Putin is offering 100,000 roubles as incentive. That’'s all of about $900
Apparently, for some reason, Russia has a shortage of males of the usual fathering age
Elon is very concerned about raising birth rates (for a certain type of course). I assume this is one the big reasons posters here think the earth is severely underpopulated? Is White Genocide really that big a concern?
The Earth, as a whole, isn’t “severely underpopulated,” and I don’t think that anyone in this thread is actually saying that.
But, for a bunch of reasons, as already outlined in this thread, many wealthier, industrialized nations now have birth rates which are well below the “replacement rate,” which means that their populations are aging, and (arguably) heading towards social and economic consequences.
Also, do you actually think a bunch of us here are Musk apologists???
That really depends a lot on your social group. There was exactly one girl in my large group of friends and classmates who we know got pregnant before graduation in 1981 *- and it was just a few months before, like she had the baby after graduation. Because we might as well have killed ourselves if we did - life was over, no college , we might have been basically forced to marry the father if he was willing and we could look forward to a life as a supermarket cashier who never had enough money. There were other girls in the school who got pregnant and had babies starting in 9 th grade- but I didn’t know any of them so I don’t know if they thought their life was over.
* There could have been more who got pregnant and didn’t give birth.
For far too many it is less “The world needs more people” and more “The world needs more people like me”.
Not a bunch, no. But there are a few who certainly have the bulk of their opinions formed by what he says.
Moderating:
Drop the Musk talk from this thread, really not on-topic.
But I shouldn’t turn this into another thread about him.
A practical way to increase child survival rate to surpass or meet replacement (which is what is really wanted) would be to greatly soften the burdens of child care.
But are those consequences long-term? Sure, I can see the bubble of retirees suddenly being supported by a smaller cohort of workers, which will be painful. But only for a few years, right? The oldsters will eventually die-off and the bubble will lessen, and things will reach a new equilibrium.
I think challenge is not ever increasing or stabilizing the population - that’s just continuing on the treadmill we are already on. The challenge will be how to push thru the bubble to a new, lower population level - the painful part where there are suddenly too many retirees compared to workers. The transition needs to be slow and managed, not spiked, but I think the world will be better-off long-term with less of us, just gradually.
this is a really curious statement. Can you explain more why you think this and what you think would be an ideal human population for the Earth?
Well, I more or less said that, though by far the most important problem is to keep the population from shrinking dramatically.
And the people claiming this is some racist thing are wrong. The problem is universal. It’s not spread equally but everyone will be affected. Maybe some countries can temporarily boost their own populations via immigration but the collapse of large countries like South Korea (let alone China) will have widespread effects. And since the world fertility rate is already almost below replacement levels (and heading lower), immigration is just shuffling deck chairs.
But surely you need to consider the World population. If there are countries with a high birthrate, then they can outweigh the others.
Population growth - Wikipedia
The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 8.1 billion in 2024.[2] Actual global human population growth amounts to around 70 million annually, or 0.85% per year. As of 2024, The United Nations projects that global population will peak in the mid-2080s at around 10.3 billion.
The World is over-populated - we need to lower the birthrate, not increase it!
Again, the world fertility rate is already almost below replacement levels. In fact it may be already, but the stats haven’t caught up yet. It was 2.26 in 2022. Replacement rate is generally considered to be 2.1, but it’s higher in many areas.
They’re probably wrong about that, but if not it’ll be a function of increasing lifespans, not high birth rates. The world population can (will) continue increasing even if the fertility is well below the replacement rate.
Gift link to a New York Times article from May 2021 about the declining birth rates and what impact that may have. Note that this and other articles point out that few interventions have had any success in increasing the birthrate. (“After expanding access to affordable child care and paid parental leave, Germany’s fertility rate recently increased to 1.54, up from 1.3 in 2006. Leipzig, which once was shrinking, is now growing again after reducing its housing stock and making itself more attractive with its smaller scale.”)
They say it’s a great place to raise twenty children…
People produce amazing things, like art and science and technology. If we had 10x the number of people (roughly 100B), we could produce amazing things at 10x the rate. And all of those amazing things would be shared across the entire population, so it’s actually a 100x improvement: 10x the number of people enjoying 10x the amount of cool stuff. That’s 10x the production of Einsteins and Feynmans and Ramanujans.
Of course, people think 100B people would be some kind of dystopia, and it would be if we handled resources like we do today. But that’s only because we’re complete fucking dumbshits about absolutely everything. The reality is that we can give 100B people an American quality of life if we were just better about how we did stuff. Mainly, that means much more energy use–mainly from solar. Energy solves every other problem, whether water supply or food or transportation or recycling.
As one example of how stupid we are, if all we did was convert the land used for corn ethanol (a totally counterproductive attempt at making fuel more sustainable) farmland to solar panels, the US would have ten times the amount of energy production. Not just electricity. Everything. That’s more than enough on its own to make absolutely everything (transportation, etc.) electric and still leave plenty of room for growth.
And to counter @Zoobi 's unfounded accusation, I was posting about this 10 years ago. Or even longer, albeit indirectly.
An artifical womb Manhattan Project would probably bear fruit. Then it’s just a matter of scaling up the technology so governments can mass produce children as needed. They can then be fostered out or raised in centralized institutions.
Sounds like Brave New World.
That’s exactly what I was going for, but I think Huxley might have vastly overestimated how much effort would be needed to discourage viviparous reproduction.
All Dopers would be Alphas of course. Except some.
I have somewhere a fascinating book by Joel E. Cohen, called straightforwardly How Many People Can the Earth Support?, that examines several hundred years of predictions and calculations of what the maximum population of Earth could be. They top out at a trillion. Plenty of others set the maximum at far more than 8 billion.
Scientists disagree not only on the final number, but more importantly about the best and most accurate way of determining that number—hence the huge variability.
Seriously, you can toss out any number you want with the right assumptions. If you magic all the effectless energy you need into existence - fusion power fans are good at this, and solar power has now entered the chat - then extremely high numbers are achieved. If not, then we have already passed capacity and huge reductions are in store.
Desperate countries have made frantic attempts to increase birthrate, none of which have succeeded. Without energy magic, increasing birthrate while also insisting on women’s equality is a like a4 + b4 = c4, with a, b, and c being integers: a seemingly reasonable goal with no solutions once the limitation is built in.
I’ve been predicted for years that global warming, with all its myriad effects but primarily heating beyond human endurance, will send a billion people into internal migration or out of their countries, mostly the latter. India has bands that have already reached that limit. So has parts of the Arabian peninsula. Phoenix and Las Vegas are rapidly approaching maximum. Immigration pressures will be massive and, I believe, impossible to limit.
That immigration will be mainly from poorer regions to wealthier ones, smoothing out current massive inequalities. The effect will be similar to increased birthrate in numbers. Not the same: teaching immigrants language, culture, and skills is a slower process than natives absorbing those aspects. Nevertheless, relative to the end of the century a slow process is a blink of an era.
Or we start creating babies. As long as everyone gets their Soma, who’s going to mind?