Last year’s summary: Russian Demographics in 2017
Preliminary data for 2017 is in.
Summary
There were about 1,689,884 (11.5/1,000) births in 2017, a decline of 10.7% relative to the 1,893,256 (12.9/1,000) births in 2016. There were about 1,824,340 (12.4/1,000) deaths in 2017, a decline of 3.4% relative to the 1,887,913 (12.9/1,000) deaths in 2016.
Consequently, the rate of natural increase declined from 5,343 (0.0/1,000) in 2016, to -134,456 (-0.9/1,000) in 2017.
Unlike the pattern in previous years, the decline seems to have been concentrated in ethnic Russian regions; births declined by only 6% in Buryatia and Tuva, by 5% in Dagestan, and outright increased by 5% in Chechnya and 8% in Ingushetia.
The population was estimated at 146,877,088 as of Jan 1, 2018, up from 146,838,993 exactly one year ago. This implies about 172,551 long-term net immigration.
Natality
Russian fertility fell off a cliff in the second half of 2016, though there are tentative signs that it may have bottomed out in recent months.
Monthly births in Russia, 2006-2017, with yearly moving average.
Monthly births in Russia (percent change year-on-year), 2007-2017, with yearly moving average.
Consequently, I calculate Russian TFR was ~1.61 children per woman in 2017, down from 1.76 in 2016.
Russia Total Fertility Rate (children per woman), 1946-2017.
Russian birth rates were long expected to start decreasing due to the demographic “echo” of the small 1990s cohort – that they managed to hold at a plateau through to 2016, despite strong downwards pressure accruing from the ~3% yearly collapse in the numbers of women of childbearing age, was actually rather impressive.
But this year, it’s as if the floodgates finally opened, and then some.
This is a disappointing development if it represents a new normal.
First, whereas Russia was doing significantly better than most of the rest of Eastern Europe (see the map right), and showed tentative signs of breaking out into the high-fertility category of European countries (e.g. Scandinavia, France, the British Isles), this has now been postponed – possibly indefinitely.
Second, whereas before Russia was firmly on my Medium scenario for natality (and High scenario for mortality)…
Medium (TFR=1.75 from 2010)The population grows from 2010, rising from 142mn to 148mn in 2025 and 156mn in 2050. The death rate troughs at 10.8 in 2034, before zooming in to 11.5 by 2050. The birth rate peaks at 13.6 by 2014, before plummeting to 9.7 in 2033, before recovering to 11.9 in 2046 and again falling, although less rapidly than before.
… It is now half-way back towards the Low scenario, which is considerably more pessimistic:
Low (TFR=1.5 from 2010)Population growth starts from 2011, going from 142mn to 143mn by 2023. Then it falls slowly to 138mn by 2050. The birth rate peaks at 12.5 in 2013, falls sharply to 7.8 by 2032, and then remains in the 8-9 range. The death rate troughs at 11.4 in 2032, then rises to 12.9 by 2050. Positive natural increase is never attained.
Curiously, this seems to be a global pattern.
- American TFR fell from 1.84 in 2015 and 1.82 in 2016, to approximately 1.77 children per woman in 2017.
- Births fell by 8% in the Ukraine this year, so its TFR will decline from 1.47 in 2016 to around 1.40 in 2017. Like Russia, the Ukraine had a recession – though a far steeper one.
- Births fell by 6% in Latvia and 3% in Estonia.
- Commenter Cicerone: “Big drops (my forecasts based on published birth figures): Norway 1.71 to 1.62, Sweden 1.85 to 1.78, Finland 1.57 to 1.49, Russia 1.76 to 1.60, Ukraine 1.47 to 1.37, USA 1.82 to 1.75, New Zealand 1.87 to 1.77, South Korea 1.17 to 1.05, Hong Kong 1.21 to 1.15, Macao 1.14 to 1.05 and Singapore 1.20 to 1.14. (For Korea at least there is a drop every 12 years because of the zodiac. For the Nordics and the Anglo countries, the drops are simply a continuation of the trend since 2008. No idea about the rest.) Only countries prob seeing a TFR rise: Portugal, Italy (recovery from crisis), Visegrad-5 and Germany. In most other developed countries, TFR will drop significantly. As the declines continue despite economic recovery, it seems to be a real cultural change. Probably fallout from the SJWs? Millennials in the West giving up on having children?“
- Annatar: “TFR also falling in France, Spain and Japan this year, though at slower rate, TFR falling in Kazakhstan as well, seems to be a wider trend, wonder what happened in 2016 to cause this.”
Abortion in Russia continues to decline to normal country levels.
Russia abortions as percentage of live births.
This is still about 2-3x higher than in most of Western Europe and the US, but Russia is longer the absolute outlier it once was.
Mortality
Based on the decrease in mortality, I calculate that life expectancy was ~72.9 years in 2017, setting it way above its Soviet era local peaks in the mid-1960s and late 1980s.
Russia life expectancy, 1959-2017.
As has usually been the case, this was accompanied by continued strong decreases in deaths from external causes.
Russia mortality / 100,000 from external causes.
This includes deaths from murder, suicide, and deaths from alcohol poisonings, the latter of which drives a great deal of Russian mortality in general.
Russia mortality / 100,000 from murder, suicide, and alcohol poisoning.
What I wrote in my demographic update last year is as relevant as ever:
One way of looking at this is that mortality trends in Russia are basically tracking improvements in the ex-Soviet Baltics (and the City of Moscow) with a lag of ten years, so there is good reason to expect this trend will continue.
This is primarily linked to the big reduction in vodka bingeing during the past decade, which depressed Russian life expectancy by about a decade relative to what it “should be” based on its GDP per capita and healthcare system. This “alcoholization” began to soar from around 1965, and peaked in the 1990s and early 2000s. According to calculations by the demographer Alexander Nemtsov, something like a third of Russian mortality around 2005 could be attributed to it.
As alcohol abuse fell, so did all of the other components of mortality, especially those most strongly associated with it, i.e. deaths from external causes: which includes homicides, suicides, deaths from transport accidents (despite soaring vehicle ownership), and, self-referentially, deaths from alcohol poisoning.
Part of this reduction was due to cultural change, including the realities of life under capitalism (if you turn up to work drunk, you can be fired, unlike under socialism), part of it was due to economics (more diversity of choice), and part of it was thanks to specific Kremlin policies, such as steady increases in the excise tax on alcohol and restrictions on alcohol advertising.
Some comparative guideposts:
Russia’s average life expectancy of close to 73 years is equivalent to Poland in 1998 (which as of this year has pretty much converged with the US), Estonia and Hungary in 2005, Latvia and Lithuania in 2010.
Neither is Russia any longer outlier in terms of “deaths from vices”. Poland (18/100,000) and especially Lithuania (24/100,000) have more suicides than Russia (16/100,000). Homicide rates are at 6.0/100,000, having almost converged with America’s 5.3/100,000 in 2016. Though hardly anything to write about, considering the challenges of America’s demographic composition, this still probably marks an all time record (the homicide rate in the late Russian Empire was around 20/100,000; in the RSFSR from 1961-1990, it varied from 6-11/100,000).
France is the same green as Turkey and North Africa on that map, probably because the people having children in France are from those same lands. The same for Britain, there is no doubt in me that it is greenish because of immigrant and miscegenation births. Poland is shocking, I did not know they had such a low rate, they really need to start doing real conservative stuff like having babies, if their current government is supposed to be conservative what have they been doing about this?
It might be interesting to see what the birth and fertility rates are if we remove the (fertility superstar) regions of the country populated with non-Russians. I guess it would take an hour or two to go through the public data and work out this out.
The regions in Russia with the highest birthrates and fertility rates, are majority populated not by Russians. So if someone will remove these regions from the data – I’m not sure the birthrates in Russia are higher than in the Baltics or Ukraine.
Interesting numbers, thanks.
My view is that stable population, or even small decline, is not that bad. For example, Russia with 110-130 million people would still be similar to Russia today. West is artificially pumping population with mass migration from the Third World (UK, France, Scandinavia) – is that better than small decrease? Wouldn’t Sweden with 7 million mostly Swedish people be that bad? Or Germany with 60 million?
Speaking of Murican life expectancy
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/images/databriefs/251-300/db293_fig3.gif
I would expect births to rise by around 5% in 2018 as marriages fell 15% in 2016 to a 12 year low which led to a 11% fall in births in 2017, marriages rose by 7.5% in 2017, which should translate to a 5% rise in births as Russia is still a nation where a majority of births occur within wedlock.
Stable or falling populations generally increase per capita incomes. But the effect on lowered rate of (not per capita) GDP growth, can be very bad for things like debt-to-GDP dynamics.
Also the effects on age structure of a population (of aging population), can eventually increase the age-dependency ratio, which increases the tax burden on the working population.
I have done this somewhere, it would go down by no more than 0.1 children per woman.
EDIT: Here – http://www.unz.com/akarlin/dying-bear-still-not-dead/#comment-1760892
Yeah it would be a nightmare for the Polish people if they had to deal with more open spaces, lower costs of living, a higher GDP per capita and other terrors associated with having a smaller population.
I talked earlier about Russophobia in the US and how it really is just about Trump. Well the House Republicans just voted to release a memo that supposedly casts light on a Deep State conspiracy to make up this whole Trump/Russia collusion story.
I doubt anything will come of it, but that really isn’t the interesting part. What’s interesting is the way libshits online are reacting to it. They are saying that the reason the House GOP is trying to sabotage the Mueller investigation is not because they are trying to protect Trump, per se, but rather because the House Republicans themselves are also colluding with Russia.
Honestly, at this stage, it might be easier to just ask US liberals to make a list of people/groups who aren’t in Moscow’s pocket.
Lowering abortion rates – that’s cool!!! Go Russia!
Peace.
China isn’t doing well either
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-population/china-births-drop-3-5-percent-in-2017-china-daily-idUSKBN1F802U
But a 10% drop is apocalyptic.
There’s talk of China going full commie on the birthrate, so expect some innovative policies to force people to have babies, or else.
You are assuming that there is an asymptotic trend towards a stable population number rather than a Darwinian dying out of an unfit population. Frankly, I don’t see reasons for optimism.
Your map is somewhat out of date. Poland has seen significant rises in birth rates over the past few years. Our crude birth rate is now 10.9 per woman. It was 9.7 according to the World Bank in 2015.
http://stat.gov.pl/en/basic-data/
Additionally, we have not seen a decline in birth rates in 2017, though the total births did rise slower than in 2016. This is likely due to A) a strong economy and B) increased incentives for child-rearing.
I also think that Russia’s decline in 2016 is probably a delayed response to the massive economic negative shock. Real household income really took a deep dive:
Seems not all embed codes work, so I’ll just post an image instead:
https://i.imgur.com/3DWnYoK.png
Such a dramatic (over 10%) fall will naturally make a dent in people’s plans, and raising kids is an expensive business to be sure.
Fertility trends are quite sensitive to income in societies which are not very religious. In the US, child support was not great from an economic PoV, but they always had a large religious population which propped up the birth rate regardless. As atheism spreads, particularly among the under-35(which is the population that matters for fertility, for obvious reasons), this is now declining in the US, too. And it is not being offset by financial/economic reasons.
France has not been very religious for many years now, and neither has Scandinavia, but their economic systems encourage natality. For poorer countries such as Poland or Russia, temporary economic fortunes matter more since the ground-level welfare support is still quite modest, at best.
Russia may be more religious than many countries, but it is my impression that religion is still quite shallow there, same as in Poland. It is often an identity marker for people and religious communion peaks around various holidays but day-to-day religious influence seems to me to be low in Russia. I could be wrong, but that is my impression at least.
Israel is a hyper-religious society by contrast. I’m not just talking about the Orthodox, even the Masorti are very religious by Western standards and they take up a significantly larger chunk. Even the secular Jews pump out 2.5 kids per woman, but that is probably a combination of demographic fear (we have to outbreed the Arabs!) as well as being influenced by their fellow co-ethnics who are quite religious and have large families.
For these reasons, I wouldn’t put too much stock in year-to-year changes, especially given that Russia economy is only just now recovering. Fertility seems to be crashing easier than it is building. The Russian recovery in the early-to-late 2000s was probably an exception to this, that is why I’d expect Russian fertility to slowly recover but recover nonetheless as the economy will do okay, the budget will turn into surplus and more money will find itself into the pockets of ordinary Russians. Real wages are already increasing by a healthy margin according to Rosstat.
Korea is going the East Asian way in an extreme manner. From 485,000 thousands births in 2012 up to 358,000 last year. As has ben pointed out on this blog several times Korea seems to be a role model for China. So thats no good sign for the “Chinese 21th century” believers. It seems like East Asians simply stop reproducing at all, what stays in the world is a Black/White mix.
Russia has relatively low debt, so the debt-to-GDP ratio is less important.’Debt’ is also a social construct; debts can be revised, abolished, devalued, etc… In a society where there is relative shortage of labor, incomes go up, taxes go up, inflation devalues debts, and all is fine.
This a favourite of open borders proponents, but it is a theory with no basis in reality. No advanced society has ever experienced a real shortage of people willing to work. With automation, people living longer, etc…there is no shortage of available and willing workers. Work is not what used to be called ‘work’, like farming or hard labor. It is mostly light mental work in offices using equipment and systems. There is no way one can run out of people willing to do that kind of work.
Advanced economies simply don’t need the crazy oversupply of Third World ‘workers’ (who mostly don’t work anyway), they can function just fine with stable or even smaller populations.
I have actually thought about that – seeing some of our fellow citizens one almost has to. But with proper incentives, ability to work and earn good living, form families, large percentage of those who appear as end-of-liners can prosper. Some won’t, but that has always been the case.
I am not optimistic, not really. But for a different reason, I think that the native European societies are being pushed into this die-off in order to dilute them and/or replace them. And it might succeed, definitely in the core parts of the West.
The current government is the first ever Polish government doing anything about this. They introduced 500+ package: if you have second, third, fourth etc child you get 500PLN (for each child).
Obviously, it’s too late. I started to read about demographics some ten years ago or more (not sure about that – I would have to check my notes) and I’ve read papers by demographers from 20 years ago. They were saying it was absolute last time to do anything in 2000. Right now it’s too late for anything and all we can do is brace ourselves for the impact of the incoming demographic catastrophe.
I’d be more interested in who’s having and who’s not having children in Poland. If it’s leftists not having any children, I’d argue it’s a good thing. Unfortunately, I doubt that. I mean, anecdotically, all my rightist friends have 2+ kids, and most of my leftist friends have none or one, but I think it’s just a happy coincidence and the pattern does not hold nationally.
Well, we are already hearing that tomatoes are rotting in the fields, or something… The enterpreneurs are complaining that they have to raise the salaries and are less competetive – in the marker where the EU attacks Polish companies in every industry where we are achieve success (The transportation is the most recent example. How our companies dare to dominate the market?? We were supposed to be only a source of a cheap labour!)
A good way to doom the PRC.
But will it last?
https://www.ft.com/content/7c86ec38-0052-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5
Metropolitan France’s France TFR went down from 2,016 in 2010 to 1,849 in 2017.
The most pro-life thing a person can do is to have children. In the past, parents raised large families on less than we have today.
What a stupid thing to say.
Romania tried that. It did not end well.
Increasing the number of unwanted children is not something that should be supported.
Not really. Sure, you can have a Jubilee and strike the debt from the ledger, but that just means that the counter-parties to that debt have to eat the loss. You can monetize the debt, but that destroys savings and purchasing power. You can pay off the debt, but that means deferred consumption and deflation.
So while debt may seem to be some shadowy and inchoate phantasm created on a balance sheet and having no real existence, once it is generated it cannot be gotten rid of without some kind of pain. It has to be “paid off” either in deferred consumption, loss of purchasing power, or capital burn.
That’s because Say’s Law remains forever in effect: You cannot consume that which hasn’t been produced. Debt allows you to consume present production before its been paid for, but that only leaves a deficit in future production. That deficit will be covered by one of the above methods. It cannot be avoided any more than the law of gravity or the conservation of energy.
The age-dependency ratio is real and significant; that fact cannot be obviated just because open-borders activists would fain abuse it as a cheap rationale for bringing in immigrants. Never mind the immigrants, just forget about them for a moment; the age-dependency ratio still exists. It is essentially no different than a pension system. If every 13 workers are supporting one retiree, that’s not so bad. If every 2 workers are supporting one retiree, that’s bad. And that is the situation the entire developed word will shortly find itself in.
Romanian birth rate graph:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/BirthDeath_1950_RO.svg
The pro-natalist policy of the late 1960s was an immediate but temporary success. It’s not impossible to influence birth rates with policy.
With two billion Africans coming our way by mid-century some of these statistics will need emendation.
“The trees don’t grow up to the sky”. Trends don’t usually continue indefinitely.
Comparing Russian births to France and UK – those countries are only high birth-rate because of their Muslim populations. I would have preferred a UK full of Brits with a falling population, the place is overcrowded as it is. UK and France should not be your population models.
Re Polish fertility – I see an awful lot of Poles and Balts wheeling baby buggies in the UK. Not surprising when the child benefit for three kids in UK is equal to a full time nurses salary in Poland.
If you wish to see real demographic disaster zones, try Spain and Italy.
I don’t think you got the point. It’s not question of ‘willingness to work’, but that working people will have to support more dependents.
The difficulty is with an aging population pyramid, is that there will be a greater tax burden on people who are working, as there is a larger dependent population.
Also you seem to go offtopic and start talking about immigration. That is a separate topic to discussion of fertility rates.
If the above is an accurate statement and we drop 0.1 (only) – then it means total fertility rates of Russian women are the same as for Latvians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Estonians. And around 0.1 higher than for Ukrainians.
I’m sure China knows of that example and will try different ways of achieving its goals.
At any rate, a failure is a failure, it won’t “doom the PRC”. China could very well afford to lose some people; it can barely feed itself. China doesn’t have a nation-wide public pension system so they could lose working population without collapsing the whole state.
But of course they’re greedy and want more people, so more people they’ll get.
Northern Europe has still high birthrates compared to other parts of the developed world, such as East Asia. A lot of it is just under replacement level.
Ireland has 2 children per women, France 2, Iceland 1.9, Sweden 1.9, Norway 1.8, UK 1.8, Finland 1.8.
By comparison, South Korea has a total fertility rate of 1.2 children per women, Singapore 1.3, Japan is 1.4, Hong Kong 1.2, China 1.6.
Another issue is that there was a fall in birthrates during the 1990s.
Total fertility rates were below 1.4 from 1993-2007.
So there will a smaller pool of people in the country (as proportion of the population) of child-bearing age when this cohort hit their 20s (i.e. over the next decade).
The situations are somewhat analogous. The highest birthrate (fertility superstar) regions in Russia are the ones where the vast majority of the population are not Russians.
But according to the blog-author above, taking out the top regions only impacts fertility rates by 0.1.
The mainstream population in Israel are almost equally scared of high Haredi and Muslim birth-rates. The Haredim and Muslims as a demographic threat and a danger for the country as the whole. The psychological effective could be to give the normal population impetus to have children in response to a ‘fear of being outnumbered’ by those threatening groups (the Haredim/Muslims). It would be interesting if the same occurred in other conflict zones.
Northern Europe has still high birthrates compared to other parts of the developed world, such as East Asia. A lot of it is just under replacement level. Ireland has 2 children per women, France 2, Iceland 1.9, Sweden 1.9, Norway 1.8, UK 1.8, Finland 1.8.
Regarding Ireland, Wikipedia has this to say:
So I am not so sure that the native Irish fertility rate is significantly in excess of East Asian ones. The situation in the UK and France is probably even further “advanced” — the Daily Mail reported in 2015 that “Over a third of babies born in the UK are no longer white British”, and I have seen similar figures for France.
I’m assuming lots of children were conceived in the months immediately after October 2015, when the CCP announced the relation of the One Child Policy.
Consequently, births increased from 16,550,000 in 2015 to 17,860,000 births in 2016, before declining to 17,230,000 this year. So quite an expected adjustment, I think.
I have once did the calculations whether this could be true and for France, it can’t unless muslim population estimations are wrong of level of magnitude (that is a high-fertility minority will increase TFR, but it’s not enough to explain away all of the French TFR).
Yes, the map is from 2013, Poland’s TFR will probably be around 1.4 in 2017 – up by 0.1 children per woman since then.
anonymous coward will claim otherwise, but you are correct, religion is shallow in Russia – more so than in Poland (as per opinion polls).
In the great depression, the fertility rate of the United States fell, because people were worried about having children that they could not support. This did not mean that America ‘ran out of workers,’ it only meant that when the economy recovered it would not be wiped out by ever more mouths to feed. When conditions got better, people started having more children again. Now it’s harder for people to start a family, and the fertility rate has fallen again. The problem is that this time a sustained high immigration rate is keeping downward pressure on wages, so things won’t get better, and native fertility rates will likely stay low.
No society in all of history has gone extinct, or even ‘run out of workers,’ because people had too few children. On the other hand, when elites demand that they know better than anyone else how many children people should have, when they create population booms either through pro-natalist policies, or by importing the surplus population from the third-world, they ALWAYS create poverty for the masses and profits for the few. Which is the whole idea.
Bottom line: trust the Russian people. If conditions improve, they will have more kids. If conditions don’t improve, forcing the issue will only drive things down.
The Russian Church isn’t promoting fertility. (Yet.) Their focus is on anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality, and both efforts are working quite well, obviously.
Not true. Native American people did. As did many ethnic groups around China, including the white European ones that used to inhabit Central Asia.
The word in China is that the government expected 20 million, and now heads are rolling.
In other words, Russia is returning to its place as a normal European country. So much for teh “Eurasian” pipedreams of Putin’s American backers!
You’re right about left and right birthrates. I’m sorry that I can’t remember where I saw it (maybe on Unz) but in America, self-identifying conservatives have a birthrate about .5 higher than liberals (Leftists in America), 1.95 to about 1.5
This was a good article on a trend hitting some of Northern Europe; long term cohabitation (this is given a legal status like marriage in some places) and comparison to marriage and effects on children.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2017/03/27/in-europe-cohabitation-is-stable-right/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Is this kind of thing big in Russia or do people mostly still get married?
Peace.
Anatoly,
Did you mention the decline in sperm count in more advanced nations as a partial cause of declining birthrates? My apologies if you did. If you didn’t, that’s a pretty big oversight. Also, the environmental, ecological, and deep state/globalist motivations for lowering sperm count artificially?
Otherwise great article!
(I like that formula, thanks.)
Regarding discarding debt, it depends on who the devalued capital owners are. If the ‘debt’ is held by distant, foreign entities for people who simply accumulate it for the sake of accumulation, then discarding debt via inflation or a write-off is relatively painless. If I am sitting in Central Europe and collecting income on bonds to Argentina laughing at how it ‘appreciates’, and then Argentina discards it, or offers me 10c on a dollar, what exactly is the loss for Argentina? Yes, I and my friends will never loan them again, but their productive economy is what it was before, actually a lot better without the debt payments.
Long-term cross-border (or even cross-continent) debt simply makes no sense and is unenforceable. It is an ‘inchoate phantasm‘.
It is not the number of workers that matters, but the income and taxes they generate. In a well managed economy with growing incomes, succeeding generations make more money and previous pensions are manageable. Our problem is not the worker-pensioner ratio, but that workers are not paid enough compared to the promised pensions. The way to fix it is by raising incomes. And you do that by controlling labor supply (cut out mass migration).
If you get to the point that native society only has 2 workers for each retiree (we are nowhere close to that), then we can increase incentives for people to work longer, do part-time work schemes, work smarter, etc…
The reason the elites are screaming about ‘worker shortage’ and ‘pensions’ is that they simply don’t want to pay people more to fix the system. It would take away from their current wealth and dominance. This is a pattern that has repeated throughout history: rich mindlessly accumulate ‘wealth’, go into absurd levels of over-accumulation, try to fix it by expansion, wars, or by bringing more people in, and it eventually collapses. It will this time too. We know that, we just don’t know when.
Same in Hungary.
I’m curious – where was this idea from? The notion seems bewildering to me; the cultural, political and structural differences are vast.
Exactly.
Many groups have been psyched out by the impact of the modernity, and now the most advanced civilizations are themselves undergoing disintegration as a result of a toxic culture that is little more than a byproduct of the corporate drive for profit maximization.
As for:
There’s no reason for the suicide of Russia or the Western nations unless it be the will or the utter stupidity of the ruling elites.
It would take too much space to explain it all here (one hopes that Ron Unz, in his wisdom, will commission an article one day explaining what has happened), but to anyone who has lived through the Western transition from the days of demographic surplus to the current demographic deficit, it is obvious why the West and Russia are dying, and hence it is pretty clear what kinds of measures are needed t0 restore the fertility of the European peoples.
That such measures have not already been taken seems conclusive evidence that the European peoples are ruled by treasonous elites engaged in the destruction of their own people, who are being replaced very rapidly by people from elsewhere, Asia and the Middle East now, but increasingly in the future from Africa.
I disagree, and for the simple reason that this extremely low fertility has spread with ease to several non-European societies as well as those European countries most resistant to the multiculti menace. Even in the Middle East you have countries like Iran or the Western part of Turkey having exactly the same problem.
And is Turkey or Iran also mass importing foreigners?
You think so? Whenever I hear the cuckservative crowd say something like this I guess they’re talking about people having modern appliances and gadgets like refrigerators or smartphones which have more or less become a necessity but do you really think you’re MORE able to afford the necessities of life–food, shelter etc. than even your near ancestors? Give your head a shake.
It’s really a non-factor, Normal sperm count even lowered by 3/4 is much more than sufficient to do the job.
The Romanian pro-natalist poicy mostly led to a huge number of unwanted births which then ended up in orphanages:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_orphans
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
They probably also had a huge dysgenic effect on the Romanian population. Who is more likely to have more children when you outlaw abortions? The highly educated who are smart enough to contracept, or the lower classes who aren’t?
No, there are definitely smarter policies than that, policies that actually benefit the smarts.
Turkey is. They have more than 3 million Syrians. They are also increasingly having diverse athletes:
http://i.hurimg.com/i/hdn/75/0x0/59c86c5145d2a027e83c18f7.jpg
I have read once – but I can’t find the relevant paper right now – that the drop in fertility in some South American country (Brasil maybe?) was correlated tightly with an outreach of TV. This could be interpreted by TV being proxy of well-being (ie. wealthier regions experiencing drop in fertility), or as an effect of TV: people start subconsciously treat TV characters as part of their social circle and when they see that “normal” number of children in this fake “Social circle” is often zero or at most two, it (subconsciosly) affects their behavior.
If that’s true, then a true natalist government with cooperation with media could propagate family model where famous models, actors etc are having a lot of children. Maybe even taht wouldbe better spent money that in welfare programs (in terms of desired effect, i.e. fertility increase; not “better” in absolute terms, because I think some of such programs are “helicopter money” for the poor instead for the banks).
I think Karlin wrote about “East Asia’s 20 year rule”, i.e. China’s and ROK’s growth rates at the same development level (compared to the US) have been very comparable, but China just started the rapid economic growth roughly 20 years after South Korea.
Btw, what is the most recent figure for Russia’s infant mortality rate? It was already close to the US in 2015 or 2016…
Would you like to add some logic to your bland assertion of disagreement?
Specifically, in what way does a demographic collapse in “the Western part” of Turkey (which nation has an overall fertility rate of 2.05, i.e., essentially the replacement rate) disprove that Western elites are either stupid beyond belief or guilty of genocidal policies against their own people?
I have long ago seen some mortgage ads in Hungary which showed a family with an only child. It seemed strange to me. They can sell anything with tits or kids, as they say. Why not have two or three (or more… like five?) kids in the ads instead of just one? The family instantly turned happy by buying a home on mortgage is not quite realistic anyway. How much would it cost to encourage banks to buy big family ads? Maybe a phone call from a minister could accomplish it? (I guess it’d be leaked by a left leaning bank employee, and then that’d be the end of it. But they don’t even try.)
Are you sure those aren’t people that are left-overs from when Ottomans used to import slaves. They are called “Afro-Turks”, mostly found along the Aegean coast. Here is one of their descendants (Turkish model, Kivanc Dogu – definitely looks mixed):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGYR_4uWVl8:
More on them:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160829-turkeys-little-known-africans
I don’t know, maybe those are new comers in that photo you posted, but Turkey already has a history of Black immigrants.
Peace.
A factor, most likely, but it’s not that simple.
In the 1950’s there was no sex “education” that amounted to anything beyond a description of the mechanics of fertilization. Today, in England, they teach kindergarteners the delights of fellatio.
In the 1950’s there was no pill (and if there had been it would likely have been illegal to prescribe it to unmarried women, let alone hand it out to school kids), and abortion was illegal. As a result, in England one third of all children born were conceived out of wedlock, and one fifth were born out of wedlock. At the same time, pregnancy of unmarried girls was stigmatized.
What does that mean?
It means that girls had reason to be cautious. Yet they were prone to irresistible impulse.
And what did that mean? It meant that sharp lads got the girls. You know:
As our Will put it. When likely lads got wenches with child.
And the result,
Generally, quite good. Natural selection at work. Hence:
America’s own Slick Willy, Bill Clinton,
Germany’s Willi Brandt,
Confucius,
Leonardo,
and a few hundred million others.
My mother, clearing out her papers just before she died, handed me a bundle of old photos, including one of my kindergarten class. I stood in the middle of the row, squeezed next to the prettiest girl you could imagine. She was adopted. In other words, pretty certainly a bastard. Now we kill them all and accuse anyone who objects of criminal misogyny.
Abortion rates have been going down in all of the European parts of the ex-USSR for the last decade or so, and the marriages are slightly on the rise the last few years. This is probably due to the improvement in men’s health (which has a stabilizing effect on relationships).
Well, when you have in Western Turkey the same TFR as American Whites have (around 1.7-1.8) and in the East you have the Kurds with 3.5 children per woman, you get it. The Kurds may be not as distinct culturally to the Turks as the immigrants in the West are to the netives, but saying that non-Western countries are spared of that fate of cultural replacement is wrong.
Mind you, I am the complete opposite of a supporter of the current mass migration and destruction of the West.
And so is Iran; it has around 2 million immigrants from Afghanistan.
In fairness, they don’t coddle them like West Europeans, but send them off as cannon fodder to Syria. I suppose this is a marginally better approach.
Poland in red, France in dark green color in Fertility Rate … Hm … Damn rasists 😉 ,…
5.5/1,000 this year, down from 6.0/1,000 in 2016.
That’s approximately the US level.
However, I recall reading somewhere that the US has more stringent definitions on what counts as infant mortality (e.g. severely premature babies that they fail to save), so their figures are not strictly comparable internationally.
Russia’s homicide rate is amplified by Siberia. Otherwise west of the Urals is pretty safe. What is going on in the Tuvan, Khanti, Buryat, Evenk, et al. communities? They almost have Latin American levels of violence.
If so that is good news. One thing France has that the UK doesn’t is space and more affordable housing. The contrast in population density between Cherbourg and Portsmouth is striking as you leave the ferry in England. On the French side, you drive to Cherbourg on an uncrowded dual carriageway. Get off onto the M27 in England and all three motorway lanes are busy.
Does France have anything like local reporting of births? The UK data makes it very easy to see who is having the babies – and it ain’t Brits.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/birthsbyareaofusualresidenceofmotheruk
Italy is a sad case. Full of good-looking thirtysomethings, nice clothes, nice flat, nice car, no children. Won’t someone think of the bambinos?
Not black immigrants, Talha, black slaves. Long before Captain Hawkins sailed the West African coast the slave markets of Cairo and Marrakesh were famous.
Generally the males were castrated and the females had children by their owners, so Turkey, North Africa and Arabia didn’t end up with much in the way of distinct black populations.
They also imported white slaves, of course. That’s where the word derives, from Slav.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade
Same in Europe, except the women having the most children are not themselves, for the most part, native born. Hence in Britain:
This is genocide with population replacement. And anyone who points that out is a labeled a racist, misogynist, anti-feminist, male chauvinist pig by the treasonous elite. Or is the elite not treasonous but just stupid? Looking at Justin Trudeau, one has to wonder whether the silly bugger hasn’t himself swallowed the liberal Kool-Aid.
Quite frankly, I am nto that sure, because (1) not all immigrants are muslims (2) there is no official data. And I have done the calculation some decade ago. The conclusion was not that muslim do not contribute to the TFR< but that French native women also have to had not that bad TFR.
Hunter-gatherer genes + alcohol.
How many Poles are giving birth in Britain?
The dependency ratio has always been rising, productivity has also always risen to negate any issues.
That’s true that we count every baby born, no matter how severely disabled in our infant mortality stats.
