Based Camp - Most Should Not Get Married Or Have Kids

00:00:00.000 This big Ponzi scheme we like to call the American economy isn't just going to make it without a bunch of kids cranked out en masse to keep the wheels spinning, right?

00:00:08.480 Well, friends, I've got news for you here, too.

00:00:10.780 You do not approach the net neutral in taxes, paid versus consumed, unless you are in the top 10% of income for 40-plus years.

00:00:17.600 Oh.

00:00:20.200 Interesting argument here. 0.99

00:00:21.400 So only the rich people have to get married.

00:00:23.760 Okay, I'm trying this. 0.99

00:00:25.200 Yeah, let's get rid of the average person.

00:00:27.760 And Lee Flynn has said this as well, that we should offer money.

00:00:29.840 for people to sterilize themselves yeah let's move to what do we call this like dark pranatalism 0.68

00:00:35.620 twist elitist pranatalism we've always been accused of elitism you know oh the collins 0.76

00:00:41.180 just they want people to have kids but only the right people and they want everyone to think that

00:00:45.320 we're like white people or like christian people but we're like no just like competent happy people

00:00:51.820 but wow i mean yeah i like that it's always really fun when something fundamentally changes

00:00:57.600 our view of something so for context today's episode is actually one that i had not planned

00:01:03.380 on releasing to the general public we had planned on doing this as a paid private episode and

00:01:08.400 throughout most of it what you will see is us being rather snarky and dismissive of the ideas

00:01:14.320 being presented because we're like well what's the alternative what's the alternative what's the

00:01:18.200 alternative and at the end of it i was convinced i think this person makes a pretty good argument

00:01:23.760 And so this has been a major sea change in how I see reality, which is to say it could be actively harmful and selfish to fight for the vast majority of people to get married and have kids.

00:01:40.420 Because the vast majority of people make bad partners, they make bad parents, they make bad children, and they would live a worse life if they were married and had kids.

00:01:54.480 Whereas the virtuous thing is to just replace them.

00:01:58.720 But see if it convinces you as well.

00:02:01.380 Do you like to know more?

00:02:02.640 Hello, Malcolm.

00:02:03.740 I'm excited to be speaking with you today because today we're doing a listener request.

00:02:08.860 so those are always really exciting we have a lot of people with excellent taste and i do we

00:02:14.540 do we yeah we do yeah we do i actually quite like our fans they're i like you guys because

00:02:20.440 you typically are living productive lives and doing interesting stuff which is neat

00:02:25.120 like smart people who always give us new ideas and and the number of you who have found partners

00:02:30.880 and started making kids since we started this podcast is astonishing it makes us really happy

00:02:35.680 yeah so if you're still looking don't give up there's a lot of hope and you could be next

00:02:39.880 and i promise you guys it gets better as they get a bit older

00:02:42.240 oh yeah because yeah malcolm has been reading my old diaries from 0.85

00:02:46.640 early in our pre-married and newlywed days and apparently it sucks

00:02:51.640 wait that's gonna dissuade people not the women the babies oh the babies but the women also get

00:02:59.300 better yeah we got in fights all the time in the early days not fights we disagreed about

00:03:03.400 things strategically but sure fights what we had been encouraged to read is a a sub stack post by

00:03:11.780 an excellence name excellently named sub stack performative bafflement i've always loved the

00:03:16.100 name of this sub stack i haven't read everything in it haven't read this the title of this

00:03:19.600 particular article that we're going to read is against more marriage as a solution to the

00:03:23.960 fertility crisis let's create the torment nexus to pump out a few incremental taxpayers

00:03:29.460 all right let's go into it it has 66 likes 48 comments and 15 restacks so did pretty well

00:03:37.120 they write okay so we all know about the fertility crisis right all the developed countries are going

00:03:42.820 extinct many consider this bad or worrisome idea etc said crisis is happening for hundreds of

00:03:49.440 interlocking reasons but the big kpi people like to point to here seems to be marriage

00:03:54.340 marriage directly tracks fertility and the decline in relationship formation and marriage

00:03:59.220 drives most of the fertility gap since 2000. He inserts graphs showing clear what looks to be

00:04:07.040 causation. Okay. Okay. It is correlation, but looks like it. One of the main solutions, he writes,

00:04:12.840 to the fertility crisis that most folks seem to like is pro-marriage incentives and initiatives.

00:04:17.940 I am here to argue against this. These people are basically advocating for creating the torment

00:04:22.580 nexus for mega folks of people mega folks to pump out a few incremental taxpayers my position let's

00:04:30.580 not create a torment nexus please and thank you aren't i being totally hysteria okay i want to

00:04:35.620 see where they're going with this i have no idea i have no idea where they yeah my guess is they're

00:04:39.520 just going to be like i don't know let the system break i don't want to grind for some boomers to

00:04:44.160 have more social security is this a leftist or right i don't even know it doesn't matter it

00:04:50.660 doesn't matter. I don't care because performative bafflement is a great sub stack name and I'm not

00:04:54.880 going to color your view of this person. Don't click on their sub stack. Be good. So I decided

00:04:59.780 to check and they are center right of the based variety. They talk a lot about genetics, stuff

00:05:06.380 like that, working out, that sort of stuff, but not probably as far as us and male. So at least

00:05:13.280 I didn't have my mind changed by a lefty woman as I thought. Okay. Let's go into the argument. 0.96

00:05:19.940 sexual sorry where is my mind today secular marriage trends first they're absolutely right

00:05:27.240 that marriage is declining it has been declining every single generation since the 40s when we hit

