Children have to compete in a competitive educational system and then in a competitive job market. Failure means being a hikikomori or working at a McDonald's. People cannot easily get a decent job with only modest effort. Parents have to invest in their children's education so they can be on a good career track or else their children are doomed to flounder.

High investment means less children.

Essentially, this is the elite overproduction hypothesis. It also validates the "lump of labor fallacy" since there are a finite number of elite spots.

So it is not about societal wealth (although my hypothesis would say that more unequal societies would have lower birth rates if other factors are controlled) or how generous social benefits are. Rather it is the ease that someone can live a dignified life. If people are constantly "upskilling", then that is a society with a low birth rate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPe7tbysc2g (Why Education is Destroying East Asia)

I'm one of those leftists who would use it to refer to reactionaries, but I would assert that I would never use it as an ableist slur. I also don't use it in leftist spaces.

A tell for my emotional state is when I excessively use profanity (beyond rhetorical) or that word.

I'm just a bit surprised that BadEmpanada is using it.

Edit: I don't support this. I don't want to even normalize or even defend my behavior. I'm just surprised he is doing this publicly. I really am critical when I use it, hoping that my consciousness would change so I can be more averse to the word.

Maybe I'm actually soliciting comrades to admonish me. I pledge that I will offer no further defense for my behavior other than acknowledging that I am doing it.

https://m.youtube.com/post/UgkxsPfUD0Q36AZnqoLUZzAMJuOp5IxQUEOF

https://fortune.com/2026/07/16/the-global-rich-peter-thiel-safe-haven-argentina/

Listen Ms. Laura Ullrich, director of the prestigious Indeed Hiring Labor. You oversee a platform where there are plenty of ghost jobs and where many posted jobs have hundreds of applicants have overqualified applicants. You must be lying. This can only be a violation of Hanlon's razor.

I doubt she has any competence and got her position through connections/nepotism. Meritocracy is long dead here.

>

https://www.benzinga.com/markets/macro-economic-events/26/07/60357632/top-economist-issues-surprise-take-on-weak-jobs-data-as-labor-pool-shrinks-there-is-demand-but-theres-not-enough-supply

https://fortune.com/2026/07/08/labor-force-participation-61-5-lowest-50-years-supply-jobs-available/

https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2015/01/12/the-poor-design-of-the-human-eye/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backside_power_delivery
https://www.arn.org/docs/glicksman/bad-design/02/bda-02.html (an intelligent design perspective)

Maybe it is harder for evolution or the intelligent designer to put the blood vessels in the back of the photoreceptors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChTGKYkivfA (Scene played here)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEd82syWEGE (Ansoku [repose], the background music that inspired to make this)

Here, Wargreymon sliced Machinedramon/Mugendramon aftetr charging him.

War was quick and the US clearly lost, so the battle seems appropriate. I was surprised how quick the actual war went and that Iran won.

I wanted to see how many comrades got the reference. I do feel a bit old.

From some quick googling
https://www.fool.com/research/how-many-americans-own-stock/

Stock ownership by level of wealth

While more than half of U.S. adults own stock, most don't own much. The wealthiest 1% of Americans hold 50% of all equities, worth approximately $27.6 trillion as of the first quarter of 2026, according to the Federal Reserve's Distribution of Financial Accounts.

The top 10% by wealth hold 87% of wealth, worth roughly $48 trillion. The bottom 90% hold the remaining 13%, less than what the top 1% holds on its own.

Image is from Simpsons - Bart Sold His Soul, and That's Just Swell (from "Bart Sells His Soul").

There were some posts here recently featuring AI imagery concern how the future of work would change. Supposedly roles would be more dynamic and less rigid. The people in the labor force need to be adaptive to a rapid technologically advancing landscape.

For example.

However, the imagery isn't evocative of anything in particular. So what is a "synthetic ecosystems designer"? How would that "role" make the world better or it is just a meaningless title?

Maybe a challenge is to write some fiction about how the life of "synthetic ecosystems designer" would be? Would they be living in a world of productivity and ease? If you can't, you have no imagination, no ideas, no talent,

The posts are essentially pro-capital propaganda since it blames workers for not conforming to whatever the technological zeitgeist is and mentions a non-existent "skills gap". You have to "reinvent" yourself which means conform to the arbitrary demand of employers who wield AI, such as making bricks without straw when told to.

The message is that AI will make things more competitive, but not easier or better for you.

I don't predict AI shortening the work week or actually perform tasks in their entirety such as prescribing Viagra autonomously in the near future. AI should work for you, while you bear no responsibility for its outputs, just like being a passenger in a level 4 car or Milhouse in the picture.

I hope the meaning behind my image is intuitive in the context of AI and futurism. It is aspirational even if it is also unrealistic.

I just read this about the B-52 bomber:

>The Boeing-made bomber has not been in production since 1962, though several life-extension initiatives have modernized the airframe and kept it flying. The Air Force recently launched another B-52 upgrade initiative centered around designing new engines with a total expected price tag of $48.6 billion, according to Defense News.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/15/us/b-52-crash-edwards-california

So, for more than six decades, the B-52 still remains in the strongest air force in the world. Of course, there are more advanced planes with stealth technology or supersonic speed (Tu-160), but it seems to function well enough. In this use case, an airframe and propulsion from the 1960s that can deliver a substantial payload at long range suffices for the present-day military. The large radar signature is problematic against modern air defenses though, but B-52s also faced Soviet interceptors and SAMs too.

The Minuteman III had a long run too. The inertial guidance system, solid-fuel rocket propulsion, and thermonuclear devices hadn't changed much.

Maybe it is other innovation that help keep the B-52 relevant, such as more advanced missiles so the bomber can function as a stand-off missile carrier beyond the horizon of ground-based air defenses.

I guess it is like calculus or the citric acid cycle. I don't think there would be fundamental innovations in calculus or knowledge of the citric acid cycle from here on. The calculus curriculum in a 2000s college classroom would suffice in 2050.

So what I envision for the future (say to 2050) is largely the same technology. No robot doctors prescribing Viagra, no robots picking strawberries, limited autonomous truck penetration, no lab-grown meat at scale.

Maybe the world will be like California with massive solar deployments and batteries. Perhaps coal will be gone in most countries, while natural gas is on a terminal decline.

I don't see graphene, carbon nanotubes, transitional metal dichalcogenides, or room-temperature superconductors playing a role.

Some maybes include solid-state batteries. Maybe limited generation iv reactors. Maybe perovskite solar cells.

Most features of the 2020 world will be recognizable in 2050, just like the venerable B-52. Innovation might be hyped in the media, but most technology is already functional and optimized for their use-cases that new technology has to clear a high bar.

https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/robert-gordon-interview

For the present day:

https://fortune.com/2026/05/27/ai-productivity-internet-boom-solow-paradox/

Published before the present "AI boom" or "AI bubble".

What do you think about Robert Gordon? Should you have a flair for him? Regardless, I chose Daron Acemoglu because he is a techno-pessimist on automation.

I think job destruction through advanced artificial intelligence (which I don't think we're even close to achieving) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for more prosperity. That technology will increase total factor productivity.

So, in a way, to increase productivity, jobs have to be destroyed. I would imagine such a world to have some positives not yet manifested in the real world, such as being able to get into a car that can take your anywhere and not drive it. That would require an AI with almost human-level capability that can function in complex environments.

I said this in 2023:

>The forecast of the Metaculus pros seems to corroborate my pessimistic framework. There is no Solow's paradox concerning the anemic growth of the 2010s and 2020s; it is just that smartphones and generative AI are not capable of generating torrid economic and productivity growth.

>https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1677547/metaculus_pro_predictors_reject_tony_seba_and_ray/

I wouldn't be that against neoliberalism or whatever if John Maynard Keynes was correct about people only working 15 hours a week in 2030.