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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25041 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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This post is a follow-on from a conversation with @Amadan, who observed that I wasn't reading his posts correctly. I thought that hiding an apology behind a button most wouldn't click through would be what the kids used to call a bitch move, so I decided to make it a top level post.

^^^I ^^^also ^^^didn't ^^^want ^^^the ^^^effort ^^^to ^^^go ^^^to ^^^waste

You know what, I went back and read through the thread and it turns out I was misremembering the order of things. I thought you rejected faceh's proposal about tightening college admissions with the browbeating comment. My mind gets a little clouded with this subject sometimes. I think I owe you an apology in the form of a bit more effort, so here goes:

My belief is that the TFR crisis can be broadly understood in terms of basic economics. Sure, there are a million billion variables that go in to the exact shape of the curves, but I believe the fundamental problem is that the supply and demand curves don't meet at a point that produces a longitudinally viable volume. Therefore, any proposed policy must influence those lines to move TFR upward. To put it bluntly, this involves coercing either bid up or ask down. Browbeating. And we need to do it while remembering the goal isn't just more children, but ones raised in wholesome environments that set them up for the social and economic success we need to operate our societies, so "pay women billion dollars per child" is out. I'll note that some of these solutions involve catching women up to around the level of browbeating that men currently experience, and I hope this doesn't run afoul of the standard because it doesn't involve much additional browbeating on men. Lastly, I'd comment that these are not my preferred solutions, mostly because they involve coercion, which is a game I believe when played under real cultural and political conditions will result in much male loss and few additional births to show for it—but more pragmatically because I believe they are impossible to implement on a timescale that matters. I think the only real way out is to quintuple down on our current strategy of hoping for technology deux ex machina.

However, if we were willing to implement some painful measures to buy ourselves some more time, here's what that might look like if it were up to me:

Demand side measures, or, how to sweeten the deal for men:

  • Wholesale refactoring of no-fault divorce and the "best interests of children" doctrine. This is of special interest to men, who under current conditions hold virtually no protection against their investments into family being stripped away from them at any time and for any reason. Solutions to achieve this could be a list onto itself, but I believe the core of the idea needs to involve a rather humble proposition: what if we reformulated the doctrine of "the best interests of children" to take into account that save for extreme circumstances divorce is not in the best interests of children. The doctrine needs to be modified in whatever way necessary to accommodate this and to allow for the application of active deterrence against divorce. Sure, you can still divorce on a whim without any fault, but you're probably not going to like the terms if children are involved. To freestyle a lighter measure example off the dome, this could involve requiring filing parties to attend a humiliation ritual wherein they are browbeaten with every stat and fact known to mankind about how bad divorce is for children, and they must affirm personally and publicly: "yes, I am a complete piece of human shit, afflict all of these maladies on to my own flesh and blood for my own selfish gain".
  • Wholesale refactoring of filial duty and the taxation model used to achieve it. This is of special interest to men, whose earthly contributions to the human union lean more heavily in the direction of provisioning. Put simply, social security and other forms of elder welfare need to be either phased out or replaced with something far less permissive to the old and intrusive to the young. Obligations should be limited to flow within the family unit as much as possible. This would both incentivize family formation and grant more interpersonal and civilizational stake to the reproductive generation, something sorely lacking under current conditions.
  • Requiring of female duty to the well-being of children, in basically any form whatsoever. As it stands, there's very little from women our civilization actually demands for the benefit of children. She can drink, snort, and smoke however much as she likes while carrying her child and nobody can actually stop her. I'm gonna be honest with you guys, I don't know what moral platform our society thinks it has to demand even a single hair off a man's head while it tolerates this behavior from women. The benefits to children are straightforwardly obvious, but it would probably also do well for the morale of men to know that women's participation is an adamant expectation rather than a whispered plea. This would extend to limiting the provision of single mother benefits to the worthy.
  • A sea change in the tone by which our society speaks to men regarding their place in it, particularly in how it relates to his role as husband and father. I'm not going to start enumerating examples because once I do I'll never stop, but I'll point you in the general direction of concepts like the man cave and the world not owing you (male) anything.

Supply side measures, or, how to sweeten the deal for women:

  • Far steeper penalties for dereliction by men. The penalties are already plenty steep if you compare them to what women presently suffer, but not nearly steep enough if the aim is to make women's investment into family formation less scary and shield children from harm. The penalties for up and leaving should be made ruinous and inescapable. Again, measures to this end could form a list onto itself. Would essentially be a modern form of shotgun wedding, but done by faceless bureaucracy instead of by patriarch, so much easier on modern sensibilities.
  • Child support needs to be massively increased in the average case. This can be done by calculating support based on a basket of goods agreed necessary or beneficial to children's developmental success, rather than income. Some men won't be able to afford it. As I've remarked in the past, we have a persistent need for materials such as lithium and rare earth metals, and I think these men can help mine it.
  • In lieu of ill-advised cash bonuses per birth, subsidies for necessities that improve the lives of both women and children, such as housing and food stipends, attached to the child and their guardian, of course. These interventions need to be both greater in volume and more selective than current programs, in order to maximize both reproductive incentive to adults and benefit to children. This is of special interest to women, who due to reasons of physicality are often most impacted by these needs.
  • Expansion of pregnancy-related protections. Needless to say, measures where the well-being of mother and child intersect should be expedited. Regionally, however healthcare ultimately shakes out in the US, women should be exempt from whatever the hell is causing them to walk away from hospitals with not just a child but tens of thousands of debt. Due to the defined scope of this exercise and the well documented negative fertility interactions, measures where women and employment intersect should be deemphasized. If we do anything at this intersection, it should involve keeping women out of the workplace for longer during and after pregnancy, but in a way that doesn't involve direct subsidy by unrelated men. Ideally this should range not just from the big stuff but also to the small stuff like being allowed to park in disabled spaces and drive in carpool lanes; we ought to search wide for easy opportunities where slipping such privileges into existing infrastructure would be sensible, beneficial, and dignified for all parties.

If you haven't noticed, there's a strong pair of themes that run through these propositions. They mostly involve offering men a more durable ownership share in family formation, and women more durable guarantees regarding child-rearing. I know some readers are probably bursting at the seams to point out that a lot of this is just traditional marriage and romantic norms with extra steps. Why don't we just stop beating around the bush and go back to what works? Uh huh. How's that been working out? Mainstream conservatism has taken notice to how unpopular this position is and has largely adapted to this reality by promoting what I've take to calling neotraditionalism: offering a model of male obligation without the durable ownership. Good luck with that.

But this does cut to what I believe is the core of the issue. I think that advocating for any program that even smells like the above would get you accused of being a cryptopatriarch in a cool minute. The basic problem is that our civilization is emotionally allergic to a key active ingredient of the medicine, and that's not something any amount of sugar-coating can help. Take the religious shell away and put it in a container that's as secular and facelessly bureaucratic as we are, and I don't think it makes a difference to the overall reaction. There's also the question of societal patience. This is separate from the consideration of TFR and its consequences. As many including some here have contentedly noted, the current crop of men don't seem to bear an eagerness to form and maintain families that's just waiting to burst out given a few tweaks in policy and culture. This isn't something my program would change. I don't think any ever could. Men as a class have been subject to a campaign of demoralization and dispossession that began decades before I was born. Undoing this may very well require awaiting a completely new generation of men to come of age. This would require a level of patience with the male sex our civilization transparently does not possess, not even remotely close.

These are insurmountable problems. There's nothing to be done.

Would you like to hear about my $100T longevity moonshot instead?

I keep seeing this ‘what to do’ take, but an angle that just gets left out most of the time is this- statistically, most of the young women not having children are in long term cohabiting relationships, and we know transforming those into marriages leads to higher fertility. Convincing cohabiting couples to marry is probably both cheaper and more effective than convincing unselected women to have kids/more kids.

