In Iran, it’s a similar situation.

I read the Iran government reversed policy from 2014, and were soon able to probably recover to TFR almost 2 per women in the last year.

By the way, what is ideal fertility rate for most countries? Surely in monoethnic county, perfect rate is 2.1 – steadily distributed over decades, so that there are not echoing waves, and everything relating to budget of country can be easily planned.

Even the Iranian birth rate and still more TFR you cite are impossibly low based on census results. Much more so the lower versions of the Chinese figures, because in China the numerous cohorts long ago passed beyond child bearing age.
Boomerific sneering at concern about overpopulation is not a good look.

what is ideal fertility rate for most countries?

Depends upon the country, D. For some it would be zero, others it would be 12-14.

Financial incentives don’t work, other countries have tried. Nor does extra maternity leave, child care, better wages, lower cost of living, housing prices, etc. Countries with those things still have abysmal native birth rates.

The main cause of low birthrates is women’s education and gender equality. In wealthy societies, women (and many men) just don’t want kids no matter how much support they’re given. So the problem is more cultural than anything else.

People in developed countries tend towards permanent adolescence, fear of family responsibilities, and a fantasy that life is about having fun and doing whatever you want, and kids just chain you down. I catch myself thinking this way too, but then I remind myself that life was probably 95% work for all my ancestors.

I vaguely recall having read a few years ago that China’s supposed gender imbalance wasn’t as bad as expected, because many people in rural areas just hadn’t reported their daughters to the authorities at birth, thereby bypassing the one child rule. So I wonder how reliable any fertility rates data from China could be.

very good article. Another point which backs up the low estimate is that is likely that China has a TFR similar to that of South Korea or maybe even Singapore for cultural reasons.
All in all currently it seems that East Asians are on their way to non-existence. 21th century will see a lot of East Asian wealth, 31th century will maybe see no East Asians at all.

when I am in China I always see those grandmothers with their one (!) grandchild in the park. That implies low fertility.

Current TFR of Iran is around 1.7 children per woman, at a birth rate of 19/100,000. China’s birth rate has been 12/100,000 since the early 2000s. This again makes it consistent with a TFR that is 0.5 children lower than the oft quoted figures.

The age strucures of Iran and China are too different to make that comparison. China had a TFR of 6 until around 1970, while Iran kept that rate until 1990, so Iran’s population is much younger than China’s.

But anyway, here’s my take on it:

The only official and annual data China publishes on births that I am aware of is in their Statistical Yearbook. There they keep a time series on the crude birth rate:

In 2016, this was 12.95 per 1000 people.

Now my idea is, instead of comparing this crude birth rate to Iran, why not compare it to a similar age structure as China actually has? The UN in its world population prospects have a best guess of their age structure, and conveniently deliver their estimate of the crude birth rate and total fertility rate as well. For 2016, they give a CBR of 12.0 per 1000 and a TFR of 1.65 children per woman. This means that hypothetical, with a TFR of 1.0, their CBR should be 7.38. But in reality it is 12.95.

So taking the data from the two sources, we get 12.95/7.38 = 1.75 children per woman. This would be my best guess for China’s TFR at the moment.

I have heard hunter-gatherers only worked 4 hours a day. Also people in medieval Europe had much more free days than today. They had (religiously motivated) parties all the time.

From a national perspective (barring some specific but now largely irrelevant situations, such as climbing out of a Malthusian trap), the more the merrier:

Assuming country has not reached already ideal population density, or is not threatened by war, or superpower rivalries.

But let’s say in case of country like Norway, where they have no military threats and their borders and relations with their neighbours are stable.

Perfect situation would seem to me where fertility rate maintains perfectly constant population. And immigration policy could be set to allow no more people in than leave.

In such a situation, everything would be very easy to plan, dependency ratio would remain always constant, and all kinds of budgets, from school funding to healthcare and pensions, could be predetermined years before.

Discussion sounds a little out of place now, where almost no industrialized country can maintain fertility rate of 2.1.

But in the next century or so – by then children will be produced for order in artificial wombs, and fertility rate could be easily raised or lowered by government.

I think high real estate prices are as big of a factor as gender equality.

Isreal is only able to achieve such demographics because they are using Orthodox Breeder Jews that do nothing but pop out kids and collect welfare.

This is completely unsustainable and these Jews are lower IQ as well.

In wealthy societies, women (and many men) just don’t want kids no matter how much support they’re given. So the problem is more cultural than anything else.

In 50-100 years in the future (whenever it happens), when babies are produced to order by private companies using artificial wombs – fertility rates will likely naturally start to rise towards 2 again.

In such a case, a government could also subsidize this part of the cost, or even for companies to bring up the children for the first few years. It will become much easier to adjust fertility rates up and down as necessary. Easily in the 22nd century, people will order children from companies, in the same way you now order pets.

Even secular population is also now above replacement rates there.

But this is not a normal situation – it seems collective fear response to horror of being outnumbered by Arabs who hate you, as well as religious who want to impose their lifestyle on you.

If you live in Middle East with millions of uncivilized Arabs both inside and outside your country (and also growing religious Jewish cults inside the country and which want to return it to medievalist superstition), then rational decision is – to apply for visa to escape and live in Europe, Australia, Canada, etc. But if you have to have family and future in such an environment, it would feel much more normal to aim for 5 kids than 1.

–

Considering the Arabs are also:

The leadership probably overestimated the impact of technology development (Automation, AI etc), or maybe they didn’t.

The main cause of low birthrates is women’s education and gender equality. In wealthy societies, women (and many men) just don’t want kids no matter how much support they’re given. So the problem is more cultural than anything else.

Such nonsense. Women have much higher desired child counts than men do. If it was entirely up to women’s choice, every industrialized country would be well above replacement, if it was up entirely up to men’s choice, birth rates would be even lower.

Come on. Think of the real-world couples that you know. In how many cases did children appear because the woman demanded them from a reluctant man and in how many the opposite? Women want children much more than men do and the fertility collapse happens when sex without children becomes available to men.

The main problem with women flooding education is that it leads to a situation where women move to cities at a much higher rate and there’s a permanent gender imbalance in favor of men in the countryside and women in the cities. Women prefer the fields that are taught in giant universities while men are much more likely to want a trade or to start a business. Besides, the current inflation of educational status means that we now have tons of women with worthless liberal arts degrees who think they’re “higher status” than mechanics or plumbers and women still want to date up.

women move to cities at a much higher rate

Urban population (% of total) in United States was 81.79 as of 2016. Its highest value over the past 56 years was 81.79 in 2016, while its lowest value was 70.00 in 1960

*82%!

TFR is merely a synthetic benchmark of imagined fertility and has it’s own issues. The discrepancy in different Chinese domestic sources of estimated TFR have their origins in the one child policy itself and the “Sovok” system. Communist party demands birth control, you’ll get data showing lower birth rates by those immediately responsible for enforcing birth restrictions. However, those whose careers aren’t directly tied to enforcement won’t necessarily report the corroborating data. For example census data reporting births being reported at X amount and then six years down the line, another data point will show X+Y number of students registering for school. Where did those extra Y students come from?

Like cicerone stated, a better way to get an accurate reflection of actual fertility is using the crude birth rate (the number of children actually born) and adjusting for the median age of the population. The comparison to Iran is interesting, but flawed in that it is predicated on the Iranian TFR being accurate. To the contrary, it is the Chinese 1.6 TFR that is probably accurate and the Iranian one that is questionable. Iran still has a crude birth rate that is 16.5/1000 with a median population age of 30. Indonesia, which has a similar crude birth rate and a similar median populationa ge somehow has a TFR that is 2.44.

China’s raw births in 2017 was around 17.3 million. China’s raw birth cohort from 25 years ago, in 1992 was reported at just slightly over 21 million.

To the contrary, it is the Chinese 1.6 TFR that is probably accurate

Did one-child policy have much impact, actually?

Despite it, mainland China’s fertility rate is still higher than its cousins South Korea and Japan, higher than Hong Kong, and far higher than Taiwan.

Yes, the higher education status bubble and women refusing to marry “down” is an especially acute problem in China and East Asia as a whole. It is Chinese nature to want to over educate, or at least over credential, their children thanks to two millennia of bureaucratic pressure selecting for education and credentialism. Girls are simply more responsive to the modern type of abusive education system that seems universal because they are more obedient and lass rambunctious than boys. Thankfully the Communists seem to be both cognizant of the problem and have started making half hearted efforts to redress this. Many university departments now have separate scoring criteria for men as opposed to women in admissions. For “soft” subjects which women gravitate towards and the gender imbalance is acute, women are required to have higher scores than men to gain admittance. I don’t think this goes far enough, but Chinese parents are particularly “touchy” about the prospects of their children getting ahead being kneecapped so I’m not sure how much the party can get away with in this area without facing serious public opposition.

What I heard is that the male imbalance exists in the countryside, not in the cities which sometimes have more women than men, due to patterns of migration.

What the exact ratio is, who knows… but if it’s so bad, then how can some cities have more women than men?

Trust me, women want kids. Women really want kids. Ever have a childless lover in her 30s? The saying “baby rabies” exists for a reason.

But they don’t necessarily want as many kids as the state requires. Most women want 2-3, which is inadequate. They need to have 4-6.

And as you already hinted at, the current life path many women take makes it very difficult for them to have kids in time (or at all).

Ideal TFR is 4-6. More than 6 seems like it would make it too difficult to invest in children, and of course there are issues with dependency ratios. Though this can be mitigated by restoring child labor, which should be done immediately.

First industrial country to achieve this will gain a massive competitive advantage over other states in one generation.

You want to maximize quality population growth for the exact same reason you want to maximize quality economic growth.

Population is power.

They need to have 4-6.

Why? So one can afford to lose a few sons in war, or what’s the thinking behind this?

The main cause of low birthrates is women’s education and gender equality. In wealthy societies, women (and many men) just don’t want kids no matter how much support they’re given. So the problem is more cultural than anything else.

Absolutely correct.

Abolishing feminism is not merely desirable, it is essential for long-term survival.

Abolishing feminism is probably not politically impossible in the West, which is why the West is not going to survive. On the other hand it is politically possible in China.

You have correctly identified one important reason. This is after all why Germany was able to overcome France after previously being the playground of French armies.

But it also guarantees a larger gross domestic product and thus a higher likelihood of developing important achievement and lucrative business monopolies. Not an accident that America has Silicon Valley.

Why is America more powerful than Germany? Is it because Americans are better soldiers and engineers than Germans? Obviously that is not the case.

As I said before–population is power.

So one can afford to lose a few sons in war,

Curiously, the communists in Vietnam seem to have launched their two-child policy in the 1960s.

Mao, on the other hand, seems to have thought of the high number of Chinese as excellent cannon fodder, if his rhetoric had any truth in it.

The more feminist countries of northwest Europe have higher birth rates than southern and eastern European countries. A lot of conservative Muslim countries like Iran with extremely anti-feminist policies have tanked in fertility rate and they’re now lower than Scandinavia.

There’s no evidence at all that feminism leads to lower birth rates.

As I said before–population is power.

True on many levels – for instance, for ice peoples. But obviously not for all peoples at all times. Some recent population explosions in other places: Rwanda and Syria.

Although, one could perhaps make the philosophical point that Germany and Japan’s high populations propelled them toward war and thus massive self-destruction. Perhaps, that is not as true today because of other even more destructive factors that a high population is necessary to combat.

Deng should have cozied to South Africa, instead of instituting one-child.

Yes, humanity as pets is indeed the future we all need to strive for.

Maybe some of those humans won’t fit the correct zeitgeist for your world or just get forgotten?

Those countries, especially not Taiwan(an excellent example of a zombie population waiting to finally die off), are not the ones to run TFR competitions with.

There’s no evidence at all that feminism leads to lower birth rates.

After the Quiet Revolution and feminism, Quebecois birth rates went from 7 to 1.4. So yes, there’s plenty of evidence.

I agree that it is not the only, or even the most important issue as many commentators make it out to be – cost really is and overall culture beyond merely gender politics. But it causes problems on many levels anyway.

That they are just now doing this shows how hidebound and unwieldy the CCP is, IMO. Granted, it is still arguably more functional than many other political parties, such as Merkel’s.

Yes, but they are China’s most similar to (culturally, ethnically, geographically) countries.

All of them, aside from North Korea (which is only slightly higher), have a lower fertility rate, than mainland China after one-child policy

So my question to ask – whether one-child policy has had much impact in China? In an alternative history without one-child policy, would the fertility rate be very different?

In that scenario, fertility rates have not naturally risen. They’ve artificially or unnaturally risen towards 2, and naturally collapsed to Zero.

Ever have a childless lover in her 30s?

Obviously a woman’s 30s are too late to have at best more than a couple of children though

It will likely be regulated and normal childbirth legal terms, so end result not different to current procedures with surrogacy – simply surrogacy on mass scale will be suddenly available in form of factories of artificial wombs.

So you cannot exactly throw your child away like the betta fish in your picture, but perhaps mothers on average, all other things equal, may be less emotionally caring for children they did not have to suffer pregnancy for (although this issue already exists with adoption and surrogacy).

Probably, sign a contract with a company and provide gametes to them. Forget about it for 9 months. And then they email you when it’s ready, and deliver a clean baby to the showroom (or as many identical, or non-identical siblings – as you order).

Such situation would rapidly become a mainstream way to have a child in developed countries, and increased convenience would result with significant increases in birthrates in those countries.

Obviously there would have to be government regulation to prevent comic book scenarios (e.g. oligarchs creating their private armies). And it would be more difficult to prevent a scenario that in less ethical countries – the government itself might mass produce children without parents this way.

–

Imagine people in 19th century, trying to imagine implications of planes, television and computers though. Easy for us to predict a lot of the technologies like this, but envisaging actual implications of them is – more challenging.

How rational is a decision to move to a low fertility country and have no grandchildren? The rational decision for a Jew desiring to have a traditional multigenerational family is to move asap to Israel. BTW, the demographic effect of Arab terror is zero.

TFR is the average number of children a woman has and it has fallen because women have much higher relative social status now. And women have much higher relative social status now because educational, employment, career, and political opportunities are available to them and even heavily subsidized and promoted for them. In general, social status derives from wealth or prestige of occupation, and prestigious occupations, whether or not they’re remunerative, generally require educational and or professional credentials.

Now that the average woman gets educated, has various careers, and can participate in politics, she has much higher relative status and has higher status than a large swathe of the male population. And because women naturally have an aversion to pair bonding and mating with men of lower status, this restricts the pool of acceptable mates for most women and thus the fertility rate has dropped.

Until relatively recently, women were restricted from education and most occupations and public life. Women had to depend on a man for sustenance. Even a poor working man had higher relative status than any woman because he could earn a certain wage independently that no woman could, he could access certain educational opportunities that women couldn’t, and he had the franchise and could participate in public life and assume political positions and power while women couldn’t. Every man in society had higher status than women in important respects, and this meant that the amount of desirable and acceptable mates for women were much higher, and thus fertility rates were much higher.

[But in the next century or so – by then children will be produced for order in artificial wombs, and fertility rate could be easily raised or lowered by government.]

By then humans will have been abolished by AI, why are you even discussing anything so backward as their reproduction?

Women have much higher desired child counts than men do. If it was entirely up to women’s choice, every industrialized country would be well above replacement, if it was up entirely up to men’s choice, birth rates would be even lower.

Yes, but it doesn’t change his (correct) analysis. There is a well-known pattern between education and fertility. The more educated women become, the more they delay the age of initial child-bearing. You see this in developing country after developing country.

However, education is just one of many factors. Liu is correct to emphasize cultural factors. Jaako’s point about Scandinavia may be true, but it doesn’t change the argument. Scandinavia still has sub-replacement TFR aside from perhaps Iceland.

Religiosity is the bigger factor. The importance here is intensity and not shallowness. Iran is a superficially religious country but many Iranians will tell you that the population isn’t nearly as fanatic as the leadership. The same pattern is true in Turkey, where atheism among Turks is rare but their religious intensity is quite low whereas the kurds are more pious. For the kurds, they also have the demographic pressure, which acts as a co-enabler and therefore pushes up fertility.

Then there’s also the K-selection and r-selection theory, though I am not a biologist so I do not know how accurate that theory is. Could possibly be a factor.

Generally, money is probably the least important issue. Far more important are the social and cultural values, which also informs how much you want to educate your girls. One area which someone mentioned is real estate and I’d probably agree to that to a smaller extent. The gigantic rise of debt-fuelled real estate prices all over the West, and increasingly even in EE, over the past 15-20 years has priced many young couples out of the market and forces them to work longer to get a decent housing in many countries. Not everyone wants or even can live in the rural areas. Jobs and economic activity is tied to urban areas. That delayed investment probably also affects TFR at the margins.

Now that the average woman gets educated, has various careers, and can participate in politics, she has much higher relative status and has higher status than a large swathe of the male population. And because women naturally have an aversion to pair bonding and mating with men of lower status, this restricts the pool of acceptable mates for most women and thus the fertility rate has dropped.

You just described the plight of educated black women in America. Yet they have higher fertility than whites and Asians in America who are less subject to the female-male education disparity.

After the Quiet Revolution and feminism, Quebecois birth rates went from 7 to 1.4. So yes, there’s plenty of evidence.

Do you have data on (Catholic) church attendance rates in the same period in Quebec?

I ask, because I suspect that feminism as such is a symptom, not the causal agent.

The two arguments do not need to cancel out each other. Education is not the sole lens to view the world through. Biological (r vs K-selection) factors also matter. Blacks have higher fertility all over the world, which is why African TFR is exploding. Educating them will still help lower fertility, even if it may level off at a higher level than for K-selected populations like East Asians.

Social factors (education), biology (r vs K), religious intensity. Monetary support. Everything counts. It’s not either/or.

Imagine people in 19th century, trying to imagine implications of planes, television and computers though

Some reactionaries did. Every one of their negative predictions have come true – whether the destruction of the family, the loss of the traditional economy, ruination of morals or the monoculture of the world.

Birth control is the most likely culprit, tbh. Bypassing the biological method to motivate the “creation of children” has its consequences; likely natalism in and of itself was not really that much of an instinct.

Speaking of China.

US decides to further escalate trade war with China on two fronts

The US has decided to further escalate its trade war with China on two separate fronts involving restrictions on Chinese companies for acquiring advanced western technology companies, and forcing new reforms targeted at China at the World Trade Organization, according to people familiar with the development.

After a reset in the strained alliance with the European Union last week, the US signalled its new strategy to intensify the trade battle indefinitely. US Trade Representative Ambassador Robert Lighthizer gave an early indication on 26 July that “it could take years to resolve trade problems with China, suggesting that escalating tariff battle could continue indefinitely,”

The US has a strong hand in any general trade war due to their massive bilateral trade deficit, but they are mistaken if they think they can stunt China’s technological prowess through trade.

I recall the decision a few years ago to ban sales of Nvidia and AMD GPUs to be used in Chinese supercomputers. The guiding assumption was that the Chinese were helpless without Western tech. It backfired badly. The Chinese simply built their own domestic one, and it was the fastest one for years.

A few days ago, Daimler deepened their co-operation with Baidu in self-driving cars, further highlighting that US firms no longer have monopoly on advanced technology. It is much too late for these desperate and panicky rear-guard actions, though it is nevertheless genuinely amusing to watch the rising fear emanating from Washington, as it realises that its hegemonic technological leadership is now slowly being confined to a thing of the past.

Cross racial comparisons are different as different groups have different tendencies. But I’m not sure that it’s true educated black women have higher fertility rates.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/32379727/ns/health-sexual_health/t/marriage-eludes-high-achieving-black-women/

Among black women with postgraduate educations born between 1956 and 1960, the median age at which they gave birth for the first time was 34 years old. This was about the same as it was for white women in the same demographic. But once white women reached their 30s, many more of them did give birth, often more than once. Many black women did not.

One big reason why these women remained childless is, as one might expect, that they go unmarried, experts say. Among highly educated women of both races, about 22 percent between the ages of 20 and 45 were single in the 1970s. But then that number diverged. It has remained the same for white women, but now 38 percent of black women have never been married.

“Their marriage chances have declined,” Brueckner explained. “This may sound trivial but one reason is that they outnumber men in this education group.” The disparity in education is important because Americans have a strong tendency to marry those with equal levels of education, a trend that has only grown stronger since World War II. “So since there are fewer men with the same education,” Brueckner continued, “you either have to find another group you can marry or you are out of luck. You have nowhere to go.”

Could it really be that simple?

Banning contraception and abortion would have no impact on sex drives. And prostitution would become largely infeasible without contraception and abortion. But sex drives would remain, and people have to satisfy them, so they would be more inclined to seek out marriage and procreative sex.

It’s possible that it might be that simple.

Smart people would figure out loopholes or how to get contraception or abortion anyway. They’d tend to go for types of sex less likely to result in conception, like oral and anal sex, etc. But it would wonderfully increase fertility among the least desirable demographics.

Nothing is that simple.

And prostitution would become largely infeasible without contraception and abortion

This is why prostitution did not exist before the 1960s

Having a kid is not worth it for your typical urban Chinese. The hoops you have to jump through and bribes you have to pay to get them in a decent school are prohibitive, and what’s more the cities are so polluted you practically have to invest in a fallout shelter type air filter to keep them healthy.

Most of the women having kids in the big cities are probably waidi ren– rural migrants at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Give Chinese an incentive to have kids and, just like Maoist times, you’ll get a lot more peasant kids.

Shanghai tfr dipped below replacement over 50 years ago, IIRC. There really is a big quality vs. quantity issue in China. Everybody knows it, but nobody is really doing anything about it. The Chinese I know who had more than one kid left the country before doing so. Most of the others I knew didn’t even have kids last I checked, when they would have been pushing 40. These are big city, educated, high human capital Chinese.

It’s a disaster in the making, and given the Chinese tendency to double down when things deteriorate, I don’t expect the trend to change anytime soon.

The only hope China has of raising fertility in the near term lies in the countryside, but without some reversal or at least serious slowdown of the urbanization drive it’s not going to happen. And anyway the government is trying really hard to decrease the number of peasants because of the aforementioned quality issue, so they’d never go for a scheme that boosted rural fertility.

English Puritans had religious and cultural ideology, in New England they also had unlimited land.

I’m assuming strong enforcement. And I agree that in my scenario, there’d be differential fertility. To mitigate that, you’d probably have to introduce things like eliminating welfare. But I’m trying to keep my scenario simple. It seems reasonable to conclude that TFR would rise simply by eliminating contraception and abortion. Sex drives remain, and marriage and natural sex will be the dominant outlet for most people. Women especially are not going to just have oral and anal sex, which are generally unpleasant for them.

I’m aware that prostitution existed before the 60s and indeed has always existed. The point is that without contraception and abortion, prostitution would not be more than a small outlet for the cumulative sex drive of society.

Shanghai tfr dipped below replacement over 50 years ago, IIRC.

Historically, cities have been HUGE population sinks. A high degree of urbanization is a surefire route to demographic decline.

False. Iran, China and Russia have no feminism or “women’s liberation” movements.

The primary cause is high real estate prices. Give the average woman a large house in a good neighborhood, and fertility will rise to 3 children per woman.

As long as the choice is “rent a small apartment in a high-wage city” vs “live in large house in the ass end of nowhere” women will keep delaying childbirth.

Are you Chinese, as in racially a Han?

Two comments which accurately pointed out the problems with this post, my no.2 and Cicerone’s no.9. Neither got any responses.

and they’re now lower than Scandinavia.

How much of that is real Scandanavians (as in white people) as opposed to Somalians and other third worlders that Sweden considers Swedish?

How does 28/31/33/37/40/43 sound?

Not too bad for a woman (mine) who was ALMOST childless when she reached the age of 30s.

The main cause was neither lack of government support not affordable housing but being surrounded by loser beta males in higher education and university. Until she met me.

As I understand it, the One Child Policy was itself inspired by the neo-Malthusian gloom of those times…A more human capital-centered/biorealistic viewpoint on the economy might have helped them escape this trap, and China today might have 1.6 billion people instead of 1.3 billion, and a younger population.

It would also make the country poorer and considerably less stable, than it is now. Look at all the problems Iranians are having: protests, youth unemployment. This is simply a byproduct of having very young population. Tsarist Russia had two revolutions because it too young and dynamic for its own good.

you are wrong.

how do you explain child free women?

overpopulation is disastrous.

I’m aware that prostitution existed before the 60s and indeed has always existed.

As our old street names (alas, now disappeared) confirm:

Gropecunt Lane /ˈɡroʊpkʌnt ˈleɪn/ was a street name found in English towns and cities during the Middle Ages, believed to be a reference to the prostitution centred on those areas; it was normal practice for a medieval street name to reflect the street’s function or the economic activity taking place within it. Gropecunt, the earliest known use of which is in about 1230, appears to have been derived as a compound of the words grope and cunt. Streets with that name were often in the busiest parts of medieval towns and cities, and at least one appears to have been an important thoroughfare.

Although the name was once common throughout England, changes in attitude resulted in its replacement by more innocuous versions such as Grape Lane. A variation of Gropecunt was last recorded as a street name in 1561.

Variations include Gropecunte, Gropecountelane, Gropecontelane, Groppecountelane and Gropekuntelane. There were once many such street names in England, but all have now been bowdlerised.[1] In the city of York, for instance, Grapcunt Lane—grāp is the Old English word for grope[2]—was renamed as the more acceptable Grape Lane.[3]

Actually in China, at least in the Song, that wasn’t true

How does 28/31/33/37/40/43 sound?

I am glad for her, but that is at least quite lucky, certainly the last ones.

“Most feminist” is irrelevant in that EVERY industrial country is feminist, if we use the standards of what feminism proclaimed itself to be a century ago–or even half a century ago. Even Iran has gone feminist on this metric. Wtf kind of traditional society produces a female Fields medalist?

Women in Italy and Greece are independent, seek “education”, pursue careers, etc.

But since these countries are much poorer and in particular for the young, they have lower birth rates.

Since feminism has completely triumphed, it’s not surprising that the movement in advanced countries has now degenerated into a bunch of silly craziness like trying to redefine everything as rape. Imagine if Nazi Germany had triumphed and liquidated the Jews. Do you think the antisemitism would’ve stopped? Or would they have gone after marginal or even imagined forms of Jewishness? My that’s a suspiciously large nose you have Herr Mueller…

The evidence that feminism leads to lower birth rates is the stunning collapse of fertility in the decade of the 1960s throughout the entire Western world. America for instance went from a TFR of nearly four to sub-replacement in around a decade.

I suppose we can state that giving women the right to vote didn’t collapse fertility.

But programming women to pursue independent careers, enter male fields, get “educated”, divorce when unhaaaaaappy, and sleep around certainly did. And that’s something which exists in every advanced country without exception. China is starting to realize this is a mistake, and it’s interesting to see how far they’ll go.

Even with garbage populations more people means more power relative to rival trash peoples, provided there’s enough food. Though obviously a global goal should be to reduce the relative numbers of trash people, when in fact we’ve been doing the exact opposite in the past century. Leading to a real risk we’ll be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of shitmen.

Yes, more powerful countries may take the risk of starting wars and in so doing bring about their own destruction.

But unless you’re willing to suffer dramatic consequences like North Korea, the alternative to that isn’t peaceful independence. It’s that without even fighting you become a lackey of a great power. The only really independent countries in the world are America, China, and Russia. Then there are some prickly states like North Korea, Iran, Israel, Cuba, etc. which have partial independence owing to extreme determination. But they could be liquidated in 48 hours if someone got mad enough.

A high population is still necessary for military power with modern technology. Who do you think produces all that high technology? People. And the experience of the two world wars is that high technology accelerates the intensity of combat and causes more, not fewer, casualties. In a hypothetical WW3 the entire planet will be a battlefield with no truly safe areas for civilians.

Blacks are R-selected, and in traditional West African society women do most of the work and families are centered on mothers as paternity is uncertain. Men are closer to nieces and nephews than their alleged children.

In America blacks are wards of the state, and the stream of payments mostly flow through black women.

And the fertility of American blacks has collapsed as well (thank God) and is not much higher than civilized races now.

Still too high of course–ideally we’d like to get black TFR hovering around zero.

Worth noting that South Africa under Verwoerd prohibited television as he considered it to be destructive of community and family.

People did this before birth control existed. Not like pulling out is terribly challenging (and yes, contrary to myth, it is fairly effective with some caveats). The difference is that birth control makes the process effortless and less subject to “accidents” which are inevitable in romance for various reasons.

Yes indeed that was lucky and also with mishaps at the end of the distribution.

I was playing the Devil’s advocate a little bit, because (1) it’s totally obvious that peak fertility is way passed when entering the 30s, (2) it’s all downhill afterwards (with a sharp decline after age 35), and (3) it’s not cool to have old parents for a teenager.

But I always use our example (limited sample but still a concrete case nonetheless) to make the point that there really is NO excuse for not having kids other than incurable sterility and other grave illnesses. In that we should also include mental illness and this is where the problem occurs as feminism is a form of mental illness in my view.
By the way feminism also affects men — at least as much as it affects women.

Someone made a comment that women want more children than men, on average. I cannot comment for every race or civilization, but for Western Europeans this is absolutely true. I was myself a persistent adolescent until my late 20s, being more interested in doing sports and other fun things than starting a family. I must admit that my wife saved me from myself there. I just regret I did not start having kids earlier.

So all in all I in fact agree with you 🙂

Historically this was mainly due to infectious disease.

If cities were made affordable and child friendly I don’t see why they would need to be population sinks. They might remain minor population sinks owing to abundance of entertainment options, but nothing dramatic.

Was Tokyo a population sink before the American population? I kind of doubt it. Probably had lesser fertility than the countryside, but I bet it was above replacement.

China and Russia are fully feminist countries. Women have equal rights, get “education”, and pursue careers. In Russia something like 40% of corporate executives are female.

Iran is officially an Islamic theocracy, but it too educates women and puts them to work. They also have “temporary marriage” to put an Islamic stamp of approval on dating/hookup culture.

A traditional society does not produce a female Fields medalist.

One area which someone mentioned is real estate and I’d probably agree to that to a smaller extent.

That’s a line that Steve Sailer has been pushing for years (“affordable family formation”) and he’s undoubtedly correct. It is important. It’s much less important than cultural factors but it is still important. And housing costs are absolutely the key to affordable family formation.

There are only 3 causes, in increasing order of importance number-wise:
1. Religious vows (which must then mean no sex at all)
2. Physical maladies (including sterility)
3. Mental illness (including feminism)

Freaks of the female population enabled by toxic cultural programming.

There are also people who passionately hate dogs and declare themselves “petfree”.

On that line a fair number of “childfree” women simply get pets as surrogate children.

A traditional society does not produce a female Fields medalist.

Although TBH that one was really an Affirmative Action one.

Far more important are the social and cultural values, which also informs how much you want to educate your girls.

To be honest our problem in the West is too much education for everybody. Education is one of those things that is good in moderation. Too much can be extremely harmful. Higher education should only be available to a very small minority who actually need it.

Too much education is bad for everybody but it’s especially damaging to women. Women do not need higher education. Society does not need women with higher education. Our obsession with fairness is destroying us. We might have a an education system that is fair and offers equal opportunities to women but how much good does that do us if our society is going down the toilet because we’ve ceased to reproduce?

Survival matters more than fairness. Survival will require some very drastic decisions (such as massive cuts to education spending). That isn’t going to happen through the ballot box.

the main goal of feminism has been female work participation, this goal is of course reached in all countries except some muslim countries.

I think that has been true of recent (say since XIX-th century), with the need to insert the urban female population into the industrial workforce.

However if we’re looking further back in time, at mostly rural societies, all commoner women were working, with and like the rest of the able-bodied family members. That was agricultural work but real work. Not meaningless cubicle busy-work. And yet there was no feminism in those times.

Therefore there must be another driving cause than just economic needs, to explain the rise of such a toxic ideology like feminism.

When in doubt it’s akway a good first approximation to blame in on the Jews, no matter what the subject.

Historically, cities have been HUGE population sinks. A high degree of urbanization is a surefire route to demographic decline.

Cities used to be population sinks because prior to modern sanitation the death rates were astronomical.

So why exactly does urbanization still lead to population decline? Why do cities encourage low birth rates? I’m sure we can all think of lots of plausible explanations but do we actually know the real answer?

There’s a lot of unreported births in the countryside, so there is some evidence for higher fertility than the reported by the NBS. 17 million babies a year are a lot of babies.

But yeah, the picture looks bleak. China has lost a great chance to promote early death of its elderly population through eager consumption of tobacco and adulterated booze; but nah. They’re on a death spiral of overentitled geezers and feminist women who just won’t have babies if their husbands arent rich and the kids are guaranteed a place at Qinghua.

It basically is. Parsimony is surprisingly good at explaining trends at times.

Some ideas:
1. More social interactions leads to increased nervousness and general rebelliousness?
2. A less natural environment favors ideological detachment from reality?
3. The struggle for survival is harsher in cities due to increased competition because of population density?
4. Jews?

I suspect it has to do with cortisol levels.

As I understand it, the One Child Policy was itself inspired by the neo-Malthusian gloom of those times, adjusted for Western intellectual trends coming a decade late to the Communist world; Paul R. Ehrlich had published his famous(ly wrong) book Population Bomb a decade earlier, in 1968.

I’ve got an interesting excerpt from 1978 book Class about the overpopulation scare in the UK:

At the beginning of the ‘seventies the small-is-beautiful brigade mounted a campaign to bring down the birthrate. Family Planning Association supporters brandished condoms outside the House of Commons and at parties sidled up bossily to women who’d just had babies saying, ‘Two’s your ration.’ Middle-class lefties were rumoured to be concealing third babies in attics rather than display evidence of such social irresponsibility. Disapproving ads appeared in cinemas showing defeated slatterns in curlers trailing herds of whining children along the streets. ‘Superdad or Scrounger?’ demanded the Daily Mirror when a man on Social Security proudly produced his twenty-first child.

In the face of economic gloom, a rocketing dole queue and mothers wanting to get back to work, people probably thought twice about bringing more children into the world. Whatever the cause, the campaign worked. The birthrate in the United Kingdom dropped by 30 per cent. The working classes in particular, having discovered the pill, curbed production dramatically and at the last count were only producing 2.16 children per family, while the upper-middles were down to 1.7. Indeed, the higher you go up the social scale, the smaller the family, although the aristocracy tend to run unpatriotically riot, probably because, as Evelyn Waugh pointed out, ‘Impotence and sodomy are socially O.K., but birth control is flagrantly middle-class.’ One can’t imagine an aristocrat having a vasectomy.

Interesting that Nazi policies to promote marroage and increase fertility were succesful.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2769448?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

He is. A northerner, I believe.

Regarding Iran and China, their fertility rates are likely higher then many estimates.

Iran as of 2017 had a CBR of around 19/1000, considering its current age structure it is highly unlikely it has a TFR of only 1.7, other countries with CBR’s of around 20/1000 and a similar age structure all have TFR’s of around 2.1 to 2.4.

With regard to China it is basically impossible that it has a CBR of 12.4/1000 and a TFR of below 1.5, comparing other countries with a similar age structure, its TFR is likely around 1.7.

Somewhat off-topic, for all the talk about low Chinese birthrates, China has a CBR then every single major western nation, even the US in 2017 had a CBR of only 11.9/1000. China’s demographic situation is better then basically every major power currently in the world something that the media never seem to realize as they predict impending demographic doom for China. And of course China has huge population to begin with so even if the population stops growing, the amount of human capital that is present in a population of 1.4 billion with a an IQ of above 100 is more then enough for total hegemony if used properly.

Northerner means Mongolian?

Much more important than those stats are the miscegenation and immigration rates, one keeps hearing about the “healthy” demographics of the US or USA from the likes of the Economist, all that “healthy” really means is non whites replacing whites, China is not facing such a mass race replacement, which in the end is the only thing that really matters.

With regard to China it is basically impossible that it has a CBR of 12.4/1000 and a TFR of below 1.5, comparing other countries with a similar age structure, its TFR is likely around 1.7.

I am no expert of Chinese demographics, but how does that square off with four decades of supposedly ruthlessly-enforced one-child policy? Something must give. Is it the CPC not that ruthless after all?

No. Beijing, etc. Northern Chinese as opposed to Southern Chinese such as Guandong. Traditionally considered as taller and more martial people, having fought with the steppe dwellers since times immemorial: wheat-eating with buns and noodles.

The ruthlessness and efficiency of the CCP has always been exaggerated, even by themselves. In practice, China is too large to be North Korea’nized, even if the CCP wanted to do that.

The hoops you have to jump through and bribes you have to pay to get them in a decent school are prohibitive, and what’s more the cities are so polluted you practically have to invest in a fallout shelter type air filter to keep them healthy.

Fake news from someone who also is advocating for a global confederation to isolate China.

“Status-adjusted child rearing” cost is indeed prohibitive, however. That’s going to be a problem in all modernized society, and more so in China due to the ever spiraling virtue signaling of status with education.

So, was it in fact always possible to have more kids, without having to endure too much retaliation as a result?

Two personal anecdotes:
(1) I remember having seen a documentary, circa 2009, that was circulated in the form of DVDs amongst Catholics about massive-scale forced sterilizations, or permanently-implanted abortifacient hardware at the time of first birth without the woman’s consent. That DVD was published by some Catholic outfit, JP2/pro-life kind of. According to said documentary (that was intelligently presented), the UN was in cahoots with the Chinese commies to effectively pave the way for what would become a model campaign for the world as a whole. Was it all lies/exaggeration? No longer being a (Roman) Catholic now, I am viewing these things with not a grain, but a block of salt nowadays. That said I would like that such policies be applied to the African continent.

(2) Back in about 2010, I was nonchalantly wandering on the sidewalk in a large US city park, with my pregnant wife, pushing a stroller with a baby in it, and 3 other kids in tow. At some point a bus stopped and park a few meters ahead of us. Then about 30-40 Chinese people walk out and surrounded us, making pictures, kind of congratulating us, counting the kids, and talking to each other in complete excitement. That was a very odd moment, but we took it easily, and gracefully accepted to be pictured with some of the older chink ladies. We thought we really had made their day, and I think that we are now in some photo albums in the RPC. In retrospect I find this story quite sad — not for us, but for them. You could tell in this women’s eyes that they were seeing something that, no doubt, they would have loved for themselves. Sad.

Part of it has to be economic.

As the agrarian portion of the economy decreased, so did the motivation to have children: the turnaround time for children to become economically productive in an agricultural society is 10 years or so, so it became easy to justify having children(especially without easy access to contraception). As the importance of child labor decreased, so does the value of children.

At the point that children are net costs and respectability is conveyed through accumulation of wealth, it becomes increasingly less worthwhile to have children but increasingly worthwhile to have the other adult member of your family work(your wife, basically). Especially as the domestic economy decreases in importance, status is gained instead by maximizing cash flow and through markers of wealth. This simultaneously drives up the cost of housing as family incomes increase, and increases the “median” status needed to be respectable. If it was once respectable to have one beater car and a two-bedroom house, it is now only respectable to have a four bedroom house, and two new cars, for example. As children are expensive, this means that childbirth must both be delayed in order to signal respectability, as well as fewer children overall.

As humans are primarily status seeking creatures, these drives along with the ability to suppress any “accidents” with birth control and easy access to abortion ultimately serve to make the production of children marginal and especially discouraged in urban environments with its stress-inducing crowding, heavy status signaling needs, and significant living costs.

Notably, effective disposable income has not actually increased in the US for almost thirty years while more total hours have been worked by households through female participation in the workforce(and overtime). Add the value of increasing debt, and arguably it has been a downhill progression economically. East Asian countries are also known for extremely long hours of work, and heavy signaling associated with such; this was probably less harmful when work was done at home(including for men, due to farm work) but the modern economy moves work outside of home and makes dilligence antagonistic to familial life, rather than complementary of it.

This is not great in the extremely long run, but humans(even the best of us) are largely only made to predict for the medium term. So we optimize for that. Individuals with extremely short time planning actually do better at this, because they won’t be planning for education(or even birth control), they’re just having sex and letting the accidents happen as usual.

I want an aggressive, anti-American Communist regime isolated, and you see that as a problem because…?

I really don’t know why the PRC gets a pass for following the same ideology as Cuba and North Korea, especially now that the Cold War has been over for more than a generation.

Was Tokyo a population sink before the American population? I kind of doubt it. Probably had lesser fertility than the countryside, but I bet it was above replacement.

Before WWII, Tokyo had a fertility rate of around 3-4 children per woman while Japan was closer to 5.

After the war, fertility collapsed in Japan.

Lately, the situation has improved from extremely bad to very bad:

Don’t forget that China is also corrupt to the bones. So there are ample ways to circumvent the controls, especially so in the countryside. Many newborn girls were simply not registered and only appear now in the census.

OT

Armata mass production further delayed and/or cancelled, apparently it’s too expensive.

https://defence-blog.com/army/russian-armata-modern-tanks-production-delayed-due-high-cost.html

I want an aggressive, anti-American Communist regime isolated, and you see that as a problem because…?

Because it is:

1) Not actually communist
2) Along with Russia, arguably one of the few states that is solidly anti-Cathedral
3) America, unfortunately, has become the side of the Great Gay Disco.

Tokyo still, oddly, has one of the better TFRs in Japan(which isn’t saying much). I believe its only lower than Okinawa, which has the best TFR around 1.8(IIRC a bit higher) or so, who are not ethnically Yamato Japanese.

Tokyo, alongside Hokkaido, actually has the lowest fertility rate in Japan and are the only prefectures below 1.3 children per woman. Okinawa is at 1.95.

Generally, the rates are a bit higher in the south than in the north.

You can check here the data for 2017 (on page 6/7):

https://www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/saikin/hw/jinkou/geppo/nengai17/dl/kekka.pdf

Xi Jinping is most assuredly a Communist, and he could care less about the “cathedral”, and certainly can and does work with American elites against the interests of most Americans so as to weaken the US as a whole.

BTW, if you go to China for a while, you’ll notice a strange phenomenon. Govt. run media outlets will enthusiastically promote the worst of the cathedral narrative, using films and shows made right here in the USA by the most degenerate anti-American trash, even though your typical Chinese has no interest in them, and would rather watch something like Walker, Texas Ranger (that show was extremely popular in China).

The regime also brutalizes innocent, faithful Christians, who are among the best behaved of the Chinese, allows its officials to steal at will from humble ordinary Chinese who are trying to improve their lot in life, and tolerates the most outrageous vice and exploitation so that it can skim the profits.

Xi Jinping and his “president for life” status marks a sharp turn away from progress toward rule of law to rule of man, and this is a development that Americans should view with great trepidation. Chinese themselves should be even more worried — dictators usually end up causing enormous trauma to their subjects.

A free China governed according to rule of law could be the greatest source of good in the world. I believe this could be one of the main pillars of the salvation of mankind, but China is going in the other direction, and this must be resisted.

Finally, yes, America has lots of problems. Maybe they will be the end of us (although I doubt it). But they just don’t compare to what’s going on in China. I’d recommend you visit China, and make sure you spend lots of time outside the showcase city centers. Get to know the common people – the laobaixing – and listen to their stories. Go spend some time with peasants, too. The peasants are very hospitable, generous and kind people. Learn about how they are treated by those with power. It will give you an entirely new perspective on the PRC.

I lived in China during the Jian Zeming era; the corruption was immeasurably worse than it is now although still it never was as bad as some people make it out to be. Whatever else that can be said about Emperor Xi, he has reigned in a lot of excesses and it actually looks like a place with direction now. The extension of the GFW is the most annoying thing, of course.

And so far, I haven’t seen a rainbow flag flying outside of Tiananming, but there’s one right outside Berlin’s government buildings. And same sex marriages are not a thing – admittedly in large part to prevent the inevitable abuse of it for hukou, but hey, whatever works.

Sixth Tone is not the voice of the Party; I am not certain if absolute “rule of law” is such a great thing at the end of the day, as it effectively serves to become a bureaucratic vehicle that really is “rule by judges.” Notably, Confucianism is a certain degree of “rule by man” through the existence of normative values.

Peasants are peasants. They can be nice people. They will not be the shining harbingers of a new future.

Thanks.

The one child policy was never universally “ruthlessly” enforced. You are mistaking Western human rights agitprop for reality. For every commies aborted my baby sob story, there was thousands of buy me dinner and give me some cigarettes and booze and I’ll look the other way non story. Fact is, plenty of Chinese still do have multiple children. All of my paternal cousins have siblings and half of my maternal ones do as well. The only reason I didn’t was because of my mother’s extremely late at the time age of giving birth to me (30) and because my father was still working on his PhD and couldn’t afford another and by the time he could, it was too late for my mom. The only sector where enforcement was total was on the party itself. Xi Jinping and all the other members of the Politburo have only 1 child each (well legally recognized child that is).

And there is, indeed, an example of a free, democratic Chinese state of Taiwan. It could be best described as: glamorous dysfunction, except its not very glamorous with its 1980s era buildings these days. Glorious peasant takeover has effected great…improvements in cargo culting.

I think it’s sensible – like they are sounding more responsibly and logical this year.

Initial plan was to produce 2,300 by 2020.

But is there need suddenly for 2,300 new tanks – after they created hundreds of modernized T-72 B3?

Currently there are almost 3000 active tanks (mainly T-72, but also hundreds of T-90).

In addition, already hundreds of T-72 B3 upgraded in the last few years, and they are equal specifications than any NATO tanks, which would be its opposition.

Upgrading to T-72 B3 costs more than ten times less than each T-14.

–

T-14 costs 250 million rubles each (enough to build a couple of schools for each tank).

So original plan was to produce 2,300 by 2020 – costing 575 billion rubles.

–

NATO itself has already much more minor tank forces deployed in Europe.

Germany greatly decreased its tank forces to around 300. Countries like Poland have 200 tanks. Hungary have 34 T-72s.

Latvia has 0 tanks.

Lithuania has 0 tanks.

Estonia has 0 tanks.

So is there need for 2,300, even if you were preparing for war?

Deterrence effect itself of building 2,300 tanks would be very large, it is true.

But the already demonstrated, technological capacity to design and build such a tank as T-14, which is significantly more ambitious than any Western tank projects – is surely itself already quite a lot of deterrence.

The modern dividing line between North and South China is the Huai river, nestled between the better known Yellow and Yangtze rivers. A more accurate dividing line would be a north, a center encompassing the southern parts of the traditional north and the northern parts of the traditional south, and a southern coast that is basically Fujian and Guangdong. Guangxi and Yunnan aren’t traditionally Southern so much as recently (17th century) acquired frontier zones.

The historic north is really the territory of Zhou ducal states of the Spring and Autumn period.

Jacob Rees Mogg is a notoriously upper class politician in the UK, he is famous for having six children.

The regime also brutalizes innocent, faithful Christians, who are among the best behaved of the Chinese, allows its officials to steal at will from humble ordinary Chinese who are trying to improve their lot in life, and tolerates the most outrageous vice and exploitation so that it can skim the profits.

Have you been to a Chinese Church? Many of my relatives in China are Christians and they go to church regularly. I used to be one but don’t consider myself a Christian anymore ,although I went to church with them once last year.

I keep reading about how China brutalizes Christians. It is total nonsense. Those had problems with the government because they didn’t follow the laws. For example, building a huge a church on a public land without permit. What do you expect the Chinese government would do? Yes those evil CCP would demolish it. And don’t con people’s money either. That wouldn’t sit well with the CCP. Stuff like this won’t fly in China: “A televangelist wants his followers to pay for a $54 million private jet. It’s his fourth plane.” The CCP wanted to control certain things just like the US government wanted to control certain things. That is why you have Waco siege in the US, and church demolition in China.

And speaking of religion, Chinese Muslims took over the streets in Shanghai to pray. Yes, that was allowed. The CCP, at least in the last 10 years, is a lot more tolerant than you think.

Get to know the common people – the laobaixing – and listen to their stories. Go spend some time with peasants, too. The peasants are very hospitable, generous and kind people. Learn about how they are treated by those with power. It will give you an entirely new perspective on the PRC.

I am a laobaixing. My parents were peasants. When I was a kid, I had only one pair of shoes which I wore during the winter. I walked around bare feet most of time. People in my area were poor, which was not surprising. China was one of the poorest countries in the world. The CCP, with its corruption and other warts, has done a pretty good job the last 30 years. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but giving where the starting point was, (just looked at where China was 100 years ago) it is unreasonable to ask the CCP to accomplish everything in such a short time with such a huge population. Everyone I know complains about the CCP all the time. But deep down, they know the grass is not always greener on the other side, and they know things are getting better each year.

http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/china/overview
Since initiating market reforms in 1978, it has lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty

The country’s poverty rate dropped from 10.2 per cent in 2012 to 3.1 per cent in 2017 which is an impressive progress in poverty reduction, it said.

China aims to eliminate absolute poverty by 2020 as part of the creation of a moderately prosperous society.

There were around 30 million Chinese living below the national poverty line at the end of last year, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Read more at:
//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/62863326.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Many Chinese elites look up to the US for it is a great country. Since 1776, is there a country that has done better than the US? The answer is no. The Chinese elites have watched and studies the US, Singapore and Taiwan since the 80s. Many watched Taiwan with hopeful eyes. Taiwan’s democracy excited them, and they thought China should follow suit if free election worked out well in Taiwan. Unfortunately democracy has become a farce in Taiwan where in-fightings and short team plannings have been detrimental to Taiwan’s development. It is pretty clear at this point that the CCP will not adopt free election any time soon. Not that they didn’t try. They tested voting process in villages and the result wasn’t good. The same people got voted in repeatedly and the corruption was even worse. I was a proponent of free election in China, but I have come to the conclusion after years of studies and travels in China that China, at this point, is better off with the CCP.

Catholicism in action. Waugh (also a Catholic convert, although only aspirationally upper class) had seven.

So in Japan, also the less “intelligent” (by IQ test scores) areas have higher fertility rates than the highest scoring ones (in test scores)

The highest scoring region (Akita prefecture – with an average “IQ score” of 108), has one of the lower fertility rates (between 1.31-1.4).

Akita is this one on the map:

Based on my personal observations over the past 35 years, I can tell you that broad-based economic growth and opportunity is a necessary prerequisite for higher birth rates in the U.S. The Reagan economic boom made it more attractive for the boomers (then mostly in their 30’s) to have kids, as compared to the stagflation 70’s when the U.S. white fertility rate dropped to around 1.6.

Later, Gen Xers started having kids during the late 90’s boom and during the housing bubble of the oughts. This all came to an end with the crash of ’08. If Trump’s economic policies result in another Reagan economic boom, then the fertility rate will go up. Otherwise it will go down.

The other issue with having kids is the cost disease associated with the Big 3 (housing, education, health-care), which is much more of a problem today than in 1985.

It is pointlessly silly to pontificate about the need for people to have kids without promoting broad-based economic growth and addressing the escalating costs of the Big 3.

Peasants are peasants. They can be nice people. They will not be the shining harbingers of a new future.

Peasants endure and they are very good at it.

I would like that such policies be applied to the African continent.

Sure you would.

One can fit 3 Chinas in Africa and still have plenty of room to spare. Barring unforeseen events Africa could end the 21st century with a population of 2 billion or more. That would still be less than half as crowded as China is today.

gracefully accepted to be pictured with some of the older chink ladies.

Real classy aren’t you?

One can fit 3 Chinas in Africa and still have plenty of room to spare. Barring unforeseen events Africa could end the 21st century with a population of 2 billion or more. That would still be less than half as crowded as China is today.

The population density of Africa is not the relevant concern.

The issue is the quality of population, which is abysmally low.

Negroids are a pestilence which destroy everything they come in contact with (unless enslaved), and it is obviously undesirable for this pestilence to grow.

The goal should be a century or two from now for negroids to be preserved solely in wild life reserves, living as hunter-gatherers while being studied by anthropologists and viewed from tourist buses.

Most of the productive arable land in Africa would of course be turned over to cultivation, and cities in Africa would be exclusively inhabited by civilized populations originating in Northern Eurasia.

One can fit 3 Chinas in Africa and still have plenty of room to spare. Barring unforeseen events Africa could end the 21st century with a population of 2 billion or more. That would still be less than half as crowded as China is today.

Then maybe Africans should stay in Africa.

the amount of human capital that is present in a population of 1.4 billion with a an IQ of above 100 is more then enough for total hegemony if used properly.

The Age of AI (artificial intelligence) is coming soon. A few points advantage in human IQ won’t make a difference then.

Then maybe Africans should stay in Africa.

And Europeans should stay in Europe?

(unless enslaved)

They destroy things then too

They mostly do nowadays, colonialism ended decades ago.

Europeans ended up in Africa not just as colonials but also as slaves.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_slavery

There are more Europeans in Africa than there are Africans in Europe.

Bliss, I am glad that you acknowledge the fact that you owe us reparations.

Ukraine has about 700 T-64BM and BV’s, and about 300 T-72s, according to Russian wiki.:

There are more Europeans in Africa than there are Africans in Europe

The difference is that Portuguese etc. in places like Angola are legal immigrants with useful skills…and nobody would entertain the idea that Africans should just hand over their countries to Europeans. There’s no equivalence to what’s going on in Europe with the entire asylum, open borders and “antiracism” business where powerful establishment forces are de facto enabling an invasion.
As for long-established communities of European origin, it seems to me most have dwindled since colonial times. There’s South Africa of course, but even if the “white genocide” meme may be somewhat exaggerated, I don’t think that’s really a positive example of successful black-white tolerance and cooperation.

and nobody would entertain the idea that Africans should just hand over their countries to Europeans.

Nobody?

I for one don’t believe in the right of blacks to govern themselves, live in freedom, or to reproduce.

There’s no equivalence to what’s going on in Europe with the entire asylum, open borders and “antiracism” business

You are right, in an ass-backwards way. There is no equivalence between Africans immigrating to Europe and Europeans doing this to Africa:

https://africanquarters.com/forgotten-european-atrocities-in-africa/

That’s not exactly current affairs though, so I don’t see your point, unless it’s the usual “Africans deserve to take over Europe because of what the evil white man supposedly did 100 years ago”.
Anyway, this discussion is off-topic and not going to be illuminating, so I’ll drop out. Maybe you can discuss the issue with Thorfinnsson 🙂

Maybe you can discuss the issue with Thorfinnsson 🙂

That guy is pure evil. Which of course brings a smile to your German face. Sad.

The greed of the Congo’s overlords knew no boundaries, and the lengths to which they went to gratify it were likewise extreme. Just as Christopher Columbus had done in Hispaniola 400 years earlier, Leopold II imposed quotas on every man in his realm for production of raw materials.
Men who failed to meet their ivory and gold quota even once would face mutilation, with hands and feet being the most popular sites for amputation. If the man could not be caught, or if he needed both hands to work, Forces Publique men would cut the hands off of his wife or children.

Without the visionary actions of Leopold II, I wouldn’t have Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires today.

These tires alone increased my grip on the skidpad by .02 G.

It’s important to have the right priorities.

The goal should be a century or two from now for negroids to be preserved solely in wild life reserves, living as hunter-gatherers

Sounds like paradise. Are whites allowed to join if they want?

I like this idea of reserves for people who want different lifestyles. You can have modern cities with technology based on consumerism and economic competition and others can have a hunter gatherer lifestyle if they want.

I make great effort to go backpacking and hiking and if the dominant society would let me live like that year round with a few like minded friends, free of the modern world, campfires under the stars…

You got my vote Thor! When u starting your campaign already?

I am sure you are more useful lying on a dissection board. You might even find it enjoyable.

Plenty of whites living like this already in the Intermountain West, with the occasional “gathering” of provisions at sporting goods stores. They also defend their territory, hence the popularity of GET OUT bumper stickers in the great state of Montana.

I’ll launch my campaign in 2024 with the bold platform of using thermal depolymerization to convert retards like Bliss into valuable minerals and hydrocarbons.

Yeah, but they still have “jobs” and are tied to the modern economy, they aren’t true hunter gatherers. They are only “weekend warriors”. I can do that in upstate NY. I want the real deal. Montana would be amazing as a site for a HG reservation – let’s make it happen!

Whooa, I thought we were only forcing Bliss into an HG lifestyle (which I’m sure he’d enjoy) – I dont know about converting him to minerals.

I doubt you could learn anything useful by dissecting me – remember, you want to study people who are into technology, etc, so you can better optimize whatever it is you’re always optimizing. If you dissected me you’d just learn which genes code for love of nature or some such useless thing.

No, it’s the Montana HG reservation that Thor will create that I must go to.

I want an aggressive, anti-American Communist regime isolated

I assume you’re talking about the U.S. Government. And I agree. Washington should certainly be isolated.

If you dissected me you’d just learn which genes code for love of nature or some such useless thing.

But it would be a wonderful experience.

Which of course brings a smile to your German face. Sad.

No much of an argument here on your part.

Worth noting that South Africa under Verwoerd prohibited television as he considered it to be destructive of community and family

.

Interesting. I didn’t realize that was a political policy. I thought it was developmental. They did have scripted radio shows. If I recall, they reproduced some old American radio shows, from the same scripts, some 30 or 40 years later.

Radio is probably a harder medium for Leftists to hijack than TV, public radio aside.

Those were pretty terrible things, done to Africans by other Africans not ordered or supervised by Europeans

http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/07/24/mythologies-about-leopolds-congo-free-state/

having fought with the steppe dwellers since times immemorial

And I would bet that they also interbred with them to some extent, often not so willingly!

Before WWII, Tokyo had a fertility rate of around 3-4 children per woman while Japan was closer to 5.

That was probably the peak fertility of Japan in recorded history, especially if one counted children surviving to adulthood.

Well, he put a smiley there when suggesting I engage with that evil pomposity Thugfinnson.

I know german-reader’s opinion on such matters is not much different from the Thug’s. Still, I take back the “German” in that post. That was wrong. Not all Germans fit the Nazi stereotype.

However it is undeniable that the colonial germans in Africa were genocidal Nazis a generation before the real Nazis came to be:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

The Herero and Nama genocide was a campaign of racial extermination and collective punishment that the German Empire undertook in German South West Africa (now Namibia) against the Ovaherero and the Nama. It is considered the first genocide of the 20th century.

In 2004, the German government recognized and apologized for the events, but ruled out financial compensation for the victims’ descendants. In July 2015, the German government and the speaker of the Bundestag officially called the events a “genocide” and “part of a race war”. However, it has refused to consider reparations.

“I was present when the Herero were defeated in a battle in the vicinity of Waterberg. After the battle all men, women, and children who fell into German hands, wounded or otherwise, were mercilessly put to death. Then the Germans set off in pursuit of the rest, and all those found by the wayside and in the sandveld were shot down and bayoneted to death. The mass of the Herero men were unarmed and thus unable to offer resistance. They were just trying to get away with their cattle.”

Trotha gave orders that captured Herero males were to be executed, while women and children were to be driven into the desert where their death from starvation and thirst was to be certain; Trotha argued that there was no need to make exceptions for Herero women and children, since these would “infect German troops with their diseases”, the insurrection Trotha explained “is and remains the beginning of a racial struggle”. Regardless, German soldiers regularly raped young Herero women before killing them or letting them die in the desert.

Upon the arrival of new orders at the end of 1904, prisoners were herded into concentration camps, where they were given to private companies as slave labourers or exploited as human guinea pigs in medical experiments…..Prisoners were used for medical experiments and their illnesses or their recoveries from them were used for research.

The Herero genocide has commanded the attention of historians who study complex issues of continuity between the Herero genocide and the Holocaust. It is argued that the Herero genocide set a precedent in Imperial Germany that would later be followed by Nazi Germany’s establishment of death camps.

According to Benjamin Madley, the German experience in South West Africa was a crucial precursor to Nazi colonialism and genocide. He argues that personal connections, literature, and public debates served as conduits for communicating colonialist and genocidal ideas and methods from the colony to Germany. Tony Barta, an honorary research associate at La Trobe University, argues that the Herero genocide was an inspiration for Hitler in his war against the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and others described as “non-Aryans”.

According to Clarence Lusane, Eugen Fischer’s medical experiments can be seen as a testing ground for later medical procedures used during the Nazi Holocaust.

Mahmood Mamdani argues that the links between the Holocaust and the Herero genocide are beyond the execution of an annihilation policy and the establishment of concentration camps and that there are ideological similarities in the conduct of both genocides

I think that Thor is trolling us, even so, I see a lot of daylight between him and GR.

Germans didn’t do anything in Africa that other nationalities didn’t do.

It’s okay to be an African partisan, but you really should understand that deadly and mortal conflict between groups is who we (humans) are. Look at the centuries of conflict in Europe (still ongoing), look at the Hutus and Tutsis, look at the Nuer and Dinka, look at Bantu speakers against non-Bantu speakers, look anywhere in the world at any time in history including today.

The ever repeated myth that Africa could substain much higher population.

First: Sahara

Second: Sahel zone -> very arid, conditions are getting worse and that forces the nomads with their cattle to go further South and there are already communal violence between farmers and cattle-herders from Ghana to Kenya.

Third: Central Africa (Congo etc.) -> Despite the jungle, the soil is actually low quality.

Fourth: Institutional/Social memory -> The Tiger economies were already centralized countries with an emperor/king/sultan – privy council – all the way down to the local official/rural gentry. SSA had barely tribal federations. The Communist Party of China’s local secretary is just the modern-day imperial mandarin sent from Beijing.

Food: Some countries (Southern Africa) are able to feed themselves or could be with modern/efficient methods (Simbabwe), but many are already beyond their carrying capacity (Niger, Egypt, Chad).

Fifth: Corruption exist everywhere. But State-Capture is mainly are Arab/African/Central Asian affair.

IMHO: You will see humanitarian catrastrophies in MENA, SSA that will make the famines/civil wars of 1980s look like a picnic. The Syrian/Yemeni civil warand the migration of Young Angry Men to Europe is only the beginning.

Germans were terrible in Namibia but were the best of the colonial powers in their other colonies. Their approach elsewhere was one of building up their Africans to become sort of self-sufficient African “Prussians.” They invested massively in education and hospitals (Swahili word for school is taken form German). This investment paid off in the brilliant performance of outnumbered German-led African troops against the Western powers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_African_Campaign_(World_War_I)

It is ridiculous that the Belgians (given their own terrible history) were given German-African lands as a consequence of a war allegedly fought for democracy and liberty.

Not that I’m one to shed crocodile tears for Africans, but the case of Belgium is distorted. Worth noting that the Belgians stamped out Arab slaving in the Congo. If not for Leopold II and the Force Publique, all of Central Africa would’ve fallen under the control of the Sultanate of Zanzibar and become one giant Arab slave farm.

After passing from Leopold II’s personal ownership, the Belgian Congo became something of a model colony in Africa. Of course within weeks of independence it collapsed into chaos and civil war.

This and other episodes of the end of European rule are documented in the excellent 1966 documentary Addio Africa, which should be required viewing in all public schools to disabuse people of the evil notions of negrophilia and racial equality:

Regarding your third, I think this could be addressed with industrial level farming – by using fertilizers. Example, Brazil’s Savannah – which was for most of history considered a wasteland. I believe they only had to add lime or some other simple thing.

IMO, there are two, somewhat, remote possibilities of a soft landing.

One is Chinese-run agritrade. Basically, the Chinese run Africa’s arable land in exchange for something profitable to them – maybe minerals or some of the produce.

Second, which seems less likely due to HBD (but perhaps still possible), is that Africans get really serious about reform. I think technology could pick up a lot of slack in this department – there are clever ways to encourage honesty and functionality. The question for me is it possible for the institutional will to exist – at the very least you need good infrastructure. The right conditions (Malthusian timebomb) might provide a real impetus. But, then again, perhaps, it is simply not possible.

Well, he put a smiley there when suggesting I engage with that evil pomposity Thugfinnson.

It was a joke, but you don’t seem to have much of a sense of humour.
Regarding German colonial atrocities, sure, some of them were among the more extreme colonialist crimes. The continuity thesis (colonial atrocities of imperial Germany as precursor and inspiration for Nazi policies) is controversial though, and the entire issue is highly politicized. In any case, I find your attempt at guilt-tripping tiresome. There’s no way colonial atrocities of more than century ago could with reason be seen as legitimating African mass immigration to Europe today, unless you’re thinking in categories of payback and vengeance.

Something like this may happen in Europe soon.

The war of numbers already exists on the level of immigration – Muslims support it with the expectation that they will gain full control of Europe. There is a real anger – a glint in the eye – when it is opposed.

The Age of AI (artificial intelligence) is coming soon. A few points advantage in human IQ won’t make a difference then.

There are some interesting advances on machine learning, but the central problem of advanced general intelligence seems as elusive now as it was twenty years ago. All other examples of machine learning at this moment are largely domain specific within a limited problem set, the “forklifts winning at weightlifting” issue and are much less efficient than organic systems. At this moment, genetic engineering for intelligence actually seems more likely.

We can’t seem to fully replicate a flatworm behavior, for example, despite complete neural emulation; but we can increase BDNF hormone expression artificially in the brain(and it has positive effect on learning), there’s an identified gene that increases BDNF as well. Either direct increase of the hormone, or editing the gene into hosts will seem to have positive effects.

There are likely probable ways to combine the two, though, and mechanically aid cognitive performance(transcranial direct stimulation, mechanical telepathy, etc). The “wetware” component will probably remain a part of our generation at least.

The normative level of tribal politics is genocide. If Europeans hadn’t shown up when they did, I doubt there would as many tribes in Africa as there are now. But that could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on whether you are an African pan-nationalist.

industrial level farming

Sure in parts of Africa it’s already the case, but the President (for Life) needs to stay away from the Mugabe virus.

Chinese-run agritrade

Already happening, but not limited to Chinese only.

The problem is that modern industrial farming doesn’t need that many labourers if you used cutting edge. The technology companies are already running autonoumous system, driver-less tractor and sensor-controlled sprinklers. Those prototypes will soon reach series-production.

Yes you could feed 12 billions already, but what incentives do you give the investors and can unemployed people even afford the food.

Africans get really serious about reform

Some countries like Ethopia, Kenya, Ghana and Botswana are struggling but they are pulling ahead. They need a nitro-boost. They will defend their borders – ruthlessly. Mark my words!

But the gorillas like Congo-Kinshasa, Nigeria and small flies like Niger might collapse under their own (demographic) weight.

There is no equivalence between Africans immigrating to Europe and Europeans doing this to Africa

True, the mass immigration into Europe by Africans is profoundly worse and more destructive than anything that happened in Africa in the past. Nobody really cares about your stupid concern trolling as it is clear that the demographic destruction that Europe is facing did not happen in Africa. There are still Africans in Africa, in fact their numbers exploded because of colonialism, on the other hand whites are facing extinction.

It is ridiculous that the Belgians (given their own terrible history)

I already posted a link debunking the Belgian Shoah in the thread

I recently read David van Reybrouck’s Congo. The epic history of a people. Van Reybrouck comes across as kind of left-wing and in general has a lot of sympathy for the Congolese, but even he is extremely sceptical of the more extreme claims about the Congo Free State (genocide, 10 million dead etc.).
In any case, there was a large humanitarian campaign, and at least the worst abuses were ended when Belgium took over direct rule in 1908.

The reason I mention China specifically is that I believe they alone have a possibility of domestic political support for maintaining their investment and preventing confiscations. Just the possibility – not the certainty.

You bring up a good objection: unemployment. I’ve mentioned it before, but blacks move into the Maghreb and into Yemen, and from Haiti into the DR, because they have greater opportunity for work in those places than their own. There may be some commodity that doesn’t require consumer-level exchange, but can be a medium of trade between governments, like fissionables. Of course, stability would remain a serious problem and handicap to such trade.

I don’t think there is anyone who believes that a city like Lagos can get to 88 million. What will happen to Nigeria is a very interesting question. It will be easy to shut off travel into North Africa, IMO, with the right resolve. The geography favors isolating sub-Sahara.

In my opinion, it comes down to 2 or three things..

1. women, as sex/gender, are more members of a kind than they are individuals. The Talmud says something like (quoting from memory): “Women are a separate people”; Michel de Montaigne, a man perhaps completely unacceptable to modern feminist mind said that women were not fully human. He equated them with nature & nature’s processes and thought they were lacking in “higher” mental pursuits & non-egoic strivings. Although Montaigne was one of the fathers of modern Western mind- I think he is, along with Shakespeare, the first progenitor of intellectual/spiritual modernity- he remains safely in the tradition of male reductionism re females. If only Indians, Muslims, Chinese, …could have read him 500 years ago, they would have agreed. Women are mostly determined by their “biology” which does not leave much space for individualism & non-biological creativity.

2. this leads me to a rather tenuous association: when I compare Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Pentateuch’s rendition of females (Leah, Rebecca, Rachel, Sarah, ..) they all seem like sex-procreation machines without individuality; their entire “meaning of life” is to get knocked up & to give birth to as many children as possible.

On the other hand, ancient Greeks- the best of their writers- treat women as individuals, especially Sophocles & Euripides. But, even a man’s man like Aeschylus give us unforgettable Clytemnestra in “Oresteia”. Of course, these women were seen from male perspective- but they are ravishing. Is it something in Western mind, that all whites/Europeans have inherited, that pushes for individualism, however intermittently? That gives women potentiality for individualization, which they themselves would not have the power nor will to obtain or fight for? Is individualism “genetically” Western thing, while others assimilate only aspects of it, only in portions they can digest?

So- generally, women go with the flow.

It would explain why it is natural that women, wherever they can break free from idiotic routine of housewife life, prefer to have not many children, mostly 1 or 2. This is the same for educated women in France, Italy, Russia, China, Japan, Sweden, Canada,..

Only Israel seems to be different (unlike US Jews). Why? There, not only religious female nuts, but even Harvard PhD psychologists, pediatricians,… may have 4 or 5 children. How so?

I guess this is because:

a) they go with the flow, and in this case it is nationalism & demographic steeplechase with Muslim Arab natives

b) perhaps even secular Israeli Jewish culture is, basically, not fully Western? Maybe both men & women remain refurbished Mid-Easterners?

Be as it may, only Western men, from Paris to Petrograd, from London to Ottawa and Buenos Aires, not only let, but actively push individuality on their females. So, low birth rate in the West (Sweden, Poland, ..) is a conflation of male individualism & female wish for an easier, more gratifying life without fussing around too many children who’re constantly screaming & nagging. In other corners of earth (Japan, China, modernized Iran,..) it is just a second component.

While, the natural condition among Africans, most Mestizos & Arab browns seems to remain female procreational animalism as described in the Pentateuch.

In both cases, women go with the flow, either having post-modern pseudo-individual fun & not having babies or pumping out babies because that’s their natural position in the chain of life.

If you live in Middle East with millions of uncivilized Arabs both inside and outside your country

Need to have a serious sit down with your real estate agent…

Peace.

HiI am pretty sure that Montaigne did not say that, or that you’re distorting it somehow.

Do you have a quote for that? I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

Montaigne is often misrepresented as the father of modernity, even though he was a Taoist.

Montaigne is a pleasure reserved for the few. The modern mind is out of sympathy with him.

Anyways, quote?

Also, since the centerpiece of Montaignes philosophy was to go with the flow and be natural, then he was subtly complimenting women, if he said that.

Michel de Montaigne, a man perhaps completely unacceptable to modern feminist mind said that women were not fully human

If he said this, then his father did not beat him enough for disrespecting his mother.

Those societies that refuse to recognize the immense innate spiritual capacity in women and those that do not give them a proper outlet for such will eat themselves alive for underestimating what the word “mother” means.

Peace.

I think these stories about the demographic demise of China are vastly exaggerated.

Last year they had around 18 million children – which is pretty much the same as the combined total of the EU and the entirety of the Americas. If repeated each year for the total of a Chinese life expectancy (let’s say around 75 years) then this produces a population of 1.2-1.3 billion, which is more or less the current population.

Now of course the number of births will decrease as the age group pyramids get less bottom-heavy (unless TFR increases) but even if TFR stays the same the Chinese will still be pumping out 13-14 million babies in 50 years time. Considering Russia is happy with 1.8 million these days, rest assured the Chinese will still be having more than enough to maintain civilisational cohesion and strength in numbers. Of course, if nothing changes in 150 years then you can start worrying but that’s pointless.

whites are facing extinction

Indeed. White babies are quite adorable – why don’t they want more of them?

Peace.

Having them is necessary but not sufficient, with mass immigration there is a near endless source of non whites entering. Then there is the bigger problem of miscegenation (heavily propagandized by Hollywood and other jew dominated media), what is the point of having 10 white children if they end up producing brown offspring themselves? The solution is mass deportations and probably much more drastic measures than that.

And I don’t want peace, peace is probably the worst thing for white people right now.

I don’t support mass immigration so I’m fine with shutting that down.

problem of miscegenation

That goes back to my original question.

The solution is mass deportations and probably much more drastic measures than that.

Possibly – I honestly don’t know what the solution is because I’m not really sure what the goal is…but that’s something for the White populations of the West to come to some sort of understanding on.

Peace.

He changes his perspective, but the dominant tone remains of equating women with “nature” (although, to be fair, Montaigne remains ambivalent about “nature” & its position). I wouldn’t say he said they were not human, biologically (after all, he was not lunatic). Just, it was a value judgment, and I think this is summed up pretty well here: https://archives.columbusstate.edu/gah/1989/119-130.pdf

As for good or bad, going with the flow is dominant world-view that has been leaving the world in the dust. Simply- West is the best.

The West is best, other views of the world… none of that matters any more mow that I’ve been informed I can live in a HG reservation in Montana.

As they say, you do you, Kaldian, you do you, and I will do me.

Israel seems to be different (unlike US Jews). Why? There, not only religious female nuts, but even Harvard PhD psychologists, pediatricians,… may have 4 or 5 children. How so?

It’s an interesting topic.

At the same time, I think answer to mystery, is very understandable and quite simple explanation – when see the desire of different communities to not be outnumbered, and talking openly about each other as a “demographic threat”.

It’s not only Arabs threatening to secular public, but also religious Jews (even though both these population’s now have falling birthrates in Israel – from very high starting point).

Arab population inside Israel was historically one of the fastest growing in world. It grew from a small number in 1948, to large number of today (even despite millions of Jews immigrating to Israel, Muslim share of population increased).

Even a million people immigrating from the Soviet Union in the 1990s, only slows a trend of increasing Islamization of demographics in Israel.

–

A civilized person in Israel, is under dual pressure of living directly mixed together with (1) Palestinian Arabs/Muslims (one of the world’s most threatening/uncivilized populations which would destroy a normal lifestyle in a developed country, and which is now over 20% of the internal population of the country). At the same time, they are also mixed with (2) growing populations of extremist Jewish religious cults (who want to return the country to medieval superstition- about 10% of the population of country belonging to most extreme and primitive form of Jewish cult, Haredi Judaism).

Place where everyone is living right next to each other, in a geographically small area, so all demographic threats are made visible in a way which is not in large countries (where people are much more geographically separate, and demographic threats are only abstract).

Modern people, who don’t want to commit to future there also leave as soon as they can to live in America/Canada/Australia/Russia, etc. So not to emigrate for secular couples in Israel, is already a political decision.

–

A paradox trend is birthrates rise, while age of first marriage is high and rising (they have high overall number, even though religious population and Arab population are usually marrying at 21 or below there).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_age_at_first_marriage

Age of first marriage in Israel is significantly higher (few years) than Russia, even though birthrates more than twice higher than Russia. (Other variables are equal, – e.g. abortion, is also available to everyone and funded freely by Israeli healthcare, no different to in Russia)

–

Overall age of mother at birth also increasing at same time as rising fertility rates overall, and the average age at birth is over 30.

The proportion of babies born to women 30 years or older rose from 40.2% in 2000 to 51.5% in 2016.
…

Average age of women giving birth for the first time, meanwhile, was 27.6, with the average age of a second child two years later and the age for a third child two years after that.

A relatively sharp rise in the mother’s average age at birth has also been recorded starting in 2000, rising by a year and five months and reaching 30.4 in 2016. Most of the increase can be attributed to women putting off their first birth well into their late twenties, from 25.7 in 2000 to 27.6 in 2016, as well as to the tendency to give birth after age 30.

–

Finally, birthrates fell to around 2, among the Druze and Arab Christians:

Since 2006, however, Israel’s total fertility rate has been on the rise, and now tops Saudi Arabia…

Israel’s fertility rate is now at its highest level since 1983, when it hit 3.20.

The increase in Israel’s Total Fertility Rate comes despite declines among most non-Jewish demographic groups in Israel.

Among Israeli Jewish women, the TFR reached 3.16, surpassing for the first time in Israel’s history the Arab fertility rate, which fell to 3.11.

Broken down by religion, however, the Muslim TFR remains slightly higher than the Jewish fertility rate at 3.29 – but has declined significantly in recent years. In 1980, the Muslim TFR in Israel was 6.00, but fell to just over 4 by 2005.

The biggest drop, however, has been among members of Israel’s Druze community, which had a TFR of 6.10 in 1980, compared to 2.15 in 2016.

Coverage is only discussing trends though. Druze fertility is now the same as the secular fertility rate in Israel (secular fertility rate in Israel, although now above replacement, is still one of the lowest).