The Impact of Digital Overstimulation on Relationships and Parenting

In this episode, we are joined by the insightful KaiserBauch to explore a detailed discussion on global fertility rates. We compare statistical trends across various countries, discuss contributing factors like socio-economic conditions, digitalization, and cultural perspectives, and analyze the influence of religion on fertility rates. We also touch upon historical fertility patterns and enigmatic examples like Israel and Kazakhstan. Lastly, we ponder hypothetical scenarios and strategies for creating high-fertility societies.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello! We are excited to be here with Kaiser Bach. No! Kaiser Bauch. Okay, so if you guys haven't seen his channel It is a fantastic channel. If you're interested, if you guys ever watch our channel and your responses, I hate how political they've gotten.

I wish they just focused on fertility rates and the really deep dive on individual countries looking at the entire history of their fertility rate. His is the channel to go to. That is, that is the channel that you are thinking of that ours is not because I don't have the time to do that research. And someone else is already doing it.

So what I wanted to focus on with this episode is having done all of these incredible deep dives on geographies around the world and the fertility rates that they're seeing, both the rises and drops over time. I want to get a synthesis of your ideas or patterns you've recognized that could be useful to either [00:01:00] resolving this issue, predicting when it's going to happen, etc.

So go ahead, get us started here.

Kaiser Bauch: Well, first of all, thank you very much for this kind introduction. I'm very glad to be here. Thank you for having me. And I mean, this is kind of a complicated question, to be honest, because one of the things that I really try to focus on in my videos is the differences between different countries or, let's say, civilizations or regions and trying to figure out why two different countries in modern period have, like, vastly different level of fertility rates.

Because people, people often talk about low fertility rates as if they were like a singular phenomenon. But there is a very wide range of low fertility rates. Like, completely, one thing is like South Korea or East Asia. Where you have really like fertility rates under one child per woman. And completely other thing is like the Anglosphere.

[00:02:00] Where, even though the fertility rates are below replacement,

they

generally tend to

be

more close to like two children per woman or at least in the in the 1. 5 to 2 children per woman range and this makes the situation let's say much more stable and easily handleable in the long run. So what really interests me is to like dig deep and try to find out why are there these differences.

Because it seems to me there are these like big broad macro factors that influence basically the whole world and that depress the fertility rates everywhere which is like all the well known stuff like the decrease in infant mortality rates, then you know urbanization, female education, lack of religiosity, urbanization, all of this.

But then there are these like very country or let's say region specific details which make, for example you know, South Korea have fertility rates that is [00:03:00] almost one child lower than that, for example, in the United States. So it's, it's, it's very hard to find some like, unifying, unifying traits that would be applicable to all of the countries.

I think

Malcolm Collins: a good

Kaiser Bauch: place to start

Malcolm Collins: is unifying traits that people don't think about. So here's an example. Why is it Latin America's fertility rate in your estimation crashing so quickly? Well,

Kaiser Bauch: I mean, what is happening in Latin America, but what is happening more broadly all over the world in this past, like, let's say five or six years, or maybe since the COVID pandemic, really, I would say is that like, we are now seeing fertility rates really crash to Very low levels in many countries all over the world.

A lot of them are in South America, like Chile, for example. It is possible that Chile will have a fertility rate lower than one child per woman this year, maybe. Or this year, 2024, so last [00:04:00] year actually. But there are also other countries around the globe that are seeing this like massive fertility crash that is very fast.

It is happening in remarkably short period of time. Like what other

Malcolm Collins: countries?

Kaiser Bauch: Well, I think Thailand is now having very low fragility rate, but, but also there, we can observe that a lot of the countries I previously talked about, for example, like, UK or Canada, or even the United States that had like, Fertility rates that were decent, that were relatively close to two children per women, are now going even deeper.

Also a lot of countries in Eastern Europe are seeing their fertility rates crash very close to like one child per woman. For example, countries in the Baltic, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, they had fertility rates that were relatively reasonable. Five or six, seven years ago. And now they all crashed down close to one child per woman.

I think that probably the most [00:05:00] logical explanation to me is that new generation of young people is growing up and they are they are. Comprising a larger and larger proportion of childbearing cohorts in these countries. And I think these younger generations are, like, really negatively influenced by the digitalization of their lives.

You know

Malcolm Collins: I was going to say, I think one thing that people are underestimating, especially for this post COVID generation, when they're like, how is this happening all over the world at once is how unified the culture that the internet generation consumes is while there might be regional colors. The movies that a young person in Estonia is watching these days is going to be the same movies that a young person in the U S is watching.

Was maybe a 20 percent difference. Same with rural Guatemala. Same was pretty much anywhere in the world. And I think that we have [00:06:00] overestimated how much cultural uniqueness there is.

Kaiser Bauch: I completely

agree with you on this and tell me more. Maybe, maybe more so than the movies even, it's things like Tinder or like the way young people are now getting or not getting into relationships to be more precise.

It's pretty spread all over the world and I think like just the general The lack of social relations or the digitalization of social relations is, in my opinion, probably the most influential part of the equation when we are talking about this specific period of the last, like, maybe decade or six, five, six, seven years in which we seen this really like big fertility declines, I would say digitalization is probably the biggest part of, of this.

What

Malcolm Collins: do you think? think about this theory around cell phones. We covered it recently. I was really surprised. It sort of came out of nowhere for me. And the theory goes like this that cell phones are basically everywhere now and cell phones are more fun [00:07:00] than having sex or kids or socializing with people.

