Can the administrative state get horny on main?
Cards on the table, I’m a fan of the administrative state. Societies are large and complex, and a little technocratic competence goes a long way in ensuring the availability of public goods and infrastructure. But there are some areas where the administrative state struggles. Sex, for one.
Or, more accurately, fertility. I’ve been thinking about this because a couple of weeks ago the New York Times Asian fertility desk1 was on fire. Over a few days they published stories on Chinese local officials pushing families to have more children, on Japan’s thirty-year struggle to raise its birth rate, and on South Koreans compensating for lack of children with pets.
Like China, my adopted home of Singapore advocated for limited birthrates during the 1970s “population bomb” panic, when it was widely agreed we were destined to devour each other like starving jackals. Singapore realized its demographic error in the 1980s, as its birthrate plummeted, and went through policy whiplash. When I arrived, in 1995, there was an advertising campaign encouraging young couples to have larger families. I recall lots of slow-motion video and gauzy photos of attractive young couples with cherubic babies, and an omnipresent theme song. Alas, it was too early to be immortalized on the Internet, but there is evidence of later campaigns.
