Population growth

[Verjigorm]

Well, I tinkered around can came up with 3.3 billion in 150 years. Which works for my purposes. I went with 10% growth for 25 years, effictevely a child every other year. This provides a fairly wide genetic base of around 65 thousand by the end of the 25 year run.

I then dropped to 3% growth for 50 years, providing 284 thousand. For the next 50 years, I shift them back u to 5%, with almost a million. A short burst of 8% pushes then to 6.6 million in 25 more years, then back down to 5% for the last 25 years.

The 6000 starting colonists are the only humans in the setting: they won't be receiving any follow on colonists. So creating as diverse a genetic pool is a good thing. I think.

Also, Bio Chauvinism is widespread in the setting, so AIs have sharply reduced rights and freedoms. You have to be biological to vote, so having lots if babies is the best way to grow your political factions access to resources and power.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Yes, its quite optimistic. I'll be the first to admit that.

An interesting case, but the haredi are subsidized heavily for other reasons: notably that their education system produces religious scholars rather than industrial workers.



Yeah, you need an enormous dedication to a cause, coupled with social pressures, to achieve this. And careful steering to ensure things don't go off course. You also need a reason to want get back to TL 10: personal enjoyment isn't enough. My scenario when I ran this was a militaristic approach.

I'm also of the opinion that in spite of the nannies and the day care and the expensive schools, parental involvement and expectations are at least as important in education (perhaps not total success, but in education).

Modern Israelis have more then once worried that in the future two wolves will have a majority vote over the division of one sheep and their grandchildren will be the sheep. Aside from other considerations such as an ambiguous admiration for orthodox piety(admittedly quite ambiguous considering the troubled relationship between Zionism and orthodoxy and the practical matter of orthodox being accused of of not meeting defense obligations) the Israeli government has a reason to want to boost the number of any kind of Jews.

Aside from that Yeshivas are a focus of cultural pride. The fact that they get state subsidies is no more odd then anything else of such a nature even for a non-religious person. For a long time such Jewish government as their was was centered in their religion, and Jewish religion is not just about religion, but art, culture, law, and even cuisine. The Israeli government per se does not have to subsidize all that but it is well that Israel does one way or another as it shows that they are mellowing from the adolescent iconoclasm that was to often a fault of the Pioneers.

[whswhs]

If we're looking at realistic economics, I have read that Canadian Mennonites have a realized average lifetime fertility of 8 adult children per woman, on the average. And they succeed in accumulating enough capital to set them up on farms, which isn't cheap. That probably defines a plausible high fertility dynamic.

(Capital accumulation is vital to make this work; if your increase in labor outstrips your increase in capital, the next generation will be impoverished. For one thing, relatively scarce capital equals relatively abundant labor, which means the price of labor falls and the price of capital rises. Supply and demand, you know.)