You know, there's probably fewer perverse incentives with a government run dating service. Obviously I can imagine ways it could suck, but when I compare them to how commercial dating services are run it's hard to see how they could do a _worse_ job.
I give it about a month before they start gaming the algorithm to pair people who are likely to be on government benefits with people who can support them.
You make $150k, congratulations all your matches are McDonalds crew members.
You make $200k, the same but now they're all mentally ill because the algorithm deems you capable of supporting thyat too.
As long as you're going dystopian, maybe the government decides that it'll be better for the country if they raise a generation of super-babies and secretly pivots to eugenics as a service.
Yeah, the precedent for the idea of a .gov dating service is Plato’s Republic along with comments in the Timaeus/Critias which make it clear that Plato envisioned a rigged service designed for eugenics. Central control over matchmaking is incentivized to eugenics.
I think its inevitable, especially if we get to artifical wombs. Think about the other side of the coin: you dont want to breed stupid and ugly people, right? Or maybe you want people who will immediately go on welfare and are genetically predisposed to vote reliably for the right party?
The nice think about artificial wombs is that they can solve some problems with the abortion issue (provided embryos can be safely transplanted). Fathers who want to keep their child when mothers want to abort could have the fetus develop in an artificial womb and pick the kid up once it's "born". Signing away your rights/responsibility to the child and leaving your embryos to be "birthed" and raised by the state could replace many abortions.
>Signing away your rights/responsibility to the child and leaving your embryos to be "birthed" and raised by the state could replace many abortions.
For a given quality of "output" at age 18 it takes a certain amount of input to get there, at least at a macro level.
Even assuming that you can figure something out that doesn't suck and produce way to high of a ratio of shitty non-productive people the way the current foster care system does, where is the surplus that the state can seize to raise these kids gonna come from?
A lot of the people crying about low birth rates aren't the least bit concerned about how affordable raising those children will be for families. Why should it matter to them how affordable raising children is for the state?
If artificial wombs will get them to stop forcing women to have children they don't want or can't afford, that should have many economic advantages.
Consider for example, if we didn't force 13 year old rape victims to give birth and raise children (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/14/mississippi-abortion-ban-girl-raped-gives-birth" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/14/mississippi-ab...). The pregnant child could focus on healing from what she went through, complete her education, get a well paying job and be a stronger contributor to the economy. The infant wouldn't be raised by a traumatized and impoverished 7th grader which could help raise the "quality of output" as you put it. To be honest though, I suspect they really just want an underclass to exploit so "quality" isn't a metric they're worried about.
First off your argument is just the "women in the workforce will make us all richer" argument but with Epstein island demographics of women.
Second, I wasn't even looking at it on that level. I was just looking at the high level economics. I'm saying that it takes certain amount of material plenty to get a kid from vagina to workforce. You've got food, clothing, the labor of educators, etc, etc, etc. None of that is free. Current foster care system costs do not scale. Our society is simply not wealthy enough to afford that for any sizable fraction of children. You could perhaps cheapen it up but I don't see much potential there since the outcomes are already sub par. You could perhaps make it more efficient, but what form would that take?
Unless we commit to walking back the standards of acceptable levels of investment in children by 70-100yr there's just no way rich western countries are gonna have more kids. Even if you pop them out of artificial wombs the whole rest of the "infant to workforce" pipeline is a mess.
I'm not sure what "Epstein island demographics of women" are, but I honestly do think that allowing women to work outside the home (and get an education, and own property etc.) has been a net win for our economy, but removing unnecessary constraints on people's ability to pursue their own career/education goals seems like a good thing for everybody
> Current foster care system costs do not scale. Our society is simply not wealthy enough to afford that for any sizable fraction of children.
I suspect that the US is more than wealthy enough, it's just historically been unwilling to do any better. It would take some massive changes, and there'd still need to be a lot of administration to make sure that the kids were safe and well cared for, but our current foster care expenses probably aren't a good way to judge the cost.
