It begins - the roll back of democracy

[Doc]

I love Sowell. Yes, Marx called for the abolition of the family. That’s what the left is trying to do.

That is what BLM was calling for on their web site before they scrubbed it. The people that have the web site anyway and most definitely communists. Actually Maoists. Being Maoists means that they are controlled by the CCP. At least that is the way it was among the Maoists I knew in college.

[cassowary]

Yes, Marx called for the abolition of the family. That’s what the left is trying to do.

I suppose your idea of family is the woman in the kitchen, the man at work, and five to six children around the house...

I guess you don't have that, not even in Singapore...

In most families, both husband and wife work to pay for expensive tuition for their 1.3 kids, save for their kid’s university and help support elderly parents. 1.3 kids are all the average family can afford. We are going extinct.

[neverfail]

Yes, Marx called for the abolition of the family. That’s what the left is trying to do.

I suppose your idea of family is the woman in the kitchen, the man at work, and five to six children around the house...

I guess you don't have that, not even in Singapore...

In most families, both husband and wife work to pay for expensive tuition for their 1.3 kids, save for their kid’s university and help support elderly parents. 1.3 kids are all the average family can afford. We are going extinct.

So Cassowary, you cannot avoid conceding here that it is not Marxist idealogy (or 'the left") that that has driven Singapore into the impasse of a vital statistic of a birthrate far below replacement level but the reality of (cost/benefit) modern economics in an urban environment.

It does not pay parents to have many kids because each and every kid represents an additional expense: not a source of additional income. Indeed, considering the sacrifice involved the having and raising of kids these days has to be an act of unconditional love: and not every adult and potential parent by any means is equipped with such a loving heart.

It was not always so. Centuries ago when most of the world's population were subsistence peasant farmers additional children were regarded as a godsend because even when relatively young they could still do some work around the farm in order to lighten the work burden of their parents. In other words they were economic assets. When they grew into healthy young adults they then went on to support the by now elderly, often infirm, parents - so in that regard the having of children must have been the equivalent incremental investment in superannuation in our day.

This no doubt is where your venerable Chinese custom of the younger generation looking after the elderly originated from. China has historically spent a long time as a high agrarian civilisation. Yet I have reason to believe that this inherited tradition must be wearing thin and is doomed. Not just in Singapore but as mainland China continues its transformation from predominantly rural to prodominantly urban it is due for extinction even in its country of origin.

It is the same story in all of the advanced countries.

[cassowary]

Yes, Marx called for the abolition of the family. That’s what the left is trying to do.

I suppose your idea of family is the woman in the kitchen, the man at work, and five to six children around the house...

I guess you don't have that, not even in Singapore...

In most families, both husband and wife work to pay for expensive tuition for their 1.3 kids, save for their kid’s university and help support elderly parents. 1.3 kids are all the average family can afford. We are going extinct.

So Cassowary, you cannot avoid conceding here that it is not Marxist idealogy (or 'the left") that that has driven Singapore into the impasse of a vital statistic of a birthrate far below replacement level but the reality of (cost/benefit) modern economics in an urban environment.

It does not pay parents to have many kids because each and every kid represents an additional expense: not a source of additional income. Indeed, considering the sacrifice involved the having and raising of kids these days has to be an act of unconditional love: and not every adult and potential parent by any means is equipped with such a loving heart.

It was not always so. Centuries ago when most of the world's population were subsistence peasant farmers additional children were regarded as a godsend because even when relatively young they could still do some work around the farm in order to lighten the work burden of their parents. In other words they were economic assets. When they grew into healthy young adults they then went on to support the by now elderly, often infirm, parents - so in that regard the having of children must have been the equivalent incremental investment in superannuation in our day.

This no doubt is where your venerable Chinese custom of the younger generation looking after the elderly originated from. China has historically spent a long time as a high agrarian civilisation. Yet I have reason to believe that this inherited tradition must be wearing thin and is doomed. Not just in Singapore but as mainland China continues its transformation from predominantly rural to prodominantly urban it is due for extinction even in its country of origin.

It is the same story in all of the advanced countries.

That is an intelligent analysis. You are absolutely correct. We need to update things in our urban environment so that children are again assets and not liabilities. I propose adult childen should be subject to a payroll tax like in the US but with a difference. Instead of going into a common pool used to pay retirees a pension, the money should go towards their own parents. In that way, there is a restored financial incentive to have kids.

There is another problem - one rooted in nature. Women prefer to marry upwards or at least an equal. You see, females of any species go for quality in the choice of mates while males go for quantity. A male can impregnate thousands of females, if he is rich and powerful enough. But females can only give birth to one child every nine months. So to ensure the survival of her genes, nature has programmed females to go for the best males they can find.

In modern human society, this means better educated and hence higher earning males. But some males will inevitably marry lesser educated females. This reduces the availability of the higher quality males that females want. To make matters worse, there are more females that are tertiary educated than males. So a whole bunch of females won't find their desired partners

What to do? I have an unChristian proposal based on what I read about the Laysan Albatross. This is a bird that lives in Hawaii. In about two thirds of the nests, you have the normal male-female pair raising chicks. But in one thirds of the nest, you have two females raising chicks!

The Laysan Albatross is monogamous and pair for life. They pair for life. So after two thirds of the better quality males are paired off with the lucky females, what's left are the bum males. The remaining females refuse to pair with them. Instead, they pair with another female for life to raise their chicks after a short term trysts with superior males.

In our society, females have started to outnember males in gaining tertiary education. We notice that females are reluctant to marry downwards because they are genetically programmed to behave like that. To worsen the situation, some males marry downwards. This reduces the availability of tertiary educate males that the females want.

Could we not do something like what the Laysan Albatross are doing? So as not to encourage marital infedilty, we could have commercially run sperm banks that pay for sperms from the high level males. This is then sold to women who cannot find suitable high level males. The women can, like the albatross, pair with another tertiary educated female and raise their kids together.

These are my two proposals to save Singaporeans from extinction.