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Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of Unsupervised Learning. Today I am here with Aria Babu. She is a researcher in England and recently I saw a profile about pro natalism. And it was notable to me that Ms. Babu here is 27 years old. And there are some young people in the pronatal camp. But I was curious what a person of such an age was doing in I guess I'm gonna call it a movement now. The last time I did a podcast about pronatalism, I think it was like pretty exotic. Over the last year in part due to the media, the gluttony for media attention of Malcolm and Simone Collins who their friends of mine but they do like media attention. And so they have gotten some media attention, I would say most of it is actually kind of negative, but they don't care. So the world knows a little about pronatalism. Aria, how do you know about it? Why do you care?
How do I know about it? So I think the first time it ever occurred to me to think about pronatalism was I was at sort of like an economics summer camp. And I just kind of repeated like the classic line that I think lots people hear that, oh, you know, the world is overpopulated. Maybe it'd be a good thing if there was slightly fewer people, or one of the other people but I was like, actually hold up, I think you'll find like, the reason I said it was like basically like some mixture of beliefs about like the environment and resource usage, and maybe some idea about how they're are fewer people wages might go up. And they basically were like I said to me, actually, in order to maintain this, like modern economy, we need lots and lots of people in order to specialize like we need. We need a constant inflow of people, which is why like immigrants are generally good for the economy, the environmental angle probably doesn't make much sense considering that we actually expect to decarbonize and that like population growth is not very closely associated with increasing carbon usage. And that basically convinced me.
Yeah, I mean, some of these facts are actually pretty surprising. So, you know, as economies modernize, you know, they decarbonize. I think another issue is I saw a couple of years ago, I had Ramez Naam. And he talked about solar power. Solar power in the 20th century, in the late 20th century, when I was a youth was one of those renewable resources that were the energy of the future. And then sometime after 2010, it really started taking off substantial minority of electricity, energy is now coming from solar power. And it's competitive. There's also wind power and other things. Here in Texas, Ideologically people are the state, the Republican Party is actually against renewables. But because development is so easy, we are actually generating more renewable energy than California who ideologically support renewable energy. But they can't build anything there because of the building codes, whatever, environmental, ironically, it's the a lot of it's the environmental review in California, which just takes forever and is frankly abused by property stakeholders to prevent development. Actually, nobody really a lot of people do not want wind farms. You know, you know, those those big propellers, you know, around their property. Including I think RFK I think the Kennedy family was really angry about that sort of development in Cape Cod. So there's a lot of NIMBY not my backyard, going about that. Going back to the fertility. So a lot of large countries, you know, obviously China, but I just recently checked, Bangladesh’s fertility, which is where I was born, it just dropped below 2 in 2021. So it's, it's around there. India also is around there. In some parts of India, including parts of India, the south where your family's from, the fertility has been below two for a long time. And then it's finally actually dropping in Africa. It's still high. But it looks like the projections of you know, billions of billions like many, many billions of Africans might be Little high. And the UN projections actually have routinely been over estimates, because they have not taken into account the fertility transition. So I mean, that's the empirical world that we live in, in the United States. Up, like, actually, like, up until I was about your age, we were pretty smug that we had maintained 2.1 that we were just naturally a very fertile developed country. And now we've dropped to like, you know, 1.7 1.6, like a European country. This started during 2008 to 2010. A lot of people thought it was because, you know, oh, the financial crisis, but really, it's just a new normal . So here we are, we have pretty high immigration rates, although it's pretty uncontrolled. So that's gonna be an issue. But we're not as bad of a straits as a lot of countries. Our average age is 34, as opposed to like, 47 or whatever it Italy. But you know, these European countries, Italy's been like 1.25, or whatever, forever. South Korea, obviously is disappearing. We know about that. So, you know, all of a sudden, I feel like there's been an inflection point. And over the last year, there has been like a massive increase in public awareness of this issue. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, completely. I would caveat it by saying I think this is an increase in awareness in the Anglosphere. And we're actually just catching up to countries that are sort of further along the demographic transition, and that they've been talking about it for ages in like Scandinavia, and Japan, and we're just catching up with them.
Yeah, I saw a recent blog post, I think Japan's a 1.25, which is pretty low, but it was actually contrasting Japan with South Korea. Because Japan's not going any further, which is good, but 1.25 is still low. So, you know, you're talking about like pronatalism and why we need it. Obviously, a lot of people don't internalize the fact that like, you know, pensions, you know, social security, the United States requires young people to pay for the old people that are now old. The math doesn't really work out currently, with the way it's structured. And like, I think, like a generation or so it's a while, but still, at some point, the fund is going to start running into issues. But I think another thing that you pointed out, like maybe we should elaborate on it is, you know, just regular pensions are just dependent on the economy. They're dependent investments to the economy, and economic growth is dependent on productive working age people. And so if you have fewer of your productive working age people, you're gonna have a contractionary situation, right?
Yeah. So I think the disaster scenario, which I'm not saying is the most likely scenario here is that the world ages to the point where the average person is not even just like, not a child or anything, but the average person is outside of their possible fertility window. And at that point, the economy starts to shrink, because we haven't managed to, like unlock any new like major productivity enhancing technology. We then see the population is like decreasing exponentially, not, not linearly. And as a result, we end up with like economic growth dropping off like very, very quickly. And we're at a point where we don't even have very many fertile people who can turn this around, entire economy shrink, like pretty quickly, lots of people withdraw their money from the stock market, lots of governments collapse, basically, Detroit happens, but it happens to basically every rich country in the world. And it's what happens in a very, very quick process. After we are unable to do anything about it. I think that's the absolute worst case scenario of what happens.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I also like children, man, you know, because situation, we're probably the only societies that will maintain any semblance of order have to be very authoritarian. Because you know,
And there'll be probably the most disconnected from the modern world as well. But think about the groups of people who are able to maintain a high fertility, we're largely thinking about people who are very, very poor, or people who are like, very religious and cut themselves off from the modern countries that they're in think about, like the Amish and like Orthodox Jews and stuff.
Yeah, the interesting thing is, like, you know, I looked at an analysis of the Amish, I think might have been Lyman Stone did it, if I recall correctly, and their fertility is considerably higher than the average, but they also track the fertility of the general population. So during the baby boom, it was way higher than it is now. But right now, it's still higher than it was during the baby boom, Mormons. Latter Day Saints have undergone a major fertility transition, and their TFR of 2.8, which is still high. But you know, when I was growing up in Eastern Oregon, you know, I would run into people in the 1990s, where they had seven siblings, and it wasn't that exceptional. So they've undergone a major cultural transition over the last year, which I think part of it is because it's just not like part of the podcast. So I'm not going to go into a detail but I've talked to multiple Mormon Friends a lot of Mormons don't believe their religion anymore because the internet, so they maintained like the cultural folkways, they made they go to church. But once you lacked the ideological commitment to producing bodies for new souls, or for pre existed souls, which is what they're doing, I think the fertility starts dropping, partly because opportunity costs, obviously middle class people, women, labor market. And so tell me what you think about what's driving this in your generation? I'll tell you actually what I always read in the media, which means that, you know, they have these stock phrases or stock people that I've talked to, it's usually not always but usually a young woman. And she always says, Well, you know, I want to travel, and I want to focus on my career. And she's like, okay, but like people have traveled to have careers forever, like, you know, why are careers and traveling so important now? I don't know.
And so I think it would be mistake to say, there's one sole reason, I think it's kind of like, kind of like asking, Why does the economy grow? Or something like that? Well, you obviously have loads and loads of possible answers. I think one of the, if I were to like pick up on one thing that I think is one of the biggest driving forces, is I think it's about what people predict they need to invest in their child to give that child good life. So I think this is potentially why East Asia has such low birth rates. Because in like Korea and Japan stuff, I think parents rationally decide to have one child and then hyper invest in that child, because like exams really matter. After school, cramming really matters, clubs and societies really matter. In the US, we've seen that the amount of time middle class parents spend with their kids has gone up the amount that they spend on after school hobbies and like things that can fill out a CV and get you into the ivy League's all of that stuff, it's become much more time intensive. So I think people are making what seems on the surface of it, quite a rational choice to basically not have a second or third child because they think it will decrease their already existing child's life outcomes. This isn't the only cause. But I think it's like one driving force. That explains why as populations get more educated, and as economies develop, people don't seem to spend that extra money on having more children.
Although it's not just the educated segments in the United States, at least, as you said, there's a lot of different causes. So this is not going to apply in East Asia. The drop is mostly attributable, apparently to teens, like teen mothers, their fertility drop, which, you know, the 1990s and 20th century was a good thing. You know, but now we're having issues with with replacement. What do you think, why do you because it's not just affecting, you know, Koreans who are like basically reductio ad absurdum they're at one end of the extreme, you know, over investment, quote, unquote, over investment, it, you know, education, all these other value added things, which are, I do have to say, like, parenthetically, I don't fair number of Korean Americans that grew up in Korea, the ones that are kind of like average intelligence, they really are anti intellectual, because, you know, their parents were just like, you're gonna be a doctor. And they tried really hard. And they like, didn't have a life. And now they're managing a hotel. And they really resent the fact that their whole youth was spent trying to do something that they probably were just like, never cut out to do, you know, but anyway, suddenly, that aside, the unhappiness of children that this this is causing, you know, fertility is also dropping it like many, many less educated places, and you know, about lower socioeconomic strata, right.
Yeah. So I think I think that's like a different reason for something that's going on. So I think if you look at the US UK cases, and this is like true ish in Europe, but I don't know the data as much, you find that lots of working class people are now just not getting married at all. Some of them that like often they're still having like one or two children. I think this actually explains part of the reason why like. European birth rates are higher than like Japanese birth rates. Because in wedlock child births are about the same in Japan, in Europe, but out of wedlock births are much, much, much higher in Europe in America. So I think potentially what's going on is there's like just a dearth of Maryable young men, like unemployment seems to have hit men in these countries like more than its hit women. And women are like much more likely to get educated, they're much more likely to get professional managerial jobs, even at like the working class end of it they're still more likely to be in employment, because we've seen a decline of manufacturing labor and stuff. So these women are sometimes thinking maybe I'll still have a child. And there are lots of if you can do lots of case studies about like women who choose children over marriage, and they think that that's like a direct choice to make. But when you're in that situation, you probably can't afford to have as many children because you do not have a reliable man who could like pay for them basically. And it's so much more work. So I think that's potentially also what's going on that men aren't providing the economic resource that they is to be able to.
Yeah, I find it very, again, like the media, a lot of times they have a narrative and they have kind of a script. So that might be why this is happening. But I just find it very interesting that, you know, in China, in Korea in the US, where they interview young people who aren’t going to have children, it's the women, I think, partly as they're articulate. I think a lot of the young men would not be very articulate, they would not be, I would not be giving good quotes at 25.
My personal hunch, also is that men have way less of a say over this anyway. So sure, you could you could get an answer from a whole bunch of men about why they don't currently have children. But just from like, talking to people, I think, like most relationships, women are largely the driving force of deciding like, whether or not they get married, whether or not they have kids, and just like thinking much more about their relationship to begin with.
Yeah, I think the men who I know, you know, obviously, I'm older than you. I know guys who just didn't want kids. I'm actually going to qualify that a second. I don't I don't bet who didn't want kids from like, when we were in our early to mid 20s, like people I went to college with and early in the workforce. And, you know, the reasons they usually gave was just like, oh, well, I don't think I could like, I think I'm just too selfish. And I couldn't focus on somebody else. Which is, that's not really a quote that I don't think a lot of newspapers, you know, what I'm saying? It's not like really a positive, productive reason but they're very candid. They're like, you know, I like to go to Germany and drink beer. It's like a literal quote from a friend of mine. He's like, you know, can I do that? And oh, another friend, he doesn't listen to the podcast, so I can say it. He's like, I don't like looking at babies, they look like slugs. You know, like, they, they don't give like very elevated reasons. So I think that that's part of it. I do have to say, I don't know, I wouldn't say many, but I know multiple people, both male and female, who changed their mind, usually in their mid 30s. With men somewhat later. The issue here though, is the result is usually different for men and women were a much higher number of the men end up marrying someone and having children. And the women, you know, a majority of them, the fertility treatments work, but I have to say, a large number of them it's actually a, it's a big, it's like a multi- you know, I don't wanna get I have friends who've been through this for four years. And candidly, it doesn't look like there's going to be a biological child light at the end of the tunnel. And so I think that's like a different, two different trajectories that I've noticed where many people that I've known over the last 20 years have changed their mind. But a lot of the bad, they're like, Okay, I'll find somebody young ish. You know, with women, it's like, well, that's not an option. Are they gonna find who they gotta find? And they got it, like, accelerate. And so I think that that's an interesting or sad contrast.
Yeah, that makes sense. I would really like it. If egg freezing were just a normal thing that people did. Especially because like, even if you don't end up using your frozen eggs, you can you can then give them to other people who are struggling with fertility. It's not even that expensive people say is expensive, but it is only about 5000 pounds in the UK. I don't know what that is, in US money. But that's like hardly anything compared to a whole bunch of other kinds of savings and investments people make plus you can make 60k off them.
Yeah, yeah. Which Yeah, I know, people who we both know, people who know all the numbers and stuff like that. It's a burgeoning part of the economy. I mean, not a big part, but it's beginning. I know many people in Silicon Valley that have frozen eggs and frozen embryos, there's all sorts of ethical issues related to that when the relationships end you know, but you know, people are hedging their bets, you got optionality. So there's a lot of a lot of options now, I guess. So like, let's just like, let's like talk about technology. What do you think I mean, so Israel has an above replacement. In fact, Israel has above replacement among secular Israeli Jews, or at least a round replacement, which is magical, supposedly, but they also are very, very aggressive and subsidization of in vitro and all these assisted reproductive technologies. Do you think on the margin that that will make a difference?
Yeah, I think on the margin, it probably makes a difference. I also what I like about subsidizing these technologies, is instead of it being something like cash handouts for babies, which is very, very expensive government policies, it is you're only really paying for marginal extra children when you do fertility. So I think it's like reasonably savvy government spending as well if you want to do an effective government policy. This is why I talked about egg freezing where it seems like these things technologies are much more effective if you proactively decide that you want to use them when you're younger and more fertile. But If you also if you have basically egg freezing combined with like free IVF I think you could probably get like an extra couple of points to your TFR.
Yeah, like in Europe that's not very controversial on most of the continent, right?
No, I don't think so. I mean, free IVF on the NHS is not controversial at all. And sometimes I see like Gaurdian scare articles about how disgusting it is that tech companies offer people like free egg freezing, but I suspect most people don't care.
Yeah, that's just class envy, whatever. Just the usual, you know. Because in the United States in vitro is not really controversial, but I think the issue would be because different states have different mandates to insurance. I think the issue would be there would be a lot of localities where people would say that they don't want that to be subsidized for ethical reasons, because some people have a minority of the population, which is not trivial, has an ethical objection to that. So I think in the United States, that would be a patchwork solution. Can you talk about, you talk about like, what's going on in France? Like, I'm just like, I looked at the map of fertility. So one thing that people often say about France? And I think that that's not true, but is our Well, France has a very high fertility, because it's, it's got a massive immigrant population. What do you say about this sort of stuff.
So France doesn't record any race based data, as far as I'm aware, I think it's one of those principles that they take very strongly, I think they also don't record religious data, it's got something to do with Enlightenment principles in the French Revolution, something. So we can't pick out the details. I would say, though, based on other numbers, I know about France, I would expect the white French population to also be having more children than other similar Europeans. A couple of stuff is that French people move out of their houses, and live independently way younger than other continental Europeans, which indicates to me that they are and their housing is quite cheap. So which indicates to me that they are actually forming like relationships and family units and couples probably younger than like Italians and stuff. Also, French don't spend very much time with their kids, which is also a reasonably predictive of having more children. And then France has like loads of really, really like, aggressive subsidies towards parents. So like, their childcare is very cheap. It's not like super high quality, but it is very cheap. And also, like, there are loads and loads of tax benefits that you suddenly accrue if you have children. So I wouldn't be surprised if like the white French population also has a high birth rate compared to other white Europeans. Yeah,
So the way you would do it is, so I've actually, like thought about this, and like this will take time, they do record the number of births with sickle cell gene.
Aria: Interesting.
Yes. So you could you could create a model, you could create a model that could back infer the various I mean, basically, the issue is sickle cell carrying rates are very low among, like zero, among Northern Europeans, right. So you can like back infer from that, you could look at the base rate in Africa, stuff like that, like, maybe I should just do it, but because they just recently started a couple of years ago, they recently started collecting it on all births, whereas before, you had to have like, at least one, you know, immigrant or, you know, like one ethnic, what are the parents had to be from an ethnic group where it was a risk, you know, so only a minority were, were recorded, but now they're all recorded. And so, also, you know, by the way, you know, France is really weird about genetic testing. Like, you have to have like, you know, stuff delivered to Belgium, and then you go get it and stuff like that.
Do you know why that is?
It’s the paternity thing.
Yeah. They don’t want to dissolve marriages. Because I guess they all just accept that they're cheating on each other.
Yeah, but I think the issue is, like, you know, like, most of the data shows that like the, you know, like most of the time, like the father is the father in like strong marriages. And I think what that must just indicate partly is, people aren't stupid about timing and protection, you know, what I'm saying? They're probably like, way more vigilant when they’re - I don't know this for a fact. But I suspect looking at the numbers, because the numbers in like Western European countries are like, close to 1%. They're about 1%. They're not very high. They get really they get much higher in lower socio economic strata, or like the higher numbers or lower socio economic strata where basically a lot of fathers don't live near. You know, it's just like, he might be like a migrant or migrating for work and all these other issues. So I think, you know, our our intuitions are a little off because of tabloid journalism. Also, the original genetic data that talked about paternity was for paternity clinics that had a massive, massive like, ascertainment bias in terms of who was, you know, so like 10 to 30% or whatever, we're coming back. It's not the father but like, the guys that were like sending those in or not the typical guy you know. So I'm curious. You know, you're like now like, was it like, was it New Statesman? What were you it The Times?
Aria: it was The Times Yeah.
Yeah. So what do people I mean, do people in your age group in England? Do people think you're kind of crazy? or weird?
I actually don't know. I unfortunately, I've shielded myself off from like having lots of friends who would think it was strange to be interested in like, pronatalism or something. I'm thinking like, my school friends is a group. I definitely think they think I'm strange, but probably not. Like for this, I think it's more like having a strong ideological commitment to any idea would be strange. And this is just one of many ideas I could have and have chosen over time.
I got it. So you're pronatalism is actually emergent out of your just like generally, like heterodox ideological tendencies overall.
Yeah. Yeah. Like, I'm definitely like, you know, I've been like, very into, like, I am still like, reasonably into Effective Altruism. So I've like talked to them a lot about AI safety. I've talked them a lot about like libertarianism, I've been angry about, like, loads of different things different governments do. So this just kind of fits very neatly, I think, to most people and like, the package of the kind of thing I would care about.
Okay, okay. And for the pronatalist movement. So, you know, I spoke at Natal last year and it was like a pretty diverse bunch, you know, there's like some Trad Caths, Mormons, you know, kind of, like, ethno nationalist type people that there was like, I think people more like you or me, that are born into like, okay, like we're talking about in vitro and all these other things of technology, embryo screening. So what is it like in England? What is the scene like in England? Cuz you're not a very religious country compared to the US?
Yeah, I guess in England is probably I think, well of the people I know, I guess I would split it into two camps, where you have people who are like, basically, like tech focused interested in this would probably be interested in anything that they thought would boost the economy, that package of people. And then I also think there's a there's a group of people that are yes, socially conservative women, like there's a whole package of beliefs that this goes with, well, like they're usually anti porn, anti sex work, anti trans, and also pronatalist, where I would kind of consider
Why don't you just why you just say Louise Perry? Just joking.
Well, she's obviously one of them. But she's like, like, like, she is like, I think representative of like, a reasonably actual, like, large cluster of people. And I don't want to but like I could name like, actual politicians too who are a part of this camp. And I guess I would like describe like, the two different views as being like, I think people who were like pronatalists first. And if like you found out that like, surrogacy would be like, the actual thing that like boosted birth rates would be like, very comfortable doing that. And appreciably so I actually think more like pro women policies. And I think pronatal ism is part of the set of things that they think in women's interests, but like, actually more primarily a kind of, like, conservative feminist.
So that's, that's the landscape in Britain. One thing that I'm curious about, and I want to get your take is I remember like in France in 2007, the socialist, the Socialist Party leader, the prime minister, a candidate who lost a Macron, Ségolène Royal had four kids, I think she was her partner at the time with François Hollande, who later became president actually. And so he so it's like, you know, he had four children, and he's a socialist. You know, unless you're a Kennedy. If you're, if you're a Democratic politician to the US, that, to me, would be like, really rare. It's, you know, the elite signaling is, I think, a big deal. And it seems like in France, like, obviously, Macron has no children. And I, you know, I think like, this is not a pattern that's held, but it was notable to me that, you know, there’s elite people in France that have a lot of kids. Anyway, I saw some data on Twitter that showed like, in South Korea, billionaires have fewer children than they do in France or Germany, you know, so, you know, elite cultural signals batter in the US, there is like very, very high wealth, like, you know, like point 1% or something, or what percent are the fertility starts to go up again, like really the fertility crutches, like lower upper middle class or something, you know, maybe it's like 10%, or something like that. 20%, you know, like reaching for the Ivys. But there's not that many people at those higher thresholds on the other hand, so they don't have an effect on the bottom line of the TFR. On the other hand, like, you know, if I feel like if movie stars or other people started just having a lot of kids, I think that that would have a cultural impact. What do you say about that?
So I kind of agree and disagree at the same time. I kind of think there are like two different ways to be like an elite rich person in the UK. I think there are like some like, if you're thinking about like the sort of educated want to send their kids to Oxbridge live in London group of people, I think you would basically need other educated people to be seen as the kind of celebrities who have lots of kids. So like, I don't think they have very many sort of like, I guess, quote unquote, “role models” of that kind. I think if you're then thinking about the kind of role models that more working class people have, I think they do have a lot of kids. So I'm thinking like, Love Island stars, footballers. These are people who, when they achieve wealth, they do seem to translate into having lots of children. And also those people probably have it easier to have more children because they're in places where childcare is cheaper. They're in places where housing is cheaper. They're probably actually in terms of like disposable income richer. I think if you want to incentivize them to have kids, they've already got the Royals, they've got that, like, they've got their potential role models. I'm not sure I can think of any group of people who would have a lot of kids who could inspire the sort of like, Metropolitan liberal elites to do it. I think you would need like, like, I don't know. Some kind of Professor some kind of like, left wing politician or something.
Okay. Love Island. I think Chris Williamson was on love Island, right?
He was, yeah.
I see him around Austin. I don't think he has any kids. But yeah,
Does he not? He definitely talked about perennialism.
Yeah, he's pretty based. But I know I, yeah, I'm not gonna talk about his personal life, because that's weird. But he doesn't I mean, unless he doesn't invest any time with them. He doesn't have any kids. So anyway, yeah. Okay, so I've never like looked up what love Island is, but it's, it's like, it's like it is what you describe it right.
It's like a TV show where hot, but not very smart people. I've never actually watched it. So this is my summary for what other people seem to say. It's hot, but not very bright people as set put on an island, and they have they're not allowed, like any outside contact and they will have to couple up, basically.
Yeah, I mean, okay, like, that's definitely a recipe for, quote, “love”. So that makes sense. They're not going to be developing a new, a new theory of physics.
Yeah, well, apparently, they're not allowed, there's like a whole bunch of topics they're not allowed to talk about. So like, they often get cut to look more batshit than they actually are.
Okay, to accentuate their, okay, I got it. It's a whole brand, it makes it easier editing. So, you know, I want to pivot to England a little bit. So I'm just gonna say, I'm going to post this after the election, but we've recorded before before the election, but there's pretty much no doubt that the Conservatives are gonna get hosed. So I think like, if the Conservatives don't get hosed, whatever, I'm just gonna, like edit this part of the podcast out, but I'm like, I'm pretty sure. I mean, there's certain things in politics you could not be super sure about, but there's like no way that they're not gonna get screwed, you know? Yeah.
Despite like, even if you forgot their personal failings, like the high inflation, low wage growth environment, it just means that they're obviously not going to win this.
Well, also, I mean, they’ve been in power for 14 years, it's just, you know, people get tired of party labor was a powerful, what, like, 13 years before the consumers took over, people get tired. So you got to make a really strong proactive case, they really haven’t. You know, I don't want to like the dump on England, but like, you know, the last couple of years, you know, I've already said this on a couple of podcasts that I think that they will be posted before. So I have this idea. And I'm just gonna, like say this. See what you think. Okay. So you know, you guys speak English? You have some cultural similarities. Why don't we just turn the UK into a protectorate, you don't need an army or navy or all this stuff you guys aren't? You guys always just do what we say anyway. You know, so it's like, there's really no point in having an independent military, you could keep your NHS like, keep your Parliament or whatever. But you guys could be guest workers in the United States that make a lot more money. You know, and you speak English already. There's like, no issue with like, language barriers. There's a lot of good gardeners in England, and there's a lot of gardening that needs to be done in the United States. So I think it would be like, a good move. Like, you guys aren't in the EU anymore. And it was always like, difficult because like, you know, you know, you don't learn German, like, you know, English speakers do not like learning other languages. That's just a fact. And so the whole mobility thing was a little bit fake, although, obviously, you could speak English to these other European countries to especially the Nordic countries, but I think it would be a really, it would be I think it'd be win/win also, England could get over its pretension that it's some sort of power. It's just like, that's over. Like, the economy is smaller than India’s now. You know, I think individual scale, I think it would unleash a lot of productivity. I think a lot of younger British people are already coming to the United States. And it would just like, bring the rest of them over. In the United States. You know, we have Big internal market, obviously, at the best of the brightest go to places like Silicon Valley already, you know. So like, why not? I think that this would be a good opportunity. And I don't I don't see like the big downside except for like national pride, which is a big deal. You know, I know pride is a big deal. People are stubborn, but I think it would make sense. And I think like, you know, it would get you guys out of the doldrums integrating with like a vast market, where you speak the same language and you have cultural similarities, you know, but that's just my opinion.
I prefer a kind of Singapore on Thames model that were promised with Brexit. Like, I think why attach ourselves to the US is FDA and occupational licensing schemes. And why attach ourselves to the European versions of those? Why not try and become do like some really solid like regulatory arbitrage between those two? There aren't many countries that have that, like, what 60 million people?
Yeah, well, I what I'm proposing is you guys can keep like your keep your domestic affairs fine. I just want British Guest workers. Oh,
yeah. Honestly, I already remotely work for an American company. I'm very happy with the arbitrage that provides me to my lifestyle.
Yeah, yeah. But I think it's like, there's all I know, people already outsourcing to the UK for low wage labor in tech. So that's, you're probably part of it. I mean, you know, comparatively, your affordable, you know what I'm saying? There's a massive gap that's opened up since 2008. And it's just really weird, because when I was growing up the gap, yeah, it was volatile. And you guys have like, caught up, you know, right before the financial crisis, because finance was such a big deal. But it's starting to get a little ridiculous. I have friends in tech, and like, you know, they look at like the engineer salaries in London, they're like, oh, we should just like have a branch office. You know, the main issue is the distance and whatever, like, remote is always an issue. But it's really weird, because you guys speak English. You know, you're not like that much less educated or whatever. You have Oxford and Cambridge, you actually have pretty good higher educational institutions. So like, what's going on in your country? You know, like, I don't know, like, what's what's happening?
