The idea that society needs a high birth rate only makes sense if you are a consumer goods company, a boomer hoping someone will buy a house for a much higher price, or planning to conscript people into war.
Otherwise, lower population vs national resources will be a major edge. UBI will be cheaper and quality of life will be higher. You can also turn on and off the immigration spigot selectively.
One public-private way to pump birth rates is to allow families to buy failson insurance from the open market. Then either your child will take care of you in forty years or the insurance payouts will.
The markets will then analyse the child’s genome at birth, as well as hukou status, parental and grandparental CVs, ideally all encrypted via zero-knowledge proofs.
Then whenever the govt wants more children born in a year, perhaps to offset softness due to zodiac-related reasons, the SOE insurers can simply sweeten failson payouts.
Beijing robotics scene is on fire
It is not surprising that embryo selection and other forms of eugenics are becoming mainstream in China.
The logical conclusion of the Confucian circle of life, the idea that childcare by parents is repaid with elderly care by children, is eugenics.
Birth rates remain low if potential parents believe that a potential child will not do well enough to help them in old age. In other words, the child will not ROI. Embryo selection either actually makes them better, or at worst acts as a placebo that makes parents believe in their children enough to create them.
Some people posting about Greater Switzerland, but after Brexit, France is the only country in the EU with a nuclear arsenal and energy independence.
Explain to me why European Union won’t end up as the French Sixth Republic eventually. They just need to ban English again and suppress the Germans. The Spanish and Italian are Francophiles. Rename the euro the franc. Recruit legionnaires from the Mahgreb and install in main cities. Arabic used as the language of the empire, French for the centre. Re-invade North Africa. Revive corpse of Napoleon and create messianic concept around it, etc.
Not surprising at all. Western classical music is already best cultivated in the East. Buddhism left India and is practiced most in the East. Badminton left the UK and is played best in the East. Entirely logical for Greek and Latin to be studied best in the East as well.
Although it may not feel like it right now, Trump’s Beijing Mar31-Apr2 visit will be deescalatory across multiple fronts. Nowadays the media and influencers on both sides are more hawkish than the actual governments and populaces. This is because to get you to click and read they need to spike your cortisol.
Rubio declaring to “Unleash Chiang” is amusing in light of the fact that Chiang Kai Shek is currently getting cancelled in TW. 70% of his statues have been removed and the DPP is resolutely committed to further efforts to “De-Chiang.” Ironically, it is mainland-side where he is enjoying a resurgence and rebrand as a Chinese patriot above all else.
There will be a temporary ceasefire within next 45 days. The GCC cannot withstand this pressure for much longer. The US military will mostly exit the region. The popularity rate is too low to mobilise ground troops.
The next wave of conflict will be ignited by skirmishes in the nearby areas, eg Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Bahrain. This time it triggers a proper Iran-Israel war that lasts at least five years.
Nuclear weapon use on inhabited sites won’t happen, but Iran will achieve nuclear capabilities. Eventually peace is reached because of mutually assured destruction guarantees. Both Israel and Iran will have substantially larger territories at the end and both sides will claim victory. The war will not be later remembered as WW3 but will have a different name in each country.
Generally speaking think Iran will be a long conflict that the US gets dragged into.
US forwarding bases in MENA are now liabilities not assets and indeed the entire perimeter security architecture only makes sense if you plan to actually defend and fortify it for decades.
I attended Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia back in 2007. Despite the protestors outside and the caustic intro from Lee Bollinger, I’d say he had the majority of the audience on his side mainly due to his pro-Palestine views. That changed after he said that Iran doesn’t have any homosexuals. He was immediately booed and people left the venue.