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This Reddit thread that I saw linked over on rDrama made me wonder if any studies have ever been done about the relative intelligence of straight people and gay people.
Just like there is reason to believe that some ethnic groups are more intelligent than others on average, is it possible that some sexual orientations are more intelligent than others on average? I have not tried to crunch the numbers, but it seems to me that gay people are overrepresented compared to their population size among the ranks of prominent intellectuals and artists. Not just recently, but also hundreds of years ago. Them living in high cost of living areas would add evidence to this theory.
Of course there are many possible other explanations, and the thread mentions some of them: gays have more money because they usually have no kids, gays in poor areas stay closeted out of fear of persecution and are drawn to liberal and usually also expensive cities, gays move in to poor areas and make them fashionable and then those areas become rich. Etc.
One other possible explanation that comes to my mind that I did not see in the thread is that maybe because it is easier for gay men to get laid than straight men on average, they don't have to devote as much of their minds as straights to getting laid and are thus free to focus on other things. I'm not sure about that theory, though - after all, just because getting laid is easy for you does not necessarily mean that you will spend less of your mental energy thinking about getting laid. And being a sexual minority could tend to add some level of stress that partly counterbalances the benefits of being able to easily get laid, especially in the olden days.
I suppose it is also possible that intelligent, creative gays are more likely to come out than intellectually mediocre gays, but I have no idea if there is any truth to that.
I do wonder, though, if maybe part of the reason for gay affluence and prominence is an actual intelligence difference of some sort.
Being a dink is enough to explain relative affluence, really, it's pretty powerful.
Another explanation for overrepresentation in creative fields is simply that being an outsider makes you conscious of your culture and makes you introspective about how you don't fit it and gives you relatively uncommon stories and a desire to express them which all help push someone into being a creative or give them more material to work with in their art.
Similarly, being excluded from/having difficulty with normal teen social stuff may probabilistically push you towards more studying/focus on career/etc (same as with the many of us mild autistics here), explaining more representation at high career levels generally.
Yeah, I don't think the power of DINK couples was properly understood when we set up democratic/capitalistic societies. Unfortunately having kids is just one of those things that really harms your ability to impact the world as an economic agent. Who knew?
And yet, we must have children for obvious reasons. The way the world sits now, people who have children are getting massively taken advantage of by the childless. It really is a shame.
Why? You trade off some of your own personal accomplishments and resources(of a sort) for those of your kids. Sure perhaps I on my own would have had more time to do X, more ability to devote to making money if I were childless, but me plus my 3 kids almost certainly will have more X time and more economic potential overall simply because there are 4 of us. That is the trap you are falling into here I think. People who have kids are not being taken advantage of by the childless. Over any time frame but the immediate our influence, economic potential and everything else is much greater than if we had not had kids.
There is no shame to be rectified, no-one is being taken advantage of, just different choices with different trade offs, over different time scales.
In a society where redistribution from old to young is privatized (except for the welfare class) but redistribution from young to old is handled by the State, the childless are free-riding because they are supported in their old age by children they didn't raise.
But in this scenario they will have each (per capita) have been more economically productive and then presumably have been taxed more through their working lives in return, so even if they are then being subsidized more at the end of their lives they would have contributed more throughout (both to general tax take but also to social security) so without knowing the magnitude of this difference, we still can't determine how this stacks up.
Wouldn't this only work if you are in a profession that contributes significantly to the capital stock? If you're a hairdresser or professional athlete, you can be as extra productive as you want, nothing you do during your work life aside from having children will make goods and services any more abundant (societally) at the time when you need them in your old age.
Unclear from the OP, he just thought they would be more economically productive. It seems likely some professions would contribute more than others, but that is true with or without kids. Even a hairdresser without kids could presumably work more hours, and save money they would otherwise have spent on schooling or college and feeding/clothing their kids and the like.
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