2022-01-19_The_Collapsing_Birth_Rates_Will_Radically_Affect_Our_Future
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00:00:29.000 | - Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:32.000 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:34.000 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need
00:00:36.000 | to live a rich and meaningful life now
00:00:39.000 | while building a plan for financial freedom
00:00:41.000 | in 10 years or less.
00:00:43.000 | My name is Joshua Sheets.
00:00:44.000 | Today I wanna share with you a little bit about
00:00:46.000 | a subject that is going to influence your life, my life,
00:00:50.000 | your economy, my economy, and many global trends
00:00:55.000 | over the coming decades.
00:00:58.000 | I do not know specifically how you can apply
00:01:01.000 | today's discussion to your investment portfolio
00:01:05.000 | or to your personal financial decisions.
00:01:08.000 | All I know is that this is going to be a factor
00:01:11.000 | in many trends through which we live.
00:01:13.000 | It's going to affect economics.
00:01:15.000 | It's going to affect politics.
00:01:17.000 | It's going to be affecting your and my life significantly.
00:01:21.000 | And I thought it's worthy of a little bit of discussion
00:01:24.000 | to make sure that this is on your radar screen
00:01:27.000 | as something that you should be paying attention to
00:01:30.000 | in the coming years.
00:01:32.000 | The topic is population decline.
00:01:37.000 | I have mentioned this many times in passing.
00:01:40.000 | In fact, it was last week I mentioned it
00:01:42.000 | in answering a question from somebody.
00:01:44.000 | And I noticed yesterday that Elon Musk
00:01:46.000 | was tweeting about this again.
00:01:48.000 | He's covered this before,
00:01:49.000 | but I thought it was worth paying attention to.
00:01:51.000 | Here are Musk's tweets.
00:01:54.000 | "We should be much more worried about population collapse.
00:01:58.000 | UN projections are utter nonsense.
00:02:00.000 | Just multiply last year's births by life expectancy.
00:02:04.000 | Given downward trend in birth rate,
00:02:06.000 | that is best case unless reversed.
00:02:08.000 | If there aren't enough people for Earth,
00:02:10.000 | then there definitely won't be enough for Mars."
00:02:14.000 | Sad face.
00:02:15.000 | Then he links to an article from NPR,
00:02:17.000 | an article from BBC.
00:02:19.000 | Another interesting tweet.
00:02:21.000 | Somebody talks to him about Japan,
00:02:24.000 | and he responds with this.
00:02:25.000 | "Last year, Japan had about 800,000 births,
00:02:28.000 | and life expectancy is 85 years."
00:02:30.000 | Impressively high.
00:02:31.000 | "Implying future population of only 68 million,
00:02:35.000 | dropping almost half from current population
00:02:38.000 | of 126 million."
00:02:41.000 | That's a lot of ghost towns and cities.
00:02:47.000 | Let me talk with a little bit of background information.
00:02:50.000 | By covering these two articles,
00:02:53.000 | which are, that Musk linked to,
00:02:55.000 | which are from the middle of last year,
00:02:58.000 | and then give you some more headlines
00:03:00.000 | that are starting to come out about the calendar year 2021.
00:03:03.000 | From May 5, 2021, NPR article, headline,
00:03:07.000 | "US birth rate fell by 4% in 2020,
00:03:10.000 | hitting another record low."
00:03:13.000 | Quote, "The number of babies born in the US
00:03:15.000 | dropped by 4% in 2020 compared with the previous year.
00:03:18.000 | According to a new federal report released Wednesday,
00:03:21.000 | the general fertility rate was 55.8 births per 1,000 women,
00:03:26.000 | ages 15 to 44, reaching yet another record low
00:03:30.000 | according to the provisional data.
00:03:32.000 | This is the sixth consecutive year
00:03:34.000 | that the number of births has declined
00:03:36.000 | after an increase in 2014,
00:03:38.000 | down an average of 2% per year
00:03:40.000 | and the lowest number of births since 1979,
00:03:43.000 | the National Center for Health Statistics said.
00:03:46.000 | The US total fertility rate,
00:03:48.000 | which estimates how many babies
00:03:50.000 | a hypothetical group of 1,000 women
00:03:52.000 | would have during their life,
00:03:54.000 | based on data from a given year,
00:03:56.000 | remains far below replacement,
00:03:59.000 | meaning there wouldn't be enough babies born
00:04:01.000 | for a generation to exactly replace itself.
00:04:04.000 | The rate has generally been below replacement since 1971
00:04:08.000 | and has consistently been below replacement since 2007,
00:04:12.000 | according to the agency,
00:04:14.000 | which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
00:04:18.000 | The statistical replacement rate
00:04:20.000 | is 2,100 births per 1,000 women,
00:04:24.000 | but in 2020, the US total fertility rate
00:04:27.000 | fell to 1,637.5 births per 1,000 women.
00:04:33.000 | One year earlier, it was just over 1,700 births.
00:04:38.000 | Just over 3.6 million babies were born in the US last year,
00:04:41.000 | according to the agency.
00:04:42.000 | Demographically, the number of births
00:04:44.000 | fell across all ethnicities and origins,
00:04:47.000 | according to the report,
00:04:48.000 | which relied on US Census Bureau population estimates
00:04:51.000 | that were derived in July.
00:04:53.000 | The provisional number of births declined 4%
00:04:55.000 | for both white and black women,
00:04:57.000 | 3% for Hispanic women,
00:04:59.000 | 6% for American Indian and Alaska Native women,
00:05:02.000 | and 8% for Asian American women.
00:05:05.000 | The birth rate didn't go up in any age group
00:05:09.000 | and fell in most of them.
00:05:11.000 | One of the largest declines was in teenagers,
00:05:13.000 | where the birth rate fell by 8%
00:05:15.000 | to 15.3 births per 1,000 females.
00:05:19.000 | The birth rate for women between 20 and 24 years old
00:05:22.000 | fell by 6%.
00:05:25.000 | It goes on.
00:05:26.000 | I just want to skip some of the more detailed
00:05:28.000 | and talk about this in the context.
00:05:30.000 | Remember, this is from last May.
00:05:31.000 | News of the continued fall in birth rates
00:05:33.000 | comes as the US is coping with losing
00:05:35.000 | nearly 580,000 people to the COVID-19 pandemic.
00:05:39.000 | The National Center for Health Statistics report on births
00:05:41.000 | did not focus separately on the coronavirus,
00:05:44.000 | but it previously found a drop in the number of mothers
00:05:46.000 | who accessed high-quality prenatal care in 2020
00:05:49.000 | compared to 2019.
00:05:51.000 | Let's go on to the BBC News article.
00:05:53.000 | This was published 15 July 2020.
00:05:55.000 | Headline, "Fertility Rate Jaw-Dropping
00:05:58.000 | "Global Crash in Children Being Born."
00:06:03.000 | Falling fertility rates mean nearly every country
00:06:06.000 | could have shrinking populations
00:06:08.000 | by the end of the century.
00:06:10.000 | And 23 nations, including Spain and Japan,
00:06:14.000 | are expected to see their populations halve by 2100.
00:06:21.000 | Countries will also age dramatically,
00:06:24.000 | with as many people turning 80 as there are being born.
00:06:28.000 | What's going on?
00:06:29.000 | The fertility rate, the average number of children
00:06:31.000 | a woman gives birth to, is falling.
00:06:33.000 | If the number falls below approximately 2.1,
00:06:36.000 | then the size of the population starts to fall.
00:06:39.000 | In 1950, women were having an average of 4.7 children
00:06:42.000 | in their lifetime.
00:06:43.000 | Researchers at the University of Washington's
00:06:45.000 | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
00:06:48.000 | showed the global fertility rate nearly halved
00:06:52.000 | to 2.4 in 2017.
00:06:55.000 | And their study, published in The Lancet,
00:06:57.000 | projects it will fall below 1.7 by 2100.
00:07:02.000 | As a result, the researchers expect the number of people
00:07:04.000 | on the planet to peak at 9.7 billion around 2064,
00:07:09.000 | before falling down to 8.8 billion
00:07:11.000 | by the end of the century.
00:07:13.000 | That's a pretty big thing.
00:07:14.000 | Most of the world is transitioning into
00:07:16.000 | natural population decline,
00:07:18.000 | researcher professor Christopher Murray told the BBC.
00:07:21.000 | I think it's extraordinarily hard to think this through
00:07:24.000 | and recognize how big a thing this is.
00:07:26.000 | It's extraordinary.
00:07:27.000 | We'll have to reorganize society.
00:07:30.000 | Why are fertility rates falling?
00:07:32.000 | It has nothing to do with sperm counts
00:07:34.000 | or the usual things that come to mind
00:07:35.000 | when discussing fertility.
00:07:36.000 | Instead, it is being driven by more women in education
00:07:39.000 | and work, as well as greater access to contraception,
00:07:41.000 | leading to women choosing to have fewer children.
00:07:43.000 | In many ways, falling fertility rates are a success story.
