this isn't as easy as "support local bookstores." They are also value extracted, at large, by the publishing mechanisms at play.
That is to say, it is easy to blame the parents for neglecting their kids. But... it is far more complicated.
It is nice to have places reserved for lots of things. So, I am not stating that these things should not be allowed to exist.
I will assert that places which don't teach the younger generations to interact in them, and instead forbid them from being there, are doing themselves a disservice.
But if there are "quiet hours" or "adult swim" times, that makes sense. All the more so when there are kids around to see how that operates. :D
Modest idea: Moderately tax no-kids zones. Spend the money to subsidize services which are ~essential to those with young children (such as day care) and ~useless to those without.
Most people go through the public school system - so childless or not, you could think of that tax as paying back for the education they already received.
2. From my experience of public school it's more of a cost than a benefit. Many thousands of hours wasted, bullying incurred, etc. (That its value was negative does not reduce the other point about cost in taxes.)
> With young South Koreans already facing pressure on multiple fronts – from sky-high real estate costs and long working weeks to rising economic anxiety – critics of the zones say the last thing the country needs is yet one more thing to make them think twice about starting a family.
But no, let’s talk about the cafes, those are clearly the problem.
A sad data point, proximate to anonym29's comment: 2 decades ago, the apartment complex I currently live in did not allow any dogs, and was swarming with small (and often noisy) children.
Now, the dogs greatly outnumber the children. And the monthly rent (with no real physical improvements) is nearly 3x higher.
An opinion, to be sure, but not the only one. If child free, you’re only vested in whatever it takes to get you to the grave comfortably, demographically speaking (and there are already 8 billion people on the planet, headed to 10 billion).
Another opinion is that children are a luxury good, not a necessity.
I’m happy to discuss what “pro social” means in another thread to prevent derailing this one, to be polite to the forum. My thoughts on the idea are that it means taking care of everyone existing first at a reasonable level of quality, before encouraging more folks to have kids with social or economic incentives because the economic pyramid scheme is at risk [1].
If you have the resources, the support network, and the emotional aptitude, by all means, invest in having children. Even if you don’t enjoy the experience (the data shows a significant percentage of parents do not), society gets them as taxpayers eventually. But if you don’t, don’t. The data shows that if unintended pregnancies are avoided (about 40% globally annually, per the Guttmacher Institute and the UN) [2], the fertility rate will settle someone between 50-75% of replacement rate (2.1).
TLDR Optimize for your own happiness (“do no harm but take no shit”). Ignore peer and societal pressure. If that means not having kids, and that causes society challenges, that’s a society problem to solve, versus dumping that externality and reduction of agency, freedom, and options on individuals.
Definitely sucks when liabilities come due and you can no longer kick the can down the road. Society will need to become comfortable with the additional go forward productivity drag incurred.
>> Anyone who is child free still has a vested interest in the future generation.
> If child free, you’re only vested in whatever it takes to get you to the grave comfortably
Aren't you saying the same thing as parent post? When someone's 60 to 80 years old, which generation is going to "to get them to the grave comfortably"?
Basic necessities like food, etc, no matter the current amount of automation to multiply outputs, you still need a baseline of working people.
Maybe, with regard to living in an area with/without kids around.
But for those who want to have children of their own...what I've heard from younger folks around here, that really does not look like an option anymore, unless you're in the 1%.
Not to get all political or spin conspiracy theories, but this makes you wonder why we are going in a direction where abortion + birth control will be illegal (at least for most people). Not to mention relaxing the age requirements for being able to work. Could this be a strategy to force people to reproduce and ensure that the poorly payed, disposable workers supply does not run dry?
At least in America, the most-popular-and-growing preference for birth control seems to be "not in a relationship". Trying to force people past that barrier might get some more-zealous pushback.
I'm suggesting that fewer humans isn't a problem, never mind a "sad" development. That's doubly true when the "fewer humans" is the result of a voluntary choice people make, rather than one of the more traditional ways of obtaining "fewer humans" in a historical context.
Here's a thought. Allow kids, but require that they have manners and are well behaved. I love kids and have no problems with them, but hate kids that have no manners and are not well behaved because the parents are not doing their job. The same is true with dogs. Both take work, but as a parent and a dog owner those are part of your job.
This is actually self enforcing for the most part. Raising kids who can behave themselves in a modern restaurant (e.g., 100+ dB crowd noise, large open spaces, and hour-long waits) involves a certain amount of luck. It's hard to be the only person expected to sit still and be quiet with no explanation as to why.
But once you know the range of social settings where you can expect your kids to behave, you can opt out of certain situations. I have two kids, both are now college age. We rarely took them to restaurants. It was unpleasant for us, unpleasant for them, and expensive. In fact I live in a town that's known for being a place to raise kids, and most people don't take their kids to restaurants that are not overtly kid friendly.
At the same time, people being more tolerant of the normal range of behaviors exhibited by children, could also be a matter of parents doing their job.
Just note that "noisy kid" may mean "parents are not doing their job" or "kid with ADHD" or "autistic kid" or "kid having emotional difficulties while parents undergoing divorce", etc.
> This sort of ageism is bikeshedding a nothingburger.
There is something funny about this sentence. Ageism, bikeshedding and nothingburger all sound like relatively new and currently popular words. Using them all at once kind of turns it into a caricature, but maybe that was the point.
> The real issue is the shunning, misery, suffering, starvation, and suicides of the elderly.
???
The current elderly have it by far the best out of any elderly generation that has lived during human civilization so far. Including the best possible health care and using up so much resources that it is likely siphoning it unsustainably from the younger generations, in the form of insolvent Social Security and other means.
In what conceivable universe are elderly a concern?
Personally I've found the presence of children in restaurants can be totally fine depending on the parents. If they keep a handle on them they're no more unpleasant than an adult. If they're trashy people who let their kids scream and carry on it's a nightmare.
I haven't lived in SK but I'm surprised there are many people who would let their kids be disruptive.
That's very true in general, but anecdotally the children in Korea (the few I saw) were very well behaved. They didn't shout, scream, cry or anything. Even when playing, running around etc. they were remarkably quiet. It's a combination of education and culture.
They have control over whether their kids are screaming where it will disrupt other people. You can always take a child into the bathroom or outside where you can resolve the issue without being a menace to other peoples' experience.
Being a parent today is substantially more demanding than it was in the past and this has very wide-raning consequences:
1. While the monetary demands have increased, they are not a huge factor. That's why in places with generous subsidies and cash transfers, the impact on fertility has been positive, but pretty limited.
2. There's a backlash against "wokeness" and women's rights. being a father was easy and spending your nights at the bar with your buddies was perfectly socially acceptable. The demands on being a "good" father today have risen substantially, more so than for women, and some men cannot bear this new burden. But rather than admit weakness they try to point the blame on women who demand the burden be spread equally.
3. People have pets instead of kids. The money, care and attention your average tech worker's dog or cat receives today is probably the same as the average person devoted to their kids in the 50s. That is to say, people's preference for taking care of living being and companionship has not changed much, but many people have been "priced out" because of the new demands. In other words, many of the people you see with pets but no kids today (or pets and one kid) would have been perfectly capable and happy with kids in the past.
If you believe this, as I do, than it's bad news because there's nothing easy on the horizon that can fix this. Cash transfers and subsidies help a little. Support from companies for parental leave help a little. Humanoid house robots could help a lot (imagine a $30k TeslaBot that can do all your housework, no more cleaning, garbage, cooking, tidying, laundry or yardwork), but then the demands for childcare could just take this into account and keep increasing.
In the (very limited) time I've spent in Korea, I got the suspicion that the low birth rate may also be related to the increasing divergence between the life expectations of younger women and the gender norms of Korean society which make 1950s USA look like a woke paradise in comparison.
(Disclosure, I am a parent and a happy one.)
There is something so bleak about the quiet child hate in the modern world. To me, it implies on some level a lack of hope for a better future. This is as far as I can tell, a systemic problem of the modern world. Yes, bad kids are annoying. We've all been there. The problem is the behavior, not the fact that the misbehaving human is young. I'd be perfectly fine with designated public "quiet zone" (like libraries have been forever) and most kids could probably handle that concept too. Exclude behaviors, not people. As another example the article mentioned older men harassing young female wait staff, for those cases have a "no-romance zone". Anyone who can't abide by the rules gets ejected from that space. It's not that complicated. The real issue to me is that some people are offended that the young exist. I don't like people much either in general, but I don't resent their very existence. Kids are good if for no other reason than to remind you what a fool you were at that age. You're probably just as much a fool now, just (hopefully) in new and interesting ways.
Where i live in Europe "quiet child hate" is not a thing. People take their kids everywhere and they are well behaved because the world takes them seriously here.
It really strange how american kids are so I'll behaved compared to most places here in Europe. Definitely systemic factors at play.
> I am a parent and a happy one.) There is something so bleak about the quiet child hate in the modern world. To me, it implies on some level a lack of hope for a better future.
It is not. You are giving a wider scope to something very trivial, such as feeling upset by sudden and very high noises, and the annoyance of little kids running around unsupervised. There is no higher meaning here, just the need for education.
The problem with "eject behaviors, not people" is that it puts a burden on the staff. People who are misbehaving often do not accept "you are behaving badly, please leave". They're often argumentative -- if they were polite, they wouldn't have engaged in that behavior in the first place. By the time they can tell that the behavior is a problem, it's more difficult to fix.
That's where these rules come from. The staff has to make a choice: tolerate the unpleasant behavior, or risk ratcheting it up to even worse behavior by intervening. It was bad for business, so they made rules. They knew it would cost something; they believed that the benefit was worth the cost.
I do believe that it's incumbent on adults without children to tolerate children to a considerable degree -- more than seems fair to them. But I've also found that a lot of parents consider "I'm raising the next generation and therefore justified in demanding infinite tolerance" to be valid, and that's just not right. When we can't negotiate a middle ground, extremes get set.
It's not child hate, unless you count the sarcastic younger generations' dark jokes. For me and my wife, it was a rational decision. We never enjoyed kids much, we have careers that we wanted to fully pursue, and other people are having enough kids to make up for our lack of 1-2 more. We're also convinced that the world is overpopulated. What's the advantage of being 9 billion or more against being, say, 5 billion? The happiest countries in the world have lower population density, so the resources aren't as strained, and the natural beauty is still afordable to all. Dwindling gradually shouldn't be as disruptive as we're made to believe.
That, and also the glomy future our kids would have had. The biggest culprits of climate change and pollution aren't giving signs of stopping anytime soon (even more with the recent demagogic resurgence), and while we'll be dead in a few more decades, the younger generations will live in harder times than we did. Not having kids is also an abstentionist stament, because people who want more kids overlap significantly with people who don't care about the world they'll be leaving to those kids.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadToo bad, when you live in a society, you have to deal with other people living in the society including those under the age of 18.
Both concepts (white only and childfree) are the same (Exclusion of the others), and come from the same place (My right to have what I want is more important than everybody else's)
Same as it was considered bad taste to have blacks lingering around, now it is bad taste to have children running around.
It's also funny that you are OK with "it is bad taste to have dogs running around", almost like it's your preference..
Smoking and parenthood are lifestyle choices, which have consequences. Skin color is not, and shouldn't. It is not relevant to the conversation.
In any case, the woman has, at minimum, several months of time between the moment she becomes aware of a pregnancy and the moment a viable, live birth occurs.
Since the 70's, PP could get you in same week for an abortion. It didn't matter what the pregnant woman's skin color, income/wealth, zip code, age, disability, national origin, religious views, or any other bit of demographic data was - this was something rapidly and easily accessible to anyone with thousands of locations across the U.S.
Granted, this has regrettably changed in recent times, so I'll give you that.
On a tangent - it's so bizarre to me that when the conservatives who can almost incessantly be found talking about the importance of "small government" finally seized a modicum of real power in the US via SC majority, some of their very first actions were increasing the scope of the rules and regulations of big government. :|
While the latter is certainly extremely reasonable and humane relative to the former, that condition is still an insurmountable barrier for lower income, cognitively impaired, or otherwise vulnerable folks.
If you lack the means to obtain another citizenship, you are more or less the partial property of the government you were born into (given they are legally entitled to a portion of all your earnings), and you have no way of leaving.
That we more or less "trap" the vulnerable into partial financial servitude wherever they're born makes me mildly uncomfortable in the same manner that the concept of chattel slavery makes me deeply uncomfortable - no person or institution ought to have such dominion over another living, breathing person that the latter cannot disassociate from former.
We wax and wane about the necessity of such resulting from the social contract, but the social contract is the only contract I know of that is both serious and enforced (even if not literally defined), whilst not being one that you enter into voluntarily.
A key component of what renders a contract valid in contractual law in the US (stemming from common law) is that all parties to the contract must enter into it voluntarily, with full knowledge of it, free from coercion or deception.
We at least ought to stop calling it a "contract" and start calling it what it really is - Demands for involuntary tributes to the ruling elites (who benefits more from taxpayer dollars - the poor and needy, or Lockheed Martin executives?), that you must comply with under threat of force, up to and including lethal if you resist the wrong way.
I'm not saying the alternative is simple, but it seems unjust to me that human societies force their most vulnerable people into subservient economic relationships with governments (that have lengthy track records of using those very same tax dollars to perform horrific and flagrant atrocities against humanity, like drone bombing weddings, abducting and torturing innocent people, etc), based purely on where they're born.
Animals don't engage in this kind of depravity - why must we?
I hope the societies of the distant future look back on our current system of government and see it for the barbaric, medieval, and inhumane institution it really was.
I am already 100% confident I will never see a penny from it, and as a result, I'm saving and investing so aggressively that I'll be on track for my investment income to exceed my FAANG income before I'm 40.
Relying on unsustainable government wealth redistribution programs is cargo cult behavior.
You are mixing up many different unrelated topics here.
Smoking is [mostly] a choice. You used it for an analogy. You explained why it is good to have smoking laws. Then you act like this is part of the conversation on the same level as childfree zones. Smoking is a personal and a public health issue. You getting cancer is expensive for everyone, your non smoking flatmate getting smoking derived cancer is a tragedy (and expensive for everyone) Definitely not in the same level as ruckus, dirt and destruction of property.
Parenthood as in "how many children will someone have" is [mostly] a choice. But there are many reasons for society benefitting parenthood in spite of exclusionists (How to call them NIMBYS?)
-> Children are expensive for parents. CONVERSELY, they are fantastic for economy. Parents are forced to work because they MUST SPEND. Not that they want, they MUST pay for food, care, health, education, clothing, entertaiment.
-> Housing is a very important current issue. Not only in the US. In the few countries I have cared to pay attention, there is the pertinent mafia who has (unofficially exclusive) permission to build, and they naturally build less than required: it is obvious, less supply, better prices. Then add the "investors", buying all property to rent it. Now add the NIMBYS to that humanitary tragedy.
-> There comes a point when the rich country population is unsustainable, and the immigration floodgates are opened. (Cheap labor, anyone?) US and Canada are there already. If not done correctly, that creates many more social issues for everybody (even the immigrants)
I don’t know if I’m parsing this correctly. Are you saying that the only reason people get dogs in your particular apartment building in Austin is because everyone else has one?
Or are you saying that, in general, the only reason that people get dogs is because everyone else has one? The latter just isn’t correct. And I can’t speak to your particular apartment building, but I’d expect it’s not true for everyone there either.
And I know the stats on dog attacks. Something like 10 a year from pitbulls could easily be down to owners buying them specifically to use them as weapons and training them as such.
I don’t think so… given breeds have different reputations, there’s no reason to expect that anything about their owners distributions to be random.
I don't really have a strong opinion on the subject, but in my life, Doberman Pinchers and German Shepherds have gone through phases of being seen as dangerous breeds as well. My suspicion is that owners who desire aggressive dogs also tune into this and train their dogs accordingly.
Also, FWIW, the only dogs I have been bitten by were a Chihuahua and a Pomeranian.
On one hand is taking responsibility for your kid and ensuring they are not a nuisance for other people. You should not outsource your responsibilities.
On the other hand understanding that kids are not full grown adults and that raising one is hard. It's also about understanding that if everyone stops having kids society will collapse in a couple of decades.
I certainly was too vague in my opening post. Not wanting to be around someone is, all told, fine. When I say "can't handle kids being around," I'm largely talking about the ones that have adult tantrums.
My main concern is we seem to have taken the view that parents are "outsourcing their responsibilities." But, so has society, as a whole. It isn't any individual's responsibility to make sure kids have a safe place to be kids. Both loudly and quietly. It is, ultimately, everyone's. As such, if you build a place that you don't let kids in, don't be surprised when the kids don't know how to behave in that place.
So much "public space" has been reduced to isolated pseudo private islands where people want to be out, but also want everyone else to not be there. I'm not saying we should all be one communal table, but I do hate that we all seem to always want the private booths, if you will.
The easy push back is it isn't your responsibility. I'm rather uninterested in apportioning who should do what. It is in your interest to help, though. However you can.
The harder pushback will be that some parents won't like you engaging with their kids. That is an education that we somehow seriously perverted in our culture. Letting the village raise the kids takes education and engagement all around.
Now. I also fully grant that I may be speaking from privilege. Mayhap something about me looks more approachable for whatever reason. I lament that I don't know how to spread whatever that is.
It used to be if a kid was misbehaving or damaging property, you could, as a random adult, tell them to stop. Now, you can't dare speak without the potential of an ugly confrontation because you dared talk to their little price or princess.
If that's the norm, I'd rather not have stranger's kids around in public spaces.
Similarly, it used to be that a village raised the kids. We somehow shifted that so that the liability and work is to be borne by the immediate parents, and them alone.
Sadly, this isn't as easy as "support local bookstores." They are also value extracted, at large, by the publishing mechanisms at play.
That is to say, it is easy to blame the parents for neglecting their kids. But... it is far more complicated.
I will assert that places which don't teach the younger generations to interact in them, and instead forbid them from being there, are doing themselves a disservice.
But if there are "quiet hours" or "adult swim" times, that makes sense. All the more so when there are kids around to see how that operates. :D
A better starting point is to take down artificial costs imposed on childrearing, like https://thezvi.substack.com/p/on-car-seats-as-contraception
2. From my experience of public school it's more of a cost than a benefit. Many thousands of hours wasted, bullying incurred, etc. (That its value was negative does not reduce the other point about cost in taxes.)
Seriously recommending his work betrays a serious lack of knowledge of the field.
But no, let’s talk about the cafes, those are clearly the problem.
Now, the dogs greatly outnumber the children. And the monthly rent (with no real physical improvements) is nearly 3x higher.
(Location - south-east Michigan, USA.)
(And that rent, woof)
Another opinion is that children are a luxury good, not a necessity.
If you have the resources, the support network, and the emotional aptitude, by all means, invest in having children. Even if you don’t enjoy the experience (the data shows a significant percentage of parents do not), society gets them as taxpayers eventually. But if you don’t, don’t. The data shows that if unintended pregnancies are avoided (about 40% globally annually, per the Guttmacher Institute and the UN) [2], the fertility rate will settle someone between 50-75% of replacement rate (2.1).
TLDR Optimize for your own happiness (“do no harm but take no shit”). Ignore peer and societal pressure. If that means not having kids, and that causes society challenges, that’s a society problem to solve, versus dumping that externality and reduction of agency, freedom, and options on individuals.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36468226
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36127247
> If child free, you’re only vested in whatever it takes to get you to the grave comfortably
Aren't you saying the same thing as parent post? When someone's 60 to 80 years old, which generation is going to "to get them to the grave comfortably"?
