I know—it sounds scandalous. Many people would consider such a slogan blasphemous, and in some it would awaken an atavistic rage against what they would label “misanthropy,” trampling every boundary of decency at full speed. Our intuitive human instinct points in the opposite direction. And yet, uncomfortable as it may be, this conclusion is not only plausible—it may also be humane, or at the very least logically grounded.

The world is drifting toward dystopia. Democracy and human rights have been on a steady downward trajectory for years. Capital concentration has reached almost unimaginable levels. Humanity is drowning in its own waste while hiding from climate change under the imaginary umbrella of denial. The middle class is disappearing. People are struggling to survive amid widening inequality and the growing arrogance and impunity of the ultra-rich.

Politics has increasingly been reduced to techniques of social and psychological engineering. Values and causes have been instrumentalized and emptied of meaning. Everything is becoming more expensive. Resources are running out. Tomorrow’s wars will be fought over water—although, in truth, such wars already exist today.

Under these conditions, technocrats—having sacrificed their scruples on the altar of efficiency—attempt to manage human flows and social anthills for their own benefit and that of their patrons. Many predict that nation-states will gradually be sidelined, while real power will concentrate in the hands of corporations. People, in turn, will be reduced to little more than a resource, à la The Matrix. Democracy? Human rights? Spare me.

As if the picture were not bleak enough, artificial intelligence enters the scene.

AI threatens to render intellectual professions obsolete and to devalue art. In doing so, it risks devaluing the human being itself. With little left to offer society beyond physical labor, individuals may be reduced to modern proletarians and plebeians, competing for any job that allows them to survive. This is not an unintended consequence—it is, unfortunately, an expected and even desired outcome for today’s elites.

1984 arrived late. But now it returns on steroids, in the form of a Leviathan that will swallow humanity, assimilate it—and eventually discard it once everything of value has been extracted.

At that point, humans may no longer be needed at all.

But until then, the Leviathan still requires fuel. It needs human resources to consume. It needs cheap labor, cheap people, cheap human life. According to the logic of supply and demand, this requires large numbers of human beings willing to work under any conditions—brutalized, resigned, dependent.

Hungry.

In other words, the Leviathan needs children.

Without high birth rates and a surplus population, the price of labor remains too high to allow the full devaluation of the human being. Today’s financial capitalism, after all, resembles a pyramid scheme that has already consumed the lives of unborn generations, converting their future into speculative profits in the present—profits that have flowed into the accounts of the ultra-rich and financial criminals.

If nothing changes, the lives of future generations will be harder than those of their parents.

Reduced birth rates, however, threaten the very foundation of this system. They undermine the endless claims to ownership and profit extraction by predatory financial elites intoxicated by greed. In the inevitable crisis that would follow, it is far from certain that these elites could preserve their privileged position as they have done so far.

Some might object that labor shortages could be offset through automation and mechanization. But in the context of AI’s rapid expansion, further automation would leave billions without livelihoods. In the short to medium term, such a development would almost certainly trigger massive social upheaval—if not outright communist revolutions.

Once the means of production—and increasingly, the means of thinking—already exist, a simple question emerges: why should people die of hunger and misery instead of benefiting from scientific progress and living in dignity? Why should private ownership of productive capacity lead to degradation, war, and death when a materially abundant future is technologically possible?

The pressure of hundreds of millions—perhaps billions—of people would be difficult for any political or economic elite to withstand.

This is precisely why large-scale mechanization of physical labor remains limited, while AI advances rapidly. Automating intellectual labor marginalizes people while preserving social control. Automating physical labor, by contrast, would destabilize existing power structures and push societies leftward, as growing numbers of “superfluous” people demand some form of unconditional income simply to survive.

So what happens when birth rates decline and the workforce shrinks?

In the short term, capital seeks cheaper labor elsewhere—through migration, as we already see today. But globally, declining birth rates accelerate automation. Capital will not voluntarily abandon profits or influence.

At that point, however, a broader political shift becomes unavoidable. Capitalism begins to consume itself. Exploitation as a source of added value loses its meaning. Even if elites attempt to maintain a careful balance between automation and employment, the wind of change will begin to blow through societies long held under ideological control.

Automation may ease the burden of aging populations. Smaller populations may alleviate pressures caused by overpopulation, resource depletion, pollution, climate stress, urban congestion, and housing crises. The value of human life rises. Justice and democracy become more attainable. Wars become less profitable.

The power of oligarchies and corporations weakens—and may even collapse.

In short, both humanity and the Earth might finally breathe easier.

Instead of reproducing endlessly under conditions of dystopia—only to enslave and devour one another in desperate wars over food, land, and resources amid poisoned environments and collapsing ecosystems—we might choose a more rational approach to reproduction. There is no law of nature that forces us to follow instinct toward catastrophe.

A future of abundance, dignity, and human progress is not guaranteed—but it is still imaginable. The path toward it is neither simple nor linear. Yet reduced birth rates may be one of the few remaining levers capable of slowing a system that thrives on human surplus and exhaustion.