This is so weird. This whole fertility thing is so weird. The Manosphere is so weird. I still remember seeing a bunch of near-divorce dad yelling “I am a Modern Day Knight!” like they were roleplaying a psuedo-KKK faction; So weird. The constant whining about childfree people is so weird. The restrictions on elective sterilization are so weird. This obsession with abortion and birth control is so weird. The endorsement of teen pregnancy is so weird. Is it wrong for teenagers to have low sperm counts? I never thought about this because thinking about teen boys’ sperm is weird; and the people obsessed with teen boy sperm probably belong on a list. They’re so weirddddddd.
They can’t get it up with their wives because they’re really not into women, and/or their wives aren’t into their piglike Nazi husbands. But they can never admit that to themselves, so there has to be some external factor to blame.
The fertility thing comes across as so weird because its an actual problem that Republicans don’t want to solve in any reasonable way because that will involve threatening their donor’s bottom lines. Basically across all developed nations with easy access to birth control, education and modern mechanisms birth rates are falling and in many countries these rates are already well below replacement rate (2.1 children per couple, not percent like RFK Jr said)
The United States was consistently staying above replacement rate via immigration but I have a nasty feeling that isn’t the case anymore
The reason replacement rate is so important is Capitalism really depends on growth companies gaining new customers. The stock market in particular relies on new wallets to spend money, homebuilders rely on new people to build homes for, and offices rely on new employees to hire. When populations start stagnating or worse shrinking, Capitalism really starts to fall apart as that causes an ongoing recession as fewer wallets in an economy means less money flowing through an economy. Less money moving through an economy means a smaller GDP which means the the economy ultimately shrinks. Bad economic conditions also lead to people feeling less certain about bringing a new baby into the world so the cycle tends to accelerate before the actual population decline can accelerate noticeably
The obvious solution is to decouple necessities of life from capitalism and significant state investment into improving existing infrastructure and planning for degrowth so that a long term recession and the effects of declining/re-balancing populations do not negatively impact the masses living through them. This is of course antithetical to capitalist and conservative goals, so as they realize this looming threat is upon them they’re getting extremely weird about it and trying to find ways to get more families to have lots of babies to try to reverse the trend.
In short, these republican pundits are trying to have a serious conversation about what could be an extinction-level event for capitalism without cluing in the masses to the flaws of capitalism or the fact that its an entirely man-made crisis that doesn’t actually involve any scarcity of the necessities of life
Bingo; But they don’t want that. The really ironic part is the USA population could still thrive as a nation of immigrants, even if birth decline was happening; But of course they don’t want that, because the “Great Replacement Theory” platformed by the New Zealand shooter. They could at least make life less miserable for existing parents with social services; But they don’t want that, because that’s “Communism” (and their donors make a killing from killing us).
Living in the United States of America is like living as a dependent of a self-destructive parent who refuses to compromise, listen to any logic, or even do the bare minimum to sustain themself. Our infrastructure is literally crumbling around us and Dad’s back to rambling about how “fluoride cuts off your connection to God”. At least he’s off the stims, I think.
The US could also thrive with a slowly declining population, as long as there was capital investment to improve productivity at a rate faster than the rate of decline of the working population.
Another factor is that many of the commonly reported economic metrics are aggregated over the whole population, not per-capita. So more people looks like more growth, even when it really means you’re standing still or regressing in terms of meaningful measures of quality of life. And there’s a well-known aphorism in business circles about what happens when you make a metric into a goal.
This is so weird. This whole fertility thing is so weird. The Manosphere is so weird. I still remember seeing a bunch of near-divorce dad yelling “I am a Modern Day Knight!” like they were roleplaying a psuedo-KKK faction; So weird. The constant whining about childfree people is so weird. The restrictions on elective sterilization are so weird. This obsession with abortion and birth control is so weird. The endorsement of teen pregnancy is so weird. Is it wrong for teenagers to have low sperm counts? I never thought about this because thinking about teen boys’ sperm is weird; and the people obsessed with teen boy sperm probably belong on a list. They’re so weirddddddd.
Sexual anxiety, in all its forms, is a big part of the fascist formula. It ties into and reinforces the patriarchy stuff, the othering, the racism.
They can’t get it up with their wives because they’re really not into women, and/or their wives aren’t into their piglike Nazi husbands. But they can never admit that to themselves, so there has to be some external factor to blame.
The fertility thing comes across as so weird because its an actual problem that Republicans don’t want to solve in any reasonable way because that will involve threatening their donor’s bottom lines. Basically across all developed nations with easy access to birth control, education and modern mechanisms birth rates are falling and in many countries these rates are already well below replacement rate (2.1 children per couple, not percent like RFK Jr said)
The United States was consistently staying above replacement rate via immigration but I have a nasty feeling that isn’t the case anymore
The reason replacement rate is so important is Capitalism really depends on growth companies gaining new customers. The stock market in particular relies on new wallets to spend money, homebuilders rely on new people to build homes for, and offices rely on new employees to hire. When populations start stagnating or worse shrinking, Capitalism really starts to fall apart as that causes an ongoing recession as fewer wallets in an economy means less money flowing through an economy. Less money moving through an economy means a smaller GDP which means the the economy ultimately shrinks. Bad economic conditions also lead to people feeling less certain about bringing a new baby into the world so the cycle tends to accelerate before the actual population decline can accelerate noticeably
The obvious solution is to decouple necessities of life from capitalism and significant state investment into improving existing infrastructure and planning for degrowth so that a long term recession and the effects of declining/re-balancing populations do not negatively impact the masses living through them. This is of course antithetical to capitalist and conservative goals, so as they realize this looming threat is upon them they’re getting extremely weird about it and trying to find ways to get more families to have lots of babies to try to reverse the trend.
In short, these republican pundits are trying to have a serious conversation about what could be an extinction-level event for capitalism without cluing in the masses to the flaws of capitalism or the fact that its an entirely man-made crisis that doesn’t actually involve any scarcity of the necessities of life
Bingo; But they don’t want that. The really ironic part is the USA population could still thrive as a nation of immigrants, even if birth decline was happening; But of course they don’t want that, because the “Great Replacement Theory” platformed by the New Zealand shooter. They could at least make life less miserable for existing parents with social services; But they don’t want that, because that’s “Communism” (and their donors make a killing from killing us).
Living in the United States of America is like living as a dependent of a self-destructive parent who refuses to compromise, listen to any logic, or even do the bare minimum to sustain themself. Our infrastructure is literally crumbling around us and Dad’s back to rambling about how “fluoride cuts off your connection to God”. At least he’s off the stims, I think.
The US could also thrive with a slowly declining population, as long as there was capital investment to improve productivity at a rate faster than the rate of decline of the working population.
Another factor is that many of the commonly reported economic metrics are aggregated over the whole population, not per-capita. So more people looks like more growth, even when it really means you’re standing still or regressing in terms of meaningful measures of quality of life. And there’s a well-known aphorism in business circles about what happens when you make a metric into a goal.
I prefer “they’re so pathetic.” It is way more accurate.