{ "episodeId": "SLP592", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "daniel_hess": { "name": "Daniel Hess", "role": "guest", "tag": "DANIEL" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:12", "start": 11.67, "text": "Hi everyone, and welcome back to Stephan Livera podcast, brought to you by Swann dot com, the best place to buy Bitcoin. Today we're gonna be talking about the global fertility crisis with my guest, his handle is at more births, Daniel Hess. Daniel has been writing some interesting stuff on X, and I thought it'd be great to have a chat with him. With him on the podcast. So first of all, welcome to the show, Daniel." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "00:33", "start": 32.76, "text": "Oh, thank you. It's wonderful to be here. and I'm, I'm very excited to, to talk about this topic, the most-- in my opinion, the most important under-discussed topic, we, we've got in the world today." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:43", "start": 43.01, "text": "Yeah, certainly there are, let's say some big, well-known people talking about it, people like Elon Musk are very vocal about the whole, fertility crisis, and, I guess let's hear it from you." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00", "start": 60.16, "text": "The world population now is eight point one billion or around that, and yeah, maybe it's gonna grow a bit and then start falling. What's the big, what's the big deal?" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "01:10", "start": 69.93, "text": "Okay, here I'm gonna share something just With your viewers here. Great. so this is a map, as you can see, so in, in red are all the countries that are below replacement fertility. So, so just a little background, we regard fertile-- replacement fertility as approximately, two point one births per woman. It can be a little bit variable in, i-- you know, whether it be a country like China with a one that ha-- you know, that has a, a slight gender imbalance or a place where there's high infant deaths, but in general, two point one, is re-regarded as replacement fertility. So we see that Almost every country in the world now is, is below replacement. Almost every country in the world, and that's just really shocking. Because, I mean, you have countries like India is below replacement. Most people assume that, that a country like India has very high birth rates. That is no longer true. Virtually every country in South America is now below replacement. So we, we have some incredibly it's, it's an incredibly shocking fact that most people don't realize is that almost the entire planet, with the exception of the continent of Africa and, some middle, middle eastern nations and some nations of Central Asia Are below replacement already. This is, a-a-and, and this, these, these numbers are falling fast all over the world. So I'm gonna show you another Seeing in just a minute here, this is, this is going to be a table of, some of the fertility rates that we're seeing. Now, this is, this is by the wonderful account, birth gauge, so we can see what some of the fertility numbers look like. And so you can see in Europe, almost every European country is far below replacement. I know this table's a little bit dense, but if you look over here East Asian countries are, are just, have, have calamitously low fertility. For example, South Korea is, was at point seven two births per woman in, in twenty twenty-three, and it's trending even lower. China is Around one birth per woman. So for the South Korean rate, that means that every generation will be only one third the size of the generation that came before it. So That means, and this is a, a point that some people have made, for one hundred people in a generation today, you may have something like ten grandchildren and about three great-grandchildren. So that's just, a, a cataclysmic collapse in some of these East Asian countries. Europe is You know, people may think that this is a, a white problem, but it's a global problem, and, and, and, and, and Europeans aren't the worst case. The, the, the, the worst case, in terms of ultra low fertility is actually East Asia. And, and s-- you know, also very interestingly, there's some, South American countries that are showing extremely low rates, like below one, like Chile, who, who would have-- Chile is projected to be at point eight Eight nine, this, so just incredibly low numbers." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:44", "start": 284.48, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "04:45", "start": 284.8, "text": "Okay," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:45", "start": 285.08, "text": "so great. So look, let's spell that out for listeners. What is the actual implication then? What, what will it mean for those future generations if they are going to be a lot smaller?" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "04:57", "start": 297.42, "text": "Well, I, I think, I think that it's, it's gonna be very cata- very difficult and very catastrophic economically for For many countries. And, you know, you, you, if you can imagine, here I'll just give you a few examples. pro- in a, in a place that is depopulating The value of property can go essentially to zero. I mean, you know, for an average property anyway. So, so for example, we see even places like, like Detroit, today, Detroit, Michigan, United States, that has been depopulating, you know, you can You can get houses for hundreds of dollars, or, or in rural Japan, which has been depopulating, there are houses that That are basically given away for free to anyone who will take them. So, so just, that's just one example, but, but if there aren't enough people to, to, you know, buy all the houses, then property goes to essentially to zero in depopulating places. Or for, at least for the average property. I mean, there might be some select properties that people compete for, but, you know, and, and just imagine that, imagine that across all manner of assets. So here's another there's another thing that I, that I want to, share as well, which is, here, what, what I'm, what I'm going to show you now Is, the relationship between, patenting and fertility, w-which is the, so actually, th-this is a, a look at patents Per million residents on the x-axis and fertility rate on the y-axis. So, what do you see? And just for the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:49", "start": 409.31, "text": "audio listeners, basically you've got, you know, in the bottom right, you've got like the South Koreas and Japan's of the world that have a lot of patents, but very low fertility rate, and then you've got-- I mean, you've got a big spread there, but you've got sort of, the United States has a relatively high, patent rate, but also low fertility. and so, yeah Call out on the chart for the audio listeners." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "07:13", "start": 433.47, "text": "Oh, sure, oh sure. I mean, this is, this is something we see, i-is that, you know, the most innovative countries, the countries that are s-at the center of the global economy. You know, all have very low fertility. You know, United States is, is not the worst of the worst, but, you know, countries like, like Germany, China, Japan, South Korea especially, just very low fertility. A-and so what this means is the fertility crisis, the, the low birth rate crisis hits the hardest, kind of at the core of economies. And we, we talk about, the, the future of artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence is gonna save the economy, and it's gonna be our, our one wondrous, amazing future, right? who, who, what is the-- what country is the number one, the-- there, there's two countries that are, that are, that are the number one and number two producers of, of the chips used for AI. Do you know what those are?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:08", "start": 488.19, "text": "well, I'm guessing Taiwan and South Korea, I don't know." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "08:11", "start": 490.55, "text": "Yeah, yeah, and I, I, I don't, I don't-- Taiwan may not be on this map, but it is, well below, one, for, for its TFR. So, so the-- these countries that are we rely on, you know, so strongly for the, the, the most essential, highest technologies that we have are, are the very countries that are, that are facing demographic collapse most quickly." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:34", "start": 513.51, "text": "Yeah, interesting. And so look, I-- In the, in a sense, I would, you know, I, I see myself as, you know, in favor of nativism, but I can imagine we're seeing a lot of people who are, for various reasons, they're not, they're not as, motivated by this, or maybe they see it like they can't afford to have children, or maybe they're just sort of, maybe it's more selfish, they're just like, \"I'm just gonna live my life and whatever happens after I'm gone, too bad. \" You know, that seems to be," }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "09:06", "start": 545.94, "text": "Yeah, I mean, the, that's, yeah, the, the, the mindset, you know, certainly it used to be that people would, you know, do the thing that they liked to do, and, and, and babies would come naturally, and, and so, it, there, you didn't have to have Kind of a, a strong decision process necessarily to have children. You just, you, you just d-did what, what, what your, your urge has told you to do, and, and, and, and family would result. So, so we're in a, in a completely new paradigm now where, you need a much stronger, you know, cultural aspect, you know, driving you to have children otherwise, Otherwise, people will, will, will tend to have very low fertility." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:51", "start": 590.61, "text": "Yeah. So that gets to, I guess what we're getting, what we're trying to answer here is, what are some of the causes? Now, I've heard lots of different answers for this. Some of it is, okay, birth control, no fault divorce, cultural issues. Is it, y-you know, there's kind of all the, is it economic problems that people can't afford to? Is it density? Is high density makes it harder to have children? Like, these are some of the ideas Your finger at what are some of the key causes of this? What do you think they are?" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "10:21", "start": 620.63, "text": "Yeah, so, wonderful question, and I think, I think, there's a lot of factors, and we shouldn't think of there's just one. But, but there are, I, I would say there are about four big ones. So I would say, you've got marriage is, is a huge one. So, the decline in marriage is, i-is, is driving a lot of that, or also later marriage. And then religiosity, the decline in Big driver. Another driver is just, you know, the simple, pro-natal attitude or anti-natal attitude. I mean, the, the, the idea that a lot of people have in their heads that, that because of the climate, it's bad to have children is impacting things greatly. And another, another point, as you mentioned, is, is density. So, so people have fewer children in, in, I, in, in cities, they have fewer children, in high-rise apartments, things like this. so that, those are the, those are the four biggest factors, and then there's a lot of, you know, smaller factors, but, but if, if, you know, i-it's good to, think that the, just keep in mind the, these, these largest factors, because those are the, those are the kind of the biggest engines, and I can, I can s-share some charts, you know, demonstrating some of that if you'd like. yeah, sure. So let's, let's see that, yeah. Sure, sure. So let's, so the first one I mentioned is marriage. So let's, let's have a look at that. So here we see, these are a couple of charts that I made, and, and it's-- I, I'm sorry if it's kind of small, I'll try to, you know, zoom in a little bit, but the first one is You know, the marriage rates- This is American states, isn't it? Yeah. This is, this is for US, you, you, for US states. So there's 50 of them, so you, it gives you a nice chart here, and, so you can see that the states- The, where people are more likely to marry, for different cultural reasons, tend very strongly to have a higher, birth rate. So i-in theory, you don't have to be married to have children, but in practice, that's what people do. And, and, and, and, and, and for all the talk that marriage is outdated, marriage doesn't matter anymore, actually, I would say marriage matters now more than ever because people, You know, don't have children unless they choose to, unless they want to, and, if, if they don't, if they don't choose it, then they're not going to-- or if the, if the conditions aren't exactly right, then people won't have children. And this is, this is actually a big cause of the collapse in fertility in South America, because South America, and also Europe actually, they, they have much lower rates of marriage, and, and now that birth control is getting really, really good, you know, it's almost perfect and, and long lasting" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "13:10", "start": 790.22, "text": "It's, that, that much. There, there's a whole, a whole range of other, long-term, birth control that are, used that are much more-- a-and so the result is that, is that actually births outside of marriage are, are dropping precipitously, and, and so what you're left with is only births within marriage, actually. So marriage matters more than ever for fertility. And so since marriage has been dropping a lot, then, quite naturally, fertility has been dropping a lot. And here's, I'll, I'll show you marriage itself, but also marriage age. So here we can see the older you get, you-- the older you are when you get married, the fewer children that you have. So that's, that's another thing. It's not just- Yeah, pretty" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:51", "start": 830.54, "text": "obvious really." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "13:52", "start": 831.94, "text": "It's not just marriage, but it's actually young marriage. So, you know, people who are-- if you're dating and, and, you know, checking people out, you know, until, until you're thirty-five, you're nearly out of time if you wait until You know, a-and, and also fertility itself, or f-fecundability is the actual word for how easy it is to get pregnant. And, and it, it's dramatically harder to get pregnant at You know, a-a-at even thirty five, then twenty five, a-and by the time you're forty, it's, i-it's quite difficult for most people. So, so you have to, so The p- there are people have long educations and then they wanna find themselves, they wanna get established in their careers, do a hundred things, and, you know, by the time they get around to having a family, you know, for a lot of people, the, the time may have run out. And, you know, one thing to keep in mind is that it's not just that people don't want children, p- i- people ha-want a lot more children than they're actually having. So so that, that's something to keep in mind, it's not just that nobody wants children anymore, but, but there's a lot of life factors that, that come into play." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:04", "start": 903.51, "text": "Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of questions and points that kind of come up from there, but I think the one interesting one to me is just that culturally, people aren't pushed to marry and have children young nowadays, right? And now there seems to be this kind of culture of delay it until you have a stable career Where you kind of think that seems to be the mindset." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "15:27", "start": 926.76, "text": "That, that is a big thing, and, you know, one cultural shift I mentioned, religion is, is another one, and here I can, I can show another, another chart here. This, this one is by Lyman Stone, he's a wonderful demographer, who, who provides so much research in this, but, but here you can see the people who, Never attend church, this is church or religious service, I should say, of, of some kind. People who attend a religious service, at least once a month have Vastly more children, than, than people who attend sometimes, who, who have a lot more children than people who never attend. So th-this, you know, may have to do with kind of the cultural norms, the, you know, the, Religious institutions tend to encourage these cultural norms, but, but broader society, you know, e-tends not to." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:22", "start": 981.83, "text": "Yeah, I see. So in a way, religion might- you know, might be a, a factor that, yeah, as you're saying, it is a factor that really contributes to, yeah," }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "16:33", "start": 992.57, "text": "exactly, and I haven't found any High birth rate, culture that doesn't have, religion, you know, as part of its culture. You know, we, we saw the chart of Africa having very high fertility. It's not just because Africa is poor. Africa is by far, the most religious continent in the world. Yeah. So, so that's, It, it's not, it, the, it, people, people in Africa want to have big families, you know, w- from, from, due to, religious beliefs." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:11", "start": 1030.61, "text": "Yeah. so I think the other point to me is it, it might also just be, yeah, just cultural attitudes around having children that maybe certain countries- Are becoming a little more hostile to actually having families and young children, compared to other countries. And I, I sort of, oh, absolutely, and," }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "17:31", "start": 1051.02, "text": "and, you know, I, I have a great example of that as well, if I may, show you something here. Well, this is-- so this is, we're looking at the continent of Asia, and i-in particular, what I wanna draw comparison between is the nation of Mongolia and what's called Inner Mongolia, which is the part of China that's right next to Mongolia. And so the nation of Mongolia has two point seven births per woman, so far, so very healthy fertility in the nation of Mongolia, in Inner Mongolia, which is adjacent, but in China, fertility is Only at point seven births per woman, so it's, like at the South Korea level. In, in, in, you know, just adjacent, just across the border, and what is the difference? In Mongolia, that was part of the, the Russian or Soviet sphere, right? And, and, and all-- and the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, and Mongolia was kind of within that, sphere, the influence of the Soviet Union. They, they, they were pro-natalist. They, they wanted people to have children, and they, they actually gave women prizes If they had big families, like the Order of Glorious, the Order of Maternal Glorious, this medal that, that, that people in these countries, including Mongolia, can earn if they have a large number of children. Meanwhile, in China, they had the one, one child policy, and, you know, and cur-- you know, and it's not just the, the force, but also the propaganda and the messages, you know, telling people that, that we have, that you need to have fewer children. And, and now China has gotten rid of its, one Mongolia is no longer under the influence of, of Russia, but, nevertheless, the, these cultural norms have been established, and so now, right across the border, you have four times as high fertility