site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37381 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The 7 Habits of Highly Fertile People

I Background

Look into the comment section of any mainstream video or article on below-replacement fertility, and you will find a familiar refrain: it is simply too expensive to have children.

However, despite this common meme, the data do not bear it out. Plotting Total Fertility Rate (TFR) vs Household Income actually produces a U shape with peaks at household incomes <$20k and >$1m, and trough around $200k per year. 2012-2016, 2018-2022.

What is happening here?

My wife and I are members of the PMC, as are most of our friends. We are in our mid-thirties. We have noticed that our friends are branching into one of two forks:

  • High-PMC who have a household income of $400k+ and are having 2-3 children.
  • Low-PMC who have a household income of $150k - $200k and are childless, or have one child and are baffled as to how they could afford more.

Recently, I have had the opportunity to get to know well two families quite outside our social circle. The first is the family of a carpenter who makes $30/hour, lives in a rural area 45 minutes outside of a tier-2 city, stay-at-home mom, five kids. The other is an urban family, headed by single-mom who works as a receptionist at a low-end hotel (making, I would guess $20-30k/year), also with five kids.

While these families are superficially quite different, when it comes to childrearing, they actually have a lot of beliefs and habits in common. And, these beliefs and habits stand in stark contrast to those of my peer group - folks who are making quite a bit more money and yet cannot imagine affording five children!

I document them below, mostly for myself:

TL;DR: High-fertility families structure their lives in such a way as to make children extremely cheap and dramatically less time-intensive.

II Habits of Highly Fertile People

1) High-fertility families do not believe that every child needs their own room.

  • Carpenter: Three bedroom house 45 minutes outside of a tier-2 city costs around $200k. Husband and wife in the master, their three daughters share one bedroom and two sons share another.
  • Receptionist: Urban, subsidized apartment. Mother and baby share one bedroom, two girls in another room, two boys sleep in the living room on pull-out beds.
  • PMC: Cannot imagine having the millions it would take to afford a six-bedroom house in a tier-1 city.

2) High-fertility families pay roughly $0 for education.

  • Carpenter: Stay-at-home mom is part of a homeschool pod with other families.
  • Receptionist: Sends her kids to the local public school in urban tier-2 city. The school is not good.
  • PMC: Would slit their throats rather than send their kids to the same public school as the receptionist. Intend to pay $25k-$40k/year/child for private school.

3) High-fertility families pay roughly $0 for kids' stuff.

  • Carpenter and Receptionist: Almost all of the clothes, toys, cribs, and other accessories that a child needs, their parents acquire for free. Hand-me-downs, Buy Nothing Facebook groups, friends/neighbors/family, etc.
  • PMC: Every kid needs brand-new everything. Sure, you might be able to get multiple uses out of your $800 crib or $300 car seat, but you are not shopping at Goodwill for little Charlotte.

4) High-fertility families pay roughly $0 for enriching activities.

  • Carpenter: When the children are free they are either playing outside, playing inside (on screens), or doing chores. The older kids have part-time jobs. The kids do play sports through some homeschool rec-league I don’t understand. The parents spend very little, but the mom does have to drive the kids around for games.
  • Receptionist: Play outside of the apartment. Sometimes that's in the public library (video games on the library computers), sometimes that's the Boys and Girls Club, sometimes that's just out in the neighborhood. The mom spends $0 dollars and essentially no time on this.
  • PMC: $3,000 for Introduction to Data Science camp at Stanford, thousands of dollars between new gear and hotel rooms for travel sports (not to mention the hours spent driving), thousands for tutors in piano, math and foreign-languages.

5) High-fertility families start early. They have known no other adult life, besides being parents. Their tastes are quite modest.

  • Carpenter: Had their first kid at 20. Mostly cook in, occasionally go to casual-dining restaurants like Applebees, spend their vacations driving to state or national parks. Have never been to Disneyland and don’t think they’re missing out.
  • Receptionist: First kid at 17. Basically the same as the above, except doesn’t really vacation.
  • PMC: Spent their twenties eating at Michelin-starred restaurants and traveling overseas. Now, starting to have children in their early-to-mid-thirties, they simply do not have enough fertile years left to get to five children. And, furthermore, they cannot fathom bringing five kids to French Laundry nor buying that many tickets to Morocco.

6) High-fertility families pay roughly $0 for childcare:

  • Carpenter and Receptionist: Grandparents, friends, neighbors cost $0. The older children are expected to care for the younger.
  • PMC: $40k+/year for a nanny or $10k/year + an extra bedroom for an au-pair

7) High-fertility families pay very little for (and think very little about) healthcare

  • Carpenter: To be honest, I don’t know
  • Receptionist: Medicaid, cheapest possible pediatrician + the school nurse
  • PMC: Not only do they have excellent insurance through their employers, they also pay out-of-pocket for all kinds of treatments. Moreover, they spend a lot of time meticulously researching pediatricians, specialists, orthodontists, etc.

I am not trying to say that having five children is the only worthy goal in life. And, it is entirely possible that the progeny of the PMC will somehow be “better” than the progeny of the Carpenter or Receptionist - healthier, higher-IQ, more worldly.

III Policy Ideas for Increasing Fertility

It also occurs to me that, even if you cannot change the beliefs and habits of the PMC, you could still make policy decisions that increase their fertility:

1) Decrease the cost of housing.

  • There are, of course, a myriad of known-good solutions: from slashing regulations in order to increase housing supply, to improving transportation to make it viable to live in the ‘burbs and commute into the city.
  • Even if you cannot convince the PMC that each kid does not, in fact, need their own bedroom, by reducing the cost of that one marginal bedroom, you increase their fertility.

2) Improve the public schools

  • Imagine if an excellent education, in a safe environment! was commonly available in American public schools. Not only would more families choose to send their children to public schools over paying tens of thousands for private schools, you would also dramatically lower the cost of housing in those few school districts that actually do a decent job.

3) Decrease the cost stuff

4) Enriching activities:

  • No ideas. Competition here is zero-sum.

5) Starting early:

  • Wild first idea: perhaps make sex-ed a required course in college with a strong emphasis on fertility windows.

6) Childcare:

  • Ensure Middle America thrives so that young PMC don’t feel like they have to leave the heartland for the coasts where they don’t have grandparents + the same social network for childcare. Ha. Ha. Easy to say.

7) Healthcare:

  • Destroy the AMA’s supply-limiting bullshit, dramatically increase the number of doctors, dramatically decrease cost of healthcare.

I have a question: of the two political parties in the USA, which one do you think is more likely to try and enact such policies as you have described?

"I want more babies in the United States of America"

So, just so we are talking about the same thing, you're saying you believe the Republican party is more likely to decrease the cost of housing, improve the public schools, decrease the cost of common goods, encourage community enrichment through programs, promote sexual education, promote livable wages and decrease the cost of healthcare than the Democrats?

In practice, republicans have done much better on housing costs than democrats.

Republicans are usually better on school choice than Democrats and that's basically the only way to break the back of the school district industrial complex. That impacts housing prices too, as Elizabeth Warren pointed out in The Two Income Trap.

As for increasing wages, reducing costs,and reducing the cost of healthcare, neither party seems to be capable of actually enacting free market reforms that would improve the situation, so it's basically a wash.

In my experience in exclusively-Democrat Tier-1 cities, the Democrats have done the exact opposite of all of those things: made housing more expensive, destroyed the quality of public schools, increased the cost of common goods, promoted sexual misinformation, and increased the cost of healthcare. I'd give the odds of the Republican party decreasing the cost of housing, improving public schools, etc at 20% - doubled since the inauguration.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats