Against Stupidity ...

Ross Douthat is the New York Times designated op-ed moron. OK, I mean he is an even bigger moron than David Brooks, whom I sometimes suspect of merely playing the part of a moron.

Since Tyler Cowen often writes sensible things, it really discourages me when he writes nonsense like this, which he entitles, I basically agree with Ross Douthat here:

The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion — a decadence that first arose in the West but now haunts rich societies around the globe. It’s a spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be. It embraces the comforts and pleasures of modernity, while shrugging off the basic sacrifices that built our civilization in the first place.
His link is here, and I willingly admit that I am in some ways part of the problem.

Low fertility is a huge factor in producing economic prosperity. Check out this gapminder chart.

More children in today's world will only produce more wars. The planet already has many more people than it can comfortably support.

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