Credit or blame massive efficiency gains. Citizens can live completely modular lives at so little cost. Just pick your favorite template from Myspace or Blogspot, and you may feel like a unique individual. Perhaps even “special”.

Ironic how people who practice market-researched tribalism actually come out thinking “Now I am somebody, not just anybody!” It only requires scanning a ten-billion entry database to locate these interesting somebodies, using keywords that are not even slightly “key”.

However banal, when life is priced so low then why clutter your freedom with kids? Even if you breed, the personal cost is defrayed by entitlements like daycare and public schooling.

Of course don’t expect everyone to be satisfied with cookie-cutter reality. Leaders aren’t giving up their ultra-uniqueness just to be small but enlightened citizens of the world, just as they won’t let their kids go to public schools.