Why do people have children? Why are people today having less children?

This is an interesting question about life. As we all know, no one lives forever. Nor does anyone stay the same age forever. And especially for females, no one is capable of reproduction forever, nor does anyone keep their looks forever. 

So reproduction for HUMANS is not a life goal we must/are programed achieve. Humans don't have a defined goal in life. But at the same time, reproduction means a lot to human beings. It is a way of passing down not only genes - that's an important part, but may not be the most important for humans. 

Humans had children in the past to pass down culture, tradition, the family name, family VALUES and wealth. These things no longer seem to be as important today, even though I believe that values is an important thing. Nowadays, people have kids to start a family (important here - when you have a kid, you start a family), because they want to be parents, or maybe they felt that something was missing from their life, that they are not fulfilled. Or, they may just love kids.

The time of the average worker is a resource. Indeed, it was revealed that Nike measures the time taken to perform each step of production precisely to 4 decimal places (in seconds). This may sound ridiculous, but in such a fast-paced, money driven world, efficiency is everything. It can mean the difference between winning a contract bid or losing a billion dollar profit.

OK, getting back to kids and reproduction. If time of the average individual is so scarce, where will you get the time to take care of the kid? You don't. So you go off to a daycare center so as to centralize the babies. But what's the fun? Not 

Children are also getting more and more expensive to raise. To fund about 20 years of full-time education, the amount of money is very large. Also, with the inflation of currencies over many years, savings is hardly a way to come up with the money. Today, it takes a large chunk out of wages to provide for a kid. And in many situations, it takes two incomes to provide for everything. (depends on where you live)

So, people react in several ways to these problems. They will either not have them, or they will have less(for many, this means the minimum- 1 kid), OR they will invest the money. All these measures show one thing - having kids and coming up with the money to raise and educate the kid is quite a risk. 

WHY BOTHER?? The kid could grow up to become a punk anyway. 

At the same time, people don't feel that they have anything worthwhile to pass down. Family tradition? You're an ancient fart! Family values? What, are you Catholic?

So, why should one not want to have children? Because of many reasons...

- they hate kids - this reason tends to be rare.

- they are homosexual - they can still adopt, but my simulation tells me that homosexuals may tend to be more polygamous (multiple sexual partners) and less likely to have very long-term commitments.  

- they hate the opposite sex.

- they want full sexual freedom, forever. Monogamy is not their thing. They want to have many partners. 

- They want to be single. 

- Some women seem to believe that because by never reproducing, they will always look as good. Could be true, but it depends what you mean by good. If you mean attractiveness, then one tends to trade it out for a more mature, wise look.

- They hate commitments to anyone. 

- They have sworn to be virgins for their entire life. (What a pity, I'm not sure why nature gave you genitalia then...)

- they are ME ME ME and me! They don't want to share. (Put in nicer terms, they want to be financially independent.)

- They feel that they have other things better to do.

- they are not financially capable of providing for the kid.

- they can't find a partner for it.

- They want to live out their political beliefs.

Some of this MAY be attributed to the fact that the new younger generation come from a higher percentage of one-kid-only families. Many of the traits above are very much impossible to carry in a small family with few people. A big family with many siblings allows for a large group of people, and a large group of people may have more things in common. This sets up a basis for faith, religion and value systems, in which children are born to believe in. While people are not deterministic, I think people who grow up having no siblings may in turn choose to have a small family size themselves, partly because they may see no merit in having many kids. 

And where does this leave us? It may mean that in a society with people who only have 1 or 2 kids, successive generations may in turn have only 1 or 2 kids, with any number higher being rare. the trend may continue for a few generations to coe, given that there are no incentives or economic or social to encourage having more kids. 

But will just a fashionable trend of having kids be enough? People are still rational in the end, in the sense that they will do what they believe is good for them. Taking drugs may be a very irrational thing to do, but it depends on what perspective and how deeply you consider something you look at it. They usually want to have a quick answer to depression or they want to be happy - sounds reasonable. But what about the addiction and the dependence? So you have my rule - people are always rational, from the mal-investors to top CEOs, but the problem is that they are stupid (or put more precisely, they are not perfectly clever), they are lazy-ass and they are not all-knowing. With this in mind, this applies to every human being, regardless of how clever or stupid they are, we are all human- incapable of being always correct! And even if we were perfect, random and chaotic systems will always exist and will always own us. That's the beautiful truth of life.

However, whether this is actually a valid point remains to be seen. The reasons for the current birth rates tend to be other factors. 

As a side-note, I would also like to say that when I say have x number of kids, it can include adopted kids. They count too.

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Update Feb 1st, 2009

Geography is supposed to be a free subject. If Einstein was a geography, I'm sure we will have better explanations for many phenomenon. 