@HighResolutionSleep's proposals (in particular the "demand-side" proposals and the "shotgun wedding" proposal) do seem basically aimed at getting men to view fatherhood as a way of locking in an existing relationship with a woman, like reverse babytrapping.

But there's an asymmetry that would make reverse babytrapping a lot less appealing than regular babytrapping: the state can force you to give up money, which is the thing that men traditionally contribute more of to a relationship, but it can't force you to provide emotional support or intimacy, which is the thing that women traditionally contribute more of.

There is a simple and straightforward way, common in our society, to induce people to commit their time to doing X instead of Y: pay them more. If you think the marginal women having another kid is more beneficial to society than whatever else she would be doing with her time then society should be willing to put its money where its mouth is. This circles back to your point about economics, though in a rather different way. Women's work outside the home is, by market standards, much more valuable today than it was 30 years ago. The opportunity cost to women of having children is correspondingly higher. As Vox pointed out back in 2018, women suffer a large and persistent decrease in earnings (that men don't) after having children. Women delay having children due to a desire to secure financial stability for doing so. This leads to them overall having fewer children, due to age-related difficulties with pregnancy. If you want more women to have children, pay them for the imputed loss in lifetime earnings.

I should probably just link Parenting as a public good.

Hungary tried spending like 5-6% of gdp on family subsidies and managed to go from a 1.23 to 1.39 and falling as of 2024. I do like this idea, as I'm trying to have a kid it's also in my self interest, but the data just doesn't really seem to support this it's this easy.

I do not have a good understanding of Hungary's economy so it's hard for me to assess the scale of their interventions relative to the opportunity cost. The exemption from 15% personal income tax seems like it comes the closest to defraying the drop in wages but it only kicks in after 4 children while my impression of the research is that the wage drop kicks in after the first child.

The GDP figure should give you an idea of the scale, pretty massive really. They also have a "baby loan" system where a couple can get $35k and the loan is forgiven if they have 3 children in 10 years which frontloads, that $35k is about two years of median individual income so quite a sum. There's also a fairly substantial mortgage subsidy that scales with child count but it's a little complicated. For some year, ending in 2022 they also had a pretty big subsidy for a larger car if you had 3+ kids. They really threw everything and the kitchen sink at the problem.

Phrased differently, this is just a massive tax cut for married couples that have kids. Which is has been a big part of mostly Republican tax ideas for decades now.

If I'm a guy making $100,000 at my job, and I'm paying 20% of my income in taxes each year but, if I get married and have a kid, that goes to 5% for the life of the kid, that's about $1,200 per month that could go to the kid. A 5 second google indicates that this is actually close to bang on for childcare monthly costs. Making up the difference would be mom having a part time job, or just coasting on savings for a year or two before getting a raise to say $125,000.

If we could get this massive tax advantage, we'd be set, right? Probably not. I am quite convinced that the deeper issue is in women having a totally irrational fear of being "trapped" because they aren't making their own money. It's almost a Jekyll and Hyde monster tale. They marry a guy because he's nice, funny, smart, and a good provider. They have a child because they both want to and love each other. Then, suddenly, he's demanding sex after dinner every night, beating her, and neglecting the child. The heroine can't leave because she's a helpless woman with no recourse (nevermind family, friends, or just a community that wouldn't tolerate spousal abuse). It just doesn't track. I'm not blaming women here, either. I think a combination of feminism-consumerism-hyperindividualism has convinced both men and women, but, especially women, that not having the means to support yourself (even within the context of a family) makes your morally reprehensible.

Your last paragraph is, I think, part of why the discussion on the left is often framed as wages rather than tax cuts. The two proposals are only really equivalent with some assumptions about what you mean by "tax cut" and the underlying facts. If its implementation is as a reduction in one's tax rate or taxable income then they are only really equivalent if you are earning sufficient wages and paying sufficient tax to benefit. I have in mind something more in the vein of Unemployment Insurance or perhaps the refundable EITC. In the most straightforward case, the woman having the child expects to face some lifetime earning reduction of X. If society thinks her having that child is worth more than that lifetime earnings reduction it ought to pay her some amount Y > X. Or, women themselves presumably capture some of the benefit of having kids so perhaps society should only pay something like 0.5*X. The general point is that we need to set the payment amount such that it is actually competitive with the opportunity cost, or we are not going to get anywhere.

I think a combination of feminism-consumerism-hyperindividualism has convinced both men and women, but, especially women, that not having the means to support yourself (even within the context of a family) makes your morally reprehensible.

I suppose my perception is not that it's perceived as a moral failing per-se. Rather, lots of women have heard horror stories from other women about feeling or being trapped in a bad situation due to a lack of access to money. I'm optimistic that this is not the typical case but I think it's understandable women want some downside protection. I, personally, would be uncomfortable in the woman's position in some stories I've read.

I know what you mean, and it is a thorny problem when it is a unforeseeable circumstance. People change and get strange. Marriage and children do change husband and wife.

But, I am also now thinking of a friend's cousin who matched with a guy on tinder, found out on the first date that he was fresh out of a 7 year prison sentence for armed robbery .... and will be celebrating her 2 year anniversary with him, I believe, in February.

Mate selection is important. "Follow your heart" has to be one of the most catastrophic psyops of all time, for men and women but, again, especially, for women. If you can envision that idea that the man you are marrying will use his provision of resources as a way to trap you in a non-consensual relationship, perhaps you shouldn't marry that guy. If your friends and family voice hesitation in their approval of a mate, you should probably listen to them. That actually makes me think of another psyop - the young woman (usually an aristocrat) who doesn't want to marry the man she is "supposed" to (usually a very eligible and stable male aristocrat) and, instead, follows her hear (see above) to marry the black sheep / sad boi / romantic poet that she really loves. They always end up happily ever after, and, suspiciously, he's often some sort of hidden prince who is absolutely loaded.

I've never seen this happen in real life, and, far more frequently, I've seen mothers desperately tell their daughters, "hey don't marry this deadbeat!" But, following the heart, they sometimes do and the consequences are disastrously predictable.

I'll de-genderize all of this. The problem is in the assumed pure autonomy of the individual to know what is best for themselves in all circumstances. "Live your best life" and all of that. But that's a recipe for consistent cycle of FAFO learning. I ask my friends and business partners for advice constantly and they do the same with me. There's not necessarily a hierarchy or approval mechanism to it, but its a fantastic way to interrogate different opinions from people who care about you and who have different mental models of how things work. As a society, however, we've carved out this weird exception for literally the most consequential decision you will ever make. Marriage.

I don't think I disagree with any of this. For many women who end up in that kind financially trapped situation, could they have made better choices earlier? Likely so. The cases where there are no red flags in advance are quite rare I think. Heck, the reason my parents never married is because my father's gambling problems were a deal breaker for my mother! But I think the question about what to do when one ends up in that situation is still important. Whatever process we have for mate selection is not going to be perfect at avoiding these kinds of problems.

Correct. Perfect is impossible and also the enemy of the good.

The solution is eliminating no-fault divorce and actually requiring some sort of proof beyond a threshold for divorce. "I don't think he cares about my problems" doesn't cut it. "He routinely screams at me and berates me, the cops have been involved a few times" checks out. That precise rubric doesn't matter so much as having one and sticking to it.

Still, there will be edge-of-edge cases. This is precisely where I don't want to over-engineer a policy. That is because policy surgically targeted at hyper edge cases usually has a bunch of unintended consequences for the median case.

I guess I don't see how eliminating no fault divorce and making it harder to divorce in general helps this. Bad enough that a woman is in an abusive situation. Now she has to create a paper trail. Hire a lawyer. Convince a judge. And if she can't do that she's compelled to remain. Why is that better? Why would shifting to this arrangement make women more inclined to marry? Less likely to be concerned about their ability to support themselves?

Why is that better?

