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"Despot rulers with the willingness and ability to pre-pay for 18+ years of care, feeding, education, etc. for an uncertain long-term outcome: Very unlikely."

"Despot rulers with the willingness and ability to pre-pay for 18+ years of care, feeding, education, etc. for an uncertain long-term outcome: Very unlikely." Authoritarian countries actually understand the problem and spend a lot of money on indoctrination of youth. See: Hitlerjugend. Baldur von Schirach, the leader of HJ, was one of the most important people in the Nazi hierarchy and later served 20 years in Spandau prison. No one expects 100 per cent results, but if you instill certain bigotry and obedience in a large subset of said kids, it is usually enough for the regime to thrive. In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, where I grew up, it was somewhat complicated to avoid all the Communist youth organizations, and your non-membership would handicap you during university admissions etc. (Possibly to the degree of never being able to study at all.) I think that, on balance, it would still be advantageous for authoritarian countries to produce kids in vitro and just assign them forcibly to parents. It has proven extraordinarily complicated to push people to procreate, but once the child is born in some lab and you are simply given no choice but to take care of it under threat of punishment, it is a different story. This kind of coercion is closer to the usual standard. China especially has a huge demographic problem and this would be an attractive solution for Xi et al.

mcny 3y ago
> China especially has a huge demographic problem and this would be an attractive solution for Xi et al. I practically know nothing about history other than some talking points but How did Imperial Japan go from allegiance to one's feudal lord to allegiance to the emperor to the point where officers (I assume all pilots are officers?) were willing to die for the emperor? Is China PR on a similar trajectory with Xi? Maybe it is naive but I believe having a presidency / party politburo general secretary / chairman of the military not being a hereditary position should mean there is not much appetite for indoctrination of the children? I mean an emperor with Meiji Restoration was doing something not just for himself but for his children, right? Why would Xi lay the groundwork for a future bureaucrat?
pbmonster 3y ago
> it would still be advantageous for authoritarian countries to produce kids in vitro and just assign them forcibly to parents You do realize that while you can create primate clones in vitro, you still need to carry them to term the old-fashioned way? Which, in your scenario, means you can't just drop a "child born in some lab" on a family. It means you forcibly impregnating a woman, have her birth the child and then raise it. This is pretty far removed from "the usual standard" of coercion. I'd call it so absurdly dystopian, imagining it happening somewhere - on any significant scale - without immediate violent revolution seems unthinkable.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  Currently, yes, but research with regard to artificial wombs is well underway. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02901-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02901-1 It is well possible that by 2030 or 2035, the old-fashioned way will no longer be necessary.
Terr_ 3y ago
> Authoritarian countries actually understand the problem and spend a lot of money on indoctrination of youth. True, however that's still harvesting "free" labor from the general population pool, as opposed to some kind of separate track where the government has to successfully execute the tasks--and bear the expenses--of a megaparent.

mcny 3y ago

> China especially has a huge demographic problem and this would be an attractive solution for Xi et al. I practically know nothing about history other than some talking points but How did Imperial Japan go from allegiance to one's feudal lord to allegiance to the emperor to the point where officers (I assume all pilots are officers?) were willing to die for the emperor? Is China PR on a similar trajectory with Xi? Maybe it is naive but I believe having a presidency / party politburo general secretary / chairman of the military not being a hereditary position should mean there is not much appetite for indoctrination of the children? I mean an emperor with Meiji Restoration was doing something not just for himself but for his children, right? Why would Xi lay the groundwork for a future bureaucrat?

pbmonster 3y ago

> it would still be advantageous for authoritarian countries to produce kids in vitro and just assign them forcibly to parents You do realize that while you can create primate clones in vitro, you still need to carry them to term the old-fashioned way? Which, in your scenario, means you can't just drop a "child born in some lab" on a family. It means you forcibly impregnating a woman, have her birth the child and then raise it. This is pretty far removed from "the usual standard" of coercion. I'd call it so absurdly dystopian, imagining it happening somewhere - on any significant scale - without immediate violent revolution seems unthinkable.

inglor_cz 3y ago
Currently, yes, but research with regard to artificial wombs is well underway. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02901-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02901-1 It is well possible that by 2030 or 2035, the old-fashioned way will no longer be necessary.

Terr_ 3y ago

> Authoritarian countries actually understand the problem and spend a lot of money on indoctrination of youth. True, however that's still harvesting "free" labor from the general population pool, as opposed to some kind of separate track where the government has to successfully execute the tasks--and bear the expenses--of a megaparent.