00:07:47.000 | Remember, I'm quoting from the BBC.
00:07:49.000 | Which countries will be the most affected?
00:07:51.000 | Japan's population is projected to fall
00:07:53.000 | from a peak of 128 million in 2017
00:07:56.000 | to less than 53 million by the end of the century.
00:08:00.000 | Italy is expected to see an equally dramatic population crash
00:08:03.000 | from 61 million to 28 million over the same time frame.
00:08:08.000 | They are two of 23 countries,
00:08:10.000 | which also include Spain, Portugal, Thailand, and South Korea,
00:08:14.000 | expected to see their population more than half.
00:08:18.000 | That is jaw-dropping,
00:08:20.000 | professor Christopher Murray told me.
00:08:22.000 | China, currently the most populous nation in the world,
00:08:26.000 | is expected to peak at 1.4 billion
00:08:29.000 | in four years' time before nearly halving
00:08:31.000 | to 732 million by 2100.
00:08:35.000 | India will take its place.
00:08:36.000 | The UK is predicted to peak at 75 million in 2063
00:08:40.000 | and fall to 71 million by 2100.
00:08:44.000 | However, this will be a truly global issue,
00:08:46.000 | with 183 out of 195 countries
00:08:49.000 | having a fertility rate below the replacement level.
00:08:53.000 | Why is this a problem?
00:08:55.000 | You might think this is great for the environment.
00:08:57.000 | A smaller population would reduce carbon emissions
00:09:00.000 | as well as deforestation for farmland.
00:09:02.000 | That would be true except for the inverted age structure,
00:09:05.000 | more old people than young people,
00:09:07.000 | and all the uniformly negative consequences
00:09:10.000 | of an inverted age structure, says professor Murray.
00:09:14.000 | The study projects the number of under fives
00:09:17.000 | will fall from 681 million in 2017 to 401 million in 2100.
00:09:22.000 | The number of over 80-year-olds
00:09:24.000 | will soar from 141 million in 2017
00:09:27.000 | to 866 million in 2100.
00:09:31.000 | Professor Murray adds,
00:09:32.000 | "It will create enormous social change.
00:09:35.000 | "It makes me worried because I have an eight-year-old daughter
00:09:37.000 | "and I wonder what the world will be like.
00:09:39.000 | "Who pays tax in a massively aged world?
00:09:43.000 | "Who pays for health care for the elderly?
00:09:45.000 | "Who looks after the elderly?
00:09:47.000 | "Will people still be able to retire from work?
00:09:50.000 | "We need a soft landing," argues Professor Murray.
00:09:55.000 | Are there any solutions?
00:09:56.000 | Countries, including the UK,
00:09:58.000 | have used migration to boost their population
00:10:00.000 | and compensate for falling fertility rates.
00:10:03.000 | However, this stops being the answer
00:10:05.000 | once nearly every country's population is shrinking.
00:10:08.000 | "We will go from the period where it's a choice
00:10:10.000 | "to open borders or not to frank competition for migrants
00:10:14.000 | "as there won't be enough," argues Professor Murray.
00:10:17.000 | Some countries have tried policies
00:10:18.000 | such as enhanced maternity and paternity leave,
00:10:21.000 | free child care, financial incentives,
00:10:23.000 | and extra employment rights,
00:10:24.000 | but there is no clear answer.
00:10:26.000 | Sweden has dragged its fertility rate up from 1.7 to 1.9,
00:10:31.000 | but other countries that have put significant effort
00:10:34.000 | into tackling the baby bust have struggled.
00:10:37.000 | Singapore still has a fertility rate of around 1.3.
00:10:41.000 | Professor Murray says, "I find people laugh it off.
00:10:44.000 | "They can't imagine it could be true.
00:10:45.000 | "They think women will just decide to have more kids.
00:10:48.000 | "If you can't find a solution,
00:10:50.000 | "then eventually this species disappears,
00:10:52.000 | "but that's a few centuries away."
00:10:54.000 | The researchers warn against undoing the progress
00:10:56.000 | on women's education and access to contraception.
00:10:59.000 | Professor Stein-Emil Vosset said,
00:11:01.000 | "Responding to population decline is likely to become
00:11:04.000 | "an overriding policy concern in many nations,
00:11:06.000 | "but must not compromise efforts
00:11:08.000 | "to enhance women's reproductive health
00:11:10.000 | "or progress on women's rights."
00:11:13.000 | What about Africa?
00:11:14.000 | The population of sub-Saharan Africa
00:11:16.000 | is expected to treble in size
00:11:18.000 | to more than 3 billion people by 2100.
00:11:22.000 | And the study says Nigeria will become
00:11:24.000 | the world's second biggest country
00:11:26.000 | with a population of 791 million.
00:11:30.000 | Professor Murray says, "We will have many more people
00:11:33.000 | "of African descent in many more countries
00:11:35.000 | "as we go through this.
00:11:37.000 | "Global recognition of the challenges around racism
00:11:39.000 | "are going to be all the more critical
00:11:41.000 | "if there are large numbers of people of African descent
00:11:44.000 | "in many countries."
00:11:46.000 | So I'll skip the last couple of...
00:11:49.000 | Actually, why not?
00:11:50.000 | Why is 2.1 the fertility rate threshold?
00:11:52.000 | You might think the number should be 2.0.
00:11:54.000 | Two parents have two children,
00:11:55.000 | so the population stays the same size.
00:11:57.000 | But even with the best healthcare,
00:11:59.000 | not all children survive to adulthood.
00:12:01.000 | Also, babies are ever so slightly more likely to be male.
00:12:03.000 | It means the replacement figure is 2.1
00:12:06.000 | in developed countries.
00:12:07.000 | Nations with higher childhood mortality
00:12:09.000 | also need a higher fertility rate.
00:12:12.000 | What did the experts say?
00:12:14.000 | Professor Ibrahim Aboubakar, University College London, said,
00:12:18.000 | "If these predictions are even half accurate,
00:12:20.000 | "migration will become a necessity for all nations
00:12:24.000 | "and not an option.
00:12:26.000 | "To be successful, we need a fundamental rethink
00:12:28.000 | "of global politics.
00:12:30.000 | "The distribution of working-age populations
00:12:32.000 | "will be crucial to whether humanity prospers or withers."
00:12:37.000 | Now, before I provide my commentary,
00:12:39.000 | I want to read to you just a couple of headlines.
00:12:41.000 | I went to news.google.com,
00:12:43.000 | and I searched "birth rate."
00:12:45.000 | And here are some of the articles that came up.
00:12:49.000 | "China's birth rate drops for a fifth straight year
00:12:52.000 | "to record low."
00:12:53.000 | That was CNN from two days ago.
00:12:58.000 | National Wales, the National Wales newspaper.
00:13:01.000 | Quote, "Birth"-- headline,
00:13:02.000 | "Birth rate continues to decline across Wales."
00:13:05.000 | Vox.com, "The Great Population Growth Slowdown."
00:13:09.000 | The Citizen, December 29,
00:13:11.000 | "India's fertility rate drops,
00:13:14.000 | "women more conscious than men."
00:13:17.000 | Hindustan Times from 14 days ago,
00:13:19.000 | "Birth rates in 10 Chinese provinces
00:13:22.000 | "fell below 1% in 2020," report.
00:13:27.000 | Business Insider has this headline,
00:13:29.000 | "The pandemic baby bust is a lot smaller than expected."
00:13:32.000 | And if you read that headline and dig into it,
00:13:34.000 | what it means is that somebody had predicted
00:13:37.000 | that there would be 300,000 missing babies
00:13:41.000 | due to the pandemic.
00:13:42.000 | I guess the Brookings Institute--
00:13:44.000 | the Brookings Institute previously forecasted
00:13:46.000 | 300,000 to 500,000 fewer babies born
00:13:48.000 | because of the pandemic.
00:13:49.000 | Well, in fact, there were 60,000 fewer babies born
00:13:53.000 | because of the pandemic.
00:13:54.000 | So there is a baby bust,
00:13:56.000 | but it's smaller than that one institution predicted.
00:14:01.000 | So one of these silly nonsense stories.
00:14:03.000 | All right, now if I add in 2021,
00:14:05.000 | birth rate 2021, here are the headlines.
00:14:07.000 | I'll skip the citation.
00:14:09.000 | Reuters, "China's birth rate drops to record low in 2021."
00:14:13.000 | Inquirer, "China's birth rate drops to record low in 2021."
00:14:16.000 | Kaiser Health News, "US death rates up,
00:14:19.000 | "birth rates hit record lows."
00:14:20.000 | Blame COVID, of course.
00:14:22.000 | SILive.com, "US coronavirus baby bust is here,
00:14:25.000 | "research shows."
00:14:26.000 | So what does that mean?
00:14:28.000 | China Daily, "Birth rate falling below 1%,
00:14:30.000 | "an early warning."
00:14:32.000 | And then we continue on.
