Government Meddling

[NuclearFairy]

So I've got an idea for a semi post apocalyptic setting where society has not collapsed, but there has been a massive die off, mostly in the adult population but a bit in the teens as well. With a large gender imbalance, Say something like 5 women to every 1 man, with a lesser imbalance amongst teens. But there are also fertility issues that scientist project might be affecting humans for several generations.

The thing is, I don't want marriages or child rearing to quite be mandatory in the story I'm trying to write, but I do want the government to enact carrot and stick laws to encourage it... However I'm having a hard time thinking up rewards and punishments that aren't just money. Any ideas?

 

[draco519]

So if rewards that aren't money are your thing; a propaganda campaign is going to be necessary. Give humanity a common enemy, maybe? Helldivers or Starship Troopers style. Breed the soldiers of tomorrow so there is an Earth to save.

You could go the religious route. We were supposed to be fruitful and multiply. Divine intervention makes everyone horny and super fertile. Breeding kink paradise on Earth.

 

[Carnevil9]

Nothing wrong with money being the carrot. Heinlein used it in Methuselah's Children. Heinlein also used citizenship and the right to vote as the incentive to join the military in Starship Troopers.

Other than that, you could create incentives for the women. Better status, nicer clothes, nicer housing, whatever; the more kids they have, the more perks they get. I suppose you could create incentives for the men, but let's face it. What man needs an incentive to fuck everything with a pussy?

 

[Husky_Embrace]

I think @draco519 has the right idea. Culture. If people grow up learning they need to reproduce for their country, they are quite likely to do so. This also opens up the changes in society where you'll not be tied down by marriage and child rearing. You could have the children go to a separate centre where they are professionally cared for. That is all the reader needs to know.

The rewards and punishments need to be nothing more than the society itself. A guy not fucking 5 women after he got 19? He'll be a social pariah until he does. It is the same why most people do not fuck behind the backs of their partner, or at least not openly. This is the social control a society enacts on it's own. People want to belong, so they aren't likely to go against it.

The culture is merely steered by the government, letting the society punish the ones out of line by themselves. There will be dissidents, but the amount will be small enough to not need a crackdown.

A government commercial:

<Rows of women, every 5 with a man in front. They all look at the camera, taking off their shirt.>
"I'm doing my part!" the woman in the front shouts gleefully.

<A woman takes off the pants of the man, revealing a big dong that hovers in front of her face, while other women hold the guy in between them.>
"I'm doing my part!" the woman says, grabbing the cock with both hands.

<You see a man fucking a woman, while others crawling up to him to kiss and touch. The man turns to the camera as he shoots his load inside her>
"I'm doing my part!"

 

[Brandnewbuddy]

So I've got an idea for a semi post apocalyptic setting where society has not collapsed, but there has been a massive die off, mostly in the adult population but a bit in the teens as well. With a large gender imbalance, Say something like 5 women to every 1 man, with a lesser imbalance amongst teens. But there are also fertility issues that scientist project might be affecting humans for several generations.

Slept on this one and I think the big thing would be a push for a societal shift and changing views on women getting pregnant.

One way to handle the setting would be making it a space colony. Low population very difficult to recruit more people so they need to make rapid changes.

Anyway, one idea I had came from Robot Jox: in that they actually start a campaign to promote getting pregnant by having big ads of gorgeous pregnant women plastered on buildings. I know you want to avoid carrot and stick but maybe they give recognition awards of women who have lots of kids. Jobs not only can’t fire you if you get pregnant but now they are encouraged to give bonuses.

Movies are made where getting pregnant is always a great thing.

On the guys side, when they turn 18 they have them cum inside a simulated vagina which simulates all the challenges a sperm might face. The difficulty is cranked up and each man is rated on how their sperm did and given a rank based on how many sperm successfully reached the end.

So guy who wasn’t that popular in school now has women lining up as he’s a rank 5: most of his sperm succeeded.

Also maybe it moves to a more communal society: you know who your parents are and siblings (though maybe you get an app which lets you scan someone before fucking just to be sure) but everyone helps raise everybody. With a popular new porn genre being “pod family” (“my pod bro is a rank 5?” “Pods sis asks me to help her get the local maternity award” “pod dad gets a reverse gangbang”)

And if someone is infertile or can’t have kids they can still get points in society by teaching those who can how to fuck or helping out pregnant women

Edit: I also did think how gay lesbian and trans people might get along. I figure to stop any discord trans folk are allowed to transition but the government does encourage them not to get bottom surgeries: “Stacy, we support you fully…but you are a Rank 4 so if you could still contribute. “Don, we’re happy for you. But if your partner and you would like to have one or two more kiddos that would be great”

Gay men could still donate to sperm banks, lesbians would be encouraged to use IVF and would still be eligibility to receive recognition rewards (leading to another porn genre: “my roommate/podmom/podsis knocked me up???”

 

[draco519]

I think @draco519 has the right idea. Culture. If people grow up learning they need to reproduce for their country, they are quite likely to do so. This also opens up the changes in society where you'll not be tied down by marriage and child rearing. You could have the children go to a separate centre where they are professionally cared for. That is all the reader needs to know.

The rewards and punishments need to be nothing more than the society itself. A guy not fucking 5 women after he got 19? He'll be a social pariah until he does. It is the same why most people do not fuck behind the backs of their partner, or at least not openly. This is the social control a society enacts on it's own. People want to belong, so they aren't likely to go against it.

The culture is merely steered by the government, letting the society punish the ones out of line by themselves. There will be dissidents, but the amount will be small enough to not need a crackdown.

A government commercial:

<Rows of women, every 5 with a man in front. They all look at the camera, taking off their shirt.>
"I'm doing my part!" the woman in the front shouts gleefully.

<A woman takes off the pants of the man, revealing a big dong that hovers in front of her face, while other women hold the guy in between them.>
"I'm doing my part!" the woman says, grabbing the cock with both hands.

<You see a man fucking a woman, while others crawling up to him to kiss and touch. The man turns to the camera as he shoots his load inside her>
"I'm doing my part!"

I'd read the shit out of this one

 

[NuclearFairy]

I know you want to avoid carrot and stick but maybe they give recognition awards of women who have lots of kids.

No no, carrot and stick are exactly what I'm looking for. I just want a carrot and stick that aren't simply "money".

You've got a bunch of good ideas for that.

 

[TheLobster]

A government commercial:

“Pregnancy guarantees citizenships!”

Less facetiously, I’d look at the tacit and institutional benefits veterans get in the US (parking spots, special waiting lounges at airports, etc.) and then ramp it up to eleven for pregnant women and couples with children.

 

[LupusDei]

Zero inconvenience pregnancy: pregnant women are supported and privileged in every way imaginable, and if she doesn't want or can't care for the kid for whatever reason, government is always ready to take over in part or full.

And yes, culture. It's touted as the beauty standard to be pregnant, it's fashionable, cool and so forth, besides the perks, but also because of the perks, obviously, but subtler.

 

[LupusDei]

By the way, if a society is really serious about population growth, they want the first pregnancies to happen as early as medically safe. According to my (primitive and unserious) numerical simulations, every 3 years increase in average age of first pregnancy decrease the potential maximum population 300 years later by an order of magnitude.

And yes, most people don't comprehend the true potential of human breeding; an arbitrary small staring population (really, 20 young women) could expand to ten billion people in under 300 years, theoretically, and I was only assuming average of 10 daughters per mother in that. But the age structure in such quick growth quite obviously isn't realistically self-sustainable, you end up with population that is almost all children, due to the flood of babies when the roughly 30 year human female fertility window is maximally utilized leading to youngest daughter and oldest great-granddaughter be same age.

So, to fully realize that potential, the fast breeding population should receive outside support, be eiter borderline parasitic on initially much larger slow breeding population, or be nurtured by a robotic colony or mixed species alien hive. The later two options obviously open theoretical possibilities to remove any limitations imposed by human biology entirely, making such calculations nearly moot...

 

[NuclearFairy]

By the way, if a society is really serious about population growth, they want the first pregnancies to happen as early as medically safe. According to my (primitive and unserious) numerical simulations, every 3 years increase in average age of first pregnancy decrease the potential maximum population 300 years later by an order of magnitude.

And yes, most people don't comprehend the true potential of human breeding; an arbitrary small staring population (really, 20 young women) could expand to ten billion people in under 300 years, theoretically, and I was only assuming average of 10 daughters per mother in that. But the age structure in such quick growth quite obviously isn't realistically self-sustainable, you end up with population that is almost all children, due to the flood of babies when the roughly 30 year human female fertility window is maximally utilized leading to youngest daughter and oldest granddaughter be same age.

