Another issue to keep in mind with respect to opinion polls -- other than "revealed preferences" actually contradicting them -- is the time-of-life when such questions as "how many children would you like" are asked. Asking them from 40- or 50-year olds, whose childbearing years have passed them by, you may get plenty "i would like more" with the unstated "but it's too late" suffix.
That's another potential problem, yes. Though if you're just looking to churn out eusocial worker drones then actual robots might be a more cost-effective solution.
True, but the same technology/legislation framework/moral code that allows for artificial wombs will probably allow for things like in-vitro-gametogenesis.
Excellent article. But there was one part I take issue with: "When the chips were down, America chose to sacrifice the normalcy and mental health of children to protect the elderly."
All this was actually clear by summer/autumn 2020, so the reasons for sacrificing the normalcy and mental health of children were more cynical ones like preventing Trump from scoring a political victory from reopening schools he'd closed in the first place and placating teacher unions, who were so anti-opening the governor of Florida had to take them to court to get schools open in summer 2020.
Breaking down birth rates in western nations by racial/economic subgroup could make or break the "idiocracy" hypothesis. It does the nation no good to have the welfare class reproduce aplenty while the productive class shrinks.
What you just stated is exactly what I was trying to get a total moron to understand. He continued to argue that depopulation is a good thing and things will mediate themselves in time after some initial pain. I argued that the depopulation aspect isn’t as important as who is going away and who is staying. I just couldn’t convince this guy that keeping intelligence high within a population is what we should be aiming for. So, the moral of the story is that I’m the moron for trying to change a mind that is fixed in belief.
I think one of the main problems is women in the workforce. They grow up getting told that they are able to work as hard or as skillfully as the average male can and that inculcates them into a mindset of idiocy. They grow up thinking "why should I ever have a man with a worse job than me"? "Why would I have kids in my 20s when I could have sex with Chad and make big money instead?" Feminism and in turn the sexual revolution have brain washed the women of America into thinking that they can be men. Women have not lost any biological value, as in people (especially men) highly value them for their ability to birth children. But men are losing their power rapidly. A women used to seek a man because he had physical strength and the ability to provide. But physical strength isn't a requirement to thrive in modern society and so that is not being selected for to the same degree it was before. Men are losing their ability to provide. In some age brackets and some metropolitan areas, women are earning more than men. Increasingly, women think that they 'don't need no man' and thusly reject marriage and child bearing until their 30s-40s. I contend that this should not be the case. Men should be the providers and should be not replaced by female HR workers. Men have bigger brains, 3-5 points higher IQ and much higher IQ variance, meaning most intelligent people are male. This is how Mormons operate. They have the correct mindset.
Hypergamy, careerism, credential inflation, and the education pipeline being rigged to advantage girls/women for decades has been a fatal combination. A lot of women don't start to consider marriage until their mid-30s and find that acceptable men are either nowhere to be found or would prefer a younger model.
A cultural reason that Israel has a higher fertility rate (also among secular Jews) than comparable developed nations might be that they feel threatened, under siege. Secure nations are more complacent and prefer status, freedom and hedonism etc.
Dare to mention the main reasons for the fertilty crisis? It's not just the lack of religious culture:
- Current house prices in the collective West are baby killers, and they are high only because of money printing. Local governments rely on property taxes and no matter what they say, they love it when property prices go up. How do you fix this?
- Feminist culture - when women are educated and granted voting rights, fertility declines - this is and has been true in every country and region in the world. Half of the population is only looking for fun or Alpha males, there is no way the other half will find a partner easily, and this culture is embraced by politicians. Academic and institutional capture by Karen administrators is the result of this, with all the negative effects on fertility. How do you fix this?
- War - coutries that experience wars have higher fertility than their neighbours - see Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria for example. Post WW2 boom, and also many, many other examples. People need to think of death to be willing to procreate, and this does not go well with the current overwhelmingly consumerist culture. How do you fix this?
No one wants to talk about real issues, as there are no PR solutions to them. If there's no "benevolent dictator" who has the will to reverse course in the West, the future generations will have much more infrastructure than they need, as abandoned building and farms will be the norm. No amount of imports from the third world will fix it in the long run, as the basics for having many children are broken.
Fertility treatments are high-risk (meaning low-success), expensive, and probably going to be ubiquitous in a future generation that has sterilized itself with genderwoo "medicine" and skipped the childbearing years to pursue the "authenticity" they were told they must find. Our problem is not a lack of religion, though. Our problem is that everyone has their own individual religion, now. The institutional religions are so-last-decade that no one wants to wear them anymore. Tara Isabel Burton calls it "the Great Remix." One in eight Americans says Buddhism has influenced their spiritual life, though only one percent are actually Buddhist. We also have a ton of ersatz religions (Eric Vogelin's words) running around these days, most of which have Hegelian, or more often Marxist, scrpitures at the core. I would argue that Paulo Friere is the gospel of the American university-cathedral. More to the point, however, is that Climatism has assumed an important place in our cosmology. Far apart from the actual science of changing climate, there is the epistemic belief in climate doomsday. It has become the new Judgment Day, and human population is the moral pollution which brings on that day. New Puritans are abroad in the land. Many of the most liberal people I know of childbearing age say they have no children, or will have no children, or have stopped having children because they think they are saving the planet. No doubt the fertility industry is licking its chops at all the money they stand to make as people belatedly realize the prophecies have failed.
"Fertility treatments are high-risk (meaning low-success), expensive, and probably going to be ubiquitous in a future generation that has sterilized itself with genderwoo "medicine" and skipped the childbearing years to pursue the "authenticity" they were told they must find."
The problem is not that so many people are infertile, but they choose to use birth control rather than have children.
In the first place, 'low fertility rate' is the wrong terminology; it is a 'low birth rate' that is in contention.
"With a shrinking ratio of workers to recipients, the government has two main options, neither of which are politically palatable: cutting benefits to recipients or raising taxes on workers."
There is a third better option. Significantly reduce the War Department budget. Think what could be done with an extra trillion dollars. But benefits to those who paid nothing for those benefits should be cut.
"However, even the United States, which has experienced high levels of immigration for longer than any other country, has failed to import enough immigrants to compensate for a low birth rate."
This is analogous to a dog chasing its tail...it is futile; no good will come of it.
"Another problem is that creative productivity decreases with age after the early 40s, which means a society that does not produce enough children will have less creativity. That means fewer people to solve problems, make scientific discoveries or advance the culture."
I do not believe that creative productivity decreases with age after the early 40s; it differs among people, but what increases after the age of about fifty is WISDOM, which, of course, also varies among people. But like all things, quality over quantity is essential in populations.
"If countries do not assimilate their immigrants well, then this creates large, alienated subcultures."
This should read: If countries do not 'choose' their immigrants well, this creates large, alienated subcultures. This is precisely the problem in the United States.
"Countries such as the United States and Australia have been more successful at assimilating immigrants..."
In the past, yes, but not so much in the last fifty years.
"This dynamic is a tragedy, because there is evidence that parents in wealthy countries are over-investing in the few children they have. For cognitive development, educational achievement, and other life outcomes, genetic influences and random environmental events matter far more for children than the influences of parents."
But parents can influence the offspring's cognition through wisely choosing a mate, embryo selection, and, in the not-too-distant future, genetic enhancement for positive human traits.
"The Israeli version of this story is that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group in the world, and in Israel, they are more likely to live as secular Jews. The Israeli and Latter-day Saint ability to get more intelligent people to have more children is important, because intelligence is highly heritable. Smart people, generally, have smarter children."
Exactly so, and this demonstrates that quality is more important than quantity...the only thing better is a high quantity of high quality.
It would seem that cultural issues matters more for the time of first children , and economics starts to matter for the subsequent children. Are there any data supporting success of subsidizing only from the second or third children onwards?
In Israel Ashkenazi ultra orthodox Jews have more kids than Mizrahi ultra orthodox (7 vs 5, I think) and among those kids you find less attrition. Following set of strict rules is easier for Ashkenazi orthodox teenagers.
Tove K. at Wood from Eden argues persuasively that causality runs from TFR to GDP, not vice versa as the economists teach, and that status-seeking through our jobs drives TFRs down. A tall order to fix...
The comparison between Israelis and Utah Mormons is illegitimate. Israel’s birthrate is holding steady but Utah’s birthrate has been declining across the board for decades
I mean the Mormons who do reproduce are likely to be more genetically 'fit' (some combination of intellect, health, and prosocial temperament), compared to Mormons who do not reproduce.
By contrast, Israeli fertility, although much higher, is dominated by Haredi, Mizrahi and Beta Israel denominations with, on balance, less to commend them genetically than secular Ashkenazim. This will create problems down the road.
Excellent analysis, and a fine bit of Straussian advice in the final sentence for readers of Aporia!
Another issue to keep in mind with respect to opinion polls -- other than "revealed preferences" actually contradicting them -- is the time-of-life when such questions as "how many children would you like" are asked. Asking them from 40- or 50-year olds, whose childbearing years have passed them by, you may get plenty "i would like more" with the unstated "but it's too late" suffix.
In principle artificial wombs could help with that, but I guess we'll find out.
Artificial wombs have their own problems, they have the potential to turn humanity into a eusocial species.
That's another potential problem, yes. Though if you're just looking to churn out eusocial worker drones then actual robots might be a more cost-effective solution.
Wombs aren't the limiting factor in childbirth. Eggs rot before wombs can no longer bear young.
True, but the same technology/legislation framework/moral code that allows for artificial wombs will probably allow for things like in-vitro-gametogenesis.
Excellent article. But there was one part I take issue with: "When the chips were down, America chose to sacrifice the normalcy and mental health of children to protect the elderly."
You're being too kind to the mostly red states that kept schools closed for so long by suggesting there was any tradeoff here. The truth is school closures/reopenings didn't make any difference to Covid outcomes in the US or anywhere else (here's a long thread on the various studies showing this https://twitter.com/MakingC19Waves/status/1515510435298316290). The same goes for the in-school biosecurity theater of masking (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.19.21257467v1)
All this was actually clear by summer/autumn 2020, so the reasons for sacrificing the normalcy and mental health of children were more cynical ones like preventing Trump from scoring a political victory from reopening schools he'd closed in the first place and placating teacher unions, who were so anti-opening the governor of Florida had to take them to court to get schools open in summer 2020.
Breaking down birth rates in western nations by racial/economic subgroup could make or break the "idiocracy" hypothesis. It does the nation no good to have the welfare class reproduce aplenty while the productive class shrinks.
What you just stated is exactly what I was trying to get a total moron to understand. He continued to argue that depopulation is a good thing and things will mediate themselves in time after some initial pain. I argued that the depopulation aspect isn’t as important as who is going away and who is staying. I just couldn’t convince this guy that keeping intelligence high within a population is what we should be aiming for. So, the moral of the story is that I’m the moron for trying to change a mind that is fixed in belief.
The depopulation aspect is plenty important by itself, if Zeihan is to be believed.
That was a very interesting and informative read.
Thank you folks !
At some point TFR should start going back up simply due to natural selection.
True, there's undergoing selection for superbreeders at the moment.
I think one of the main problems is women in the workforce. They grow up getting told that they are able to work as hard or as skillfully as the average male can and that inculcates them into a mindset of idiocy. They grow up thinking "why should I ever have a man with a worse job than me"? "Why would I have kids in my 20s when I could have sex with Chad and make big money instead?" Feminism and in turn the sexual revolution have brain washed the women of America into thinking that they can be men. Women have not lost any biological value, as in people (especially men) highly value them for their ability to birth children. But men are losing their power rapidly. A women used to seek a man because he had physical strength and the ability to provide. But physical strength isn't a requirement to thrive in modern society and so that is not being selected for to the same degree it was before. Men are losing their ability to provide. In some age brackets and some metropolitan areas, women are earning more than men. Increasingly, women think that they 'don't need no man' and thusly reject marriage and child bearing until their 30s-40s. I contend that this should not be the case. Men should be the providers and should be not replaced by female HR workers. Men have bigger brains, 3-5 points higher IQ and much higher IQ variance, meaning most intelligent people are male. This is how Mormons operate. They have the correct mindset.
Hypergamy, careerism, credential inflation, and the education pipeline being rigged to advantage girls/women for decades has been a fatal combination. A lot of women don't start to consider marriage until their mid-30s and find that acceptable men are either nowhere to be found or would prefer a younger model.
A cultural reason that Israel has a higher fertility rate (also among secular Jews) than comparable developed nations might be that they feel threatened, under siege. Secure nations are more complacent and prefer status, freedom and hedonism etc.
Dare to mention the main reasons for the fertilty crisis? It's not just the lack of religious culture:
- Current house prices in the collective West are baby killers, and they are high only because of money printing. Local governments rely on property taxes and no matter what they say, they love it when property prices go up. How do you fix this?
Lots of info and statisctics here https://econimica.blogspot.com/
- Feminist culture - when women are educated and granted voting rights, fertility declines - this is and has been true in every country and region in the world. Half of the population is only looking for fun or Alpha males, there is no way the other half will find a partner easily, and this culture is embraced by politicians. Academic and institutional capture by Karen administrators is the result of this, with all the negative effects on fertility. How do you fix this?
- War - coutries that experience wars have higher fertility than their neighbours - see Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria for example. Post WW2 boom, and also many, many other examples. People need to think of death to be willing to procreate, and this does not go well with the current overwhelmingly consumerist culture. How do you fix this?
No one wants to talk about real issues, as there are no PR solutions to them. If there's no "benevolent dictator" who has the will to reverse course in the West, the future generations will have much more infrastructure than they need, as abandoned building and farms will be the norm. No amount of imports from the third world will fix it in the long run, as the basics for having many children are broken.
Fertility treatments are high-risk (meaning low-success), expensive, and probably going to be ubiquitous in a future generation that has sterilized itself with genderwoo "medicine" and skipped the childbearing years to pursue the "authenticity" they were told they must find. Our problem is not a lack of religion, though. Our problem is that everyone has their own individual religion, now. The institutional religions are so-last-decade that no one wants to wear them anymore. Tara Isabel Burton calls it "the Great Remix." One in eight Americans says Buddhism has influenced their spiritual life, though only one percent are actually Buddhist. We also have a ton of ersatz religions (Eric Vogelin's words) running around these days, most of which have Hegelian, or more often Marxist, scrpitures at the core. I would argue that Paulo Friere is the gospel of the American university-cathedral. More to the point, however, is that Climatism has assumed an important place in our cosmology. Far apart from the actual science of changing climate, there is the epistemic belief in climate doomsday. It has become the new Judgment Day, and human population is the moral pollution which brings on that day. New Puritans are abroad in the land. Many of the most liberal people I know of childbearing age say they have no children, or will have no children, or have stopped having children because they think they are saving the planet. No doubt the fertility industry is licking its chops at all the money they stand to make as people belatedly realize the prophecies have failed.
"Fertility treatments are high-risk (meaning low-success), expensive, and probably going to be ubiquitous in a future generation that has sterilized itself with genderwoo "medicine" and skipped the childbearing years to pursue the "authenticity" they were told they must find."
The problem is not that so many people are infertile, but they choose to use birth control rather than have children.
Adolescent girls are put on the pill with alarming regularity, it's the new normal.
I am using the United States as an example.
In the first place, 'low fertility rate' is the wrong terminology; it is a 'low birth rate' that is in contention.
"With a shrinking ratio of workers to recipients, the government has two main options, neither of which are politically palatable: cutting benefits to recipients or raising taxes on workers."
There is a third better option. Significantly reduce the War Department budget. Think what could be done with an extra trillion dollars. But benefits to those who paid nothing for those benefits should be cut.
"However, even the United States, which has experienced high levels of immigration for longer than any other country, has failed to import enough immigrants to compensate for a low birth rate."
This is analogous to a dog chasing its tail...it is futile; no good will come of it.
"Another problem is that creative productivity decreases with age after the early 40s, which means a society that does not produce enough children will have less creativity. That means fewer people to solve problems, make scientific discoveries or advance the culture."
I do not believe that creative productivity decreases with age after the early 40s; it differs among people, but what increases after the age of about fifty is WISDOM, which, of course, also varies among people. But like all things, quality over quantity is essential in populations.
"If countries do not assimilate their immigrants well, then this creates large, alienated subcultures."
This should read: If countries do not 'choose' their immigrants well, this creates large, alienated subcultures. This is precisely the problem in the United States.
"Countries such as the United States and Australia have been more successful at assimilating immigrants..."
In the past, yes, but not so much in the last fifty years.
"This dynamic is a tragedy, because there is evidence that parents in wealthy countries are over-investing in the few children they have. For cognitive development, educational achievement, and other life outcomes, genetic influences and random environmental events matter far more for children than the influences of parents."
But parents can influence the offspring's cognition through wisely choosing a mate, embryo selection, and, in the not-too-distant future, genetic enhancement for positive human traits.
"The Israeli version of this story is that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group in the world, and in Israel, they are more likely to live as secular Jews. The Israeli and Latter-day Saint ability to get more intelligent people to have more children is important, because intelligence is highly heritable. Smart people, generally, have smarter children."
Exactly so, and this demonstrates that quality is more important than quantity...the only thing better is a high quantity of high quality.
It would seem that cultural issues matters more for the time of first children , and economics starts to matter for the subsequent children. Are there any data supporting success of subsidizing only from the second or third children onwards?
In Israel Ashkenazi ultra orthodox Jews have more kids than Mizrahi ultra orthodox (7 vs 5, I think) and among those kids you find less attrition. Following set of strict rules is easier for Ashkenazi orthodox teenagers.
Tove K. at Wood from Eden argues persuasively that causality runs from TFR to GDP, not vice versa as the economists teach, and that status-seeking through our jobs drives TFRs down. A tall order to fix...
The comparison between Israelis and Utah Mormons is illegitimate. Israel’s birthrate is holding steady but Utah’s birthrate has been declining across the board for decades
I think Russel makes the decline in Utah clear. On the flip side, I suspect that Utah's net fertility is a lot more eugenic.
What do you mean by eugenic, here
I mean the Mormons who do reproduce are likely to be more genetically 'fit' (some combination of intellect, health, and prosocial temperament), compared to Mormons who do not reproduce.
By contrast, Israeli fertility, although much higher, is dominated by Haredi, Mizrahi and Beta Israel denominations with, on balance, less to commend them genetically than secular Ashkenazim. This will create problems down the road.
That’s what I thought, I’ve never seen eugenic used as a simple adjective I guess.