I'll need to read a few more times and absorb some more. Great stuff, thank you!!
What are good "next steps" on an individual level? You went as far as encouraging people not to obsess on the issue and to build like-minded communities in the midst of the decline we'll see. I wonder if the following would help as well, but I'd love to read any further prescriptive thoughts you might have.
-Have as large of a family as possible while modern civilization is still at early-stage collapse, so that one can be well positioned when incentives change in later stages?
-Exit typical financial instruments/investments that take for granted the old paradigm enduring - the problem is what to direct capital to instead?
-Avoid real estate ownership, rent until the demographic tsunami crashes and makes its way inland a bit?
-Prepare for the return of subsistence farming? Is it going to go that far? I suppose your answer might be yes, given your blunt assessment that the amish will "replace" societies with wealth too high on the status ladder?
I suppose there are so many variables to how this will play out, and no one-size-fits-all strategies available. Red team does not offer a perfect way forward (refuse to stop pushing us to die for Israel), though blue team does seem like they've really swallowed all of the dysfunctional elements that have gotten us here and may crash harder as a result.
We'll all feel the decline surely, but what are some actionable ideas to cushion the blow?
Have you heard the joke about the two friends who were camping when an enraged bear started heading their direction? The first guy immediately started putting on his running shoes. The second guy screamed "What are you doing, you idiot? Don't you know you can't outrun a bear?" The first guy replied "Of course, why would I need to outrun a bear? I just need to outrun you."
My general view toward preparing an uncertain future is that most people way overthink it to the point where they either go completely overboard or do nothing at all because they think some extreme response is the only effective strategy. You don't have to build a survival bunker with 30 years of supplies and fake your own death and live as a hermit. If there's going to be some next level catastrophe with a 90% fatality rate, all you have to do to give yourself a good chance at thriving is to outrun 90% of people. And that's a laughably low bar.
You don't have to transition to subsistence farming. Maybe start by not putting all your eggs into the PowerPoint job with the 401k and Social Security. That puts you at about the 50th percentile already. Just learn some skills that would be useful in what you expect the future to be. Get handy with a wrench and a $200 MIG welder. Learn to grow pot or make some kind of alcohol, there'll always be a market for that. Buy a reliable gun (just one, you aren't John Wick) and learn how to use it. Get some carpentry tools and build a few projects around the house instead of buying everything from IKEA. Anything to make yourself a more capable, more competent, and more well-rounded person.
Become the type of person who can think on his feet, is open minded, tough, can absorb some unpleasant or nasty situations, can gain respect from and cooperate well with others, and adapt well to any situation. That's really what makes for a successful life now, and the same traits will serve you well no matter what changes in the future. Don't overthink it, just be an excellent and capable person, and pay attention to and prepare for the changes you see. That puts you way ahead of the game.
When it comes to allocating capital, just be flexible and diversified. Buy some land if you can manage it, that's almost never a bad decision. Buy some Bitcoin, buy some gold, buy some useful tools and learn to use them, buy some guns and ammo. Don't get mono-maniacally focused on one specific future. It might not turn out the way you expect, or it might happen long after you're gone. Don't be the goldbug who's been sitting on a pile of coins for 30 years and never bothered to buy some Bitcoin because "the grid is going to collapse, bro."
When it comes to marriage and family, remember that individuals respond to societal incentives, they don't create them. People aren't getting married or having kids because they're not incentivized to do so. That just means there are a lot of potential bad outcomes that people are avoiding by staying single. If you think you can get married and have a family and avoid those bad outcomes, great. Just don't think that the fact that you're aware of the potential pitfalls means you aren't susceptible to them. If you can find or create some type of community with opposite incentives, like the Amish do, that's great. But if not, take into account how well prepared you'll be for the future with half your financial resources gone and an ex-wife who hates you and tries to undermine your relationship with your kids. Because that's also a potential future outcome to reckon with, and a much more likely, concrete, and imminent threat than potential societal collapse or nuclear war or whatever else people are obsessing over these days.
This is the best “why” explanation, rather than the typical “what” explanation I’ve yet seen on the topic.
I responded to Kurtz’s suggestions for fixing the problem with a very negative essay. To me, it seemed like the equivalent of;
“My house is infested with termites, how do I get rid of them?” and the answer; “Burn it down.”
I think if it was offered in the same spirit I see here I was actually mistaken in my response. If indeed the only way to fix declining fertility is undoing many (if not all) of the social structures we seem to value in the modern day, and that’s the only solution we can find, then the desire to preserve our existing structure wouldn’t matter in the face of the fatal trajectory, and the possible cure that’s worse than the sickness.
Maybe there is no solution, but then again, maybe there is. Even the captain of a sinking ship might, by bailing water at a rate less than it flows in, delay the inevitable long enough for an unexpected solution to arrive. An uncharted island, a passing ship, a whale swallows you whole like Jonah just to spit you out on land. Who knows!
A solution doesn’t need a TFR of 6, and it doesn’t need to be applied across the entire society evenly. Developed societies across the world have significantly different fertility rates, from as low as 0.7 to nearly replacement, so whatever the sickness is, the rate of progression isn’t consistent. If things could be arranged for a stable equilibrium, and bumped only slightly higher than their current rate in many parts of the world, the problem would be effectively mitigated, if not solved.
Maybe there is insight to be had from the conclusions you and Kurtz outline here. Maybe there’s some middle ground that doesn’t involve resetting the whole structure some wish to preserve. Or maybe it’s just an exercise of futility, and there’s no actual solution, so we should think about it for fun alone, or not at all. I wrote a piece about the “what” of the fertility crisis a while ago, and intended to follow it up with a piece about the “why” (talking about the alleged causes I’m sure you’ve seen elsewhere), but I eventually shelved it, since I think implicitly there was the realization that outside some very creative thinking I might not be capable of, the cure is distasteful and invalidates the whole project on its face.
I'll need to read a few more times and absorb some more. Great stuff, thank you!!
What are good "next steps" on an individual level? You went as far as encouraging people not to obsess on the issue and to build like-minded communities in the midst of the decline we'll see. I wonder if the following would help as well, but I'd love to read any further prescriptive thoughts you might have.
-Have as large of a family as possible while modern civilization is still at early-stage collapse, so that one can be well positioned when incentives change in later stages?
-Exit typical financial instruments/investments that take for granted the old paradigm enduring - the problem is what to direct capital to instead?
-Avoid real estate ownership, rent until the demographic tsunami crashes and makes its way inland a bit?
-Prepare for the return of subsistence farming? Is it going to go that far? I suppose your answer might be yes, given your blunt assessment that the amish will "replace" societies with wealth too high on the status ladder?
I suppose there are so many variables to how this will play out, and no one-size-fits-all strategies available. Red team does not offer a perfect way forward (refuse to stop pushing us to die for Israel), though blue team does seem like they've really swallowed all of the dysfunctional elements that have gotten us here and may crash harder as a result.
We'll all feel the decline surely, but what are some actionable ideas to cushion the blow?
This is a great question.
Have you heard the joke about the two friends who were camping when an enraged bear started heading their direction? The first guy immediately started putting on his running shoes. The second guy screamed "What are you doing, you idiot? Don't you know you can't outrun a bear?" The first guy replied "Of course, why would I need to outrun a bear? I just need to outrun you."
My general view toward preparing an uncertain future is that most people way overthink it to the point where they either go completely overboard or do nothing at all because they think some extreme response is the only effective strategy. You don't have to build a survival bunker with 30 years of supplies and fake your own death and live as a hermit. If there's going to be some next level catastrophe with a 90% fatality rate, all you have to do to give yourself a good chance at thriving is to outrun 90% of people. And that's a laughably low bar.
You don't have to transition to subsistence farming. Maybe start by not putting all your eggs into the PowerPoint job with the 401k and Social Security. That puts you at about the 50th percentile already. Just learn some skills that would be useful in what you expect the future to be. Get handy with a wrench and a $200 MIG welder. Learn to grow pot or make some kind of alcohol, there'll always be a market for that. Buy a reliable gun (just one, you aren't John Wick) and learn how to use it. Get some carpentry tools and build a few projects around the house instead of buying everything from IKEA. Anything to make yourself a more capable, more competent, and more well-rounded person.
Become the type of person who can think on his feet, is open minded, tough, can absorb some unpleasant or nasty situations, can gain respect from and cooperate well with others, and adapt well to any situation. That's really what makes for a successful life now, and the same traits will serve you well no matter what changes in the future. Don't overthink it, just be an excellent and capable person, and pay attention to and prepare for the changes you see. That puts you way ahead of the game.
When it comes to allocating capital, just be flexible and diversified. Buy some land if you can manage it, that's almost never a bad decision. Buy some Bitcoin, buy some gold, buy some useful tools and learn to use them, buy some guns and ammo. Don't get mono-maniacally focused on one specific future. It might not turn out the way you expect, or it might happen long after you're gone. Don't be the goldbug who's been sitting on a pile of coins for 30 years and never bothered to buy some Bitcoin because "the grid is going to collapse, bro."
When it comes to marriage and family, remember that individuals respond to societal incentives, they don't create them. People aren't getting married or having kids because they're not incentivized to do so. That just means there are a lot of potential bad outcomes that people are avoiding by staying single. If you think you can get married and have a family and avoid those bad outcomes, great. Just don't think that the fact that you're aware of the potential pitfalls means you aren't susceptible to them. If you can find or create some type of community with opposite incentives, like the Amish do, that's great. But if not, take into account how well prepared you'll be for the future with half your financial resources gone and an ex-wife who hates you and tries to undermine your relationship with your kids. Because that's also a potential future outcome to reckon with, and a much more likely, concrete, and imminent threat than potential societal collapse or nuclear war or whatever else people are obsessing over these days.
This is the best “why” explanation, rather than the typical “what” explanation I’ve yet seen on the topic.
I responded to Kurtz’s suggestions for fixing the problem with a very negative essay. To me, it seemed like the equivalent of;
“My house is infested with termites, how do I get rid of them?” and the answer; “Burn it down.”
I think if it was offered in the same spirit I see here I was actually mistaken in my response. If indeed the only way to fix declining fertility is undoing many (if not all) of the social structures we seem to value in the modern day, and that’s the only solution we can find, then the desire to preserve our existing structure wouldn’t matter in the face of the fatal trajectory, and the possible cure that’s worse than the sickness.
Maybe there is no solution, but then again, maybe there is. Even the captain of a sinking ship might, by bailing water at a rate less than it flows in, delay the inevitable long enough for an unexpected solution to arrive. An uncharted island, a passing ship, a whale swallows you whole like Jonah just to spit you out on land. Who knows!
A solution doesn’t need a TFR of 6, and it doesn’t need to be applied across the entire society evenly. Developed societies across the world have significantly different fertility rates, from as low as 0.7 to nearly replacement, so whatever the sickness is, the rate of progression isn’t consistent. If things could be arranged for a stable equilibrium, and bumped only slightly higher than their current rate in many parts of the world, the problem would be effectively mitigated, if not solved.
Maybe there is insight to be had from the conclusions you and Kurtz outline here. Maybe there’s some middle ground that doesn’t involve resetting the whole structure some wish to preserve. Or maybe it’s just an exercise of futility, and there’s no actual solution, so we should think about it for fun alone, or not at all. I wrote a piece about the “what” of the fertility crisis a while ago, and intended to follow it up with a piece about the “why” (talking about the alleged causes I’m sure you’ve seen elsewhere), but I eventually shelved it, since I think implicitly there was the realization that outside some very creative thinking I might not be capable of, the cure is distasteful and invalidates the whole project on its face.