Globalization and bureaucratization has a big part in it. We are constantly confronted with problems we can't solve, making us feel powerless and insignificant. We thrive on agency, accomplishments, community, and all that is overshadowed.
Aging: Many people can continue to function well into their 60s and 70s, however new ideas mostly come from young men up to about 27 years old. The fact that people are expected to just study up to that age has really reduced the scientific and engineering breakthroughs. If we add to that a society where the basic infrastructure is crumbling, technological progress will be zero, in fact it will be hard to just hold onto what we already have. We're already seeing this today, many of the scientific breakthroughs of the 60's have sparsely been repeated.
Samo Burja is very persuasive to me because he speaks so dispassionately. I haven't heard him cover a topic yet (and he covers a lot!) where he tips his hand. I'm fascinated because its so hard to guess his biases.
@@gmw3083 high-IQ segments decline much faster than low-IQ. fact is, the only ones who breed more are either religious communities or violent, impulsive underclasses. i'm fine with you not breeding, however
The population crash is something we HAVE to go through, I think. The corporate and government bureaucracies have made society SO inefficient, very few people are doing actual useful work. In fact the bureaucracies PREVENT people from doing useful work. The establishment will not give up their power, not until the system simply cannot sustain itself anymore and we HAVE to change.
WhatifAltHist has a great video on China showing how they invented a ton of stuff that wasnt effectively used until Europeans either rediscovered it or obtained it from China all because the Chinese bureaucratic system made it basically impossible to actually leverage these inventions.
@@HanzHermannHoppe Just the other day I heard a lot of internet stuff is like that as well. Most places around the world the internet has become severely regulated. Not just China but also Europe. The USA is one of the few places where the web is still largely unregulated. That's why they're building data centers like mad here.
The real issue driving this globally is not that women have so many other opportunities. It's that children are no longer beneficial to male resource production, they are just costs. Marriages aren't forming because women have lost their evolutionary strategy of trading children to the male, which added to his resources, for access to his resources for life. When children became a cost and not additive to the male's resources, females were forced to switch to direct resource production. The biological truth we are struggling with is that children require a union between a man and a woman, and that union occurs as a result of that trade. When women then seek their own direct resources, it all collapses. It's a problem in the evolutionary development of the species. We need to direct all of our efforts of getting men to marry. But that is ony going to happen if children are valuable to men. Which means marriage on the partnership model is fundamentally not aligned with fertility. That's why it's happening globally regardless of culture.
It's at least as much the women who are not pursuing marriage. What might work is traditional arranged marriage at a fairly young age. Spending 10 or 20 years dating and playing the field means you get married with very little fertility left.
Marriage currently has such a negative aspect to males that many men refuse to marry. The risk to lose all your resources is too high with current draconian laws biased towards women after a divorce
@@tramlink8544the laws used to have a reason for it. Back then men were abandoning their families and women weren’t allowed to own a bank account without a man’s permission. But those days are gone and the laws are obsolete. We need new flexible laws. Or we need these laws to also affect women by making them gender neutral then the laws will be changed quickly.
Does North Korea have arranged marriage, or does it partake in love marriages? This is what you should look into. Fertility is crashing in every society in which young people are expected to find and choose their mate all by themselves. In societies where parents or community play a higher role in mate selection (like Amish or Orthodox Judaism) fertility is higher. Please research this and get back to us.
Hindus have arranged marriages, but low fertility. Particularly, in the cities. It is not so much arranged marriages per se (although they help). It is the entire patriarchal toolkit: women not being emancipated and having no say in what occupation they have, what husband they have, and having no or very little practical ability to divorce. Highest TFR is in Taliban Afghanistan.
35:40 Glad you point that out. People say the world is full , yet go drive across the USA, it's nowhere near full. However the government and investors own a lot of land. It needs to be made more available. One of the reasons I moved to Texas is because Texas is one of the few places where most land is actually available for citizens.
It’s a normal part of the civilisational cycle - look at the ruins of once thriving Roman, Greek, Mayan cities. Soon we will see people all move to cities as services are more centralised and smaller areas are abandoned, but when population levels become so low that services like power and water break down, people will move back to the countryside to grow food and have fresh water, then slowly the cycle of growth will restart.
I think one of the big differences is that in the west there are very few big families now. Most of my great-uncles never reproduced and most of my great-aunts only had two, but I had one great-aunt who had a dozen. Nobody has that many children these days.
Not being in a relationship what with the dating market being completely broken, the cost of living and housing being through the roof, already spending 50-60 hours per week working, over population, the environmental crisis and geopolitical evolution meaning I don't want to bring kids into this world and the list goes on ...
I can’t see the ideas later in the talk happening in China. The party-state is very hostile toward surrogacy, and assisted reproductive technologies are legal only for married women. I believe the party state will force social re-engineering before attempting the kind of technological measures described. The familial mindset is very strong, and there is broad recognition that the fall in fertility is due to a breakdown in the courting market and resulting collapse of marriage rates.
I highly reccomend reading up on the Rat Utopia project from the 1960s. Over 30 experiments were conducted over the space of 10 years where 6 rats were introduced to an enclosure with food and nests for a population of 6000. after 2 years there were 2000 rats in these utopian conditions when suddenly the fertility rates crashed, not because of disease or anything else, but the rats just didn’t want to reproduce, some became infertile, others turned aggressiv, males became feminine, females more masculine and eventually the population totally died. Humans are animals too so there can be a correlation that because we live so comfortably nowadays we don’t have that survival drive of our ancestors anymore, and it could well be that it’s a major cause in our fertility rates being so low
As a population of humans changes, so does its culture. So I assume that eventually it will become socially acceptable for those of modest means to have children again. And I'm sure many of them will "colonize" the abandoned villages, towns and cities of their respective areas of Earth. Simply the culture of those around in 200 years will be so different from today that they will see filling the Earth with people as a moral good.
