Have some kids is good advice but not a solution. The demographic time bomb of 0-17 year olds is already here, and even if every republican managed to crank out 5 kids by 40 we'd still be losing the demographic war to the third worlders.
Yes having kids is awesome, but our future on the r/K scale is 100% on the K plan.
But the idea of "increased parental investment" with r strategy has a flattened curve. The parents are not such geniuses that their investment means all that much anyway. Beyond food, clothing, a hug, and a small number of non-negotiable rules, their input means only so much. If they stay together.
If they stay together.
If they stay together.
Now that education is being restructured and college is no longer seen as the great, golden, shining good it once was... you don't have to limit childbearing to the number of college educations you can provide.
Both R and K strategies have their vices and virtues.
I think you are seeing that K is not always the way to bet, indeed your own words seem to hint at that if I understand you correctly.
The lurking villain is the man's wanting his wife's salary, to make life more comfortable.
R maybe be beating the snot out of K.
R doesn't need luxuries; his idea of fun is yet another child. He doesn't need other toys. Half his children are useful because they are male. And the other half help with the younger children, so he's good all the way around. He can't lose.
Bad laws? Who passed them? Humans. You don't have enough humans.
There is only one source of numerous humans, and it isn't a woman with a good job.
In humans, it has come to mean, do you want eight children who live lean and start life lean, share clothes and toys, may not go to college, because we can't afford it?
Or, do you want one or two children who have life's advantages, have fun, and don't have those pressures of having to share, and who do go to college?
K has been the way of the Western world since the end of WW II. It seemed to work nicely for several generations, but it has produced problems too.
R has been the way of the East and the South since forever. It is the human norm. K was the innovative and unprecedented thing.
K has led to fewer Westerners being around, and the sheer numbers of the
non-Western has meant that they increasingly get their way. And why not. Of course. If you don't show up, well where are you? Non-existent people can't vote.
Another thing that happened that wasn't expected was the diminished prestige of the woman who was home raising kids, and a lot of kids. Gradually, "I'm just a housewife," led to "OMG you are NOT having a kid NOW," and "she just pumps them out. She's a breeder."
NOBODY would have used such nauseatingly disrespectful language about a mother or motherhood before 1950.
The "baby boomers" resulted from a burst of enthusiasm for life and love for peace, home, children, after the horrors of WW II.
But the boomers' parents were having two, or three, or maaaaybe four kids. Only one kid was considered weird. "Only children are always spoiled. You need two," was the thinking. But more than two? No. Let's buy a house and have plenty.
The women were thinking differently.
The ads showed them in pearls and heels, pushing vacuums instead of pushing a broom. New appliances were making things sparklier and easier. But they were still home.
In the late Sixties, the untenable paradox of being home but not having that many kids, and therefore having empty days, exploded in the Women's Movement and the women left the home.
Then the home lost its anchor and the divorces happened.
The children of those divorces are today's parents or non-parents.
Their kids, the Antifas, know their futures have been looted, meaning, marriage was destroyed. That is why they crave belonging, and of course the colleges have become horrible places. Whatever humanity they arrived with was expunged by their Residential Advisor in the Freshman Year Experience program, which is national. Leftism, blah blah.
So that's R versus K.
Every problem you see today can be traced to simply not having enough children in the past.
I would also add that the dichotomy of "have kids / or have plenty" is a false dichotomy brought about by two factors:
The destruction of the value of labour by the doubling of the labour force due to the influence of Feminism and women's lib.
The ever increasing burden of taxation on otherwise prosperous and productive middle and even lower-class earners.
These two things together have destroyed the ability of the Western family to have 3+ children and still enjoy a generally prosperous lifestyle of plenty. Real Productivity has increased by an insane amount in the West over the last 100 years; and yet, the middle class has largely not seen great benefits from it, because as Productivity has increased, so has the loss to taxation by the State.
