Post: #1

This has been bugging me for a while, so I'd like to bounce it off the forum and hear some peoples ideas.

Why is it that winners always seem to have so few kids in the current era? Buffet and Gates have 3 children each. Pitt has 3 and Clooney 0. Gene Simmons, in spite of having banged in excess of 4000 women, has 2. So does David Bowie. Felix Dennis, who claimed at one point to be supporting 17 mistresses, has 0 children.

Meanwhile there are bottom-of-the-pile dudes racking up double-digits, like this guy: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/18...8850.html.

If you look back through history, you find many men in high positions (kings especially) who simply reproduced subject to biological limits only - the burden any child could impose being negligible compared to their capacity to cover it. This is consistent with sexual selection theory - men with strong traits rise to the top, and by being at the top have preferential reproductive access, thereby having more offspring and moving the species in the direction of those strong traits.

Why is it that modern winners are so birth-control sensitive, rather than reproductively profiting from their high position?

Post: #2

Relevant:

Enjoy the decline

Post: #3

Quote:Currently, the state requires him to divide 50 percent of his earnings among the 11 women, some of whom receive as little as $1.49 a month

Post: #4

(02-11-2015 05:18 PM)kaotic Wrote:  Relevant:

I had a feeling someone was going to mention 'idiocracy' . Doesn't answer 'why' though...

Post: #5

The absolute top elite used to have their official children who inherited everything and in addition their mistresses had offspring and they tracked their progress. If those kids had talent, then they were advanced much faster in society.

I have read that they were doing that going back as far as the 1930s. Don't know if they still keep track of that kind of procedure.

In our times it is a bit more problematic, because even if you are man with 20 bio. $ in property, siring 5 official kids and 20 unofficial ones might result in a deep separation of your company. It is not even a matter of simple money - the laws have been changed to such a degree that any offspring of a lowly street-whore may become a great heir to your empire.

Then there remains the matter of giving your children enough quality time. I know one Dark Triad Alpha who had 7 children with 6 different women. In the end he was only a good father to the last kid after he let go of alcoholism. The other children are hard to take care of with such a spread. In most cases you are basically a bad father or have alienated kids - even if you have the cash to pay all the child-support.

Nowadays women have so much control over the future of a child, that even if you are billionaire, you cannot decide over the fate of your son - even if that woman is a mistress who would have had nothing without you. The law gives women so much power nowadays, that even wealthy or powerful men don't have dozens of children anymore.

Never mind the Players and Playboys - most would not be able to afford it, also they would know better than to tie themselves to a woman for such a long period.

Essentially it comes down to a solid well-thought decision with a quality woman - one that you could deal with even after separation - being also able to be a good father to the child. It is comparable to having a natural limit to having dogs - 1-2 is mostly fine, 3-5 is stretching it, but 6-12+ are often way too much, since you simply cannot spend enough time with all of them to have meaningful experiences. Nowadays we want that with our children instead of being a distant Mr. Father like in 1890.

Post: #6

These days, kids are an economic liability for middle-class parents. To ensure that the kids stay in the same social class as mommy and daddy, they have to go to a good school in a suburban neighborhood and attend a good college in order to get a high-paying job in engineering, finance, law, or medicine. This gets expensive quickly, and most upper middle class parents, especially dual-professional couples, will not be getting much from universities in financial aid, and there aren't enough full-tuition scholarships to go around, even at state universities.

For the indolent poor, however, children are an economic benefit, because they receive more welfare, both in cash payments and financial assistance with housing, food, and healthcare. For them, it is actually a rational choice to have more children. Not only that, greater access to food and better prenatal care are improving fertility in the lower class, which historically was not high.

The book A Farewell to Alms argues that the emergence of the English middle class and the subsequent Industrial Revolution was a result of differential fecundity by socioeconomic status (children of rich parents survived better) in the manorial and post-manorial periods, as well as downward social mobility due to primogeniture. The end result was a large number of people with the same culture of future-time orientation as the nobility, who were rational enough to escape Malthusian catastrophe. In essence, we are living in the inverse situation today.

Post: #7

(02-11-2015 05:51 PM)Native Baltimoron Wrote:  These days, kids are an economic liability for middle-class parents.

