I wonder if at some point he ever read about how 1 in 7 (or whatever) humans are descended from Ghengis Khan.
I know he says all kinds of wacko stuff about fertility rates and population collapse, but when have his motivations ever been even that bit more complex than wanting to imitate/join the cool/funny thing he found online? I seriously wonder...
It was also never originally about fire safety. It was about making it more difficult to build multi-family homes.
Lawrence Veillier, an early influence on zoning laws in the US, wanted to "do everything possible in our laws to encourage the construction of private dwellings and even two- family dwellinas, because the two-family house is the next least obiectionable type, and penalize so far as we can in our statute, the multiple dwelling of any kind... If we require multiple dwellings to be fireproof, and thus increase the cost of construction: if we require stairs to be fireproofed, even where there are only three families; if we require fire escapes and a host of other things, all dealing with fire protection, we are on safe grounds, because that can be iustified as a leqitimate exercise of the police power... In our laws let most of the fire provisions relate solelv to multiple dwellings, and allow our private houses and two-family houses to be built with no fire protection whatever" (NHA Proceedings 1913, 212)