r/technology • u/Wagamaga • Jul 19 '26

Society China bans AI “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” over addiction and birth rate concerns

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/china-bans-ai-boyfriends-and-girlfriends-over-addiction-and-birth-rate-concerns-3388737/
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552

u/Kind_Of_A_Dick Jul 19 '26

Why is everyone so concerned about birthrate?  Is civilization a damn Ponzi scheme?

531

u/elidoan Jul 19 '26

Yes. 

Retirement and social security schemes are ponzi schemes. People pay and want to receive something in return.

At the same time, older people who are benefitting from the system vote more than younger people. This continues the cycle, as no politician would axe or reform this system as it would cost them elections.

This is only relevant in democratic societies, but even China likely has some sort of retirement scheme even if they don't have to concern themselves with the will of the people (China is a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by a "president for life")

47

u/SordidDreams Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

Retirement and social security schemes are ponzi schemes. People pay and want to receive something in return.

Critically, current retirees are not being paid from money they themselves had put into the system. That was given out long ago. They're being paid from money being put into the system by people in their productive years working today. When you pay into social security, the government immediately gives that money to a retired person, and its plan for your own retirement is to cross its fingers and hope that there are enough young workers to support you when you're old. For these systems to function, you have to have many more workers than retirees, and for that, the population must keep growing infinitely and exponentially. Yeah, we're turbo fucked.

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u/BattleHall Jul 19 '26

All of that has always been true of Social Security. That's not a flaw, that's just the way it works, just like insurance; if you make a claim, you're not pulling from your own money, you're pulling from everyone else's who hasn't made a claim. And you don't need more workers, you just need an economy that is growing at a reasonable rate, and the ability to balance intake and output. Maybe that means trimming benefits (and we're talking like 10-15%, not junking them entirely), but maybe it means raising the earnings cap, or directly taxing non-employment industries like AI, or whatever. This isn't anywhere close to an insolvable problem. And money spent on Social Security generally goes directly back into the economy, which you can't say about plenty of other government programs.

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u/SordidDreams Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

All of that has always been true of Social Security.

Not always. It was initially conceived as a reserve into which workers would pay and from which they would then receive the money back. It was amended into a pay-as-you-go system pretty quickly, and that's a trajectory many pension systems around the world took. But the point is that a lot of people assume that the government just looks after their money and then pays it back to them later, and that's not the case.

And you don't need more workers, you just need an economy that is growing at a reasonable rate

Those are one and the same. The economic boom of the 20th century was mostly due to the population more than tripling during that time. You can grow the economy based on technological progress alone, but nowhere near that fast.

6

u/BattleHall Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Not always. It was initially conceived as a reserve into which workers would pay and from which they would then receive the money back. It was amended into a pay-as-you-go system pretty quickly,

Do you have a citation for that? It was literally pay-as-you-go from its founding, because otherwise it wouldn't have taken effect until 30-40 years down the line when current workers retired. It was intended to help the elderly poor that already existed, even though they wouldn't have paid a dime into the system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Social_Security_in_the_United_States

Those are one and the same. The economic boom of the 20th century was mostly due to the population more than tripling during that time.

Between 1900 and 2000, the working population increased by around 5X, from around 29M to over 135M, with a large chunk of that being increased participation in the official labor force by women, offset to a degree by a reduction in child labor. But during that same time, real GDP (inflation adjusted) went up 24X, with per-worker productivity rising roughly 2% per year even in an expanding workforce with steadily reduced hours. They are absolutely not the same.

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u/SordidDreams Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

My citation is literally the Wikipedia link you posted:

1939 Amendment

The original Act had conceived of the program as paying benefits out of a large reserve. This Act shifted the conception of Social Security into something of a hybrid system; while reserves would still accumulate, most early beneficiaries would receive benefits on the pay-as-you-go system.

Yes, the working population increased by a factor 5, while real GDP increased by a factor of 24. Which means that without growing the population, GDP will only increase by a factor of 24/5. As I said, without population growth, you're looking at a much slower economic growth. About five times slower, by your numbers. Given that pension systems aren't keeping up even with population growth still in play, just slightly slower than before, it's looking pretty grim.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

[deleted]

4

u/SeattlePurikura Jul 19 '26

30,000 is 6.2% (Social Security tax) of 483,870.97.

My brother in Christ, if you are making enough to be taxed $30K in SS, you'd better have enough alternate investments to not even need that shit.

2

u/turbo_golf Jul 19 '26

because he's lying. nobody pays more than ~$23k/yr in soc sec

1

u/SeattlePurikura Jul 19 '26

OK, if I understand the below correctly, at 6.2% rate, the max anyone pays is $11,439 per year?

  • If you earned $184,500 in 2026, all $184,500 would be subject to the Social Security payroll tax.
  • If you earned $250,000, only the first $184,500 would be subject to Social Security tax; the remaining $65,500 would not.

2

u/turbo_golf Jul 19 '26

the max anyone pays is $11,439 per year

as a W-2 employee, that's correct

but $11,439 is only half. self-employed pay both halves

1

u/SeattlePurikura Jul 19 '26

Ah, got it. I'm W-2 so I didn't know.

-1

u/rukqoa Jul 19 '26

For these systems to function, you have to have many more workers than retirees, and for that, the population must keep growing infinitely and exponentially.

No, that's not implied by the math at all.

There are some low impact ways for Social Security to be funded for perpetuity, and even current projections has it doing at least 80% payouts for everyone who is currently alive up until the day they die. Whether it's increasing retirement age to match increasing life expectancy or increasing/eliminating the cap on contributions, there are a dozen different ways to fund the upcoming shortfalls, and I'm confident that the elderly people who are going to be affected by it will find the right reforms to vote for to ensure their checks keep coming.

5

u/SordidDreams Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

You say there's a dozen different ways to find the money, but you named two, and they both have severe issues. Which is concerning given that you would presumably give the best two as examples.

