Why is Fertility Collapse Happening Faster in Some Places Than Others? (& Are Women at Fault?)

In this episode, we delve into a new theory by EW, who explores why fertility rates fall faster in some countries than others. The theory suggests that countries modernizing later retain elements of ancestral culture, particularly outdated misogyny and gender roles, which haven't adapted to contemporary contexts, leading to a dramatic decline in fertility rates. We compare two groups of countries with differing fertility trajectories and investigate the roles of economic development, respect for elders, individualism, and gender dynamics. We also discuss the implications of these cultural factors on both family dynamics and societal trends, touching on real-world examples and personal anecdotes. Join us as we analyze these critical issues and invite you to share your thoughts on the factors influencing global fertility trends.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about a theory about fertility rates that come out from EW for end of the show.

Don't know if you've ever been on, we should ask him. Nice guy. But anyway, he has done a new theory where he tries to understand why fertility rates fall. Faster in some countries than other countries. Mm-hmm. IE what is protective of fertility rates and the, the gist of the argument is that these countries modernized later and that caused them to maintain more of their ancestral culture, specifically the misogyny and gender roles.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: Which is not properly updated for the new context. And leads to a crash in fertility raise. And I thought that the theory was really interesting. So let's go over it piece by piece, because I think he might be onto something here. But any thoughts before I start? Let's

Simone Collins: dive in. Let's

Malcolm Collins: do it. All right.

Let's get a graph on screen here. Gotta you gotta [00:01:00] ex enhance, enhanced,

Simone Collins: yeah. Give us, give us the visual and the, the premise that crem sets is what differentiates the countries in orange from the countries in blue? Why do the orange countries plunge into ultralow fertility while the blue ones have maintained themselves better?

So let's

Malcolm Collins: talk about the two country groups. Orange includes Korea, Spain, and Italy. While blue includes the United States, France, and the United Kingdom.

Simone Collins: And REU groups them into two sets. He says the countries in the first set are group one nations. In the second set, they're group two nations. Notice anything about their growth rates.

One thing is that they've all grown to similar enough levels. Another is the acceleration of the pace of growth. So in the second tweet, he shares two additional graphs showing different. Trajectories of growth and different fertility rates

okay.

In Group one, nations [00:02:00] started off a bit richer and they grew at a more stable pace. In Group two, the nations started off poorer, but they caught up to group one by growing faster. In the latter half of the 20th century, their fertility re rate trajectories followed suit.

Malcolm Collins: And so what you see here is a really interesting thing in Group one countries where we've talked about it in other videos, but around the 1930s there was a huge fertility crash that a lot of these group one countries recovered from.

This was mostly due to medical technology, although how seeing in the war played a role as well. Hmm. And you can look at our video on, you know, the, the ba the baby Boom. To get more information on this, but the gist being is that if you take the baby boom as an anomaly and you sort of try to draw a through line through these, it looks fairly stable.

Whereas these other countries start to crash really dramatically and pretty quickly. And what's interesting is most of the crash in these other countries. Fertility rates [00:03:00] happens between 1920 and I'd say 1980. So before our, our, our modern time. And that's where they're dropping for much higher initial fertility rates.

So if you look at it like sort of the mean fertility rate at the beginning of this period in 1920 for the group two, all of these countries where they started with a much higher mean fertility, let's say around. Four or maybe even 4.5, whereas the other group started with a mean fertility of three to 3.5.

Mm-hmm. So it's almost as if the higher fertility you start with, the lower your fertility goes over time.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And REU has a theory around this.

Premiere rights. All societies used to be pretty sexist. They used to repress women in various ways, and that was just that for all of human history. But as societies have developed, one of the major changes has been that women's status has quickly moved up to the levels

that have only once been seen by men with slow continuous growth. These norms changed and women's acceptance was [00:04:00] taken up gradually without much need for pushing. But with rapid growth, the picture is far different. The norms have changed more slowly than the markets, and I. That may have been disastrous.

You can see plenty of signs of this everywhere. For example, in the Group one Nations that experience slow and steady growth, men and women tend to have more similar household labor distributions. He then shares a graph of time use and fertility among the 12 group one and two group two nations. And there is somewhat of a negative correlation between total fertility rate and female minus male daily hours of unpaid household labor.

He continues. Similarly, in the case of distributions in the home is incidentally related to fertility among this group of developed countries, he shows another graph with negative correlation between time and fertility among 20 nations. He writes, I'm aware there are issues with treating this as if it's causal, but the point here is less about the particular example of household time use and more about how norms change over time with slow [00:05:00] versus rapid growth.

Take South Korea as an example in South Korea, men's attitudes towards women are still pretty unrefined, a potential result. Enormous sex differences in getting along in politics, these gulfs. Are opening up the world over, but South Korea is the most extreme example Here. He shares a financial times graph showing the ideology gap opening up between young and men and women in countries across the world.

With South Korea being the first country shown, I. And just over time, especially from 2015 to 2020, the gap is just like, like they're just becoming different species. Whereas in the US the gap is violent, but not that insane. In Germany, it's a little bit less bad. In the UK it's, it's also, I mean, they're, they're all getting worse.

And I, this resonates with me. I mean, I, I could see a lot of the tension there making sense.

Malcolm Collins: I actually think Rock came up with a better answer, but I do like this answer. It's definitely something that is contributing to the fertility collapse that we're seeing in Italy and Spain. [00:06:00] Is the idea that not, sorry, not Italy and Spain, South Korea, but I don't know why.

Said that but likely the same thing is that men are staying much more misogynistic in their attitudes and expectations of their wives

Simone Collins: than

Malcolm Collins: men are in the United States. And if you get female liberation in terms of the workforce with all the misogynistic attitudes, now marriage becomes an incredibly raw deal for.

For women? No, just in terms of hedonism, I'm not saying in terms of like genetics or whatever. Yeah. But if you are expected to handle the kids, handle the house and handle a career that's equivalent to your husband's career and he just, what does whatever like, takes the status, bosses you around, like, yeah, what, why would you want that?

Right. And then a lot of men feel like, well. You know, you should give us, like, we do need to maintain some degree of our historic culture. So I understand why they're pushing back and they think a lot of women have gone too far in their accusations around men, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I mean, if you look at the level of misogyny and misandry in Korea, it is at a [00:07:00] completely different level than what you see in the United States or something like like that.

Like these. Two genders are almost two separated political classes now. Yeah. And that's definitely more in Italy. I grew up partially in Italy. I lived there for a year when I was a kid. And one of those things I distinctly remember is the constant cat calling. Oh really? Wow. Yeah. And this is, this was true when I was growing up there, and I remember this being an American, from Texas, being in Italy and in Texas.

I don't remember ever. Hearing, cat calling golly.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: You just wouldn't do it. Like it, it'd get beaten up or something, you know. But in Italy, no. It's considered very normal for guys to be, you know, really and, and people who don't understand why cat calling is bad. Like you are intentionally harassing in a way that is meant to be derogatory of their status in re relative to your status, a woman.

Mm-hmm. A lot of people think that this is like. I don't know that there's, like, there might be some women who have like a weird fetish for it. They're not even a weird fetish. I'd actually say it's probably a, a normal fetish to like [00:08:00] being publicly humiliated by men saying you're attractive. But I, I don't think that it is something that you're gonna see a lot of in countries where women are seen as, you know, tough or deserving of their own like rights.

Now when I put this into any thoughts before we go to what GR has to say?

Simone Collins: I'm, no, you have me. So curious about what Grok is gonna say. I can't say no.

Malcolm Collins: All right. So, what I put into Grok to sort of test it. So if you look at the countries that he includes in the two groups I decided to only include a.

Few of the countries that he includes in the two groups. Okay. To see if rock's findings hold true for the other groups that are in the two groups. Hmm. So the full two groups that he used was Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, uk, us. Mm-hmm. The second group was Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, and Spain.

Okay. And so I decided, let's just do two. Okay. So, sure. What's the difference between South Korea, Spain, and Italy and the us, France and the [00:09:00] uk? All right. Yeah. Culturally speaking, sure. What. It says the most striking thing would be respect for elders. With, and, and this is definitely true with the US, France and the UK having much lower levels of this than Spain, Italy, and South Korea.

And so then my question could be, oh, is that cultural distance also true in the other countries here, like Greece and portugal. Yes it is. Okay. What about the other countries on the other side? Germany and Denmark. Yeah, definitely way lower respect for elders. Mm-hmm. And if I actually think about where countries have seen fertility collapse hit the hardest, like Japan, Korea, China, these are all countries that have a unique respect for elders.

Yeah. Where has fertility hit? Uniquely lowly greater Appalachian cultural region, as we've mentioned, which has almost no respect for elders at all. Like elders are kept alive, but like, definitely we won't kill you, but we won't kill you. [00:10:00] But it's always we'll resent

Simone Collins: you a little bit.

Malcolm Collins: And Jewish culture, and I actually argue Jewish culture does not have a particularly high respect for elders when contrasted with, let's say Korean or Japanese or Confucius culture.

