My thinking on this subject is based on this criteria:
How do you measure success of an organism? Another way of putting it is how do you measure the fitness of an individual to its environment?
The only thing that makes sense to me is by counting the offspring, or even better grand-offspring. Raising many offspring that are, in turn, able to raise many offspring, is proof of fitness.
Similarly, on a larger scale, we can measure the success of a group of organisms by their birth rate. A declining birthrate is a sign that the group is no longer flourishing. Each generation is able to squeeze fewer and fewer copies of their genes through the barrier that separates one from the next. The barrier is comprised of the environment and the challenges of life that we are all faced with. The more copies of genes that make it through this barrier, the more successful the originals were at facing modernity.
From this standpoint, it is clear that the dominant cultures of the world are in decline. They are tautologically doomed to fail because producing people is success, and they are not doing it well enough.
If you want to know what the future will look like, look to the sub-cultures that are still producing many children. Children are the future.
(as to birthrates, cursory googling suggests they have birthrates from on the order of 10e30 individuals per year to on the order of 10e30 individuals per week)
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized."
> Anyone examining this issue must acknowledge this straightforward truth, alongside the reality that our present culture is steering us away from the desired path
I agree that our present culture is steering us away from our path, but see no evidence given for why that path ought to be the desired one.
Old age payments might be a problem under the current system, yes. But the way I see it is the cultural shift explored here will simply increase innovation, and either immigration or increases in productivity would also solve that problem.
In terms of desirability, undefined: this generation decides how many children they wish to produce; the next generation gets to decide, having seen the available inputs, how they'll allocate their resources.
In terms of necessity, 0 is an obvious lower bound. An upper bound is difficult to state, but given the low (in vivo anyway) litter size, 32 might be appropriate? Roughly: from 0 to more than 10 but less than 100? (0 to more than 16 but less than 64?)
A hidden premise of this piece is that the author agrees with the current economic system, which requires exponential growth at all times, which ends up also requiring that most people have children.
Otherwise, the criticism of low birth rates becomes pointless.
How do you measure success of an organism? Another way of putting it is how do you measure the fitness of an individual to its environment?
The only thing that makes sense to me is by counting the offspring, or even better grand-offspring. Raising many offspring that are, in turn, able to raise many offspring, is proof of fitness.
Similarly, on a larger scale, we can measure the success of a group of organisms by their birth rate. A declining birthrate is a sign that the group is no longer flourishing. Each generation is able to squeeze fewer and fewer copies of their genes through the barrier that separates one from the next. The barrier is comprised of the environment and the challenges of life that we are all faced with. The more copies of genes that make it through this barrier, the more successful the originals were at facing modernity.
From this standpoint, it is clear that the dominant cultures of the world are in decline. They are tautologically doomed to fail because producing people is success, and they are not doing it well enough.
If you want to know what the future will look like, look to the sub-cultures that are still producing many children. Children are the future.