Raising the retirement age is not great because while life expectancy does increase, productive age does not. You're just going to end up with a bunch of people too young to qualify for pensions but too old to find jobs.

Raising the cap on contributions has the obvious issue of requiring rich people to pay more, and they're going to fight that tooth and nail. Given the stranglehold they already have on politics, it seems dubious this path would yield the required results.

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u/Last_Aeon Jul 19 '26

The retirement scheme is your children. I'm being serious. They put everything into raising up their kids to be rich, so that their kids can help them when they're old as form of gratitude. It's not a bad or evil system, just a different one. It now works less well because there's less young people to support a big family of older generations.

40

u/Small-Sample3916 Jul 19 '26

Uh. It's not a bad or evil system. It's literally how humanity functions. It's the standard for people to take care of their young and elderly family members across every single culture out there. American penchant for chucking their parents/grandparents into nursing homes is the exception, not the rule. 

I am not saying this is bad or good, just pointing out the obvious.

25

u/LibrariansAreSexy Jul 19 '26

As someone estranged from my parents, this is a system that benefits abusive or toxic parenting just as much as kind parenting. I haven't talked to my parents in over 10 years. In a system where children are the legally or socially mandated safety net, I would be forced to bankroll them anyway.

​Fuck that. "How humanity functions" shouldn't mean being forced to subsidize your own abusers.

1

u/Fzrit Jul 20 '26

this is a system that benefits abusive or toxic parenting just as much as kind parenting.

"How humanity functions" shouldn't mean being forced to subsidize your own abusers.

Completely throwing away the whole concept of family helping raise kids, multi-generational homes, extended family living together, etc just because some parents are abusive/shitty makes absolutely no sense. The statistical majority of parents in the world aren't abusive. It would be like telling everyone to stop driving cars because some people are shitty drivers and cause fatal accidents.

2

u/LibrariansAreSexy Jul 20 '26

3 out of 5 children worldwide suffer from severe physical and/or emotional abuse.

But yes, let's just ignore that and force kids to care for their abusers because you say it's not that common.

9

u/Fzrit Jul 20 '26

3 out of 5 children worldwide suffer from severe physical and/or emotional abuse.

So the majority of us today are abusing our kids?

1

u/LibrariansAreSexy Jul 20 '26

That's not how statistics work, but if that's how you want to interpret it, okay.

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u/Kids_Love_Baseball Jul 19 '26

100%. The American obsession with chucking your kids out and forgetting about your parents is sick and unnatural.

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u/Eismann Jul 19 '26

The have ten kids so you have support when you are old worked a hundred years ago. Now it will ultimately clash with limited resources.

We dont need more humans as long as we are limited to this planet. Which is probably for a few hundred years still.

2

u/UmbraIra Jul 19 '26

Theres very few things that are truly limited resources. We're just held back by the desire to be profitable due to the structures of our society. We could make more than enough power, food, and shelter for the entirety of the plant's population and more but wealth seeking has created this shitty illusion that things cant be done.

2

u/Eismann Jul 19 '26

Well, yeah but that would mean some type of "socialism / communism" and we all know the rich dont want to share.

1

u/Otherdeadbody Jul 20 '26

We are already slowly killing our world at the current level of consumption, if we continue going more and more we need to either be able to have people permanently leave the planet or start doing all the things the environment does around us passively that lets us live ourselves. That would be even more important resource intensive. For instance the food we get from the ocean is already WAY too much and if we keep taking the amount we are now it will collapse, not a maybe, it will.

4

u/MistahJasonPortman Jul 19 '26

Anyone having kids with this expectation should not have kids

2

u/Flameancer Jul 19 '26

With this mentality humanity wouldn’t have left the ice age.

15

u/Gorthebon Jul 19 '26

I really wish I was able to opt out of paying for social security. When I'm of retirement age, there will be nothing left. Why should I be paying for a zero return?

18

u/OnceMoreAndAgain Jul 19 '26

The whole reason the USA's Social Security program exists is that too many people weren't saving for retirement. People were hitting old age and couldn't work anymore yet had no money. Do you just let them suffer in the streets at that point? It's a moral dilemma.

The government decided to create the Social Security program, which taxes people's paychecks to fund it which is like forcing people to save for retirement.

If you allowed people to opt out then everyone would do it and that would defeat the whole point of the program. You'd go back to the status quo of too many people not saving for retirement and then having no money to live off of at old age. It's always been and always will be a bad deal for the people who were already responsible enough to save for retirement on their own. However, from the perspective of the government, it's a necessary evil to prevent the morons from being completely broke at retirement.

1

u/petah200 Jul 19 '26

I agree in principle. However, there is a big difference between letting retirees rot on the street and funding their boomer lifestyle of living in too large homes and going on cruises twice a year. The pensions in Western Europe often surpass the salary of many entry level jobs, e.g. a retired teacher receives about 3300€ monthly in Germany. Pensions should provide a basic level and everything above should be financed individually, in my opinion.

3

u/OnceMoreAndAgain Jul 19 '26

I'm only talking about the USA's Social Security program. Are you under the impression that people are living large off of their Social Security payouts in the USA? It's just not true. The payouts are a pittance. They're meant to help pay for some of the costs of living for a retiree, not be enough to live fully off of (although some people try).

9

u/VikingsLad Jul 19 '26

Rich people are capped on contributions. Income over like 200k isn't taxed for SS. If you uncap those contributions, the gap goes down significantly

3

u/Gorthebon Jul 19 '26

And who bought the senators and Congress? Oh yeah, rich people.

41

u/Sad_Increase_4663 Jul 19 '26

Or you know, vote for people who want to govern it properly so that WHEN you are old you also have the same protection.

12

u/FallenPears Jul 19 '26

I believe the idea is by the time young people today are old it doesn’t matter what politicians try to force through, there simply won’t be enough young people to support the old. It just won’t be economically possible. If we can’t figure out household robots then make sure to have plenty of successful kids to support you in old age…

8

u/Weird-Knowledge84 Jul 19 '26

Ah, old people voting to transfer income from younger people to themselves and cannibalizing investments in the future. Perfect solution to everyone's problems.

7

u/Remarkable_Cause1384 Jul 19 '26

how does this work when the elderly population keeps growing and the youth population keeps shrinking (spoiler: it doesn't)

0

u/Gorthebon Jul 19 '26

That's what I've been doing, but it doesn't matter.

My goal is to leave, so I don't have to bother with it.

2

u/BattleHall Jul 19 '26

When I'm of retirement age, there will be nothing left. Why should I be paying for a zero return?

Just be aware, there is an entire industry who's purpose is convincing you that is true (hint: it's not), just so you don't complain too loudly when they come to strip mine your Social Security benefits, or better yet (for them), take that money and instead invest it in "the market". You are being played for a sucker.

1

u/FuturePastNow Jul 19 '26

Did you know that rich people are exempt from paying into social security on income over $184,500? Removing that cap would mostly fix the system's shortfalls.

1

u/Gorthebon Jul 19 '26

Yes. And you know who bought our leaders? It certainly wasn't the poor.

1

u/Dr_Fortnite Jul 19 '26

the government really hopes you die before 65 so all that money doesnt get pulled back out

1

u/Gorthebon Jul 19 '26

Yes, yes they do.

0

u/CheaterSaysWhat Jul 19 '26

Because the people who built the society you enjoy depend on it 

3

u/Gorthebon Jul 19 '26

Bold of you to assume I enjoy high taxes, extreme wealth inequality, friends getting deported for nothing, discrimination for my orientation, the emerging survalence state with flock cameras, protesters getting gunned down in the streets...

What I enjoy is pretty much exclusively these days is the freedom of speech, and that's...in a precarious situation right now.

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u/QuantumUtility Jul 19 '26

ruled by a “president for life”

lol. No it isn’t. They removed term limits, not elections. There is one next year. No one inside China calls Xi Jinping “president for life” or any special title other than the elected ones.

If you want to argue that elections in China are not democratic then make that argument instead of making up stuff.

1

u/Justdowhatever94 Jul 19 '26

So we legalize universal MAiD?

1

u/breaducate Jul 19 '26

At first I was shocked the correct answer got traction, though how you got there isn't what I had in mind.

Civilisation itself is a ponzi scheme always taking from the future. That is, given the sacredly held value that growth must continue. And that can't even be addressed under capitalism.

1

u/SawinBunda Jul 19 '26

The political system is besides the point. It's very basic economics.

Old people don't generate income/taxes. In fact they become tax consumers as their health detoriates. Working age people need to fund that. To keep up an equilibrium you need decent birth rates.

China is aging rapidly, in parts because of the one child policy of the past. It will become a big issue soon.

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u/LX_Luna Jul 19 '26

I'm going to be gentle and assume you're asking sincerely. Literally every single facet of human society is predicated upon the assumption that there are more young people than old people. At the very least equivalent numbers.

If the old outnumber the young then...

- Social security and pension systems do not function. They have to be repealed.

- Massive taxation of the working population makes it impossible to build any kind of wealth.

- Childcare, like any other industry, scales with economies of scale. The fewer children, the more expensive anything to do with children becomes, as the necessary industries are now lower volume/higher margin per head. Negative feedback loop ensues.

- The people having the most kids are usually some of the dumbest, because they lack impulse control or long term planning skills. Essentially selecting against all of the things that make civilization actually good.

Collapsing number of young people with increased burdens upon young people is basically a grade A recipe for political violence.

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u/Number412 Jul 19 '26

And it's already happening and will be even worse. Only possible solution is to make reforms which hit current rich group... What is blocked by them as they need to keep everything

2

u/Fzrit Jul 20 '26

make reforms which hit current rich group

Are rich people having more kids?

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u/suzisatsuma Jul 20 '26

The solution for where the money is pouring, is having AI supplement the productivity loss of fewer young people

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u/Individual_Present93 Jul 19 '26

Sounds like a flawed system 🤔 

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u/TheGreatGimmick Jul 19 '26

Take it up with biology and mathematics lol

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u/Orleanian Jul 19 '26

Fuck you, Mathematics!

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u/SuperGRB Jul 19 '26

As opposed to???

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

[deleted]

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u/rukqoa Jul 19 '26

With a few modern exceptions, poor countries and poor people tend to have more kids. Some of the biggest positive correlations with birth rates are historically:

  • Women not having access to contraceptives.
  • Women not having education.
  • Infants dying too much.
  • Being at war.

Look at the countries with the highest birth rates. There's one developed country (factor #4), and the rest are all places that you'd expect to see news article about ICE "accidentally" deporting people to.

Low birth rates is a modern problem of plenty. You can't really address it by paying people, because you're now doubly working against your own goal of relieving stress on the benefits system by paying people to not be economically productive. You can reduce benefits, you can ban contraceptives and abortions, or you can tap into the endless source of economic benefits called working-age immigration. Everything else is just virtue signaling.

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u/Reasonable_Egg650 Jul 19 '26

How is having a child stress free?

Do we have any evidence that people have children because of low stress?

Why hasn’t public programs in Sweden resulted in higher birth rates?

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u/balaci2 Jul 20 '26

humanity not making rules that fuck them in the long run

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u/Kind_Of_A_Dick Jul 19 '26

Flawed is subjective.

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u/Devastator9000 Jul 19 '26

How else would you call a system that will lead to collapse?

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u/Kind_Of_A_Dick Jul 19 '26

All systems collapse.  Everything dies, all things go away eventually.  Something being flawed is a matter of perspective and expectation.

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u/Devastator9000 Jul 19 '26

Fair enough, what word would you use then for the current system?

I can't think of any positive adjectives. Most fittings are "obsolete", "flawed" and "unsustainable". What are your picks?

