The Fertility Apocalypse w/ Samo Burja

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TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Intro
(00:29) Demographic challenges and fertility crisis
(02:07) Global fertility trends and anomalies
(07:50) The impact of modernity on fertility
(14:04) Future population projections and concerns
(16:52) Sponsors: Dealcraft | Notion
(18:59) Life expectancy and healthspan
(23:44) Potential solutions and interventions
(31:03) The case for family tax breaks
(32:20) The implications of declining fertility rates
(35:07) Urbanization and population shifts
(38:30) The future of industrial society
(41:08) AI and human extinction scenarios
(44:02) Cultural and political dynamics of fertility
(52:52) Innovative solutions to population decline
(01:00:09) The ethics of genetic engineering
(01:01:30) Wrap

[gmh]

The fun part of this is most people don't care about human extinction.

[Fredosphere]

Samo Burja is very persuasive to me because he speaks so dispassionately. I haven't heard him cover a topic yet (and he covers a lot!) where he tips his hand. I'm fascinated because its so hard to guess his biases.

[castirondude]

The population crash is something we HAVE to go through, I think. The corporate and government bureaucracies have made society SO inefficient, very few people are doing actual useful work. In fact the bureaucracies PREVENT people from doing useful work. The establishment will not give up their power, not until the system simply cannot sustain itself anymore and we HAVE to change.

[angels]

This was such a brilliant interview. Thank you

[castirondude]

Aging: Many people can continue to function well into their 60s and 70s, however new ideas mostly come from young men up to about 27 years old. The fact that people are expected to just study up to that age has really reduced the scientific and engineering breakthroughs. If we add to that a society where the basic infrastructure is crumbling, technological progress will be zero, in fact it will be hard to just hold onto what we already have. We're already seeing this today, many of the scientific breakthroughs of the 60's have sparsely been repeated.

[danielgrayling]

We can all look at our own lives and see a large number of show stopping reasons why we are personally not have having any children.

[KevTheImpaler]

I think one of the big differences is that in the west there are very few big families now. Most of my great-uncles never reproduced and most of my great-aunts only had two, but I had one great-aunt who had a dozen. Nobody has that many children these days.

[fryguy]

The problem is that our civilization lost its soul. Many can point to many reasons to why, but truly, we have lost that fire of life in ourselves.

[Peter-MH]

It’s a normal part of the civilisational cycle - look at the ruins of once thriving Roman, Greek, Mayan cities. Soon we will see people all move to cities as services are more centralised and smaller areas are abandoned, but when population levels become so low that services like power and water break down, people will move back to the countryside to grow food and have fresh water, then slowly the cycle of growth will restart.

[RedFishBlueFish-sihe]

The real issue driving this globally is not that women have so many other opportunities. It's that children are no longer beneficial to male resource production, they are just costs. Marriages aren't forming because women have lost their evolutionary strategy of trading children to the male, which added to his resources, for access to his resources for life. When children became a cost and not additive to the male's resources, females were forced to switch to direct resource production. The biological truth we are struggling with is that children require a union between a man and a woman, and that union occurs as a result of that trade. When women then seek their own direct resources, it all collapses. It's a problem in the evolutionary development of the species. We need to direct all of our efforts of getting men to marry. But that is ony going to happen if children are valuable to men. Which means marriage on the partnership model is fundamentally not aligned with fertility. That's why it's happening globally regardless of culture.

[angels]

I thoroughly enjoyed this discussion. Thank you

[brycemckay]

I’m almost 80 and still working full time.

[nworks]

1:00:07 Samo sums up the depth and complexity of the issue here. Very scary and chilling realizations on state Central planning of genetics.

[jackoward]

It's community, or lack thereof. If you feel like you have a supportive community around you, you feel good about starting a family. Dunno if any studies have been done on that, but would love to see

[samiamgreeneggsandham]

I can’t see the ideas later in the talk happening in China. The party-state is very hostile toward surrogacy, and assisted reproductive technologies are legal only for married women. I believe the party state will force social re-engineering before attempting the kind of technological measures described. The familial mindset is very strong, and there is broad recognition that the fall in fertility is due to a breakdown in the courting market and resulting collapse of marriage rates.

[scallamander]

A world inherited by the Amish may not be such a bad thing

[sashadence]

I think it's simple. When the sexual revolution and feminism hit, it seemed all so liberating. What happened in the '70's onward was how hard it is to be pregnant, give birth, lactate, raise a toddler, maintain a household and also have a fulltime career. Then divorce relaxing. So women knew that husbands/fathers could leave and then single motherhood . Recipe for exhaustion, poverty and kids going nuts. Raising children is *work*. This seems to be difficult to understand. It is not compatible with a demanding career. But then, women got forced to work. It was/is no longer an option. All girls know they must have a career/job. If that is non-negotiable and pregnancy is negotiable, what is going to give since they compete with each other for the same time, the same energy, the same resources. Modernity requires that women work. women do not have the choice not to work - not really. At the very least, they now get stigmatised for it if they are 'able' to care-give fulltime. But without husbands, fathers, a family wage, children are exhausting and scary. The modern world does not prioritise them. In fact, it prioritises everything except children. But it isn't rocket science. Bottom line. Family formation is hard, even when its easy, and is not not not compatible with one, let alone two full time careers. In all this, it is the kids who get screwed.

[elzoog]

I think what he's not taking into account is that most people don't plan to have children. Most people simply get horny and then "Oops she's pregnant. I guess I better step up and be a parent"

[Ruth-osmi]

Population collapse. . .
Good : For families.
Bad : For corporations.

[LadyMarigoldWithers]

I didn’t have children because I thankfully had the choice not to. It’s that simple.