This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
If you were going to increase the birth rate how would you do it?
There's lots of suggestions, most of them bad. For example, Scandinavian countries have been touted as "doing it right" by offering generous perks to families such as paid family leave. But these efforts, despite outrageous costs, have done little or nothing to stem the falling birth rate. Sweden's fertility rate is a dismal 1.66 as of 2020, and if trends hold, the rate among ethnic Swedes is far lower.
I think that, like everything, deciding to marry and have a family comes down to status.
Mongolia is a rare country that has managed to increase its fertility rate over the last 20 years, from about 2.1 children per women in 2004, to about 2.7 today. This feat is more impressive considering the declines experienced worldwide during the same period. It's doubly impressive considering the fertility rate in neighboring Inner Mongolia (China) is just 1.06!
What is Mongolia doing right? Apparently, they are raising the status of mothers by giving them special recognition and status.
https://x.com/MoreBirths/status/1827418468813017441
In Georgia (the country), something similar happened when an Orthodox patriarch started giving special attention to mothers with 3 children:
https://x.com/JohannKurtz/status/1827070216716874191
Now, raising the status of mothers is more easily said than done. But I think it's possible, especially in countries with a high degree of social cohesion like in East Asia. In Europe, a figure like the King of Netherlands could personally meet and reward mothers. In the United States, of course, this sort of thing would be fraught as any suggestion coming from the right might backfire due to signalling. Witness the grim specter of the vasectomy and abortion trucks at the DNC. But the first step to fixing a problem is to adequately diagnose the cause. To me, the status explanation is more compelling (and fixable) than any other suggestion I've seen.
Mongolia and Georgia are very different from the average western country. Both countries:
Additionally Georgia's population growth has been negative for the past 30 years, if you don't count the bump they got in the last two years from the war in Ukraine.
In my opinion the fertility crisis is 100% economic in origin, it would be interesting to see where the increase of fertility is happening in Georgia and Mongolia. If it's concentrated in rural/low density regions then all it's doing is convincing a few people that live in very-low-child-cost areas (in the case of mongolia possibly in negative-child-cost areas) to have more. If that is the case trying to do something similar in the west will yield no result at all.
What I wouldn't do is:
No child subsidies. We're never going to be willing to spend the kind of money needed to make them work. Plus they are dysgenic, to make them not be dysgenic you'd have to make a regressive social program (rich people get more) and those are taboo.
Taxing the childless. This is the exact same thing as 1 just framed as to appeal to conservatives. The only positive thing is that you can make this not be dysgenic.
Less schooling. Schooling is a big driver of child cost so reducing it seems to make sense. Ideally you wouldn't just get rid of college but bite into secondary education as well. Most people should be, by age 16, out of school and into a paid apprenticeship that offers a career path (so, not tomato-picker-forever type things). I think our world is too complex for this to be possible, we wouldn't be able to decide who's worth putting the apprenticeship training into.
Push religion onto people. Religion is positively correlated to fertility so we can trick people into taking an economically bad deal (having more children) by brainwashing them into believing god wants them to. I think the correlation of religion and fertility is a mirage, more religious people just tend to live in lower-cost-of-child areas (living within an extended family both provides free child care and also makes people opportunistically religious). This is too long to explain but I think religion by itself suppresses fertility.
I don't think the problem is actually tractable. It's intractability is likely the true reason behind the big push for immigration we've seen in the past 20 years.
My extremely long shot proposal is this: socially normalize and encourage women to have children while in college, out of wedlock and with no expectation that the relationship will last and then dump the child on their grandparents (of the woman). After the first 3-6 months she's not going to see the child at all outside of holidays and a few sundays. This places the economic burden of children on people that are better positioned economically to handle it, who can live in less dense areas of the country (because they don't have to be near a job), it mostly removes the negative impacts on career (because she's still doesn't have one) and child subsidies can be added to the pension system and thus be regressive, because the pension system is the only social security system that is allowed to be regressive (hopefully nobody notices that we are doing this).
There is a strong social stigma against having children before finishing school, that it will make you forever poor (because it currently does do just that), so this is extremely unlikely to work.
The religious parts of Holland and Ukraine maintain healthy TFR’s. Church attending TFR in the US is above replacement even without geographic segregation.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link