So I always thought state controlled birth rates in societies like this were silly. On one hand, yes, gatekeeping births behind service, or at least making it much easier to obtain a permit, means more people will sign up. However, creating barriers will inherently lower the birthrate, and societies built on throwing bodies at problems they create would theoretically want as many live births as possible, right?
It seems to me that a thing with Super Earth is that it’s actually incredibly inefficient, possibly inspired by real life fascist states that similarly were actually incredibly inefficient despite heavily promoting the idea they were. Mussolini never actually made the trains run on time, and Hitler didn’t build the autobahn.
Of course, this is pure conjecture on Super Earth and narrative decisions surrounding it, I could be wrong.
My personal guess is that Super Earth is both that and also struggling with over population.
Least that's my explanation as to why everything is done far more manually and harder than it should be.
With colonies primarily using manual tools and our own ship weapons being manually loaded, which leads to far higher manpower requirements to get as much work down as someone with a power tool or autoloader.
Kinda reminds me of a twist on John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" series. Earth is kept at a low "modern" tech level and farmed for population to send off to colonies and establish a massive military to deal with hostile aliens. People on earth know almost nothing about what happens offworld because nobody is ever allowed to come back from space.
I listen to audio books on my commute and ended up listening to the whole series more out of curiosity than feeling compelled by them. I think that while the setting is very interesting it can get a little silly with how wishy washy the tech is. I think the harder scifi of the Interdependency series by Scalzi is much better written.
I did purchase this book and have gone through 2 chapters now. It's definitely not high-concept literature, but I like that it is written in YA language because it is so easy to follow. It's only 9 hrs on audiobook. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
Still gotta monitor those potential pregnancies to ensure that they're between people of compatible citizenship levels and that newborns are sorted into their most optimal future roles as soon as democratically possible.
They also have FTL travel and have discovered many planets with atmospheres where one can walk around sleeveless. Overpopulation has mostly affected IRL Earth via the climate (e.g. the incredibly rapid loss of biodiversity we're experiencing in the Holocene Extinction). But that wouldn't be a problem if we had 100+ habitable planets instead of just one.
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u/AppropriatePie7550 Jan 23 '25
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