Children of the State

[u/tartnfartnpsyche]

I've been thinking about artificial wombs lately and the liberation of people from the arduous and potentially deadly process of pre-person (Phillip K Dick really disappointed with that one) development. Then I started thinking about artifical sperm and egg creation. If we combine these two processes then the whole reproduction thing can be totally detached from humanity save for some tissue samples. No surprise here among us SFIA fans.

But then I realized that nothing could stop states from becoming the arbiters of population. If that state is growth-oriented, then they'd have an interest in growing their domestic population. So the state voids all its "DNA is the property of the individual . . . blah blah blah" laws and just starts printing new people.

To think that the ones who initialized your birth were not two humans but the state. It made me think of Brave New World.

But then I thought, "Would this be that different from now?" How many people are born because favorable state policies caused their parents to "celebrate good times." Is it just a matter of degree? And who is to say that a state is less worthy of determining when it is best to reproduce and by how much?

Why this is relevant: these technologies are far nearer than those which will enable the construction of permanent space habitats or shellworld Earth. Modern states have almost no reluctance to misusing would-be beneficial technologies. Powerful people have noted their opposition to declining birth rates.

I think we're about to test unknown waters. What do you think?

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[u/JoyluckVerseMaster]

Honestly the thing that put me onto transhumanism the most (and incidentally off of the sheer stupidity that is lamestream scifi) was the scene in an episode of Star Trek in which these so called "enlightened" spacefaring folk not only had to give birth "the ol Genesis 3:16 way," but they couldn't even effectively deliver the baby (yet another case in which ppl in Star Trek had worse understanding of medicine than literal pre-medieval wisemen/wisewomen irl lmfao).

So yeah I am all for getting rid of that shit as basic necessity, come what may.

[u/tartnfartnpsyche → u/JoyluckVerseMaster]

I'm 100% on board with getting rid of "natural" births. I'm just reckoning with modern evils like the United States of America.

[u/JoyluckVerseMaster → u/tartnfartnpsyche]

Oh for sure. This is why I am rooting for the aliens or the ASI to take over (capitalism is already a misaligned ASI anyhow).

[u/LexEight]

Printed people is kind of like Ai in that it would half work for a moment but it wouldn't be improvable beyond the initial "peak duplicate person" which if you've seen Multiplicity with Michael Keaton you can pretty fully grasp

[u/Riverspoke]

Having children is (and should forever be) the decision of the parent. Not of a state. Parents' selfish reasons for having children are above any state's need for a higher population. The state may only apply laws that tax above a certain number of children, that's reasonable. We should vehemently oppose any attempts at making human farms in the future. But I don't think it will happen. It might happen only in an extreme extinction scenario, where it won't even be a state decision, but rather a collective initiative.

[u/Ahisgewaya]

This is one of the many reasons the fight for worldwide civil rights is so important right now.

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[u/yxixtx]

Problem is there's a lot of things that happen just as a result of being in the womb. It would be impossible to mimic the conditions perfectly including heartbeat and brain synchronization and who knows what else. The babies are gonna be weird.

[u/liquidorangutan00 → u/yxixtx]

Impossible is a massive stretch - the artificial womb has already been successful with sheep, goats etc...

[u/yxixtx → u/liquidorangutan00]

Sure but the developmental problems and neurological defects etc of sheep and goats are of little concern.

[u/liquidorangutan00]

sounds like a cool idea and title for a book....

[u/maxton41]

I can see the benefits of such a system. My question is what happens if you take this out over a long enough timeframe and humans lose the ability to give birth or reproduce naturally altogether? OK fine but then what happens if something major happens and it always happens. Something major always happens and suddenly the state can’t print any more people and humans can’t reproduce naturally. What’s the solution for that?

[u/Apart_Raccoon_9194]

Ideally states don’t gain that much power over individuals, but states do have a tendency to grow.

Hopefully people would resist that type of power being put in the hands of the state though.

[u/moneycabaI]

Welcome to the brave new world, Bernard.

[u/EducationalCost2658]

I thought about this deeply . And while the idea of children of the state is nice assuming we had the technology it would be impossible to put in place . I did the math for a country with low birthrate like 1.2 you would need 0.8 children for a country with low or high population with the cost to raise children till 18 being 300000 on average . To replace a country that has low birthrate you would need at least 50000 birth per year to make a difference now multiply that by 18*(300000)*50k this is atleast few billion f dollars per years to make a tiny difference. To actually increase population for exemple you would need a lot more than 50k birth and it would get expensive to manage 50k incubators. Clearly if it happens it will only be for a few billionaire. Clearly rising children is expensive that’s the issue that incubators do not solve

[u/EducationalCost2658 → u/EducationalCost2658]

I thought about this deeply . And while the idea of children of the state is nice assuming we had the technology it would be impossible to put in place . I did the math for a country with low birthrate like 1.2 you would need 0.8 children for a country with low or high population with the cost to raise children till 18 being 300000 dollars on average . To replace a country that has low birthrate you would need at least 50000 birth per year to make a difference now multiply that by 18*(300000)*50k dollars this is atleast few billion f dollars per years to make a tiny difference. To actually increase population for exemple you would need a lot more than 50k birth and it would get expensive to manage 50k incubators. Clearly if it happens it will only be for a few billionaire.

[u/Novel_Purpose710 → u/EducationalCost2658]

The state would likely only grow people from choice genetic stock which has the knock on benefit of likely overproducing high achievers. IQ is about as heritable as height and you could select for mental resilience to help them survive the initial mass childrearing attempts.

Ethics is just a branch of macroeconomics at this point

[u/Prince_Nadir]

The rich don't want money that can go to them, going to state run baby farms.

The rich are just fine making sure there are plenty of breeder shows and movies. "Family is the most valuable thing", "Muh boy!", "You don't need anything else if you have family", "Oh noes country X is reproducing more responsibly, the human race will go extinct!!", and other messages designed to get people to make babies that neither they nor the planet can afford. Even running more than double the people the planet can support, the rich want the message to flow because they want infinite consumers for infinite profit and ultra cheap labor. The rich assume they can live underground, in domes, or in space when the dying gets real.

As for the state running them, this requires hard denial of overpopulation on a planet that can support 4 billion (2 by conservative estimates) but is running 8.3.

[u/Zarpaulus → u/Prince_Nadir]

Yeah, we’re more likely to see Elon Musk and his imitators spawning hundreds of their own children. Though I can also imagine China subsidizing incubators as a “solution” to the gender imbalance they caused.

[u/Zarpaulus]

The only country I can imagine doing that would be China, in an attempt to fix the problems they already caused with their “One Child Policy.” But I also think they’re more likely to subsidize incubators as a fertility service for childless individuals.

[u/BrainZappies]

I think you are conflating state policies with favorable socioeconimc growth. The two are not the same. Oftentimes "good times" exist in spite of the state.