Jesus Christ to His Church: "Do Your JOB!"

First – meet the real Jesus, not the Caspar Milquetoast preached from most pulpits:

“Do not think that I came to [z]bring peace on the earth; I did not come to [aa]bring peace, but a sword. 35For I came to TURN A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; 36and A PERSON’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD.

37“The one who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and the one who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38And the one who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39The one who has found his [ab]life will lose it, and the one who has lost his [ac]life on My account will find it.” - https://biblehub.com/nasb_/matthew/10.htm - {read the whole chapter}

 

Christians, we are at WAR! “Whether you realize it or not, if you live in the West, you are currently engulfed in a civilization-wide cultural war that is taking place all around you. Maybe you’re aware of it, or maybe you’re not. It doesn’t matter. The cultural war is real and it is vicious. And unlike a traditional shooting war between different nations, in a cultural war there are no civilians. There are no neutral parties, since no fence-sitting is permitted, and there is no common ground to be found. No one is permitted to sit it out or refuse to take sides; sooner or later, you are going to be forced to declare yourself by either publicly submitting to the current ruling culture or openly rejecting it.” – Vox Day

 

What is our JOB? And it ain't about us all gettin' to heaven......

On the day we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, it is appropriate to remember His commandment to us - Matthew 28:18-20 New International Version (NIV)

18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

 

It is TIME – for Christians to look in the MIRROR!

Contrary to the first century Christians who followed the instructions of Jesus when He ascended - Matthew 28:18-20 – we in our comforts and self-focused, self-righteous, presumptuous self-assurance LOST what our predecessors BUILT!

“Interestingly enough, the last people to fess up to our responsibility in forming the culture are Christians. We have abandoned it, starting more than 100 years ago, and now accuse that culture of persecuting us. So what do we expect? If you leave the battlefield, who wins? Do a word search on Churchianity - you will not like it!” – from http://www.crushlimbraw.com/

 

Churchianity or Christianity: The Need for Scriptural Cultural Theology – Ezra Institute - By Joe Boot  / December 21, 2017

 God's people are called not only to personal evangelism and activities within the church institution, we are commissioned to disciple the nations, a holy task that influences all areas of life. 

The War on Masculinity Will End Badly By J.B. Shurk

 I have long believed that one of the most dangerous mass movements gripping the West today is the suicidal drive to emasculate, and even infantilize, men.  History is not filled with examples of prosperous and peaceful civilizations made up of men apologizing for their strength and promising to be less stoic and more tearful in battle.

 

Note to Mentors – Nov. 23, 2018 – Do we need a leader?

What does it take to become a mentor? Do we need a centrally focused leadership team and selected leader to function effectively? In other words, do we have to become an institution?

Absolutely not! In fact – NEVER! I am not your leader – I am your librarian!

Mentoring Simplified – May 4, 2018 – (Posted by Crush)

Note to Mentors - Your intellectual curiosity should be your strong suit - CL

Just a reminder that I expect all mentors to build their own patterns of research, including bookmarking favorite websites. Our responsibility is to 'prove all things and hold on to that which is good' - sometimes destroying our own favorite sacred cows. That certainly has been my experience in the last 12-15 years.

 

The Great Commission - Did Jesus Christ Intend The Gospel To Reach Everyone On Earth? - Christians for Truth

This is not to say that the ways of God are not for all races of the earth — since the laws of God and biblical principles can benefit any people. It is just that they will never possess and follow God’s ways by evangelizing and preaching to them. This has been tried for nearly 2,000 years — and the results are self-evident. However, God’s people can use their material blessings to help guide and direct other people to the ways of God.

 

A Closer Look At The Meaning Of 'Gentiles' In The Old And New Testaments - Christians for Truth - October 9, 2022

Most white Christians of European descent today believe that they are “gentiles” — but as Ewing demonstrates, this cannot possibly be true given how that term is used in the New Testament.

 

The Height of IGNORANCE? When It Becomes WILLFUL!

