Population optimization

“There are many of us, but few pants. There is only one way out, Grigory. There should be fewer of us"

Even I have quoted this classic a hundred times on various occasions. But what to do - that’s what the classic is for: “ ...there are many of us, but few places. There are many of us, but few pants. There is only one way out, Grigory. There should be fewer of us ." Further on in the text, Zhvanetsky has another final sentence - but in modern times this is clearly an article. That's why it's a classic...

With a small population for such a huge territory, when the issue of increasing the birth rate is raised in every possible way, even the most fanciful, it seems that the country does not really need some of the citizens. That some categories of the population become a suitcase without a handle for the state. Of course, no one will say directly that these people are superfluous and of no use to us. But we have long learned to understand indirect thoughts, by reading between the lines and listening between the words.

“ At one time we got rid of orphanages. On the one hand, the children received a decent family upbringing. On the other hand, we saved a lot of money. We need to look - maybe at the social service homes where people of the older generation, as they say, are housed; there is also something to think about. And now we are coming up with a proposal that, perhaps, we can apply the same experience to support the families of these older people. It will be, on the one hand, much cheaper, and on the other hand, much more comfortable for these people ,” this is the proposal made by the former Kaluga governor Anatoly Artamonov.

Orphanages are a disgrace for any country. And there are countries where there are no orphanages, although, unfortunately, there are orphans everywhere. And it’s better to be raised in a family (normal, of course) than in an orphanage. However, fostering a child is one thing. People who cannot have children, or simply good families where they are ready to raise adopted children in addition to their own - this is an understandable and common situation. And thank God.

But who will take care of the elderly? Again, there are countries, there are peoples where there are no abandoned old people - these are the local traditions. In our country, these traditions do not exist everywhere.

A third of households in Russia consist of one person. In three quarters of cases these are single women over 60 years of age. In half the cases, single people are widows and widowers. And every fifth person was not even married. They almost certainly do not have relatives who will take them to live with them. And to find strangers - perhaps in exchange for the apartment of such an old woman or old man, or for some serious benefit from the state. But knowing that after the death of a stranger you will receive his apartment, will you sincerely take care of him in order to prolong his life? Let's leave this question unanswered. But we already understand for sure that nursing homes and the elderly themselves are a burden for the state. Let only the former governor talk about this. It’s just easier to say some things to an ex than to a current one.

However, you still can’t literally say about old people that they no longer belong here. After all, once every few years they have to vote, and older people do it with discipline and, most importantly, vote “as they should” - TV helps them. Of course, electronic voting has partly solved the problem, but in those same nursing homes, responsible people are still walking around with ballot boxes, collecting ballots, and quite a lot of these necessary checkboxes are collected!

But there are also categories of citizens who are not so reliable in the electoral sense. The director of the Institute of Diabetes, Marina Shestakova, spoke about them the other day. She said that there are now about 5.5 million people with type II diabetes who require therapy. But our budget is no longer able to handle the treatment of such a number of patients. What to do? I further quote from Vedomosti : “In this regard, the priority group included the most able-bodied patients, for whom financing of therapy is economically justified. In the future, endocrinologists plan to seek to expand the criteria for selecting patients, Shestakova added.”

Again, no one is suggesting that we abandon patients with diabetes and deny them treatment! But we are clearly informed that there is no money. It is impossible to help everyone at once, no matter how much you want. No matter how great this desire is, I am not ready to fantasize and build gloomy hypotheses. However, in the same material from colleagues there are two figures: 1 million diabetics need modern glucose-lowering drugs, and the target group for receiving such drugs was 105,507 Russians with cardiovascular and renal diseases who do not have disabilities and do not receive drugs with a cardioprotective effect at benefits. If I’m not confused and understood everything correctly, only one out of ten patients in need can count on qualified modern care.

This is a good time to remind you that in 2026, 19 out of 82 regional budgets significantly reduced healthcare spending - by a total of 107 billion. And funding for the national project “Long and Active Life” will be reduced by 26%, to 274.2 billion rubles.

Again:

no one directly says or will say that “we don’t need you anymore”, old, sick, disabled people. It’s just that we don’t have money for healthy and young people.

You just have to look for some ways or endure. Or hope to live until the time when rubles left over from filling various defense and “power” items will be found for your needs.

In the meantime, those who are still able to give birth were reminded that this should be done in any case. Just these days in the Urals it was reported that all private clinics in the Sverdlovsk region refused to perform abortion procedures. It’s best not to think about how many less-than-desirable children will end up in an orphanage.

And since I started with the classic, I’ll end with it: “Patriotism is a clear, clear, well-reasoned explanation of why we should live worse than others.”