“strong cultural preferences”
Translation the child benefit is the cause of the preference for having more kids.
I am a 25 years old White Mexican but don’t wanna children in Mexico, I wanna help majority White countries in the future, I might immigrate to United States or the European Union, to marry a girl from there between my 30 and 35 years. I don’t see the point to continue in Mexico all my life, I see no hope in that country.
Hey YetAnotherAnon,
Mostly, yes. Though the Ottomans controlled plenty of territory that included Black areas such that Blacks, Arabs could travel relatively freely within their lands. So, I agree that the majority would definitely have been from slave imports.
Correct, they were absorbed over time into the general population. One of the people I descend from (who is also a Shiah Imam) was born of a Nubian freed-woman:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_al-Ridha
Yup – Turks used to be big on European concubines. Many of the Ottoman elites had children from European women.
Yes, but to my knowledge, Slav didn’t get the association with the word slave from Barbary pirates – they were operating way more West and well after the medieval period. The association is more accurately from when Europeans were selling Slavic people to the Muslim world. Slavs were some of the last people to become Christian (and they were also Orthodox when they did convert) so it was open season on them for a good while:
“A flourishing slave trade continued amongst the non-Christian Slavonic people as well as the Muslim world and as the Venetian and Genoese traders secured footholds in the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea ports they took an active role in this lucrative trade. The slaves they traded came mostly from Eastern Europe and Central Asia and were acquired from slave markets or by raiding the unprotected coastlines of the Black Sea and the disintegrating Byzantine Empire. While Western Christians were nominally protected, Christians of the Eastern Rite were still considered fair game and slaves also came from the Greek islands which were under the control of the Venetians and Genoese….Genoese traders sold Greek Orthodox Christians until the late fourteenth century, when the Genoese government finally banned the practice. So prevalent were the slaves from Central Asia that Tartar became the generic term for slave.”
https://medium.com/the-history-buff/slavery-in-medieval-italy-cb189ae45933
Also a great article on it:
http://www.unz.com/pfrost/from-slavs-to-slaves/
One has to remember that – at the time – there wasn’t much Europe had to offer the Muslim world in terms of trade.
Peace.
China does have a pension system
Its called American SSI Medicare senior housing and other benefits given to Chinese who arrive a week before their 65 th * birthday and brought in vans to the SS office by the immigrant rights groups.
I’m not sure you’re actually helping the situation.
Why would the government have any involvement in what people do? The Party is first and foremost in it for themselves, not for the anyone else.
The abortion rate in Russia is still one of the highest in the world. (Significantly more than double the abortion rate in the United States – and 2 to 4 times the rate of countries like Netherlands, Germany Belgium, Switzerland), but it has fallen very massively
2007 was the first year that the number of births exceeded the number of abortions.
What’s happened is a fall from completely astronomical levels, to merely very high levels. However, there is a debate about whether the official statistic are reliable, as they do not count illegal abortions.
Unlike in the West (where abortion mainly is conducted with teenagers), it is primarily amongst women aged 25-29 years.
As a result, abortion in Russia has less impact on birthrates, as it usually takes place in couples who are delaying their children.
Education plays a role – the more educated a woman, the less likely to have an abortion.
Much other information is here: (I had to re-write the link for it to work on this site)
https://demreview.hse.ru/data/2014/07/15/1312456972/5_%D0%94%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%A1%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87_%D0%90%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%82%D1%8B%20%D0%B2%20%D0%A0%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B8.pdf
—
Method of abortion used by state hospitals – ‘dilation and curettage’, is still very out of date.
Normal countries should not tolerate abortion at all. It is an inherently depraved event and is rejected by any healthy society.
To add to my above comment where the conclusion was omitted, as shown in the studies – religion is not really a factor in lowering abortion rates, whether in Russia or in foreign countries (the countries with the least abortions are very secular Western European ones like Netherlands – even in Germany the abortion rate is 4-5 times lower than in Russia).
(I have to re-write the link for it to work with the website’s coding). But there is a lot of information on the subject here:
https://demreview.hse.ru/data/2014/07/15/1312456972/5_%D0%94%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%A1%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87_%D0%90%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%82%D1%8B%20%D0%B2%20%D0%A0%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B8.pdf
Oops this should be 3-4 times lower.
Oh good. More heavy handed population adjusting from the CCP. I’m sure it’ll all pan out, this time.
China seems like the type to turn to science for a solution. Bio-engineering, artificial births, designer babies, children born to and raised directly by the government. An army-like generation made from the collected genetic material of those citizens whom the CCP considers to be China’s most ‘elite’ specimens. Fully government-regulated breeding and child-rearing seems like it’s right up China’s Orwellian alley.
Would that still be true if we controlled for contraception usage? I somehow doubt it. I have been told that contraceptions are far less common in eastern Europe than in the West, where practically every young woman is on the pill.
They promised Hengsha.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GveJDIZYfrY/maxresdefault.jpg
As for-the-record was pointing out this elides the question of who is having those babies in NW Europe. Most of these places don’t quite do the racial tracking the US does. You have to cobble together the data from other proxies. But it seems to be the case that these higher fertilities are because these nations are seriously pozzed.
You are much, much better off being Japan with your gals popping 1.4, than say France with actual French gals popping maybe 1.7 and the muzzies popping 3.4 and accounting for 1/3 of all new “French”. (That model is a SWAG. But those TFRs with an a 83/17 model for childbearing age females, which is reasonable, gets you to 2.0.)
Note, i’ll grant that actual NW European native women do seem to be doing somewhat better than the Asiatics–or at least the very crowded Asiatics–which is good. But they aren’t “ok”. All their real numbers are much worse than the “national” numbers. And their nations are corrupted to boot.
Though ironically, in the DX universe, China is once again ruled by Western neo-colonialists in alliance with local comprador elites, an arrangement enforced by London-based BellTower PMC.
I don’t think there’s any Chinese in the Illuminati either, they are at best local partners who are only ever tempted with but never allowed near real power (Zhao Yun Ru).
If China is to deliver our awesome cyberpunk future it will probably be without that particular element.
Technically Zhao Yun Ru was Illuminati, but she wasn’t anywhere near the Council of Five that I recall and her presence felt weak overall, perhaps in part because familiarity brings contempt and her main distinction was her continued efforts to try to murder the player and exceptional lack of capability in doing so.
I’m still amused by the ability to just end the final boss fight by firing mah las0rs. Definitely one of the better iterations of “developer thinks of everything.”
Much easier to ‘go full commie on the facts’ (in time-honored fashion):
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2117167/inconvenient-truth-china-omits-key-figures-may-have-highlighted
The Illuminati. Are you kidding? The Illuminati died out long ago, surely. So Carrol Quigley believed and so Niall Ferguson assures in his latest opus. There is more to fear from the Clinton Foundation, surely, than the machinations of any remnant of Weishaupt’s masonic cell.
It’s a reference to the Deus Ex computer games.
Aha!
If the Illuminati continue to exist, I doubt they would be happy if we were analyzing their demographic component on a free access webzine anyway.
“and so is Iran; it has around 2 million immigrants from Afghanistan.”
Are you sure they are ‘immigrants’ rather than people with temporary permission to live there?
Iran had a huge problem with population growth a while back, and its government embarked on a campaign to lower the birth rate. Seems to have paid off too well.
Well Anatoly, now the Russians just need to learn to drive a car then all will be well. But it s thoughgt provoking that birth rates are dropping, have Russian men turned gay or something ? There is certainly nothing wrong with the broads..
I don’t know what the recent statistics show, but Polish TFR in the UK was at replacement as of 2011, and was trending upwards.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2038948/50-babies-day-born-Polish-mothers-UK.html
What matters is how many of those liberals’ children stay liberal (I’m guessing that the vast majority will) and how many of those conservatives’ children stay conservative (I’m guessing that maybe half will).
Liberals don’t need to have children. They end up getting most of the children born to conservatives.
Most people accept that all the politicians on both sides are in Israel’s pocket. AIPAC and the rest of the Jewish outfits openly do more to influence US elections and policy than Russia is even accused of doing.
The whole thing had become a circus. Especially after the nonsense of the 2016 election. Does anyone really believe that anyone in the Democrat-Republican party actually cares about the country? Or the people that vote them in? You just had a government shutdown because they were more concerned about the welfare of illegal aliens than the US citizens they are paid to represent.
Low birth rates don’t lead to a smaller population. They lead to massive immigration and a transvaluation of all social values to those of the immigrants.
Given the focus of this thread, I’ll take the liberty of reposting portions of a couple of my recent comments on a different thread that veered wildly off-topic in several directions:
===========
…the widespread belief among Western pundits that it’s extremely difficult for the government to raise the birthrates in developed countries has always seemed totally ridiculous to me. Obviously, an “unserious” effort might or might not be successful, but I think a serious one almost certainly would be.
Suppose, for example, that anyone over 25 but not yet married would have their tax rate raised by 10 percentage points. Surely, young marriages would quickly skyrocket.
Now suppose that anyone over 30 without a child also had their tax rate raised by 10 percentage points. Surely, first births to young couples would also quickly skyrocket.
Adjust a few parameters here and there, and pretty much any reasonable level of TFR should be easily achievable, while simultaneously generating generating extra billions in cash for building monuments to the leaders responsible.
I’ve sometimes mentioned this in the context of silly people saying “it’s impossible” for China to reverse its demographic decline with government policies. Nope, I tell them, it’s exactly pretty easy. The Chinese government probably thinks they already have plenty of Chinese, but if they ever decide they really need more, they could certainly produce as many as desired…
This is an unbelievably bizarre statement. How else does one go extinct other than by not reproducing?
The fall of the Roman Empire was a demographic collapse. So indeed is the fall of every empire, but Roman affords us the largest and most well documented example of this kind. The city of Rome itself held 1.3 million people at its height. In the days of Alaric it was home to 25,000—the population of a village.
That sort of serious effort would probably work in China but from a Chinese point of view it’s better to export some people to the West and elsewhere for now.
The Chinese birthrate is all the Chinese not just the ones living in China. They already have a decent size population in China so they can afford to lose a few million to emigration. India is in the same situation.
In Hungary the late communist government from around 1975 introduced a number of great incentives. Their effects were clearly measurable, nearly restoring fertility to replacement levels, but then the effects petered out after 1990 and dropped to new lows. This is often cited by liberals that such measures could not possibly work long term.
Except… the maternity incentives were inflated away by the early 1990s, so little wonder they became ineffective by then. Then in 1995 a brutal means test was introduced, eliminating most support for much of the middle class. This destroyed confidence in the system.
In 1998-2002, during Orbán’s first term, new generous incentives were introduced, but they failed to restore confidence in the system: most people believed the measures to be phased out if Orbán lost the election. Which indeed did happen. This example is again cited by liberals that the measures could not possibly work… because they’ll abolish them anyway.
Since 2010, Orbán reintroduced all of his previous measures, and then some. It’s effects have so far proved modest. The economy is still weak. Wages are still low. Foreign (mostly EU) companies, which bought up most of the Hungarian economy for peanuts in the 1990s, are pumping out more money (and have been doing so since the 1990s) than the EU subventions we get. The large multinationals also dominate the labor market, keeping wages low.
But the main problem is that there is little confidence that Orbán will stay in power. In 2012 people thought he might lose the 2014 election. Then people were not confident he would win the 2018 one. And it’s clear that whenever he’ll lose, the measures will be phased out quickly.
Also his measures are geared towards the middle and upper middle classes. It’s the most expensive, though probably results in the best quality children. Fertility is surely less dysgenic in Hungary than, say, in Romania.
So it’s probably easier to raise fertility in a communist dictatorship taking it seriously with no chance of losing power. It’s more difficult to do that in a democracy where the opposition is hostile to the idea, however remote their election win seems.
It’s a lot easier to do a lot of things in a dictatorship than in a democracy. Especially when you have foreign ngo’s, banks and corporations influencing the democratic process.
Even something that should be non-controversial and routine like deporting illegals becomes a nightmare in the case of a democracy if powerful players want illegal immigration. The US is a classic example of everything that can go wrong with a democracy.
The 2016 US election had Trump on one side saying he wanted to put America and Americans first. On the other side was every other candidate saying that would be racist and that they instead want to represent illegals and foreigners. You literally had candidates campaigning to keep illegal immigrants in the country. In such a system it’s entirely unrealistic to expect the government to do anything positive about fertility rates.
If foreigners are interchangeable with citizens it’s easier and cheaper (short term) to import more people as needed. Without an identity a country like America is very vulnerable to that argument.
Sure it sounds good on paper. But are there studies or evidence to support this.
Has maternity capital (not a cheap project to do on a nation-wide level) even had statistically significant impact in Russia? There are studies that claim it increased fertility rates by 0.15. But if we give it an ethnic angle, fertility-rates have gone up, but not more (if we discount non-Russian populated regions of the country) than in the Baltics and Belarus and only slightly more than Ukraine. The clustering of the whole region together, despite the economic and policy differences, is the interesting part, which makes it seem like fertility rate is acting independently of particularly government policies.
This tax change might work in a country with very strong central authority and punishment for disobedience like Saudi Arabia. But in modern democracies such as Russia or the United States of America – such unfair taxation policies would lead to mass rioting of millions of singles on the streets. It would be the first time I would be motivated to storm the palace, about the notion of different taxation dependent on my relationship status. I believe it was discriminatory taxation policies which led to the original American revolution. That’s not to mention the economic impact of messing with taxation like this.
According to the study I linked earlier* – it says that abortion is most common in the age 25-29 women age group, where it is often used to delay couples’s having children (i.e. as a kind of last-ditch contraception within relationships).
This would support your fair point.
But the contrary issue is that religiosity is not the same in Russia (or much of Europe in general), as in America or the Middle East. Religion has more symbolic and ritual value – but there is not much evidence of impact on behaviour. To put it bluntly, the average religion-identifying people are not behaving like American Mormons. People are living a normal secular life-style, with religion as a more symbolic identity. (The somewhat more conservative attitudes on things like homosexuality themselves are not that much to do with religion either – in Soviet secularism, these social attitudes were more conservative still.)
*Footnote https://demreview.hse.ru/data/2014/07/15/1312456972/5_%D0%94%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%A1%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87_%D0%90%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%82%D1%8B%20%D0%B2%20%D0%A0%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B8.pdf
US does not have tax reliefs for married people?!
Stalin tried it by outlawing abortion in the 1930s. Women turned to folk miscarriage-inducing methods that killed or crippled so many of them that the government eventually legalized abortion again. When legalized, it was done without any anesthesia by the most sadistic and abusive medical personnel imaginable. Still didn’t stop people from aborting all pregnancies after the second or even first.
Traditionally, a lot of cultures made fatherhood as proxy for adulthood such that promotion, etc. was improved by being a father. I wonder if something like that could work – obviously you will get a children who aren’t born into loving families, and even a kind of natalism immigration if individuals adopt children rather than conceive their own, but that’s arguably less corrosive than adult immigration.
It’s interesting that fertility rates also has a rise over replacement rates in the 1980s in Russia, just starting to decline in 1989. In addition, mortality rates fall which is attributed to Gorbachev anti-alcohol campaign.
But the serious proposal above, which is proposed to have a significant (skyrocket) impact, is a different level to such light tax-reliefs – it is like Jizya tax on single people. In a democracy like Russia, 10% tax rise on single 25 year olds, and addition 10% tax rise on 30 years without children, would lead to protests, emigration of skilled workforce, mass unpopularity of the government from the important demographics (20 year old professionals) for the country’s future, and probably various other negatives from the government perspective. There is enough argument against taxing higher earners (progressive taxation), and adding extra tax brackets for singles seems another level of government coercion.
I should add – the expectation that the Party has that its men are to be married to show they are 稳妥(dependable) people has been a soft method of eliminating gays* from being promoted into any position of significance in the government in China. It has also been argued that this serves to discriminate against women from advancing in the Party as well, due to “unfair” gender tendencies to drop out of or deemphasize public life after childbirth, even when nannies and the boarding schools essentially eliminate the existence of such children.
*sorta. Gays obviously can marry** women in spite of their preferences.
** same sex ‘marriage’ not yet recognized in China
*** disparate impact all around!!!
Yeah, there are methods that don’t work. Outlawing abortion is about the dumbest possible method available, and the Hungarian communist government didn’t do that in the 1970s. Even contraception was available back then.
Your comment didn’t have much to do with mine. I wrote about financial incentives, and my quoted paragraph was about financial incentives working better under a stable communist dictatorship, not about outlawing abortion or contraception or both.
I don’t find it fair that in a progressive taxation system a family with five children has to contribute as much to the public budget as a single person with the same income. Income should be calculated on a per capita basis.
There have been attempts by the government to introduce these ideas – some of which are bit comical like the ‘Festival’ nevest’*. (*Although issue is not really marriage rates, but how many kids people are having.)
Cultural differences in natality are probably the main explanation for the different birth-rates across different nationalities within the country.
The issue related to these differences in the Russian Federation, is that the highest birth-rates are in region populated more by non-Russians, and vice-versa. So the currently indications show fertility culture is highest amongst highly non-Russian nationality populated regions in the country, and lowest in the highly Russian populated regions.
https://i.imgur.com/OECj7tu.jpg
Well let me guess that you are a person with children 🙂 As a skilled single worker in my twenties (I would immodestly say the kind of person most important for the country’s economic future) – 10% tax rise, with a promised additional 10% tax rise when I hit 30, is exactly the policy that would get me to emigrate (although I have myself already emigrated, so perhaps this is superfluous). And this would undermine the entire purpose of the policy (unless you add an emigration ban as well).
And bearing in mind the divergence in birth-rates across different nationality-populated regions in the country, it would lead to increased rates of emigration of Russians vis a vis the non-Russian nationalities.
Having many children seems strongly associated with low-status, unfortunately. I can only think of one elite family that I know of who had many children(around 14, actually); all but 4 of them were adopted, most of them had mental illnesses out of desire to do good for the world/virtue signaling.
They strongly identified with their Scottish roots. I can’t imagine typical wealthy Americans considering that route, even to virtue signal.
I only have one child, but I have always thought that it was unfair.
Obviously it can be a tax cut for people with children instead of a tax increase.
I don’t think disloyal twenty-somethings who leave the country anyway are that important for the future of any country.
Do Chechens pay a lot of taxes? Otherwise it’d be not better for them at all. To compensate for the tax cuts for top taxpayers with a lot of children, you’d need to cut welfare for non-taxpayers. So it could easily result in a worse situation for them.
You are still young enough to have children later, but ultimately someone who has no children in life, unless they have generated a lot of income or made some other great contribution, are parasites. When you get old, someone else’s kids will be carrying on for you (assuming you never have children later). While childless people spend their earnings on themselves, those with children are spending their earnings on an investment in society’s future. This ought to be reflected in tax policy. Perhaps one can calculate how much each kid provides for the future, decrease the parents’ tax burden accordingly, and compensate for this with a corresponding increase on the taxes of childless people.
Ideally, tax rate changes would also benefit those who are more educated and whose children would presumably contribute more, although this would be criticized as eugenics.
Or simply levying some sort of an exit tax on emigrants, perhaps having them pay back their subsidized educations or whatever.
Being able to afford multiple children has become somewhat of a status symbol. Afford the big home, afford the private schools to keep away from unruly lower class immigrants etc.
Conversly sterilising the wrong people would work in conjunction with incentives. Lowers the tax burden, public schools would be attractive, multiple bedroom houses would be more afforable. The West is getting the worst of both worlds.
I don’t think the world can support the current population level so I think declining birth rates are good, the issue is migration to other regions and Africa.
More than 5 children, sure.
3 kids isn’t terribly uncommon among upper middle class or wealthy Americans, however. Stats of child size by income are skewed by high numbers of Latinos and blacks on the poor end, who have many children. I”m not sure that Belmont families are a lot smaller than Fishtown ones, OTOH.
Wealthy Americans that come to mind – Romney has 5 kids, Trump 5 kids (albeit with 3 women), Bill Gates has 3 kids, Bill Ford (heir of Ford motor company) has 5 kids, Warren Buffett has 3 kids, Ted Kennedy had 3 kids.
I don’t find it fair that in a progressive taxation system a family with five children has to contribute as much to the public budget as a single person with the same income. Income should be calculated on a per capita basis.
I am somewhat confused by this and other similar comments — in the countries I know best (US, France, Portugal), there are indeed substantial tax reductions for families with children. In Portugal, for example, the tax bill for a family with five children would be around half of that for a single taxpayer (for an income of €50,000).
In any event, it seems to me that the major deterrent to having children (except perhaps at lower income levels) is not the lack of tax incentive, but that “modern”, educated women do not view child-rearing as an overriding objective in their lives.
These modest differences don’t come close to the differences in cost of child-rearing.
In Hungary you paid the same tax until Orbán came along. There is now some tax incentive for up to 3 or 4 children, but it’s more modest than simply multiplying the tax brackets by the number of people in the household and adding up all income by any family members. A family of five needs a full time mother until the children are fairly big, so has to make do with one income (in Hungary they didn’t even take into account the woman for a while!), and has to work essentially seven times harder than a single person. If he ends up making exactly seven times more money, he’ll have to pay higher taxes despite having the same per capita income as the single person with one seventh of his income. This is totally unfair.
Though now it’s much better in Hungary because there exist a lot of other incentives and help from the government, like the woman gets a certain percentage of her pre-birth income for two years (then a basic income based on the minimum wage for another year), and this increases for each child (so with five children she gets to stay at home for a maximum of fifteen years), then there’s a low interest rate mortgage, and also a government sizable government subsidy on buying a home (but you have to pay a substantial portion still, so essentially middle or upper middle class people get subsidized, while lower class people cannot cash in on these).
This is a relatively fair system, I think.
Essentially, a childless person will only be able to enjoy his pension because other people make it possible by raising the next generation and so ensuring that there still will be a society by the time he gets old. So it’s only fair that the childless should somehow subsidize the raising of children. Most childless think that by paying taxes they do that (like “I don’t receive any education any more etc.”), they just don’t understand the order of magnitude of child-raising costs.
Ah, OK. The USSR had nalog na bezdetnost (childless tax), separate rooms for married couples in workers’ dormitories, and they had a good chance to be put into the waiting line for an apartment. It didn’t quite outweigh the negatives of having 2+ kids in the world of food shortages and overworked mothers.
But after it was mostly abolished, it outweighed the negatives even less, so that birthrates outright collapsed after 1991.
And obviously incentives won’t lead to a population explosion as long as only a fraction of the cost of raising children is covered. Which is the case even for the more generous child support systems.
Dmitry, there was a mini-baby boom in all of the republics at that time. I’ve tried to figure out why, I think the dry law is only one of the reasons. There must have been a period of stability. I also remember something about the compulsory military service – the service would be cut from two years to one, if the family had the second child. Now, I don’t know how you pull that off when the guy is gone, but my parents managed to. My dad came home from Kaliningrad when my sister was born, from what my mother told me.
…show off professional baby photos on Instagram. The skinnier the mom, the more status points.
It’s in a way you can notice without needing any studies – right now generally a segment that did the best academically, has the most future earning potential, and has the most job options available to them – so from the perspective of the country’s economic future, it’s one of, if not the, most desirable group. Meanwhile there will be a strong correlation between being lazy and stupid at school and not leaving your hometown in adulthood.
This is a relatively fair system, I think.
I’m not disagreeing with you at all, but neither you nor the other commenter (AP) responded to what I think is the more important, and perhaps intractable, point — in “Western” societies (I’m not so sure about Hungary) many educated women don’t see childbearing as essential or intellectually stimulating. You could pay my sons’ partners a fortune, and they probably still wouldn’t choose to have children.
While it’s interesting to think about and discuss, I entirely lack emotional sentiments about ‘society’s future’ (when I am dead, who gives shit).
With the little free time from work, aside from procrastinating on the internet – the most enjoyment in life is meeting girls, friends from other countries, buying nice things, travelling and having your own income. I think this is very common and what organized people do when they have the opportunity.
I’m sure I’ll have kids in my late-thirties. And not more than one or two.
In the time of Alaric, Rome had population about 800k and whole Roman Empire about 50-60M (decline from 80M peak, but no wasteland). Nothing important happened in the fifth century except change of leadership.
For average peasant serf it meant he would be serfing for German master who believes that Son was begotten by the Father, instead for Roman master who believes that Father and Son are of single essence.
The fall of Rome came in the sixth century, due to triple whammy of disasters, two natural, one man made.
Three years of famine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535%E2%80%93536
Plague
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian
War, that exhausted what remained from the Roman Empire and completely devastated Italy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_War_(535%E2%80%93554)
If you want to know why city of Rome ceased to exist and became a small village in the midst of ruins, here are the reasons:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Rome_(537%E2%80%93538)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_(546)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Rome_(549%E2%80%93550)
This explanation is not popular, because only “moral lesson” it offers is: sometimes, big rock will fall on your head and there is nothing you can do.
Same in Hungary. But people do respond to incentives. Some women do choose to have children, some even choose to have many children. The percentage of those will change according to financial incentives. If raising a child makes you considerably poorer, fewer people will want to have children, than if a substantial portion is paid for by the government.
Yes, that’s why I’m an only child. The early 90s were a real life post-apocalypse. “Two slices of salami” (a song about a guy offering two slices of salami to a hungry girl for sex) was a hit song of the time. Ah, childhood memories.
By the way, some Japanese town apparently doubled its fertility by giving people money:
https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21734319-subsidising-parenthood-appears-work-wonders-small-town-japan-doubles-its-fertility-rate
But people do respond to incentives. Some women do choose to have children, some even choose to have many children.
At the margin, you’re certainly right, there will be more children. But to reverse the demographic suicide of the West, particularly among the better educated (and presumably more intelligent), will require a major change in attitudes and not only economic incentives. So far, I see no signs of this, on the contrary.
A mediocre student staying at home will contribute more to the country’s economic future (and really, any kind of future) than a bright kid who leaves the country.
“The difficulty is with an aging population pyramid, is that there will be a greater tax burden on people who are working, as there is a larger dependent population.”
At least, it seams that the time period during which people are healthy has increased (in most countries, life expactancy has risen, while the time during which people are dependent on care at the end of their lives has not increased). There are different opinions as to how life expectancy will further develop, I think it is likely to increase further, and people will be able to work longer – that is not very popular, but it makes sense to increase the age of retirement.
Furthermore, it depends on the kind of pension system to what degree the demographic changes are a problem. In Poland, they will most likely be a severe problem because pensions are almost exclusively financed with payments by currently working people. In contrast, in Switzerland, only a part of the pensions (the one that makes sure that pensioners have some minimum income) is financed by currently working people, while a large part of the pensions is financed by money that is saved during people’s work live, so that the financial problems from an aging population pyramid are much smaller.
Yes, and the unrealized contribution to the country’s economic future (ceteris paribus) is also greater when a bright kid leaves, than the realized contribution from the mediocre kid that stays.
The more skilled or in demand profession you have trained in, the more opportunity there is to work abroad at instant middle class levels – which is really not bad.
Now it’s a small stream that leaves to work abroad, and there are all kinds of reasons to stay – but things like imaginary taxation policies that would target people in their 20s, are only advisable if you think exodus of the country’s best youth is a desirable goal, if they don’t storm the palace in response.
Attempts to coerce our behaviour by government, are the last thing we need. The guideline for government should be to create keep stable, fair (which means meritocratic policy) rules – the kind of thing that allows talented and attractive people to succeed and to keep their own income, without having to subsidize a bunch of losers that can’t afford to raise their own children, and many of which would not even by the same nationality.
That sounds terribly nihilistic tbh. I’m irreligious myself, but have real trouble understanding this “après moi le déluge” mindset.
Yes raising retirement age is an inevitability. Putin has to keep avoiding this inevitability, because a large proportion of his voters are older people. After the March, we’ll see if he dares to touch the subject.
Do you have a moment to talk about LessWrongism and our savior – I mean, researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky? These tools of rationality can provide a great deal of clarification and comfort in these days of confusion.
Let’s imagine there is a nuclear apocalypse in February 2100. Assuming that all of us writing on this board are adults (over legal alcohol drinking age), and let’s assume none of us live past 100 years old. Then quite literally, the events of February 2100 will have no affect on our lives, to the extent that this fate will not change a molecule in our bodies, or firing of single synapse in our brain. It is therefore irrational for us to care about it.
Discussing and thinking about the future beyond our life-span can also be enjoyable and interesting, or even tell us something about the present in the same way as studying Ancient Greek history can provide both entertainment and insight into the present (although far less informatively since the future beyond our lives is only speculation, while the past beyond our lives is partly knowable fact). But if thinking about these realms in which we will never live starts having unduly negative impact on our emotions – then we are being irrational and wasting time, the same way hypochondriac is wasting time on some imaginary illness that will never touch him.
I don’t think so, to the extent of our abilities we should try to act against trends that might have disastrous consequences even well after the end of our own lives. Regarding your example (nuclear apocalypse), this might mean working for a lessening of international tensions that make great power wars unlikely, or even working for the abolition of nuclear weapons (though that is probably not possible and might actually have negative consequences of its own if it leads to more conflict). Another obvious example would be climate change and environmental degradation. And if one cares about civilizational and national continuity (and a lot of people reading and commenting here do, even if you think that’s irrational and just futile self-delusion, to escape the depressing reality of our own mortality) and wants to pass something on to later generations, in the hope they’ll make something good of it, that same principle applies imo in matters of demography.
If it makes you feel happier in the present, to think or feel like you can change in a positive way future that you will be non-existent nothingness during – then it is rational, since it is improving your present life for which you are in existence. Likewise, buying a lottery ticket, and dreaming of a fortune that you will never experience, can be rational, if those dreams are enjoyable to you. But if it starts to make you unhappy or has a negative impact on your life, it is irrational. I’m certainly not going to let myself stress about the potential situation in some decade (e.g. 2120s) in which I will be absolute nothingness and dust.
You wrote you might have at least one kid. Would it not change if you knew with absolute certainty that mankind would be destroyed in 2100, with no survivors at all? I mean, your child won’t be able to have children of his own. Or if he did, those children would die at a young age. Quite horrible. Your child won’t be able to enjoy his pension. He’ll die the moment he turns a pensioner. (I’m just calculating you having a child in maybe 15 years. By that time retirement age will be probably around 70. So he won’t yet be a pensioner by that time.)
Unless you have no descendants, you cannot say it doesn’t affect you. Moreover, you don’t have to have descendants at all. It’s enough if people you care about have descendants, like your nephews and nieces, or even just members of your ethnic group, race, or humanity in general. Do you care about no one but yourself? It sounds a bit psychopathic.
Or are you just saying that because you cannot do much anyway, you shouldn’t worry? That still sounds a bit psychopathic, or at least overly relaxed. The same argument could be said about a destruction coming next year, or tomorrow. Why care now, if it doesn’t affect me right now? I’ll have plenty of time to worry tomorrow morning…
Well, not everything is about personal happiness which is very fleeting anyway and shouldn’t be one’s highest good. Responsibility and thoughts of the greater good also matter.
And a focus just on hedonism, good f**ks and professional achievements at work seems quite empty to me. Most people want at least the illusion of somewhat more meaning in their lives.
Dmitry is on to something. In fact, better jobs for men is exactly what Russia and E.Europe need to raise birthrates. Most EE women want two kids. Better jobs for men will stabilize relationships.
It affects you while you are alive (your thoughts about prospects for your children and family), but not once you are dead. Let’s say that your children are very happy and successful until the week after you die. And then the week after you die – they die in an airplane crash.
It cannot be said that this had any impact on your life – their fate didn’t change a molecule in your living body, or synapse firing in your brain.
As you say, I would like to have children in the future, and ones which reflect well. But I don’t pretend that what happens to them after I die, will have any impact on my existence (by tautological definition it will not). Perhaps when I am old I will go into some revelry about how my descendants will become great scientists, and this will comfort me in old age – but the impact is only on my present emotions (whether they actually do become scientists or not is irrelevant).
To look at simple historical example. Does the fate of his descendants, have any impact on Alexander III? If he had had a crystal ball allowing him to see into the future while he was still alive, it would have. As he did not, it did not.
Very true points, but to the extent this improves their subjective experience of life. Not because it actually matters. Your point is argued by Epicurus himself – who understood that simple ‘hedonism’ is often counter-productive, and even believed that loyalty to friends is of great importance (that we can hardly call psychopathic views, despite his ultimate understanding of death as nothingness).
We need much more hi-tech jobs, beyond the ones provided by local branches of multi-nationals.
Startups in the Russian Federation in 2016 (a particularly bad year for which we have data) raised $410 million. By comparison, in 2017, Israeli startups (from a country with an 18 times smaller population than Russia) raised over $5 billion.