I learned in the last 20 plus years that almost all of my previous learning had been pure bullshit and propaganda – a hard thing to swallow…but true….and still learning.
Here’s logic – the systematic study and practice of discerning and speaking the truth! It is a process – never an end state.

 

The Road Ahead…

 …and what is to be done.

The main thing that Christians need to do now is get engaged with the government of the church they belong to. They should petition the elders to have the pastor address the sins of our generation from the pulpit.

Which comes back to my paragraph above: what are the sins of this generation?  Cheering on the war machine, bowing down to masks and to closing churches, worshipping the state of Israel, ignoring the order in which God created man and woman – and the purpose of each in His creation.  That’s my list.  Here is Wilson’s:

And speaking of the road ahead……for anyone truly serious, here is a roadmap: CAP – Kingdom of God Study List – listed on Link List

 

No, this is NOT the ultimate source, but it is a beginning for those who are willing to challenge what they ASSume to know as DaTruth and might discover what they know – AIN’T so!

Been there – done that!

Allow yourself adequate time for this project and invite others to join in the adventure – but BEWARE of your PRESUPPOSITIONS! They can hang you up for years and stop your learning!

 

Following this example of our Messiah, Christians should not let anything distract them from the progressing kingdom of God. Our conquering King rules now and subdues more according to His will and power daily. We should not let false divisions and interpretations of Scripture distract us from His way; so many have left the way in order to drink from the brooks of Scofield and his followers. We must return to the battle as Christ has enjoined it, as the apostles understood it, and as the people of God have progressively expanded so far.

bionic mosquito: The Stomping Boot

 Paul VanderKlay (PVK) did a video reviewing, among other things, Tucker Carlson’s recent Heritage Foundation talk – the one that some point to as one more reason for his ousting.  Following are some of my reactions to this.

PVK asks, what is the answer to the divide seemingly caused by these various cultural and political issues?  In my view, the only peaceful answer is secession and decentralization.  Secession means gathering with others who share similar cultural, political, and religious views – and excluding those who hold contrary views.  Decentralization means governance at ever-lower institutional levels – at the lowest reasonable level (e.g., family). 

And this happening, but not in the traditional way.  The traditional way would result in The State of Jefferson.  But we know that the US government has a history of not allowing peaceful transitions.  Not in the United States, not in Korea, not in the former Soviet Union – even Ukraine today.  Not anywhere.

But back to how it is happening today.  People are migrating – seceding in the way they can.  California and New York are losing people, Idaho and Tennessee are gaining people.  Unfortunately, this isn’t an answer for everyone, or even many.  It can only happen on the margins.  But it is happening.

There is no law of God that says three hundred million people have to live under the same rules or in the same culture.  When God created the earth, He didn’t draw the political boundaries on His creation.  These aren’t carved in stone, so to speak. 

We have a culture that freely ignores what God carved in stone, and violently defends that which God did not carve in stone.  Abraham Lincoln ignored what was carved in stone by God, and violently defended that which was not carved in stone by God.  And he is considered by many as our greatest president – especially so by many Christians…sadly showing how long the road is that must be traveled.

Carlson, when speaking of the culture-destroying actions we see all around us, said something like: The weight of the government is behind it.  PVK: “I agree with this, but they aren’t thinking through it either.”  I think this is a naïve statement by VanderKlay.  He attributes good intentions where such attribution isn’t deserved – or, he doesn’t attribute malevolent intentions when such attribution is richly deserved.

PVK, commenting on one of the many theological points made by Carlson: “He’s not at a theological podium; he’s at a political podium.”  VanderKlay would often comment: “Politics is downstream from religion.”  He is right.  In other words, it’s all theological.  It’s just a question of which theology.

PVK: Don’t back your enemies into a corner unless you are planning to do something final.  From this, two points: liberal democracy does not have the tools necessary to defend itself; its enemies don’t play by the rules of liberal democracy, and nothing in liberal democracy is available to counteract this.  Second, one side in this discussion is happy to just be left alone – in other words, they will tolerate, but don’t demand that they affirm.  The other side demands more than toleration; it demands even more than affirmation.  It demands subservience.

