Something is greatly amiss with relations between men and women. Women first offered now forced to work 40+ hours outside of the home, government regulations driving up the cost of housing, cost of living including food and more all play a role, but there is one thing that is prominent in the tragically low birth rate - the widespread use of contraceptives.
There is now a disconnect between sex and babies. This has short circuited not only a women's drive to procreate, but also a man's drive to provide, and their relationship together. Women often feel used for sex. Men are often not fully engaged. If couples were to choose to go off contraception, and use fertility methods which make them both aware of when the wife is fertile and when she is not (a healthy man is always fertile), they'd be living a very different life. One ordered towards having a family -not avoiding one, and that would in turn change society too.
There are two main factors affecting birth rates..Country women have many more children than urban women, and women being educated beyond high school have far fewer children...In Tehran, despite Islam, the birth rate is about 1.0...40% of German women with advanced degrees have zero children...Singapore, with the highest average IQ of any country, has a rate about 1, and has been called an "IQ shredder"...Even places like N.Korea have sub-replacement rates...The only area with high rates is Africa, and they are dropping rapidly...
It looks like the demands of modernity are killing birth rates...a good thing as far as I'm concerned...IMO. America was a better country with a population of 150 million than it is now...
We went from almost extinct to 8 billion in the blink of an eye. Technology today makes the Earth's carrying capacity multiples higher. There are different feedback mechanisms but the most basic is "enough births that several survive." Today, that's lower than ever.
In his series "Civilization" Kenneth Clarke said civilizations all end the same way. They end with laughter, Let's remember that.
I disagree...water aquifers are being rapidly depleted all over the planet...Wells in California, North Texas and many other places are being drilled deeper and deeper to reach what's left of the aquifers...Some areas can no longer be farmed...The aquifers, of course, will be restored in the next 100,000 year glaciation.....
Water and energy arent limitless in the real sense though, because at some point the marginal cost of desalinating another gallon or drilling another oil well becomes too high to support the existing level of complexity and population, let alone any growth. I recommend reading up on the concept of EROI, if you haven’t already.
My generation had fewer babies because we were taught from elementary school that the world was overpopulated. This included propaganda films such as "Soylent Green" -- which featured global warming.
Seems as if around the early 2000's restaurants became the new secular cathedrals (Bourdain started at the Travel Channel in 2005). For me going to a restaurant prior to the millennium (except fast food and diners) was an occasion (as it was occasional). We didn't take pictures of the food (no Polaroids) and make such a deal of it.
Pretty sure there are correlations between the rise of restaurant culture, obesity and decline of birth rates.
Watching a foodie show five years ago, I was struck by the similarity between the chef adding the final sprinkle of salt to a dish while enthusing about the fellowship at the table, and callng down the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine at Mass.
Today I'm reading a WSJ article about doctors joking about putting GLP1s in the water supply to reach the hundred million obese Americans.
An interesting take. I think there are dozens of reasons, all of which are, in the end, related. I am writing a similar article, actually as part of a story, on how the lack of breastfeeding, open, public, breastfeeding, has led to a lack of fertility.
Society is complex. Some thoughts on this excellent essay.
(1) Fertility in the West is worse than implied by the graphs, which show fertility boosted by mass immigration of higher fertility, lower IQ people from foreign cultures. This is a slow accumulating poison for these societies, even as it boosts their population. Some nations are further along in this than others (eg, France).
(2) Population density affects fertility more than population. They are closely linked in S. Korea, but not in the US. In America, since WW2 economic and public policy forces have driven people from towns and cities to a few large cities.
Not only have the recipients’ cities high density depressed fertility, but it has created a housing shortage. America is filled with aging urban areas with perfectly good (often great) homes that are empty and rotting away. So we need to build new homes for internal migrants as well as immigrants.
(3) The larger issue is that libertarian ideology dominates our thinking, despite its obvious absurdity. Governments used to spend a great deal of effort on social issues from internal migrations to what are broadly moral issues - marriage, fertility, family structure. Now the former are left to themselves, and moral issues are lately increasingly unleashing people to do what they want. It’s a vast and grand experiment, and the horrific results will serve to guide humanity for many generations.
'(It’s interesting in discussions of this topic Fantastists give up their notion that men pretending to be women are “really” women.)'
Sometimes, even for highly progressive green lgbt zealots, pretending isn't enough: Germany has brand new gender laws, very Fantastic: You are what you say you are.
Unless war breaks out. Thén only biological men are called up for military service.
