[0xcafefood]

It's probably too simplistic to just look at a global average. Developed countries (largely Western and Asian ones) have fertility rates well below their replacement levels, while sub-Saharan African nations (many of which are on food aid) have fertility well above replacement levels. These don't cancel one another out in terms of effects on humanity. Not economically, not culturally, not geopolitically.

[gtvwill]

Well pretty sure we know how to fix that. Go have some kids! Seriously folks need to breed more. You wanna spread your ideals? Have a family. Wanna sway politics in the long run to your ideals? Tell your kids to have big families too. Religions have been doing this for yonks. It's not rocket science. It strikes me as absurd the academic class hasn't worked this out.

[0xcafefood]

I think what you're proposing will happen, but over time. Birth control has separated sex from reproduction, for anyone with access to it and the desire to use it. So nature's former trick of making sex enjoyable in order to incentivize reproduction doesn't work as well any longer. The next trick will have to be an actual desire to have children, instead of a desire to have sex with the results also including children. That desire may be genetic or memetic (e.g. in the form of a religion), or most likely a synthesis of the two.

[threatofrain]

A lot of people want to have families... you're making it sound like there's a marketing problem, but the conversation is on whether or not there's the right platform for the middle class to have children; i.e. childcare, family, home, money, etc. People want to maintain their station in life while having children.

But somehow you're looking at the problem like "why don't people know they could achieve religious and political gain by having more kids?" Gosh, these dumb academics haven't figured it out. And who is thinking that academics even has serious political sway on these matters?

[gtvwill]

Hey look I'm poor as I've ever been and have 3 step kids. Gonna send it for another two kids soon regardless of our finances. Why? Well because we want to and we're not getting any younger! Mate childcare, house sizes, money. Eh well make it work. No point worrying about problem that might not even happen.

It is a marketing problem largely. People got too high a expectations these days. They expect everything to be perfect and are largely massively selfish in doing it.

We might be poor, we might be cramped in a tiny house. But the kids are fed, clothed and are in a loving family. It's better than a lot of wealthy fams I know where the kids are depressed because the parents rarely cross the giant house to have a chat or hang out with them. Everybody is hidden behind thousands of dollars of screens.

The middle class has a massive marketing problem re. Having kids and families.

[gumby]

> Seriously folks need to breed more.

People who want to are welcome to -- you be you.

People who don't want to should not be pressured to do so.

[gumby]

The usual complaint is that the pyramid scheme stops working (not enough people working to pay the pensions of the old people). This is simplistic: the real problem is that there aren't enough doctors/garbos/crop-harvesters etc as a proportion of the population. Either way the fix is straightforward: bring in some people who'd like a job.

Some rethinking is required -- in the USA Social Security was put in place when the typical recipient was expected to receive a payout for...less than three years.

I have friends in the "reduce the birth rate" community, and they are at least as thoughless if not more than the "birth rate too low" crowd. In the former case their "diagnosis" is inevitably that the wrong people are having too many kids though they hate it when you point that out.

A higher birth rate in sub saharan africa is hardly a crisis: every person in the US emits 5X the CO2 of a person in Africa. Dropping population in the rich, polluting countries can be a step in the right direction.

(Personally I'm pretty indifferent to either position. As Herb Stein famously put it: "if something cannot go on forever it will stop". Sure, the latency in this case is quite high but people deal with worse all the time.)

[tivert]

> This is simplistic: the real problem is that there aren't enough doctors/garbos/crop-harvesters etc as a proportion of the population. Either way the fix is straightforward: bring in some people who'd like a job.

That "fix" doesn't work when the birthrate problem is widespread. It just moves the problem around so it hits the poorest the hardest.

> Some rethinking is required -- in the USA Social Security was put in place when the typical recipient was expected to receive a payout for...less than three years.

Yes. Social security's payout formula should factor in the number offspring. Anyone who has less than two gets a significantly reduced or no payout, because they didn't sufficiently contribute to the next generation's labor pool to provide the goods and services they payout would be used to buy. The tax payments would be kept but re-conceptualized as support for elderly parents. To make it fair, the government should pay for fertility treatments, and count a certain number of good-faith attempts as children in the formula.

[gumby]

> It just moves the problem around so it hits the poorest the hardest.

Could you expand on this? I can’t think of a scenario where that is the case.

> Social security's payout formula should factor in the number offspring.

Ha, how will you track it? I have no offspring in this country (USA) bc they decided things are better elsewhere. But they were born here.

Germany just does it directly: when your kids are little you have to support them (assuming you can); when you are old and decrepit your kids have some responsibility for your wellbeing.

[tivert]

>> It just moves the problem around so it hits the poorest the hardest.

> Could you expand on this? I can’t think of a scenario where that is the case.

Pretty straightforward: there's no unlimited wellspring of young people from poor countries for rich countries to tap, there is a limited amount. Those poor countries also have declining birth rates, they're just a few decades behind on the trend. It's unlikely there are enough poor young people satisfy the labor demands of all the depopulating rich countries.

So the rich countries suck up all the available young "doctors/garbos/crop-harvesters" from the poor countries. That leaves the poor countries with screwed up, unbalanced demographics (without necessarily even fixing the screwed up, unbalanced demographics of the rich countries), and they're in an even worse position to deal with the problem, since they're poor.

So poor African grandma's doctor moves to American to treat rich American Grandma, and African grandma gets to do without.

> Ha, how will you track it?

How does the government track anything? They come up with rules and definitions and bureaucracy, then implement them.

And the types of records needed to implement the idea for 90%+ of cases have been kept for 100+ years.

[crngefest]

It wasn’t you but GP who started this thread stated:

> sub-Saharan African nations (many of which are on food aid) have fertility well above replacement levels

So which is it ? Are they above or below replacement levels?

> How does the government track anything?

While I get where you are aiming at this didn’t work in China and they have arguably the most perfect surveillance state worldwide - I don’t think this is desirable, the tradeoff in freedom and security is just too big.

[tivert]

> So which is it ? Are they above or below replacement levels?

Is is now or is it later? We're dealing with statistics that change over time.

An idea that depends on certain areas having "fertility well above replacement levels," like using immigration to compensate for demographic decline, falls apart when the fertility in those areas drops.

I'll live to see global fertility at sub-replacement levels at current trends: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/WLD/wor....

Then there's the additional problem of do the numbers even add up for that idea to work in the short to medium term. There are a lot of very large places with sub-replacement or near-replacement fertility right now: Europe, China, India, Russia, etc.

And there are even more problems! Everything above is a one-dimensional analysis, which assumes bodies can be moved around frictionlessly to do labor, and the only question is "do you have enough?". IMHO that still points to immigration not being a solution for fertility problems, but add more dimensions, and I think the idea becomes even more unworkable.

>> How does the government track anything?

> While I get where you are aiming at this didn’t work in China...

What didn't work in China?

The US government already reliably tracks births and parentage, and that would only get more reliable if there was a new financial incentive that it be accurate. That's pretty much all that's needed for my idea. Tracking a "certain number of good-faith attempts" at fertility treatments for fairness could be covered by similar processes to those already used by health insurance.

[TheCleric]

If only there was a way for people to move from one country to the other…

[0xcafefood]

Historically, periods of mass migration have also been periods of immense turmoil and even violence. What will make the proposal to try it again, this time on absolutely unprecedented scale, go better?

[TheCleric]

I dispute your assertion. The late 19th and early 20th century USA had a population boom largely from immigration. There was no immense turmoil and violence.

[0xcafefood]

But there was violence. Between Protestants and Catholics, between English-Americans and the newcomers from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Poland, etc. Lutheran Churches were firebombed during the First World War. For example, many German-Americans today don't even know this, but there was immense pressure to severe ties with Germany, e.g. to stop speaking German, to Anglicize their names, to adopt a more "American" cuisine, etc. Immigration was more or less halted for the half century between 1924 and 1965 due to a great deal of this turmoil.

And that's just describing inter-ethnic conflicts among White Americans. These groups have histories that intertwine extending back to their homelands in Europe. There was also a great deal a inter-racial violence and tension.

I don't blame you for not knowing about any of this. It's just not something the United States really touts about its own history. And knowledge of the problems it caused 100 years ago raises uncomfortable questions about the current levels of immigration into the US. So it's something that goes largely undiscussed today.

[gumby]

> > inter-ethnic conflicts among White Americans

The context of the Johnson–Reed Act is more complex than you make it and significantly restricted people you would call “white”, not just other “undesirables”.

Most of the violence of the early 20th century was political (especially, but not only, during WWI, which is the example you chose) and seemingly had more to do with age demographics than racial (a similar problem arose a millennium earlier, driving the invention of crusades). The biggest period was after the Johnson-Reed act, as part of a broader increase in crime.

Yes there was an enormous amount of racial violence, but most of it was directed against black citizens, none of whom were recent immigrants.

I have followed this history because without the 1965 Immigration act I would not have been permitted to come to the US and attend school. And I come from a country with twice the immigration rate of the US, but little violence.

[drewcoo]

> And that's just describing inter-ethnic conflicts among White Americans

They're not white until they're normalized. Ben Franklin would not have considered Germans to be white.

https://qz.com/904933/a-history-of-american-anti-immigrant-b...

Similarly, Hispanic did not exist until the late 20th century. People who used to be white became Hispanic as the group was othered.

[TheCleric]

I’m not claiming that there was no violence. However there is no evidence that the rate of violence went up during this time. The Dillingham Commission (who weren’t open borders types) even concluded during that there was no substantial evidence for immigrants as a source of increased crime.

However it’s very clear you’ve made your mind up and everyone else is uninformed. Enjoy your enlightenment. Have a nice day.