Hacker News: saintvlad

New comment by saintvlad in "India's surprise baby bust"

saintvlad — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:31:29 +0000

> You do need to be able to afford to care for them and be reasonably capable of providing them with a stable and healthy environment to grow up in though.

You kinda don't though? The government won't let you starve to death. Surprised there aren't more people welfaremaxxing, TBH.

New comment by saintvlad in "India's surprise baby bust"

saintvlad — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 21:59:54 +0000

That's the neat part! You don't have to care. It will either way. But it's not looking great for liberalism (and that's good thing).

New comment by saintvlad in "India's surprise baby bust"

saintvlad — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 21:58:31 +0000

> Women change their entire bodies, sacrifice years of their lives, and go through considerable stress to have a baby.

"Humans extinct, women most affected"

Pretty amusing how it's always framed as some terrible burden on women to justify more gibs. As if they aren't also the beneficiaries of society thriving and men never make any sacrifices for society. Or that, well, women also "benefit" from reproducing in the Darwinian sense.

New comment by saintvlad in "India's surprise baby bust"

saintvlad — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 20:57:14 +0000

> we seem to be running out of transformative capacity to keep building essential stuff like housing in many countries

Eh, I think we all know that we could build the housing if we really wanted to.

> This just seems self correcting to me - on both axis.

I agree, but it could a rough ride if the correction is too fast or too far. I think quite a lot of people would prefer the industrial system to keep running, and there is probably a minimum population below which it cannot run.

New comment by saintvlad in "India's surprise baby bust"

saintvlad — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 20:51:41 +0000

FWIW, I think we all (I am including myself here) underestimate the degree to which our beliefs are formed by the culture we inhabit.

New comment by saintvlad in "India's surprise baby bust"

saintvlad — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 20:25:35 +0000

I mean "capacity" isn't some magic barrier. Usually it involves increased chances for the organism in question to starve to death due to reduced availability of food. We don't seem to be that close to reaching that.

New comment by saintvlad in "India's surprise baby bust"

saintvlad — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 20:12:13 +0000

> more taxes are needed

Don't forget it's not just taxes, but the allocation of labor and resources. If the entire population magically turned 90 tomorrow, no amount of taxes would be able to provide for them.