00:14:34.000 | And then if you add in other clarifying things,
00:14:36.000 | like birth rate, US birth rate 2021,
00:14:40.000 | you see that across all of it,
00:14:45.000 | there is a significant decline in birth rates.
00:14:49.000 | And so we're still waiting for all the data from 2021,
00:14:53.000 | but there is a significant decline in birth rates.
00:14:57.000 | So what's going on here?
00:15:00.000 | What we see is quite simply,
00:15:02.000 | people are having fewer children.
00:15:05.000 | And if you want to see this in your own life,
00:15:07.000 | here is a mental experiment that you can do.
00:15:11.000 | Remember that in order for a population to be stable
00:15:16.000 | due to birth rates, not growing, not declining,
00:15:20.000 | every single woman in a population
00:15:25.000 | must have 2.1 children.
00:15:31.000 | In order for a population to be stable,
00:15:34.000 | every single woman in that population
00:15:40.000 | must have 2.1 children on average.
00:15:48.000 | That's what's necessary for stability.
00:15:52.000 | Not growth, but stability.
00:15:55.000 | Now do a little mental experiment.
00:15:58.000 | Look around you.
00:16:00.000 | Look around you at your job.
00:16:02.000 | Look around you with your friends.
00:16:04.000 | Look around you at your church.
00:16:06.000 | Look around you at your neighborhood.
00:16:08.000 | And start counting the percentage of women that you know
00:16:12.000 | who have or are likely to have 2.1 children
00:16:20.000 | in their lifetime.
00:16:22.000 | Now if you're 21 years old,
00:16:25.000 | this may not yet be apparent to you
00:16:27.000 | because you might look around and say,
00:16:28.000 | "Well, maybe a lot of my friends will have 2.1 children."
00:16:32.000 | But when you start to reach 30, 35, 40,
00:16:36.000 | and you start to look around,
00:16:38.000 | all of a sudden the trends become massively more clear.
00:16:43.000 | You see that very, very few of your female friends
00:16:48.000 | or very, very few of the women that you observe
00:16:51.000 | have 2.1 children or more.
00:16:55.000 | There are a lot that have zero.
00:16:58.000 | And if a woman has a child at all,
00:17:01.000 | it's quite common that she may have one
00:17:04.000 | or perhaps two children.
00:17:07.000 | My wife and I, we have four children.
00:17:09.000 | Like Elon, we're trying to do our best to lead by example
00:17:13.000 | and not contribute to population decline.
00:17:17.000 | We're trying to grow our family tree.
00:17:20.000 | And yet, even though we have four children,
00:17:22.000 | which is not that much more than 2.1,
00:17:26.000 | most people consider us to have a large family.
00:17:29.000 | Most people consider us to have a large family.
00:17:34.000 | And I know almost nobody who has more than four children.
00:17:40.000 | I have a few friends who have more.
00:17:42.000 | I'm the youngest of seven myself.
00:17:45.000 | I have, let's see, one friend, they have six.
00:17:48.000 | I have another friend who has five.
00:17:50.000 | But very rarely do most people that I know
00:17:53.000 | have more than four children.
00:17:55.000 | And when you think about how many of those of us
00:17:57.000 | with four children are balancing off people
00:17:59.000 | who have zero or one or two,
00:18:02.000 | then you start to see the trend.
00:18:03.000 | You could just see it with your own eyes.
00:18:06.000 | This leads to population decline.
00:18:09.000 | But it doesn't just lead to a declining population
00:18:11.000 | in an abstract sense.
00:18:12.000 | What it leads to is a disruption
00:18:15.000 | and a transformation of society.
00:18:18.000 | Let me talk about what some of those transformations
00:18:21.000 | and changes are and how they affect people.
00:18:24.000 | Number one, it leads to a graying of the population.
00:18:29.000 | You have lots of older people.
00:18:32.000 | This can lead to all kinds of difficult things.
00:18:34.000 | For example, what you see is that in many nations,
00:18:37.000 | because there are so many old people,
00:18:40.000 | old people hold a lot of political power.
00:18:44.000 | And thus they get to vote and express that power
00:18:49.000 | by sheer virtue of their population.
00:18:52.000 | But this leads to a lot of frustration
00:18:54.000 | amongst younger people.
00:18:56.000 | You'll talk to many younger voters.
00:18:57.000 | You see this play out in politics.
00:18:59.000 | You'll have a young, who would be, I guess,
00:19:05.000 | Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
00:19:07.000 | would be a good example.
00:19:08.000 | You have this young, very popular, fiery,
00:19:12.000 | public young politician.
00:19:15.000 | And yet some of her most ambitious projects
00:19:18.000 | and some of her most ambitious initiatives
00:19:20.000 | are continually stymied by old, gray fellow representatives
00:19:25.000 | who are representing a significant portion
00:19:27.000 | of the United States.
00:19:29.000 | This happens on a global basis.
00:19:31.000 | So you can have political frustration that happens.
00:19:34.000 | Because if people are supposed to vote
00:19:35.000 | in favor of their interests,
00:19:36.000 | what you wind up with is a system
00:19:38.000 | that more and more favors older people
00:19:41.000 | voting for themselves.
00:19:42.000 | This is especially difficult because many of the legacy systems
00:19:46.000 | under which we live were built under the assumption
00:19:50.000 | that there would be continual population growth.
00:19:54.000 | A good example is simply the ratio
00:19:56.000 | with the Social Security system of the United States
00:19:58.000 | is looking at the ratio of covered workers
00:20:00.000 | to the number of beneficiaries.
00:20:02.000 | In 1940, the first year that Social Security
00:20:07.000 | was founded in the United States,
00:20:12.000 | there were 35 million, 35.3 million workers
00:20:18.000 | versus 222 million, sorry,
00:20:23.000 | there were 222,000 beneficiaries
00:20:26.000 | and there were 35 million workers
00:20:28.000 | for a ratio of 159 workers for every beneficiary.
00:20:31.000 | Also remember, of course,
00:20:32.000 | that the average life expectancy
00:20:34.000 | when Social Security was founded was much, much lower.
00:20:36.000 | By 1945, that number had dropped dramatically
00:20:39.000 | to a ratio of 41.9 workers per beneficiary.
00:20:43.000 | 1950 dropped to 16.5, 1955 8.6,
00:20:48.000 | 1960 5.1 workers for every retiree,
00:20:51.000 | 1965 4.0, 1970 3.7, 1980 3.2,
00:20:57.000 | 1990 3.4, remember you had this high degree
00:21:00.000 | of stability due to the baby boom
00:21:02.000 | that happened after World War II
00:21:04.000 | and then we've been slowly dropping more or less.
00:21:07.000 | It has been stable from about 1990
00:21:09.000 | through about 2005, 2007 it was 3.3,
00:21:14.000 | 2008 3.2, 2009 3, 2010 2.9,
00:21:19.000 | 2011 2.9, 2012 2.9, 2013 2.8.
00:21:23.000 | And remember where we are in terms of the baby boomers retiring.
00:21:27.000 | You've got this massive golf ball
00:21:29.000 | that's been moving through the snake
00:21:30.000 | and every day more and more baby boomers retire,
00:21:32.000 | more and more start to take.
00:21:33.000 | And here's what's happening also.
00:21:35.000 | It's standard financial advice
00:21:36.000 | that a retiree waits until age 70 to take Social Security.
00:21:41.000 | So you see these numbers played out there.
00:21:43.000 | So politically this affects a nation.
00:21:46.000 | Economically it affects a nation.
00:21:48.000 | This is one of the reasons why the danger
00:21:51.000 | is so significant for the collapse of globally
00:21:56.000 | all of the systems that are the entitlement programs
00:21:58.000 | that are built to protect aged workers.
00:22:01.000 | So Security, Medicare, Medicaid in the US
00:22:03.000 | and various countries options as well.
00:22:05.000 | When you have a society in which there are many workers
00:22:09.000 | supporting a few retirees,
00:22:11.000 | then that can be stable.
00:22:14.000 | Most of us have this desire to want to support other people
00:22:18.000 | and want to support the aged and those who are poor, etc.
00:22:22.000 | But when you have a very few number of workers,
00:22:24.000 | the burden gets very, very heavy.
00:22:27.000 | And this is exacerbated by the personal circumstances
00:22:30.000 | of those workers.
00:22:32.000 | Let me just use an example.
00:22:33.000 | I like to use my own personal example.
00:22:35.000 | I'm the youngest of seven.
00:22:36.000 | One of my sisters died when a teenager.
00:22:38.000 | And so my parents have six surviving children.
00:22:41.000 | At this point in time, all of my grandparents have died.
00:22:44.000 | And so my parents have among their six children
00:22:48.000 | a significant number of children
00:22:49.000 | who can support them in their old age,
00:22:52.000 | help them, care for them, pay for them if they need it, etc.
00:22:56.000 | They can support them.
00:22:57.000 | If my parents needed care,
00:23:00.000 | then our ability to share the burden of that care,
00:23:04.000 | I mean daily physical care of them in their home,
00:23:07.000 | caring for their daily necessities,
00:23:09.000 | the ability to share in that would be quite low.
00:23:12.000 | This is especially true given the fact
00:23:14.000 | that there are a significant number of grandchildren as well.
00:23:18.000 | My parents currently have 15 grandchildren.
00:23:21.000 | And so when you think about the age of those grandchildren,
00:23:24.000 | that if my parents needed care in their 80s, in their 90s,
00:23:27.000 | in their 100s, etc.,
00:23:29.000 | then there should be a significant number of children
00:23:32.000 | and a significant number of teenage and young adult grandchildren
00:23:35.000 | that would be available to care for them
00:23:37.000 | because their family tree is growing.
00:23:39.000 | Now if you take that and you compare that
00:23:41.000 | with what many people face who don't have children,
00:23:44.000 | it becomes much more difficult.
00:23:46.000 | And this is very, very significantly the case in many Asian societies.
00:23:50.000 | You might have a married couple,
00:23:52.000 | a married couple that has chosen or either chosen by will
00:23:56.000 | or chosen through circumstance not to have children.
00:23:59.000 | And then their parents start to age.
00:24:01.000 | And if their parents are alive,
00:24:03.000 | instead there are--excuse me--
00:24:06.000 | both parents have had a single child.
00:24:09.000 | That individual child has married another person of an individual child.
00:24:14.000 | And so it's not--and then they've chosen not to have children.
00:24:17.000 | It's not uncommon to then have two people
00:24:21.000 | who are caring for four aging parents with no help.
00:24:26.000 | That's a tremendous, a huge burden.
00:24:29.000 | It's an absolutely massive burden
00:24:32.000 | to have two people caring for four parents.
00:24:37.000 | And so if you compare a declining population of, again,
00:24:43.000 | only child, only child who gets together, married,
00:24:46.000 | don't have children, and then have four parents to care for,
00:24:50.000 | as compared to an expanding population of what I described in my own family,
00:24:54.000 | you can see the difference in terms of the social weight that happens.
00:25:00.000 | If you've never cared for an aging parent, let me tell you,
00:25:03.000 | it disrupts everything in your life.
00:25:05.000 | It's a tremendous, tremendous challenge and a burden.
00:25:08.000 | It's obviously an honor, but it's a tremendous burden.
00:25:11.000 | And so this has a major effect on society.
00:25:15.000 | This more importantly has an effect on many, many institutions.
00:25:20.000 | If you think about all the institutions that are fueled by young people,
00:25:25.000 | all of those institutions start to slowly collapse.
00:25:28.000 | You see declining attendance at schools,
00:25:30.000 | declining attendance at colleges, et cetera.
00:25:33.000 | And so this creates major disruptions in the workforce.
00:25:36.000 | You see major challenges in jobs that are traditionally entry-level.
00:25:41.000 | You can't get enough workers because there are not enough young people to go into that.
00:25:44.000 | And this leads to more and more disruptions in society.
00:25:47.000 | Now, I'm not a catastrophist.
00:25:49.000 | I think that humanity, as always happens, will adapt and adjust, will change to it.
00:25:56.000 | But if you understand this issue, you can see the conflicts being played out,
00:26:02.000 | and you can understand where many things are likely to go.
00:26:05.000 | I'll give you an example.
00:26:06.000 | Immigration.
00:26:08.000 | The reason that a country like the United States has continued to be strong population-wise
00:26:13.000 | and experience overall a growing population is due to immigration.
00:26:18.000 | Immigration has been a major influence.
00:26:22.000 | And so if you understand where these trends are going, though,
00:26:26.000 | you understand that the anti-immigration political factions are destined and doomed to failure.
00:26:32.000 | They cannot succeed.
00:26:34.000 | So this is where you have large numbers of people in the United States
00:26:40.000 | who oppose all kinds of immigration and especially oppose illegal immigration,
00:26:46.000 | but oppose all kinds of immigration.
00:26:48.000 | Those systems are doomed to failure.
00:26:51.000 | One of the things that I personally feel is absolutely certain is that in the coming decades,
00:26:57.000 | every single attractive economy around the world will have to rework its immigration system
00:27:03.000 | to seek very vigorously to attract immigrants to it.
00:27:08.000 | So places like the United States that currently have very difficult and impossible sometimes immigration systems
00:27:14.000 | will have to transform all of their systems because they must attract immigrants
00:27:18.000 | in order to keep the system going in some way.
00:27:22.000 | But that's not a universally good thing.
00:27:26.000 | It's not a universally good thing because this brings tension to society.
00:27:30.000 | Immigration brings societal strife and factions
00:27:34.000 | because you start to get immigrants that often cluster together.
00:27:38.000 | This creates communities.
00:27:39.000 | And if the immigrants aren't successfully assimilated into the current population,
00:27:43.000 | then that political strife is only exacerbated.
00:27:46.000 | You have us versus them, a significant level of trust.
00:27:48.000 | Why are those people speaking Spanish? Maybe they're talking about me.
00:27:51.000 | Why are those people speaking Arabic?
00:27:53.000 | And it creates just deep, low levels of trust.
00:27:57.000 | Human beings fundamentally have a problem, a very, very hard time trusting people
00:28:02.000 | who don't look like them, who don't dress like them,
00:28:05.000 | who don't share the same cultural traditions, the same cultural values, etc.
00:28:09.000 | And absent some kind of unifying religion, meaning something that can cross those boundaries
00:28:16.000 | of skin color and language, etc., with universal principles that are applicable to all
00:28:22.000 | and unify diverse groups, without that, you wind up with a fractured society,
00:28:29.000 | with a low-trust society.
00:28:31.000 | And this is very, very dangerous because it can lead to tension, to strife, etc.
00:28:35.000 | And so you see this in many parts of the world.
00:28:37.000 | I think very prominently you see this right now in Europe, many parts of Europe,
00:28:41.000 | where Europe's demographics have been utterly transformed by immigration,
00:28:46.000 | and yet there's been major challenges to figure out how do we help these immigrants
00:28:52.000 | to assimilate into the culture.
00:28:54.000 | And as the culture has become weak and not standing for something,
00:28:58.000 | then what happens is whoever has the strongest principles winds up winning.
00:29:01.000 | And so you see a society in a time of transition, like you see right now all around Europe.
00:29:08.000 | But this is not only limited to Europe.
00:29:10.000 | This is going to happen systematically on a global basis,
00:29:13.000 | because this population collapse is a global phenomenon.
00:29:17.000 | It's more pronounced in certain areas than in others, but it is a global phenomenon.
00:29:23.000 | In addition to broad-scale economic trends, social trends,
00:29:28.000 | one thing that genuinely concerns me personally is the potential for a decline in innovation,
00:29:36.000 | decline in creative thinking, etc.
00:29:39.000 | Human beings are the single most valuable resource that we have.
00:29:45.000 | The single most important thing that exists in the world is human beings.
00:29:50.000 | The human brain, the human intellect, the human creativity, the human spirit.
00:29:54.000 | Human beings, people are your resource.
00:29:57.000 | If you think about this with regard to disaster planning, it's a good example, right?
00:30:02.000 | Imagine there's some horrible doomsday thing that happens.
00:30:08.000 | The gray cloud of death goes up and there's nuclear war that sets off.
00:30:13.000 | Well, if you think about it and you think about where would you rather be,
00:30:17.000 | how would you live a richer lifestyle?
00:30:20.000 | Let me give you two opposing foils.
00:30:25.000 | On the one hand, you can be a lone survivalist, right?
00:30:28.000 | You and your buddy or you and your spouse are out in the woods
00:30:32.000 | and you got your bug-out backpacks and you got your tents
00:30:34.000 | and you're going to live off the fat of the land out in the woods by yourselves.
00:30:39.000 | Or on the other hand, you've got a community of, say, 500 people
00:30:44.000 | that all speak the same language both literally and metaphorically.
00:30:49.000 | They understand how each other thinks.
00:30:51.000 | They share a common culture, a common heritage.
00:30:54.000 | They're comfortable with one another.
00:30:55.000 | They love one another, et cetera.
00:30:57.000 | And they live together in a small community.
00:31:00.000 | If you could join either of those groups, which would you join?
00:31:06.000 | You'd be a fool to want to go be with the two guys out in the woods.
00:31:11.000 | You would be destined to live in absolute poverty,
00:31:15.000 | scratching a living out of nothing out in the woods.
00:31:20.000 | And there's a very good chance that all three of you would wind up dead.
00:31:24.000 | But at any rate, the chance of all three of you surviving would be minuscule.
00:31:30.000 | Whereas if you could go and you could join a society of, say, 500 people
00:31:34.000 | that could work together, those 500 people, if they share a common sense of community,
00:31:40.000 | common values, a common understanding of ethics, just a sense of commonality,
00:31:47.000 | if you could join that community, you would live very well no matter what the disaster is.
00:31:53.000 | Because even if resources seem scarce--this is always the classic thing, right?