Makes pre-marriage discernment of true compatibility more important. Both parties have to be thorough and sober in thinking about the future together.

Why would shifting to this arrangement make women more inclined to marry?

It wouldn't. But it would boost the initial social value of getting married and seriously boost the social value of staying married to a good man. Downstream, cadding and slutting would be socially de-valued. People admire people who can do hard things. If marriage is (somewhat) harder, it becomes more admired.

Less likely to be concerned about their ability to support themselves?

Again, because of the social esteem of having a stable marriage, men with the ability (and _stability) to support a wife and children would be valued higher relative to face tattoo bad boys who are "fun" but can't hold a job.

I think framing it solely as "shouldn't women in bad situations be able to get out of them?" is a kind of false choice. Because, upstream of this, you could reframe it as "we shouldn't let women get into bad situations so easily." Which is exactly what I am saying. I'll admit this actually runs against my usual stance of "let people do things." But, the society level costs of shitty marriage culture is self-evident. THE number one predictor of poor life outcomes for kids is a single parent household.

I am quite convinced that the deeper issue is in women having a totally irrational fear of being "trapped" because they aren't making their own money.

I have heard from several different elder millennial lady attorneys (obvious sample bias) that their Boomer mothers verbally beat into their heads that they had to have their own income and never be dependent on a man. As an outside observer, their marriages seem to be... fraught.

By that reasoning, employers who employ women are free riding because they don't have to pay for the harm to society from discouraging women from staying home and having children. So there should be a special tax on anyone who employs women so that when hiring women they have to pay the cost of that harm (and the receipts of this tax should be given to women who stay at home with children).

i suspect you would oppose this plan.

I'd be in favor of this plan, personally. It is basically the same as paying people to have more children, yeah. Might be more popular to do it in a non-gendered way, tax people with too many childless workers, but effectively that's still a tax on women working.

I suppose it's all a matter of framing. I don't think women are obliged to give society children such that their failure to do so is a "harm" to society in a sensible way. Would it be sensible to say you are doing "harm" to every person you could give money to, but don't?

It's the flip side of paying women to have children--if paying women for children is good because it creates incentives for them to have more children, hiring women is bad because it creates incentives for them to have fewer children. So employers who hire women should have to pay to make up for the bad incentives.

Wholesale refactoring of filial duty and the taxation model used to achieve it. This is of special interest to men, whose earthly contributions to the human union lean more heavily in the direction of provisioning.

Is this actually true, for a period of time in history long enough to be considered stable? I am increasingly unsure the idea of "men as the sole or noticeably primary breadwinners" being a historical constant as opposed to a brief (but recent enough to be remembered) anomaly.

It is my understanding that during the industrialization era both men and women would work in the factories. Before that, when the vast majority of the population was a peasant, men and women both contributed greatly to the household economy (just in different ways).

We can of course go further back than that, and consider hunter gatherers but even there I am told that women provide the majority of the calories for the family.

So I think the idea of retvrning to the brief housewife era is not the way to go. It was brief and does not seem to have been stable, nor do women seem to have enjoyed it. The core of the issue, I suspect, is that historically it took more than a single adult working together (both in terms of time but also skillset) to have a good life and this is no longer true for a majority. All relevant skills are commoditized on the cheap (food, shelter, security, clothing), or solved by cheap technology (washing machines, stoves, vacuum cleaners). What actual need have men for women and vice versa in modern society, except for sexual thrills which are largely proving to be insufficient for long term bonding.

The solution has to involve mutual need, it can't be one-directional or the other gender will defect.

The basic problem is that our civilization is emotionally allergic to a key active ingredient of the medicine, and that's not something any amount of sugar-coating can help. Take the religious shell away and put it in a container that's as secular and facelessly bureaucratic as we are, and I don't think it makes a difference to the overall reaction.

I like this sentiment and I'm going to use it to comment more broadly on what I see as an aggravating tension between Tradition and Traditionalism. I'm use those two words so I can play off the "all -isms are bad" meme.

Tradition is a set of beliefs, values, and, importantly, ongoing or repeated behaviors that are inherited from the past with the goal to preserve the present and pass on to the future.

Traditionalism is vibe based gesturing at "how it used to be" with the implication that "it" used to be better. There's going to be some kind of attempt at vaguely repeating the behavior of the past - often incomplete - and a lot of rhetoric about the past. There will be close to zero deeply held beliefs and values under the surface. As Rob Henderson might say, it's mostly about signalling. These are the RETVRN people. I mentioned a young woman like this in previous post.

I think these are your "neotraditionalism" people (all -isms are bad!). And I agree with you that these very "neo-trads" would never vote for some of the ideas you have laid out. Why? Because it would be bad for them, personally, as individuals. And thus I trace this back to the rise of hyperindividualism (isms! isms! isms!).

I'm not advocating for actual collectivism the way Mamdani did in his inaugural speech today. I'm advocating for the idea that there was a society before that gave us what we have to day and our job is to sustain it and then pass it on. That's the chain of real capital-T Tradition that did sustain so many different human societies up until about the 20th century. The proto-causes are still up for debate; was it the industrial revolution? global financialization of capitalism? the "trauma" of WW1/2? I can't weigh in with authority here, but I can point to one thing that I think is key:

The Baby Boomers broke that chain of real capital-T Tradition. In both directions. They looked at their parents with their going to church and waiting for matrimony and not smokin the wacky-tobaccy and said "Peace and Love, Man!" before inventing the pill, porn, no-fault divorce, equality, feminism, and affirmative action. Next, wanting to enjoy the prosperity of a post WW2 America (that they, the boomers, totally earned on their own and didn't inherit from the Greatest Generation) voted for Social Security, Medicare/caid, and home mortgage subsidy. This created a massive debt burden that they would never pay because their children and grandchildren will.

Gen-X kind of got caught in the crossfire, but when you could work at a coffee shop in Manhattan, smoke cigarettes, and date a quirky mid in the 1990s, it was kind of ... whatever, cool, I guess.

Millienials woke up to the grift and Gen-Z seems to have been born nihilistic. They know the boomers looted the store and then stuck everyone else with the bill. They, rightfully, are enraged by this but only a small fraction has eaten the bitter medicine and realized "ah, shit, we're going to have to fix this ... and it's going to be hard for a while." Instead, 90% + of Mil-Z-enials are somewhere between "Government provided everything, tax the rich" and "Fuck it, Imma get mine. Let's hit some crypto scams, bruh" Both of these are anti-social and, of course, non Traditional. I agree heartily with you that only a hyper minority of mostly religious or strongly philosophically disciplined / metaphysically driven people in these two generations are seriously committing to "we can rebuild, and our kids will benefit."

How this all plays out is that we're going to see a slow motion culling of the population where we can afford it most - young men. We know this because it has already happened. I don't even need to quote the stats anymore. Opioid epidemic, 6 - 8 million prime age males out of the workforce, incels, no friends etc. A great way to sidestep demographic gravity is to led some deadweight drop. That's bleak and I know it. It's also what's happening.

The next necessary ingredient is peeling back the feminist lie of fulfillment in a career alone. This is already starting. When TradWife tiktoks trend for a while and then we get backlask like "is having a boyfriend cringe?" articles, it means the ideas are now circulating and its just a matter of time before some percentage of women decides "fuck a job, I want babies." It doesn't have to be that great a number, it just has to be present outside of the semi-sequestered religious communities (Amish, FLDS, etc.)

The thing that keeps me up at night is how long all of this could take. Returning to my original framing, the people who buy into Traditionalism aren't actually willing to do what needs doing to fix things because it will probably mean accepting a slightly materially less comfortable quality of life for some time and an absolutely lower social quality of life as well (i.e. getting branded as a kind of weirdo). But they will gesture vaguely to things like "encouraging earlier marriage" and "keeping a family together." But will they endorse women not going to college? Will they endorse no-fault divorce? Of course not. And I wonder how long this will draw the pain out, especially when the other side (progressives) are offering sprinting into oblivion. The Traditionalism-ists don't need to really dig deep to retain political and social sway when their opponents are literally recommending self-castration, baby murder, and neo-surfdom.

