Got your attention, didn’t I? That, apparently, is the loosely-translated name of a two-year campaign going on in Sweden aimed at upping the Swedes’ population. I first heard about it last summer at a Cato University event from a wonderful British lecturer named Stephen Davies from the University of Manchester. Keeping with the Blogosphere’s bashing of the apparently impoverished and crime-ridden Swedes, here’s the scoop:

Sweden, you might know, is terribly socialist. Probably one of the more socialist countries in the world — certainly in Europe. They’re also quite green and have for some time been concerned about over-population and the Malthusian notion that one day we humans will be unable to sustain ourselves.

Well, as it turns out, sustainability has become a problem in Sweden, but not in a way the Swedes anticipated. Doing their part for Mother Earth, the Swedes have been careful to limit their offspring (through, I might add, a bevy of government programs), and their birthrates have consequently plummeted. But now the Swedes are aging, and it seems that the country might soon face a crisis, wrought by the one-two-three punch of an elderly population, an enormous cadre of social programs, and an ecologically-sound-but-consequently-miniscule population of young people to support said elderly population and enormous cadre of social programs.

Ever the active social engineers, the Swedes sprang into action, and, thus, birthed the “fuck for the future” campaign. The aim? Get Swedes fucking, so more Swedes get pregnant, so more Swedes are born, so more Swedes start producing, so there’s more Swedish income to pay for, you guessed it, more Swedish socialism.

So we get the spectacle of Swedish political candidates calling for more pornography on television (which, in itself, is not necessarily a terrible thing), and a government encouraging its people to have lots of unprotected sex. Swedish tennis great Bjorn Borg has even appeared in television spots forcing home the “fuck for the future” motif.

The same thing is happening in Singapore, by the way. There, the government actually runs a dating service (under the auspices of the Orwellian-sounding “Social Development Unit”), and prints up pamphlets and brochures telling married Singaporeans (who often live with the parents of one of the spouses) how, when, and where they might escape to to make love. The state even offers tips on technique.

Just goes to prove that while socialism might work for a short while, sooner or later everybody’s going to get fucked.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 9th, 2002 at 6:07 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.