Singapore's Baby Bust: Record low births in 2023 deepen demographic crisis

There are certainly anti-natalist groups out there, but I wouldn’t consider those some kind of elite. In fact they’re usually fairly heterodox.

Similarly, the only people I see pushing natalism at this point are far right wing people

Those don’t seem like coherent groups

I suppose I just don’t know what that meme is at this point

so how would you define the previous memetic position that led to children as a regular part of life?

Further, what is the new memetic position on children that is being implemented?

Perhaps GenAI will wipe out a lot of white collar work in that time. This frees up people to do physical labor.

Maybe it supercharges robotics or drones by letting them understand the physical world better. Think robotic orderlies changing bedpans, or robots picking fruit. Then we need fewer people for labor.

More likely it will be a combination of both.

Not really, they've got the equipment for it (e.g. uteri and mammary glands). I think it would be impossible to "equalize" the cost without doing some extreme and bizarre things (e.g. have some kind of arbitrary Weregild-type thing to "equalize" the cost).

A significant part of the problem seems to be one of ideology colliding with reality.

This is the origin story of the contraceptive movement: either your population growth rate is contraception-limited, or it's death-limited. The latter is pretty horrific.

> If it really was about cost, we'd be seeing the upper middle class having children by the ton

The cost issue is even worse for everyone who isn't a rentier, because children need time, and the opportunity cost of that is higher the more you could be earning otherwise.

(hmm: "7 points by pjc50 18 minutes ago [flagged]" I see it's going to be one of those days)

And without modern healthcare a lot of them will die. If you want to make sure one of them inherits the farm (and provides for you if you manage to become old) you need to have enough children to achieve this at an acceptable level of risk.

I mean... the answer to that is, it's complicated. If you're talking the peasantry bound to the land owned by a Lord in ye olden days, I would say they were certainly stressed out and barely getting by, but they were different stressors. If they didn't grow enough food to pay their owed amount to the person who effectively owned them, they would obviously be in a really bad situation. But at the same time, that's something they could work on and reasonably plan ahead for: it's an actionable stressor, if you will. It's certainly a problem but it's a problem you can actually do something about.

In contrast, if you work in an industry that chronically underpays people, are saddled with various obligations, and are subject to extremely high costs of living, like, in theory you can try and get a better job maybe? But that's not nearly as actionable in general, and there's no guarantee that the better job is even out there, nor how many people you'd be competing with to get that better paying job. Sure, you have air conditioning, you have modern medical treatments, you have a whole host of things at your fingertips should you need them that those peasants wouldn't even dream of. But you also have a ton of stressors that are far more disconnected from your ability to solve them, that are down to systemic failures in our societies.

> The discussion around cost is a red herring. If it really was about cost, we'd be seeing the upper middle class having children by the ton.

That presumes that the upper middle class aren't also drowning in debt. I can't speak for everyone, but I assure you, I have the really nice house, relatively new vehicles, people would probably call me quite wealthy by the standards of the area I live in, and make no mistake, we're doing better than a lot of our neighbors, but I'm still like, three bad months from homelessness and that's definitely, along with the general trajectory of the world, one of the reasons why we're childfree.

I know tons of people my age who are doing much worse than me, who also have decided against children, even if temporarily because they are so damned expensive and there's basically no support here for parents save for a tax credit.

I think it may have more to do with increasing cultural expectations we put on mothers and parents.

There was a times were it seemed like these expectations were much lower than today. To hear it from friends born in the 40's to 60's, the typical duties of parents basically ended at providing a roof and two meals a day.

I'm not so sure about that. There's no law that says desire has to be aligned with needed action. For instance: up to the availability of oral contraceptives, it was very hard to avoid having kids even if you didn't want them. Kids would happen automatically if you desired a different thing: sex.

It's sort of like exercise: it used to not matter if someone desired to "exercise" or not, because they were forced to do lots of physical activity if they wanted to live (e.g. physical work on a farm, walk to the market, etc.). Now technology has enabled a previously impossible level of sedentary life for the common person, moving exercise from a necessity to a desire, we have huge and increasing levels of health problems in society because the desire for the needed thing itself isn't there.

I predict, after some period of time, "childfree" psychology will breed itself out of society, and the people who are left will have a lot more explicit desire for children.

That's one of the big differences between having a kid in Germany and the US.

(the sub-500 EUR/mo daycare is another one - and that was for a 1.5 engineer income couple)

[1]:https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2023/

[2]:https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...

[3]:https://www.populationpyramid.net/france/2023/

This is absolutely a story about risk, you're right on that. But I truly feel like you'd have to be willfully blinding yourself to not recognize that the risks are way worse than ever. The full grind of capitalism in a global economy has chewed up humanity & left us deeply powerless & exploited. The demands for housing health care, and help have shot to exceptional unaffordability. I don't think risk aversion has necessarily changed: it's just a fact that trying to raise a family is far riskier & much harder than it has been. Those willing to have a family have had to go against ever more abysmal ods.

I mean, yes almost assuredly. But that doesn't mean shrinking populations are without their own issues, outside economic ones, elder care being the most obvious. And, shrinking populations can quite easily contribute to large-scale cultural demise, which is always something worth considering. That said, fewer humans overall is undeniably better for our environmental outlook.

Here's the shocker: one young person can care for more than one elderly person. Not every elderly person needs a young person exclusively devoted to them.

Also not all elderly people need caretakers. Not all elderly people are helpless without young people. My dad is well into his 70s now, and he may be retired, but is still helping family and friends, fixes up their homes, helps care for his grandchildren, and holds his own.

Society won't fall apart. You just need to adjust your expectations and things will work out in the end.

The human part of any hybrid would be the weak part as it comes to performance. And since we don't care about typical human things, like family, why bother with a human part at all?