I agree with the general idea here.

Previously parents could obtain a house, finances for children and still be able to afford a decent quality of living in their early 20s. Middle class kids have seen what their parents obtained and are finding it hard to similarly have a house over their head that is their own.

They're now all forced to take on student debt or were conditioned to do so and with the majority of decent paying jobs (above minimum wage) requiring a degree for just an interview. People are resentful of it all with knowing how their parents had it and opting out of having kids for something more affordable like a pet. It's really messed up if you think how future little Alice or Bob are now replaced with a pet.

I'm not really buying into the idea of tinder is part of the blame. People did the same dating crap in the previous generations but it wasn't so in your face like now. I just think it has become the idea, when you're middle class it isn't financially worth having a kid and where you will then be living a lower class lifestyle to support your children; saving for their future with knowing how expensive a higher education will be for them. I feel like if society doesn't fix this soon, whenever things get changed the previous generation will riot or be extremely negative for what they missed out on (were forced into living without).

Sorry, who's "You" in this example? I don't remember doing any of these things.

Since you haven't presented any actual evidence, this sounds like storytelling. I'm sure it's a story that appeals to some demographic, given the upvotes, but that doesn't make it true. And insisting that it's obviously right to "anyone with two brain cells" definitely raises the skeptic flag for me.

I assumed the 'you' to refer to the capitalist system we live in, not particularly one person or group of people but the machine of capitalism that pushes for growth above all else.

In the west, all of these things happened under democratically elected governance. Thus one can say that it is what people chose to be. Economic progress and technology intensified individualism and childrearing fell way behind in the hierarchy of needs. That may explain why fertility rates are terrible in Germany, despite them having affordable and state-supported lives.

Democracy is more of a system where the choice for the "new generation" is made by their parents and older. The system falls apart if people become sociopaths when it comes to "needs" of the future generation.

Indeed. I don't see anyone born in the 80s/90s dictating policies or in politics. I see the same boomers that sold this country's middle class up the river still doing what they do best. Gray and white hair, wealth from a career of servicing companies, steps away from the grave and they still don't want to let go of the reigns for the "new generation". It's like a sick obsession they have with trying to control the world. Never stopping once to enjoy what they have profited from their enterprises... Seemingly aiming to dictate policy until they take their last breath.

The state of politics in this country is at trash tier levels.. Even more insane when you think of the trillions of dollars tied up in this circus and what it could do for American society if it was actually put to good use.

I see this as a system that started off with good intentions, order, and promise that eventually just gets ran down with clowns. Interestingly, a good number of 1st world countries have governance of similar characteristics right now. It's like they lost the narrative as to what they should be doing so just engage in a soap opera on a day to day basis to keep up appearances.. Meanwhile squandering trillions of dollars of tax payer money.

Children want a lot of things that aren't good for them. If they have bad parents or their environmental conditions are down-trotten enough, it's not a mystery of what becomes of the majority of them. Democracies are a viscous feedback loop which in modern times has been functioning at the highest levels based on corporate interest in lobbyist. It's a fit of bread and circuses. A system run down in the long run as all do. So, it's hard to definitively point the finger. However, it can be summarized as the collective. The question becomes more critically as to who alters the broader rules, game, and game state and who simply is just a peon player trying their best to optimize. When a problem festers long enough, it becomes systemic. When the environment becomes toxic enough, the individual player becomes as ruthless as those at the top albeit within their own scale. Take an honest look at the west and this is where we are at now. Most politicians do nothing for the greater good of the country besides waste tax payer money and in many cases do things that harm people's overall wellbeing. Trillions of dollars are siphoned out of people's pay checks and the basic infrastructure of the country is dilapidated. Education K-12 is a hollowed out mess. Our gateways to the internet are profiteer centers instead of public domain. Our healthcare system centers on profit maximization over patient health. Our food products are filled with cheap junk fillers that cause diabetes/cancer... Common sense telling people this for years only to find a decade later companies like Monsato did the obvious damage to society. No worries... They pay a fine that goes predominately to regulators and lawyers.

Economic progress occurred significantly in the 90s and early 2000s and it seemed the west was on a path towards brilliance. Then came the b.s wars .. Then came the greed that destroyed the middle class. Then came the over-financialization. Then came the unregulated housing fleecing (which is still going namely in the bay area). Then came the wave of Academic Institutions joining in on the free-for-all w/ insane inflation of tuition.

Technology meanwhile was solving problems. There was no need for insane tuitions/fees given that we had high speed internet and video anywhere. However, it was put under wraps.

Then comes the social junk for the masses in which a broad based information utility that could bring society to a higher level was turned into an information warfare tool.

We had economic progress. Technology intensified. Individualism really isn't all that pronounced. There is more group think than ever as masses of people became social media zombies. Critical thinking is gone. Families and long lasting wholesome interaction is gone. It's essentially a big manipulative profit maximization experiment gone wrong. There are no social standards guiding production. It's a free-for-all.

The obvious outcomes are now being realized : https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/tinder-hook-up-cu...

Social Media has had detrimental effects on people's psychology and mental health.

The obvious was obvious before these trends. They were ignored because profit was the central theme and the purpose was to maximize it. Things don't spontaneously just happen. They occur for a reason.

I've spent some time in Germany. It's expensive and the pay is lack luster. They don't have career mobility of ascension as people are staffed based on Age. Young people aren't having kids because they don't feel a deep connectivity to their home land. They don't see the need to preserve their culture/roots because culturally the country shunned and shamed it. So, with a globalist chancellor like Merkel they decided to decimate the local populist with a flood of immigrants all for the mighty dollar.

Socially, Germany killed off a range of cultures. Women don't have the connection they do to their kids as they do in other cultures... It would take me pages to detail. Suffice to say, the powers that be didn't allow Germany's population to slide for long did they? Nope.. The economic engine must persist. So, they're flooding it with immigrants w/ zero regard to the local populist. Its in this moment, you see what is being looked out for and why such conditions persist. It's the flawed economic engine over people and when this is the game being played .. People indeed become divided, selfish, and stop broad considerations of the long term and earth. Why invest in an entity of the future when it is clear that the world they will be born into will turn to crap? To a country trying to destroy its own culture and people? as evidenced by the trends and things you see before your very eyes? So yeah, a smart person goes towards 'individualism' and short term enjoyment will it is still to be had.

You are pointing out some real problems, but your attempt to pin them all on capitalism ("the almighty dollar") is incoherent and fallacious.

It's not "capitalism" turning young people to Tinder, which is dirt cheap. Capitalism as a system would much rather them start families and have lots of babies. Raising one kid yields far more purchases than a Tinder Plus subscription and a pack of prophylactics.

It is certainly not the "capitalism" strawman pushing aggressive gender politics. Most of these are based on Marxist studies, and closely associated with socialist and Marxist views and movements, that is - the opposite of capitalism.

In short, you invoked a bunch of very different problems with current American culture, bundled them together and strapped the collective label "capitalism" onto them, so now you have a single throat to cut to cure all that is ill with society. Unfortunately, it's not a single problem, and certainly does not have a single cause.

You're also ignoring agency completely. Nobody "pushed" people to use Tinder. They could keep dating seriously and getting married at 23 like they did in the 50s. They don't do that because they don't want to.

> Unfortunately, it's not a single problem, and certainly does not have a single cause.

Did they claim that? They didn't even use the word capitalism once. They simply mentioned that greed is also a problem, and you talk about how they supposedly blame it all on capitalism, and how that's just a convenient strawman to slap down.

> Nobody "pushed" people to use Tinder.

Yeah, because that's a simplification of a whole lot of stuff. It can be unpacked, but why even bother when you're not working along, and just go by a silly literal interpretation and point out how silly that is.

> They don't do that because they don't want to.

That's the start of the discussion, the comment was talking about why that is. And you just end with "it's fine that it is so because it is so", basically.

> Raising one kid yields far more purchases than a Tinder Plus subscription and a pack of prophylactics.

That was described by the parent post. That's why the push for immigration can be traced back to increased capitalistic opportunity.

> It is certainly not the "capitalism" strawman pushing aggressive gender politics.

Again, he did not describe that.

> You're also ignoring agency completely

No, he described it in sweeping generalities eg Why would someone have a kid in the current environment? - a direct reference to the wealth-education of the middle class, where you're smart enough to maximize, but not able to ascend leveraging those choices.

The primary issue with the rant is how he starts with "You" to mean a nebulous powers-that-be and then asks questions and makes statements from the perspective of the middle class.

Read it again for clarity. There's nothing about his comment that hasn't been said before.

I don't recall pinning them all on capitalism. That is a typical false classification someone engages in who wants to dismiss any real world analysis of the underlying causes. Then you go on to argue from this basis for the remainder of your commentary. I won't engage you further because you have misclassified my framing on purpose I could imagine and are falsely arguing against something I never stated. I detailed a range of different reasons why Birth rates are down. If you want to accurately refute any particular point you're more than welcome. But I will not engage your falsely framed retort in the least.

> You are pointing out some real problems

And yet.. you're trying to falsely refute them. Meanwhile, you present nothing but 'Yeah you pointed out some real problems ... but dude.. it's totally nothing"

Agency is framed by social context. Does someone have the same Agency in America as Canada, Europe, Sweden, Japan, China? Do they express the same cultural/social trends? What happens when a country like China bans certain social activity? What about your agency then? What happens when China bans certain apps that have no social value whatsoever and will lead to a more impoverished state? What happens when a country is steeped in nonsensical divisive idiocy vs a mature country that doesn't tolerate it socially? Agency means nothing without context. Cultures are pushed through mainstream media in the west. If you deny that, you have something cognitively wrong. Agency means nothing when you don't exercise it and live your life based on populist trends which is what the majority of people do. Thus the term : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_ideology

You began with : > You are pointing out some real problems

And went off to lala land. I'm not a Marxist. I'm not an anti-capitalist. I'm a realist. Reply with something better.

> Reply with something better.

Nah, I'd rather engage with someone less rude and toxic. Good luck to you.

Please don't post unsubstantively like this on Hacker News.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html