00:32:00.000 | Two guys out in the woods, you're like, "Well, there's deer everywhere
00:32:02.000 | and there's moose everywhere."
00:32:04.000 | Those resources might be there, but those resources are very difficult to get.
00:32:09.000 | And even if you're Daniel Boone and there's deer all around,
00:32:13.000 | you're still just barely eking out an existence.
00:32:16.000 | Whereas if those 500 people, they may be faced with scarce resources,
00:32:20.000 | but the amount of human ingenuity and shared knowledge and creativity
00:32:25.000 | among that group of 500 people would be so, so high
00:32:30.000 | that give it a couple of years, and even if there were a time of difficulty
00:32:33.000 | and you had 20% of them die off with a short-term famine,
00:32:37.000 | there would be so much raw labor, there's so much ingenuity and creativity
00:32:42.000 | and shared knowledge and historical knowledge that they would be eating well
00:32:45.000 | in the community and would have the potential to flourish.
00:32:48.000 | Now, those are simple examples. There's no guarantee, right?
00:32:51.000 | There have been communities of people that have turned their backs on each other
00:32:54.000 | and murdered one another, obviously.
00:32:56.000 | But the point is that human beings are a resource,
00:33:00.000 | and when you have a declining resource like human beings,
00:33:03.000 | you have a declining population, massive amounts of progress in the world
00:33:08.000 | can get wiped out. You can wind up with a so-called dark age, right?
00:33:13.000 | Where knowledge is not growing and where humans are not expanding
00:33:18.000 | and sharing with one another. That's the great danger.
00:33:22.000 | Human beings are always your ultimate resource.
00:33:26.000 | And the more human beings there are, the better and the easier
00:33:29.000 | it will systematically solve the problems that the world is, the world has.
00:33:34.000 | However, when we have fewer human beings, we have less intellect,
00:33:37.000 | fewer geniuses, less support, less labor, everything starts to get more difficult.
00:33:43.000 | Now, these trends will not be as stark as I described in a group of 500 people,
00:33:48.000 | obviously not. Throughout your lifetime, you'll be able to find a place
00:33:52.000 | that you're comfortable and you'll be able to work it out.
00:33:55.000 | But these things will affect your life in many ways.
00:33:59.000 | They're going to affect your wealth. They're going to affect so many things.
00:34:03.000 | And we don't know, I don't know, any more than we know that these predictions are accurate.
00:34:08.000 | You're making a prediction of something that's 78 years in the future.
00:34:10.000 | How do we know for sure what's going to happen? We don't, right?
00:34:14.000 | Could there be some kind of widespread appreciation of the dangers of population decline
00:34:20.000 | and people start having lots of babies again? Maybe, right?
00:34:25.000 | I'm optimistic. I hope that that's the case.
00:34:28.000 | I frequently find myself encouraging people, "Have children."
00:34:31.000 | But you see why people don't. It's obvious why people don't.
00:34:35.000 | Let me talk for a moment about that so you can understand.
00:34:38.000 | We've gone through a very, very significant cultural transformation,
00:34:43.000 | a series of them, which makes it extremely difficult for parents to have children,
00:34:49.000 | even when they want to.
00:34:51.000 | Not setting aside, let me first deal with the medical reality of children.
00:34:57.000 | There is a major problem that seems to exist in many of our circles
00:35:04.000 | of people facing significant levels of infertility.
00:35:08.000 | Some of this is just simply-- I'm not sure the word to use.
00:35:13.000 | It just is, right? It's not a matter of choices.
00:35:16.000 | For example, the testosterone levels of my generation of men,
00:35:23.000 | our testosterone levels collectively are half of the collective testosterone levels of our fathers.
00:35:31.000 | This is a major, major challenge.
00:35:36.000 | It's devastating, and the reasons are not fully understood.
00:35:39.000 | But if you're a man, one of the things that you need to do in 2022 is get your testosterone checked.
00:35:44.000 | You need to work with a doctor and review the numbers
00:35:47.000 | and figure out how you can increase your testosterone if necessary
00:35:50.000 | because these low levels of testosterone are very, very bad,
00:35:54.000 | and it's horrible for our sons as well.
00:35:56.000 | If you have boys, you need to study the topic of testosterone
00:36:00.000 | and help your boys to make-- and make sure that your boys have high levels of testosterone
00:36:05.000 | through proper dietary changes, through all the exercise,
00:36:09.000 | all the things that can be done,
00:36:11.000 | through making sure they have an environment that's not potentially contributing to the decline of testosterone,
00:36:15.000 | but it's a major, major significant issue.
00:36:18.000 | The levels of infertility are significant.
00:36:20.000 | I haven't dug deep into the data on this, and I'm speaking just from some observation,
00:36:25.000 | but it's astounding when I personally think about the number of my friends who struggle with infertility,
00:36:33.000 | and these are often just happy, normal couples that you would think, like,
00:36:36.000 | "There should be no struggle here,"
00:36:38.000 | and some of it is probably environmental.
00:36:41.000 | For example, one of the major trends that has happened is marriage--
00:36:46.000 | the average age of marriage and the average age of conception and childbirth
00:36:51.000 | has been pushed far, far later than the biologically normal age.
00:36:58.000 | The biologically normal age at which a woman can give birth is teenage years, right?
00:37:05.000 | Post-puberty, teenage years.
00:37:08.000 | And throughout history, it was very common that a woman would have children
00:37:13.000 | starting in her teenage years all the way through for many, many years beyond that,
00:37:18.000 | but in today's environment, that is not common.
00:37:22.000 | And I think all of us are glad to see teen pregnancy rates down.
00:37:26.000 | There's no question about that as long as they're down for ethically right reasons
00:37:32.000 | rather than for immoral reasons.
00:37:34.000 | But that puts a big difference, right?
00:37:37.000 | So it's very, very common if the normal age of marriage is something like 26 right now,
00:37:41.000 | it's very, very common that a woman might first start trying to have children
00:37:44.000 | at around the age of 30--late 20s, 30, early 30s.
00:37:48.000 | But her fertility is massively lower at the age of 30 than it is at the age of 18
00:37:54.000 | or the age of 20.
00:37:56.000 | And then the ease of childbirth is massively lower,
00:37:59.000 | meaning it's not as easy to have children.
00:38:03.000 | And so I have many friends, right?
00:38:05.000 | They had very difficult first childbirth and they don't want any more children.
00:38:09.000 | And you go through your circles and you just see then other levels of infertility,
00:38:13.000 | whether it's--whatever the cause is, right?
00:38:15.000 | I'm no expert on it, but whatever the cause is,
00:38:18.000 | there are a significant number of couples in my personal friend circle
00:38:22.000 | who you would think would be able to have a couple of children,
00:38:25.000 | and yet they struggle.
00:38:28.000 | But biological factors are only one component.
00:38:33.000 | I think a much more important component are sociological factors.
00:38:38.000 | Our societies, the modern societies in which we live,
00:38:42.000 | are not friendly, generally speaking, to parents, to having children.
00:38:50.000 | They're not friendly to children.
00:38:52.000 | And there are many, many levels of this.
00:38:55.000 | At its core, you see a dramatic financialification
00:39:00.000 | or a professionalization of life.
00:39:03.000 | It's considered quite--what's the right word?--just not appropriate
00:39:11.000 | to encourage someone to plan ahead and say, "I want to have children."
00:39:16.000 | Very rarely do we ever tell an 8-year-old man,
00:39:20.000 | "Well, how many children would you like to have?"
00:39:22.000 | Very rarely would it ever be considered appropriate to ask a 13-year-old girl,
00:39:26.000 | "How many children would you like to have?"
00:39:28.000 | Generally speaking, we push our children to professional capacities.
00:39:34.000 | And what happens is this becomes an even more significant kind of--
00:39:38.000 | it's a trend that picks up steam.
00:39:40.000 | It's a flywheel.
00:39:42.000 | The more we do it, the more it becomes.
00:39:45.000 | My wife and I value children.
00:39:47.000 | We value families.
00:39:50.000 | I have three boys and one girl.
00:39:53.000 | And so I think carefully about how do I encourage them?
00:39:56.000 | But what happens is we no longer live in a world
00:39:59.000 | in which I can exclusively encourage my boys and my girls
00:40:05.000 | to simply focus on, "Hey, have babies."
00:40:10.000 | My daughter would perhaps be the most vulnerable here
00:40:13.000 | because to think that she would live in a society
00:40:16.000 | where she would be valued for being a mother,
00:40:19.000 | that's just not the societies that any of us live in.
00:40:22.000 | Even if we're part of subcultures in which children are more valued
00:40:27.000 | than the general culture, that's a significant risk.
00:40:31.000 | And so basically we all continually prepare our boys and our girls
00:40:36.000 | for a professional life.
00:40:38.000 | We spend years sending them to school, right?
00:40:40.000 | 12 years of elementary, middle school, high school,
00:40:44.000 | years of college education.