He's not asking about losers, he's asking about winners.

Most middle class families are medical emergency away from living in the trailer park.

WIA

Post: #8

Age old question, but to get on top of the pile, art, business, et cetera - you spend a lot of your prime baby making years pouring all of your energy into it. You really need to be pumping kids out when you're in your late 20's early 30's. But that's also prime time to make big moves professionally. You have the drive and energy and education and experience garnered from killing yourself in you early and mid 20's.

Warren Beezy was probably dead ass tired after 12 hours of reading 10K reports.

Mikey G didn't get married for a long ass time, cuts in on the baby making.

George "Pimp C" Clooney probably never found a chick really worth of knocking up. I mean when you got a track record like that, famous and rich 10's in and out of your life, you're no longer enchanted by beauty. His current wife is definitely not a looker imo.

Compare that to your trailer park dude, dude in the hood, hombre in the barrio. All you really got to look forward to is a cold brew, a hot meal, and a nice piece of ass. If you knock a broad up, it is what it is. Not like shit can change for the better. Ain't no one beating down the door to give a blue collar dude a high paying job in some factory. Better hope them oil fields don't dry up.

Middle class families typically need both parents to work, because the Wife wants to live in the good neighborhood with the good schools, and all that other bullshit. What she doesn't account for is how expensive childcare is, and how expensive keeping up with the Joneses is.

WIA

(02-11-2015 05:09 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  This has been bugging me for a while, so I'd like to bounce it off the forum and hear some peoples ideas.

Why is it that winners always seem to have so few kids in the current era? Buffet and Gates have 3 children each. Pitt has 3 and Clooney 0. Gene Simmons, in spite of having banged in excess of 4000 women, has 2. So does David Bowie. Felix Dennis, who claimed at one point to be supporting 17 mistresses, has 0 children.

Meanwhile there are bottom-of-the-pile dudes racking up double-digits, like this guy: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/18...8850.html.

If you look back through history, you find many men in high positions (kings especially) who simply reproduced subject to biological limits only - the burden any child could impose being negligible compared to their capacity to cover it. This is consistent with sexual selection theory - men with strong traits rise to the top, and by being at the top have preferential reproductive access, thereby having more offspring and moving the species in the direction of those strong traits.

Why is it that modern winners are so birth-control sensitive, rather than reproductively profiting from their high position?

Post: #9

The problems our male ancestors faced have mostly been solved. Get enough food, don't get eaten by animals, you're good. In today's world you don't have to be the strongest, fastest, or smartest to have a decent shot of passing your genes on. Being a winner back then meant being in the top third (or whatever) in some characteristics and living long enough to reproduce. Reproductive success and life success were the same thing. Most everyone lives long enough now. Being a winner today is doing something huge, making big money, whatever.

That and birth control and societal surpluses. If you made too many kids 5,000 years ago they all died. Make more than you can support now and the state pays for them.

Post: #10

I think it is because these guys are smart enough to know that having 2 to 3 kids is just fine. They realize that there is no need to have 6+ kids. Usually someone had that many because they needed to take care of the farm or there was a higher chance that your kid would die before adulthood. Now that we have modern technology and most people don't grow their own food there is no need to have that many children because it's just not practical anymore.

Post: #11

(02-11-2015 07:54 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  Middle class families typically need both parents to work, because the Wife wants to live in the good neighborhood with the good schools, and all that other bullshit. What she doesn't account for is how expensive childcare is, and how expensive keeping up with the Joneses is.

That's because she doesn't care, she expects you to just take care of it.

Post: #12

The major factor is modern medicine. As recently as a hundred years ago half of all children born did not reach adulthood. And that's not just talking about Africa or India, that's from developed Western countries, including children from wealthy families. So even the rich back then had incentive to have larger families, because back in the day money couldn't save your child from a bad infection or other childhood disease. You had to hedge your bets to ensure you had at least one competent surviving heir by having at least 5-6 children.

