Elon Musk Wants You to Go Forth and Multiply

The Tesla founder called dwindling birth rates the biggest threat to civilization

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, stands at a press event on the grounds of the Tesla Gigafactory. The first vehicles are to roll off the production line in Grünheide near Berlin from the end of 2021.
Elon Musk, father of seven children who I am not fully convinced he has ever met
Photo by Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images

I’ll admit, Elon Musk and I don’t have much in common. He’s one of the richest men alive, I am in six figures of student debt. He makes fancy high-tech cars, I can barely operate a motor vehicle. Still, the Tesla founder seems like a huge weirdo and probably a pretty insufferable human being, two qualities to which I can very much relate. For that reason, I’ve always felt some level of probably misplaced connection to this billionaire genius with whom I otherwise have nothing in common, and have been pretty willing to laugh off his more unhinged online behavior and problematic takes. Unfortunately, he has finally betrayed me by championing reproduction, which goes against everything I believe in.

On Monday, Musk took some time at the Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO Council to air some thoughts on the dwindling birth rate, calling society’s waning interest in bringing new life into the world “one of the biggest risks to civilization.”

“So many people, including smart people, think that there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control,” he said. “It’s completely the opposite. Please look at the numbers — if people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble, mark my words.”

What Musk, who is himself the father of seven children like some kind of modern-day Captain von Trapp, has clearly failed to recognize is that the crumbling of civilization is already well underway, which is precisely why so few people want to bring new life into this hellscape. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: personally, I think the best thing we can do for the world at this point is do ourselves a favor and quietly die out. We had a good run, but this has gone on long enough.

Moreover, I would like to point out that while Musk’s dramatic warning comes amid legitimate reports of dwindling birth rates and even a decline in sexual activity, it seems to me that plenty of high-profile men are out still out here spreading their seed with reckless abandon, and frankly I would like to see less of it. Again, Musk has seven children, which I thought was something that only happened in 20th-century Austria, while Nick Cannon fathered four children in the least year alone and a certain Tristan Thompson can’t seem to stop impregnating people. Frankly, with women’s abortion rights currently hanging in the balance, I don’t think we need to be encouraging anyone — especially not men — to go forth and multiply.

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