And the way the theory was presented that I heard it is, you know, when I was a kid, you had like snake on your cell phone, like very simple games. And so like, if a friend says like, come over to my place. You know, there was nothing better to do, really. You could watch what was on TV, like pre scheduled programming, or play Snake on your cell phone, right?

But now, you can watch and engage in literally any environment or game you want to or any sort of social interaction you want to, so why have in person interactions anymore? Do you, do you buy into this theory?

Kaiser Bauch: Oh, well, of course. This is just overstimulation, I would say. It is like, I mean, a young guy Growing up today, the amount of content or the amount of fun or the amount of games or pornography, whatever is so vast, it's basically never ending.

It's infinite. So you can basically spend your whole like couple of years growing up in your room and you are ba you are able to like [00:08:00] experience things that would be unthinkable like two decades ago. It's true on the other hand. I don't know if I could say it's more fun. It probably is in some, like, superficial manner, but it's not fulfilling.

Like, people are not happy with this reality. They are not. So, I would say, yeah, this is, like, basically some form of maybe, like, dopamine addiction or overstimulation, but I don't think it is, like, leading to people. So you don't, you don't think

Malcolm Collins: it's a marketplace issue. You think it's an over saturation issue?

Well, yeah. So I'll, I'll describe the different scenarios because I actually think it's a marketplace issue more than an over saturation issue. The marketplace issue is saying, if I am deciding between two activities I now have, there's this whole new category of activities I might choose over wanting to be a parent or going on a date or having sex.

And the thing that really gets me about this theory, and I think that you, you highlighted this for me when you were just talking is that [00:09:00] people have been like, oh, people aren't having kids because of, like, porn, but it's like, I know more guys who turn down sex or a date because of a good video game than because of porn.

Kaiser Bauch: Well, yeah, yeah, that might be the case, sure. I mean, I would, I would say The analogy I was thinking about in this regard, sometimes ago was that you know, the digital technology, internet, all of its smartphones, it's, it's all connected. And it was sort of like, it was just the, the younger generation was thrown into it without any sort of like form of meaningful supervision, because.

Basically, when I was growing up my parents were not really able to control what I do online because they just didn't have the skill. Like my father was really lucky when he was able to put an attachment to an email. So he, he wasn't like able to control what I'm doing online. And I think this is maybe similar to like when there was an industrial revolution and one generation of [00:10:00] kids was just getting a really bad, like health impacts from all the, all the chimneys and all the factories.

And then people said like, okay, this is not really good. We have to somehow make this work differently. So the negative impacts are not so big and then it was sort of regulated. And I think we might be in the process where. The younger generation was sort of thrown into this, and we, it just needs to somehow, you know, figure out how to live in this completely changed technological environment.

And I, I mean, In this regard, I'm pretty much on board with stuff that, like, maybe Jonathan Heights said about this if you are familiar with him, that, like, I really think the, like, the approach towards kids and their, their, like, approach to technologies should be somehow regulated. I don't know if you agree, but, like, I would say, I would say it shouldn't be, like, completely, completely Unregulated how it is now,

Malcolm Collins: I think it's it's very hard to do.

Yeah, I think

Kaiser Bauch: [00:11:00] yeah

Malcolm Collins: anything I mean the problem with kids is they're better with technology than we are.

Kaiser Bauch: Yeah

Malcolm Collins: And one of the the jokes in the u. s Is a I don't know if you know this but someone I didn't know this until recently about 50 percent of the states in the u. s like effectively have a porn ban really?

Yeah, like requiring like an ID if you're accessing Pornhub and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, like that's But, but as people point out, it's really only a ban for people too old to know how to use a VPN. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. And, and that's the thing about any sort of technology ban is it is inversely effective.

Against the population that needs it the most. Oh,

Kaiser Bauch: I completely agree. And when I talk about regulation, I do not necessarily mean like administrative or legal regulation. I mean, mostly like within families, I would say like, so maybe I didn't like say, say right. I think like parents really need to try to to try to somehow regulate what their kids are doing out there, even if it's not easy, but I would actually say that the difference between.

What between the [00:12:00] approach to technology of different generations is now a bit smaller. So I use the example with my father, so I'm, I'm basically in my late, late 20s. And when I was growing up, like maybe 2005, 2007, 2010, like the, the gap between my digital skills and my, let's say parents, digital skills was really, really big.

I

would say now I'm also a parent now. I have a. I have a kid unless there is some like really, which is possible, really, really new, massive like jump in the technological innovation, I would say that the gap will be smaller for the parents today with their kids.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so I want to ask you about some specific countries here.

What are your thoughts on the North Korean dropping fertility rate? You think that's just due to like, like, like scarcity of food or something else?

Kaiser Bauch: Oh, to be completely honest. Do we even know the data is like correct? Because I'm going to, I'm going to be honest with you. I [00:13:00] haven't really looked deep into North Korea because my approach was like, I don't really know what is going on in that country in great detail.

I do not have the information. I, I'm not really sure because you know. Do you know, maybe you have, what are your, what are your thoughts

Malcolm Collins: on Israel then the total opposite

Kaiser Bauch: Israel is my favorite, like Israel I'm going to get some heat for this comment, but like for a person that is demographic buff, like Israel is incredibly interesting because they are able to walk the fine line between like group cohesion.

Enough to have like big families and strong culture norms and enough individualism to have like, you know, modern, prosperous, innovative economy. And I would say that with Israel, it is like all about the common purpose of the people. They just. know why they should have kids. They do not need to be persuaded.