00:05:32.400 a local peak of 90 marriage rates which have which drove the baby boom 90 i didn't know that

00:05:39.120 actually can you imagine living in a society where nine out of ten people were married

00:05:43.160 no it's crazy okay i continue literally every single generation on generation since then each

00:05:51.660 cohort of women has looked out at the world said lol nope and opted out of marriage at higher rates

00:05:57.900 than the one before and they show a graph of women in the u.s by decade of birth who are getting

00:06:04.600 married and it ain't looking it ain't looking good it's it's it looks like a rainbow that's dying

00:06:11.180 and guy continue and just as a note i am framing this as primarily women's choice because one

00:06:18.740 women are traditionally proposed to and say yes or no two historically women are the sex that wants

00:06:25.040 and pushes for marriage while in a relationship more often three women getting educated and having 0.93

00:06:30.660 jobs and careers of their own is a big part of the fertility crisis in the sense those things 1.00

00:06:36.880 all reduced fertility when first introduced to a society that doesn't sound right do women push

00:06:42.020 for marriage more than men i don't think so so these days definitely men are pushing more for 0.96

00:06:46.600 marriage so she's i mean she's right that women are driving the decline in marriage 0.98

00:06:50.040 you can see it in the polling we've done plenty of episodes that cite this polling

00:06:54.340 so i that is true when you look at at least historical tropes because we didn't live in

00:06:58.660 this time yeah i know historical tropes but i think the reality is and potentially even into

00:07:03.480 history that's been the men i mean in a lot of the stories that you know i remember from my

00:07:08.460 childhood the romance stories it's the man pushing for marriage it's the i'll go to ip switch for

00:07:14.080 you it's the you know like that's those are romances that's not reality reality is men

00:07:20.580 want to maintain as much optionality as but look sexually like from a sexual strategy perspective

00:07:25.440 babies i pushed you to get married right your your game of musical chairs was rapidly ending

00:07:33.600 you you felt like you're i guess and i was like 24 at the time when i know but you felt like an

00:07:39.620 old maid or whatever the male equivalent of that is you're a very unusual case the the male strategy 0.66

00:07:45.560 has almost always been look maintain maximum optionality string women along don't actually

00:07:50.480 commit because then you can move on to another woman and even when women now in our modern 1.00

00:07:54.840 society after no fault divorce were able to just divorce women when they wanted to and then move 0.92

00:07:59.840 on like that there's a lack of commitment although these days i know women initiate the majority of

00:08:04.780 divorces but no i i think i think that checks out i agree i think that most women wanted marriage

00:08:09.880 more than men historically and often what was hat what happened even when like a woman gets pregnant

00:08:14.960 it's the shotgun wedding not because the woman is being held at gunpoint it's because the young man

00:08:21.200 is being held at gunpoint. Women can't escape the reality of being pregnant if they live in a 0.99

00:08:29.240 society or in a family that does not approve of abortion or have a culture that doesn't approve 1.00

00:08:33.340 of it. Anyway, yes, I agree with performative bafflement. So la la la. Four, women being able

00:08:41.360 to have jobs and lives of their own gives them more options and is what enables them to opt out 1.00

00:08:46.600 of marriage at ever-increasing rates. I am here to argue that this gigantic reduction in marriage

00:08:51.680 rates is an unambiguously good thing, and that the great majority of these ladies are genuinely 0.99

00:08:56.440 making smart decisions. Marriage is a bad idea in the great majority of cases. Broadly, people 1.00

00:09:02.460 aren't compatible, because people suck. I mean, come on, Malcolm, you can't disagree with that. 0.99

00:09:07.720 When approximately 90% of women... Other people suck. 1.00

00:09:10.660 Right. You're such an outlier, Malcolm. 1.00

00:09:13.440 there are people who think progressives think i suck you know like right and yeah but we're very

00:09:22.900 unusual and we we both also cast a wide net and and worked i was very targeted in my search you 0.93

00:09:32.300 cast a very wide net and we're also very very choosy and worked extremely hard to find a partner

00:09:39.020 most people don't work that hard but i think are less choosy so you know it all washes out but

00:09:43.160 i i was so committed to living alone not because i wasn't a hopeless romantic i actually kind of was

00:09:48.100 but because i couldn't imagine someone being compatible with me being how weird i am

00:09:54.580 and look you had to live with me disproportionately push for marriage

00:09:57.660 but by a dramatic margin you just checked on ai yeah during what time period

00:10:02.560 2023 data so not even that recent no we're talking about like the 1950s obviously now

00:10:11.700 I said obviously now men are the ones in the 1950s I believe that men also push for it I think that

00:10:16.460 we are shown a narrative in the media that's not real or accurate

00:10:20.200 I don't know chime in in the comments and let us know what you think who's right Malcolm or Simone 0.98

00:10:28.820 but I will continue broadly people are compatible blah blah blah they suck how do we know this by 0.57

00:10:33.700 just looking at actual outcomes looking at revealed preferences and how people actually 0.56

00:10:37.720 end up after marriage obviously the ever decreasing marriage rate for each generation of women above

00:10:43.620 she's referring to the graph the sad rainbow that is driven by something what could that something

00:10:49.040 be i'm here by the way i'm guessing this person's a leftist because they don't seem interested in

00:10:53.020 what's actually true but just sort of i'm assuming that they're a woman um i'm here to argue because

00:10:57.300 these are very common arguments so far that i hear from the female youtubers i watch because

00:11:03.780 i like girly things i'm here to argue that is a genuine reaction to actual marriage quality and

