The funny thing is that when you point out places that are very much still the Wild West, some even more so than they were a century ago, the response is always some version of “yuck”. They don’t want adventure, they want a curated adventure experience. They want a video game.

@Mechanical_Dodo Nearly all of it, I think, these are deeply intertwined. I think there’s a very strong case that TFR decline is itself partly a function of reduced mortality, because people have surprisingly stable goals over time for number of children *they expect to reach adulthood*.

@Mechanical_Dodo People respond to better odds of children surviving by having fewer, but ofc that depends on then protecting that reduced mortality by risk-avoidance. Reading biographies and old novels, people’s attitudes toward risk come across as incredibly fatalistic in a modern context.