World Births in 2020

From Twitter demographer Cicerone (now @BirthGauge):

For some countries, this is the last update (November) for which realized births still reflect fertility decisions taken before the onset of Corona – which, judging from anecdotal reports, will crater them further, but we’ll see*.

Broadly, this continues a trend I have already observed of most of the “White” world clustering towards a TFR of 1.4-1.7, e.g. involving a disappearance of the traditional US superiority to Europe. The only major downwards exceptions are in the Med, which is racked by emigration of young people to more dynamic regions of Europe.


The East Asians are breaking new barriers, with South Korea now falling to 0.85 and – for the first time in its modern history – annual deaths now outnumber births. This is quite impressive for a country where life expectancy is 83 years and where the median age was 32 years only back in 2000. But nor is South Korea unique, Taiwan has now joined it in the under 1.0 club.

No European country ever really fell that low for a prolonged period of time. Why?

Well I think it’s basically a confluence of whammies hitting them all at once, namely:

(1) Europe underwent its demographic transition much earlier and more gradually, this means “breeders” have been selected for longer and are a larger percentage of its population. There are almost none of them in East Asia, since it has only recently shaken off traditionalism.

(2) The new cultural and technological forces that have been hitting fertility during the 2010s (rising unaffordability of housing at global level, more affordable and higher quality leisure pursuits, Tinder) are also hitting East Asia.

(3) There’s also I think a tempo effect, in which average age of childbirth goes up as women “postpone”. This effect was particularly pronounced during the 1990s in Europe.

So, all of these things happening at once producing the effect of  “Best Korea” now having more total births than the South. But, funny as this meme is, I don’t think it can or will last.


  • Corona effect on US fertility:

 

Anatoly Karlin is a transhumanist interested in psychometrics, life extension, UBI, crypto/network states, X risks, and ushering in the Biosingularity.

 

Inventor of Idiot’s Limbo, the Katechon Hypothesis, and Elite Human Capital.

 

Apart from writing booksreviewstravel writing, and sundry blogging, I Tweet at @powerfultakes and run a Substack newsletter.

Comments

  1. Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.

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  2. Demografie says

    Numbers for south europe are especially bad. I would blame it on the EUR. Germany conquered Europe by controlling currency in EU. I am afraid, until there is real movement to leave EU / Eurozone, South Europe will face very bad times.
    I wonder about South Korea. Such a low fertility must have real world consequencies.

  3. Scotland & Puerto Rico have shockingly low TFR.

  4. Duc de Lorraine says

    Low TFR in high IQ countries / high TFR in low IQ countries: the (negative) correlation is observationally irrefutable hereby hinting at the fact that in contemporary circumstances, high IQ is no longer a selective advantage.

    The intelligence disadvantage appears to be further aggravated by personality traits, specifically neuroticism (low amongst Africans / high amongst Europeans and East Asians). Neuroticism might also have presented selective advantages in the past — but it no longer does, evidently.

    What we can anticipate is a return to a more primitive organization of life on Earth, until high IQ and above average neuroticism become again advantageous. In the meantime, enjoy the show.

  5. Duc de Lorraine says

    My prediction is that nobody will leave the EU in the next five years. And this is especially likely for southern euros which are degenerate beyond repair and are still hoping for handouts from Brussels.

  6. One is reminded that prosperous countries have a tradition of limiting their fertility rate when it’s hard to start a family. The US fertility rate fell drastically during the Great Depression, as people worried about having kids they could not take care of. This did not mean that the US “ran out of workers” or any other such trash, it only meant that when the economy did improve, it was not all cancelled out by ever more people. The fertility rate rebounded mostly during the ‘baby boom’, though with a peak fertility rate of only 3, and as it was both preceded and followed by periods of low fertility, the total demographic boost of the baby boom was moderate – and reasonable and appropiate!!!!! Is it too much to ask, to let the people themselves decide?

    Bottom line: one never knows, but I would trust the average person to decide how many children are appropriate to have before I trust the ‘experts’ whose advice for governments to encourage massively high fertility rates has done such wonders for Mexico or Syria or Iran etc….

    They say that in a century the population of Japan might fall to 80 million. Still plenty of people, I mean New Zealand is doing just fine with only about 5 million, and until recently Canada was doing great with 25 million. And it would only take a small uptick in confidence for the fertility rate to easily cancel out current declines… why force the issue?

  7. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    Scotland & Puerto Rico have shockingly low TFR.

    Northern Ireland is still a very Christian country to has a healthy TFR of1.89, Scotland is an atheistic and homogeneous nation so its fertility reflects the fertility of Whites in England and Wales also. The reason fertility in the latter two nations is higher is due to immigrants.

    On another note, the Census will be taken this year in the UK and the data released next year, it will be the first census since the ”redpilling” of the mid 2010s happened, so the ethnic data should be interesting, London will likely be minority White (as opposed to 60% White due to inclusion of Europeans) and less than 30% ethnically British.

  8. Fertility is really the metric that should be used to judge the appropriateness of measures designed to help the elderly.

    Anyone can rail about coldhearted people letting grandma die, but is preserving grandma a few years worth one less grandchild, or one less great grandchild? What about 1/10 less of a child? There’s no such thing as free lunch.

    Of course, we can hope that the response might help collapse some of these bubbles that are hurting young people, but I suspect any dramatic upsets would require political changes which are unlikely to happen. It seems like the regime is attempting to draw legitimacy from the fact that we are “at war.”

  9. I don’t know if there are reliable stats, but I suspect that the TFR of Puerto Ricans is higher than the TFR of Puerto Rico. That is, that many of the younger people have fled.

  10. Anonymous Motherfucker says

    1.8 is not a healthy fertility rate, you disgusting transsexual cuck.

    It’s just pathetic to see people aspiring to a 2.2 fertility rate, and acting like Mongolia or Pakistan’s fertility is at “third world heights”, when that is actually a very low fertility rate that was typical of the middle classes just 55 years ago. Picture the USA in 1965… That’s a 3.5 fertility rate:

    https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/FT_19.05.16_FertilityUpdate.png

    Imagine a world so spiritually impoverished, frigid, and hesitant, that it struggled to get its fertility rate to 2.2.
    2.2 is seen as sky high nowadays. Imagine struggling, hesitsting to get your useless ass women to do what they were supposed to do in life…. Twice. Just twice.

    6 children per woman would be a better start. That was the traditional rate and the Amish have managed around that level with a very low mortality rate, using ancient tech. If modern women can’t manage that with dishwashers and washing machines, we’re going to have to go the alien route and start harvesting embryos. 17 children per lifetime in a prison planet, in which everyone lives in a sensory deprivation chamber from the day they are born until the day they die.

  11. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    Yes, as I said in another thread, prolonging life has become a new religion of sorts in the West, it would be better if compulsory euthanasia at aged 75 was introduced, the fact that abortion is not frowned upon in the developed world means that such a thing would not be seen as too controversial after a period of emotional adjustment. Most people past that age are immobile and do not live a good life at all, euthanasia would be far more human than the indignity of having someone else helping you defecate and clean up the mess, many old people are also emotionally neglected in care homes and at worse physically abused.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Yoshitoshi_-_100_Aspects_of_the_Moon_-_97.jpg

  12. JohnPlywood says

    Raising the fertility rate to 1.6 is in no way a success, particularly after over 50 years of shit fertility (Hungary had actually dropped to 1.8 in 1964 and has been below 2.0 for 40 years).

    No one has ever been able to get their fertility rate back to 2.2, despite all the urgency programs. Not Japan, not Hungary, not Italy, no one.

  13. AlexanderGrozny says

    Surely Tinder would increase fertility? Think about it, before tinder men and women didn’t meet or spend time together. They were alone. No mingling = no sex = no children. With tinder though, many have found partners and thus breeding happens.

  14. AlexanderGrozny says

    I fail to see how the two are mutually exclusive. How is keeping grandparents alive resulting in fewer children? Israel has both a high life expectancy and a fertility rate comfortable above replenishment, so they accomplish both. They keep Grandma alive whilst at the same time having plenty of grandchildren.

    In fact, if a population becomes healthier and longer lived then the women are more attractive which results in more sex, and therefore more children but also people love longer so more old people.

  15. AlexanderGrozny says

    Scotland has a fertility rate of less than 1.4, whites in England and Wales have a much higher fertility rate than that.

  16. The decline in certain western TFRs is quite something. The Nordics have gone from TFRs around 1.8-2.0 only ten years ago, to as low as 1.37 in Finland’s case, with the other Nordic nations being around 1.6. Iceland went from 2.2 to 1.78.

    America is also notable, they went from 1.93 to 1.66. This is only partially due to covid, prior to this, it was 1.7. This is comparable to Eastern European nations’ TFRs.

    I can think of a couple of events in the past decade that may have had some bearing on these nations’ fertility rates, but I am still surprised that the downward change in TFR has transpired so quickly.

  17. …but is preserving grandma a few years worth one less grandchild…

    In the current circumstances, it is more like months than years. Over-80 people who have died from corona in Sweden had average life expectancy of 4 more months.

    Among the young the victims of corona – children not born, families not started, health impact of fake video lives, lack of exercise and socialising – will be in tens of millions of victims. And it will be long-term.

    We have a gerontocracy: protect the old and their assets at all costs. Even the leaders are elderly, decrepit grandpas with nothing to say and no plans. Nothing like this has to my knowledge ever happened in human history; we have put normal life upside down with ‘safety‘ for the 85-olds or for the overweight chronically ill 55-year olds above all else.

