This post is just a quick informal thing to kick off discussion, I won't claim to be as informed as I should be and some of my points may be wrong.
>declining birthrates lead to shrinking economic growth and tax revenue+larger proportion of dependents, all due to a shrinking labor force
>birthrate decline (not yet population decline) is happening in most countries outside of Africa, regardless of socioeconomic development, cost of living or culture (incl. religion or "feminism")
>the most likely primary common cause is the simple availability of choice: not needing children as extra labor, more access to birth control/abortion, etc.
>>secondarily, often it is not the case that people don't want children but that they want to have them later in life and want to give their children optimal lives, e.g. being unwilling to raise children until one has a high-paying stable job; this also leads to people having less children overall
>>the chain reaction here is that the higher the standard of living gets, the bigger the opportunity cost of having children when one actually gets to DECIDE whether to have them, as well as a more demanding standard for WHEN one should have them
>the proposed liberal capitalist solutions fail to tackle the problem:
>>paying people to have children needs to cover the opportunity cost of not having them, which is already massive and will continue to increase the more an economy grows, which will eventually become unsustainable for governments
>>roundabout solutions like providing parents with tax cuts, exceptional welfare or a lower retirement age suffer from the same problem
>>even increased immigration will only stop the bleeding temporarily as the global population fails to keep up
>>automation might "cover" the decrease in labor force but at the same societal cost that massive automation will always bring
With all of the above in mind, it seems that capitalism combined with reproductive choice contains the seed of its own decline. Stagnation threatens the system, but growth leads in its own roundabout way back to stagnation.
The capitalists thus only have the option of restricting or steering choice, from banning abortion and contraceptives to the more extreme scenario of forcing women to be broodmares; or alternatively, by an ideology of pro-natalism for the "greater good", requiring many people to act against "rational self-interest".
In practice, however, those options are just forms of reaction, and even when reaction is successful (and it rarely is) all it can ultimately lead to is a repeat of the past, susceptible to the same conditions and contradictions that caused it to crumble once before.
This is a classic problem that manifests in many ways: capitalism needs laborers to be spenders, but progress inevitably requires a decrease in their ability to do so; in this case, by directly cutting the supply of labor.
Unironically, the only solution is socialism.
The only way to change this equation around without making things worse for everyone is by challenging the assumptions of growth and opportunity cost. This can happen in many ways.
If making a living isn't tied to the success of companies which need constant growth to stay competitive, the dependence on constantly increasing birthrates is reduced.
On the other hand, if society can directly contribute to making child rearing easier and less expensive instead of subsidizing the artificial difficulties and costs created by the market, the opportunity cost of having children is also reduced.
And this ties into many other factors. More safety, more education, more stability, they all ease the burden on parents.
But as you can see, it requires real socialism. Can't half-ass it and call it socialism anyway or you'll pay the price. You need real socialist outcomes.
So. Can porky survive this?
120 posts and 26 image replies omitted.>>2482167Birth control became easier, but it always existed and it still isn't necessarily effective.
People always had the choice of ejaculating outside or being gay. These two things are showcased and explicitly condemned in the Bible. Also there were herbs that performed the same role as hormonal birth control and morning-after pills.
Contemporary birth control methods don't always work either. Some people are too horny and don't use a condom because "it feels better" or because they are too lazy to buy it in a particular situation. There are women who would never choose to take birth control because of its effects on the body and the mind. It's hard to understand why is it feminist for women to suffer just because some men can't be bothered to put on a condom. Some might not realize that the woman is pregnant until it's too late, especially if there is a contraceptive method involved that failed. People might be reluctant to undergo abortion. Menstruation itself is a punishment ordained by
God evolution for not getting pregnant and should be considered a deterrent against non-reproductive sex, no matter how is it achieved.
>>2483573Socialism will solve the problem by simply existing as whatever we need to define it as and not through actually having solutions, what a genius answer.
>>2483573>it'll outcompete every other society below replacementSpot on, the current population boom and bust already happened at the end of the stone age, when the transition to agricultural life caused a spike in birthrates.
Some societies were able to cope with that by changing to a newer mode of production, others collapsed because of reaction.
