How Do We Stop The End Of Human Civilization As A Result Of Declining Birth Rates? Get Back To Shaming Virgins

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The issue of population decline has been harped on a lot lately. It's an odd flip given that for much of my life, I was told to fear overpopulation. The world was running out of food, space, trees, and coral reefs due to how much successful sex people were having. But somewhere along the way, enough people decided that children are obnoxious and expensive and life is better when you don't have to hire a babysitter to go see that new Zendaya movie about tennis players piping the same person simultaneously.

I refuse to consult science on this. These are my views and my views alone. 

Notably, Elon Musk has been ringing the alarm bell on declining birth rates while putting his money where his mouth (he's now up to 11 children, making him the Antonio Cromartie of space travel). 

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I find this stuff fascinating. In order for a developed country to just maintain its population, women need to have an average of 2.1 children. It's two to replace the parents when they die, and then the extra .1 because kids and people die randomly all the time. That math really makes you think. If a large construction crane comes undone and topples upon the roofs of an entire row of parked school buses, say, then the ladies in that particular school district need to make up the difference! Really makes you appreciate women, their ability to birth children, and how important that incredible gift is to the world. Especially since crane assembly quality control has gone to shit lately. 

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Crane collapses are such a problem now that lawyers can actually specialize in crane accident law. Like Michael "The Bull" Lamonsoff, who is "relentless" and "formidable" in his pursuit of damages for families and individuals affected by cranes. 

Look, I could go on about crane law all day. But we're trying to get to the bottom of this population decline issue. And crane collapses are only a small part of this growing problem. 

John Rich wrote a blog a little while ago about how Gen Z has opted out of sexual intercourse. 

I'm sorry. That's the wrong link. I had already copied The Bull's page, in case any of you have recently been the victim of a crane accident. So when I hit paste, it embedded in the blog, and I like him so much that I don't have the heart to delete it. But here's what I meant to paste: 

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Male virginity rates are on the rise, according to this tweet from Daily Loud:

Did you know that as recently as 1870, the average American woman had FIVE children? And that was down from about seven on average in 1820! Goodness gracious. 

But now, we are heading the way of Japan, whose depopulation has reached a legitimately critical level. NOBODY is having kids in Japan. The average fertility rate there is 1.26! Now, I do believe their cranes tend to be made of higher quality steel, and they are probably assembled with the exacting eye you might expect from the nation that gave us elaborate omakase meals that sprawl across multiple hours featuring fish from the far flung seas. But if they don't start figuring it out soon, Japan is projected to see their population decline from 125 million to 87 million by 2070. And they'll all be very old. Although again, Japanese people seem to age very well. So maybe it's not that big of a deal. 

It's hard not to root for a little depopulation when you live in cities like New York, Houston, LA, DC, or Chicago—where the congested sidewalks are more clogged than even the traffic-laden freeways. To see that the remaining five miles on the GPS is estimated to take 34 minutes of driving is one of life's greatest infuriations. In those moments, I often think of the Bill Burr bit on blowing up a few cruise ships to thin out the freeway:

Sure, it would be nice to thin the herd a bit. But we can't go too overboard. We need to get to a certain number that feels more comfortable, and then get back to pumping out the right amount of kids. Is there a way to do that? I'm not even saying that we keep the best and the brightest, for that gets a little too… echoey of eugenics. Maybe there's a random draft for some sort of gladiatorial combat school and winners get a good prize and are immediately dumped right back into society where they can mate happily and peacefully. 

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Or, and hear me out, we could start bullying virgins again. Bullying has gone out of style, largely because it was causing real harm. But without bullies, voluntary virginity retention becomes a movement. People are proud of it, and loneliness somehow becomes this empowering journey of self-discovery. 

I don't have any solutions. But I think about it all the time. Can we decline just a bit more and then start hitting our child quotas? I'm sick of struggling to get reservations at New York's top restaurants, and I refuse to pay some scalper for a goddamn 5PM seat at Atomix.