00:11:09.260 outcomes the empirical outcomes even today when many fewer couples get married and marriage is

00:11:14.920 significantly more selected divorce base rates are approximately 42 for first marriages and about

00:11:21.360 half of the remaining marriages are net miserable for at least one party that's roughly two-thirds

00:11:27.900 failure misery rate she she doesn't i'm assuming she performative bafflement doesn't because people

00:11:33.580 don't try they don't try to get into a good marriage and they don't look they'd be miserable

00:11:38.500 by themselves too yeah i don't i do not know any miserably married people any i mean people like

00:11:46.520 to hide it i guess yeah at least people in the base camp community are really solid anyway think

00:11:52.880 about think how net miserable those 90 of marriages were that were not selected at all and could not

00:11:59.600 divorced back in the 50s. Moreover, of the marriages that stay together, all they predominantly do is

00:12:05.320 make people fat and sexless and miserable. Married weight gain is a strong effect seen in practically

00:12:10.920 every country in the world, even after controlling for genes and personalities. For example, 0.95

00:12:16.260 identical twins, one of whom marries and the other does not, the married one typically gains

00:12:20.480 significant weight. Both of you and I weigh less than we did when we got married, which is

00:12:24.120 interesting. The Termik et al. 2024 meta-analysis surveys approximately 200,000 couples and

00:12:31.200 approximately 100,000 matched singles across 18 countries and surfaces a very strong effect size

00:12:38.040 of marriages on obesity, a 1.7 odds ratio up to 2.5 odds ratio in economic downturns.

00:12:47.180 Oh, people eat their feelings. And the trend reverses. On divorce, both men and women lose

00:12:52.880 weight. On sexlessness, as far as I can tell, a lot of sources consider fewer than one times a

00:13:00.460 month to be basically a sexless marriage. In GSS, this ranges from 5% to 20% of all marriages

00:13:06.160 that have lasted at least five years, depending on how happy they are and how long they've been

00:13:11.180 going. And obviously, there's a giant survivor effect there, with the approximately half of

00:13:16.380 them that have been divorced were more likely to be sexless prior to divorce. So 5% to 20%

00:13:21.980 is the heavy heavily survivor biased portion of sexless marriages that already have a huge thumb

00:13:29.100 on the scale in terms of upping the amount of sex this is to say that i personally think some

00:13:33.900 much larger portion of marriages attain sexlessness it's just that the majority of those end up

00:13:38.480 divorced leaving our relatively more modest five to twenty percent her thing is it's a good thing

00:13:42.740 that it's not happening because most people are failures okay yeah okay yeah that's i think that's

00:13:48.860 broadly what is being argued here. And she's like, and you should, I mean, I guess like the

00:13:52.720 type of person who's not finding a partner today is the type of person who would have been a bad

00:13:56.440 partner in the past. Well, performative bafflement proceeds to present a flow chart showing total

00:14:01.340 marriages and then they split off divorce. And then of the active marriage pool, we have 20 year

00:14:08.560 successes. That's 18% of all relationships. We're almost coming up on 11 Malcolm. So we're getting

00:14:14.180 there. And then net miserable and or dead bedroom, 40% of all relationships. And there's some weird

00:14:23.740 like extra thing in it. And who cares? Whatever. Over only 20 years, only approximately 18% of

00:14:30.180 marriages are actually still happy and sexually active. All the rest are divorced or net miserable

00:14:34.500 slash dead bedroom. And I don't think if you're PMC, you're immune. So I've just ignored the 0.78

00:14:39.440 obesity effects on this chart because that's apparently almost every American's fate and

00:14:43.460 nobody cares about this, at least not enough to do anything about it. This view is a simplification.

00:14:48.540 Obviously, a lot of the divorces were dead bedrooms or miserable before divorce, and this

00:14:52.680 caused the divorce. And obviously, people trickle into the net miserable column at increasing rates

00:14:57.140 over time. But this is genuinely what all the data tells us over 20 years. And there's a good

00:15:01.920 reason to think that GSS is optimistic on both the dead bedroom and the happy marriage front. 1.00

00:15:05.660 So every woman opting out of marriage at a higher and higher rates, super smart. Definitely the 1.00

00:15:11.180 right move. If you track empirical outcomes, that's definitely the best. Wait a second.

00:15:17.020 But she's not looking at the counterfactual. She's not looking at the mental health rates of

00:15:20.340 women who never get married. We're only looking at married couples. And look, a lot of women who 0.94

00:15:26.760 end up divorced get alimony and more financial security because of the divorce. Anyway, she 1.00

00:15:32.460 continues. We're just assuming performative bafflement as a woman, not really knowing the 1.00

00:15:37.000 background. And as an aside, I think this kind of is kind of an amazing demonstration of the wisdom

00:15:41.620 of crowds and invisible hands at work. Basically, nobody knows these numbers. All anyone can do is

00:15:46.560 look around at the relationships around them and judge their quality and outcomes. It is an

00:15:50.580 exceptionally noisy information channel that's highly selected and skewed for everyone. And even

00:15:55.120 with all that noise, even with literally zero idea of the statistical ground truths, women in the 0.99

00:16:01.440 aggregate have still arrived at a better closer to the truth answer in each subsequent decision

00:16:07.180 round over 80 years of cumulative decisions that's amazing and before everyone here closer to the

00:16:13.440 truth she's arguing that no one should get married or reproduce i think so yeah i think yeah i'm

00:16:18.880 getting some anti-neutralism in here like though it's like what's even the point of fixing this if

00:16:23.460 sometimes marriage is bad right like what well and sometimes being single is bad but she's not