So, to fully realize that potential, the fast breeding population should receive outside support, be eiter borderline parasitic on initially much larger slow breeding population, or be nurtured by a robotic colony or mixed species alien hive. The later two options obviously open theoretical possibilities to remove any limitations imposed by human biology entirely, making such calculations nearly moot...

You would also have to take into account the extremely variable fertility window. Some women would start to lose fertility in their late twenties, whereas others not until they're in their fifties.

The other question then becomes, when is it medically safe? It's not when they're still technically girls, having a baby in your teens can stunt your growth and hamper your future fertility. Is it when you're done growing then? That doesn't happen until you're twenty four. Is it when your brain is done developing? That won't happen until you're twenty seven. Were'as a woman's peak fertile years are in their twenties, so if you wait for either of those milestones you're cutting out a decent chunk of their easiest to get pregnant years, on the other hand you might be extending their viable fertility as well... It's hard to say as not enough research has been done.

 

[TheLobster]

You would also have to take into account the extremely variable fertility window. Some women would start to lose fertility in their late twenties, whereas others not until they're in their fifties.

The other question then becomes, when is it medically safe? It's not when they're still technically girls, having a baby in your teens can stunt your growth and hamper your future fertility. Is it when you're done growing then? That doesn't happen until you're twenty four. Is it when your brain is done developing? That won't happen until you're twenty seven. Were'as a woman's peak fertile years are in their twenties, so if you wait for either of those milestones you're cutting out a decent chunk of their easiest to get pregnant years, on the other hand you might be extending their viable fertility as well... It's hard to say as not enough research has been done.

These are all linear factors; they do not alter the intrinsically exponential growth curve that describes this kind of maximally “efficient” breeding pattern.

In other words, it might increase the time needed to achieve the 20->10B scenario by a few decades, but it won’t balloon it to millennia or longer. This is just how exponential functions work, which, as @LupusDei alluded, are often wildly unintuitive to many people.

 

[Husky_Embrace]

These are all linear factors; they do not alter the intrinsically exponential growth curve that describes this kind of maximally “efficient” breeding pattern.

In other words, it might increase the time needed to achieve the 20->10B scenario by a few decades, but it won’t balloon it to millennia or longer. This is just how exponential functions work, which, as @LupusDei alluded, are often wildly unintuitive to many people.

I'm reminded of my first time learning about it that drives the point home. Expect exponential growth to be much bigger than expected, and you'll only underestimate it by a few orders of magnitude instead of many.

The day I learned it we got a final assignment. It followed the alleged first time exponentials were used or something. A king or similar liked the game of chess so much he wanted to reward the guy. The guy innocently placed half a grain of corn on the first tile of the chess board. On the next a single one, then two on the 3rd. He asked to repeat this process until the board was full.

The king said "if that is all you want, you'll get it, you fool"

It then appeared it was a request not able to be fulfilled. We got some extra information about how many corn would fit in the trailer of a goods train, the length of such a trailer, and the circumference of the Earth. If memory serves well it ran about 4,5 times around the Earth.

That is a lot of corn. It was insignificant at first, and with every exponential it quickly becomes more than you would expect on feeling alone.

 

[LupusDei]

Were'as a woman's peak fertile years are in their twenties, so if you wait for either of those milestones you're cutting out a decent chunk of their easiest to get pregnant years, on the other hand you might be extending their viable fertility as well... It's hard to say as not enough research has been done.

Consider two populations. Both are the exact same size at some point in time. We assume similar life expectancy of 70+ years in both.

In one (A), it becomes customary for every woman to have two kids before she's twenty. Almost no children are born after that.

In the other (B), it shift so almost no children are born until the woman is at least thirty.

Since the reproduction in both populations are exactly at the replacement level, 2.1 children per woman in average, you may expect the two populations still be same size a couple centuries later.

Wrong. Population A will be massively larger quite soon. Further, it will be youthful, with economically preferable age structure, thus higher economic and militarily power per capita even if it wasn't grown orders of magnitude larger. The B will become senile, remain small, and may even struggle to support itself.