Based Camp - September 10, 2025


What Does A Birth Rate Collapse Future Look Like？


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello, Malcolm. I'm so excited to be with you today because we are going to talk about what
00:00:04.380 it's actually like to live through demographic collapse, which really matters because it's
00:00:08.860 already kind of starting. As William Gibson said, the future is here. It's just not evenly
00:00:12.360 distributed. We're going to go through the good, the bad, the ugly. And I think we're
00:00:16.100 going to start off with the weird, like artificial wombs being developed in robot humanoid form.
00:00:21.480 So it's going to be fun. This is in China that this is happening. And I'll argue that it's
00:00:26.200 probably not real. It's 100% almost certainly not real, but still I'm very. Artificial ones are
00:00:30.720 being developed. But what I, the core point of this episode that we're going to be going over
00:00:34.720 with you guys is what does it actually feel like to live through a demographic collapse apocalypse
00:00:42.180 scenario? What does the world look like in 150 years? And what, and keep in mind, we will be
00:00:48.940 modifying this with what does this look like in positive AI timelines, in neutral AI timelines,
00:00:55.440 because the huge modifier on how this plays out is AI, you know?
00:00:59.500 Yeah. Although in some ways, AI, I'm going to argue is going to make things worse, faster
00:01:03.280 for people. So I agree. It absolutely will. But, but what I mean here is in my AI scenarios
00:01:09.480 was in the original timeline, AI doesn't come online enough to fix everything. When you get
00:01:15.480 a post apocalypse, it'll create some for artfab.ai that, that have this scenario eventually.
00:01:19.880 But anyway, this is, this is like my deus ex world, right? Where, you know, our distant descent
00:01:25.700 150 years from now is exploring mostly decayed buildings with like a slab drone, right?
00:01:32.040 Cities, you can't even walk in them because they're so dangerous because things can collapse.
00:01:35.860 But what if the AI comes online and decides to keep everything up and running, right?
00:01:40.760 And so it, as a function of justice, its maintenance function ends up keeping up all the roads in
00:01:47.640 all the cities. And you just end up with like eerily empty cities was like a very large and
00:01:53.500 bustling, like Orthodox Jewish quarter. But like everything outside of that is, is, is mostly
00:01:58.520 just empty, policed by AI drones. So you can't go out and like break the law or steal something
00:02:03.400 that could be the very weird and real future that our distant descendants could be living through.
00:02:08.220 So let's talk about what these different futures could look like.
00:02:11.100 Yeah. And since this just came out in the news, we've got to talk about it because this is how
00:02:16.160 things are going to get weird. Probably not through this method, but through others. Yeah.
00:02:20.140 Some Chinese scientist has announced that he's going to create a humanoid robot that will gestate
00:02:25.000 humans. According to Chosen Biz, an article titled China develops pregnancy robot with artificial womb
00:02:32.140 to aid infertile couples. It reads quote, reports have emerged that the world's first pregnancy robot is
00:02:37.280 under development in China. The robot is designed in a humanoid form and is equipped with an artificial
00:02:42.740 womb in its abdomen, allowing it to carry a fetus for 10 months and give birth. Prototype is expected
00:02:47.720 to be released next year with a selling price of around 1000, 100,000 yuan, approximately 19.3 million
00:02:54.800 yuan. So the scientist, sorry, sorry, seems to be like, for context, for our audience, that's around 14,000
00:03:02.440 US dollars. Yeah. So like, this is 100% not going to happen. One, it's insane. Like, why would you,
00:03:08.740 why would you put an artificial womb in a humanoid robot? I mean, one thing that that that's really
00:03:13.220 weird is, so the article also reads, the key to the pregnancy robot is the artificial womb technology,
00:03:19.580 where the fetus grows inside the artificial womb, filled with amniotic fluid, and receives nutrients
00:03:24.580 through a hose. Dr. Zhang noted, quote, the artificial womb technology is already in a mature stage,
00:03:29.840 and now it needs to be implanted in the robot's abdomen so that a real person and the robot can
00:03:35.080 interact to achieve pregnancy, allowing the fetus to grow inside. I don't know if he wants people to
00:03:40.480 have intercourse with the robot. This is the most fake China thing I have ever seen. It is beyond fake,
00:03:47.840 because I mean, if you're developing an artificial womb, really, like from embryo onward, like you are
00:03:53.040 developing something where the, the, the placenta is also growing in there. And just a way that for
00:03:59.400 context, we have a lot of knowledge about artificial womb development beyond what the art of normal
00:04:04.100 person would, because this is a space we are very interested in potentially investing in, then we're
00:04:09.060 very passionate about it. And so I am aware of the state of the current technology. And this is like
00:04:14.580 somebody comes out there and is like, I have a phaser, right? It's like, I am aware of the cutting edge
00:04:19.920 technology. You don't have a phaser. Like we, we, I have teleportation or something, right? Like it's
00:04:25.020 like, no, you don't have teleportation. We are at least, I'd say maybe six years away from being able
00:04:31.260 to do this in humans from my knowledge of the current technology. Yeah. And it's not going to
00:04:34.160 look like a humanoid robot. This reminds me of those, those examples of early AI robots in China
00:04:39.100 where like, clearly there was just a person to speaking to a mic. So, oh yeah, there's this really
00:04:43.960 funny thing. So early in China, they did the thing where they were doing like cutting edge AI.
00:04:48.300 They were like, we've done it people. We've developed in Singapore. And the person went
00:04:53.400 up to it, the AI, and they could converse with it in English and they could converse with it
00:04:57.760 within the Singapore language, but it couldn't talk in Mandarin, the Chinese language. That's
00:05:05.000 clearly just a person. But it was great. Yeah. But also like the way that it spoke, it was kind
00:05:10.520 of like, yeah, no. So like, while this is totally bunk, one, there will absolutely be artificial
00:05:16.360 looms fairly soon. And two, China is absolutely going to get on this kind of tech because it is
00:05:20.960 going to probably be, we would, we would argue the first country that is going to start printing
00:05:27.560 essentially its own citizens. Oh, absolutely. So when people are like, no, China wouldn't do,
00:05:32.640 China would absolutely, that's exactly the type of thing China would do. So for people who don't know,
00:05:36.720 during the one child policy, if you was in certain districts, if you'd go in for like a cold,
00:05:41.200 they'd give you like a forced abortion. Like why wouldn't they do forced inseminations if you go
00:05:45.840 in for a cold or something like that? Right? Like the government there, when things get bad enough
00:05:52.560 and when they finally recognize it and keep in mind, things are bad there right now. They have
00:05:56.260 tried to force people to have more kids through differential sort of government. Like it's hard
00:06:01.580 to move up in the government if you don't have at least three kids now. Yeah. But it's still super
00:06:05.340 trending in the media constantly in China is just sort of stuff that's going viral of people talking
00:06:10.460 about why they can't have three kids. Like most recently in this reality TV show,
00:06:14.980 this celebrity couple was discussing how, well, they had originally pledged to only have one child.
00:06:20.900 And then the husband's kind of like, well, I kind of like two kids. And the mother's like, listen,
00:06:24.940 like you're not helping me at all. And like sort of this, this conversation that played out publicly
00:06:28.940 on reality TV. And I'm kind of shocked the CCP allowed them to play this. Russia would not allow this.
00:06:34.120 They, the social media sort of erupted in support of the wife who was like, I'm not having more kids.
00:06:40.320 And in criticism of the husband, like, how dare you say that you want more children? He argued,
00:06:45.260 like it would help with his artistic inspiration or something. And his dad died and it made him
00:06:48.800 rethink the importance of fatherhood and stuff like that. So constantly, like as much as the
00:06:53.760 government's trying to shift the narrative, it's super not working in even mainstream media.
00:06:58.840 No, it's their only chance. It's their only chance. But then this becomes really scary because
00:07:02.780 you can get an entire society where the majority of children are born
00:07:06.800 born through artificial wombs under the government.
00:07:11.340 And they can also be, they will be able to be genetically modified by this point too.
00:07:15.300 A scary thing that Malcolm has pointed out that governments may do in the future to not only print
00:07:20.540 their own citizens, but also prevent a brain drain, because that's also kind of a war that's going to be
00:07:26.020 taking place between countries. It's like they're going to be fighting over productive taxpayers and
00:07:29.800 productive citizens. To keep citizens captive, you can make people with certain deficiencies who depend
00:07:37.260 on a very specific chemical compound that only like the CCP can manufacture. And if you don't get
00:07:42.360 your monthly injection or supplement or whatever, you just die. So you can't leave.
00:07:48.240 And I'll know if people can think that this is like sci-fi or whatever. I need to point out,
00:07:53.280 this technology is being developed. The CCP has signaled that it wants to get into this technology.
00:07:57.920 And even though it did arrest that guy who did the genetic editing in the past,
00:08:02.680 the CCP is modifying its stance on a lot of this stuff. If you look at sort of what's going on in
00:08:07.040 their hood, based on the fertility collapse that they're dealing with right now, like they're
00:08:10.700 halving their population every generation. They're going to deal with an economic collapse,
00:08:15.020 certainly because of this. And they have the motive means and motivation to react to it in this way,
00:08:24.280 right? Like people are like, they would never, they would do that. And if you can't find a way
00:08:28.860 to motivate fertility through something other than this, or, or genetic selection that leads to
00:08:34.800 better traits instead of just genetic traits, you are going to lose to Chinese, like Chinese culture,
00:08:42.540 whatever that is, it will be the culture that determines the future of humanity. It takes this time.
00:08:46.980 Yeah. And this is why it's extra important for us to build successful societies that support things
00:08:52.520 like bodily autonomy and reproductive choice. So this is the sci-fi element of it.
00:08:57.300 Note here, you just said reproductive choice, which to us means something different. She doesn't mean
00:09:01.500 abortion. She means the ability to do things like embryo screening and augmentation.
00:09:05.900 Yeah. Or to not do that if you don't want to do it.
00:09:08.660 Right, right.
00:09:09.660 Literally to choose how you have a family and whether you want to have a family. Like reproductive choice
00:09:14.360 also means like, Hey, I want to be a dink couple and Oh great. Okay. The government's not going to
00:09:18.780 force me to do it. Although I think that China will probably in the future just allow for dinks
00:09:22.540 and like have them die out and tax them to high heaven and then just print their own humans that
00:09:26.720 are compliant. But anyway, so that's the sci-fi element. I think a really underrated element of
00:09:31.800 demographic collapse is that we can really see it. It's already happened or sort of the same
00:09:36.920 after effects of demographic collapse have played out in different regions of the world
00:09:40.620 that allow us to see what it's going to look like already. Like you can literally fly to these places
00:09:45.840 and physically see what it looks like. And a really great example that we've cited before is Detroit.
00:09:51.440 So Malcolm, I'm going to send you on WhatsApp some images. First, some before and after.
00:09:56.420 Here's the Michigan railroad waiting depot.
00:09:59.040 I love it that everybody thinks that what's going to happen as places depopulate is that they're going
00:10:03.800 to get really cheap, like cheap, cheap housing.
