Based Camp - Why Are Muslim Fertility Rates So Fragile？

00:00:00.000 Hello, Malcolm. I'm so excited to be speaking with you today, especially because we're talking

00:00:04.520 about a big misnomer in the demographic collapse world, which is that Muslims are going to take 1.00

00:00:09.240 over the world because they're going to have perpetually high fertility, which is just not 0.77

00:00:12.400 true, as Camille recently pointed out on X. And what's most interesting is when you go into what

00:00:18.260 various Islamic countries and Muslim majority countries are trying to do to keep their birth 0.86

00:00:22.620 rates up, it's basically a buffet, an overloaded buffet of all of the disparate policies of the

00:00:29.800 different camps of the prenatalist movements want. There's the culture stuff, which, you know,

00:00:34.020 we're always like, it's the culture, it's the culture, it's the culture. Well, they did that

00:00:36.820 stuff. And then there's the, although, you know, it's the, it's the payout people. Well, it's all

00:00:40.400 about them giving money and cash payouts and cash payouts, but they're doing that. And then there's

00:00:44.380 also the people who are like, no, it's traditionalism and, you know, early marriage, it's the marriage,

00:00:49.460 it's the marriage. Well, they're doing that too. And guess what? They're also doing the whole thing

00:00:53.420 of scaling back family planning, like taking away access to birth control and abortions. And that's

00:00:58.460 not working either. And so I think it's really important to look at, at the Middle East and

00:01:03.080 Islamic countries as a case study and say, all right, so there is this world in which everyone 0.97

00:01:09.220 got their way. All the prenatalist leaders with all their disparate little pet projects 0.97

00:01:13.020 got their way. Why is it not working? And I point out here, then people are like, well,

00:01:18.580 don't some Muslim populations have a high fertility rate. Muslims are not high fertility. They're poor. 1.00

00:01:23.540 Okay. It's a mistake that people make. Muslims are actually have a lower fertility than Protestant

00:01:29.700 groups when you control for income. And their fertility rate is so low that despite the relative

00:01:35.280 poverty of the Middle East, only Iran, you were saying, what was it? Iraq?

00:01:40.160 Only Iraq. Only Iraq. 0.95

00:01:41.240 Only Iraq. 0.83

00:01:42.040 Beats Israel. Because I think Israel's a really great, like here's where we are with developed 0.99

00:01:47.620 non-Islamic Middle Eastern nations. I think it's a really good base. And of course it's the 0.99

00:01:53.800 ultra-Orthodox Jews that are really propping this up. You know, they're killing it. They're doing 1.00

00:01:59.220 great, but they've figured it out. So in this episode, what we are going to be covering is

00:02:04.020 crashing fertility rates around the Islamic world, crashing fertility rates within the Islamic diaspora,

00:02:09.820 what the Islamic communities are attempting to do to decrease this.

00:02:13.660 And there are some really, there are some policies in here that like are so insane in terms of

00:02:19.900 over the top. You will not believe it, Malcolm. I'm like, what? So there's some good stuff in here.

00:02:25.760 Great. Okay. Let's go.

00:02:27.320 And then, and then try to figure out what do we learn from this? Cause they're not working.

00:02:31.780 So there's a Cremio. This, this was all inspired by him because he's so fricking amazing. We love him.

00:02:36.480 He posted on X basically like a clarification to people because especially in X, there's a whole like,

00:02:41.600 he writes, there's a myth that the Islamic world has figured out fertility, but it has not.

00:02:47.280 They show the same declining fertility rates that other places have barring Iraq, the Middle East has

00:02:51.400 lower fertility rates in Israel. And hopefully you can put this graph that he shared up on the screen

00:02:56.120 showing this just overall declining fertility graph and infertility rates births per women in the Middle

00:03:03.820 East, basically with Iraq at the top, then Israel, then Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Oman,

00:03:09.460 Libya, and so on with the UAE at the bottom. But I love the UAE because you're going to see,

00:03:15.680 they have my very favorite pernatalist policy. I can't wait to get to it. And this graph that we're

00:03:21.620 seeing really tracks global fertility rates in general. And that's an argument that Cremio makes

00:03:26.500 in the comments of this thread where people are like, what about this? What about that? And he's just

00:03:30.840 pointing out, no, everywhere this is happening. And that I think is a really important theme of all this.

00:03:35.400 So he continues in his thread, exceptions, maybe Yemen and maybe Palestine, both of which have

00:03:41.860 terrible data. So their comparative situation is unclear. But two things on that. Firstly,

00:03:46.460 Jewish fertility is the head of Arab fertility in Israel. And he shows a graph of fertility rates in

00:03:51.520 Israel of basically the average number of births per woman for Jews and others in Israel, and then

00:03:57.700 Arabs in Israel. And what's really interesting with this graph, if you're just listening, Arabs in 1990

00:04:03.340 were at eight, eight kids per woman. And Jews were hovering a little bit below four, they were 0.99

00:04:10.840 at 3.49. And now in 2018, or at least as of 2018, they were basically at exactly the same spot,

00:04:18.640 3.05 for Jews and 3.04 for Arabs. And so Arabs just are freaking plummeting. And there's something, 1.00

00:04:27.100 this is why we're always so interested in Jews and Jewish culture and like what's going on in Israel,

00:04:30.900 because they are holding strong in the face of modernity. So anyway, Cremu continues. Secondly,

00:04:37.160 Israeli fertility might be just ahead or slightly behind Palestinian fertility, depending on the

00:04:43.120 source. Israeli growth is definitely ahead of Palestinian growth due to immigration, Palestinian

00:04:48.480 emigration, and Palestinian mortality. So he shows another graph, fertility rates, births per women

00:04:54.140 in Palestine and Israel. Again, Palestine, Arab, Islamic, Muslim going down, Israel holding steady. 1.00

00:05:02.900 So he continues. So no, I don't believe in Islamic excellence and fertility. Even their famously 1.00

00:05:08.520 fecund culture is not immune to the global baby bust, not in Denmark. And then he shows basically 0.99

00:05:14.780 after Muslim immigrants spend some time in Denmark, their fertility plummets. They normalize to normal 1.00

00:05:21.260 Denmark fertility levels. He continues, nor in France. And even if we look at second generation 0.98

00:05:26.820 immigrants, not shown in the graph he, he had, but linked below and we can link to his same sources.

00:05:31.560 And then he shares his sources. And basically he shows that the diaspora that's Middle Eastern also

00:05:37.080 doesn't have great fertility. So once they leave, because a lot of people were like, okay, yeah,

00:05:41.620 fine. In these, in these countries, they're bad, but then, you know, they go to other countries and

00:05:46.020 that's where they're spreading so much, but no, sweeties, no. So like one, the source is drying up

00:05:51.740 and two, once the diaspora goes out there, they, they drop infertility even faster. So I think what's

00:05:57.940 really important is that the stereotype exists for a reason, right? That, you know, Muslims are high 1.00

00:06:03.800 fertility because this is a culture and a religion that supports that, you know, like traditionally,

00:06:07.560 this is, you think of traditional Muslim families and it's, it's young marriage. It's a lot of

00:06:12.620 children. It's very traditional gender roles, right? So you think like these guys are going to,

00:06:17.120 they're going to like, they're going to be the fine ones. No, one's going to have trouble with

00:06:19.920 them. We don't have to worry about them. And indeed these countries have really, at least after

00:06:24.540 they've gotten over freaking out over too much population, they've really put in a lot of effort.

00:06:30.500 When they started a lot earlier. So for example, Iran, as an example, started its massive fertility 0.96

00:06:35.500 efforts about 10 years ago. So what's interesting about the data we have from these countries is they give

00:06:40.960 us a lot of data on long-term and quite dictatorial implementation of often the most aggressive

00:06:49.620 forms of pronatalist policy that people can imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Because from the 1980s to the 2000s,

00:06:56.280 fertility in Iran dropped from 6.5 to 1.7 children for women. So like Iran is especially boned and 1.00

00:07:02.940 they're also kind of the leader in, in like fertility obsession. I mean, I kind of see them as like the

00:07:07.700 Hungary of the middle East, you know, like they're kind of the ones who were like, yeah, rah, rah, rah. 0.99

00:07:11.860 So in terms of their policies, they've totally reversed their family planning programs. They

00:07:16.840 scaled back their birth control programs. And even in 2014, they proposed bans on vasectomies to

00:07:23.580 restrict sterilizations and encourage higher birth rates, very similar to what's going on in China. 0.70

00:07:28.160 So stuff that, you know, China's like just getting used to, this is like old conversations in Iran.

00:07:32.960 So they also have cash payments for additional child. Oh, all the socialists love this, you know,

00:07:38.500 Lyman Stone, super happy, right? You know, he loves this stuff. Right. And then, then for, on our part,

00:07:43.500 they're there, they have a big cultural push for pronatalist policy. Supreme leader Ayatollah al-Khamenei

00:07:50.340 has publicly condemned contraception as a Western influence, promoting larger families as a national

00:07:56.820 and Islamic duty. So this is clearly, you know, at least on a national level, they're really trying to

00:08:01.940 push pronatalism as this is, this is good. This is for your country. And then they all, of course,

00:08:06.860 have various bills proposed that are supposed to penalize the promotion of contraception,

00:08:11.900 which is very similar to stuff that's been proposed in project 2025. So there's a lot of,

00:08:17.280 there's a lot of parallels, but they've already been there, which is important.

00:08:21.020 Yeah. And we can see from this that Iran actually has had its fertility rate up, go up a little bit 0.84

00:08:26.860 recently. So it's not that the policies are having no effect. Yeah. If anything, and I think

00:08:31.880 Camus would argue this, the cash payments are probably the biggest thing. Yeah. He's, and we can

00:08:36.680 have a separate podcast about this. He's kind of changed my mind a little bit about direct cash

00:08:41.360 transfers. Oh yeah. We could have, I mean, this is, I think it's important for us to, when we

00:08:46.000 moderate our views. But let's talk more about the other policies. Let's go to Turkey, which I fell down 0.86

00:08:51.480 the other, the other, like, I think a year ago, Turkish hospitals where women are giving birth.

00:08:58.280 It's like a whole thing. They, these are like luxury hospitals. You get all the flowers, you get

00:09:03.600 all these, like they're literally, there's a small economy built just around huge decorations and

00:09:10.100 celebrations and meals and parties, like literally held for you in the hospital. And they're like

00:09:14.860 celebrity doctors delivering kids. Like I can already tell even before reading about Turkey's 0.81

00:09:20.540 prenatalist policies, that this is a country that's really making it cool.

00:09:36.360 And what I think is important there is when I see it on Instagram, like when people are flexing it on

00:09:41.900 Instagram, it's not like a cringe thing that like, you know, how the CCP is kind of trying to pressure

00:09:46.140 people into have kids. They don't think it's cool, but no, in Turkey, like they're actually 1.00

00:09:50.520 flexing it on Instagram. They're actually excited about it. And I think that's really important to

00:09:54.480 note, but you know, in general, what I think is really funny is that Erdogan has repeatedly urged

00:09:59.440 families to have at least three children. And he, he frames family planning and contraception as

00:10:03.940 treason, which is amazing. It's true. I love it.

00:10:08.040 Against Turkish nationalism, treasonous people. So I mean, not, I think they take a step beyond

00:10:15.500 the Iranian thing of just like, this is for your country. It's your duty. It's national. It's like,

00:10:20.040 no, you're fricking treason for not having kids. Treasonous. I love that. But also back to stuff

00:10:27.160 that, you know, a lot of people really advocate for, including Cremieux, including all the people

00:10:31.660 who are like, yes, Marxism. They have, they have housing support. They have maternity benefits.

00:10:37.420 They have tax breaks. I think tax breaks are great for families. They have subsidies for newlyweds,

00:10:41.540 which is big and also campaigns to reinforce traditional family structures. So, you know,

00:10:46.760 sort of the heritage camp, the religious traditionalists would love that, right?

00:10:50.340 Early marriages support the family. And then they also have extended maternity and parental

00:10:55.000 leave policies. Really with these, the funny thing about maternity leave and parental leave is I only 1.00

00:11:00.400 really hear non-pronatalists advocating for it because basically-

00:11:04.420 When they hear a pronatalist advocating for something, they get really mad and they're like,

00:11:07.920 why aren't you advocating for this? And that's because it's really like the, the funny thing is

00:11:12.120 there's not, not actually any expert in the, in the, in the pernatalist world. That's like,

00:11:18.380 yeah, extended parental leave really helps. Cause it really doesn't like, there are,

00:11:22.580 there are definitely people who are like cash payments are very important and we really should

00:11:27.140 be investing in these. And here is actual robust evidence. And then, you know, cultural things really

00:11:31.160 do help. There's robust evidence. No one's really standing extended parentally, but they're still

00:11:35.740 trying and you know, every little thing. It's not that it doesn't help any families, but I think

00:11:40.200 it's something that should be relegated by industry and not holistically. Yeah. Like for some work from

00:11:47.360 home is just such a better policy, but you know, if you work in food service or in hospitals and

00:11:52.200 things like that, and you have to show up and it's great. And then per industry, I think it should be

00:11:56.100 the childcare center should be the responsibility of the company. 100%. Yeah.

00:12:00.380 Yeah. Yeah. If they're going to demand that somebody comes to work, which I'm totally okay with.

00:12:04.520 Yeah. So let's fly over to Saudi Arabia, whose TFR has declined from over seven in the 1970s,

00:12:11.800 woof, to 2.4 in recent years. So the government has been a little bit less aggressive in this case

00:12:17.580 with friend Adel's policies, I think, cause they're like, Oh, 2.4 is fine. Like we're doing great,

00:12:21.420 but they are focusing more on economic diversification. And I think that's actually really smart

00:12:26.860 because, you know, another element that really predicts good fertility is good economic prospects.

00:12:31.400 And I think Saudi Arabia very reasonably is like, we can't depend on this one industry forever.

00:12:37.180 So I think they're doing the right thing, but they're also doing the cultural reinforcement thing.

00:12:41.320 The state backed clerics are really pushing, you know, for having a family. There aren't really 0.95

00:12:46.620 that many explicit government campaigns, but I think we're going to argue later that that

00:12:51.100 actually kind of backfires. And they do have subsidies for housing, subsidies for education,

00:12:56.500 subsidy for healthcare. And while these things aren't directly branded as pronatalist, they are

00:13:01.640 like, they definitely can help. And then also they have extended maternity leave, which again,

00:13:06.240 I don't know. So Qatar or Qatar, I guess how some people say it, they have a like two to three

00:13:11.760 fertility rate. And they also have housing grants, child allowances, state-sponsored programs promoting

00:13:19.220 traditional family. Again, the heritage camp loves that. They have free or subsidized maternal

00:13:24.760 healthcare and child healthcare, which again, helps, you know, like in terms of, you know,

00:13:29.840 more births, whole thing about this is a fertility stack. It's a bunch of factors. Most of these

00:13:34.300 countries have multi-pronged strategies here. We've got the payouts, we've got the extended leave,

00:13:40.040 we've got the cultural leadership and it's still not working, but let's go to the UAE because this is

00:13:45.360 my very favorite. Okay. One, they have one of the lowest fertility rates in the region. They're

00:13:50.260 like 1.5 to 1.7. So like at the U.S. level or maybe a little lower and the U.S., the Emirati

00:13:58.020 government, it's like uniquely concerned, I think about kind of like cultural genocide, which they

00:14:02.460 should be. We cite them as like one of the classic examples of people who are going to disappear like

00:14:07.700 South Koreans, like Emiratis, Native Americans, Janes, like they're on that go-to list we give. 1.00

00:14:12.540 Obviously they have childcare incentives and childbirth incentives. They give subsidies and benefits for

00:14:17.140 Emirati families, like education support, healthcare support, and they have national

00:14:21.480 identity campaigns that sort of are like, yeah, like be proud to be Emirati. But here's my favorite

00:14:26.080 thing. Can you guess? Like, I hope you haven't read my outline, but like, can you guess?

00:14:30.500 No, no.

00:14:31.640 Okay. Would you get married, Malcolm? This reminds me of that comedy skit you shared with me on like,

00:14:38.480 what is it going to take to you?

00:14:38.900 Yeah, there's a great comedy skit.

00:14:40.040 Literally, I feel like they're doing that in the UAE. They're like, hey, okay, what if we gave you

00:14:47.420 $20,000 for a wedding? Like, literally, this is beyond like having a kid. They will give you money

00:14:58.260 for your wedding. So they have this thing called the marriage fund, and it provides financial grants

00:15:03.820 to Emirati men to cover wedding costs in hopes that they will encourage early marriage and family

00:15:09.500 formation. Like in most cases, you can't qualify. Obviously you can't qualify if you're not Emirati,

00:15:14.500 but also you won't qualify in most cases if you've been married before. So they're like really trying

00:15:19.280 to target like first time young marriages. And so I'm like, this is, this is insane. Like this can't

00:15:24.200 actually exist, but no, it definitely does exist. According to one source, getting married is also

00:15:28.880 an extremely expensive affair in the UAE. Emirati women can officially demand a maximum dowry of up

00:15:35.020 to, what is this currency called? Of up to 20,000 dirhams, though families often set much higher

00:15:40.900 amounts. So there are dowries. And then the average cost of a UAE wedding has been reported to be in

00:15:45.480 excess of 300,000 dirhams. So that's approximately $81,677, which is $81,000 you get? No, no, no.

00:15:55.780 That's how much like a wedding can cost. Like a typical wedding in the UAE can cost. So

00:16:00.960 government pays for it. But like, because this is a problem, like the government's like,

00:16:05.280 oh, culturally, this is kind of an issue, but also like, we don't want to get rid of our culture.

00:16:08.840 So what do we do? Well, I guess we'll pay people for weddings up to 20,000 US dollars. So then that

00:16:16.220 like cuts it down 20,000. What does the traditional UAE wedding look like?

00:16:21.460 I mean, they gotta, it's gotta be great, man. But yeah, there's, there's been, there's some,

00:16:27.360 like one of the reasons why this grant program began is there's some speculation that Emirati

00:16:31.600 men are choosing to marry foreign women in order to save money. So this brings us back to the passport 0.93

00:16:36.080 bro. I get that UAE wedding and it's a bunch of Emiratis marrying foreign women.

00:16:41.280 That's the only way to make it sustainable. My sister was proposed to by an Emirati royal.

00:16:47.960 What? Yeah. I won't say her name on air, but yeah, my sister had a marriage proposal 1.00

00:16:54.000 from one of the, if I remember correctly, one of the Emirati royal families. One of the big ones

00:16:59.980 too, actually not like one of the side ones. That is insane. That is insane. Well, but I,

00:17:04.540 okay, this fund though, I'm obsessed with this fund. Like literally here's your wedding money.

00:17:09.000 The fund is led by a committee, which is selected by the UAE government to enable nationals who are

00:17:14.080 battling to raise the funds to cover their wedding expenses. So they give away approximately 3,000

00:17:20.140 grants on an annual basis where couples can expect around 70,000 dirhams. And that's, that's about

00:17:26.360 $19,000 and they get 30,000 upon the announcement of the marriage. And then the rest is handed to them

00:17:32.260 once they've begun their wedding plan. So you have to kind of like show that like the wedding's

00:17:35.940 actually going to happen, but you get like 30,000 upfront. And in addition to providing

00:17:41.100 the financial assistance of this grant, they also provide guidance for couples before their wedding

00:17:46.000 ceremony on like lectures and like how to handle sexual relations. And then also 300 UAE nationals

00:17:53.960 are married in group weddings hosted by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahian, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.

00:18:01.840 So also like literally if you are okay with a group wedding, and I guess a lot of women are 0.99

00:18:08.300 probably like, no, not for me. You need to do all the things, but like, it's also hosted by the

00:18:13.340 Sheikh. Like, I don't know. I feel like that could be decent. I've been to these sort of group events 0.72

00:18:17.680 in the UAE before that are hosted by like, and they can be pretty decent. Yeah. I mean,

00:18:22.000 like you're in a palace, right? I mean, I mean, often what you're outlaying a lot of cash for is to

00:18:27.840 get married in a palace with a lot of food. The only problem is that it's just not, it's not,

00:18:32.340 you're a special day, Malcolm. And I don't get, you know, you get the whole thing for women. It's, 0.99

00:18:36.120 it's supposed to be all about the woman. What about her? But anyway, you can't have a group wedding,

00:18:41.080 but I just, that is, that is a pronatalist policy that is so out there. And I get the cultural reasons

00:18:49.540 and everything, but I'm just like, man, like we're just trying to scrape together for like

00:18:53.380 $5,000 per kid had in the United States. And like, here's the UAE. And they're like, 0.90

00:18:59.000 here, here's $20,000 for your wedding. Oh my God. I love it. Yeah. I just think it's so great.

00:19:06.020 You know, Egypt, Egypt, if we're moving on, it has a relatively high TFR at three,

00:19:11.160 but the government has, it's, it's, it's also focused on reducing fertility. So there's still

00:19:15.180 kind of like transitioning from the, oh my God, we have too many people still, they provide subsidies

00:19:19.820 for food education and health care. They have a pretty high fertility rate, right? 1.00

00:19:23.880 Three. Yeah. Yeah. There are three. And they are massively overcrowded. Egypt is a great example 1.00

00:19:29.440 against the argument that it is about. Oh, having space, having leverage.