The other factor is related to IQ and future time-orientation. Basically, intelligent people are more conscientious and understand what they need to do (at least in theory) to maximize their child's potential for success in life. Low IQ people don't really understand what it takes to do this. It therefore makes logical sense for higher IQ people to focus on quality over quantity, by heavily investing in a smaller number of children they can "maximize". In contrast, lower IQ parents don't really know how to maximize their children's upbringing, so they benefit much more from taking the shotgun approach: have as many kids as possible, and hope that at least a couple turn out okay.

Post: #13

One thing is the amount of male-male competition these days. Historically, from genetic analysis, about 40% of men who ever lived on this earth reproduced but the number was double at 80% for women. So, if you lived through the constant warring with the local tribes, the intra-tribal warring, the ceremonies to become a man, and other environmental hazards then it signaled that you were among the best and over time you could rise in rank which also signaled to women that they should have your children. This seems to be even more true in harsher environments which is why polygamy was found in those environments.

Today we have a social safety system and the worst that most guys are likely, barring a few localized exceptions, to experience is a fist fight on the playground. Also, birth control.

Post: #14

(02-12-2015 12:30 AM)scorpion Wrote:  The major factor is modern medicine. As recently as a hundred years ago half of all children born did not reach adulthood. And that's not just talking about Africa or India, that's from developed Western countries, including children from wealthy families. So even the rich back then had incentive to have larger families, because back in the day money couldn't save your child from a bad infection or other childhood disease. You had to hedge your bets to ensure you had at least one competent surviving heir by having at least 5-6 children.

The other factor is related to IQ and future time-orientation. Basically, intelligent people are more conscientious and understand what they need to do (at least in theory) to maximize their child's potential for success in life. Low IQ people don't really understand what it takes to do this. It therefore makes logical sense for higher IQ people to focus on quality over quantity, by heavily investing in a smaller number of children they can "maximize". In contrast, lower IQ parents don't really know how to maximize their children's upbringing, so they benefit much more from taking the shotgun approach: have as many kids as possible, and hope that at least a couple turn out okay.

In addition governments have put out incentives in many countries where low IQ, low income families are having improving lifestyles because the state supports them.

Here an example of one such woman in the UK having 8 children and planning to have 2 more via state-sponsored surrogate mothers. She wants to have 10 children because she could then get a 5 bedroom council house. Also she openly states that the reason she had more kids with her boyfriend, was because she could improve her lifestyle by getting more.


/thread-45033.html
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mum...ys-5060861

An intelligent mother would only do that if she could hire 10 nannies - and more out of love for having small kids.

So currently as others have stated we put out incentives for poor low-IQ people to have more children. From an elite viewpoint it makes sense however, because a stupid population is one which is more easily controlled.

Post: #15

Birth Control

Stupid people don't use it.

I'm not saying that we're all winners here and that none of us are losers but just think how many children some of us would have if women of higher SES didn't use birth control. Some guys on the forum are probably in the triple digits for bangs. I estimate that I'm somewhere in the mid double digits, and most of those girls were college educated. If it wasn't for condoms, plan B and birth control pills, I would easily have a handful of kids by now.

Post: #16

As a comparison, Charlie Chaplin had 11 children (by 4 women). Bob Marley had 10 (by 7). Sultan of Brunei has 12 (by 4), supposedly.
Trying to find more examples is itself a good example of how full of garbage google search results are becoming.

Yes I suspect a lot of it has to do with politics. The welfare (aka democratic) state is well known for it's subsidization of reproduction of the bottom rungs of society. I suspect the damage to the reproductive rate in the middle comes indirectly from tax, regulation, inflation etc. It used to be the case that a man could support a wife and family without her working, not any more.

But the top-end, the winners, none of those factors really apply. You'd think there would be at least a few going the Genghis Khan route. Perhaps there are some countries that I know of where this is more common among the top men.

Post: #17

(02-11-2015 05:09 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  Why is it that modern winners are so birth-control sensitive, rather than reproductively profiting from their high position?

Because divorce rape is a relatively new invention.

Marriage and having kids is an overwhelmingly bleak, bad idea for guys now, especially if you have money. Surely most guys who are winners are perceptive enough to pick up on this and steer clear?

Granted that would suggest they should be having no kids, not just fewer kids. So maybe it's not the biggest factor.