00:40:46.000 | None of that education is related to family.
00:40:49.000 | None of that education is related to children.
00:40:52.000 | None of that education is related to anything except making money,
00:40:56.000 | except being a fundamental part of the economic world.
00:41:00.000 | And so then our children feel the necessity to properly respond.
00:41:07.000 | They feel the necessity to push back and say,
00:41:11.000 | "Yes, okay, I was taught to make money, so I need to make money."
00:41:15.000 | My parents invested all this money.
00:41:18.000 | They spent tens of thousands of dollars to educate me
00:41:20.000 | so that I could be professionally productive.
00:41:23.000 | And so it's my job to be professionally productive.
00:41:26.000 | And even those for whom that's not that big of a deal
00:41:29.000 | would feel a restraint in today's world about saying,
00:41:32.000 | "I want to have children."
00:41:34.000 | When I was thinking about--
00:41:35.000 | I've known forever that I wanted to have children,
00:41:37.000 | but I didn't go around before being married and ask a woman,
00:41:41.000 | I was like, "Well, how many children do you want to have?"
00:41:43.000 | That's verboten, right? That's taboo.
00:41:45.000 | We don't talk like that.
00:41:47.000 | If a woman went around saying, "I just want to have a lot of babies,"
00:41:50.000 | that would be tremendous--
00:41:52.000 | she would be a social outcast for that.
00:41:55.000 | And then it becomes a continuing self-fulfilling prophecy.
00:41:59.000 | The more we financialize, the more we professionalize
00:42:02.000 | the training of our children,
00:42:05.000 | and the fewer children our children themselves are around,
00:42:09.000 | then what happens is we create a world
00:42:10.000 | in which they're not really comfortable with children.
00:42:13.000 | And since there's not a need to have children--
00:42:20.000 | meaning you can have all the sex you want without children
00:42:24.000 | in the modern age of birth control, abortion, etc.--
00:42:29.000 | there's no biological need to have children.
00:42:31.000 | And you can function pretty well in society without children.
00:42:34.000 | There's no longer any stigma for not having children.
00:42:39.000 | There's no stigma for being single.
00:42:41.000 | There's no stigma for being a couple that doesn't have children.
00:42:45.000 | Then what happens is it becomes more and more of it.
00:42:47.000 | And so in the circles of people that I talk to,
00:42:50.000 | it's very common that I speak to people
00:42:53.000 | who have no ambition to have children--
00:42:56.000 | just not important to them.
00:42:59.000 | Obviously, I don't think anyone should be forced to have children.
00:43:04.000 | But these trends are continuing, is my point.
00:43:08.000 | They're continuing.
00:43:09.000 | And again, they're self-fulfilling.
00:43:11.000 | Many people who don't want to have children,
00:43:13.000 | they often just didn't have a great childhood.
00:43:16.000 | And they're not around happy families.
00:43:19.000 | They're not around other families with children.
00:43:21.000 | And all they hear is negative jokes about children.
00:43:25.000 | If you want to drive Joshua Sheets crazy,
00:43:27.000 | just come and open your mouth around me
00:43:29.000 | and say something mean to children.
00:43:33.000 | Our society is riddled with this and it drives me nuts.
00:43:36.000 | I talk about the terrible twos and all this nonsense.
00:43:40.000 | Don't get out of here with that.
00:43:42.000 | Do not speak down about children.
00:43:45.000 | Children are the future of our civilization.
00:43:48.000 | And they deserve to be honored, not discriminated against,
00:43:50.000 | not made fun of.
00:43:53.000 | If you're one who makes fun of millennials
00:43:55.000 | or makes fun of stupid teenagers and kids these days,
00:43:58.000 | you're the problem.
00:44:00.000 | It's your discrimination that is causing people to stop.
00:44:08.000 | Don't make fun of people.
00:44:10.000 | Build people up.
00:44:11.000 | And if you see weaknesses, don't make fun of them.
00:44:13.000 | Get in and help.
00:44:16.000 | Because you sure don't make people want to have babies
00:44:19.000 | when you talk down about them, when you insult them.
00:44:23.000 | There are other trends, though, that cause people to--
00:44:26.000 | cause our society to be unfriendly to children.
00:44:29.000 | As a parent who's actively living this,
00:44:33.000 | I'll tell you that society is unfriendly to children
00:44:36.000 | because there's not much of a village that exists
00:44:39.000 | at this point in time, especially speaking broadly.
00:44:44.000 | There's a classic thing that has become--
00:44:47.000 | it's in some circles quite in vogue to joke about--
00:44:50.000 | people say it takes a village to raise a child.
00:44:53.000 | And there's an expression, I think, of where that does go too far,
00:44:56.000 | meaning that I believe personally in the sovereignty
00:44:59.000 | of the nuclear family unit.
00:45:01.000 | My wife and I don't look to other people for their approval
00:45:04.000 | about what we do with our children.
00:45:05.000 | They're our children.
00:45:06.000 | I don't look to anybody for permission.
00:45:08.000 | I don't ask any permission.
00:45:09.000 | I don't look for other people to control anything.
00:45:12.000 | But there's a reality in which it does very much take a village
00:45:16.000 | to raise a child.
00:45:18.000 | And what we find is with the intense, again,
00:45:20.000 | professionalization of society,
00:45:23.000 | there's not a lot of support that parents get.
00:45:27.000 | There's not a lot of support.
00:45:28.000 | And so it's very, very difficult to raise children in the modern context
00:45:34.000 | because you pretty much wind up doing it all yourself.
00:45:38.000 | And the society in general has become so unfriendly to children--
00:45:42.000 | and I'm not saying that people are unfriendly.
00:45:45.000 | Most people are nice to children.
00:45:47.000 | But what I mean is the society has become unfriendly to children
00:45:51.000 | such that if you're raising children, you find yourself continually burdened.
00:45:59.000 | You continually have to do it yourself.
00:46:01.000 | Let me give you an example.
00:46:08.000 | Recently we rented a house in Orlando, Florida.
00:46:12.000 | We were there for about a month and a half.
00:46:14.000 | And we were in this beautiful golf community.
00:46:17.000 | And it was nice.
00:46:18.000 | Beautiful Airbnb, beautiful golf community,
00:46:20.000 | nice house, beautiful neighborhood, et cetera.
00:46:23.000 | The amount of pressure--
00:46:24.000 | every person that we spoke to in that community was so nice.
00:46:30.000 | Retirees, beautiful people.
00:46:33.000 | They were kind.
00:46:34.000 | Everyone was lovely.
00:46:36.000 | And they made so many nice compliments about our children.
00:46:41.000 | But the entire structure of the neighborhood
00:46:44.000 | and everything about it was unfriendly to children.
00:46:49.000 | It was just completely unsuitable to their needs.
00:46:52.000 | For example, we begin with the house.
00:46:54.000 | The house, meaning--let me not go with the interior of the house.
00:46:57.000 | That would be too pedantic.
00:46:58.000 | But on an exterior basis, there's no yard.
00:47:02.000 | There's a nicely landscaped front bit,
00:47:04.000 | and then there's a back bit that opens up onto a golf course.
00:47:07.000 | And so the children, of course, can't play on the golf course.
00:47:10.000 | There is a river there right behind the house, a canal.
00:47:14.000 | So you have to be careful of that.
00:47:17.000 | And all the other houses are just set so close.
00:47:19.000 | And so I let the children go play in the street.
00:47:21.000 | The street was safe enough.
00:47:23.000 | And again, all the people were wonderful.
00:47:26.000 | But it was one of the worst environments possible to have children in.
00:47:29.000 | It was awful because my boys go down the street,
00:47:32.000 | and they ride their scooters down,
00:47:33.000 | and they start digging in somebody's yard,
00:47:35.000 | and they have to go out--no, don't dig in that.
00:47:36.000 | They go and dig in someone's trash pile and find some treasures there.
00:47:40.000 | And they're just being children.
00:47:42.000 | And yet the social opprobrium for messing up the beauty of the neighborhood
00:47:46.000 | would be so significant that I'm on pins and needles all the time
00:47:50.000 | trying to make sure that we're good neighbors.
00:47:53.000 | Now, you could say, "Well, Joshua, clearly a golf community
00:47:55.000 | is not necessarily the right move, right?
00:47:58.000 | This is a retiree community full of gray-haired people
00:48:01.000 | enjoying their last years of leisure."
00:48:04.000 | And that's true.
00:48:05.000 | The problem is where do you go where there is actually a great community for children?
00:48:11.000 | Communities are very rarely structured well for it.
00:48:14.000 | There are some.
00:48:16.000 | You can find sometimes a few neighborhoods.
00:48:20.000 | But even if you're fortunate enough to go and engage in one of those neighborhoods,
00:48:26.000 | you can't really just let your kids go and play.
00:48:30.000 | And even if you want to--I'm very much in favor of the ideals of free-range parenting,
00:48:36.000 | letting my children go and do,
00:48:38.000 | and I think that it's silly that people are more concerned about--
00:48:43.000 | it's silly that people are concerned about safety for their children.
00:48:46.000 | Our children are far safer than they ever were 50 years ago, 100 years ago.
00:48:50.000 | But what happens is you live in a society in which other people don't get it.
00:48:55.000 | I'll give you an example.
00:48:56.000 | When we were in that same neighborhood, I went and let the children go and play.
00:49:01.000 | And they let them go play in the canal.
00:49:03.000 | The children could all swim and keep an eye on them.
00:49:04.000 | But I told them where their boundaries were, which were pretty wide.
00:49:08.000 | But they had--I can't remember if it was seven or eight houses down.
00:49:12.000 | There was a big tree.
00:49:13.000 | I said, "You can go as far as this tree.
00:49:14.000 | You can go as far as this other landmark down here.
00:49:16.000 | These are your boundaries."
00:49:18.000 | Well, then one morning, here comes the guy from five houses down, hurrying down.
00:49:23.000 | "I saw your children out playing.
00:49:24.000 | I just need to make sure they had a home and whatnot."
00:49:26.000 | And, of course, he was very kind, and you appreciate that.
00:49:28.000 | I hope you hear me clearly.
00:49:29.000 | I'm trying to articulate.
00:49:30.000 | If you don't talk with parents about these issues,
00:49:33.000 | these are some of the things that are happening,
00:49:34.000 | and I just want you to be aware of them.
00:49:36.000 | So the guy was wonderful, right?
00:49:38.000 | He was concerned about children.
00:49:40.000 | He was looking out for their safety, and he wanted to make sure that they were okay,
00:49:45.000 | which was great.
00:49:46.000 | He didn't do anything wrong.
00:49:48.000 | But this is an example of what exists everywhere.
00:49:51.000 | As a parent, you can't just let your children go play outside.
00:49:54.000 | You can't let your children go to the park, because then everyone's asking,
00:49:57.000 | "Where are your parents?
00:49:58.000 | Where are your parents?"
00:49:59.000 | And so what happens is parents have to be on all the time,
00:50:04.000 | and there's no suitable place for them to be,
00:50:06.000 | even in a neighborhood that's friendly to the children.
00:50:08.000 | You think about the classic idea about the 1950s.
00:50:12.000 | "Oh, my friends and I went out to go and play.
00:50:15.000 | We went out and played sandlot baseball every afternoon after school."
00:50:19.000 | Well, number one, you go into a neighborhood,
00:50:20.000 | even the most friendly neighborhoods and the most family-friendly towns,
00:50:24.000 | the places where there are children and there's virtually no children.
00:50:28.000 | The streets are barren, so there's no place for your children to play.
00:50:31.000 | There's no one for your children to play with.
00:50:34.000 | And then you wind up--and then you put the children--
00:50:39.000 | so there's no one for them to play with,
00:50:41.000 | and there's very few places that they can play.
00:50:44.000 | And then when they do play, all the neighbors around are so concerned
00:50:47.000 | about the safety of the children that it gets pretty intense.
00:50:51.000 | And so you've got to be seen sitting out and watching them, et cetera.
00:50:55.000 | I hope this doesn't sound like complaining.
00:50:57.000 | I guess I'm just trying to articulate that the whole concept
00:51:00.000 | of society being friendly for children is not.
00:51:03.000 | Now, take that into where most people live, which is in a city.
00:51:06.000 | Have children, what happens? You need a bigger place.
00:51:09.000 | And it's even more difficult to have children in an apartment
00:51:12.000 | where you've got to go down and buzz yourself in and out of the doorman
00:51:15.000 | or whatever that kind of lifestyle is.
00:51:19.000 | So what happens? Well, where do your children find friends?
00:51:22.000 | Well, it's always school.
00:51:24.000 | Well, the things that happen with school is school becomes this all-consuming thing,
00:51:28.000 | and you wind up carting your children around, being taxi driver here, there, et cetera,
00:51:32.000 | structured play times, structured this.
00:51:34.000 | And so as the number of children grows, then the constraints just become harder and harder.
00:51:40.000 | And now if I've got three children in baseball, then I've got to drive my kids everywhere.
00:51:45.000 | And they can't ride the bus, and they're not supposed to take Uber by themselves.
00:51:48.000 | And so it's just, as you see, it becomes a lot.
00:51:51.000 | And so what do people need? We need a community.
00:51:54.000 | And traditionally you could find this in a local area.
00:51:59.000 | You could find a village. I'm reading my children the book by--what's her name?--Estes,
00:52:03.000 | "The Moffat Children." And it's so beautiful.
00:52:05.000 | It's a beautifully written story about the Moffats.
00:52:07.000 | And here you see this expression.
00:52:10.000 | And I don't think it's an idealization.
00:52:12.000 | I think it was a society that really was in the United States many years ago.
00:52:16.000 | But you see this sense of people knowing each other.
00:52:18.000 | And here's this little girl, Jane Moffat, playing in the street up and down.
00:52:22.000 | And everyone knows it's Jane Moffat.
00:52:24.000 | They know all the children. They know everybody.
00:52:27.000 | But in our modern societies, we don't.
00:52:30.000 | And everything is so separated, at least in the U.S., I'll say.
00:52:33.000 | In many places it's the same.
00:52:35.000 | That this is--it makes it hard.
00:52:39.000 | And so your neighbors--you have a hard time trusting your neighbors
00:52:41.000 | because we don't know our neighbors because we sit inside and sit in the air conditioning,
00:52:44.000 | sit in the heating, and watch football on TV
00:52:46.000 | instead of actually going and playing football in the yards.
00:52:49.000 | And so it becomes more difficult.
00:52:51.000 | And I think this is one of the things that contributes significantly.
00:52:53.000 | When you have parents that want children, that value children,
00:52:57.000 | every additional child that you have becomes this intense, difficult price.
00:53:03.000 | You're going to pay the price because it's tough.
00:53:07.000 | That's not even getting into the infrastructure, etc.
00:53:10.000 | So what are--what am I saying?
00:53:13.000 | I guess I'm just trying to articulate that I get it.
00:53:16.000 | I get why people don't have children.
00:53:18.000 | I get why people don't have children at all.
00:53:20.000 | I get why people don't get married.
00:53:22.000 | I get why people don't have lots of children.
00:53:24.000 | And yet this contributes to this significantly declining birth rate.
00:53:31.000 | Now I don't worry about--I don't think these problems are insoluble.
00:53:39.000 | I've worked hard to solve many of these problems for myself and for my family.
00:53:45.000 | I have some solutions to some of them,
00:53:47.000 | but a lot of times they're not easy solutions,
00:53:49.000 | nor are they universally accepted or acceptable solutions.
00:53:54.000 | For example, I find a lot of the community that my family needs,
00:53:59.000 | we find that in subcultures.
00:54:02.000 | I have religious subcultures of which I'm a part.
00:54:05.000 | I have ideological subcultures, homeschool groups, etc.
00:54:11.000 | People who are religious tend to have a lot of children,
00:54:14.000 | or at least more than average.
00:54:16.000 | People who are homeschoolers tend to have more children,
00:54:19.000 | at least more than average.
00:54:22.000 | And so what happens is because you find communities of people
00:54:25.000 | that share the same problems,
00:54:26.000 | then you can put together a community to handle those things.
00:54:30.000 | You can find neighborhoods, find properties, find things that work for you,
00:54:33.000 | and you can create a solution.
00:54:36.000 | But on the whole, these kinds of subcultures are fringe.
00:54:41.000 | They're fringe groups.
00:54:42.000 | They're not mainstream at all.
00:54:44.000 | They're not easily findable.
00:54:45.000 | They're fringe groups.
00:54:47.000 | And so you've got to be aware of the fact that this is what's happening in society.
00:54:54.000 | Let me pivot now and talk about some pieces of advice.
00:55:01.000 | And I'm going to give this fairly broadly.
00:55:03.000 | Let's begin with just some general advice.
00:55:05.000 | Number one, make sure that your personal financial goal
00:55:11.000 | is not to be dependent on systems of society.
00:55:17.000 | Because as I see it right now,
00:55:20.000 | the graying population will hold the levers of control
00:55:25.000 | in most democratically controlled societies because of their sheer numbers.
00:55:30.000 | But at some point in time, young people are going to rebel.
00:55:35.000 | And you see this happening with the movement to drop out.
00:55:40.000 | You see this happening in many ways.
00:55:42.000 | But I think that there are some long-range trends.
00:55:45.000 | The systems that were designed for the world of the 1940s no longer work.
00:55:49.000 | They don't work.
00:55:50.000 | They're not going to work.
00:55:51.000 | They're going to continue to collapse over the coming decades.
00:55:54.000 | And it's as simple as that.
00:55:58.000 | It's certain that they're going to collapse.
00:56:01.000 | Now, there will be a time in which I think they can be patched together.
00:56:04.000 | Remember, immigration is how most countries are trying to solve this,
00:56:07.000 | trying to hold up the welfare state based upon immigration.