(And no doubt, as large swaths of educated families, left and right, historically always do, progressive germans will find ways to excuse THEIR men from serving where it's dangerous. The best cntemporary example would be Ukraine where being in a 'higher tax bracked' saves you from the front).
Please don’t forget that food quality is as important as the quantity of it, and the quality especially in countries like the United States has steadily worsened since the 1980s.
You´re all WRONG. All animals react to overcrowding. It just that our overcrowding is PSYCHIC and spiritual, and has as much practical effect as the physical kind. All over the modern world, young minds are JAMMED FULL of anxieties.
The real problem is that productive, intelligent people are having fewer children, while unproductive, ignorant criminals are having too many - and abandoning them to poverty and feral behaviors. The next round of the American Civil War will collapse our technological civilization and reduce the food supply, because while donkeys can make more donkeys, tractors cannot make more tractors. Malthus WILL have his revenge!
"The bad are things like women’s Equality, which led to women eschewing motherhood, interesting ways to avoid the consequences of sex, and the indulgence of killing, at mass scale, children implanted in women. Just so the woman can pursue non-family ends, such as finding enough money to afford to live in over-crowded cities and still go shopping. Men allowed this Equality, and embraced it finding in it their own greater freedoms, even going as far as substituting real women for online simulacra."
Feminism seems to have a firm grounding in sensible and noble political ideals... but the more you dig the more sinister and maladaptive it appears. It's literally connected to almost every factor deforming our civilization, it seems.
"But the most major cost, finding abodes, ought to fall with the population."
Instant validation of your prediction! Are you using some kind of model??!
"What is an akiya or empty house in Japan, and why are they so affordable?
In Japan, akiya refers to an empty house, often abandoned or left uninhabited due to various reasons such as population decline, urbanization, or inheritance issues. These empty houses have become a significant social and economic issue in Japan, particularly in rural areas where the population is aging and declining.
Akiyas can be relatively affordable because they are often sold at a steep discount or given away for free by local governments, property owners, or real estate agents who want to get rid of them quickly."
Is it really possible to buy a house for € 1? Yes, and it is a project wanted by the Municipality of Mussomeli, in Sicily. Buy your dream for € 1 in the fabulous town of the Sicilian hinterland, just a few kilometers from the enchanting beaches and the historic temples of Agrigento."
The other thing is that they are feeding the food to old people, government employees, and other bums who don't produce anything in return. The opportunity cost of welfare is the unborn: every single beneficiary continually removes from the world the amount of value required to bring a new life into the world.
People should have as many children as they desire but the idea advanced by some that a smaller population will be problematic is simply wrong.
Smaller populations will not be a negative but will help humanity soften the impact of climate change and save the other species we share the planet with by protecting their shrinking habitat.
Robots equipped with artificial general intelligence (thanks Elon) will wipe our aging asses and grow and prepare our food.
Young people will have less competition for jobs so their wages will rise and with less demand for housing the cost of the existing housing stock will become more affordable.
Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman looked at low birth rate Japan and penned an amazingly optimistic report on its economic conditions. "In some ways, Japan, rather than being a cautionary tale, is a kind of role model - an example of how to manage difficult demography while remaining prosperous and socially stable.
Seriously citing both "climate change" and "Paul Krugman" to support a comment on Prof. Briggs' substack!
Or are you joking?
You can look up the abysmal failure of "climate science" predictions for yourself. Spoiler: They pretty much bat 0.00.
I'll help you get over your worship of Wrong-way Krugman:
"It is the rare human who can be found wrong about nearly all of his opinions and predictions. It’s an even rarer human whose predictions have been consistently wrong, and yet dismisses the dismal track record and shamelessly makes more predictions. You’d think he would seek another line of work.
"But no. Not Paul Krugman, the Keynesian economist for The New York Times. Here’s a guy who just can’t seem to get it right most of the time. It is hard to find an economist who is wrong as much as Krugman. That’s because he calls himself an economist while he is moreso a partisan political entertainer with a distorted worldview. Even worse, the Times doesn’t seem to care.
"Let’s look at some of his predictions and claims. His most recent one earned him 1st Place in President Trump’s 2017 Fake News Awards. This was Krugman’s prediction, on the day of Trump’s landslide victory, that the U.S. stock market would “never” recover. Since then, the Dow Industrials have set 94 new record closing highs, and is up 8,000 points. Nice call, Paul.
