Adoption as an alternative to breeding

[Novus America]

Why are you afraid of dropping birth rates. I'm not. It is probably a good thing in the long term.

Japan. Permanent stagnation and recession, deflation, spiraling debt, pensions that cannot be paid... Etc. It is not a good thing.

[Hardknock]

Why are you afraid of dropping birth rates. I'm not. It is probably a good thing in the long term.

Japan. Permanent stagnation and recession, deflation, spiraling debt, pensions that cannot be paid... Etc. It is not a good thing.

Population aside, a lot of that could be avoided if governments had been held to zero sum accounting like the rest of us. It is rather difficult to perpetuate ponzi schemes and impossible social contracts when you have to at least break even every year.

But then where would the powermongers be?

[Grand Britannia]

Why are you afraid of dropping birth rates. I'm not. It is probably a good thing in the long term.

Japan. Permanent stagnation and recession, deflation, spiraling debt, pensions that cannot be paid... Etc. It is not a good thing.

To be fair, a lot of their problems come from something other than population growth.

[Gun Manufacturers]

Why not both, if you have the bandwidth for it?

Then you might have favouritism toward your own biological sons or daughters instead of your adopted ones. It should be adoption OR breeding, but not both.

My older sister and brother in law have an adopted child (my nephew), and have three biological children (my nieces) as well. I've never seen them play favorites with any of them.

BTW, my nephew is biologically related to my brother in law. My nephew was born when his biological parents weren't financially or emotionally mature enough to provide for him, and instead of my nephew going to a foster home with strangers, my older sister and brother in law adopted him so he could remain with family.

[The Althing Confederacy]

The OP is wrong on so many levels!

[Minzerland]

I'd rather breed than adopt, predominately because I have a natural instinct to continue the survival of the genes of my family and people.

[New Grestin]

The world is already a nightmarish dystopia, OP.

It doesn't need to be a horrific nightmarish dystopia.

[HMS Vanguard]

Why would any government in the West put disincentives on breeding. That's insanity. We're having negative native population growth.

Heh, talk about you!
Us in France, thanks to the Roman Decadence™ phase we went through in the 19th century, have sexuality rather ingrained in our culture making us more tolerant of out of wedlock birth and bastards and because our welfare make pregnancy affordable; we have managed to maintain our 2.01 child by woman making our population stable and ensuring a steadily rise.

However your 19th century decadence phase was a national death spiral that led directly to your 20th century disasters.

In 1800 France was the most populous state in Europe other than Russia. By 1900, the UK had a larger population and Germany had close to a 50% advantage. This despite the fact that France had more land and a lower density than either, unlike both wasn't throwing off population into the colonies and the USA by the tens of millions, and was between the two in wealth. Hence France went from the terror of Europe to the football of Europe.

This experience, and particularly WWII, terrified your government enough that it partially reversed this trend in the second half of the 20th century. But in the bigger picture, the whole of the West is in your 19th century decadence phase, and you yourselves are only partially out of it, suggesting that the West is not going to have a fun 22nd century.

That aside from the fact that making "Single Mother" a government job is not exactly preserving and multiplying the highest quality human capital of the West, even if it is boosting absolute numbers somewhat. Would be best to simply go back to the 18th century set-up.

[Costa Fierro]

The world is already a nightmarish dystopia, OP.

It doesn't need to be a horrific nightmarish dystopia.

Aw, but one can at least have a little bit of fun imagining it, right?

[Novorobo]

Japan. Permanent stagnation and recession, deflation, spiraling debt, pensions that cannot be paid... Etc. It is not a good thing.

Population aside, a lot of that could be avoided if governments had been held to zero sum accounting like the rest of us. It is rather difficult to perpetuate ponzi schemes and impossible social contracts when you have to at least break even every year.

But then where would the powermongers be?

Sometimes you have to go into temporary deficit in order to make money in the long run. The answer isn't "always balance the books" it's "better scrutiny toward their plans for recovery."

Japan needs to just swallow their pride and accept immigration and/or adoption already.

Why are you afraid of dropping birth rates. I'm not. It is probably a good thing in the long term.

That's what China thought. If they make it through the next few decades it may work out, but all they need is one more baby boom and they're screwed again.

If they hadn't resorted to the one-child policy, imagine how much worse climate change would be...

[Novus America]

Population aside, a lot of that could be avoided if governments had been held to zero sum accounting like the rest of us. It is rather difficult to perpetuate ponzi schemes and impossible social contracts when you have to at least break even every year.

But then where would the powermongers be?

Sometimes you have to go into temporary deficit in order to make money in the long run. The answer isn't "always balance the books" it's "better scrutiny toward their plans for recovery."

