[confuseddesi]

This seems almost akin to the tragedy of the commons. Society needs for various reasons (e.g., to maintain and promulgate culture, to power welfare and labor needs, to generally exist in the next century) for people to have children at least at some level above replacement rates. However, each individual couple has a lot of disincentive to have children. I am not convinced this disincentive is due to a lack of benefits from the state - I don’t see benefit-rich Western Europe doing much better than the austere United States. I think we as a society and as individuals simply don’t value creating and raising children as one of the most rewarding and important activities to be performed enough to outweigh the financial, social, and personal implications.

[CogitoCogito]

> Society needs for various reasons (e.g., to maintain and promulgate culture, to power welfare and labor needs, to generally exist in the next century) for people to have children at least at some level above replacement rates.

I'm having a hard time to respond to such a broad statement other than to say that I don't believe society needs a growing population for any of those things. I might change my mind if you were to support your claims though...

[maximus-decimus]

If you fold a piece of paper 42 times, it reaches the moon.

Exponential growth is not sustainable. You simply cannot have "above replacement rates" of kids forever. The Earth population has doubled in the last 50 years. If we're already worried about our pollution levels right now, I certainly don't think we should double our population again over the next half-century.

[mrkramer]

Yea it is tragedy of the commons; even people in Medieval Europe understood they need to have a lot of children because agricultural workforce, craftsmen workforce, army size, priesthood size, taxpayers size and like you said in general to exist and inhabit some land. Because land without people was and is attractive prey in the eyes of invaders and conquerors.

[nicbou]

Europe can now suck people up from other countries, and only pick the ones that have potential to pay taxes.