His prescription for population growth exacerbates the problem it’s intended to solve.
The United States does not reproduce itself. The same is true for Europe on a much more radical basis. Even so, with the replacement rate at 2.1 and the birthrate in America at about 1.6, the future is bleak. As Japan and Europe and especially Russia have learned, they cannot support their economy going forward, and this in two ways. First, they cannot support their social services. Second, they cannot produce enough workers to run their factories and companies.
Enter Elon Musk. Easy, he says. Just go out and impregnate as many women as possible. Create “legions,” in his phrase. Perhaps we’ve lost track, but we believe that Musk has 14 children from four women. Musk’s solution, if one can dignify what he does with that word, does not address the primary cause of population decline in the Western world. In fact, he is the perfect embodiment of, not the solution, but the problem.
The problem is values. Why are people not reproducing at replacement rate? Musk doesn’t address this because he can’t. He embodies the anti-value that has brought Western societies to this point. That anti-value, in a nutshell, is twofold.
First, it is this: Children — or at least many of them, i.e., more than 2.1 children per couple — are inconvenient. Many children retard economic advancement; they cost too much. Many children get in the way of career actualization; they take too much time. Children limit my freedom; I can’t use all of my free time as I wish. Having children is not first priority; I am first priority.
Second, the anti-value that militates against 2.1 or more children per couple is the gradual derogation of marriage since the 1960s. Elon Musk’s immoral exploitation of women and of his offspring is an extreme case of breakdown of the family unit.
None of this applies to people who want children but either can’t have them or can’t have many of them. Infertility is an ironic and searing issue stacked against the overall preference not to have many children. Until that preference and the cost of childrearing are addressed, until a major reshaping of social values is underway, there will be no reversal of population decline.
Musk’s idea for the government to pay couples for each child they bear is both a non-starter and another reflection of the corruption of values that he embodies. It’s a non-starter because it can never be big enough to meet the cost of raising a child. The figure bandied around is $5,000, a ridiculously small fraction of the cost of raising a child. For all but the wealthy, there is no way to raise a child without making financial sacrifices. That value cannot be rendered irrelevant by a subvention from the government. The value issue is unavoidable.
The value issue is entirely avoided by the inevitably fruitless pursuit of “legions” and financial incentives. It may be a good idea to send a check to a birthmother as a nice gift to alleviate immediate costs, but it cannot reverse population decline. On the scale of what it takes to raise a child, the idea that the government can incentivize people to have children with a $5,000 gift is like thinking a person will switch to an EV due to a $100 subvention from the government.
Because Musk is the richest man in the world, he thinks big. He thinks of multiple women and 14 children (and counting, he says). The outsize dimensions of his idea, if one can dignify what he proposes with that word, serve only to exacerbate the problem by diverting attention from the difficult, long term, unavoidable, essential reorientation in values that alone can reverse the population decline.
Musk’s vision is I-It, not I-Thou. Absent from Musk’s robotic vision of the future are the values of giving, holiness, tranquility, fidelity, sacrifice and love. These values, not rampant promiscuity and $5,000 pro-natal grants, will nurture the future.
© IJN 2025
