Why are billionaires Elon Musk, Mark Andreesen concerned about birth rates?

Two of the world’s wealthiest men, Elon Musk and Marc Andreesen, seem obsessed with the declining birth rates. The tech moguls have been vocal about their concerns.

For instance, Elon Musk posted a tweet about flagging birth rates in the US. Now, Andreessen Horowitz CEO Marc Andreesen joined Musk in the same stance. Just recently, Andreesen appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast. They tackled a wide range of explanations about eugenics and birth rates. 

Andreesen pointed out in the Joe Rogan podcast, “Right now, there’s a movement afoot among the elites in our country that says anybody having kids is a bad idea, including having elites have kids is a bad idea because of climate. Elon has been surfacing this very issue in a very useful way.”

I hope you have big families and congrats to those who already do!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2022

Marc Andreesen pointed out how Musk is eager to tell the world about his breeding tactics. One of which is the most recent revelation of his secret twins with one of the company’s executives, where he is a co-owner. 

The Tesla CEO tweeted after the news broke, “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”

Whether Musk’s strong interest in the declining birth rates is just curiosity or it’s a bit strange, he must have analyzed some future global scenarios. However, he’s not one to follow the conservatives’ beliefs. This covers the need to have more children. But it should be within a nuclear family to maintain the core Western values and civilization.  

Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis.

A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2022

What the future holds

One proof of Musk’s unusual stand on contributing to raising the birth rates is his nine children. He had the first five with his first wife, then two with musician Grimes. Musk also had his most recent secret twins with Shin Zilis, a Neuralink executive. 

For most of billionaires, they see that growth holds the future. Wealthy men, including Musk, have spent millions on groups focusing on longtermism. It is a philosophy that believes “nothing matters more ethically than fulfilling our potential as a species of ‘Earth-originating intelligent life.”

This kind of philosophy centers on doing everything you can to utilize the well-being of humanity. Fast forward to millions, billions, and trillions of years into the future while limiting the risks to species and all civilizations. As Musk believes that low birth rates are “the biggest danger to civilization faces by far.”

Moreover, Andreesen told Rogan, “There’s a long history in elite Western thinking about whether there should be kids who have kids. Hundred years ago, all the smartest people were very into eugenics. Then, later on, that became something called population control. And then, in the 70s, it became something called regrowth. Now, we call it environmentalism. We say that human beings are bad for the planet, not good for the planet.”

Andreesen cleared that the Nazis not only discredited their interest in eugenics. But it also gave the idea of controlling the population.

Andreesen’s clarification of how eugenics was not only popular before the Nazi era but that components of it later resurfaced is true. America has a central role and long history in the global eugenics acts. It goes a long way to sterilize one-third of the Puerto Rican women by force from the 1930s to the 1970s. 

The binding theories and concepts

The concepts around forced sterilization and the revival of Malthusian apocalyptic thought existed in some areas, even though these ideas have been proven wrong and have long been discredited. 

Reputable science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson has a better idea than depopulation. He pointed out that a smaller population might be more feasible. However, he has also proposed alternatives rather than reducing the population’s size. Instead, he suggested that mass migration to cities is better as it can minimize global footprints.

Although Andreesen’s discussions clearly show his criticism of the idea of eugenics, he still believes the myths behind that belief. Andreesen and Musk’s concern about the declining birth rates is not opposed to eugenicist idealism. But rather an affirmation of one of its core ideas. The issue isn’t who gets what, but how many people are getting these.

Eugenics’ idea is about the proposed selective breeding of humanity by following specific policies. Andreesen believes that the breeding of society should undergo and follow policies. However, this set it clear that the goal wasn’t to improve human lives but to use them to fix the future in some way.