You know, you [00:14:00] need to have kids because it's good. It's, you know, it gives you stability. It is what gives life its meaning. People are like, okay, that is all sort of like individual, these values. But I would say in Israel, they have really strong feeling of like, okay. We have our country. We have fought to have it really hard.

We are still fighting to have it, and we do not want to lose it. And we cannot afford to start massively aging and dying out because we are actually standing against, like, this huge numerical mess around us that is demographically much stronger than we are. So I would say that in Israel it is really about this, like, common sense of purpose, of national purpose.

I've

Simone Collins: also, the last time we spoke when we accidentally forgot to record our conversation, you were, had just finished making your Kazakhstan video and it hadn't gone live yet. And it's really interesting for a couple of reasons because They are like this. I mean, okay, their fertility is not amazing, but they're doing pretty well and especially the number of [00:15:00] people in Kazakhstan who are having a lot of kids like four plus kids is notable.

I mean, it's, it's a much bigger proportion of the population than in other areas. And you pointed out. That there's more of a core cultural norm around having a lot of kids. And there's also more of a cultural norm of still living with your parents and having kids and being married while in your twenties and while going to university.

So here's an example of a place where people are. Having kids while also getting higher levels of educational attainment, while experiencing an increase in national wealth, while also not being incredibly, like, religiously conservative, similar to Israel, right? Like, Israel has a lot of religion. But it's not crazy about it.

Like it's, and it's not an Ariya Babu wrote a great substack piece drawing a correlation between countries that were sort of overall very religiously conservative and those which weren't, but had very religiously conservative [00:16:00] pockets and found that basically if you lived in a country that was uniformly very religious, religiously conservative, birth rates on average were lower perhaps because there's.

This feeling like it's imposed on you or like you don't have a choice or like the standards are so high. How could you possibly keep up with it? Whereas maybe when there isn't this, this sort of oppressive religious overtone in a country, there's more enthusiasm about having kids. I don't know, like we haven't gotten to the bottom of that, but it seemed to be something that showed up also in Kazakhstan.

Where, yes, 10% of the population would support the idea of Sharia law, but that's quite low compared to countries where Sharia law is actually,

Kaiser Bauch: Imposed.

Simone Collins: Yeah, sure, sure. So I think that, that, that's a really interesting example and I'm much more interested in, not in like what, what do we take away? Or like

Malcolm Collins: creating it there.

Kaiser Bauch: Sorry, once again, please.

Malcolm Collins: What's creating the high fertility rate or the resistance to fertility? Col collapse was in Kazakhstan.

Kaiser Bauch: Well, so the Kazakhstan case is pretty interesting because [00:17:00] usually when I do these deep dives and I'm trying to find out why some country has like notably lower or notably higher fertility than others, I usually managed to, like, figure out this, like, one specific thing that I didn't think is the reason, but with us, for example, with Israel, as we were talking about before, but with Kazakhstan, to be honest, I haven't really found like some magical ingredients that would explain it.

My takeaway was that it just works there. I'm not sure what specifically is behind it, but. As Simone said, the country is religious, but it is not overtly religious. It is a Muslim country, predominantly, but there is also an ethnically Russian minority, which is orthodox, and there are no big, like, problems there.

Relatively few people support things like Sharia law. People, the population is very much very much educated. So there is, for example, very, very low proportion of women that would [00:18:00] be illiterate, basically close to zero. That is maybe like an inheritance from the Soviet times because like the Soviet system, however bad it was, it was pretty keen on education.

So, the countries also have relatively high urbanization rate, not too much but relatively high. The GDP per capita, it's not like Israel, it's poor country. But it is not like impoverished in any way. There are richer, richer countries that have much lower fertility. So it just works. You know, I was talking to some people from Kazakhstan and one of them told me that due to the sort of like, tragic history of Kazakhstan in the 20th century, there was a big famine in the 1930s where a lot of Kazakh people died.

And population of Kazakhs actually decreased quite a bit. And he told me that there is a bit of like pronatalist sentiment connected to this, that they want to like replenish the population, which came close to being like drastically reduced. Oh, that's interesting. [00:19:00] Similar to Israel. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's

Simone Collins: similar to other studies that have shown that like.

On the same island that has been hit by a tsunami, small sub regions that had more casualties actually had higher fertilities after that than those that had lower casualties. Like there's, there's a reaction to tragedy.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but I don't think that that's what this is, Simone. This is a totally different No, no.

Simone Collins: Well, but what I think, well, like, I don't know, listening, listening again to that YouTube video which is just so good. And again, everyone's got to check out the YouTube channel. It, there are such good deep dives on the full history, the cultural, the economic, the political incentives and disincentives for fertility was just that, like, it's kind of a societal default that's societally supported on all ends.

And it's specifically the way that families form and function provides a default path in life, where, of course, you're going to have kids at that stage. Like, of course, in your twenties, while you're living with your parents and going to university. Like, it makes sense to start your family and that's what makes the biggest difference.

I think that the big, the big driver behind these sudden drops in [00:20:00] fertility is fewer mistake babies had by teens, which is good. Like we don't want a lot of unprepared people who don't want children to be having children. So like, I'm not necessarily against those jobs, but we're seeing on the flip side with the, with these declines is people delaying and delaying and delaying having kids because they.

This is a

Malcolm Collins: totally different phenomenon, Simone. So you're, you're connecting now a totally new phenomenon, a third unrelated. So the phenomenon you're talking about is different from the phenomenon of tragedy, meaning to increase fertility rate. Like I'm talking about a separate one. I'm

Simone Collins: talking, this is independent of the tragedy thing.

Malcolm Collins: And then there's the separate phenomenon, which is at place within Kazakhstan and Israel, which is a cultural identity of anxiety around disappearing. Or being erased by enemy factions which does seem to be able to persistently increase fertility within a region. And is something I would actually encourage most families to adopt.

This idea that your family is different, or your small cultural [00:21:00] group is different.

Simone Collins: By the way, is also improved by diversity. So if you combine, there's like a bunch of tiny factors here that I think, if you combine the fact that there was tragedy in the past, also that there's some, there's more diversity, relatively speaking in Kazakhstan.

Malcolm Collins: But diversity is like, if you're a Kazakhstani, you go out and you see the Russian immigrants that were brought to replace you every day

Kaiser Bauch: and

Malcolm Collins: their fertility rates are super low. Anyway, we'll let Kaiser talk.

Kaiser Bauch: Oh yeah. Well, so, I agree that the high fertility in Kazakhstan is specific for the ethnic Kazakhs.

There are also other groups like Tajiks and other, like local central Asian groups. Their fertility is also high, but the fertility of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan is relatively low, even though it is higher than in Russia, which is just like a trivia, but it's, it's still sub replacement firmly, but yeah.

But then again, it is always a bit of alchemy because you can definitely find groups around the globe that underwent genocide or like these comparable events [00:22:00] and their fertility is not boosted by it. So, I mean, you can maybe, like, you can argue maybe, for example, Native Americans could be terrible

Malcolm Collins: fertility rates.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kaiser Bauch: So, so it's always like, and now at this point, I'm not really able to come up with some other group like that, but I'm sure there are groups that underwent, like, big big genocide, like, I remember you said,

Malcolm Collins: you know, the difference between the Native American fertility rates within Latin American populations, like the Mesoamerican people.

Kaiser Bauch: Well,

Malcolm Collins: Do

Kaiser Bauch: you mean between different countries?

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. I mean like, so in, in, in the United States, you know, you've got Native American populations but they're generally pretty small. In, in Latin America, there's some really big Native American populations, like the descendants of like the Mayans and the, and the Aztecs and the Inca and stuff like that.

I was, I like in my head, I'm wondering, did they have a differentiated fertility rate from the settler population of like Spanish types? Okay.

Kaiser Bauch: So I was not looking specifically [00:23:00] into this phenomenon, however, I would be willing to bet that a lot of these communities will have. Higher fertility than like the settler populations, but then again, it is a question.

I would say a lot of it would be probably explained by like socioeconomic factors. I would guess that these Native Americans in Latin America will be much more rural, will have much less income, or we'd be like on a lower scale of the socioeconomic development in comparison with the settler population, which will be probably more urban.

And let's say in the higher stratas of the socioeconomic ladder. So I would say here the differences would be probably explainable by just socioeconomic factors.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, but in the United States Native Americans are more rural and more poor, and they have a worse fertility rate than the white population.

Well, yeah, that is

Kaiser Bauch: true. That is true. I mean, I guess you always have to approach any group, like, on an individual basis. I would say, personally, in North [00:24:00] America, they're among, I like, I'm no expert on native Americans, but I always get the sense that they really like the lost their world. And they, they are sort of like surviving in a world that is not really theirs.

I don't know if it is, but there is like, it always seemed to me that way. While in Latin America, it seems to me that it just all merged into this new entity, which is like equally. Native and European and, you know, a bit of like African slavery and history in there, but it's like, I was doing a video on Brazil and Brazil is really like what, what makes Brazil, for example, very different from like, North America.

Is that the population just mixed from the very beginning and it's like most Brazilians are just like this sort of like brown brownish population that is just that that have parts of ancestry from all the main free ancestry groups, which is like a native native. populations to Latin America, European, mostly [00:25:00] Portuguese settlers, and then slaves brought from Africa.

So it's like, it was just a very different story demographically from the North America, where the groups didn't really intermingle, demographically

Malcolm Collins: speaking. What's fertility rate like when contrasted with other countries? Once again, sorry? How is Brazil's fertility rate doing?

Kaiser Bauch: Oh bad. It's not good.

Brazil is one of the countries that I could mention when you were asking in the beginning, which underwent pretty, pretty massive fertility decline in the past, like, half a decade, two decades. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So I want to get your thoughts on my religion theory that I've had for this. Because you you'd likely be able to, like, get a get a feel of this.

So I sort of have this theory that there is an overlay. Obviously, there's all the main things that affect fertility, like urbanization, wealth, etc. But then when you take all of those into account, my argument is that various religious overlays seem to have an additional effect of fertility either up or [00:26:00] down.

With the most negative ones. Being East Asian religious systems, specifically, you know, like Shinto, Buddhism, Taoism, all of that, that category of stuff. But the ones that are more surprising to people is where the Judeo Christian ones fall. The, the ones that are the most protective of fertility rates is Judaism at the very top.

Then under Judaism Protestant Christianity. Then under Protestant Christianity which often I think surprises people are the, the Muslim groups. Then under the Muslim groups are Catholicism and Eastern, Eastern Orthodoxy. Which seem to have like unusually low fertility rates.

Mm

Kaiser Bauch: hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Kaiser Bauch: yeah, yeah. So, well, what I found, find very interesting about comparisons of different religions is basically that broadly speaking. Abrahamic religions, all of them, like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, there exists within these religions, there exists a correlation between [00:27:00] religiosity and fertility.

So highly, highly religious people in Abrahamic religions do have more children, do have larger families. In comparison to that, for example, people from Buddhist countries or Hinduist countries, so like India, this correlation is non existent there. It's just Isn't there. So being a highly devoted Buddhists.

Or highly devoted Hindu is not connected to having larger family, which is interesting. And when you think about like, I'm not once again, I'm not like expert on Hinduism or Buddhism, but what I was, when I was researching it it seems like. So the idea of sort of escaping the suffering of life to escaping the never ending cycle of like Reincarnations and all the stuff connected to it is like the the highest goal of these religions.

Yeah, it's inherently

Simone Collins: antinatalist It's about like Species wide destruction.

Kaiser Bauch: Sort of. There is an element that is [00:28:00] like inherently antinatalist in these religions. I agree. So this is what I find very interesting. And like, if you, we would compare, like, different Abrahamic religions that, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mostly, I mostly would agree with, or like, that is probably supported by data, what you, what you stated about the different religious group.

And I would say Why Catholicism is like lower than Protestantism. My take would probably be that Catholicism is like really universal. While the Protestantism is really good at, like, maintaining this, like, smaller, more narrow, like, sect based attitude. Where you have, like, a lot of Yeah, mix and let us in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I have Actually,

Malcolm Collins: I know, I love this. I hadn't thought about this before. I'm gonna reframe this a little bit. Most in the same way that Jews are like, we are Jews, we are different and we are better. A lot of protestant groups feel that way about themselves. Whereas a lot of catholic groups intrinsically are like, and we are going to convert [00:29:00] you because there's no difference between us and you and you'll be catholics one day.

Eventually.

Kaiser Bauch: Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I agree with this. But then again, Islam is also very universalist. It is similar maybe to Catholicism in this way, and there seems to be a higher fertility. On the other hand, a lot of the Muslim world is relatively socio economically backward. I don't want to, like, you know, offend anyone, but broadly Check out our video,

Malcolm Collins: Why Are Muslims So Poor?

Kaiser Bauch: Yeah, I will. I will

Malcolm Collins: watch it. We have a video on this. Go continue.

Kaiser Bauch: Broadly speaking, it is true that the Muslim world is is less wealthy, and this obviously interplays with fertility. And when you look at some countries that managed to reach some, like, you know, level of wealth, level of development, level of urbanization, level of education, all these, like, classic points, for example, Turkey, Iran, some other countries the fertility is sub replacement.

So I, I do not think Islam will be like inherently able to resist this. It was just later to arrive into like modernity defined by some of these [00:30:00] traits, like, you know, urbanization, education, economic prosperity, and so on. That makes sense. Okay.

Simone Collins: What I'm really curious is, I mean, now that you've just done so many deep dives on different regions and cultures if you could.

Design, like some, let's say someone said, here's a bunch of territory. You can turn this into a city state. You can choose who is allowed to emigrate to your zone. And your job is to create a thriving, but also like high fertility country. Like we, we need this to be at least like the one bastion of humanity that grows in the future.

Yeah. Other than Israel. How would you design this city state? What kind of culture would you try to perpetuate? What economic policies would you implement? Are there even, like, industries that you would promote or try to leave out of your city state? What would you do?

Kaiser Bauch: Okay, well, that is a really interesting question.

I have to admit I haven't talked about this from this sort of, like, playing the god [00:31:00] perspective. How would I do it? I would say what would be really important is to let people have autonomy in their, like, in their family lives, in their community lives. Because I would say What connects a lot of these high fertility groups is that they have, like, a very considerable amount of autonomy within the societies they function in.

And I think this is, like, really important. So, basically, if you have groups that are intrinsically programmed or, like, culturally predisposed to have high fertility, just let them do their thing and do not mingle with, like, with their, with their cultural beliefs. And then, like, I mean, What specific sorts of people I would like invite to these hypothetical states?

I mean, there are, that would just be a matter of maybe my culture preference, you know? So, like, probably my culture preference would be closer to, like, some Christian groups, maybe some protestant Christian groups, than to, for example, [00:32:00] Haredi Jews or Some, you know, high religious Muslims, but I don't think that is a matter of like, what is better for fertility.

That would be just a matter of maybe my culture preference, which is like defined by my, you know, where I'm from and stuff. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: We, and you could always cheese the numbers just by, you know, like inviting Jews. So I do like the idea of like, okay, you're starting from scratch here. Very. Interesting. How would you, would you go for like a millet system?

This is what I've promoted before, but do you know what I mean? When I talk about a millet system?

Kaiser Bauch: Oh, I'm not sure now. Okay. So a

Malcolm Collins: millet system was used in the in the Ottoman empire and they basically had a different court system and laws for every sub religious community. And the tax base was collected by the individual religious communities and then distributed through them.

Cool.

Kaiser Bauch: Well, I mean, Maybe, maybe. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm like, I think this [00:33:00] is a very like complex issue and you know, the millet system as far as I know had like, it definitely, the Ottoman Empire is well known for the different like ethnic and religious groups within it having quite a lot of autonomy and like a certain degree of self, self rule.

But then again, I mean, the It came to like, it was then, but it was not like able to stand up in the competition against other big states or empires that were like months more centralized and have like more, more, you know, more unified bureaucracy and they were then more efficient and stuff, but we are comparing like different time periods and what was maybe functioning then in some time.

Regards would not be functioning now and vice versa. So like, I don't know, to be honest, I don't know,

Malcolm Collins: you know, this is, this is the, I think an interesting thing that we civilizationally don't talk about right now, but the country that's really bucking the trends here and the countries that we see [00:34:00] bucking the trends you know, if you, if you look at like Kazakhstan or you look at Israel are countries where you have a, A native population or a population that sees themselves as native, like the, the, the Kazakhstan or Israel and a bit of an ethno state, but an ethno state that allows for a large degree of diversity.

So in Israel, for example there is an understanding that this is the Jewish state. For the Jewish people, but you know, we have a huge chunk of the population that's Muslim and Christian and everything like that. And I wonder if this system for running things could be the most effective.

Kaiser Bauch: Well, it might.

I mean, it's definitely true. And there, there is also research to support this from Paul Moreland, demographer, that says that basically like ethnic competition between ethnic groups can definitely lead to higher fertility. It was the case in Israel and like in the, between Israeli, [00:35:00] Israelis. and Palestinian Arabs.

There was this like sense of ethnic competition. They were trying to outbreed each other. And there was a time I think, I think this was in the 1980s and maybe 1990s where like women in the Gaza Strip were having like eight or nine children per woman, which was even back then. It was like out of sync with the standards in the Muslim world on the same level of socioeconomic development back then.

And the research proved that it was like very much maintained also by the sense of ethnic rivalry between the groups. Another example of this was Northern Ireland, where basically the Catholics in Northern Ireland, they were a minority and they are now basically It's 50 50 and they probably have like a majority among the younger generations.

It now stopped because the conflict fortunately is like it's not, it's not really like going on anymore. But back then in like the 1970s, 80s when there was really like a pretty big ethnic conflict in the, in Northern Ireland and all the bomb attacks and everything and [00:36:00] IRA. There was also a sense of like higher fertility among Catholics in Northern Ireland and their mission was to like outbreed the Protestants.

So there are cases where this happens. Also another case that was from Sri Lanka where I don't remember exactly. Yeah, there was also a bit of like ethnic competition going on in Sri Lanka between the two groups. One was Tamils, and I don't remember the other, unfortunately, sorry. But yeah, so this is documented that like ethnic conflict or like sense of ethnic danger can definitely lead to higher fertility.

But then again, there are other cases where it just doesn't happen. It's always a bit of alchemy. Like, it is one of the ingredients, but there is always some something you,

Malcolm Collins: like,

Kaiser Bauch: it's not universally applicable.

Malcolm Collins: We need a race war, is what you're saying.

Kaiser Bauch: A

Malcolm Collins: race war, I'll put on the South Park scene here. So, okay, so I was gonna ask you, what are your thoughts on the, because one of the statistics that always shocked [00:37:00] me was that like 50 percent of European countries going into, I think it was World War I, were below repopulation rate.

What are your thoughts on that previous sort of European fertility collapse before the baby boom?

Kaiser Bauch: Okay, so I don't think it was World War One. I think this is World War Two, I would say. World War Two, okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this was basically between the wars. And I think a lot of it was connected to the great the great crisis, the economic, the great economic crisis of the 1930s.

So, the fertility rate went under two children per woman in the, in the times of the Great Depression. Yeah, that was the word I was looking for, Great Depression. And then after World War it went up again. I mean, I would say a lot of the countries in Western Europe, like countries that were really like the most developed countries in the world back then, Germany, UK, France, I would say there were more or less culturally ready for low fertility back then.

And in the environment between the wars, which was kind of like, how to say, like there was the great [00:38:00] depression, which was big economic crisis. There was sort of this sense of like, you know, Weimar Germany, it was sort of like decadent, all values were questioned a lot of like, you know, a lot of free thinking people.

But I would say it was not also a lot of like. I don't know. Sorry, I got sort of tangled up in this now. But yeah. It is true, a lot of people do not know this, that there was a period of relatively low fertility under two children per woman, even back then, when a lot of people suppose it was just like high fertility all the way up, you know, 1990s or 1980s.

And then it went went went up again after the world war two in what is known as the baby boom where the generation of baby boomers were born. But yeah, I would say a lot of it was probably a lot of it could be explained by the great depression probably.

Hmm.

Or do you have some alternative explanation for that?

Malcolm Collins: No, my explanation is it was just a continued [00:39:00] trend, and that it had been going down for a really long time, and that the illusion of the baby boom mostly came from better fertility technology, and that fertility has mostly just been a line going downwards in Europe since the 1800s. Okay,

Kaiser Bauch: so, and what do you mean by the better fertility technologies of the baby boom?

Malcolm Collins: The, the number of babies that died early decreased dramatically, and the, that explains almost all of the rise in births.

Kaiser Bauch: Well, okay, now I don't hear you. Okay, yeah, oh, now I hear you. Yeah, I cut out there.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, basically, what we argue is there wasn't a rise in births, there was a rise in surviving babies.

Okay. Okay.

Kaiser Bauch: Well, I mean, I would have to look at the data more thoroughly in regards to this, but I would say that like the fertility rate data would be probably like cleared of this phenomenon. No, I don't know if I'm mistaken, but I would say like the fertility rate is sort of like, [00:40:00] I think this would be taken into account, right?

Like, they are measuring the children per woman. Yeah. So I, I, I'm not, I'm not sure if, if, I, I think there was a genuine spike in, in fertility rates after World War II. But it was just, you know, it was clearly limited in time. It just ended at some point and it never came back. Well,

Malcolm Collins: I think 1 thing about the end of World War 2 that people forget if we're looking at, like, why is Israel's fertility rate high?

And you have this, like, I'm proud to be a Jew, like, this level of jingoism, everything like that. And you look at the types of media, whether it was cartoons or movies, or media being produced, comic books being produced in the U. S. At the end of World War Two, you had a really high degree of jingoism that made you proud to want more Americans.

And that was probably a big part of it as well. Oh, well, sure, sure.

Kaiser Bauch: I agree with that. There was just this sort of like cultural, cultural upswing. And it was, it happened not only in the United States. States. It was the baby boom was like [00:41:00] strongest in the United States. I think in the United States, there were a couple of years where the fertility rate was over three children per woman in the 1950s and maybe, maybe 1960s, but it happened also in European countries.

You had baby boom was, I think in like France, in UK, in Germany, in Germany, it was weaker, but yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I remember it didn't happen in the countries that didn't participate in the war. Like Ireland didn't get one. If I remember.

Kaiser Bauch: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, sure, I would say that there was probably a sense of, like, relief and sense of, like, now we can go back to, like, normal life so, like, we are enjoying the ability to live normal life and to have families because we've been through this, like, traumatic experience and maybe even a sense, maybe, like, in One would say there might be even a sense of like, okay, let's not think about what happened and let's just, you know, let's have family, let's go to work and let's just live normal life.

But then, like, it all, it all ended, like, in what is also just, sorry, [00:42:00] give me a minute. I need to put my phone in the charger. I just need to put out my charger. Just give me 10 seconds.

Simone Collins: And Malcolm, I think your mic came unplugged. I think it's just your laptop's mic picking up your audio now. So just make sure it's

Malcolm Collins: catching that.

Simone Collins: The sooner we adjust by the better.

Kaiser Bauch: Okay, yeah, all set now. And there is also this really interesting statistic about like how in most countries, the precise year in which the fertility rate went under two and basically never recovered was 1973, which was the year of like the global oil shock crisis, and when like this stagflation period of the 1970s started, which also shows that like, while I mean, one of the big questions that people often ask is, it is culture or it's economy?

And more and more I think about this, I kind of came to a conclusion that this line is sort of [00:43:00] artificial because like, I, those things are so interconnected, like. Economy influences culture and culture influences economics and it's basically like this big bundle of, of like human behavior, which is mutually influencing each other.

So I don't, I don't know if like one can really separate it completely, but without a doubt, as without a doubt, as with the example of the Great Depression of the 1930s. And with this example of, like, this fertility drop in the 1973 economic factors undoubtedly play a big role. Like, they influence, they influence things.

They usually lead to, like, Spikes and or increases that could be temporary, but the thing about the 1973 decrease was that it became like permanent. It never, it never went up again, like basic, like after the World War Two. Yeah,

Simone Collins: I also, though, I feel like there's this turning point that's not discussed a whole lot.

It's really difficult to track that took [00:44:00] place starting around the 1960s, where media became more globally homogenous and more broadly consumed. so much. And also where media set very different standards in terms of aspirations in life that were more oriented around Like sort of aspirations that people would want as teenagers like travel glamour wealth career Instead of family life, and I don't know like at that same time.

I also see this beginning of a tipping point Which just gets logarithmically worse over time, that just orients people away from immediately wanting to start a family and instead thinking a family is something that you start once you achieve all of these other All these other factors, you know, it's like established career, wealth, own a home all these things, which now, I mean, also, yes, economics plays a big role is becoming increasingly difficult for people to achieve.

But still, I, I like culture and what, what is marked as your default path in life plus is [00:45:00] desirable, has really, I think played a huge role. That's, that you still cover in, in, in your content too. I just wanna emphasize it.

Kaiser Bauch: Oh, un undeniably. Without any doubt, like the aspirations of people in life and like what you, what people perceive as an ideal life changed incredibly.

And it makes a huge difference. I completely, I completely agree with that. And probably more so with women than with men. I would say that like the change in how women perceive their lives and how women like see their ideal path in life is, is probably more important here because in the end, like women Are the ones who have the biggest, like, biggest biggest worth and biggest role to play in childbearing.

So, they're like And women had the

Simone Collins: most violent shift in life aspirations. Definitely. Because men already, like, wanted to establish their careers and build Oh, I'm sorry. That didn't mean necessarily that they wanted to Ah! Sorry, she's grabbing all the things. Like, forego family. Whereas for women [00:46:00] There is a, there are trade offs and it has become exceedingly difficult without copious governmental or societal or family support.

To, to make those things happen at the same time. So I, I mean, I agree with you, like, I'm not, I'm not normally the person that says that feminism plays a role, but certainly like this, this expectation that women should put their careers and wealth building first before starting a family plays a huge role in the downfall of any nation.

Kaiser Bauch: Oh, most definitely. But then again, I also, I don't know if this is true, but it is sort of interesting hypothesis I read somewhere. That basically this whole, like, feminist movement or this whole notion that women should, like, work, should build careers, should be very successful, should basically, to a certain degree, emulate men in, in their, like, goals and standards, is basically a form of cope with the fact that men today is not able to provide for the whole family with one salary.

So basically, it was like, okay, we [00:47:00] can't have the sort of life we used to have. So we're just going to rationalize why what we have now is better, if you understand what I mean.

Malcolm Collins: So, I don't know. Very interesting way to look at it.

Kaiser Bauch: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not sure where I heard this, but it caught my attention.

Malcolm Collins: My question is, how do we force women to be obedient?

We get it, we get it. We have so many articles about us that are so angry because they're all based on like our title cards and they don't watch the episodes.

Kaiser Bauch: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And stuff like that, it's like there was a big article in a salon today that's like, that's screeching. Anyway, it was, it was great to have you on.

Any final thoughts?

Kaiser Bauch: I mean, as your question went, how do we make women more obedient? I would say the answer to this is, well, first of all, I don't really know, but I would say they need to want to be obedient. Like, you can very often find people Most [00:48:00] usually like young guys that are sort of frustrated and disaffection with their situation that really wants to go for some sort of like forced and brutal and like top down approach.

We should like, we just like put a stick is their

Malcolm Collins: answer.

Kaiser Bauch: Let's put into constitution that women needs to like get married, but it won't work. Like it won't work. You don't want to force people to have families because that would be, that will be just hell for everyone involved and for the children first and foremost.

So we need to come up with cultural norms that would incentivize people to, and women to like, want to function in this sort of environment.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You know, I totally agreed. A really good one that we used to have was this thing called marriage. Yeah,

Kaiser Bauch: but

Malcolm Collins: we kind of broke that.

Kaiser Bauch: It is true. It is true. Yeah.

Yeah. But then again, it's question once again, if the, what is more important here, if it is the cultural aspect or the economic aspect, well, since women [00:49:00] massively entered the workforce and start earning wages and start working, they just have much lower economic incentive to get married because they just can provide for themselves.

So once again, it is this big, like. Hurricane and whirlwind of influences, some cultural, some economical, and we just have to make some sense of it, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it was great to have you on. Go, like, if you haven't checked out his channel, you really should if you like our, our, our stuff on demographics.

He goes into it much more academically in a lot more detail. If people are like, Malcolm, Simone, I want your ideas, but in a lot more detail. That's why we wrote books. Okay. You're on YouTube. You're here for the slot. Yeah. You ain't going to find it on YouTube.

Simone Collins: No, but Kaiser bath on YouTube is like so good, really well researched and not just regions, like, one of your recent videos, I think for like a month ago.

was sort of on the rise of incels internationally and you sort of go into this and it's just beautifully done. So for what you do. [00:50:00] Everyone definitely check out the channel. And yeah, please keep it up and hopefully we'll, we'll be having more conversations soon.

Kaiser Bauch: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure and it was an honor.

Thank you. Great.

Malcolm Collins: Have a good time. I'm going to end recording now. I know that at that time we had forgotten to hit record. Well,

Simone Collins: now we're recording, so we're safe.

Kaiser Bauch: That I do not remember seeing the recording bar in there from last time, so maybe this is the case.

Malcolm Collins: Sorry.

Kaiser Bauch: No, it's

Malcolm Collins: all your fault. It's all my fault. I have been It was meant to be.

Kaiser Bauch: It was meant to be.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah, honestly, I'm very excited to You've grown a lot since then, right?

I don't remember you being, like This big.

Simone Collins: Oh, you put out some amazing content too. Like I was re

Malcolm Collins: refreshing myself. It gets like 56, 000 per video now.

Kaiser Bauch: Wow, you do. Oh, well, I, I do not really remember exactly how big the channel was when we were recording the last video. I'm not sure when it was, but sure, yeah, I guess it, it, it has grown a bit since then, which is great.

I'm very [00:51:00] grateful for it. Well

Simone Collins: done. Yes.

Kaiser Bauch: very much, but I think your channel is also growing as well, from what I saw. It grew

Malcolm Collins: a ton in the election cycle, and now it's gone down since then. And how are things in

Kaiser Bauch: Trump's America? Oh my gosh, amazing! Oh yeah! Too much winning! Too much winning! A lot of envy from the European side of the pond.

It's going to

Malcolm Collins: spread, it's going to spread. So we've got a what, what are the things that, well, also we're, we're now learning. I was just sending Simone that apparently Gamergate was funded by USAID, that organization. It was recently shut down and I was like, Oh, so like this whole culture war was funded by the U S government.

That's fantastic.

Kaiser Bauch: Yeah, but incredible amount of stuff in Europe was funded by this government agency. Really? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of like, left wing NGOs and sort of like, media organization and new sites. It now is like, it [00:52:00] seems a lot of it was just funded by U S taxpayer money, which is like really interesting.

Simone Collins: That is, well, yeah, I guess not surprising. So what, what we So, two

Malcolm Collins: things I want to ask before we go further with this. One thing is, is we do a lot of press these days. Do you want us to refer to you when people want to talk to, like, pronatalists or fertility people?

Kaiser Bauch: Yeah, why not? No issue with that.

Sure. You can. Perfect. Then

Simone Collins: there's someone I'll start with an introduction to a reporter at The Economist. And we'll just go forward from there, if that's alright with you. Yeah, sure, sure. Introduce more people to your work. The more the merrier. No problem.

Kaiser Bauch: I would be very grateful for that.

Malcolm Collins: Awesome.

So, do you have an idea or thesis around what you wanted to focus this episode on? Like existing statistics you wanted to focus on? Or did you want to focus on more broader theory that you've been able to pull from all of the statistics you've been looking at around solutions or what drives this?

Kaiser Bauch: [00:53:00] I think I would probably keep it more broad, if it's alright with you.

Okay, then that's

Malcolm Collins: what we're gonna do. Do you Oh, Simone, can I just go in right now? Do it.

Kaiser Bauch: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, how do I pronounce your channel's name? Kaiser Botsch? Kaiser Bauch. The pronunciation

Kaiser Bauch: is It's a German word, so it's Bauch.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. It looks like a beer. I think a beer. His channel's name looks like a beer logo to me and sounds like a beer.

It's a wheat beer. I could even imagine what it

Kaiser Bauch: tastes like. That is good. I never thought of this, but when you say it. That's something to be proud of, I would say. Yeah, you need to

Simone Collins: make merch. You have to have, like, your own, like, small batch beer brand, you know. It's drunk enough to make babies.

Kaiser Bauch: I should do that.

Being from the Okay, I'll start off. I'll start off.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

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