Well yes, but that’s not the point, it’s more about acting responsibly and trying to alter the world in a way like you think it should be, so those coming after you will have good starting conditions, and maybe be able to improve it even more (and if they f**k up, well, it’s their responsibility then). I feel like you’re looking at this purely from an individualistic perspective (which does play some role of course, in the desire to achieve a limited form of transcendence in passing on one’s genes, or at least one’s culture, values etc.), but that’s too narrow a view imo. And there also is a clear distinction imo between accidents like the airplane crash you mentioned (just general risk of life, bad luck) and larger trends like demographic decline, risk of war or environmental pollution, which one might try to affect through collective action in the present.
Well, a lot of women who already have one child can decide to have another one: it’s not as big a barrier as the one before the first child. (She already has a partner, for example.) Same thing for having a third child for someone who already has two. Or maybe a fourth one for someone with three children already.
The culture changes if people see a lot of others having many children. It will seem a more normal thing. Of course, it’s always useful to have a change in the culture: commercials and ads and movies and TV shows showing well-off well adjusted role model families with many children, for example. People being let down by others, but never by family members. We’d need to replace Hollywood, unfortunately.
I agree about hi-tech. But it’s a start. And we need to build our own, Eastern European companies. Trust me, there is some improvement. I can see it first hand, comparing how things were just 10 years ago.
I think lower population should be a goal for most nations. Already we have water shortages, inadequate services, poverty. Half of India’s cities do not have piped water or sewage. That’s not the model to follow. Also, robots are already taking many jobs. Are the millions of van and truck drivers
around the world to be replaced by cars with no steering wheel? They’re already looking good in testing.
And lower population is not a security threat. Russia and US are falling all over themselves to introduce battlefield robots, warships with no crew, AI decision makers presumably to replace generals, etc. We don’t need more humans, it’s not clear whether we will be necessary at all in a couple decades.
See comment 165. Population isn’t what it used to be. But I agree the Muslims in Europe are breeders much more than native Euros. I am not exaggerating to say unemployment in migrant areas is often 90+ %. As for social services, sometimes migrants have priorities over people born in that country, and for most that is their only legal income. A work requirement would get the women doing something besides breeding. Or no more benefits after the first child.
Europe needs massive deportation and military raids on no-go zones. Some Euros are finally seeing that.
We are in a new era. No one knows how many jobs will go to robots. Worldwide, tens of millions could be replaced by driverless cars. There will be warships with no crew, etc. Immigrants are reducing Europe, not helping it. They simply do not have the skills, or even the inclination, to assimilate. Also see comment 165.
A cut, probably, if true.
I’d rather say…
0 to 1 – it’s what’s expected of you, your parents will shut up about wanting grandkids, and babies are cute. Yay!
1 to 2 – you’re going from moderately tired to extra tired.
2 to 3 and further – tiredness grows exponentially (haven’t been there, judging by mommyblogs).
That’s if you do everything yourself. It makes a lot of difference if a mom can afford help. Many would breed like Ivanka Trump if they, too, had three nannies. Or even one, or even occasional babysitter and once-a-month cleaning service. It would be good to subsidize it.
The Starks in Game of Thrones (6 kids) are wildly popular.
For what it is worth, my wife grew up in a family with eight siblings. She said that she was raised by her sisters, so at some point, economies of scale happen. Evidently at one point, it was a common French Canadian thing to do to challenge Anglo control, a movement known as la revanche des berceaux: revenge of the cradles.
http://www.canpopsoc.ca/CanPopSoc/assets/File/publications/journal/CSPv30n1p193.pdf
Its definitely environmental and cultural, because it really does seem that extreme fertility was related to a rural and mostly pre-modern setting, with her mother struggling through pregnancy after pregnancy, through miscarriages and stillbirths, and its not really like her husband’s salary kept increasing(though high for the era). This isn’t in the distant past: this was 1980.
But this generation, now that they all live in the city, there isn’t even one among all of her many daughters that have had more than two children.
The PDF has pretty good application for this thread, btw, as it concerns extremely high natality rates of a Western European population and its subsequent crash. Excerpting another part relevant:
It seems apropos here to add a cheap shot at feminism now, but really, its so obvious that it is pointless.
This is great news for the human race, and for the chance to see civilisation again one day.
The Mongols had this sudden military advantage when they combined use of the short cross bow with the invention of stirrups and massive horse herds. They were suddenly unstoppable, despite being wildly inferior in civilisation to most of the people they conquered. Then the European neo-Viking barbarians combined improving sailing technologies with the cannon, which came from China, and suddenly they were the new Mongols, taking over every port in the world. The Russians have a foot in both barbarian rampages.
In the coming years these empires will crash, as all empires and usury bubbles eventually do. Already the corruption of the young has been so total that the birth rates are crashing and family structures are vanishing. This is ideal for the destruction of these monsters who have gone about the planet teaching usury, industry, and feminism to the peoples of the world. What could be better news for this world and for the human race as a whole than falling fertility rates in Russia, Europe, and the USA?
You are either a psychopath, or have Asperger’s, or maybe both. I’d bet on the Asperger’s without psychopathy.
It’s a similar question to the one about eating your dog. I read it in one of Pinker’s books, but it’s a commonly used example.
“Suppose there was a couple who loved their dog very much. They provided great comfort to their dog, cuddled it, always protected it from harm. But one day, the dog was run over by a car. They found its body next to the car. Then suddenly they realized that they had never tasted dog meat before, and that it didn’t matter to their beloved dog anymore anyway. So they cooked the dog. It tasted delicious!”
Do you find this repulsive? Or do you think there’s nothing wrong with what the couple did to their dog’s body, since it was dead anyway?
Most normal people get repulsed by it. Evolution makes us feel it repulsive. But, once you stop to think about it, it’s not irrational at all. You can rightly suspect that they couldn’t have loved the dog much, if the very day they lost it they could think of their culinary desire of eating it. It’s repulsive to us because we suspect they didn’t much love their “beloved” dog. We also suspect they don’t love much anything, if what they thought they loved meant so little to them. In other words, we suspect them of psychopathy. And we are right: psychopaths, unlike normal people, don’t see anything wrong with eating the dog.
By saying you don’t care what happens after your death, you declare you never worry about anyone other than yourself. That’s pretty psychopathic, which makes it quite repulsive.
By far the biggest difficulty is having a child under two. Actually, the first few months are the most difficult. So having three children is not nearly three times more difficult than having just one. Children can also play with each other. Older children can look after the little ones for a short while. My acquaintances with more children told me that a seven year old can be left alone at home for a short time, and even if there is a smaller child. That makes it vastly easier to handle more children – one of them will be older. It’s easier to make the second child sleep in the kids‘ room, because the only child would be forced to sleep alone, while the second child already has company, and he might actually prefer sleeping with the brother or sister instead of Poppy and Mommy.
Then there’s the question of experience. Having a child the second time is easier, because you have experience. You won’t worry so much about the child being ill, or throwing a tantrum, or whatever. You will also know what to expect, so won’t have to improvise so much.
By the way the material incentives might mean that you have more money for a nanny than otherwise. Actually, having just one nanny for three children might be enough. Probably more expensive than if she only had to look after one child, but cheaper than three nannies.
I am no psychopath, and do not have any Asperger’s (rather the opposite) – thank you for your diagnosis attempt though. As for the dog example – I would not eat the dog. And I am no fan of cruelty to animals (to see all these videos of American rednecks hunting bears on YouTube is nothing but repulsive).
I am simply grown-up enough to write down the facts, without a silly sentimentality.
The fact that a person should not care what happens after they die, does not mean that they shouldn’t care what happens during life or not care about other people while alive. It is just a simple understanding of reality, that what happens after death does not affect the person, in any possible way. Think again of Alexander III – is he affected by what happened to his descendants? The answer is in quite a simple way, no. He lived his life in a fortunate bubble, and that was that (lucky for him he didn’t live into old age).
Transcendence is an optical illusion. But if it’s comforting for people to believe in their control or contact with these matters (or the objective importance of them, for which there is nothing), then sure let them believe. Illusion is precondition for most things in life.
It’s even comforting, interesting and entertaining for us on here to talk about grand subjects like demographics, even though not only can we have zero statistical impact on it (even if our surname is Putin), but it will have hardly have any impact on our lives, and has no objective importance, even in the sphere of natural history, let along chemistry and physics.
If it’s entertaining or interesting, then this is great, just like discussing football teams. The issue is when people start to get stressed or emotional about these irrelevant things. It’s the same as people who get very attached to sports teams. These subjects are actually quite fascinating, but they also need to be held in perspective.
As for what happens after we die. It’s good to feel well oriented, or optimistic towards, the future. And the mind naturally tries to continue this past its own life-span. But in reality this future does not exist for you. It is not part of your life and you have no place there. Does Peter the Great prefer facebook or VK? What does Bismarck think about the new iPhone 8? It’s just as ridiculous as these questions, for us to objectively worry over the future beyond our own life.
Although is what can be called ‘shallow illusion’, which is easily dispersed. There are much deeper illusions such as belief in our own free-will, which we can never relinquish (even when everything that will happen – on macro-physics level – including my apparent decision to write this post, was predetermined and ‘set in stone’ 13.8 billion years ago).
This is a silly question. He is dead.
A better question would be, should he have worried about his descendants? Would he have worried, had he known, what would happen to them? Even retrospectively, we value these emperors based on how there policies affected their descendants. We don’t say, “hey, Alexander III’s policies led to him being happy throughout his life, so all was jolly,” instead we say, “hey, this guy’s policies might have increased the likelihood of his son being toppled.”
If I knew now that humanity would be destroyed in 2100, I would be worried about it, and try to do everything in my power to avert it. Anyone who wouldn’t care is either a psychopath or has some other serious mental problems.
Of course, people often just create an online persona which is quite different from their IRL personalities. It’s quite possible you care more about the future of mankind than you let on here. Nevermind, I don’t care who you are or what you do. Just that not caring for the future is a very weird and creepy trait, if you indeed have it.
Many (maybe most?) commenters here have at least a mild form of it, or some similar personality traits.
Does Peter the Great prefer that a great deal of all Russian subjects’ (and other people’s) personal secrets be collected by a foreign empire hostile to Russia, or by the Russian government? He was a smart fellow, he’d quickly grasp the question.
In any event, you stated something way over the top, namely that it’s “irrational for us to care about” a potential nuclear apocalypse in February 2100.
I agree with everything you wrote, other than the part about Asperger’s. People with Asperger’s are often incapable of expressing their emotions appropriately, and often say the wrong things, but they do feel emotions – so they are not like psychopaths.
Dmitry’s statements are clearly psychopathic in nature (though I wouldn’t necessarily draw conclusions about him as a person, young people often take extreme positions).
I think people with Asperger’s are more likely to take a “rational” ideology more seriously (even if, in reality, they do indeed think the opposite), simply because they couldn’t find “rational” counter-arguments. It doesn’t mean that it’s what they really think, but maybe they think it’s a good position to represent publicly as a “rational” position. Normal people don’t feel the need to find rational arguments supporting their gut feelings.
Well I like maths. But otherwise, no.
I do find most commentators on here a bit strange people. But I’m not sure it’s for the reason you cite. The main thing I find weird here is the obsession with various hatreds of other nationalities and with a narrow view on life (viewing people in an instrumental way as groups, rather than individuals), which I am happy to be free of, even when I agree with their political views (such as restricting immigration).
There’s a difference between how one actually feels, and recognizing what is rational. Psychopaths and so on, are unable to feel empathy for other people. This is completely different, to recognizing that what happens after your death is of not importance to you. And being able to understand realities like this usually makes nicer people, who don’t waste life obsessing about things which are irrelevant to them.
I hope that I have a nice funeral, but it is also a reality that it won’t matter to me if it actually happens or not. A bunch of hooligans might sabotage the funeral, dance on my grave and it would make no difference to me, unless someone had told me of this intention on my deathbed. This can be understood clearly by the Alexander III example, which you resist below.
But he did not know and could not know. It was hermetically sealed to him, and this is the point. What happens after you die is epistemically opaque while you alive, and you will have no part of its consequences ontologically. Your attitude to the future before you die, might affect you, but what actually happens, does not.
How your own attitude and intentions affect you while you are living is a different issue. Although the consequences of that are unforeseeable. And can often be the exact opposite of what is intended. (The opposition of fate- to intentions, reminds of the wisdom of the ‘Death in Tehran’ parable.)
Hey Dmitry,
I commend you for your honesty and deep thinking into the subject; I have observed that most people live in some state of cognitive dissonance. Their values and assertions simply do not jive at the core of their own belief system. Thank you for your input. Also, have you come across this before, I found it a fascinating and brutally straight-forward evaluation of the subject at hand:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bK2a-1K0Sdg
Peace.
But that’s equally true of the future within your lifespan. Why worry about tomorrow, when anything could happen – my wife could win the lottery (I don’t play), or a nuclear war might destroy us all?
Obviously I don’t advise to obsess over things you cannot know, but worrying about the future to the extent that you can know it (the same way you worry about things within your lifespan) is quite rational, even about the future after your death. Provided you aren’t a psychopath.
The point of a nuclear apocalypse example, is that it would be something unforeseen. In order words, it is the same as the Alexander III example. It is outside of our lives, as the revolution was outside his.
Most people understand this on intuitive level, and you can say of person who dies before unfortunate event that – “he was lucky he didn’t live to see this”. Alexander III was lucky he didn’t live to see the revolution, and it was as if it happened in a different dimension to the luxury life he lived.
He was dead. And when you die – you actually die, although people try to deny this in all kinds of subtle ways, projecting themselves imaginatively into the future (or onto illusions like institutions and nations).
To go back to my original claim that started this argument, I wrote in a crude way I lack emotional attachment to things like “society’s future”. This is not a very hard or unsympathetic attitude. I have preference for how things will turn out and that it will be peaceful and the world will progress, but aside from being outside my or anyone here’s control (or even largely Putin’s control), it is also happening on this forum mainly discussion about things which are actually illusions (countries, nations, etc). Again, any intelligent, or scientifically educated, person should be able to keep these things in perspective.
This is not a pose, but some simple attitude. There is reason people historically keep ‘Memento mori’ on their desk, to help put perspective around daily issues. There is a reason Montaigne ‘retreated to his tower’, when he realized how he was wasting much time of his life worrying about the political life at court.
That’s factually incorrect, I’m 33 now, so unless I die prematurely or kill myself, I will in all likelihood get to see the extremely negative consequences of the ongoing mass immigration to my country. It’s not an abstract concern about some distant future no one alive will see, but about developments that will affect my personal life and the lives of many of those commenting here, about trends already clearly visible (and which probably will only get worse), and how things will be in about 2040 or so (which isn’t that distant in time…I remember 1995 well enough).
But you seem to be arguing from an extreme individualist perspective and on the assumption that nothing in the end really matters. In the long term that’s probably true (eventually humanity will in all likelihood cease to exist, and the sun will go out, and our solar system will become a cold and lifeless place), but I can’t feel much sympathy for such complete indifference and detachment, it strikes me as extreme egoism masquerading as philosophical virtue.
Sure if you live in Germany, policies might one day be suicidal enough that it could lower your standard of living by retirement times – perhaps you could retire in more sane country. But in most countries, life-standards are improving, insofar as will actually effect us – in our life we already have more opportunities and standard of living than our parents (even as things like ‘high-culture’ or ‘national culture’ are in decline).
We are talking about this subject of demographics. From a national perspective, it would be preferable if it would reach replacement rate. But the current situation is not that – and the regions with highest fertility are ones with high rates of non-Russians, mainly Muslim regions. Imagine in 2150 (arbitrary number, I don’t know the calculations), it will become a partly Muslim country. It might not be ideal, but this does not effect my life – I see no reason to stress about it. That is a normal reaction, I don’t think it is extreme. Interest in ‘future of society’ hardly needs to extend past retirement age.
A secondary issue is how much control you have over events. Nobody here has any control over any of these events – not more than a football fan watching on television, has control over his team can win the match. In the case of the football, the emotions are irrational, and likewise for us over things we cannot control. So long as it is still interesting and entertaining, it can be fun to discuss – but again, I’m not going to pull my hair out if I see a negative trend I cannot change (and I guess even Putin cannot change). There are more than enough opportunities for us now, that I find the whining of people in rich, developed countries, some kind of ungrateful tiresome, even when I agree with their overall point of view and support all the same policies they do.