Basic necessities like food, etc, no matter the current amount of automation to multiply outputs, you still need a baseline of working people.
Maybe, with regard to living in an area with/without kids around.
But for those who want to have children of their own...what I've heard from younger folks around here, that really does not look like an option anymore, unless you're in the 1%.
But once you know the range of social settings where you can expect your kids to behave, you can opt out of certain situations. I have two kids, both are now college age. We rarely took them to restaurants. It was unpleasant for us, unpleasant for them, and expensive. In fact I live in a town that's known for being a place to raise kids, and most people don't take their kids to restaurants that are not overtly kid friendly.
At the same time, people being more tolerant of the normal range of behaviors exhibited by children, could also be a matter of parents doing their job.
Just note that "noisy kid" may mean "parents are not doing their job" or "kid with ADHD" or "autistic kid" or "kid having emotional difficulties while parents undergoing divorce", etc.
The real issue is the shunning, misery, suffering, starvation, and suicides of the elderly.
There is something funny about this sentence. Ageism, bikeshedding and nothingburger all sound like relatively new and currently popular words. Using them all at once kind of turns it into a caricature, but maybe that was the point.
???
The current elderly have it by far the best out of any elderly generation that has lived during human civilization so far. Including the best possible health care and using up so much resources that it is likely siphoning it unsustainably from the younger generations, in the form of insolvent Social Security and other means.
In what conceivable universe are elderly a concern?
I haven't lived in SK but I'm surprised there are many people who would let their kids be disruptive.
Being a parent today is substantially more demanding than it was in the past and this has very wide-raning consequences:
1. While the monetary demands have increased, they are not a huge factor. That's why in places with generous subsidies and cash transfers, the impact on fertility has been positive, but pretty limited.
2. There's a backlash against "wokeness" and women's rights. being a father was easy and spending your nights at the bar with your buddies was perfectly socially acceptable. The demands on being a "good" father today have risen substantially, more so than for women, and some men cannot bear this new burden. But rather than admit weakness they try to point the blame on women who demand the burden be spread equally.
3. People have pets instead of kids. The money, care and attention your average tech worker's dog or cat receives today is probably the same as the average person devoted to their kids in the 50s. That is to say, people's preference for taking care of living being and companionship has not changed much, but many people have been "priced out" because of the new demands. In other words, many of the people you see with pets but no kids today (or pets and one kid) would have been perfectly capable and happy with kids in the past.
If you believe this, as I do, than it's bad news because there's nothing easy on the horizon that can fix this. Cash transfers and subsidies help a little. Support from companies for parental leave help a little. Humanoid house robots could help a lot (imagine a $30k TeslaBot that can do all your housework, no more cleaning, garbage, cooking, tidying, laundry or yardwork), but then the demands for childcare could just take this into account and keep increasing.
It really strange how american kids are so I'll behaved compared to most places here in Europe. Definitely systemic factors at play.
It is not. You are giving a wider scope to something very trivial, such as feeling upset by sudden and very high noises, and the annoyance of little kids running around unsupervised. There is no higher meaning here, just the need for education.
That's where these rules come from. The staff has to make a choice: tolerate the unpleasant behavior, or risk ratcheting it up to even worse behavior by intervening. It was bad for business, so they made rules. They knew it would cost something; they believed that the benefit was worth the cost.
I do believe that it's incumbent on adults without children to tolerate children to a considerable degree -- more than seems fair to them. But I've also found that a lot of parents consider "I'm raising the next generation and therefore justified in demanding infinite tolerance" to be valid, and that's just not right. When we can't negotiate a middle ground, extremes get set.
That, and also the glomy future our kids would have had. The biggest culprits of climate change and pollution aren't giving signs of stopping anytime soon (even more with the recent demagogic resurgence), and while we'll be dead in a few more decades, the younger generations will live in harder times than we did. Not having kids is also an abstentionist stament, because people who want more kids overlap significantly with people who don't care about the world they'll be leaving to those kids.