TRIGGERnometry - Population Collapse is Coming - Alex Kaschuta

00:00:00.000 I think it's about 3% of the world population are living in countries where fertility is not declining.

00:00:06.220 So the idea that, you know, the population is growing is very old news.

00:00:12.040 Immigrants get old. Immigrants stop having kids as well. 1.00

00:00:14.880 You know, it's the same type of thing.

00:00:16.820 You're just getting in, essentially, a new dependent class because, you know, they're not going to...

00:00:22.160 They usually have, you know, maybe more children than the typical, you know, westerner for maybe one or two generations.

00:00:27.860 But the decline's already fairly steep once they get here.

00:00:32.180 You know, are we going to get off the pill? Are we going to, you know, get off of the Industrial Revolution?

00:00:37.920 Yeah, you know, it's the toothpaste meets tube type situation.

00:00:42.760 I don't want people to end up in that position where that realization comes that late.

00:00:48.980 And there's maybe not a huge amount you can do about it. And I think that's tragic, actually.

00:00:57.860 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry On Location.

00:01:06.560 I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:07.740 I'm Constantine Kishin.

00:01:08.780 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:13.540 Our brilliant guest today is returning to the show.

00:01:16.000 She's a writer and the host of the Subversive podcast, Alex Kishuta.

00:01:19.380 Welcome back.

00:01:20.460 Thank you so much for having me.

00:01:21.520 And as we said, we're on location in London, which is why we are more fancily dressed than normal.

00:01:26.980 And the set, the set is what the set is.

00:01:30.180 But anyway, welcome to London.

00:01:32.240 It's great to have you back on.

00:01:33.800 I've been following your writing and the things you say on social media with great interest.

00:01:38.500 You just spoke at the NatCon conference where we are as neutral media, of course we are.

00:01:43.680 But what are you thinking about right now?

00:01:47.780 What is sort of piquing your curiosity?

00:01:50.900 What is interesting to you at the moment?

00:01:53.240 Oh, I think the main theme of the conference seems to be the fertility crisis.

00:01:58.540 You're doing your job.

00:01:59.360 Yeah, I'm doing my part.

00:02:00.900 I've been actually praised for my pregnant lady outfits when I came in here.

00:02:04.060 Thank you.

00:02:04.500 I've worked a lot of them because, yeah, you need pregnant lady outfits. 1.00

00:02:08.420 I've learned.

00:02:09.760 So I think this has been kind of in the ether.

00:02:13.340 It's also been on my mind.

00:02:14.740 I was thinking about actually speaking on this topic, but I'm kind of glad I didn't because it seems to be very well covered.

00:02:20.520 It definitely would have brought something really redundant to the theme.

00:02:24.600 And it seems to also be very spicy in the UK context because I've been looking at, okay, how have people reacted?

00:02:29.600 And, you know, even like the insinuation that, you know, mother and father type of combo should be normative in society seems to have sparked like pretty much insanity in the UK media.

00:02:42.660 And, yeah, I mean, the idea that, okay, you know, the fertility crisis seems to be tied into the idea that, okay, the only way to solve this is some form of coercion.

00:02:55.240 And this is what, you know, the fascists at NADCON want you to do.

00:02:58.280 And, yeah, it's...

00:03:00.260 Make the women have the babies. 1.00

00:03:02.260 Yeah, exactly.

00:03:03.120 But before we get into that, a lot of people who are really not familiar with any of these conversations will be thinking, what fertility crisis?

00:03:11.000 We've got a population problem.

00:03:12.900 Population is going to boom.

00:03:14.180 Everyone's going to die of climate change, et cetera.

00:03:16.440 So what is the fertility crisis?

00:03:18.440 I don't think that's the case.

00:03:19.860 I mean, at least in terms of kind of the newer data that we have is that I think it's about 3% of the world population are living in countries where fertility is not declining.

00:03:31.740 So the idea that, you know, the population is growing is very old news.

00:03:37.700 The population is falling pretty much everywhere.

00:03:40.420 And it's not falling in the sense of, like, you can't feel it in the water right now.

00:03:44.280 If you go out on the street, plenty of people there, you know, you might see more elderly people slowly. 0.99

00:03:49.040 But it's not something that's, like, an urgent problem.

00:03:51.920 But the fact that, you know, the population pyramids in pretty much every region are reversing and you have many more older people than younger people is something that can have extreme, like, knock-on type domino effect consequences that, you know, people are just starting to model and starting to realize.

00:04:09.520 I mean, it's predicted that a country like South Korea, which has, you know, abysmal birth rates, they've fallen under one child per couple, like the TFR is like 0.9 something, they're essentially going to die out.

00:04:24.960 So this is kind of we're watching the last South Koreans slowly kind of march on to their graves if this trend continues. 0.82

00:04:31.420 And they're not going to die out in, like, 500 years.

00:04:33.580 This is pretty much in about 100 to 150 years, you know, you'll see the last South Koreans say goodbye to them. 0.94

00:04:40.340 And, you know, this is only just, like, a startling example, but the same trend line applies to pretty much everywhere in the West, with very few exceptions.

00:04:47.200 I mean, like, consistently over-replacement fertility rates you have in places like Israel and, like, the Amish community, in Mormon communities in the U.S., but even they are just about at replacement and probably going to fall under replacement very soon.

00:05:03.660 So this is a form of, you know, essentially what people are trying to do now is to identify what exactly causes this.

00:05:12.060 And, you know, overall, there are many factors that can go into it.

00:05:16.820 There's, you know, environmental factors, you know, even, like, kind of xenoestrogens in the water, things that might affect, you know, we've heard about declining testosterone, you know, fertility issues for younger and younger women.

00:05:29.300 And the fact that most people who want to have children after a certain age need IVF, there's all sorts of factors going into it.

00:05:36.460 But I think the conclusion that a lot of people at NatCon arrived at, and one that I have as well, is that the main factors are essentially cultural.

00:05:46.280 Like, we've really, you know, once children became optional, we've really kind of lost the will to have them, in a sense, because they are really a burden in a way.

00:05:57.800 And I think people can, you know, they can't really model their lives with children, but they know how they feel right now.

00:06:03.760 And they know that, okay, you know, sleepless nights, cost of daycare, you know, I'm renting, I don't want to have that hassle, you know, all these things.

00:06:13.720 It's just not worth it to a lot of people.

00:06:16.720 Is it really cultural, though?

00:06:18.160 Because, look, the housing crisis is a UK very specific problem, but that's part of it.

00:06:24.080 But just more broadly, urbanization means, you know, Peter Zahan, who we've had on the show and talked about this, when you live on a farm, kids are free labor.

00:06:32.420 When you live in a city, they're like an expensive pair.

00:06:35.180 Of course, yeah.

00:06:36.660 That's fun, mate.

00:06:38.020 Yeah.

00:06:38.420 It depends what you do a lot.

00:06:39.480 I mean, one can argue that, you know, urbanization is something that's kind of tied into culture as well.

00:06:44.460 I mean, the incentives for urbanization are kind of mimetic as well.

00:06:49.900 It's not like, okay, it's not just people chasing money, but it's, you know, it's a culture that forms after these kind of, after the Industrial Revolution as well.

00:06:57.820 People kind of gather it in urban centers to, you know, to work on the factories.

00:07:01.220 And a certain kind of culture emerged around that.

00:07:03.580 And then a fertility rate dropped to the level of that culture of people, you know, being together in that environment.

00:07:09.260 So I think what we've reached now is the point where kind of a lot of these memes converge.

00:07:15.520 And for the life that the typical individual leads in these cities, yeah, it's just, it doesn't make logical sense to have children.

00:07:26.240 And, yeah.

00:07:27.440 And as well, governments aren't really doing anything to incentivize people either.

00:07:31.960 I mean, the Hungarian government does, to be fair to them.

00:07:34.540 Yeah.

00:07:34.900 But certainly the British government, you look at...

00:07:37.700 It's a tough one, yeah.

00:07:38.820 You look at what they're doing, you think, well, they're just exacerbating the problem, aren't they?

00:07:43.160 Yes, in a way they are.

00:07:44.280 But if you look at, you know, places that had incentives for, you know, raising the birth rate, it is marginally productive.

00:07:53.280 Even the places who've imposed, like, you know, kind of significant incentives like Hungary, it kind of works.

00:08:00.180 I think they've bumped it up by 0.2 or 0.3 after, you know, massive cultural programs and all of that.

00:08:06.860 But, yeah, the trend line still, you know, they're really fighting an uphill battle.

00:08:11.360 It seems to be very hard to lift.

00:08:13.680 I think the only country who's actually gotten it back from below replacement to above replacement is Georgia.

00:08:19.620 Because they've been, I think the local patriarch, people are very religious in Georgia, baptizes every third or fourth child that a family has.

00:08:28.040 So, like, big families are incentivized to, you know, get to the special ceremony to, yeah, to meet the patriarch and have their child baptized by him.

00:08:35.160 So, yeah, I think, you know, a strange exotic type of, you know, incentive that I don't necessarily know would work here.

00:08:41.760 I don't know if the Archbishop of Canterbury would, you know, pump people up to have lots of kids.

00:08:47.340 But, yeah, I mean, you know, the housing crisis, I think, is really an important thing as well.

00:08:53.140 But if I think back at, you know, all of the squalor and struggle that my ancestors went through

00:08:59.980 and just the material conditions that they had children in, you know, I don't think the fact that they rented and didn't own was a big problem for them.

00:09:10.280 Or, you know, the cost.

00:09:11.560 They had different social technologies around them as well.

00:09:14.660 Like, they had family, they had support networks and all of that.

00:09:17.800 But it was also culturally the thing that you did.

00:09:21.380 And it was not really optional in the sense that you would, you know, if you didn't do this, you were probably going to be stigmatized

00:09:29.700 or you would feel bad about yourself if you, you know, you were a spinster or you didn't, you know, participate in growing the clan

00:09:36.300 and all the traditions that tied into that.

00:09:39.320 And when, you know, you had the cultural, not the cultural revolution, the industrial revolution

00:09:42.920 and all the things that kind of came with it, you know, the family just didn't work the same way.

00:09:48.420 You know, people moved away for work.