in Mongolia as, as in Inner Mongolia. So, you know, and, and there, there is a, a little bit of a cultural difference, you know, b- you know, there, there, there's an ethnic difference there, but that can't explain, you know, such a massive, difference. That's, as you're saying, there" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:38", "start": 1178.38, "text": "Even in the Western world, is it that, you know, there's kind of like more sort of \"Sex and the City\" feminism and kind of like don't settle down kind of thing, and that's kind of pushed the marriage age later, as an example. And maybe the boys have their own issues too, maybe they're, you know, playing video games and porn or something, and, you know, there are just these cultural issues that have sort of- stopped people, on top of all the other aspects, I like the density" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "20:04", "start": 1204.37, "text": "and," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:05", "start": 1204.97, "text": "you know, yeah," }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "20:05", "start": 1205.25, "text": "there, there's a, yeah, but you, you mentioned two of them, one, one of, you know, one major problem on the- On the female side, one major problem, on the male side, so that both men and women both, both have, have strong pro-natal or anti-natalist or anti-family kind of cultural elements that have kind of seeped into culture on the women's side, this sometimes an angry feminism, if you will, on the, on the men's side, you, you can have, opposite attitudes, but you can also, you also have problems with, as you say, you know, video games, porn, a lot of distractions that, you know, so there's a lot of" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "20:41", "start": 1240.86, "text": "who, who have worked hard, they wanna have a family, you know, and they're looking, you know, they don't want, they don't need a millionaire, they don't need somebody who's six foot, six foot six and covered in muscles. They just, they, they just want a, a decent guy who, who, who isn't in, in their mother's basement playing video games all day, right? A-and, a-and for, for young women, especially young professional women, those, those guys can, can be hard to find sometimes. So, so there," }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "21:11", "start": 1270.58, "text": "any one gender or any one idea, it, it's, it's a whole, a whole set of circumstances." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:17", "start": 1277.12, "text": "Yeah, that's really unfortunate in a way, but, I guess part of it is like, what are, what are some of the ways to turn this around, right? As you were pointing out, and, you know, from what I've read, it sounds like there have been a lot of governments who have really tried to raise the, you know, the fertility rates, and they've-- But it seems like most of them have not been successful, or they've" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:41", "start": 1300.58, "text": "Has this policy where if a woman has four or more children, no more income tax for life for her. But it's, I, I heard it, it, it's kind of, maybe it's kind of turned it around a little bit, but not that much. And I've heard, you know, in lots of other countries around the world, there are people trying this, this kind of, these kinds of pro-natal policies, but they're not having that much impact. I'm curious what you see there." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "22:00", "start": 1320.18, "text": "Yeah, it, it's, it's tough. And, and you know, Is that, i-i-is the culture matters more than policy, and we need to keep this in mind, you know, if, if, for example, you know, if, if, if young people are turning away from religion, or if they're embracing, you know, a kind of pop culture that, that, that, that's, that's not big on marriage, then, you know, trying to have some government benefits is gonna be kind of weak sauce. The, the, the, they, they both matter, but I do wanna, you know, use the" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "22:37", "start": 1356.96, "text": "Fertility rate of, from maybe about one point three to maybe one point five or one point six. That's, that's okay, I mean, that's good progress, because, you know, during that time when they got from one point three to one point six, most of the world was, was seeing a, a, a big drop. So So they're, they're kind of having hard, hard won gains against, against a very strong current, that's bringing fertility downward, you know, all over the world. So I think they deserve, you know, some credit for, for, for their efforts, but a big problem and a big challenge is, is that American and Western culture, are, are really kind of dominant in the world. And I think, I can't imagine, you know, I, I guess you're, you're podcasting from, I think, Dubai. Yeah, and, so it, a-and, and, and you know, you must experience and you must see that, that how-however much local areas try to have their own culture, you know, it's just washed over by, like, the power of American, culture and bands and media, is kind of influencing" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:43", "start": 1423.23, "text": "many parts of the world, right? And I can say, now, I'm, I'm an Australian, but I was born in Sri Lanka, so I have, you know, some awareness there, and Sri Lanka has a more, I would say, But even now, it's starting to-- things are sort of turning, are starting to get influenced by that global culture, as you said. and I'm hearing, and this may be global as well, there are women or young girls who are getting put on birth control pills, and then later in life that comes to bite them in the arse because now they're having trouble trying to get pregnant and that kind of thing." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "24:16", "start": 1456.17, "text": "Yeah, yeah, and, you know, this is a difficult thing. I mean, you can't, on the one hand- yeah, you're, you're right, the, the, you know, the, these, these, you know, birth control, abortion, these, these, these are, are negatives, but you, you, at the same time, you can't just- You know, ban them, you'll get a, you'll get a backlash. You know, one, one thing that's very interesting that happened in the United States is, you know, there was a big, court ruling called, called the Dobbs decision, and after that, some states weren't allowed to, you know, strictly limit abortion. and what actually happened, most people don't realize this, but actually the number of abortions went up. It went, it didn't go down, it went up because, because there was such a backlash that, that people were, were kind of more determined than ever to, to do what they wanted to do. Right. Maybe they" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:08", "start": 1507.93, "text": "go to another state and do it there. Oh, yeah, exactly, exactly." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "25:10", "start": 1510.42, "text": "So you can't force these things, and you, you just, you have to- you know, you, you can't, you can't roll back freedom, people, people won't, won't take that. So you, you, you ha- you kind of have to ha- just build a stronger pro-natal culture, have a stronger pro-natal message. you know, Israel has-- In Israel, you know, a- abortion is, is legal, but Is- Israel has a very high birth rate, and the reason is because they have a, a pro-natal culture, people want to have children. The same in many Arab countries, in much of you know, o- in many ca- w-where, where people have children, it's because they-- there's a culture that's driving them in that direction." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:47", "start": 1547.3, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. This show brought to you by CoinKites dot com, the creators of the best Bitcoin hardware security devices, such as the Coldcard Mark IV and the new Coldcard Q. Now, we use Bitcoin hardware security devices to keep our keys offline, our private keys offline. Now, the way these work is you can do that setup, write down your 12 or 24- Words on the, the seed word cards and keep that secure. 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Yeah, I see, and I think part of it is- What is gonna make you go and take on that cost, because a lot of people just, if you're just looking at the dollars and the cents, it might not make sense, right? Like it, it might, it might be more like, you know, a common thing you might hear is people say, \"Oh, look, the, this Asian government is giving certain child incentives,\" but the child incentive is nothing compared to the extra cost that you would pay to actually raise that child, right? And so that's where I guess you need a strong cultural, I guess push to- Actually, people-- to encourage people to overcome, you know, the cost of having children." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "27:43", "start": 1663.45, "text": "Well, there is one government policy that I think, i-is rarely talked about in terms of, sort of encouraging families, but, you know, you're, you're from Australia, so, that you'll, you may appreciate what I'm about to show you. Okay? So this is a map of, a fertility map, and of Sydney. Oh, cool. So here we're, we're looking, a-and what do you notice here on this map?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:09", "start": 1689.35, "text": "Yeah, as in the more close you are into the city, the lower your fertility, right?" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "28:13", "start": 1692.57, "text": "Right. So, so what we're, what we're seeing, and, just for, for people who can't see, we, we have a fertility, you know, in some places two, two point one, one point nine in, in these suburban areas around Sydney, but in the core of Sydney your fertility is, is one point o, so it matters tw- you, you double your fertility just by going from the urban core, out to the suburbs So there's an incredibly important lesson here for urban planners and for, for countries, because if you're building these apart- these high-rise apartment towers, you, you are sabotaging future fertility because people just won't have a large family in, in, in a tiny little, high-rise apartment. They, they won't. And, you know, in that vein, there's something, you know, here's another- something I wanna show you here. So here, what we're looking at now is, is a-- This is, this is Seoul. This is what Seoul looks like. This is downtown Seoul. And the fertility of, of, of Korea as a whole is like point seven, but it's about point five in, in s-- in downtown Seoul. And the, you know, so- And a big part of that is the architecture. If people live in, in high-rise, apartment towers, they, they just tend to have extremely low fertility, and this is true all over the world. So that, that's a major point of, of government policy that actually can make a difference. You really wanna favor, and, and Australia and New Zealand, And the United States have done this and ha- and, and tend to have relatively better fertility than countries that, that have built like the East Asian, sort of the tigers. Interesting. I'm," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:06", "start": 1806.25, "text": "I'm curious to get your view on this though, because A common point we're hearing now is that the cost of housing is so high, right? And so that kind of is a counterbalance as well, because there's so many people who are saying, \"I can't afford to even look after myself, let alone have a wife and kids.\" And part of the challenge then is because if, if everything is low density, well, it's gonna be really hard to afford that, at least in the, you know, in the city, in the nice areas, right? And so I'm curious what you think there. Like, yes, high density is bad utility perspective, but it's also, I guess you could say it is cheaper from an accommodation perspective, right?" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "30:46", "start": 1845.55, "text": "I hear that, I hear that, but we have an interesting experiment, a natural experiment in, actually Tokyo, Japan, because Tokyo has been, building high-rise apartments in abundance for like the last twenty or thirty years. And, so the, the rents in some places in downtown Tokyo are like just hundreds of dollars for a studio apartment. So it- It's, it's incredibly affordable, but Tokyo still has the lowest fertility in all of Japan. You know, so it, it seems, it seems that the, that the cost isn't the biggest factor. And, you know, one thing, you know, South Korea after the war, they had this idea that they wanted to, you know, have affordable housing for everybody, so they just started building all these apartment towers, and they never stopped building these apartment towers, and now they, they're the lowest fertility country in the world. So we, you know, we, we should- Build more housing, absolutely, and young people are having a very hard time affording housing, absolutely, but we need to keep in mind that, that it, it needs to be a kind of a family friendly type, and so you don't have to be out in, Out on a farm like, like, you know, fifty miles from, from, from the nearest store or something. Although, although your, your fertility will-- it, it, it will be higher in a rural area, but you, you know, it's, it's just to be in the suburbs and just have a single family home in a subdivision, you know, makes an incredible difference. And I mentioned Australia, Australia has done-- is an example of a country, that has done a wonderful job of, kind of, of building around cities in," }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "32:23", "start": 1943.08, "text": "And, and the result is that Australia has healthier fertility than, you know, than, than most of these- Than" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:29", "start": 1948.84, "text": "other Western countries. Maybe just, less, far ahead on the, fertility collapse than some of the other countries, sadly. Oh boy, yeah. Yeah. I'm curious as well. Now, one thing that I- C is welfare statism. I think welfare statism has arguably driven fertility rates down because historically, if you had a child, it's, it was maybe a little bit more like an insurance policy, whereas now with the welfare state, it's co-- it's almost like the families who take on the cost to have children, those children are now paying taxes into the system to help fund the childless people who became old and never had children. So it's sort of I think it, it kind of has this negative impact on the fertility rates in a, in a, you know, in an unfortunate way. What do you think?" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "33:16", "start": 1995.75, "text": "Yeah, I, I think you're not wrong. I mean, I, I do think You know, and, and that, that may be a problem that we're seeing now. Everybody looked at like the, the Scandinavian countries, like Sweden, and they said, \"Why can't you just be like Sweden? If we're just all like Sweden, then we'd have all, all our problems would be solved.\" And they, you know, they have a big welfare state and stuff, and they, they incu-- they incu-- you know, they have a lot of benefits around having children, which is, I, you know, that's not a bad thing, but people," }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "33:50", "start": 2030.2, "text": "has, has, has absolutely plummeted. So, so they're now a very low birth rate country too. So that, that's kind of throwing a, that, that's messing up a lot of people's models in their minds. But you're right, actually freedom You know, having a free market is actually, you know, pro-pro-natal if people feel, free. And there, there's another aspect to that is that, is that You know, with, with tr- with real freedom, you have a lot of choices. You know, if somebody wants to, you know, go and become a, a Mormon, a Mormon is a-- that's a, a religious group in the United States that i-is known for having bigger families. If somebody wants to go and g- go and become a Mormon, you can do that. If somebody wants to, you know, use IVF and, you know, have a, ha-have children, i- In a high tech, non traditional way, you, you can do that, and, so you have a lot of-- there's a lot of options, if you will, of, of, of things that you can, you can do in a free society, so that when there's a-- when there's many pathways, or another example is, you, you know, if women want to try to juggle- Work and having a family in the United States, you can do that. In, in, in some countries like in East Asian countries, it, it's, it's a lot more constricted. You have a woman is expected, when she has children to stop working and, you know, stay at home raising the kids. And maybe you, you may say that's a good model for some people, but if you force it or if the culture says you have to do this, then a huge share of women aren't gonna wanna- want to participate at all. So in other words, you know, that can be a good model for some people, but you have to, you have to at the same time balance that with a, a mindset of, of, of allowing all options, because if you allow more options, the, then, then, then more people will find a path that, that they like, that, that, to have children. So, so f- freedom is a very, is a, is a very good thing for that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:52", "start": 2151.53, "text": "I'm also curious your thoughts, now I'm, I'm not sure if this is something you deeply researched, and not that I've researched it deeply, but some people were saying, I've seen people saying even, low birth rates were almost like an indicator of collapse, even when it came to the Roman Empire. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that, like is it just kind of a reflection of there's certain things that are, that, going bad from a social and cultural perspective, and that's why so many countries around the world are going into a negative, fertility rate" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "36:18", "start": 2178.06, "text": "No, okay. I, I, I have, researched Rome extensively and, ha-and had some, viral threads about that, on, on X, which, readers who are interested can, look into, and again, my, my handle is more births on Twitter, so that's the, it's an, all, all sorts of stuff related to the birthright crisis and solutions, but, so on, on, on, Christmas Day of 2023, I, I, I had one particular thread that, that, that's a date that people can look for, on, on, on the fall of Rome, actually, and, so it, it really looks like that was specifically a fertility crisis because, the, there's documented evidence that, The, the Romans had, had, had all kinds of birth control. They, they, they knew how to control births, and, and also, the, the Roman leaders were passing laws to try to encourage people to have more children. So for centuries, they knew that, that this was a problem, and then, and then the, the, the, the cities kept shrinking because, because they were, depopulating. So the evidence is very strong that the biggest reason that Rome collapsed was actually low birth rates. Great. So, very scary parallels with, with the numbers in the world that we're seeing today." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:40", "start": 2259.74, "text": "Yeah, and I, as I understand, I've read a couple books on this topic, not on the Rome to point, but just more broadly. I forgot the exact name of the book, but it, it, it-- I think in the book, the author was making this point that it really mattered for the future of those different countries because the higher your birth rate, you know, in those days, the higher your army, the bigger your army would be, and they It really mattered if they could motivate fertility and have a, a culture around it, and it would literally change the course of history if one country had a much higher birth rate than another." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "38:14", "start": 2293.97, "text": "Oh yeah, oh yeah. So that's, that's, you're exactly right. That's a, that's a major, that's a major thing. But w-what we need to think of is like, e-even though we're not, countries all at war with each other, you know, I think it's, the world has gotten peaceful, more peaceful, but nevertheless, you know, the power of economies, you know, runs on- populations and having large numbers of people, you have to have a lot of people able to work together to kind of build the modern world. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense for people to invent things if they don't have a market of, you know, millions or billions of people to sell into. Or, you know, another- a-a example that I mentioned before, you know, we're talking about, you know, the, the big technology that everybody's excited about right now is AI, but AI sits on like this huge Tower of millions and millions of people working really hard to, you know, on everything, you know, the-- You know, you don't, you, you know, you can't just build AI, you know, build these, these chips, you have to have, you know, an unbelievable economic infrastructure that, that, that layers technology upon technology until you can get to the, this pinnacle at the very top of, you know, which is, which is these AI chips, right? And, and so if you have a smaller base Of people, you, you just can't climb as high. And that, you know, Robin Hanson, who's a futurist, he, he has the Overcoming Bias blog, and he, he's, he, he's an incredibly well-known thinker in, in the United States, but he, he has, he has talked about how if as population declines and begins to- B-begins to go backward, you're gonna, you're gonna be, you're gonna stop innovating. You're gonna," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:02", "start": 2401.75, "text": "yeah. Yeah, you're not, you're, you're, your technology's" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "40:05", "start": 2404.99, "text": "gonna stop. And so we assume that, that the world, we always have progress, but if you don't have more people, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna lose progress itself." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:14", "start": 2414.5, "text": "Yeah, and I think it's, to me, it's clear if anyone has actually really studied economics and understood concepts like division of labor, specialization of labor, you know, if Only one hundred people, they might have maybe a Chinese restaurant, but i-if you want, you know, more variety, you need a bigger town because otherwise there's not enough people to kind of justify that. You don't get that sort of long tail effect, and as the population goes the wrong way, and not only that, it's also, I would say it's the composition, right? Like historically it used to be like a pyramid, right? There was a small amount of old people and a lot of young people, and now we're kind of, sadly, we're going the other People to work and produce things for all these old people who are, you know, needing more care and assistance. So that's probably the other economic problem, right?" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "41:06", "start": 2465.72, "text": "Yeah, and I've got a, I've got one more, one more, you know, something related to that that I can show, which is, if we, if we wanna, we, we talked about South Korea a little bit, here is a, here's a look at, population pyramids in South Korea, right? so here we see Korea today, you know Very few children, much fewer children than there are middle aged people. So, but nevertheless, if you look at-- Most of the population here today is between, age twenty and sixty-five. So even though- Right. Working age And th-this is why the fertility crisis, the low birth rate crisis is so deceptive and so easy to dismiss, because we look at Korea, oh, their economy is doing gangbusters, what's the problem? They're, they're, they're doing all sorts of amazing things But, that's beca- because the fact that there's so few children doesn't hit the workforce yet. So if we, if we project, you know, forward into the future, here we have, another population pyramid projected to, to 2060. You know, there are more people," }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "42:20", "start": 2539.95, "text": "Over, like, the age of sixty-five, than there are like under the age of sixty-five. So you, you're, you're getting to a world where, you know, Korea is going to be mainly old people, and, and how-- and the burdens on young, young people are just going to be, you know, absolutely incredible." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:42", "start": 2562.31, "text": "Yeah, and then, I mean, it causes also this-- there's gonna be a real generational battle, I think, because right now, as, as, as you point out as well, that there are leaders around the world who are out there trying to encourage people to have children, but in, in some cases, they themselves didn't have many children, or maybe they had one, right? Like I know the Singaporean, I'm not sure prime minister or president, he was out there telling his people have more children, but he has-- he doesn't have any himself, I'm trying to get to. There's gonna be all these young people who are gonna be forced to pay into the welfare state Ponzi, but when they're old, the welfare state Ponzi won't exist for them. And it's sort of like, how do you motivate people to actually care about that, right? And I think this is one area where- Maybe I have a slight difference with some of the other, let's say, people who are, you know, talking about nat-natalism and stuff like that is, I think people are, I mean, unless you kind of get like a really strong national pride sort of thing with people, a lot of people aren't gonna care about that. They're gonna be like, \"Well, that's for someone else, right?\" Like, so maybe it comes back to more like a, you know, like a Brian Kaplan, what are the selfish reasons to have more kids, right? I'm curious what you" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "43:59", "start": 2638.98, "text": "I, I, yeah, I do think that that's part of it, but I, I do think that there's more power, than, than people realize when, when you talk about it. I do, you know, I think, you know, the COVID crisis is a good example, I think, of You know, kind of locking down, you know, canceling all your events, and wearing a mask and doing social distancing, these are pretty unpleasant things, but, You know, with encouragement, you know, people, people did these things, and you, you know, p- you can have your opinion on whether that was the right thing or not. you know, that's not, that's not my, my, that's not the point of, that I'm making, but my point is that, you know, People really wanted to do the right thing and people took, did dramatic things to try to do what they, what they considered to be the right thing. So I think that, I think that, p-that, that people would be surprised that, you know, you start talking about it and saying, \"This is a problem, people, you know, it's very important to have children.\" I, I think I think we shouldn't dismiss that. I think that could make a bigger difference than people, than people acknowledge. Back to the show" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:07", "start": 2706.86, "text": "in a moment. The lead sponsor of this show is Swan dot com, and Swan has a mission to onboard millions of people into Bitcoin. I also work at Swan, helping on some educational content for the team. Now, the team have also put out a new version of the Swan Bitcoin application, which is available on your smartphone, whether it's Apple or Android. Now, this app has a really fun- Last onboarding experience. It's now just a few minutes to go from zero to Bitcoin. So if you are standing there with your family or friends and you might have been having trouble trying to get them onboarded, well, try this now. Recommend SWAN Bitcoin, and you can do this while you're standing next to them. They can click through, and most of them will be able to set up and do this in just a few minutes. 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You might wanna have special branding in terms of how your custom instance of mempool dot space looks. So to sign up for that, go to mempool dot space slash enterprise. Now, back to the show. Right. And I mean, to some extent, it's a, it's a cultural thing that if you're in a-- Let's say you're in a friend group and everyone there is married and has children, obviously you're a lot more likely to do that too, because you wanna fit in. and so there's certainly, there's certainly an aspect to it there, and I think part of it is- I think culture is going the wrong way right now, and we sort of-- There's gonna be a bit of work required to sort of turn it back and get it going the right way, and so one area I've seen you speak about on this is the three child norm. So this is this idea that instead of kind of the nuclear family with the mom, dad, and two kids, you're talking about this idea of a three child norm. So can you explain what you're getting at here?" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "47:46", "start": 2865.54, "text": "Okay, so yeah, I, I, I can show you something else related to that. I It's actually very important because we, you have to show people, you, what's going on here. So, here what we're looking at is, this is, this is the number of children people had, you know, in the United States over time, or the percentage of women that had four, three, two, one or zero children. and we see throughout the, you know, for people born in the 1800s, 70% sixty five percent of women had more, had four or more children. So that was just the norm back then, and now you know, it's only like maybe six percent or something have more than four ch- have four or more children. You know, the, the most common number, of course, is two. So ever people have this number in their mind that the right number of children to have, you know, if you're a, if you're a proper, right-thinking middle-class person, you should have two children. That, that people have that, that, that's-- I don't know if it's Leave It to Beaver. I don't know if you-- Have you ever heard of that? That Yeah, yeah. So that was a-- and that, you know, that, that was the, the perfect little family, the, the mom and the dad and the two kids, you know? So that kind of created a, a kind of a, a model in people's minds, but, actually, that, that, that, that number two isn't a good number because, What, what happens in the world today is that roughly a third of young people now, i-in most developed countries, aren't going to have children. So just to make the math work, then the average Among people who have children, should be three. You know, if, if you think about, if one, if one third of the people are having zero children, then the remaining two thirds have to have three children on average just to be at replacement, right? So, So i-it would really help to just have, have a higher, you know, norm, for in, in people's minds. The, the, if, you know, the people, people have heard the replacement is, is two, but you look at, you know, most of Europe, The, the, the, the total fertility rate in, in most of Europe is, is like around, you know, maybe one point four, one point five, something like that, and that's what you get when You know, two-- The norm is two. Yeah. When two thirds of the people end up having two children and the rest have zero, the-- you know, people who are unpartnered or, you know, just not at the right place ha-have zero children. And so, you know, one thing to keep in mind is that, you know, you, you look at this chart that we're looking at here, you know, people always had-- there was always a share of people that had zero children. you know, that wasn't, s- even in the 1 Something like that. But, you know, the norm of everybody else was this, you know, four or more children. So, i-if, if you have a norm, of a l-of a, of larger families, then it's okay if, if some people just don't have children. You don't, you never, you don't wanna, you can't force people to have children. We don't want like the world of Ceausescu, where, where you're trying to force people to have children who don't want them. But people need to realize that, you Birth rates and, you know, people should think about having larger families. Just, you know, if, if things are going well, if you're, if you're happily married, if, if, if you, if you, if you have a, a good enough income to, you know, to do it, then, you know, have a bigger family, it's fine. It's, it's, i- and, you know, I, I speak as a, a, a father of six, actually. I, you know, I have six children and," }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "51:44", "start": 3103.7, "text": "Having children is that you get to be a kid a second time, or a third time, or a fourth time, you get to e-experience that, you know, when it, when it snows around here, which is, you know, right now, in Washington, it is, approximately one hundred and one degrees outside, but in the winter time, when we get our snow, you know, I can go out, w-w-with the kids, with the younger ones, and go sledding, you know, if, You know, you, you try to do that, as a, as a single guy with no kids, and, and you're a, a very strange person, and, you know, people, people are gonna be very suspicious of that. But you can, you can do all the fun things with your kids and, and kind of get a second go at childhood, and it's, you know, so that's, that's one of the underrated joys," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:24", "start": 3144.46, "text": "actually. Yeah, interesting. And as you say, with this, kind of, the historical norm of how many people Yeah, they, they take their cues from television and movies, and maybe they're thinking about that or maybe they, they are thinking about the baby boomer generation, but actually based on the chart you were showing, it's actually Historically, people had, you know, more kids, and then it was dropping, and then there was kind of this boom after World War II, that's the baby boomers, and then it's been falling, at least in, you know, in our time." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "52:56", "start": 3175.81, "text": "Right, right. And a-actually, it, the baby boomers is, is a good thing to talk about because there's some, there's some real lessons there for, you know, factors that, that impact fertility and, and we can learn a lot, you know, for the future because, because nations" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "53:16", "start": 3195.6, "text": "but there are two major, major factors that, that kind of caused the baby boom. The, the first one is that people, married at very high rates, like over ninety percent of people were marrying at that time, and they tended to marry young. So in, in the United States, for example, the average age that a woman got married w- I think was like twenty or twenty-one years old. So if you get married young, you just have a, a whole lot more time, you know, to have a family. That was the first factor, and the second factor in the United States and maybe some other countries was you had this suburban building boom. So you were building a lot of houses, but you weren't just building houses, you were building the right kind of houses. You were building, you know, and they didn't, they weren't, they didn't have to be huge. I mean, these were, you know, they talk about, they were kind of derided as these cookie cutter, you know, houses that are cheaply built and whatever, but that- That's actually, that's a little underrated because, you know, for a, a working class person or a middle class person, just having a, a house with a yard is an amazing, wonderful thing, and we shouldn't, you know, i-, i-, it's pretty arrogant and elitist to, you know, to kind of- Knock on the suburbs and, and suburban sprawl and say, you know, call them McMansions or whatever, but, you know, that, that, that large house for a big family i-is, i-is just a, a wonderful thing. And, you know, i-i-it's You know, who can afford a, a single family home inside of a city? I mean, i-i-in most world cities, that's, that's probably millions of dollars. This is not feasible," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:56", "start": 3295.6, "text": "yeah, unless you're very rich, yeah. And I think the other, the other point I'm curious to get your thoughts on is the expectation seem to have risen a lot. Whereas, you know, when I was younger or kind of stories I hear, is that people used to share rooms, right? Like, like kids would share rooms, whereas nowadays it seems almost like the expectation now is that you You know, I'm not endorsing, but I'm just saying that seems to be the, the current mindset is that you should only have a few children and just put in a lot of resources into them and take them around to whatever piano class and soccer cl- soccer and whatever. Is it just that the expectation has changed and we need to sort of recalibrate those expectations so that people feel comfortable to actually have children and not necessarily have to have like a seven-bedroom mansion?" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "55:39", "start": 3339.33, "text": "No, I'm, I'm so glad you bring that up and, you're, you're, you're, you're such a-- It, it's so great to talk to you because you've done so much research and you, you, you know a lot already. So this is another important point. And my, my good friend, Tim Carney, has, written a, a wonderful book. Let me see if it's on my shelf right now. It may be, it may be elsewhere." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "56:03", "start": 3362.96, "text": "But, he, he-- this, he's, he's talking, his book is titled Family Unfriendly. and one of the first things he talks about is, A, a trend that's huge in America, which is travel teams. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:18", "start": 3378.16, "text": "right. Like, th-this is when the kids travel for sport, and then the, the parents have to spend all this money to kind of fly with them or whatever. It's completely" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "56:25", "start": 3384.64, "text": "nuts and out of control in, in the United States, and I had to make a decision with my wife that we aren't going to, going to do travel teams. My, one of my daughters is a swimmer, she's excellent, and, and, you know, but, but, but they, the, the, the which is, you know, Maryland is, is nuts about swimming, by the way. We have, you know, Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky are both from, both from Maryland. We're, we're just nuts about swimming. But, you know, the-- These kids have, have, these, these swim meets like in, in Orlando, Florida, that's, that's a thousand miles away. And then ima-- you know, imagine, you know, flying a thousand miles for your kids to have like a, a, a swim meet. You You know, sometimes to follow their kids around in sports, and this is, i-it's such a burden on the parents, and it's so exhausting, it's financially expensive, it's, it, you know, i-it's exhausting on their time, on, on, on their, on their energy level. They're not, you know- And th-this is, you don't need to do all this. you know, as you say, you know, put, put a few, bunk beds in, in rooms and, and you, you, you, you can, you can do it much, you don't have to do everything perfectly. and, you know, one of the, one of the points that Brian Kaplan makes is your kids are probably gonna turn out roughly the same, you know?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:53", "start": 3473.03, "text": "Right. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, as they say. Exactly, exactly." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "57:56", "start": 3476.32, "text": "So you don't need to, you know, the fact that you-- that one parent drove, you know, a thousand miles, you know, every month to, to, to send their kids to different soccer tournaments while the other parent just gave their kid a, kid a ball and let them play in the neighborhood, you know, the kids are Probably gonna kinda turn out like their parents, right? With, so, yeah, yeah, that, that's-- So we, we burden ourselves too much, and that's a big problem. And actually, the nation of Korea is a great example of that. They have the, these cram schools called Hakhwon, the, the, the, you know, and I don't know how many hours a day Korean young people study, but it's an unbelievable amount. And, you know, it, it, the, it has, you know, education has its benefits, but, you know Perfect is the enemy of the good, right? You know, if you're, you're trying so hard, you're trying to do everything perfect, and you, the, you know, that nation is, is going downhill because people are trying too hard in a way. You know, that's, that's a problem. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:01", "start": 3540.65, "text": "Yeah. I, and so I guess it comes to sort of turning it around, as you said, like, as we've-- Well, one theme here is the kind of the cultural aspect. How do we turn this around as a society or as a culture? I think, you know, from a Bitcoin perspective, this is something I've seen in a lot of Bitcoin circles where a lot of Bitcoin people are You know, in, you know, thinking of it from a low time preference perspective, they're thinking multi-generational, and, you know, as they start hodling Bitcoin, they start thinking more about, \"Oh, okay, yeah, do I wanna leave a legacy? Okay, yeah, I want kids, I want, I wanna do these things.\" So, I think that's something I've noticed, at least in, you know, amongst my Bitcoiner friends, I would say, the Bitcoiner friends I have do have higher fertility rates, or at least higher intended, Working on it and so- Yeah, congratulations" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "59:52", "start": 3592.27, "text": "by the way." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:53", "start": 3593.17, "text": "Thank you. Yeah, yeah. So I think, I think that, I think some of these things will change, but it's, you know, there are cultural things that have to be solved there. but, it's kind of to, to the Asian country paradox as well. It is kind of a paradox to me that, some of these countries, they tried so hard to make sure they were wealthy, they work hard and study hard and make sure that their kids are high skilled, and you-- Here Are very economically successful, they became rich, but they failed at motivating fertility, and it's, it's, yeah, so we have to talk about it. There's," }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "01:00:27", "start": 3627.18, "text": "there's one more thing that I would, you know, I, I would like to talk, you know, there was an event that happened yesterday which was the nomination that we have a, so, a Bitcoin holder, a hodler, JD Vance, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So here we go." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "01:00:41", "start": 3641.77, "text": "There he is. Can, can, let's see. There we go. No, no, I" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:45", "start": 3645.99, "text": "can't see. Okay, yeah, coming up now. Yeah. There" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "01:00:47", "start": 3647.71, "text": "it is. So that's his very lovely family. He's, he, he, I think his, H- his youngest came, I think about two years ago, two and a half years ago or something, but, you know, so, but, but, this is exciting because he is, one of the First, politicians in the English speaking world that talks about, that has been talking about the problem directly and said, you know It actually saying birth rates are too low, we, we have a crisis. And he's been willing to say that. I believe he mentioned" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:01:21", "start": 3681.9, "text": "he wanted to give an extra vote to parents for every child they have, something like this." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "01:01:26", "start": 3686.61, "text": "Oh, I, I'll take it. Yeah, but it sounds like he's a little bit more into it than that. Yeah. but you, you need to, i-i-it's important to just talk about it. Talk, you know, people, I, I really think people want to do the right thing. so people need to know that there's a low birth rate crisis. You, you know? It, it's very strange, you know, Canada, for example, i-i-there, they have incredibly low fertility now, I think one point two or so, one point two five, incredibly low, and the government realizes this is a problem, so, so they are, You know, they're, they're trying to roll out free he-free childcare for, for every parent. That's, or, or near, I don't know, free, but close to it, very inexpensive childcare for every parent. And that, you know, there's a lot to be said for a policy like that, but, Justin Trudeau in Canada hasn't mentioned one time that we have a fertility crisis. He, you know, he could, you know, inst-- you, you sp- you can spend billions and billions of dollars, but you would have a greater impact just by saying, \"Hey, guys, you know, if things are going well, if you can afford it, you know, it would be great if you could have more children because we have a low birth rate crisis.\" Just say that. You know, it- You know, people, people, people want to, you know, and, and that's why I'm, I'm excited about JD Vance, because he, he kind of, you know, breaks the taboo, by-- I don't know why it's a taboo. I mean, But, but, but, you know, he's willing to talk openly about it, and that makes a big difference, especially for the, for English-speaking countries, because sort of the English-speaking world is, is kind of sets global culture" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03:10", "start": 3790.02, "text": "Yeah, that's an interesting point about the cultural setting, the culture, because, yeah, it, it could be that other countries around the world sort of look to, let's say, America and sort of the Western world for a cultural lead, and then they follow that, and so that's probably an interesting point. I would say from a libertarian perspective, from a free market perspective, I think there are many ways in which the state is unfortunately hurting the birth rate, right? Whether that's fiat currency, central banking, whether that's regulation. I, I think massive, we are massively overregulated in most of the world, and that's raising the cost of childcare, it's raising the cost of things like, you know, having a nanny or daycare and all these kinds of things, and I think that is also Making it difficult, for the, let's say, millennial and Gen Z generation to sort of get on with it and start having, a bunch of kids. Yeah, you," }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "01:04:00", "start": 3840.2, "text": "you, you made a very specific point, and there's one particular aspect of deregulation, that makes a huge different, difference, which I think you mentioned, d-deregulating childcare. I mean, where I live, you know, You know, it can be, two thousand dollars a month or something for one child. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:04:19", "start": 3859.41, "text": "completely out of the range for most, you know." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "01:04:21", "start": 3861.53, "text": "You know, and, and what, you know, I, I, I've been lucky that, that my wife has been able to, and I, you know, I, I've been working from home, so, but between the two of us, we've been able-- And, and I, further, we-- I, I should mention this because this is an important element as well, is, you know, when were able to provide, a lot of childcare, especially for my wife when, when we had four little ones at one point, they were all very closely spaced, and, i-it was hard, and, and, you know, my, my wife, you know, some- my, my mom would come over, you know, pretty frequently in, you know, when my, when my wife was exhausted and my wife would just sleep or go away or do something, and my mom would have the kids for, for, for three, four hours, and that was You know, it made all the difference in the world because my, my wife could, you know, rest or do what she wanted to do and come back refreshed. And so family, family cooperation is, is very important. But there's one more kind of thing that I wanted to, that I do want to mention related to kind of families working together, which I think is a good thing, but, there, there's one thing That's not so good, and, and here, I'm gonna show, share a map here. this is, you know, people living at home. So this is one more fertility, it's a very big fertility factor that I, that I, hadn't mentioned before, but, we, we see there are certain countries in Europe, for example, you know, Spain, Italy, Poland is another one, but especially these Mediterranean countries, you know, young people, this is, look, this is a chart, a map of people Live with their parents, okay? And we see that countries where a very high share of people in, in their young adulthood live with their parents, those countries have Very low birth rates. So, so that's another element of culture that, you know, the importance of young people getting out and getting out into the world and, and not living at home. It's, you know, parents helping their children is a wonderful thing if a parent wants to, you know, h-help foot a down payment for their child or, or, or help You know, help with childcare, things like this, that's a wonderful thing, that helps a lot. But if, if the, if a, a young person is still living in their parent's basement or still living at home in their, in their bedroom that they lived in all along, that's, That's a big problem. So, so families should help each other, but, but not-- but, but it's also very important for young people to get out of their parents' house and, a-and, and establish their own lives, you know, pretty, pretty early." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:06:58", "start": 4018.61, "text": "Yeah, for me that comes down to, I think, I think a lot of fiat currency and, you know, government control over the money has, has caused a lot of these issues around cost of living, and unfortunately, it's kind of generationally unfair because there are people who managed to get in at a much smaller multiple of their salary. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, this," }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "01:07:18", "start": 4038.79, "text": "yeah, you're, you're absolutely right, and this I feel very bad about, even, you know, I'm- I'm, I'm kind of, I'm at the very tail end of Gen X. So I'm, I, I, I, I was, I was born in 1978, so I'm, I'm very tail end of Gen X, but, you know, I became a homeowner in, in 2008, and, you know, I- I, I'm, I'm a beneficiary where our house has a very, a very low mortgage, a very low mortgage interest rate. you know, it's, we're, we're, we, we've seen a lot of appreciation on our, you know, but, but a young, it would be very, very much harder to get in today, and, and as you say, fiat currency, you know, ha, has a lot to do with that because," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:08:01", "start": 4081.45, "text": "but if you were twenty-five trying to buy the house you're in today, would you be able to" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "01:08:09", "start": 4089.19, "text": "There is something to be said, you know, I, I didn't need my parents to help me with a, a down payment, but I do think that there is, that there is something to be said for that because, just ho-houses are so expensive these days, and, and, you know, the- the baby boomer generation is sitting on a lot of, a lot of equity from that, as you say, fiat currency, it's just been inflation just driving up the, the, the prices of these houses. And, you know, so I, I think there's a lot to be said for parents maybe helping their, their kids a little bit with a down payment or something, but, but as you, if there was, if we were in a, in a different kind of money system, I, I don't think houses would be Would be so difficult to reform. Yeah, because that's, that's the key problem," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:08:49", "start": 4129.81, "text": "right? It's that the housing has been financialized. People treat it like their life savings asset instead of understanding housing more like a consumable thing, right? It's seen as like, \"Oh, property only goes up.\" It's kind of, it's, it's, wrong-headed and unfortunately, it's, it's a sad result of the fiat currency system that we're in. And so I think that's, from a Bitcoin perspective, I think that's the key point that I think people" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:09:17", "start": 4157.41, "text": "Yeah, we, we, we definitely, you" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "01:09:18", "start": 4158.87, "text": "know, the, the, this, this tendency to run debts and, have higher inflation does seem to have a very huge cost on, on, on young people. So I, I think-- But I, you know, talking, you know, one thing I, I would, I would want to give young people some encouragement to just, you know, when it comes to family, you know, Most people when they're in their twenties and thirties, you know, they tend to be kinda poor. And those same people, when they're in their forties and fifties, they tend to be much richer actually. But you have to- Kind of take the leap and have a family when you're in your twenties and thirties, because that's when you're-- that, that's when people are fertile. You can't, you know, you can't wait until your forties and fifties when, when you're finally, more well off to have a family, that's too late. So you kind of have to take a leap of faith, you know, when you're young and, and trust that if you're on a-- if you're on a solid trajectory, you know, you'll get" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:10:18", "start": 4218.33, "text": "there. Overall, encouraging people to have children, but I think the leap that you're asking, you know, a Gen Z or a millennial person to take nowadays isn't the same as the leap that a Gen X or a Boomer was being asked to take, right? In terms of how much of their salary, how-- like, what are the sort of the cultural implications? I, I hear that, but I wanna push" }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "01:10:42", "start": 4242.99, "text": "back a little bit, which is, which is this, I mean There's a relative wealth and, and, and young people are relatively, you know, ha-have less wealth than, than people older than them. however you know, f- overall, people in the past were poorer. They, you know, people, you know, nobody goes hungry these days. You know, people have-- you know, the, as wealth has gone up, as people have g-grown wealthier and had more resources, they've had fewer children, not more. And this is, this is kind of a point that Elon Musk has made that, that, The, the root of the low birth rate crisis isn't, i-isn't a lack of money because people were poor in the past and had a lot of children. The biggest factor is culture. So the biggest thing, you know, w-including, including religious belief, including just believing in, i-in the future and believing in having children and, and having that, and al-also having a mindset of, of wanting to get married when you're young, not, not spending, You know, you know, twenty, thirty years. I have a, I have a cousin, you know, who, who, who finally, who, who was kind of dating around for a while, and then finally, he, he, he found somebody to marry at the age of fifty. And like, you know, so no kids there. He, he was just kind of playing the field for thirty years. Like, come on, you know? Yeah. You know, so, so you ha-- you know, you, you, people should be thinking actually about getting married even in their twenties, even. you know, yeah. Yeah. It seems strange to say that. Yeah, I agree with you on" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:12:18", "start": 4338.81, "text": "the cultural aspect of it, that, society should encourage people to marry younger, ideally, but, you know, there's kind of points back and forth. Forty years ago, and people, you know, just sort of dealt with it. Maybe people were tougher, and maybe that's also another indictment of society today that people are just kind of weaker in a, in a mental sense. But I would say this," }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "01:12:44", "start": 4364.74, "text": "you know, people, if you wanna tell-- You know, one, one big problem is people are bored with life. Everything, you know, if you want excitement, you know, go have kids. If you wanna mess things up and, and kind of make things more interesting, and I think people are happier, honestly, when they Like, it's like paradoxical, paradoxical, but, but, you know, we have it in some sense easier, there's more, more luxuries, there's more entertainments than ever before, but depression is higher than it's ever been before. So I think, o-o-people want to have a heavy load, people want to be working, and if you want your life to-- if you want to have more challenge, go have kids, and, and it'll be much more interesting and, a-a-and all these things. There's one more point that I wanted to- Mention as well one factor which is kind of work and, you know, work from home is, is a wonderful, thing for fertility. People, tend to have more children if-- and some-sometimes that's not an option, but, where it's possible, you know, countries and governments and companies should do their best to encourage that because, you know, you mentioned the, the, the, the childcare difficulty, almost a crisis of, of ha- child, childcare being so difficult to, to, to obtain, and not very affordable. Well, if, if, if parents can work from home and, and have, you know, a little bit different schedules, then they can, they can cover most of the time. And so, so that's a, that's a big positive as well." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:14:15", "start": 4455.66, "text": "Yeah, working from home definitely was accelerated in the last, few years. so let's, let's leave it there. I will put the links in the show notes, but, listeners, you can follow Daniel at, the handle is at More Births on X. Links will be in the show notes. Daniel, thank you for joining me today." }, { "speaker": "daniel_hess", "time": "01:14:31", "start": 4471.24, "text": "Yeah, thank you for having me, and yes, you ple- please check out More Births on, on X, and you can, you can search through my, my timeline to, to, to be" } ] }