Mm-hmm. You have. Like a little degree, but I, I don't. I'd say less than Christian. Even like your modern, like East coast Christian. Mm. Elders are just not assigned a high status unless they can meritocratic prove that they deserve a high status. So it's not that you don't see elders in positions of status, it's just that being elder in and of itself is not a thing deserving of respect.

Mm. Okay. And so the question could be, why would that cause, well, let's, let's go into it a bit more before we ask why. Yeah. South Korea, Spain and Italy appear to have a cultural similarity and that they have a deep respect for their elders. Rooted in traditions like FU and South Korea and Catholicism in Spain and Italy.

This respect manifests in behavior such as using formal language, giving up seats for elders and prioritizing family roles, ah, which [00:11:00] contrasts with the more individualistic and use focus culture that the US and the UK and France. Mm-hmm. However it shows a France it says, shows a blend of this,

hmm. Okay. Here it also divide stuff with looking at individualism versus collectivism with the cultures on this side being much more individualistic, which I also see, and much more low power difference, which I also see. So that's another thing that could be causing this. Mm-hmm. Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Spain, all are less individualistic, more collectivist, and have higher power differences.

Mm. Whereas the us, uk, Sweden, Germany, France, and Denmark all have fairly low power differences. So let's think about how this could have caused a fertility issue. Right. Okay. Yes. The respect for elders is. I guess it's fairly obvious to me, like where, when resources are limited and demographic collapses already underway.

Yeah. Do you distribute the resources that are left? You're gonna, if you could choose more [00:12:00] babies or elders mm-hmm. You're gonna choose elders. Yeah. I mean, a country like Korea should be spending as much on family creation as it spends on elder care. 100%. Yeah. And I'm fairly sure it's not, I'll add in post, but I'm fairly sure it's not even like, you know, maybe one 10th what it's spending on elder care.

Okay. I find myself surprised on this one. They only spend about double on elderly costs, In elderly costs in South Korea, it's around 51 to 54 billion USD and in children it's around 18 to 22 billion USDA per year as of 2025. So the elderly care ratio is two to 2.5 x birth incentives.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. If you look at so, so that makes perfect sense to me. Because it's about, or me as an individual, like if one of my parents was like, oh, I'm aiding, help me. I can't survive on social security. It's in a message like, disabled. I have four kids, you know. F off.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like

Simone Collins: your problem.

Malcolm Collins: Your problem.

Speaker 4: Hey, man, I got five [00:13:00] kids to feed.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I'd be like that scene from team America where he is like, if you get caught, you may need to take your own life. And he slice the hammer across the table.

Well, you'll probably want to take your own life here. You better have this.

All right, team. That's it. We've got a job to do.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That'd be me. I'd be like, you know, you need to, you know

Simone Collins: what to

Malcolm Collins: do, you know what to do. Okay. So that I see. Now let's talk about individualism.

Why would high individualism lead to higher fertility rates in these cultures? Mm-hmm. The answer here could be that you have an easier time resisting the monoculture and dominant cultural practices within your country. And so you're gonna have more people who sort of buck the trend.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Which I could definitely see leading to higher fertility rates in many of these countries.

Yeah. You were gonna say something?

Simone Collins: No, no, no. I'm, I'm agreeing with you.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then high power distance. That makes a lot of sense. I think in the modern world, high power distance [00:14:00] just doesn't really work that well anymore. This is where like your boss is like really high above you in status. And this is actually really true in a lot of Latin America, where we're also seeing a unique fertility collapse.

It is sort of across Catholic cultures. Because you have like the, the people who matter and then the people who are the people, right? Mm-hmm. And why this leads to fertility collapse is I think the people, people like don't see a point in continuing to cycle anymore.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They don't wanna put people into this system where they're gonna be an underclass and I.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. Why would you, why would you continue to participate in that? The final sort of hypothesis I'd have here about what would lead to this is just a longer time to evolve a resistance to the urban monoculture. I think the urban monoculture didn't really care, or the iterations of that existed.

Before it, like the prodomal iterations of it didn't really focus on these other countries when they were super poor and culturally different.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. And I think that's

Malcolm Collins: was leading to their high fertility rates at that period. Mm-hmm. And so they didn't have a century [00:15:00] for the people who were slightly lower fertility rate when exposed to the urban monoculture to die out disproportionately.

Yeah. And so now they're all dying out at once.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I could see that so dire. That is, that is interesting. I don't know, I still, I'm still finding myself, however, gravitating toward the, the misogyny thing, just because so much of this problem is couples just failing to get married.

Malcolm Collins: True and, and, and a misogynistic attitude.

Pervading a culture where women have an option not to marry, is going to lead to women, not is enthusiastically engaging with the marriage culture. So every high

Simone Collins: fertility family we know personally. Mm-hmm. His husbands has husbands who contribute a lot, are extremely supportive if they, if they're the breadwinners, they also contribute a lot of labor.

If [00:16:00] they are not the sole breadwinners, they contribute probably as much labor as their wife also breadwinners. Contribute. Mm-hmm. You know, there's just like this, actually,

Malcolm Collins: I, I might word it differently. I'd take every high fertility family that we know has a husband who would be considered a simp by like the Manosphere or the Andrew Tate movement.

Mm-hmm. And not necessarily like, like for example, us, I'm not like a simp in a traditional term, but people have been like, oh, Malcolm, you're like overly nice to your wife. You overly cest your wife, you. Mm-hmm. And I'm probably of all of the high fertility men that we know the most traditionally masculine.

Yeah. Except for maybe Kevin Dolan.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kevin

Malcolm Collins: Dolan's pretty traditionally masculine, but Yeah. The, the, yeah. I think that you're a hundred percent right here. Women have kids when they feel supported and protected. Mm-hmm. . Because a woman in a modern context is just not gonna feel like you have her back if you're pulling this. And, and the truth is, is you [00:17:00] don't. I think we saw this was a quiverfull movement, and it's part of the reason the Quiverfull movement sort of fell apart, was a.

It's understanding of the man's role in the household instead of adapting to modern and changing pressures. They tried to go as this dictatorial male in control, woman at home, does nothing birthing. And it didn't create an environment that daughters wanted to recreate or that sons were capable of recreating.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I agree.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and actually here, I thought, I, I read something really interesting on our discord that somebody posted about the failure of the quiver full movement to replicate itself. Hmm. And I was like, oh my God, this is so true. I've gotta read it. So this is from the person on the Discord called Cat.

I don't know. It's some sort of vegetation. Okay. And they have three kids. 'cause people say that on the Discord, how many kids they have. I have so many thoughts regarding this topic as somebody who has raised quiverfull adjacent Christian [00:18:00] homeschooler, who attended Quiverfull co-ops, et cetera. But my family wasn't specifically quiverfull ourselves.

I think the big factor of their failure is the way that they specifically and intentionally raised non-AG agentic children. Boys in general have a, had a bit of a rudderless time over the past few decades, but I've never seen anything like the slow motion catastrophe that has been the quiver for boys aging out of their homeschooling regime.

Mm. The prototypical quiver for family is a first generation. Fairly beta white collar husband, fairly crazy homeschooling mother, raising sons who are simultaneously longhouse brow beaten under mommy's supervision his entire life, while also being inculcated with an irrational entitlement complex based on being male not being accomplished.

They can't follow in their haired, checked out fathers white collar footsteps because they are undereducated College is of this world. Yeah. But they often don't have the connections or savvy to make it [00:19:00] in the working class trades world. So they either languish in some sort of drifting failure to launch, or if their family is particularly committed, get married off and are expected to support a family.

Then it increases by one every year starting at the age of 18 on nothing but thoughts and prayers. Mm. It's such a mess. Anecdotally, I can confirm mass deconversion rates. , I don't think the duggars are at all are typical. They mostly compensate for the above issue by having all that TLC money that Jim Bob bought real estate with.

So he basically supports his sons through the dad welfare. Hmm. It's just crazy to me that they had all this IBLP propaganda about how they were gonna raise a Joshua generation. It's gonna take over the government and lead a worldwide revival and then raise the least age agentic children ever walk the earth. Timid, sly not good.

Not good. Or

Complete and utter failure and refutation of the movement's philosophy. Yeah. And yeah, I completely agree with that. And I think that that might [00:20:00] be what we're seeing in these cultures that have these stricter power differences between the old and the young as well.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Is that they are.

But they put really strict rules on their kids. And if you look at our family, well, we have rules for our kids. I expect them and will be proud of them when they break those rules. That's part of why we use corporal punishment instead of limiting punishment to just like yelling or emotional escalation.

Simone Collins: Yeah. '

Malcolm Collins: cause when a kid does something bad, it allows me to quickly show them like, bop, they did something wrong. Mm-hmm. But I still love you like was recorded in that piece. Hmm. So that they understand that breaking rules does not remove them from the circle of love of this family, and that I will set down a fence and rules for them.