As for philosophical virtue. This alleged ‘egoism’ attitude is reflected by many educated people – whether it is Epicurus, Montaigne, or even politically engaged people like Herzen. Herzen writes in his memoirs far more cynical and ‘egotistical’ things than anything I have said in this thread.
You mean like Germany?! :O
Share of Muslims among grade schoolers in NRW, most populous German state
https://kartenseite.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/nrw-gemeinden-grundschueler-1996-ab-5-prozent.jpg
https://kartenseite.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/nrw-gemeinden-grundschueler-2006-ab-5-prozent.jpg
https://kartenseite.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/nrw-gemeinden-grundschueler-2011-ab-15-prozent.jpg
Agreed. Chechnya and Ingushetia are both subsidized 85% by federal transfers; Dagestan, 80%.
Or simply levying some sort of an exit tax on emigrants… Then the US levies sanctions on you for holding people captive.
Well, you’re from the former Soviet Union, so for you that’s true, for me and many others in Western Europe things are definitely not better than for our parents’ generation.
We’re not talking about some distant future, we’re talking about 30-40 years from now, that is well within the probable lifetime of young people alive today. By current trends the native populations in much of Western Europe will become minorities at some time in the 2050s and 2060s. Major trouble and civil strife will in all probability happen well before that, as will the collapse of the pensions and welfare systems (the combination of the baby boomers going into retirement plus having to provide for unproductive, parasitical “refugees” will crush the native working population under an immense burden and will accelerate the demographic death spiral for the native population, with many who have the necessary financial means and skills probably fleeing to the US or Oceania, or maybe even China).
I shouldn’t have accused you of egoism, sorry for that. I actually can to some degree understand your views (even if I disagree), your reasoning isn’t implausible…but your conclusions do seem a bit extreme to me.
The current female German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has 7 children, of all people.
But yes you’re right.
Ho dang – they are literally paying for them to have more kids – that’s hilarious!!!
Wouldn’t it just be cheaper to pull back from the Caucasus, let them go their own way and erect a long fence or something? Is there a long term strategy here or – we’ll simply see what happens?
I don’t understand what that place has to offer from a strategic vantage point.
Peace.
She’s from a privileged background (her father was Christian Democrat minister president of Lower Saxony from 1976 to 1990), so she can afford to have that many children, it’s sort of a status symbol.
Sorry to hear it.
{Wouldn’t it just be cheaper to pull back from the Caucasus,}
It might be cheaper moneywise, but in the long run it will be a strategic disaster.
The Russian empire expanded into those areas in the first place a couple centuries ago, because those places were bandit heavens: raids were regularly mounted into Russian populated areas to kidnap people for ransom. Basically lawless badlands causing Russia endless grief and a security threat.
And Chechnya did get de facto independence after RF lost the 1st Chechen war.
So, the first thing Chechen Islamists did was invade neighboring regions still part of RF, with the stated goal spreading radical Islam throughout the region and beyond.
And we know what happened next.
Those three regions cannot and will not stay independent and neutral for long, after Russia withdraws.
First, they’ll be co-opted by NATO/ Saudi Arabia, and next will become staging areas for destabilizing Russia.It will be a lot more expensive for Russia to deal with that than paying the subsidies now, and having a free reign to come in heavy if things get out of hand. Now it’s internal matter, and NATO/Neocon dogs can’t yap. But invading a sovereign country will be very costly for RF on the international scene.
{I don’t understand what that place has to offer from a strategic vantage point.}
Right: you don’t.
But you can figure it out, if I give you this piece of info: Russia has a large base in Republic of Armenia with about 5,000 troops and also has an air wing based in Yerevan. Armenia benefits, of course. But Russia is not doing it for Armenia: Russia is doing it, because they look far into the future.
Armenia is the only Christian state breaking the long chain of Muslim states from Turkey to the Stans. See?
Hey Avery,
Good points, all – thanks.
Peace.
Thoughts on the Dmitry vs. everyone else debate.
My view – It’s a completely rational viewpoint. Though like many overly rational attitudes, evolutionarily maladaptive.
In economics, the standard way to value the welfare of current vs. future generations is to apply a time discount rate. (Since Dmitry says that he does have a preference that the world “will be peaceful and [continue to] progress”, even in his case, it evidently does not fall to absolute zero after his death). Consequently, the debate is really about the size of this discount rate.
Promoting research into radical life extension will open up the possibility of a society-wide compression of the discount rate, as people’s investment into the future will increase since a larger and larger percentage of the population will face the prospect of dealing with the long-term consequences of the policies they support. So this is one of many good arguments in favor of it.
Bingo!
Here it is going one step further (not saying Dmitry is pushing this, just an example of the maladaptive strain):
https://aeon.co/essays/having-children-is-not-life-affirming-its-immoral
I personally found Dmitry’s perspective very refreshing and honest from a materialist and individualist standpoint. And well-grounded and consistent with the framework he believes in.
Peace.
Do you have info about Belarus demographics? Since Belarus managed quite well the 90s black years, I bet Belarus is the best of the three Russias in terms of demographic trends.
Interest in ‘future of society’ hardly needs to extend past retirement age.
For you, perhaps. For me, I care very much about the future of the “society” that my children (and hopefully grandchildren) will live in Even if I didn’t have children, I think I would also care. Your view strikes me as extraordinarily cynical, but I am sure it is not an uncommon one.
{… from a materialist and individualist standpoint.}
Right.
But evolution or God (depending on your belief system) solved that ‘problem’ long time ago. You (generic you) choose to live the good life, materialistic life, individual life – and have no children. Over time your kind of genes get eliminated.
If you have children, grandchildren – you care and worry about the future.
You do whatever you can humanly possible, while you are alive, to make sure your genes are perpetuated through your descendants.
This is playing out in West Europe even as we watch: the materialistic, individualistic Europeans are eliminating themselves, and being replaced…..by those who have lots of children.
[A few days before the Berlin election, Frauke Petry, head of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) said Chancellor Angela Merkel is a worse leader because she doesn’t have children.
“I have four children, Merkel has none,” said Petry in an interview with stern.]
[“Kids help you see beyond your own periphery. And that’s what Merkel doesn’t do.”]
Merkel has no children, so doesn’t care what happens to Germany or her fellow Germans after she is gone.
*
[AfD’s Petry bashes ‘Mutti Merkel’ over childlessness]
https://www.thelocal.de/20160915/petry-bashes-mutti-merkel-over-childlessness
You’re intuition is largely correct. Belarus has better life expectancy than Russia by around 2 years, and has pretty much tracked Russian TFR. Adjust Russia down by ~0.1 children per woman, and Belarus would have done at least equally well; but compare Belarus with Central Russian regions, which have a lower TFR than Russians in the Urals and Siberia, and they do very well indeed. However, because the Belorussian population is older on average, and considerably numbers of Belorussians emigrated to Russia, its population has fallen more in relative terms.
Hey Avery,
Yeah and I feel bad for them. They could turn it around by simply changing their attitude to life – but it’s their life, their future…
It is interesting that in Arabic, someone who is “faithless” is called a mulHid and it derives from the tri-letter root (لحد) which means “to dig a grave”.
Peace.
Thanks.
Yes you can frame it in terms of time discounting. But my point is not to say I have a high time discounting, while German Reader and Reiner Tor have a low one. And it’s also not to say that I wholly discount anything beyond my death, while German Reader and Reiner Tor have posthumous preferences (even if at significantly discounted rates for posthumous times).
It’s stronger point that for preferences covering posthumous time, regardless of whether you have them or not (and it is natural human tendency to have them) – it is irrelevant whether they are fulfilled or not, and probably we cannot speak in meaningful way of their fulfillment.
The issue of whether and why we have posthumous preferences, is matter for psychology, and will vary from person to person.
But the notion that they can be fulfilled (and therefore be said that it is relevant whether they are fulfilled or not), requires transcendental perspective, that does not exist.
This issue can be related to the discussion of death made by Epicurus.
Epicurus’ insight into death was: “Where there is death, I am not. And where I am, death is not. I do not care.”
Objection to Epicurus by Thomas Nagel (I quote from his book ‘Mortal Questions’):
“The first type of objection is expressed in general form
by the common remark that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. It
means that even if a man is betrayed by his friends, ridiculed behind
his back, and despised by people who treat him politely to his
face, none of it can be counted as a misfortune for him so long as he
does not suffer as a result. It means that a man is not injured if his
wishes are ignored by the executor of his will, or if, after his death,
the belief becomes current that all the literary works on which his
fame rests were really written by his brother, who died in Mexico
at the age of twenty-eight.”
This objection of Nagel, can make sense for me, but only to the extent that if you are betrayed behind your back by your friends, there is potentiality that you can discover it. So there is an unfortunate potentiality contained in this situation (that you could discover that your friends are betraying you, but until you do everything is going well). In the case of death – let’s say for Alexander III, until we find that he was in possession of crystal ball for seeing into future, there is no indication that there was potentiality that he could discover his family would be murdered in the revolution. To the extent that he did not know, he was therefore completely unaffected.
My clarifications –
But for actual realization of our posthumous preferences – this requires a transcendental perspective, which there is no evidence that we can ever access.
Really it is more kind of humility, than solipsism. And this is what I mean by ‘I don’t give a shit what happens after I die’. Well it’s not completely true (but in reality, nothing that actually happens after that touches you, even as you imagine as if it does).
And there is resistance to this view, in terms of viewing it as solipsistic. Someone cares that their children and friends will have a happy life after you are dead. Yes – but this can exist, only so long as the person themselves is alive. Person exists only in terms of their first-personal consciousness – and once this is gone, they are nothing. They can no longer have preferences and dreams, which are realized or not. You might have a preference for something to happen in a time in which you don’t exist, but this preference itself does not and will never exist in that time, to be fulfilled or not fulfilled. There is absolute ‘cut off’.
This is very pessimistic. I do not have such pessimistic views of political future. But if I did – I would leave open the Montaigne point of view, where he ‘retreats to his tower’. Assuming you don’t have a tower, there will surely be places you would move to like Switzerland which will be still great in the 2050s, even if Germany starts to follow a suicidal path in the future decades.
Interesting! Yes, older sisters, aunts, orphan girls taken into the house were all doing childcare in peasant households. Here’s one from Old Russia. Commenters recall their grandmothers working as nannies, one starting at age 8, and a great-grandmother at age 5:
https://m.vk.com/photo-4367359_117819573
And there’s a vintage photography collector Okinawa Soba who has a whole gallery of Japanese kids carrying their baby siblings on the back. Not that child labor was seen as good (everyone who had money hired adult servants), but it was a dire necessity to not leave mother alone with all the chores.
A comparison: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-opioid-epidemic-in-america-killing-one-million-workers-the-triumph-of-capital/5627300
“American youth are 70% more likely to die before adulthood than their counterparts in other rich countries. In 2016, death rates for millennials (ages 25-34) rose to 129/100,000, with 35/100,000 deaths due to narcotic overdose. The carnage surpasses the height of the US AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s. …
The drop in life expectancy and rise in premature death in the US resembles the pattern seen in Russia during the first decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the rampant pillage by the US-backed mafia oligarchs under Boris Yeltsin.
Official government studies estimate almost 700,000 deaths [due to narcotic addiction and/or overdose] since 1999… … at least 65,000 in 2016.
The producer of the leading commercial ‘gateway’ into addiction, Oxy-Contin, is Purdue Pharmaceuticals. The company was founded and run entirely by the Sackler family under the leadership of the recently deceased Raymond Sackler and his brothers. … The Sacklers set up an aggressive large-scale sales force to convince physicians that their product was not addictive. They paid physician-researchers to publish fraudulent data on the safety of Oxy-Contin. … The totally preventable and predictable devastation eventually led to Purdue Pharmaceuticals being fined $634.5 million dollars in 2007 for fraudulently covering up the addiction and overdose potential of Oxy-Contin. The political influence of the Sackler family protected their members from any accusation of misconduct or criminal conspiracy. Their influence in elite political and judicial circles was unparalleled.”
Our American cannibals, the Sacklers.
“Concerned about national survival, concurrent Quebec nationalists viewed urbanization – or at least, sudden and large scale urbanization – and other aspects of modernization as threats to the province’s unique culture and society (Hamilton, 1995). To cocoon Quebecers from the outside world, liberal ideologies were discouraged. In this context, because it would distract women from their maternal role and reduce the birth rate, feminism was interpreted as a threat to national survival.”
So, autistic white sharia ideas have already been tried and failed hard.
Some statistics on England/Wales Births for your delectation (i have used 2011 as that is the census year) Annual statistics are available on Births and it seems that the white British share of Births decreases by ~1% per year, total white falls by ~0.5% per year.
Statistics are for the race of child, NOT race of mother, as US statistics pertain to.
2011 Total Births 719,624
White births: 77.0%
White British births: 68.3%
In the Reproductive age cohort (16-39), as per the 2011 census, 81.3% of women were white, 72.5% white British. So births of white babies lag the number of potential white mothers by about 4%… I guess a mix of miscegenation and lower birth rates.
Interestingly Wales (96% white) and England (85% white) had virtually the same TFRs (1.93 in England, 1.90 in Wales) compared to Scotland (96% white – 1.73) and Ulster (98% white – 2.06) Scotland, until the mid 1970s, had similar TFRs to England/Wales, then diverged. Not sure why.
I must say, some of the “Births by Ethnicity” dataset in England/Wales statistics surprise me. Essentially, all the growth in the relative share of Births since 2005 has been in the White, other category, or the “Other” (ie any non-white that isnt south asian or full blooded black), with africans and south asian births stabilizing since 2005/6. I see some evidence of this. Over the last 3/4 years Turks have begun to penetrate everywhere. Very few Turks in Britain until a couple of years back. Now they seem to run about 90% of Barbershops.