    That was the true madness of 2020 and the consequences will be dire.

  18. There is this really ugly culture in the US of keeping people alive to drain all the money possible from them and them dumping them like a corpse, when it runs out. I’ve seen terrible things while visiting people in old age homes. There are people that they keep alive who are brain-damaged and continuously moaning and driving other people out of their minds. It is not a good environment, to be housed with crazies, and even the more sane people are often pumped full of psychotropic drugs, in order to make money, or to help them adjust to the horrible environment.

    The elder care field is also full of Haitians and Nigerians. At a minimum, I think we should be putting the money into robots, like the Japanese. We could pool R&D costs, and develop dual-use robots for securing borders, and rounding up undesirables.

  19. Puerto Rico also has a low average IQ, so low fertility for it would actually be a good thing. 🙂

  20. “annual deaths now outnumber deaths.”

    This should say “annual deaths now outnumber births.”

    Anyway, Anatoly, what effect do you think having easy access to hot anime waifus (in anime porn and elsewhere) has had on East Asian fertility patterns? Not much? Or do East Asian men really do prefer to fap to never-aging hot anime waifus in comparison to hot real-life women who are bound to eventually age?

  21. At least southern Europe has the luxury of being subsidized by the wealthier Germans, no?

  22. Puerto Rican (and Cubans) in the US mainland also have very low fertility.

    I have never seen a good explanation. It has been this way for a long time. Have a look at the annual CDC report for details.

  23. I fail to see how the two are mutually exclusive. How is keeping grandparents alive resulting in fewer children?

    There’s an observable dip. What more evidence is required?

    Fertility is not an infinite consumable. It is limited and has a set expiration point. Delaying births also results in more mutations.

    Israel is a different environment. The government is reliably Right Wing. It is tooled to be a Jewish state, has massive foreign subsidies, and the people there are in a religiously-motivated fertility arms race.

  24. AlexanderGrozny says

    We have a vaccine for the old Rona now so I can’t see the restrictions lasting much longer. I am a 19 year old who has had no real socialization in the last 9 months, and this has been hard, but now there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

    I can’t see Rona holding back my breeding habits or health in the coming decades. I think we will rebound and by 2023 there will be a state of splendid normality.

  25. It will be interesting to see the immunological impact on kids.

    All this seclusion might mean a lot more autoimmune diseases, if the hygiene hypothesis holds true.

  26. AlexanderGrozny says

    My point is that having replacement fertility and high elderly life expectancy are not mutually exclusive.

    Another example would be 1950’s America, which had very high elderly life expectancy by the standards of the time (a 65 year old was expected to live to early 80’s) but also healthy fertility.

  27. You can say the same thing about parasocial relationships with idols and, now, VTubers.
    Imagine paying ¥1000 just for five seconds and a handshake with a girl, or ¥1000 just to get a thank you at the end of a livestream.

    Is it really any wonder that there are so many herbivores?

  28. Annual changes moving up and down in total fertility rate are not necessarily important, as the changes up and down can be caused mainly by the estimation itself.

    E.g. imagine the total fertility rate changes from 2 in 2010, 1,5 in 2015, and 2 in 2020. A contribution to the increase to 2 in 2020, can be the fact it fell to 1,5 in 2015.

    If there is underestimation in one year, then it will have to be overestimated in another year, and vice-versa, because accurate estimate would only exist if age-specific fertility rates are constant across the women’s reproductive years.

    This has confused a user above who is stating that USA had a fertility rate of 3,5 in 1960. This was an overestimation caused by measurement error as women began to have children at younger ages than previously during that time; the earlier overestimate, then resulted in later underestimations of fertility from the “total fertility rate” from the second half of the 1960s.

  29. Swedish Family says

    I can’t see Rona holding back my breeding habits or health in the coming decades. I think we will rebound and by 2023 there will be a state of splendid normality.

    It might not hold back the child prospects of the 2001 birth cohort, but a good few women in their 40s must have gone infertile this past year when normally they would have borne children. Beyond these, some women will enter menopause childless this year from lack of dating in 2020. The coming years might also see bad knock-on effects like single women struggling to break out of their state-imposed hermithood.

  30. Swedish Family says

    E.g. imagine the total fertility rate changes from 2 in 2010, 1,5 in 2015, and 2 in 2020. A contribution to the increase to 2 in 2020, can be the fact it fell to 1,5 in 2015.

    I remember your making this case last year (and the year before also?), but it’s getting thinner and thinner, isn’t it? Year after year, TFRs just keep dropping across the field.

  31. Lol I don’t understand your debate with Songbird. What is the relationship between caring for older people and fertility rates?

    We wouldn’t expect causal relationship between these two topics, that appear to be quite separate from each other.

    Perhaps lack of care for old people could reflect something vague about our “alienated modern attitudes”?

    In many traditional cultures, we had cared more for old people, than today. But it depends on your culture. In Swedish folklore or myths, old people were allegedly supposed to jump off the cliff.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwD7f5ZWhAk

  32. Swedish Family says

    The decline in certain western TFRs is quite something. The Nordics have gone from TFRs around 1.8-2.0 only ten years ago, to as low as 1.37 in Finland’s case, with the other Nordic nations being around 1.6. Iceland went from 2.2 to 1.78.

    My best guess is that the earlier Scandinavian birth rates (Sweden / Denmark / Norway) were propped up by immigrant groups from traditional cultures. As their children westernized, they converged to Scandi breeding patterns, which lowered total TFRs. We don’t keep much data on this (for political reasons), so no one really knows.

  33. Paperback Writer says

    According to this website, black American TFR is below replacement. Discuss.

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/226292/us-fertility-rates-by-race-and-ethnicity/

  34. Paperback Writer says
  35. JohnPlywood says

    No, ethnic Swedes still had a higher birthrate than Southern Europeans, and traditionalist immigrants there are too few to make a dent. Ethnic Swedish birthrate was 1.8 in 2007.

    Iceland has virtually no immigrants.

  36. I’m not sure I explained clearly. Part of the waviness is result of the imperfect design of the estimator.

    Likely part of the cause of falling total fertility rate, is rising total fertility rate of previous years, and vice-versa.

    That is not to say there is not reduction (or rise) of the real fertility rates, but the real line will be higher than the estimated line during the low points.

    If you look at country like Norway, Sweden, Russia, or UK – there is such a rise preceding fall, and vice versa. We might suspect that part of the cause of the fall, was the rise preceding it, and a part cause of the rise, was the fall preceding.

    This is because of the way the estimator is designed.

    https://i.imgur.com/N0ZuEJy.jpg

    Of course, there is a real line underneath these fluctuations, but it is rather less wavy than the estimator produces.

    • Russia is one of the more dramatic examples. If we look at the “total fertility rate” estimator, then it seemed at the time like there was a dramatic, rise, fall, rise, fall.
      https://i.imgur.com/m7ooK8Q.jpg

    However, the actual indicator from the completed fertility is more like this black line (drawn roughly for illustration – do not take as real data!). There has been a real fall of fertility, but a less dramatic fall than the estimator had indicated at the time.

    https://i.imgur.com/GCKqeL2.jpg

  37. Fertility is really the metric that should be used to judge the appropriateness of measures designed to help the elderly.

    Anyone can rail about coldhearted people letting grandma die, but is preserving grandma a few years worth one less grandchild, or one less great grandchild? What about 1/10 less of a child? There’s no such thing as free lunch.

    Fertility decline started in the West a century ago. After the Baby Boom birth rates rapidly collapsed again, and that was when the economy was booming. It’s very unlikely that economic conditions have any impact on birth rates.

    The factors driving demographic collapse are almost certainly urbanisation, secularisation, consumerism and increased lifestyle choices.

    It clearly has nothing to do with whether grandma dies or not. The people who want the elderly to die are just bitter losers who want someone to blame for their miserable lives.

    People have fewer children because they want fewer children because children limit their lifestyle choices. Killing grandma is not going to make them want more kids. A society that doesn’t care about old people is probably not going to care about children either.

  38. 6 children per woman would be a better start.

    With low infant mortality rates 6 children per woman would be catastrophic.

  39. Scotland has a fertility rate of less than 1.4, whites in England and Wales have a much higher fertility rate than that.

    Also, Scotland’s major urban areas have a lot of immigrants, so immigration wouldn’t cause such a large difference in TFR in comparison with the rest of the UK.

    Something strange is going on in Scotland. The rise in nationalism while TFR has been declining made me think of Quebec.

  40. Yellowface Anon says

    Things will get much worse in 2021 and probably beyond since:

    1) Rona is destroying the social fabric and boosting the size of volcel demographic
    2) General economic malaise (almost certainly more than temporary with a currency collapse and reset, and total supply chain failures to the point of inducing food shortages in the developed world)
    3) Active depopulation campaigns under the Great Reset (think vaxx-induced sterilization, strict Chinese-style family planning, energy quotas, etc.)

    It won’t be subreplacement-as-usual.

    (deleted and reposted the comment to remove the mention)

  41. Puerto Rican (and Cubans) in the US mainland also have very low fertility.

    I have never seen a good explanation.

    Here’s your explanation: Puerto Ricans and Cubans are very different from Mexicans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorans, etc.

    They’re more culturally European (especially Cubans).

  42. Surely Tinder would increase fertility? Think about it, before tinder men and women didn’t meet or spend time together.

    In recent decades, “meeting people” in real life is considered sexual harassment. If it weren’t for Tinder, fewer people would meet romantic partners. They might have only been looking for fun at first; but that was also the case back when it was legal to “meet people” offline.

  43. Swedish Family says

    No, ethnic Swedes still had a higher birthrate than Southern Europeans, and traditionalist immigrants there are too few to make a dent. Ethnic Swedish birthrate was 1.8 in 2007.

    True. Whatever merit my convergence theory has, the data doesn’t lend it much support. I do find it odd that Denmark matches Sweden’s TFR even with vastly fewer immigrants.

    Where did you get the 2007 figure from? So far as I know, there is no detailed data on these things, only reports written in the broadest of terms.

  44. Swedish Family says

    However, the actual indicator from the completed fertility is more like this black line (drawn roughly for illustration – do not take as real data!). There has been a real fall of fertility, but a less dramatic fall than the estimator had indicated at the time.

    If I have you right, then, completed fertility is the figure to keep an eye on? And this is because women postpone childbirth in bad times but make up for it in the good times that follow?

  45. Haruto Rat says

    Aging happens in some hypothetical future. The breast size ratio between cultural depictions and reality, however, is here and now. In anime, it’s probably above 3.0 on average.

  46. gabriel alberton says

    You might be confusing cause and effect. One way to know if that is the cause of low East Asian fertility would be to immediately abolish easy access to hot anime waifus to all men and women in at least one jurisdiction. If a fertility rebound happened there three decades later, and not in places that kept access to them, it would be known that hot anime waifus are at least one of the causes of low societal fertility in East Asia. If not, however, then they would be ruled out as a cause. My view in absence of such a controlled experiment is that hot anime waifus are a symptom of something deeper lurking within those societies.

  47. Daniel Chieh says

    No, Tinder actually promotes rejection complex. Paralysis by excess of imagined choice.

    https://www.psypost.org/2021/01/new-research-shows-online-dating-can-cultivate-a-rejection-mindset-59008/amp

  48. JohnnyWalker123 says

    What percentage of Stockholm, Uppsala, and Goteborg are Muslim?

    Is 10% a conservative estimate for all three cities?

  49. Daniel Chieh says

    Due to reduced sexual differentiation and testosterone, East Asian societies relied on legal and social controls on women. Basically there’s no recovering there if women aren’t legally considered as property; waifus etc are just forms of escape from the pain of modern life and disappointments.

  50. Bringing up “many” children means living in poverty, inability to pursue studies towards a better job, inability to carry out social life, spending many years in stupefying tasks like cleaning babies and so. Women will not do it if they have choice. Empowering women is the road to extinction. Women are built for oppression and will accept it if society tells them that it is how it should be. I am a typical liberal Jew and it is not what I would like, moreover I would never agree with such antediluvian fascist position, but deep down I know.

  51. Hangnail Hans says

    This is the result of age of consent laws and the sociosexual norms they establish. If a mother is not permitted to enjoy erotic sensations from her infant, then she will have little inclination to have a child. Simple as.

    https://apnews.com/61c6dbb3ca1bf67c001b174dcc65a85c

    Cause and effect.

  52. The Amish and the Haredi?

  53. Rona does not affect pornhub does it?

  54. Women have been considered second class citizens to varying extents in all societies, the decline in fertility would probably match with ‘women’s liberation’ in every society. Actually I still think if the media promoted marriage and children as much as they do the sex and city (homosexual really) lifestyle things would reverse themselves somewhat.

  55. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    Tinder is mostly for hookups, genuine relations that will yield marriage and children do not really happen from it.

  56. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    Tinder and it’s consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

  57. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    East Asian women are out of control in White societies, they are the biggest race traitors out of any group of women.

    East Asian men really need to go Sharia on their thots

  58. Postponing birth will not lead to fertility increases later imo, because older women then run into primary/secondary infertility issues.

    So i belive that those who hope for a pick up of TFR due to the postponing effect are wrong. That is, the overall trend will be downward.

  59. Black TFR has been below replacement for a while. It’s a pity the U.S. has had so many immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, because they often have higher fertility than the native blacks. Without them, not only might black TFR be lower than whites, but blacks would quickly become irrelevant. Having lower fertility is a bigger problem when you are already a minority. We can all thank based liberals for making abortion on demand for all. It might turn out that liberalism plus Mexican/Central American mestizos are the white man’s greatest weapon against blacks. Blacks seem to have no defense against this powerful combination.

  60. East Asian women are out of control in White societies, they are the biggest race traitors out of any group of women.

    East Asian men really need to go Sharia on their thots

    No. If they don’t want their women marrying white men, they should stay out of white countries.

  61. sher singh says

    In medieval era intelligence is dependent on food.

    Doesn’t this mean Germanic elite starved out the Celtic & Slavic peasentry over time?

    Re the higher iq having 50% more kids.

    https://akarlin.com/2009/09/struggle-europe-mankind/

    Turk, Bantu, Arab, German.

    Humanity unite against the scourge(s).

    Han too?

    No comment on the birth rate, we all know solution.

    If you want the birthrate to be right, you need to take some rights.

  62. Europe Europa says

    Why is the UK always represented as different countries in stats? I’m not aware of any other country that does this.

  63. Europe Europa says

    Agreed, ultimately migration is driven by the men of any society and if they are moving to a country with a different race, especially a multi-racial country, then miscegenation is going to be an inevitable result.

    This even happens with Polish/Eastern European women in the UK, they have a reputation of being bigger race mixers than native British women. Ultimately the solution is stay in your own country and have strict immigration policies if you want to minimise miscegenation. To move to racial melting pots and then complain about miscegenation strikes me as stupidity.

  64. Europe Europa says

    Scots are more Atheist than even English people, and also I think Scotland probably has a more degenerate, nihilistic culture.

    Scots are usually stereotyped as aggressive alcoholics and miserable, depressive sort of people whose culinary techniques are limited to “deep fried”.

  65. Hannah Katz says

    My daughter recently gave birth to twin girls, added to an existing daughter. So she and her husband definitely went against the grain. However, both parents earned degrees at well regarded colleges (he also got an MBA) and his father was a medical doctor. So I am betting these little ladies should do well when competing against the throngs of low IQ workers. Play with the cards you have been dealt.

  66. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    Scottish cities are not that immigrant heavy at all, when I went to Glasgow and Edinburgh, it was mostly White people, there were one of two immigrant enclaves but as a proportion of the total population they are very low. Edinburgh is 92% White and Glasgow is 88% White.

    Scotland is 96% White while England is 85% White. Another thing to note is that the nonwhites in Scotland seem to be more well off and tend to move there from England after becoming more successful.

    Fertility by ethnic and religious groups in the UK, trends in a multi-cultural context

    https://i.ibb.co/WFvD8Sc/UK-TFR-by-Ethnicity.png

    As you can see, White British women had a fertility of around 1.7 between 2000 and 2006 according to this paper, so it is entirely plausible that the White British fertility (Northern Ireland excluded due to its unique culture in relation to the other constituents of the UK) has fallen down to around 1.4 as is the case for the homogeneous Scotland but the 1.65 fertility figure for England and Wales is entirely due to high fertility immigrants, namely Pakistanis and Bangladeshis as well as Carribbean people somewhat.

  67. Europe Europa says

    Not surprising, there is little draw for third world immigrants to go to Scotland over England. Its reputation is worse weather, poorer, less established immigrant enclaves, more nationalistic therefore more potential for “racism”, etc.

    Also, Scotland is not a country despite being listed separately on this list, they do not have their own immigration policies. An immigrant can only live in Scotland if they have the right to live in the UK as a whole, so the vast majority will just choose England.

    I would guess the few immigrants who do go to Scotland are ones with already established businesses in England who are looking for less competition, to be a “big fish in a small pond” so to speak.

  68. The world is clearly overpopulated, and you can’t increase population forever.

    Its obvious that there is a balancing process at work, and that a prolonged period of population growth needs to be followed by a contraction.

    This “up and down” process is so obviously a basic embedded process of nature – there is literally nothing that does not rise and fall. Yet we are always shocked that things fall and try and stop it.

  69. ‘in contemporary circumstances, high IQ is no longer a selective advantage’

    As opposed to what? Has it ever been an advantage?

    https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2018/01/29/the-seven-losses-of-high-iq-leadership/

    ‘The Seven Losses of High IQ Leadership

    1. Lack of self-awareness
    2. Lack of humility
    3. Communication losses: The reading level for the average American is at the 7th or 8th grade level. If a leader chooses to use their additional 5-10 years of education, knowledge and vocabulary when communicating with people in the organization, those people may not understand the leader. It is not surprising that a leader who is hard to understand would be perceived as less effective.
    4. Excess sophistication
    5. Lack of empathy
    6. Not being relatable
    7. Incongruity’
  70. Joe Paluka says

    The traditional family in any society has grandparents helping the mother look after her children and the wisdom and life experience that’s passed onto the young mother and little kids. Anyone who calls for old people to be killed at 75, is mentally sick and spends too much time masterbating in his mother’s basement.

  71. As opposed to what? Has it ever been an advantage?

    It was a selective advantage before the middle of the 19th century, when smart people had more children.

  72. Joe Paluka says

    Visit the place before you make stupid statements like the ones you have made. Scotland has it’s share of people with problems, but not in any more proportion than any other European nations. Scotland is a wildly beautiful country with a rich history, rich culture and educated population. The weather isn’t any worse than that in most of the US Northwest coastal areas and it’s food is similar to that of the Norwegians, Danes and Icelandics. If this is not to your taste, you can go to the many McDonalds or Burger joints that are in every major town in Scotland.

  73. RadicalCenter says

    Russia needs your contribution, and it’s not exactly a painful way to serve Rodina. Get yourself a nonMuslim devushka — that is, if you can discern whether you are attracted to each other from six feet away through face-diapers.

    Then get busy violating antisocial distancing, if you know what i mean.

    If not, Stavropol gradually becomes part of Greater Chechnya under President Ramzan Kadyrov III 😉

  74. Daniel Chieh says

    This is why humans are eternally destined to be hunter-gatherers.

    Oh wait.

  75. RadicalCenter says

    Fair point. But the Germans will enforce the judgment and collect those euro-denominated debts from italy and greece — with what army?

    Maybe the Germans can hire some heterosexual men residing in Germany, i.e. non-Germans, and deputise them for the task.

  76. If anyone reads the guardian somewhat regularly, the left has used this coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to rail against soulless mass consumerism and neoliberal corporate worship, which worsened inequality, and this thus worsened the effects of the coronavirus crisis on those who could afford it the least, interesting bit of political maneuvering I might add.

  77. RadicalCenter says

    More important for my country — and no, Puerto Rico is not properly part of the usa — are PRs settled on the mainland afflicted with such a low fertility rate? One can only hope.

  78. No one has ever been able to get their fertility rate back to 2.2..

    Georgia and Israel (israeli jews) did that. Some central asian countries and Mongolia as well.

  79. Pornhub sends its regards

  80. The world is clearly overpopulated, and you can’t increase population forever.

    Its obvious that there is a balancing process at work…

    Ironic that it does not apply to Israel : )

  81. JohnPlywood says

    No it would not, that’s environmentalist bullshit.

  82. Daniel Chieh says

    Outmarriage is really a minimal threat compared to the imported memes of individuals and liberalism. To an extent, the West has had greater experience with it and grow up with it so they have greater resistance and ability to function with it; East Asians have much more significantly exported those functions to societal control and with the breakdown of societal control, so is the loss in function.

    The need is still there, so it becomes recreated in imaginary women in order to fulfill the loss but since it is an inferior good compared to the “real thing”, it also imparts the equivalent lack of motivation and the hikkamori.

    Capitalism provides balms, but often insufficient ones.

  83. JohnPlywood says

    No they didn’t, Einstein. Mongolia and most central Asian countries had fertility rates of 5-8 children per woman 40 years ago. They were never below 2 TFR. Iran is the only exception I can think of that you would possibly be referring to, and it’s a West Asian theocratic republic. I was obviously referring to European countries and most of East Asia.

    Israel has never had a fertility rate below 2.0.

    Georgia has risen above 2.0, but they’re clearly on the fringes of Europe and not as developed — their dip below 2.0 was ephemeral. Mortality is also higher there.

  84. Daniel Chieh says

    17 children per lifetime in a prison planet, in which everyone lives in a sensory deprivation chamber from the day they are born until the day they die.

    You can manage this with minimal misery with just artificial wombs and extracted eggs + sperm.

  85. The rarer, high IQ breeder type. The future overlords of the planet.

  86. The good ole Lapot.

    A weird tradition, from probably the weirdest region in the Balkans (and by global standards we’re all insane already). If I had to decide where IRL Innsmouth would be, I’d say it’s Negotin.

    But hey, rather useful

  87. Depends on country- in Britain the tipping point was around 1850 but on large parts of the Continent it was around 1900. In some places outside Europe it was well into the 20th century.

  88. JohnPlywood says

    **If you are referring to the very short 4-7 year dip in Mongolian and Kazakhstan TFR which took place in the 1990s, this is entirely due to the emigration of approximately 60,000 Kazakhs + other minorities from Mongolia, representing approx. 5% of the country, and the emigration of hundreds of thousands of “Kazakhs” from Kazakhstan. Brief periods of crisis can disrupt fertility but it’s very clear that there is no comparison between this and the +40 year below replacement fertility of countries like Hungary and Japan.

  89. Shortsword says

    16% of Iceland’s population is foreign born. That’s far from “virtually no immigrants”. But most are European. One third of the immigrants are Polish which is interesting.

    20% of Sweden’s population is foreign born. One third is foreign born or has at least one parent born in another country. A large portion of the immigrants are from MENA+SSA. Certainly enough to make a difference in the total fertility rate but perhaps not too much. Another fact to consider is that the the number of Swedes that has two parents born in Sweden has been decreasing for 20 years.

  90. In the deep-long term, we probably are going back to hunter gathering at some point.

  91. I’m sure at a certain point, Israel will also go into fertility decline. Its still a young country that’s being developed, with still a sense of adventure, opportunity, and pioneering spirit.

    But it will grow old, and start to decline. At that point it will have to reinvent itself, or die, like Islam is doing after failing to reinvent itself.

    But for a while, there will have yo be a period of contraction, which is healthy and good.

  92. So what do you propose to do to correct the maladjusted woes of a society that favors its elderly citizens? Not too many politicians are bold enough to go up against the political platform of a lobbying group like AARP (and there are scores of other such interest groups too).

  93. Daniel Chieh says

    In the deep long term we are going to die to the end of the universe.

    This has no meaning for our day to day existence.

    Another one of your “insights” of surpassing meaninglessness, found at the shrine of enlightment from a pot bong.

  94. Yes, as I said in another thread, prolonging life has become a new religion of sorts in the West, it would be better if compulsory euthanasia at aged 75 was introduced

    You know that Karlin seems to worship at the altar of this “new religion”, it’s called “Transhumanism”.

    I’d love to hear his opinion about instituting mandatory euthanasia at aged 75? Come to think about it , it’s been a long, long time since he’s posted anything about this favorite subject of his. It’s definitely time for an update!

    https://open-tdm.au.dk/ph/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/transhumanism.jpg

  95. Shortsword says

    Close to 15% of the Israeli population are Haredi Jews. They have almost 7 fertility rate. That’s the difference maker. Without Haredi Jews Israel would still have a relatively high fertility rate but it would be closer to 2 rather than above 3.

  96. In the deep long term we are going to die to the end of the universe

    I would argue that has tremendous impact on our day to day living. This knowledge has led to the rise of religions to escape death, and the liberation of a small minority such as myself, who accept death.

    States frequently collapse and are replaced with more primitive forms of organization, and civilizational collapse has repeatedly led to a return of a pastoral, nomadic, or hunter gatherer lifestyle in various parts of the world.

    Recognizing the patterns that shape our world , and the deep structure of reality, leads not only to intelligent allocation of effort and resources and the avoidance of futile struggle, but to the eradication of fear, anxiety, and a deep peace, acceptance, and joy at things as they are.

    All things conspicuously lacking in you, O Grim One 😉

    But these truths are not for such as you – you are condemned to toil in the narrow furrow, like Sysiphus, never seeing the wider and grander picture – never seeing the world sub specie aeternitatis – and convinced you’re getting somewhere in your little mouse hole. And that is just as well – the fool has his part to play just as much as the wise, and a world of only wise people could no more exist than a world with only progress and no decadence, life and no death.

  97. Magic Dirt Resident says

    I give it another decade until Ireland is equal with them. The collapse of Catholicism there has been swifter than I ever thought possible.

  98. Shortsword says

    Eastern Europe needs to get the women born in the 80s to have more children before they get too old.

  99. Daniel Chieh says

    And as usual, you are completely wrong when it comes to numeracy – state collapses may have happened historically, but retained knowledge appears to have made each one shorter in its recovery, especially as the technology advanced to permit retention of information. The collapse of western Rome and the end of coin minting failed to end the concept of money, for example: items continued to be priced in Roman denarii even when the coins ceased to be minted. This was further exemplified when Charlemagne created almost completely imaginary currency which Europe has retained to this day: sous, shillings, pounds, etc.

    During the reign of the actual Henry II (1154–1189), just about everyone in Western Europe was still keeping their accounts using the monetary system established by Charlemagne some 350 years earlier—that is, using pounds, shillings, and pence—despite the fact that some of these coins had never existed (Charlemagne never actually struck a silver pound), none of Charlemagne’s actual shillings and pence remained in circulation, and those coins that did circulate tended to vary enormously in size, weight, purity, and value.

    The reality is that everything changes, and always must: No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

    So that indicates what is perhaps most specific to this thread: understanding the issues caused by the modern environment, requires modern solutions to it. Adaptation comes in many forms and it is indeed natural to struggle. The wolf pack in peril does not accept death: it fights teeth and nail.

    http://www.wolfsongnews.org/news/Alaska_current_events_3015.html

    Fellow biologist Tom Meier, who studies wolves in Denali National Park and Preserve, figures that “at least” 60 percent of the wolves that die in Alaska’s most famous national park are killed by their canid cousins.

    “That, by far, is the most common cause of death,” he said.

    The number would probably be higher than 60 percent, Meier said, but biologists have a hard time determining how some wolves die because “by the time we get to the carcass, there’s not enough left to figure out how they died,” he said.

    As for your final lie:

    I would argue that has tremendous impact on our day to day living. This knowledge has led to the rise of religions to escape death, and the liberation of a small minority such as myself, who accept death.

    Still waiting for you to give all of your material belongings to Karlin.

  100. How long do you think the lockdown should last? Would a full year be worth it to you?

  101. Scotland has a fertility rate of less than 1.4, whites in England and Wales have a much higher fertility rate than that.

    An allegedly “liberal democracy” that is a one-party state ran by a dog-faced pony soldier bullet-headed dyke.
    It could, in a sense, be simply a pioneering version of the GloboHomo project. In the sense of “you’ll all be this five years from now”.
    On that note: if you can get the Celts and the Iberians to sign up to self-genocidal degeneracy, then you can sign anyone up, Eastern Europeans and Arabs and Latinos very much included. If an Irishman or a Scott or a Portuguese or a Spaniard can submit to this crap in spite of being allegedly uncontrollable machos, then hope needs to be looked for elsewhere.
    Outside chimerical “national character”.

  102. Paperback Writer says

    Right. Not to be a false white-piller but immigrant fertility is always higher than native, and eventually dips. The problem is that the US always has immigration; it’s something that Americans have been brainwashed to believe in from Day One.

    I hate the words “if” and “should” in comments to posts because none of us here has any power but I’m going to break my own rule. IF the US would only change its immigration laws, (white) America has a chance of survival, after a few generations. If not… it won’t. The nature of the downfall is anyone’s guess, but down it will fall.

    What you and I have both brought out is that it isn’t rampant black TFR that’s the problem, which is something I see here a lot. It’s our crazy policies.

  103. They say that in a century the population of Japan might fall to 80 million. Still plenty of people, I mean New Zealand is doing just fine with only about 5 million, and until recently Canada was doing great with 25 million. And it would only take a small uptick in confidence for the fertility rate to easily cancel out current declines… why force the issue?

    You will not want to live in Japan with 80 million people. Population pyramid inversion is not just about quantity. Basically, thanks to excellent healthcare and good lifestyles Japanese won’t die of normal stuff like hearth disease of cancer. But the longer their bodies function well, the higher the chances of their minds malfunctioning, stuff that we can’t cure. So they will get dementia, Alzheimers etc en masse.

    So of those 80 million, you are looking at millions of old demented zombies that you must take care of, and they have all the money and political power. It will be like Walking Dead except you will be forced to change adult diapers 24/7 and this will be your entire life, your entire future. It will be a nightmare. So younger Japanese are hiding out with their sex pillows.

  104. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    So of those 80 million, you are looking at millions of old demented zombies that you must take care of, and they have all the money and political power. It will be like Walking Dead except you will be forced to change adult diapers 24/7 and this will be your entire life, your entire future. It will be a nightmare. So younger Japanese are hiding out with their sex pillows.

    https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/2_Probabilistic%20Projections/1_Population/1_Total%20Population/Japan.png

    https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/2_Probabilistic%20Projections/2_Pop%20Percentages/Age%2070%20and%20over/Japan.png

  105. Well, I guess feudalism may have been peak civilization after all.

    We either rediscover how to confer status via family structure (feudalism did that via House allegiance and titles) or we will die out trying to become trannies just to be accepted in a local book club.

    This is also an answer to Fermi Paradox. Where are the aliens? They all died making lesbian art.

  106. Europe Europa says

    You sound like you have an idealised view of Scotland to me. The fact is Scotland, especially the major towns and cities, are widely known as having significantly worse alcohol and drug abuse problems than England and Glasgow at one point was the murder capital of Europe.

    The fact you compare Scotland with Scandinavia proves that you deluded because it is nothing like the Nordic countries. The notion that Scotland is more like Iceland and Norway than England, which I think is what you are implying, is laughable.

  107. Europe Europa says

    Scotland and Northern Ireland are not a sovereign states, therefore including them in a list of sovereign states is meaningless. I can’t see that there is any more logic to that than listing places like the Tuvan Republic, Yakutia, Catalonia and Bavaria separately.

    You have to compare like with like, comparing regions of different countries against sovereign states as if they are the same thing is absolutely meaningless. There’s certainly much more regional and cultural diversity in Russia than Britain, and yet Russia is treated as if everywhere is identical.

  108. Two new statistics should be developed for the purposes of national comparison:

    1.) gerontocratic index: measuring the average age of government leadership, perhaps with variants including the average age of bureaucrats, or perhaps age per unit pay on government paychecks in order to balance for power relationships.
    2.) gynocratic index: what percentage of leadership/bureaucrats is female

    I think we would be able to explain a lot of state dysfunction with these indices.

  109. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    Scotland and Northern Ireland are not a sovereign states, therefore listing them in a list of sovereign states is meaningless. I can’t see that there is any more logic to it than listing places the Tuvan Republic, Yakutia and Andalucia separately.

    I think the statistical authorities who carry out studies in Scotland and Northern Ireland are not the same as the ones in England and Wales due to those two nations getting devolved privileges. If you read BBC News, you may have noticed most statistics included in news reports concern England and Wales combined as opposed to the UK as a whole.

  110. The point is that they are different environments. Scotland is further away from London. Northern Ireland has always been an economically depressed area with its own unique recent history.

  111. Europe Europa says

    I’m pretty certain that Chechnya and Tuva are markedly different environments to Moscow/Western Russia with their own unique histories, yet that is rarely if ever reflected in stats to do with Russia.

    I find it irritating how the unity of Russia, and other countries, is treated as sacred, whereas people can deconstruct the UK at will.

  112. They were never below 2 TFR.

    Wrong.

    As for the rest of the comment, i do not agree with that, because the trend has been downward for everyone else – nearly two hundred countries, whether due to “crises” or nor crises. TFR dropped in almost all areas and countries due to different reasons, but nowhere else it managed to recover. Whether there were “crises” or not.

    In Israel, they managed to increase it for jews from 2,6 to 3.1. Again F you to the general trend, whether that of high fertility countries, or of low fertility countries, so it is a case that stands out.

    In Georgia, some claimed that religion was the reason.

    Some other central Asian countries managed to recover from drops too. These are all cases that deserve to be studied, there is always something new to be learned.

  113. Source – R. Lynn

    In the mid-19th century a number of biological and social scientists came to believe that the genetic quality of the populations of the Western world was deteriorating due to the relaxation of natural selection, the process by which nature eliminates the unfit in each generation by reducing their fertility and by early death.

  114. Canada’s TFR is at 1.47, but its annual population growth rate is at 1.2 percent, a lot higher than the US, I will leave it to the people here to do the math on how it is done, New Zealand’s TFR is at 1.64, but its annual population growth rate is at 2.0 percent, British Columbia’s TFR is a lot lower than Japan’s at 1.2, but its population is growing at an annual rate of 1.1 percent. So I think there is ready-made solution for Japan. Actually Japan is not that crowded up north, Hokkaido is pretty much empty, and its climate is no colder than Montreal or Ottawa.

  115. Even secular jews have the highest TFR in developed nations – 2.1 TFR is way lower for other developed secular populations. What will be the US TFR if you remove the religious ones, for example? Poor.

  116. So that indicates what is perhaps most specific to this thread: understanding the issues caused by the modern environment, requires modern solutions to it.

    The uniqueness of modernity is a self flattering illusion of modernity.

    Modernity is displaying the same patterns as all earlier forms of complex organization – a gradual rise in complexity, reaching a peak, then dysfunction, decline, and exhaustion. Its rather silly to think this isn’t a natural pattern that serves a function in the total economy of life (you rarely look at the total economy of life, Chieh)

    Arguably, from the perspective of lovers of cvilization, this is a good thing – when a particular form of civilization has exhausted its possibilities, it needs to die so that new combinations with new potentialities can come into being.

    It is only the fearful who cannot accept change, and the death of old, exhausted things, and the birth of new things.

    Civilizations decline because it takes a tremendous amount of effort to maintain and there is little good reason to do so. Eventually, people look around them and say, why must I lace so hard to maintain these grand, solid brick houses, when I can live at my leisure in a tent? Civilizations are sustained by some grand illusion that is sort of like a pyramid scheme- the illusion that all that hard work and sacrifice will have some massive payoff in the future. The illusion can only be sustained for so long- the payoff never comes.

    In fact, the origins of civilization appear to be coercion by a small group. Civilization is maintained under compulsion – originally by a small group, and later by a popular illusion – and so its periodic death is foreordained.

    But so is its periodic rise again, as mankind cannot be cured of illusion. Best, then, to see civilization as a shiny toy, and one gets bored with old toys and wants new ones.

    Adaptation comes in many forms and it is indeed natural to struggle. The wolf pack in peril does not accept death: it fights teeth and nail

    .

    Yes, raging at the dying of the light and all that. If it makes you happy.

    But the wise man understands that in the total economy of life, death is as important as life. In the total economy of the universe, Emptiness is as important as Being. In fact the two go together and therefore, nothing is to be feared.

    But you are a human being, and why adopt the perspective of the universe? Why adopt the perspective of God if you are just a man? Of the whole when you are just a fragment?

    One might continue living from the perspective of the fragment…

    As for animals, you overstate their attachment to life. An animal puts up a fight up to a point, but submits calmly when there is no hope. When it is time to die, a cat will walk quietly into the woods and curl up and wait for death. There does not appear to any anxiety or struggle against death.

  117. JohnPlywood says

    No dude, you’re confusing short 3-7 year trends in underdeveloped countries caused by economic chaos and large scale migrations, as happened in Kazakhstan, Mongolia, etc in the ’90s. What happened in the West/ex-Iron Curtain states and core East Asia, which has endured for over 40 years, is not related to momentary crises in Mongolia or Israel.

  118. As for continuing to work, a large proportion of people under 75, would actually prefer to continue working rather than being forced to retire at age 60 or 65, and anyway it is better for their cognitive health if they continue to work, although they may need to shift to a somewhat less stressful tempo, and if you look at medicines already on the market in China and iin Stage III clinical trials in Europe, then truly effective treatments for cognitive decline among older adults maybe really be around the corner.

  119. JohnPlywood says

    Secular Jews have had the lowest fertility of any group in America for over 100 years. American Jews as a whole were below replacement 55 years ago, have been ever since.

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/2061103?seq=1

  120. AlexanderGrozny says

    I have noticed Scots are becoming more like Estonians in this sense. Thinking they are “Nordic” or “Scandi” when everyone can clearly see they aren’t.

  121. TheStormisComing says

    I come from a Roman Catholic white British family in the North West of England (Lancashire), and looking at people I know I find it hard to believe that we have 1.4 children on average. My mother had 2 children, and most women over the age of 30 have 2 kids at least. There is one cousin of mine who is 31 with no kids, but another cousin of mine has 3 children.

    My grandparents replaced themselves, my parents replaced themselves and most cousins, uncles and aunts have at least 2 to 3 children, and one of them has given birth recently. None of us have big families, but when you look at our family tree we have replaced ourselves. None of us have one child, and for everyone who is childless, someone else has 3 children.

  122. AlexanderGrozny says

    American Ultra Orthodox Jews have an excellent fertility rate though.

  123. AlexanderGrozny says

    Because another commenter on this thread said this:

    Anyone can rail about coldhearted people letting grandma die, but is preserving grandma a few years worth one less grandchild, or one less great grandchild? What about 1/10 less of a child? There’s no such thing as free lunch.

    Based on that, he is suggesting that keeping older people alive depresses fertility rates but what I am saying is that is not necessarily true. Or rather, It doesn’t have to be true. You can have it both ways.

  124. Indeed, I’d speculate that the type of person who wants to kill grandma in order to have more resources is the type who is less likely to have children, also for more resources.

  125. I was talking about israeli secular jews. So yes, you can have 2.1 with modern developed urban secular population.

    As for the rest, considering the fact that TFR has been declining everywhere, in almost all countries, whether in western or in non-western countries, it is worth having a shot at what is going on in those countries where that did not happen. No one else managed to recover TFR as these several cases. It has been a general downtrend everywhere else, including in high fertility countries too.

    The clustering of these cases in Central Asia is particularly interesting. TFR rose in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, as well as Mongolia. This happened nowhere else in the world, whether in low fertility countries, or in high fertility countries. They are also unaffected by the recent last 10 year baby bust that affected almost everyone else in the world.

    So studying what is going on there is a good idea.

  126. Europe Europa says

    I find it odd how Scots will say they are “Celtic”, as opposed to the “Germanic” English, but then long for recognition as a Nordic country, ie as a Germanic country.

    Scots seem to be quite inconsistent with their identity, they pick and choose based on what suits them at any one time.

  127. Daniel Chieh says

    A lot of words to demonstrate factual illiteracy. Having been shown to be wrong before, AaronB rambles at length but has relied on a centrally incorrect thesis once again(among other things – the modern state is indeed unique, for better or worse, for one and thus why it presents novel challenges).

    Its rather silly to think this isn’t a natural pattern that serves a function in the total economy of life (you rarely look at the total economy of life, Chieh)

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201209115209.htm

    A new study at the University of Chicago has shown that elaborate protein structures accumulate over deep time even when they serve no purpose, because a universal biochemical property and the genetic code force natural selection to preserve them.

    In fact, complexity(as opposed to “simplicity of economy”) is natural and just constantly increases. Arguably there’s some subsidiary benefit to this as well – ants are an excellent example of an animal with vast quantities of relic genes that they sometimes call forth again as needed.

    https://phys.org/news/2012-01-supersoldier-ants-lab-reactivating-ancestral.html

    The results of the experiments suggest that even those species that do not produce supersoldiers must have been able to do so in the distant past, some 35 to 60 million years ago, and that they still retain the genetic information for supersoldier production that can be reactivated under certain environmental or nutritional states. The researchers say that retaining the ancestral genetic tools could be important for the evolution of new physical traits.

    But even if it is useless, the evidence shows that neutral mutations accumulate and complexity becomes necessary even when it serves no real purpose.

    To their surprise, they found that the ancient proteins functioned no differently when assembled into a dimer than if they had never evolved to dimerize at all. There was nothing useful or beneficial about forming the complex.

    The explanation for why the dimeric form of the receptor has persisted for 450 million years turned out to be surprisingly simple. “These proteins gradually became addicted to their interaction, even though there is nothing useful about it,” explained Hochberg, who is now a group leader at the Max Planck Institute in Marburg, Germany. “The parts of the protein that form the interface where the partners bind each other accumulated mutations that were tolerable after the dimer evolved, but would have been deleterious in the solo state. This made the protein totally dependent on the dimeric form, and it could no longer go back. Useless complexity became entrenched, essentially forever.”

    For someone who is constantly wrong, you like to state a lot of things. But, as the factual information on wolves demonstrate, the only one who is without hope and thus desperately trying to project his hopelessness and justification of his pitiful state(when not being an outright hypocrite) is an AaronB.

    Fortunately, he provides an purpose as a bad example for me to post interesting data unto when I shit upon him.

  128. RadicalCenter says

    Thank you for the cogent analysis, esp. your point about punishing EU debtors by rendering credit cards unworkable in their countries.

    China, however, could readily reward and sustain such EU debtors / seceders by directing a flood of tourist business their way. Tourists from germany and france, old countries whose native populations are getting even older and dying off, can very easily be dwarfed by chinese tourists, even if the chinese tourists might spend less on average.

  129. Your examples aren’t well chosen.

    For one, the ants no longer manifest a potential they once had. The second example 1) we cannot detect a function, but there may be one we don’t know about 2) future evolution may lead to reversal, or breakdown may occur on a larger timescale 3) complexity is not on the level of function – no new abilities gained. Is that complexity or just random organization (or for a gained function we cannot percieve)?

    The general biological picture clearly shows a pattern of growth and decay, and your odd outliers are ambiguous and inadequate to change that picture (clutching at straws).

    In any event, I’m quite prepared to admit that there are processes of growth that will continue till the earth gets destroyed. For instance, the accumulation of topsoil as more and more animals and plants die and become dust.

    But the final destruction of the earth, the final victory of entropy, is assured. The final de-complexifier 🙂

    Anyways, on the macro level, both biologically and socially, the pattern is growth and decay, in so many areas and in so many fields- with even existence itself finally canceled out by entropy – that I think we can make conclusions about the deep structure of reality. That, plus the fact that concepts come in logical pairs, embedded in the very structure of thought, seems really to clinch the deal (the last point is hard for most people to really understand).

    But I think I am in the presence of a religious ideologue here 🙂

    Its unfortunate because I don’t really want to take away your hope and consolation, your belief in progress. Most people cannot live without this belief in the modern world, and I absolutely encourage you to believe it if it brings you comfort and hope.

    Opinions like mine always had to be driven underground, as the dull bovine mainstream cannot handle it, and I should really be more circumspect and compassionate. Believe me, Daniel, I meet with lots of people like you in actual life, who who freak out at my acceptance of death.

    I need to work on a better way of expressing myself – I finally understand the Straussian idea of hidden meaning and veiled subtext. One cannot simply express oneself clearly among the masses.

  130. I was reading this recently published book over the Christmas holidays:

    Fr. Thomas Crean O.P. & Alan Fimister, Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy, editiones scholasticae, 2020

    It is an interesting guide to the traditional political philosophy of the Catholic Church. It seems this philosophy was officially put into temporary storage in the 1960s following the 2nd Vatican Council because of the number of ways in which it is at variance or in tension with the political order that became predominant following the end of WW2.

    One of the key ideas is that the family is the basis of both the social and political order and that ideally, only heads of families should be allowed to vote (however no responsible ruler should allow unmarried people cohabiting to vote). This was reflected in the 1933 Portuguese constitution, as an example, section III of that document is on ‘The Family’: At. 11 The state ensures the constitution and defence of the family as the basis of the conservation and development of the race, as the primary basis of education, of discipline and social harmony, and as the foundation of the whole political order by its representation in the parish and municipality’.

    These are important ways of defending any commonwealth against degenerate forms of government like pornocracy (rule by prostitutes or harlots, when political judgement is completely corrupted by lust) or theatocracy (when poets have corrupted the judgement of men by vicious music; generally when actors are able to convince people to believe anything no matter how shameless or bizarre).

  131. AlexanderGrozny says

    Britains fertility decline is driven by minority groups. White fertility is quite stable.

  132. RadicalCenter says

    I didn’t know that. The English apparently are typically heavily German, French, or Celtic genetically:

    https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/international/press-releases/DNA-of-the-nation-revealedand-were-not-as-British-as-we-think

    So I wonder whether the Scots, similarly, really are genetically quite Nordic Germanic; it would make some sense.

  133. JohnPlywood says

    Yes, the 76 ultra-orthodox Jews in America have been reproducing at an excellent rate for the last 30 years. It is rumored that their numbers could increase to 1000 by 2050, and that they may be able to acquire a Subway restaurant in Hoboken to reduce their dependency on welfare.

  134. AltanBakshi says

    They say that in a century the population of Japan might fall to 80 million.

    In 2050 it will be something like that, current estimation is that there will be population of 55 million in Japan in the year 2100.

  135. Daniel Chieh says

    For one, the ants no longer manifest a potential they once had. The second example 1) we cannot detect a function, but there may be one we don’t know about 2) future evolution may lead to reversal, or breakdown may occur on a larger timescale 3) complexity is not on the level of function – no new abilities gained. Is that complexity or just random organization (or for a gained function we cannot percieve)?

    The ants do in fact, manifest the function as needed. This is why I always mock your lack of imagination – even though in all fairness, I should be more gentle to someone with brain damage. When required, they do create “supersoldiers” but even when the function can’t easily manifest(like birds with teeth), the existence of relic genetic code means that its easier for it to reacquire than for it to be come to being del novo. The comparison to civilizational concepts such as money is appropriate. So as long as memory(and writing) remain, concepts remain and manifest sooner rather than later.

    And secondarily, I’m sure that 420 million years isn’t enough time to detect a trend(/sarc). Further trying to niggle and define “complexity” doesn’t change that it is factually more complex. Arguably it can promote more function, but that’s hypothetical: we can in fact see more complexity.

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-surprising-origins-of-evolutionary-complexity/

    The scenario that Gray proposes for the evolution of RNA editing goes like this: an enzyme mutates so that it can latch onto RNA and change certain nucleotides. This enzyme does not harm the cell, nor does it help it—at least not at first. Doing no harm, it persists. Later a harmful mutation occurs in a gene. Fortunately, the cell already has the RNA-binding enzyme, which can compensate for this mutation by editing the RNA. It shields the cell from the harm of the mutation, allowing the mutation to get passed down to the next generation and spread throughout the population. The evolution of this RNA-editing enzyme and the mutation it fixed was not driven by natural selection, Gray argues. Instead this extra layer of complexity evolved on its own—“neutrally.” Then, once it became widespread, there was no way to get rid of it.

    This is in fact to some extent self evident by the existence of mitochondria. Not that you would know what that is.

    But the final destruction of the earth, the final victory of entropy, is assured. The final de-complexifier

    And that’s silly. First, that would contradict your own theory of cycles(everything progresses one way now?). Secondarily, we don’t know if the universe isn’t actually more mysterious or cyclic(Sir Penrose had the idea rather recently that the Big Bang is not the beginning of the universe – https://physicsworld.com/a/new-evidence-for-cyclic-universe-claimed-by-roger-penrose-and-colleagues/).

    But most of us, it shows that you have a tragic adherence to the arrow of time. And that’s not something that on a total level we understand at all, and indeed there’s significant evidence against it via retrocausation.

    Its unfortunate because I don’t really want to take away your hope and consolation, your belief in progress. Most people cannot live without this belief in the modern world, and I absolutely encourage you to believe it if it brings you comfort and hope.

    No worries. Its clear that your imagination is as poor as your reading comprehension and evidently, your self-reported communication skills. The desperate religious ideologue is no one but yourself. It is actually rather sad, the wailing desperado who keeps crying out “all is pointless” and hopes to shore up the darkness in his life through social proof on an internet site. Fitting, but tragic.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails

    And yet it is terribly amusing in the end, really, of someone like you who likes to talk about “nature” but has the most profound ignorance of biology. But you are in good company there with other charlatans who need to be exposed for their foolishness. You’re both so mentally uncreative and so remarkably stupid that you can’t realize it, and so accuse it unto others.

    Do spend more time alone. Maybe you will rediscover the ability to think again then.

  136. The comparison to civilizational concepts such as money is appropriate. So as long as memory(and writing) remain, concepts remain and manifest sooner rather than later.

    Sure, I have no problem with that. The capacity for civilization never goes away (at least on timescales we are aware of) – but interest in creating a civilization rises and falls. One might say “need”, but since civilization is complexity with no purpose- life was in every way better as hunter gatherer- interest seems better.

    One might apply this to all human traits including violence- capacity for violence is always there, but it only gets expressed as needed (mediated by perception, beliefs, etc).

    And that’s silly. First, that would contradict your own theory of cycles(everything progresses one way now?). Secondarily, we don’t know if the universe isn’t actually more mysterious or cyclic(Sir Penrose had the idea rather recently that the Big Bang is not the beginning of the universe

    Not a contradiction, because I believe that just as the universe ends, it will be created again in an endless cycle of creation and destruction. I believe the Hindu myth of cyclical creation and destruction, across infinity – the expansion and contraction of Brahama – gets at the fundamental nature of our universe. As I said, concepts appear only in logical pairs- Being and Nothing are not opposites, but different aspects of one thing.

    As for Penrose’s suggestion- I’m a for it. The mysterious “something” that was before the Big Bang – the universe percievable to our senses and minds – is totally in line with every mystic who ever lived.

    So thanks for that 🙂

    But most of us, it shows that you have a tragic adherence to the arrow of time. And that’s not something that on a total level we understand at all, and indeed there’s significant evidence against it via retrocausation

    I don’t believe time is real – it is merely a category of our minds that we impose on experience, as Kant showed. Retrocausation is totally plausible to me.

    In a sense, I believe everything happens “all at once”, and there is no real future or past.

    Thanks for these stimulating and interesting reflections!

    It is actually rather sad, the wailing desperado who keeps crying out “all is pointless” and hopes to shore up the darkness in his life through social proof on an internet site. Fitting, but tragic.

    Fair enough, but I never said all is pointless- I said all is unserious. Life has a very real point – fun 🙂

    Just, life has no serious or important point. It has no goal or purpose. Nothing is at stake.

    As Heraclitus said, it is a boy playing with marbles.

    To you, life is a compulsion – science, knowledge, civilization matter, and hence one is compelled to pursue them. To me, they are games, and pursued freely, out of zest. I would argue, that life as compulsion is not worth living – and the best discoveries of civilization were made out of a sense of play.

    Low civilization still languishes under a sense of compulsion – high civilization, like the one that characterized Europe from roughly 1500 till 1950, recovers the innocence of the child, and plays.

    When science was a game of amateurs, great things were discovered. Today, science is done out of a sense of compulsion – it is an institution, a bureaucracy. And nothing is discovered.

  137. Athletic and Whitesplosive says

    All the fertility “fixes” on offer have been marginal rewards for extra childrent, pretty thin gruel. Given the incredible ammount basically every country wastes on totally stupid shit, we could certainly do much more. Having a posterity to continue your nation’s existence (or at the very least, for cynical self centered idiots, to have someone around to take care of you when you’re old) is pretty damn important, so why not have more extravagant rewards for people who reproduce at a greater rate?

    Or better yet, why not do that, and also punish people who live a sterile life until 50 without any history of fertility issues? The justification is totally clear: taking care of your old ass is a burden on the infrastructure and labour of the next generation of our nation whom you wilfully didn’t contribute to, so you’re giving up X% of your pension (or net worth, whatever) to make up for it.

    Given a significant reward for fecundity and an impending penalty for sterility would certainly make more than a small difference imo.

  138. Donald A Thomson says

    Iran is below replacement rate. [email protected]

  139. RJ Macready says

    They should not be killed ofcourse but sedated/medicated. They are a burden on the system and do not contribute! Its a simple fact. I think a universal old age home concept should be implemented and everyone above a certain age sent there

  140. Europe Europa says

    The native German fertility rate must be significantly lower than the native English rate, because Germany has at least as many non-whites if not more and yet still has a much lower fertility rate.

    I find it surprising there’s such a difference, because I would have thought socially and culturally native English and Germans would be similar and among the most comparable countries.

  141. ‘The native German fertility rate must be significantly lower than the native English rate, because Germany has at least as many non-whites if not more and yet still has a much lower fertility rate.’

    Not necessarily. For example, Germany has a lot of Turks, and Turkey’s fertility rate is 2.1, which is below the world average of 2.4.

  142. Islam? As for Mongolia it basically is at the level of Indonesia.

  143. Daniel Chieh says

    Thanks for these stimulating and interesting reflections!

    This is why I’m paid for my awareness. Naturally, you owe me both time and money.

    The rest of your prattle remains the same demonstrations of severe incapacity. Do spend more time alone and work on your problems, though neurological damage can be intractable at times, the brain can reroute and recover to some extent.

  144. Has anyone done surveys on the TFR of religious vs. agnostic and non-religious right wingers? I wonder what the difference would look like.

  145. Looking at the attitude of the White people here towards elderly people, maybe it is a good idea to have retirement home employees come from developing countries after all?

  146. Even if your fertility is low, you still cheat the system by bringing in lots of immigrants like what Australia or Canada is doing, and keep the over 65 population at a manageable level, plus a lot of people are really able to work for way past retirement age.

  147. Another matter is that compared as you can see here, White people are simply less dutiful than Asians in taking care of their parents and elderly people. Shipping elderly people in retirement homes is not really seen as a morally acceptable thing to do in China, unlike what White people do in Western countries.

  148. A lot of things one does in life are really down to duty anyway, not because one does it out of happiness, children go to school and study because they have to do it, not because they want to do it, part of the reason why people have to work is because they have to, although part of the reason is because they also want to.

  149. Shortsword says

    Don’t make a new comment for each paragraph. Just write it all in one comment.

  150. The edit window? This is a thread about the lack of children, and many in the altright bemoan the lack of children, how many people here have a lot of children? How may children does Jared Taylor or Andrew Anglin or Moldbug have?

  151. FYI: my plan for the elderly would be very humane. Though, it would require a more rooted society and many changes. I would, for instance, encourage babies to be brought to old people to see, which they really like – at least, the moral ones.

    But I’m afraid some boomers are beyond redemption. They are very materialistic and just want to grind the young into grist leavened with Africans to facilitate their hedonistic, empty lifestyles.

    These I would send to a boomer island. (perhaps one of those atolls the atomophobes so fear.) They would be prevented from ever seeing anyone without a wrinkle again, and I would not allow them to even keep mammals as pets. But, out of compassion, I would allow them to keep snakes and insects, which they would also have to kill and eat for sustenance.

    BTW, Jared Taylor, Andrew Anglin, Moldbug would have to be insane to talk about their children.

  152. AltanBakshi says

    Finns are not Germanic…

  153. I would, for instance, encourage babies to be brought to old people to see, which they really like

    Great idea. Old folks need to have their sense of power and importance restored. Selecting babies which live and which is harvested for fife extending potions would be perfect for it.

  154. Yes it is the complete fertility rate which determines population replacement under stable population theory.

    If it’s interesting to mention the historical context. “Total fertility rate” was a common sense estimator, introduced by Richard Boeckh in Prussian Statistics Bureau in 1880s. The procedure was popularized by one of his assistants, Richard Kuczynski, who worked for Brookings Institute in 1920s and League of Nations in the 1930s. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2016/09/01/kuczynski-at-lse/

    Presumably, it has become popular in government offices due to its advantages that it can be produced instantly, and annually, by ordinary clerks, so long as there is some reliable records in a country.

    I am not in any way a knowledgeable person about demography. But my amateur assumption is that demographers like such a crude estimator, because it is rapid and transparent, that you can (at least retrospectively) understand or guess almost quickly why the estimation goes wrong.

    In the 21st century, it seems to have become popular with politicians and journalists, because it gives some real-time story, and on annual basis, this estimator waves up and down, above and below the real line, as it assumes a constant age-specific fertility rate.

    As a cynic, I would say it is more excitable estimator is popular with journalists, as they can write more dramatic articles as the line rises and falls from year to year, generating annual clickbait, while politicians can use some of the confusion that their policies (e.g. “maternity capital”) ability to change timing of births will be equivalent as raising fertility.

  155. This discussion about “old vs young”, as if some kind of unbridgeable categories, doesn’t make much sense considering how short our lives are, and that we all run (to the extent we don’t die prematurely) between the two states within a very short time.

    A few seconds ago, we were 5 years old at school, and sitting at the carpet, looking at our attractive young teacher, while some other child is throwing their snot at us. Blink your eyes. The next moment we will be pensioners, starting to enjoy your retirement years, and the attractive teach of our memory will have died years ago.

    Externally there might appear to be dramatic change between the baby and the grandfather, but internally your soul doesn’t feel any different, and neither should you feel any different, as you will have transformed from one to the other before you had an opportunity to understand it, and it happens so fast.

    Perhaps if we were a different kind of animal which lives for thousands of years, and had an opportunity to explore a sufficient part of the world, or to realize many ambitions, (or even read more than a couple bookshelves before we die), then we could talk about “old people” sacrificing themselves for the “young people”.

    But life here is so short and limited, that most feel like “life is just beginning”, by the time it is ending. The idea that old people should be pushing ourselves off the cliff after we experienced only a few seconds here is a little strange, or as senseless as a mayfly, who can have a day of flying around before the next generation.

  156. Women born in Germany from 1900-1920s, were already below significantly replacement rate.

    By comparison, English women were higher across the 20th century.

    Here is showing fertility from year of birth of the women.

    (Note that the replacement rate was higher than the current 2,1 in the first half of the 20th century, due to the higher mortality rates).

    https://i.imgur.com/e7JHMIS.jpg

  157. Your sensible argument will fall on deaf ears unfortunately. Old, young, boomers, generation X or Z are part of nowadays accepted meme patterns by resentful not too smart young people. This is another fragmentation in society as if race and gender fragmentations were not enough. Whoever is in position of doing the divide et impera must be pleased. These kinds of divisions appeal to simple minds. A comix version of ersatz Marxism. The simple minds are of rightoid orientation because the divisions are biological as defined by a biological clock. The leftoids come up with more sophisticate abstractions.

    The degree of resentment and envy in the songbird comments was very disconcerting.

  158. Broadly speaking, I dislike a lot of these generational terms, like “gen Y” and “gen Z”, as they seem like superficial marketing terms. I also think that a lot of generational conflict seems to be a modern cliche, driven mostly by superficial thinkers, who take their identify from the pop culture of their youth.

    And I honestly think that Boomers are blamed a bit too much. Sure, a lot of them are careless and selfish, but that is true of any generation. The main problem has always been a bad political system, IMO, and the way that today’s corruption naturally layers on past corruption.

    But there really is no getting around the fact that the US and many other societies are tooled for the gratification of the elderly, at a severe cost to the young. I’m not sure that it is as true in Russia, but in the US, it is practically true on every level, here. Why is healthcare so expensive? Because of government programs instituted for the elderly injected countless billions into the industry. Who gloats about stratospheric housing prices? Etc. Who demands getting more social security benefits than they paid into the system?

    A lot of these things are part of some severe economic deformation. Those who are young now will not benefit from them. They were only possible to institute with a certain age pyramid structure. As it is with collapsing TFR, they are unsustainable, and we will have to re-evaluate the way we are doing things. That is my only point.

    I don’t think we necessarily live in an ideal society for the elderly or that we can’t show elders more respect. I think multiculturalism inevitably results in these divisions.

  159. I’m perpetually surprised by how enthralled you are to Freud.

    Actually, I don’t envy old people, at all – they’ve lived through the full transformation of West, up till now. When I was born, American cities were already inhabited by hordes of Africans, and we were already rolling downhill. Europe was the big surprise for me.

  160. From last year but I missed it: China overstating births and total population.

    https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/01/28/report-chinas-birthrate-already-record-low-seriously-overestimated/

    This is a write up of a paywalled SCMP article.

  161. in Taiwan deaths outnumber births, the population in China will start to decline in a few years and Latin America as whole is below replacement rate

  162. Muslim majority countries like Iran and Turkey have below replacement fertility , even in Saudi Arabia fertility is in decline…

  163. How about young people stop blaming older people for their problems and keep on passing that moral buck, they may deny it but that is what they are basically doing. And Social security is not actually that much of a problem in the US compared to Germany, because of a young median age due to relatively high TFR and immigration, most of the housing stock in cities like Toronto and Vancouver that were bought when they were still cheap back in the 80s and late 90s were actually bought by Gen X people. 80 percent of people for fought in Vietnam were volunteers and not draftees, which speaks against stereotypes of boomer selfishness, and before millennials and gen y starts pointing the finger, their generation is hardly any better and arguably much worse. And going by the same logic of finger pointing and passing the moral buck by the people here, whatever the faults of boomers should be the fault of the silents and the WW2 generation, and whatever the fault of the WW1 generation can maybe be blamed on the Hundred Years War generation or something.

  164. If anything compared to places like South Korea, China, Japan, or Southeast Asia, I would say that discrimination against the elderly and ageism is actually a major problem in Western societies.

  165. If anything Western society actually puts too much importance on the opinions of the youth and the 18 to 35 age category, in that their opinion carries too much weight in terms of deciding what policies should be set for the whole of society, and devalues the views of older people, if not the voting age would not be 18 and would instead be 25 or 30. And society would just say that people under 35 are stupid and their views on things like racism and LGBTQIQOQOQO should count a lot less than the views of elders in society. And Western culture tends to be obsessed with youth or staying young. Regardless of how elderly people are well off financially, socially they are actually treated very poorly compared to Confucian countries, or even Southeast Asian countries.

  166. I do not see any Chinese TV shows portraying old people in the same manner that grandpa Simpson is portrayed in the Simpsons.

  167. For example, I do not think it would be acceptable in Chinese culture for Trump to mock Biden for his alleged dementia in the way that he did, since it would be insulting to older people.

  168. AlexanderGrozny says

    Åland Islanders and other Swedish speaking Finns are.

  169. Maybe make all forms of artificial contraception and abortion illegal.

  170. There are more than 600,000 ultra-orthodox Jews in the USA already, and that number doubles every 20 years.

  171. Europe Europa says

    I know, but Scots don’t compare themselves with Finns but with Norwegians and Danes typically.

  172. AltanBakshi says

    So USA has then a better case for being Hispanic than Finland has being Germanic. I dont get your point, theres also many Finns in Sweden, lots of Finns and Sami in Norway.

  173. AltanBakshi says

    Still Nordic≠Germanic

  174. Joe Paluka says

    The major cities of Scotland have all the same problems that you will find in any major city in the world if you want to find them. If you go into Glasgow and hang around the downtown and go to drinking establishments, you will find drunks and prostitutes, if you go to Glasgow and hang around the parks, museums and art galleries you will have a totally different view of the city. Glasgow is a city of dirt and grit and a city of fine buildings and high culture, it all depends on what you are looking for. The same would go for any Amsterdam or Stockholm, if you want to find the drunks, druggies or prostitutes, you can find them in the right part of town.
    The north of Scotland and especially the Orkney and Shetland Islands share a lot of history and culture with Scandinavia. Large parts of Western and Northern Scotland were colonized by the Vikings and have left a lasting genetic and cultural footprint. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16050269

  175. Joe Paluka says

    OK, we’ll let you be the first to send all your older relatives there and of course, when the the time comes, yourself.