Higher education, jobs are probably the main reason why someone from the UN said "Economic Development is the best contraceptive".

This update will be mainly about human females. As I said, males are out of the question because men are not time-dependent. They don't lose fertility much as they get older. Their ability to get a mate tends to increase.

This is because higher education and careers take a lot of time to build. And it isn't a part-time job, which means that often, long-term relationships will take the back seat. By the time such a career is built, they will be at least 30 years old. I know this sounds completely crazy and offensive by today's standards of political correctness, but (I'm not a politician) this means that they do become

- less attractive

- less fertile

- more demanding

- will want someone who is higher in status than they are.

So males are less likely to want to have them as mates, and are less likely to be fitting. The women will also find that the men are less likely to be as qualified as they are. This is because the men left over who can't get a mate will tend to have a lower status or be less desirable by female standards.

So what do the men do? They try to get the best younger women, taking their time. What's the hurry anyway?

And as a side-point to the children issue, these women may find it difficult to find a mate, given today's mating trends. And more feminist laws will be passed to punish the men, encourage inter-gender AND intra-gender competition/conflict and put the government in a bad financial situation.

But what are the solutions? I think 

the most likely thing that will happen is some will get smart and seek mates earlier. But with the current mindset that many have, it's unlikely. Higher and higher education which leads to the careers, careers mindset will continue. Some demand student loans to get to university, further complexing the financial situation. The bubble will burst in the long term.

But in about 80 years time, the world may find that having children can be profitable. Once there is significantly less labour force around, it will give many reasons to people to have more babies. With the current economic situation, most people may find they become less wealthy, their retirement is less safe and hence to make their life more complete, having two kids is the optimum number.

But there is a problem to this. Will the culture change? Will mating rules change? Will women continue to fall into the "trap"? Will the people around to breed at that time change their mindset? What will this "financial tsunami" do to the economy and to the behavior of its participants?

Sidepoint: Will homosexuality make a difference? Not yet. But if homosexuals are legally allowed to marry and adopt or even have children, it may open up as a choice to some people and especially women. 

We are at a very special time in history. There are now be people who will never have offspring, and a society which accepts a variety of sexual and mating behavior. 

And Thomas Malthus is wrong. The population won't die out. It will just go into chaotic behavior or simple harmonic motion or the people learn to breed less (doesn't happen), until the problem is fixed.

Suppose you are a prison guard. 

Your commanding officer orders you to torture someone. 

You won't get in trouble if you did it.

Would you do it?

Suppose your family is suspected of something by the government. 

You happen to be an informant. 

Would you betray them?

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In an experiment done with volunteers, people were asked to ask questions to another person. If the asker got an incorrect answer, the answerer gets an electric shock. 

The test is repeated, with higher and higher voltages. 

At 150 volts,  70% of people were still willing to administer shocks to the other person.

This is quite a shocking result. 70%? That's 7 out of 10 people. 

And I guess if you people were threatened to do so, then 100% of you will willingly administer shocks. 

Even if the people you were shocking were people you care about.

Of course, people are free to control their actions. But why so prone to obedience?

Suppose we did the experiment at school with ordinary students, and a teacher was conducting the experiment. What would the results be?

Also, I believe that in East Germany, many people were willing to spy on their families and friends.

Personally, I am extremely disappointed at such results. It goes to show that people just will not stand up for anything at all when up against authority. They won't even stand up for reason and values, or more generally, principles.

Why do a standard of right or wrong exist? They exist to enhance the interactions, relationships and deals in a society or group of people. 

They exist so that the maximum number of people would be happy in the long term. 

They are meant to reduce the amount of arguments, or fights. 

The code is agreed on by the people and they uphold it.

The thing about values is that they can evoke emotions or the interests of people.  So, you can say that my disappointment at the results is an emotion response. And indeed it is. But there are also reasons for it, and these are backed by practical consequences of actions.

There are many standards and different societies hold different ones to be true. 

I know that there are some values that, if we abide to, makes everyone better off. Hence, the people in a society have an interest in following these values. Their interests are often fairness and prosperity.

morals

Society's code for individual survival.

ethics

An individual's code for society's survival.

The New Lantau Trip planning/gear post

Gear:
just got a lantern. Not larger than your average flashlight.
Interestingly, it uses the same type of LED as my headlight.
We have something to light up our cooking stuff and for someone to lead the way up Lantau Peak.

I am not getting a liner, unless it's so good it can be my sleeping bag. The worst case scenario is I put on everything I see, from the plastic bag to the emergency blanket.
Or, I can make my own...

Lantau trip HKAYP

I though the Lantau trip was in January 11-13... but apparently it gets put forwards.

So no more Bronze AYP practice trip...

Who carries what?

1 tent guy

1 tent guy

1 trangia, fuel guy

1 food, snack guy

I guess if the tents aren't actually that heavy, the food load and fuel load can be shared out.

