Overcoming Low Fertility:

The present is better than the past by many measurements, but one major flaw is our low fertility rate.  If things continue as they are today, most of the modern world would simply die off, disappear, cease to exist, in a couple centuries.  From this perspective, immigration is hardly a problem.  If we intend to just die away and go extinct, it's better for someone to use the land than no one.  Why begrudge a new group of humans who actually desire to live to move in over our decayed carcasses?

It's clear that modernity, not any particular national feature, is causing this below replacement fertility.  It's just as true in homogeneous Japan, poor China, atheist Europe and christian capitalist America.  The best explanation for low fertility is the combination of women's rights and the birth control pill.  These two factors are the largest determiners of your country's fertility rate, beyond culture, religion, race, wealth, etc.  The problem is most people, especially most women, have no intention of giving up either of these advancements for the sake of higher fertility.

Absent a draconian new government that simply forces women to have babies again, how can we ameliorate the steady loss of life low birth rates entail?

One way is to protect the population that is born.  Technology can extend the life expectancy of those who are alive and prevent more accidental deaths or epidemic deaths that take people away too soon.  Lowering infant mortality is one great idea.  Finding cures to powerful diseases is another -- for instance, many cancers that used to be terminal are now treatable, in just the past few decades.  Heart attacks are also being treated better, for instance with the invention of stents.  Getting people to stop smoking, improving the country's diet (for instance the banning of trans-fats New York City just did), reducing crime, reducing drug use, improving road safety, avoiding war, and many other measures could all be undertaken by the government or corporations (who for instance would like to brag about how safe their car is) to protect our ever dwindling population from further loss.

With the advent of stem cells, it's highly possible that old age itself can be overcome.  At which point, having new generations of kids is no longer necessary.  Various research organizations are trying to find the secret to immortality.  We shouldn't be very surprised if it's possible.  After all, various living things on Earth last for hundreds to thousands of years.  There is no law of physics reason stopping long life.  If we look at many countries with below replacement fertility rates, their populations are still growing due to the high number of old people who have yet to die due to enhanced diet, habits, and health care.  Especially for poor countries and countries with high unemployment, it is difficult to start having 'enough' children when there isn't even 'enough' for the living.  As length of life continues to grow, fewer and fewer kids can be introduced to the world in a positive fashion to replace those who have died before them.  The world's population is still growing, at a rate too fast for our resources to satisfy.  There isn't enough of anything to go around for an indefinitely growing world population.

Even more important, we must realize that today's 7 billion is already an extreme population growth since just the 1950's.  Civilization was perfectly possible with less than half the population the world contains today, and therefore a fertility rate that got us back down to half the world's population would be a major bonus for all the living who remained.  Imagine the same natural resources being divided up between half as many people, and everyone is instantly twice as rich as before.  Low fertility could just be a response to the worsening resource depletion and job market that marks the strains of overpopulation.

In addition, many of the places with low fertility are hyper-densely populated.  Europe, Japan, China's river valleys, America's East Coast, all of them share a feature of humans being packed far more tightly than they are used to or evolved for.  The mental stress of being surrounded by so many people all the time could turn everyone off from the idea of introducing yet more lives into the world.  Reducing population in the most densely populated areas of the planet is not a bad idea.

The problem is there is no floor where human behavior will change after we've sufficiently reduced our population.  It seems as though countries which would be great if they reduced their population by half, fully intend to instead reduce their population by 5/6, or 10/10ths.  This runaway depopulation is a threat that looms after the initial positive effects of low fertility have already been seen.

Let's imagine that humans simply aren't interested in reproducing anymore, even though they see the results will be catastrophic.  Today low fertility's results are largely benign, so let's say this problem is showing up 100 years from now.  In 100 years, there is enough time to make reproduction obsolete.  Increasing length of life is one solution, but for another, building sentient life in factories should be possible.  If computers can handle roles humans used to do, there will be far less need for mankind in the future.  It is even possible to let all humans die out if we've given AI enough tools to inherit the good in mankind from there.  There are alternatives.  Certain cultures within the larger culture still have healthy birth rates, like Amish or Mormons.  It isn't unimaginable that these cultures could overcome the momentum of low birth rates and could repopulate the Earth regardless of what the nihilists choose.  Less cheerfully, it's possible for third world immigrants to just replace us all and live on at a Mexican or Peruvian standard of living.  Third world people seem too stupid to use birth control during sex, and therefore even though they don't want children (and their high abortion rates prove they must really hate children), they will continue having plenty of them.  In a sort of reverse evolution, it's now been determined that the best survival trait in mankind is horny, impulsive, stupid women who can't use birth control or safe sex for the life of them.  Since evolution will continue selecting for them, humanity will never be defeated by the pill -- it will instead turn into an organism that is immune to it, like a disease resistance exposed to antibiotics.

The best scenario would be the rapid reproduction of children of the mind.  Childhood is an expensive and painful experience for all involved.  Children hate being powerless and disrespected.  Adults hate the added time and expense it requires to look after said powerless children.  Even with the government helping out in terms of both money and daycare/schooling, many adults just can't feel any enthusiasm for raising the next generation.  There is no reason for children to be born such unfinished products, it is due entirely to the limits of brain growth from babies having to come through the pelvis of grown women.  If we nurtured humans in some sort of mad scientist lab they could be full grown before ever being turned 'on,' an artificial womb would be a great relief to the length of childhood, the pain of pregnancy, the requirement for marriage, etc.  It may be impossible to create full grown adult brains, however, due to the brain's unique learning architecture.  Only experiencing the world can teach the brain how to interact with it.  In this case, it may be better to create wholly digitized brains.  Computers, right out of the packing, operate at full speed and are as smart as they'll ever get.  If they need to know something more, we just install that knowledge into them at nearly instant speed.  This would be the final evolution away from child-bearing.  At this point fertility isn't an issue because we could make infinite fully competent, fully grown adults at the click of a button.  All we would need, as 'parents', is to have the right to program our computers to have the features we love and are most akin to ourselves.  The biological messiness can be left on the chopping board.

Shouldn't we at least secure a normal route to replacement fertility before relying on unproven technology?  If only it were so easy!  A 'normal' route at this point is more difficult, in terms of implementation, than the wildest of sci fi futures.  Basically, a 'normal' route of seizing power and requiring women act against their own rational self-interest for the sake of some nebulous 'society' or just for the sake of 'men' is even more outlandish.  How will this get popular support?  Why should today's 'winners', who have set up society exactly the way they like it, and have the most power in it, be willing to support changing society?  The whole world has had the opportunity to defeat women's employment and the birth control pill for fifty years, but it has been in full scale retreat the entire time.  What possible scenario could reverse this?  The ascent of Islam over the world?  But even in Iran, fertility rates are well below replacement.  Islam seems no more capable of stopping birth control than any other group.  Relying on futurism makes sense when the past shows the present stands no chance.  Only through the introduction of some new variable can the formula of today change.

What about smaller measures that try to bump up birth rates from the shadows?  For instance, child tax allowances, cheaper real estate, free daycare, a citizen's dividend, or just lots of commercials about how great children are?  These are probably good ideas, but I doubt they can reverse such a powerful trend.  In the end, no matter how much easier you make raising children, it's still admittedly one of the hardest tasks anyone can undergo, especially for single mothers.  Since nearly half of all children born today are to single mothers, I doubt any stack of incentives could convince them to have more.  It's so much easier to just have sex freely and swallow a pill every day.  It's so much easier to just enjoy your own hobbies and career than sacrificing everything for someone else.

Science should be concentrating on ways to extend the human lifespan and ways to create artificial intelligence, that can far exceed both the intelligence and learning speed of human children.  By the time low fertility has actually rendered human life impossible, both of these inventions should have long happened.  I would be surprised if AI weren't invented by 2050, much less 2100.  Every day we announce some newer chip or smaller transistor or better memory device.  These kinds of advances can't continue indefinitely without producing real results.

Meanwhile, those who actually love marriage, children, and family, can be pleased with the fact that their children will have more wealth, more land, and more job opportunities due to everyone else fading away.  It isn't actually bad for high fertility couples to live in a low fertility world.