>>2483582We already know what the solutions are, populations of people who neither fight nor perform labor are the only ones with positive birthrates as we see in israel. Wage labor society is simply incapable of sustaining itself long-term. I guess racial socialism (fascism) is also capable of the transition
If America turned socialist tomorrow, and the flow of imported labor stopped we would find it necessary to professionalize motherhood and have a community of women with the political power and leverage of creating and nurturing future labor passed back to them just as it was in the Matriarchal tribal societies of old
>>2483592Why was this not the case historically then? We've had laboring groups that reproduced for several millenia
>>2483599Things changed since capitalism and the industrial revolution.
>>2483599Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State says it was the transition from Matrilineal to Patriarchal society that caused this issue, and the rise of wages and more importantly private property
>>2483606So, what, all of class society has seen falling birthrates? Primitive communism was the average woman popping 200 children out a year and it's been falling for thousands of years?
>>2483611That still doesn't give us an explanation of why it happens under capitalism bit not under other systems.
This also quite clashes with any concept of western laborers benefiting from imperialism if it's a value exploitation thing.
>>2483614>That still doesn't give us an explanation of why it happens under capitalism bit not under other systems. it did happen under other systems but was solved through violence and coercion. As societies become more advanced its put at odds with the archaic structures it depends on. The problem only got worse when women were emancipated in the workforce and marriage became optional. I see wage labor as more responsible than capitalism itself as the USSR had the same fertility rate issues
>This also quite clashes with any concept of western laborers benefiting from imperialism if it's a value exploitation thing.it's not. Indias births just fell behind replacement rate and their industrialization went very poorly
>>2483617So human society has been functionally based on rape for thousands of years and the moment we try to stop rape-factory society it comes apart, the only way to solve it is something literally nobody has succeeds at yet.
>>2483857>the only way to solve it is something literally nobody has succeeds at yet.yes. like in other modes of production the bottleneck is always the price of labor, and our system systemically destroys its future stock. we're now in a period of global ideological competition. who will come out top? who's capable of this change? Who knows, but whoever manages it will have a headstart to global hegemony, and it will be either socialism or fascism
Declining birthrates are one of the greatest things that can happen on this planet and if you say otherwise, you're just showing you cannot reflect out of a capitalist framework.
>>2483606Yeah and he was wrong, no such transition happened. Marx and Engels had no idea about the prehistoric world, primitive communism is one of the most retarded things ever
having thought more about this:
If you introduce polygamy then each woman only needs to give birth to (n+1/n) * 1.05 children (where n is women per mating group), if you can get a way to ensure there are far more female than males born.
For example, if you have 400 women and 100 men, and you can maintain this gender balance ratio, the birth rate can drop to a mere 1.32 and you'd still have population growth.
This doesn't necessarily mean women all have to be attached to the guy in marriage, mind, if we accept IVF.
>>2494493>maintain this gender balance ratioSelective abortions are too much of a taboo in modern societies.
>>2483617>it did happen under other systems but was solved through violence and coercion. Examples of "solving it" under other systems?
Please don't cite Decree 770 in Ceaușescu's Romania (picrel) as it caused way more harm than good (loads of orphaned children and a huge increase in maternal death related to illegal abortions performed in grossly unsanitary conditions).
>>2483604That was more of a joke, for serious(tm) thought see
>>2481821 >>2494534>Examples of "solving it" under other systems? like in ancient rome they passed laws like how women in bondage to a master could be freed legally if she had three children, part of a wider set of laws meant to boost fertility primarily in the elite. Pretty much every urban city had more deaths than births and was only sustained through immigration from the poor rurals
Labor itself is not the driver of falling birthrates, look at the Amish population. It's the interaction with the labor market and wage labor that's responsible
>>2494534>Selective abortions are too much of a taboo in modern societies.Just modify the fertilization process so that you simply don't get male kids.
>>2494534>picPretty sure it's fake data, projected from researcher's asshole
>>2494661have some more please
>>2494621how would you enforce that exactly? strict IVF-only reproduction with 1 in 5 chance of getting a male fetus?
>>2494684It'd take some societal restructuring but genetic engineering and possibly retroviral options.
Obviously it's not gonna happen overnight, but the short of it is, the more the gender balance skews female, the lower the fertility rate can go, till it's basically a bit over 1.05
>>2459222You think this is a funny joke anon? Women die of sepsis trying clothes hanger abortions. And abortion is illegal in many places in the world, made illegal by men, bourgeois men
Is it really a problem for liberalism?
Most of the poorest workers are mostly not needed for labor in the numbers that they were before. Especially if the cold war is going to force industrialization to the poorest part of the periphery. Be it to dispute rivals or exploit the profits. As automation increases productivity in places where economic activity is meant to be delimited to imperialist interests, a lot of people are simply not needed. So it's okay if they die out.
