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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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TFR is a real, serious issue. But I don't think most people who worry about it really act in a way that's consistent with worrying about it.

If we are to have a real policy intervention to fix it, what are the trade offs that people are willing to make? Suppose there's no real way for the government to encourage traditional, two parent households with 3+ kids (entirely plausible, considering that previous attempts have mostly failed and no one seems to have any ideas). Would people be willing to subsidize low income, low education single mothers having lots of kids with multiple deadbeat baby daddies? They're the most likely for small financial incentives to influence outcomes; of the professional women I know, most would not take advantage of even a $100k grant to have a kid. But there are plenty of high school dropouts who'd be willing to start pumping out kids at $5k/pop.

Of course, it's far from ideal, but in the real world we have to prioritize. My sense is that few people are willing to bite that bullet, and a lot of worries couched in terms of TFR are really just complaints about the state of current gender dynamics of a certain class stratum.

What's the point of subsidizing the reproduction of the underclass? Even if you can do it, those people don't work, don't create value, don't pay taxes, etc. They survive by parasitizing the wealth created by the actually productive classes in the form of crime, welfare, and prison.

It's like that joke about selling at a loss but making it up on volume. For society, each kid of a high school dropout single mother and a deadbeat baby daddy is a liability, not an asset. You are just accelerating the collapse.

There's a tradeoff: is it better to have a less inverted demographic age pyramid and lower average human capital, or to have a more inverted age pyramid and a higher average human capital?

The latter choice is essentially the position of the "do not worry about TFR" crowd; we'll be able to make do by making people more productive, so it's not a problem (or, at least, the cure is worse than the disease.) Which is a reasonable enough position, but it means TFR isn't really the important thing, as opposed to education/eugenics/whatever someone's main priority is.

People who even know about TFR as an issue are also usually concerned with dysgenics. I'm not really sure critiquing people for not acting like it's an issue makes sense, if we're going to accept flooding low iq people we might as well get the immigrants for free and pocket the money we'd spend on the nonproductive years of the kids. And really what are the individual actions you'd expect from people concerned with LFR? My investments take into account the likely lack of growth in certain markets, that's about all I can personally do beyond discussions.

On a social level, there's not much people can do individually. Someone can reasonably point at the single childless 30 year old professional concerned about TFR as somewhat hypocritical, but I agree: individually, we all must make do as best we can, and there's not much point in railing on individual choices.

When thinking of it as a social problem, though, if someone correctly recognizes it as a serious issue, I think it's reasonable to ask them what they're willing to give up to solve it. It's similar to environmentalists worried about climate change who refuse to even consider nuclear power: when faced with hard choices for them, they are just saying "I want all of what I want and refuse to make any trade offs." It reveals a great interest in signaling and a lack of any deep commitment to solving the Serious Problem.

The higher TFRs in the Philippines and Niger likely is driven by the lower classes and has a dysgenic effect, but despite that they're still likely to have higher growth rates than comparable countries with low TFRs.

There's going to be economic costs associated just with having a shrinking population so I'd be willing to spend economically. But yes, I both want the population not to shrink and to avoid dysgenics in solutions if possible. I guess my solution if we can't get an at least even rate of reproduction along socioeconomic classes would depend on the country, as an American my nation has more options than many in that we have the kind of market that lets us attract high quality immigrants and I'd push for far more of those as a fallback, but I would very much like to solve the social issue that is causing us to not have kids at the root over these other solutions.

I agree that the US is uniquely well positioned, though I think that high quality immigrants are going to be harder to come by, particularly in the quantity needed to reverse the costs of an aging population. My hope is that we try to reverse the culture of anti-fertility starting now and that technology will catch up in the next decade or so to help with the dysgenic effects.