00:09:51.100 They preferred to live alone because, you know, family is wonderful, but it's also kind of a hassle.

00:09:55.760 And if you can help it, you'd probably move away from in-laws and most people did.

00:09:59.680 So it's also the abundance that the industrial revolution and all the technologies coming with it created

00:10:05.600 that allowed us to atomize ourselves because, you know, like in economics, it is a revealed preference.

00:10:13.180 People like to, you know, mind their own business.

00:10:15.920 It's, you know, it's like we were talking before this, you know, community is something beautiful,

00:10:20.180 but it's for when other people do it, it's much nicer.

00:10:23.500 You know, other people really need community.

00:10:25.420 I'm kind of a loner myself.

00:10:27.600 But we're also ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the pill.

00:10:31.180 Yeah.

00:10:31.920 Yeah.

00:10:32.220 I think the pill is a major factor in there.

00:10:36.240 The thing is birth rates were falling before the pill as well.

00:10:39.440 So it's kind of a trend that was already in motion and the pill was definitely not a decelerant.

00:10:45.160 It really kind of, yeah, helped to stoke the fires of a trend that was already in motion.

00:10:51.300 So it's not the pill or the pill may have contributed, let's say.

00:10:54.540 Yeah.

00:10:54.660 So when we talk about the cultural developments that are a product of urbanization, whatever.

00:11:00.360 So what's going on, Alex?

00:11:01.300 Because there's part of me that thinks that when we delve into this issue, we're going to find a lot of things we don't like pretty quickly in terms of, you know, the correlation between prosperity and the number of children people have.

00:11:15.860 You know, do we need to be poorer so that we start reproducing?

00:11:19.140 Is it about women's liberation?

00:11:20.960 Have we liberated women too far? 0.99

00:11:22.800 Like that would be a question some people ask.

00:11:24.380 I'm not saying I'm asking it, but people will start to ask all of these questions.

00:11:28.280 You talk to, I've been talking to a lot of people at the conference about it, like Louise Perry.

00:11:32.600 She's like, it's all about prosperity.

00:11:34.180 You talk to Eric Kaufman, he'll say, well, it's about religion, you know, and he's not religious, but religious communities reproduce and non-religious basically don't.

00:11:42.380 Like, where do you see the crucial piece of this?

00:11:46.920 AI and risk-related compliance isn't tomorrow's idea, but rather today's edge.

00:11:52.020 Moody's combines advanced AI with one of the most comprehensive data estates.

00:11:55.720 Yeah, I think it's, you know, unfortunately it's hard to kind of delineate which particular ingredient in this,

00:12:24.600 because these are all kind of factors that accentuate each other and it's hard to say what, you know, what the first domino was when, you know, you're like 100 dominoes down the line.

00:12:34.080 So I think, you know, in a way the education of women was a big thing.

00:12:38.920 You know, it kind of freed women from marriages that were not necessarily of convenience,

00:12:45.420 but in the sense that, you know, they really were dependent in many ways for protection and for financial support,

00:12:51.920 which, you know, not saying anything about the quality of those marriages.

00:12:54.480 A lot of marriages, you know, are arranged or, you know, maybe coerced a little bit in the beginning and people end up having a really good marriage.

00:13:00.360 So, not saying that that's a bad thing, but it's, you know, the fact that people did have a lot more options,

00:13:07.560 like in the case of having children as well, I think led to a decline in marriage rates and then, you know, 0.97

00:13:13.900 and the revealed preference of not having to deal with each other is bullshit.

00:13:17.560 And so the inevitable question is, if we are to address this problem, what do we do? 0.97

00:13:24.060 Yeah, you know, it's like kind of a Pandora's box type situation, putting the toothpaste pack in the tube.

00:13:33.680 It's a tough one.

00:13:34.960 I mean, I feel like, obviously, what I'm part of and what I'm trying to do is kind of more of a, you know,

00:13:42.180 incentivizing people culturally to, you know, adopt this meme of pronatalism.

00:13:48.780 Because, I mean, I can be only a testimonial of one.

00:13:52.980 And it's been really a miraculous thing for my life.

00:13:56.100 And I know for my husband as well.

00:13:58.000 I mean, yeah, I don't want to speak for him, but yeah, I can because, you know, he's very happy being a dad.

00:14:03.440 And, yeah, you know, the people that I know around me are also, you know, completely enamored by their children.

00:14:09.840 There's also, you know, the downside is of building this up too much because obviously there are downsides.

00:14:15.380 You know, I think there's also kind of a very trad movement now that it's like, oh, you know,

00:14:19.860 this is going to solve all your psychoses, all your problems are going to be solved by having children.

00:14:26.440 It's all upside.

00:14:28.080 Obviously, it's not.

00:14:29.080 I mean, you know, people have the instinct that this is going to derail their lives.

00:14:32.040 And they're very, very right.

00:14:33.420 It's going to completely restructure the way you relate to yourself, to your partner, to your life, to what your priorities are.

00:14:39.460 But for most people, this is a good thing.

00:14:42.100 I really think so because a lot of the problems that people have psychologically with kind of the burden of modernity is this aimlessness of, okay, what is it that I'm supposed to be doing?

00:14:54.540 You know, there's no guardrails.

00:14:55.940 It's all about you self-creating, you know, building this unique, you know, snowflake type thing that only you represent.

00:15:02.500 You know, finding your authenticity, going to whatever silent retreats and meditating on what it is to be alive and stuff like that.

00:15:09.520 And I've personally found by doing this stuff, it feels like it's kind of an eternal circle.

00:15:13.940 You're kind of always back to square one. 0.99

00:15:15.700 And it's like, you know, whenever you think you've had this major epiphany that you've kind of fought yourself out of your thinking process, you're back in the shit. 0.98

00:15:24.700 Do you think part of the problem as well is that we are accustomed to living a life where our own pleasure is the main thing? 0.99

00:15:32.500 Yeah, I think that is part of the problem.

00:15:35.780 It's a hard problem to solve because that's kind of the most immediate thing that you want to do because, you know, in a way, at base we're all animals and, you know, you want to scratch an itch and, you know, eat the candy and do all that stuff.

00:15:48.060 Plus, there are so many ways to scratch so many itches that you didn't even know you had and probably didn't have until, you know, yesterday when you saw, hmm, people are having this itch online.

00:15:57.420 Maybe I should scratch it.

00:15:58.760 So I think that's, you know, something that people underestimate, like the mimetic power of a lot of the stuff that comes in from the internet.

00:16:08.540 I mean, you know, the kind of more benign way is that, you know, some company convinces you to buy shoes off of the internet.

00:16:14.580 The more kind of vicious way is that, you know, your 14-year-old's convinced to chop off her breasts because she saw, I don't know, 500 TikTok videos of people saying,

00:16:24.640 this is really satisfying, do it.

00:16:27.520 So, yeah, I mean, it is a very strange new world and it is, you know, kind of all about this because we don't have a structure to fit into to say, okay, what is life?

00:16:40.420 You know, life is you wake up, you go feed the animals, you have this responsibility, this fills up your entire day.

00:16:47.380 And then you go to bed and you, you know, say your prayer and you, you know, you report to this authority and you're kind of inbuilt into the system.

00:16:55.900 And everyone else believes the same thing because obviously this is what you believe.

00:16:59.540 I think, you know, since time immemorial, we had something like that.

00:17:03.440 Now we don't have anything like that.

00:17:04.840 And people are told, okay, it's time for you to, to make up on the fly, whatever you think that thing is, you know?

00:17:10.700 And I don't think most people, probably very few people are equipped to actually do that, you know, to create their own authenticity from scratch.

00:17:18.580 And then they fall prey to a lot of this stuff that's just like out there in the ether.

00:17:22.700 And a lot of this stuff is really predatory.

00:17:24.280 Like, you know, whatever, slot machine gambling now.

00:17:27.880 It's like, you know, slot machines used to be really bad in like even the 80s.

00:17:31.340 But nowadays they have essentially the same logic inbuilt like Candy Crush.

00:17:35.440 And you have people just like sitting in front of the slot machines, you know, peeing on themselves after three days and, you know, like dying of dehydration because this stuff is just so powerful.

00:17:45.460 And we're really not equipped to deal with it.

00:17:48.300 And yeah, like I said, not just a slot machine.

00:17:49.960 It's like everything is like that now.

00:17:51.740 And, you know, the free market idea is that, you know, there is a need.

00:17:55.140 The market's feeling a need.

00:17:56.140 These people have a need to, you know, die of dehydration in front of a slot machine.

00:18:00.340 Because they keep doing it.

00:18:02.000 They keep pulling the lever.

00:18:02.940 Free will.

00:18:03.660 They're consenting to do it.

00:18:05.740 So, yeah, I think a lot of our environment is set up like that.

00:18:11.620 And, you know, maybe this trad stuff and, you know, kind of back to the land, all this stuff is kind of a bit of a backlash against that.

00:18:18.920 You know, I don't necessarily think it's all, you know, super wise.

00:18:21.640 And I think a lot of people, you know, I hear stories of, you know, like 19 and 20 year olds now getting married just and being afraid of all this stuff that we're talking about, the predation that they see around them.

00:18:31.840 And then they get really kind of disillusioned by the fact that, you know, marrying some random 19 year olds who thinks that, you know, the West has fallen off the Internet is not like an idyllic way of living.

00:18:46.560 And it's not really like, you know, in the pictures of you walking through a wheat field with your babies and stuff.

00:18:50.920 So, yeah, we're definitely at a sort of kind of metaphysical crossroads and how we relate to ourselves and in the West in general.

00:19:00.620 And people feel like they've lost a lot, but we're still kind of fumbling in the dark about what to do, what to do about it.

00:19:07.940 And one of the interesting things that has risen with this whole natalism conversation is the rise of surrogacy.

00:19:15.700 Now, you look at it on the surface, you go, OK, this is, you know, this is good.

00:19:18.860 You know, people who can't have kids can have kids.

00:19:21.540 What's what's wrong with that?

00:19:22.480 And then you look into it, you go, oh, this is dark.

00:19:25.780 Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a strange thing, because obviously the kind of the more kind of napkin presentation of the case for surrogacy is really nice.

