Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto, savage.com.
Today I've got special guest Kevin Doland on the line.
He is one of the founders of the Natal Conference that's going to
be happening in Austin, TX in December.
And it focuses on the population decline that we are now
experiencing globally and in the US And we kind of dive deeper
into what that is exactly what it means, what it means not just
for us, but also the generations, you know, coming
forward, our kids generation, their kids generation.
What is contributing to this decline as it pertains to
culture and societal shifts, biomedical changes, fertility
rates changing? Not the normal podcast that I've
recorded, but a very, very interesting conversation
nonetheless. I feel very blessed to have met
with Kevin, learned from him, and I'm very excited to relay
this information to y'all through this podcast.
So without further delay, sit back, relax, enjoy the
conversation with Kevin Doland and we are live.
Kevin, how are you Sir? Doing great man.
Thanks for having me. Hey, I'm excited to be chatting
with you, so we got introduced through e-mail.
We have a mutual friend in Barbara who I interact with
Aikido Con. She's great friends with Judy
Cho, who's an awesome individual.
And she was telling me about this conference you have coming
up in Austin called the Natal Conference that dives deep into
the declining birth rate, hormonal health and just what
what we're kind of dealing with as a society there.
So what this is a topic that I feel is widely misunderstood.
People don't understand why people don't understand the
birth rates decline. This is kind of newer
information to the general lay public, is it not?
Yeah, I mean a lot. A lot of people are still kind
of living in the in the 70s where it was all, you know, Paul
Ehrlich, population bombs, Soylent Green.
The the narrative was that the population was gonna explode out
of control and we were gonna, you know, run out of everything
and living be living in sort of a favela planet.
And it's funny you say that because, like my my parents, who
obviously have shaped me quite a bit, they're constantly talking
about the overwhelming growth in population and how it's, you
know, our planet can't sustain that growth.
And that's why they only had two kids, my brother and I, because
they just wanted to replace themselves and not contribute to
this increased growth rates. But I guess that's totally
turned on its head now. Yeah, I mean, basically I I
think people. Don't understand.
Well, number one, they just don't know that people aren't
having kids anymore. Or at least they haven't.
I think if you were to, like, ask them intuitively, like, hey,
look around you, how many young families do you see?
They'd be like, Oh yeah, it's probably not a lot, but I think
that a lot of them are sort of imagining that it's like just
their social circle or it's just their sort of socioeconomic
class that's not having lots of kids.
But it's actually across the board.
It's it's every basically every demographic in America is is
below replacement fertility apart from not just recent
immigrants but recent immigrants like without a high school
diploma. So it's essentially like the the
sort of migrant labor class of of immigrant they have above
replacement fertility nobody else does.
And the the narrative. Among like sort of the right
thing you're supposed to say about this problem is like,
well, we'll just solve the fertility crisis through through
immigration. But Central America and South
America as a whole are right at the cusp of replacement
fertility and falling rapidly. So like the the same the same
factors that are generating this this population decline in.
You know, sort of the developed world, it's it's ramifying to
the whole rest of the planet in it.
By by 2050, the only countries on Earth with above replacement
fertility will be in sub-Saharan Africa.
And the reason that matters is because our entire economic
system is predicated on stable growth.
It's you know, if if you if you go into debt as a business.
And you have expectations of reliable growth it's it's like
no problem you can sort of grow your way out of out of the debt.
But if that business did no longer has expectations of
steady growth and and especially if like the government you're
continually sort of renegotiating the debt the the,
the cost to service that debt will just explode.
It was like, you know, if you if you took out. 90% leverage to
start a business or like like down, down payment on your
house, right. If you put 20% down on your
house and that house loses half its value, you're like wiped
out, you're like in you're, you're underwater you're in the
negative right versus if you if you paid cash it would be
different. So but our economy is wildly
leveraged. Real estate markets are
predicated on steady population growth, all kinds of sort of the
way that the way that companies. Compute what they what they
imagine demand will be in the future.
Everything that we're preparing for is this is this scenario of
like steady population growth. And when you break that
assumption, so many things collapse.
And you, you can see the consequences of that kind of
thing in a city like Detroit, where the tax base abandons the
city and then you've got these pockets of people living in
these essentially abandoned neighborhoods.
And the cost to pump water and electricity and sewer and
garbage and everything goes up exponentially on those
individuals because the the pipes, you know, it's not like
you can just sort of send the water directly to that one
house. It's like this huge sprawling
infrastructure system built for a much larger population that
still has to be maintained and kept clean.
Like that's that's a lot of what happened with the Flint water
crisis was you just didn't have. You didn't have the tax base to
sustain this infrastructure meant for a larger population
and it it can be so. So then not only is your is your
property value you know, collapsed because of of sort of
the market forces, but also it's like nothing works anymore and
the the houses around you are like boarded up and there's like
you know homeless people living in them and doing drugs and like
there's this huge. Value collapse such that these
homes that used to be just sort of regular middle class homes
are like selling for 10,000 dollars, $5000, sometimes even
like triple digits, you know, $500.00.
So, so it's a real problem. It's it's it's A and and it's
it's going to be a global problem like Detroit right now.
Michigan is still solvent. the United States government is
still solvent. But what if you had that
phenomenon in every major city in America?
All at the same time and there wasn't anybody to bail them out.
Yeah, that's that's kind of what we're up against.
So when we're looking at this like from a a global standpoint
actually can you do you have any statistics handy like at what
point did the population start to decline it, what what year
did that start happening well world.
Population is still increasing but we're we're we're basically
right toward the top of the curve and it's it's virtually
all. Sub-Saharan Africa and the
Middle East. Why is that you think?
Well, essentially the the cut off in terms of like national
income appears to be about $5000 per person per year.
So if a country is richer than than you know, $5000 per person
per year, it's got either replacement fertility or rapidly
declining fertility. So it's like.
It it, it appears to be the case that it has something to do with
with prosperity and opportunity and education and like all these
good things. So it's it's, it's really, it's
really a sticky problem to to unravel and and I think you know
just basically Africa and the Middle East there's just a lot
of development work to go and and and you're seeing it in
those countries too they have the, the, the.
The slope of the curve, the the the way that their population,
their fertility is trending downward.
I, I, I could show you the graphs.
It looks exactly the same as everywhere else.
They're just starting from a higher baseline.
So they're they're basically, you know 20-30 forty years
behind the rest of the world but they're going the same place
right. And and and that's actually.
See, like as as bad as it is in the United States where we have,
you know, some infrastructure and some automation and and and,
you know, ways of taking care of the elderly.
It's going to be way worse in countries that are already poor
and already struggling to take care of their elderly.
And then what do you do when instead of having you know five
workers for every elderly person, that ratio is inverted?
Right. And there's just, I mean it's
it's you can it can get really dark when you start having that
conversation. So on a global population level,
Africa and the Middle East are still contributing to an overall
increase in global population, but that trend is about to tip
and that the the net effect will be a total global decrease in
population by 2050, you said. Yeah.
So in in in 2050 it will be. The only countries that will be
growing will be in sub-Saharan Africa and and the population
decline overall is going to start in the in the late twenty
20s early twenty 30s. What is the rate of population
decline in the United States specifically?
So we have roughly like 1.7 TFR. So that's total fertility.
So that's that's assuming the number of babies born right now
if you assume that every woman had children.
At the same rate that they're currently having children right
now, how many babies would that woman have for her entire life?
And right now that number is 1.78.
Replacement fertility is 2.1, so so that's that's fairly rapid
decline. I can give you like the most
extreme population decline right now is happening in Korea, and
Korea has a point a 0.8 TFR. Which roughly means that for
every 100 Koreans alive today, there will be between 4:00 to
6:00 great grandchildren. So that's that's essentially
like extinction, right, That's that's the the sort of
evaporation of of of Korean culture as it currently exists
and what what is the current population estimation like 8
billion or something like that? Yeah, it's, it's, it's around
there and it's probably going to top out at around 10 billion, 10
billion and then at 2050, what is the forecasted population at
that point? So it's it's probably going to
be around where it is now and declining, but it will be a
significant like what what people sort of miss when they
talk about population decline is that it's not just that the
population will go down, but that the population will go down
and get significantly older. So you imagine if we had.
A population the same size but maybe like, you know, 2030% more
elderly people who are sort of pulling on state benefits, not
able to work and and and not gonna have babies.
Yeah, that's the other piece of it.
And then and then you've got the young people under those
circumstances. I mean, this is what you see in
Japan. This what they call the lost
decade of Japan. It's not that they like.
Mismanage their economy per SE, and that's why they haven't had
growth. It's because they've been in a
state of population decline since the 1970s and eventually
the workforce gets old. The the power dynamics of the
workplace change when when you've got essentially lots of
old folks in in entrenched positions who vote and who.
Frankly, don't innovate as much as 20 and 30 year olds do.
And and so these young, these young people who are the, the
type of young Japanese people who would start families are
under this tremendous professional and and tax
pressure because they've got to, they've got to pay the bills of
sort of the the pensioners and they've also got to work in
these environments where there's just like not a lot of room at
the top. Not a lot of room to to expand
and grow. What do you think the main
driving factor is for this decline in population?
Is it just societal changes? Is it economics?
Like, what do you think the underlying driver is?
I I think a lot of it is just cultural in terms of what we
value, what we want. To happen I I think, I think to
some extent men and women. The idea of marriage as a as a
project where in a man and woman would like mutually trust each
other enough to start families that has really broken down.
And I mean and and and a lot of it has to do with our different
incentive structures. So, like women?
Their 20s are this incredibly valuable time in their life in
terms of like career development, in terms of like
just just sort of people like treating you well because you're
attractive and you're young and it's just it's very valued in
the culture and you know you can you can travel and do all these
things and that's precisely the time when sort of for for
replacement fertility to happen, these women would need to be
like. Finding a fella and and and
having babies, which involves a lot of work and a lot of
sacrifice and a lot of trust in that guy because as the two get
older, you know his his stock doesn't necessarily go down at
the same rate hers does his especially if she elects to have
like, I mean basically if you want to have more than say three
kids. I mean really more than two, but
certainly more than three kids. Eventually the economics of a 2
income family breakdown, it stops making sense to send like
3 or 4 kids to daycare. So a parent's going to stay
home. It's probably going to be mom
and and so in order for that to happen, Mom's got to believe
that she can trust dad to. Take care of her and the family
and and not sort of wield that economic power over her and then
when when they're done raising their kids that he'll stick
around and she would like like so much of so much of what's
happened in terms of like women going to college and starting
career has has been about like we this is an arrangement that
we can no longer trust like we it's it's it's no longer.
A a a safe bet or a smart bet to like put all your chips in in a
man to take care of you and and so I think a huge dimension of
that and and basically like so so like we're saying like for
any families to have greater than oops sorry for any of any
families to have greater than replacement fertility greater
than two kids. Someone's got to basically stay
home and and and the the family unit has to has to act in
concert. It can't be sort of two
individuals sort of autonomously pursuing their own interest like
it doesn't work that way. And so go ahead.
You think this cultural shift is more prominent in the US?
Or is this same phenomenon occurring across all the
countries? Oh, it's it's actually
significantly worse than like Korea and Japan.
The the the people's skepticism about marriage and family,
people's commitment to their career, the amount of time they
spend at work and with and with Co workers way higher in Korea
and Japan. What about China?
What's China looking like right now?
Yeah, China, China, very similar.
I mean, you know, they had the one child policy and they tried
to reverse it, but people had already sort of re.
Calibrated their sort of life expectations to in this sort of
sense of what life was about to toward career and and and China
by the way is going to have a much harder time with
demographic decline for that same reason that we talked about
cause like Japan they've got they've got lots of money
they've got you know significant automation of their
manufacturing significant automation of elder care.
If if there's a best case for demographic decline, it's
probably Japan. But China doesn't have nearly
the kind of resources per capita that Japan does to take care of
its elderly population. And and and yeah, it's, it's
very much a, it's very much become an individualist,
consumerist culture, the same as the US and Japan and Korea and
Western Europe. It's that that appears to be the
the common denominator and people people often attribute it
to women's education. They say like that that's what
causes fertility to decline and and like Bill Gates Foundation,
they'll say like, oh it's actually good, like we need to
educate these women so that they'll have less kids because
having less kids is is a desirable outcome.
But I actually think that. Women's education.
In this case, like, I I don't think it's the case that, like,
women learn something in college that makes them want fewer kids.
I I think what happens is that attendance in college is a proxy
for women embarking on this individual career journey that's
just incompatible with having kids.
Because when you ask, when you ask women, how many kids do you
want to have? Like 95% of them say they want
kids and the family sizes once, once, once you have your first
child, family sizes are very similar to what they were in
like the 1960s and 1970s. It's it's it's not a problem
that like people are still getting married, but they're
like electing to have fewer kids.
What's actually happening is that people are not getting
married and people are just having zero kids.
So it's it's this epidemic of. Not not necessarily like fewer
kids but unplanned childlessness as a whole people and and and in
most cases it's like 10% medical like you know biological
infertility. In 10% of cases it's women who
say like, no, I actually, I I chose this.
I I I did not want to have. I did not want to have kids.
I planned my life around it. This is where we are.
But the other 80% of women who don't have kids basically say,
like I I couldn't find the right guy or you know, my my other
ambitions kind of got in the way and I ran out of time.
And it's, it's it's the the vast majority of of childless women.
That wasn't the plan for them. That wasn't what they wanted.
And so for me, the solution is and like like a lot of times
this, this debate is characterized as sort of like
pitting, you know, women's interests against the good of
society. But I that's not what what I'm
about is like, let's take these women who say they want kids who
who, who, who intended to have kids, and let's figure out if we
can make that easier for them to do.
Let's figure out if we can open up opportunities or or make it
less scary or or less risky to make this choice that's so
important to make. I would imagine, I mean if it's
it's 80% that's that's cultural phenomenon that that's obviously
the the vast majority. I would imagine that medical,
you know, 10% chart of the pie there is also growing at a
pretty quick rate considering how many people.
And maybe this is because I'm I'm kind of living in a
nutrition vacuum so to speak and most of the people I'm talking
with are talking in terms of nutrition and fertility rates
and whatnot and they're coming at it from the angle of people
just aren't as fertile due to. You know, malnourishment,
heavily processed foods, things of that nature.
But I would imagine that number is growing at a pretty quick
clip. No, it absolutely is.
