I don't think I'd call it misanthropy, even though I agree it has that effect. I think people are deeply confused. Morally and intellectually.
Discussion
It strikes me that many ppl I know are doubling down on a simplified apocalyptic understanding of the near future. It turns out, the less you are invested in the future, the easier it is to convince yourself to invest less. Fewer children. Less nutrition. Less community support. Breaks my heart.
I think that might be true for some people. But I think the real paradox comes from the fact that with higher relative wealth, our time preference as a civilization shifts dramatically. This is why there is an inverse correlation between birth rate and relative purchasing power.
It's a real conundrum, I think.
What’s the connection between time preference and age-at-first-child?
The way I think about it, and this might be over-simplified, is that higher relative wealth tends to lower time preferences, and that crowds out high time preference things -- which having children is.
I know these correlations exist. But I don't have a deep understanding of the subject. I am interested in it, though.
I was once chided by a West African colleague for failing to recognize how much economic value 6 kids would bring me in 20 years.
Indeed. I’m much attracted to the up vs down outlook, which better describes many tensions today than does left vs right. Balaji dived into this a bit recently, but it goes back much further (this text from Fogbanking c. 2013).
Energy is life, and always at the root. I agree we need vastly more of it.
The Wizard and the Prophet (Charles Mann, 2018) explores this well too.
