[extropy-chat] Gay marriage in Spain, a world of change

[Brent Neal]

 (7/23/05 12:08) Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:

>The baby bust in the western nations by choice, and the legislated one
>in China, may cause more than a crisis in social security funding
>methods, it may cause just the sort of technological collapse David
>worries about, if nations choose to kill off public and private funding
>of scientific research in favor of funding retirement systems. Killing
>technological advancement through the tax structure WILL cause a
>Malthusian crisis.

Static thinking. You assume that any retirement system will look like and behave like the one we have now.  My guess is that as the last "large" generation passes out of the mortal coil or is uploaded or whatnot, the generations following will have the political will to change the system. This is borne out by the statistics on the support for social security reform broken down by age bracket.


>
>> 
>> 3) Do you really think that not having the government provide
>> incentives to get married will keep people from having babies? Heck -
>> do you really think that having the government involved is necessary
>> for a "social mechanism" to be in place?  (The ruder way to ask this
>> is 'Do you wait for W to tell you to go get laid?')
>
>It will for the lower classes who have a definite economic inscentive
>from welfare to have babies. 

While that is a fabulous story, it doesn't really bear on the subject.  The question was stated as "without an incentive to marriage, will birthrates drop."  You're talking about removing an incentive to childbirth. Further, I will point out the second question isn't really touched upon by your anecdote either. People were not only having babies, but were pairing off in marriage without the kinds of government incentives we have now.

B
-- 
Brent Neal
Geek of all Trades
http://brentn.freeshell.org

"Specialization is for insects" -- Robert A. Heinlein