00:10:06.020 Yeah. Like, oh, finally, like we'll have affordable housing. This is going to be fantastic. Like,
00:10:10.380 no, what happened in Detroit after there was a big exodus of population was that housing in some ways
00:10:17.100 did become much more affordable. And we do have friends, for example, who moved there and got
00:10:20.200 swanky apartments in like the few areas that got kept up. But what happened more and more was that
00:10:25.160 places got abandoned and then just no one could afford to maintain them. Because if anyone here who's
00:10:30.180 has bought a house, like, oh my God, these things are money holes. It costs so much.
00:10:34.180 There's an episode on this and I'll put some of the pictures from that episode here where we show
00:10:37.300 that houses in Detroit essentially deteriorated into rubble with modern building practices in around
00:10:43.800 15 years of not being used. Here you have an abandoned group of three normal looking houses in
00:10:49.520 2011. By 2013, you can see one has already collapsed in on itself only two years after being abandoned.
00:10:57.600 2015, you see there's basically nothing left. 2022, you can see it's as if they were never there.
00:11:05.640 So keep in mind, 2015, that's only four years after these were abandoned. They are just rubble.
00:11:11.320 Yeah, I'm sending you another picture of the vanity ballroom theater or just ballroom before and after.
00:11:18.520 I'm showing you a picture of a classroom in Detroit. These are things that were like,
00:11:23.760 you know, built in like the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, sometimes even the 90s that are falling apart.
00:11:29.340 Here's Cass Technical High School in Detroit. What you're seeing is just the face of a building
00:11:34.180 with a bunch of like broken empty windows and just ruins inside. It's super creepy.
00:11:39.420 Here's the house, the former house of a wealthy banker. You know, people are building these houses
00:11:44.640 thinking that they're just going to last forever. You know, this is my legacy. I'm going to
00:11:48.140 contract a famous architect for this, which is what was the case with this particular house,
00:11:51.960 which you can see was a once great mansion. It is now literally collapsing and it has since been
00:11:56.320 demolished. Here is a former synagogue. Actually, the Jews all left Detroit kind of around the same
00:12:03.520 time, apparently. And then it got turned into a church and then it got abandoned. Super creepy
00:12:08.180 looking. It was not built very long ago. Here's a dental office, like offices. I mean, already offices
00:12:14.040 are being abandoned. When Malcolm and I go to New York and host parties, we do so on a high rise.
00:12:18.780 Like looking through of the old core club offices, which is like a sweaty club.
00:12:23.140 Yeah. Which is in the same building. And then in the adjacent buildings, you can look into the
00:12:26.320 offices. They're just empty. And you would, I mean, just like buildings just crumble so quickly. It's
00:12:32.420 terrifying. So that's just to give you a picture of it. What's important for people to be aware of
00:12:38.880 is that it's not like people are going to move in and be able to afford to pay for maintaining
00:12:43.100 these buildings. There's a factor, at least in the United States, that's going to accelerate
00:12:46.820 this problem. I need to explain why this happens because people might not understand why somebody
00:12:50.700 wouldn't pay to upkeep a building. The reason why you pay, and we bought real estate before
00:12:55.520 to upkeep real estate is because it has a lot of value, right? It's good. You know, if you're like,
00:13:01.920 I want to buy a house in a market where prices and houses are going down, that can seem like a great
00:13:07.260 idea, but then keep in mind, you're spending a lot of money on an asset that's going to decrease in
00:13:11.600 price. Nobody buys an asset that they think is going to decrease in price, which means that
00:13:16.300 houses, when people are pretty sure the market's going to go down, it goes all the way down really
00:13:21.660 fast. This is why houses in Detroit were selling for a penny. You know, they become a liability,
00:13:27.880 not an asset. This is going to be exacerbated by insurance. So already in a bunch of states in the
00:13:35.160 United States, especially California and Florida to start, but this is already happening in other
00:13:40.200 states too, is that insurance companies are going bankrupt and or leaving the state. And whilst in
00:13:45.760 some cases, states like California are trying to create basically state-based insurance programs,
00:13:50.400 they're prohibitively expensive, which means that some people just can't afford insurance or can't
00:13:55.240 get insurance at all on their houses. And this does a couple of things. One, it makes it impossible
00:14:01.620 for some people to buy houses entirely because many mortgages, the loans that you get to buy
00:14:05.640 a home require you to have home insurance. They will not give you the loan if your home is not
00:14:11.020 insured. And if you literally cannot get or cannot afford insurance for your home, that means you can't
00:14:15.380 buy the home. So then there's this huge swath of a population that won't be able to buy homes.
00:14:20.360 And then home that they would buy at zero value immediately. Yeah. So homeownerships are going to go
00:14:26.160 down. The financial stability of families and communities is going to go down. You know,
00:14:31.080 people are not going to be able to sell their houses because no one can buy them.
00:14:34.940 So we're going to see both, like a lot of people in the United States, their home is their nest egg.
00:14:39.420 It's their savings. It's like that they plan on selling it once they become empty nesters and that
00:14:43.440 will fund their retirement. And they expect to make, you know, that the price of their house will
00:14:48.220 have appreciated and that that will pay for their retirement, which is important because social
00:14:53.060 security is going to stop working and their pension plans aren't going to pay anymore.
00:14:56.080 What happens if the real estate market crashes at the same time as social security stops working,
00:15:00.380 And it actually probably is. So jumping up to social security, at least in the USA,
00:15:04.740 the USA is projected to no longer be able to fully cover social security obligations by 2033 to 2034.
00:15:10.780 And already some like their neighborhoods in Florida where basically most people have left,
00:15:15.900 like they are empty. They're going to become Detroit eyes, you know, like completely crumble
00:15:20.160 because literally people are leaving after floods and hurricanes because they don't have insurance
00:15:25.960 and they can't pay out of pocket to repair their broken houses. So already that's starting to
00:15:31.160 happen. It's going to happen in more and more places. And at the same time, basically like fewer
00:15:36.380 than 10 years away from now, social security is no longer going to be able to defund its obligation
00:15:42.140 unless lawmakers intervene to shore up the trust funds or overhaul programs financing. But
00:15:46.600 the way they're most likely going to do that is just by printing more money and printing more money to
00:15:51.820 fund social security payments is likely going to result in higher inflation. And this is going to
00:15:56.060 increase everyday costs like food and healthcare. It's going to reduce the dollar's global purchasing
00:16:01.460 power and it's going to destabilize personal and government finances. So you're also going to see
00:16:06.480 as social, like, let's say you're not even old when social security dies, you're not even dependent
00:16:11.000 on it. Well, suddenly you're paying a hell of a lot more for food, for medical care, for all the stuff
00:16:17.140 that retired people are buying now with money that isn't worth as much. So also you as a retired
00:16:22.860 person expected to be able to live off your social security check. And you can't because now suddenly
00:16:28.500 medical services cost a lot more and technically the government's meeting their obligations to you,
00:16:33.400 but they're not because you can't afford anything. Because the government's not worth anything.
00:16:38.920 But I've pointed out that the U.S. is one of the best places to be as demographic collapse plays out
00:16:43.400 only because everyone else is going to be fleeing here. Well, yeah. And you have to consider, I mean,
00:16:47.880 already, one, for one thing, a lot is already privatized in the United States. So to a certain
00:16:54.320 extent, we're slightly more weaned off the tit of government, which is, or teat. Do we say teat when
00:16:59.700 we're talking about breastfeeding? I don't want to talk about breastfeeding. I understand that my mom
00:17:05.060 and my sister-in-law, my half-sister, not sister-in-law, half-sister, they got in such a fight about this
00:17:10.660 on an airplane once. What was the correct word? That- Versus teat? Are you serious?
00:17:15.320 Yeah. That she called her, teat was her nickname. I think it was little teat and big teat or something.
00:17:20.580 Little teat and big, that is amazing. I just remember that growing up and hearing that word
00:17:24.840 all the time and knowing the story. I think teat is used in the context of discussing
00:17:29.720 breastfeeding. So at least we're more weaned off the teat of government services. For example,
00:17:34.380 NHS, people are already super unhappy with waitlist times with the services in general. They're having a lot
00:17:39.700 of trouble. And most recently, this has erupted in angry discussions on X because in July,
00:17:47.240 the prime minister, Keir Starmer, announced that they plan to bring over 300 gauze and children
00:17:52.120 with their parents and provide them with NHS treatment because they're really sick, which,
00:17:57.260 okay, that's really nice. But then people got super mad because they're like, my four-year-old has
00:18:01.360 been on a waitlist for NHS treatment for five years now. Or no, that wouldn't work. But like for years,
00:18:07.280 I saw for years, but it was like for a reason. They brought the gauze in and they're like,
00:18:12.740 we're treating them. The immigration thing was in the next 10, 20 years as fertility rates really
00:18:18.880 become obvious as an issue. People are going to freak out way more than they are. If you're like,
00:18:23.540 this is like the height of immigration as like a concern area for society. When people realize
00:18:29.740 that they are unironically just being replaced by the wealthy, they are going to freak the F out.
00:18:37.960 You mean replaced by immigrants?
00:18:39.680 No, no, no. That the wealthy is replacing them. Like that they're like, oh, we have a problem with
00:18:43.480 not enough people having kids. We'll just bring other people into the country to replace you.
00:18:47.820 So a great example of this is a place like Italy, right? Where I point out that at the current Italian
00:18:51.460 fertility rate, which is 1.18, there's only going to be 20 great-grandchildren for every 100 Italians.
00:18:56.540 And this is assuming that the numbers don't go down further, which they have done like every
00:18:59.740 year for the past however many years, they almost certainly are. And then countries at the UN or the
00:19:03.680 WSL say, we can fix this with immigration. So either you want to do one of two things with
00:19:07.620 those immigrants, right? Like either you plan to completely erase their birth culture and make
00:19:11.880 them exactly like you, Italian, German, whatever, which is cultural genocide. Like historically we call
00:19:16.880 that cultural genocide. It's bad. Or you plan on replacing the existing population. So either you do plan to
00:19:24.140 replace people or you plan to commit cultural genocide. Yeah. Speaking of genocide, I actually
00:19:30.000 think this is what many nationalized healthcare services are going to start to do, which in other
00:19:34.280 words, they're going to do the same thing that Canada has started doing, which is introduce medical
00:19:39.040 assistance in dying, AKA the MAID program. So when that was first in 2023, there were over 15,000 MAID
00:19:46.080 cases representing 4.7% of all deaths in Canada. And that was a 15.8% increase over 2022. And then a
00:19:54.880 little bit of like year over year growth has slowed, but it is, it is still going up. And I feel like
00:20:00.080 it might just get to the case where basically the NHS and many other government healthcare services,
00:20:06.060 which just can't afford, like neither have the staff nor the money to pay for people's medical
00:20:10.000 services are just like, well, we'll help you transition out of your life easily. Like at
00:20:15.040 least we'll do that. Well, we're seeing Mary Harrington on X, which is really funny. This
00:20:18.400 was like a year ago when she said this, but she said, imagine signing up for an NHS suicide chances
00:20:23.360 are, oh, sorry. Imagine signing up for an NHS suicide. Chances are you'd either die on the waiting
00:20:28.960 list. That unaliving. Okay. So like a year ago, Mary, Mary Harrington said, imagine signing up for an
00:20:36.540 NHS unaliving. Chances are you'd either die on the waiting list or come out healthier on the other
00:20:41.860 end, which is so true. Canada is literally, you should watch our episode of should it be legal
00:20:49.940 for Canada to kill poor people? Because that's essentially what this has become with a lot of
00:20:54.640 these services. Yeah. With the Canada one, with the made one, at least is, is if you are long-term
00:21:00.340 on a lot of these government services, they basically recommend it to you. Well, they're going to have to
00:21:05.200 because they, one, they can't afford you like your liability. And so the best thing, the most
00:21:10.200 responsible thing for them to do is to just try to remove you from their balance sheet. And other
00:21:14.040 governments have already suggested killing old people. So this has happened in Japan where a lot
00:21:18.380 of people freaked out. No, no, just, yeah, just one guy was like, one politician. But what I will say
00:21:23.720 is we are going to see this more and more because people are going to be like these numbers. And when you
00:21:28.480 talk about like, what's the timeline for these numbers not working in many European countries,
00:21:32.580 we're looking at this timeline, not working within 10 to 20 years, systems are going to start
00:21:40.400 breaking. So when people are like, what's the timeline on the European system?
00:21:46.940 So yeah, basically like what we're going to see is, is if you are dependent currently on government
00:21:53.400 provided healthcare, you need to start planning on alternate methods that if you are in a place like
00:21:58.460 the United States and you're dependent on private healthcare and private insurance, you need to plan
00:22:02.580 finding alternate sources of medical care because it is going to become unaffordable. So if you're on
00:22:08.880 private medical care, it's going to become unaffordable. Find ways to get like no doctors
00:22:13.640 or train yourself in like self-treatment and know how to source medications outside working with a
00:22:18.620 primary care physician, get familiar with direct primary care. I think what we're going to see is
00:22:22.860 probably a shift to direct primary care, which is where you outside of insurance, outside of anything
00:22:27.360 else, pay a doctor directly for medical advice. They can prescribe medication and then get really
00:22:34.240 used to finding and or possibly synthesizing and making the medications that you need to survive and
00:22:39.640 hope that you, you know, save, you're going to end up spending a lot of money just to be able to get
00:22:44.160 life-saving services. So we're going to see, of course, medical breakthroughs, but they're also going
00:22:47.760 to be so unaffordable that like it kind of doesn't matter. But I think that's, that's something that
00:22:52.240 is really important to, to also think about. So let's, let's go back to what it's like to live.
00:22:59.720 No, I want to talk about what it looks like when social security and stuff like that starts breaking
00:23:03.300 down. Because if we look in, in, in some of the European systems, they're actually slated to begin
00:23:08.380 to become financially insolvent within as little as half a decade. We're, we're less than a decade
00:23:13.840 away from our social security faltering. Yeah. So when you look at these environments, right,
00:23:19.360 what's, I know you say that they'll just start printing money. I don't know. We may see them
00:23:24.400 increasing the age of retirement. We may see them. That happened. Shinzo Abe did that for Japan.
00:23:29.420 Yeah. There's going to be a number of changes to the way these systems work. How can you,
00:23:33.840 how will that happen in the U S like I could see Japan may be working this out because they can be
00:23:38.320 responsible and honorable, but as you pointed out, you need boomers to vote for less stuff for
00:23:43.740 themselves. That's, that's not going to happen. Right. That's just not. And this is why you say
00:23:48.180 that demographic collapse undermines democracy is when you have a dependency ratio cascade and you
00:23:52.560 get to a point where there are more people who are net drains on our tax system, who cost more to
00:23:57.900 the government than they bring in voting. Then you have people who are net contributors to the tax
00:24:03.060 system. And those people who are net drains are not going to vote themselves fewer services that,
00:24:08.780 you know, as far as boomers are concerned, I paid into the system. I did my part. I deserve what I,
00:24:13.900 you know, what I did like, so they had a uniquely flourishing economy. No, they don't look at it
00:24:18.660 that way. I mean, and we've had conversations with boomers who were like, no, we're just being
00:24:22.460 totally unfair. Like they're, they're pathologically unable and unwilling to take a hit. So we have to
00:24:28.860 depend that that's not going to happen. That's why they're going to start printing money because
00:24:32.680 again, boomers aren't going to vote themselves fewer services. And basically what's going to happen
00:24:36.340 in 2020, 2033 to 2035, is it social security? Like we're only going to be able to pay out like
00:24:42.740 75 to 80% of what people are entitled to, entitled to, unless we, we really start like
00:24:49.720 fudging numbers and stuff. We're not going to cut back. Like it's just expect inflation. I'm just
00:24:56.120 telling people like, cause I want to want part of this conversation to be is like, what should you
00:24:59.500 be preparing for? So like medically get used to taking care of your own medical stuff and sourcing your
00:25:04.000 own medications and really owning your own medical care financially, you know, prepare to live a lot
00:25:09.660 leaner than you do now, because money's going to cost a lot more. In addition to medical care,
00:25:13.640 once social security starts to falter, you have time to prepare. So in the U S like you have maybe
00:25:19.720 seven years in Europe, you have maybe a shorter timeline, but that's something to watch out for.
00:25:25.860 And another thing that I want to point out is just how, like, so I think some governments are
00:25:32.760 going to try to assist with housing. I want to show you, here's some photos on WhatsApp that I'm
00:25:37.280 sending to you that you can put on the thing of, this is a gated community in South Africa.
00:25:43.220 And this is the Soweto township that we had toured with your family. And here's the school that we
00:25:49.220 visited in the Soweto township. So these are pictures we took. Yeah. Well, not, not the gated
00:25:54.520 community. Cause we didn't see the fancy stuff in Johannesburg. We went to the, by the way,
00:25:59.940 here are the backpacks that were at the kid's school in the Soweto township, which makes me
00:26:06.380 feel excited. Looks like Walmart. Well, no, but it's like, everyone gives us shame for like not
00:26:11.900 having like a branded kid's backpack for our son who's in, he's going into the first grade. Cause
00:26:17.420 we just, you know how like they give away really nice backpacks at conferences. So we get one of
00:26:21.760 those. Like it's a really nice backpack, but it's clearly from a conference and like everyone else is
00:26:26.940 coming with their like Elsa backpack. And even in Soweto, it's like all branded kid backpacks.
00:26:30.940 And I'm like, Oh God, I'm in the worst period ever. Even in the slums out of like outside of
00:26:35.260 Johannesburg. Yeah. But anyway, so like what's going on in these townships is even after apartheid,
00:26:41.420 even after all these attempts to like, okay, well the government's going to step in, the government
00:26:44.780 will provide, because I think we're going to see a lot of that too. I mean, we're seeing this with
00:26:47.740 mom Don me in New York, all this like, well, okay, we have to start fixing that. Well, this is what
00:26:53.280 it looks like when a government is like, Oh, we'll provide you with housing. We'll fix this.
00:26:58.200 No, the townships in South Africa often don't have electricity or running water. These are houses
00:27:03.940 that many people have just built on their own. They are not nice. And then meanwhile, there are
00:27:08.560 ways that the wealthy people in South Africa have found around the weird property ownership laws in
00:27:14.200 South Africa to have these gated communities. And I fell down this rabbit hole today of all the
00:27:19.420 random weird services and types of gates that you should be buying in, in South Africa and the kind
00:27:25.860 of private security that you can be getting. For example, you know how like ADT is like a home
00:27:29.760 security company in the United States as well. So here is Fidelity ADT in South Africa. I'm sending
00:27:36.860 you some pictures of the dudes that will come out. Oh my God. They're like, they're like a SWAT team,
00:27:43.980 you know, that just comes and shoots the bad guys who inevitably are coming to your house.
00:27:47.440 What has happened in South Africa because they're the government much earlier than ours
00:27:51.580 has been unable to provide security that is reliable is now basically you as a private citizen
00:27:57.640 are paying ADT Fidelity. Here's the plug. They're not a sponsor of this podcast, but they can be if
00:28:03.060 they want to. I will totally take a private security sponsorship, but like people are going to now feel
00:28:10.740 obligated to pay for private security because when they call the police, the police won't come.
00:28:14.860 And as much as you might be like, Oh, whatever. That's like a South Africa thing. Like they're
00:28:18.780 having all these problems. No, like police departments are already not working in the USA.
00:28:25.060 So just, just for like a little perspective about 44 to 47% of the New York police department's total
00:28:31.220 annual costs go toward pension debt and benefits. So only like 53 to 56 currently supports active
00:28:39.080 operations. So basically half of the NYPD is on, on like not providing services. Like they can barely
00:28:45.660 pay for what they have. Our closest city in Philadelphia, the department is about 20% short
00:28:51.680 of its full officer commitment. This is down 1,200 officers from 6,380.
00:28:57.880 You should look at our thing on the, the, the, the closed crime rate. We have an episode on this
00:29:02.780 where it's gone down dramatically, where many crimes just aren't even being pursued in the United States.
00:29:06.820 So to just give you some quick numbers on this, violent climb clearance rates went from 48.1%
00:29:13.820 in 2013 to 36.7% in 2022, a drop of 24%. Property climb clearance rates, including thefts and burglaries
00:29:23.320 dropped from 19.7% in 2013 to 12.1% in 2022, a decline of 39%. So it dropped from 19.7% to 12.1%.
00:29:35.160 So we're only seeing about one in 10 thefts and burglaries being solved anymore.
00:29:40.540 Thefts and homicides rates have plummeted from around 91% in 1965 to around 50% in 2022.
00:29:49.180 Why? Yeah. Because this is, so this particular in Philadelphia, it's impacting 9-1-1 response
00:29:53.360 and cold case investigations, cold cases. Of course, this is like, we are in the middle of an apocalypse
00:29:58.160 right now. I want to, I want to make that clear to people. Like it is happening in slow motion,
00:30:02.480 but it is here already. Yeah. In Oakland, California, which is right next to the town
00:30:07.280 where I grew up in, in California, right across, across the little water. I grew up in Alameda.
00:30:11.860 It is, their police department is very understaffed. It's dropped from more than 800 sworn officers to
00:30:18.640 678, possibly lower if they cut more costs because they kind of have to. So basically there's
00:30:24.480 overspending on overtime because there's high demand and they, they're likely to just not be
00:30:29.060 able to respond anymore. In Los Angeles, also they're facing a nearly $1 billion budget shortfall.
00:30:34.880 They may lay off 1,600 employees with about a quarter from LAPD civilian rules, like crime scene
00:30:40.980 photography and cybersecurity. So like, you know, good luck getting anything solved. And, and also it's
00:30:47.180 not just big cities. They're also small towns. And this is where it's going to start first,
00:30:50.360 actually. So there are places like Morris, Minnesota and Washburn, Illinois,
00:30:53.240 where shortages have forced entire departments just disband. They're like that, like, sorry guys,
00:30:59.440 we don't have a police department anymore. So these localities are now reliant on county sheriffs.
00:31:04.900 Good Hugh, Minnesota lost its entire force after the police chief and officers just, just resigned
00:31:09.660 due to inadequate pay and benefits. So they're just like, yeah, yeah, it's not worth it anymore.
00:31:15.520 So again, like get ready for ADP fidelity and please sponsorships for private security are
00:31:21.160 welcome to welcome to reach out to base camp because that's, what's going to happen. So also
00:31:25.020 I think investing in home defense and home security systems and better fencing, all these things,
00:31:29.920 like you, you actually need to think about these things aside from just a recreational prepper
00:31:34.060 standpoint. Now it's more like, if you think police departments are taking care of you, you're,
00:31:40.640 you're probably wrong. And then there's all these sort of like underrated under the surface issues,
00:31:45.880 like food safety. The point I think that she's making here is the crack, like people think this
00:31:54.680 is an intergenerational issue. It's here, depending on where you live in the world. Yeah. Within your
00:32:00.240 lifetime systems are going to start to crack. Yeah. Within your lifetime, you're going to need to arm
00:32:05.080 yourself. And you can already go to places in the world to like field trip, experience it. For example,
00:32:10.700 we, we used to spend half our time living in Lima, Peru. And pretty much every time I go,
00:32:17.120 even the last time I went like last year or two years ago in 2024, no last year. So last year there
00:32:22.500 was a, there was just a power outage. I was in the most expensive part of the most expensive city
00:32:27.760 in the most expensive hotel, or like I was in the Marriott. They just lost power. They didn't have a
00:32:35.240 backup generator, I guess. They're just like, Oh, we don't have power right now. Remember the whole,
00:32:38.840 like for days at a time, there'd be no water. And they're just like, Oh, water's off right now.
00:32:44.960 Like no water. Yeah. No, like this was just, it's a regular thing. And you know, they're not falling
00:32:50.600 apart yet. You know, brownouts and blackouts are also super common in South Africa to the point where
00:32:55.400 these nice wild garden housing developments have backup generators in addition to their private
00:33:01.620 security and everything. And that is where the wealthy are going to go live. They're going to go peace
00:33:05.420 out. And whether or not governments have rules about how much they can like go off and live in
00:33:09.620 their wild gardens, they're going to find a way to make it work. Like it, they're going to do it and
00:33:13.800 you're going to be left behind. And already there are several U S states. We're not just talking Peru
00:33:18.840 that are experiencing not infrequent blackouts and brownouts. California and Texas are the most
00:33:23.360 prevalent examples. A lot of the, the, these problems and the same with insurance is due to
00:33:29.280 kind of global climate change related things like wildfires and hurricanes.
00:33:32.740 Unfortunately in Pennsylvania, we've been expanding our nuclear plants recently.
00:33:36.940 Well, thank God, but get ready because also there's a lot of AI infrastructure development
00:33:41.860 that is being discussed in Pennsylvania. So AI infrastructure. Yeah. So several areas in the
00:33:49.120 United States are now being directly affected by power demands of AI data centers, which also affects
00:33:54.920 water, your availability of clean water, because they're using literally potable water to cool.
00:34:00.160 Not ours. We have a well, I know. Thank God. But all, I mean, like it could, it could drain
00:34:04.700 groundwater. It could, it could drain aquifers. I don't think that we're pulling from a major
00:34:08.500 aquifer, but still. So the growth and clustering of the facilities, it's putting substantial strain
00:34:14.620 already. And you can go on, watch YouTube videos on like communities that have been affected by AI
00:34:19.040 data centers already. It's putting a lot of strain on power grids. And this is causing both grid
00:34:25.200 stability issues. So blackouts and brownouts, but also increased electricity costs. So not only
00:34:30.620 does food cost more and medical, it's also going to be your electricity costs. So in, this is already
00:34:37.440 an issue in Northern Virginia and Eastern Oregon and Central Washington and in Phoenix, Arizona,
00:34:42.400 Texas and California. And Pennsylvania is kind of next in line for this. And nationally,
00:34:48.880 the U S department of energy and independent grid monitors have warned that the current system
00:34:52.760 is not equipped to handle the boom and AI related power without rapid upgrades, but also like no
00:34:59.200 one's incentivized to. I love a world where humans live in poverty and AIs get all the water and power.
00:35:05.320 No, but that's, that's actually what's going to happen as, as the AI sector accelerates, more
00:35:09.080 communities are going to be impacted by the surge in demand. And the AI companies are going to have
00:35:13.120 the resources and the lobbyists and everything else to, to demand that power. What I love is,
00:35:19.440 is all of these like trans people in the tech sector, they already dress like they're in the
00:35:23.960 capital of the hunger games, you know, not contributing to the future of humanity, just
00:35:28.160 dedicating to consolidating wealth around themselves in this one generation. Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:32.880 So, I mean, what I want people to take away from this is you need to be prepared with things like
00:35:38.600 who would things like backup generators, maybe like much. I don't know. I don't even think they need
00:35:44.040 to be prepared. I think you're wrong about this. I'm going to, I'm going to be honest. Why?
00:35:49.200 Because the price of a lot of these things is going to fluctuate so much. I guess you should
00:35:52.720 be prepared. Should we be getting one of those every year? We talk about getting a big solar
00:35:56.520 generator. We have, we have, I mean, we should get more, we should get more solar panels,
00:36:00.920 but already they're already in my Faraday box up in the app. Oh, we got the solar one and you put it
00:36:04.400 in your solar box? Yeah. We got them on a prime day last year. That was my last like pregnancy prepping
00:36:08.620 thing. We should probably every time that there's like, well, we should, I'll put it on my Black Friday list
00:36:12.500 to get more solar panels. But yeah, no, I think there are two things you should be doing. One is
00:36:16.980 you need to rapidly decrease the amount of like your burn. I think that's a really big thing. I
00:36:23.780 mean, having massive saving reserves in dollars is probably not the safest thing to do. So I would
00:36:28.320 diversify where your money is held. Like some of us, like this is not financial advice. We're not
00:36:33.680 giving you financial advice, but what we're doing is trying to diversify where our money is. We don't
00:36:38.980 want it all sitting in dollars because we know that people are going to start
00:36:41.640 devaluing the United States dollar. So maybe, you know, we have a little bit in crypto. We have a
00:36:46.720 little bit in real estate that we think is going to stay productive that we would actively rent out.
00:36:51.480 We have a little bit in the stock market, a lot of it in the stock market, like, you know, in S&P 500
00:36:58.500 index funds, but like, think about where your money is, knowing what is going to happen. And also think
00:37:04.240 about things like security, energy independence, food sustainability, and all these things, because
00:37:10.280 again, the future is here. It's just not evenly distributed. We're going to see blackouts. We're
00:37:14.800 going to see brownouts. People in California are experiencing them. People in Texas and Florida
00:37:18.460 are experiencing them. They're experiencing rapid drops in housing prices because insurance companies
00:37:23.180 are fleeing and people can't get mortgages anymore. This is, this is happening now and you need to expect
00:37:29.240 it to happen and adjust your life accordingly. This doesn't mean that the future isn't bright and that
00:37:34.360 you don't get to own the future because this is one of those periods of rapid disruption where the people
00:37:38.180 who play their cards, right. Just play your cards, right. And you win the entire civilizational
00:37:44.700 game, right? That, that isn't a bad thing. You can create high fertility, high technology families.
00:37:50.980 Yeah. It's just like a choke point in, in, in, uh, in, in humanity. Yeah. We're at a choke point in human
00:37:57.080 history and those that play it indolently will not exist in the future. And I, I really mean this,
00:38:02.860 like these influencers and stuff like this who have no kids, no wife, and they're like 35 or
00:38:07.700 whatever. It's like, they're not actually going to, if they're giving you advice, they're not going
00:38:11.900 to exist in the future. Right. Well, give advice from people who are living the life you want to
00:38:15.380 live. If we're not living the life you want to live, don't take advice from us. But also I think
00:38:18.680 a lot of people are assuming that the world is going to continue as it is, is. Right. We are,
00:38:23.500 we're in, we, this is the thing. Collapses have been faster. Yeah. Yeah. And, and suppose AI starts
00:38:30.920 replacing people, then it gets harder. When you talk about something like being able to put a human
00:38:36.440 in, you know, like a, a completely AI automated environment, right? Like suppose we get UBI all
00:38:43.580 over the globe, right? And AI does everything for us, or at least regionally, which is the way I really
00:38:48.500 expected. I think we might get UBI in like China and the U S and then nobody else gets it because our AI
00:38:53.040 companies are being taxed and making money and nobody else has the AI company, then the AI can
00:38:57.140 easily replace workers. Yeah. But even in these environments. Well, but I, I mean, I point out
00:39:02.100 that like, I think in South Africa, they, they kind of promised UBI, they promised free housing to
00:39:08.020 people. Yeah. They just couldn't deliver. And that's again, like think of the pictures that I, I shared
00:39:13.380 of the Soweto township, like this is what UBI looks like and massive unemployment, you know, children
00:39:18.520 in these schools. I mean, and they did like the school we visited, those kids were so cool. The
00:39:22.720 teachers are awesome. Like people are amazing and resilient and like people are going to make it
00:39:26.480 work, but it ain't going to be pretty. And I want you to plan for it. Well, as things begin to
00:39:33.300 deteriorate, right? Like as governments begin to become unstable, you are going to get a lot of
00:39:40.140 political movements. I think that's one of the things that people don't know here, which is
00:39:43.480 basically just give us the money, political movements. We don't want to work. Like the urban
00:39:47.100 monoculture is incredibly entitled. Yeah. Why else do you think mom, Don, mom, Donnie is,
00:39:51.840 is camp. And then Europe is, and, and, and actually this is something I can say with some
00:39:56.980 degree of, I think a lot of Europe is going to look like South Africa within the next 25
00:40:02.400 years. Yeah. Well, I mean, the scary thing is, you know, again, you can have a great life
00:40:06.280 in South Africa. We've met people who are like, yeah, I'm excited to move back to South Africa.
00:40:09.720 Like, you know, I, I have a place. It's great, you know, communities. However, the problem is
00:40:17.620 that like, it's going to be harder if you don't have the money for that now to get the money.
00:40:23.060 Oh, do you have the ABA therapist coming today? Yeah. I've got to run.
00:40:26.940 Bye. Love you. I love you too. Do you want teriyaki chicken with pineapple and rice or do you want
00:40:32.920 curry with rice? Let's do curry with rice. Okay. I love you. Love you.
00:40:38.180 Oh, dear. I'm so out of it. I'm barely conscious. Okay. Ready?
00:40:55.620 Can you sing? What, what about your other voice? What was that other way you were singing?
00:41:03.000 You were singing like, can you do that?
00:41:08.180 Oh, now you're getting all sweet again.
00:41:18.660 I see how it goes.