Also, make sure we all bring hats and hiking sticks. Hiking sticks are good for long marches, because they make walking less boring and shares out some load. Hats are good because you don't want a freezing head. I'm thinking about some reflective cloth belts, so that it will be good for identification at night.

My headlight is marginally powerful, and someone should bring a more powerful flashlight, because it's much better for path-finding at night. If we missed a ribbon in some very nasty bush-wack, we may have to camp out for the night. Which I think would be ideal, but the rest of the group and teachers would find annoying.

Walking 50km in three days is not easy, and especially when we have less people than the other groups. Also take into account of getting lost or taking the wrong paths. 

Be prepared to walk from 0800 am to 2000 pm, because we must cover AT LEAST 17 kilometers everyday. 12 hours should be sufficient, given that we climb the tallest hills, instead of trying to traverse them. Traversing an overgrown/non-existent path is more dangerous than going up an established path.

I wander if we'll be more independent this time. I prefer no teacher, unless they are only shadowing us or good navigators. 

I'm not using matches this time (but maybe as backup), because they aren't windproof nor reliable enough. Lighters are better. I insist on getting the lighter Trangia, because we only have 4 people and it appears to be faster. 2 fuels should be marginally enough for 4 meals and drinking needs.

UV sterilization of water and active carbon filtration would be available, but it depends on how trusting you are to it. Active carbon filtration is necessary to remove any organic toxins that cannot be killed, and particles that may block UV. I am also thinking about double treatments just for safety. You may even choose to add iodine, but that is unnecessary, because iodine is milder than many other treatments. 

This is going to be pretty hard, so group cohesion is necessary, even when we are tired. We can't let members trail behind or get bored or too tired. Fatigue also contributes to errors.

Abortion

Abortion is an interesting topic, because there are conflicting interests. 

Babies have the inherent right to life, as given to them by a creator.

Some men and women, under certain conditions, want to get rid of the baby, because delivering it will have major financial consequences.

My solution is not to make abortions illegal, but to make it so that people make their own decisions, at their own cost, with their own minds and money, and the conditions defined. The conditions should be limited to sound medical reasons, substantial risk to lives or sexual assault. The abortion should also take place within the first 3 months. This should make people more aware of the consequences of their actions, which should be a positive outcome for both the mother, family and the child. Finally, this should also compromise a variety of views and interests.

Are babies alive and have human rights? YES! If someone pulled the fetus out of the mother and destroyed it, the person can be sued and put in jail for life for MURDER. The only time it is not, is when the fetus dies or is hurt, has a defect or the mother's life is endangered.

So the fetus/baby has a LEGAL human rights unless it is a danger to others or itself, where other rules overrides it.

Now, to the mother's rights. The baby is in the mother's body, but whether it is part of her body or a sovereign body is up for lots of debate, just as the issue of whether life begins at contraception. For the sake of covering the worst case scenario of this dilemma, I will assume that it is part of the mother's body. This means that the mother has the power to decide the fate of the child. But only if it affects her in a way that can be proven to be endangering or as a result of rape

Abortions as a result of rape can be prevented, should a person choose to do so. Humans have since had the ability to control their own fertility, and it's called birth-control pills. 

Feminists like to think and argue that women are special and helpless. They try to single out issues that concern to women and use those as bases to work outwards. Yet, if you look at women as nothing more than human beings, you realize that feminism was built on a huge mound of logical fallacies and hypocrisy. I hope women would think about this from a human, rather than female point of view and see through the sad, self-pitying crap before it engulfs the world.

One thing I hope everyone can agree on is that government should not, using taxpayer money, help abort fetuses. This is because, no one gets to control what their tax dollars are used for directly, and there are always some who won't agree with abortion.  

If one wants an abortion, people will have to fund it from some feminist charity, insurance or out of their own pockets. 

Suppose someone stole something from a victim. The victim goes over to the police. The thief is caught and charged with theft. But the item stolen was never found. Is it possible to get the police to buy you back the thing that was stolen? No. The police, courts and government don't do that. Why should they bail a woman/human out of a rape case? 

The government is not a savior designed to help everyone at everything. It just never works, unless government is able to create new resources infinitely and indefinitely. But that's never possible, so feminism would fail too.

So, I have arrived at the optimum method for defeating feminism. It is very simple. You leave them alone. Eventually, it would just collapse under its own weight or be overthrown by its once faithful followers, like the Soviet Union. In the meantime, one can speed up the process by getting others to challenge their own opinions.

Proof of God

Suppose before you were born, nothing existed. Nothing at all. The system itself didn't exist either.

Then how did it occur that there is now stuff in the system? 

Science has yet to explain how it is possible to create anything out of a complete void. Therefore, something bigger must have existed before the system. Maybe god.