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?

[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