Post: #18

Ziltoid Wrote:Marriage and having kids is an overwhelmingly bleak, bad idea for guys now, especially if you have money. Surely most guys who are winners are perceptive enough to pick up on this and steer clear?

Granted that would suggest they should be having no kids, not just fewer kids. So maybe it's not the biggest factor.

The drive to have kids is pretty powerful. There's also the economic situation of men to consider, here. Very, very few millennials will be able to afford a house any time soon, even among the post-baccalaureate set. There is a lot of wealth transfer from younger men going on, ranging from Uncle Sugar's welfare to debt-peonage abetted by the Fed.

The longer it takes for men to reach economic success, the longer it takes for them to attract a long-term mate, assuming they are using the traditional beta-bucks strategy. A lot of the guys I know who got married early are or have been in the military, which left them with a comparatively better financial position.

Once you've attained economic success, the difficulty of finding a young, pretty, and sane prospective wife is magnified by the risk of marriage and frivorce. By the time you've found one, and actually started having kids, there might not be that much time left on the clock if you want to keep the trisomy risk low.

Too, as people have mentioned, there's not too much point in having lots of kids, because the childhood mortality rate is quite low for upper-class people in the U.S. And having more kids means diluting your empire (potentially even if you put it in a trust or foundation, which is what all the really cool kids are doing today).

WestIndianArchie Wrote:Most middle class families are a medical emergency away from living in the trailer park.

I looked up the debt-to-income ratio for the middle three income quintiles of Americans: it's 135% as of this 2013, and peaked at 155% in 2007. Given that definition of middle class, you are quite likely correct.

I think, though, that the vernacular "middle class" is most closely approximated by the fourth income quintile, which stretches from roughly $80,000 to $100,000 a year. Most of those people will have health insurance, and probably can withstand a major hospitalization without bankruptcy.

Post: #19

I have 7 kids and a step daughter. 3 diffrent baby mothers. I pay child support to one, (not bad $$$ wise) and recieve child support from another. (Fought her in court for the kids, and won) and g/f now we live together and just had a daughter. I had a lot of kids for all diffrent reasons for each baby momz. My first one i was young and dumb, my 2nd i got trapped (she wasn't taking her bc) and 3rd is my current g/f. Its ok to have a lotta kids IF ur willing to raise them (on your own) and 2 if you know the court game and can succeed in a divorce/custody battle. (This is possible, just must kno the tricks yhe court plays and make the woman destroy herself)

ps: There is unlimited pussy streams available to single fathers reguardless of ur status/money. Just keep that game tight and u will literally be pushing pussy away. It all cones down to chillin with ur kid in public and running game.

Post: #20

(02-11-2015 05:51 PM)Native Baltimoron Wrote:  For the indolent poor, however, children are an economic benefit, because they receive more welfare, both in cash payments and financial assistance with housing, food, and healthcare. For them, it is actually a rational choice to have more children. Not only that, greater access to food and better prenatal care are improving fertility in the lower class, which historically was not high.

I can only assume that you did not grow up in a low-income household if you really think the average poor family sees an unexpected pregnancy as an economic benefit and makes a rational decision to breed in order to up their income. It's far from the case, I assure you, and in most low-income homes I spent time in growing up, there's little going on in the way of rational decision-making to begin with.

I'm not saying I support these government programs, but such a person would be far better off manipulating men for child support than bringing up a kid just to work the system.

I grew up in a low-income home, with a mom who worked three jobs and still needed welfare at times just to make ends meet. Raising three boys on her own while the dads were on drugs or in prison. I remember her getting knocked up once with a fourth too, and I remember the fear in her eyes and her crying all night as she considered the mess she'd gotten herself into.

Sure, it was her own doing, but that's a conversation for another day. Regardless of how I feel about the decisions she made in this regard, I can say with a touch of pride that she eventually rejected the welfare system and chose to scratch out her living without - we were a case study of a family who needed it, but she was too proud to put up with all the prying that comes with it and probably too proud to keep taking handouts.

In any case, raising children when poor is fucking hard (at least with the standards of modern society surrounding you), outside assistance or not. And those monthly cash injections don't affect much when the recipient is shit at handling money to begin with - it's typically spent before it even arrives.

Sometimes the foodstamps were the only reason we ate. Though, like many welfare parents, my mom often sought out local stores that would let her trade them for cigs, booze, and cash. Not because that was her diabolical nature but because that's a mentally poor person's relationship with currency.

Low income people who are less proud than my mom welcome the extra money but I doubt many plot as deep as you're suggesting to get it. Most have more kids because they're more ignorant and don't give enough thought to long-term consequences when making decisions in the moment. It's part of the reason they're poor in the first place. Not to mention they've probably got more time for sex since they've only got so much money to do other things.

Sure, there are crazy people out there hustling the system, but they are not the norm, and those ones are typically just not bright enough to know their system of making money digs new holes faster than it fills.

Again, I'm not supporting welfare systems or asserting that we should inject more cash into them, but anyone who grew up in a home that needed welfare, and around other people who could never quite get their lives together enough to wean themselves off of it, can tell you that this idea of it creating entire bastard families out of its sheer generosity is just absurd. I think the flaws in the system can be exposed without completely demonizing the people who use it and overexaggerating the misuse.

I also think your assessment of middle class families is off. Middle class families, as another poster pointed out, aren't exactly the smart winners of society - they're just the ones who've played decent enough damage control to not sink to the bottom (yet). We're talking about people who are stuck smack dab in the current of consumerism, and I don't think they're completely considering how heavy of a liability a child can be - if they're having less kids, it's probably for other reasons. I think there's a real pressure in the middle class to have those trophy kids as a sign of how "successful" they are.

Note: I'm talking American culture. If you're talking about England, that could explain some major differences.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #21

(02-12-2015 12:30 AM)scorpion Wrote:  The other factor is related to IQ and future time-orientation. Basically, intelligent people are more conscientious and understand what they need to do (at least in theory) to maximize their child's potential for success in life. Low IQ people don't really understand what it takes to do this. It therefore makes logical sense for higher IQ people to focus on quality over quantity, by heavily investing in a smaller number of children they can "maximize". In contrast, lower IQ parents don't really know how to maximize their children's upbringing, so they benefit much more from taking the shotgun approach: have as many kids as possible, and hope that at least a couple turn out okay.

Your points are 100% correct. This is actually a studied topic in economics and developmental psychology called time investment, or more specifically, how time investment by parents in the cognitive development of their children affects economic mobility.

Economists have documented that parents with a college education invest substantially more time in their children compared to parents without a college degree. While this might seem obvious, it is also somewhat surprising when you consider the fact that college-educated parents have greater earnings potential, so it is more costly in terms of foregone earnings for well-educated parents to spend a lot of time investing in their children, compared to less well-educated parents. But well-educated parents are also more “efficient” investors: a child gets more cognitive stimulation per hour of time investment if his parents are well educated.

Post: #22

(02-11-2015 05:09 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  Why is it that modern winners are so birth-control sensitive, rather than reproductively profiting from their high position?

Here's a basic question. Let's take good old Leonardo DiCaprio. How would having say 16 children have any benefit towards Leonardo DiCaprio's lifestyle? No matter how much he neglected them at some level fathering 16 children would be a distraction to him.

Hugh Hefner comes first in mind as modern day king and even he was smart enough to know that popping out tons of kids doesn't help your current lifestyle. Really the way most modern day 'kings' operate is not to have 30 bastards who didn't receive attention running around, but a have a manageable amount of children that get the attention to be their successor(Donald Trump for example). The people popping out lots of kids today are at the bottom of the barrel in society. They are just breeding with lots of ugly women.

Post: #23

(02-14-2015 09:03 AM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  ...

I can only assume that you did not grow up in a low-income household if you really think the average poor family sees an unexpected pregnancy as an economic benefit and makes a rational decision to breed in order to up their income. It's far from the case, I assure you, and in most low-income homes I spent time in growing up, there's little going on in the way of rational decision-making to begin with.
...

Note: I'm talking American culture. If you're talking about England, that could explain some major differences.

What you describe is the typical Christian puritan viewpoint that you find in the US. Also welfare does not pay nearly enough to survive in a decent way in the US. I would estimate that Americans hardly ever have children out of some net-gain calculations.

