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Campaigners tie baby slings to statues in call for better UK paternity leave
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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There are already way, way too many people on the planet. We shouldn't be forced to support someone else's family.
Those new people being born will end up funding your state pention. Unless your fine not having one
They'll also fund all infrastructure in the future, produce all goods and staff the nursing homes where these egotistical assholes will end up.
So true the amount of people that don't get this.
I get it, I just also understand humans are destroying our only environment. Were driving the fifth ever mass extinction of life on Earth.
We literally can't keep living the way we are.
Yeah, 100% agree. This is entirely driven by selfishness and avarice.
I'd rather have a functioning ecosystem and mitigated climate change.
Not to put words in your mouth, but do you really think the best reason to have a child is for the good of the economy?
Individuals have a perverse relationship to the economy where what's good for the individual diverges from what is good for the economy. For example saving money is good but if everyone does it then you can end up with deflation like Japan.
In terms of children people do it due to biological urges without fully assessing the hit to quality of life or finances. The economy needs more workers at every point though since pensions are essentially a ponzi scheme.
Nope, that is not at all what I think, nor what in said.
I hope you’ll remember that should you or your family ever need state hand outs.
I'm fine with regular support for people who need it, but not paying for people to create more people. There are WAY too many of us already.
Most western states are looking at bleak prospects in terms of keeping their welfare system going unless the citizens have more children.
Either that or accept immigration, which many western states don’t want to do either.
Yeah, that's going to suck, but the apparent alternative is continuing massive overconsumption that will eventually cause much worse problems.
Immigration will be a huge problem that's already being exacerbated by climate change and disinformation.
There are too many people, I’ll agree.
However you can’t take away peoples biological rights to reproduce.
But you can give fathers a bit more time off early on to help with looking after their family. A few weeks of extra paternity leave funding would probably work out cheaper in the long run for the treasury vs all the alternatives.
Plus you need a constantly supply to refresh the workers who are getting older and cluttering up the top of the population pyramid.
I'm not trying to take anyone's "rights to reproduce," I just don't want someone reaching onto my wallet to incentivize increased population because its a stupid thing to do that harm humanity in the long run
This is coming from somene who supports things like single-payer universal healthcare, broad financial support for education, ensuring housing for people, etc.
How is giving fathers a bit of extra time off incentivising increasing the population??? They were going to have the child anyway!
It’s not reaching into your wallet, it’s everyone’s. And the cost is far offset by the taxes levied on that child when it starts work anyway.
Its right there in what you typed, its giving them time off. That's what inventivizes them.
I'm part of everyone, so yes, it's reaching into my wallet.
No it isn’t. I speak from personal experience. Twice.
Would you honestly take on at least 18 years of responsibility for another human being in exchange for a couple of weeks off work? Do you seriously consider that an incentive?
If I knew the goverent would support me like that I'd be more likely to have a child
I just want to be absolutely clear here, to make sure that you fully understand the question, because your answer suggests you don't: It's not couple of weeks a year, it's just a couple of weeks, right at the start, and it's not a holiday, you have to look after the baby at its most helpless during those extra weeks of leave. Are you sure that you consider a few extra weeks of looking after a child to be worth 18 years of looking after the child? Like I'm not doing a silly hypothetical where I ask if you consider yourself more or less likely to consider having a child in future, I am asking you, personally, if you will be having a child and raising it should men recieve more paternal leave.
Says who? Populations are expected the level off. We produce enough food for 10 billion currently before we even get to our advances in green energy and agriculture. Our housing issues are political.
It's a weird angle to take against equality.
Says the fact that we'd require several more earth size planets just to sustain current human consumption, or the fact that we're killing off other life on the planet at an almost unprecedented rate.
We produce enough food to feed everyone... in a completely unsustainable way.
Come on, what a shitty strawman.
Your logic is flawed. Even if we reduced births to 10% of current rates. Those children would need more parental support for longer. As that generation would be more dependent on parental and family bonding due to lack of a same aged community to learn and grow with.
We are a species evolved to have very, very dependent young, rather than most other mammals. This presented up with advantages in the predator / prey fight that is evolution. But it also left our young depended on tribal societies to survive.
Parental leave is just the modern capitalistic equivalent of the tribe coming together to raise its young. It is the recent historic lack of it in many societies and post-industrial revolution that is odd. Not the return.
You as a non parent will eventually need these children to learn to manage the society you live in. Just because you choose to be child free yourself. Does not mean you will not depend on them as adults as you age. As you age you will need educated doctors nurses and Bin men to ensure your life is liveable. Those adults are the very children you think are not your responsibility now.
But unless you are a hermit living entirely on the milk of your own land. (if so you are already not funding this).
Then yes, you and all of us are involved in raising the future population.
I get all of that, I also understand that we literally have no choice but to change how we live because it's completely unsustainable.
Ignoring the fact that the Earth is already way over populated isn't helping anything.
My point was more about your attitude towards parental leave.
But it is not actually a dact thar trhe earth is over populated. How we live is more an issue then the numbers.
Any science on the autual numbers earth can support leaves us with a few bln to go.
But that science doselt allow for capatalism.
You're putting up optimistic hypothetical consumption scenarios against an ongoing global mass extinction, climate change, and environmental degradation caused by our actual real world consumption
As opposed to controlling a mammals desire to breed?
It not like either solution is easier.
We’ve already lucked into a solution to the population boom, the numbers will level off around 10 billion. Given how intractable population control is, we’re very lucky we’ve found this without some dystopian shitshow.
In the developed world we are approaching the opposite problem, we’re currently dependant on immigration to maintain our societies, but as the rest of the world stops growing we’ll have more trouble getting that immigration and won’t have the local young population to care for our elderly.
Given that we should be trying to figure out how to encourage a sustainable population whilst we still have time to do so. If we can choose between 1.9->2.2 children per couple as needed then we’ll be in a healthy position to slowly reduce the population to a comfortable level.
Right now our natural population decline in the developed world is too fast, probably because our society has made being a parent quite an individual burden. Of course, totally moving the costs to a societal model would be a disaster, but presumably there’s a middle ground where people are comfortable keeping the society going at a healthy rate.
Yes, I generally agree. I can't help but note that we aren't expected to hit peak population for a long time. There's a good chance we'll both be underground by the time it happens.
Meanwhile, many of the key metrics we use to monitor the environment have already been indicating irreversible damage for decades.
Piss off Malthus
I was thinking of thanos but yeah
Another thoughtful argument from Hexbear.
Eco-fash don't deserve my best effort.
They weren't way too many people on the planet there's way too much holding resources, you monumental pillock
Unless you have a super duper magical way of changing how billions of people live, it's both.