First thing off: By "soon" I mean that there's a bigger than 50/50 chance that this might happen by the end of this century.
Falling birth rates and the skewed demographics resulting from them are already one of the biggest topics globally, and they are sure to be one of the most prominent trends shaping the future. As of now, there's barely any country outside of Africa with an above-replacement birth rate, with even multiple countries endlessly stereotyped as producing uncountable quantities of humans, such as Mexico or India, already being below the replacement level threshold. Even in Africa itself, birth rates have consistently been falling faster than expected by both international and domestic institutions.
Some governments are already taking actions trying to raise the birth rates of their countries and eventually, just about all of them will be forced to.
Now, as I've already mentioned in a different thread, some countries are seeing their birth rates slowly increasing into, hopefully one day, sustainable levels. Also, universally, rural birthrates are higher than urban ones, meaning that all of this can probably be resolved by waiting a couple of decades for things to stabilize, with a fair amount of ruralization/deurbanisation worldwide to help things get normal again, and that's not even mentioning all of the stuff being talked about which the governments could try.
However, what if not all governments decide to go the way of waiting for decades for things to turn around while trying out reforms which have a realistic chance of not even working in the first place? What if, seeing their populations continuously just falling and falling and falling even further, some governments decide to go for the most extreme option available?
Scientists have already managed to turn normal human cells into eggs years ago, with this year seeing the achievement of scientists managing to create mice embryos from two male mice by turning the skin cells of one of them into eggs to be fertilized by the sperm of the other. All in all, we're just a decade or so ago, at most, from the creation of functioning artificial wombs, along with the techniques and technology needed to turn ordinary human cells into sperm and eggs to fill those artificial wombs with embryos if needed.
So, what if, tired of seeing their populations disappear year by year, some countries simply decide to start mass-creating their future populations? Obviously, whoever would do so first would face massive backlash, but what's the chance that no one's going to break and do so? And when that eventually happens, there's no question that others will do so as well.
And so, that's what we'll eventually see. A Dark Eldar-style society, where people, if only informally, divide themselves between those proudly boasting about the fact that their conception and birth were truly natural, and those who can't claim the same as they were created through very much unnatural means because the government wished for it.
Falling birth rates and the skewed demographics resulting from them are already one of the biggest topics globally, and they are sure to be one of the most prominent trends shaping the future. As of now, there's barely any country outside of Africa with an above-replacement birth rate, with even multiple countries endlessly stereotyped as producing uncountable quantities of humans, such as Mexico or India, already being below the replacement level threshold. Even in Africa itself, birth rates have consistently been falling faster than expected by both international and domestic institutions.
Some governments are already taking actions trying to raise the birth rates of their countries and eventually, just about all of them will be forced to.
Now, as I've already mentioned in a different thread, some countries are seeing their birth rates slowly increasing into, hopefully one day, sustainable levels. Also, universally, rural birthrates are higher than urban ones, meaning that all of this can probably be resolved by waiting a couple of decades for things to stabilize, with a fair amount of ruralization/deurbanisation worldwide to help things get normal again, and that's not even mentioning all of the stuff being talked about which the governments could try.
However, what if not all governments decide to go the way of waiting for decades for things to turn around while trying out reforms which have a realistic chance of not even working in the first place? What if, seeing their populations continuously just falling and falling and falling even further, some governments decide to go for the most extreme option available?
Scientists have already managed to turn normal human cells into eggs years ago, with this year seeing the achievement of scientists managing to create mice embryos from two male mice by turning the skin cells of one of them into eggs to be fertilized by the sperm of the other. All in all, we're just a decade or so ago, at most, from the creation of functioning artificial wombs, along with the techniques and technology needed to turn ordinary human cells into sperm and eggs to fill those artificial wombs with embryos if needed.
So, what if, tired of seeing their populations disappear year by year, some countries simply decide to start mass-creating their future populations? Obviously, whoever would do so first would face massive backlash, but what's the chance that no one's going to break and do so? And when that eventually happens, there's no question that others will do so as well.
And so, that's what we'll eventually see. A Dark Eldar-style society, where people, if only informally, divide themselves between those proudly boasting about the fact that their conception and birth were truly natural, and those who can't claim the same as they were created through very much unnatural means because the government wished for it.