If it's not fertility or climate change, or poverty or sickness, it will be conflict. Because the means will NOT be allowed.
>>2453978outside of the logic of capitalist exploiters, high fertility rates are not good. Birthrate decline is 100% a good thing.
>>2456839>>2456840I think the problem is that you guys assume women aren't totally okay with being single mothers if it means their child gets a genetic benefit from mixing DNA with men with good looks and bodies.
Institutional marriage did in fact get started to ensure women couldn't just all conglomerate into Chads harem, but it also evolved in a way where men who are Chads realized it was less beneficial than living under matriarchy, it's super weird, but under matriarchy the hot minority of men get it the best.
>>2495733>Institutional marriage did in fact get started to ensure women couldn't just all conglomerate into Chads harem,There are societies with polygamy and marriage so that's not the case. It's because who the fuck is going to provide for this family? Obviously not the philandering Chad. If the man can support multiple families, then it is allowed in those societies. If you can only take care of one you get one. If you can take care of 0 you get 0. So at the end of the day, like I said, marriage is an institution to primarily benefit women/children. It's not like anyone was ever stopping women from siring bastards, but people recognized that it wasn't good for the women/children, thus the taboo. Maybe I should say it's primarily for the kids since the women can dump the kids at the orphanage or whatever, but a woman can't really birth some kids secretly and secretly dump her progeny, whereas a man can fuck, and ride off into the sunset at most 9 months in advance.
>>2495733Why couldn't my parents have been good looking and more socially connected. I could've been banging like crazy.
>>2495733>Institutional marriage did in fact get started to ensure women couldn't just all conglomerate into Chads haremwhere do you incels retards even find those stupid theories. Do you just make shit up?
We need declining birthrates for fucks sake, we're at 8 billion and we'll get to 11 billion at peak population. Stop worrying about this made-up "problem". It's literally just capitalists whining that the labor supply is declining which puts workers at an advantage.
>>2456839> people say treating women as exchangeable property through a dowry and marriage system is patriarchal, but have you considered that raping, impregnating, and abandoning women is an even more patriarchal otucome?i guess
>>2495985I don't it's usually rape when things like that happen. It's usually consensual it's just that the dude only wanted to fuck and may have lied about wanting to stick around or maybe did stick around but decided it wasn't for him or maybe like
>>2495733 said and the woman just wanted a piece of the guys genetics and didn't care if he stuck around.
>>2495985It doesn't even matter because no one is getting married anymore. Patriarchy ended I guess.
>>2495537Comrade she is using a machine
>>2453978The only problem I see in this is Nigeria growing its population to 1 billion with infrastructure worse than India. This is why China needs to take leadership in 3rd world relations to help these countries not to become even more hellish than they are now.
>>2497442Communist China already does this. The Belt and Road Initiative creates long term conditions for Global Peace and Prosperity and Harmonious Shared Future for Mankind.
>>2497462>Global Peace and Prosperity and Harmonious Shared Future for Mankind.i love this clanker
>>2497500Have you considered martyrdom instead of shitposting?
>>2456840it colaterally benefits women while also damaging them in many ways, mainly by harming their ability to be autonomous agents both personally and in civil society. but the main functionality of marriage as an institution is being able to organize a sedentary agrarian society with division of labor and complex economies, mainly by hereditary transmission of the forces of production and, therefore, stabilization of the mode of production by a clear cut determination of social relations into low social mobility classes that iterate themselves through different generations. this is why capitalism is destined to do away with the family and those others ancien regime institutions, and the birthrate decline along with many other phenomena such as feminism and the general desintegration of gender, must be seen as part of this trend. This, i believe, will only tend to increase once this rotten finantial derive the world economy has taken due to anglo-american imperialism comes to an end, once an industrial superpower has done away with the rentiere class and keeps the logic going into the inevitability of socialism, such as the OP said
>>2498012It’s not enough just for the ancient forms of marriage to be done away with, they need to be replaced with new structures where people can be both stable and free to live their authentic desires or whatnot. Right now it’s just rugged individualism and that’s just not a good model.
>>2498013yes but what exactly would a post-capitalist societal structure look like that both retains everyone's standards of living and encourages population growth naturally?
