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Having more kids always results in having more kids. Raises are to get market value for my labor, not because I have kids. Similarly for lower taxes.
Attempting to optimize policies for the societal production of kids will inevitably result in perverse incentives and the effects of Goodhart's law that I'm personally not willing to subsidize and think is shortsighted. Trying to induce procreation with government policies will likely have marginal success and be susceptible to rampant abuse. Sure, nonintervention might result in ethnic replacement or demographic collapse, but these are common enough over recorded history that I don't have any personal problem with it.
To be clear, I'll attempt to get as much resources as needed for me and mine and advocate for strong families and promote the benefits of strong families, but I view the proper course of government and religion as like Agricultural Extension. Provide advice and best courses of action for individuals to take rather than attempting to compel them to do so.
I agree that individual returns to societal-level advocacy are usually small, but again I don't understand where you draw then line between "advocacy for strong families" versus "Attempting to optimize policies for the societal production of kids".
If having kids is so central, then why spend time trying to get market value for your labor, instead of spending that time having more kids?
Something bad being common doesn't make it OK - it makes it scarier! And both of these things increase the chance that your descendants won't be able to have as many kids as they otherwise would.
I'm an individualist. I will personally advocate for the merits of strong families. I have no opposition to institutional protection of the right to have a family or the promulgation of information that highlights the benefits of strong families, but I have a strong opposition to institutions, by policy, subsidizing the development of families or compelling them through inducements into existence. It's a private affair and should remain a private affair.
Once you let institutions start meddling, it creates further legitimacy for them to do so, which not only creates shaky predicates (" whoops, that subsidy was cut, guess now you're homeless with eleven kids"), but the mission itself can invert and suddenly it's not about expanding families, but limiting their size, which in the same realm as Reproductive Policy which has already been legitimized.
I personally view institutions like Samuel saw kings:
I would not take that offer. I have to live with the institutions that exist (which are in some cases necessary evils) and will take advantage of things like the EITC (as it's my money to begin with), but I'm not going to help create new ones, especially concerning human reproduction.
Augustus tried to boost birth and marriage rates and failed. I'm not optimistic an atomized society filled with perceptions of institutional illegitimacy will have any better luck.
Isn't that exactly what the Haredi (TFR: 8.56) and Amish (TFR:~8.5) do? And I'm personally not a great example; I'm a stay at home parent that got a late start due to cultural conditioning. I'd love to have as many kids as there are stars, but unfortunately that falls to my descendants to fulfill.
I disagree for the same reason that I have trouble sympathizing with ecological antinatalist sentiments. There have been over thirty documented extinction events, yet life is still here. There have been multiple collapses of human population in recorded history, yet humans are still here. Nothing lasts forever except that which never began. It doesn't mean I want to lean into causing an extinction event or collapse, but in my mind, they're not existential threats.
In a clade of generations, sure. But if they survive the bottleneck, well, it's free real estate. Those that survived mass culling events like the Black Death or the Great Jewish Revolt left an inordinate genetic impression on future generations. That my descendants might be a different hue or a lower IQ doesn't really matter to me, as selection pressures are dynamic and if worthwhile will emerge again.
I don't identify as a mammal, European Early Farmer, Churusci, Gothic, Saxon, or what have you, while those are certainly facts that could be said about my heritage.
The only constant between me and the far distant soup that spawned life is that still alive.
If my descendants aren't able to cope with what the future holds and face a reproductive dead end, well, that's how life works. I'll do what I can to equip my kids with the wisdom necessary for understanding the rules of the game and to play it accordingly.
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