It is a Truth Universally Acknowledged that a nation faced with a market failure must consider government intervention.
The birthrate crisis is a textbook example of a market failure. An economically productive activity, traditionally relegated to the private sector, is no longer occurring at the scale necessary for national survival. The most obvious solution to the problem is for the state to pick up some of the slack and solve this tragedy of the commons via mass production of babies — utilizing the available technologies of sperm & egg donation, surrogate pregnancies, and childcare.
Why It Matters:
Like Elon says, a society that doesn’t produce new babies eventually dies
Economic and political institutions depend on a continued increase in population
Population growth is one of the main drivers of new wealth. Without it, we become poor
Why is the Birth Rate so Low?
Various hypotheses have been put forward:
Feminism
Endocrine Disruptors
Collapse of the fabric of society
Phone addiction
Lack of a “third place”
Crisis of Meaning
We are left with the problem of multiple explanations – which really means we lack any convincing explanations at all. We may not understand this problem satisfactorily for decades to come. We cannot wait for a consensus-approved explanation to begin solving the problem.
Fuck the Why, Let’s Fix It
To buy ourselves time to understand and reverse the root cause, it is expedient to directly address the symptoms right now. Moreover it is perilous to delay. If we wait 10, 20 years, 30 years, we will be forced to begin the programs with greater urgency and scale. Without the benefits of a gradual ramp-up in baby production, the rate of production errors (i.e. maladjusted, sickly children) – with all of the ethical and practical implications – will inevitably be higher.
Reversing the Birth Rate Decline is Simple
We have all of the ingredients in place
Sperm & Egg Banks
Surrogate Mothers
Nurseries, Daycares and Schools
Producing large quantities of new humans does not require new technology or even new institutions. It is a matter of directing taxpayer dollars into pre-existing institutions. The Government already raises everybody’s kids — it is not a uniquely new burden.
Precedent
We can learn from the 20th Century German policy of Lebensborn, a case of state-driven production of newborn orphans. (One difference is that this program used sexual intercourse rather than artifical insemination)
Anni-Frid Synni Lyngstad, a singer of Abba was a product of Lebensborn. By all accounts, she was of good genetic stock, and had two children of her own – the traditional way.
Some Objections:
Millions of Orphans
Expensive
Immigration Can Solve Our Problems
Addressing each of these in turn.
Is having millions of orphans worse than the human race going extinct? Is it worse than those orphans not existing? That attitude strikes me as 20th century – we are not in a position to pick and choose between “old-fashioned child production” and “Mass Produced Infants”. The choice we are faced with is between incrementally Mass Produced Infants or no incremental babies at all – and a continued dwindling population.
Producing new population is not a societal expense — it is a societal investment, The upfront investment has been historically borne by private citizens making it appear to be an expense (likely this contributes to the low fertility), however, from the perspective of society, or the government it is simply an investment with positive expected returns.
What about Immigration? This cannot solve our problems. The whole world is also experiencing fertility decline. Relying on Immigration is simply throwing the can down the road, outsourcing the fertility problems to other nations, and will involve turning over the native population of the country – to consider this a permanent solution is to endorse wholesale, the replacement of native populations!
There is Another Motivation
Drawing Inspiration from the Lebensborn Program, it is possible to produce more children and simultaneously increase the average genetic quality of the population. Good genes, eugenics! This is possible through simple, well-understood technologies such as selective breeding – and it is possible through more modern inventions such as CRISPR, embryo selection to greatly reduce the frequency of genetic diseases or erase them altogether.
In time, it will be understood that the children of this program are much more highly desirable than the children of the old ways. They will be healthy, beautiful, intelligent, and their offspring will be as well. They will be free to breed amongst themselves, and with the native population. Both unions of this type will be highly eugenic.
It is time, in 2024, to begin a pilot program, a New American Lebensborn – with the goal of supplementing the declining native population with a racially pure, beautiful, and overall excellent stock.
The Amerikaner Will Rise Again!
I've written two comprehensive pages on topic, if you're interested:
- https://zerocontradictions.net/FAQs/eugenics-FAQs
- https://zerocontradictions.net/FAQs/overpopulation-FAQs.
Subscribing just because of the Anni-Frid reference.