Have some kids is good advice but not a solution. The demographic time bomb of 0-17 year olds is already here, and even if every republican managed to crank out 5 kids by 40 we'd still be losing the demographic war to the third worlders.
Yes having kids is awesome, but our future on the r/K scale is 100% on the K plan.
I hear that.
But the idea of "increased parental investment" with r strategy has a flattened curve. The parents are not such geniuses that their investment means all that much anyway. Beyond food, clothing, a hug, and a small number of non-negotiable rules, their input means only so much. If they stay together.
If they stay together.
If they stay together.
Now that education is being restructured and college is no longer seen as the great, golden, shining good it once was... you don't have to limit childbearing to the number of college educations you can provide.
Both R and K strategies have their vices and virtues.
I think you are seeing that K is not always the way to bet, indeed your own words seem to hint at that if I understand you correctly.
The lurking villain is the man's wanting his wife's salary, to make life more comfortable.
R maybe be beating the snot out of K.
R doesn't need luxuries; his idea of fun is yet another child. He doesn't need other toys. Half his children are useful because they are male. And the other half help with the younger children, so he's good all the way around. He can't lose.
Bad laws? Who passed them? Humans. You don't have enough humans.
There is only one source of numerous humans, and it isn't a woman with a good job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory
In humans, it has come to mean, do you want eight children who live lean and start life lean, share clothes and toys, may not go to college, because we can't afford it?
Or, do you want one or two children who have life's advantages, have fun, and don't have those pressures of having to share, and who do go to college?
K has been the way of the Western world since the end of WW II. It seemed to work nicely for several generations, but it has produced problems too.
R has been the way of the East and the South since forever. It is the human norm. K was the innovative and unprecedented thing.
K has led to fewer Westerners being around, and the sheer numbers of the non-Western has meant that they increasingly get their way. And why not. Of course. If you don't show up, well where are you? Non-existent people can't vote.
Another thing that happened that wasn't expected was the diminished prestige of the woman who was home raising kids, and a lot of kids. Gradually, "I'm just a housewife," led to "OMG you are NOT having a kid NOW," and "she just pumps them out. She's a breeder."
NOBODY would have used such nauseatingly disrespectful language about a mother or motherhood before 1950.
The "baby boomers" resulted from a burst of enthusiasm for life and love for peace, home, children, after the horrors of WW II.
But the boomers' parents were having two, or three, or maaaaybe four kids. Only one kid was considered weird. "Only children are always spoiled. You need two," was the thinking. But more than two? No. Let's buy a house and have plenty.
The women were thinking differently.
The ads showed them in pearls and heels, pushing vacuums instead of pushing a broom. New appliances were making things sparklier and easier. But they were still home.
In the late Sixties, the untenable paradox of being home but not having that many kids, and therefore having empty days, exploded in the Women's Movement and the women left the home.
Then the home lost its anchor and the divorces happened.
The children of those divorces are today's parents or non-parents.
Their kids, the Antifas, know their futures have been looted, meaning, marriage was destroyed. That is why they crave belonging, and of course the colleges have become horrible places. Whatever humanity they arrived with was expunged by their Residential Advisor in the Freshman Year Experience program, which is national. Leftism, blah blah.
So that's R versus K.
Every problem you see today can be traced to simply not having enough children in the past.
Is it too late to catch up? Not quite.
This is an excellent and cogent analysis.
I would also add that the dichotomy of "have kids / or have plenty" is a false dichotomy brought about by two factors:
The destruction of the value of labour by the doubling of the labour force due to the influence of Feminism and women's lib.
The ever increasing burden of taxation on otherwise prosperous and productive middle and even lower-class earners.
These two things together have destroyed the ability of the Western family to have 3+ children and still enjoy a generally prosperous lifestyle of plenty. Real Productivity has increased by an insane amount in the West over the last 100 years; and yet, the middle class has largely not seen great benefits from it, because as Productivity has increased, so has the loss to taxation by the State.
TIL - Thanks for the writeup. Very informative
Thank you for this take