If 98% of the world's population live their lives inside the surrogates wouldn't that stop the population growth and leave the world without kids? Robots can't get pregnant and have babies so you'd think that would eventually kill off the population if they lived inside the surrogates long enough. You'd think the only ones reproducing would be the dread reservation people and that's a small portion of the people in the world.
sharePopulation growth has *already* stopped in most industrialized nations, and is in fact moving in reverse. Japan, Taiwan, S. Korea, Russia, most of Southern Europe - All are facing population crises in that they are in a depopulation death-spiral. They are getting older, on the average, and their young people are not having enough children to replace the folks who are dying every day.
It has something to do with complacency; When you are wealthy enough for your daily needs to be satisfied, and still have enough left over for recreation, you no longer feel the pressure to 'Be fruitful and multiply'. There just isn't any urgency to reproduce and make sure there is a generation to follow this one. Everyone puts it off, thinking 'I have time, I can wait until I'm ready.'
The problem is, too many people are putting it off til too late, and are having children after the optimal time when their bodies and reproductive cells are healthiest. Thus the explosion in children with Autism and related disorders.
Others just never get around to having children because it's too inconvenient, too expensive, or it cuts into their social lives too much. There are too many distractions in modern life, too many available alternatives that are making it likely that humanity will not always be as plentiful in the future as it is now.
To hear it from the radical environmentalist and animal rights advocates, that's a good thing. I'm not entirely convinced.
dude's right. Actually, I don't know about some of the countries he's listed, but it's become a famous problem in places like Japan.
Ah well, who knows? Maybe in the future we'll be harvesting people on farms or populating the world in other artificial ways.
It's quite irrelevant to the OP's question though. I mean, population doesn't grow as fast as it used to in real life, but just imagine if, overnight, 98% of the world would just stop having babies. I mean that's the biggest plot hole in the movie I think.
shareAgreed on all points (that the above posts don't relate to the OP's post, and that it was big movie flaw). I found it hard to suspend my disbelief and really get into this movie due to this fact. Initially I found it strange they didn't offer some explanation/possibility to deal with this issue, but then realised they probably couldn't come up with any feasible way to deal with the reproduction issue and left it out entirely. Shame.
shareI know this is old but just in case you all weren't paying attention to the beginning it was only like 7 years after the mass use began it would take about 18 years before the real affects would show up. Plus with people being able to work longer in physically demanding jobs I'd say you could easily add 10 years more to the 18 before the world would begin to collapse so there'd be no reason to deal with this issue in the time period this movie take place in. i would also imagine that people would realize this issue within a few years and there would be huge incentives giving out by governments to have kids, massive tax breaks and things like that, people with multiple kids likely wouldn't even have to work. I'd be willing to bet that sperm banks would also become a very lucrative business.
shareI've only seen this movie once, and I can't even remember what pathed me to this site this time around either (oh, that's right, I was searching for movies that had Rosamund Pike in them as I could remember seeing her in something), andyway, from my memory 98% of the population live their lives in Surrogates, but not all of their life. An unhealthily long amount of their days sure (like people who use computers and the internet) but they still sleep etc in their skin. I vaguely remember Greer passing his wife in the hallway, and I think it kind of touched on the relationship deterioration that had occurred because of (their) use of Surrogates (which is not to say all would have the same level of relationship deterioration... but I imagine many would). So, to that end, people who actually wanted to have kids would have sex, and fall pregnant.
I'd think you would see a sharp decline in population though, but perhaps augmented in an increase in life expectancy (no accidents at work - nobody dying in wars etc).
SpiltPersonality
I just watched the movie on TV and it was implied that something happened to their son, I was doing other stuff so if it was ever said exactly what I missed it. But I agree they did stuff outside of their surrogates and the movie didn't cover alot of time, so it didn't really have enough time for their to be a problem with fewer kids being born, even if they didn't have the reduction in injuries and death due to being in surrogates. Plus we don't know if the 98% is accurate or what the total population was. Basically, at least for me, there are way too many factors for me to consider it a flaw in the movie.
shareI caught about the last half on a TV broadcast beginning with Willis's character in the hospital.
The movie did reveal the son was killed in an auto accident. When I saw the wife's face with large scars, it seemed she was driving then. Since Willis's character did not have scars, he probably was not involved in the accident that killed the son.
Now then, with the scars on her face, the wife would likely be inclined to use a surrogate rather than appear in public with her scars. If She was in fact the driver, there would also be guilt each time she saw the scars on her face. That would be even more reason to "lose herself" in the surrogate.
Appearance and guilt...
As far as reproduction goes, that would seem to be overthinking the sci-fi movie that was trying to make a different point.
However, there would be positive results in the use of surrogates, directly related to population! Traffic accidents in the USA kill more people every year than all deaths by guns! With the surrogates driving, and suffering the vehicle crashes instead of their operators, many people would not die!
Furthermore, the surrogates might be better able to avoid crashes, and presumably would not be driving while intoxicated, high on drugs, or exhausted/sleepy.
BTW, it is true that Russia allows couples to take one day off each year, for the specific purpose of procreation.
(That is if you believe a news article that was very recently on the internet! I vaguely recall it was even a paid holiday on a designated day.)
And I have another thought about the population decline in industrial nations...
It has only been a few generations ago (possibly around the same time as the populations began to stagnate and actually decline) that industrial nations began moving people off the farms/ranches and into cities. When the population was largely agricultural, families 'grew their own help' by having large families. Since then, reasons for having large families have largely diminished. With family farms being 'more fairly divided' among all the kids, each farm got smaller, and trended toward less profitability or even losses because they became too small. The older way of passing down the family farm/ranch was for the oldest surviving son to inherit the farm. That left the rest of the family to still be 'the help', or move somewhere else.
With the smaller farms becoming still smaller and less/not profitable, they were bought up by/into mega-farms that use big machinery instead of human power, also moving more people off the farms.
Once in the city, large families in one apartment or house becomes a reason not to have large families... So, the population decline seems to be more of an adjustment to the change in the composition of the national society.
just sayin'