00:19:34.800 And you keep in mind, if you just look at like the, the landmass of Egypt to the fertility rate

00:19:38.760 of Egypt or the population of Egypt, you're like, what? No, they have a very low density of

00:19:42.300 population. And then you look at like a light map of Egypt or a population map of Egypt. And you're

00:19:48.140 like, oh yeah, I forgot. You can only live in like 2% of the Egyptian landmass.

00:19:55.180 Horrifying desert. It's a fricking sand. And, and if you go to Egypt, you know, I've driven around 0.71

00:20:01.580 there. It is super, super crowded, super, super people stacked on top of people. And yet the

00:20:08.500 fertility rate is really hot. Yeah. That actually might be an interesting question to explore is

00:20:14.160 why is the Egyptian fertility rate as high as it is? Yeah. Yeah. And also like, even in the face 1.00

00:20:19.320 of them, really the only interventions they've placed so far to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow

00:20:23.740 down. Like, can we not? So, you know, cause Iran did that and it worked really well. So I don't 1.00

00:20:30.700 know if it's poverty. I'm guessing that that's it. That's that, I mean, I was like 90, 90% confident

00:20:37.460 that that's just the case, but I just want to like, you know, bring it together. This is a who

00:20:43.320 is who of everyone's pet policies. We've got the cultural and religious messaging. We've got the

00:20:47.620 economic incentives, including like direct subsidies, tax breaks, grants for housing and

00:20:52.600 education, wedding payments. We have early marriage promotion. Heritage is happy with that. All the

00:20:58.220 marriage people are happy with that. The religious conservatives are happy with that. And then scaling

00:21:02.500 back family planning, you know, all the people who are like abortion is murder and contraception is 1.00

00:21:06.900 killing you and making you infertile. Like again, these are all the things. Nothing 0.99

00:21:12.040 is missing. Interesting. By the way, I was just looking at the differential average yearly

00:21:15.620 incomes. So Iran's is $5,300. I, I, Iraq's is $4,137 and Egypt's is $3,636. Well, there

00:21:30.460 you go. So it is significantly poorer. That's yeah. More money for you kids. Okay. I mean,

00:21:36.760 unless you make a ton more and then suddenly you have more kids, but I think so. The, the,

00:21:41.620 the thing here though, is that it's not working the, the, the, the payouts, everything else. I

00:21:49.860 mean, Cremieux, if he were here might argue, well, you don't know what the counterfactual

00:21:53.440 is. You don't know how much lower their fertility would be if they didn't provide these subsidies 1.00

00:21:57.460 and this cultural support and everything else. I think it's more in the execution. Honestly,

00:22:02.260 I think that as, as Aria Babu pointed out, when you look at countries that are on the

00:22:07.920 whole culturally conservative, where it's like this oppressive miasma that you have to 0.84

00:22:14.360 walk through everywhere, you're not like endogenously excited to have kids. You feel

00:22:21.300 like it's forced on you and then it becomes this burden. And then you're really concerned

00:22:24.560 about having kids. I even think about the case of Turkey where I fell down this, this

00:22:31.520 Instagram loop of these insane hospitals and celebrity doctors and in beautiful delivery

00:22:38.800 rooms and parties and balloons and flowers. These women were not having a lot of kids. 1.00

00:22:44.520 This was like a first or second kid. And I think they were like, where this backfired is

00:22:50.560 they're like, oh yes, our culture idolizes the mother and like, blah, blah, blah. But

00:22:54.120 then the way that women are doing it is like, well, okay, well then I'm going to front, I'm 1.00

00:22:58.480 going to show how much, you know, how many designer clothes I have my kids in and how fancy my kids

00:23:04.100 daycare is. And then they can't afford to have a big family. 0.68

00:23:07.760 Which, you know what I mean?

00:23:08.580 A lot too.

00:23:09.600 Yeah.

00:23:10.680 Like these giant parties for their kids. Like we don't do birthdays for our kids. I don't

00:23:15.000 see the point of a birthday party.

00:23:16.260 Well, they don't like them. I mean, we were, we're doing what Malcolm calls kid maxing where

00:23:20.100 we actually just do what the kids really like, instead of what we feel like we're supposed

00:23:25.240 to do as good parents. So for their birthdays, we do whatever it is, their favorite activity

00:23:29.800 is. Malcolm takes them to a store and they get to choose whatever they want, which costs

00:23:35.640 a tiny fraction of an entire birthday party. We go to a store and we buy whatever their favorite

00:23:41.140 food is like for Torsten, it's just tons of fresh berries. And then, you know, for him,

00:23:46.000 he doesn't want a cake. He wants a candle and a dinosaur nugget. And so we do it.

00:23:50.000 Whereas other, other parents would be like, no, you have to have a cake and you have to

00:23:53.160 eat, you know, and like, then they cry and they're overstimulated and there's like kids

00:23:56.200 would just Google if the kid wanted a cake or something like that. How do I make a good

00:23:59.300 cake? You know, of the type they want, like you just make it right. Like, yeah. Which

00:24:03.240 is what we do for our kids who like cakes. We've never, we've never bought a cake as a

00:24:07.180 family. Have you realized that?

