Richard Hanania on having kids; Michael Huemer on evil; Tyler Cowen on changes since 1950; Kling on Luca Dellanna; Glenn Loury with comedians (superb!)
Re Hanania on social connectedness and meaning, I think there are other important ways of getting these things that are neither about family nor about public works, and so don't get mentioned by either Hanania or Hertz. I think those paths to connectedness are probably more disproportionately accessible to urban elites than was previously the case. I speculate that urban elites, enjoying those paths to connectedness but unsure of how to broaden their accessibility, may be grasping at straws like "fund the libraries!' instead.
Reflecting on my own life to illustrate: I have a psychologically rewarding job doing something I think matters, with co-workers I greatly esteem and enjoy being around. I also have an avocation (choral singing) that is similarly rewarding. I get a lot of social connectedness and meaning from devoting energy to these people and our shared projects. I think it is pretty rare to have access to such strong sources of meaning from those things. But there does not seem to be anything in human nature that dictates that that must be rare, and I wish I knew how to make it less rare.
Here's how I think about the issue of children and meaning. Having kids is a high-risk, high-reward undertaking. A lot of the time, maybe most of the time, it turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to you. But lots of people end up with lifelong mental or physical illness, drug addiction, or seriously deviant behavior patterns. If one or more of your kids is like that, you're fucked for life and your retirement years are spent trying to just help your kid survive (or in the worst case scenario, trying to protect your grandkids from your kid). So every kid you have is a spin of the roulette wheel; just how risky a spin it is depends on what kind of health and behavior issues run in your family.
It's worth spinning the wheel if your baseline level of meaning and value is modest. You don't have that far to fall anyway. But if you've got a good thing going--meaningful vocation, other positive relationships, spiritual fulfillment--rocking the boat by having kids can be a big mistake.
All this is to say, it's more complicated than you and Hanania suggest.
Two things that should be connected that are mentioned here is how the size of families changes the population. If a city has the same # of housing units and average family size went from 6 to 2.5, there is a decline in the population of a city. I don't know how much of a contribution the family size decline makes but it should be enough to be mentioned in the discussion of city population changes from the 1950s to the 2020s.
Off-post, sorry, but FIT-related question. Not long ago you were linking to Eric Weinstein / "IDW" stuff a bunch, and that seems to have dropped off your radar. Do you think he / they kind of faded out or became too repetitive or something else?
Sam Jay made my day.
Re Hanania on social connectedness and meaning, I think there are other important ways of getting these things that are neither about family nor about public works, and so don't get mentioned by either Hanania or Hertz. I think those paths to connectedness are probably more disproportionately accessible to urban elites than was previously the case. I speculate that urban elites, enjoying those paths to connectedness but unsure of how to broaden their accessibility, may be grasping at straws like "fund the libraries!' instead.
Reflecting on my own life to illustrate: I have a psychologically rewarding job doing something I think matters, with co-workers I greatly esteem and enjoy being around. I also have an avocation (choral singing) that is similarly rewarding. I get a lot of social connectedness and meaning from devoting energy to these people and our shared projects. I think it is pretty rare to have access to such strong sources of meaning from those things. But there does not seem to be anything in human nature that dictates that that must be rare, and I wish I knew how to make it less rare.
Here's how I think about the issue of children and meaning. Having kids is a high-risk, high-reward undertaking. A lot of the time, maybe most of the time, it turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to you. But lots of people end up with lifelong mental or physical illness, drug addiction, or seriously deviant behavior patterns. If one or more of your kids is like that, you're fucked for life and your retirement years are spent trying to just help your kid survive (or in the worst case scenario, trying to protect your grandkids from your kid). So every kid you have is a spin of the roulette wheel; just how risky a spin it is depends on what kind of health and behavior issues run in your family.
It's worth spinning the wheel if your baseline level of meaning and value is modest. You don't have that far to fall anyway. But if you've got a good thing going--meaningful vocation, other positive relationships, spiritual fulfillment--rocking the boat by having kids can be a big mistake.
All this is to say, it's more complicated than you and Hanania suggest.
Two things that should be connected that are mentioned here is how the size of families changes the population. If a city has the same # of housing units and average family size went from 6 to 2.5, there is a decline in the population of a city. I don't know how much of a contribution the family size decline makes but it should be enough to be mentioned in the discussion of city population changes from the 1950s to the 2020s.
Off-post, sorry, but FIT-related question. Not long ago you were linking to Eric Weinstein / "IDW" stuff a bunch, and that seems to have dropped off your radar. Do you think he / they kind of faded out or became too repetitive or something else?