The main cause of fertility collapse and partial solutions
Not expecting miracles from this sub, but it's good to share ideas.
The main cause of fertility collapse is this:
People left to themselves don't have children.
Traditional, rural cultures do a lot to encourage people to breed. Parents have status, work, social life, religion is designed to encourage children.
Modernist and urban cultures have never needed to encourage fertility, because they have been able to draw from large, rural populations. Even in ancient times, urban TFR was below replacement.
The rural populations don't exist anymore because agricultural work is now done by machines.
Traditional rural cultures don't last very long when moved to modernist, urban environments.
The patterns of work, commitment, transience, destroy them.
The 'true-trad' urban communities are living in borrowed time, they lose members all the time to the urban culture.
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'Neo-trad' communities may eventually evolve a culture which encourages large-scale high TFR in a modern environment. They may still call themselves 'Christian' or 'Muslim'- but their actual culture and practices will have changed a lot from today.
But no one knows how to do that yet.
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Bad solutions:
'Return to the countryside by yourself with no money':
Doesn't work, that world is dead and you'll just be growing old alone.
'Everyone becomes muslim/$myversion of trad christian':
Living on borrowed time, modernists and communists suck your members away because you aren't adapted to the modern world.
'ban abortions'
People's behaviour adapts quickly, the fertility bump never lasts long.
'Give people money'
Most rich people aren't having 6 kids. Actual effect size of this policy is too small.
'Wait for the population to fall'
People will keep focussing on the big cities, life will never feel less crowded, urban factors lowering fertility will not go away.
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Good solutions using actually existing social technology, knowledge of birth rates:
1. For the UMC (household income > 250k/annum):
Buy your way out:
Form pro natalist networks, move to suburbs, towns with likeminded people, send your kids on holiday together, raise children in proximity to nature to support healthy instincts.
Use surrogates to have additional children.
Only let your children socialise with people who dream of colonising the stars.
2. Middle class:
Join a religious community, build a retreat town in the countryside for your kids to play at, be educated, keep working in the city.
3. Working class:
Join the military, military base family area is the cheapest actually-existing pronatalist community: Free health care, free education, high social trust, no crime, rural location.
Single men:
Freeze your sperm and make plans to pay for a surrogate if you realise you aren't going to find a wife.
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At the moment, the best use of time for the pronatalist movement is to encourage the upper-middle class to have larger families. Money is not a limiting factor for them, so their fertility rate depends on status and motivation. Most UMC families have 2-4 children, but they could easily afford 5-7.
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