00:16:29.880 talking about that is she before i've never seen two decent people in a bad marriage

00:16:34.740 i have i have my my best friend in childhood her parents were perfect and i thought they 0.90

00:16:43.620 were the perfect marriage and the dynamic broke at one point when the wife was given the job

00:16:51.920 opportunity of a lifetime and they moved across country and the husband went a long time without

00:16:57.900 working and it just killed the family's dynamic because he no longer felt like the provider he

00:17:02.140 became the stay-at-home dad and that he his identity wasn't ready for that and then they

00:17:07.400 both ended up with other partners and they're happy now but like there are things that have

00:17:11.100 nothing to do with the two individuals who can be incredibly these people were like smart and

00:17:16.840 good looking and insanely tall like they were both over six feet oh that doesn't really make sense to

00:17:22.200 me so what he cheated on her what do you mean they both ended up with other because presumably

00:17:25.400 it's going to be harder for him to get his job back

00:17:28.200 I think he may have cheated

00:17:29.460 I think he may have cheated on her

00:17:31.080 which I mean if she was like gone a lot for her

00:17:34.020 but I don't know because I was a kid

00:17:35.820 you know when my friend was going through all this

00:17:37.940 and it was rough

00:17:39.960 you know it was amicable

00:17:41.340 but these are like two very good people

00:17:43.980 it just didn't work out and that

00:17:45.500 like devastated me I was like oh my god

00:17:47.700 I don't know about that

00:17:49.320 anyway look I'm just saying

00:17:51.840 very decent smart wonderful people

00:17:53.500 I feel like you know

00:17:55.400 it all worked out in the end so i'm happy anyway she performative bafflement continues and before

00:18:01.520 anyone here jumps in and tries to argue that their spouse is mother theresa and sydney sweeney

00:18:05.980 combined and was recently best and also hottest human being who has ever or will ever exist yes

00:18:12.580 i'm not talking about you and me friends we all know my readers are notable exceptions whose

00:18:17.980 spouses descended from heaven on gossamer wings and whose very presence inspires the involuntary

00:18:24.000 outbursts of angelic hymns and paroxysms of joy mine does though that's the problem mine does too

00:18:29.320 i know i'm i'm the one woman who made it i'm talking about everyone else says performative

00:18:34.660 bafflement those who are far less fortunate than we you know the ones i mean you see the quality

00:18:39.980 of your friends and relatives and co-workers marriages as is usually the case with revealed

00:18:44.640 preferences and it's high quality i i do see the quality in my generation it's high quality

00:18:53.760 that this idea that like if you look around all this can tell me is this person is in some sort

00:18:59.000 of circle where everyone's miserable and i can only guess it's all progressives or something

00:19:01.780 i guess yeah i mean i'm even like thinking as far as i can work it in in my head even with people

00:19:08.520 who have i would say very imperfect marriages they're all just due to imperfections they have

00:19:14.280 as people which they would experience perhaps in a more magnified fashion if they lived independently

00:19:19.880 But again, it's something that I wasn't considering at this point in the piece because I hadn't gotten to the end argument, which does help think this for me, is the people we surround ourselves with, e.g. Simone and I surround ourselves with, are exceptional people.

00:19:34.200 I don't like to talk to people who I do not think are exceptionally competent or exceptionally contributory to the future of humanity.

00:19:42.360 And it is that type of person, when they end up in a marriage, that they have a good marriage.

00:19:47.240 It is the type of person who lives the life for whatever, as you're about to hear, that even when they are otherwise good people, have toxic marriages.

00:19:58.200 And the great thing is that a lot of people's vices can be moderated.

00:20:04.440 Well, this is the whole thing. If your purpose in life is to make humanity better and to contribute to humanity's continued flourishing in the future, e.g. the next generation, one of the most important things you can do, but by far, I mean, unless you're going to cure cancer or something, which you're probably not, okay, is have a lot of kids and raise them well, right?

00:20:27.700 especially with this being a crisis that humanity is going through right now and the fact that you

00:20:36.200 wouldn't even try to do like one of the it's like you know you're on a spaceship and the life

00:20:41.560 support's dying and somebody's like well you know i don't really see the point in trying to fix the

00:20:47.460 life support it sometimes shocks you it's like what are you talking about it's the only option

00:20:53.220 i haven't heard you present a secondary option yeah yeah we'll we'll continue then we'll see

00:21:00.680 the argument's only warming up there's a lot more marriage is a bad idea even from a purely

00:21:06.920 theoretical point of view on top of the base rates indicating that it's a bad idea empirically the

00:21:11.380 whole idea of being able to accurately predict how people are going to evolve or change over 20

00:21:15.720 to 70 years is silly to begin with and 20 years is pretty much the minimum you have to consider

00:21:20.920 if you want to have kids with that person?

00:21:23.220 How much have you changed versus you 20 years ago?

00:21:26.200 Why wouldn't you expect your spouse to change that much

00:21:28.480 and you to change that much in the next 20 to 70 years?

00:21:32.000 I promise the great majority of everyone

00:21:34.280 in that 82% were in love when they got married

00:21:36.540 and didn't think they'd get divorced or be miserable.

00:21:39.180 See, this is why you have to grow together as a couple

00:21:41.320 and not grow apart.

00:21:43.180 Like that's, this is easy to head off.

00:21:44.740 So I'm just going to skip to the next section

00:21:46.140 because you just grow together and not apart.

00:21:49.500 That's something you can solve.