Japan needs to just swallow their pride and accept immigration and/or adoption already.

That's what China thought. If they make it through the next few decades it may work out, but all they need is one more baby boom and they're screwed again.

If they hadn't resorted to the one-child policy, imagine how much worse climate change would be...

Deficit spending does not do shit to help structural problems. It is a painkiller. It temporary naans the problem. But has side effects and is crazy addictive.

Japan is done. They will NEVER recover. Yes they should open up to immigration and adoption. But they will not.

China was stupid, Mao encouraged ridiculously high birth rates. This created too many people forcing China to make a complete reverse. Now their demographics are all screwed up.

They went from 6 to 1.6. Had they just stayed at 2.5 the whole time they would be fine.

What you want is to stay steady Between 2 and three. Below 2 is too low, above 3 too high. You should Not play the pendulum game China did. It is all about moderation. Neither extreme, too low or too high is good. If you are already overcrowded you want 2. If you are underpopulated like say Alaska 3 is ok. Most places 2.2 is pretty good though.

But the US has no need to worry about too many as we have a low population density anyways. We could handle on the higher side.

[UniversalCommons]

Then you might have favouritism toward your own biological sons or daughters instead of your adopted ones. It should be adoption OR breeding, but not both.

What? I know plenty of families that do both depending on their circumstances there is nothing wrong with it.

The mark of successful raising of kids is not that you don't care for one more than the other (even with purely biological children there are always the ones who's personality mesh with the parents better) but that you raise them in a loving home, take care of their needs, make sure they grow into successful contributing adults.

If you are capable of doing that with adopted and biological children without putting undue burden on society then there is no reason not to do both

Many adopted kids are disabled or dysfunctional and will never be anything but a burden on society. However, the point is not whether they are a burdern or not, but the need to take of children so they don't become a danger to society. Our prisons are full of people from orphanages and similar institutions. The government is not good at raising children. Encouraging the idea that kids should be raised by loving parents is very important. Simply being able to drop dysfunctional kids into orphanages and government institutions is not a good answer.

[HMS Vanguard]

Japan is done. They will NEVER recover. Yes they should open up to immigration and adoption. But they will not.

Is "never" here again meaning "in a time I care about" or something?

I think it is very unlikely that Japan could be invaded, even with only 30-40m working age population. If it can't be invaded, and maintains its national cohesion, it will recover as soon as low TFR sub-populations shrink relative to the whole.

[Sack Jackpot Winners]

That's what China thought. If they make it through the next few decades it may work out, but all they need is one more baby boom and they're screwed again.

If they hadn't resorted to the one-child policy, imagine how much worse climate change would be...

That's assuming most of them would be in the cities. I have to check but a good chunk of the population still lives in huts.

[Novus America]

Japan is done. They will NEVER recover. Yes they should open up to immigration and adoption. But they will not.

Is "never" here again meaning "in a time I care about" or something?

I think it is very unlikely that Japan could be invaded, even with only 30-40m working age population. If it can't be invaded, and maintains its national cohesion, it will recover as soon as low TFR sub-populations shrink relative to the whole.

It is a timeframe in which any current ecnomic measures matter. Besides at that point Japan's debt will be about 2,000% of GDP.

[HMS Vanguard]

Is "never" here again meaning "in a time I care about" or something?

I think it is very unlikely that Japan could be invaded, even with only 30-40m working age population. If it can't be invaded, and maintains its national cohesion, it will recover as soon as low TFR sub-populations shrink relative to the whole.

It is a timeframe in which any current ecnomic measures matter. Besides at that point Japan's debt will be about 2,000% of GDP.

What if Japan just defaults on its debt. Will it cease to exist as a nation?

Besides which most of that debt is owned by elderly Japanese, so they are just funding their own pensions.

[Novus America]

It is a timeframe in which any current ecnomic measures matter. Besides at that point Japan's debt will be about 2,000% of GDP.

What if Japan just defaults on its debt. Will it cease to exist as a nation?

Besides which most of that debt is owned by elderly Japanese, so they are just funding their own pensions.

If the default on that debut they can never borrow any more at a reasonable rate. And yes they are using debt to kick the can down the road.

It comes down to that Japan will not recover economically in return to its height, they will remain in permanent decline economically for the forseable future . So borrowing money in hopes things get better ecnomically is silly as things are not going to get better at least within this century.

[HMS Vanguard]

What if Japan just defaults on its debt. Will it cease to exist as a nation?

Besides which most of that debt is owned by elderly Japanese, so they are just funding their own pensions.

If the default on that debut they can never borrow any more at a reasonable rate.

Which would be kind of annoying, but in the scheme of things no really big deal.

