It's actually not that expensive if you take an inside cabin, I remember seeing prices of about 900usd at some point, which isn't more than a plane ticket if you take into account the food/entertainment. Right now there's some crossing from the UK to New York starting at about 450 pounds, you have to call though.

Huh, that's a lot more affordable than I thought. I think I'd prefer an inside cabin anyway, on a ship like that you don't really wanna spend time in the cabin.

A two day ferry to Spain will set you back more than that!

Worth noting, though, being able to "afford" this kind of thing isn't just about the money. Most people get only a few weeks holiday per year, and many aren't allowed to take more than a couple of at a time. To get the most out of something like this you'll ideally have a month at the very least to holiday, which is not possible for most.

Go back to medical school, I'm only very early in my career and in my home country you can restart medical school at any point in time (it's also extremely rare to do so).

It's like with the music industry, it got easier for anyone to make music/release music in theory. Meanwhile for the last 100 years there's mostly been more concentration/consolidation.

when TVs were this expensive you didn't have this technology. Furthermore you had less competition from e.g. Korea and China in the TV sector.

"average human who's read a few books on the subject and is good at bullshitting" seems like a large portion of white collar workers that make bank.

The robot thing was also what japan bet on in the 90s

I don't think financial incentives will actually do that much, it's generally seen as something that works only marginally. People get more kids when they get stable/good jobs, have a support network, have a culture that incentivizes births.

South Korea is currently throwing money at the problem, upped parental leave even did some things to make it easier to retire if you got a lot of kids. I'm almost certain these things won't meaningfully change the situation (maybe go from 0.8 to 1.0) as all korean children are expected to get good jobs (white collar, certain professions) , they structure their society towards this and it's impossible to get a high birthrate like this.

I actually read about how something like presence of nuns in your town in italy was quite correlated with birthrates as it basically relieved all women but the nurses of some duties. In Korea you can see how the stability leads to a very significant effect on birthrates as Sejong is by far the highest birthrate region. Interesting since those really obsessed about birthrates also seem to hate the worker protections that make it difficult to fire people. I guess housing is another of those stability factors since renting really ups the risks of children.

I think for most millenials it's an excuse not really the actual reason they don't want/get kids (although i think there's a few actual believers).

It's amazing how many people don't realize that people make a decision, and then find reasons for it.

They don't make a decision. They get influenced by media, then they internalize the reasons provided, then they create a belief + memory that they independently arrived at the conclusion logically, from their deeply-held principles.

But the influence only goes one way, not the other, right? There has never been pressure from society to get married and reproduce?

Although I think there's a good chance that this will happen there's no reason to assume that we'll be better or at most slightly worse in the future just because that's all we've experienced in (recent) human history, it's a sort of survivorship bias.

Besides the AR glasses, this is roughly what already happens when PE rolls up a trade or clinic. One (licensed) expert oversees a bunch of less-qualified staff following a script. Just optimize the revenue and let schmucks pay expert prices.