Whether we accept it or not, this will likely be the century that determines what the optimal human population is for our planet. It will come about in one of two ways: Either we decide to manage our own numbers, to avoid a collision of every line on civilization’s graph — or nature will do it for us, in the form of famines, thirst, climate chaos, crashing ecosystems, opportunistic disease, and wars over dwindling resources that finally cut us down to size.

Alan Weisman

Of all the things that divide Americans in this age of hyper-polarization, the panic over declining birthrates, especially of whites (for conservatives, mostly), is one of the strangest and touchiest. On the surface, the situation is embarrassingly simple. It’s called demographic transition, and it is one of the most uncontroversial, rock-solid phenomena found in the social sciences. Simply put, as women gain stature in a society — reproductive freedom and control, access to education, and economic opportunity — birth rates go down. It’s not complicated, and it holds true all over the globe, regardless of ethnic makeup, religious persuasion, and even of general economic structures.

Demographic transition, then, would not seem to be a moral issue. It is a social fact, a law that emerges out of the general social, economic, technological, and political changes of our times.

But human beings are not good at thinking in social science terms. Our social primate brains are evolved to see everything in terms of interpersonal relations, morality tales, and the stew of ideas that swirl around perceived tribal loyalties, rivalries, and conflicts. So instead of just acknowledging objective social trends and realities, we go searching for good guys and bogeymen, regardless of the issue or problem in question.

In the realm of declining birth rates, this moralizing tendency takes a few distinct formats, the more dramatic of which are on the conservative side of the aisle. There is a relatively benign version of conservative population panic, perhaps most loudly and recently lamented by Joe Rogan, who addresses the subject on a regular basis. In this telling of the tale, if we’re now reproducing below replacement rate (which is 2.1 kids per household), which indeed we are (see chart above), then we’re going to start crashing into all kinds of economic catastrophes, especially the declining tax revenues from younger generations, and the subsequent inability to fund increasing support-costs for the elderly, like Social Security, Medicare, and other federal “entitlements” for the geezers.

The more nefarious version of population paranoia from the right comes from Stephen “Lord Baldemort” Miller, JD Vance, and other theocratic defenders of “Western civilization.” True to the dualistic demonization form of conservative Christianity, this panic is all about declining white fertility in particular, set against the backdrop of more rapidly reproducing minority groups and the artificial injection of population numbers via legal and extra-legal immigration. Here, of course, we have the usual conspiratorial suspicions, where liberals and Democrats are seen as deliberately trying to extinguish white Christians, to usher in some type of American mongrel melange, in which all kinds of radical left lunacy can flourish: atheism, baby cannibalism, Sharia Law, globalism, gay child grooming, efforts to turn all kids into trans-weirdos, etc. In fact, the frantic push to outlaw abortion and to control women’s reproductive freedom is less about religion than it is about this panic that we are aborting superior white fetuses, ceding the future, literally, to the forces of darkness. (I would even bet that if they could, MAGA conservatives would outlaw abortion amongst whites, but continue to allow it, maybe even subsidize it, for non-whites — but that would be a little too transparent, at least as of this writing).

Now, on the liberal end of the spectrum, one might expect to see more enthusiasm for declining fertility, as it represents both women having more agency in choosing to live beyond the role of baby fabricator, and also because declining population is a prerequisite for attempting to undo our species’ ecocidal tendencies. But on the left, we see some of the same practical economic worry over the untenability of an elderly-heavy society. Who is going to pay for all that geriatric support stuff? This is actually a fair question, and I’ll circle back to it later.

Also, there is a justified liberal concern that women and young people in general are not eschewing child-bearing and child-rearing just by choice, but because of a lack of economic power. Many young women and men would love to start families earlier, or have that second and third child, but it’s just too fucking expensive, and the job landscape is just too precarious. Many libs thus push for truly family-friendly policies, like free daycare, more guaranteed (and paid) maternity and paternity leave, higher minimum wages, free universal natal care, and bigger child tax credits. And they rightfully lambaste conservatives who give lip service to “family values” while gutting every financial assistance program that actually helps family formation, and for killing (aborting?) any new policies in the legislative crib.

So there really is an almost universal American hand-wringing over declining fertility, running the gamut from purely practical and economic, to a more ethical concern over life opportunities, to a full-fledged racial panic over white replacement. Everyone seems to agree that we need to be having more babies, maybe parting ways over the details of life-timing, overall volume, and skin tone of the fetuses, but nonetheless concurring that we need to facilitate a new American baby boom.

But let’s upset the apple cart a bit. Our real population problem is not related to replacement rate, which is actually an arbitrary and solipsistic reference point that presumes that we haven’t already massively overshot the human carrying capacity of the Earth. Nor is declining fertility an existential crisis, again considering the catastrophic ecological impact the human species is having on the planet. And at bottom, even the the practical economic hurdles of intergenerational finance and traditional family formation are not phenomena that should strike terror into our hearts.

No, our real “demographic issue” is that the household, the basic unit of our society and economy, is fundamentally too small, by a large margin, and no amount of nuclear family augmentation can fix that essential defect.

At this point, let’s recall the actual overarching crisis that informs this blog as a whole: Human beings are destroying the planet through their excessive numbers and technologies, and our “sacred” cause as a species is to massively and rapidly reduce that damage, and to start a new civilizational process that can heal the planet while still allowing for the flourishing of humans and other natural forms and processes. In this light, anything that reduces human population is good, and any other subsystems that have to be changed, scrapped, or adjusted to accommodate this overall goal should be re-worked and re-thought.

So in practical terms, we’re talking about how to reduce the American population while preventing economic catastrophe, spiritual desolation, and social disintegration. How can we support the elderly, pay the bills, give hope to the young, provide stability and dignity for everyone, all while trying to rapidly and extensively reduce every aspect of human impact on the planet?

Clearly, these current institutions and ideas should be transformed to achieve this sacred task:

• The nuclear family: current household size in the US is around 2.5. Forget about replacement rate. This is just far too small, in general, to provide economic stability and psychological health. It is also massively overconsumptive and wasteful, which is great for corporate profits but a disaster for the ecosphere. Households need to be reformatted to much larger groups, anywhere from 50-150, to give people much more control over their lives, their health, and their finances. This would be a cultural change, not any kind of mandated, top-down transformation, although federal and local governments should be prepared to provide logistical assistance to people who want to make the move to Bigger Home Bases. Having much larger households would begin the healing of almost everything at the same time: ecological damage, psychological health, the crisis of gender warfare, financial stability, social media saturation, intergenerational isolation, even plutocratic domination).
• Careerism and the work ethic: the idea that human labor is inherently moral and character-building is obsolete, as there are now more exceptions to the rule than positive examples. The futile effort to pretend that work can still provide the formative core of our economies and psyches is the source of many of our cultural battles, as technology, AI, and the general evolution of capitalism render human effort and skill increasingly disposable. Work will remain as a positive goal for those who desire it, but it should not be a prerequisite for not dying. Universal Basic Income is absolutely unavoidable.
• Taxing income and other productive activity to “pay for” things: at the federal level, the fantasy that government is like a household budget, where money has to raised by the feds before they can pay for things, has to be abandoned. Following Modern Money Theory, we have to nix the ideas of the deficit and the debt, in favor of viewing federal fiat money as completely free economic tool to accomplish our societal goals. Most taxation should be ended, and the USD should be “driven” by a Universal Basic Income instead. Taxes should be used only to punish violations of legal statues, and to discourage damaging activity, as determined by the people, via Congress.
• Battling the rest of the world for economic and political supremacy: at this point in our planet’s history, economic and military wars are utterly pointless, like a gang fight on the deck of the Titanic. The United States should abandon the effort to dominate our rivals, in favor of turning its attention inward, to transform our society and economy along the lines of the bullets above. This would truly “put America first,” but it would also immediately make the US a leader in promoting a just, sustainable model for a sane future. Even beyond the Democratic Socialist countries, an American turn to power-populism, where real agency and dignity is provided for the masses, would have tremendous to undermine despotic and theocratic regimes around the world.

There are many other ideas and cultural trends that need to be transformed, but these are a good start in showing what we should be looking at. Check out earlier posts on the blog for more details on specific issues, and I’ll continue to update and flesh out what might be possible in the current climate, as “Trump 2.0: The Re-Moron-ing” continues to unfold.