In the face of extinction... an alternative

[MrDibble]

By the way, I can’t recommend the SF books of Sheri S. Tepper highly enough for those who’ve found these recent related threads interesting - especially relevant would be The Fresco and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, I think, but The Gate To Women’s Country is the classic.

[begbert2]

@Malacandra

"We are of course unable to guarantee that there will be no inflation, but we are required to factor index-linking into the payments. I may reveal in addition that during negotiations it was tentatively agreed that payment terms might be acceptable - and you will surely agree that a million dollars becomes a less intimidating figure when it may be paid over twenty-five, perhaps thirty years. It is clearly understood that the terms may appear onerous at first sight, but I should remind you that this is not a buyer’s market.

"Naturally we may find ourselves unable to sustain a birthrate sufficient to maintain our present population levels, but the solution is presented only as a stopgap until, perhaps, technology has advanced sufficiently to admit of a better. We are obliged to maintain some population of breeding age against that day, as will be obvious - and also to ensure that the labour force does not grey out.

“You spoke also of volunteers. I believe that circumstances alter cases. No sane man would volunteer to stand in a muddy trench in northern Europe during the depths of winter in order to be shelled, machine-gunned or gassed, and yet history records that volunteers have been found in answer to urgent need - which I do not believe was a factor in your otherwise admirable census findings.”

“We conservatively estimate that there are approximately 100 million fertile women in the country at this time. Per your census findings, that means that you will have, approximately, ten thousand women willing to be hosts, and one million egg donors. therefore we may estimate a cost of one trillion dollars to each group. So let us not speak of mere millions of dollars here, and let us not pretend that this influx of cash will not itself effect the value of the dollar.”

“Additionally, per your recommendation, I reran the polls of the men, and found that when they were fervently reminded that the survival of the species depended on it, we found that one tenth of one percent of men of the appropriate age group were willing to acquiesce to the plan, and even then only if they received an amount of money comparable to the women who were hosting children. The questionaires we had them fill out suggested that many of them felt that, unlike military service, there was something inherently demeaning about being a host to a child - and that there was something demeaning about the idea that they be paid less than a woman for the same service.”

“Given that there are an estimated ten million males between the ages of fifteen and twenty, we would have approximately 10,000 male hosts volunteering, one hundredth of the number needed to host the million donated embryos that we estimate we would collect. To host all of those embryos in men, one in ten of these boys would need to participate, which our data suggests is far more than we can induce to voluntarily participate by any method. Unless there are other plans to compell involuntary male participation?”

“It should be admitted that the ten thousand number is not insignificant; it matches the number of women who can be induced to host a child similarly. (It should also be noted that it sports a similar price tag - another trillion dollars.) However given the extreme negative public opinion we anticipate to recieve as a result of the male hosting proposal, I humbly suggest that it may be best to eschew male hosting and rely on female hosting alone, since we expect the problem to be resolved another way in only twenty years.”