"Earlier in 2016, Krugman created the term “Trumpenfreude” to predict that the Trump candidacy “would bring down the Republican Party in ruins”. As we know, the opposite happened, adding to the growing evidence that there may be few economists in Western Civilization who have been more incorrect than Krugman."
Address what Krugman said about Japan not things he (like everyone) is wrong about. Do you know what the ad hominem fallacy is because you are advocating one? Oh, you are also an ignorant climate change denier.
An ad hominem fallacy is a logical fallacy where someone attacks the person making an argument, rather than the argument's validity.
Why it's fallacious:
An ad hominem attack is considered fallacious because it doesn't address the actual issue being debated. It's a tactic used to discredit an opponent by focusing on their personal characteristics or circumstances, which are irrelevant to the argument. ”
Krugman is a political hack with a severe case of TDS, but he is an excellent economist. His comment about Japan is just good sense. It is insanely crowded, but could be a garden with fewer people.
The 21st century job apocalypse is just beginning.
* More powerful algorithms, better sensors (esp vision) and manipulators, and robot bodies will radically change transportation, manufacturing, retail, health care, etc.
* Large Language Models (aka Generative AI) will hit the entertainment and creative fields like a tsunami - artists, models, composers, etc.
A highly educated and disciplined population - even if small - is likely the path to late 21stC prosperity.
Human beings don't breed, they procreate.
Something is greatly amiss with relations between men and women. Women first offered now forced to work 40+ hours outside of the home, government regulations driving up the cost of housing, cost of living including food and more all play a role, but there is one thing that is prominent in the tragically low birth rate - the widespread use of contraceptives.
There is now a disconnect between sex and babies. This has short circuited not only a women's drive to procreate, but also a man's drive to provide, and their relationship together. Women often feel used for sex. Men are often not fully engaged. If couples were to choose to go off contraception, and use fertility methods which make them both aware of when the wife is fertile and when she is not (a healthy man is always fertile), they'd be living a very different life. One ordered towards having a family -not avoiding one, and that would in turn change society too.
There are two main factors affecting birth rates..Country women have many more children than urban women, and women being educated beyond high school have far fewer children...In Tehran, despite Islam, the birth rate is about 1.0...40% of German women with advanced degrees have zero children...Singapore, with the highest average IQ of any country, has a rate about 1, and has been called an "IQ shredder"...Even places like N.Korea have sub-replacement rates...The only area with high rates is Africa, and they are dropping rapidly...
It looks like the demands of modernity are killing birth rates...a good thing as far as I'm concerned...IMO. America was a better country with a population of 150 million than it is now...
That was a different 150 million people.
We went from almost extinct to 8 billion in the blink of an eye. Technology today makes the Earth's carrying capacity multiples higher. There are different feedback mechanisms but the most basic is "enough births that several survive." Today, that's lower than ever.
In his series "Civilization" Kenneth Clarke said civilizations all end the same way. They end with laughter, Let's remember that.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XofkKmPrYA
* https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c
I disagree...water aquifers are being rapidly depleted all over the planet...Wells in California, North Texas and many other places are being drilled deeper and deeper to reach what's left of the aquifers...Some areas can no longer be farmed...The aquifers, of course, will be restored in the next 100,000 year glaciation.....
Cheer up.
Every time humanity seems doomed, new technology arises.
We have endless water and the unlimited energy to desalinate it.
Also, glad to subscribe, if you ever publish that newsletter.
Water and energy arent limitless in the real sense though, because at some point the marginal cost of desalinating another gallon or drilling another oil well becomes too high to support the existing level of complexity and population, let alone any growth. I recommend reading up on the concept of EROI, if you haven’t already.
Thanks for the thoughts.
There are a number of interesting metrics for weighing inputs against outputs.
While the Earth can likely sustain multiples of current population, we've likely maxed out at 8 billion.
I'd wager we both live to see media fretting about "population collapse."
Robert
My generation had fewer babies because we were taught from elementary school that the world was overpopulated. This included propaganda films such as "Soylent Green" -- which featured global warming.
Seems as if around the early 2000's restaurants became the new secular cathedrals (Bourdain started at the Travel Channel in 2005). For me going to a restaurant prior to the millennium (except fast food and diners) was an occasion (as it was occasional). We didn't take pictures of the food (no Polaroids) and make such a deal of it.
Pretty sure there are correlations between the rise of restaurant culture, obesity and decline of birth rates.
110%.