And studies I've seen is basically that that sperm counts
are declining by 1% per year, which is that may not seem like
a ton, but it's catastrophic over even you know 20 years.
And I I I can't remember the exact figure but it's it's
something like by by by 20402050 if that trend continues the
average sperm count will be 0 essentially.
So you'll you'll have half half the population with like no
sperm at all. And so it's it's it's that's
that that element of it, the the biomedical element of it is a
crisis that's that's going to be a huge problem And it is
apparently linked to and I actually think that the
psychological side of this and the social side of it is linked
to to to the biological side of it.
Like I I think that people's people's hormonal if the effect
on their moods, the effect on their their attraction and what
like how intensely they feel desire and and the kind of
people that they're attracted to that's unambiguously a function
of their sort of hormonal environment.
And when you mess that up, you, you not only mess up
potentially, they're like biological ability to have
children. But maybe you mess up like the
guy who, the guy who would have gone up and talked to that girl.
Maybe he just doesn't feel it intensely enough and doesn't
like, feel confident enough. And all the stuff that
testosterone does to a guy just doesn't happen for him.
And so he sort of misses his chance.
You know, I think it's all interconnected for sure, and it
seems as though. The the people that are having
kids, there seems to be a a much greater acceptance of divorce
now than there used to be as well.
Like that's just in the cards, whereas before it seemingly
wasn't as much of an option. So you've the people that are
having kids are often times leaving them in broken homes
with separated parents. So even though we have fewer
kids, they're they're having less of a foundational, you
know, good home life to to stem from.
So it's kind of a catastrophic on all fronts it seems.
Yeah. And I mean that that that speaks
to the the trust issue. Like if you know, there's
there's there's a lot of problems with a social stigma on
divorce, right. Like, it's not great to to like,
shun people, make them feel awful about this really awful
thing to begin with. Yeah, but it is the case that
when there is a sort of stigma around something like that, it
makes people feel more confident in in making the decision.
Like, because because the the the math of, like how hard do
things have to get in my marriage before I have to worry
about, like divorce. That math changes if there's
like no social, no legal, no, no consequences for it, right?
Like it does. It's it's just it's incredibly
easy to do. And therefore it's like what has
to happen? Does it have to be 1 bad day?
How How bad does that day have to be?
And then and then you're sort of thinking, you know, the the the
young people who are contemplating marriage, they're
sort of doing that math and like, well, you know, if it's
that easy and it and and and it can really just be this
impulsive or this frankly, like flippant decision, then OK,
maybe I'll get married if I find the right person.
But I'm certainly not gonna set aside my education to have
children with this person. Like obviously that'd be insane.
And and yeah, so so people's. People's a bit like I guess
where I would sum that up is like social structures that
encouraged marriage in the past were not optimal like there
were, there were, there were things that were bad about that
and and and a lot of pain involved in that.
But people having no ability to like count on, count on their
their spouse, count on the society to sort of help them
stay together. But there's better ways to help
them stay together but but they need help to stay together,
right? Totally.
And and it it, it actually does matter what the community thinks
about marriage. I wholeheartedly agree when it
comes to, you know, the economic front, the infrastructure side
of things, you know, all that was based on a an increasing
growth rate. Are there some?
Benefits to the population decline, Like when you look at
it from a food sourcing standpoint, you know, like
there's all this debate in my circles around what could we
sustainably produce as a species to feed the population with
quality nutrition And. And that's why, you know, mono
crop agriculture's getting a lot of kickback, regenerative
agriculture got a lot of kickback.
There's all these different situations in which people
trying to figure out how to feed the population at its current
level. If the population were declining
as it's predicted to be, could that be a benefit in that regard
or is the net outcome going to be negative across the board?
Well, I think that it's hard, it's hard to find a variable on
which like things will be better for the world overall under
conditions of population decline.
You know for for instance when when the like the people who who
sort of require the most food aid, the areas of the earth that
require the most food aid, it's not necessarily the fact that
like they're actually outstripping the carrying
capacity of their environment. Like African can feed itself.
That's not, that's not really the issue.
The issue is political instability and poverty and and
war and all these things that that cause a need for food aid
and the loss of human capital and the loss of know how.
I mean just you just look at the boomer generation and how much
they know about maintaining and developing the infrastructure
that all these systems depend on, the, the, the mechanization
of of agriculture. And like, you know, obviously
there's problems with industrial agriculture, but like tractors
are probably pretty great, right?
Like, it's probably good that we have tractors.
Yeah I like tractors and and and combines and and like there's
there's all sorts of elements of modern agriculture that that
potentially become harder to make and and and harder to
maintain as the as the know how to maintain them dies out and
and isn't necessarily passed on. Now I will say like there are
there are going to be winners and losers right in in every
situation. Like I don't, I don't think
there's there's anything that's going to be great for the whole
planet with this problem. But people who have technical
skills and skills and automation, they're going to be
in higher demand. People who companies that invest
in elder care, they're going to be in higher demand.
And that's one of the things that I want to do at the
conference. I want to, I want to address
like, yes, are there global solutions?
Are there, are there big picture things we can do to solve this
problem? But as individuals are there
investments that we can make that will make our families
better off under these conditions because it's going to
be really hard for for everybody.
But but there's still smart investments you can make.
I mean for for one thing this is maybe a a a perfect example of
this is like the real estate market.
Like the problem is going to be that the real estate market is
just not going to be a store of value the way that it was for
our parents and our grandparents because the sort of periphery of
all these cities is just going to hollow out as there's just no
kids to raise families in them. But the upside of that is real
estate will be cheap. It's you know for for every, for
every seller there's a buyer, right?
Like there's a there's a there's a buyer side to that equation.
So. So yes, certain things will get
will get less expensive and and easier to obtain.
So the the gap between the haves and the have nots will likely
increase substantially. Yes.
Yes, that is absolutely the case.
I mean because you know, you sort of imagine the what was the
smart move if you lived in Detroit as it was hollowing out.
Well, you'd want to sell your house as quickly as possible.
And if you couldn't if you couldn't sell it and and
basically you'd be selling it at A at A at a a pretty serious
loss to go move into you know the core of the city where the
infrastructure's a little bit better and there's you know sort
of police protection's a little bit easier to get.
And and I I essentially see that that as being a trend across the
board as populations decline they're gonna, they're gonna
sort of abandoned the periphery of the cities and move closer to
the center. Which means if you're sort of
the the people who own that extremely this the the the real
estate that's extremely high value in the core of these
cities will probably stay extremely high value.
And a lot of middle class people whose retirements depended on
sort of the value of their suburban home are going to have
a real rough ride. Yeah, I'm, I might be doing the
exact OPS. I might be moving out in the
country even further. Well, right and and that's
that's sort of the IT, it depends on like what kind of a
bet you're making, right? Like if, if, if the bet you're
making is is like your home as a financial investment that's you
know iffy. But if if you're, if you're
trying to get out to the country so that you can be more sort of
self-sufficient, more independent, you know connecting
with a different kind of people that's that's a whole different
story, right. Like that's sort of a non
financial decision. So so what's the solution to
this this pretty paramount problem and like what do people
need to do individually and what do people need to do, you know,
in tandem with society? Like what what is the what, what
catalyst can be can be activated to make this trend improve upon
itself? Yeah.
So essentially the the most important thing in my opinion is
to get together with other people who care about this and
and who are you know like I I I guess to to be frank it's like
you need to find people who want to have kids so that you can
have like if you're if you're single you need to be around the
kind of people who want to have a family which is increasingly
sort of hard to find and and the kind of people for whom there's
like a framework in which marriage and and and children
make sense. And if you have a family and you
have kids as I do, I want to be around other families that are
raising their kids with the kinds of values that produce
kids who want kids because I want my kids to have kids of
their own. And and so I think sort of what
what I'm the basic thing I'm trying to accomplish with the
natalism conference is just to shoot up a flare and say hey is
anybody else out here. And and we've had, I mean the
the guests who are going to be attending this conference are
really spectacular. We've got geneticists.
We've got demographers. We've got you know culture
commentators and and people who are really concerned about this
issue and have a lot of expertise and a lot of
understanding of how how it works and how it's going
investors and and we're going to be getting together to try to
solve this problem globally but also individually.
And I think that that alone is a huge part of the solution.
It's just sort of connecting with other people who care about
this. But in terms of like policy
prescriptions, I think you have to de risk marriage and family a
little bit and you know the the the the traditional ways of
doing that of just like sort of being cruel to people who do it
is is probably not the solution. But there's but there has to be
some way of of making it reforming the the sort of legal
arrangement of marriage such that it's less risky.
I think you also have to address the way people find partners.
I mean Tinder, the whole business model of Tinder is you
know the the moment that you're happy, they lose you as a
customer, right. And so the incentive is to keep
you on this treadmill and and as as sort of as sort of like sad
and lonely as possible and and so we've we've got a guy coming
to the group who's a a founder of a novel dating app concept.
Those kinds of like cultural solutions I think I think are
going to matter quite a lot. I do think that there's we've
got, we've got you know some some medical professionals
coming who are going to talk about the biological infertility
issue. So basically it's about finding
the people who already want kids and are struggling to have them
because there's a lot of them like that's that's you know if
it's 80% of of so, so it's 40% of millennials are not going to
have kids which is a crazy number.
It is crazy. That's that's my, that's my
generation, my high school graduating class.
I'm 36 and and my high school graduating class is basically,
you know, kind of coming to the end of the the the women's sort
of main fertility window where they're likely to have kids.
Particularly if you haven't had one kid by, like if you had one
kid by then having another is not so hard.
But if you've never had a kid by then, it's really, really
challenging to have your first at that age.
It is strange. I mean like you were talking
about earlier the just the societal pressure and incentive
for young females to have this very career minded focus that
often times does not equate to rearing a family.
Like I look at my my wife and you know we have a son, 15 month
old son. We're planning on having more
but it's like it seems as though you know her raising.
Him staying at home that that that seems to be a very, you
know, non traditionalist approach these days where it's
it's pretty pretty traditional when you think about it.
You know if you rewind the clock to like the parents generation,
but like that is not the norm these days.
It seems like it's it's been rather difficult for us to find
other people of the same age demographic that are in a
similar chapter in life, because that just doesn't seem to be the
norm. Right.
And and it it's one of the
things that demographers have found is that fertility is
highly contagious, that you know it one lady in the friend group
has has a baby or becomes pregnant and then all of a
sudden like three or four in the in the friend group.
Like that's something that people have anecdotally noticed.
But like demographers have looked at the data and they've
been like, no, that actually happens.
And so I think there is a lot of value in sort of tipping over
the scales there a little bit and and you know, making it
higher status to do and 'cause I mean like the the sort of the
the mean. Well, it's like we we sort of
talked about the cruelty behind like enforcing marriage norms,
but there's also a cruelty behind you know, enforcing these
career norms as well. I mean you know my wife has been
treated with pretty serious disrespect by some people for
her decision to to to raise our family and and I think, you know
it's I don't know if that's like a just a law of the universe
that you just can't you can't escape that people are just
going to be mean no matter what the rules are.
But, but yeah, I think the more you can surround people with an
environment where it is high status and it is, you know.
It's talked about why it's why it's cool and and and and the
value of it. It's really easy to complain.
And I I think, I think part of the problem is that like
complaining about your family and complaining about how hard
it is and and like what a what a hero you are for enduring it.
That's sort of the the the popular narrative around raising
a family for men and women and and so I just I don't know I I
me and my wife when when people talk about like oh boy you guys
sure have your hands but we have six kids wow boy you guys.
You guys sure have your hands full.
You know my wife always is like yeah it's great it's it's
wonderful have these these beautiful kids and to to just
sort of never succumb to the because you know what people are
expecting you to do they're they're sort of expecting you to
to to put on those sort of exhausted like Oh yeah let me
tell you about it. And I and I think just not doing
that makes a difference to be honest with you.
I've definitely had people that I've met who've who've, you
know, meeting my kids gets them excited about having kids.
And it's like, and that makes me feel great because I feel like
I'm doing a good job. If I've got these kids that that
that are sweet and and good and happy and you know.
They'll be. They'll grow to become
contributing members of society. I mean that that is key.
I mean, I look at what my wife is doing and I'm just incredibly
proud to see her raising our son to the extent that she is.
And it's nothing but respect that I have heard.
Like I don't try and hold her under my thumb by any means.
And I don't feel like anybody should do that.
It's just such a. Cultural, societal shift that's
occurred. And I don't want to say that,
you know, I don't want to place judgement on anybody else.
I mean, everyone has to find their own life path.
But I feel like there's certainly should be no
disrespect associated with the woman that decides to stay home
and take care of the kids because that is a incredibly
demanding job in and of itself. And if you're raising quality
kids, I mean, it takes a ton of effort.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
And I think part of the problem is that we have sort of embraced
an idea that if if work is worth anything, you ought to get paid.
And there's this whole I mean and and and you can see why why
governments why businesses would want people especially women to
think that because if if if your wife is is raising kids and
educating them and and and being involved in your community.
She's not paying income tax and she's not generating all this
demand and she's doing she's doing things for free that
otherwise a corporation might be able to monetize.
And, and so if they can, if they can capture all of that energy
that she's generating and all of the good that she's doing and
turn it into like revenue for the daycare, revenue for the TV
dinners, revenue for, you know what I'm saying, Like just sort
of all of it being taxable, you can see why there's an incentive
to encourage this narrative of like, oh, no, you should, you
should be at work. That's where the real you know,
that's where real life is. Yeah, how much of this, this.
This may be a a slight detour here, but.
How much of this do you think is ingrained in like biblical
beliefs and things of that nature?
Because it's, I mean, I'm in Arkansas, so I'm like in the
middle of the Bible Belt. So this seems to be a lot more
accepting for those traditionalist minded people
that want to kind of stay more in line with that philosophy of,
you know, parenting and raising kids, you know, things of that
nature. Whereas if you go out to like we
were just in New York this past weekend, it seems to be that.
You know those demographics are much less traditional from a
biblical sense and therefore much more prone to not want to
have the kids be more career focused etcetera, etcetera.
Like with regards to your approach to this and what not,
do you try to keep those completely separate or do you
think they're intertwined or how how much of that is is affecting
societal and cultural beliefs around having kids?
Yeah, I mean I think, I think what is happening essentially is
you've got people behaving rationally in the face of
incentives and like the the sort of the sort of financial and
social incentives are strongly against having children.
