Sustainable Population Growth: We have no plan B
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/31
Sustainable population growth is a relevant mid-length issue for many, but not all, societies. It concerns the problem of potentially productive citizens in a nation, which is to say, their shrinking populations, which the Russian Federation and China have begun to see on the authoritarian side and South Korea and Japan are seeing on the democratic side.
It’s a pervasive issue and a legitimate problem. There is an ‘ick’ factor in discussing things like statistics of birth rates because it implies a sort of dehumanization of individual citizens, particularly women, especially in more egalitarian and developed industrial societies that pride themselves on being more gender equal and gender-affirming.
That’s a left-wing preventative in discussing these topics or a molasses burden. Then there’s the more conservative orientation of simply using this as a means to argue for traditional gender roles. Perhaps somewhere between these, not extremes but differences, a place of better balance exists.
The basic fact is that women do not want to bring children into the world in those countries for a variety of reasons. The first reasons are inferable in the result. Women want a choice in reproduction, at a minimum, and sufficient resources to provide for those children. They bear most of the burden anyway. Now, as they become better off, most societies tend to dip in population rate. One particular aspect is access to ‘the’ pill or a variety of contraceptive measures for women to have more of choice in their life paths.
No matter the efforts of the institutional, mostly male leaders of the country making aims to increase the population rates or the desires of the leaders, theocratic or otherwise, if women do not want to have children, they will, in many circumstances, stage a silent protest to determine their life trajectories, which includes in the arena of determining their lives. Women want a good life and deserve equality with men. It seems incumbent upon men with the gumption to take a leap and work for those egalitarian efforts. You do not have to; believe me, look at the birth rates in societies and compare them to replacement levels.
Atwood had a marvellous example of forced birth State efforts. Romania, under Nicolae Ceausescu, instituted Decree 770 to restrict women’s access to abortion and contraceptives. Most legitimate human rights organizations stipulate that, as a fundamental human right, the restriction is a crime. As time proceeds, it becomes more transparent and unambiguously agreed upon worldwide. The outcome is poverty and destitution for all of these women, having kids beyond their means and kids growing up without sufficient resources to flourish.
It is a basic recipe for intergenerational poverty. And that’s what it wrought under a communist regime attacking women’s dignity and humanity. Oddly, communists and religious conservatives who speak out against Communism agree on this common aim: 1) politicization of women’s bodies and 2) restriction of abortion access and reproductive rights. They are allied in the attack of women as persons, by which I mean people with a sense of autonomy and a desire for freedom.
We have the empirical results of high poverty, low education, high malnutrition, high infant mortality, and extremely low rights for women and populations. Those are colloquially termed third-world countries or developing nations or less developed states. There are very high birth rates in those countries because people have no control over their destinies.
What about modern cases to enforce women’s bondage to the home and — what has been termed by leftwing commentators — “forced birth”? So, the Russian Federation’s efforts are to call for Russian women’s tradition of large families, even President Putin. In China, it’s more of a shame culture. Women past a certain age get some translational equivalent epithet of “leftover women.”
The hard fact about these efforts is their a) superficiality and b) inefficacious thrust. Neither of those work. Even in developed sexist societies, like South Korea or Japan, women are choosing the same. The formal movement in South Korea is called the 4B Movement, or something like that. Japan has one of the lowest birth rates in the entire world. It’s developed, democratic, technological, intelligent and educated, and a land of the salaryman.
Thus, we have the societies in which women’s rights do not even begin to exist with high birth rates. Far too many people for the amount of the resources. Then we have the autocratic developing societies attempting to encourage a culture of big families to solve low birth rates. While we have freer rich societies, sexist in character, women choosing to forego children altogether. What do we do? The other option is majoritarian run societies with wealth.
In developed, more egalitarian societies, there is a minor rate of being below the replacement rate for a sustainable economy and population, which is more optimistic and workable. We need a robust picture of what works at the extreme egalitarian end. Still not enough to replace people dying, we’re stuck with a low birth rate and, so, a lower population overall too.
What are we to do now? We — literally — do not have a plan. However much Musk likes to be the center of the crusade for replacement of the dead sufficiently, there isn’t a robust universal solution for every societal admixture, yet. However, egalitarianism seems the most promising: Simply empower women. That’s the best start shown empirically so far — give women decision in their fates.
I suspect that Iceland will show the way — simply looking at some of my favourites humanists coming out of the humanist community Iceland. That’s one option there. They made the right choices at each crucial juncture where other countries faltered. They’ve been labeled the most gender-equal society by the World Economic Forum for 13, 14, or 15 years. Something like that. It’s not simply for professional mothers and women alone. No, it has to be pervasive plan influencing even the most blue-collar aspects and white-collar facets of institutions. Something like a cultural stamp or seal of gender equality, as they have at the University of Iceland.
It seems clear to me, insofar as I have my current evolved view, that no rights for women in societies are terrible for everyone because men get gender stereotyped, too. I am gender atypical; I would not fit the provider role in any sense or the earner in any sense, as I have a different compass guiding my life choices.
And I wouldn’t want to be; it’s uncomfortable and stifling, I find, and the social pressures up to a point are tremendous: the shame and guilt culture to get men to conform is disgusting and was a massive issue for me, growing up, and a significant area of shame, until I got out of the conservative religious community, the Evangelical community.
It’s also clear to me that the attempts to reverse women’s rights in semi-developed societies are idiotic and not working because women, like everyone else, once they get a taste of freedom and a better life, tend to prefer it. The only two other options for developing more egalitarian societies and sexist societies are pretty straightforward. In the sexist ones, women throw a middle finger at the authorities trying to tell them what to do with their lives, and the egalitarian ones have a more productive workforce and a highly educated one and more closely approximate a balanced population rate. Therefore, our only option out of the morass is more egalitarian, with some unknown tweaks that need more evidence.
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