00:21:50.920 Next section. Good marriages are heaven and bad marriages are hell. Here I'll point out that a 0.99

00:21:55.680 good relationship is one of the best things on earth and a bad relationship is one of the worst

00:21:59.620 things on earth. Being single is much better than being in a bad relationship. Okay. I'm going to

00:22:05.020 skip through this section too, because we agree. Well, yeah, but that means you should just leave

00:22:08.680 the relationship. Being married is much better than being single. Yeah. Being in a good marriage

00:22:13.540 is if you're in a bad marriage leave it right the person learn about the person grow together

00:22:21.640 get married young what like the advice is just so easy to get around yeah what this cashes out to

00:22:30.540 performative bafflement writes as soon as no-fault divorce opened up in the late 60s divorces surged

00:22:35.860 and that was a good thing it was millions of soul-crushing relationships suddenly being able

00:22:39.980 to be dissolved no it was millions of relationships becoming soul crushing because people got other

00:22:45.040 options this there were bad relationships before this but i can guarantee you they were probably

00:22:51.540 at about a third the rate maybe yeah when you when you create a norm around leaving a relationship

00:22:59.220 or a motivation to leave a relationship or look for flaws in your partner instead of trying to

00:23:04.520 make it work this is why arranged marriages have higher love rates or equal love rates but when

00:23:08.540 you can count survivorship bias higher love rates than non-arrange marriages so no fault divorce

00:23:13.100 created the first fomo or a dangerous new form of fomo and it caused a bunch of people to become

00:23:20.340 miserable when they couldn't they did not need to be or would not have been yeah okay next section

00:23:25.100 then we'll skip to is this women getting all uppity so lots of guys think this is a female 1.00

00:23:30.020 selectivity problem indeed if you do the math approximately 80 percent of women are opting out 0.99

00:23:34.500 of marriage at the bottom quintile of male SES, and nearly two-thirds are opting out of the

00:23:40.400 medians and below. Marriage is increasingly a luxury good. The top quintile of SES men

00:23:45.920 still have 85 to 90% marriage rates, just like all men in the 40s. Oh, that's interesting.

00:23:52.180 And look again, look at the ground truth. This is just women being actually smart and reacting to 1.00

00:23:56.980 actually huge effect sizes. What's the percent of marriages that make it and were retroactively 0.98

00:24:02.880 actually worth entering roughly 20 boy if i were making that bet i'd sure try to only do it with

00:24:10.760 the top quintile of people uh-oh malcolm your top quintile i i am top quintile i'll say that

00:24:18.360 yeah but you know i could just get a i could just get a as you've said in the past i should just get

00:24:22.120 a harem so i'll get a few more wise and right but you know we know from that like one one bit of 0.95

00:24:27.580 research on African, what's the word, polygamous marriages, that the more wives a man has,

00:24:37.440 his value gets moderated down because the wife considering choosing him as a husband has to

00:24:41.780 understand that you now have to divide his assets by the number of wives, plus a little bit more of

00:24:46.820 a discount because there's the uncertainty of knowing you may fall out of favor. So he's not

00:24:54.340 as certain of a bet as a man of more moderate income who you know will not be further diluting

00:25:03.020 it with additional wives. Because keep in mind, what if you're like wife number three for like

00:25:07.340 millionaire man, but you don't know how many more wives you might convince to get? This economy is 0.99

00:25:12.240 about to get gnarly, right? So you're going to get, I think, fairly low quality women unless you're 1.00

00:25:18.720 super, super high value or they're very insensitive. Now, I think it's different with 0.99

00:25:22.540 things like sister wives, right? Because in a sense, it seems like in many cases, sister wives

00:25:27.100 actually choose each other and the husband's just like, oh, okay. Whereas they're like, look, I need 0.72

00:25:32.080 another woman around the house. I, you know, it's like not, you know what I mean? That that's kind 1.00

00:25:37.780 of a dynamic at play. So I'm not talking about those types of marriages anyway. Okay. So basically

00:25:44.080 she's saying that like, it only makes sense for women to marry the, the high value men. Next

00:25:49.740 section let's put any returns to bed for good of course return spent with a spelled with a v

00:25:54.740 which you've noticed as a whole thing right return spelt with a with a v you've not are you

00:26:01.720 really i don't know what you're talking about there's this whole how do i best describe it

00:26:08.620 guys how do i describe this to malcolm this like go back to roman times it's like the it's supposed

00:26:15.800 to be so it's like trying to be highbrow bronze age pervert and you start some like men's association

00:26:22.620 called retvrn uh and it's all about going back to traditional christian values

00:26:28.960 this brings nobel you've not seen any of this i have no idea what you're talking about anyway

00:26:34.540 i'm gonna read i will read and this is largely why some of these men are the biggest proponents

00:26:39.840 of returning to a regime where women are locked out of jobs and bank accounts and are stuck

00:26:46.260 barefoot and pregnant in kitchens shackled to duds it's seemingly the only way they see actually

00:26:50.880 marrying women nowadays given the high ever-growing opt-out rates clearly not offering an alternative 0.96

00:26:57.140 like we're literally talking about it in the human civilization okay so yeah manosphere rejected no 0.82

00:27:02.680 return or turning case study what can a median woman get from marrying the median man okay so

00:27:09.100 prospectively the median woman can get a snag and expect to snag a median man the median man is

00:27:15.700 short and obese only has a high school degree and makes approximately 50k a year that can barely 0.59

00:27:21.300 buy you groceries much less a house anywhere oh also when it comes to sex the median ejaculatory 0.99

00:27:26.500 latency time is nine minutes nine minutes so every week or so you'll get nine minutes of awful sex 1.00

00:27:31.520 approximately zero women could get off to man sounds great i can see why average women are 1.00

00:27:37.440 just busting down the doors for median men to get married that's really the average time i mean that 0.96

00:27:42.760 sounds bad right i don't want that i i think you i think you'd prefer that oh you mean short and

00:27:50.900 quick well malcolm we have things to do yes no but not a i mean i'm honest i would probably prefer

00:27:58.800 that to be my time men prefer cookies more than you you under we're not going to get into yeah

00:28:07.120 we're not going to get into it but like yeah that is women tend to prefer longer sexual periods

00:28:11.660 that sounds very efficient maybe this is actually because the way that men experience sexual pleasure

00:28:17.040 works a little differently from the way that women experience sexual pleasure actually this

00:28:20.700 might be why we have such an extreme stance on like it how how are people having kids when they

00:28:26.600 when they're like naturally when when they have a bunch of kids already yeah like when are you how

00:28:31.440 do you people have active sex lives and now that i'm hearing that the average time for a guy to

00:28:35.700 come as nine minutes i'm like that's how you have that's how you have sex lives and kids yeah yeah

00:28:41.500 you think the kids are going to leave you alone for longer than 10 minutes i mean this is yeah

00:28:45.000 yeah when i'm like i just don't understand how it's like plausible that you're having sex and

00:28:50.280 a bunch of kids yeah okay i get it now yeah 10 minutes 10 minutes makes sense note here this is

00:28:56.640 part of the broader conversation that we have which is i don't get these people who are like

00:29:01.180 i'm parents with like five kids four kids and we still have a healthy and active sexual relationship

00:29:07.480 because this guy acts like a dead bedroom is like the worst thing in the world and it's like

00:29:11.800 no i thought it was a natural part of having a ton of kids around the house and needing to hire 0.97

00:29:17.340 a babysitter to be a basically a prostitute by proxy because that's the only way you get to have 0.99

00:29:24.620 sex because god knows i'm not gonna have sex while a little baby is watching me and i'm not 1.00

00:29:30.400 going to leave my baby outside the room for over an hour while i'm just pleasuring myself and my 0.99

00:29:38.200 wife right you know like that's gross right like the baby starts crying or something what a

00:29:42.480 horrifying thing and everyone's like oh no it's so easy and i'm like oh because it only took nine

00:29:47.360 minutes for you that makes sense anyway blah blah blah so she's basically saying that marrying a

00:29:52.720 mid-man is kind of dire looking from the woman's perspective. I mean, I can continue. Man sounds 1.00

00:30:01.620 great. Blah, blah, blah. Another triangulation point. Fully 35% of women lack interest in sex

00:30:06.280 at all. And can you blame them? And around, wow, so 35% of women are asexual basically. 1.00

00:30:12.560 I mean, that makes sense. It's like me and all of my friends in high school and around 50%

00:30:17.020 have at least one noticeable problem with the quality of sex they're getting. 0.63

00:30:20.080 want more context and flavor check here for actual comments from lots of women it's pretty clear that

00:30:24.800 having approximately any job and pets and netflix and you own a place is roughly 10x better than

00:30:30.460 marrying the median man who in addition to subjecting you to nine minutes of terrible sex 0.61

00:30:34.220 every week will want you to do his laundry and dishes and cook for him and spend all your free

00:30:37.800 time raising his awful kids well if you don't like him yeah they're awful kids while also working

00:30:42.880 full-time because he can't afford anything and needs your income for your for you two to even

00:30:46.900 survive i wrote a whole article on why women have a raw deal in general and this section comes from

00:30:52.640 here click click there for a more complete case all right i'll just that's its own i'm not hearing

00:30:59.220 the alternative yeah okay let's see all the positive effects of marriage are driven by

00:31:02.780 selection effects anyway okay this is not a solution how about health okay that's not a

00:31:08.140 solution it's looking at long the relationship between physical health and marriage was

00:31:13.680 completely explained by non-random selection. Okay, so she's saying marriage is not going to

00:31:17.660 make your health better. How about income? She cites some research. The results show that married

00:31:22.560 men earn more because selection into marriage operates not only on wage levels, but also on

00:31:26.680 wage growth. Hence, men on a steep career track are especially likely to marry. We conclude that

00:31:31.380 arguments postulating a wage premium for married men should be discarded. Okay, how about happiness?

00:31:36.580 Okay, she's certainly going to cite studies that show marriage doesn't make you happy. This is why

00:31:41.020 marriage is a luxury good now the only people worth marrying are at the top quintile of peace

00:31:44.720 people basically i feel like a hypocrite because you're like top one percent probably like top 0.01

00:31:50.140 it's true i am one of the best living humans this is like an objective thing that anyone

00:31:54.780 it is though that that does it yeah so like who are we to say right like maybe

00:31:59.260 you are too though simone no for you specifically right i'm i'm the right kind of person

00:32:06.420 and we're really lucky to find each other but i'm trying to find the solution this is a moral and

00:32:11.580 bad i'll make this horrible suggestion for any proposal that's basically suggesting to create 0.99

00:32:14.840 decades of misery okay so basically marriage is immoral and bad because marriage sucks and people 0.99

00:32:18.580 suck blah blah okay so that's her that's the argument but but we need more taxpayers next 0.98

00:32:23.200 section maybe this is finally going to be it come on performative bafflement you might say look 0.97

00:32:27.280 around you dependency ratios the big problem oh dependency ratios you made that one yeah i'm the

00:32:34.580 who popularized dependency ratios you did people i don't even care about more taxpayers anymore now

00:32:39.860 that we have ai i'm just like you know we will replace you that's the goal at this point we've

00:32:43.940 got to replace the existing population that thinks like this dependency uh sorry uh performative

00:32:48.040 bafflement is is humoring you here the big problem south korea and japan and china are headed in for 0.92

00:32:52.800 infinite ever-growing array of old people tiling tiling the sky to the horizon like octogenarian 1.00

00:33:01.620 celestial vampires draining the economic and cultural life force out of their kids and grandkids 1.00

00:33:05.860 as each kid has to support a greater number of sky vampires oh that's good performative bafflement 0.58

00:33:11.980 that's good that's going to suck for them their entire economy is going to grind to a halt and

00:33:16.680 everyone is going to hate their lives and in the developing world we're all on the same train 1.00

00:33:21.900 they're just getting to the station first so that's ours and our kids fates too this big

00:33:27.160 ponzi scheme we like to call the american economy isn't just going to make it without a bunch of

00:33:31.980 kids cranked out on mass to keep the wheels spinning right well friends i've got news for

00:33:36.920 here you for you here too the median taxpayer isn't this is to say no matter how you do the

00:33:41.340 math you do not approach the net neutral in taxes paid versus consumed unless you are in the top 10

00:33:46.520 percent of income for 40 plus years oh interesting argument here so only the rich people have to get

00:33:53.940 married okay i'm trying this yeah let's get rid of the average person stare and leaflet has said

00:33:59.520 this as well that we should offer money for people to sterilize themselves yeah let's move to what do

00:34:04.460 we call this like dark pronatalism twist and if your question was in dark pronatalism is well then

00:34:11.320 who's worthy who should be having kids it's the people who are willing to make that sacrifice

00:34:16.160 that's who decides the people willing to make the sacrifice for the future it's you it's the

00:34:22.440 individual who gets to decide who gets to either find or not find a partner who gets to make a

00:34:29.540 good life for that partner a good enough life that they want to have lots of kids elitist

00:34:33.820 pernatalism we've always been accused of elitism you know oh the colleges they want people to have

00:34:38.080 kids but only the right people and they want everyone to think that we're like white people

00:34:42.860 or like christian people but we're like no just like competent happy people yeah so yeah the

00:34:49.640 If competent happy people is this like rare, impossible thing.

00:34:55.220 I will continue because we're going to have to get the kids real soon.

00:34:57.820 Let's just show this at a super high level.

00:35:00.160 Only about half of Americans work.

00:35:02.120 The rest are kids, retirees, and layabouts.

00:35:04.460 So you've got 170 million workers. 0.57

00:35:06.460 We spend $7 trillion a year, mostly on old people entitlements from 52% to 69%,

00:35:11.680 depending on where you account for national debt and interest and some other stuff. 0.94

00:35:15.200 I like round numbers.

00:35:15.980 So let's lazily call it $4.5 trillion for entitlements and $2.5 trillion for everything else.

00:35:21.120 How much is $7 trillion over $150 million?

00:35:24.400 It's $40K in taxes paid per worker.

00:35:26.660 You don't hit that amount of taxes paid until you are top 5% of income or $250K plus or so.

00:35:34.460 But people pay dollars in payroll taxes every paycheck.

00:35:39.620 Yeah, sure, it doesn't matter.

00:35:41.100 The median worker pays $6 to $7K in federal taxes, including all those.

00:35:45.080 and the mean is around 10 to 12K, still way shy of 40K. I mean, even if you literally take out

00:35:51.540 entitlements entirely, just that 2.5 trillion across all the workers, it's like 15K a year.

00:35:56.540 Because it's highly heritable whether or not your kids are going to pay into the system as well.

00:36:02.140 Yeah, but this isn't, yeah. Anyway, I'll skip around. Performative Baffleman says,

00:36:07.240 I'm not disparaging average people here who are genuinely paying a big chunk of their income in

00:36:10.920 taxes. I'm disparaging our maximally stupid government spending and policies. 0.99

00:36:14.460 and pointing out that there's literally no way it can go like this, go on like this with the 1.00

00:36:18.840 sky vampires hit. The sky vampires. I really like that. If we're always and forever spending 6x more

00:36:24.900 than we make per person, adding more people isn't going to help. We're still, we do our system in

00:36:30.180 the maximally stupid way. And as an example, taking the widow's mite of taxes, 1k back then 0.98

00:36:35.380 in 1970s dollars, immediately spend it, then basically promise the person who paid those

00:36:39.560 taxes and piddling 1970s dollars will spend 40k per year on them in present day dollars when

00:36:44.540 they're old, which we're doing. Yes, that's so true. I hate that. Versus if you were smart,

00:36:48.980 hi Singapore, you'd put those 1970s dollars into some financial instrument that also grew with

00:36:54.140 time. So by the time they were old, their money had grown to offset some of that gap. Oh, and we

00:36:59.300 also take on huge amounts of debt every year in a tiny 1970 dollar equivalence so that we hit both

00:37:04.380 ways by that none of the positive contributions grow but the debt grows with time so today's

00:37:10.140 figure if we actually get to paying off that debt would mean more like 60k per year but obviously

00:37:14.400 we're not paying it off we're racking it up still more debt every year i yeah i agree with this dark

00:37:20.700 pronatalism we should do a full episode where we go hard into the concept of dark pronatalism

00:37:27.380 because there's been the direction i've been moving in terms of like the populations you

00:37:30.600 can actually affect who actually matters who we actually want to have kids and like yeah dark