Watching a foodie show five years ago, I was struck by the similarity between the chef adding the final sprinkle of salt to a dish while enthusing about the fellowship at the table, and callng down the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine at Mass.
Today I'm reading a WSJ article about doctors joking about putting GLP1s in the water supply to reach the hundred million obese Americans.
An interesting take. I think there are dozens of reasons, all of which are, in the end, related. I am writing a similar article, actually as part of a story, on how the lack of breastfeeding, open, public, breastfeeding, has led to a lack of fertility.
Society is complex. Some thoughts on this excellent essay.
(1) Fertility in the West is worse than implied by the graphs, which show fertility boosted by mass immigration of higher fertility, lower IQ people from foreign cultures. This is a slow accumulating poison for these societies, even as it boosts their population. Some nations are further along in this than others (eg, France).
(2) Population density affects fertility more than population. They are closely linked in S. Korea, but not in the US. In America, since WW2 economic and public policy forces have driven people from towns and cities to a few large cities.
Not only have the recipients’ cities high density depressed fertility, but it has created a housing shortage. America is filled with aging urban areas with perfectly good (often great) homes that are empty and rotting away. So we need to build new homes for internal migrants as well as immigrants.
(3) The larger issue is that libertarian ideology dominates our thinking, despite its obvious absurdity. Governments used to spend a great deal of effort on social issues from internal migrations to what are broadly moral issues - marriage, fertility, family structure. Now the former are left to themselves, and moral issues are lately increasingly unleashing people to do what they want. It’s a vast and grand experiment, and the horrific results will serve to guide humanity for many generations.
'(It’s interesting in discussions of this topic Fantastists give up their notion that men pretending to be women are “really” women.)'
Sometimes, even for highly progressive green lgbt zealots, pretending isn't enough: Germany has brand new gender laws, very Fantastic: You are what you say you are.
Unless war breaks out. Thén only biological men are called up for military service.
(And no doubt, as large swaths of educated families, left and right, historically always do, progressive germans will find ways to excuse THEIR men from serving where it's dangerous. The best cntemporary example would be Ukraine where being in a 'higher tax bracked' saves you from the front).
Please don’t forget that food quality is as important as the quantity of it, and the quality especially in countries like the United States has steadily worsened since the 1980s.
You´re all WRONG. All animals react to overcrowding. It just that our overcrowding is PSYCHIC and spiritual, and has as much practical effect as the physical kind. All over the modern world, young minds are JAMMED FULL of anxieties.
The real problem is that productive, intelligent people are having fewer children, while unproductive, ignorant criminals are having too many - and abandoning them to poverty and feral behaviors. The next round of the American Civil War will collapse our technological civilization and reduce the food supply, because while donkeys can make more donkeys, tractors cannot make more tractors. Malthus WILL have his revenge!
Adulteration of food may be part of this effect.
"The bad are things like women’s Equality, which led to women eschewing motherhood, interesting ways to avoid the consequences of sex, and the indulgence of killing, at mass scale, children implanted in women. Just so the woman can pursue non-family ends, such as finding enough money to afford to live in over-crowded cities and still go shopping. Men allowed this Equality, and embraced it finding in it their own greater freedoms, even going as far as substituting real women for online simulacra."
Feminism seems to have a firm grounding in sensible and noble political ideals... but the more you dig the more sinister and maladaptive it appears. It's literally connected to almost every factor deforming our civilization, it seems.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/civilizational-darwinism
"But the most major cost, finding abodes, ought to fall with the population."
Instant validation of your prediction! Are you using some kind of model??!
"What is an akiya or empty house in Japan, and why are they so affordable?
In Japan, akiya refers to an empty house, often abandoned or left uninhabited due to various reasons such as population decline, urbanization, or inheritance issues. These empty houses have become a significant social and economic issue in Japan, particularly in rural areas where the population is aging and declining.
Akiyas can be relatively affordable because they are often sold at a steep discount or given away for free by local governments, property owners, or real estate agents who want to get rid of them quickly."
https://www.allakiyas.com/
"Buy your home in Sicily with only 1€
Is it really possible to buy a house for € 1? Yes, and it is a project wanted by the Municipality of Mussomeli, in Sicily. Buy your dream for € 1 in the fabulous town of the Sicilian hinterland, just a few kilometers from the enchanting beaches and the historic temples of Agrigento."
https://www.case1euro.it/
The other thing is that they are feeding the food to old people, government employees, and other bums who don't produce anything in return. The opportunity cost of welfare is the unborn: every single beneficiary continually removes from the world the amount of value required to bring a new life into the world.
