You could take genes out of the picture and the story would hold. Just assume people raised by impulsive parents distracted by 8 other kids are more likely to repeat the cycle. Contrary to supporting eugenics, that idea is inclusive and powers progressive welfare reform.
Reddit is gamed like that. Even before LLMs there were highly active users that caught bans for using multiple accounts to boost all their posts.
Facebook didn’t catch on in a similar way, because people didn’t have personal feeds yet. The way startups are funded now seems to follow your model though. Decisions on high about what people should see/want.
More housing ≠ more people. We aren’t going back to a 3+ child average unless a lot of other things change
Software engineering back then sounds like academia
My new favorite 405 image
Some percentage, including me, would have built a second or third