2011 TFR by local Authority area (’11 census % white/% white British female population age 16-40)
Arranged by TFR. Of the top 5, Barking/Dagenham is heavily african (mostly christian AFAIK) and noted for having the fastest demographic change of anywhere in the UK – was 94% white in 1991, Forest Heath is heavily American having 2 USAF bases, Wellingborough has many Indians and Carribeans and Latterly East Europeans, Peterborough is heavily Eastern European and Pakistani, Blackburn is heavily Pakistani. One of the interesting factoids is that Polish TFR is estimated around 2.2 in the UK, but only around 1.3 in Poland. Of the bottom 5, 4 are in inner London, and as such the area contains few families but a lot of career orientated 20 somethings of all races, and 1 is a university city (
Local Authority…% white…% white British…TFR 2011
Barking and Dagenham … 52.4 … 39.8 … 2.45
Forest Heath … 88.9 … 67.1 … 2.32
Wellingborough … 85.1 … 74.7 … 2.31
Peterborough … 79.9 … 62.5 … 2.30
Blackburn with Darwen … 60.9 … 57.6 … 2.29
Slough … 42.9 … 27.0 … 2.28
Sandwell … 63.0 … 57.3 … 2.27
Hyndburn … 82.7 … 79.7 … 2.26
Bradford … 59.4 … 54.6 … 2.25
North Devon … 96.9 … 93.1 … 2.24
Denbighshire … 95.9 … 93.4 … 2.23
Thanet … 93.8 … 86.3 … 2.23
Elmbridge … 87.4 … 72.4 … 2.23
Corby … 94.5 … 78.7 … 2.22
Stoke-on-Trent … 85.3 … 82.0 … 2.22
Pendle … 72.1 … 68.5 … 2.21
Tendring … 96.4 … 93.4 … 2.20
Torbay … 96.2 … 91.4 … 2.20
Harlow … 86.2 … 78.4 … 2.20
Oldham … 69.2 … 67.1 … 2.20
Newham … 30.1 … 12.3 … 2.20
Luton … 49.1 … 35.7 … 2.19
Boston … 95.7 … 70.6 … 2.17
Telford and Wrekin … 90.9 … 85.8 … 2.17
East Staffordshire … 86.5 … 78.9 … 2.17
Bury … 85.8 … 81.2 … 2.17
West Berkshire … 92.5 … 85.2 … 2.16
Walsall … 72.5 … 69.8 … 2.16
Mid Devon … 98.0 … 93.1 … 2.15
South Oxfordshire … 94.3 … 85.7 … 2.15
Gloucester … 87.3 … 80.2 … 2.15
Redcar and Cleveland … 98.2 … 96.8 … 2.14
Hastings … 92.1 … 85.5 … 2.14
Wolverhampton … 61.9 … 56.8 … 2.14
Waltham Forest … 50.8 … 26.6 … 2.14
Bassetlaw … 96.7 … 91.7 … 2.13
North Somerset … 96.0 … 90.4 … 2.13
West Oxfordshire … 95.4 … 87.9 … 2.13
East Cambridgeshire … 94.8 … 83.1 … 2.13
Vale of White Horse … 92.0 … 83.7 … 2.13
Bolton … 77.0 … 73.8 … 2.13
Milton Keynes … 76.2 … 67.2 … 2.13
Rochdale … 75.8 … 72.3 … 2.13
Conwy … 96.4 … 92.8 … 2.12
Sevenoaks … 93.9 … 86.5 … 2.12
Gravesham … 78.9 … 70.4 … 2.12
Torridge … 98.0 … 95.6 … 2.11
Barnsley … 97.1 … 94.2 … 2.11
South Somerset … 96.9 … 91.2 … 2.11
Waveney … 96.8 … 93.7 … 2.11
Mansfield … 96.7 … 90.0 … 2.11
Breckland … 96.1 … 85.1 … 2.11
Wiltshire … 94.6 … 89.2 … 2.11
Central Bedfordshire … 91.8 … 86.0 … 2.11
Basingstoke and Deane … 89.8 … 81.7 … 2.11
Dartford … 85.1 … 77.9 … 2.11
Bridgend … 97.2 … 94.6 … 2.10
Tameside … 88.2 … 85.2 … 2.10
Broxbourne … 88.1 … 75.9 … 2.10
Kirklees … 73.1 … 69.6 … 2.10
Greenwich … 58.1 … 43.6 … 2.10
Ryedale … 98.0 … 93.6 … 2.09
South Hams … 97.5 … 92.9 … 2.09
Fenland … 96.5 … 84.1 … 2.09
Swale … 96.0 … 90.0 … 2.09
Test Valley … 93.7 … 88.2 … 2.09
Kettering … 92.2 … 85.1 … 2.09
Epping Forest … 87.1 … 78.9 … 2.09
Aylesbury Vale … 85.3 … 78.6 … 2.09
Middlesbrough … 85.3 … 82.4 … 2.09
Thurrock … 83.2 … 75.4 … 2.09
Burnley … 83.1 … 81.1 … 2.09
Birmingham … 52.3 … 47.0 … 2.09
Calderdale … 85.0 … 81.3 … 2.08
Stevenage … 84.8 … 78.3 … 2.08
Bexley … 76.9 … 70.4 … 2.08
Sedgemoor … 97.6 … 91.8 … 2.07
East Lindsey … 97.4 … 94.0 … 2.07
Hartlepool … 96.8 … 95.3 … 2.07
Rossendale … 91.5 … 89.6 … 2.07
Ashford … 91.0 … 84.3 … 2.07
Cherwell … 89.6 … 79.9 … 2.07
Croydon … 49.9 … 39.1 … 2.07
Ashfield … 97.1 … 94.2 … 2.06
Daventry … 95.7 … 90.0 … 2.06
Nuneaton and Bedworth … 88.3 … 84.7 … 2.06
Rugby … 88.2 … 77.0 … 2.06
Reigate and Banstead … 87.1 … 78.3 … 2.06
North Hertfordshire … 86.3 … 79.3 … 2.06
Northampton … 81.4 … 69.7 … 2.06
Crawley … 77.0 … 64.1 … 2.06
Derby … 76.8 … 69.8 … 2.06
Hillingdon … 52.9 … 41.3 … 2.06
Redbridge … 36.3 … 24.6 … 2.06
West Lindsey … 97.2 … 94.8 … 2.05
Mendip … 96.8 … 90.8 … 2.05
North East Lincolnshire … 96.7 … 93.5 … 2.05
Tewkesbury … 96.2 … 90.3 … 2.05
Havant … 96.0 … 93.2 … 2.05
Wrexham … 95.8 … 89.1 … 2.05
Blackpool … 95.6 … 90.9 … 2.05
Arun … 95.2 … 84.5 … 2.05
The Vale of Glamorgan … 94.7 … 91.7 … 2.05
Rother … 94.6 … 90.5 … 2.05
Maidstone … 92.2 … 82.9 … 2.05
Solihull … 84.7 … 81.2 … 2.05
Woking … 77.5 … 65.1 … 2.05
Hounslow … 48.6 … 29.4 … 2.05
Cornwall … 97.3 … 93.4 … 2.04
Knowsley … 97.0 … 95.7 … 2.04
South Kesteven … 96.4 … 89.5 … 2.04
Wirral … 96.2 … 93.9 … 2.04
Chorley … 96.1 … 93.6 … 2.04
Taunton Deane … 96.0 … 89.4 … 2.04
Swindon … 87.4 … 79.9 … 2.04
Rushmoor … 80.7 … 74.3 … 2.04
Coventry … 68.3 … 59.2 … 2.04
North Kesteven … 97.4 … 93.5 … 2.03
Craven … 95.6 … 92.0 … 2.03
Chesterfield … 95.2 … 93.0 … 2.03
Poole … 93.5 … 86.4 … 2.03
Richmondshire … 93.2 … 89.6 … 2.03
Shepway … 91.6 … 86.0 … 2.03
Basildon … 90.2 … 85.8 … 2.03
St Albans … 84.5 … 73.6 … 2.03
Watford … 67.5 … 53.0 … 2.03
Copeland … 97.6 … 96.2 … 2.02
North Dorset … 96.7 … 91.3 … 2.02
Gosport … 95.3 … 92.2 … 2.02
Wakefield … 93.6 … 88.8 … 2.02
Redditch … 90.3 … 82.3 … 2.02
Ipswich … 87.0 … 77.8 … 2.02
Bromley … 80.1 … 69.5 … 2.02
Wycombe … 74.9 … 66.7 … 2.02
Bolsover … 97.3 … 94.5 … 2.01
Melton … 97.0 … 92.3 … 2.01
High Peak … 96.7 … 93.9 … 2.01
South Northamptonshire … 95.4 … 91.0 … 2.01
Great Yarmouth … 95.3 … 88.3 … 2.01
Suffolk Coastal … 94.6 … 90.4 … 2.01
Doncaster … 94.2 … 88.3 … 2.01
East Hampshire … 94.1 … 88.1 … 2.01
Tunbridge Wells … 92.6 … 83.4 … 2.01
Southend-on-Sea … 89.3 … 82.7 … 2.01
West Somerset … 97.6 … 90.8 … 2.00
Powys … 97.5 … 93.3 … 2.00
Mid Suffolk … 96.6 … 93.4 … 2.00
Wigan … 96.5 … 94.0 … 2.00
King`s Lynn and West Norfolk … 95.7 … 86.3 … 2.00
St Edmundsbury … 94.9 … 86.6 … 2.00
Hinckley and Bosworth … 94.7 … 91.8 … 2.00
Huntingdonshire … 92.8 … 84.4 … 2.00
South Cambridgeshire … 90.2 … 80.1 … 2.00
Medway … 87.1 … 81.1 … 2.00
Enfield … 56.3 … 32.1 … 2.00
Forest of Dean … 97.8 … 94.9 … 1.99
North Norfolk … 97.8 … 94.0 … 1.99
Carlisle … 97.1 … 92.1 … 1.99
Scarborough … 96.2 … 92.1 … 1.99
Rhondda, Cynon, Taff … 96.2 … 94.6 … 1.99
East Northamptonshire … 95.5 … 90.9 … 1.99
Uttlesford … 94.8 … 87.5 … 1.99
Darlington … 94.7 … 90.9 … 1.99
East Hertfordshire … 93.8 … 84.7 … 1.99
Dacorum … 87.9 … 80.8 … 1.99
Newport … 86.9 … 82.4 … 1.99
Spelthorne … 82.2 … 72.1 … 1.99
Bedford … 75.4 … 63.4 … 1.99
Sutton … 75.0 … 63.7 … 1.99
Derbyshire Dales … 97.9 … 95.1 … 1.98
Purbeck … 97.4 … 93.5 … 1.98
Newark and Sherwood … 97.2 … 91.4 … 1.98
Teignbridge … 97.0 … 93.5 … 1.98
West Dorset … 96.0 … 92.3 … 1.98
Braintree … 95.4 … 90.0 … 1.98
Eastbourne … 91.2 … 80.6 … 1.98
Worthing … 91.0 … 83.9 … 1.98
Stockport … 89.4 … 85.8 … 1.98
Bracknell Forest … 87.9 … 79.1 … 1.98
Merton … 64.3 … 39.4 … 1.98
Selby … 98.0 … 92.5 … 1.97
St. Helens … 97.6 … 95.8 … 1.97
South Ribble … 96.1 … 93.6 … 1.97
Isle of Wight … 96.1 … 92.3 … 1.97
South Derbyshire … 94.2 … 91.7 … 1.97
Stockton-on-Tees … 92.5 … 90.8 … 1.97
Kingston upon Hull, City of … 92.0 … 84.6 … 1.97
Chiltern … 87.5 … 78.3 … 1.97
Salford … 86.8 … 78.1 … 1.97
Ealing … 48.6 … 23.4 … 1.97
Torfaen … 97.3 … 96.0 … 1.96
East Devon … 97.2 … 93.4 … 1.96
Wyre Forest … 96.3 … 92.6 … 1.96
South Norfolk … 96.2 … 92.4 … 1.96
Cheshire East … 95.0 … 89.8 … 1.96
Dover … 95.0 … 89.6 … 1.96
Tonbridge and Malling … 94.7 … 89.2 … 1.96
Chichester … 94.5 … 87.7 … 1.96
Harrogate … 94.1 … 85.7 … 1.96
Rotherham … 91.0 … 88.4 … 1.96
Dudley … 86.3 … 84.2 … 1.96
Wokingham … 84.0 … 76.7 … 1.96
Epsom and Ewell … 82.2 … 71.3 … 1.96
Trafford … 81.9 … 75.6 … 1.96
Hertsmere … 81.1 … 67.7 … 1.96
South Bucks … 77.7 … 68.1 … 1.96
Weymouth and Portland … 96.9 … 93.0 … 1.95
Tamworth … 96.8 … 93.3 … 1.95
Merthyr Tydfil … 96.6 … 92.1 … 1.95
Lewes … 94.5 … 88.5 … 1.95
Adur … 93.7 … 88.8 … 1.95
South Gloucestershire … 93.0 … 87.6 … 1.95
Lewisham … 52.3 … 35.5 … 1.95
Leicester … 48.6 … 41.2 … 1.95
Flintshire … 98.0 … 93.8 … 1.94
Halton … 97.5 … 95.8 … 1.94
Hambleton … 97.5 … 93.9 … 1.94
South Holland … 97.0 … 81.5 … 1.94
Wychavon … 96.9 … 88.7 … 1.94
North East Derbyshire … 96.6 … 94.8 … 1.94
Malvern Hills … 94.4 … 89.9 … 1.94
Eastleigh … 92.6 … 88.1 … 1.94
Herefordshire, County of … 97.0 … 87.4 … 1.93
Stroud … 96.9 … 92.3 … 1.93
North Lincolnshire … 94.4 … 88.0 … 1.93
Gwynedd … 93.7 … 90.3 … 1.93
Tandridge … 91.0 … 84.0 … 1.93
Allerdale … 98.5 … 95.8 … 1.92
Carmarthenshire … 97.2 … 93.3 … 1.92
Neath Port Talbot … 97.2 … 95.7 … 1.92
Maldon … 96.9 … 93.6 … 1.92
Wyre … 96.9 … 94.7 … 1.92
Fylde … 96.3 … 92.2 … 1.92
Wealden … 95.8 … 89.9 … 1.92
Hart … 92.5 … 85.5 … 1.92
Mole Valley … 91.9 … 83.2 … 1.92
Surrey Heath … 86.1 … 78.0 … 1.92
East Dorset … 97.1 … 93.8 … 1.91
Pembrokeshire … 97.0 … 94.0 … 1.91
Warrington … 94.7 … 90.0 … 1.91
Waverley … 93.1 … 83.8 … 1.91
Havering … 83.6 … 77.3 … 1.91
Bristol, City of … 82.1 … 72.9 … 1.91
Brent … 37.9 … 15.0 … 1.91
North Warwickshire … 97.2 … 94.4 … 1.90
Rochford … 96.6 … 94.7 … 1.90
Cheshire West and Chester … 96.3 … 91.9 … 1.90
Fareham … 95.3 … 92.1 … 1.90
Blaby … 87.7 … 84.1 … 1.90
Richmond upon Thames … 82.5 … 61.5 … 1.90
Harrow … 35.7 … 20.4 … 1.90
Babergh … 96.9 … 93.2 … 1.89
North West Leicestershire … 96.7 … 93.0 … 1.89
Erewash … 95.8 … 93.1 … 1.89
New Forest … 95.7 … 91.2 … 1.89
Stratford-on-Avon … 95.4 … 88.6 … 1.89
Broxtowe … 89.5 … 83.6 … 1.89
Three Rivers … 82.5 … 73.0 … 1.89
Reading … 71.2 … 57.2 … 1.89
Barnet … 60.6 … 35.5 … 1.89
Amber Valley … 97.2 … 94.6 … 1.88
Christchurch … 95.7 … 91.5 … 1.88
Bromsgrove … 94.0 … 91.0 … 1.88
Horsham … 93.6 … 87.1 … 1.88
Runnymede … 82.2 … 69.4 … 1.88
Windsor and Maidenhead … 81.3 … 68.2 … 1.88
County Durham … 96.8 … 94.0 … 1.87
Lichfield … 95.9 … 92.5 … 1.87
North Tyneside … 95.3 … 92.8 … 1.87
Mid Sussex … 92.5 … 85.0 … 1.87
Caerphilly … 97.9 … 96.3 … 1.86
East Riding of Yorkshire … 97.3 … 93.9 … 1.86
Sefton … 96.7 … 92.9 … 1.86
Broadland … 96.4 … 93.6 … 1.86
Cannock Chase … 97.0 … 95.5 … 1.85
Sunderland … 93.9 … 91.9 … 1.85
Winchester … 92.8 … 86.3 … 1.85
Chelmsford … 91.8 … 85.9 … 1.85
Worcester … 91.3 … 84.1 … 1.85
Preston … 76.7 … 70.5 … 1.85
Oadby and Wigston … 65.9 … 62.7 … 1.85
Staffordshire Moorlands … 98.0 … 96.2 … 1.84
West Lancashire … 97.4 … 93.2 … 1.84
Castle Point … 96.0 … 94.3 … 1.84
South Tyneside … 94.7 … 93.5 … 1.84
Plymouth … 94.6 … 89.6 … 1.84
West Devon … 97.9 … 94.0 … 1.83
Barrow-in-Furness … 97.6 … 95.9 … 1.83
Gedling … 91.2 … 87.7 … 1.83
Colchester … 87.0 … 78.8 … 1.83
Southampton … 83.5 … 71.3 … 1.83
Monmouthshire … 97.0 … 94.0 … 1.82
Shropshire … 96.4 … 92.1 … 1.82
Gateshead … 94.3 … 90.6 … 1.81
Welwyn Hatfield … 76.1 … 65.2 … 1.81
South Lakeland … 96.5 … 89.7 … 1.80
Haringey … 62.6 … 30.8 … 1.80
Blaenau Gwent … 98.2 … 96.1 … 1.79
Rutland … 96.0 … 90.6 … 1.78
Stafford … 92.7 … 88.9 … 1.78
Lancaster … 91.8 … 85.2 … 1.78
Swansea … 91.2 … 87.4 … 1.78
Rushcliffe … 90.6 … 86.4 … 1.78
Guildford … 84.6 … 72.3 … 1.78
Nottingham … 68.7 … 60.7 … 1.78
Northumberland … 97.8 … 96.1 … 1.77
Leeds … 81.7 … 76.0 … 1.77
Southwark … 55.1 … 35.3 … 1.77
Cotswold … 96.3 … 90.5 … 1.76
Brentwood … 90.9 … 84.1 … 1.76
Kingston upon Thames … 70.3 … 53.5 … 1.75
South Staffordshire … 93.9 … 92.6 … 1.74
Harborough … 93.1 … 89.6 … 1.74
Cardiff … 83.0 … 76.7 … 1.74
Manchester … 65.8 … 57.0 … 1.74
Hackney … 59.3 … 36.0 … 1.74
Lincoln … 94.6 … 86.5 … 1.72
Eden … 98.4 … 94.3 … 1.71
Bath and North East Somerset … 90.9 … 83.5 … 1.71
Newcastle-under-Lyme … 90.7 … 88.1 … 1.71
Portsmouth … 84.9 … 77.8 … 1.71
Sheffield … 79.2 … 74.8 … 1.71
Cheltenham … 92.1 … 83.0 … 1.70
Bournemouth … 89.2 … 75.1 … 1.70
Charnwood … 82.9 … 78.6 … 1.70
Norwich … 86.9 … 77.4 … 1.68
Exeter … 89.4 … 81.7 … 1.67
Warwick … 85.2 … 76.5 … 1.67
Liverpool … 86.5 … 80.3 … 1.65
Canterbury … 87.4 … 77.3 … 1.64
Ribble Valley … 96.4 … 93.6 … 1.63
Newcastle upon Tyne … 81.9 … 76.4 … 1.63
Oxford … 75.9 … 56.9 … 1.63
Ceredigion … 94.7 … 87.5 … 1.61
Wandsworth … 74.8 … 50.2 … 1.60
Tower Hamlets … 47.3 … 27.8 … 1.60
Lambeth … 62.3 … 39.2 … 1.56
York … 90.7 … 83.8 … 1.49
Brighton and Hove … 86.0 … 72.4 … 1.49
Kensington and Chelsea … 65.6 … 28.8 … 1.46
Camden … 62.5 … 36.1 … 1.44
Hammersmith and Fulham … 69.3 … 40.2 … 1.43
Westminster … 59.2 … 26.0 … 1.43
Islington … 68.5 … 43.6 … 1.42
Cambridge … 78.9 … 56.0 … 1.37
It seems low total fertility rate correlated with status/intelligence/education levels in UK. You have the most wealthy area (Kensington and Chelsea), the most politically powerful area (Westminster), and the two most educated areas (Oxford/Cambridge) – within the bottom 13.