00:24:08.140 Even see this in the United States where, you know, in our episode, we were talking about

00:24:11.220 how progressive social media significantly mentally hurts people and conservative social media

00:24:16.420 doesn't. Somebody was like, well, yeah, that's because you're talking about the modern U S

00:24:19.840 definition of conservative. You know, if we were talking about the conservative culture

00:24:24.120 of the past, social conformity and shaming and like, instead of vitalism and excitement

00:24:31.800 about your ancestry and who you are, you know, modern conservative is much more based around

00:24:37.000 vitalistic, positive nationalism. Whereas historic conservatism is based around, you know, having

00:24:43.180 the nun watching you and making sure you're not breaking any of the rules.

00:24:46.200 Yeah. And then again, this is all about intrinsic versus extrinsic when it is extrinsic, when

00:24:51.740 it's forced on you, or even when you're have an extrinsic, intrinsic force, the individual

00:24:57.520 who goes online and is so proud of their conservative tradition and is shaming other individuals for 0.94

00:25:03.800 doing things like, let's say like masturbating or being gay or something like that, right? Like 0.96

00:25:08.420 this individual is the type of conservative that's dying out. And I think that they don't realize

00:25:16.500 that they're not really part of the governing apparatus that's going to exist within the

00:25:22.560 conservative movement going forwards, because it's become a fundamentally vitalistic movement

00:25:26.540 instead of a nanny state movement. And I think that this is where a lot of these nanny state types 1.00

00:25:31.660 have begun. They're like those progressives who haven't woken up of like, oh, we're the party of the

00:25:38.120 imperialistic authority. Like these people haven't woken up and be like, we're not the party of the

00:25:42.560 imperialistic authority. And when they have that wake up, they're like, oh, I'm actually a

00:25:46.500 progressive. I just didn't realize that the parties had flipped yet. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. But I mean,

00:25:53.180 so like I, when I, when I'm trying to think through like, okay, what would I do differently if I were

00:25:58.000 these countries? And also when, for example, the United States does actually decide to invest

00:26:05.100 maybe a lot of money, but also at least more policy effort into prenatalist policies.

00:26:10.540 How can we go about all these things? How can we go about the fertility stack of more births

00:26:15.200 in a way that's actually effective because they're doing the fertility stack and it ain't working.

00:26:18.920 And so the question is, you know, how do we do that? Right. Like if it's the UAE,

00:26:24.460 it's clearly a problem that like weddings can cost over $80,000, but like maybe instead of

00:26:32.940 shoving out money to people on a limited basis, cause that's only 3000 couples per year,

00:26:39.020 you could just be like, well, you know, anyone who wants to book my palace is a venue.

00:26:44.320 The palace booking is free. You can use my staff and the food is at cost. You know, like how can you

00:26:50.520 use existing government resources to just make this more doable and, or change the standards? I mean,

00:26:57.380 I know that they want to keep Emirati culture, but I also don't think that Emirati weddings always cost

00:27:03.620 that much. Cause I just don't think Emirati families always had that much money. Like, I don't think

00:27:08.680 traditional Emirati culture is like Nouveau Riche, if you know what I mean. Like it is now buddy. 1.00

00:27:14.260 It is now. They don't want to look like, no, our culture is Nouveau Riche. I'm a real house

00:27:19.840 for the sake of garishness. I mean, power to the people, but like, if you want to do garishness

00:27:27.200 for the sake of garishness, then like, how can the government do that in a more scalable and

00:27:30.500 efficient way? Because while with this grant program, they're expanding it now to make it

00:27:34.840 more available to people at all income levels. They only at first made it available to people

00:27:38.620 at lower income levels. And then like, ah, you're, you're sort of limiting the program that you're

00:27:42.720 still dissuading people. And then like all the rich people are just marrying Russians and Americans

00:27:48.000 and Italians and it's just not working, but also like, how do you make, how do you support this

00:27:53.820 endogenous self-motivated culture? And I think that that's, you know, like having these government

00:27:59.760 messages like turkeys, it's treason to not have more children. It's treason to use birth control.

00:28:08.220 Gets a little, a little creepy, like just a little, like, I don't know. It goes, it goes too far.

00:28:14.000 So I feel like, I don't know, how would you, aside from cultural sovereignty, which I think

00:28:18.140 is the key thing is like homeschooling, let the weird cultures be weird, let people do their own

00:28:23.880 cultural thing and encourage weird religious subcultures and cults and all that stuff.

00:28:29.680 Like what would you do on the culture front?

00:28:32.900 The culture front.

00:28:34.140 Just sovereignty, cultural sovereignty.

00:28:35.800 I mean, I think, you know, in the past, the United States has funded and put pressure on

00:28:44.100 Hollywood to make movies that are nationalistic, that celebrate things like our military or

00:28:49.620 celebrate things like national pride.

00:28:52.040 Our school system had entire holidays created around this sort of celebration, like 4th of July.

00:28:59.400 And today, you know, it's like 4th of July, but with qualifications and I remove the whiz

00:29:06.260 qualifications, you don't have a day every year where you unironically as a country celebrate how

00:29:12.680 awesome you are, which America has so many reasons to do. Like if you are not just wildly brainwashed

00:29:17.760 and uneducated, you'd be like, wow, America is like a really awesome country. And like the grand

00:29:22.620 scale of countries, you were like, well, what about sleep is like, it contrasted was like the great

00:29:28.240 things American has done that like bad things we've done are just not particularly detracting

00:29:35.040 from the greatness of the country. We won a world war and then focused on rebuilding the economies

00:29:43.560 of the people we defeated while keeping them as autonomous countries and not their land or money

00:29:51.960 or like that hadn't been done before. The idea of let's help the people we just defeated.

