On average, if you have the means, you will try to give a good environment to your children.
A nice education, e.g. by making sure they go to non-crappy schools. A chance of doing sports, pursue art or music, coding, and so on. A potential path to explore the world, and develop as individuals.
You do not need money to provide a good environment. For example, you can be economically poor while providing a rich intellectual environment to your children.
But often money has to be brought into the equation. This is because in our society it is usually a key to satisfy basic needs that allow you to develop as a person on other axes.
Therefore, a big emphasis of this post is money. Dinero. Argent.
Money gives a lot of kids the privilege of following a path without second thoughts on their basic needs. On average, these same people are also the ones ending up getting the good opportunities, some of which lopsidedly shape the world.
Eventually this loop restarts.[1]
On the other hand, there is a large number of kids that can not afford much. Let's not talk about the stress, lack of opportunities, and the insurmountable obstacles they encounter in their life. When they grow up, they need to look for themselves, and perhaps others. They work as twice as hard as their more fortunate peers, with little to no results. Everything is complex and difficult. Perhaps they do not have the necessary skills to economically succeed, and not because of some intrinsic deficiency, but due to lack of training, connections, chances.
Do not get me wrong. Many end up happy in their personal lives. But for some reason, the system is not made for them to thrive as individuals. Little encouragement is found.
On average, this bucket of individuals skew towards the bitter side of the society of which they represent most of the chunk.
They are told what to do (e.g. because some lawyers now bureaucrats think to know better). They see their mortgages ramp up (e.g. because some physicists and mathematicians played with the market). They are told what to think, and what do they need to care about (e.g. by someone who thinks they are part of the intelligentsia). All by people that, on average, never had to earn their most basic needs.
If you are bitter or want to improve hopelessly your situation, because of a system working against you regardless of your innate abilities, as a human you may end up following populists. They have their own way of charming the masses (e.g. through scapegoating).[2] You do not need to seduce everybody. Once you reach a critical mass, you gain a lot of momentum.
In this case, one can imagine the following scenario.
A democratic society voting for a populist whose rhetoric leads to an authoritarian revolution. In current most technologically advanced and influential individualistic democracies regimes emerging are a threat to humanity. This is an unstable point that can very easily turn into totalitarianism.[3] The consequence is increased human suffering. People might become less educated on average. Scientific research might take a big hit. Social mobility becomes even harder. In the event of existential risk/thirst for power authoritarian regimes seek the answer in biological, chemical, nuclear, and advanced technological weapons.[4]
Let's trace backwards my basic chain of thoughts:
authoritarian regime a huge threat to humanity <- marginalised unhappy people <- little opportunities to kids that always had a hard life <- economic and life prospects are bad <- little opportunities to kids that always had a hard life
I put twice "little opportunities to kids that always had a hard life" because:
I am not arguing the above is the only chain towards an authoritarian regime. But it has certainly a non-zero chance.
Now, I want to state the following:
There might be biological reasons to only care about our child. Today, our tribes are deeply interconnected, and the consequences of our actions have network effects.
If we really care about our child, then we should try to make the world better instead of pouring a huge number of resources to our children only (especially true for the richer side of society).
Very basic examples:
I think this will lead to less bitter people on the long run (yes, sometimes there are people that no matter what you do they will act the same, but we should focus on the average person).
And then, you will have less marginalised unhappy people.
And our populists, or an AI politician, will have less power on them (if using the same usual rhetoric of the populist, so probably the strategy will change).
By making the world better for everybody, by drastically reducing the resources you directly use for your children you are actually creating a better world for them!!
But what's the difference between your own child and other's children?
You have been waiting for a while in the hospital.
Today, time is really slow. You are waiting. Not even scrolling socials helps. You are too nervous. You take a walk. But you can't. You are soon going to be a parent.
Suddenly, your eyes are full of joy. Your ears full of noise. Your newborn is screaming! They are in good health. All of the stress that accumulated into your heart turns in tenderness. You are on the verge of a new adventure.
After a little bit, they come to bring your baby to the nursery; they need to make some little checks, as it is customary for that hospital. You go with them too.
Lately, nurses and doctors have been very busy. They have been flooded with new born babies. Last year, periphery hospitals had to shutdown due to budget cuts. Some have been targets of predatory tactics by private equity firms.
You go with your family back home. Everything is ready for the baby. You already outlined their next twenty years: which schools they are going to, which activities and places to explore to unleash their potential. And why not start some little investment or savings. After all, business has been good for you, and you feel very enthusiastic.
You were born in a middle income house. You never had to economically struggle. But you worked hard to improve socially your situation. Especially in this period of national turmoils, social inequality, fluctuating markets, wars, you want to give your child the best chances in life.