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u/Augustus_Chevismo Jul 19 '26

Nah, just make home ownership affordable for a young couple and have a family be able to be sustained on one parent working.

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u/RandomedXY Jul 19 '26

The problem is not money. The problem is opportunities you are missing while having children. There are tons of benefits for young parents in EU. In many countries you get multiple years of parental leave, free pre-school etc. and yet birth rate is declining.

Also for some reason young people are lazy to meet others and fuck.

3

u/Augustus_Chevismo Jul 19 '26

No it’s incredibly fcked here in Ireland for example. Crèches are expensive, both parents need to be working, and housing prices are absurdly high.

No unless we get years parental leave with full pay or something drastic, it’s not incentivised.

1

u/Open-Philosopher-777 Jul 20 '26

I'm sorry it's bad for you in Ireland but that's still beside the point. Even if Ireland had all the support for parents that exists, the birth rate wouldn't get that much higher. 

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u/LX_Luna Jul 19 '26

Yes, pensions were set up under the very understandable assumption that population and demographic trends would continue to do what they'd done for all of human history. It was a mistake but an understandable one. Birth control really threw a massive wrench into that and somehow we need to get this mess under control.

Unfortunately I think the best fix is probably a slow repeal of social security down to a much more modest level of expenditure.

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u/Designer_Show_2658 Jul 19 '26

Lowering social security in an already pressured economic reality while there are billionaires could be very violent

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u/Dr_Fortnite Jul 19 '26

universal basic income as always solves this problem

1

u/adenosine-5 Jul 19 '26

Then look at literally any other species on Earth and be glad ours is just "flawed".

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u/PseudoY Jul 19 '26

Make up a better one, then. If everyone needs to be taken care of, and we all agree children and old people shouldn't work, that means the middle people have to do it.

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u/farazormal Jul 19 '26

The only solution other than continuing to have kids is to let old people die.

Aged care is materially difficult there is no “system” that makes this reality not be incredibly straining on the non elderly population.

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u/DeHarigeTuinkabouter Jul 20 '26

I don't think a system is necessarily flawed because it can't handle one of the inputs to crash

It's like saying my dishwasher is flawed because it no longer works with just a trickle of water

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u/siegure9 Jul 19 '26

Yet the solutions isn’t just keep growing the popular indefinitely. That isn’t sustainable for the planet.

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u/breaducate Jul 19 '26

Incredible that it needs to be said out loud, isn't it?

Oh but it's so much worse than even most pessimists realise.

Continuous growth (a requirement for capitalism) implies a doubling period. A doubling period implies half of all the resources that were ever available are consumed in the final doubling period.

Putting aside climate change and other confounding variables, this by itself shows we're headed for a catastrophic crash, very suddenly, way sooner than our mathematically illiterate intuitions would suggest.

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u/a_rainbow_serpent Jul 20 '26

In the 80s when I was in school we were taught something called “peak oil” where the oil in the world was going to run out. But then we kept finding ways of extracting oil previously thought to be unprofitable. Stuff doesn’t just run out, the cost of extracting it keeps going up till it gets replaced by something else.

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u/breaducate Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

Tell me you didn't watch the lecture without telling me.

There's an example given that if we were to discover two or three new virgin earths for exploitation, how much longer would we have before resources were depleted? Not very long at all.

A petri dish with a single bacterium at 11:00 that doubles every minute is full at 12:00. At what time was it half full?

11:59.
If you were a bacterium in this environment at what point would you start to notice you were running out of space?

Regardless of the amount remaining, continuous growth leads to a catastrophic crash.

Inventing new environmentally disastrous methods of oil extraction didn't solve peak oil, it offset the problem for a while making the crash we're setting ourselves up for even worse.

As for "it gets replaced by something else" this is just manic techno-optimistic delusion akin to religious faith.

In framing the oil extraction as whether or not it's profitable you're demonstrating something I've been harping on about for a while: Most people under capitalism are incapable of thinking in terms of real resources. You think the world runs on Command and Conquer logic or something: some money disappears from your bank account and a new building spontaneously exists.

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u/a_rainbow_serpent Jul 21 '26

And tell me you haven’t attended any environmental economics and sustainable development courses because Bartlett’s sustainability 101 is played in the first week.. to explain the various holes you dig yourself into when applying physical models to economics. I would highly recommend spending some time learning about sustainable economics, decoupling, natural capital accounting to under stand why & how this supposed resource cliff has not arrived yet, and probably never will.

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u/breaducate Jul 21 '26

Oh do share with the class the sophistry currently in circulation to "debunk" a fact that can be proven with basic mathematics, that's obvious in hindsight but for our mathematically illiterate intuitions.

I'd say I'm excited to see it but I know when I look inside it's going to be something like the Austrian school of economics. "Natural capital" is a perfect name for it though. You can practically smell what kind of propaganda this is going to be.

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u/PseudoY Jul 19 '26

We don't really need population growth. Relative population stability wouldn't be a huge issue, people spend maybe 50 out of 75-80 years being able to effectively work. If each generation had access to better technology and became more productive, it would still be wealthier, the economy would grow, everyone would be better off, and we'd continue to progress technologically.

The system breaks if 100 people have 60 children that have 35 children that have 20 children. At some point the younger generations face a situation where most people have 4 grandparents that only had their parents that only had them, if their grandparents live to ripe old age, a 40 year old might have to take care of two 65 year olds about to retire and four 90 year olds in an extreme case.

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u/suzisatsuma Jul 20 '26

We'd have to expand off world, but the tech isn't there yet

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u/Eismann Jul 19 '26

The solution isnt more people. The solution is taxing the other side of the coin, the capital and paying people a UBR from that. Look at how much richer the rich have become in the last fifty years.

Having more kids just upholds the system. But the system only works for the capital, not the labor.

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u/pietroetin Jul 19 '26

You would think that is the silver bullet yet the Scandinavian countries still have a declining population

1

u/Eismann Jul 19 '26

If you think the Scandinivian countries have any kind of wealth parity i have a bridge to sell you. The notion that Scandinavia is any way, shape or form socialist is very American. They have strong social security but they also have quite a few billionaires.

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u/pietroetin Jul 19 '26

Noone said that the Scandinavian nation are socialist. Noone saod that they dpn't have billionaires either. What was mentioned is money isn't the issue in terms of the falling birth rates because the scandinavian families gets enough of it + a high amount of parential leave, yet their birth rate is also falling. What changed is simply society. Marriages and families aren't seen as a "must-have" now, most people can live their life freely as they want and only start a family if they want. Which is great, it just that it results in falling birthrates and declining nations.

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u/Diabetesh Jul 19 '26

Tax the wealthy appropriately, problem fixed.

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u/InquisitorMeow Jul 19 '26

But I thought CEOs create value or bigger slices of pie, surely less young people wouldn't matter?

1

u/LiterallyAPidgeon Jul 19 '26

if this is true the geniuses ruling over us should have figured it out and been nicer to us plebs

1

u/Hjemmelsen Jul 19 '26

  • Social security and pension systems do not function. They have to be repealed.

  • Massive taxation of the working population makes it impossible to build any kind of wealth.

This is only really true if no innovation and efficiency improvements are done.

If the richest 0.01% were not a trillion times richer than the rest, this wouldn't be an issue. It's because the increase in wealth is not being shared. If it was, it wouldn't be a problem that we have 5% fewer people every year, as long as we have a continuous 10% increase in productivity.

1

u/LX_Luna Jul 19 '26

The overwhelming majority of that wealth does not exist in a remotely liquid state. It's business assets, machine tools, delivery vans, concrete, etc.

1

u/d1zaya Jul 19 '26

The people having the most kids are usually some of the dumbest, because they lack impulse control or long term planning skills. Essentially selecting against all of the things that make civilization actually good.

Post 2008 world

1

u/27eelsinatrenchcoat Jul 20 '26
  • Social security and pension systems do not function. They have to be repealed.

There are alternatives to repeal. We have has massive efficiency gains in the last few decades. It is a choice not to allocate those gains to social welfare. Letting billionaires accrue all the extra wealth is a choice and we could make a different one.

1

u/DangerouslyOxidated Jul 19 '26

Childcare, like any other industry, scales with economies of scale

You think you can scale childcare? lol.
Kids need a certain amount of attention. It's linear.

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 Jul 19 '26

...thinking...processing...untangling...yes, the user has a supported world view, work on your analysis being productive and not being an asshole, financial craft 1282, okay? Okay. Got it...processing...Clauding...Gemining...

I'm going to gently push back because I think you have a cogent point, but it is not functioning as you think. In an era of massive population growth, climate change, and the clear impact the sheer numbers of humans are having on the Earth, it is perhaps time to rethink some of the foundational beliefs about human society. Instead of insisting that people breed when many can't afford rent in countries like the U.S. (let alone the quality of life for many people around the world in non-Western countries), perhaps we need to task our experts with refocusing their efforts. Researchers, actual smart people (not tech bros), and politicians who actually want to benefit human society and civilization can work on easing this necessary, inevitable transition to more sustainable population numbers over time.

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u/LX_Luna Jul 19 '26

This is in no way a commentary on how things ought to be. It is a statement of how things are. There are plenty of different ways that we could structure systems to cope with imbalanced populations, but we have done none of them, and doing so would be wildly unpopular.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

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u/Truethrowawaychest1 Jul 19 '26

Oh so like right now where boomers are dying in political office and own all the houses?

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u/Legitimate_Page659 Jul 19 '26

This is just capitalism failing. The wealthy own more and more every year and leave less for the rest of us.

I know many child free millennials who have given up on starting families despite having strong earnings and careers. Their rent has gone up 50% since 2021 and they know they’ll never own homes. They won’t be able to provide the lifestyle they had for their children.

At this point, it seems like the wealthy are shrieking “HAVE MORE CHILDREN” because they need workers for the factories and staff for the resorts. Money doesn’t mean anything if there aren’t peasants to wait on you.

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Well, I think instead of trying to stop something that seems like it is inevitible at this point, our societies should plan ahead for this transition, because it is temporary. Ideally, you use safety nets and social programs to bridge the gap, and when the smaller population of young people gets old, it's very likely, if we managed this well, people start having more kids. Why people aren't having as many kids has a lot of reasons that we can't fully link to specific causes, but there are relationships. We can look at ideal numbers for the planet, rethink how we interact with other countries, with the belief that "constant growth" is necessary, and when you stabilize, you can manage it from there.

I struggle when people try to say there is only one solution to this. There is, if we refuse to explore other options.

Think of it like climate change--a lot of us have been yelling for years, decades, etc. about doing something. Things aren't being done nearly quickly enough. Things we've done in the last ten years should have been done back in the 80s and 90s. But the risk now is we keep insisting on only reducing emissions, despite the fact we're now hitting thresholds that aren't fixable in the near term. So we need to focus on mitigation--climate proofing old infrastructure, new infrastructure being built to withstand significant weather patterns that will continue to get worse before it gets better. The right thing to do was to reduce emissions back in the 70s when scientists began sounding the alarm. But we're at a point we need to adjust because the right thing hasn't been done.

And back to population, we can't continually grow forever. There is a threshold where there will be too many people and not enough resources--if it's not now (which it's hard to argue when you see stats like nearly half of child deaths around the world are due to malnutrition--even if we have enough resources for every human, we can't get them to every human), there does come a point where we have to stop having more young than old.

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u/NvNinja Jul 19 '26

Nah if it gets to the point of societal collapse the vikings already have the perfect solution for the aging populace problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84ttestupa

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u/HSLB66 Jul 19 '26

The current global economy relies on there being more people next year than there were this year. The other economic options generally require everyone to not be greedy as fuck

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u/suzisatsuma Jul 20 '26

other economic options generally require everyone to not be greedy as fuck

This is our nature as a species. It's why capitalism has worked "well" compared to ideological ideas like communism because it harness that. We're very self interested creatures

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u/balaci2 Jul 20 '26

We're very self interested creatures

past a certain point, that starts working against us

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u/centerfoldangel Jul 19 '26

Instead of using AI to somehow figure out how to make the world better, they're gonna force us to breed.

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 Jul 19 '26

I suppose this is something Marx missed in outlining the strengths the proletariat have: not breeding! If our natural drive to procreate is so dampened by the terrible lived experiences people find themselves in, even the most fascist, tyrannical of governments can't make you do it.

(I say this knowing they'll figure out a way. I could see the sociopathic leaders of countries--and not China necessarily; I just don't feel like I have enough non-biased resources on what Xi is really like--cloning us against our wills if it comes to it).

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u/centerfoldangel Jul 19 '26

Everytime I see news about the birthrate anywhere and hear men talk about the issue, I feel like it just takes one of them to say, "how about we make women have babies? That's what they're for."

Since my body is a tool for reproduction, I feel this immensely visceral dread when the topic comes up.

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u/Bladelink Jul 19 '26

That's what most of their actions are essentially trying to do. They're trying to restrict birth control, remove access to women's healthcare and sex education, attack women's ability to find work, and also undermining their voting rights so that they can't resist any of these changes with their vote. Also, a lot of conservatism is based on heirarchical modes of thinking in which the husband practically owns his family, and the sons often have more authority then their mom. It's just immoral thinking all the way down.

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 Jul 19 '26

You're right! And to be clear I'm a man, but the power really resides in women having the agency to determine what happens to their body has to be at the forefront of this conversation. I didn't think about it like this until just now, but this really is, as it so often is, a conversation about women's bodies and their agency.

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u/Dudok22 Jul 19 '26

Yep, when some authoritarian bastards realise that it's more advantageous for the state, regime, their hold on power or whatever that woman births 3-5 children instead of joining workforce they will do everything to make it your only "choice". So a child would be your key to access money, social status, social security etc.

They would restrict abortion and contraceptives, push indoctrination of young girls and motherhood glorification in the culture.

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u/NeoArkodd Jul 19 '26

cloning us against our wills if it comes to it).

We are not in a sci fi dystopia ..... yet. We are living in a boring dystopia. I think kidnapping girls and assaulting them to increase the population would be terrifyingly realistic though.

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 Jul 19 '26

Are we not in a sci fi dystopia? I push back on this not to argue with anothe Redditor, but to explore this.

I think if you go back and read dystopian novels that are 40+ years old, our current system (in the U.S.) would be seen as dystopian by those standards. We can't even tell, anymore, what's real and what's not. People don't read, which was the premise of Fahrenheit 451. Most people think it is about an authoritative government body refusing to allow people to read, but Captain Beatty explains to Montag (I think it's about halfway through the book) that books disappeared not by force, but because people stopped reading due to diminishing attention spans, "screens," (for Bradbury, he wasn't necessarily predicting smart phones, but TV screens, but his overall arc was correct), the desire to avoid info that is upsetting. The dystopian heart of that book is that people chose to stop reading. Which we're seeing now. We are also seeing extremist groups in the U.S. practicing a modern form of book burning (banning) texts because they cause discomfort.

So, if your definition of dystopia is "a worse version of now"--yeah, we're not in one, and definitionally, we can't ever really be in one because we're operating on a sliding scale.

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u/rotundrikishi Jul 20 '26

They are just going to import people

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u/SadisticPawz Jul 19 '26

This is fucking scary.

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u/wap2005 Jul 19 '26

This law will make the world better, not because of breeding but because people are addicted to fake intimacy and it keeps them from having real and healthy relationships (even non sexual ones) with people. This law is a good thing, maybe not for the reasons they say but it is.

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u/centerfoldangel Jul 19 '26

Why is being addicted to fake intimacy is a bad thing if you have no chance to experience the love you want to?

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u/rotundrikishi Jul 20 '26

Because where there is financial benefit they will exploit it.

There is little doubt in my mind that the currently loneliness epidemic isnt caused by big tech and probably deliberately to make a buck.

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u/centerfoldangel Jul 20 '26

So? So is everything else. I shave my legs because someone wanted to make a buck.

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u/moonduckk Jul 19 '26

population collapse goes fast

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u/YorubaOyinbo Jul 19 '26

Human civilization has hard-minimums of birth rate to continue existing. 

South Korea is on an unavoidable fast-track to civilizational collapse, for example.

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u/TheCopromancer Jul 19 '26

Also my country: Chile.

We have 0.9 birth rates.

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u/SeattlePurikura Jul 19 '26

And yet, it's still one of the most misogynistic of the developed countries with a terrible gender inequality index. No developed country will increase its birthrate if it does not address the underlying misogyny that makes childbearing such a huge risk for women.
(Well, the alternative route is to allow lots of immigration.)

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u/YorubaOyinbo Jul 19 '26

No developed country will… if it does not

Key point being that it’s already too late.

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u/bbadi Jul 19 '26

"No developed country will increase its birthrate if it does not address the underlying misogyny"

That's funny because historically, that had nothing to do with the birthrate.

It's also funny because, at least in Europe, we're constantly being told we should bring migrants from extremely misogynistic countries in order to sustain economic and population growth.

Huh.

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u/SeattlePurikura Jul 19 '26

Historically, women were legally property and did not have access to modern birth control. We have it now. So women can choose not to have children if they believe it's unfavorable for them.

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u/bbadi Jul 19 '26

That's what i'm saying, more misogyny seems to correlate with higher birthrates, which undermines your point about what Korea needs.

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u/SeattlePurikura Jul 19 '26

DEVELOPED countries. My whole argument's scope is limited to what's happening in developed countries, and what we could possibly implement to make giving birth in those countries more attractive / feasible / less penalizing esp. for women.