00:56:10.000 | That works as long as there are significant numbers of fecund societies
00:56:17.000 | that are creating lots of young people that are willing to go abroad.
00:56:21.000 | But as these mainstream--if this trend continues,
00:56:28.000 | those societies themselves will not have as many people available to immigrate.
00:56:34.000 | And so immigration can keep some of the leaders ahead.
00:56:37.000 | Immigration can keep the United States going.
00:56:40.000 | Canada is desperately trying to keep going with immigration.
00:56:45.000 | Immigration can fuel some of the growth in the U.K. and Western Europe, etc.,
00:56:49.000 | for a time.
00:56:51.000 | But there will come a point in time in which immigrants will be less attracted.
00:56:54.000 | I think this is already happening in the United States.
00:56:57.000 | I think that so much--I think the demand for immigration to the United States
00:57:02.000 | has been dramatically hurt.
00:57:04.000 | I can't prove that. I don't have any data at my fingertips.
00:57:06.000 | But I think that just anecdotally, I don't think that on a global basis,
00:57:12.000 | highly skilled, highly knowledgeable people are trying to immigrate
00:57:16.000 | to a place like the United States as significantly as they once were.
00:57:19.000 | There are still lots of low-skilled workers that are trying to immigrate to the U.S.,
00:57:23.000 | but there aren't a lot of smart, intelligent people because it doesn't have to be.
00:57:26.000 | We live in a global world, and the opportunities in the United States
00:57:30.000 | are not as stark as they once were in terms of their superiority to many places
00:57:35.000 | in the rest of the world.
00:57:37.000 | So this is going to impact society, but you can't be financially dependent on that.
00:57:42.000 | If you don't have children, and you don't have the state,
00:57:46.000 | you need to think about what are you going to have.
00:57:52.000 | What many people have done is they've substituted the concept of children
00:57:58.000 | to take care of me as I age, to provide company for me as I age, etc.,
00:58:03.000 | and they've substituted that with the state.
00:58:05.000 | So if you don't have either of those things, what are you going to have?
00:58:08.000 | You're going to need a group. You're going to need some friends.
00:58:11.000 | You're going to need a group of people committed to caring for one another.
00:58:15.000 | Ideally, this should obviously be found in your local church.
00:58:20.000 | It may be found in a local community.
00:58:22.000 | You might join some form of intentional community.
00:58:25.000 | You might get together with your buddies and do something and figure it out.
00:58:29.000 | But how are you actually going to be cared for if you don't have children
00:58:33.000 | and the systems of care that exist in the state continually decline
00:58:39.000 | and the things that you don't want to be associated with?
00:58:41.000 | Think about that carefully.
00:58:43.000 | In terms of long-term trends, recognize this is going to be at the background
00:58:47.000 | of so many long-term trends, so many political trends,
00:58:50.000 | and you seem to be aware of it.
00:58:51.000 | It's back there in the fabric.
00:58:52.000 | If you look at this issue and then you look at the world,
00:58:55.000 | many of the conflicts that you see are going to be largely inevitable,
00:59:01.000 | and they're rather predictable.
00:59:04.000 | What about in your personal life?
00:59:05.000 | I think that personally you should consider if you want to have children.
00:59:09.000 | If you do, I think it's very much in your best interest to not goof off about it.
00:59:16.000 | I wouldn't change any other way.
00:59:18.000 | I think that one of the craziest things that people do is,
00:59:20.000 | even with all of the headwinds that I discussed,
00:59:22.000 | even the things that are difficult,
00:59:24.000 | I don't understand why people don't have more children,
00:59:26.000 | especially just successful--let me rephrase.
00:59:28.000 | I shouldn't say I don't understand it.
00:59:29.000 | I do understand it.
00:59:31.000 | There are costs to it, but I think the benefits far outweigh the costs.
00:59:38.000 | I haven't personally met--I've read a few on Reddit, right?
00:59:41.000 | But I haven't personally met somebody who's ever regretted having more
00:59:47.000 | than a few children.
00:59:49.000 | I've met a good number of people who had one or two children
00:59:52.000 | and said, "I should have had more."
00:59:54.000 | I think if you recognize that human beings are the basic focus of life
01:00:00.000 | and they can be an incredibly rewarding part--
01:00:03.000 | and it's what people look at, right?
01:00:05.000 | Look at what 80-year-olds care about in their life,
01:00:07.000 | and then begin with the end in mind.
01:00:10.000 | Then do the work in your 20s and your 30s, etc.,
01:00:13.000 | to, number one, not only have the plan of having children,
01:00:17.000 | but make sure that you have the resources to do it.
01:00:20.000 | Make sure that you have the resources to solve your problems.
01:00:24.000 | Develop yourself and train your children to develop themselves
01:00:29.000 | so that instead of goofing off, they're prepared to support a family,
01:00:34.000 | and they have the training necessary, the education necessary,
01:00:37.000 | the skills necessary to earn enough money necessary.
01:00:40.000 | I would have a very hard time supporting my family in an adequate way
01:00:45.000 | if I did not earn a significant amount of money.
01:00:48.000 | But because I've developed myself and my businesses,
01:00:51.000 | then I can do it in comfort, and I can solve a lot of those problems
01:00:54.000 | that I described that face you, and money goes a long way towards that.
01:00:59.000 | So pay attention to that.
01:01:02.000 | If you have children, recognize that your children are going to be seen as a resource,
01:01:06.000 | and so train them for that.
01:01:08.000 | This might be in a negative sense, right?
01:01:10.000 | This is one of the reasons I left the United States.
01:01:12.000 | There's a crazy, ridiculous, upside-down world that a government
01:01:16.000 | that's borrowing money like crazy thinks it can tax everyone,
01:01:19.000 | and that government is stealing money from my children,
01:01:23.000 | thinking that somehow my children are going to pay it back.
01:01:26.000 | Well, I think it's dumb for my children to be forced to pay for the money
01:01:30.000 | that their great-grandparents stole.
01:01:33.000 | That's silly.
01:01:34.000 | Now, I don't think they're going to pay.
01:01:36.000 | I think that a default is likely, but I wanted to make sure they had an off-ramp.
01:01:40.000 | I don't want them to think that the United States government sees them as a cash cow
01:01:43.000 | and it can just steal their lives, and so I've got to make sure
01:01:46.000 | that they're not beholden to any one particular government that sees them that way.
01:01:50.000 | So that would be kind of the negative view.
01:01:52.000 | But in the positive view, just recognize that the world is going to be desperate
01:01:57.000 | for your children.
01:01:58.000 | The world is going to be desperate for thoughtful, well-educated, disciplined individuals,
01:02:04.000 | because as the number of competitors declines,
01:02:10.000 | then the opportunities open up much more significantly
01:02:13.000 | for those who are really skilled and ready for it.
01:02:16.000 | And so I don't have any sense of uncertainty or crisis about it.
01:02:21.000 | I think it's just going to be a tremendous opportunity.
01:02:23.000 | Society will go through major changes.
01:02:25.000 | That's what happens.
01:02:26.000 | You go through changes, and there can be massive demographic changes,
01:02:30.000 | but change always results in opportunity.
01:02:34.000 | Sometimes it takes time to figure out where that opportunity is,
01:02:36.000 | but change results in opportunity.
01:02:39.000 | And if you're having children, your children are going to be such a valuable resource,
01:02:42.000 | especially your children, right?
01:02:45.000 | Not common, ordinary, everyday children, but your children are going to be
01:02:49.000 | such a valuable resource that their future is going to be extremely bright.
01:02:56.000 | I think finally--there are more things I could say,
01:02:58.000 | but I think finally what I would say is that if you have children,
01:03:02.000 | you will have more of an opportunity to direct the future than those who choose not to.
01:03:09.000 | The future belongs to the fecund.
01:03:11.000 | And those who have children and who do--you have the opportunity to mold the future
01:03:18.000 | every single day.
01:03:20.000 | And it's such a powerful responsibility, yes, but it's such a powerful opportunity.
01:03:26.000 | There's nowhere that you have more opportunity for influence than in your own home.
01:03:30.000 | So no matter what the difficulties you face are,
01:03:34.000 | press forward and influence your children in the proper direction.
01:03:39.000 | And those who grow, those populations who grow,
01:03:45.000 | those are the ones who are going to control the future.
01:03:48.000 | It's true on--in every level.
01:03:52.000 | I wish I had a better kind of bang-up thing to close on.
01:03:59.000 | My conclusion is simply pay attention to the data.
01:04:02.000 | I don't know what you can do with it today,
01:04:04.000 | but this subject is going to be at the backdrop of many major societal changes
01:04:11.000 | over the coming decades.
01:04:13.000 | So pay attention.
01:04:14.000 | When you see the headlines, you don't need to do much more than read the headlines,
01:04:16.000 | but pay attention to the headlines because this is going to be a transformative influence
01:04:23.000 | and trend in our lives over the coming decades.
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