And so you need a you need an incentive that is non rational
or pre rational. That's like, yeah, this is gonna
be hard. This is gonna be harder than
some other things I could do, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
And I'm I'm increasingly needing some secular people who have
found their way to caring about this for other reasons.
But yeah, in general I think it's overwhelmingly religious
people. And and I mean like in I, I
actually did a little amateur analysis of my high school
graduating class of like because because we're we're sort of
coming to the end of of our our our childbearing age.
And yeah, the the few people who are having three plus kids are
first of all it's like it's like 14% of my high school graduating
class has three or more kids at this point and they constitute
like 48% of the total fertility. So like the new the next
generation that the generation of our children is
overwhelmingly represented by the, you know 14% of of of the
population that made that choice and they're all religious, all
of them. And so it's what will that mean
for the culture in, you know, 20 years when those kids grow up,
if you can, if you can hold on to them, right, like, like at
least. So the the way that the way that
the the sort of secular progressive worldview has
reproduced itself for the last, you know, 100 years or so has
been by taking the children of of other cultures and and and
assimilating them, converting them.
So it it's it can't just be that, like religious people have
the kids and and and they they get get to keep all them, 'cause
they don't. That's not how it works.
Having said that, this, this 14% of my high school graduating
class, there was something unusual about them, right?
Like that cause 'cause there were lots of religious people.
I grew up in Texas. It was, you know, much more than
14% of of my graduating class was was sort of raised in
church. But there was something weird
about us, this little cadre. And so, like, does that
weirdness about us translate into something, like, weird
about our kids, maybe even biologically?
That's like, no, these are people who are just way more,
like they're way more resistant to whatever whatever has caused
people to buy into this story. Maybe, I think, I think that's I
think that's likely. I I think you know, the the,
the, the types of people that my kids and grandkids are going to
grow up knowing is going to be a very different cohort than I
grew up with because of who had all the babies.
I think that that's key. I mean, people, it's very hard
to have this incredible forward thinking mentality of OK, what
is life going to be like for my kids and their kids?
But that is absolutely of paramount importance cause like
when I look at it from an epigenetic standpoint, I mean
the foods that I'm consuming right now and that my wife are
consuming impact, you know, the health of my son when he was
conceived. And then that has an antigenetic
effect for three generations or more deep.
And that's just the nutritional component when you look at it
from a societal and cultural component as well.
You know what kind of. Kids and peer group are Are my
kids and their kids and their kids going to be surrounded by
what is the what? What's what's going to make life
easier or harder for them? Like, people don't take the time
to think like that, but it's crucial that they do because
it's going to be shaped by their decisions today.
And if we find ourselves living in a world in which the
population is drastically declining and there is no
incentive or desire to. Raise good quality kids, have
them in a good home, feed them properly and that just becomes
the norm. Then that's not gonna bode well
for us as a species, right? Right.
And the like. And to be clear like this is
this is maybe an admission against interest, but like the
incentives against having kids are gonna get stronger because
the voting population is going to get older.
The the sort of demands on the benefit system are going to get
stronger. It's going to it basically.
People are going to have to grow up in a our our kids are going
to grow up in a in a more challenging economic environment
than we did. And so like to to inculcate the
values that they need to still make the decision to raise
families under that environment. That's a tall order.
And so yeah, basically this is something that I have dedicated
myself to pretty much entirely. I mean everything that I'm
involved in is is sort of an attempt at addressing this
problem. But yeah, I think it starts with
and and and the the conference, the concept for it started when
we just thought like hey it actually turns out that we know
like you know all these people who were on that documentary,
the Tucker Carlson documentary, people who are are interested in
this and talking about this. We should try to get just the
smartest people we can think of to to get together and address
this problem. So day one's going to be a
standard symposium with with panels and and and and speakers
and reception sort of mix and mingle.
But day 2 is going to be a a structured innovation workshop.
So we've got my partner Drew Gorham is involved in Stanford
Design School innovation workshops and this incredible
tool for like getting the right answers out of people.
Getting getting the best from a group.
And so you're going to be sitting across the table from
these experts and you're going to be able to like chew on any
of these problems whether and it's sort of whichever 1 catches
your attention and you think is the most important, whether it's
the cultural angle, whether it's the, the biomedical angle, it's
policy. It's going to be a really
exciting time. And my and my hope is that that
at least you know two or three or four of these initiatives
turns into something that you know some of the some of the
investors who are going to be in the room will take an interest
in and and and pick up and run with.
So that's sort of the best way I could think of to to attack this
problem. No, I think it's, it's
incredibly admirable, man. Like I don't know of anybody
else spearheading this topic. So I think what you're doing is
profound and incredibly, you know, importance of
significance. Are there any other groups or
cohorts doing this or is this kind of like you just grabbing
grabbing the bull by the horns and leading the tip of the spear
here? Well, so we're the only
conference on this topic of which I'm aware, although I will
say I think I think Elon Musk recently went to one in like
Hungary or something. So definitely would like to get
Elon down here, 'cause he, I know he, I know he's concerned
about this issue as well, but but no.
So there's another group called pronatalist.org that's run by
Malcolm and Simone Collins. They're actually going to be at
the conference and they're they're attacking it from the
education angle. They they they've they've got a
lot of initiatives that they're working on.
So it's like we're not we're not all alone out here.
But as far as I know if you if you want to come to like a a, a
symposium where the the major thinkers on this issue are going
to be in the same room. I I think, I think we're the
only game in town. And and when is the conference
and how do people listening get involved, get tickets and
attend? Yeah, it's it's natalism.org.
That's and it's December 1st and 2nd in Austin, TX at the Line
Hotel. You can get your tickets there
for either day one or day one. And day two it's going to be, I
mean really we we we sort of planned it around like if Elon
Musk or Tucker Carlson or any of these other sort of like
billionaires who care about this, if they showed up, we'd
want to make them comfortable. So it's going to be really high
end, great food, great environment and and and just
some of the smartest people I'm aware of in the space to to talk
to. So it's going to be a lot of
fun. No, I think it's awesome and I
think I think you know being forward thinking like this is,
is crucial and I appreciate you doing this.
It's not, not typically in my wheelhouse of discussion, but
it's it's relevant when you look at everything on a symbiotic
level and I really appreciate that you're bringing in.
All the different components of it.
You've got the cultural societal standpoint, you've got the the
health and biomedical standpoint.
You have the policy in the governmental standpoint because
it all goes in tandem. So I think it only is, it's
fitting that you've got all these experts from all the
different walks of life coming there to share what they know so
that it can all be cohesive. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's
going to be a really, really good time and I appreciate you
having me down to to spread the word because I think, I think, I
think your listeners would really find it interesting.
Yeah, I mean you've definitely solidified in my mind the path
that my wife and I are taking with, you know, trying to be
more self-sufficient, living off the land, doubling down on local
communities, finding you know, friend groups and people that
are of the similar age, similar chapters in life, doubling down
on that. I mean, we're probably going to
go the home schooling routes in the beginning for sure and I
think. You know, as the population
declines, it's, it's interesting man, I don't know if I'm totally
off the wall on this, but we saw this massive increase in growth
and technology and awareness, innovation, which is great, but
it came at the cost of people just simply being connected on a
deeper level. So we've been trying to double
down on increasing that atmosphere within our own home
and abroad and I I think kind of just really fixating on that and
making it a conscious effort. To to make that your reality and
and part of your life is key. So us homeschooling, raising our
own food and getting plugged in the community is, is even more
important now. I think yeah, I, I, I was having
a conversation with a friend of mine who is looking for looking
to make some substantial investments and we were talking
through because we're we're both pretty committed to this, this
vision of the future. And we said well if if you've
got if you need a place to put your money and the stock market
is probably going to tank and maybe not come back.
The real estate market is probably going to tank and maybe
not come back. The dollar is probably going to
tank and maybe not come back. It's like where, where do you
put this investment, what's what makes sense, what's safe?
And basically the conclusion that we came to was this people,
you, you, you invest in whatever gets you closer to the kind of
people who are going to help you solve problems because human
capital is going to become that's that's the only
appreciating asset that there's going to be in the next 100
years in my opinion. Yeah, no, I think.
I think investing in relationships and human capital
is always a safe bet if you're in a good group of people.
So no, I think this is awesome, man.
I'm, I'm stoked. Are you going to have a?
To have virtual conferences. I'm gonna be traveling out of
town that weekend, but I would love to partake and learn from
the speakers that'll be at your event.
Is there gonna be a way for people to attend virtually or
get recordings of it? Yeah, we're gonna have, we're
gonna have recordings available after the fact.
So we're gonna, we're definitely gonna be releasing some of that
information. The workshops are Chatham House
rules. So that's gonna be because we
wanted to be able to have like a maximally open conversation in
inside the the group. So.
So we're not going to be publicizing day 2, but day one,
the speakers and and that kind of thing.
We're going to be preparing some some recordings for that.
Awesome, awesome. Well, Kevin again man, I tip my
hat to you. I appreciate you taking the
charge on this, bringing awareness to it.
If there's anything that I could possibly do to help, by all
means let me know. I've thoroughly enjoyed the
conversation and really enjoyed getting to meet you and dive a
little deeper. And one more time.
What's What's the website? People can go to
yeahnatalism.org. Natalism.org You have like a
social profile as well. Yeah, Natalism Org on Twitter.
Awesome. Well, I will link out to all
those. Make it easy for people to find
you. And again, man, I'm going to be,
I'm going to be just following along.
You've got six kids. You're a little bit further
along on this journey than me, but I respect what you're doing
here, so I'm going to be taking notes.
Thanks so much. Great talk to you.
Appreciate you, Kevin. Take care, man.