As I've said before in this thread and as Amadan said below, I don't want to control women (or men) from a State perspective. If a woman wants to get three PhDs and never marry, that's on her - just as it would be on a man. But, right now, we're actively subsidizing those decisions socially, culturally, and even financially whereas were suppressing capital-T tradition socially and culturally. This isn't "boo hoo unfair!" this is drawing out the agony for society.

Millienials woke up to the grift and Gen-Z seems to have been born nihilistic. They know the boomers looted the store and then stuck everyone else with the bill. They, rightfully, are enraged by this but only a small fraction has eaten the bitter medicine and realized "ah, shit, we're going to have to fix this ... and it's going to be hard for a while."

This tugs at a thread that I wanted to bring up in response to @DoktorGlas and @Botond173's earlier posts on fertility and gender-dynamics but was struggling to find a way to do so without it being immediately dismissed as being uncharitable, or drawing broad generalizations about the outgroup.

I think there is a very real sense in which the post-modern liberal ethos of emancipation, self actualization, and the maximization of one's earthly/material material conditions and status is simply incompatible with forming healthy relationships and families. Having a family means accepting that you are no longer the main character in your own story and that is bridge that a lot of people today are hesitant to cross, a painful truth that many recoil from.

As I mentioned in one of those earlier threads, our first child was not planned, and if you had asked me at the time if I was ready I would have said "no", but in hindsight if my partner and I had waited till we we ready, we may never have had children at all, never mind enough children to justify multiple car seats. Both my partner and I have had friends and family who asked us why we didn't just get an abortion? What they were really asking is "Why would you (a presumably rational and intelligent person) willingly accept an inferior quality of life?". I never really had a good answer to that question, at least not one I could articulate, beyond "I choose to". But I feel like there is the outline of an answer in your last two paragraphs.

The future belongs to those who show up. So if you want to have a future, be one of the people who shows up.

Next, wanting to enjoy the prosperity of a post WW2 America (that they, the boomers, totally earned on their own and didn't inherit from the Greatest Generation) voted for Social Security, Medicare/caid, and home mortgage subsidy. This created a massive debt burden that they would never pay because their children and grandchildren will.

I'm a little confused by this section. The Social Security Act was passed in 1935, a full decade before the first boomers were born. Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965, when the oldest boomers would have been around 19.

Yes it's true. The theft started with the greatest generation stealing from the youth to pay for their retirement, in their defense at the time there were a lot of old folks finding themselves out on the street. However this was a relatively small burden for the boomers because they were splitting the bill so many ways. The Silent and greatest generation made out like bandits. The real problem is the Boomers are so numerous that millennials are struggling to life several times the relative weight.

Yeah the true original sin is no indexing of benefits to lifespan (SS), and healthcare trend in general (medicare and Medicaid)

Most of these seem outright counterproductive if you want more children. People have more children when life is difficult and uncertain no matter what they do, and someone will probably turn out sickly or disabled, so you're best off having six kids and hope half of them turn into productive adults who can provide a buffer for the rest.

When even a single child results in legal landmines, interactions with CPS, and onerous family requirements, you're asking for fewer, not more.

Sure, you can still divorce on a whim without any fault, but you're probably not going to like the terms if children are involved. To freestyle a lighter measure example off the dome, this could involve requiring filing parties to attend a humiliation ritual wherein they are browbeaten with every stat and fact known to mankind about how bad divorce is for children, and they must affirm personally and publicly: "yes, I am a complete piece of human shit, afflict all of these maladies on to my own flesh and blood for my own selfish gain".

Unless accompanied by banning contraceptives, this seems likely to actively lower people's willingness to have children (which would lower willingness to have sex as well).

Put simply, social security and other forms of elder welfare need to be either phased out or replaced with something far less permissive to the old and intrusive to the young.

Possibly? People with long time preference already have marriages and family oriented around wanting people around them when they're old.

Requiring of female duty to the well-being of children, in basically any form whatsoever. As it stands, there's very little from women our civilization actually demands for the benefit of children. She can drink, snort, and smoke however much as she likes while carrying her child and nobody can actually stop her.

Women do get shamed and end up having to raise retarded children if they screw this up. Already. I'm not sure what you're proposing here, but if it's increased penalties, maybe that could, on the margin, lower TFR a bit?

A sea change in the tone by which our society speaks to men regarding their place in it, particularly in how it relates to his role as husband and father.

Evangelicals do this already. How's it going?

Far steeper penalties for dereliction by men. The penalties are already plenty steep if you compare them to what women presently suffer, but not nearly steep enough if the aim is to make women's investment into family formation less scary and shield children from harm.

That seems like it would... slightly lower people's willingness to have kids?

Child support needs to be massively increased in the average case.

With the hope that men would be more vigilant in their condom use?

In lieu of ill-advised cash bonuses per birth, subsidies for necessities that improve the lives of both women and children, such as housing and food stipends, attached to the child and their guardian, of course. These interventions need to be both greater in volume and more selective than current programs, in order to maximize both reproductive incentive to adults and benefit to children. This is of special interest to women, who due to reasons of physicality are often most impacted by these needs.

Will it be equal to an entire adult's annual income? Otherwise, nice but unlikely to do much.

Expansion of pregnancy-related protections. Needless to say, measures where the well-being of mother and child intersect should be expedited. Regionally, however healthcare ultimately shakes out in the US, women should be exempt from whatever the hell is causing them to walk away from hospitals with not just a child but tens of thousands of debt.

We have the median household income in our state, and pregnancy and infant health costs were fully covered by medicaid. That was nice, I'm in favor. Maybe one or two more women would have another child if they knew about that?

Most of these seem outright counterproductive if you want more children. People have more children when life is difficult and uncertain no matter what they do, and someone will probably turn out sickly or disabled, so you're best off having six kids and hope half of them turn into productive adults who can provide a buffer for the rest.

I mostly agree with this overall sentiment. The problem is family formation is delayed, which makes women have less than the number of kids they want, which if they had the number they want would be a bit low, but still high enough to not make our populations look like inverted pyramids.

So, the simplest solution is do the opposite of what we have been doing: shorten school, and make the shorter school a better employment signal. This means, High School ends at 16 or 17, and college is 3 years. Both having vigorous entrance and exit exams intended to mean only people who really need college go, and only those who are super qualified finish. Law and medicine would also be reformed to fit into this new system and you'd be done with those in 3 or maybe 4 years after HS. Oh, and because college entry and exit is actually hard again, fewer women will do it, which dulls hypergamy effects.

This would already be the natural course of things if we got rid of the fully retarded summer break. I don't know the origin of this practice (farming?) but the longitudinal data is indisputable; backsliding occurs in the summer, child abuse goes up, crime also goes up.

Furthermore, we have this horrible discontinuity where, from ages 6 - 22, people develop a "I have a long break to look forward to" mentality and then, upon entering the workforce, realize that isn't the case.

According to Google, it was more about being unable to adequately cool the schools during the hottest part of the year, that's why is doesn't include time for planting or harvest (but rural schools where children were actually needed did).

My city still isn't able to install AC in the older schools, despite exceeding 100F on hot days, and keeps discussing less school in July, but just suffers through it due to state requirements. My mother spent some of her youth in Houston, and said that they spent much of summer at the beach, but they still had several months of miserable hot classrooms surrounding that.

I would like to trade three weeks of summer break for two weeks of fall break. June is alright, but in July we fall into just sitting around in front of the swamp cooler for days on end.

