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Comment by rs999gti | Hacker News Reader

With current birth rates in westernized countries, I'm surprised any of these social services will still be around in two decades.

People are living longer, immigration can't solve the problem, people are relatively healthy and wealthy, etc. but there is not enough babies entering at the bottom of the pyramid to grow into tax payers to continue funding the social systems.

Dystopian me sees a world where western governments will have to institute mandatory, two child per woman births, moratoriums on birth control, huge incentives for people with children under 18, and aggressive pushes for couples to raise adopted children and/or make new ones.

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> Dystopian me sees a world where western governments will have to institute mandatory, two child per woman births, moratoriums on birth control[....]

Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to just allow more immigration?

I mean, there are plenty of young, able-bodied, english-speaking people who'd like to move to rich countries.

The politics around allowing immigration are complex and controversial though. Som e people will fight tooth and nail to prevent more of the "others" from coming into their country. I'm not just referring to the US and Europe.

Look at Japan for example. Immigration has been touted by Western think tanks and pundits as a solution to their demographic problems, but instead they've chosen to go all in on automation and robots to attempt to solve it.

I expect Korea to follow the same path. Probably China too. A lot of East Asian countries that are at the bleeding edge of the demographic bomb place extremely high value on population and cultural homogeneity. The West would probably label that as racism.

>The politics around allowing immigration are complex and controversial though.

And forcing every woman to have two children isn't?

Per my other reply on this thread:

I would imagine such aggressive measures (i.e. forcing of anything) would occur first in a certain other countries before it happens in the West - if it ever does. I would also not be surprised if the West would implicitly choose to implode first before sacrificing an iota of "freedom and individuality".

Outside the West, I also would not be surprised if some countries/cultures would implicitly choose to implode before sacrificing their homogeneity.

America is never going to "force" people to have children, but it may ramp up transfer payments to those who do. The Child Tax Credit was a big part of the Biden agenda, for example. So is, AFAICT, subsidized daycare and such.

(If more aggressive payments by other countries are any indication, this will have approximately zero effect on people's decisions.)

Japan has started loosening it's immigration requirements

> Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to just allow more immigration?

Both in the EU and US, various immigrants (both legal and illegal), have been coming into the continents since the 1960s.

But even with all the immigration, currently there are still near one child fertility rates.

The native inhabitants, both the native born and born from immigrant families, still need to make up the short fall of having their own children.

In typical EU cities the default housing option is a small 2 bedroom / 1 bath flat. That makes it awkward to have more than one child. Admitting more immigrants further increases competition for very limited housing supplies. Building more housing in those cities would probably be a good idea but realistically it's not going going to happen on any large scale.

I feel norms are a big part of the problem. In other parts of the world nobody bats an eye at six children living in a one-room hut.

> But even with all the immigration, currently there are still near one child fertility rates.

Is it matter while enough immigrants coming?

Social Security will still be around in two decades. They'll just increase the retirement age again, raise taxes, and cut benefits in order to close the financial gap.

I would imagine such aggressive measures would occur first in a certain other countries before it happens in the West - if it ever does.

I would also not be surprised if the West would implicitly chooses to implode first before sacrificing an iota of "freedom and individuality". As the saying goes, "give me liberty or give me death", or that famous Benjamin Franklin quote about trading freedom for security.

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