In July of this year, Elon Musk posted a tweet in which he boasted that he was doing everything possible to help the demographic crisis after “having two more kids” with Shivon Zillis, the Neuralink executive. Musk took to, as usual, her social media, her personal speaker, to mention how she is working hard to help with the “underpopulation crisis”.
In leaked court documents, it was revealed that the billionaire and Zillis’s children were born in November 2021. This was weeks before the now father of nine and his on-and-off partner Grimes welcomed their second daughter. Musk is also the father of twins Griffin and Vivian, triplets Kai, Saxon and Damian with his ex-wife, author Justine Musk. His eldest child, Nevada, died at 10 weeks of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in 2002.
Among other posts and comments, the tycoon has also recently said that “the collapse of the birth rate is the greatest danger facing civilization” Y praised large families: “I hope you have big families and congratulations to those who already have them!”. But it’s not the first time Musk has brought up the subject, and his obsession with global birth rates has become apparent. Yes, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wants people to have more babies.
“There aren’t enough people,” he said at a Wall Street Journal event. “I can’t stress this enough, there aren’t enough people,” the billionaire noted that low and rapidly declining birth rates are “one of the biggest risks to civilization.” “If people don’t have more children, civilization will collapse,” he said.
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
Recently, a Business Insider report brought up a phenomenon that has been cultivating for years in the upper echelons of millionaires in the world of technology and venture capital, a select circle of people who they want to save civilization by having many genetically superior children to seize “control of human evolution.” These “pronatalists,” as some call themselves, are part of a growing movement that fears that falling birth rates in developed countries like the United States and much of Europe will lead to the extinction of cultures, the collapse of economies, and the , ultimately, to the collapse of civilization.
It is also a theory defended by Elon Musk and other personalities such as Ross Dou, who has spoken about it in opinion articles in The New York Times, or Joe Rogan and the billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman has been an early investor in Genomic Prediction. Openly gay, he also invests in a company called Conception, a startup that plans to grow viable human eggs from stem cells and allow two biological males to reproduce.
Genomic Prediction, meanwhile, is one of the first companies to offer PGT-P, a controversial new type of genetic test that allows parents undergoing IVF to select the “best” available embryos based on a variety of polygenic risk factors. “We are the Underground Railroad of ‘Gattaca’ babies and people who want to do genetic things with their children,” they said.
The obsession with procreation and longevity
The obsession with producing heirs is not a new trend: elites have always tried to perpetuate their power and fortunes through their lineage. But now that couples are increasingly putting off parenthood, or rejecting it outright, people like Musk are looking Tricks to make large families feasible in today’s society.
In the 2010s, the quest for longevity swept Silicon Valley, and mega-richs like Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, and Larry Ellison invested billions in biotech companies they thought could help them defy death. Jeffrey Epstein (who also planned to impregnate 20 women at once on his New Mexico ranch) considered freezing his head and penis to revitalize them hundreds of years later, while Peter Thiel is said to have sought blood transfusions from Young. He later said, “For the record, I’m not a vampire.”
However, not all families are billionaires who can afford a large family. And these types of comments occur when an increasing number of people decide not to have children, citing fears such as climate change and inequality. Morgan Stanley analysts explained in a July note to investors that “the movement away from having children due to fears about climate change is growing and is affecting fertility rates faster than any previous trend.” To back up their argument, they cited surveys, academic research and Google data showing that climate change is accelerating birth declines.
According to The Lancet, an estimated 183 of the world’s 195 countries will fall below the replacement rate of about 2.1 children per woman by 2100. As we’ve discussed before on Magnet, even countries like China and India Previously struggling with overpopulation, they are now looking for ways to revive birth rates.
Most experts, however, dismiss Musk’s population anxiety and obsession, pointing out that international migration from countries with growing populations will help stabilize demographic inequalities. Even so, governments that do fear the economic impacts of an increasingly aging society have begun to take action in this regard.