Wow, that's depressing. I understand the physical limitations through the 1940s,50s,60s,70s (in some parts of the country). Nowadays, however, this should be able to solved for a small amount of money. However, I can already imagine how "School upgrades" plus union labor plus public procurement of goods and services means installing 10 A/C units on the roof equals a $10 million contract that takes place over four years.

Yeah, the reasoning I heard was that if they update the AC, they have to update some large amount of infrastructure -- maybe ducts and roofing? Which is extremely expensive. I also heard that LA has more potholes than necessary because if they repave the roads, they have to make the sidewalks accessible, which is much more expensive than the repaving itself.

I hav seen several bring up ensuring AC for all as a high leverage improvement for schools, that basically all children, parents, and teachers would appreciate.

Tightening up educational requirements again is probably a good idea for other reasons, but I'm not sure it would do much for fertility. It's very common for women to graduate at 22, and get married at 30. They can and do date during college, so if the culture were oriented differently, even college educated people could be getting married at 23 or so. That they're not seems to largely be a matching problem -- that each relationship lasts for several years without leading to marriage or children, and then eventually people settle.

I do think that college has been overhead as a path to the middle class for working class children, and that was a mistake. They have become bloated, politically charged institutions and should be replaced or reformed. My own family, going back four generations at least, were educated lower middle class (teachers, professors, psychologists, cooks who like to talk about books, etc), and I would be disappointed if my own children don't have an opportunity to enjoy something approximating college, even if it doesn't increase their job prospects all that much.

To freestyle a lighter measure example off the dome, this could involve requiring filing parties to attend a humiliation ritual wherein they are browbeaten with every stat and fact known to mankind about how bad divorce is for children, and they must affirm personally and publicly: "yes, I am a complete piece of human shit, afflict all of these maladies on to my own flesh and blood for my own selfish gain".

Would you limit this to true facts and stats, or would you include false ones as well?

(If you limit it to true ones, you will have a problem because many "true" facts will be false as applied, unless you're getting down to insane levels of detail like "for people in your particular socioeconomic situation, in your specific state with your specific jobs..." And you probably won't have good statistics for those anyway. Of course, you could decide you don't care about truth when you do this, which has its own problems.)

We lack a crystal ball through which we can show prospective divorcees a differential analysis of their children's future, so I'd say keep it general but factual. I don't expect this to be a comprehensive solution or anywhere near; some people will simply not care, others will be convinced that their parenting skills are the exception. We'd need to come up with other interventions that target those cohorts, and beyond.

Why not just offer affirmative action to married couples with children?

Want a promotion in your white collar job? Have a husband/wife and have children!

Want your kids to get into a good university? Have more children!

This would efficiently target the most valuable, productive, ambitious people too, rather than the welfare class who don't really want to go to university, don't have anywhere near the necessary marks and aren't in line for promotion anyway.

This would efficiently target the most valuable, productive, ambitious people too, rather than the welfare class who don't really want to go to university, don't have anywhere near the necessary marks and aren't in line for promotion anyway.

The whole criticism of affirmative action is that it promotes non-meritocratic people. I don't really want my surgeon being selected for having four kids any more than I want her being selected for being a neurodivergent woman, or something. And if we started offering affirmative action for people who have kids, I don't know how it would stop otherwise-low-performing people from having kids to game the system. It probably would boost TFR but I don't think it would efficiently target the most productive or ambitious people any more than current AA policies do.

And if we started offering affirmative action for people who have kids, I don't know how it would stop otherwise-low-performing people from having kids to game the system

Well in the fantasy world where this policy is implemented, I'd block low-performers from taking advantage of it. Right now the affirmative action system doles out money and jobs to people of the right (wrong) race, I'm conceptualizing a system where it doles out money and jobs to married couples who meet certain baseline standards - their children aren't menaces, they work in more skill-intensive occupations, good character...

There's always going to be gaming of all government systems and there'd be gaming of this too but the system would be designed with perverse incentives in mind, not as a political patronage system.

If we just meritocracy-max then we're back to IQ-shredding, there needs to be a balance.

Only targets a small slice of the population, so unlikely to generate results worth the amount of aggro it will pull, which is what I was aiming for with my proposals. That's why I tried to make them as broad as possible while minimizing inflammation as much as possible while retaining effectiveness.

That's why I didn't recommend outright banning no fault divorce; that's a coup-complete solution.

Put simply, social security and other forms of elder welfare need to be either phased out or replaced with something far less permissive to the old and intrusive to the young.

You do want to slash pensions though. I also want to slash pensions, I think it's a good idea. But it's incredibly toxic, since you'd also need to disenfranchise the olds. They will always vote for loot now and consequences later. While we're disenfranchising, may as well keep going and remake the entire political system...

None of our political solutions are at all likely to happen without a major transformation of the system, something comparable to a coup. So I also agree on the importance of a technological fix.

The fact that the pension is sitting in the bank account of someone other than the recipient is just a paperwork issue. It should be treated the same as if it was sitting in the bank account of the recipient. Taking it is equivalent to taxing the old on savings. You may wish to tax the old on savings anyway, but admit that that's what you're doing.

Except they aren't savings. It's not like the money they contributed was put into a fund somewhere to accrue interest and now they are getting it back. Their money was spent to pay out pensions to the old before, and their current pensions are being paid by current contributions from the young, with no relationship between how much they contributed and how much they get paid back out (pensions pay out much more than was ever paid into them and were only ever possible because of an exponentially increasing population of young people to fund them; when fertility collapsed, the pensions became unsustainable).

No, that's not how it works at all.

A state pension means that the government is taking from taxpayers and paying the old.

Pensions are provided because the old don't have savings (or because they don't have 'enough' savings, after they've fiddled the figures to ensure they don't).

I have no problem with people saving their own money, my issue is with the government subsidizing the lifestyle of the old at the expense of the young. Welfare /= savings.

A state pension means that the government is taking from taxpayers and paying the old.

A "pension" in the US is deferred compensation, generally the term implies a defined benefits plan. Once you've been employed for the requisite period, the employer (whether public or private) is obliged to make the payments when you get old. At a cash accounting level this is the same as taking from the taxpayers and paying the old, but it's a matter of paying a debt owed, not a subsidy.

This is complicated by the way some of the public pensions were attained -- union delivers votes to politicians in exchange for pension benefits -- which taints the process, but barring things like that, a pension is an obligation owed the former employee.

In most other Anglophone countries what the US calls "social security" is called a "pension".

Good definitional clarification, I understand where Jiro was coming from now, not being American myself.

She can drink, snort, and smoke however much as she likes while carrying her child and nobody can actually stop her.

This isn't exactly true; on a quick Google around half of US states treat substance abuse while pregnant as a form of child abuse.

Why don't we just stop beating around the bush and go back to what works? Uh huh. How's that been working out? Mainstream conservatism has taken notice to how unpopular this position is and has largely adapted to this reality by promoting what I've take to calling neotraditionalism: offering a model of male obligation without the durable ownership. Good luck with that.

This does work within the communities that practice it. Red states are attracting more children than blue states; devout religious conservatives are ~at TFR. You correctly point out the problems with packaging this in a secular model but it works well in a religious model where accusations of cryptopatriarchy are the cost of doing business.

These are insurmountable problems. There's nothing to be done.

If you extrapolate wildly and irresponsibly from current trends, what's being done is precisely what needs to be done: the evangelical non-denoms, Pentecostals, and Jews will slowly convert the entire population of the United States and then birthrates will stabilize nicely at about replacement, carefully husbanded by religious traditions with centuries of time to refine their methods for dealing with human mess.

Of course I don't think it's as simple as that; nothing is as simple as that. But I think it's important to realize in the TFR/birthrates discussion that the United States isn't a monoculture, it is a teeming ecosystem of competing subcultures, and some of them are radically out-competing the others. (And of course I assume this is true elsewhere as well.) If you want to boost birth rates, you can try to identify what works in those subcultures (or, if you're a genetic fatalist, you can probably relax because they will win in the end eventually anyway).