But I still, especially when they're breaking rules in their own you know, based on their own internal moral compass have respect for them in doing that. And, and you know, you see this, I've, I've mentioned in previous episodes like. Jordan Peterson, a guide to raising Simps, Jordan Peterson is like, you just need to break the child's will down until they listen [00:21:00] to you.

And I'm like, that is not a good idea. That raises non-agent children. Yeah. You want to build the child's will up until they take. From nobody. And if they don't understand why you're giving rules and you're just like, you just obey the authority, then they're just gonna obey the urban monoculture. And I think a lot of these religious families, that's what they were.

Just obey the authority. Just obey the authority. Just obey the authority. But they thought the authority was always gonna be at the church. Mm-hmm. And they didn't realize that the authority changes based on the person's context of they're interacting within the real world. Yeah. And so they were easily brow beaten and they also created males that like, what?

Who would want that? Like a lot of girls just aren't gonna want that. Yeah. And, and so they, they get a, you know, because if, if it's like much worse than like a Mormon community or something where you have more of the church like keeping track of things and less a chance that one man is, is gonna be like overly domineering with his family or something.

Yeah. Within these more dispersed Protestant communities I, as a [00:22:00] woman, honestly, I wouldn't wanna marry into one of these. I'd be really worried. Especially if they were raised was a sort of like, well men lead the family attitude like, and we have me as a man, lead the family. I just consider that a gift from Simone.

Simone Collins: Well, and back to our repeated theme of, of real dominance, real dominance isn't. Shut up and do what I say, follow my orders. Real dominance is demonstrating through your competence, good decision making and good leadership, natural leadership, that your plans are trustworthy and the best way to go. People fall in line.

There is no ordering and there is no shutting people down and systematically training them to be compliant. You don't need to train people to be compliant when they know you're right. That's the big difference.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and we had the episode on, on Andrew Tate, where I was like, Andrew Tate's idea of masculinity.

It's like he watched the gladiator and he is like, ah, the emperor, that's what the ideal man is like. And that, that, you know, the, the gladiator Maximus, he's a simp. Whereas the [00:23:00] exact opposite is true. You know, and I pointed this out because if you watch and. Is he attempts to force the women around him to follow his wills, literally at Sword Point, you know, like Andrew Tate being like, this is why I have a sword.

So women don't, you know, they talk down to me and you see, the Emperor playing was like a sword in his house, you know? And wanting to be loved. And I think that if you look at Maximus, none of this is about being loved by people or anything like that. He just has a duty and he is carrying it out.

And it's certainly not about, like, if you look at the character of Maximus. You look at the relationship he's framed at having with both his kids and the woman who has that desperate crush on him is, is this is not a guy who is pushing around his wife, telling his wife, like get in the kitchen, telling his wife like, you do what?

I say, now, you know, the wife is making him dinner because she cares about him, right? Mm-hmm. And, and they're working on a shared goal or something like that, like mm-hmm. We don't have any feeling like they don't have traditional gender roles. But the traditional gender roles are carried out because those are the preferences of the male and the woman. Mm-hmm. They are not carried out because the [00:24:00] woman has some supernatural reason to be obedient or some like biological mandate to be obedient to her husband. It's just mm-hmm. Average biological differences here.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Yeah. Which means that there also is no commitment to. Those specific roles and the commitment is to where someone's propensity and skill lies. So if, for example. A man and a woman or whatever configuration of people you want work to pair up and start raising kids together. We're not gonna be like, well, you're the woman, so of course you're doing those things.

It's, well, okay, what are you gonna contribute best? Do that thing. Yeah. So if a man ends up doing all of the cooking, indoor cleaning and infant rearing, fine, we're, we are not married to that. And I think a lot of these really conservative religions. Are, well, that's just these, these cultures as well. Like, well, no, the, the man can't do that.

Even if he'd rather do that. Like even if the woman has the highest educational degree and the greatest earning potential and the greatest professional network, she has to become the [00:25:00] mother who stays at home. And somehow the less educated, less connected, less privileged man has to earn enough for both.

Malcolm Collins: . So this isn't just like a religious culture thing, this is also within the wider online manosphere, right-leaning culture. Mm-hmm. Where recently there was a fight of memes in which there was this concept of like the dad meme or the husband meme. And it's typically the husband being like, oh honey, of course I'll do X for you.

Or I'll do Y for you. You know, he is doing something sweet for the wife. That's like normal for a husband to do. Yeah.

This was known as the wife Jack Meme Wars. I was wrong. It wasn't about a husband meme, it was a wife meme.

Malcolm Collins: And then a bunch of guys were like, oh, like you guys posting, what a simp you are. You know? And the guys of course complaining that these other guys are simps are unmarried, right? And it's like, well, that's genetically what's being preserved in the human condition.

It's not a simp, it's being able to work with people, right. And being able to appreciate what other people are bringing to the table. And it has become almost within these cultures, seen as a sign of submission or browbeat ness [00:26:00] if mm-hmm. You are shown as making either concessions to your wife or you are shown as having appreciation for your wife.

And yet anybody who is gonna have a lot of kids knows that those two things are like. Within a modern context, critical to, I think having, let's say over five kids, like you just can't get to these sorts of numbers. If you're not doing that. If you're, if you're taking the, you do what I say approach you're gonna really struggle to get that high because the woman is just not gonna be all about it.

She's gonna be like, what am I doing all this for? Like, what am I raising my daughters for? Like, what's the point, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's demotivating. Yeah, slave mentality. If you want to turn your wife into a slave, she's gonna labor like a slave. Well, again, intrinsic

Simone Collins: motivation is just a billion times more powerful than extrinsic motivation, as is seen across.

Countless studies, research, anecdotal examples, just says this should be common sense

Malcolm Collins: their wives following them for the same reason and gladiator why people followed what the emperor said instead of the reason why people [00:27:00] followed what Maximus said. Mm-hmm. And it's, it's a completely different Are they following you because you're inspiring them or are they following you because it's the rules and, and because you'll hurt them if they don't.

Mm-hmm. And I think that that, this sort of like ideal of male athletics, that's not really working for any man anywhere that I'm aware of, except for maybe Andrew Tate is like super toxic and it was Andrew Tate. It basically only works because he's super wealthy, like women will do a lot of crazy nonsense for, for very wealthy men.

Yeah. It's a trade off, especially if they have like a public profile or something like that. Like you look at the simp women that like Elon gets or something like that. But I could not treat you the way that Elon treats his wi. Like I would never get away with that. Like you'd leave me, I. And I don't think that like, and somebody's like, is that fair?

It's like, dude, he's a, he's like a infinity billionaire. Like fair is not part of the equation. It's a different social contract when you're interacting with somebody like that it's [00:28:00] like, it's like, oh, the king in, in like, you know, medieval Europe or something like that, treats their wives differently.

Than you do.

It's like a entirely different social contract exists for the king, of course. Yeah. Like, what, what are you, like, how could you think that? And I think that you get sort of two categories of influencers who like go into this category of influence.

One is they're super successful, they become super wealthy, and they're able to live some sort of like, unrealistic life. Yeah. The other they go like the Nick Fuentes path and they end up like a forever celibate, right. You know, where they can't. Like his advice on the way you should treat girls leads to the extinction of your culture.

Like he is living proof of that.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: He's not gonna have any kids likely at this point, given how old he is already. Or at least not many. Not unless he use his IVF, which he won't. And so, my problem

Simone Collins: is, I mean, men really can afford to delay fertility. But they're either [00:29:00] ensuring that their children are not going to be very healthy, or they need to freeze their sperm.

Guys, please freeze your sperm for the love. Like, although here's my other problem with like yeah,

Malcolm Collins: male genetic health. It degrades it around the same rate as female genetic health does. It just doesn't fall off a cliff at that rate. And these, these

Simone Collins: higher risk factors that your child will get if you have them with older sperm.

Like higher risks of cancer and all, all sorts of other disorders, they get passed on to your grandchildren and their grandchildren. So what are you doing? But beyond that, like, so, I mean, one, it is actually super possible if you free sperm to have healthy children late in life and, you know, put that off.

My problem is that older men are still in a bad situation if they choose to do that because either you end up with, you know, your perfect sexy 20 something wife who. It's never gonna be on your level because there's so much of an age gap. You know, you're never really gonna have an intellectual [00:30:00] equal. I mean, you might meet someone who loves old souls, but still like age, you know, it's, it doesn't quite work as neatly as I would hope on that front.

And then, yeah, well and end up with an older woman who probably hasn't frozen her eggs. And then you have the same problem with genetic material.

Malcolm Collins: A needs men are gonna be doing like you. Okay, let me put it this way. You a guy right now. You're like, yeah, when I'm 50 or 60, I'm gonna get a young woman and I'm gonna have lots of kids after I'm rich.

Yeah. Do, do you want a child? Do you want to raise a child and then have her raise child? Like you're not just that, but like. Do you even want to be having that sex? Like no, I'm, I'm being honest, like you do you really want like a 50-year-old sleeping with like a late 20 something? Like it's gross. Do you think that's hot for the 50-year-old?

Even at that point? Like where you're taking all of the medications so that you're still horny? Oh, don't do all. You're taking all of the pills so that you can still get hard. Like that's

Simone Collins: not Well then there's also the problem, like the most. [00:31:00] And I, this is not spoken about enough. The most unsexy type of sex is obligatory sex, especially if you know that the partner is like having sex out of obligation.

And they may be great at acting, but I'm pretty sure that the vast, vast majority of 20 something girls who marry wealthy and successful, much older men. Are faking it, which is the, you're having sex

Malcolm Collins: with a woman who's pretending to be into

Simone Collins: you,

Malcolm Collins: like,

Simone Collins: which is the worst type of sex. I just like, I, I, I could never, I could never have sex with someone like that,

Malcolm Collins: just like that.

I'm just, I'm just saying that like they think that what they're getting is just delaying and then they get the young hot wife and it's like, no, you get the young hot wife when you are young and hot, or you get some other type of weird relationship. Mm-hmm. Not like you create that relationship later in life.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: [00:32:00] So,

I think that that's gonna be a possibility for them. But the reality is it's not either from a genetic standpoint that real of a possibility or. From a, you know, they're not like, oh, I can delay getting this now and I'll get it in the future. No, you're, you're not getting it in the future. You're getting some weird other thing.

Which is, which is not as fun, you know, you, yeah. Anyway yeah. Love you to DeSimone. I am glad that I settled down with you. I had another one that I'm, I'm not actually not gonna make because I just know it'll do bad. But it was really interesting to research, which was. If the trope of the bachelor party where people felt like they were like marrying a, a ball and chain and like, oh

Simone Collins: yeah.

Like this is my last moment to go wild.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I was like, is this real? Like, is it, was this ever actually a thing that was practiced in large numbers because it like doesn't seem,

Simone Collins: oh, I thought it was a condensed version of the sort of Catholic model that existed back all the way to like ancient Roman times where it was just kind of understood that debauch wealthy men would.[00:33:00]

Have all the female partners they wanted and then. Try to sober up later in life when they got married. And that Bachelor party's kind of compressing that for less wealthy people. What, what, what did you find in your research?

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, I mean, apparently it did really happen. And it, you know, they were like, well, I understand that today.

'cause I was like, it doesn't even make logical sense. Like you're about to get married to presumably the person that you love more than anyone in the world. And you've been so excited to spend your life with. Hmm. Like why would you go out and sleep with other people right before that? Like, why would you want that?

And it was like, oh, well, you see, people didn't actually used to love their wives during this period of history. Yeah, I

Simone Collins: mean this, the, yeah, the alternate take there is, hold on. Actually, maybe this was the sign of a better. World in which people got married as business arrangements and saw sex as something that they did separately, but also lived in monogamous societies.

Malcolm Collins: A breaking of both. Which is to say that it was this period of the boomers where they got all of the divorces, you know, they had like the really high [00:34:00] divorce rate and they'd had terrible marriages. Like everybody knows, like. The boomers were almost like the pure infantilization of humanity where they were a generation that had very little self-control, very little like is obsessed with self validation.

I. Just, you know, broke a lot of social traditions that were actually really important without understanding what they were doing. Didn't really pass money down to their kids intentionally. Didn't really establish the idea of like intergenerational family units, well, in the way that their ancestors had.

Mm-hmm. They just sort of, after the greatest generation, it just like increasingly degraded. Then you got to the boomers. And I think since the boomers, every generation has been sort of building themselves a little bit back from that point. You know, you look at Jan Alpha and they're definitely a lot more mature than the boomers in terms of the way they relate to things like sex and sexuality and, and, and parties and wives and everything like that.

And I think that the boomers were this generation where they got married out of obligation. 'cause it was sort of like what they did. [00:35:00] They were like a generation that, that. Wanted to live this white picket fence ideal, or they had like an ideal of what they wanted to live without. Thinking about why these things were ideal without thinking about why you had kids or without thinking about everything, was just about like hedonism and consumerism for them.

Hmm. Very much what I think, you know, something like Fight Club was arguing against was the mindset of the boomer generation and. Then you have other generations trying to reestablish some sort of stable state norm after the boomers,

Simone Collins: huh? Well, that's interesting. That's an interesting idea. I. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, they're the generation that had all of our societies that just take out debt forever instead of actually trying to build like stable civilizations.

They're the generation that reads the most. Whenever we bring up fertility collapse, they're the generation that's out. If you look at these, these Trump protests, everyone is like, it's wild that they're all like elderly white people. Those are the only people protesting. So [00:36:00] weird.

Simone Collins: So

Malcolm Collins: weird. But they, they still get their news from the news, like CNN and stuff.

And so they think that like, oh dude, the evil Trump is outed

Simone Collins: again

Malcolm Collins: anyway. Well, and I

Simone Collins: guess it's, it's very boomer to think that protests actually work, because, I don't know, I guess I should look, go to a protest

Malcolm Collins: one day and film and just be like, you know, protests don't work. Nobody cares about what you're doing here.

No, you have wasted a day. Do you have nothing better to do with your lives?

Simone Collins: One of the things that we really can't stand is listening to people who have really bad brain rot, and the kinds of people who attend protests are, I would argue, the epitome of that type of person. Remember at Natal Con, there were those protestors outside the opening night and Kira the.

Journalist from Mother Jones. So tried to talk to them. Sufficiently progressive, right? Didn't look conservative. No. Came up to them, [00:37:00] approached them as a Mother Jones journalist and attempted to talk with him. With them. And when I saw her after her attempted interaction, she's like, well, I, I couldn't get a word on edgewise.

Like she attempted to interview them and they were so. Brain rotted that she literally couldn't ask them a question to get their opinion on the matter they were protesting.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it's funny you you say that there's been a lot of videos that have been going viral of people going to these Trump protests and trying to talk to people.

Oh, yeah. And they don't know why they're there, and they don't know why Trump is a fascist. They're like, Trump's a fashion. They go explain.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Like, what

Malcolm Collins: has he done that's. That makes him a fascist. And what the right is taking away from this is, oh, these must be paid protesters who don't actually have a vested interest in this.

I don't think that's it. I think they're just brainless, brain rotted automatons who are like CNN says Trump is bad. No, I go to field and yell at people. I, I, I genuinely think more people are like closer to like NBC at [00:38:00] automatons than you would imagine

Simone Collins: maybe. Maybe they're just all in the same Facebook groups.

I imagine this is a Facebook groups thing. If it's mostly boomers, it's just a show thing. Oh, no. Anyway, come on. That makes sense, right?

Malcolm Collins: It No, it does, it does. Tonight

Simone Collins: for dinner. Hot dogs. Hot dogs. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I'm gonna do my we got 'em in all these with relish. Fancy. All these buns, all these

Simone Collins: amazing. Oh yeah.

They're brioche buns. We really went all out for that.

Malcolm Collins: You're gonna toast the buds, of course,

Simone Collins: with butter. Obviously,

Malcolm Collins: We are going to though save my curry for another night. I can have it tomorrow.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I'll do hot dogs tonight too. Lunch

Simone Collins: tomorrow. Hot dog night. Very American. Big deviation from your typical meal choice, but everyone seems to want hot dogs right now, so.

Malcolm Collins: Well, the kids wanted hot dogs and I was like, you know what? We've got the onions now we've got relish. We've got, do you want [00:39:00] them in

Simone Collins: confetti or. Slices and slices.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, onions and hot dogs you typically want in slices, get slice, get more front slice. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Not not, although I guess I've seen it both ways or I think of relish and I think of the confetti.

No, either

Malcolm Collins: way works. Honestly, the confetti works just as well. 'cause you get crunch from it too. So you know, it actually, I'm thinking

Simone Collins: confetti's better. 'cause you can really finely chop it and you don't want to have like really like peeling off noodles. You know what I mean?

Malcolm Collins: So you guys in the comments need to answer this hot dog onions, is it confetti or is it, is it noodles?

Confetti or noodles for hot dog onions

Simone Collins: asking the hard questions. I'm more interested if people have alternate theories between the group one and group two countries. If it's that feminism didn't catch up as quickly with economic development, which then led to a faster backlash and separation between the sexes, or if, if rock's theory was more accurate or if it's something else that you think is going on because.

I find that quite interesting. I had had previously thought that leapfrogging development, like really fast development was a good thing [00:40:00] because you ended up getting like building infrastructure when tech was already more advanced. So you, you ended up with much better systems than say the United States had because you were developing, using, you know, third to fourth generation, later technology and all these other things.

And so this is making me look differently at the benefits of developing quickly and later, but. Yeah, I'm curious to hear people's theories on that.

Malcolm Collins: All right, Simone, I love you to death and have a spectacular day.

Simone Collins: Goodbye my dear husband and I will, I will give you a call on your phone when you're nurse run, so please, please on.

Thank you.

Do you want me to open for you? Wow. Wow. You can read it. I got a purple car. Sure. It says. That is. That's so nice. So cool. Look at that. Joie. Do you wanna put it on the fridge? Yeah. Okay.