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Notes -
Is a strong central authority necessary to deter the catastrophe of health and fertility?
Consider that if America wanted to reduce its obesity epidemic it would likely have to implement draconian actions like high taxation or outright bans on certain food types, reduced workplace stress conditions, incentivizing longer breastfeeding times and reducing female employment to reduce stressed mothers. If it wanted to maintain or increase its fertility rate it would need to deter or ban women from higher education, teach pro-motherhood material in public school, possibly ban certain types of media…
Any action that has a real effect on the ever-increasing problems of obesity and fertility would be essentially off the table. Our capitalism worship and our political climate forbids it. It is unlikely that there will be a magic bullet for fertility that does not include reducing female education/employment and producing natal propaganda. A state like China, however, can snap their finger and introduce policies that will certainly reduce obesity and increase fertility.
No, but some kind of positive governance is required, rather than an incompetent or malicious one.
Take obesity, for example. People get fat when they ingest more calories than they burn - this isn't rocket science. Having cheap, calorie-dense food everywhere makes it nearly impossible to keep a good calorie balance without going hungry, or without planning and measuring your food (which most people don't and won't do). So a good place to start would be to not subsidize corn, and thus high-fructose corn syrup. Instead, incentivize the cultivation of tasty vegetables (as opposed to good-looking ones, e.g. sherry tomatoes vs. the large ones at the supermarket) and low-calorie fruit, like strawberries.
For fertility, notice that you can't have TFR > 2.1 if families don't have more than 2 kids on average. So, what are the barriers? High housing prices are the first to tackle, in the places that people actually want to live. This is also not rocket science - build more. It doesn't even matter how or what, if housing stock will increase then the prices will decrease. Couples detached from their family will have almost no spare time - so young kids should be in some kind of schooling for 6 days a week (or 5-and-a-half, like here in Israel) to give parents time to make more kids.
Giving birth should not cost the parents money - cost is a very obvious disincentive. Instead, compensate the hospital directly for each birth and charge the parents nothing (again, this is what we do in Israel. The result is that the maternity ward is one of the nicest places in the hospital, as hospitals compete to get as many mothers as they can. Sort of a voucher system). Car seat laws in Europe and the US are just insane, creating a hard barrier at 2 kids per family with a normal car, or spacing the kids out too much so that at least 1 doesn't need a safety seat.
Most of this requires less government restrictions, some of it is just moving things around, but you don't really need to get big-brother on your populace.
As an owner of car seats I can tell you with certainty that they're a non-trivial factor in stopping my reproduction at 2.
Are these things actually way better than something that fits in the space for a seat?
Edit - Some googled stats:
For the most part, these laws have worked. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that child deaths from car crashes dropped 43% between 2002 and 2011 — which was also the period in which the scope of car seat laws was expanding. And the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration found that child restraints sa
I always thought sex in the car is rather uncomfortable, but damn, that must have been a serious injury.
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