It actually worked pretty well in terms of fertility, but perhaps a sideproduct of it was depressed income and education which led eventually to the Quiet Revolution. I might write an essay on that in a few weeks, as it something that I’ve become kinda interested in and it hasn’t been written about much. The
“oppressive, Catholic” Quebec had TFR of 3.8 in 1960, though, so its not something to merely dismiss.
Secular Quebec has TFR far below replacement, and as the analysis noted, even incentives offered including $8000 per child after the third, did nothing to resolve the situation. Extended families, rural living, early marrying age and low levels of “individuality” seemed needed for high TFR.
Ancedotally, my wife noted that “perfect” marriages were not expected. People married young, hoped for the best, and were pressured to stay together. It created a lot of children, though also a lot of runaways, neglect and abuse. There was even a vague sense of truly R-selected upbringing with some of the older Quebecois mothers figuring that “its okay to ruin or lose a child or two, there’s others to make up for it. Its all up to God.”
Completely different attitude. Nothing’s perfect in this world.
That’s a useful and alarming map.
Our children have been learning German from a very young age. We used to talk about encouraging our children to do a year abroad in Germany during high school. Not any more.
The way things are going in Germany, we’re not so sure about even vacationing there 10 years from now, let alone entrusting our children to the sick suicidal bastards for a year.
Interesting point.
But can’t we expect that only a tiny percentage of the population will be able to afford life-extending technologies? Many people even in the USA, Canada, and Europe will be struggling just to provide for their families and cling to something less than what we consider a “First World” standard of living.
Germany is already on a suicidal path, and moving along that path fairly quickly.
Also, there is no reason to think that Switzerland will be fine in the 2050s, based on current demographic and cultural trends and immigration policies.
Like Germans, Swiss people don’t have children, period. World Bank and other sources put Swiss TFR at a meager 1.5 for the year 2016, compared to Germany at 1.4. The Swiss are aging and dying out, and the numbers are stark as for most of the rest of Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate
As of several years ago already, there were around 400,000 Muslims among Switzerland’s population of about 8 million. If the Muslims living in Switzerland merely reproduce at a TFR of 2.1, enough to replace themselves, the Swiss population will be more Muslim with every passing year — before even accounting for new Muslim immigration into the country. God help them.
I know, and our friends with 3 kids are pretty easygoing and energetic, on some conditions: big gaps between kids, big support from extended families, no disabilities. It can get tough if your personal situation is not so lucky. For example:
“I became pregnant on our honeymoon, and promptly ended up with hyperemesis gravidarium, made famous by Kate Middleton, only I didn’t get the same kind of attention lavished on me. I just had to suck it up and hope I could survive. I gave birth to a premature son, I had no milk to nurse him and had to bottlefeed from the start. I had six children in ten years. I have six grade levels to teach this year and I am solely responsible for their education, plus any extracurriculars (each plays one instrument and one sport; their music and P.E.). Additionally, I have all other traditional responsibilities of a wife and mother. Training your children to help you is an arduous task that requires loads of patience, loads of time and loads of effort…..not as simple as some would expect.”
https://thepracticalconservative.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/about-women-delaying-marriage/#comment-7913
And that’s good, but when you just get money, your family pressure you into buying more kid clothes and toys, because it makes them feel better (even if the kid is prefectly happy with what he already has) and you can’t really need rest, can you? (I need it but am polite enough to appear cheerful and not bother people with my troubles.) Special discounts for house help would help the money actually do the useful work (say, end sleep deprivation and raise energy levels of parents). Three nannies are totally in the millionaire territory, I used it as a hyperbole.
A highly unusual paper on Putin — actually, a breathtaking report by a witness — by Sharon Tennison: https://alethonews.wordpress.com/2018/01/28/is-putin-profoundly-corrupt-or-incorruptible/
Sharon’s plea illustrates the degree of unfreedom of the US press:
“Some of you were around Putin in the earlier years. Please share your opinions, pro and con …. confidentiality will be assured. It’s important to develop a composite picture of this demonized leader and get the record straight. I’m quite sure that 99% of those who excoriate him in mainstream media have had no personal contact with him at all. They write articles on hearsay, rumors and fabrication, or they read scripts others have written on their tele-prompters. This is how our nation gets its “news”, such as it is.
There is a well known code of ethics among us: Is it the Truth, Is it Fair, Does it build Friendship and Goodwill, and Will it be Beneficial for All Concerned? It seems to me that if our nation’s leaders would commit to using these four principles in international relations, the world would operate in a completely different manner, and human beings across this planet would live in better conditions than they do today.”
While I share your point of view about undesirability of the demographics and so on, I highly doubt that a country as successful as Switzerland cannot continue to maintain their quality of life. I highly doubt (short of some radical unforeseen events) it will not still be a great place to live in the 2050s. And direct democracy in Switzerland is also very willing to do moderate, but still somewhat politically incorrect policies when it seems required – see the Muzzin ban.
Hey, Ron.
Could you comment on the memo release and offer your analysis?
Thanks.
Solution to demographic crisis stares in the face. Bring back those parts of the Soviet system after removal of which demographic fell of the cliff. People stopped valuing that system by the end of 80s due to sheer stupidity unlike previous generations who knew beastly capitalism. Now people would value it a lot more after 27 years of hard schooling. It is difficult to produce kids when they are this expensive and there os no confidence in tomorrow. When there were 7 kids pe family on average they were like dime and dozen cheap and provided quick profit. Kids started working often at 6. Died often too. No regulations. No need for kindergarten. Demographic can be resolved either Soviet or sub Sahara region style.
I think you mean the minaret ban, correct?
I disagree, and, with all due respect, here I think you are providing the authentic ‘sperg viewpoint. (Which is I think where Dmitry is also coming from.)
I can’t remember much from microeconomics about time preference, but I think it was just normally assumed as a given. I’m lazy to search for it online.
But if you stop to think about it, there are at least two sources for it. Please let me know if you can think of a third reason to discount the future.
Reason A: The future is unknown, and the more distant future is the one we have the least information about. The future promise might be broken due to unforeseen circumstances, so the larger later reward might never come.
Reason B: It’s better to enjoy the rewards while young. Self-explanatory: a smaller sooner reward is actually bigger because being old will discount any reward to a great extent. Having a Lada at age 18 might be a better girlfriend magnet than having a Ferrari at age 80, so it’s perfectly rational to choose the former over the latter.
I don’t dismiss argument A: yes, there’s some uncertainty as to what the demography of France will be in 2050, though the thing about demographic predictions is that at least partly they actually predict the past: if 35% of all newborn this year are nonwhite, than it’s not difficult to predict that absent any huge cataclysmic event by 2050 35% of all 32-year-olds will be nonwhite. That’s not a difficult prediction. If the portion among newborns has increased by 1% point annually for the past fifteen or twenty years, than it’s also not very difficult to predict that it will be over 50% after 2040, again, absent some cataclysmic events.
But Dmitry is arguing for reason B: that it’s better to enjoy things while we live. He is willing to completely discount the future – he doesn’t seem to care for whatever happens to his descendants. Not just “it’s more important to get by now, and let my kids deal with future challenges when they come in their way,” but rather “I know the world is going down the drain, but who cares? I’ll have the good life till I live, and I don’t even care if my children will be exterminated afterwards.” This is psychopathic. As I wrote, I don’t think he’s a psychopath, he’s just probably trying to argue “rationally” something (perhaps against his own gut feelings) which is not well thought out by him.
My point is the following: if the question is about our descendants, especially the possibility of their extinction, then time preference doesn’t apply at all.
Let me give you a thought experiments:
Which do you choose? Neither means personal discomfort to you. But in one, your descendants will be the ultimate lords of the Earth, forever (or until there is humanity at all – all humans will be your descendants). But only after a huge tragedy befell them. And then they will have to wait for their luck in great discomfort for a long time. In the second scenario, though your descendants manage to conquer the planet and live in great comfort for dozens of generations, eventually they will all get wiped out.
Would you choose 2) or 1)? I think it’s obvious that 1) is vastly better than 2): the former promises eventual paradise, while the latter gratification for your grandchildren, but at the price of their later descendants completely getting wiped out.
So, discounting time preferences beyond your lifetime is only legitimate because you don’t quite know the future: you cannot know if being nearly exterminated can lead in the later future some untold gains – you simply cannot predict the future (in this case, the asteroid).
Dmitry argues that he’d rather just enjoy personal comfort and let his descendants (this must include his yet-to-be-born kid or kids) suffer. He doesn’t care. That’s psychopathic.
It’s not all black and white. According to this data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_subjects_of_Russia_by_total_fertility_rate in 2016:
Novosibirsk region (1.80) or Krasnoyarsk Krai (1.82) had higher TFR than non-Russian Kabardino-Balkaria(1.72) or KCR(1.52).
The non-Russian regions with high-fertility (DIC, Tuva, Sakha, Altai) represent a small share of Russia population. Excluding them from the statistics wouldn’t impact birth rate significantly.
The difference: In Turkey their leader, Erdogan, urges women to have more children because Turks have problem with fertility. Apparently, he understands the danger of high-TFR among Kurds to Turkish state.
On the other hand, you’ll be labeled sexist, racist, misogynist pig, xenophobic etc, etc, etc just for pointing out the obvious: dying out/replacement of white population.
I’d same for Russian stating he’s Orthodox doesn’t imply that he is actually religious. Most people visit church once a year at best to “consecrate bread” on Easter. You can ask:
– Are you Orthodox
– Yes
– Do you believe in Jesus Christ
– Eh, … I guess …
In Russia Orthodoxy (namely) has become part of Russian identity, part of being Russian. It is similar in Greece, Armenia, Poland etc.
‘society’s future’ – supporting nihilists like you when they get older. Masses are ready to commit national suicide just to get a new iphone or ipad rather than start having children. That’s why we need government to promote large families and offset the cost of rearing a child through taxation of singles.
Even in places like Ammurica, where worker is supposed put away some money, buy stocks to save for retirement etc. The stocks will be worthless in 20-40 years unless there are enough workers and consumers to support the whole system.
It’s even worth in the US, where family guy has to pay more in taxes than a single person. Having a family with 2 children if I make 120k per year I end up paying way more percentage-wise in taxes than a single person making 30k per year. Even though we make the same amount per capita. Person making 30k would hardly pay any taxes (exclude standard deduction and personal exemption), only 19k will be taxed at low rate.
This is, essentially, the same thing. Even if most people do not realize it. Money or stocks are worthless unless there is a system in place to support its value (work-age population who work and buy goods and services).
It might work for a small country like Switzerland with investments all over the world. But not for the country the size of USA, Russia or even Canada.
If I didn’t have relatives in Russia wouldn’t have to worry one bit if 146 million Russians were killed in gas chambers, right? Not a single molecule in my body would change, so why care? It doesn’t affect my life (I live in US) one bit, right?
Sorry, no need to answer these questions. You’re either troll or, as @German_reader pointed out, psychopath.
themoscowtimes.com/news/putin-offers-86-billion-to-families-as-russia-nears-election-59744
It’s good that al least state support for demographic recovery will continue even in times of economic difficulties. It’s encouraging.
who’s not having children in Poland. If it’s leftists not having any children, I’d argue it’s a good thing.
I’m not sure this breeds true.
But if it starts to make you unhappy or has a negative impact on your life, it is irrational.
Happiness is highly over-rated.
to see all these videos of American rednecks hunting bears
Whoa! Whoa! Stop it right here. Hunting is not cruelty to animals.
Especially if you don’t waste the meat. The guy who taught me archery was one of those tough guys. Killed two black bears over the course of his life (with bow and arrow) and ate them too. Told me it took him months because of how much meat one of those things packs.
Peace.
That is an excellent article. Thanks for the link.
Normal people don’t feel the need to find rational arguments supporting their gut feelings.
Well this is a big relief.
As of 2013 48% of Poles go to church at least once a week, in comparison to 27% of Greeks and 8% of Russians (latter figure actually seems high to me).
Thank you for the info. Really strange indeed.
From my personal anecdotal evidence: my local protestant church, it is normal to marry and have a couple of kids by the age of 30, most have 2-4 kids (discounting recent converts or convicts who turned to faith). Moscow Patriarchy church in Ukraine – normal for those who are part of ‘приход’ to have several kids plus more.
Bans on muezzins doing the call to prayer, or restrictions on the construction of mosques or the size of mosques or the height of minarets, are all grossly inadequate measures.
Until and unless Switzerland stops Muslim immigration and settlement, Muslims will continue to come and will continue to constitute an ever-greater proportion of the population. In time the Muslims will gain the political strength to repeal the measures mentioned above and, to the contrary, start imposing sharia “law.”
Switzerland being such a successful country does not in any way give us rational cause for optimism under current circumstances. It is a successful country because of its people and its culture, and those will continue to change for the worse unless serious measures are implemented fairly soon.
Germany will go under first, from the look of it, but our Swiss cousins won’t be all that far behind.
I’m rooting for Russia, but what I’m hearing is that the ethnic-Russian population is declining in every oblast / region. Anything less than 2.0 TFR, or really 2.1, means the population is dying out.
Absent real changes, the only question is how fast it will die out and how fast a competing people will assert their political, economic, and cultural clout at the expense of ethnic Russians.
Probably but it seems that those who attend church regularly in MP churches in Ukraine are a very small fraction of MP believers, because the highest fertility rate in Ukraine is in Orthodox areas where the Kiev Patriarchate or the UAOC are strongest, followed by Galicia, and in last place the ones where the Moscow Patriarchate is strongest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine#Total_fertility_rate_by_oblast
The non-Moscow Orthodox parts of Ukraine have the most parishes per 10,000 people:
https://i.imgur.com/2CO2QQL.png
My point was that religious people tend to have more children (whether they are Protestants or Orthodox). Of course, if they are committed. That’s why I mentioned ‘part of parish’ (“приход”), not just some random factory worker who gets drunk in the evening and visits Church once a year on Easter.
If you look at urban population https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Fertility2010ua.PNG
there isn’t much of a difference between different parts of Ukraine (except for Eastern Ukraine). Kherson, Odessa or Dnepro regions have higher fertility rates then Lvov or Ternopol.
If rural Ukrainians in the Western Ukraine tend to keep Christian traditions and faith so far – good for them.
The chart you are referring to:
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Fertility2010ua.PNG
This is true of urban Galicia (Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, part of Ternopil oblasts), whose urban fertility rate is the same as in the central and southern Ukraine (and higher than eastern Ukraine). But the Orthodox Western regions of Volynia and Zakarpattiya have the highest urban fertility rate also.
A note: the chart is from 2010 when overall fertility rate was at 1.45; Ukraine’s fertility rate improved to 1.51 by 2013.