Comment by Epa095
1 month ago
Well, this hit harder than I thought it would
My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. — No, no won’t do.
1 month ago
Well, this hit harder than I thought it would
My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. — No, no won’t do.
I try to remember Vonnegut: "We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."
An older lady friend used to say, "People like to spend their lives screaming around. When they don't want to wake others, they quietly fart around."
Vonnegut truly nailed it
Amen.
I had to look up the article to figure out if this was the intolerable downside of having kids (all this work raising them, and then they just fly out of the nest) or _not_ having them (with your scientific work the only great project of your life). I believe he meant the latter :)
Yeah it's in the marriage pros section, so I assume it's the latter. And worker bees can't reproduce.
Worker bees will reproduce when the hive queen's suppression pheremone disappears. Of course, they're not fertilized so they only produce haploid offspring, who in the bee world are all male and hence useless for anything but mating with a queen. Worker bees can't mate.
But I understand the sentiment.
1 reply →
In those those days though I'm not sure the calculus of working for the sake of the children was quite the same.
You might have kids, and then they work the farm, then you manage the farm and slowly the children take over the manual labor and hard work of it. In old age the investment in the children pays off and a reciprocal relationship is formed where you take care of the grandchildren and your own children take care of you.
Now that is flipped on its head. The parent makes the lions share of the investment in the child, but the benefits of the child is largely socialized. Want daycare, food, recreational, extra-cirricular activities -- basically anything other than public schooling you pay taxes for already? Go fuck yourself.
But once the children is grown up, well well well we are a society here! Tax the shit out of the kid, spread the social security benefits around to everyone including people that didn't raise any children. And if you directly want a piece of the investment from the children, as people got in the old days, well then go fuck yourself you greedy selfish bastard -- it is only morally right when all of society does the exact same thing to the kid.
There is every possible incentive in today's society to encourage others to have kids, ensuring your own retirement, but to reneg on doing it yourself because some other poor bastard can front most the costs and then you can tax the shit out of the kid for your retirement / social benefits. I think children were a rational decision in Darwin's day, now they are definitely not, because you are on the sucker end of a tragedy of the commons deal.
Another interesting cultural development here is that the scope of parental responsibility has started to extend into what is conventionally considered adulthood, obligating parents to pay for their child’s post-secondary education. By contrast, children have effectively no legal obligations to their parents in old age. This privileges those who invest in financial instruments in lieu of having children, since the instruments will (at least in theory) provide the investor with the resources necessary to hire help in their old age.
Is that actually a contrast though? Parents are generally considered to have some moral obligation to help their kids pay for college, but no legal obligation. Children are (generally?) considered to have some moral obligation to help out their elderly parents (in my family at least), but no legal one.
4 replies →
> children have effectively no legal obligations to their parents in old age
I don't know which country you are talking about, but at least in France and Belgium they do.
Parents do not have an obligation to pay for their children's post-secondary education though (but they have to provide for them if they are not financially independent).
Single people in Belgium often complain that they are more taxed than families and that it's some kind of injustice.
1 reply →
None of this applies to Darwin though, he was wealthy and didn't need to think about "working the farm".
Interesting, he doesn't portray his wealthiness in these readings, he seems to think kids might make him not have enough $ for books!
But apparently he needed to think about having to work for income to sustain a family.
2 replies →
You can see the consequences of this playing out in highly developed countries
> And if you directly want a piece of the investment from the children, as people got in the old days, well then go fuck yourself you greedy selfish bastard
consider the following: if your children don't care about you, the societal structure of capitalism may not be the primary reason.
To put it in words close to finance: it is not an early cash investment in daycare and food, but lifelong kin work, that is rewarded with emotional bonds and long term dividends.
Living together in multi-generational homes facilitates kin work, there i agree, but it is not a strictly necessary requirement.
There are also other effects at work, especially psychological. Many adults don't grasp that their elders have increased demands, because they are used to see them in a providing role. They understand it on a abstract and logical level, it is so obvious and well known, but to truly understand it on a personal level is far more difficult. In the same way people growing older often try to stay in this providing role as long as possible, as they for many years defined themselves through it.
There comes a time in life when easter invitations switch direction. If you live together on a farm, this changes gradually.
I think the more common scenario is the kid cares about the parent but is unable to financially assist them because they're being taxed 20-30% by "society" (who as a kid basically left them high and dry), in addition to paying a large amount for their own children due to society imposed costs like paying out regulatory / licensing / tax overhead for daycare which is now required because being a latchkey kid or going to unlicensed daycare is effectively illegal -- leaving nothing left over to assist the parents financially.
If you killed off social benefits, desirable or not, there would be lot more left over for intra-familial support and the incentive would come back for people to invest in their own children. Or alternatively under a more society-driven system, make a proportional societal investment in children to what you ultimately take from them so that the incentives are not skewed. Ultimately the issue here is not individualistic or social systems for raising children but rather shoving almost all the costs on the individuals and then totally changing the system to being societal as soon as society can extract benefit.
7 replies →
A farm, in the middle of 19th century London ?
Charles Darwin actually only lived in London for a few years, and spent most of his life in what was at that time the county of Kent. Although in any case, as you say, his home did not involve a farm.
> Tax the shit out of the kid, spread the social security benefits around to everyone including people that didn't raise any children.
You lost me here. I don’t have children but I pay into Social Security. Why shouldn’t I get something back in retirement?
I think you're looking at this with a misunderstanding of how SS works. You didn't pay hardly any SS to the youth that will support you from which you will make your demands. Rather you reciprocated to the investment made by elders that raised you.
The money you paid the elderly in SS is gone. The question is what proportion of the investment in the youth did you make that will pay you. Probably some, but likely less on average than a parent/guardian.
9 replies →
On marriage and partner - "These things good for one’s health."
Proven by modern science now. At least longer life.
The Natural state of Man -- at least, according to Ben Franklin.