Forster care is hugely inefficient and involves a lot of overhead which pushes the price tag way above the usual cost of raising a child. A child might cost a typical family $18,000 a year, but the cost for one child in the foster care system over that same period could cost $40,000 to $200,000.
Many of those costs wouldn't apply to a situation where the state was committed to raising a kid from birth though. For example all the legal costs involved in determining if kids should be placed into or taken out the system and then also doing that wouldn't exist. There would a lot less need for kids to be shuffled around. Plus lots of kids in the system need extra care, either because those needs made it impossible for their parents to care for them, or because they ended up in the system after traumatic circumstances.
water-data-dude · · focus · HN ↗
SwtCyber · · focus · HN ↗
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cucumber3732842 · · focus · HN ↗
I give it about a month before they start gaming the algorithm to pair people who are likely to be on government benefits with people who can support them.
You make $150k, congratulations all your matches are McDonalds crew members.
You make $200k, the same but now they're all mentally ill because the algorithm deems you capable of supporting thyat too.
autoexec · · focus · HN ↗
Telemakhos · · focus · HN ↗
a34729t · · focus · HN ↗
autoexec · · focus · HN ↗
cucumber3732842 · · focus · HN ↗
For a given quality of "output" at age 18 it takes a certain amount of input to get there, at least at a macro level.
Even assuming that you can figure something out that doesn't suck and produce way to high of a ratio of shitty non-productive people the way the current foster care system does, where is the surplus that the state can seize to raise these kids gonna come from?
autoexec · · focus · HN ↗
If artificial wombs will get them to stop forcing women to have children they don't want or can't afford, that should have many economic advantages.
Consider for example, if we didn't force 13 year old rape victims to give birth and raise children (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/14/mississippi-abortion-ban-girl-raped-gives-birth" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/14/mississippi-ab...). The pregnant child could focus on healing from what she went through, complete her education, get a well paying job and be a stronger contributor to the economy. The infant wouldn't be raised by a traumatized and impoverished 7th grader which could help raise the "quality of output" as you put it. To be honest though, I suspect they really just want an underclass to exploit so "quality" isn't a metric they're worried about.
cucumber3732842 · · focus · HN ↗
Second, I wasn't even looking at it on that level. I was just looking at the high level economics. I'm saying that it takes certain amount of material plenty to get a kid from vagina to workforce. You've got food, clothing, the labor of educators, etc, etc, etc. None of that is free. Current foster care system costs do not scale. Our society is simply not wealthy enough to afford that for any sizable fraction of children. You could perhaps cheapen it up but I don't see much potential there since the outcomes are already sub par. You could perhaps make it more efficient, but what form would that take?
Unless we commit to walking back the standards of acceptable levels of investment in children by 70-100yr there's just no way rich western countries are gonna have more kids. Even if you pop them out of artificial wombs the whole rest of the "infant to workforce" pipeline is a mess.
autoexec · · focus · HN ↗
> Current foster care system costs do not scale. Our society is simply not wealthy enough to afford that for any sizable fraction of children.
I suspect that the US is more than wealthy enough, it's just historically been unwilling to do any better. It would take some massive changes, and there'd still need to be a lot of administration to make sure that the kids were safe and well cared for, but our current foster care expenses probably aren't a good way to judge the cost.
Forster care is hugely inefficient and involves a lot of overhead which pushes the price tag way above the usual cost of raising a child. A child might cost a typical family $18,000 a year, but the cost for one child in the foster care system over that same period could cost $40,000 to $200,000.
Many of those costs wouldn't apply to a situation where the state was committed to raising a kid from birth though. For example all the legal costs involved in determining if kids should be placed into or taken out the system and then also doing that wouldn't exist. There would a lot less need for kids to be shuffled around. Plus lots of kids in the system need extra care, either because those needs made it impossible for their parents to care for them, or because they ended up in the system after traumatic circumstances.