Friendly encouragement to start an abortion conversation in a different thread if that’s what you want to discuss on our wonderful finance blog. Or even better, consider the happiness benefits of just not discussing abortion with random internet strangers. Cheers.
I agree with you, and there are plenty of off-topic threads that have within them hearty debates about abortion.
The problem is, that it seems on the forum in general, the endpoint of many topics of conversation that don't explicitly deal with objective financial strategies, hobbies, or personal journals often accelerates quickly to some of the most frustrating and contentious socioeconomic topics of debate.
Given the title alone, birthrate and immigration are two reasonable topics to discuss. When birthrate is brought up, education, welfare, and abortion are logical next steps. Immigration easily ushers in discussions of race/racism, xenophobia, and welfare. Kind of hard to avoid the armchair debate when the initial question is firmly big picture.
ETA- I do understand the OP was specifically looking at hedging strategies, but the fundamental question is far too vague to avoid weekend philosophers.
Agreed, but it is also interesting that the discussion started with a question about decline specifically in relation to innovation but subsequent posts have avoided the issue of climate change, which is both a significant engine of potential decline and a potential catalyst for innovation. Too big an issue for people to get a hold of? Too much an issue where individuals are concerned about being held to account for their own failings rather than being able to pontificate on the failings of others?
Although it's certainly an issue so enormous we won't ever understand the big picture until it's too late, I think your second point is more accurate.
To be optimistic though, I try to at least skim through many of the more 'general' topics around the forum and I don't see too many explicit climate deniers here. I suspect Pete himself being an advocate for mitigating climate change helps keep a lot of the would-be vocal deniers off the forum or at least in the shadows.
To be pessimistic and probably realistic, many of us don't want to confront our own failings. It's easy to talk about policy and alternative energy from a 10,000 foot view but when each of us is faced with the fact that we make suboptimal decisions on a near-daily basis, it becomes much more difficult to talk about strategies that actually work when we know we're not actively participating.
It may sound like I paint with a broad brush, but I am in no means trying to suggest that there aren't plenty of folks around here who are much, much more diligent about affecting positive change on a personal level. There are plenty, and I sincerely applaud and appreciate their effort.
All that said, a country's current and future performance is a wildly complex machine so ignoring birthrate, healthcare, immigration, education, etc. would be disingenuous to the topic even if climate is the shadow looming over all of them.