Now for the bucket of cold water. NRx has almost nothing to say about it. Of course, it can remark on the problem, insistently, and even diagnose it with some definite precision. What it has yet to do is to cross from urgent policy recommendations to anything remotely approaching a road map for implementation.

The way stations on the hazy track into the future that NRx generally follows — this blog very much included — tend to include a more-or-less comprehensive phase of social collapse, and subsequent restoration of comparatively non-demotist, authoritarian models of governance. (It leads, roughly speaking, through the Jackpot.) Is there any solid basis for the assumption that a regime coming out of this — perhaps Neocameralist / Monarchist in character — would vigorously pursue the pro-natalist policies advocated by contemporary reaction? It is at least questionable, given that the actually-existing states presently closest to this type have proven to be — despite public expressions of concern — entirely incapable of doing so.

The problem of time-horizons at the root of the modern fertility crisis is easily trivialized, as if it were merely a product of adjustable degenerate attitudes. The deep problem — partially tractable to game-theoretical apprehension — is that, under the conditions of the modern state in an environment of intense competition, suppressed natalism is a short-term winning strategy, and if you don’t win in the short-term you’re not around to play in the long term. If the world becomes increasingly Hobbesian in the decades ahead, this dilemma becomes more acute, rather than less so. It presses no less heavily upon a monarch than a democratic leader. Continuing industrial advance means that the (strategic) opportunity cost of subtracting smart females from the work-force becomes ever greater. Any ideal of ‘long-term thinking’ that ignores all of this is incomplete to the point of utter dysfunction.

The condescension really ought to stop. Modernity crushes fertility because it sees ahead better than you do — you just don’t like what it’s seeing.

ADDED: Responses from Hurlock and Athrelon.

ADDED: Alrenous on fertility and purpose.

This is an educated person with a PhD, they know better than some teenager in the middle ages.

[Discuss.]

Once the fertility transition to controlled fertility occurs in a population, its fertility generally continues to decline until it is below replacement. The benefits of the new pattern are increased material wealth per person, a reduction in disease, starvation, and genocide, and upward social mobility. The main drawback is the onset of a dysgenic phase that may end civilization as we know it.

(Admit it, you’re hooked …)

This two-decade old James Fallows article played a major role in the final phase of the Bitcoin article. Without question, large chunks of NRx will like it a lot more than me, and probably simply a lot. It seems obviously important. Perhaps there’s something better, covering the same ground, that could replace it, but right now I’m not sure what that would be.

Yesterday was fertility day, to an extraordinary degree. In case anybody missed these: Sister Y, Jim, and Woodley et al.

Robo-extermination watch.

* Think I already linked to the first installment, but I’ll put up links for the whole series when it’s there (probably about 7,000 words including notes). There’s nowhere near enough Bitcoin / blockchain discussion in the NRx. I’m warming up for a cyclonic rant on the subject.

ADDED: Almost forgot, fotrkd recommended that this update on the Cult of Gnon get a wider airing.

ADDED: ISIS propaganda video [*ahem*]

ADDED: Azathoth (related).

ADDED: And …