Based Camp： Could Our Civilization Collapse in the Near Future？
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Summary
In this episode, Simone and I discuss the question: Can our civilization collapse? We discuss the various models of civilizational collapse and what it might look like in the past and present, and how it might impact our society in the future.
Transcript
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would you like to know more hey malcolm hello simone we have such an exciting topic today
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yes indeed can our civilization collapse discuss yeah i think this is such an interesting topic
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because we hear people talk about this and we call them preppers or we we i think it's a very
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easy thing to dismiss because if you look at the past couple hundred years civilization hasn't
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collapsed i think the first thing to establish in terms of thinking about can a civilization collapse
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is has it happened in the past and the answer is yes it's happened a number of times in the past
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you know whether you're looking at the egyptian civilization or the roman civilization or various
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periods of the egyptians that happened to them like four different times if you go through history
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when you're talking about the new kingdom versus the old kingdom versus the middle kingdom that was
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three periods of collapse with many collapses in between so when in egypt it got so bad they forgot
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how to write came up with new systems writing they forgot how to draw it's really interesting you can
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see art falling apart and then be reinvented not even rediscovered but reinvented in between these
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collapse periods so i think rome presents probably the best model of a collapse we can look at for what
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a collapse of our own society might look like yeah that's what people always discuss right the fall
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of the roman empire and is quote-unquote western civilization fall yeah talking about western
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civilization today is silly china to an extent evolved down a different civilizational route japan
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evolved down a different civilizational route korea did if they collapse we collapse we're all tied
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together at this point there's just civilization now but to go back in time with the collapse of
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the roman empire to the average roman on the street they probably wouldn't have noticed that much
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change in their daily lives as the collapse was happening they may have noticed that rules around
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religious practices were becoming more orthodox supply lines like they they had less stuff in
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their local stores or things were getting dramatically more expensive political figures may have been
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increasingly becoming more radical acting but from their perspective and i'm talking about like in
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the western roman empire so let's say someone in spain not that much would have changed from their
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day-to-day life and also keep in mind with the collapse of rome you had the western roman empire
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collapse long before the eastern roman empire did the byzantine empire and so there's this idea that
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collapse means everywhere all at once goes road warrior right because that's what we see in media
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yeah yeah road warrior water world we're picturing complete lack of infrastructure no government
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but you're saying that's not what civilizational collapse is what i'm hearing from you is you're saying
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it's poor services what exactly is it be a little more specific here it's a collapse of supply networks
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it's a collapse of an economic system the biggest thing that's associated with civilizational collapse
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is economic system collapse to the extent that once you have a collapse of an economic system
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then you begin to have a collapse of a geopolitical order presumably this is some kind of irreversible
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collapse because otherwise you could define the pandemic as a temporary civilization no what you
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have to ask is what does it look like when it is what we saw in the pandemic part of what you see
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during a civilizational collapse yes no for sure so i guess you could say that what many people
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experienced during the pandemic is of what civilizational collapse would feel like you can't
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get some products that you really want to get you you can't go to work or you don't have a job
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or people aren't letting you work or traveling becomes more dangerous that's a really big thing
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within civilizational collapse mobility in general mobility and one thing to remember is that culture
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often doesn't completely go away it just becomes a lot less aggressive in terms of change so what you
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see is culture become dramatically more conservative for often a period of like 100 200 years um and and
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before that often culture is much more promiscuous or permissive i think is the word most promiscuous
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oh so yeah so you're going from freedom recess to like cracking down you're in the middle of math class
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yeah but then things begin to open up again after that period if things survive and that's where this
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question gets really interesting so the first big point i'd make about civilizational collapse for a lot of
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people when they think about the existing world civilization is there's this belief that we have
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been on a consistent trajectory for the past 300 years or so and we're not in the middle of any
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really big experiments at the moment like at the economic or geopolitical level and that's just
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factually wrong we have started a number of really big worldwide society-wide experiments pretty recently
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and these experiments affect people's daily lives so let's just globalism gender equality like sort
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of women in the workforce and women being educated high levels of education in general so yeah but
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with women being educated i think people look at that and they're they really misunderstand the scope
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of that one women being widely educated and accepted into the workforce was one thing but the workforce
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in the economy adapting to that to lower wages with the idea that you had doubled the amount of workers
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in the economy that was the bigger fallout of that which meant that it really became almost impossible
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and not that it was really that possible before it's actually a myth that on a global scale it was ever
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realistic to raise a family on a single income but there was a period where in certain parts of the u.s
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in europe it was possible for a 50-year period to raise a family on a one-family income that possibility
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is just not there anymore so i think a lot of people they're like oh you could have women like
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you actually see pushes for this now oh you could have women not be educated and that would solve the
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problem or women not work but as long as some countries are engaging in women working that doesn't
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really work then you're just choosing to be desperately poor is really what's going on when you make that
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change at a society-wide level yes some people can be wealthy enough to make that decision but we're
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past doing that anymore you see a similar thing with something like student debt right so student debt
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is something that i think affects a lot of people's daily lives it's a big thing when people are like
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what is your biggest stressor in your daily life a lot of people say student debt so in 1995 in the
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united states there was nationally 200 million in student debt right now there is 1.76 trillion dollars in
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student debt holy smokes so that's just like new like if you're looking at like 2000 versus where
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we are with student debt today it's not the same kind of a game it's the same thing with national
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debt national debt like really big amounts of national debt didn't really begin until the 70s
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and then it began to distribute around the world but then you also have the same thing as a fractional
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reserve banking system where if you want to hear people like the pontificate on that or currency
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not backed by anything that's a fairly new concept and a lot of these are associated with conspiracy
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theorists because i think a lot of the times when people started these experiments people initially
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went out and said oh this will lead to immediate collapse and people started saying that for 10 20
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years afterwards but the reality is if you look at rome if you look at the decisions that precipitated
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the collapse those decisions happened about a lifetime before the collapse and that's how
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civilizational collapses often work but the larger point here being we're in the middle of a big
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experiment so what i really care about and what i think is important what should people be doing
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what should people be doing if they believe that we won't be able to depend on our economic systems or
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that international trade and international travel will become more and more limited like what lifestyle
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changes or things should people be getting out of the way now like bucket list items yes so the the
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constant talking point that we always have is that debt is this miraculous instrument when things are
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growing and we've built our society like a pyramid scheme so for the past 300 years or so the economy
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has been growing in aggregate all around the world when you shotgunned your money into the stock market
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it grew you could be an idiot and make money on the stock market now this was because population the
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number of workers was growing exponentially and the productivity per worker was growing linearly yes
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technology is growing exponentially but productivity per worker was growing linearly and so this led to
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this illusion of a constantly growing stock market and we begin to build a lot of our economic systems
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like social security again a pretty recent experiment on those systems and a lot of governments have
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similar unpaid systems like that and social security is basically a debt system in that we are taking out
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debt like any unfunded pension program is essentially debt that is held by the person who you're promising
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money to but you haven't actually given the money we're pretending like they're investing money but they're not
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investing money and but you see this at the society level so debt's this amazing instrument when things are
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growing if i make a ten dollar investment in something and eight dollars of that is debt and two dollars of that
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is equity and it grows by twenty percent well my investment has doubled but if it shrinks by just
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ten percent my investment is halved and so debt multiplies the prosperity when everything is
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growing and so we had the society where population rates began to slow right at the same time as we
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doubled the number of workers by putting women into the workforce in mass and so as population rates
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were slowing we had an increasing adoption of women into the workforce which hid this massive decrease
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in the worker supply but now that clock's beginning to become due and one of the things i i note is
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that if you look if you say that america's fertility rate will fall the same rate it did over the past
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10 years continuing into the future and there's one generation every 30 years that means for every
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hundred americans today there will be i think it's 3.4 great-grandchildren uh now of course we'll
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probably see some dieback in terms of population fall but no one has really handled that problem yet
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so what this means is you're going to see a collapse of the basic infrastructure of our economic system
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now what this looks like to simone's question is a lot like detroit i would say detroit is just a very
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good picture of what a system looks like when it's collapsing because a lot of people that hear things
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like oh housing prices are going to decrease and it's great when a housing price decreases 10 20
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it's really bad when a housing price is always decreasing and everybody knows it always decreases
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because then there's no reason to invest in it and houses go to a dollar and houses actually cost a
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lot to upkeep so you end up with this endless urban blight actually this is a question i want to ask you
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how would you prepare for that simone one is it's it sounds and this is not news to anyone but don't
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depend on a pension plan or social security even if for example you work for a teacher's union or
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something like it looks not great in terms of you depending on that in terms of investing on the
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dark market for the next 10 years at least demographic collapse itself isn't going to be
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driving that in fact ai may cause really high increases right but aside from that my intuition is
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enjoy a really broad range of products while you can enjoy very inexpensive electronics while you can
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it's hard for me to think that there's in the face of civilizational collapse considering how slow it
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goes that there's even that much that that much you can do yeah but also it doesn't sound like
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we're gonna get hit that hard as long as oh no it's gonna be bad okay so what how is our life
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is how bad things were for the average american just 85 years ago just 150 years okay so what's gonna
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get bad walk me through it just the amounts of poverty are going to be astronomical just just like
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we're going to be impoverished other people who is going to be society everyone everyone and i think
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that's the thing that's difficult for people to think about what does it look like for just rates
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of poverty to be about 80 to 90 percent higher than they are today but what does it look like if you're
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living in america today for america to have the same lifestyle that you experience when you go to a
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developing country so people won't have jobs that's what you're saying is they just won't pay
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very much the government services won't do very much there'll be much more corruption at all levels
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it'll just be much more like a developing country and america is going to be more isolated from this
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than any other country in the world as globalism begins to collapse america is actually the number
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one beneficiary of this it's just a lot poorer yeah like when you read peter's eye hands the end of the
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world is just the beginning the punchline to it is north america is actually looking pretty good in
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this scenario um i mean it's it we will per his perception of civilizational collapse be more
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isolated we'll have to depend on domestic production we won't have imported america looks well vis-a-vis
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other countries it's still dramatically poorer yeah and i think that this is one of those things where
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people are like oh no i'm struggling today and it's like no no no no no i mean like food scarcity
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is a major thing for like 50 percent of countries populations that we think of as developed today
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and like actual food shortages actual food shortages or just actual a lot bigger wealth disparity where
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if the now this is something that i think people really misunderstand they're like ai will make us so
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much wealthier or if people get that poor they'll rise up and our company did a lot of work in
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venezuela so we really saw things continuing to get worse constantly things can get so so so bad
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before people rise up especially in an era of technology it is very hard to rise up when the
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government has autonomous drones and venezuela doesn't even have those but and so you just you
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actually do not see revolutions just because things have gotten bad often the other thing that i think
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people aren't seeing as much is governments are preparing for this that's what zero covid is about
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that's what in china social credit is about it's about preparing for a collapse of their economic
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system and i think one thing we always say about ai is that and this is likely a topic for a different
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video or we can do it for the next video but ai is the tool that finally frees the bourgeoisie from the
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proletariat they don't need you anymore they don't they and i and i think the masses of civilization
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have never dealt with a period where genuinely the wealthy did not need them to maintain their
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lifestyle and i think that they have this overestimation of how much the wealthy actually
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care about them when push comes to shove when they may need to sacrifice a portion of their lifestyle
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if you look at the sort of celebrity class today they literally think the world is about to die
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because of global warming and they can't get off their private jets for five seconds
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yeah okay so then the takeaway from this is what are you doing yeah one i think we're raising
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our children to be independent to be both highly technophilic and resourceful online and with tech but
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also highly resourceful and independent offline like we want to teach them basic agricultural
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building fixing and survival skills and not just here's how to survive online and here's how to get
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a job but if there is no economy to participate in how also can you thrive so that's one thing
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two is i want to add to what you just said there because i think a lot of people make a mistake here
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they try to teach their kids and their family to survive without technology as a way to deal with this
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which is i'm it's not like a stupid approach it's just probably not an optimal approach it is an
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option that people should be prepared for and in the event that like ai goes really off the rails for
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some reason and you have to go full battlestar galactica really off the rails we're all going to die
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it's just objectively true so what we're going to deal with is a period of increased hardship but we will
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still have access to technology when you are thinking of farming what you need to be thinking
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about is how do i farm with technology that my family can maintain and build themselves how do i
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keep the local tractors running how do i having technology that you can work on yourself that's
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what's really important the thing that you won't have access to is semiconductors so technology that
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you can build with fewer semiconductors or you can build with recycled semiconductors is technology
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you will continue to have access to the technology that's most likely going to become scarce is
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advanced semiconductor technology yeah okay so there's that and then i think the other part is
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like to enjoy late stage capitalism while it lasts you and i go on walmart walks in the morning and we
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just enjoy what's on the shelf yeah yeah also enjoy it while it lasts travel internationally
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see as many nations as you can go on cruises like just do stupid i don't know if that's my plan at all
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it's certainly not really what we're doing with our kids so simone has this reaction to it right where
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she's my reaction is really focus more on preparing our family intergenerationally to make it through this
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yeah and i think one of the most important things about any collapse scenario is that you realize that your
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country does not matter as a primary unit of account as much anymore when rome collapses focus on your
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family networks you need to focus on the people who are ideologically similar to you who are your
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cultural allies moving into the future and understand that just by investing in the stability of the
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nation state you aren't necessarily investing in your own family's future in the same way you are
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during a period of enormous growth so build your techno fiefdom build your tribe build your support network
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what does it look like as our economic system begins to falter it's about relying on personal relationships
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and about building and investing in those personal relationships at the intergenerational level
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a personal relationship isn't really that important if the person doesn't have kids they're a strong family culture
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but it is really important for other families that do have kids and do hope to survive into the future
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because when you're building those networks those provide you with i think the beginnings of the next
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of the foundation of the next economy and hopefully the next great civilization yeah which is exciting
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right so you what you're focused on is oh if civilization is collapsing this is an opportunity i can get in on the
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ground level here yeah i'm getting on the ground level of the next civilization that's what i'm
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interested in we need the next civilization to be one that doesn't collapse because we can do that we can
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build a never-ending renaissance but here i am i'm like oh enjoy it lasts and you're like you're like
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i'm gonna i'm gonna you're like you're thinking like a looter ah smash the windows grab what you can
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can't we just say yes to all the things you know enjoy it while it lasts build the next one i think
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that's maximum fun um i think one thing we need to remember is as it becomes clear to people who have
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overly invested in the existing system and expected it to care for them like people who over invested in
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the expectation of social security over invested in the expectation of social stability and have become
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this priest class in our society that don't really produce anymore but expect some level of social
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status they are going to become angry and vengeful and i think we're already seeing this to some extent
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because they see the lack of hope they have after basically enslaving themselves to this university
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pyramid scheme where they put all this money to pay for this priest class and we we all try to put like
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a gif here that i thought was funny of what like a university graduation looks like and people are like oh no
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this isn't a priest class like have you seen the way these people dress and they talk in languages that
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almost no one understands and they give you this this script of paper and a language that's like this
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dead language and this is a priest class okay and you are paying money to nominally join the priest class at
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the lower level at the hope that you may be able to join it at this higher level and have some sort of say
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as the experts the people who decide what's true and what's not true in our society but really you
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don't and instead you've just gone into life-shattering debt to support all of the other the people in
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this it's insane it's not a good look like an obvious cult like our society is run by what to me
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looks like an obvious cult but isn't that what it looks like when things are about to fall apart right
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yeah but it's also what things look like when they're recreated no no a cult has taken over
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our government you could say that and people are like no like when you talk to people who bought into
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the cult they're like no no this cult knows what's true it's actually true this time and it's
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bro they always say that they always think that the academic system today is not what the academic
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system was 50 60 years ago this is a holistically the whole like for example let's just talk about
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like the way that we determine status within the academic system we're talking about another new
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thing this whole peer review system where like your status is determined by how many citations your
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paper gets and then you get peer reviewed by other and yet we have found out you can submit things to
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peer review that are just like what was it like mind comp but they had changed out the things for like
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feminist sounding things or something and it got it passed peer review this entire academic system
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it turns out it was a neat experiment we've only tried it for about one human lifetime and it's already
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failing us okay academia used to be something different than what it is today and it used to
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fundamentally function different than what it does today and if you look at the output of the academic
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system it basically collapsed in the 80s per dollar spent the amount of money flowing into the
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system rapidly increased but the amount of technological output rapidly decreased now you
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can say oh invention's gotten harder invention should have been getting harder for the past century and a
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half why didn't it decline before that it didn't because the way that the system operates is
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fundamentally changed and one of the statistics we always love we talk about this in the sexuality book
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but there was this great study of about 500 phds in the uh psychology of sexuality space and what
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they found was that more than half of them said that they would actively occlude or not publish results
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if it showed systemic psychological differences in in in the brains of males and females like the way
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they process things yeah and that shows to me that this entire field is more interested in promoting an
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ideology than it is in searching for truth anymore and people are like yeah but the good studies some good
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studies might still get out there what about the other 50 percent and it's yeah but if you're doing a
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literature review of the field now you really can't believe anything because what that means is if you're
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trying to find is the truth some number between one and ten and you know that 50 percent of studies that
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above number five won't be published then you and it turned out the real truth was actually
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only number six you had to adjust for that and trying to determine what's true so you end up
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determining seven or eight and it's created this world where it is very hard to use what's coming
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out of academic fields to determine what's true outside of the few very hard sciences that are untouched
00:24:04.280
by this but the sciences i think that often matter most to how we interact with our daily lives like
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psychology and stuff like that you have this huge replication crisis where but 50 percent of studies
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can't re-replicate it so i'm just pointing out that i think when you have bought into the system
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which you don't realize is how much of the system doesn't work the way people are saying it works
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and how much it mirrors what historically we would have called a cult and i guess one thing that we
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haven't even talked about and now you're alluding to it is maybe we've been seeing the signs of
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civilizational collapse for a while 30 years starting with academia starting to crumble now
00:24:47.160
you're seeing mental health skyrocketing fertility is plummeting there are issues with pollution
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they're beginning to get shorter yeah obesity is becoming a huge problem like people's endocrine
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systems seem to be totally screwed up yeah there's a lot that seems to be really not working but it's
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important to not approach this like a doomer and by that what i mean is i think apocalypticism is very
00:25:10.820
tempting right there's this tendency to want to be to just be an apocalypticist about things to say
00:25:16.380
everything will definitely end within x time period where i think the real approach to environmentalism
00:25:22.840
is yes there is a mass die off of species yes ecologies are going to adapt to that yes the world will get
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hotter it will be harder for us on a massive scale potentially but no it's not going to kill us all
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and it's the same thing when we talk about civilization collapse it's not going to be road
00:25:38.940
warrior it's going to be the worst of detroit when but without the rest of the world to bail us out
00:25:44.480
it's going to be like living in a developing country today it's not going to be the end of humanity
00:25:51.980
except and unless because this time you know you had the fall of the roman empire and stuff like that
00:25:57.280
they didn't have nukes back then and that's something we have to watch out for yeah that's
00:26:02.580
that's scary you know what i really want to talk about in the next one is how ai changes the economy
00:26:08.940
let's do it and what that means for the division of classes in our society that'll be fun to talk
00:26:15.820
about but i liked talking about this with you too even when it's the end of the world it's so fun
00:26:20.680
talking with you malcolm i love you a lot at least we'll have each other and the family and that's
00:26:28.900
the thing you build durable networks durable social networks and the most durable social network you
00:26:33.320
have yeah do it well if you're not a terrible person like even if you are podcast aren't we
00:26:40.440
aren't we your family all right i'll catch you on the flip side and i'll catch you on the flip side