00:19:34.680 You know, you have, you know, women who maybe don't are not of great means, you know, but are willing to do it for kind of generously to help someone who maybe is infertile and they really want their own child.

00:19:47.740 And this is the only way they can have it. It's really, you know, it kind of pulls on the heartstrings, especially for someone who knows, you know, are infertile yourself or, you know, it's it's it's tough out there.

00:19:58.100 Like I said, you know, a lot of people are having trouble with this and it feels like, oh, you know, you you scratch my back.

00:20:03.600 I scratch yours type of situation. But I think the the the case for it or against it in a way is kind of a case of like like virtue ethics.

00:20:11.960 Like if we allow this type of activity to to start and if we allow this little edge case where, you know, it's obviously virtuous and nice, the thing is not going to stay there.

00:20:24.800 You know, we have we have, you know, slippery slopes are all around us and we've been slipping on so many and at this point where I think surrogacy, especially commercial surrogacy and cross-border commercial surrogacy is already a little bit of a of a strange beast.

00:20:41.300 Because, you know, especially now with the war in Ukraine, you know, this is kind of a lot of the uncovered was essentially that a lot of people who are evacuating were these kind of like Big Brother style houses of women who, you know, were living kind of in a cluster home.

00:20:55.840 I don't know, pregnant with some Westerners baby and they were kind of keep being kept in sort of, I don't know, observation so that the the moms and dads or whoever was ordering the baby from abroad was.

00:21:08.800 Yeah, it was kept in check of how the ladies were doing and stuff like that. 1.00

00:21:13.540 So I don't know. It was. Yeah, I mean, you could see this.

00:21:17.140 We're still at the beginning of this and this is already kind of, you know, it feels a little bit predatory and it feels a bit predatory to interrupt and just completely like commercially sever the bond between mom and baby.

00:21:28.540 I mean, I've I've had a baby. I'm going to have one again very soon.

00:21:32.860 And it's the idea that, you know, in the hospital, even though if I signed the contract before, obviously, you know, I consented to this previously without knowing how I'd feel when the baby arrived.

00:21:44.060 I would just have to, you know, give the baby, you know, just hand it over and say, sayonara, I'm going to go home now.

00:21:50.060 So, yeah, there's also a lot of physical cost involved.

00:21:56.080 Yeah, it's it's, you know, recovering from pregnancy is not always easy.

00:22:00.080 There are risks of, you know, risks that are really hard to calculate in advance as well in terms of the impact on your health.

00:22:06.180 You know, some women, you know, end up having like stress fractures, uterine ruptures, all sorts of, you know, things that just happen in the course of being pregnant might lead to infertility for themselves afterwards.

00:22:18.060 So, yeah, I mean, obviously, if someone's more of a libertarian bent, they say, OK, you know, put this in a disclaimer, put it in the contract, obviously, let them know that this, you know, side effects might include this, this and this.

00:22:30.340 But I think when it comes to something so profound as the bond between a child and mother, you know, I don't think your body knows that, oh, this is someone else's egg and this is some, you know, third party sperm.

00:22:42.540 And, you know, this is a strange, it's a different situation.

00:22:45.500 But, yeah, it just feels like, you know, one of those slopes that, you know, it's you can tell when you reach the precipice that it's like this, this is the direction it's going into.

00:22:56.940 And we're just about there and we're taking the first step down the slope.

00:23:00.540 And it's, you know, the the darkness at the bottom is essentially, you know, people ordering babies for anything.

00:23:06.500 Well, it comes back to the point you were making about the market is like, what is the commodity that's being traded in that exchange?

00:23:15.160 And it starts to get a little bit creepy very quickly.

00:23:19.860 And then, as Francis says, once you look into it, then it sort of starts to make sense a little bit.

00:23:25.120 But I want to come back to what what can be done about it, because I was chatting to a bunch of young women at the conference. 0.92

00:23:33.060 And I actually did something I don't usually do, which I just stood back and listened for a long time.

00:23:39.060 And there's a kind of different set of perspectives on this, because there are some some people who go, well, you know, we got to put the message out there and whatever.

00:23:47.820 And there are other people who I think quite rightly say, well, look, like a guy on stage telling me a bunch of statistics about when I'm supposed to get pregnant by isn't really going to persuade me to do it.

00:23:58.420 And, you know, since I've had my son a year ago, I've been putting out like wholesome thirst traps on the Internet about like, is this is how fun it is.

00:24:09.620 This is how much I'm enjoying his acute photo, whatever, you know, I'm going to stop doing that.

00:24:13.160 And what is the way to to just let it's not about persuading people into doing stuff is just like letting them know that that option that we talked about has all these benefits that you might not see because you're living in, you know, in a big city.

00:24:30.280 You may none of your friends have kids.

00:24:32.320 You know, the one of them was saying, I didn't hold my first baby until I was 30, which to me and probably to you being Eastern European, you're like, what?

00:24:39.460 Well, you know, that was the case for me as well.

00:24:41.960 Oh, was it?

00:24:42.560 Yeah, I didn't have siblings or cousins.

00:24:43.920 I was like totally surrounded by babies my whole time.

00:24:46.360 You know, that's pretty normal in Eastern Europe because I'm just a bit of a freak.

00:24:49.160 So what do you think is some of the what is the best way to communicate about this issue?

00:24:57.180 Yeah, I think there's kind of a two pronged thing.

00:25:00.000 I really I agree that, you know, the young ladies want this really big events by, you know, a graph here.

00:25:05.640 Look at the graph.

00:25:06.440 It's real bad if you don't pop them out tomorrow.

00:25:09.200 Yeah, I don't think that's that's good.

00:25:11.600 And I do think kind of your approach of thirst strapping is probably more more suitable to to to how to do it.

00:25:19.060 I think people seeing high status people, people that they look up to, people that they want to emulate doing these things and presenting it.

00:25:27.240 Like I said, in a bit of a realistic manner, because, you know, you can also have the the overshot where it's just all just wheat fields and, you know, women surrounded by by seven babies, you know, real thin with their, you know, wonderful blonde hair, you know, flowing in the wind.

00:25:40.280 And that happens.

00:25:41.520 But it's rarely the case.

00:25:42.980 It's usually a bit more hectic.

00:25:43.860 If you have seven babies, you know, it's they're not all chill all the time and all this type of stuff.

00:25:48.680 So, yeah, I mean, it's that's kind of I'll stop posting his photos and I'll just stop stop posting.

00:25:54.040 Like the kitchen table after he's done throwing stuff everywhere.

00:25:59.180 Yeah.

00:25:59.400 Just I think if you put like five adorable thirst traps of wonderful things, throw a dirty nappy in there occasionally to remind people that there's a bit of a bit of a downside in there as well.

00:26:12.120 And the reason I feel really strongly about this is I don't know if I've told this on on in public before, but I did this discussion that unheard a few months back.

00:26:23.580 And Freddie, who Freddie says, who hosts it, he said to me, he said, there's something different about you since you became a father.

00:26:32.240 There's something different.

00:26:33.420 And I went, well, yeah, the future is not an abstraction anymore.

00:26:36.760 It has a face and it has a name, which I hadn't thought about before.

00:26:41.360 But that's what came to me in the moment.

00:26:43.340 And then as we were standing outside, I'd broken all my post father promises and bummed a cigarette off Freddie and I was him and I was standing there smoking.

00:26:51.920 And this couple walked out of the club.

00:26:55.260 And the woman came over to me and she was like, oh, I'm so glad you said that.

00:27:00.480 You know, you really changed the way I think about it.

00:27:02.820 You know, I'm really.

00:27:04.080 And she was like, you could tell she was really inspired.

00:27:07.280 And she was like, we're going to have children now.

00:27:09.800 You know, I was all right now.

00:27:10.940 We'll go for it.

00:27:11.640 But then we were talking a little bit more and I went, how old are you?

00:27:16.280 And she went, I'm 43.

00:27:18.960 I mean, it could still happen.

00:27:22.620 It could.

00:27:23.840 It could.

00:27:24.860 But probably not.

00:27:26.420 Yeah.

00:27:26.720 And I felt that that was a kind of sign to me that I shouldn't keep quiet about it because I don't want people to end up in that position where that realization comes that late and there's maybe not a huge amount you can do about it.

00:27:44.420 And I think that's tragic, actually.

00:27:45.620 And I think the whole slew of people from our generation, we're both 40, if you're a woman our age and you haven't, you know, you're in trouble.

00:27:55.920 Right.

00:27:56.620 So this is a really serious issue, not just like for the survival of South Korea, but like for people's sense of fulfillment and well-being and happiness and all of that.

00:28:07.980 And increasingly, I meet and hear from a lot of people who are in that position.

00:28:11.780 So it's a really important issue.

00:28:13.460 But as we talked about, the top down, do this, this is what all of that isn't going to work.

00:28:19.620 So other than you and I thirst trapping people online, what else can be done culturally about this if it's a cultural issue?

00:28:26.900 Yeah, I think, you know, the kind of the policy wonk type stuff, I think, should be done, not necessarily because each individual policy does something, but because it signals that this is a kind of a priority of the state.

00:28:40.060 And I think it should be because, you know, very few things are as serious and as imminent.

00:28:46.620 I think the problem that we have with kind of democratic politics is that people think in like four or five year cycles and it's like, OK, what's what's burning now?

00:28:54.680 And these things like this is like generational, multi-generational issues.

00:28:58.800 And it's very hard to bake in kind of a long term view because, you know, what's what's the return going to be on whatever, you know, politicians priorities for the next five years.

00:29:09.280 So I think that's a challenge. But given the fact that, you know, a lot of people really are having this problem and the fact that this is like the main theme of this conference is not just because it's filled with, you know, weird like Westminster wonks, because it isn't.

00:29:25.400 It's filled with a lot of people who maybe have gone through, you know, trying to have children or have have gotten to some some issues with it.

00:29:33.540 You know, we're talking about housing. We're talking about all this stuff. And they're trying to solve these issues. And I think this is symptomatic of a change in the culture as well.

00:29:43.280 I mean, this you didn't hear about this five years ago, though. It was already kind of a problem if you in the South Korea sense, it was already kind of an issue.

00:29:51.340 But now it's an issue as well, because I feel many people from the millennial generation or so are starting to feel the burn of this as well.

00:29:57.540 Like they're seeing people in their cohort either trying to have children, not managing to have children or, you know, having pretty kind of depressing lives, you know, trying to, you know, keep going to the clubs with their, you know, wrinkly whatever.

00:30:11.200 And, you know, it's not it's just not. Yeah, it's not a satisfying thing.

00:30:14.720 So I think it's it might have a chance to just be be picked up.

00:30:20.120 And, you know, through a myriad of thirst traps from from influential people such as yourselves, I think it's going to. Yeah.

00:30:28.300 You know, because also as well, it leads to the problem of mass immigration, where we have a labor shortage in this country.

00:30:37.360 And the only way to fill it is to get people from overseas.

00:30:41.020 And that creates its own problems.

00:30:43.300 Yeah, of course. I mean, it's this is, again, the five year cycle.

00:30:46.560 It's like, yeah, for five for the next five years, this is an extremely good, you know, you're going to solve patch the problem.

00:30:51.800 But immigrants get old. Immigrants stop having kids as well. 1.00

00:30:55.240 You know, it's it's it's the same type of thing.

00:30:57.140 You're just getting in essentially a new dependent class because, you know, they're they're not they usually have, you know, maybe more children than the than the typical, you know, Westerner for maybe one or two generations. 0.91

00:31:08.220 But it declines already fairly steep once they get here because of urbanization, because of the incentives of living in the space, because of, you know, the fact that obviously their children will be educated.

00:31:20.160 They want them to come here to be educated.

00:31:22.740 The girls will be educated.

00:31:24.060 They have other aspirations for their lives.

00:31:25.740 And then, you know, even if they're in a bit more of a traditional context, you know, the memes of modernity are flooding in the pill.

00:31:33.540 You know, maybe maybe they didn't have the pill back in Afghanistan and definitely have it here.

00:31:37.680 Yeah. And and what is high status in the culture is not, you know, being the tried wife or whatever, having lots of kids.

00:31:44.400 It is, I don't know, participating in all the self-creating, cool authenticity stuff that we discussed before.

00:31:52.180 So, yeah, I think that's.

00:31:54.520 But it also leads to problems within a nation because the lack of cohesiveness within the nation, you know, people from different cultures mean that it's it's not as homogenous as it once was.

00:32:06.260 That leads to problems, leads to problems of national identity.

00:32:10.640 So, you know, there's there's a flip side to mass immigration as well.

00:32:14.400 Oh, oh, of course.

00:32:16.460 Yeah, no, no, definitely.

00:32:19.740 There are many, many issues with mass immigration.

00:32:23.120 I mean, like I said, for fertility, I would say, yes, it's kind of a bit of a patch in the short term.

00:32:28.640 But in terms of kind of what it does to to to national cohesion, and this is kind of like very vague terminology.

00:32:34.760 That's what people attack. It's like, oh, what does cohesion even mean?

00:32:37.580 Well, you know, if you go to Bradford, you see what cohesion means.

00:32:40.720 You know, if you if you go to places where cohesion is broken down, you know, you you can I know it when I see it type of things.

00:32:48.100 You know, a lot of kind of modern politics is about kind of the rule of experts, you know, bring bring your own spreadsheets, bring your own graphs and type of stuff.

00:32:56.940 And I feel like a lot of the problems that you have with mass immigration is just, you know, kind of the sound is a silent disenfranchisement of people who used to live here.

00:33:05.500 You know, it's like this whole like white flight type discussion. 0.51

00:33:08.400 People just kind of, you know, slowly moving out.

00:33:10.660 It's hard sometimes to quantify or people don't really want to quantify it because it's not a not a favorable statistic to the incentive structure that the people in politics want to build.

00:33:20.760 So it just you know, you just wake up one day and like, you know, Bradford is majority.

00:33:26.200 I don't know exactly Bangladesh, Pakistani, something like that.

00:33:28.840 And, you know, people might say, oh, it's just the way the cookie crumbles is fine, whatever, you know, but it's not just that, you know, you obviously have the grooming gang crisis.

00:33:38.860 I mean, scandal, you know, whatever, just like this pervasive insanity that happened with the majority Pakistani grooming gangs. 1.00

00:33:49.160 And also because there is kind of a silencing on this and, you know, people don't really want to rock the boat.

00:33:55.380 They don't want to be anti-immigration and things like that.

00:33:58.120 These things tend to escalate to a point where, you know, it's it's it's really it's really unsustainable.

00:34:04.660 And yeah, this stuff doesn't make it into the into the GDP calculation.

00:34:08.820 Just, you know, overall GDP is growing.

00:34:10.880 You know, it doesn't matter what Bradford looks like.

00:34:13.920 It doesn't matter if, you know, you know, that, you know, girls are tortured in Telford or something like that.

00:34:19.240 GDP line goes up.

00:34:20.480 That's what, you know, most of the policy wonks care about.

00:34:23.320 So, yeah, that's kind of what's going to flow into the statistics.

00:34:27.220 That's what the experts are going to care about.

00:34:29.600 But yeah, I think like that's a lot of the stuff that's kind of low status.

00:34:33.440 And so right wing politics and things like that is based on, you know, things that are nakedly visible to the eye that are, you know, obviously painful for people experiencing them.

00:34:43.940 But that somehow don't make it into the statistics.

00:34:46.340 No, it's one of the things I wanted to ask you about, because you're one of the people that I see talking about status a lot, high status, low status.

00:34:55.100 And I think Ed West talks about this quite a bit as well.

00:34:57.800 It's it's a very interesting way of looking at why some ideas are popular and others not.

00:35:04.160 Because I think it's tempting, particularly if you're like us, you care about truth.

00:35:09.120 It's sort of tempting to think, well, if something's right, then other people are going to.

00:35:14.120 But that's kind of not really the way we think about these things, is it?

00:35:18.260 Yeah, I think status is a really important variable that, yeah, a lot of people overlook because, you know, yeah.

00:35:25.880 People tend to think that, OK, we're the world operates on truth claims.

00:35:31.100 OK, if something's more science based, if something's more kind of knowledge based than something else, it will somehow for some mechanism win out in the end.

00:35:41.500 But in reality, kind of the way power works and the way ideas become influential is who exactly holds these ideas?

00:35:50.540 You know, how do they propagate the fact that they hold them, who is influenced by them?

00:35:56.660 And, you know, it's kind of, you know, we we hear that, you know, the argument from authority is a fallacy, but it's pretty much how how arguments work, you know.

00:36:05.400 And even even you like, for example, if you want to inform yourself about whatever kind of, you know, strange topic that you don't know much about, you know, you go to X expert and see, OK, what is the consensus in the field?

00:36:16.420 Maybe you listen to one or two speakers or something and then you from authority and take that guy's word for it.

00:36:23.620 And now because we have so many domains, pretty much every domain of life is a domain of expertise.

00:36:28.580 And that's kind of what we believe in.

00:36:30.800 You know, the argument from authority is pretty much what we what we all believe.

00:36:34.600 And then status in every field is how kind of that authority is conveyed.

00:36:39.960 OK, and so you have that.

00:36:42.440 Pandemic was a good example of this. 0.96

00:36:44.220 And actually, whichever side of the argument you come down on now and this is what I was going to ask you about, because now with I feel that so many of the issues that we're talking about are product of social media, because social media gives status to ideas that aren't true, but sound good and punishes ideas that are true, but don't sound good.

00:37:04.520 I think in a way that even discussion in the mainstream media doesn't even reach that level.

00:37:10.040 Like the level of derangement on many things in social media is amplified by the fact that it really rewards things that sound nice and therefore high status versus things that don't.

00:37:22.800 Do you think that's a big part of it, the social media entering into the fray?

00:37:26.360 And that's one of the reasons that there's such a separation now as well?

00:37:29.360 Yeah, I think social media kind of exacerbates what is already present in human nature.

00:37:34.640 Yeah, I think if you if you were in like a little band of people in your village, you had kind of the same instincts of, OK, I'm going to trust the high status guy and I'm going to think this guy's a loser because he's whatever since whatever loser signals.

00:37:45.280 And I'm not going to believe his religion. 1.00

00:37:46.460 I'm going to believe this guy's religion.

00:37:47.520 And that's kind of what you have on social media.

00:37:50.380 I mean, whoever you follow, they're the influencers and you're going to kind of side with them, even if they make some crazy statements.

00:37:58.000 Because an interesting thing that I've noticed about even like political social media is that the clustering of positions is sometimes not very coherent.

00:38:07.060 Like, you know, you had, for example, with COVID at the beginning, the most intensely lockdown, pro lockdown, pro masking, pro people on the fringe, right?

00:38:14.780 Because they were kind of early on this.

00:38:16.140 They there's a lot of them in Asia for some reason.

00:38:18.580 And they they were really kind of, you know, on the barricades and learning about this and telling people where to get their masks and stuff.

00:38:26.180 And then it kind of flipped when it became a little bit more mainstream.

00:38:29.760 People, you know, at first it was all about hugging your friends in Chinatown and stuff like that in the mainstream.

00:38:34.380 And then it flipped. It was all, you know, this is the end of the world.

00:38:37.000 We need to we need to lock down.

00:38:38.320 And you could see the kind of the status hierarchies like solidifying in real time because, you know, it wasn't clear exactly what the position was at first.

00:38:47.740 But then it was clear, OK, you know, my people believe this.

00:38:51.240 We believe, you know, vaccines are holy.

00:38:53.060 We need the masks.

00:38:53.820 We need the lockdown.

00:38:54.660 It's all good.

00:38:55.300 If you're against this, you're a part of this other tribe.

00:38:57.800 And obviously there's also an incentive for the other tribe to say, oh, really?

00:39:00.420 Well, then, yes, exactly.

00:39:01.980 Yes, I am the anti-masking people.

00:39:04.440 I am anti-masking people.

00:39:06.340 And it just leads to like definitely more derangement in terms of like people holding on to positions really strongly than you'd have in, you know, the village with the loser guy and the high status chat telling you what religion to follow.

00:39:18.280 So, yeah, I think there's definitely a lot of kind of mechanics built into the Internet that, like the slot machines, we're not used to like social escalations that we're not used to dealing with in real life.

00:39:31.620 We're not built for that scale of, I don't know, exacerbation of ideas.

00:39:36.980 And is the answer to get off the Internet?

00:39:38.980 Yeah, go for it.

00:39:40.000 Is that the only answer?

00:39:41.460 Because I don't think we are going to get off the Internet.

00:39:44.440 Yeah, yeah.

00:39:45.420 It's a tough one.

00:39:46.200 Like, to be honest, with all these technologies, like, you know, are we going to get off the pill?

00:39:49.740 Are we going to, you know, get off of the Industrial Revolution?

00:39:54.320 Yeah, you know, it's the toothpaste meet tube type situation because we need it.

00:40:00.020 I mean, you know, we both make our living off broadcasting on the Internet.

00:40:04.040 You know, I want to read the comments, see what people are talking about.

00:40:06.100 I want to see who the guests are.

00:40:07.820 I'm kind of stuck in it in a way.

00:40:10.120 And I feel like just personally, I'm just now I'm trying to kind of moderate my use of it, you know, trying to be, yeah, I don't know, try to be very paternalistic with myself and how I use it because no one else is going to be.

00:40:20.920 But I can see how, you know, how much of a downward spiral it can be for other people who, you know, for some reason or another maybe don't have, you know, good self-control.

00:40:29.960 Not that I have extremely good self-control, but, you know, I'm really, you know, doing my best to do this.

00:40:34.700 But, yeah, it's, you know, it's another thing that is and can be predatory if it's not put to good use.

00:40:41.980 And I think this is kind of a dynamic that you see a lot nowadays in terms of, you know, the space we're in with all these technologies and all the stuff that's really changed in the last 300 years is really good and gives like insane returns to a very small percent of people.

00:40:58.420 You see just everywhere from dating markets, from the economy, you know, there are a few people who are very well placed in terms of being like very high IQ, high conscientiousness, low neuroticism type people who can just take this stuff and just like plug into it like robotically and just, you know, make the most money, you know, get the best partner, things like that.

00:41:18.520 And then that works out for them. But because it is such a, there's so many wild cards here for the other people, this is essentially like predatory.

00:41:28.180 The fact that this is all just like completely, you know, very like, you know, build your own adventure, non-paternalistic, we don't judge type stuff.

00:41:36.640 But it is really, yeah, it's quite aggressive for the people who are just not equipped to deal with it.

00:41:43.480 So, you know, we've kind of built our society around the idea that, you know, freedom is perfect, it's really good.

00:41:51.460 But I think there are gradations of how much any individual person can consent to this stuff, both in the sense that the stuff is getting more predatory by the year, like every year, the stuff, you know, A-B testing, like everything's more refined.

00:42:06.020 And I feel like a lot of people who are at the top, you know, tend to be very libertarian about this, it's all fine.

00:42:11.700 But I feel like there's, it's coming for you.

00:42:14.860 Like you're not, you know, you might say you're going to plug into the AI and become like a Superman, but you're not a Superman yet.

00:42:21.640 You know, you've, even with your high IQ type stuff, it'll get you.

00:42:26.140 Like some, one of these traps will get you eventually.

00:42:29.100 And, you know, it's, you know, for now it's okay that it's just kind of like consuming the plebs and whatever. 1.00

00:42:35.440 But, yeah, it's coming, it's coming to a theatre near you.

00:42:39.680 I couldn't agree with you more.

00:42:41.640 And I think what people fail to realise with social media is that it is dementing.

00:42:47.980 And that, we like to think that we're immune.

00:42:50.700 I certainly did until, you know, one day you end up losing your head and just getting drawn into an argument.

00:42:58.660 And before you know it, you're at seven, it was seven o'clock in the morning.

00:43:01.980 You're looking out and it's, the sun is setting.

00:43:03.940 And you've spent however long, you know, saying things that you deeply regret.

00:43:08.920 Yes.

00:43:09.740 We've all been there, haven't we?

00:43:11.660 Yes.

00:43:12.100 I mean, that's one of my rules on the internet is to not engage in beefs.

00:43:16.180 And one of my other rules that I don't follow pretty much is to not read comments.

00:43:19.900 But I do read comments in the end. 0.94

00:43:21.340 And then people tell me like, oh, you know, you're really fat.

00:43:24.060 And I'm like, well, whatever.

00:43:25.280 But one of the things moving on, but still focusing on the internet,

00:43:30.060 that I find really interesting is the left-right paradigm,

00:43:34.540 where people used to say, I'm left, I'm right.

00:43:36.760 Well, because everything has become niche due to the internet,

00:43:40.200 what you see is political movements becoming fractured and fragmented.

00:43:44.060 And at first it happened with the left, where I originally was on the left

00:43:47.920 and then I saw wokeism and we all know what happened with that.

00:43:51.080 But now I'm seeing on the right and the fractures start to appear on the right.

00:43:55.780 So what do you think of that, what's happening on the right?

00:43:58.980 And where do you place yourself?

00:44:01.180 Yeah, it's a tough one.

00:44:02.760 I mean, if you asked me that maybe a year or two ago,

00:44:04.540 I'd probably have like a, you know, a name for the place where I place myself.

00:44:08.500 But now I'm not so sure just because I'm kind of in the more kind of dissident right wing space

00:44:15.240 and I kind of know the different factions now.

00:44:17.840 And it does feel like it's, the fracturing is more of a product of what's going on

00:44:22.240 with the medium itself, like with the internet itself

00:44:24.520 and the incentives that are set by the platform.

00:44:27.040 So obviously, you know, what are these movements?

00:44:29.780 They all are, they have a few key influencers, some of them,

00:44:33.360 and they kind of set policy for the movements.

00:44:35.900 And to grow your specific circle, you kind of have to cleave off audience

00:44:40.700 from the other circles.

00:44:42.220 And then you enter into these beefs for whatever point of doctrine, you know.

00:44:46.500 There's beef around, you know, should we be a wife guy 1.00

00:44:49.020 or is, you know, loving women and having a peaceful home with them gay, you know,

00:44:53.600 or something like that.

00:44:55.500 What a conversation.

00:44:57.360 This is an important conversation on the right.

00:45:00.660 Obviously, there's a split between religious and atheist right wingers

00:45:04.960 or people who are like maybe more into like the pagan vibes and things like that.

00:45:09.620 That's a big fault line.

00:45:11.220 So, you know, that's kind of, you know, and obviously the influencers in these spaces,

00:45:16.460 especially because now there's more attention to these spaces,

00:45:18.360 because there really is a lot of, you know, generative, interesting stuff happening there.

00:45:21.460 That's why I'm in this space.

00:45:23.600 They're getting a lot of attention.

00:45:25.180 You know, there's a bit of money, actually.

00:45:26.680 People are getting whatever sign-ups and whatever, sub-stack money.

00:45:32.240 And yeah, there's more incentive to present yourself as, you know,

00:45:36.580 the actual heir of the right wing in general.

00:45:40.200 And this is the program.

00:45:41.280 And my 10-point program is much more coherent than your 10-point program.

00:45:45.240 And yeah, people fighting over immigration.

00:45:47.640 Like there's the major fault line now is between people who are kind of Christian

00:45:53.500 and they essentially are looking forward to, you know, a right wing with kind of a Christian core

00:45:57.520 as kind of the morality of whatever proposed state that they'd like to live in.

00:46:01.660 And people who say, oh, no, no, Christianity essentially just means, you know, open borders

00:46:05.200 because you just let in anyone in the world who's Christian.

00:46:08.120 And that obviously has a lot of, you know, bad side effects in the sense that we're pretty much a square one

00:46:12.900 and we have the same social ills that we have now.

00:46:15.580 But everyone's nominally Christian.

00:46:17.280 So, yeah.

00:46:18.240 I mean, that's kind of the main divide here.

00:46:20.820 And there is something to these arguments.

00:46:23.200 Obviously, they need to be discussed.

00:46:26.580 But the fact that they end up, you know, in the sense that, okay, we need to purge you.

00:46:31.940 You know, we need to cleave you off and we need to, whoever is with me has to stay on this side of the fence

00:46:37.500 and whoever is not with me needs to leave.

00:46:40.080 It's, yeah, it's definitely an interesting and lively time to be in right wing politics on the internet.

00:46:47.720 But, yeah, it's still, I think, one of the most interesting places to hang out.

00:46:54.100 And you identify as being, to quote your words, a dissident right.

00:46:58.080 What does that actually mean?

00:46:59.980 What do you believe?

00:47:00.700 It's just a moniker for the whole space.

00:47:03.700 I mean, what do I believe?

00:47:05.040 I mean, I've, you know, I don't think I'd say I have like a, you know, political program to implement tomorrow.

00:47:10.500 But I'm definitely, I'm more of a kind of a suspicious of mainstream right politics.

00:47:17.740 I mean, I share the same values.

00:47:19.140 I mean, I think we should have a society that has kind of a relatively core normative ideas of how to live life.

00:47:25.820 You know, the two family type, two parent family type situation.

00:47:29.800 And that policy should be geared towards supporting that.

00:47:33.200 And, you know, we should be having a kind of a long-term consideration of what our societies will look like, which brings in the kind of the birth rates conversation and all of this stuff.

00:47:41.780 I think religion should have a kind of a revered position in society, though, you know, my personal relationship with religion is a little bit tortured, I know.

00:47:50.920 But, yeah, I think, you know, I'm kind of right wing in the sense of, yes, my values align with pretty much, I would say, most right wing people who would consider themselves right wing.

00:47:59.380 What the dissident right brings to the table is kind of a more granular critique of power.

00:48:07.380 Like, a lot of people in the dissident right wouldn't say that, you know, okay, we just need to win the next election.

00:48:12.080 Because I think that the main epiphany that they've had is post-Trump, post-Brexit, is that things just don't work that way.

00:48:19.100 You know, it's not like you win an election and you have power.

00:48:22.220 Your side has power and now you do your side's things.

00:48:24.640 We discover that, you know, there is a whole substructure, kind of managerial substructure, you call it the blob, call it the cathedral, call it whatever you'd like, that essentially has a mind of its own.

00:48:38.460 And it is fueled by status.

00:48:40.120 It's fueled by what the elite, the actual elite who is in power, not the figurehead guy who you voted in or out.

00:48:46.720 And what they believe and what fuels them and what interests them.

00:48:51.720 And for now, the major kind of ideology behind the elite is some form of wokeness.

00:48:58.340 You know, the most interesting and powerful people in the world believe some form of wokeness, either because they are true believers, which I think most of them are,

00:49:06.660 or because it is useful to them because it has, you know, some useful characteristics for the upper class because they can essentially have kind of this very profound moral vision where they can not only feel good about themselves for, you know, flagellating themselves because, you know, whatever, white guilt and all this type of stuff.

00:49:26.640 They can hate the people that they usually hate, which is kind of the middle and lower middle class.

00:49:31.860 And then they can also kind of virtuously give handouts to their client classes, which are the lower classes, you know, people, immigrants, you know, all the woke coalition, the woke pyramid that you want to.

00:49:44.380 Obviously, they don't mingle with these people, but they are their client class and they can make promises to them and they can gang up on the middle, obviously, because the middle is always the contender for the top spot.

00:49:54.520 You know, you're not worried about, you know, you're worried about the people in Newham, you know, you're worried about the people in Cornwall, you know, and you don't want those to come and get you.

00:50:03.260 So, yeah, it's...

00:50:04.740 So, Alex, that being the case, if winning elections doesn't solve things, what is the dissident's right version of the solution?

00:50:14.560 There are many, there are many solutions.

00:50:16.080 And that's always kind of where the thing breaks down a little bit, because the solutions are typically a more centralized form of organizing society.

00:50:26.960 Oh, there's a relief.

00:50:28.040 Yeah.

00:50:29.240 Authoritarianism, great.

00:50:30.300 I mean, you know, you call it authoritarianism, but, you know, this, you know, democracy is, you know, is something that's quite recent in human history.

00:50:40.260 I mean, we've had some form of monarchy pretty much since time immemorial.

00:50:45.340 There's always kind of, you know, that's kind of the hierarchy.

00:50:48.680 You know, you have middle management, upper management.

00:50:51.140 At the top, there's a CEO in any organization that's functional, you know, except for the state, where apparently we're all kind of co-partners and we're all CEOs in our own right.

00:50:59.940 But in reality, that's not really how it works.

00:51:02.300 So I think that the main critique isn't that, you know, democracy on paper is bad, is that democracy in reality is essentially a shadow oligarchy.

00:51:12.920 It's like, it's not that, you know, it wouldn't be good for it to be this way where, you know, we have these really relevant people who actually have power in government that we can all vote for in an informed way.

00:51:25.380 And, you know, this is, this all sounds great.

00:51:27.240 I buy into it, but witnessing the process of politics, how the sausage is made in reality, what you have is essentially a whole cast of people who you cannot see, who are unaccountable, who are distributed within this whole kind of hydra of managerialism.

00:51:43.840 And, you know, like with COVID, like who exactly, you know, has been held to account for the fact that most probably this stuff escaped the lab.

00:51:52.120 Most probably a lot of the policies were completely misguided, like an extreme amount of, you know, a lot of people died because of the policies.

00:52:00.260 I mean, you know, because of issues with the policies around the hospitals.

00:52:05.120 So, you know, there's absolutely no accountability for this stuff.

00:52:09.100 There won't be a Nuremberg trial for COVID because there are no figureheads, you know. 0.95

00:52:13.740 You can shoot Himmler.

00:52:14.900 You can, you know, it's clear because he was obviously in charge of his division. 0.98

00:52:19.600 He had his middle management.

00:52:21.040 He had all the people under him.

00:52:23.380 You can, you know, French Revolution style, kill the king because you know who he is and he's responsible for X or Y.

00:52:29.800 So I think that's kind of the idea.

00:52:32.180 It's like, OK, if you want to have any sort of functional organization, you need to have a chain of command.

00:52:38.240 You need to know who the guy at the top is because, you know, when you go out to have your little French Revolution to oust him, at least you know who he is.

00:52:46.200 And that's it.

00:52:46.920 There'll be a lot of people who would happily hang Matt Hancock from the gallows down the road from here.

00:52:52.700 I promise you.

00:52:53.080 Sorry, man.

00:52:53.580 But isn't that the problem with every type of government?

00:52:57.620 Every type of government.

00:52:59.140 And Konstantin is obviously from Russia.

00:53:01.320 You know, you had the figurehead, the leader, but you also had the shadowy bureaucrats.

00:53:06.680 Chay Cheska is the same thing.

00:53:08.320 My mum's from Venezuela, Maduro. 0.99

00:53:10.240 I would happily kill. 0.99

00:53:11.660 Right. 0.87

00:53:11.820 But he's also got his cronies, none of whom that I know.

00:53:15.480 So isn't that the problem with all government, Alex?

00:53:18.040 Yeah, in a way it is.

00:53:19.540 I mean, I think it's a problem of scale as well.

00:53:22.220 And it's a problem of, you know, the fact that a lot of the managerial system that we have now in government, it really is kind of necessary.

00:53:28.600 Like, you know, back in the day, you didn't have, like, FDA, EPA type organizations, which, you know, people might, you know, not think they're extremely effective, but you kind of need them now because the complexity of the whole system really is, like, incredible.

00:53:42.400 You know, you need to have consumer protection.

00:53:44.560 You need to have all these types of things.

00:53:46.240 So it really is hard to see who's in charge of these things.

00:53:50.860 So, yeah, I think there is an issue with that.

00:53:52.980 But, I mean, you know, with Chay Chesko, we didn't shoot the guy and things did change.

00:53:56.940 I mean, slowly and slowly.

00:53:58.580 It's a bit unfair. He had, like, a 99% approval rate.

00:54:00.920 He did.

00:54:01.360 Yeah, yeah.

00:54:01.640 The day before he was set.

00:54:03.180 Yeah, it tells you a lot about democracy, doesn't it?

00:54:05.340 Well, it's not really democracy.

00:54:07.620 I just dropped my mic.

00:54:08.500 Yeah, well, it's not a democracy when you don't like it, is it?

00:54:11.540 Yeah.

00:54:11.760 When you don't like the result.

00:54:13.140 Yeah.

00:54:13.400 Yeah.

00:54:14.220 Yeah.

00:54:14.820 I think, you know, I think a lot of people on dissident rights would say that, you know, our democracy might be closer to that than you think, you know, to the figurehead type.

00:54:24.500 So, what's the solution then, as I fiddle my microphone back in my pocket?

00:54:29.640 The solution, I mean, like I said, there's different proposals.

00:54:33.000 I'm not sure that I, you know, buy any of them in, like, wholesale.

00:54:37.640 But the idea would be, you know, a lot of people are interested in kind of more decentralized ways of organizing society, like, you know, like charter cities and stuff, where it's kind of much easier to have kind of a CEO figure at the top, where it's, you know, small.

00:54:49.240 You essentially buy into this community, and then you also have exit rights.

00:54:54.460 So, you don't necessarily have voice, where you vote for the guy, but it's like, it's whatever, Constantine's charter city, he's the boss here.

00:55:01.960 I kind of like what he's doing with the place.

00:55:03.940 And then I apply to get in, you know, Constantine says, you're nice, okay, you can stay here.

00:55:08.720 And if, you know, it hits the fan, you can have exit rights.

00:55:12.760 How many wives am I allowed to have on this? 1.00

00:55:14.840 Because that's really the main thing.

00:55:15.360 I don't know.

00:55:16.140 It's your charter city, Constantine.

00:55:17.600 You know what?

00:55:18.040 You have to decide.

00:55:18.880 I am now part of the dissident right, because this sounds great.

00:55:22.420 Strictly one, by the way.

00:55:23.640 Strictly one, by the way.

00:55:25.900 But this is kind of the American model.

00:55:27.640 We saw this, particularly during COVID.

00:55:29.500 You know, a lot of our friends moved around the United States.

00:55:32.180 I think it's a good model.

00:55:33.300 Yeah.

00:55:33.740 Well, I am envious as hell.

00:55:36.180 You do need a big country to do it, and a federalist system.

00:55:39.380 Or multiple countries.

00:55:40.480 Or multiple countries, right, exactly.

00:55:42.680 But that is actually what happened, is people are sorting themselves based on their preferences

00:55:47.420 about how they want to see the relationship between welfare and government and taxes and

00:55:54.560 freedoms and opportunity and so on.

00:55:57.320 And so you see those more liberty-minded people moving to places like Texas, like Florida.

00:56:02.980 And there are plenty of people in California.

00:56:04.680 I was just in California a few weeks ago.

00:56:07.100 There are lots of people, you know, there's this narrative of, like, everyone is leaving

00:56:10.400 L.A.

00:56:10.700 There are lots of people who are really happy living in L.A.

00:56:13.020 And they're staying because they are comfortable with the trade-offs that they have.

00:56:18.320 Of course.

00:56:19.540 They don't like the machete attacks.

00:56:21.740 But as they told me, they have an app now.

00:56:24.040 Yeah, of course.

00:56:24.720 They have an app.

00:56:25.620 Machete Swerve.

00:56:26.560 Yeah.

00:56:26.960 Something like, well, right.

00:56:28.100 Is that what it's called?

00:56:29.220 No.

00:56:30.160 It's ahead of a name.

00:56:31.260 We should set that up here, mate.

00:56:32.340 You came up with that straight away.

00:56:33.860 But this is literally a conversation I had with somebody.

00:56:36.660 I was like, they were asking me about, oh, we see all these knife attacks in London.

00:56:39.980 And I was like, oh, yeah, I was just watching a video of some guy with a machete.

00:56:42.820 And they were like, oh, yeah, we have that here.

00:56:44.300 But we have an app.

00:56:44.920 We put it in.

00:56:45.860 And then everyone knows to stay away from that area for a couple of hours.

00:56:48.740 There's a way in which these things kind of self-segregate at one point.

00:56:51.820 Right.

00:56:51.980 You know, it's like, you know, we're talking about white flight and stuff like this. 0.64

00:56:55.040 You know, it's, you know, you could call it kind of Brazilification, where you have 0.92

00:56:59.220 the high-rise next to the favelas.

00:57:00.880 And there's a really, really functional wall between them.

00:57:03.920 And then, you know, people live relatively peacefully.

00:57:06.240 There's some, you know, issues between them.

00:57:08.220 But, yeah, that's kind of, that seems to be kind of the equilibrium that these, you know,

00:57:13.140 these cities reach.

00:57:14.000 You know, you have the kind of the donut cities model, where, you know, the inner city is

00:57:17.040 just completely deserted.

00:57:18.240 And then the suburbs are flourishing.

00:57:20.040 And then you have kind of the commuter towns around.

00:57:22.020 And then you kind of, people swerve each other, swerving the machetes.

00:57:25.240 So it's essentially a future in which people start to build their communities according to

00:57:31.040 their value systems.

00:57:32.380 I think that's probably most likely.

00:57:34.360 I think kind of see a lot of people doing that already in practice or aspiring to do

00:57:38.220 it.

00:57:39.440 Yeah, there's not really, you know, you kind of have to coordinate around something.

00:57:43.300 I mean, obviously, I'd love that something to be like the nation state and stuff like

00:57:47.560 that.

00:57:47.940 But it might just be the case that, you know, the nation state was a social technology

00:57:52.200 for a different era, where, you know, nations were at war with each other.

00:57:55.060 And you kind of have kind of nations representing relatively homogenous ethnicities, not just like,

00:58:00.740 you know, economic zones.

00:58:02.820 So now I think it might be that, okay, people will arrange themselves after maybe religion,

00:58:08.540 maybe whatever, you know, their transhumanist AI devotees.

00:58:12.960 And if you want to, I don't know, whatever, have.

00:58:15.140 Well, some set of values, you know, like, for example, we are here at NatCon, neither France

00:58:20.060 or Siraya, particularly conservative or nationalistic, really.

00:58:22.840 We welcome you.

00:58:23.600 Well, but this is my point exactly.

00:58:26.820 This is my point exactly, which is that there is overlap in terms of values between different

00:58:34.180 groups of people.

00:58:34.860 I wrote a piece in my sub-stack after we came back from America about the old school liberals

00:58:38.820 in America and conservatives trying to work out a way to work together on things that they

00:58:43.100 actually agree on.

00:58:45.080 And that's kind of maybe what you're talking about.

00:58:46.700 And I have to say, I joked about being part of the distant right, but I genuinely think 0.99

00:58:51.760 that in Britain, it's unlikely because we're too small a country.

00:58:55.860 But in America, I totally see that happening.

00:58:58.440 And everyone I talk to about their experience of doing that, they seem really happy.

00:59:04.940 They seem really happy.

00:59:05.880 You know, like this is, Rogan was like, oh, move to Texas is great.

00:59:09.500 And there are people in Florida who are delighted to be there.

00:59:12.200 Like I said, there's people in New York.

00:59:13.500 They love being in New York and it's the value system that works for them.

00:59:19.640 I'll be thinking about this.

00:59:21.560 Yeah, I think it seems to be like a natural way that things are kind of panning out.

00:59:27.260 You know, there's a lot of talk about kind of theoretical ideas in these spaces like,

00:59:30.940 you know, the integral state.

00:59:32.320 Everything's going to be Catholic. 0.96

00:59:34.020 No, it's not.

00:59:35.560 This is going to be very hard.

00:59:37.280 It's definitely a toothpaste that has left the tube a very long time ago, not putting

00:59:41.780 that back in.

00:59:42.360 So, yeah, you know, in theory, a lot of things are possible.

00:59:45.300 I think in reality, something like this is more likely.

00:59:48.140 I mean, you have this as well in Irania, you know, in South Africa, it's kind of a relatively

00:59:52.340 famous thing where, you know, you have the Afrikaners having trouble with the surrounding

00:59:56.280 issues politically.

00:59:57.920 They essentially, you know, made their own city and there's very strict rules of what

01:00:01.860 you can do.

01:00:02.460 It's not like it's, you know, it's not walled off, but it's very clearly enforced what's

01:00:06.760 allowed in there and whatnot.

01:00:08.400 A lot of people have problems with this because it's, you know, it's very, it's for the

01:00:11.740 Dutch ethnics of the country.

01:00:13.960 And obviously it's, it's very monochromatic in Irania, but it's, yeah, it's, it's one 0.83

01:00:18.920 way of solving their problems.

01:00:20.320 It's a highly functional society in a sea of absolute chaos.

01:00:24.000 And that's, you know, one way it's like, uh, you know, a very, uh, you know, the anti-favela.

01:00:29.820 So.

01:00:30.580 I mean, the problem is with that is it's, if it's done on racial lines, I'm kind of not

01:00:36.800 down with it.

01:00:37.960 I mean, they're down with it.

01:00:39.500 Yeah.

01:00:39.860 I mean, so was apartheid, you know what I mean?

01:00:44.540 I mean, it's not apartheid in the sense that, you know, this is literally just private property.

01:00:48.740 It's like, it's like a reservation.

01:00:50.480 It's like if the, you know, Indians in, in, uh, in, in America would say, okay, we just 1.00

01:00:55.920 buy this plot of land and we live there, which is essentially what they're doing now.

01:00:59.200 And, but it's just because it's endorsed by the state, but here it's not endorsed by

01:01:02.880 the state.

01:01:03.220 It's just these people know each other.

01:01:05.420 They have private property and they have so much of it that it's essentially a town.

01:01:09.080 And, you know, if you're at least a little bit libertarian, you say, okay, that's pretty

01:01:13.040 much fair enough.

01:01:14.440 Well, I have no problem.

01:01:15.820 If they can't come into your house, why should they come into their compound?

01:01:19.220 Right.

01:01:19.900 I have no problem with people, you know, wanting to, you know, have shared ideals and all the

01:01:25.120 rest of it.

01:01:25.600 I'm deeply uncomfortable when it comes to the racial aspect of it, where people just

01:01:30.740 go, right, we are X group of people.

01:01:33.820 I understand that obviously, but in that, you know, I think in a situation like this, where

01:01:39.480 you're essentially at war, this is, you know, whatever you think about, there's a lot of

01:01:43.840 violence happening in South Africa.

01:01:45.480 Agreed.

01:01:46.140 The racial aspect for the people living in Irania is a good rule of thumb.

01:01:51.120 You know, if it's, if it's, if your family's in danger and if that's kind of the thing,

01:01:55.180 it's not that people of different ethnicities can't come in around, like literally there

01:01:58.800 is, but they have a police force.

01:02:00.640 So no like deviation from, you know, law and order will be tolerated.

01:02:04.520 You literally will be taken off the premises if you start, you know, mucking about.

01:02:08.980 Yeah.

01:02:09.140 So, you know, it's, you know, there's a limit to, to tolerance sometimes.

01:02:14.840 I agree there's a limit to tolerance when it comes to things like crime.

01:02:20.020 The thing where it loses me is if it's done on pure, if you were essentially creating a

01:02:25.720 mini ethno state.

01:02:26.880 I think they're creating a mini ethno state in practice and not necessarily because that's,

01:02:30.860 you know, that's, that's the ethos of it, but it's like, you know, this is, it is, it

01:02:34.560 is for their community and they happen to all be Dutch, Dutch ethnics or, you know, from

01:02:41.020 Afrikaners essentially.

01:02:43.300 And I think, you know, they do this for a reason because not doing this has been, you

01:02:47.720 know, quite fatal for a lot of them.

01:02:49.640 So, you know, I'm all for freedom of association, independent of what criterion you're basing

01:02:56.440 it on.

01:02:57.280 So what would you accept that in other nations?

01:03:02.860 Yeah.

01:03:03.600 Why not?

01:03:03.980 I mean, it's just, you know, you buy a plot of land in Venezuela and populate it with your 0.85

01:03:07.420 very best friends, you know, and then you have so much money to buy a really big plot

01:03:12.020 of land.

01:03:13.600 Is it discriminatory that other people can't come trespass?

01:03:18.640 It's not as if, if you're building a society and you're saying that this group of people

01:03:23.160 aren't welcome because they have these types of immutable characteristics, I would say that

01:03:28.820 there's a real problem with that.

01:03:30.400 And you would outlaw it.

01:03:31.840 I mean, what, what's the limit there?

01:03:33.180 Or is it, if there's a post office, then it's bad, but if there's none, then it's just

01:03:37.700 like your backyard.

01:03:38.820 You know, it's, I really do think that people should have the freedom to do that.

01:03:43.180 Obviously, you know, this is a question of taste and I think it's also a question of the

01:03:47.300 conditions you happen to find yourself in and yeah, and what you've had to tolerate up

01:03:52.320 to that point and, you know, it's, yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's a, it's a tough place

01:03:57.000 to live in.

01:03:57.900 And the problem is like the, the Afrikaners really don't really have anywhere else to 1.00

01:04:00.940 go.

01:04:01.160 It's not like they can go back to Holland.

01:04:02.820 It's like the only place that they can live.

01:04:04.840 And, you know, I've, I've had people on my show who are Afrikaners from South Africa.

01:04:09.320 They're working, you know, politically to, you know, to, you know, better their country.

01:04:14.000 But the things that they described to me, you know, they, a lot of people like in Cape

01:04:18.020 Town and stuff have, you know, bars on their doors and there's, they're, you know, they're

01:04:22.860 literally called rape bars for a reason, things like that. 1.00

01:04:25.560 So they, you know, there's a lot of like profound ethnic conflict, which happens along the white 0.78

01:04:30.760 black divide.

01:04:32.520 And it's obviously you want to give people the benefit of the doubt.

01:04:35.440 And a lot of these guys that I've talked to also have a lot of black friends, you know,

01:04:38.740 it's impossible not to do in South Africa.

01:04:41.120 But, you know, there's a reticence around these things for a reason.

01:04:47.580 And, you know, I think it's, it can be reasonable in some, in some ways.

01:04:52.580 And Alex, we've talked about a whole variety of subjects.

01:04:57.100 The decision right thing is, is an interesting one because I see you kind of dipping into

01:05:00.900 that as I watch what you talk about and stuff.

01:05:03.280 And I've always just been curious to hear your, your views on it.

01:05:07.080 We've got a little bit of time left.

01:05:08.520 What else are you thinking about?

01:05:09.580 What else am I thinking about?

01:05:11.940 Well, other than the babies, other than the babies.

01:05:14.860 Yeah.

01:05:15.000 I think everyone's babied out.

01:05:17.540 I, I mean, I, the subject of my talk, this, this, this NatCon was a little bit more, I

01:05:23.680 guess, more, more spicy, but also it kind of flew under the radar because people don't

01:05:27.120 really, yeah, they shouldn't engage with it as much.

01:05:29.580 Um, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's essentially something that ties into what we were discussing as

01:05:34.900 well.

01:05:35.560 It's, um, you know, it's around the concept of equality.

01:05:38.400 You know, we, we have this, uh, aspiration towards equality and I think it's, it's kind

01:05:42.680 of, it's, it's very virtuous.

01:05:44.120 You know, we, we want that.

01:05:45.000 We have kind of an instinct for fairness.

01:05:46.320 We want people to, um, to engage with societies to their fullest and have as much opportunity

01:05:53.060 as possible.

01:05:53.700 But I feel we, we kind of constantly hit a snag, especially people who are, um, it's 0.99

01:05:58.300 kind of more the classical liberal persuasion.

01:06:00.080 And they really do want, you know, um, you know, we talk a lot about equality of opportunity

01:06:04.600 versus equality of outcome.

01:06:06.140 We classical liberals are for equality of opportunity while they are for equity, equality of outcome.

01:06:10.900 Um, and I feel like for people who are more conservative or want maybe to implement a

01:06:15.620 more conservative, uh, vision of society, this is a bit of a trap because if you say,

01:06:20.640 okay, I'm for equality of opportunity and I want everyone to have equal opportunities,

01:06:24.320 it's a very hard thing to prove politically in terms like, for example, if you implement

01:06:29.580 a policy, okay, I want, um, you know, I want to say everyone in the society has maximum

01:06:35.240 opportunity.

01:06:36.140 We're doing the best we can so that everyone can, you know, equalize opportunities.

01:06:40.900 And if after one, two, three, four generations, that doesn't happen.

01:06:44.300 And you have pretty much the same distribution of people ending up at the top from different

01:06:48.480 constituencies.

01:06:49.160 I'm saying this is kind of a multi-ethnic, you know, men and women are, you know, theoretically

01:06:54.340 have equality of opportunity.

01:06:56.500 Um, and you have, you, you realize you have the same patterns, the same patterns, the same

01:06:59.880 patterns.

01:07:00.700 Um, what you get is an extremely powerful left because essentially what they're holding you

01:07:06.180 to is equality of outcome because there's no test for equality of opportunity in the

01:07:10.720 wild, but equality of outcome.

01:07:12.660 If you don't get equality of outcome after, you know, the set timer, you're going to be,

01:07:17.500 uh, suspected of racism, sexism, homophobia, all this type of stuff.

01:07:21.700 Well, it's even worse than that because on many of these criteria, we are actually, there

01:07:27.320 is equality of outcome across these groups and it's still not enough.

01:07:31.680 Yeah.

01:07:32.080 Yeah.

01:07:32.320 Of course.

01:07:32.720 I mean, you know, it's, uh, the, the ideology of this stuff kind of takes on the mind of

01:07:36.400 its own after a while, it's, you know, it's the, the, um, equalization and kind of, it,

01:07:42.040 it, it becomes a bit of, um, a religious impulse, you know, not only need, do we need to equalize

01:07:48.420 these people, we need to uplift them and, um, and write historical injustice by penalizing

01:07:56.200 the, the oppressor class, you know, the people who are, who are at the top.

01:07:59.960 So we're kind of in that phase of it as well.

01:08:01.680 At this point, I feel like my speech was more in the sense that we need to be a little bit

01:08:05.940 more realistic about what's actually possible as the right.

01:08:08.480 We keep getting into the same, we stuck in the mud in the same equality of outcome discussion,

01:08:12.700 uh, equality of opportunity discussion.

01:08:14.340 And everyone's like, how we, um, you know, you also have to kind of realize that equality

01:08:18.640 of opportunity, even, if, even if you were to try your hardest at it, it's pretty much

01:08:23.400 impossible in practice as well, because people come to the table with, you know, extremely

01:08:29.380 different backgrounds, you know, you know, even putting aside genetics, I mean, the, the

01:08:33.420 cultural aspects, the, um, you know, what did they, what nutrition they have in childhood,

01:08:39.920 you know, how much can you, um, can you change that?

01:08:43.080 And yeah, I think it's, it's just a, it's just a losing game.

01:08:46.520 And I feel like the right should be in the, um, in the business of offering, um, like functionality,

01:08:53.080 offering wide ranging opportunity, but in the sense of, okay, like colorblindness, you know?

01:08:58.080 Well, this is what I've always said is like, I really reject any sort of messing around

01:09:03.840 with quotas and any of that.

01:09:05.400 What we should have is no discrimination based on prejudice, right?

01:09:08.680 You eliminate that and then it's, sorry, it's every man for himself at that point.

01:09:12.420 It's a tough one because, you know, in law now you have, um, essentially the, the, the

01:09:17.200 standard of disparate impact.

01:09:18.940 And you have that in the, in the UK as well, in the Dequality Act and in the US under the

01:09:22.820 Civil Rights Act, where it's pretty tough to prove that you were prejudiced or not.

01:09:28.520 And the way people prove that there was prejudice is by seeing the, the outcomes.

01:09:33.060 So if you don't have proportional representation and expositions, people would say, okay, this

01:09:38.000 is, this is discriminatory, you know, because it really is in practice pretty tough to say,

01:09:42.800 okay, why did you take this candidate instead of this one?

01:09:45.240 Well, you might say, oh, they had a better university education, but no, but they have more experience

01:09:49.040 here.

01:09:49.520 So it's, you know, it kind of opens you up to litigation now and pretty much everywhere

01:09:53.480 in the West.

01:09:53.960 So this is something that I think as a right needs to be, it needs to be walked back because

01:09:58.300 it's, it's an impossible standard and it's like a cudgel.

01:10:01.220 It's a rod for our own back.

01:10:03.000 I do not recommend.

01:10:04.160 And I know it's, it kind of goes, it's counterintuitive because people really want to have equality.

01:10:08.680 It's instinctive.

01:10:09.460 We want fairness.

01:10:11.140 But fairness needs to, needs to play out in a different way.

01:10:14.840 And you can see this, especially, I mean, I'm sorry to say with crime as well.

01:10:18.040 I mean, you have rampant crime in, in the U S especially, and a little bit here in the

01:10:22.140 UK as well.

01:10:22.900 And there's a lot of issues with, um, with policing along racial lines.

01:10:27.900 There's a lot of issues with not, you know, rocking the boat with different communities,

01:10:31.920 which we've seen with the, with the grooming and scandal.

01:10:34.460 Um, so, um, you know, from a right-wing perspective, what you would need to have in regards to crime

01:10:39.920 is, um, pretty, you know, pretty strict and clear implementation of law and order,

01:10:46.800 independent of how disparate the outcomes are.

01:10:49.460 And I mean that the outcomes will be disparate because they, they've always been disparate,

01:10:52.940 you know, and there's, there are all sorts of factors that flow into here as well.

01:10:56.380 You know, cultural factors, crack epidemic, whatever, fatherlessness, which are factors

01:11:01.100 as well.

01:11:01.940 But they're also extremely hard to remedy and say, oh, we're just going to change the

01:11:05.860 culture.

01:11:06.220 It's like, we're just going to say, okay, we're, you, you have to treat your children

01:11:09.340 like Koreans treat their children and that's going to right things. 1.00

01:11:12.520 That doesn't really happen.

01:11:14.000 It's not how you, um, how things happen.

01:11:15.940 It's much more organic.

01:11:16.580 So we need to unfortunately treat the symptoms to protect the citizens from this because a

01:11:22.340 lot of people forget that the cost of crime is not just, um, you know, the fact that the

01:11:27.480 poor guy ends up in jail because that's what we focus on.

01:11:30.560 It's, you know, the absolutely ruined lives of the communities that, that have to live with

01:11:34.460 these people and a lot of the, the, the sources of the most crime in the world are, is recidivism.

01:11:40.400 Like people who are in and out of jail are not deterred by short jail sentences.

01:11:45.640 You know, you know, I, I think like something like a three strikes law or something like

01:11:49.260 that is, is genius because it really is a very small percentage of the population that

01:11:53.600 does most of the crime.

01:11:55.340 And that also destabilizes most of the areas where crime happens.

01:11:59.580 Cause there is a kind of a, um, like a domino effect in crime as well.

01:12:03.240 It's like, if you are in the crime ridden area and there's a lot of crime, well, you

01:12:07.420 know, the crime is the way you make your money, you know, gangs and things like that.

01:12:10.940 So yeah, I think that's, um, you know, this is, this is a fruitful and effective area of

01:12:16.480 the right.

01:12:16.960 I mean, you could see this with Giuliani's policies and, you know, after the crack epidemic,

01:12:20.840 you know, things, things went well for a while because it was pretty strict and draconian

01:12:25.280 and, you know, people didn't like it because it, um, you know, it, it affected certain

01:12:31.400 communities more than others, it's gonna, because that's just how, this is how it is.

01:12:36.800 There you go.

01:12:37.520 Well, Alex, thank you for coming back on the show.

01:12:39.740 We're going to ask you some questions from our local supporters in a second, but everyone

01:12:44.280 should check out your subversive podcast and, uh, we'll see you on Locals right now.

01:12:50.580 What or who inspired you?

01:12:52.120 What?

01:12:52.780 What?

01:12:54.480 What?

01:12:54.960 What?

01:12:56.120 What?

01:12:56.980 What?

01:13:16.360 What?

01:13:18.560 What?

01:13:19.540 What?

TRIGGERnometry - June 21, 2023

Population Collapse is Coming - Alex Kaschuta

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript