Capitalism seems so inevitable to us that we sometimes fail to notice its explanatory power. In this case, it’s staring us right in the face. The incentive structures of capitalism run counter to those of child-rearing — and as market logics pervade deeper into every aspect of our society, the business of having babies makes increasingly little business sense.
Why have them when they’re just meat-fodder for the 1%, eventually? Hell, these days, the inhuman leeches don’t even wait to “fighting age” before turning them into products, statistics, and propaganda. Still. Gotta be a good citizen and feed the coal chute with our young. Ah, what paradise, this Modern Civilization™.
If the problem is capitalism why is China’s birth rate so low?
None of the replies got it right except the person who deleted theirs saying it’s women having opportunity and education. (And also birth control.)
I know that if I was given the choice not to squeeze a watermelon out of me just because I wanted to bump hams I’d take it every time.
China is capitalist, even though they pretend not to be.
Wrong answer.
“In the CCP’s view, China is not a capitalist country because despite the co-existence of private capitalists and entrepreneurs with public and collective enterprise, the state holds a monopoly on all land ownership and a primary ownership stake in the economy’s largest and strategic enterprises, while the party retains control over the state and the direction of the country.[1] However, many scholars consider the Chinese economic model as an example of authoritarian capitalism,[14][15] state capitalism[16] or party-state capitalism”
China has a population of 1.5 billion people.
And it’s fertility rate is 1.22.
Yes and their government is still concerned about the declining birth rate. By 2050 there will be less than two working adults for every elderly person which will cause huge economic strain.
State capitalism is still capitalism with extra work.
The example in the article is a comparison between east and west Germany, where the east had significantly higher TFR. The author attributes it to better socialized childcare services and more egalitarian attitudes about work and motherhood.
This is a unique natural experiment which makes it difficult to incorporate comparisons with modern China. There are numerous confounding factors comparing between time, culture, and geography, when what the question really is, is whether a capitalist China would have a different TFR than a socialist one.
I would also question how socialist China really is. Things have changed a lot since the Soviet days. Chinese culture seems extraordinarily competitive to a casual observer.
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China works in the context of US led western capitalism and trade war.
China has a cultural legacy of its one child family policy, only recently relaxed.
Just think how much your AI shares will be worth when there are no more humans to replace! The economy is going to go through the roof!
“Ratling Skynet noises”
This article discusses differences between east and west germany before and after reunification.
I would instead like to see a graph of nations on earth comparing fertility with things like economic equality, funds spent on social services, subjective rating of “capitalismness”, etc
Looking down the list of countries by fertility, it seems to me that fertility rate is primarily driven by poverty - the more poor people you have, the higher your fertility. The biggest exception is poor countries that are also formerly communist.
In an April 2025 article in the conservative Catholic First Things Magazine, titled “Feminism Against Fertility,” Darel E. Paul blames the decline in Western fertility rates on young women who wish to remain childless because “they have more important priorities or simply like being single.”
To me, this seems more or less correct. In poorer societies, women have less knowledge, less control over their lives and bodies, and fewer opportunities to do things with their lives other than raise children. So, they have lots of kids.
Women in wealthier nations have access to birth control and know that they have other options in life than raising children. So they don’t have children, and do other things instead. This is an extremely reasonable descision. And it is caused by feminism.
It is so weird that any time birth rates are mentioned, the left wingers are like “well you need to pay for my childcare!” Bullshit! I know a lot of women, and very few of them have had or have plans to have kids. Why? Because it fucks up your body. It ends all the freedom you have in your life. It takes all your money. And sure, they could get a fair chunk of that back if they leaned on their families - but their families live on the other side of the country in podunk towns they don’t want to return to. And also, they don’t want to spend that much time with their families.
It seems like a much more reasonable response would be “Yeah, some of us want to take vacations to Maui instead of being sleep deprived and covered in poo. Falling birth rates are a natural response to people being more free and wealthy. We’ll deal with it just like we deal with literally every problem humanity has ever encountered.”
Beside capitalism, the secular liberalism is also at fault for declining birth rate across the world.
Liberal political ideology is hostile to marriage, family, religion, and the nation because all involve social bonds that impose duties to others. These duties significantly limit individual liberty. Liberalism does not destroy marriage, family, religion, and the nation immediately, as this would cause too much political resistance. So it slowly dissolves these institutions and their constitutive social bonds in a step by step process. Every step confers a new “freedom” or “human right.”
We have now reached the stage where liberal governments feel that the population will accept complete elimination of social bonds between parents and children. This will, of course, be hailed as a triumph for “children’s human rights.”
