Babies are also free labor. They are just like the AI agents of today, parents had their children do a variety of things around the farm, instead of paying for tokens, they had to feed them, thats all.
That problem won't go away because India is not at 80 - 95% urbanized like the west. There are still ~50% in villages, who will continue to migrate to cities.
The problem is India only has a few metros. India should be building 100+ new cities and rapidly urbanize. Cities are engines of growth. The slow migration from villages to legacy metros amplifies the infrastructure problems.
Yes. Actually it'll make sense to build new cities instead of pumping billions paying inflated land cost to build roads, rail etc. and metro systems that only pull even more crowds. Let the main cities rot, be replaced over time by new ones. Most empires did that, globally.
In a farming culture, children are a profit center:
1) Production of children costs nothing. People married young and children just happen, there are no expensive fertility treatments, etc.
2) children are free labor for decades, helping their dad (family?) expand the acreage. More land = high status for dad. Even today, children can work in the family business without any pay. A child can be free labor, but only for family.
3) After the children become adults, they don't automatically get any share of the land, they have to wait and be loyal to get their share of the inheritance.
4) Children are expected to take care of elders until they die. (free caregiving). Compared to taking care of an infant, which just lasts about an year or so, taking care of old people is extremely resource intensive. People used to do it because thats how social/cultural expectations were set.
5) Religions/culture standardize this by creating the culture/religious texts/etc -- women must produce more children (more followers for the religion) and children (specifically young) must obey their parents.
Now, children are a cost center. They cost a lot to produce, raise, don't confer high status (no free labor to expand production or acreage), and most critical factor no more free caregiving. Adults in these generations are realizing they are on their own when it comes to taking care of them when they are old. Then, why children?
The second thing is divorce is extremely punitive on men. Children happen, a man needs to be punished for the rest of his life and lead a significantly degraded life for decades. Decent men suffer the consequences of the toxic/abusive partners who are enabled by the state to steal as much as they can. When the laws change to be a bit more fair, magically divorce rates plunge. Divorce Plunged in Kentucky. Equal Custody for Fathers Is a Big Reason Why: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/the-equal-custody-experiment...
Some people point to poor people have lots of kids --> kids don't cost anything. Yes, poor people do have more kids, because divorce is divorced of disastrous consequences. If you have nothing, the state can't transfer/take much from you. As soon as you surpass the subsistence levels and have a job that pays above min wage, you have to worry about the inevitable consequences of divorce. You lose the primary home, pay a TON in child support, alimony, lose half your assets, pay for childcare, childrens health insurance and activities and still be the bad guy who gets to see his children only for a few hours. Women get most everything. Charlie Munger's on incentives: "Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome." This site has some examples: http://www.realworlddivorce.com/
If there is one thing Americans need to think about, work with your elected representatives, change the divorce laws. Young men are watching whats happening to their dads and
Note: Some of this is US specific, but largely applicable to most countries. Other countries are copying the worst divorce laws of US.
I forgot to add these two dimensions: technology and fictional growth.
Technology is hijacking biology. Biology uses sex as pleasure to make more. But FAANG companies have hijacked biology: https://cwcp.ca/blog/limbic-capitalism/
Entertainment technology, first as TV, now as mobile phone (the worst kind of technology) has provided continuous low grade drip dopamine. This with contraception is a killer combination.
Automobile is another technology that is anti kids. Kids used to roam freely. Now they need to watched at home all the time. This is super exhausting and consumes all available time of parents. Kids used to go out, play, socialize, get hungry and come back home to be fed and they sleep (because they are tired).
The economy is another 'technology' and the 'growth' idiocy is another dimension. All countries are using one neat trick to boost 'GDP' growth, make real estate super costly and create elaborate financial structures for a basic need: housing. Magically, you add some growth, while restricting supply and making things worse for everyone. Making housing an asset class is making everything worse. Similarly, financializing healthcare to boost GDP growth, which is now 20% of the economy and growing!
There is no consequence free growth or technology. There are always consequences and they will eventually show up.
AI (Compute/GPU) has always been first citizen on this planet. Cradle to Grave in AC environment. Humans, yeah, they'll live in the heat. Or not.
We must spend trillions of dollars on AI as if we are going to be extinct. Meanwhile, nobody has any money for massively increasing clean energy, which is possible now, just deploy solar (dirt cheap) everywhere, use EVs to dump excess production during the day.
Datacenters are subsidized everywhere (just like fossil fuels), and they get the best and first cuts of everything. Google is building a mega DC in Vizag, India, with massive incentives from Govt.
>WTF did Uber build with all of that spend? How did it meaningfully impact their revenue in a positive direction?
Uber (and quite a few bay area companies and startups) can afford to spend that money. There is no expectation of profit, Uber lost ~62B and growing: https://uberlosses.com/
As much as I love to hate on Uber, that website is from 2022. Uber has been profitable since 2023.
It's profit margin seems to have stabilized around 10%.
The real economic crime is losing at least $40bn over 10 years scaling a business that ended up having retail profit margins (i.e. low profit margins).
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