China's Real Population Numbers are Shocking (Demographic Collapse is More Advanced than we Thought)

In today's episode, we delve into recent revelations about China's drastically inflated population numbers, which have significant implications for global demographics and economic stability. Our discussion covers the impact of China's misrepresented fertility rates on stock markets and global population estimates, drawing comparisons with similar issues in Nigeria. We explore independent research on China's population, including discrepancies in birth statistics, Lunar New Year travel patterns, and salt consumption analysis. Additionally, we theorize potential dystopian solutions for China's demographic challenges and discuss parallels with historical and current geopolitical situations. Join us as we unpack these complex issues and their broader global significance.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone! I am excited to be talking to you today. Today we are going to be talking about China and recent information that has come out through multiple angles.

that leads people to believe that China's total population, a lot of people know that, their fertility rate was lower than the official figure said it was, so they did all of this. Oh, we got it wrong. We're readjusting our population numbers. We're readjusting our fertility rate numbers. Turns out that their total population is still being represented as dramatically higher than it really is.

And this has major implications because it means that one, their entire stock market might be vastly overvalued right now, even given how fragile it is. And two for people who are thinking about global population numbers right now, they might be way lower than we think they are. And this isn't just a China problem.

I'm also mentioned a lot recently. It's a [00:01:00] Nigeria problem, which is another very populated country. A lot of people don't know, but Nigeria. Gives out oil money dollars to different provinces based on their reported Population

and

There's nobody overseeing the populations that the individual provinces are reporting So there is always a huge incentive to lie in the extreme and I mean it's africa, right?

How corrupt are these numbers going to be? So

Simone Collins: this is very similar to the blue zone scandal which came out whereby they found that All these supposedly very old people that lived in countries were not actually alive. It was their family members collecting their pensions and lying about them being alive.

And here's just another issue of incentives being misaligned. People are lying about their populations because they get more money when they say that these people are there, aren't there. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that globally speaking, we may have to do a re ledgering. That's going to have people realize that the total global population is dramatically lower than anyone thinks it is.

Especially if you're looking at UN numbers, there was a case recently where somebody sent an email to the UN saying Brazil's own [00:02:00] tabulation of their population shows it's 10 million less than yours. And the UN in response, they go, why don't you update it? And they go we don't want to alarm anyone.

I'm like, and that's over a double digit off from where their fertility population actually is. Percentage, double digit percentage off. So the UN is just lying through their teeth at this point to try to hide this.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: So it turns out after recording this, this situation was astronomically worse than anyone anticipated. And this first series of graphs I'm showing you. The red line is the actual fertility rate of these countries. The blue lines is UN repeated projections of the fertility rate of these countries was interesting year.

As you can see with some like Columbia, it never even was really attached to the real fertility rate with others like Korea every year. They just expect it to stop going down anymore. Which is just well negligence. They're lying to people. If we go to this next set here, you can see what's happening throughout Latin America. The red [00:03:00] line is the real fertility rate.

And all of the other lines are UN every year saying, stop worrying about this.

This is why the world's not panicking. If the world saw these red lines projected forwards by any reasonable equation. They would be shitting themselves right now. Look at this, even in Africa.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: And the middle east

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: So here you have Tunisia and Turkey. The same thing is happening and it's not just the UN you also have

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: and I H M E every major organization is attempting to Gaslight people about the severity of this. We're going to have a different episode where we go over this, but wow. I am shocked to see this coming out in a mainstream newspaper.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: No, here. Like you to take a moment to think, okay. If the UN is lying about all these other countries, fertility rates. And these countries own governments are like, Hey, actually, you are hugely overrepresented. Our fertility rates. , imagine what's going on with China right now. When their government doesn't want [00:04:00] people to know how bad things are. And has been famously able to push around the UN.

Malcolm Collins: All so specifically China doesn't have a 1. 4 billion person population. Their population is probably below 1 billion people and fell below 1 billion people a while ago.

Speaker: See, out of all the places, this is the place that I'm worried about the most. Why? Just, the way they live, they're different. What, Chinese people? They just wreck everything, they make everything weird. That's what I'm worried about. To you? To you? Everything. Chicken. Why is it orange in Chinatown?. The way they write, the letters are weird. Their alphabet's not like ours.

Theirs is like, like someone testing out a biro. Everything's There's no logic to anything that they do. There is! Of course there's a logic to it! The way they read a book, it's all the other way round. From back to front, instead of from front to back, and up and down, and Everything that we've done, they've gone, Right, we're gonna do it weirder.

Malcolm Collins: But let's talk about this. A [00:05:00] lot of this episode, and I always want to give credit when a lot of it comes from somebody else's research, came from a show called Lei's Real Talk. Or Lee's Real Talk. Anyway, pretty decent China watcher show. It's certainly not as good for me as like China's Fat Chasers.

 But she does real solid work and she sometimes breaks stories and it's definitely a source that I think people should have in their back pocket if they are doing China stuff.

But everything that she's talking about here is data that can be independently checked. So first there's an argument that China's birth statistics are inflated as evidence by the discrepancy between reported births and the number of deaths. Of bcg vaccinations administered logic in china. The bcg vaccine is mandatory and given to newborns within 24 hours of birth Therefore the number of bcg vaccines should closely match the number of births A chinese researcher conducted a study comparing the official birth data to BCG Vaccine Administration records from 2008 to 2021.

The [00:06:00] study found each bottle of BCG Vaccine can vaccinate between 1 to 5 babies with an average of 1. 35 babies per bottle. Using this average, the calculated number of births based on BCG Vaccine usage was consistently lower than official birth statistics. Over the 14 year period from 2008 to 2021, the discrepancy totaled 58 million births.

Extrapolating this trend back to the 1980s when China's economic reforms began, the total overestimate could be as high as 178 million people. This research argues that this discrepancy suggests systematic over reporting. And I will have a link to this study in the description. It's in Mandarin.

So be aware of that. Wow. Then there's data from the Lunar New Year travel study. A significant decrease in Lunar New Year travel between 2019 and 2023 suggests a potential population decline, particularly among lower income groups. Logic. Lunar New Year is [00:07:00] the peak travel period in China with almost everyone traveling to visit family.

A large decrease in travel numbers, especially among lower income groups, could indicate population decline. Data and source official data from Zeonoon News Agency shows in 2019 2. 984 billion person trips during the 40 Day Lunar New Year period in 2023 1. 556 billion. Trips during the same period, which represents a 47 percent decrease overall.

So these might be representing very large population drafts breaking down. The data air and rail travel is typically used by more affluent travelers decreased by only 15 percent bus and road travel. Typically used by lower income groups. So the largest decrease calculation, assuming 422 million people, 30 percent of the official 1.

4 billion population didn't travel due to poverty or old age In 2019, 986 million people made 2.984 billion trips an average of three trips per [00:08:00] person in 2023, assuming 2.5 trips per person due to economic factors. This suggests a potential population decrease of 556 million people who didn't travel in 2023.