>>2498013communism brings the best possible scenario for an optimal love life: the total expulsion of strategic behaviour from love-seeking through the absence of scarcity and, therefore, the absence of a need to employ reproduction and love-desire for economic means, on the on hand; on the other, many factors, such as the absence of education scarcity, the erosion of the state, the family, private property, money… will bring about a fundamental change in our ego-complex, or "mentality", "personality"… the absence of social strife will radically increase communitarian behaviour and the basic social concept we operate with. i believe that the change would be so fundamental that we can hardly imagine it. i think the model would be a type of large scale communal reproductive and caretaking system such as that of some tribes studied in anthropology.
love would, because of this, cease to be economical, and therefore acquire the same structure as friendship: since both its necessitative character would be done away with scarcity and the family institution ("necessitative" as in, necessarily following the family structure in order to properly iterate society), and its superficial consumptive character done away with commodity form, scarcity, culture industry… its true essence as free appretiation of each other's beauty in a sexually or erotically expressable way would emerge, and we would engage each other erotically just as we now do in the realm of friendship, completely freely. i even believe that the line between friendship and eroticism would be greatly blurred, and that it would be all considered part of the same coninuum, or rather, spectrum, because it would not be linear (i.e. the more intensity, the closer to eroticism), but rather multidimensional (so that there could be intense friendship with weak eroticism and viceversa). Another way of putting it: the conditions of possibilty for rape and unrequited love would be abolished, since love would not be a necessity, but something that duly emerges spontanously between individuals. I think that this friendship spectrum already is the underlying logic of personal relations of mutual recognition, only that scarcity and the institutions built around it "contaminate" the spectrum harming its "free" functioning. and i put "free" in scare quotes because i dont mean freedom as in liberal freedom, i.e. we are born free but made slaves by the insitutions… no. Precisely the long term operations of these "limiting" (therefore, determining, determinatio negatio est) institutions are what will achieve the freedom that we potentially can have but actually lack, once some emergent properties are "unlocked" and with some luck due to stochastic factors. that's why "contaminate" is also put in scare quotes.
>>2498068>the conditions of possibilty for rape and unrequited love would be abolished, since love would not be a necessity, Would conditions of possibility for murder and assault also be abolished? Rape is not an act of love by any means and is only tangentially related to it
>>2498017theorically, the change would be so intense and counter intuitive that even urbanism would change, since houses are linked to the family. some kind of communal housing would probably develop, based around not bloodline but the personal life developement (an artistically inclined person would try to move into an artistically inclined community housing etc.). It is likely that the sheer concept of housing, city, countryside… in general, the whole conception of living spaces, would change, since the dichotomies between city and countryside, living space and working space, etc. would totally change, so i doubt that words like "housing" and "urbanism" would make sense, unless as etymological sediments.
>>2498074in theory, yes, the conditions of possibility of murder would cease to be along with scarcity, or remain as a category for understanding stochastically disfunctional behaviour of people we today call "mentally ill", but it would be called murder only as an etymological sediment, since murder itself, as a concept or category intrinsecally and historically linked to the whole system of law, right, and therefore, with the maintenance of a social order by means of the monopoly over violence which the state necessarily has to employ; would cease to be along with class, scarcity, markets… The sheerconcept of absolute freedom of the will, that obscure and confuse concept (what Kant calls noumena-cause) would probably cease to make any sense to ordinary people, for exactly the same reason that the concept of Right also would, so people wouldnt intuitively percieve actions of other people the way we do now.
And rape has to do with love: it is a degenerated or disfunctional way of seeking recognition by another, inasmuch as the basic or abstract desire of love is sought after by means of turning the other into an obscure and confused image of a superficial object that can be consumed unilaterally, when, in reality (or "objectively", or, said in layman terms, outside the delusional mind of the rapist), that which is tried to be consumed can never actually be consumed, because it is a person, with a whole world inside it, with its own very complex activity that often times doesnt even exhaust with death. At best, what the rapist consumes in actuality is the abstract image (i.e., superficial concept of a woman that is sexually attractive in general under the local normative societal canon), only that not even that can be consumed, since the intense scarcity of recognition that lay at the foundation this extremely disfunctional behaviour als determines that drive so as to be impossible to satisfy through consumptive means, since it is impossible to earn recognition unilaterally from an object of consumption, but only from a person, community, oneself… i.e. from a properly percieved subject-subject relation in which both parties recognise themselves in an intentionally cooperative input.
>>2498120rape is 90% about power
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