226A. Demographic Collapse is Accelerating
Leading indicators are at species-historic highs, suggesting that projections based on trends will underestimate the threat and severity of what we can expect.
[The theme of this series is that our species is under extreme threat, but that that threat is mostly invisible and thus easy to ignore. That’s not all that different than climate change, but this threat is going to happen much faster than climate change. With climate change, it ended up happening faster than all predictions because it is complex and poorly understood. The topic of this paper is similar in that here I explain why all of our predictions are going to vastly underestimate the speed of this crisis.
In Part 2 I will talk about Gender, because it is a critical element in this reproductive crisis. As a society we don’t like to talk about gender, and for many this can be very uncomfortable. Nonetheless, we can’t address the threat without talking about Gender. So that paper will come with trigger warnings.
In Part 3 I will do my best to explain what is causing this Demographic Collapse as objectively as I can without disrespecting one/any/both Genders.]
Demographic collapse (DC) is a global event that threatens every nation. Almost every nation is having new births at rates below the “advanced nation” Replacement Rate of 2.1 births per adult woman. Nations with higher infant mortality rates need higher replacement rates to break even so even some nations where women have 3 births are still below local replacement rates.
Having population go down over time can have beneficial environmental effects, and if done gradually can actually be beneficial economically over time. This is because the more people competing over the same resources, the poorer each person will be. The problem comes when there is a relatively sudden loss of productive younger people while the number of lower-productivity (or entirely retired) elderly goes up.
You might find it interesting that resources for childbirth have been strictly assigned and rationed in the West since the publication of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith in 1776.
How Nations Controlled Births Prior to Oral Birth Control
Smith explained how to maintain a stable “labor supply” (this is how Smith refers to low status people) in 1776:
“A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.”
I will describe the “sufficient to maintain” income as the “survival rate”, or 100% income, in this paper.
“the lowest species of common labourers must everywhere earn at least double their own maintenance, in order that one with another they may be enabled to bring up two children; the labour of the wife, on account of her necessary attendance on the children, being supposed no more than sufficient to provide for herself. But one half the children born, it is computed, die before the age of manhood. The poorest labourers, therefore, according to this account, must, one with another, attempt to rear at least four children, in order that two may have an equal chance of living to that age. But the necessary maintenance of four children, it is supposed, may be nearly equal to that of one man.”
So 250 years ago the lowest quality of workers (what we would call “working class” today) earned 200% for men, 100% for women, and women spent the other half of her labor caring for ~4 children. Half of those are expected to die with a 50% infant mortality rate. In modern times even the most war torn countries (not including ethnic cleansing areas) have infant mortality rates below 10%.
To my knowledge, this is the only time Smith discusses women’s wages.
You can see here that there is an assumption that children only require 25% as many resources to maintain as an adult. This low rate is in part due to them being expected to work from very early ages. In the West the costs of children (including education) are much higher than they were 250 years ago, but with infant mortality rates close to 0% a family only requires 2 (2.1) children. Thus the 200% rate is still likely sufficient. If there are two adults in the family (true for ~70% of children) that extra 100% above the survival rate can be shared by both adults. If we accept this math, for one adult to support their “stay at home” partner and two children would require wages equal to 300% of survival rates. Only ~3% of Americans earn this much, making the “stay at home” parent family structure that was common until perhaps 50 years ago, now almost mythological.
As discussed in previous papers, women could have as many as 20 live births 250 years ago. Numbers above 4 children, or even above 2 children, were ultimately culled through starvation. Intentional starvation.
“Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence, and no species can ever multiply beyond it. But in civilised society it is only among the inferior ranks of people that the scantiness of subsistence can set limits to the further multiplication of the human species; and it can do so in no other way than by destroying a great part of the children which their fruitful marriages produce.”
See, even 250 years ago they had “politically correct” language for things like infanticide.
How are the Elderly Paid For?
250 years ago the average life expectancy was ~35 years. There wasn’t a concept of elderly working class people. Only the aristocracy was expected to live beyond a point of “unproductiveness”. Thus Smith does not even mention this possibility.
In modern times the elderly are maintained by a combination of their own savings and support from the state. The latter support is raised from taxes. The USA used to have a “Social Security” system that held and invested social security taxes for future retirement needs. Starting in 1983 the government started “borrowing” those funds. As a result the Fund is expected to go underwater by 2033, only maintaining 77% of obligations. This will represent a massive economic shock to the economy that is fast approaching. I will call this the Retirement Reserve Shock.
If we ignore social security, taxes are raised to support the elderly. Those taxes go up severely as the % of dependent elderly increases, and the % of productive adults decreases due to Demographic Collapse.
Survival Rates Under Pressure
As Demographic Collapse advances, post-tax incomes will go down on average for everyone. The exception would be if they have a crime or sex work occupation that evades taxation. I talk about this at length in Gender Economics.
Annual expenses in the USA are ~$78K USD. Median adult incomes are ~$51K USD. This means that for most Americans, they are paid below the survival rate at 65% where 100% is survival. To make up the other 35% they may engage in crime, desperation, shared housing, or most commonly, debt. In Australia yearly wages are 43K to 55K USD (wide range based on region). Expenses including shared housing range from 25K to 35K USD. This gives a rate of 160 to 170%. Australia is a relatively rich country, and effective net income is more than twice what it is in the USA. Thus Australians can still afford children, maybe even more than one, especially with both adults working.
Recall that in the USA taxes will have to increase significantly due to Retirement Reserve Shock in 7 years, even if they were not starting wars, massively increasing their military budgets, and disrupting global supply chains. AI is also being used to aggressively replace workers. All these factors are going to make a nearly impossible parenting situation even harder. I assume this is intentional on the part of that government, which is why I wrote a special paper for the unique Demographic Collapse situation in the USA.
I have to mention that men need about 50% more calories than women. As food prices rapidly rise, this will become more meaningful. Even if men still had as much money as women, they would have less to spend on things other than food. That includes spending on children. Thus if men and women had equal budgets, the men would have lower % survival rates.
As taxes go up, food/fuel prices go up, and employment rates go down, things are going to get rough.
Gender Competitive Pressures
While my grandmother Majorie was educated as a nurse, she worked for Howard Hughes making aeriel bombs for the USA Air Force during WW2. Women working in traditionally male jobs was a new thing spurred by desperation. After the dust of war settled, it became clear that our country was far more productive with both men and women working.
Rules and laws changed to promote women in the labor force, and to even promote them in education. So much support was given that they soon reached parity and now are more educated and earn more than men. I discuss this in my Gender Economics paper. The UK data showing that women now have higher base wages than men were released after I wrote that paper so the Gender Income Gap (in favor of women) has widened even more than I described there.
This might be confusing for generations raised to believe that men make more than women. Well, they used to, but we kept putting our fingers on the scale until that reversed. All that assistance has put stress on men who now find themselves very unemployed. It has also put stress on women who expect men to contribute to child raising with shared income but many men fall short and struggle just to support themselves.
This leaves many men “ineligible” for relationships or parenthood.
Where the relationship between the binary heterosexual genders used to be cooperative, it has now turned competitive. Our species is exceptionally efficient at eliminating competitors. Our entire culture is shifting in real time to make that permissible. I’ve previously described this as a Gender War.
As men went from “superior” (patriarchy) to “inferior” (called dusty and/or patriarchy still), women have become very frustrated that they aren’t getting enough help from men. The recent UK poll (from a women’s research team) showed that younger women now out-earn their male counterparts, even before counting the various undeclared incomes that I discuss in Gender Economics. It also showed that less than 20% of women aged 30 or less wanted children, while almost 80% of men did want children.
That’s the inverse of the cultural narrative that women want children and men are more ambivalent or even “deadbeat”. In the face of many barriers, men are increasingly just avoiding women that they can’t afford. It is no surprise that women do not find the idea of trying to hold down their careers while also being single parents very appetizing.
The real kicker is what happened when the UK research team asked the binary genders who they feel about the other gender. Men seemed to still be optimistic with 72% saying they liked women, with only 7% saying they disliked them. For the youngest adult generation, only 35% of women liked men and 27% said they disliked them.
Since women don’t wear shirts that say “I hate men” on dates, this generates threat towards men as the risk that the person they are meeting might be a misandrist is quite high. If your partner is sexist against you from the start, the chance of being assaulted emotionally or physically is quite high, along with the risk of a false allegation being made.
Men have reacted by forming “red pill” communities where men educate each other on the rapidly evolving threat. These are often folded into a broader category that includes any straight male influencers: “The Manosphere”. Since there are 431 universities with Women’s Studies programs, and zero with Men’s Studies, this is all that men are allowed. Women who see men as competitors want to get rid of any sort of men’s support groups so influence campaigns against the Manosphere have been intense, usually focusing on the misogynists on the radical fringe.
What’s Next
With women mobilizing against competing men, and men increasingly organising against the perceived threat, it seems inevitable that both misandry and misogyny rates are going to increase. The potential for aggression in both directions will increase.
Under “normal” (tribal) conditions, cis hetero men and women release oxytocin when they like each other, and this vastly boosts sensations of trust and love. The ultimate result is new children. Oxytocin can also boost aggression towards competitors. I will explain that dynamic in detail in the 3rd paper in this series.
As trust drops to zero, the result is going to be birth rates dropping rapidly to zero. Birth rates in the West could drop to less than half of projected (already dire) rates in the next two years. I base this on “back of handkerchief” math where “friendly” women are less than half the frequency (35%) they might have been a few years ago (70+%).
Governmental options are going to be limited, and almost certainly “out of budget”. Giving men more money so that they can give it to a woman would be the ideal situation, but I can’t imagine a reality where that would happen, or could be set up to avoid fraud. Giving women more money if they have children has been tried in many countries, and generally doesn’t work because the amounts are insufficient, end too soon, and don’t solve the gender divide. If women just want to get pregnant but don’t like men, the risks of false allegations will go way up as this is the preferred way of denying men parental rights.
“Artificial” insemination might become popular, but children perform poorly with only one parent, especially if that parent doesn’t have time to parent. I can’t imagine that locking cis hetero men out of the process would be popular with them.
I’m operating from the view that the core source of this problem isn’t that men or women suddenly became more evil just in the last year or two. I also don’t think economic changes could have made such a rapid change. I believe the oxytocin metabolism that normally makes coupling possible has been disrupted, by social media. I will make this case in the 3rd paper, after I talk about the influences of gender in this scenario in the next paper.