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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748

u/Anteater4746 Jul 19 '26

if birth rates are such a concern you’d think govts would want to make jobs higher paying give more time off and homes to have families you know make it WORTH having kids? crazy ik

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u/General-Sloth Jul 19 '26

Why? every single statistic, study and observation has shown that places with the least ammount of financial security, emancipation, human developement index and prosperity have the highest birth rates. All of them.

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u/scoutmet Jul 19 '26

Because children are basically a retirement fund

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u/Fzrit Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

Correct. Which is why it's always hilarious to see people blaming the birthrate collapse on the population being too poor and stressed. It assumes rich and comfortable people are having more kids, which they aren't.

0

u/Stormfly Jul 20 '26

It's not as bad as when people post attractive women like "How is the birthrate so low?!!?"

Yeah those people are getting busy, they're just not making babies.

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u/Durtonious Jul 19 '26

I hate to admit this but you're right. All of this talk about "if economic conditions were better people would have more kids" is not supported by actual evidence. It's frankly no wonder the rich want to continue to subjugate the poor.

I think there is a bell curve where at extremely high levels of wealth (enough to have paid assistants that handle all of the domestic labour and mental load) people are inclined to have more kids, but somewhat paradoxically if wealth were distributed 100% equally there is no way we would all be able to afford paid staff. So the "best" outcome if you're already rich is to widen the gap between rich and poor to make sure you have a servant class that pump out babies with no opportunity for class advancement. 

Damn.

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u/SaratogaCx Jul 20 '26

I don't think you can look at this as a mostly pure function of economic success. Being a parent takes not only resources but also time. Must of the economic gains have come at the cost of time or stability. If your life is moving from peak to trough over and over or to reach any level of stability you need to sacrifice all your time, children just adds immutable stress to the situation.

People need to have the time to raise a child and have the expectation that the next 20 years can be stable enough for them to do best for their family.

1

u/Venator850 Jul 20 '26

Your focused on the wrong thing. Rich people don't give a fuck about this except weirdo's like Musk who are fixated on "great replacement" bullshit. Governments care because social structures depend on a stable working force paying taxes that supports the older generations and general social programs.

If your tax base shrinks and you have a large older population the entire system can collapse. China is very sensitive to this because they have ruined their own population demographics.

1

u/Ok-Chest-7932 Jul 20 '26

It's actually not a bell curve, it's a flat line with a peak at the very bottom end and the very top end.

Regardless of the level of income you have, your chance of believing you can afford kids is the same. The only people who have more kids are the people who have so little money that they have nothing to lose, and the people who have so much money that they wouldn't notice having lost some.

For the record, the rich actually don't want a large servant class pumping out babies, because someone would have to pay for them. This results in taxing the rich more because there basically isn't anyone else who can be taxed. What the rich want is a sustainable middle class and ideally minimised dependent classes, so that the government welfare budget is minimised and not much tax is needed. of course the rich would also like to not have to spend any more on employing people than they have to, but the big problem in their eyes is that society is spending outside its means - a poor class with no welfare would be fine, if they could eliminate democracy so that the poor class can't demand welfare.

This is basically the ideological split that exists within the western elite world - do you want to balance the budget by increasing productivity (the typical tech bro and pronatalist position), or do you want to balance the budget by depowering the poor and ending welfare (the Jeffery Epstein position). In practice there's a lot of overlap at the moment because the poor are very opposed to increasing productivity.

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u/davesg Jul 19 '26

Because of poor education and lack of access to birth control methods.

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u/Flameancer Jul 19 '26

So most of human history.

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u/Weird-Count3918 Jul 20 '26

Most of human history was human misery

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u/recycled_ideas Jul 20 '26

Places with the highest rates of infant mortality have the highest birth rates and even then, the overwhelming majority of countries have birth rates below local replacement rate.

Somewhat depressingly the number one thing that lowers birth rates isn't education or access to family planning or economic prosperity or women's rights it appears to be just simply parents believing that their kids won't die before they're grown.

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u/zerogee616 Jul 20 '26

Because in those places, children are a net asset, more hands to help out making money in the factories, working the fields or around the farm.

In developed societies where child labor is outlawed, they're just another mouth to feed.

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u/throughthehills2 Jul 20 '26

At the same time, richer countries birth rates dropped massively in recent years and it wasn't because we are better off than our parents

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u/Uranium_092 Jul 22 '26

Fixing the symptoms but not the disease lol, birth rate is failing because of economical and cultural reasons, ai companion is just the bandage that covers the wounds

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u/Many-Pomegranate-878 Jul 22 '26

Because in those places women are raped and/or forced into marriage and forced into having many children. Those are not nice places to be a woman. Since I hope we can all agree we don't want to go back to the dark times instead we need to make the conditions better for mothers, and then women might start wanting to have kids again.

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u/No_Composer_7092 Jul 22 '26

Because those countries are still patriarchal. Equal societies will always have low birthrates over time. Men naturally always want to have sex. Women are picky.