Good point but on a side tangent, it’s nuts to think in 200 years humans will still have to manage nuclear arsenals while trying to fill the earth with people. My gut tells me humanity is going to use some nukes before 200 years pass
I agree with the recommendations from the World Economic Forum, that advised the cancellation of direct incentive programs, the target of a stable fertility rate of 1.7, and a diversion of all 'baby bonus' funds towards pediatric and child care.
Burja strawmans the arguments about the baby boom. The explanations are 1 male incomes increased relative to female and 2 male incomes became more equal. As a result of these factor women could best gain social status by marrying, and because male incomes were fairly equal, there was no point holding out in hopes of landing a high income man. You could marry a man you liked and be confident of a good life together. So people married young, and so they had more children due to simple biology. Start having children at 22, you'll have more of them than if you start at 36. This is why the baby boom in the USA started in the mid-1930s, after the New Deal. Not after the war.
That would lead to a massive consolidation in wealth outside cities. A lot of towns exist to service agriculture and raw material extraction. The few who remain would have ample opportunities.
Kids are a product the same as any other livestock . If there is no benefit to the farmer for raising this livestock, why would they bother to breed and raise it? Expensive pets? If governments want to become involved in the solution they should offer tax breaks to families with 4 or more children. Say no tax on first 200k of family income until the last kid leaves the house. Better yet, use tax breaks to bring back smaller family run farms that breed their own labour. Farm raised kids tend to be hard working problem solvers. The challenge here is that we are asking the Gray- haired population to fix the problem they created without it being seen as their doing.
Do we need more humans? Or are we close to the point where robots take over the tasks which keep society going...leaving the remaining humans to occupy themselves with greater purposes? A darker question is: What happens to those who are not suited for exploring greater purposes?
We have had robot vacuum cleaners for two decades, and they still cannot vacuum stairs, let alone dust the furniture or water the plants. Robots will not be taking over in your lifetime.
I think what he's not taking into account is that most people don't plan to have children. Most people simply get horny and then "Oops she's pregnant. I guess I better step up and be a parent"
This depends on socal class and personality. The consientious personality all ways uses contraception or a method that last years. Has mone y to pay for it etx. The lower class women have Kids young. No amazing carrers to stop. Husband who often earns more than them. The Unconcientious forget the tablet, take it late dont even realise they are more fertile becouse they missed. Thses two effects can be seen in study data. There is a third group who want kids and now third generation women of this group have increadably strong feelings to have kids.
Here in Canada, contraceptives are widely available and will soon be free, and vasectomies are free. Unplanned pregnancies are rare, and virtually all abortions are administered to women with a crisis pregnancy who desperately want a child... but the average age for first childbirth in our cities is about 37. But there's no value in 'baby-bonus' schemes, and we must prepare degrowth strategies!
Really insightful discussion. Especially around not knowing the real cause. I heard one history podcast that suggested there is historical evidence that fertility drops as people move into cities. It was the farmers who end up repopulating after the city state ultimately collapses. Modernity means more people than ever can live in cities. Access to birth control and abortions means we have less accidental children - perhaps the majority of births pre birth control were by accident (although I can't prove that). Taken together these influences seem like they could be strong drivers behind this phenomenon. In short, technology has created this problem. And, in my opinion, technology is our only way out of it - no putting the genie back in the bottle. Whoever figures out artificial wombs and ai bots to raise kids en mass may end up inheriting the earth. 😬
I think it's simple. When the sexual revolution and feminism hit, it seemed all so liberating. What happened in the '70's onward was how hard it is to be pregnant, give birth, lactate, raise a toddler, maintain a household and also have a fulltime career. Then divorce relaxing. So women knew that husbands/fathers could leave and then single motherhood . Recipe for exhaustion, poverty and kids going nuts. Raising children is *work*. This seems to be difficult to understand. It is not compatible with a demanding career. But then, women got forced to work. It was/is no longer an option. All girls know they must have a career/job. If that is non-negotiable and pregnancy is negotiable, what is going to give since they compete with each other for the same time, the same energy, the same resources. Modernity requires that women work. women do not have the choice not to work - not really. At the very least, they now get stigmatised for it if they are 'able' to care-give fulltime. But without husbands, fathers, a family wage, children are exhausting and scary. The modern world does not prioritise them. In fact, it prioritises everything except children. But it isn't rocket science. Bottom line. Family formation is hard, even when its easy, and is not not not compatible with one, let alone two full time careers. In all this, it is the kids who get screwed.
It was not like that gues where? In socialism! I am not telling that socialism is good but in this point it is much better. I see that every day after leaving Serbia and settling in Germany. Although we are not socialistic country Serbia retain many of good things. Support for mothers is much better. From working time of 8 hour against German 9 hours, to worry free kindergarten where there is no separate Krippe for kids up to 3 (hard to get and prohibitive expensive) and kindergarten. University educated people are actually working with kids, teaching them, feeding them. No waiting lists to get place, no packing of food (damn Brotzeit!) no prescription when to put and when to get your kid in 15 minutes period (damn German punctuality and dictate) no caring time up to 8 hours in country where youbare forced to work 9 hours! If we staed in Serbia we woud have at least 3 kids, in Germany we stopped at 2 😢
@@aurelije What a good point and so interesting what you say about the contrast with Serbia! I lived in Germany for a while a long time ago and I remember the culture was very work oriented, or rather, paid work oriented and not very flexible around people just being people. But how interesting that Serbia, which we often think of as just a bit better than a developing nation is actually better for kids than Germany which we think of as a sophisticated, modern western economy. Tbh I think there's lots to be said for socialism, but it is expensive. Not crazy about communism...
"The total fertility rate (TFR) of a population is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime, if they were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) through their lifetime, and they were to live from birth until the end of their reproductive life." - Wikipedia.
I would say urbanization is the culprit. No country above around 75% urbanization has a positive fertility level. Within 75-50% urbanization, the only positive fertility examples are in Africa, Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea, and Iraq. Now, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and the Philippines are interesting counterexamples of rural nations with below replacement. For these nations, I'd say that being isolated from other high-fertility nations creates a compounding effect. I expect islands of high fertility like Kazakhstan and Iraq will eventually decline toward the norm for their regions. With Africa, you have overlapping positive fertility across the entire continent which reinforces the culture. I will also note that Southeast Asia has a serious lack of religiosity, especially toward the Abrahamic faiths which is positively correlated with higher fertility. Unless you have an urban population below 50%, I don't see any method to get it back up to replacement level. And even then, if the country is not sufficiently culturally religious there's no hope for a country that is 25-35% urban as with Southeast Asia.