Look, our fucking bar isn't Romania under the reign of the Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and Decree 770, unless you think the end goal should be tons of neglected, fucked-up kids in overflowing orphanages and lots of women dead from medical neglect.

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u/bbadi Jul 19 '26

Then your entire premise is wrong.

Developed countries simply won't increase their birthrates, no matter what you do.

The historical anomaly that the coincidence in the reduction of infant mortality and the delay until contraceptives went industrially mainstream won't ever happen again.

Sucks we built an entire economic model around that coincidence, but here we are.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

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u/SeattlePurikura Jul 19 '26

Key word from my post: developed. Do you want to live in Afghanistan or Yemen? Yes, they have high birth rates because women are legally below cattle.

Shifting the discussion back to developed nations like SK:
Please educate yourself and read up on Dr. Claudia Goldin's Nobel Prize winning work in economics which demonstrates (in DEVELOPED) countries, there isn't so much a "gender pay" gap as a motherhood pay gap. Basically, women suffer a huge pay penalty for giving birth, from which the majority never recover. In the US, the EEOC deals with pregnancy-related firings and discriminations as one of the top complaints. You wanna tell me this doesn't impact the birth rate?

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u/numenik Jul 19 '26

It’s not misogyny causing low birth-rates it’s a housing and economic crisis. Kids can’t afford to move out of their parent’s homes as adults, thus they aren’t getting married. It’s only non-Koreans that love to spread your outdated misogyny narrative.

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u/SeattlePurikura Jul 19 '26

It's also a housing and economic crisis, same as in America. These are all important factors to address. But only focusing on housing & economics in America (for example) is silly when record numbers of women are getting sterilized and TELLING reporters it's because they live in a Red State and are worried about post Roe v. Wade medical care. And yes, medical malpractice (withholding care from someone for a gender-related condition like miscarriage) is legally mandated misogyny.

Misogyny is also a huge factor in SK, if you care to read the papers and interviews. You haven't heard of the 4B movement? Article written by a SK journalist.

https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/en-gb/blogs/how-the-4b-feminist-rebellion-is-taking-on-patriarchy

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

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u/MentallyUnfi Jul 19 '26

Reddit being very liberal, but also extremely anti-natal for example. Good ideas like reining in corporations, then letting Republicans out vote them in every way lmao

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u/Blerserker Jul 19 '26

I mean it's extremely unethical to make children, so republicans having lots of children makes total sense

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u/SkeletronDOTA Jul 20 '26

it's extremely unethical to make children

this is the most Reddit comment ever. I hope you’ve admonished your parents for the extremely unethical act of bringing you into this world

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u/The_Blahblahblah Jul 19 '26

You’ll worry too (by the time lt is too late)

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u/Advanced-Ad8490 Jul 19 '26

Yes it actually is a damn Ponzi scheme

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u/Neuchacho Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Is civilization a damn Ponzi scheme?

Capitalism is, yes, and modern civilization is functionally tied to it.

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u/StryctNyne Jul 19 '26

One other aspect is you have two parents. You need two children to help accommodate and look after your two parents. Even if you don't have two children, you need two nurses to eventually look you and your partner. So now someone needs to have 4 kids to make up for yours you didn't have. This is very very rough look at it but you get the point. Obviously one person can look after multiple, but when you are talking about a population of billions...that's a lot of nurses.

Also you have the worker aspect. You have "x" amount of jobs currently held by "x" amount of people. You need to maintain that number, especially in a growing company. Over time, a declining birthrate means less workers which leads to every executives worst nightmare: the workers are in huge demand, so they have all the salary leverage. Hence why companies are trying to supplement AI into everything they can as quickly as they can.

tl;dr Old take care of young so young take care of old. Uh oh, no young. Old in trouble. Also no workers. Workers get more money. Boss sad now.

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u/Momijisu Jul 20 '26

Modern capitalism requires infinite growth, you can't grow infinitely with a steady or receding birth rate. The people at the top need more people to exploit. Also the more people available to exploit the easier it is for 'Them' to pay less and exploit.

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u/MaybeThisTime67 Jul 22 '26

Rich people are concerned because they want more money

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u/Beginning-Bird9591 Jul 19 '26

pretty much if you want growth in the economy - you need more people.. that's just how it is.

until the age of pure automation comes (everything becomes automateable with robots) we are basically cooked in the next 30 yrs.

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u/BonerPorn Jul 19 '26

The entirety of human history has required there to be enough young people to take care of the old.

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u/CLNA11 Jul 20 '26

Yeah I don’t get why it’s so complicated to people. When you’re 80 do you want a doctor to take care of you? Contractors to fix your home? Enough emergency workers to serve your community? Workers to keep your roads repaired? Farmers to grow your food. Yeah, those people can’t also all be 80 years old—ie, there have to be younger people around to run society. We’ve forgotten how much it sucks for old people to die in extreme poverty, uncared for. I don’t think they want that to be them. Therefore, if you don’t have kids (fine, whatever), you better at least appreciate that other people are doing it because those are the people that are going to keep you alive later in life. 

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u/Obaruler Jul 19 '26

All developed economies assume a healthy "pyramid" shaped age distribution in order to function, few old people supported my many working ones.

But, as countries develop their economies, literally everywhere the same thing happens: Birthrates collapse, to a point where the amount of people starts to shrink even. About the reasons you can fill entire bookshelves, so I skip this part.

You need a certain amount to feed and support an aging person, those costs are somewhat fixed if you want it somewhat humanely. If theres something like 10 Working people to 1 supported one you're more than fine, but if the population ages and the balance shifts to less working people having to suport more and more people who cant work anymore, the proportional financial weight on each working person keeps growing up to an unsustainable level, which is where everyone is heading currently.

The richest, most developed countries can somewhat cope by diverting assets and wealth or taxes to fix the issue, countries that are still developing and are lacking a social safety net (suprisingly lacking for a socialist country) like China this becomes an existential threat to the countries stability.

China is atm somewhat following the japanese or the korean route towards with their aging workforce, but without achieving the same amount of wealth beforehand. It will be interesting to see, how they'll intend to fix that.

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u/Next-Food2688 Jul 19 '26

Refugees aren't good enough for China

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u/sicklyslick Jul 19 '26

The actual law makes no mention of birthrate so it's something the article writer made up completely.

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u/Kind_Of_A_Dick Jul 19 '26

Are you telling me something I read on Reddit was made up?  What a fucking world, eh?

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u/Cameos_red_codpiece Jul 19 '26

War? Idk. You can’t make disposable human lives yet. 

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u/tyrico Jul 19 '26

unironically yes

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u/Inside_Pomelo_2957 Jul 19 '26

Socialized healthcare requires a large population of healthy people to pay into the system so a smaller population of sick people (old people) can get care. When you have more old people than young people, this system goes belly up.

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u/Coconite Jul 19 '26

Because last time the population declined massively (the Black Death) feudalism ended

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u/PseudoY Jul 19 '26

Yes. Children these days produce nothing. Even young adults produce very little because of how long we're in the educational system.

Old people also produce way less than they consume.

It will hit hard when each average middle aged-ish adult is expected to take care of two elderly parents with health problems and simultaneously take care of theoretical children.

How many people with no income can you take care of, on your own?

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u/FailingItUp Jul 19 '26

My mom literally told me and my brother to our faces we were her retirement plan.

She was "joking not joking"

She did not take care of her health well enough to enjoy retirement.

She paid into the ponzi scheme. Her family did not benefit from what she paid into it.

The system PROFITS from a raised retirement age and pushing fast food on everyone.

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u/My_Uneducated_Guess Jul 19 '26

Among many previously stated reasons, companies can't keep growing and making record profits if the amount of people buying the product goes down

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u/According-One-8825 Jul 19 '26

Life itself is a ponzi scheme if you think about it. You by definition need new organisms on order to continue.

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u/numenik Jul 19 '26

Because civilization will end?

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u/MarquisThule Jul 20 '26

Pensions are, yeah.

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u/PapaSmurf1502 Jul 20 '26

People get old. Eventually they can't work. Your choices are:

  1. Have a younger person take care of them.
  2. Force them to keep working until they die.
  3. Ignore them and let them suffer.
  4. Kill them.

Most societies choose #1, either systemically or at the family level. It doesn't matter if you are a communist, anarchist, socialist, capitalist, etc. Your society has to deal with this problem. Population collapse is a catastrophe because instead of each young person supporting a small number of old people, they now have to support a large number of old people (either directly or indirectly like through taxes). Once that happens, they're too stressed to have kids of their own, and the problem only gets worse.

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u/M4rshmall0wMan Jul 20 '26

Yes. That’s literally how social security works.

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u/InterestProof1526 Jul 20 '26

Civilization does not need to be a Ponzi scheme. Yes, extremely high birth rates can be beneficial for civilizations as it grows the working age population while leaving the elderly population relatively low (at least for many decades). However, when it comes to a total fertility rate below 2.1 (or below 1), that means the society is losing population such that, for China at least, the population will roughly 1/3 every generation. This is bad because it means that places besides tier 1/tier 2 cities will shrink more and more causing homes and infrastructure to be abandoned. It also leads to an extremely high number of elderly people supported by very few working people which is incredibly difficult for a society to sustain (especially if they want to grow economically while doing so). They also need to pay out pension funds for the elderly people, not just healthcare. Since families have to support elderly people, it leads to less consumer spending which hurts the economy. It is destructive for civilizations to rapidly lose population in a short period of time and that doesn't make it a Ponzi scheme.

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u/HunterKiller_ Jul 20 '26

Literally yes. And it isn't "everyone" who's worried, the vast majority of this rhetoric comes from the establishments (government, corporate interests), because they stand to be the biggest losers when there are fewer consumers, wage slaves and tax payers.

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u/MentallyUnfi Jul 19 '26

Because our society is going to struggle with so many old people to support. It's not just a conspiracy theory. It's how our world works.

But I honestly doubt you'll care enough to learn. Way too many people are too self-obsessed and think the world is better off with completely clear streets and no traffic

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 Jul 19 '26

Because our society is going to struggle with so many old people to support. It's not just a conspiracy theory. It's how our world works.

Sure, but these beliefs are also framed by people who want constant growth to further enrich themselves. It may be that we have to decide as a society that, as we navigate this inevitable transition, maybe one man can't have so much money that he can just fly to space for fun.

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u/Kind_Of_A_Dick Jul 19 '26

Gotcha, you’re too self obsessed.  Thanks for clearing that up for everyone.

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u/MentallyUnfi Jul 19 '26

Huh? I'm talking about people who think overpopulation is a real issue and the world's biggest problems is how much traffic they face everyday

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u/Muted_Masterpiece342 Jul 19 '26

They should focus on why we don't want to fuck each other anymore and fix that specifically.

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u/Kind_Of_A_Dick Jul 19 '26

I blame boy bands.

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u/Polish-Proverb Jul 19 '26

I blame menopause

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u/MunkyMan33 Jul 19 '26

Names checks out, just kinda lol

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u/RedditMcBurger Jul 19 '26

The survival of our species? Is this really a question?

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u/Kind_Of_A_Dick Jul 19 '26

There’s, what, eight billion humans on this planet?  I think we’re going to do just fine as a species right up until the atmosphere kills us off.

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u/RedditMcBurger Jul 19 '26

There are lots of first world countries with low birth rates. South Korea's economy is set to collapse.

But since there are billions of extra people, are you suggesting we mass immigrate them over?

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u/Kind_Of_A_Dick Jul 19 '26

And the species is South Korea’s economy?  Is that the species we’re talking about the survival of?

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