- Money.
- Insecurity about money.
- Not being able to afford kids or the house to raise them in.
My gut reaction is that these are more perceptions than real obstacles. There's a strong perception that there's a certain dollar amount or level of wealth before one should have children. Somehow changing the perception first would probably help fertility more than simply paying per child.
"Home is where the heart is."
I thought this meant something like home is where longing is (your metaphorical heart), the place that you yearn for the most. Now I think it may simply mean that home is wherever your physical beating heart is. The message behind it being that you can adapt to feel at home most anywhere.
"Breathtaking."
I thought this was just an expression to explain natural beauty but I actually felt the breath leave me when I was young from suddenly seeing a sweeping vista of mountains and forest while riding on a bus when I was a teen.
Children of Men (2006) comes to mind: a movie about a small group of people in a dying world who have the means to benefit humanity and provide hope for the future but can't agree on next steps. (The story is more nuanced but these bits seem relevant to rationality).
Maybe there's a way to hedge against P(doom) by investing in human prosperity and proliferation while discouraging large leaps in tech. Maybe your money should go towards encouraging or financing low tech high fertility communities?
This applies to me, my work ethic went down after 2020 partly because of timing. I turned 30 in 2020 and before then mostly just did what was expected of me without putting too much thought into what I wanted. I'm still hardworking but much more choosy about what I'll put time into and I try not to let social pressure affect my decisions.
My primary motivation for delving into WBE stems from a personal desire to upload my own mind.
This scares the hell out of me, even a very low chance of mind theft and eternal torture are just too risky in my opinion.
A repairer wants your stuff to break down,
A doctor wants you to get ill,
A lawyer wants you to get in conflicts,
A farmer wants you to be hungry,
A teacher wants you to be knowledge-less,
But there is only a thief who wants you to be rich.
I'm not sure how to interpret this. Repairers, doctors, lawyers and farmers are market inventions based on demand so technically they all want you to be rich. Teachers (at least in state schools) are more like a type of clergy with a sacred duty to their 'parish'. So a more appropriate description could be: A teacher wants more teachers.
I would take this movement seriously and endorse it if there was a detailed plan for the future of the movement when the human race is still around in 2051 and I'm homeless and buried in debt.
I can imagine that building as a solution to low fertility could pick up steam in the coming years in terms of rhetoric but all the same barriers will likely still be in place (NIMBYism, lobbying by landlords, status quo bias etc.)