The population decreasing would actually be good for the working class. Bad for the elite. And mostly the elite are worried about it. Every population decrease benefited the poor and not the rich. We would not be less poorer like this guest said. Or maybe he was speaking on behalf of the elite.
Samo it is female literacy in developing countries dropping the fertility rate. that explains places like North Korea the Amish and the hacidics; and yes the hacidics and Amish are dropping as well. Amish fertility rates will move in a similar fashion to Utah once they become a homogeneous group in any county or state and their institutions become redundant with local governments. Their fertility is highest on the fringes like any other group with a growing population we multiply on frontiers. In the developed world it was contraception being normalized in 1972 look at the numbers, and west Germany the uk and France were going to at least partially gravitate towards the fertility trends in the us because they rejected their own cultures after world war 2 especially for the first 30 or so years and adopted American or global culture and the subconscious social pressures of pregnancy are very strong think how much fertility varies by state compared to any economic indicator it’s the same with age of marriage people only base when they get married on when other people get married
And also tax breaks won’t improve fertility for any sustained period of time they are expensive and become normal look at the early 20th century the only thing that’s ever worked to improve fertility was a bachelor tax
@@jobloluther it appears stable because it’s higher on the frontiers but in reality it’s dropping in the core in New York it’s rising in orange and ulster counties but dropping in Brooklyn and no set in rockland
Giving tax breaks for people with kids is essentially a tax on people without kids and that's just not fair. The real solution is to redistribute a lot of the wealth from the rich to the poor. And to create a basic income that rewards women for having kids younger. And legislation to enable women to enter careers later in life (after children) at no penalty to their prospects.
Exactly. De facto taxation on childlessness means being childless automatically becomes more expensive and because kids ARE AN EXPENSE. People simply wait even longer to be in a financially sound position to have them. It does not translate to people having kids earlier. It only helps those who ALREADY HAVE the kids, so it won't put a dent in the fertility rate only worsen it
Does he have any idea of what women have to go through to harvest eggs? You cannot mandate that! Plus frozen eggs don’t fare well, not nearly as well as frozen embryos.
@@ArtymusPrime Scale down to smaller more localized economies/prepare for less people. We dont need a huge corporation that makes billions owning every provider, service and clinic in every city. We dont need a McDonalds on every corner. Hell even Doctors work for corporations now and can only treat their patients if an insurance company says so... but that would eat into their profits.
@@karenhaggard7094 So what you are describing is the collapse of complex civilization, akin to what happened after the disintegration of the Roman Empire. That will happen anyway if current trends continue, and they will definitely get worse.
This mans possible solutions at the end are very depressing, extreme, and very unlikely. It fails to address other problems. This assumes men are okay being intentionally not allowed to breed and the government is largely left in charge of who reproduces. We can always go back to simpliar solutions. Like encouraging kids to pair up before 20, enforcement of monogamy, having lots of third places. Intentional get togethers where people mingle.
If I look at the USA of the ~1870-1970 time frame , it was beautiful, thriving, ripe with opportunity. We need to bring back this optimism and inspiration for the future. That's what people are missing now. You can really see that from where this discussion went. Not enough babies? Well we just coerce people, make baby factories, etc etc. How about we just make our country/society a place where people would WANT to have a family?
I would like to know why climate change is constantly brought up as an issue for declining birth rates, and frequently as a scoffed at issue, like it's not a real problem. I would agree that CC is an issue for some for not having children, however, I doubt it is a primary issue. Economic stress, social psychology, financial stress, lack of community are likely major factors. Decline in the early 1970's is likely to other factors at that time.
People who understand ecology will say the opposite, thst we need to lower birth rates so that we need to rapidly reduce birth rates to drop the overall human population to a billion or so. We are actually causing the sixth biggest extinction event of Earth history. Wildlife numbers have been reduced so much that we humans and our livestock make up 98% of terrestrial biomass. Then there is energy, water, food and other resource overshoot. We 8 billion people are using more resources than the Earth can supply and producing more pollution than the Earth can reprocess. The Earth is so crowded and resources are so stretched that resource conflicts are growing worse. The bloody battle for survival between the Israelis and Palestinians is a battle for resources, for space, water, food and energy. And, global warming is rapidly exacerbating water, food, and other resource shortages and conflicts. The big challenges are going to be finding an ethical way to reproduce birth rates before water, food, energy and other resource shortages, and the resulting conflicts, reduce our populations for us. If you want more Haiti’s, Palestines and Syrias, then keep overproducing. But the human suffering and destruction of biodiversity that is causing is beyond unethical.
Good point, except your wrong on "terrestrial biomass." More accurately, this is the planet of the ants. They are almost an order of magnitude more than human biomass. If other Kingdoms are included then land-based plants, fungi, and bacteria are much higher than humans and livestock. Source is, "Biomass Distribution on Earth" 2018, Yinon et al.
You underestimate evolution. Humanity is not a social monolith. There are many societies and subcultures. The ones that produce more babies will grow. Low fertility during the Roman empire contributed to their fall, but higher fertility among Christians led to Christianity taking over the Roman empire. The fundamental differences between Christianity and Roman paganism led the empire to finish falling, but the principle still stands. The future belongs to those that show up. Low fertility groups have greater social impact because childless people are both miserable and bored. Since they aren't spending time on the worthwhile task of raising children, they have a lot of time and a unfulfilled need for seeing their own impact. As they need to rationalize their failure to have children and still want a legacy, they often apply their free time to campaigning against fertility or something else that doesn't help children.
That theory would work were it not for the fact that said subcultures within 2 to 3 generations simply end up with similar fertility rates if they move to urban areas as said urban populations. Rural communities continue to have more fertility on average than any urban area. The problem stems from the fact that all the economic opportunities are in urban areas and the rampant unchecked monopolized buying of properties by corporations makes simply living expensive. Even rural areas are losing fertility because many of their children will go to urban areas to earn money for their families and thus end up having less children. Even if they come from a family of 8 and have 5 children that is still 3 less than the previous generation. If their 5 children have 3 children then you can see how it SLOWLY declines. Our society is sick. The dropping fertility is a symptom not a cause. Just like they said in the video Even if ALL those populations that stopped having kids die out. The ones that remain will follow into the exact same trajectory. So long as people at the top hoard wealth and make it difficult for people at the bottom to live then fertility will not rise. We have to make having kids a net positive and right now its a net negative. Spending 60% to 90% of your life at work, with barely enough energy to even enjoy being a parent is wrong and we cannot even downplay how difficult it is to raise a child (the whole it takes a village to raise a child). We have lost community. More and more people are forced to raise kids on their own which only makes being a parent that much more stressful to point that even people who want kids will want less because of how difficult it is. People have breaking points. And this society is doing its best indirectly to get them as close to it as possible. Many of us are broken. The idea of having that family against the insane mountain of the job market, lack of time, ever growing stres, increasing price of BASIC living. The fertility is a sign of people giving up. And they are giving up on this society.
People with good genetics work till 70 today. Today everything costs so much in everywhere that you can’t afford kids. Technology has become unaffordable.
...I don't understand why the alarm... when we get down to a billion we might start to worry about extinction. Maybe if we make a more pleasant world we'll get fertility as a nice side effect!
So your solution(not being rude) but amounts to just have children and ignore the issues that caused people to not have kids? All that will happen here is people will continue to not have kids regardless of the vote one. Two the population not able to vote will obviously be all the youth which is your working force. And any political party silly enough to isolate the working populace will only speed up civil unrest. If you make being childless expensive you won't cause people to suddenly want kids. You will only increase the wall one must scale in order to be able to have kids. This is why taxes on childless people is stupid. If it costs me MORE to feed myself, I will be THAT MUCH MORE inclined to AVOID a family (because the cost of a child suddenly doesn't disappear and these government barely give enough money to justify how ridiculously expensive kids lets no play pretend)
Actually, not so much. Male sperm count is way down. My neighbor is struggling with exactly this. Hubby's sperm count is very low. He doesn't want sperm donor, and they can't afford IVF. So they have accepted no children. And, no, he doesn't want to adopt. "If it's not my child, don't want it." They are close to aging out.
Population decline is huge financial crisis you idiot. Who will pay your pension? Who will take loan to create money? WTF are you talking about? A lot of benefits for who? Animals only but not for humanity.
The underpopulation is also an opportunity to right a lot of wrongs. Our excesses have allowed a cancerous bureaucracy and regulatory burden to grow. Eventually the excesses will not be there and the bureaucracy will no longer be sustainable and disappear.
Go with the opposite, folks are broke, and women's mental health is collectively bad at record rates. People don't want to raise families without economic stability.
Who do you know had an unplanned child in the last 20 years? Because I don't know anyone. We waited until we could afford them and had a set of twins at 40 and another set of twins at 42. Kids are expensive. It takes a long time get all 9f your ducks in a row.
@@runningfromabear8354damn you won at life, good for you sir\ma’am. But, precisely, planning has become the norm in the last 20 years. Before, many pregnancies were accidental. That’s not the only factor but one of the factors that reduced fertility.
The problem is that our civilization lost its soul. Many can point to many reasons to why, but truly, we have lost that fire of life in ourselves.
Perhaps because we are treated and treat each other like machines instead of people.
Globalization and bureaucratization has a big part in it. We are constantly confronted with problems we can't solve, making us feel powerless and insignificant. We thrive on agency, accomplishments, community, and all that is overshadowed.
Fault Based divorce undermines marriage rates & fertility rates.
@@castirondude Nope. It's the West
Aging: Many people can continue to function well into their 60s and 70s, however new ideas mostly come from young men up to about 27 years old. The fact that people are expected to just study up to that age has really reduced the scientific and engineering breakthroughs. If we add to that a society where the basic infrastructure is crumbling, technological progress will be zero, in fact it will be hard to just hold onto what we already have. We're already seeing this today, many of the scientific breakthroughs of the 60's have sparsely been repeated.
But it takes that long for our most talented young people to get to the level where they can contribute.
@artichoke60045 because our education system is so inefficient
Basically, if you don't have a doctorate nobody takes you seriously in academia, new ideas are shot down because "you lack accreditation".
@@castirondude Yep, most 4 year Bachelor's degrees can be done in 1 year.
Samo Burja is very persuasive to me because he speaks so dispassionately. I haven't heard him cover a topic yet (and he covers a lot!) where he tips his hand. I'm fascinated because its so hard to guess his biases.
He makes his bias fairly clear on this particular issue. I mean, consider how many arguments he simply dismisses out of hand.
He wants population growth. He's wrong. Population decline is fine if not beneficial.
He's right about the masses getting more stupid, though. This aids in population decline. Or maybe it doesn't. Hard to say..
@@gmw3083 high-IQ segments decline much faster than low-IQ. fact is, the only ones who breed more are either religious communities or violent, impulsive underclasses. i'm fine with you not breeding, however
The population crash is something we HAVE to go through, I think. The corporate and government bureaucracies have made society SO inefficient, very few people are doing actual useful work. In fact the bureaucracies PREVENT people from doing useful work. The establishment will not give up their power, not until the system simply cannot sustain itself anymore and we HAVE to change.
WhatifAltHist has a great video on China showing how they invented a ton of stuff that wasnt effectively used until Europeans either rediscovered it or obtained it from China all because the Chinese bureaucratic system made it basically impossible to actually leverage these inventions.
@@HanzHermannHoppe Just the other day I heard a lot of internet stuff is like that as well. Most places around the world the internet has become severely regulated. Not just China but also Europe. The USA is one of the few places where the web is still largely unregulated. That's why they're building data centers like mad here.
