the low fertility rate in the United States

JonMiller said:

Correlation does not imply causation, but if we look at people with children at home and people without children at home, the couples with children at home are more likely to give to charity.

Now there could be many causes for this. Like maybe if people with children at home have more income and can give more to charity? Not likely. There are others that might be likely.

There are a lot of things to look at, and soft sciences aren't very easy to isolate cause and effect.

But you even look at the reasons most people say they are childless, including all of the ones presented in this thread. And they are all selfish reasons.

I want more time for my hobbies is a selfish reason.
I don't think I would be a good parent (which is I don't want to take time to be a good parent, and won't choose to) is selfish.
I don't have enough money is selfish.
It would disturb my life is selfish.

Everything points to those who choose to not have children as being selfish, excluding the few who do so so that they can focus on serving others.

JM

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Selfishness is a value judgment. It has no place in a discussion about a supposedly objective criteria. Value judgments also rely on how you define the concepts you are using.

As above, if you define selfishness to mean the things you describe, it would be selfish not to want expanded government micromanagement of your finances. It would be disruptive of your life and infringe your freedom to do with your money as you wish, and therefore would be selfish on your part. But under the value judgment of that assessment, the other external possibilities are neglected and motivations are defined as strictly one-dimensional, rendering them meaningless and outside the realm of reality. The reason for this is that the idea of selfishness implies a negative motivation - the motivation to deprive other people of something, or to not give something that you would prefer to use on your own indulgence. This context is not rational as a general indicator for why people do things and misses many fine distinctions that exist within each respective class of circumstance.

Selfish Definition | Definition of Selfish at Dictionary.com

Some people seem not to understand what selfish means. It means placing your interests/etc above others. Acting for your own personal pleasure/etc.

You can, without going to socialism, act selflessly with your finances. If you give money to charity, for example.

JM

The fact that people here don't understand what selfish behavor is is quite disturbing, but I really shouldn't be surprised.

JM

we know what selfishness is Jon, we're saying its not logical to assume that all couples who are childless by choice are selfish or that all couples who choose to have children are unselfish.

I am not assuming all couples who are childless by choice are selfish.

I am listing the common reasons people give, which are all selfish reasons.

I referenced one study that showed that who have kids give more to charity than those who don't.

And I hypothesized that people who chose to be childless, and weren't doing so to due to illness or to focus on serving others, were selfish.

JM

JonMiller said:

I am listing the common reasons people give, which are all selfish reasons.

Click to expand...

Selfishness is a value judgment, which may or may not be applicable to a given situation by virtue of motivation.

I would change my mind if anyone could give a reason that wasn't selfish.

Note that the "I don't want children" is an excuse, it isn't a reason. Look at other countries, non-first world materialistc/etc focused ones don't have the same issue as the first world nations/japan with a lack of children born.

JM

JonMiller said:

I would change my mind if anyone could give a reason that wasn't selfish.

Note that the "I don't want children" is an excuse, it isn't a reason. Look at other countries, non-first world materialistc/etc focused ones don't have the same issue as the first world nations/japan with a lack of children born.

JM

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What does selfish mean? It's a value judgment based on determined qualities of motivation - it's selfish to save money when people around you are starving, because you don't care and want a luxury yacht at some point in the future. It's not selfish to save your money when people around you are starving, despite caring, because you want to open a food bank and give people the ability to take a lasting benefit from your much larger donation of resources. Initial assumptions without qualification are always wrong by virtue of their simplistic nature.

That is why I referred to the motivations, basically the reason why they decided to be childless.

That is motivation.

JM

JonMiller said:

That is why I referred to the motivations, basically the reason why they decided to be childless.

That is motivation.

JM

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According to that logic, the motivations would require a motivation.

No, you are comparing apples and oranges.

You said that a person could save for a vacation or save to start a business (which would than employ someone who had been unemployed and poor). Those are both actions. There are different reasons and goals for those actions.

The childlessness is the action. The motivations are at least partially included in the reasons given.

You aren't being logically consistent.

JM

Yarrrrrrrr I be done with this thread!

they have you down the rabbit hole jm.

Wow this thread seems to have gotten tense. I'll fix it with funny pictures of dogs!










There, all better?

JonMiller said:

The fact that people here don't understand what selfish behavor is is quite disturbing, but I really shouldn't be surprised.

JM

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yes, the main reason people are not having kids is selfishness, or greed. funny thing is one reason people always had kids is to take care of them as they got old. the point of this thread is there is now a demographic crisis. the balance of the population is getting older. they were too greedy to have kids and now there will be no one to look after them. they are victims of their own selfishness.

canukian said:

yes, the main reason people are not having kids is selfishness, or greed. funny thing is one reason people always had kids is to take care of them as they got old. the point of this thread is there is now a demographic crisis. the balance of the population is getting older. they were too greedy to have kids and now there will be no one to look after them. they are victims of their own selfishness.

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IDDQD said:

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speak english.

canukian said:

speak english.

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why? you dont like free speech?