I think I genuinely like, I think a whole bunch of this is that we just don't build stuff. We're so unbelievably stuck in that. The Southeast is like our most economically productive areas. Our housing is so much more expensive, as far as I can tell them everywhere in the US, despite the fact that our wages are much lower our office spaces more expensive. Energy is like, I energy is three times more expensive. I think one of my friends had this line that we basically got the wages of Mississippi, the rent of Manhattan, and the like energy costs of I guess, like nowhere in the US has energy costs as high. As a result, we can't build anything. I also think there is like some extent to which we are like also a very bureaucratic nation. But I think I feel like when I hear people talk about problems in the US, it doesn't feel like it's that much more extreme.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the same issues. I mean, are like all Anglosphere. You know, I mean, the issue, the thing with the US that I love is we are a big country, there's diversity. So in Texas, where I live in Austin, the rents have been dropping, you know, which when I tell my friends in the Bay Area, that they're just like, look at me very confused. Like, that's against the laws of nature, you know, but it's because they, it's just because there's a lot of building here. And why is there a liability here? It's because like, the state of Texas has a pre existing culture, it's contingent lock in. It's not because like, you know, conservative, libertarian ideological people are like an overwhelming majority. They're not. There's actually like, there's plenty of stuff in the news about people in Texas. They don't want, you know, this big bill to that big bill. But the laws and the pre existing culture are such that, well, they've never cared, and they've allowed them to build, you know, so those are the inertia. And so it's never been a situation where they haven't built, you know, I mean, a lot of this stuff is not like pretty. We don't look like San Francisco often doesn't look like San Francisco's aesthetically pleasing. But you know, it's way cheaper. And that's why we're getting a lot of the refugees from San Francisco. I do think I did record a podcast. It'll post before this was so listeners will get a chance to listen to it. Listen to it with my friend Leighton Woodhouse, who lives in Oakland. I do think the Bay Area is I mean, if you look at the, the VC investment and stuff like that, and like how many intellectual intelligent people are there? It's actually pretty horrible, that its governance is so bad, you know, with like, low level property crime, and, you know, the rents and everything like that. So that's, that's squandering some of our human capital. I thought it was just hustling.
The world has probably lost so much in terms of like possible, like economic growth and innovation from the fact that San Francisco is now such an awful place to live.
Yeah, it's basically like, it's sort of it's an equilibrium state. Like they have all these for every unicorn that emerges out of San Francisco. The governance is gonna get like equivalently worse, because the tax base is gonna get bigger and You know, they're gonna have like all these like, you know, rich, you know a while really well off, like, you know, if you're like a 29 year old engineer making $350,000, you have a lot of disposable income, no matter what the tax rate is. So it's awash in money. And they're not, you know, until very recently, they haven't voted these people out, it is changing, they're going to probably swing back towards moderate Democrats. The model that I will tell you is like, I know Singapore is great. But New York City during the Bloomberg era was like professional managerial class heaven Because Bloomberg, you know, he was socially liberal enough that people would vote for him the city, but he knew how to keep order. The crime rate was low, the public disorder was low. Giuliani obviously started it, there was like a decline in crime earlier, but really like the Bloomberg period, like New York was like a paradise for middle to upper middle class professionals. And I think that's, that's kind of a little bit the model. Even that, though, obviously, New York has issues with rent control and all these other things. So, you know, we have governance issues. The thing with England is like, it's like an American, it's like California, it's more populous in California. You guys have what 65 million people? Yeah.
Yeah: I think the population of like a whole basically like the eastern seaboard, right?
Yeah, that sounds right. So, but you will also have high immigration rates I was looking at, like 40% of the people showed up since 2010. What that's a lot. That's immigrants.
I think there's an extent to which that's like a little bit of a fluke in that we had, we took loads of Hong Kong refugees, loads of Ukrainian refugees. So I wouldn't expect on immigration rate to stay as high as it has been just sort of like during this like, quick period. That being said, as far as I can tell, we a couple of like structural factors, for some reason means that post Brexit, that we have also higher immigration in general. I think it's because we're granting more asylum places. And also more like working visas, because we need more nurses, we need more care workers, we need more farm laborers.
Yeah, I mean, that was I was talking to a friend of mine about you know, there's a lot of old, there's a lot of people that have a one child or children, you know, you hit a certain age, you start to be like Joe Biden, and you need young people to help you. And well, who are those young people going to be? I think it's going to be, you know, I think they're called Filipinos. You know,
I think we've got lots of Europeans who still want to move here as well. And I definitely noticed that the service in UK restaurants has gotten a lot better since we've started to have as far as I can tell way more Indian migration as well. Like directly from India. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like, um, I've definitely noticed that like, my waitresses are getting more and more Indian over these past few years, and more polite.
Well, what's up with that? So just like for the listener, who doesn't know the breakdown, the “Asian” quote population of the UK like there's a lot of Pakistanis either from the Mirpur region, a lot of Bangladeshis, mostly from Sylhet. And then of the Indian population, a lot of it is actually from East Africa. So and then like a lot of those are also the others are mostly a lot of them are Sikh Punjabi. So the typical quote unquote, “Indian Indian” is actually a small minority or not a small minority, but it's a minority about the South Asian population, the established South Asian population. Right. And so, are you. Are you getting an influx more of the “Indian Indians” so to speak,
That is, as far as I can tell, I don't have your skills of being able to like completely identify, but their accent seem Indian and they like seem Indian to me.
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, the weird thing about by the way, when I went to Europe, like 15 years ago, it was 2010. So 14 years ago. The Bengalis in Florence, I could understand their Bengali because they speak standard Bengali. Mostly. The Bengalis in London I had no idea what the hell they were talking about on the street, because they're speaking Sylhetti.
Aria: Interesting.
Yeah. But obviously, like the London Bengalis, the Bengalis, would they speak Bengali on the street. That's a dialect. It's, it would be like, it'd be like saying so Sicilian is Italian. It's not, it's not intelligible. So it's just like, that's like a weird, you know, weird fact. Because, like, I've heard, I just, you know, I kind of knew about it, but I saw something on YouTube once where it was, like, a British person speaking Bengali on the street, and I'm just like, What the fuck is that? You know, it's like, and then like, I looked at the comments, and people were like, That's not Bengali that's Sylhetti, Thats not Bengali, that's Syhletti because I don't know if Syhletti is even a written language. But who cares? You guys aren't gonna be like, they're not gonna be writing it, you know, the UK. So they're just like, continue speaking it. Some of the same thing happened the United States where some dialects continued and people were just would say it's Italian. But it turns out, it's like Neapolitan dialect, which is quite distinct from standard Italian. But so you have these immigrants from all these different places. And that's causing - So you guys don't build and you're increasing your population through immigration. That seems like not a good thing. Yeah,
I guess, unless
Unless you're a landlord, unless you're a landlord.
I guess I think we're still at the point where on net working, working immigrants probably still basically benefit the economy on that, even though they'll drive rents up even higher. Ideally obviously will build a lot of housing and also be able to have lots of wonderful working age immigrants. But if we can't do that, I still think it's probably better to have a fair amount and immigration. Considering our population pyramid. Yeah.
I mean, what's the difference between what's the difference between Scotland in the UK here? England,
I have no idea.
Because I only if you look at the ethnic breakdown in Scotland, it's way whiter. You know? So kind of be like a laboratory, I think. I mean, until relatively recently, I think Northern Ireland had a relatively high fertility for the UK because of competitive fertility, basically, between Catholics and Protestants, right. So it would have like a somewhat different dynamic. And I think the UK as a whole, it doesn't have like Southern European levels of fertility has got like Nordic levels of fertility, right.
Yeah. My guess is that there's some kind of baseline pronatal culture that we haven't basically in the Anglosphere as a whole, that shields us from some of the incredibly low fertility that like Catholic Europe is experiencing?
Well, a lot of it a lot of it is what you're alluding to in France, though, movie out?
Yes. Yeah. So I think, boys, so A) they've got really high youth unemployment throughout lots and lots of southern Europe. B) I think boys who don't have jobs just do not leave their parents housing. And therefore, like, one of the one of the meant to get a wife were never meant to find a girlfriend, how they meant to how they're meant to get anyone pregnant. Yeah,
Just the whole youth unemployment thing, like, you know, people who've been to Southern Europe knows how it works. Like basically, they don't have like, you know, they don't have like cradle to grave welfare socialism, like the Nordic countries, but they have a regulatory state that, you know, basically, if you get a job, you can't be fired. And that means that they don't really like to hire people full time, because they can't fire them. And then I don't I know concretely from Italy, a lot of people, once they get a job, they think that's the jackpot. And they work the least amount possible. So like they have real issues with just getting anything done, you know, absenteeism, all these things, it's just really difficult, because the laws protect them. So they're just gonna go to the edge of the law. And so there's a lot of problems in those societies relating to that, you know, part time workers, quote, unquote, they'll work hard, because they have to get productivity out of somewhere. But, you know, there's been a lot of scandals in Italy, of like, people that just never come to work, but still collect salaries somehow. Because, you know, it's just a pain in the butt to like, actually, I know this in the United States in one context universities. I knew of a case where, basically, a woman in a laboratory was a technician, and she had chronic depression, and basically just stopped coming. And my other friend who was the other technician had to like, pick up the slack. Basically, the professor that was managing laboratory was like, Look, the way the laws work in university, California, or California, with the regulations and stuff like that, with her funding and all this stuff, it would cost me more money and time to go through the paperwork to fire her, that you just pay her for six months, and just like let it lapse. And so, you know, he was trying to scramble for more money to like, pay for my friend to give her a raise, and all this stuff. And that's how I go about it. But you know, these are the sorts of things that are inefficiencies that exist in the world. And, you know, they cause all sorts of problems, like ideally, we don't have them. And, you know, we have we talked about the housing issue. What do you think about density of fertility going back to like, you know, the, the topic of what we started out with, you know, I have a friend, I think it's more births on Twitter. And he says that the high density is a serious problem. That anyway, you have high density, you have low fertility, which you guys live in a high density island. So
I am like, actually a bit doubtful of that data because I think people select into and out of high and low density. So I, you know, I'm sort of like making plans, I'm gonna get married later this year, I'm probably gonna have a kid soonish and I'm now planning on moving from like the very, very center of the city to the like, not quite the suburbs, but like slightly further out like a less dense place. It's not that the density is causing necessarily low fertility. It's that people who are not currently planning on having children select into high density areas. So I'm just like kind of suspicious of that thesis overall. Also. We're not that dense of an island. And like, I guess lots of people live in and around the southeast, but we've got loads and loads of space.
Yeah, I mean, I would say I pretty much actually do agree with you. Because, you know, here in Austin, the way it works, I think is compared to Silicon Valley, or the Bay Area where I lived before, is, you know, there, you'd have a three bedroom house, like a single, you know, single storey house, a very simple middle class house, it's worth, it's like $3 million. And, you know, sub like, manager at Google who's like, pretty high up or whatever lives there. And regular people, obviously are cramming into apartments, and you're figuring out situations, here at Austin, that manager will probably live in a really, really nice condominium, if he lives in the city, or he or she, and if they, you know, want to, they live in like a really, really big, quasi suburban place to west of Austin, you know, Westlake and something like that. So there are options that actually like frees up housing for regular people in not apartments, you know, so if you have, like dense condos, that are, you know, expensive that are like moderately expensive, but affordable for people in their 20s That's fine. You know, because like somebody is the reason that like, there's resentment against tech workers. And SF, is because you have these 25 year old engineers that are making a lot of money, you know, and like, they're just gonna find apartments to live in, you know, and they're gonna kick out the regular quote, regular people who make like a third their salary, you know, so I think if you do like give people supply that will release pressure and all sorts of ways. I think that's the underlying logic.