00:37:36.660 pernatalism I care that you plan to be a productive citizen you want to be a productive citizen and

00:37:41.380 that means you're going to have productive children yeah and performative bafflement

00:37:44.340 after making the whole tax argument which I think we all understand now points out that like if you

00:37:48.880 like kids you'd want them to be raised in a loving functional high socioeconomic status household

00:37:53.780 with your parents because they will be better off right like they have better everything and they

00:37:59.700 want the kids and can raise them well okay that's pretty much the way wow yeah what a twist huh

00:38:05.520 that was that was great i mean i'm not i don't i didn't get permission from the person who sent

00:38:10.340 this but good send yeah i mean we went into this blind i only had heard of i think someone sent me

00:38:17.200 one performative bafflement article before i don't know who they are we still don't know who they are

00:38:21.100 we like to judge people based on their ideas and at first we were like okay this is whiny but also

00:38:26.440 oh my god you're right marriage does suck for most people who also no no no not for most people for

00:38:31.960 below average people okay that's like half of people yeah but the point is is that we can get 0.96

00:38:38.440 rid of the below average people would not get no look look we will let them do what they want 0.92

00:38:43.520 and that can lead light pronatalism where they want to help the somalis have more kids and the

00:38:51.900 the random you know the freaking homeless people who keep getting pregnant accidentally

00:38:57.100 and we can run dark pronatalism you heard it here folks it's sad to be able to appreciate

00:39:03.540 part of the take and then see that after simone stopped it gets ends on the most mind-bendingly 0.75

00:39:10.620 stupid take i've ever heard which is fertility isn't actually a problem for another hundred plus 0.83

00:39:15.920 years even if the entire world fertility drops to 1.85 for the next hundred years 0.98

00:39:21.220 we're going to have 9 billion people through 2125 the low bar here requires it dropping to 1.5

00:39:28.080 around the world blah blah blah blah fertility isn't actually a problem for another 100 to 200

00:39:33.160 years and in these like and by the time it actually becomes a problem we'll have fully 0.69

00:39:37.220 automated luxury gay space communism as the meme goes what's so funny here in this very piece he 0.84

00:39:43.840 seems acutely aware that the vast majority like one human is not equal to another human in terms

00:39:53.000 of technological progress in terms of economic involvement in terms of economic progress and if

00:39:58.620 we look at dropping populations like if the dropping population is primarily in this one

00:40:04.340 group that's paying all the taxes globally speaking that's really really bad for

00:40:14.200 civilization right like i hate to say it but if you look at like global birth rates and you're

00:40:21.560 trying to act like everyone's going to be equally likely to be economically productive

00:40:25.740 and you're just like okay well where do we have good birth rates oh like somalia do you really

00:40:31.520 think that they're going to be the next collectively i'm not saying any end of any

00:40:37.380 individual somalian can do great i'm just talking like averages and math here that all of a sudden

00:40:43.000 they're going to become this super economically productive region or be as economically productive 1.00

00:40:48.480 as san francisco come on man stop being stupid like that's just intentionally stupid well wow 1.00

00:40:53.040 i mean yeah i like that it's always really fun when something fundamentally changes our view 1.00

00:40:58.060 of something. And we already had a sort of shifting view of prenatalism because of the way

00:41:03.060 we look at AI and how AI can potentially change this, but totally valid point about taxpayers.

00:41:10.380 And that like, well, I mean, we've, we've also pointed that out though, that like, we don't want

00:41:13.440 net tax drains, which is why immigration is not a solution and why, you know, trying to push really

00:41:17.860 low income families to have more kids is not going to solve the problem. It will exacerbate it as

00:41:21.960 much as we welcome anyone who wants to have kids to have kids. Cause also like, why, why do you

00:41:27.000 want to pay taxes for the sky vampires i also hear that but yeah so i'm gonna have to think

00:41:31.520 about this thank you all right well i love you malcolm i'm gonna go get the kids and make you

00:41:36.380 crispy chili oil and garlic green beans with boncha i love you bye i love you too bye

00:41:43.020 i think if you guys use it again i'll just know how to choose that but then i would look there

00:41:53.160 again because you just hit there well I think you'll find one I believe in you

00:42:02.280 Octavian I really do Andy do you think Octavian's a good hider yes exactly to

00:42:11.980 3100 no well that's gonna be a long time 30 or 100 okay ready I'm gonna go one

00:42:19.080 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

00:42:31.440 Ready or not, here I come.

00:42:34.300 Andy, where is everyone?

00:42:37.020 It's lost.

00:42:38.440 Really?

00:42:40.660 It's why there's a basket.

00:42:45.640 What is happening?

00:42:46.980 Why is that box moving Indy? Why is it moving? Oh my god, it's moving again. I'm so scared.

00:42:58.480 What should I do Indy? It's okay, I'm not really scared. It's getting closer. I think

00:43:07.140 I need to. Oh no. It was you the whole time. Wow. You're very good at hiding. Do you know

00:43:20.960 where Octavian is? Well, I need to go inside and make dinner for everyone. Okay. Would

00:43:28.640 you like to help me? Uh, okay. Just be careful love. This is

00:43:37.040 not a box of holes in it and you need air so maybe just a loose covering yeah okay that's fine

00:43:43.280 good okay you just uh i'm gonna find octavian i'm gonna keep it um if it is shiny i thought

00:43:53.040 you wanted to keep it if it's shiny yes okay all right i'm gonna go make dinner i love you

Based Camp - July 02, 2026

Most Should Not Get Married Or Have Kids

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript