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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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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.