People should have as many children as they desire but the idea advanced by some that a smaller population will be problematic is simply wrong.
Smaller populations will not be a negative but will help humanity soften the impact of climate change and save the other species we share the planet with by protecting their shrinking habitat.
Robots equipped with artificial general intelligence (thanks Elon) will wipe our aging asses and grow and prepare our food.
Young people will have less competition for jobs so their wages will rise and with less demand for housing the cost of the existing housing stock will become more affordable.
Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman looked at low birth rate Japan and penned an amazingly optimistic report on its economic conditions. "In some ways, Japan, rather than being a cautionary tale, is a kind of role model - an example of how to manage difficult demography while remaining prosperous and socially stable.
You'll appreciate this post on global warming. I bring great news! There is nothing to worry about:
https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/the-great-global-warming-aka-climate
Denier!
Wow!
A Daily Double!
Seriously citing both "climate change" and "Paul Krugman" to support a comment on Prof. Briggs' substack!
Or are you joking?
You can look up the abysmal failure of "climate science" predictions for yourself. Spoiler: They pretty much bat 0.00.
I'll help you get over your worship of Wrong-way Krugman:
"It is the rare human who can be found wrong about nearly all of his opinions and predictions. It’s an even rarer human whose predictions have been consistently wrong, and yet dismisses the dismal track record and shamelessly makes more predictions. You’d think he would seek another line of work.
"But no. Not Paul Krugman, the Keynesian economist for The New York Times. Here’s a guy who just can’t seem to get it right most of the time. It is hard to find an economist who is wrong as much as Krugman. That’s because he calls himself an economist while he is moreso a partisan political entertainer with a distorted worldview. Even worse, the Times doesn’t seem to care.
"Let’s look at some of his predictions and claims. His most recent one earned him 1st Place in President Trump’s 2017 Fake News Awards. This was Krugman’s prediction, on the day of Trump’s landslide victory, that the U.S. stock market would “never” recover. Since then, the Dow Industrials have set 94 new record closing highs, and is up 8,000 points. Nice call, Paul.
"Earlier in 2016, Krugman created the term “Trumpenfreude” to predict that the Trump candidacy “would bring down the Republican Party in ruins”. As we know, the opposite happened, adding to the growing evidence that there may be few economists in Western Civilization who have been more incorrect than Krugman."
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2018/01/22/paul-krugman-lord-wrong-predictions-592049/
'Seriously citing both "climate change" and "Paul Krugman" to support a comment on Prof. Briggs' substack!'
That gave me a good chuckle too.
Address what Krugman said about Japan not things he (like everyone) is wrong about. Do you know what the ad hominem fallacy is because you are advocating one? Oh, you are also an ignorant climate change denier.
Wow!
Dave got the Daily Double already! Now's, with his ad hominem "...you are...an ignorant climate change denier," he's got the Trifecta!
Keep it up, Davey!
"Do you know what the ad hominem fallacy is...?"
Yes, I do. Clearly you do not.
I provided evidence that Krugman is, essentially, wrong about nearly everything he predicts or claims.
That's not an ad hominem, Dave.
Do you know what an ad hominem is? Because calling me "an ignorant climate change denier" is a perfect example of that logical fallacy.
Go for it!
Citing someone's work product is hardly an ad hominem.
Perhaps you might refresh yourself with a review of the definition of the term.
Here is an example of an ad hominem: "ignorant climate change denier."
.
Try to do better.
“Definition:
An ad hominem fallacy is a logical fallacy where someone attacks the person making an argument, rather than the argument's validity.
Why it's fallacious:
An ad hominem attack is considered fallacious because it doesn't address the actual issue being debated. It's a tactic used to discredit an opponent by focusing on their personal characteristics or circumstances, which are irrelevant to the argument. ”
Krugman is a political hack with a severe case of TDS, but he is an excellent economist. His comment about Japan is just good sense. It is insanely crowded, but could be a garden with fewer people.
The 21st century job apocalypse is just beginning.
* More powerful algorithms, better sensors (esp vision) and manipulators, and robot bodies will radically change transportation, manufacturing, retail, health care, etc.
* Large Language Models (aka Generative AI) will hit the entertainment and creative fields like a tsunami - artists, models, composers, etc.
A highly educated and disciplined population - even if small - is likely the path to late 21stC prosperity.
For more about this:
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2015/07/02/japan-star-of-21st-century-86825/