{"id":23036,"date":"2014-01-12T10:32:03","date_gmt":"2014-01-12T15:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23036"},"modified":"2015-03-16T17:57:20","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T21:57:20","slug":"qotd-the-real-world-economics-of-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/01\/12\/qotd-the-real-world-economics-of-children\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The real-world economics of children"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8220;Oh, certainly, you could produce quantities of infants\u00ad &mdash; although it would take enormous resources to do so. Highly trained techs, as well as equipment and supplies. But don&#8217;t you see, that\u2019s just the beginning. It\u2019s nothing, compared to what it takes to raise a child. Why, on Athos it absorbs most of the planet\u2019s economic resources. Food &mdash; of course\u00ad &mdash; housing \u00adeducation, clothing, medical care &mdash; it takes nearly all our efforts just to maintain population replacement, let alone to increase. No government could possibly afford to raise such a specialized, non-productive army.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Elli Quinn quirked an eyebrow. &#8220;How odd. On other worlds, people seem to come in floods, and they\u2019re not necessarily impoverished, either.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ethan, diverted, said, &#8220;Really? I don&#8217;t see how that can be. Why, the labor costs alone of bringing a child to maturity are astronomical. There must be something wrong with your accounting.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Her eyes screwed up in an expression of sudden ironic insight. &#8220;Ah, but on other worlds the labor costs aren&#8217;t added in. They\u2019re counted as free.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ethan stared. &#8220;What an absurd bit of double thinking! Athosians would never sit still for such a hidden labor tax! Don\u2019t the primary nurturers even get social duty credits?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I believe,&#8221; her voice was edged with a peculiar dryness, they call it women\u2019s work. And the supply usually exceeds the demand &mdash; non-union scabs, as it were, undercutting the market.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lois McMaster Bujold, <em>Ethan of Athos<\/em>, 1986.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Oh, certainly, you could produce quantities of infants\u00ad &mdash; although it would take enormous resources to do so. Highly trained techs, as well as equipment and supplies. But don&#8217;t you see, that\u2019s just the beginning. It\u2019s nothing, compared to what it takes to raise a child. Why, on Athos it absorbs most of the planet\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,25,28],"tags":[374,1023,85],"class_list":["post-23036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-economics","category-media","tag-children","tag-loismcmasterbujold","tag-sf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5Zy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23037,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23036\/revisions\/23037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}