dagblog - Comments for "Disappearing demographic"

This is an interesting

flyover_27 — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:32:41 +0000

This is an interesting dilemna. On one hand we've got to slow down population growth due to lack of resources. (And less financial overflow for many American families, caused by lower salaries and higher prices, translating to less money for discretionary spending, and wish lists items like large families.) On the other hand, we've got to find a better way of socializing children if we have new challenges to overcome. I like independence and people with initiative, but perhaps more sensitivity to others and more willingness of those in American Society to be more group, oriented, or at least more sensitive to the perspective and needs of the whole.

I will be interested to see what people say about this here.

I read the Dean book, but not

Tom Wright — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:48:48 +0000

In reply to Disappearing demographic

I read the Dean book, but not the original work.

Thanks for the book

Emma Zahn — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:58:36 +0000

In reply to Disappearing demographic

Thanks for the book reference. I'll check it out.

A more conservative world I could probably live with but not an authoritarian one. Have you seen this pamphlet on authoritarians? John Dean based much of his book, Conservatives without Conscience, on the work of the pamphlet's author, Bob Altemeyer.

Professor Altemeyer has been studying authoritarians for several decades and even conducts experiments of world governance with them as well as non-authoritarians and mixed groups. The authoritarians have a tendency to either blow the world up quickly or let it evolve into chaos and then blow it up. Very interesting work.

Hear, hear, for us middle

Tom Wright — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:28:18 +0000

In reply to Disappearing demographic

Hear, hear, for us middle kids. BTW, Frank Sulloway's "Born to Rebel" addresses birth order and controls for complicating factors that undid 19th-century versions of the concept. Short version, middle and later children are less authoritarian.

So a prediction from the model is that we will become more conservative. Maybe already happening.