Oh, yeah, completely like housing, housing makes questions about economic growth. Restrictive housing, I should say, make questions about economic growth and immigration, like much more zero sum than the, I guess it should be. I also think in London, at the very least, I think in lots of Britain, we have a tradition of like, Great mansion flats where you'll build, like courtyards, and like six, eight storey sets of flats, well, that they're actually really spacious on the inside, if you go to them. Plenty of room to have kids in. But we basically made buildings like that illegal. So there are like, also ways that you could continue to have like, very dense London neighborhoods that probably were, like, conducive to families. It's just, we don't let that happen for a whole bunch of silly reasons.
Yeah. Well, hopefully, hopefully. Well, so we've been talking for a while. I want to, I want to end, so you said you're gonna, you know, have kids soon. You know, you're 27, you got a lot of running room, so to speak. Like, do you have a target number?
I don't have a target number. I think I've got a couple of reasons for not having a target number, the big one being that I actually don't know what the experience of having children is like. And it could be that while I say that, while I say that people are making what I consider to be like a semi rational decision about hyper investment and a child, whatever. I expect, I will learn a lot from having the first child about how much investment I do think it's like about Correct. I also,
Razib: How tall are you?
five foot three.
Okay, It's like the correlation is not like super tight. But the taller you are, from what I have seen, I've read this Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has some stuff about this. The taller the larger woman is, usually the easier the pregnancy is because it's just like a smaller proportion of her body. You know?
Yeah. So this is actually one of my big concerns, which is that as far as I can tell, all the babies born to women in my family have been very big, and also cesarean babies. I am, like, quite small, my partner is quite big.
So the size at birth, I actually know a little about this, because my sister is whatever, like I’m not going to like say the details about her. But if people don't have a sister, so she's very small, smaller than you. I would just say like her babies, like her daughter was, okay, well, I just said I have a niece but whatever. You know, I don't think it'll matter 25 years from now when she becomes an adult that I just said I have a niece because hopefully I'll still be alive. But still. She was five pounds, nine ounces. Very small. And you know, her brother is very small. My kids were was like, eight, nine and 10 pounds. Obviously, were related. So I was curious about this. And I asked a friend of mine who's that worked on some of the genetics of the heritability of the genetic incompatibilities and all this stuff. birth weight size, it's a mother that's determining it. So you will, you're it's much more important what your size is or what your family's history is. That your partner's Okay. Your husband's or whatever. So, just just so you know, because my sister's husband is he's like about 5’11” six foot, you know, normal size. I'm five, eight, about like, super tall, but I was six pound six ounces, I think I was six six. I was six six my siblings really has siblings who's like, six nine, and another who was like, six three, and seven. So we were all small. My mom is not as small as my sister. But the point I'm telling you is like, kind of a tangent, but it's news you can use look at what the maternal background, with the mothers, the babies, because they're the ones that are determining how much obviously, nutrients and what, at what time they come out, right. And so they're doing like evolutionary trade off about their size of their immune system and all sorts of things. And so women will tend to give birth to about the same size, based on what the maternal lineages irrespective of the Father, like obviously, I was smaller. They're all the babies, all my kids were born much closer my wife’s size.
So that's, unfortunately not encouraging, considering that I think I was seven ounces. And I was taken out by cesarean from a mother who's like, shorter than I am. And so yeah that is kind of thing. That worries me though.
Yeah, but you know, the rate of cesarean does vary a lot by like, so in Brazil, it's like, what 50% or something, it's really high, that actually might have dropped Brazil's fertility a lot. Just a lot of listeners probably don't know this. They really do not recommend that you like do too many Caesarians so that's gonna cap and like, they also in the US, at least, they don't recommend that you do vaginal birth after cesarean, although people do. So there's a whole like VBAC movement. You know, just anything when you have kids, like you learn all these things, you know, but yeah, so it keeps it puts a cap on it. And that's just like a natural thing. I think, you know, I got above two. So, we'll see. You know, that's, that's above replacement. And I guess, like, that's, you know, practicing a little bit what I preached, but, you know, good luck on everything. And, you know, it's not really the individual outcome. I think that matters, although it's good to model it. It's like, you know, do we have the social context to allow it right?
Yeah, like, um, I guess I care about the environment. I'm not the kind of environmentalist who diligently recycles and washes out the plastic or refuses to fly. I'm the kind of person who will vote for like a carbon tax, if that comes up. And that is like, largely how I think about the fertility thing, although I kind of when you spend so much time thinking about people having babies, I do think it makes you want to have more.
Yeah. So, you know, good luck of everything. You know, I think we'll be hearing a lot from you. I do have to say, like many British people, you are very eloquent. And you sound very bright. So I think you have a, you have a big future if you want to be a public intellectual, the United States because you get an automatic bonus.
Yeah, I think the accent just automatically gives me like, an assumed 10 Extra IQ points. It's great.
I do have British friends who told me that, like, they don't like it when there's other British people around because it like reduces their uniqueness and value. And if they disagree, Americans don't know who to agree with, you know, because they sound equally smart. There's like, there's a whole there's a whole, you know, cultural weirdness around that. But yeah, it was great talking to you good luck on everything. I think, you know, I think the future still holds promise, I know that there's a whole lot of pessimism, like the whole degrowth movement, I think your your country is experimenting with that. But I think that that's gonna be a fad. I don't think we're gonna go extinct. You don't need to have a rebellion. And, you know, at some point, we got to figure out the situation with shrinking populations, because they, I mean, they could shrink indefinitely, but eventually that everyone's gonna become like Amish Roma. You know, a few like Hasidic Jew, you know, and I don't know if that's gonna work with the world's population.
Yeah. I so I described the like, worst case scenario. I don't think that's likely. I think what's likely is we'll just be poorer and we'll have fewer like people to be happy and enjoy the earth, then we would in the counterfactual.
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's that's good place to add. Great. Great having you on Aria, and I will see you around
Aria:Yeah, you too. Thanks for having me.
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