You inform yourself on the Internet, from acquaintances and friends for the best places you can send your kid to. The best schools in your neighbour or city. You do not want to send them to a school with kids from bad families. Young people are very easily influenceable. Sure, in the good school, public or private, you have bad kids too. But the environment is amazing. If you can afford it, you are also happy to tip some money to that school, or use your influence to improve it.
Generally, you make sure you provide what you can for them. And you are very active about it. You do not shy away from spending money to nurture the creativity and energies of your kid, be it in music, martial arts, or paintball.
On the other hand, far from your neighbourhood kids are wasting their time in the mall in front of the ice-cream shop without buying anything. They just spend their time there. Some of them are going to work soon, despite you live in a wealthy advanced country. Some, dropped out of university. Or took bad decisions without thinking. They are stuck. There are not that many degrees of freedom for them. Sometimes, some of them pops out and manages to do something for themselves. You feel sorry for them. But you do not do anything about it.
Now your kid is 10 years old. They are wonderful! Though, can be a nightmare :) They gave you so many good times. Your kid is enjoying life.
But society is becoming worse. Taxes are rising. More people are in poverty. You fear for your kid. So you decide to put more resources to send them to more exclusive places, and save more money for them to use in the future.
Your kid's life is proceeding, as well as yours. They are now 20 years old. They look very similar to your great-grandparents. They are still young, but ready for life. They are articulate. They have interests. They want to explore outside their home. They have everything ready. Or maybe they are still undecided. No worries. You got them covered. Or maybe you will kick them out of the house to teach them something.
On the other hand, the kids you saw twenty years back are still struggling. They probably have combined potential earning smaller than your beloved child. Someone at the government plans to rise taxes to help them. You and your friends are not that happy about that. You worked hard. You are a simple person. You are not powerful. But maybe someone at your sports club knows someone that knows someone at the government. They maybe can manage to do something about it.
While thinking about this, you enter in a supermarket to get some groceries. You see someone that has a very similar nose to your partner. They are nice people. You pay, and you go home.
Neither them nor you know that they are your true child. The fact is, 20 years ago, a devil mistakenly swapped your true child with your current one.
The fact that you cared for twenty years so much about someone else's DNA product means that your own DNA product is not that special to you. Indeed, it never occurred to you to give money to your biological child (that might be gifted as you).
The thing that makes you care about a child is the species.
You want to preserve the species. Therefore, in principle there should not be a difference between your own child and other children.[5]
In this post I tried to make a rough argument on why you should care about children that are not yours. And why your children are not special.
And even if your children and other's children are not special in absolute terms, if you really love them you have big incentives into investing into the world. Because, if you do not, nasty things can happen.
How to make the world better?
An efficient way to do this is by financial sharing.
I would probably create a non-profit foundation that allocates the money. Sincerely speaking, I would like the government to not be involved in money talks.[6]But I would use the government to disincentive people from sending their kids to elite schools for example. This would force privileged people into making all schools a better place.[7]
Once we found a way, what to do about the motivation? How to intrinsically motivate people? I tried to make a rational argument. But by the end of the day, I think this works with a restricted number of people.
In general, I think the multitude does not share resources, or do, because of the way they grow up. Not because they reached some epiphany that led them to keep what they earn/inherited and spend it only on vacations. And it is not a money issue. There are people that earn more than us and in absolute terms donate less.
People will mainly share or not depending on their values and experiences.
An example is religion. The only instance where I saw a parent buy an ice-cream to strangers, or kids sharing their small bag of potato chips with multiple randoms, is in a religious community.
On the other hand, some people that overcome poverty won't share because they worked hard for that, and they do not like poor lazy people.
Hence, I arrive at the most fundamental value:
if we really care about our child, we make sure to instill in them the value of sharing. This how we can make the world a better place.
We could do it showing our example, teaching principles of religion or philosophy, or reminding them that we are all made of stars.
Even with no children, this is still how we can make our world better. By caring about everybody's children.[8]
The loop does not restart from the pool of people with common background; genetic factors, luck, play a big role. Social mobility is upwards, and downwards. Here ignored.
See for example, https://www.cronologia.it/lebon/indice.htm
Needless to say, authoritarian regimes can be overthrown. But the damage they do in the meantime can be devastating.
If I imagine the limiting case of only totalitarian nuclear nations among the world, I am not sure how diplomacy would play out. On one hand, there is the craving for influence and control. On the other, if you seek too much power you might scare the others.
Note I am excluding the case of a children who is trained to harm you, for example.
While I am pro-sharing a fraction of resources, I do not like governments forcing people to do so. This is because I see most of the governments inefficient and do not trust them with my money (though some branches are better than others, but still some rotten tomatoes screw good fruits).
There are non-elitist reasons to send your kid to a particular school: maybe because of beliefs, or because your kid is gifted. Then, my point is that there should not be places for rich gifted kids, but for gifted kids only.
I thank K.K. for suggesting adding this.