Those things happen in Europe, where welfare is more plentiful and even then it is mostly done by immigrant families. The local people do it for the same reasons the American poor do: stupid decisions most of the time. You find those kind of families even when there is hardly any welfare given at all in EE & FSU countries. It's more a matter of consciousness and only few of their children break out of the cycle of poverty.

As far as "winners" in our society are concerned - the middle class - even the upper middle class - they are not among the winners.

And to be honest - any man can find himself with a child by a woman he has no real future with. I had 2 close calls in my past when I was young and believed women when they told me that "it was safe". My luck was only that they aborted or I would have been a daddy for a long time by now. Maybe I would have risen to the occasion and become more successful or maybe not. In any case young men should definitely be super-careful around that point.

I frankly don't expect it from women too much, they are way too emotional and get attached too quickly. It is their biological imperative to stop thinking whenever they get pregnant. Too bad that young men don't think too much whenever giving a creampie to a young girl.

Eventually I don't think it matters whether the absolute elite has 20 children each. They are generally the money elite and there are plenty of people below them who are their superior in genetics, IQ, physical abilities etc. The only reason for a discrepancy would be that they can really afford to have 10 or even 500 children.

Nowadays most women don't want to have 5+ children even if they can afford it.

Also I am not a fan of eugenics and even the preambles of "Idiocracy" are only fun for a movie. In the middle ages the malnourished population was 1-2 heads shorter than the aristocracy, most children died during childhood and there is a high likelihood that a high majority of the population consisted of morons with very low IQs. As soon as living conditions improved, so did the health and mental faculties of the poor. Eugenics has always been a pet-project of the elite, but the wide-scale IQ tests done in the UK in the 1930-60s proved quite clearly that IQ similarly to body height improves between generations. A family of avg. IQ 100 can likely rise within 2-3 generations to an average of 130 via excellent nutrient dense nutrition, health care, clean living and water, plenty of intellectual stimulation, lack of toxins - especially during pregnancy and early childhood.

Now the elite does not like to present those results as they would essentially be a downer for their grand "we are the best, because we are the richest" con. Currently their plans are having a good run - IQs on average have been rising for practically all world populations from the 1940s onward. The trend started reversing itself in the 1990s and IQs are currently plummeting.

But hey - the "winners" have found a good way to stay on top - and it is not via reproductive success, that has been a dead end ever since we left the stone age.

Post: #24

(02-14-2015 12:31 PM)The Wire Wrote:  Here's a basic question. Let's take good old Leonardo DiCaprio. How would having say 16 children have any benefit towards Leonardo DiCaprio's lifestyle? No matter how much he neglected them at some level fathering 16 children would be a distraction to him.

To what end is ones lifestyle? As far as biology is concerned, if you don't have kids, you just made a load of noise and commotion and then died.

Post: #25

You're making the assumption that these men lead normal lives.

That they have the same amount of free time as the middle class, middle manager. Or the scum bag loser. Either way, they are fundamentally different in their approach to life, and how they interact in the world.

Of course divorce rape is a big issue. Robin Williams the perfect example. I'm convinced his life was ruined by multiple divorces, and in short, having multiple children. Oscar winners dont do Snickers commercials and sitcoms because they love the craft of making TV commercials. His ass was beyond broke.

Or Elon Musk, whose first marriage ended because he was absent at home. And his second marriage ending because finding a following bride willing to sacrifice the stereotypical modern romance woman are sold, is harder than it looks. Can these women see the big picture?

Elon works 15+ hours a day, every day, building fucking rocket ships. Robin Williams likely bought into the notion that "this time I will do it right." Gene Simmonds tours every year. Bill Gates is a workaholic, as is Warren Buffet. Felix Dennis was a workaholic who worked all day every day, was unencumbered to make risky investments, work all night, fly and travel to make deals. He was single not because he liked hookers, they were hired and fired accordingly.

These men work 100X harder than the middle class. And they are unencumbered for a reason. And likely subconsciously or consciously choose not to bring children into this world knowing that child wont get what it should, a full time devoted parent. Combine that with a western women's desire for the 9-5, 50/50 household duty sharing Oprah book club reading house man, and it becomes even less of a possibility.