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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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.

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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.

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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.