Sometimes people say exactly what you are thinking:
You can’t miss it in today’s news: US births break record, 40 percent out-of-wedlock. Frankly, my dear, who gives a shit about the wedding bands. Though that’s pretty much what all the moralizing is about.
No, what’s stupefying is the fact that nowhere in this much-travelled article does anyone ever talk about the real impact of more babies being born in the US in 2007 than any other year in the nation’s history.
So let’s talk about it. And let’s start with a really interesting study just published in the journal Global Environmental Change. A couple of statisticians at Oregon State U disengaged their mechanical pencils from their pocket protectors, clicked some fresh lead onto recycled paper (we hope) and came up with this bold analysis into that sacristy of human reproduction—to have or not to have:
A mother and father are each responsible for one half of the emissions of their offspring and 1/4 the emissions of their grandchildren and so on forever or thereabouts
Therefore, under current US conditions, each child adds 9,441 metric tons of CO2 to the carbon legacy of the average female
That’s 5.7 times her lifetime emissions
Translation: one child costs nearly 6 times your own CO2 emissions
In the pessimistic scenario, each American child adds 12,730 metric tons to your carbon legacy
In comparison, under current Bangladeshi conditions, each child adds 56 metric tons of CO2 to the carbon legacy of the average female
CO2 aside, the sentiment is right on. The Pope visited Africa and advised against the use of condoms to deal with preventing people from getting AIDS. That issue was settled in the 80s.
The use of birth control is a sign of our civilization’s evolution, but the largest institutions on the planet can still muck up such logic with mystical nonsense.
Africa is a sad situation all the way around. To me it seems like a lot of their problems come from having too many people for the available resources and the countries seem designed to maximize internal conflict as when they put them together they threw a lot of different people into one country.
Listening to an ignoramus like the pope isn’t helping them either. Of course didn’t the US take the family planning component out of our AIDS assistance to Africa as well. I guess having a world filled with idiots is not helping Africa.
Hey, just wanted to say thanks for the attempt to inject a little sense into that thread over on Pandagon. Pity more people didn’t bother listening, but I’m glad to see another sane person over there.
Thx,
Glad to know someone appreciated the idea
Here’s a good counterfactual from Bryan Caplan:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/03/how_will_daniel.html
Hey CB
Thx for the link. That is an interesting discusion.
Wow – how about we ask the millions of kids in orphanages about whether their parents had “buyer’s remorse”…
The guy compares having a kid to buying a television.
At least for some people kids really are a consumer item. Over at Pandagon I suggested the fertility treatment was not a good use of resources and I got a lot of comments abount how everyone has a baby and it is not fair to infertile people. Sounded like me when I was nine years-old and wanted a puppy.
Wow – how about we go to the junk yards and landfills and cemeteries wonder about more “buyer’s remorse”.
Very fallacious.
Ever listened to a guy on a child support rant? If that is not buyers remorse I don’t know what is.
Yes, I guess we are agreed that redistributive welfare programs create perverse incentives then?
Child support is isn’t so much a “redistributive welfare program” as it is forcing a person to help pay for the expenses they helped incur. In fact it is the opposite, child support helps keep children out of the welfare system by forcing parents to at least pay a small portion of the costs of their children.
I think we need someting similar for dog breeders, you would be amazed how many pure breed dogs you see in an animal sheltr the person who bred that dog and probably profited from it should have to pay for the care and expense when the dog gets abandoned at a shelter. Sorry for the dog rant, one of thise days.
So you are, in a roundabout way, agreeing with me about redistributive welfare?
Not at all. I see kids a waste product of a relationship and both people should help pay for the dispostion of what is really a bio-hazard that both of the created.
Just like dog breeders should have to pay for all the strays they create
You see the earlier version of yourself in this way?
Ironic is not the word I am looking for, but the best first approximation.
Are you suggesting the world would be better off had I not been born 🙂
Not at all. You are!
Mr Bettor:
I guess you have diagnosed me with esteem issues.
If I hadn’t been born I wouldn’t know it nor would anyone else. Worrying about potential children leads to things like Jesus’ generals mason jars.
If anti-child advocates had not been born, who would advocate? We need to have children to fuel the cause!
Even though I am making huge bucks and making lots of friends as well, I would be willing to find a new career if people would start only having one child per couple.
This kind of reminds me of people I used to work with at the animal shelter. If we could solve the problem of homeless animals a lot of people would be out of a job, but I have a feeling it is a job most people in the industry would be willing to lose.
Well, if there are more productive things to do than rescuing animals (we adopted a puppy whose mom was abandoned in Brooklyn), then the capital pouring into shelters would go to those activities.
Ever hear about the broken window fallacy? Unfortunately, neither Barney Frank nor John McCain seems to have.
Companion animals are a great example of a place where the market doesn’t work well. It is really easy to breed a dog and seel the puppies for a profit, even though that puppy is very likely to wind up in a shelter a few years later where it is being taken care of by either tax dollars, in the case of a municipal shelter, or by charitible donations in the case of private shelter. Either way the breeder made a lot of money and now everyone else is paying for the animal.
Although I guess I should be hoping for more people to adopt unwanted animals, of course the main reason people give up animals is that the dog or cat doesn’t get along with the new baby. Or my favorite was when people would adopt the animal thinking their kid was going to take care of it, and when the kid doesn’t take care of the animal they bring it into the shelter.
I will go look up the broken glass fallacy and get back to you.