Then PVK asks: “Was Donald Trump just more pantomime?” 

Yes.  All political theater.  When he brought in people like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, it was clear that the joke was on us.  When he led the charge on fourteen days to flatten the curve, it was clear that the joke was on us.  When he did (and still does) self-congratulate himself for operation warp-speed and the jab, it is clear that the joke was and is on us.

I say “us,” not as an avid Trump supporter, but in the context of something else Carlson said recently: we are all caught in a game where none of the important issues are discussed, and all people on all sides of all of the things that are discussed are fooled into ignoring the important things.

Trump’s election was important because of why people voted for him.  And it is those people who are in jail.  It is those people who are shut out; it is those people who are considered the enemies.  These are the people who cling to their Bibles and guns, per Obama; these are the deplorables, per Clinton.

PVK: “We know what happens when things go existential.”  Yes, we do.  It seems clear that those with power today wish it to go this way.   It is clear in the US; it is clear in Ukraine; it is clear with China.

Conclusion

‘If You Want a Picture of the Future, Imagine a Boot Stamping on a Human Face – for Ever.’

Whatever one might say about Tucker and his firing, it is seen by a large portion of the population as one more stomp in a very long string of stomps of the boot on the face.

Epilogue

My long-running theme:

Ephesians 2:2 (paraphrased): …the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-stomping-boot.html

Poverty and Crisis: Sucking Humanity Dry - Colin Todhunter

The World Bank says nearly 80% (560 million) of the 700 million people who were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020 due to COVID policies were from India. Globally, extreme poverty levels increased by 9.3 per cent in 2020.

In 2022, it was estimated that a quarter of a billion people across the world would be pushed into absolute poverty in that year alone.

In the UK, poverty is increasing in two-thirds of communities, as millions go without heat and skip meals. Due to the ‘cost-of-living crisis’, 10.5 million are experiencing financial difficulty. An additional 13.7 million people would be at risk of financial difficulty with further increases in costs.

Living standards in the UK are plummeting. For instance, 28 per cent (up from 9 per cent pre-COVID) of UK adults said that they could not afford to eat balanced meals. Absolute poverty is set to rise from 17.2 per cent in 2021-22 to 18.3 per cent in 2023-24, pushing an additional 800,000 people into poverty.

In England, 100,000 children have been frozen out of free school meals.

In the US, around 30 million low-income people are on the edge of a ‘hunger cliff’ as a portion of their federal food assistance is taken away. In 2021, it was estimated that one in eight children were going hungry in the US.

Small businesses are filing for bankruptcy in the US at a record rate. Private bankruptcy filings in 2023 have exceeded the highest point recorded during the early stages of COVID by a considerable amount. The four-week moving average for private filings in late February 2023 was 73 per cent higher than in June 2020.

Meanwhile, nearly 100 of the biggest US publicly traded companies recorded 2021 profit margins that were at least 50 per cent higher than their 2019 levels.

The Bank of England’s chief economist Huw Pill says that people should ‘accept’ being poorer. This is similar to the response of Rob Kapito, co-founder of the world’s biggest asset management firm BlackRock. In 2022, he said that a “very entitled” generation of people who have never had to sacrifice would soon have to face shortages for the first time in their lives.

CRISIS – WHAT CRISIS?

Of course, Kapito is no doubt referring to ordinary US citizens and not himself. Kapito, as the president of BlackRock, made $26,750,780 in total compensation in 2021.

Nor is he referring to the high-net-worth individuals who benefit from hunger by investing in BlackRock, a firm that continues to profit from a globalised food system which – by design – leaves around a billion people experiencing malnutrition. BlackRock is one of the rich ‘barbarians at the barn’ who continue to make huge financial killings from an exploitative food regime.

Kapito and Pill tell ordinary people to get used to their ‘new normal’ while business as usual prevails elsewhere, not least in one of the world’s most financially lucrative sectors – arms manufacturing. The war in Ukraine has been a ‘gold rush’ for Western arms makers as wealthy US neocons like Victoria Nuland continue to try to bring about ‘regime change’ in Russia by fighting Moscow to the last Ukrainian.

When Huw Pill tells ordinary people to get used to being poorer, he is not referring to the individuals and firms who have made hundreds of millions of pounds (courtesy of the taxpayer) from corrupt COVID equipment contracts thanks to the UK government prioritising politically connected suppliers at the start of COVID.

And this cannot be brushed aside as a ‘one-off’. These revelations are merely the tip of a massive corruption iceberg.

For example, Byline Times reports a cross-party parliamentary watchdog raised concerns that decisions on how to award money from the £3.6 billion towns fund, designed to boost economic growth in struggling towns, were politically motivated. It also notes that 40 potential breaches of the Ministerial Code were not investigated in the past five years.

Little wonder that in January 2023 the UK plunged to its lowest-ever position in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index.

Consider that the UN estimates that just $51.5 billion would be enough to provide food, shelter and lifesaving support for the world’s 230 million most vulnerable people. Then consider that 20 corporations in the grain, fertiliser, meat and dairy sectors delivered $53.5 billion to shareholders in the financial years 2020 and 2021.

According to Global Witness, ‘excess profits’ are sudden and significant increases in a company’s financial returns that are due not to their own actions but to external events. The EU says profits count as ‘excess’ when they are more than 20% above the average return of the previous four years.

Global Witness finds that the 2022 annual profits of the five largest integrated private sector oil and gas companies – Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and TotalEnergies – were $195 billion. Up by almost 120% on 2021 and the highest level in the industry’s history.

This means that these companies made $134 billion in excess profits, which could cover nearly 20% of the money all European governments together have allocated to shielding vulnerable households and businesses from the current energy crisis.

Centrica, the company that owns British Gas, reports record profits for 2022. Operating profits of £3.3bn were recorded, up from £948m in 2021. This surpassed its previous highest ever yearly profit of £2.7bn in 2012.

In May 2021, it was reported that COVID vaccines had created at least nine new billionaires. According to research by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, the new billionaires included Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel and Ugur Sahin, the CEO of BioNTech, which has produced a vaccine with Pfizer. Both CEOs were then worth around $4 billion. Senior executives from China’s CanSino Biologics and early investors in Moderna have also become billionaires.

Although the nine new billionaires were at that time worth a combined $19.3 billion, the vaccines were largely funded by public money. For instance, according to a May 2021 report by CNN, BioNTech received €325 million from the German government for the development of the vaccine. The company made a net profit of €1.1 billion in the first three months of the year, thanks to its share of sales from the COVID vaccine, compared with a loss of €53.4 million for the same period last year.

Moderna was expected to make $13.2 billion in COVID vaccine revenue in 2021. The company received billions of dollars in funding from the US government for development of its vaccine.

This article has briefly touched on four horses of the economic apocalypse – agribusiness, oil, arms and big pharma. But let’s finish by mentioning the fifth and the most powerful – finance. The sector which sparked the devastation that we now see.

By late 2019, a financial crisis was looming. It was multiple times worse than the 2008 one.

Investigative journalist Michael Byrant says that €1.5 trillion was needed to deal with the crisis in Europe alone. The financial collapse staring European central bankers in the face came to a head in 2019:

“All talk about big finance bankrupting the nation by looting public funds, politicians destroying public services at the behest of large investors and the depredations of the casino economy were washed away with COVID. Predators who saw their financial empires coming apart resolved to shut down society. To solve the problems they created, they needed a cover story. It magically appeared in the form of a ‘novel virus’.”

The European Central Bank agreed to a €1.31 trillion bailout of banks followed by the EU agreeing to a €750 billion recovery fund for European states and corporations. This package of long-term, ultra-cheap credit to hundreds of banks was sold to the public as a necessary programme to cushion the impact of the pandemic on businesses and workers.

What happened in Europe was part of a strategy to avert the wider systemic collapse of the hegemonic financial system. And what we now see is an interrelated global debt, inflation and ‘austerity’ crisis and the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich in history under cover of a ‘cost-of-living crisis’.

As millions of workers take strike action in the UK, Huw Pill implies that they should accept their plight as inevitable. But they have no reason to.

The wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $3.9tn between 18 March and 31 December 2020. Their total wealth then stood at $11.95tn, a 50 per cent increase in just 9.5 months. Between April and July 2020, during the initial lockdowns, the wealth held by these billionaires grew from $8 trillion to more than $10 trillion.

The only thing inevitable about the current crisis was the collapse of a debt-fuelled, unsustainable neoliberalism set up to facilitate outright plunder by the super-rich who have offshored more than $50 trillion in hidden accounts.

Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture and is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal. You can read his “mini e-book”, Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Cultivating Resistance, here.

https://off-guardian.org/2023/04/29/poverty-and-crisis-sucking-humanity-dry/

 

We Should Really Be Having More Kids | ZeroHedge

 Submitted by Jack Raines via Young Money,

In 27 BC, Caesar Augustus was crowned the first Roman emperor. Widely considered one of Rome’s greatest leaders, Augustus’s reign marked the beginning of the 200-year Pax Romana.

One reason that the Roman Empire flourished during this time was its first-class transportation and sewage infrastructure that supported densely-populated cities, with Rome itself boasting an estimated one million residents at its peak.

However, these population centers were also susceptible to epidemics, disease, and lead poisoning (lead was commonly used in pipes, eating utensils, and even food and drinks), yielding high infant mortality rates and low life expectancies (maximum ~33 years).

Low life expectancy + expansive territories meant that the Roman Empire needed high birth rates to maintain enough soldiers to defend its borders, and Rome struggled to keep its birth rates above the population replacement rate. This issue was so important that Augustus offered tax breaks for large families and cracked down on abortion and adultery because he believed that “too many men spent their energy with prostitutes and concubines and had nothing for their wives, causing population declines.”

But government efforts never succeeded in meaningfully increasing birth rates.

At the conclusion of the Pax Romana, low birth rates, combined with plague and war, wreaked havoc on Rome’s population, and the power structure of the empire shifted to the newer Constantinople. Rome never recovered, with the city’s population dwindling from a peak of 1,000,000 residents in the late second century to ~30,000 by 600 AD.

We humans draw parallels and analogies across time and space because they help us better understand the world around us, and no two Western civilizations have attracted more comparisons than the Roman Empire and the United States of America.

Both nations experienced explosions of wealth and eras of unprecedented peace, both nations were the dominant global powers of their respective eras, and today, the US faces the same issue that plagued Rome 2,000 years ago: declining birth rates.

In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway penned this now timeless exchange:

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, and then suddenly.”

Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises

We worry about global warfare and pandemics because they’re big and scary and sudden and could wipe us out with a sudden BANG! But the real existential threat, declining birth rates, will progress like Mike’s bankruptcy: gradually, and then suddenly.

Allow me to demonstrate through some basic arithmetic.

~2.1 children per woman is the typical population replacement rate in a developed country, and the US currently has a total fertility rate (which measures the average number of children that would be born per woman if all women lived to the end of their childbearing years and bore children according to a given fertility rate at each age): of 1.84. This means that (assuming this rate holds constant) every 100 parents will yield 92 children and ~85 grandchildren. And keep in mind, rates have been on a steady decline for years.

It’s a bear market for babies.

This isn’t just a US problem. We’re seeing these trends of sub-replacement fertility rates occurring all over the developed world:

• South Korea: 1.11

• Spain: 1.29

• Japan: 1.39

• China: 1.45

• Austria: 1.51

• Canada: 1.57

• Germany: 1.58

• United Kingdom: 1.63

• Sweden: 1.67

So now you might be thinking, “Okay, declining birth rates ‘sound’ scary, but who cares? Like, why does it matter?”

At the individual level, it doesn’t matter. You have every right to think, “It’s no one else’s business if I don’t have kids!” But once a critical mass of individuals decides not to have kids, there are societal consequences.

In her recent piece, Everything’s a Pyramid Scheme, Katie Gatti Tassin highlighted a logical fallacy in the “retire early” movement:

I’ve long pointed out the fact that financial independence and early retirement cannot exist at scale, because our economic system would cease functioning. If every young person in their thirties or forties achieved financial independence and quit working, the workforce would be limited to those under the age of 35, effectively removing roughly 66% of the current labor force, or the equivalent of about 44 million people…

Of course, there’s a funny redundancy in the system: If 44 million working-age people retired en masse and ceased most discretionary spending…corporate profits would drop, the stock market would stutter to a halt, and the returns required to support early retirement would vanish, driving everyone back to work.

Katie Gatti Tassin

Basically, retiring early works for individuals, but it could never work at scale because our economy would collapse without enough workers to keep it functioning smoothly. The Financially Independent, Retire Early (FIRE) movement only works as long as the majority of society fails to FIRE.

Now, back to the babies.

One big reason that our advanced and wealthy societies have become so advanced and wealthy is that growing populations created a growing labor force which, coupled with technological advancements, powered growing economies and widespread wealth creation.

And now, our advanced, wealthy societies have devised systems that allow folks to retire and live their golden years in relative ease and decadence thanks to a combination of personal savings/investments and social safety nets.

These social safety nets are supported by taxes, which are funded by taxpayers, aka workers. And our number of workers has been steadily increasing since the Industrial Revolution.

But now people are having fewer kids, meaning that down the road, we’ll have fewer workers. And when life expectancies are higher than ever while birth rates are lower than ever and everyone still wants to retire on time… well, you see where I’m going with this? The math doesn’t add up.

(Katie actually made this same observation to highlight the absurdity of individualism).

So not to be a complete doomer here, but it feels a lot like we’re climbing the initial ascent on a rollercoaster, and we’re about to hit the apex.

What does the descent look like? I don’t really know, because we haven’t actually seen a large-scale population decline in the modern era, but I imagine it would go something like this:

• Social programs that we take for granted will no longer be feasible.

• People will have to work longer (you’re already seeing protests about this in France after the pension reform).

• Stock and real estate markets will decline as lower populations reduce consumer demand, hurting corporate profits and property values.

So after considering why declining birth rates matter, I had another question: Why, given the risks associated with birth rate declines, are we still experiencing said declines in developed countries?

Like, this problem is pretty obvious, so why aren’t we making more babies?

I have a few hypotheses:

1) Kids are expensive (both in perception and reality).

The US Department of Health & Human Services estimates that the average family with infants would need to pay $16,000 per year to cover the true cost of childcare, and half of US households make less than $70,000 per year. That’s a big chunk of cash going to raising a kid each year.

Besides the real costs, the perceived costs of childcare scale exponentially with one’s social group. Say you’re a high earner, and you and your spouse take home $200k+ per year.

Do you want your kid to attend a private middle school to improve their chances of gaining acceptance to an elite boarding school to ensure they secure a seat in an Ivy League university which will help them land a coveted job on Wall Street?

Are they going to play travel sports and take music lessons and eat organic foods and drive a nice car?

That’s going to cost a lot more than $16,000 per year.

Even high-earners are hesitant to have children because they don’t know if they can afford their desired lifestyle for their kids.

2) Widespread contraceptives.

Thousands of years before Planned Parenthood, the ancient Greeks and Romans discovered this cool plant called Silphium. Silphium had a number of medical uses, but it was most popular for its role as a contraceptive: ingesting a chick-pea-sized dose of Silphium prevented pregnancy.

There was just one problem with Silphium: it could only be grown in a narrow strip of fertile land in present-day eastern Libya. The Romans loved Silphium so much that they overused the wonder plant, eventually driving it extinct.

After the disappearance of Silphium, the world didn’t have an effective, safe contraceptive that could be ingested until 1950, when the birth control pill hit the market.

For the first time in 2,000 years, women controlled when and if they wanted to have children. When we have a high degree of control over the childbirth process, the number of unplanned pregnancies will decline, which means the number of total pregnancies will likely decline too.

3) Everyone, regardless of their sex, is focused on their careers.

100 years ago, it was normal for husbands to go to work while their wives took care of the house and/or raised the children. But now? Everyone works. And kids really throw a wrench in climbing the corporate ladder.

Ambitious women don’t want children to derail their careers, and ambitious men don’t want to step off the fast track to partner to spend a few years as stay-at-home dads. So both sexes delay having kids until they have achieved some threshold of success in their professional lives. But the clock doesn’t stop ticking, and every year spent chasing paper is one year not spent chasing two-year-olds around the house.

4) The Bored Parent Hypothesis.

I have this half-baked idea that one’s number of children is inversely related to their availability of fun/interesting alternative activities. If you are a 20-something living on a few dollars a day in an undeveloped country, you don’t really have many things to do (excluding work) besides creating an army of your own miniature genetic replicas.

But if you live in a developed, first-world country in the Year of Our Lord 2023, you have a lot of ways to spend your time that does not involve making babies. You can enjoy a luxury previously unknown to most of our ancestors: chill with your friends. You can travel for fun, ski, engage in this weird modern phenomenon known as “hobbies,” create art, and learn a foreign language.

You have options.

Subconsciously, we know that children mark the end of this period of vast optionality by introducing a really, really big responsibility. This is the first-world problem of all first-world problems, but I do think that some young people in developed countries today are hesitant to have kids because there’s just a ton of fun stuff to do when you don’t have kids.

Of course, I’m speaking as a young dude in a developed country who thinks there’s a ton of fun stuff that doesn’t involve having kids.

5) There are literally too many potential partners.

While birth rates have been steadily declining, the average age of first marriage has been steadily increasing. These two numbers are related: if you get married later, you literally have less time to have kids.

Something, something, biological clock.

So why are people getting married later? One reason is that the internet has given us a damn-near-infinite number of potential partners.

Historically, guy likes girl, girl likes guy (or the parents arrange the marriage without consulting the kids at all), and then guy and girl get married and have kids.

But now, guy likes girl, girl likes guy, guy refuses to show how much he likes girl while girl plays hard-to-get to keep guy interested, and guy and girl enter a 4-month relationship-adjacent purgatory where they go on dates and sleep together but don’t acknowledge the relationship itself until one party inevitably stops talking to the other party to see what else is out there, and then the whole cycle repeats.

“Dating” looks the way it does today because everyone is replaceable when the dating pool has millions of options. Instead of working through a road bump in one’s relationship, you can treat every minor inconvenience as an opportunity to look for someone “better.”

This weird dating carousel can last for years as we take longer and longer to commit, giving us less and less time to have kids.

 

The irony of this whole thing is that it was our very economic prosperity that created the conditions that could unwind the whole thing:

• The desire for everyone to “get ahead” has made it really expensive for your kids to get ahead

• Medical advancements have allowed us to be tactical with our pregnancies

• Previously unavailable career opportunities have led many folks to put off having children to pursue those opportunities

• Our abundance of wealth has provided us with near-limitless entertainment and activities that don’t involve having kids

• And the internet turned the whole world into a potential dating pool, making commitment next to impossible

And now we face this really weird Prisoner’s Dilemma:

Any individual person can delay having children to enjoy our abundance of everything, and their world will function just fine. But if every individual person neglects to have kids any time soon, the whole system grinds to a halt. The only way to ensure that everyone wins is by everyone having more kids.

Maybe society really is just one big pyramid scheme.

So I guess we should probably start having more kids. Or at least y’all should, anyway. I don’t really want to be part of the solution anytime soon, respectfully.

- Jack

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/we-should-really-be-having-more-kids