Now this something ain't right. Yeah, I'll explain what would cause this. And she's actually done a different piece where she goes into this in a lot more detail, but she argues that this unexplained decrease is due to unreported population decline. due to COVID 19 fatalities. So not only is the overall population less than they're reporting, but they're hiding a huge chunk of the population that died during COVID 19.

She has a different episode where she goes into kindergarten closures because there was a sudden increase in kindergarten closures were 20 percent closed year over year this last year. And she says, this indicates. that a lot of people were either died during COVID or something like that or etc. And they decrease in specific regions at really high levels, specifically smaller towns.

And we don't have the rural data. But she argues that the country could have lost more than 20 percent of its [00:09:00] population in COVID. And from someone simply from death. deaths from death. And some of the CCP's behavior indicates that this is the case. By that, what I mean is right now they've had a mandate to destroy records of deaths during the COVID period.

In a lot of hospitals and we'll go into more data that the COVID deaths may have been dramatically higher than they're reporting. But so not only is their overall population lower because they were lying about some stuff, but their overall population is higher. lower because of people dying and keep in mind for the flight thing.

It was the low in middle class numbers that dropped this huge amount, not the upper class numbers that didn't drop that much at all. And people

Simone Collins: who. We're uniquely hurt in a disease outbreak would be those who can't go to a private hospital, for example and get better treatment. So that could be the play.

I see.

Malcolm Collins: Or we're more likely just to be shipped to 1 of the I forgot what they call them. Not

Simone Collins: really. Yeah. Scary isolation [00:10:00] zones where you just went to a cell.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Really bad situation there. And the next is the salt consumption analysis. This was an analysis of regional salt consumption data, which suggests China's population is significantly lower than official figures.

Salt consumption per capita is relatively stable by analyzing regional salt sales data and known per capita levels. consumption rates, one can estimate the population. A Chinese researcher conducted a comprehensive study of salt consumption data from 2000 to 2022. The methodology involved collecting regional salt consumption data from various news reports over 20 years using known daily salt intake figures for different regions ranging from 8.

5 grams to 11. 5 grams per person per day. They calculated the estimated population based on salt consumption data and compared it to official census data. Findings from 2000 to 2014, calculated population was 19.29% lower than the official data in 2015 to 2022, calculated population was approximately [00:11:00] 31% lower than official data.

So again, the huge chunk disappeared there so that they've been over reporting for a while, but now they're not even reporting what happened with Covid. Applying the 31 percent discrepancy to the official 2022 population figure of 1. 4 billion yields an estimated population of 986 million. The full study will be linked to in the description.

 Was interesting here is the arguments are supporting from multiple directions. So it's not just one study. They're all showing this huge like 31 percent lower number. And then she ran a different set of math just for another set of math. You can run here where she looked at the reported fertility rate of China versus India and starting populations of the two countries.

And then showed that China showed a much higher growth than it should have an overall population when contrasting with India. And then people can be like that might be because they have better medical care. And so then what she did is she looked at, okay, what was the lifespan [00:12:00] increase between China and India during those periods?

And India had a larger lifespan increase over that period than China had. Which implied that the numbers should have favored India further, which implied we are seeing systematically wrong numbers here. Wow.

Simone Collins: What good sleuthing on her part. This just sounds, these are such amazing questions. I'd be so proud of one of our kids.

If they looked at a problem from this many different angles, I really respect her.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I really respect her as well.

Yeah. There was also a Russian and a Japanese study that put their population at around 800 million.

This specifically the Russian experts name. Was Victor McCove, and he concluded China's population is not the official, the number that's nearing 1. 5 billion.

Simone Collins: This seems like a classic China problem in terms of the way that rewards or funding is dealt out to different regions, causing.

Major problems. I recall this being [00:13:00] an issue in like the height of early communist China

Malcolm Collins: with this is really interesting. So Russians gathered Chinese urban populations, added them up, and then arrived at a total urban population at 280 million

and

assuming the rural urban populations have a one to one ratio, then China's actual population should be around 500 million.

Simone Collins: Why should they be run to one? That doesn't make sense to me.

Malcolm Collins: But if total rural. population carries a higher weight. It may not be one to one. But they said that China's total population should not exceed 800 million, but I'd expect their urban population to be higher than their rural population, China's recent push on this.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: that is fascinating. So we've got more stuff here. Here's an article. And so just, in terms of like China having a lower population than it otherwise might have had. 1 here for people are wondering how big this difference is. It could be. So they did 2 different [00:14:00] calculations here.

So what you might have is a real population. Population of, oh yeah, so this was just a 944 million and priority set. Okay. Now in terms of who is saying that more people died during covid than official numbers This is not an urban monoculture cover up. There was an article by the cdc on this topic And there was an article in nature on this topic and the Atlantic did a piece called, can a million Chinese people die?

And nobody know official statistics on COVID can't be trusted because they share Beijing's political interests. Making the dead disappear is only part of it. And then evidence of underreporting satellite imagery revealed heightened activity at crematorium centers during the outbreak , domestic footage of overwhelmed hospital wards circulated on Chinese social media before being censored.

A morning and funeral index based on online search volume for related terms indicated 712,000 excess mortalities, so nearly a million excess mortalities from December, 2022 to [00:15:00] February, 2023.

Simone Collins: Oh that's recent. That's after after the pandemic. 2022 to 2023 is. When the pandemic is very quote unquote old over.

That's

Malcolm Collins: whatever the case may be over a million more people died So basically they're just hiding their deaths. They're Fudging their births the whole chinese situation is not only a paper tiger It's a Potomkin village. It's fake. It isn't an actual economic superpower in the way that we believe that it is.

And I think that right now, another thing that she's been arguing in her recent videos, and I actually think she's right about this is when we ask, why is Xi Jinping not doing logical things to protect his economy or his people right now, given how bad things are. The answer could be that he's trying to transition into a wartime economy, and a wartime economy is not going to be driven by consumer demand.

It's going to be driven by [00:16:00] centralized production queues.

Simone Collins: Do you, are there signs that they are centralizing their production?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Keep in mind, all the billionaires have been like disappearing. They've been centralizing all their major industries. Remember when what's his face?

Alibaba guy disappeared, right? Yeah, that's very much a move to a, how

Simone Collins: does that have to do with what does that have to do with centralizing production?

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Remember how we have defined in other videos the difference between a socialist state and a fascist state? Yes Whereas a socialist state puts the state industry like the economic means of production Under the state for the purposes of distributing wealth as equally as possible Whereas a fascist state Puts the means of production under a state for the purpose of spreading a particular ideology or worldview in keeping existing oligarchs in power, i.

e. what the Democrats are doing. That's why the Democrats are fundamentally a fascist party. A lot of people don't understand this. They think I'm like exaggerating when I say that. Anyway that's what China is doing right now. It's they're transitioning. [00:17:00] To a fascist economic system where they are putting the means of production under the authority of the existing power structure to heighten the power of the existing oligarchical structure because I think that they know that an economic collapse is impossible.

Basically, the entire economy there has been. More of a Ponzi scheme than the rest of the world's economy for a while. It's like foreign investors come in, foreign investors come in, your money will always grow, look at how many people we have imagined how big this could be. And I think that, very similar to what happened in Japan in the eighties but about a thousand times worse.

Simone Collins: What are the implications of this?

If they're

transitioning to a wartime economy, do we have good reason to believe therefore that they are going to come for Taiwan faster?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I think they meant to go for Taiwan by now, but Russia's F up in Ukraine has significantly lowered their desire for [00:18:00] that particular conflict.

That's my read of it. Like all of this, I think started Before they saw what happened in Ukraine and right now there's like an ongoing conversation. Do we do it? Do we not?

Simone Collins: So I thought it's more of just a siege scenario and taiwan from an energy independent standpoint Is so screwed that all you have to do is just besiege them

Malcolm Collins: Do you know how much our gpus that we've been buying up?

Simone and I have been buying up gpus are going to be worth if taiwan gets sieged

Simone Collins: How you will look pretty good to get

Malcolm Collins: a very good resale value on those. By the way one of the things we're looking for right now is a CTO for the companies, if anyone's like a GP, GPU specialist, or a, running data center specialists, let us know we'd really be interested in, in, in working with you or has a good technical resume otherwise For a position at a startup, but yeah, so the implication could be that they're going for taiwan I don't know.

It's just such a dumb decision if they do but it could be with the goal of securing the existing administration Knowing that [00:19:00] an economic collapse of the region is not going to happen but already underway

Simone Collins: Golly. Okay. Yeah. I was reading in totally outside of, let's say someone wants to write all this off as conspiracy theorizing and they choose to not believe any of the stats presented.

I was just reading that China's getting to the point that for every child born, six people are dying. It's that bad. Wait, is that

Malcolm Collins: bad now? That's horrifying.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it, let me make sure I have that right. Okay, here we go.

Demographer warns that if China's fertility rate remains on its downward trajectory, eventually six people will die for every newborn. This was from an article called China's pro birth policy is not yet enough to counter demographic crisis. Expert warns published in the South China Morning Post. So that's mainstream.

Not question people talking about, just how bad things are, how their fertility rate dropped to 1. [00:20:00] 09 in 2022. But that's likely highly overstated. We don't have numbers for 2023 officially. And to your point about this, anything they do send to us may be very highly overstated. Even in China's, Best possible, most enthusiastic and optimistic number presentation, we're still looking at an extremely dire scenario if things are even worse and as bad as you describe and as bad as people are seeing through things like baby vaccinations and salt intake and vacation travel and morning, it's bad.

It's also very concerning that apparently excess deaths are so much higher, even between 2022 and 2023. It implies.

Malcolm Collins: Gets me on this. And I think that a lot of people, what were you going to say? It implies.

Simone Collins: It implies that it's not just a COVID thing and it's not just people being hopeless and not having kids anymore thing that [00:21:00] people that the country may also be deeply unwell in other ways that we aren't fully aware of when they're, I

Malcolm Collins: guess my takeaway from a lot of this is one.

India is likely a bigger player in the global future than we think. China has long Basically what this means is India's population is higher than China's population, and going forward for the rest of human history we can project right now will continue to be higher. But in addition to that, it just means that China is when people are predicting future events, do not over-index China's role in those events?

I guess I would say when I talk to a lot of people, I would say this is one of the, in terms of smart people who I talk to, like really smart people, consistent mistakes that they make in the single most consistent mistake I see they make. Is believing too much that China has a future seeing them trying to play out the roles and the moves that they make, 50 years from now, 100 [00:22:00] years from now, thinking that they are going to find a way to fix this quickly when.

They should have already done that. Like it's basically too late for them at this point, even if they start going on a forced birth campaign or something like that, I just wouldn't expect that much benefit from it, given that it would need to admit things that mainstream training officials just aren't admitting right now.

Keep in mind, they were one of the first countries to. Jail someone who is doing gene editing in humans. Very publicly, right? Like they made it clear. We don't do genetics here We don't believe in genetics here all humans exactly the same and that's going to make any sort of a campaign they do to try to increase fertility rate Likely create an adverse outcome.

So I just don't I do. And it also means that their existing power on the world stage might be being overstated. And a lot of China's existing power, people misunderstand that like their existing power is due to what they produce. And I'm like, [00:23:00] that is not true. Their existing power is due to the amount of money American and European investors have poured into China.

That is where their valuation comes from. Obviously, China.

Simone Collins: So you mean people buying.

Malcolm Collins: Companies putting companies in buying stock, investing in, et cetera, investing in China is why China has a high valuation. Like, when you're looking at like Chinese GDP or like the share of the global market and blah, blah, blah, a lot of this is like basically fudged numbers due to the people who have put money into that.

And that's also why. You don't get this counter narrative of actually China is not that relevant, politically speaking, because nobody benefits from this. The wealthy oligarchs who run our society, they have tons of money invested in this that they can't quickly get out. And so they're not gonna want it widely disseminated that actually China is already over.

So they don't publish it in their newspapers. [00:24:00] They don't talk about it. They don't promote people who are talking about it. It's the same with the political apparatuses in neither serves the conservatives, nor the Democrats well to say China is not particularly relevant as a power player.

Because, people want to focus on what do we do if Taiwan gets attacked?

And as I've always said, what we do if Taiwan gets attacked is nothing. Because Taiwan won't exist in 100 years at their current fertility rate. We are not saving a thing of persistent value by saving Taiwan at this point. If Taiwan can get their fertility rate up, I would commit American force to help them.

But at their current fertility rate, you are just delaying their death by a century. There is no point. This very seriously. A country with a fertility rate that's hovering around 1, halving their population every generation, why would I have our either capital or actual human beings dying to defend that?

That's insane.

Simone Collins: [00:25:00] Yeah but by that logic, are you trying to argue that we should only fight for countries with high birth rates? So if someone invades a high birth rate African country ah, defend them.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's not just based on the birth rate. It's based on their relevance in a future Earth scenario.

That's

Simone Collins: Africa. They're the ones who are going to decline last.

Malcolm Collins: I don't think that you are actually really helping that much in terms of the future trajectory of Earth by committing tons of resources to preventing random groups in Africa from attacking each other whether or not, it just all comes out in the wash there because the infrastructure and the economic infrastructure in that region is so poorly developed that you're just really not getting much of a, an outcome from that.

But if somebody was to say. Okay. Oh, would you care? Like where would you care about defending if they were attacked? What's a country where you're like, this country is going to have an outsized, a level of impact in the future. When I look at current India, no Israel.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: Israel's the big example here.

[00:26:00] Technologically, they're going to matter in 50 to a hundred years fertility white wise. They're going to matter in a 50 or a hundred years. In terms of Who is it worth investing to protect? Israel is who it's worth investing to protect. Taiwan is not particularly worth investing to protect. In terms of the Ukraine, I thought that it was worth it to just show that Russia couldn't push people around in the beginning.

