[OFF TOPIC] Are there any studies proposing solutions to the problem of low birth rates?

Submitted by FusionRocketsPlease t3_y43uar in singularity

I alone came to the conclusion that to solve this, it would be enough for couples to rationally have the number of children necessary to keep the population constant and with a healthy number of productive people to keep the economy active. The government should implement a policy of encouraging people to have children, or even forcing them to do so. But I googled and didn't find any model/study/proposal, is this a taboo? I think this is a typical prisoner's dilemma, as people not wanting to have children to have a comfortable life may be good for them individually, but it's the undoing of the species.

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Electronic_Chard_270 t1_isc3a48 wrote

‘I alone came to the conclusion’. Lol. Dude, you are talking about the government forcing people to have children and then asking if it’s taboo. Yes, it is taboo.

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slopdonkey t1_isc41ft wrote

Low birth rates are not a problem. Humans reached the upper end of what their environment will sustain for "current" conditions. Maybe those conditions will change and impact what birth rates level off at. Environmental, social conditions, culture, beliefs, health, and a million other factors affect birth rates.

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Buck-Nasty t1_isc76ah wrote

We're massively overpopulated and facing a coming wave of technological unemployment. The state should be paying people not to have kids.

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tedd321 t1_iscdpgv wrote

No government should force anybody to do anything.

A well functioning society will produce children. If people feel safe and have abundance in their life then children pop up.

No intelligent person living pay check to pay check and working some terrible hours per week is going to decide to have children.

Basically if there’s too much inequality in the world, it will collapse because no one will want to exist.

Lmao

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-ZeroRelevance- t1_iscgzf5 wrote

The simplest solution to the problem is basically just to make it a lot easier to have kids, and encourage a culture that wants them. Or if you want a technological approach, investing in life extension technologies to allow people to be productive members of society for longer, or automation to allow robots to make up for the lost productivity due to ageing.

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Wise-Yogurtcloset646 t1_isci288 wrote

Studies in ways to prevent people from dying are a good step in the right direction.

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Ortus12 t1_isciepi wrote

One solution is longevity escape velocity.

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chimgchomg t1_isd28z2 wrote

Are you really on the singularity subreddit talking about needing more human labor in the economy when most of the people here believe we're going to have AGI in less than 10 years? Anyways, this wouldn't even be a problem today if first world countries were willing to accept more immigrants from places with higher birth rates and lower economic opportunity, but racists are gonna do their thing I guess.

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itsNonfiction t1_ise0q4r wrote

Replying to Buck-Nasty (#105,275)

I'm not going to comment on the potential technological unemployment part, but we are certainly not massively overpopulated. This is a common misconception. You cannot just look at the size of a population to determine overpopulation.

We are actually massively underpopulated. We have too many boomers and stagnant population growth, due to low birthrates in the newer generation. In the last 50+ years, the only countries to really grow are 3rd world countries.

We are already seeing the ramifications of this, by lacking literally millions of employees in the work force. Our population is "big", but its severly right skewed towards elderly people who cannot work and also need a lot of care and help during the day, combined with not enough new kids being born.

You have to look at it more like a funnel where a certain amount of input flow has to compensate the output flow. Right now we are looking at a population who previously had a massive input, but no longer has enough to even sustain the population at its current size.

We are going to see massive work force problems in the coming decades, since we will have so few new people entering the work force, due to generations of stagnant birth rates.

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16161as t1_ise98ui wrote

Agi will be our descendant

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FREE-AOL-CDS t1_isflv2j wrote

Remove the ability for corporations to buy housing, increase pay, reduce working hours. Increase the quality of education. Provide healthcare to everyone. This is the bare minimum if you want people to have kids.

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AGI_69 t1_isg1vlm wrote

Replying to chimgchomg (#106,814)

When you import large percentage of immigrants, you also bring their religion/culture, which might be destructive and the main reason, why they want to migrate in the first place. The whole debate is little more nuanced, than "if you don't want immigration, you are racist".

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FREE-AOL-CDS t1_isg5jtm wrote

Replying to FusionRocketsPlease (#111,609)

We’re in a subreddit that’s discussing the evolution of our species and the beginnings of one of the greatest things conceivable and you’re concerned about how best to force people to have children to keep the economy going.

I knew what you were the second you replied and you got as much of a condescending reply as you deserved. I hope you’re able to reflect on this and grow as a person.

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Lawjarp2 t1_iss7mb8 wrote

No children required. Robots are enough. There will be no 'productive' people after singularity.

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