One parting note: I do think there is a distinct danger of trying to boost TFR by elevating high-fertility subcultures. I suspect that outside threat sensation boosts fertility rates - see Israel's extremely high TFR; it may not be a coincidence that evangelicals, which have had a persecution complex for decades, have a higher fertility rate than mainline Protestants even with similar beliefs (see my second link). So, as in other ecological endeavors, attempts to preserve or expand an ecosystem might backfire and end up destroying it.

This does work within the communities that practice it.

So in other words, it doesn't work.

The scope of the consideration here was solutions that might cause a widespread meaningful rise in TFR. If you're not invested in that, then sure, it not working isn't a problem for you.

The scope of the consideration here was solutions that might cause a widespread meaningful rise in TFR. If you're not invested in that, then sure, it not working isn't a problem for you.

Over what time span? Over a long enough time span, the problem as currently projected is likely to very slowly fix itself because those higher-fertility communities are growing. Of course I don't trust those projections to continue indefinitely but it seems just as wrong to assume that births will go to zero as it does to assume tradcons will go to 100.

Short of shotgun gestation, there's nothing that will fix TFR immediately. I expect you could fix it in about ten-twenty years in the States with a whole-of-society effort. I suspect free (state-subsidized) births (cheap, I suspect), school propaganda (~free), media propaganda (cost+), perhaps some housing subsidy-type arrangements could drag it back past 2.1. Throw in building 1000 nuclear reactors (expensive but we need 'em anyway) to boot. I don't think that's undoable by any means, but it would be hard and the social conditions aren't there to galvanize it yet. Maybe in a decade.

I don't think some of the gender-related stuff you talk about would hurt and it might help but I suspect that it would pale (particularly in terms of cost-effectiveness) in comparison with kids being told in school and on television "you will be a failure in life if you don't graduate high school, get married, get a job, and have 2 - 3 children." Maybe I am wrong, but people forget that there was a concerted anti-natalism campaign in the West in media and elite circles, and I do think that saw results. The tweaks you are proposing, to make men feel more "ownership," will also work, but slowly, because people work via vibes, and it might take some time for your legal tweaks to nudge the vibes - at which point, frankly, I think the nudge will be weaker than "wow energy is free and the housing is cheap." I broadly agree with you wrt pregnancy-related expenses although eliminating those would of course come out of someone's pocket. Ultimately I suspect "tough marriage policy" - the stick - would help, but not as much as a carrot, and you do that by making it easy to get a job and a 4 bedroom 3 bathroom white picket fence and lawn forever home at 24.

A big question, to me, is if a crash course in boosting fertility based on massive government intervention is sustainable. People are very susceptible to social pressure but it tends to breed backlash and resentment. I don't want a massive baby bump in 20 years followed by a massive crash and backlash in 50.

I like the way both you and @Amadan are approaching this problem, but as long as we are restructuring society, I propose working from the following first principles:

  1. One goal of family formation is the raising of healthy, resilient, intelligent children.
  2. It is best for children if mothers are not drinking, smoking, or toking. Even caffeine is suspect (although research on caffeine is heavily confounded by mothers who drink coffee also smoking.)
  3. It is best medically for children if they are breastfed to age 1 or so. (Failure to do this leads to improper palete formation (mouthbreathing, dental issues), and greater incidence of leaky gut.)
  4. It is best psychologically for children if they are cared for by their parents nearly fulltime to age 3 or so. (Failure to do this leads to ADHD and attachment disorders.)
  5. It is best for children if they are raised by their biological parents (non-biological parents have a much higher rate of child abuse) and their families are stable.
  6. Women are hypergamous, and so stable families will be those in which the father has above-average social status and/or the woman has limited opportunities to meet other men with higher social status.
  7. Men are promiscuous, and so stable families will be those in which the man has limited opportunities to meet other women.
  8. Overall biological fertility is dropping precipitously (-2% per year), and it looks like the drop is due to environmental factors (food contaminants, screens, poor sleep), especially exposure to estrogenic compounds in utero around gestational age 6-8 weeks.

I propose the following interventions for maximizing fertility and child wellbeing:

  1. As a society, we desperately need to re-taboo drinking, smoking, toking, and adultery.
  2. We need to ban estrogenic compounds everywhere the modern consumer is exposed to them. (Which means in everything from plastic food containers and airborne pesticides to polyester carpeting.) We should take a precautionary approach to new compounds rather than the "generally recognized as safe" approach.
  3. Marriage should be encouraged and divorce should be strongly discouraged while there are minor children in the home.
  4. Women should be forbidden from working (or part-time WFH only) while they have children ages 0-3. I agree with @Amandan that this should be funded by fathers.
  5. We should re-segregate society so that married men and women are no longer exposed to temptations outside of the home. (Which includes gender-segregated social circles, workplaces, and social media.)
  6. Married workers should be discouraged from jobs involving heavy travel.
  7. Biological fathers should be forced into shotgun weddings. Single mothers should be shamed. Widows and widowers should be supported on the public purse, but forbidden from marrying/dating while they have minor children.
  8. Fathers should be paid more for their work to compensate for interventions (3) and (6). This should be paired with commensurate increase in responsibiliites.

Overall, I think that interventions 4-6 mean that married women are going to be doing more WFH jobs, married men are going to be doing more field jobs, and the unmarried will be doing more travelling.

Of course, this has no chance in hell of being a popularly selected policy. The game-theoretic self-interest of hypergamous women is to vote for social support so they can have more babies out of wedlock with cads (paid for by taxpayers), no matter how much having babies out of wedlock harms the children.

In order to counteract this failure mode, I suggest the following initial (moderately sneaky) political platform:

  1. uniform paternity testing in hospitals (can be mandated under testing for genetic diseases)
  2. expand maternity leave to 3 yrs from the birth of the child at half- or one-third pay (probably quite popular?)
  3. legalize sex-based segregation and discrimination in the workplace
  4. reduce economic support to "single mothers"
  5. increase child support burden based on (1), if married
  6. build more mini (sub-1000 sqft) starter homes, depressing housing prices to make childrearing more affordable
  7. gradually license more doctors, nurses, and midwives, depressing medical wages to make childbearing more affordable
  8. make divorce legal only in the case that it serves the best interests of the child, and make divorce cases self-represented like small claims court to remove the economic incentives of lawyers to promote divorce. Compensate existing divorce lawyers with large sums for their early retirement.

The effect of (1) and (4) will be to make life harder for cheaters and cads. The effect of (2) will be to depress hiring of mothers, and the effect of (3) will be to raise wages for men and limit mixing of men and women outside of the home. (1) and (5) will increase the prevalence of "shotgun" weddings. (6) and (7) are attacking cost disease to make marriage more affordable. (8) is to reduce the rate of divorces to those that are really necessary for child wellbeing.

As a society, we desperately need to re-taboo drinking, smoking, toking, and adultery.

At least all but toking are positively associated with the creation of children. (Maybe toking too)

We should take a precautionary approach to new compounds rather than the "generally recognized as safe" approach.

A precautionary approach means stagnation and ultimately being defeated by those who do not take it.

We should re-segregate society so that married men and women are no longer exposed to temptations outside of the home. (Which includes gender-segregated social circles, workplaces, and social media.)

So people who get married are required to lose half their social circle? Since if we have segregation BEFORE marriage, it's going to be a bit hard to make marriages come about.

You're going after the wrong problems. It isn't smoking, drinking, or adultery which is holding down TFR. Probably isn't estrogenic compounds either. TFR was higher before prohibition when the saloon culture existed, and higher during the 50s-70s when people smoked like chimneys.

higher during the 50s-70s when people smoked like chimneys.

Which is really funny because (if I recall correctly) there's at least some evidence that nicotine is not great for fertility; if smoking was wide(r)spread today it would absolutely be Culprit #1 for reduced fertility.

Nicotine may be bad for fertility-per-sex-act, but I'll bet smoking is good for sex-act-per-unit-time. And drinking is good for increasing number of sex acts (up to a point, whiskey dick helps no one) and skipping contraception.

I also wonder if nicotine ends up being a net win for the former (and the latter) over a large population over time due to its tendency to keep smokers thin.

Not a nicotine user myself and wouldn't encourage it. But I think we are (as a collective society, or, if you prefer, the state is) often shortsighted in perceiving the effects our actions will take. Which makes stuff like "boosting TFR" very tricky.

I've been "prescribing" smoking and lead for obesity for many years now. Perhaps eventually the powers-that-be will be desperate enough to try it. Probably not in my lifetime. (And I hate the stink of cigarettes anyway, and they DO kill you, so maybe work on that? I'm not sure if vapes work as well though, someone should do a study)

Put simply, social security and other forms of elder welfare need to be either phased out or replaced with something far less permissive to the old and intrusive to the young.

At least in my peer group, this seems to be priced in; we already believe that Social Security is a kind of Ponzi scheme that we won't receive any benefits from. For example, The Hill reported on a 2023 survey where 45% of Zoomers believed they "would not get a dime" from SS. We're already planning our own retirement savings. (Unless there's dementia in the family, in which case we're planning our DNR and MAID paperwork. No amount of support from his children has made my granddad's life less miserable.)

I appreciate you rereading what I said, because the entire issue is poisoned by bad faith toxic discourse on both sides, and it's very hard to make any kind of proposal for how either men or women should change their behavior, or be pressured to change their behavior, without being mapped to the worst extremists.

"I think men should be responsible for any progeny they create, you can't just dump them on the mother and/or the state and keep fucking around."

"OH SO MEN ARE JUST PAYPIGS FUCK YOU AS LONG AS WOMEN CONTROL REPRODUCTION AND CAN HAVE ABORTIONS MEN ARE SLAVES OF THE STATE!!!!!"

"I think women should be encouraged to have children young instead of giving up their most fertile years seeking a career they probably won't even enjoy."

"OH BAREFOOT AND PREGNANT IN THE KITCHEN IS IT? WHY DON'T WE JUST MAKE IT ILLEGAL FOR WOMEN TO LEARN TO READ LIKE IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS YOU PATRIARCHAL INCEL?!"

Obviously, it's pretty hard to have a dialog like this. Also obviously, the all-caps lines are a bit tongue-in-cheek but not far off from what you see most places online and even to some degree here. So I have definitely taken the first position, for example- if you get a woman pregnant, you did the deed, now you have to feed the kid. No, I don't care how irresponsible and slutty the mother is or if she "baby-trapped" you. No, I don't care that she has the unilateral power to abort or not. You stuck your dick in it, you know how babies are made, so the options are (a) you pay for it, (b) I pay for it, (c) we let the child starve. I choose option (a). Yes, some men get screwed. This is unfair. Tough shit. Use a condom or don't drink and fuck.

"OH SO WE SHOULD ONLY BE UNFAIR TO MEN WE CAN'T BE EVEN A LITTLE BIT MEAN TO WOMEN????"

Sure, we can be "mean" to women. I am not anti-shame. I think slut-shaming is good and we should do more of it.

I think if there was a way to implement welfare reform to ensure children get fed and clothed with as little incentive to the mothers as possible to keep popping them out, we should do it (I admit, I don't really know how this could be done, short of poorhouses or something, which historically have been even worse).

Relatedly, I would be in favor of social messaging to encourage fewer people (but especially fewer women) to go to college, and start families instead. But realistically I don't know how this social engineering would work, especially without the power of a church behind it, and I am not in favor of increasing the power of religion, so, yes, once again you may be right that there is no real solution.

Also, "young people should get married and start families young" and also "young people are totally screwed, the economy is terrible, no one can buy a house" - I read Scott's "vibecession" post and I am still not sure how much to believe about how bad the economy and the future really is but it does seem rather bleak for a young couple starting out without a lot of money.

All of which is to say, I mostly don't disagree with your proposals per se, and I mostly agree they can't really happen.

In the alternative, the proposals I mostly see amount to varying levels of coercion, and mostly this is directed at women. Ranging from "Be more mean to them and make them settle" to "Be really mean to them and make them property."

As much as I dislike the rabid bad faith feminists calling any man who has standards and expectations a sexist incel, you can kind of see why they react like this when you see their opposite numbers. There are quite a few men who hate women and are very clear that they consider women to be inferior beings who should just acknowledge their inferiority and suck it up (literally). We have some of them here on the Motte, and their he-man woman-hating screeds get lots of upvotes. A woman who's had a few encounters with these men (who also make it very clear they want to fuck the women they hate) is understandably going to develop a negative attitude about men and a paranoid attitude about any proposal that smells like "control women."

I dunno, man. But nothing any of the he-man woman-haters say has ever convinced me the solution is to hate/control women, or that I should feel anything but contempt for incels. I am not really averse to a "neotraditional" revival of some kind, but like you, I don't see how it can be done.

For what it’s worth, I don’t hate women. I’m married to one. I have young girls.

At the same time, I am of the opinion that feminism is poison. I don’t want my daughters to be girlbosses. I want them to have a lot of kids with a husband who is (1) the head of his house but (2) treats my daughter with love and respect. I also think it’s my responsibility as their father to provide some safety net in case their husband proves to be abusive etc.

I think modern society is all out if whack expecting paradoxically too little and too much from men and women.

I wasn't thinking of you, for what it's worth, nor do I classify everyone who is anti-feminist as a woman-hater.

I didn’t say you were thinking of me (would be slightly narcissistic to assume you were). It was more providing context re the comment that men who want to discourage current day gender norms often are women hating. I know you weren’t say they all are but wanted to provide a real life example to the contrary.

Where do you find good cultural influences for your daughters?

It is a difficult question. I guess I start at home where my wife is stay at home and we have a lot of kids. Our friends almost all have a lot of kids.

But there isn’t something similar to Hollywood we can turn to (though very old Disney such as original Cinderella fit the bill)

Thank you! I'm also eyeing old media, although one has to be careful that the censors haven't had a pass over it.

There seems to be a roaring market in old (used) children's books.

I hear what you're saying, but I guess my initial reaction is that I find it hard to take offense to a lot of what's being said. In all but the worst cases, none of it strikes me as being much worse than what's already imposed upon men as a matter of policy. But you're right, that doesn't make it good. There's very few posts that happen here or elsewhere I'd be happy to elect as my representative.

I've reflected a lot on the MRA phenomenon and my involvement in it during the early to mid 2010s. I'm increasingly of the conclusion that it was, at its best, an attempt to arrest a cycle of violence before its next iteration. Reconstructing a positive belonging for men was rightfully seen as a key element. It wasn't meant to be. From the early manosphere we got two winners that made it big into broader culture: incels and red pillers. And it seems like inceldom is now the favorite to win the whole bracket. Bone apple tea.

I don't know if it's just because it fits into a neat understanding, but I get the feel from a lot of these men based on the way that they present their ideas that they are more on the younger side. I think there's going to be more of them as the years go by. I believe that the tools and implements of nihilism and faithlessness that were used to dispossess men are now moving against their next victims in the form of women. The wheel of violence turns.

I think things will get worse, but maybe before they get better. Maybe once there's nothing left there will be room for something new.

Relatedly, I would be in favor of social messaging to encourage fewer people (but especially fewer women) to go to college, and start families instead. But realistically I don't know how this social engineering would work, especially without the power of a church behind it, and I am not in favor of increasing the power of religion, so, yes, once again you may be right that there is no real solution.

There is already a thumb on the scale in favor of women getting more educated uber alles. Obviously removing it is difficult in se, but we should probably start there.

I wonder how much of this will happen naturally as higher ed begins to face a crunch as the population narrows. Various fedgov policies could speed this along fairly "painlessly" (to the average American). It seems plausible that college enrollment trends will reverse even without ideological buy-in from the colleges themselves.

The only developed country with above replacement rate tfr is Israel. This even includes secular Jews. The main differences I think is Israeli politicians always promoted reproduction versus the west falling under some kind of white people bad/for the environment bad argument. The second and similar reason would be Jews still viewing themselves as basically a tribe and growing the tribe has value.

The only developed country with above replacement rate tfr is Israel. This even includes secular Jews. The main differences I think is Israeli politicians always promoted reproduction versus the west falling under some kind of white people bad/for the environment bad argument.

I agree that's likely a factor, but I think there's something deeper going on, which is that Jewish people were the very first group to get whacked full-on by modernity and its effects on fertility. So that in the early 19th century, Jewish people were heavily concentrated in urban areas while other groups had large segments working in the countryside in agriculture. And the urban areas were where fertility declines due to modernity have always hit the hardest.

Logically, what happens when a group experiences some kind of fertility shock like this? Logically, it's going to be roughly the same thing that happens when an antibiotic is put into a colony of bacteria. It will have a big effect at first, but over time, the colony will develop resistance. And arguably what's what happened with Jews, i.e. Jewish people developed cultural (and possibly genetic) defenses. In fact, it was around this time that Haredi Judaism caught on. And in the last 200-300 years, these types of groups have grown to the point where they will soon be a majority of world Jewry.

It's interesting to note that in the last 5-15 years, Jewish fertility in Israel grew to the point where it exceed Arab fertility. Which is very interesting, since Arab leaders have been promoting population growth as a way of winning a demographic war. And certainly Arabs are not suffering from any kind of "Arabs are bad" delusion.

The difference, in my opinion, is that Arabs have hard far less time than Jews to demographically adjust to modernity. So that their TFR is dropping like every other group that encounters modernity.

Cities are IQ shredders theory I believe, except Jews were hit by it early so those with the highest fertility in urban environments have survived and now produce higher.

Cities are IQ shredders theory I believe, except Jews were hit by it early so those with the highest fertility in urban environments have survived and now produce higher.

I think you mean to say that cities are fertility shredders. And yeah, I think it's very reasonable to hypothesize that (1) for hundreds if not thousands of years before the 20th century, if you lived outside of the city, chances are you and your family worked in agriculture; (2) if your family works in agriculture, there's a lot of incentive to have a lot of children since it means a very inexpensive source of labor for the farm; (3) if most of the community works in agriculture, then the culture will tend to value high fertility; (4) if a person (or a family) moves to the city, there is far less incentive to have a large family (and in fact there is the opposite incentive); (5) city culture can be expected to reflect this after a while, until of course cultural and genetic selection get you people and cultures who value large families even though it means cramped living conditions and spending a lot of time and money without much economic return; and (6) one would expect to see this change first in groups which have gone through the "fertility shredder."

That's why I think the idea of just copying Israel might not be all that effective as one might expect. Besides which, a large and fast-growing subset of the Israel population consists of ultra-religious types who don't contribute all that much to Israeli society.

I think you mean to say that cities are fertility shredders.

The term "IQ shredders" was invented by Spandrell and popularized by Nick Land. It's a combination of fertility shredding with the attraction that cities present to young, intelligent, ambitious people.

If you are a talented young man or woman from the countryside or suburbs, chances are you move to New York or Singapore to make it, then fail to reproduce. Hence, IQ shredders.

The term "IQ shredders" was invented by Spandrell and popularized by Nick Land. It's a combination of fertility shredding with the attraction that cities present to young, intelligent, ambitious people.

If you are a talented young man or woman from the countryside or suburbs, chances are you move to New York or Singapore to make it, then fail to reproduce. Hence, IQ shredders.

I understand. My objection to this concept is that in the modern era most people live in and around cities. I don't know about Singapore, but in the last 150 years, lots of people (both smart and stupid) moved from rural areas to New York and their fertility took a hit as a result.

I concede that there might be an add-on effect of modernity which is that (perhaps) unusually smart and ambitious people are presented with opportunities that depress their fertility and that those opportunities are heavily concentrated in cities. That being said, I think it's pretty likely that if you researched the subject you would find that (1) among men in cities, IQ does not have much of a correlation with fertility; and (2) among women in cities, higher IQ definitely is associated with lower fertility. If that's so, the perhaps we could call cities "female IQ shredders"

Well, IQ is heritable from both parents, so a "Female IQ shredder" is just an IQ shredder.

Of course, the other element of the metaphor is that you're not just shredding for the sake of it: there have been a lot of productivity gains from the agglomeration effects of cities. "IQ shredders" points to the trade-offs present in urbanization.

Well, IQ is heritable from both parents, so a "Female IQ shredder" is just an IQ shredder.

To a large extent, I agree, but I think genetic and cultural evolution are flexible enough to select for different traits in men and women even as those men and women are combining their genes. So for example, it's very common to meet highly intelligent women who nevertheless have terrible senses of direction. So common that the difference is very obvious even without doing a formal study.

I’ve seen the term IQ shredders but it’s close to what you are referring as fertility shredders. Cities also attract higher IQ folks. Then the population shredding kicks in. Which makes them at a society level IQ shredders since the new city folks are higher IQ then the people that stayed rural.

I think you mean to say that cities are fertility shredders.

They're called IQ shredders (by those who do) because the smart people move to the city and don't reproduce there, thus providing selection against IQ on a population basis.

It has nothing to do what Israeli politicians say or do and more of the fact that the Holocaust made the Jewish national existence the responsibility of every household. If they don't fuck in Israel, then they'll be demographically drowned out by the Arabs. That's why you get weird things like the IDF sperm squad which extracts sperm from dead soldiers to impregnate their widows, like some demented and sad version of 40k's apothecaries. If you're not spermjacking the dead to increase the birth rate, you're not pro-natal enough.

It has nothing to do what Israeli politicians say or do and more of the fact that the Holocaust made the Jewish national existence the responsibility of every household. If they don't fuck in Israel, then they'll be demographically drowned out by the Arabs.

Has there been a similar trend among Armenians? Or the Tutsi people in Rwanda?

People care about Status. In Israel for whatever reason having kids is high status. In the US we lowered the Status of mothers. That matters a lot more than the marginal dollar in a post-scarcity society.

One of the things that the constant opining about low TFR has done in Korea is to make childrearing high-status again. Marriage rates and childbirth are both on the rise. It's too little too late for Korea, but it does show that there is a social dimension which cannot be neglected and is hard (but possible) to intentionally change.

Very interesting. Is there a nice succinct article/essay about this you could share?

I've been mildly optimistic that elite concern about the issue in the West is early enough that it will pull the elephant in the correct direction, so it would be very interesting to read about the South Korean experience on that question.

Not really. But marriage rates are increasing monthly and births are "way" up, large companies are starting to give 6 month maternal/paternal leave (+ 2.5 years unpaid), and everyone knows the issue is critical.

However, there is also a lot of government support for young families now, from special housing options to support for ultrasounds. I think my local district office will provide ~$800 in medical vouchers and folic acid supplements when a pregnancy is registered. $800 is probably enough to pay for the absolutely necessary medical expenses for delivery if the mother is on national health insurance, but I don't think it would be enough to cover electives like NIPT or first-trimester blood testing.

So on further consideration, it might be cultural change driving financial incentives, or financial incentives might make motherhood more high-status.

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

TFR went from .721 in 2023 to .75 in 2024, but this is generally linked to a boom in marriages that were put on hold during Covid (Koreans just do not have kids out of wedlock). This is most likely just a statistical anomoly that will revert to the previous trend in the next couple of years.

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