Population collapse won't collapse this system, they'll simply get into managed decline mode, yet at the end the bureaucracies will be unchanged.
The real issue driving this globally is not that women have so many other opportunities. It's that children are no longer beneficial to male resource production, they are just costs. Marriages aren't forming because women have lost their evolutionary strategy of trading children to the male, which added to his resources, for access to his resources for life. When children became a cost and not additive to the male's resources, females were forced to switch to direct resource production. The biological truth we are struggling with is that children require a union between a man and a woman, and that union occurs as a result of that trade. When women then seek their own direct resources, it all collapses. It's a problem in the evolutionary development of the species. We need to direct all of our efforts of getting men to marry. But that is ony going to happen if children are valuable to men. Which means marriage on the partnership model is fundamentally not aligned with fertility. That's why it's happening globally regardless of culture.
It's at least as much the women who are not pursuing marriage. What might work is traditional arranged marriage at a fairly young age. Spending 10 or 20 years dating and playing the field means you get married with very little fertility left.
Marriage currently has such a negative aspect to males that many men refuse to marry. The risk to lose all your resources is too high with current draconian laws biased towards women after a divorce
@@tramlink8544the laws used to have a reason for it. Back then men were abandoning their families and women weren’t allowed to own a bank account without a man’s permission. But those days are gone and the laws are obsolete. We need new flexible laws. Or we need these laws to also affect women by making them gender neutral then the laws will be changed quickly.
Does North Korea have arranged marriage, or does it partake in love marriages? This is what you should look into. Fertility is crashing in every society in which young people are expected to find and choose their mate all by themselves. In societies where parents or community play a higher role in mate selection (like Amish or Orthodox Judaism) fertility is higher. Please research this and get back to us.
Hindus have arranged marriages, but low fertility. Particularly, in the cities. It is not so much arranged marriages per se (although they help). It is the entire patriarchal toolkit: women not being emancipated and having no say in what occupation they have, what husband they have, and having no or very little practical ability to divorce. Highest TFR is in Taliban Afghanistan.
35:40 Glad you point that out. People say the world is full , yet go drive across the USA, it's nowhere near full. However the government and investors own a lot of land. It needs to be made more available. One of the reasons I moved to Texas is because Texas is one of the few places where most land is actually available for citizens.
It’s a normal part of the civilisational cycle - look at the ruins of once thriving Roman, Greek, Mayan cities. Soon we will see people all move to cities as services are more centralised and smaller areas are abandoned, but when population levels become so low that services like power and water break down, people will move back to the countryside to grow food and have fresh water, then slowly the cycle of growth will restart.
I think one of the big differences is that in the west there are very few big families now. Most of my great-uncles never reproduced and most of my great-aunts only had two, but I had one great-aunt who had a dozen. Nobody has that many children these days.
Reupload from moment of zen
Thank you
We can all look at our own lives and see a large number of show stopping reasons why we are personally not have having any children.
Not being in a relationship what with the dating market being completely broken, the cost of living and housing being through the roof, already spending 50-60 hours per week working, over population, the environmental crisis and geopolitical evolution meaning I don't want to bring kids into this world and the list goes on ...
I can’t see the ideas later in the talk happening in China. The party-state is very hostile toward surrogacy, and assisted reproductive technologies are legal only for married women. I believe the party state will force social re-engineering before attempting the kind of technological measures described. The familial mindset is very strong, and there is broad recognition that the fall in fertility is due to a breakdown in the courting market and resulting collapse of marriage rates.
1:00:07 Samo sums up the depth and complexity of the issue here. Very scary and chilling realizations on state Central planning of genetics.
To me the 'Brave New World' future is seeming more and more likely.
I highly reccomend reading up on the Rat Utopia project from the 1960s. Over 30 experiments were conducted over the space of 10 years where 6 rats were introduced to an enclosure with food and nests for a population of 6000. after 2 years there were 2000 rats in these utopian conditions when suddenly the fertility rates crashed, not because of disease or anything else, but the rats just didn’t want to reproduce, some became infertile, others turned aggressiv, males became feminine, females more masculine and eventually the population totally died.
Humans are animals too so there can be a correlation that because we live so comfortably nowadays we don’t have that survival drive of our ancestors anymore, and it could well be that it’s a major cause in our fertility rates being so low
Give parents 1 year paid leave or guarantee return work after 2 years. That would help. I am a father of two infant boys.
As a population of humans changes, so does its culture. So I assume that eventually it will become socially acceptable for those of modest means to have children again. And I'm sure many of them will "colonize" the abandoned villages, towns and cities of their respective areas of Earth.
Simply the culture of those around in 200 years will be so different from today that they will see filling the Earth with people as a moral good.
Good point but on a side tangent, it’s nuts to think in 200 years humans will still have to manage nuclear arsenals while trying to fill the earth with people. My gut tells me humanity is going to use some nukes before 200 years pass
I agree with the recommendations from the World Economic Forum, that advised the cancellation of direct incentive programs, the target of a stable fertility rate of 1.7, and a diversion of all 'baby bonus' funds towards pediatric and child care.
The government raising people's children is totally dystopian
Burja strawmans the arguments about the baby boom. The explanations are 1 male incomes increased relative to female and 2 male incomes became more equal. As a result of these factor women could best gain social status by marrying, and because male incomes were fairly equal, there was no point holding out in hopes of landing a high income man. You could marry a man you liked and be confident of a good life together.
So people married young, and so they had more children due to simple biology. Start having children at 22, you'll have more of them than if you start at 36.
This is why the baby boom in the USA started in the mid-1930s, after the New Deal. Not after the war.
A world inherited by the Amish may not be such a bad thing
That would lead to a massive consolidation in wealth outside cities. A lot of towns exist to service agriculture and raw material extraction. The few who remain would have ample opportunities.
See Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia experiments 😅
Kids are a product the same as any other livestock . If there is no benefit to the farmer for raising this livestock, why would they bother to breed and raise it? Expensive pets?
If governments want to become involved in the solution they should offer tax breaks to families with 4 or more children. Say no tax on first 200k of family income until the last kid leaves the house. Better yet, use tax breaks to bring back smaller family run farms that breed their own labour. Farm raised kids tend to be hard working problem solvers.
The challenge here is that we are asking the Gray- haired population to fix the problem they created without it being seen as their doing.
Do we need more humans? Or are we close to the point where robots take over the tasks which keep society going...leaving the remaining humans to occupy themselves with greater purposes? A darker question is: What happens to those who are not suited for exploring greater purposes?
And those people will breed regardless
@@pce12345 except they don't...
@@pce12345that was the assumption but tfr says that's not true
We have had robot vacuum cleaners for two decades, and they still cannot vacuum stairs, let alone dust the furniture or water the plants. Robots will not be taking over in your lifetime.
We get Idiocracy.
"Hope has been taken away"
I think what he's not taking into account is that most people don't plan to have children. Most people simply get horny and then "Oops she's pregnant. I guess I better step up and be a parent"
That hasn't been true for most people in 20 years. I don't know anyone who didn't plan their kids.
Maybe they did that more in the old days. These days they are more likely to say they are not ready to be a parent.
This depends on socal class and personality. The consientious personality all ways uses contraception or a method that last years. Has mone y to pay for it etx. The lower class women have Kids young. No amazing carrers to stop. Husband who often earns more than them. The Unconcientious forget the tablet, take it late dont even realise they are more fertile becouse they missed. Thses two effects can be seen in study data. There is a third group who want kids and now third generation women of this group have increadably strong feelings to have kids.
All my family planned their children and all my friends. The only people I know that didn't were horny uneducated teens and drunken sloppy party pigs.
Here in Canada, contraceptives are widely available and will soon be free, and vasectomies are free. Unplanned pregnancies are rare, and virtually all abortions are administered to women with a crisis pregnancy who desperately want a child... but the average age for first childbirth in our cities is about 37. But there's no value in 'baby-bonus' schemes, and we must prepare degrowth strategies!
Replaced by the forests for the win
The humanity plant has bloomed and produced an AI flower.
It could be that our lives are too abstracted whereas these cultures who have lots of kids keep things simple and grounded.
Really insightful discussion. Especially around not knowing the real cause. I heard one history podcast that suggested there is historical evidence that fertility drops as people move into cities. It was the farmers who end up repopulating after the city state ultimately collapses. Modernity means more people than ever can live in cities. Access to birth control and abortions means we have less accidental children - perhaps the majority of births pre birth control were by accident (although I can't prove that).
Taken together these influences seem like they could be strong drivers behind this phenomenon. In short, technology has created this problem. And, in my opinion, technology is our only way out of it - no putting the genie back in the bottle. Whoever figures out artificial wombs and ai bots to raise kids en mass may end up inheriting the earth. 😬
I had a child last year via surrogacy. He's a lovely, little chap. However, it is extremely difficult and extremely expensive.
I have 3 kids and now my wife is expecting our 4th child. We are dedicated parents who live within our means
The US crossed replacement around 2003 or 04 it dropped in 08-09 again.
I think it's simple. When the sexual revolution and feminism hit, it seemed all so liberating. What happened in the '70's onward was how hard it is to be pregnant, give birth, lactate, raise a toddler, maintain a household and also have a fulltime career. Then divorce relaxing. So women knew that husbands/fathers could leave and then single motherhood . Recipe for exhaustion, poverty and kids going nuts. Raising children is *work*. This seems to be difficult to understand. It is not compatible with a demanding career. But then, women got forced to work. It was/is no longer an option. All girls know they must have a career/job. If that is non-negotiable and pregnancy is negotiable, what is going to give since they compete with each other for the same time, the same energy, the same resources. Modernity requires that women work. women do not have the choice not to work - not really. At the very least, they now get stigmatised for it if they are 'able' to care-give fulltime. But without husbands, fathers, a family wage, children are exhausting and scary. The modern world does not prioritise them. In fact, it prioritises everything except children. But it isn't rocket science. Bottom line. Family formation is hard, even when its easy, and is not not not compatible with one, let alone two full time careers. In all this, it is the kids who get screwed.
It was not like that gues where? In socialism! I am not telling that socialism is good but in this point it is much better. I see that every day after leaving Serbia and settling in Germany. Although we are not socialistic country Serbia retain many of good things. Support for mothers is much better. From working time of 8 hour against German 9 hours, to worry free kindergarten where there is no separate Krippe for kids up to 3 (hard to get and prohibitive expensive) and kindergarten. University educated people are actually working with kids, teaching them, feeding them. No waiting lists to get place, no packing of food (damn Brotzeit!) no prescription when to put and when to get your kid in 15 minutes period (damn German punctuality and dictate) no caring time up to 8 hours in country where youbare forced to work 9 hours! If we staed in Serbia we woud have at least 3 kids, in Germany we stopped at 2 😢
@@aurelije What a good point and so interesting what you say about the contrast with Serbia! I lived in Germany for a while a long time ago and I remember the culture was very work oriented, or rather, paid work oriented and not very flexible around people just being people. But how interesting that Serbia, which we often think of as just a bit better than a developing nation is actually better for kids than Germany which we think of as a sophisticated, modern western economy. Tbh I think there's lots to be said for socialism, but it is expensive. Not crazy about communism...
What is tfrt?… started using that from the beginning and didn’t define
"The total fertility rate (TFR) of a population is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime, if they were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) through their lifetime, and they were to live from birth until the end of their reproductive life." - Wikipedia.
16:25 Fertility numbers have been collapsing since 1963 and there is no indication that it will ever jump back.
There’s a link between cultural decline and declining TFR; is it religion? Social media? Global geopolitics?
I would say urbanization is the culprit. No country above around 75% urbanization has a positive fertility level. Within 75-50% urbanization, the only positive fertility examples are in Africa, Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea, and Iraq. Now, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and the Philippines are interesting counterexamples of rural nations with below replacement. For these nations, I'd say that being isolated from other high-fertility nations creates a compounding effect. I expect islands of high fertility like Kazakhstan and Iraq will eventually decline toward the norm for their regions. With Africa, you have overlapping positive fertility across the entire continent which reinforces the culture. I will also note that Southeast Asia has a serious lack of religiosity, especially toward the Abrahamic faiths which is positively correlated with higher fertility. Unless you have an urban population below 50%, I don't see any method to get it back up to replacement level. And even then, if the country is not sufficiently culturally religious there's no hope for a country that is 25-35% urban as with Southeast Asia.
The population decreasing would actually be good for the working class. Bad for the elite. And mostly the elite are worried about it. Every population decrease benefited the poor and not the rich. We would not be less poorer like this guest said. Or maybe he was speaking on behalf of the elite.
Samo it is female literacy in developing countries dropping the fertility rate. that explains places like North Korea the Amish and the hacidics; and yes the hacidics and Amish are dropping as well. Amish fertility rates will move in a similar fashion to Utah once they become a homogeneous group in any county or state and their institutions become redundant with local governments. Their fertility is highest on the fringes like any other group with a growing population we multiply on frontiers. In the developed world it was contraception being normalized in 1972 look at the numbers, and west Germany the uk and France were going to at least partially gravitate towards the fertility trends in the us because they rejected their own cultures after world war 2 especially for the first 30 or so years and adopted American or global culture and the subconscious social pressures of pregnancy are very strong think how much fertility varies by state compared to any economic indicator it’s the same with age of marriage people only base when they get married on when other people get married
And also tax breaks won’t improve fertility for any sustained period of time they are expensive and become normal look at the early 20th century the only thing that’s ever worked to improve fertility was a bachelor tax
Amish fertility rate is stable actually, same for Hassidic in Israel
@@jobloluther it appears stable because it’s higher on the frontiers but in reality it’s dropping in the core in New York it’s rising in orange and ulster counties but dropping in Brooklyn and no set in rockland
Giving tax breaks for people with kids is essentially a tax on people without kids and that's just not fair. The real solution is to redistribute a lot of the wealth from the rich to the poor. And to create a basic income that rewards women for having kids younger. And legislation to enable women to enter careers later in life (after children) at no penalty to their prospects.
90% of the government can just be de-funded and then we ALL get a tax break
Exactly. De facto taxation on childlessness means being childless automatically becomes more expensive and because kids ARE AN EXPENSE. People simply wait even longer to be in a financially sound position to have them. It does not translate to people having kids earlier. It only helps those who ALREADY HAVE the kids, so it won't put a dent in the fertility rate only worsen it
This is the case to do away with pay-as-you-go pensions and replace them with individual retirement savings.
Just tax not having children worldwide so that having no children costs about the same as having them.
Does he have any idea of what women have to go through to harvest eggs? You cannot mandate that! Plus frozen eggs don’t fare well, not nearly as well as frozen embryos.
But it is duty of women to reproduce her family and nation.
Okay, so as a woman, what exactly is your solution?
@@ArtymusPrime Scale down to smaller more localized economies/prepare for less people. We dont need a huge corporation that makes billions owning every provider, service and clinic in every city. We dont need a McDonalds on every corner. Hell even Doctors work for corporations now and can only treat their patients if an insurance company says so... but that would eat into their profits.
@@karenhaggard7094 So what you are describing is the collapse of complex civilization, akin to what happened after the disintegration of the Roman Empire. That will happen anyway if current trends continue, and they will definitely get worse.
@@ArtymusPrime Sounds good to me
This mans possible solutions at the end are very depressing, extreme, and very unlikely. It fails to address other problems.
This assumes men are okay being intentionally not allowed to breed and the government is largely left in charge of who reproduces.
We can always go back to simpliar solutions. Like encouraging kids to pair up before 20, enforcement of monogamy, having lots of third places. Intentional get togethers where people mingle.
If I look at the USA of the ~1870-1970 time frame , it was beautiful, thriving, ripe with opportunity. We need to bring back this optimism and inspiration for the future. That's what people are missing now. You can really see that from where this discussion went. Not enough babies? Well we just coerce people, make baby factories, etc etc. How about we just make our country/society a place where people would WANT to have a family?
Population collapse. . .
Good : For families.
Bad : For corporations.
If you understand that hypergamy is wired into women... It's a number game after that. giving women too many choices will end in this result
53:00 say what? Impregnating a million women does not increase TFR (total fertility rate)?
I would like to know why climate change is constantly brought up as an issue for declining birth rates, and frequently as a scoffed at issue, like it's not a real problem. I would agree that CC is an issue for some for not having children, however, I doubt it is a primary issue. Economic stress, social psychology, financial stress, lack of community are likely major factors. Decline in the early 1970's is likely to other factors at that time.
Read the comments on here and you'll see it's the first issue for many. More humans (especially rich humans) = more carbon in the atmosphere.
It's possible artificial wombs along with automation can solve this.
US life expectancy effected by covid (temporarily).
People who understand ecology will say the opposite, thst we need to lower birth rates so that we need to rapidly reduce birth rates to drop the overall human population to a billion or so. We are actually causing the sixth biggest extinction event of Earth history. Wildlife numbers have been reduced so much that we humans and our livestock make up 98% of terrestrial biomass. Then there is energy, water, food and other resource overshoot. We 8 billion people are using more resources than the Earth can supply and producing more pollution than the Earth can reprocess. The Earth is so crowded and resources are so stretched that resource conflicts are growing worse. The bloody battle for survival between the Israelis and Palestinians is a battle for resources, for space, water, food and energy. And, global warming is rapidly exacerbating water, food, and other resource shortages and conflicts. The big challenges are going to be finding an ethical way to reproduce birth rates before water, food, energy and other resource shortages, and the resulting conflicts, reduce our populations for us. If you want more Haiti’s, Palestines and Syrias, then keep overproducing. But the human suffering and destruction of biodiversity that is causing is beyond unethical.
Good point, except your wrong on "terrestrial biomass." More accurately, this is the planet of the ants. They are almost an order of magnitude more than human biomass. If other Kingdoms are included then land-based plants, fungi, and bacteria are much higher than humans and livestock. Source is, "Biomass Distribution on Earth" 2018, Yinon et al.
@@avernvrey7422 he’s talking about mammalian biomass, he didn’t specify it but that’s what he means
What if we just need less elderly?
Soylent green
Just get red of marraige and responsibility to take care of anyone, no responsibility means being more risky
You underestimate evolution. Humanity is not a social monolith. There are many societies and subcultures. The ones that produce more babies will grow. Low fertility during the Roman empire contributed to their fall, but higher fertility among Christians led to Christianity taking over the Roman empire. The fundamental differences between Christianity and Roman paganism led the empire to finish falling, but the principle still stands. The future belongs to those that show up.
Low fertility groups have greater social impact because childless people are both miserable and bored. Since they aren't spending time on the worthwhile task of raising children, they have a lot of time and a unfulfilled need for seeing their own impact. As they need to rationalize their failure to have children and still want a legacy, they often apply their free time to campaigning against fertility or something else that doesn't help children.
That theory would work were it not for the fact that said subcultures within 2 to 3 generations simply end up with similar fertility rates if they move to urban areas as said urban populations.
Rural communities continue to have more fertility on average than any urban area.
The problem stems from the fact that all the economic opportunities are in urban areas and the rampant unchecked monopolized buying of properties by corporations makes simply living expensive.
Even rural areas are losing fertility because many of their children will go to urban areas to earn money for their families and thus end up having less children. Even if they come from a family of 8 and have 5 children that is still 3 less than the previous generation. If their 5 children have 3 children then you can see how it SLOWLY declines.
Our society is sick. The dropping fertility is a symptom not a cause. Just like they said in the video
Even if ALL those populations that stopped having kids die out. The ones that remain will follow into the exact same trajectory.
So long as people at the top hoard wealth and make it difficult for people at the bottom to live then fertility will not rise.
We have to make having kids a net positive and right now its a net negative. Spending 60% to 90% of your life at work, with barely enough energy to even enjoy being a parent is wrong and we cannot even downplay how difficult it is to raise a child (the whole it takes a village to raise a child). We have lost community. More and more people are forced to raise kids on their own which only makes being a parent that much more stressful to point that even people who want kids will want less because of how difficult it is.
People have breaking points. And this society is doing its best indirectly to get them as close to it as possible. Many of us are broken. The idea of having that family against the insane mountain of the job market, lack of time, ever growing stres, increasing price of BASIC living. The fertility is a sign of people giving up.
And they are giving up on this society.
People with good genetics work till 70 today. Today everything costs so much in everywhere that you can’t afford kids. Technology has become unaffordable.
Just let Samo breed all of them
😂
Fertility rate lof india is 2.0
Your Toyota has a soul???!!! Hahaha! Its because you have never met my beetle Herbie 53!!! Brasil
...I don't understand why the alarm... when we get down to a billion we might start to worry about extinction. Maybe if we make a more pleasant world we'll get fertility as a nice side effect!
Something needs to change or else all will be lost. People not having 2 kids min should not be allowed to vote.
So your solution(not being rude) but amounts to just have children and ignore the issues that caused people to not have kids?
All that will happen here is people will continue to not have kids regardless of the vote one. Two the population not able to vote will obviously be all the youth which is your working force. And any political party silly enough to isolate the working populace will only speed up civil unrest.
If you make being childless expensive you won't cause people to suddenly want kids. You will only increase the wall one must scale in order to be able to have kids.
This is why taxes on childless people is stupid. If it costs me MORE to feed myself, I will be THAT MUCH MORE inclined to AVOID a family (because the cost of a child suddenly doesn't disappear and these government barely give enough money to justify how ridiculously expensive kids lets no play pretend)
😂Nobody talks about this enough because of gynocentrism and this is a woman problem.
Actually, not so much. Male sperm count is way down. My neighbor is struggling with exactly this. Hubby's sperm count is very low. He doesn't want sperm donor, and they can't afford IVF. So they have accepted no children. And, no, he doesn't want to adopt. "If it's not my child, don't want it." They are close to aging out.
@@dallastaylor5479 Bad genes, bad food. My friend smokes and drinks and made a kid at 38.
Population decline brings a lot of benefits
Do you care to elaborate what benefits there are?
@tacotuesday1960 less strain on resources and more housing
Population decline is huge financial crisis you idiot. Who will pay your pension? Who will take loan to create money? WTF are you talking about? A lot of benefits for who? Animals only but not for humanity.
Not to mention land being able to go back to nature
The underpopulation is also an opportunity to right a lot of wrongs. Our excesses have allowed a cancerous bureaucracy and regulatory burden to grow. Eventually the excesses will not be there and the bureaucracy will no longer be sustainable and disappear.
Humanity needs artificial womb. AW should be our priority not AI :D
great podcast. Btw it's just the phones and technology
Population crash rubbish.lawless game playing indeed.make society asafe space and life shall flourish.
Go with the opposite, folks are broke, and women's mental health is collectively bad at record rates. People don't want to raise families without economic stability.
54:00 😂 Does Samo have kids? Kids come from being in love/lust. Very few plan or strategize on the social aspects of having kids. 😂
these guys get 0 pussy man, they just grandstanding lmao, go to chanel if u want a baby
Who do you know had an unplanned child in the last 20 years? Because I don't know anyone. We waited until we could afford them and had a set of twins at 40 and another set of twins at 42. Kids are expensive. It takes a long time get all 9f your ducks in a row.
@@runningfromabear8354 when you consider the world at large, do you think your personal experience is common? But wow! Congrats on the family!
@@runningfromabear8354damn you won at life, good for you sir\ma’am. But, precisely, planning has become the norm in the last 20 years. Before, many pregnancies were accidental. That’s not the only factor but one of the factors that reduced fertility.
how many GFs yall got again?
Artificial womb. Children raised by AI.
Yeah I think a tilted female majoritian population that leverages robots for hard labor is better.
Go Amish!
Amish supremacy
Just tax childless
I have no children and spent 30K on IVF with out success now you want to tax me also.
Rome had a Bachelor's tax. It failed.