It comes down to that Japan will not recover economically in return to its height, they will remain in permanent decline economically for the forseable future .

In terms of total GDP yes, but they will not drop below the minimal viable state size, which is the minimum size required to produce nuclear weapons and survivable ballistic missiles.

At the same time, they have not experienced the immigrant-fuelled terrorism and crime of the Western world, their culture will survive, and their homogeneous society of intelligent, trustworthy people is not being diluted.

What they are losing is way easier to replace than what we are losing.

[Novus America]

If the default on that debut they can never borrow any more at a reasonable rate.

Which would be kind of annoying, but in the scheme of things no really big deal.

It comes down to that Japan will not recover economically in return to its height, they will remain in permanent decline economically for the forseable future .

In terms of total GDP yes, but they will not drop below the minimal viable state size, which is the minimum size required to produce nuclear weapons and survivable ballistic missiles.

At the same time, they have not experienced the immigrant-fuelled terrorism and crime of the Western world, their culture will survive, and their homogeneous society of intelligent, trustworthy people is not being diluted.

What they are losing is way easier to replace than what we are losing.

Umm they will not be able to really defend themselves either as there will be few young people, and will never build nukes because they are terrified of them. But I guess they can keep leaching off the US.

Immigrants are not the major source of crime in the US, nor are most immigrants a problem. Obviously we should not be letting in extremists.

Japan could limit immigration to only nearby countries with a similar culture like Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and assimilate them. But Japan's culture is part of the problem, they need to change the way they view children.

The west needs to get people having children again or it will not survive though.

[HMS Vanguard]

Umm they will not be able to really defend themselves either as there will be few young people, and will never build nukes because they are terrified of them. But I guess they can keep leaching off the US.

They will build nukes if the alternative is a serious threat to their sovereignty.

Immigrants are not the major source of crime in the US, nor are most immigrants a problem. Obviously we should not be letting in extremists.

The US probably isn't facing the criminal and social cohesion problems of Europe, but it is facing the end of its middle class society, which is predicated on a level of personal competence that Hispanic immigrants on the whole don't meet.

Japan could limit immigration to only nearby countries with a similar culture like Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and assimilate them. But Japan's culture is part of the problem, they need to change the way they view children.

Lots of Koreans won't move to Japan, as Korea is already a nice country, one with a smaller population, and even worse birth rate problems. Same broadly for Taiwan. The others are third world countries.

I expect Japan will restructure its society to put more emphasis on women having children rather than careers, but this will mean a serious break from US culture. I don't see that happening until China starts really pushing the US out of that side of the Pacific, and probably not until after Japan gets nuclear weapons.

The west needs to get people having children again or it will not survive though.

No arguments here.

[Iwassoclose]

so instead of breeding ourselves we should steal the children of 3rd world countries?

creepy

Its called overseas adoption, its been happening for decades.

[Stormopolis]

Sometimes you have to go into temporary deficit in order to make money in the long run. The answer isn't "always balance the books" it's "better scrutiny toward their plans for recovery."

Japan needs to just swallow their pride and accept immigration and/or adoption already.



If they hadn't resorted to the one-child policy, imagine how much worse climate change would be...

Deficit spending does not do shit to help structural problems. It is a painkiller. It temporary naans the problem. But has side effects and is crazy addictive.

Japan is done. They will NEVER recover. Yes they should open up to immigration and adoption. But they will not.

China was stupid, Mao encouraged ridiculously high birth rates. This created too many people forcing China to make a complete reverse. Now their demographics are all screwed up.

They went from 6 to 1.6. Had they just stayed at 2.5 the whole time they would be fine.

What you want is to stay steady Between 2 and three. Below 2 is too low, above 3 too high. You should Not play the pendulum game China did. It is all about moderation. Neither extreme, too low or too high is good. If you are already overcrowded you want 2. If you are underpopulated like say Alaska 3 is ok. Most places 2.2 is pretty good though.

But the US has no need to worry about too many as we have a low population density anyways. We could handle on the higher side.

I agree. Mao messed up, but he had good reason to do this. He firmly believed that the USA and the USSR would nuke the entire world once the Cold War started to heat up. The only way to counter this, he thought, was to have more people than the others. Where the USA and USSR would have thousands of inhabitants left when the dust settled, China would have millions.

[Novus America]

Umm they will not be able to really defend themselves either as there will be few young people, and will never build nukes because they are terrified of them. But I guess they can keep leaching off the US.

They will build nukes if the alternative is a serious threat to their sovereignty.

Immigrants are not the major source of crime in the US, nor are most immigrants a problem. Obviously we should not be letting in extremists.

The US probably isn't facing the criminal and social cohesion problems of Europe, but it is facing the end of its middle class society, which is predicated on a level of personal competence that Hispanic immigrants on the whole don't meet.

Japan could limit immigration to only nearby countries with a similar culture like Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and assimilate them. But Japan's culture is part of the problem, they need to change the way they view children.

Lots of Koreans won't move to Japan, as Korea is already a nice country, one with a smaller population, and even worse birth rate problems. Same broadly for Taiwan. The others are third world countries.

I expect Japan will restructure its society to put more emphasis on women having children rather than careers, but this will mean a serious break from US culture. I don't see that happening until China starts really pushing the US out of that side of the Pacific, and probably not until after Japan gets nuclear weapons.

The west needs to get people having children again or it will not survive though.

No arguments here.

Most "Hispanics", (the term is too broad and vague to mean anything anyways) are not a problem. Nor a threat to the middle class. Bad trade and tax policies are killing the middle class.

Japan does not have the US work culture either. It is very different. The US has a much higher birth rate than Japan. But yes Japan has to change. That much is clear. And they are going to need some immigration to just take care of the elderly. And third world immigration is not always bad. It can be, but there are plenty of educated people in the third world.

[HMS Vanguard]

Most "Hispanics", (the term is too broad and vague to mean anything anyways) are not a problem. Nor a threat to the middle class. Bad trade and tax policies are killing the middle class.

I am not talking about competition for jobs. There was a middle class in 1900, when practically everyone had a job that is bad by comparison to today. Being middle class is a set of character traits, basically a combination of intelligence, future preference, and self-discipline. Hispanics are, broadly speaking, dependants, will vote for governments that pander to dependants, but even if they fail imposing government that panders to dependants, they will form an underclass in individualistic society, not thrive like Anglo-Germans do.

Japan does not have the US work culture either. It is very different. The US has a much higher birth rate than Japan. But yes Japan has to change. That much is clear. And they are going to need some immigration to just take care of the elderly. And third world immigration is not always bad. It can be, but there are plenty of educated people in the third world.

They need immigration to take care of the elderly if they want to maintain current consumption levels. If dropping personal consumption is absolutely intolerable, they need immigration. Even that isn't totally obvious, since house prices will drop enormously: as those people die they will pass down a lot of capital wealth. But dropping personal consumption just isn't a huge deal. Like I said, a lot of people would rather live in 1950s America than Hispanicised 2050s America.

[Novus America]

Most "Hispanics", (the term is too broad and vague to mean anything anyways) are not a problem. Nor a threat to the middle class. Bad trade and tax policies are killing the middle class.

I am not talking about competition for jobs. There was a middle class in 1900, when practically everyone had a job that is bad by comparison to today. Being middle class is a set of character traits, basically a combination of intelligence, future preference, and self-discipline. Hispanics are, broadly speaking, dependants, will vote for governments that pander to dependants, but even if they fail imposing government that panders to dependants, they will form an underclass in individualistic society, not thrive like Anglo-Germans do.

Japan does not have the US work culture either. It is very different. The US has a much higher birth rate than Japan. But yes Japan has to change. That much is clear. And they are going to need some immigration to just take care of the elderly. And third world immigration is not always bad. It can be, but there are plenty of educated people in the third world.

They need immigration to take care of the elderly if they want to maintain current consumption levels. If dropping personal consumption is absolutely intolerable, they need immigration. Even that isn't totally obvious, since house prices will drop enormously: as those people die they will pass down a lot of capital wealth. But dropping personal consumption just isn't a huge deal. Like I said, a lot of people would rather live in 1950s America than Hispanicised 2050s America.

"Hispanics" are not some monolithic group at all. Somebody with a tiny bit of ancestry from Spain is considered "Hispanic". This is why total numbers of "Hispanics" means little as they very often intermarry into other groups.

Nor are many "underclass". Many do quite well and are well integrated. They are not inherently less intelligent, actually recent immigrants work harder than others who have been here longer. And most Americans of all backgrounds vote for government pandering, we have not been really individualistic since the 1920s. And in the 1950s there was massive Hispanic immigration anyways.

Asians is actually the fastest growing group anyways.

Besides some Wahhabis (that needs to stop) the US does not have that much a problem with legal immigration, we do have some problems with illegal immigration but the US is not facing the same problems of Europe at all. We do need to boost our birthrates some, but we are still not critically low as we were above 2.1 in only 2007 and our rate is increasing again (and at 1.86 while too low is not that bad).

Dropping personal consumption will mean lower living standards in Japan. And old people unable to care for themselves yet no one to care for them.

But it really comes down to the fact that the proposal of this thread is ridiculous, low birthrates are a bad thing and one of the greatest problems facing the west today.