I no longer think it's worth it. Now they're just fighting over land, and neither country's gonna matter much in the future either, and Russia has already expended all of their military power.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess if this were like an elimination based reality TV show and you're trying to decide to who to ally yourself with if there's someone who's just clearly tanking they lack the charisma or physical prowess or whatever the show's based on, cooking ability.

To hang in there. Yes. You really need to look at someone's ability to be there in the future. And it's not just whether you like them or whether

Malcolm Collins: I like Taiwan a lot.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I they're a

Simone Collins: [00:27:00] contender. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: they're just not a contender. It's the same with China. So keep in mind, like China and Taiwan are enemies.

I am very pro Taiwan. I am very anti CCP, but I admit that they both are dealing with this population problem and there really isn't an out for them at this point that I can see. And so when people are like, Oh, what do you think the, China's going to be doing in X many, I'm like, they're not going to be doing anything that matters.

Now this does have impacts on like semiconductor production and everything like that, but I think we'll be able to offshore Taiwan's semiconductor production at least the relevant parts before things go tits up. Keep in mind that because we've hit a Moore's law sort of ceiling now we are Entering optimal semiconductor world at this point.

Do you understand what I mean by that Simone? So historically if one company was like really ahead of other companies in semiconductor production it didn't really make sense to try to compete with them because it's you've got You, you want to try [00:28:00] to catch up with this company, but every year they're improving so much.

They're like 30 percent better every year. So even if I figure out how they're making the semiconductors they're making this year, I'm not going to be able to compete with them economically by the time I get that up because by the time I get that Fab up by the time I get all that up, it's going to be 5, 10 years from now.

And they're going to be like a generation, not one generation, like 10 generations ahead of me, right? Like I will be able to make very simple semiconductors, but nothing particularly impressive. But now the advancement in semiconductor production has lowered dramatically. You are getting very small increment because we reached the edges of what physics can do.

And so this gives other companies and countries a long time to catch up with this. And I think the next major advancement in semiconductors that we should focus on from a human civilizational perspective is how can we, one, Lateralize semiconductor production. Right now, it takes 40 different [00:29:00] countries all developing.

The lasers are developed in Norway and the plans are developed in California and the end products developed in Taiwan. How can we lateralize this process? And how can we microtize this process, i. e. I think we're going to need to focus on more modular and smaller semiconductors as global supply chains begin to break down even if they are slightly slower it's going to be equally useful given the way that cloud networks work in the way that you can just chain like GPUs together.

Simone Collins: If you were living in China right now let's say in a place like Shanghai where the birth rate is so low. Where would you move? If Shanghai's fertility, by the way, is 0. 6 as of 2023. So not even this year. Lower than I get out. I

Malcolm Collins: don't think that there is a way to to, [00:30:00] I think that China is internally burning itself.

I think that the situation in China is going to get astronomically worse than it is today. You

Simone Collins: think they're going to start blocking emigration though? I feel like they already.

Malcolm Collins: Stopped they stopped it like five years ago. They put major bans and restrictions on people out migrating. Yeah,

Simone Collins: so then that's not a realistic you're just saying figure out how to figure

Malcolm Collins: out figure out like you're running from a holocaust that's about to happen like Figure out like you don't get how bad things are going to get.

That's my read of China right now. You do not know, you cannot comprehend you. If you want to know how bad things are going to get in China in the future, ask your grandparents about the great famine. Okay. That's the scale things are going to in China right now.

Simone Collins: Yeah. What does worry me is.

Again, those excess deaths between 2022 and 2023, like we're not in the middle of the pandemic anymore. And to my knowledge, there have been no [00:31:00] immense natural disasters in China, though, okay, I'm not following the news that closely. I do wonder, especially after all these stories of people being like buildings collapses or infrastructure, not really working well.

And I guess it's just so hard to trust what you're hearing, because then when you hear from anyone who is in any way proud of China, and I think there's a lot to be proud of in China, I think the Chinese people are awesome. And I've traveled through China in a decent amount, not an amazing amount, but I've been to like Zhangjiajie and Changsha and not like your typical just Beijing and Hong Kong and Shanghai, though I've done those too.

It's an amazing place. But when you talk with anyone who has pride in China, then it's just propaganda talking points. So I don't know who to consult, right?

Malcolm Collins: This is the thing also about out migrating from China, historic. And real Chinese [00:32:00] culture is better preserved in the immigrant communities than it is preserved within CCP China.

If you like, if you're like, I want to get in touch with my Chinese traditional roots, you are better off living in one of the American Chinese immigrant communities than you are under CCP China because they often were founded by individuals from before the Cultural Revolution, and they maintain more true uninterrupted through lines.

To traditional Chinese culture.

Simone Collins: I do think that's really interesting that when in some countries you get these selective pressures where people with a certain fidelity to a certain culture, just leave on mass and then anyone who stays basically gets completely changed through those same selective pressures.

And then the original country. Is somewhere else now. And you can even see this and not necessarily in holistic cultural sets or cultural mimetic religious, whatever [00:33:00] sets, but even just an accents like I've ever argued that the true British accent of will say before the American Revolution may be more alive in some versions of American speech in like the 1900s than even the modern British accent.

Which is an interesting, yeah. Because like certain groups migrate and like things evolve, it's not like after a point of great migration, do things stay the same in the original home country? No things change. In fact, often when there is a great migration, it's because there's significant change in the home country.

So I'd like that point about cultural fidelity, maybe not even being in China. And if you really love China and if you believe in China, you maybe need to rebuild that somewhere else.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I like that way of looking at it. It can be rebuilt, but I don't think it can be rebuilt in China. Not so long as Xi Jinping is in charge.

Now, he have, and this is one area where I realize I have a [00:34:00] big difference between my friends who believe that China has a future in me, is they're like Xi Jinping, he won't be in charge for long. He's got replacements in the wing. As soon as he Fs up enough, they're gonna replace him. And my belief is, The opposite of that.

I don't think they have real replacements lined up for him. I have looked into these people's, they've said, oh, this guy is competent. I'm, I don't see it. I don't see it. I don't think that they have a good replacement for him. And if I were

Simone Collins: him, I would not want to take, or if I were anyone else, I would not want to take his place.

I would be terrified to take his place.

Malcolm Collins: I don't think that they I think that he's for a long time purged everyone competent who might take his position. I don't think that there is somebody who can competently take his position. I think when Xi Jinping falls, a lot of people think, oh, this is when things begin to fix themselves.

No, I think that's when warlords begin to take over. I think that's when things begin to fracture or they go incredibly stupid, a la Venezuela, like a bus driver taking over. I [00:35:00] think that as much as Xi Jinping is a problem, he's also the bulwark against complete idiocy. And I have intense fear around what happens when he does fall because I think people think some competent bureaucrat is going to take over and that's not the tea leaves I'm reading.

The tea leaves I'm reading is. Some idiots going to take over who, we would never have assigned power was intention. And if I'm wrong about this if the system is still working, if they still can get a competent person in there and they can get rid of Xi Jinping, China has a chance, but it's got no chance under Xi Jinping.

Or the Dowager Empress, as I call him.

Simone Collins: The Dowager Empress.

Malcolm Collins: He reminds me of the Dowager Empress in the last fall of China.

Simone Collins: The scary dragon lady. I guess everyone calls Dowager Empresses or any mean woman dragon lady. But yeah, the one with the really young son who just killed a bunch of people, that one.

Malcolm Collins: In fact, if I [00:36:00] was in office I would always call him the Dowager Empress. Because I think people need to draw this connection more to one, understand just how much he's hurting the country into two through a historic parallel into to understand just how long within the Chinese bureaucracy, somebody who is that toxic to the country's long term best interest can stay in power.

If people don't take care of them.

Simone Collins: If you were, let's say someone incredibly competent, the right person for China were suddenly installed and given autocratic power. What would you have them do? What would you encourage them to do? If they came to you and ask you

Malcolm Collins: for something you need to do is become completely transparent about all of their records their economy, their population, their part of me

Simone Collins: wonder.

So what if Xi Jinping doesn't even know the gravity of this and can't because There are so many adverse incentives at play where a province is not going to tell you because then they won't get their tax [00:37:00] revenue. I feel like there's a crisis of reality

Malcolm Collins: in place, independent departments, independent branches of government using things like AI and satellite images, all the stuff that foreigners are using.

And then they get, or commendations and wealth for finding areas where people are fudging things. All right. So let's

Simone Collins: say first thing you established the department of, and they go out and their job is to just find out what's going on.

Malcolm Collins: Department of transparency. Then you need to re institute goodwill among investors that if they invest in something, they will be able to get their money into and out of the country easily.

That's one of the big things that's going to drive down investment right now, right? As people are terrified that if they put money into China, that the money's never going to be able to come out of China. And because that's true right now, China's basically realized like it's excessive.

You need to suddenly you do that. And all of the money, a lot of the money, this is all going to cause short term pain. All that you're saying was in China's autocratic system that apparently can think long term, even though it [00:38:00] definitely can't. No,

Simone Collins: You are a long termist autocrat. You need

Malcolm Collins: to, you need to, basically all of this is around developing investor confidence.

You need to develop investor confidence, long term investor confidence with foreign investors. That is the. First core thing you need to do. So all, everything involved in that, not jailing making things. If somebody achieves a certain level of wealth, you're not just going to go after them.

You're not going to, all of that stuff. So investor competence is thing. Number one thing. Number two is fertility collapse is a national security issue right now. And I may even put it under the purview of the military focusing on artificial wombs in the lake.

Simone Collins: Oh, so just invest heavily in science.

Heavily

Malcolm Collins: in science and genetics.

Simone Collins: Right, but what good will artificial wombs do you if no one wants to have kids anyway, whether or not they get pregnant?

Malcolm Collins: You have the state raise them.

Simone Collins: Huh. So you would encourage the first ever government [00:39:00] funded human production

Malcolm Collins: plan. I think if you do those two things simultaneously and big enough.

I guess

Simone Collins: you could, would you, this is very dystopian, but would you Offer to pay women a a living wage to carry pregnancies to term. And then if they don't want to raise those children, No, but I

Malcolm Collins: wouldn't disallow anyone from a high level government position with less than four kids.

Simone Collins: So to say, I know the anti cat lady tenure policy.

I think

Malcolm Collins: you need to create,

Simone Collins: and you might need to create But that's nobody, because no one has been allowed to have a lot of kids. No, there,

Malcolm Collins: It's been long enough under the three child policy and loosen one child restrictions. What?

Simone Collins: Come on, when was the three child policy, No, when was

Malcolm Collins: one child policy loosened?

Simone Collins: No. Because it was still culturally so discouraged. They're basically no. The policy was formally passed into [00:40:00] law by the National People's Congress, the National Legislature of China on August 20th, 2021. With this one child

Malcolm Collins: policy. Simone, the one child policy was loosened in 2016. Loosened!

Simone Collins: Loosened!

Malcolm Collins: You could say this is the thing and this is where everybody gets things wrong.

They always blame us on the one child policy, but the problem is that fertility rate now in China is lower than it ever was under the one child policy. And that's a culture problem. I just, I'm not

Simone Collins: going to listen. You shouldn't penalize people for not having a lot of kids. You under Xi Jinping in China during COVID in China, would you be having kids?

No, you would be shouting. We are the last generation along with everybody else. Yes, and those people need

Malcolm Collins: to be penalized. That's the exact point I'm making, Simone. You need to penalize people who are investing in your career. No, you shouldn't penalize

Simone Collins: people who are making smart and logical decisions.

Malcolm Collins: I disagree strongly.

That's the only way you create a cultural change. In fact, I would go further. I may disallow [00:41:00] salaries above a certain amount to people who have less than a certain number of kids. I would tap your max possible salary To the number of Children you have, which will quickly create the perception that more kids means more wealth.

Simone Collins: No, I would that's a fun That's a fun concept to reconnect from just from a policy perspective in general, because the thing in the past and why people would have a lot of kids aside from, other cultural reasons was the more kids you had, the more wealthy you were. And if we just reconnect those in some way.

Either, of course, through progressive tax breaks for the more kids you have, but also just through other means. Yeah, the more kids you have, the more money you're allowed to earn or something. It's just the level of dystopian control that you have to have over a people to do that. It's too much. Aren't we too libertarian for that?

You and I

Malcolm Collins: No, but you're It's different from what I want for America. China is [00:42:00] culturally different from America. Okay

Simone Collins: so yeah, you're trying to come up with a solution that certainly doesn't fit with our cultural values, that is more coercive, that is more I'm not gonna say evil. That is just Creepy because you're like, this is going to work for them.

Yes.

Malcolm Collins: You're saying if I was in China, what would I do? Like the person who's I'd started democracy is an idiot. That is not what you would do. You need to fix the problem in a Chinese way. What's actually going to work.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. I could see a kind of China making human production army thing with artificial worms.

They could pull off the look. I feel mean saying that I, again, respect China, I was really, I was on like a five. Did I tell you about my five hour bus ride to. Zhang Xiaojie from Changsha, it's about five hours, like some [00:43:00] guy had this cell phone that constantly kept ringing and it was just children's choirs singing Christmas songs in English.

And they were chewing this thing that smelled incredibly strong, like throughout this bus that just made me want to vomit the whole time. And we're on these twisting roads. So I'm just hearing children's choirs singing Christmas songs and smelling this putrid smell of whatever it is people are chewing and spitting out on the bus.

Malcolm Collins: It's Betelgeuse, probably.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): Badal nuts are an addictive stimulant that's chewed in parts of China. Particularly the Southern provinces, such as a non. A high nine

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Betelgeuse

Simone Collins: did not smell good. So they were, I've had good moments and I've had bad moments. But like good moment just before that bus drive, the taxi driver or the taxi cab driver who took me to the bus station where I took that bus was so [00:44:00] concerned about me that he got in to the bus station and helped me buy a ticket and told me where to sit because he was like, girl, what are you doing?

This is not safe. So they're really they're awesome, cool, bro people who help out total nonsense, idiot foreigners who are kind and hardworking and enterprising and creative. And it makes me so sad to think that they're under this level of threat. Damn. But I don't know. I wish there were a less dystopian way to do this.

Malcolm Collins: There are less dystopian ways to do this. But you've got to I think that the less dystopian ways of handling this are going to be handled in the immigrant communities. You can't find a new, like in the U. S. I'm like, experiment with new ways of having your family culture work, new traditions, new holidays, new ways of relating to things.

What can China do? This doesn't work in China.

Simone Collins: What can China do right [00:45:00] now that other countries can't do? So if suddenly you become transparent and you're like, okay, guys. Now I'm in charge. We're figuring out our population situation. We're going to be financially transparent. You can leave and enter the country as desired.

We'd love to welcome immigrants. We'd love to welcome industry. What would you do? Peter Zion talks about their natural resources being not great. Like they're not that energy independent. Then I'm not having that food independent. What are you going to make them like a nuclear hotspot?

Fast, like that was

Malcolm Collins: the thing I was talking about was transparency and everything like that and taking a short term hit. The big problem China has now is they got so used to that period where they were a growing power instead of a weakening power that they built this idea of will always be bigger tomorrow.

And therefore let's believe the neighboring countries, let's believe the people around us. They need to understand that they are in a position of short lived power right now and they need to be doing. Everything they can right now to build goodwill [00:46:00] among their neighbors. That nine dot line that they've drawn, that's not going to hold for 50 years.

And when it stops holding the people who they were bullying are going to be awfully mad at them. Meaningful walk back all of this stuff they've been doing to the local region. Okay.

Simone Collins: So start playing nice with others, but then, what will a Admittedly smaller going forward. China do. To build prosperity and.

They

Malcolm Collins: need to, as I said one, forcing competent people to have more kids, culturally speaking, through the way that you influence them. Okay, incentivizing,

Simone Collins: not forcing, incentivizing through cultural means.

Malcolm Collins: The state raised kids, state produced kids, that could be an option that they have access to that we don't really have access to.

And they, I think right now is something that is being understated in the investment world is how much of a problem it is that nobody trusts Chinese stock market or wants to put money onto [00:47:00] it. And it's not just because they're shrinking. It's because the government has basically said, okay, now you've put the money in, now we're going to keep it from going out.

Like we tricked

Simone Collins: you. Here's

Malcolm Collins: an interesting idea.

Simone Collins: If you create state created humans, and state raised humans, maybe China, because China also has an international reputation, I think of producing very smart, competent, hardworking people. To with your army of government creative people, like be as though we are the intellectual mercenaries of the world.

You want to hire Chinese people. You want we will build the best factories we will build and then they just start investing in all of the type of human infrastructure that will matter in a post AI world because the rest of the world is too indolent, probably to raise the sort of disciplined, smart person, practical person not hedonic [00:48:00] person.

To thrive in a post AI society and still matter in a post AI society. So maybe if China did that and they continued with the same Oh, America, you suck with your titty attainment. Like you go and enjoy your hedonism and we're going to produce our competent, hardworking, tight lipped people who we will produce and train, then maybe they can just be like the one non idiocracy.

No, that would really be cool if they could do that.

Malcolm Collins: And I'd also say that one of the core things that people get wrong when they're predicting future world events and stuff like that is how cheesed America is from so many perspectives. We are not moving into a multipolar world. We are moving into a world in which America is dramatically more dominant than it is today.

And

Simone Collins: I think a good book to start if you're interested in the subject is Peter Zeihan's book. book, the end of the world is just the beginning. He talks through in a very sort of guns, germs, and steel kind of way. Just why America has the [00:49:00] tailwinds that will give it a huge advantage in the instance of a world in which there is no more.

support for international trade.

Malcolm Collins: So one is as globalization and global economic systems begin to break down. Yes. That is part of why America will be strong is we are the most self sufficient country in the world by a dramatic margin, whether it's energy or food or any of the things that civilization needs to survive.

But in addition to that we also have A weirdly high fertility rate for our level of prosperity and output. And it's because America has what it turns out is the greatest resource any country can have in the 21st century, which is we have religion. And a lot of it, a lot more than any other developed country.

And it turns out that a lot of these countries, when they were modernizing and got rid of their religions, did a great harm to themselves. And when I look to the future, when people are like future world polarity wise, where are you looking at world [00:50:00] power centers? One, people are hugely sleeping on how much power America is going to have.

The other area that they're hugely sleeping on. Is Israel like, no matter how positive you could be about Israel, you need to be 10 X more positive than that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I guess if we were to look at any country that actually was producing some kind of hyper competent workforce, it does, that is, famous for going out and getting a lot of things done.

And it doesn't focus on hedonism over everything else. It was so weird how in your class at Stanford's graduate school of business, One of the most difficult schools to get into in the entire world. There were so many Israeli students. So many Israelis. And not only that, but So many Israelis. And they weren't just Oh, they were all having kids.

They were all having kids. They all had businesses and they were going through school. They were like so much more on top of their lives than anyone else. And even though they worked harder and even [00:51:00] though they were incredibly conscientious, they all just, they just seemed very happy. Like they didn't, they were the tortured souls at your school, but they weren't a

Malcolm Collins: lot of the American Jews were among the tortured soul category that you're talking about reform.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And actually Simone, we have an invitation to go to Israel and meet with, and live with some of these variety families for a bit. I'd like to take it up at some point.

Simone Collins: It's a really cool invitation.

Malcolm Collins: We It would involve being around people. Has invited us to stay with some of the Haraiti families in Brooklyn in the next couple of weeks because he's going to be there and he's going to be That's

Simone Collins: so cool.

I

Malcolm Collins: was like, I don't think we have time. I was like, Now the

Simone Collins: timing is not amazing, alas.

Malcolm Collins: In future years, I really want to, but not right now, unfortunately. But the yeah, people are they do not understand how much fertility rates in technophilic regions matter.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the cool things that China has the building blocks.[00:52:00]

China has the technophilia. China has this I just love how modern so many of the things there are

Malcolm Collins: another big advantage, which is they don't have the bureaucratic bloat of other regions.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: it would seem,

Simone Collins: I don't know. Like October 7th seems to have been largely a product of the government not having time to do

Malcolm Collins: an episode on this, but we can just briefly mention in this now.

I have looked at their competence since October 7th in terms of essentially wiping out all of

Hezbollah In Palestine,

Simone Collins: but keep in mind those, that groundwork was laid well before October 7th.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. And the problem is Simone, which you might not be considering that groundwork was weighed. Before October 7th, they wouldn't have been able to execute on that groundwork if October 7th hadn't happened.

Why were they making plans for how they going to take out Hezbollah? Like that they obviously from a geopolitical standpoint, couldn't [00:53:00] execute on unless I, I used to think October 7th, I was like, Must have some level of impossible stupidity.

Here I am now leaning towards the, oh my God, this was all planned from the beginning.

Simone Collins: I'm leaning toward, they put so many resources into embedding devices with Hezbollah and getting intel from Hezbollah that they snoozed on Hamas. Just being like, you guys are so incompetent. Do you think

Malcolm Collins: they could have had if Hezbollah wasn't attacking 'em as aggressively as they are right now, do you think they could have had all those things explode?

Simone Collins: Oh, you mean just from a diplomatic standpoint, because there's so much hate on it. I think it was an insurance policy because keep in mind, they weren't just incendiary devices or explosive devices. They were also Intel gathering devices. So it was, I think it was about optionality to have that there.

And who knows? They knew. That Iran was probably going to get more resources at some point, Obama had started that trajectory and that's [00:54:00] about when they started doing this. So I think they knew it was going to be rising threat. I don't think they, they could have anticipated or even encouraged October 7th.

I think. I think it's more of a, just, they thought that they knew what they were doing or the, I just, it seems plausible to me that just what Hamas did was so out of.

Malcolm Collins: I'll tell you what British intelligence, they looked at this. There was an ex British intelligence guy and he was saying, I, it is shocking that Israel accomplished more.

In a year and a half that we accomplished during the entire war on terror against the Taliban. He's if we could have dismantled Taliban, the Taliban to the level that Israel dismantled Hezbollah. This would have been, this is like 99 percent more than what we did. Like it was a stunning that they were able to accomplish.

Simone Collins: Here's what we need to do. We need to get like spy novel [00:55:00] writers. In the same room as like government officials or like sci fi writers and just be like, figure it out guys, get creative, man, get drunk and then just start making

Malcolm Collins: plans. Is it was all of this in context, we should consider ourselves very fortunate of the Secret Service agencies that apparently are actively attacking us now, which is the British one that it's not.

Yeah, we should be glad that of the ones most likely to support us. It would be the competent,

Simone Collins: but here's the thing about massage. You won't know that they're out to get you until you're dead. that effective. So who knows? But yeah I guess we just did a surprise attack. We're going to talk about China.

Here's where we dunk on China. Oh, ha. We

Malcolm Collins: love Israel.

Simone Collins: Another one of those episodes.

Malcolm Collins: It's like when I'm thinking about like world players who matter.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: it's literally like in my future calculations of geopolitics matters [00:56:00] to X what China matters.

Simone Collins: Yeah, the other kind of in the potential to have outsized influence, very similar in my mindscape to.

The UK or Britain, before the they became the British imperial empire. They were this sleepy backwater. Rome didn't even want to hold on to them, right? They sucked. They were gross. It was cold. No one took them seriously. They were a bunch of barbarians. Like you, you said in that other episode on our one civil, your one civilization theory.

I'm just, I identify too much with you, Malcolm, but I'm not trying to take credit for it. It's a really good theory. No, it's ours! Yeah, Royal We. Nobody really

Malcolm Collins: helped inspire it by telling me that I should think more of ancient Chinese civilization. That was really the thing that got me investigating and then I was like, no, actually they suck.

Simone Collins: Oh my god. So Poor China. I'm trying to point out things that I love about China. Szechuan food people in Szechuan province. I love Chinese

Malcolm Collins: food. I eat Chinese food almost every week. I love it. Also

Simone Collins: people in Szechuan province are [00:57:00] just genuine, genuinely awesome people and really cool.

Malcolm Collins: No, I have a lot of Chinese friends.

I think that the whole, like a lot of the Chinese people I know are some of the smartest people I know.

Simone Collins: They're crazy smart. Anyway, so yeah, we love China but I can't remember where I was going. It doesn't matter because we need to make dinner. But I'm sorry to anyone who came here just wanting to hear about China.

And there we go. It's real again, but no, no. Yeah. Great. Yeah. So yeah, no one thought, yeah, Britain was backwater. No one cared about it. Relatively small population. And yet so much influence. In the entire world. And I think it's, yeah, it's easy for people to write off Israel to be like, it is a tiny postage stamp of land within a hostile area.

They, why would they matter? Why are we trying to help them? I don't know before the rise of the British imperial empire, I would have wanted to, Now, what was going on with these guys, see how I could work with them. So I guess I see your point in that we have to look to the future and [00:58:00] look for their potential.

So yeah,

Malcolm Collins: Don't make big sacrifices to make alliances with the Ottomans. Yeah, exactly. Right now is the Ottoman. They're

Simone Collins: the Ottomans. Yeah, sadly. But I think what also gives me hope at the end of this, and I want to end with this, because it's where there's hope for China, Is that China isn't in China anymore, just like Venezuela is not in Venezuela anymore.

Yeah, I agree.

Malcolm Collins: We know through

Simone Collins: our travel agency, which works with a ton of Venezuelans, that all the Venezuelans are in Spain, they're in Peru, they're in Doral, they're in

Malcolm Collins: I should say.

Simone Collins: Yeah because they left. It was Cuban, like all

Malcolm Collins: the good Cubans, I'm sorry, not good Cubans.

Simone Collins: We are going to hell so many times over, Malcolm.

Real Cuba's in Florida. Yeah, though. And that is a theory that gives me a lot of hope. Because when I hear about new news with China's demographic collapse. I just think I weep for China and it makes me very sad and scared. But then I think about, yeah, all these amazing Chinese immigrant [00:59:00] communities throughout the world.

And you've got stuff, so yeah, people can move, populations can move and build something even better. And as we've talked about in other episodes, the more, That you evolve and move around and play jazz with other cultures and take the best from them and do it better yourself. The more you will thrive and own the future.

And

Malcolm Collins: I will say that China is not the most effed world power right now. Germany is. Germany is. And Latin

Simone Collins: America is just vaporizing and no, but

Malcolm Collins: the thing is that Latin America has cultural enclaves in other countries that have decent fertility rates. Germany has no backup plan. If I was a German that wanted to maintain German culture, there's nothing left.

Simone Collins: Gosh. Yeah. We're there. There are no, I guess you could say that Amish people are,

Malcolm Collins: but now, Oh my God, you should hear their stuff on Trump. We watched the video of them, like them talking about Trump. They are so based.

Simone Collins: Yeah. They're so based. Love the phone. I'll let you go. Bye. Okay. Ciao. Ciao. [01:00:00] Oh,

Malcolm Collins: are you going to do the

Simone Collins: Just get the kids, you get the kids, I'll stir taquitos.

And then if you just drop them off, I'll play with them while I cook food and you can wrap up work for the day. Yeah? Yeah. You ready for that?

Malcolm Collins: And let me know what we're getting for replies on this. This is a long and spicy thread with lime and stuff. Oh

Simone Collins: no.

Malcolm Collins: Have you even checked it?

Simone Collins: No, I'm just going to ignore it.

I'm very bad with Twitter. Remember, I thought that someone had closed, somehow closed their tweet to replies and I just didn't know I was blocked because I'm so old.

Malcolm Collins: Other people said then they were blocked. I don't know. But yeah they, weird.

Simone Collins: Yeah I don't understand Twitter, x. Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we're definitely at an age now where there's things that I don't understand and things I make a real hard focus on staying on top of. AI. AI is something I'm like, I gotta be up to date. Love you.

Simone Collins: I love you, too. You're seeing the thousandth time. [01:01:00] Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: so today antinatalism documentary, which I actually loved. I haven't seen it at all.

Simone Collins: That was so well done. It was the best. So well done. This guy is a true

Malcolm Collins: star. Yeah, Tim came out. I hope it does incredibly well.

Yeah. So people haven't seen it. This is the guy who's done some other like really big documentaries.

I want to, I haven't watched it all yet. I only watched the beginning. I was like, Oh my God, this is. His

Simone Collins: storytelling is top drawer like the way he, but the problem is that it includes stories of. Conditions that cause babies to die terrible deaths I, and then so of course I'm crying first thing in the morning while watching this frickin thing.

Malcolm Collins: I'm so sorry. And then the limestone thing happened today.

Simone Collins: Limestone Claymore. So yeah, that was, oh, it was so much reading. It was so much reading.

Malcolm Collins: So much reading and so much, I don't know, felt like disingenuousness he posted the thing. He's like, why are they attacking me out of nowhere? This is a guy who runs the Institute of Family Studies thing.

And we're like, he does the whole, whoa,

Simone Collins: hold on in his whole, you haven't even read the he's I don't run the Institute for Family Studies. This is just 10 percent of their [01:02:00] spending that I'm involved with. So he takes umbrage.

Malcolm Collins: He just, out of the blue he's they just attacked me out of the blue and I'm like it may have been that article that you wrote on us that was really long and compared us to Nazis and eugenicists and said that you should be running the pronatalist movement and not us and that we shouldn't even be considered pronatalists and tried to throw a that might've been, and mischaracterized everything we've ever done.

He's they're, I don't know. communitarians. Like they only care about people in their community. They're not about trying to help everyone. I'm about trying to help everyone. I'm all about freedom and I'm gonna give everyone freedom. And not only is my movement about freedom, but how dare their movement allow people to use surrogates or do genetic testing.

And I'm like, You're like contradicting yourself here MMMMMM, seething! But I'm not gonna attack him anymore, because I said I'd stop attacking him after this if he doesn't try to [01:03:00] undermine the big tent pronatalist movement again to try to take it over. We honestly could have been a lot worse to him.

I had a much meaner episode planned about him, but we ended up just talking about it in the episode where we were talking about what was it? When it is not true, because this is something he believes that more wealth doesn't lead to lower fertility rates, and I'm like, that belief continually arguing that, which he does persistently throughout all his work and he's like, why are they telling reporters not to talk to me?

I'm like, that's like an environmentalist arguing that it's an environmentalist. Like industrial logging doesn't hurt the rainforest because one person is like planting trees or like they can find this one study like broadly everyone who's saying and knows that industrial logging hurts the rainforest and other environmentalists aren't going to send reporters to talk to you like obviously if you're the pronatalist version of a flat earther, When a reporter comes to me, I'm like, yeah, don't talk to the guy who doesn't think that wealth causes lower fertility rates.

That's pretty [01:04:00] insane position when you can just Google any graph on this and you will see it as a very strong trend. But yeah, I don't want to go too deep on, on that particular thing. So what would the other thing you said? There was something else that came out today that was stressful. You read this one.

It wasn't

Simone Collins: stressful. It's more of a Swedish piece. They were so mean to us. The Swedish place that I think it was a translation, but it was like, they said the parents who beat their children. Yeah. The parents who beat their children and want everyone to have children. And then we live in a dank farmhouse.

They said we live in a dingy farmhouse. Dingy, that was the word, dingy. Oh, I wonder if there's a like, more diplomatic way that this is written in Swedish, or did they, she just like flat out call her home dingy? Was this somebody who came to

Malcolm Collins: her house, or were they writing about somebody else? Yeah, she,

Simone Collins: yeah, she's the woman who came to her house.

Her picture's at the very end of the article. Remember, she wore the bright shirt.

Malcolm Collins: Oh I like that. They included a lot of our full arguments in that piece. That's always nice. When somebody does that, we always

Simone Collins: ask someone to come at us. We're always like, be [01:05:00] controversial, but it must as villains.

And she's I'm glad she did it because it made the article more interesting. But yeah, it's always stressful reading those being like, wait, my house is dingy. I try to clean up before you. I

Malcolm Collins: broadly, I thought it was a good article. It is the type of article that I would want written.

But it's always,

Simone Collins: it's always stressful to, for anyone to talk about, like to read anything about you. It's just as stressful if it's positive. So I'm just ready to de stress. Let's talk about China as a dumpster fire. It's going to make me feel so much better. Okay. Let's do it.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Do I have any debris on me or anything like that? Ooh,

Simone Collins: yeah, let me, not that I can see, not that I can see. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: this right here.

Simone Collins: I can't, is wiping your nose on it going to make it go away? I'm trying to lick it off, but it's not that scary.[01:06:00]

Just give me the shirt to wash. I, we have a, I brought a bunch of

Malcolm Collins: shirts and pants down for you to wash.

Simone Collins: I hope you didn't put them in the clean laundry basket. I need to make things more. We need a better hamper system. We will work this out.

Malcolm Collins: I'll just change my shirt.

Simone Collins: What do you want for dinner, by the way?

Malcolm Collins: You know what would be really cool if you learned how to make, if you learned how to make taquitos.

Simone Collins: That can't be hard to do, but I would need oh my God, wait a second. No. I can use, hold on. What if I tried this? I will make corn tortilla taquitos using your slow cooker beef and keep in mind that is prime beef, the Christmas beef.

I will

try it. I don't know exactly how they're properly cooked. I'm just going to First, lightly fry corn tortillas in butter, then I'm going to roll them in the meat, which I will saute ahead of time with some pumpkin. Would you like put some of it or not? Yeah, that's a

Malcolm Collins: great idea. And [01:07:00] then

Simone Collins: I will cook them further in the air fryer.

Malcolm Collins: That's exactly what I would have suggested.

Simone Collins: All right, let's see with maybe some melted cheese on top. I don't know. I haven't gotten there yet, but we're going to see how that goes. No, no melted cheese. We're going to try dry. You can dip them in sauces. We're going to see how this works. I'm excited for it.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, the episode we did today on the spy, it got demonetized. And I think it's because we were talking about things that we aren't allowed to talk about. So just don't, no, even saying we aren't allowed to talk about something. You can't say that.

Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. Deleted

Malcolm Collins: everything else. So that must've been what flagged it.

That is so creepy. That's really dystopian. Yeah.

We live here. Have fun. The deep state is spying on us. And

Simone Collins: we can't say that.

Malcolm Collins: One of the comments that somebody had that got to me as they were like they did arrest like random women who nobody follows for questioning their school board. Do you think was your guys platform? They're not going to attack you. [01:08:00] And I was like, That makes sense.

Simone Collins: Touche. Creepy.

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