00:29:59.580 That was a look at like the end of World War One. It was all reparations and punishment and dividing 0.68

00:30:04.960 up.

00:30:05.760 Oh yeah. And clearly it went wrong and we saw that and we learned from it. So it's, I mean,

00:30:09.540 there's also at least.

00:30:12.240 No, it's not that it was, it was. So they, when at the end of World War Two, there was this moment

00:30:16.700 where the Americans were bringing everyone to the table and they're like, okay, we're setting

00:30:21.260 the agenda for this. And everyone expected that what the Americans were going to do was

00:30:26.780 going to be a carve up their countries and take their land or gives them like really horrible 0.96

00:30:30.680 terms. And America was like, no, we're going to like help rebuild. We're going to like make

00:30:34.920 everything. And apparently like everyone was shocked. They were like, wait, what you're going

00:30:39.280 to do what you're going to give us money. You're going to send us engineers to rebuild the

00:30:46.220 things you destroyed. You're going to, what are you talking about? Like, sorry, America, we need

00:30:52.600 to take you aside. This is not what you do when you defeat somebody. America has been, you know,

00:30:58.860 we denigrate the concept of the melting pot today. And yet it is where all of American culture comes

00:31:05.760 from. You know, if you today look at American cinema, you know, this is downstream of Jewish 1.00

00:31:13.100 refugees often. If you look at American technology, these are our Nazi scientists. If you look at 0.99

00:31:21.440 America music, pretty much all forms of American music that have been globally influential came

00:31:27.380 from black people. By this, what I mean is if you look at modern, for example, rock music,

00:31:34.540 modern rock music came from blues music, which was a predominantly black form of music. If you look

00:31:39.940 at modern, I'm sorry, did I say rock or country music? You said rock. Okay, sorry. Country came

00:31:45.280 from blues. Rock and roll came from jazz and blues. And if you look at hip hop, obviously a black form 0.97

00:31:53.640 of music. If you look at modern American pop music, it often came from like rock and country, which again,

00:32:00.400 come from black forms of music. All of American music is, whether you're talking about the

00:32:06.080 countryest of country song is ultimately heavily, heavily, heavily influenced by predominantly black

00:32:12.500 music. And that's okay. Like that's, that's something that all Americans have pride in. Like I have pride

00:32:18.560 in country music. I listened to lots of country music. Yes. So yeah. So yeah, I guess more investment

00:32:24.000 in media that supports it, which actually a big theme in the comments on the Kremu thread when, where he

00:32:29.400 pointed to these falling fertility rates was this is Western culture diffusing into Middle Eastern

00:32:35.740 culture and Western values polluting it. And I'm, I'm sure that's a factor, you know, and I mean,

00:32:42.240 also this rampant consumerism and the fact that Nuvo Rich has become the aesthetic of the UAE

00:32:46.780 100% is not helping with birth rates. Like it is not helping. It can only hurt. So I think you're

00:32:54.720 right there. And in terms of the, the, the, the economic incentives, I think the tax breaks are great.

00:33:01.160 I think income tax breaks from a demographic collapse perspective is very good at incentivizing 0.98

00:33:06.960 the creation of more high taxpayers, because people who pay high taxes and would be excited to pay

00:33:11.820 less of those taxes are also likely to produce through their children, future high taxpayers.

00:33:17.780 So it's like, you're getting greater bang for your buck. I feel like that grants for housing sound

00:33:21.660 good, but in terms of things like childcare housing, like I'm not, I'm not as sure about those. I just

00:33:30.020 feel like maybe they need to be more evidence-based in the whole like extended parental leave thing.

00:33:34.320 If they just took the money that they spent on that and shifted it to just more direct payments

00:33:40.040 and subsidies, but I think more direct payments in general, they'd probably see better results.

00:33:44.540 So maybe more of, it's just about smarter versions of the policies they already have early marriage

00:33:50.560 promotion. I'm just surprised. Like I'm, maybe this is one of those issues of like early marriage

00:33:55.300 promotion really does help and they're doing a great job with this. And if they didn't do it,

00:34:00.860 things would be a lot worse. But it is interesting to me that despite there being so much traditionalism

00:34:06.440 preached, I mean, I, I do want to kind of highlight this to people who are in the pro natalist

00:34:11.580 movement when they're like, no, this is all, it's all about early marriage. It's 100% early marriage

00:34:15.400 because you get that in, in, in these countries. Yeah. Like you couldn't do it more than it's done

00:34:21.020 here. Like it's so explicit. You could never get close to the level of early marriage promotion in

00:34:26.840 the middle East that you, like in the United States, like that would just never happen.

00:34:30.300 So it reminds me a little bit of what happened with COVID where like only when we grounded all

00:34:35.040 flights, functionally speaking, and almost everyone stopped commuting and everyone was inside their

00:34:38.980 house. Did we reach the level of emissions that like the Paris climate. The incremental reduction

00:34:44.140 that we needed year over year, every year by the Paris. And it still wasn't enough. And so I feel

00:34:48.880 like that's kind of, this is analogous with the whole marriage thing. Like, you know, even that,

00:34:54.700 even if we went to that level with early marriage promotion in the United States, which would be

00:34:59.160 insane pandemic mirror world dystopia level promotion by our standards, by American standards,

00:35:07.140 it would still not be enough. And, and so I do question, I mean, I I'm all for marriage formation.

00:35:12.900 It's so much easier to raise kids when you have someone to help you. Like it, that's just a

00:35:17.260 logistical truth. This is not, it has to be a man and a woman thing. Like, I don't care if it's a 0.99

00:35:22.740 cat girl and a cat girl. Okay. But like the logistics are easier. And then the scaling back family

00:35:29.840 planning thing. Like, I feel like that's just, that's just so dumb. Like this has been shown again 0.99

00:35:34.300 and again to not, to not be helpful. I don't even know if we can count that. Maybe we just have to

00:35:38.880 throw it out. Like, unless you get, I feel like China is going to be the first country 1.00

00:35:43.260 to do this in a way where maybe it works because unlike with Romania, I think instead of just dumping

00:35:50.900 kids in orphanages where they, they languish and are not taken care of, I could see China just being 1.00

00:35:57.620 like, yeah, we'll take them. Now they're CCP babies and we're going to raise them to be in our CCP army.

00:36:03.740 And it's going to be like the clone wars and they're just all going to, it's going to be the

00:36:07.080 clone wars. No, I think we'll do that. Yeah. But I think that's the one way where removing 1.00

00:36:13.020 reproductive choice and going hyper dystopian is going to work is if you're like, I'm going to

00:36:18.780 force you to have babies, but also I'm going to raise them because you can't force a person to have

00:36:26.220 a baby and expect them to do a good job raising them and like not abandon or abuse them. You know,

00:36:31.020 you're not going to create high tax paying citizens or high productivity citizens. If you

00:36:35.780 have this resentful or traumatized or whatever, like coerced slave perspective of the state,

00:36:42.860 childcare has always been free and that needs to change. That's a really great way. That's a

00:36:48.040 wonderful way of putting it. Yeah. From the perspective of the state, childcare has always

00:36:54.020 been free. Free, freeloading state. Freeloading state? They expected these taxpayers. Come on,

00:37:01.100 man. Oh my God. Now I'm like, I'm genuinely insulted. The state is using you, Simone. 1.00

00:37:08.940 That is. It takes that you care about the future. How dare they? Anyway, love you to death.

00:37:14.880 I love you too. Great topic. Great job researching it, Simone.

00:37:18.400 All thanks to Cremieux for inspiring this, but I found the UAE marriage wedding thing and that's so

00:37:25.400 insane. That is crazy. It is crazy. It is crazy. Okay. I already sent you the link for the other

00:37:32.840 one I'm ending recording. The story I'm working on is so engaging. What kind of husband walks up to

00:37:40.960 their wife on a random day and is like, I accidentally wrote a novel today. Yes. Well,

00:37:46.900 I finally found a very good AI integrated storyteller for like exploring worlds. Okay. And so I put an

00:37:54.020 isake together, which is like a Harry Potter of method rationality, but good. I'll link to it in

00:37:58.880 the comments here so people can read it, but it takes place in like an isake world. It's got an overly

00:38:04.460 arrogant protagonist who is just had it with this isake nonsense and decides to take over the world

00:38:12.740 immediately to, to make things better. And I did it all with the AI, like allowing the AI to,

00:38:20.400 if it presented a challenge to me or like, if I didn't know how like a magical system worked,

00:38:24.900 I would always have the AI sort of lay out the rules of the thought experiment that I was going

00:38:29.840 to have to try to get through. So it was written, you could say to an extent adversarially where

00:38:35.400 there wasn't a lot of like, Oh, I want this to happen, or I want things to go in this way,

00:38:40.500 which I think makes it roll pretty fun. You know, it's very much like I'm going in and I'm like,

00:38:45.860 okay, we're going to do things in this new way. We're going to have this new technology. It's

00:38:48.960 really fun. It's really fun. Very methods of rationality. Yeah. And if people like it and they're

00:38:53.560 like, Hey, write more of this, I can continue in this world and try to make like a bigger world and even

00:38:58.540 create with our video game, like a thing. So you can explore worlds like this or do this yourself

00:39:02.720 better. Well, that's the point of the platform that you and Bruno are building is that while

00:39:07.080 you're starting off with this post-apocalyptic or like post-demographic collapse AI world game,

00:39:13.520 anyone's lore or fan universe can be plugged in and be explored with this really rich format,

00:39:20.720 right? That's what I'm so excited about. Yeah. That's what I'm really excited about too,

00:39:24.340 is it creates a system where you can create these really big, persistent and interesting worlds

00:39:30.140 that you can explore. And that's what we're working on with the Reality Fabricator project

00:39:34.580 to basically create this, but more adversarial and better. But with this one system, I was just really

00:39:40.460 impressed with it. And I ended up because I finally had a little bit of time to myself, like,

00:39:45.580 okay, let's actually play through one of these because I haven't in a long time.

00:39:50.220 Yeah. Enjoy it while it lasts. You're not going to have a private moment for a long time

00:39:55.300 and a bit. You're going for the cruise together. It's going to be great.

00:39:58.840 Yeah.

00:40:04.860 Yeah.

00:40:05.860 Thank you.

00:40:35.860 Thank you.

00:41:05.860 Thank you.

Based Camp - May 22, 2025

Why Are Muslim Fertility Rates So Fragile？

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