> Still, we can’t exactly do anything about these causes.
Disagree, and there are two counterexamples of this. First, there was the famous study where they tried to discourage teen pregnancies by telling high school students about what's involved in taking care of babies. Second, we have Israel, where even "secular" Israelis have TFR > 2.1. Neither of these is as expensive as various economic proposals.
Now, one might say that we have no way of replicating such approaches at scale in America. But I disagree with that as well. This can be done in a revenue neutral way, without becoming a theocracy. All it would take is to calculate high school teacher pensions as "baseline * (2*quantile(adjusted gross income of their graduates)) * ((1/2.1) * (TFR of their graduates))". How would teachers respond to such an incentive? First, they would start teaching students about parenting in ways that concretizes it. Second, they would teach students to be proud of our past and optimistic and determined about our future.
So fixing the cultural problem is very feasible from a technical point of view. Of course, it hasn't been tried, but neither have economic incentives of the scale that would actually make a dent. Is it feasible from a political point of view? I'm not sure, but it's not less politically feasible than an economic policy that's targeted at "women in their late twenties, probably mostly white and asian, who work in tech as product managers".
Now, if I'm being honest with myself, I'd say that my proposal and your proposal have exactly zero probability of ever becoming policy. This brings me to my second proposal, which is to found the cult that you want to see in the world. I don't think we should assume a "religious world" necessarily involves "sliding back". The reason is that I don't think "secular" Israelis are irreligious, if one properly understands what religion is. As Max Nordau said in his speech at the Second Zionist Congress in 1898, "Everything that is alive in Judaism, everything that is a Jewish ideal, that embodies dignity and the desire for development, is Zionist." There is an enormous religious difference between "secular" Israelis (who are reproducing themselves) and "secular" Diaspora Jews (who are not).
The problem is that most secular Westerners and secular Easterners are not only secular (unbound to any magical or theistic belief system), but irreligious (unbound to any story which they are a part of and want to continue). To quote Stanley Hauerwas, "We live at a time when we believe we should have no story, except the story we chose when we had no story. We call this freedom." Fixing this cultural narrative at a societal level is a regime-complete problem, but it is substantially more addressable at a smaller level.
> Still, we can’t exactly do anything about these causes.
Disagree, and there are two counterexamples of this. First, there was the famous study where they tried to discourage teen pregnancies by telling high school students about what's involved in taking care of babies. Second, we have Israel, where even "secular" Israelis have TFR > 2.1. Neither of these is as expensive as various economic proposals.
Now, one might say that we have no way of replicating such approaches at scale in America. But I disagree with that as well. This can be done in a revenue neutral way, without becoming a theocracy. All it would take is to calculate high school teacher pensions as "baseline * (2*quantile(adjusted gross income of their graduates)) * ((1/2.1) * (TFR of their graduates))". How would teachers respond to such an incentive? First, they would start teaching students about parenting in ways that concretizes it. Second, they would teach students to be proud of our past and optimistic and determined about our future.
So fixing the cultural problem is very feasible from a technical point of view. Of course, it hasn't been tried, but neither have economic incentives of the scale that would actually make a dent. Is it feasible from a political point of view? I'm not sure, but it's not less politically feasible than an economic policy that's targeted at "women in their late twenties, probably mostly white and asian, who work in tech as product managers".
Now, if I'm being honest with myself, I'd say that my proposal and your proposal have exactly zero probability of ever becoming policy. This brings me to my second proposal, which is to found the cult that you want to see in the world. I don't think we should assume a "religious world" necessarily involves "sliding back". The reason is that I don't think "secular" Israelis are irreligious, if one properly understands what religion is. As Max Nordau said in his speech at the Second Zionist Congress in 1898, "Everything that is alive in Judaism, everything that is a Jewish ideal, that embodies dignity and the desire for development, is Zionist." There is an enormous religious difference between "secular" Israelis (who are reproducing themselves) and "secular" Diaspora Jews (who are not).
The problem is that most secular Westerners and secular Easterners are not only secular (unbound to any magical or theistic belief system), but irreligious (unbound to any story which they are a part of and want to continue). To quote Stanley Hauerwas, "We live at a time when we believe we should have no story, except the story we chose when we had no story. We call this freedom." Fixing this cultural narrative at a societal level is a regime-complete problem, but it is substantially more addressable at a smaller level.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA