“Should we worry about low domestic population growth rates” is actually a fascinating question, along with typical follow-up questions of “What could be done about it, and should any of that be done?”, and I hope Arnold gives his take on it one day.
For more than twenty years, I have thought that the age of “mass ____” was ending, as the Industrial Revolution gives way to the digital age. Henry Ford needed a big army of workers. Bill Gates did not.
One implication of this is that we should not worry about low domestic population growth rates. The masses are not going to make the same contributions to economic and military strength that they did in the industrial era.
If you scratch me, you will find an elitist. That is, I think that the future will be shaped by a relatively small elite. But the catch is that I do not know what that elite will look like or what it should look like. I don’t want it to look like the Progressive products of American higher education. Unless they turn out to be very Straussian.
Trump seems to be a particularly unsubtle sign that the masses are increasingly unwilling to tolerate the elites.
What you are seeing is a churning of “elites”/intellectuals. The rhetoric is so horrible because the chattering class are unsure of their sinecures. A realignment is happening, in many countries.
It is interesting in that the intellectuals “job” is to make the case for the State/government. Our recent intellectuals have made the case against America as founded. The populace isn’t buying it, hence the churn.
The elites have always been churning. As Voltaire said, “history is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below.” But on a personal level, it’s very very bad to be coming down the stairs in slippers and meet a new bunch of toughs climbing up, even when you know that the new guys’ great grandchildren will inevitably wear slippers.
Trump’s win was a statistical fluke, not a harbinger of change. Keep in mind Romney got a greater % of popular vote than Trump despite being the opposite of Trump in terms of rhetoric.
The fact that Trump won a narrow victory means very little. The fact that Trump was anywhere near competitive means quite a lot.
The people not reproducing themselves come disproportionately from the upper end of the intelligence distribution. This is true within cultures, and across cultures (fertility rates in Germany and Asia ought to be shocking).
Straussianism seems rather unstable to me. Today’s “inside joke” is tomorrows unquestionable dogma crushing all before it. Demographics and institutional driven electoral, economic, and cultural realities are only going to put more and more pressure on elites to be more and more progressive. Elites are shaped by their circumstances as much as they shape them. Those that go too much against the zeitgeist can always be replaced with an elite that will get on board.
This seems like a bit of a non sequitur. You only have 5 starters on a high school basketball team (i.e., basketball performance is driven by the elite), but a 5A school will generally have a better basketball team than a smaller school, because it has a bigger pool to select from.
Agreed. More people means there are more elite.
Other things being equal more people means more inventions, improvements and other great things.
BTW, it is not just domestically: the world has passed peak baby. That is unfortunate, because people are awesome.
The problem with a declining birth rate is an aging population. Social Security and Medicare make that problematic. We’ll be forced to either open our borders or overhaul our programs. Given the “kick the can down the road” mentality in Washington, the former solution is far more likely than the latter.
Additional immigration would mostly be negative sum for fiscal balance sheets. Low skill workers cost more than they pay in taxes. Most of the world population is low skill. That balance will only get worse as time goes on (TFR in Asia is abysmal, we can’t keep importing “free” high IQ Asian 18 year olds forever).
The main issue is that the most expensive things that have been growing faster than inflation in our society are services provided by the high IQ. Medical care (Medicare) being a prime example. That same high IQ constituency constantly wants to subsidize demand and restrict supply with government backing, and an increasingly poor and non-tax paying low IQ electorate isn’t going to stop them.
Once we realize that the things eating our economy are high IQ provided services which can’t be mass produced we have to deal with the fact that we can’t “grow” our way out of the problem.
I would think that housing is one exception to “high IQ Baumol’s Codt Disease”. It is getting increasingly expensive, but mostly due to regulatory barriers.
In any major city, there is “affordable housing”. You can go on Zillow and find residences which are structurally sound and a reasonable commuting distance to where the good jobs are. They are also often on good mass transport routes.
And yet, most people don’t live there. They pay 2x, 3x, 5x, or more to live in places that on the grounds of physical structure or location are identical to the cheap places. They go into debt their whole life and work jobs they have 50+ hours a week and often add large commutes just to not live in those neighborhoods.
They do this because the people living in those neighborhoods are not nice to live around. And their kids aren’t nice to send to your kid to school with.
If we include “living near high IQ people” as a cost driver of real estate, then we realize that it is the #1 cost driver of real estate and that trillions of dollars of real estate value is essentially being squared upon by undesirables.
This is also why YIMBYism can’t get anywhere. When you build “affordable housing”, undesirables move in, destroying the value of the existing real estate. This has played out in neighborhood after neighborhood in my neck of the woods (first in Baltimore City, but now in Baltimore County).
Until you can guarantee existing property owners (who comprise most Americans and who mortgaged the earnings of their entire working lives into these purchases) that you aren’t about to destroy their lives in one fell swoop, then you aren’t going to get substantial uptake for new building.
If people can’t speak forthrightly about their worries, concerns, and legitimate interests, then not only will they choose the alternatives to ‘voice’ – either ‘exit’ (like flight to the suburbs) or ‘intransigent resistance’ (justified by some insincere but socially acceptable excuse) – but it will become impossible to do the ordinary political work of hashing out and negotiating social compromises on policies.
That is, if people don’t feel free to express themselves – which in the case of fear of policy consequences necessarily involves having to reveal some of their model of how the world works – and thus self-censor, their opponents will have a hard time reaching an accurate theory of mind / passing the Intellectual Turing Test. And the knowledge that forms that basis of such an understanding of the real interests of each side is simply indispensable to any attempt at the creative problem solving necessary to come to successful social deals.
If you read a lot of the advocacy for “affordable housing” or “build baby build” arguments for less regulation and zoning restrictions and so forth, you get the impression that the advocates really don’t understand what’s going on in the heads of their opponents, and simply cannot fathom a good-faith or charitable interpretation of their motives. So opponents are painted as merely selfish and irrational obstructionists, not a class to be dealt with, but simply dominated when possible. (It is no coincidence this parallels the general progressive difficulty with passing conservative ITTs).
Since the health of the discourse environment in not likely to improve soon (quite the contrary, alas), we need a New Institution to deal with this problem.
Our current institutions evolved in a context which took a certain level of social trust and potentially productive discourse for granted.
But in a low trust environment, without being able to really talk things out and understand each other, there’s just no good alternative to “skin in the game” / “put your money where your mouth is” / “prediction market” logic.
My proposal is various approaches to “policy insurance”. Policy proponents must be able to offer some kind of built-in assurance that bad things won’t happen, and that new laws will self terminate and restore the status quo ante if they do, also triggering compensatory payouts of large liquidated damages.
“So opponents are painted as merely selfish and irrational obstructionists, not a class to be dealt with, but simply dominated when possible.”
Selfish and irrational? Both?
It’s not irrational to be selfish. It’s just selfish to be selfish. Who dominates whom?
Most of medical care is NOT high IQ. The doctors are at the top of a very wide pyramid. Nowdays a lot of what doctors do could be done by nurses and nurse practitioners if laws and insurance regulations were different. Better and better AI is another threat to those now at the top of the pyramid.
(Computers have already destroyed a lot of well-paying lawyer jobs.)
Even for doctors and even excluding the paperwork, my impression is that at least 80% of medical practice is fairly routine. If it’s an infection, prescribe an antibiotic and follow up in a few days. Lots of hypertension and diabetes. If anything seems unusual, refer to a specialist (to whom it probably won’t be unusual).
Personally, I have very little prior opinion/inclination/intuition on this, which makes me inclined to view it from a three axis perspective.
People on the liberty-coercion axis (where I find myself most frequently and where — if more people spent more time viewing issues through this lens — I think the world would be a better place) might say: who cares? If people want to reproduce, that’s their prerogative, any consequences are secondary (positive or negative).
I can see the civilization-barbarism axis (i.e. many of the commentators on this blog) saying: depends on who is doing the reproducing.
The oppressor-oppressed axis seems least relevant to this particular issue, but I suppose could see people worried about oppression concerned about reproductive healthcare access, abortion, birth control etc, which is semi-related.
OK, I will bit on why this should be a concern for libertarians long term:
1) Although it is simple Keynesian Macro GDP factory, population growth is the one variable that increases both AD-AS curves. Viewing Japan the last 30 years, They were hit with AD stagnation in the 1980s (offset by trade balances) but now they have a stagnant AS curve, especially labor supply. I suspect one reason the US economy is in a grumpy sub-4% unemployment is because labor supply is constrained.
2) Although not perfect at solving government debt, decreased populations increases this debt a lot. Although not the primary driver in some of the European debt problems, having more people (Italy, Greece and Ukraine) could have dealt better with the debt.
3) Slow family formation decreases the impact of religion.
4) I would say less people the less new companies and less economic mobility…Etc. Etc. In terms of small business, they are hit the hardest as large companies tend to pay better.
5) Some of the Immigration debates come from areas shrinking populations. Trump’s base and France Yellow Vest protestors center around towns with decreasing populations.
6) The most left wing opinion I have is thriving capitalism needs cheap labor to exploit.
7) It really does seem ironic to me that the richer we are the less we can afford children. Children are good for society, good for adults and generally make life better.
I’ve heard #7 said a lot, but I’m not sure I believe it. People 50 years ago had one car, a two or three bedroom, 1200 sqft house and families with 3+ kids were common. They cooked at home and didn’t eat at restaurants frequently.
Today, most folks have much more material wealth. If you want to have a 3500 sqft house with three cars and eat out 5 times a week, sure, it’s probably more difficult to live that lifestyle in addition to raising kids.
If you were to say people prefer consumption over spending money raising kids, I’d agree with that. But I’m not sure how us being richer makes it less affordable to have kids. The cost of basic inputs for child rearing (food, clothes, diapers, etc.) haven’t experienced inflation like we see in healthcare or education.
I’m sure I’m missing something.
Having three kids:
1) Healthcare is BIG one especially with declining health insurance benefits. One of sons had cancer and high functioning autism so I have experienced it. (And in terms of inflation the reality is he probably does not survive if he was born before 1990.)
2) There is more fear and anxiety on education and if your child is not going to be successful.
This is and isn’t true. When we say fertility is down, we mean its down amongst UMC liberals. That’s why its below replacement. So we are talking about a decision people are making, rather than sheer unaffordability. People who prioritize having kids high enough are having them.
There are some things that have made things expensive. Education and real estate (near good jobs and good schools) really have gotten more expensive. So has healthcare. I’ve run the numbers myself, and it really is difficult to raise children with those caveats. Not impossible, but there’s certainly a tradeoff, and most liberals just don’t find that tradeoff compelling.
Any solution would need to have a cultural angle (fertility raises status, lack of it lowers status) and economic changes (making things like education and real estate less expensive).
A lot of this is true but it also down for all developed nations not named Israel. So it is very down in Far East Asia, most of the Europe and even richer South American nations. (Brazil & Chili and Mexico is near or at replacement fertility which is one reason illegal immigration is down.) So it is not just the US coastal liberals.
Finally, the main drop in fertility since 2008 in the US is the drop with Hispanic- & African-Americans so they moving to technocratic society.
Most societies in the OECD are secular and liberal, so their fertility is down. Within a society the more secular and liberal you are, the lower your fertility, at least amongst the high IQ.
Israel is a reactionary ethno-state and thus very different then the rest of the OECD.
“Israel is a reactionary ethno-state.”
That statement is fairly amusing to anyone with the slightest familiarity with the actual state of Israel and its stridently leftist, secular, anti-Judaic, Arabophilic permanent (unelected) establishment, both in an out of the government. Maybe you’ve been reading the leftist newspaper Haaretz, which claims that every setback to the Left’s suicidal agenda (such as the elected government’s continually frustrated efforts to deport illegal migrants from Africa) constitutes Jewish fascism, or even worse.
Anyway, without the Orthodox Jewish and Arab minorities, Israel’s birth rate would be about replacement level – slightly better than the rest of the developed world.
People want high status in a peaceful social heirarchy and having children accomplishes neither goal.
The culture really doesn’t promote higher birth rates. For people in my age cohort (40s), I know more men that have received vasectomies than have fathered four or more children
During pregnancy classes, the first 30 minutes are dedicated to genetic testing (the primary purpose of which is to get an abortion if a defect is found). After birth, one of the first questions is whether the mother wants a prescription for birth control.
One’s 20s are a big waste of time nowadays. For me, rearing children occupied almost none of my adulthood aspirations but in retrospect it should have occupied about forty percent.
Controlling birth rate with fertility controls is what naturally happens when the mortality controls of infant mortality, fatal disease and injury, etc. increase the probability of a child growing to maturity. Fewer children given more investment. Fewer children are also a consequence now that children are no longer a future asset to the family enterprise, but rather a lifelong cost (economically, ignoring other benefits of children). The leading cause of poverty in the world is children. Reducing the number of children a couple have is the easy way to reduce the risk of living in poverty.
To the extent declining birth rate is an adjustment to lower child mortality it seems a win. But birth rate has declined more than child mortality. So, if it’s a response, it’s an overreaction.
This is only true if by family you mean a single generation. The children become people and an financial asset to their generation and to the nation.
Yeah, if we have no people we have no poverty. Children are also the source of all long term prosperity.
The leading cause of famine— damn near the only cause of famine in the last 50 years— is men with guns.
To the extent declining birth rate is an adjustment to lower child mortality it seems a win. But birth rate has declined more than child mortality. So, if it’s a response, it’s an overreaction.
Nor necessarily. You have to look at the variance as well as the mean. If you wanted a 90% chance of two children surviving to reproductive age a hundred years ago, perhaps you needed to birth 6. In some cases, all 6 would survive. In a few cases, none would. 90% of the time, at least two would. But the average number of surviving children would be considerably more than two.
Now you get a 90% chance with just two live births.
Well, maybe we can shoot all the biologists and medical professors or something …. but otherwise some amount of eugenics looks to be inevitable, worldwide. Screening out fetuses with high predisposistion to Alzheimers and schizophrenia looks like a near term thing — reducing long run medical costs among the elderly will probably seem desirable to insurance companies and most national leaders. Screeening against autism and some mental retardation might be a possibility later on, or might not, or might be controversial in some nations.
After success in such efforts, some small scale improvements should find favor. There won’t be one-gene modifications that toggle 100 point IQ raises, but finding five or ten genes that might be altered to promote 3-5 point IQ rises ought to be possible. Modifications to promote greater height, more healthy hearts, longer life spans, etc. would also seem acceptible in most places. We’re not talking about eldritch and ominous mutations here with Nietzschean supermen ruling the world — just about gradual shifts in health and maybe happiness that over time disperse through entire societies, with increasing impact as the years go by.
Pretty much what goes on now, in other words, but probably brought about by abortions and miscarriage-inducing potions rather than expensive pharmaceuticals. And there will be questions about whether individuals or governments should pay the bills for such treatments. So my expectation is that the USA will opt out of this kind of thing, places like France and China and Indonesia and Argentina will probably opt in.
And I guess my question is: Yes I can see why low population growth states governed (or at least culturally dominated) by small capable elites may seem more desirable than hordes of underemployed, ill educated rabble running about without such natural governors. But what if an alternative were a large, rapidly growing state with steadily rising health and intelligence. Would it be doomed to economic decline, superstition, loss of international influence?
Despite hearing many opinions, it doesn’t seem like anyone really knows the odds or timelines on possible genetic improvement potential.
If voluntary eugenics reaches the point of genuinely changing the shape of the bell curve, then basically everything everyone could ever write would go out the window. If it happens, great, no need to worry about much of anything.
If it doesn’t I don’t have much faith in our elites, who don’t strike me as competent natural governors.
In any event, maximizing the probability of continuing the great enrichment means maximizing IQ in the first world, one way or another.
P.S. I doubt the USA or anywhere else will stop scientific eugenics on moral once it is proven safe and effective (the public will demand access), but some place may drag their feet in the more uncertain stages before that point.
It will be interesting if we find that genetic engineering for achievement reduces happiness and engineering for happiness reduces achievement (perhaps because achievement requires dissatisfaction).
There’s a old saying to the effect that “evolution isn’t about happiness; it’s about survival.”
“Screeening against autism and some mental retardation might be a possibility later on, or might not, or might be controversial in some nations.”
Genocide against autistic people will be controversial with autistic people.
The slogans of identity politics would be literally true: The existence of a human type would be invalidated, negated, annihilated.
I can imagine autistic people being offended by that.
Mr. Weir:
Let me quote from Wikipedia on haemophilia: Genetic testing and genetic counselling is recommended for families with haemophilia. Prenatal testing, such as amniocentesis, is available to pregnant women who may be carriers of the condition.
Wikipedia on sickle-cell anemia: People who are known carriers of the disease often undergo genetic counseling before they have a child. A test to see if an unborn child has the disease takes either a blood sample from the fetus or a sample of amniotic fluid.
Wikipedia on Tay-Sachs disease: Three main approaches have been used to prevent or reduce the incidence of Tay–Sachs:
Prenatal diagnosis. If both parents are identified as carriers, prenatal genetic testing can determine whether the fetus has inherited a defective gene copy from both parents.Chorionic villus sampling (CVS), the most common form of prenatal diagnosis, can be performed between 10 and 14 weeks of gestation. Amniocentesis is usually performed at 15–18 weeks. . . . Preimplantation genetic diagnosis. By retrieving the mother’s eggs for in vitro fertilization, it is possible to test the embryo for the disorder prior to implantation. Healthy embryos are then selected and transferred into the mother’s womb, while unhealthy embryos are discarded. In addition to Tay–Sachs disease, preimplantation genetic diagnosis has been used to prevent cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia among other genetic disorders. . . . Mate selection. In Orthodox Jewish circles, the organization Dor Yeshorim carries out an anonymous screening program so that carrier couples for Tay–Sachs and other genetic disorders can avoid marriage.
I think you’re stretching things by calling this behavior “genocide.”
Being female isn’t the same as Tay-Sachs, and the 63 million “missing women” in India weren’t diseased or afflicted or sick.
They were female, and that was enough. So we need to drop this fig-leaf of “disease.”
Amartya Sen put the number at 37 million in 1991, when the ratio was 927 girls to every 1000 boys. In Rajasthan in particular in 2004 it was low as 838 girls to every 1000 boys.
Hmm. You’re mad as hell about female infanticide, that I can see. But that has nothing to do with what I was talking about. Arnold had suggested that societies are basically run by small elites, with the implication that non-elites are of little importance; I argued against that with the idea that eugenic measures could eventually create large elites. Some of such measures are pretty much taken for granted already, and its easy to imagine that more will be — as shown in those Wikipedia quotes.
We can choose to have brighter children. We can choose to raise healthier longer-lived people.
That’s got nothing to do with “Let’s kill lots of little girls because THEY AIN’T BOYS!” Please get some sleep and reread all this in a couple days, and you’ll see it.
Autistic people are not, as a rule, unintelligent. They will understand what you’re saying, even if they don’t understand every nuance of body language or facial expression. When you talk about genocide against autistic people, you should remember that autistic people can hear you. Obviously it’s offensive. Genocide is offensive.
They may be boring conversationalists and bad at picking up social cues. They may be charmless and unappealing, and lacking in personality. But when you say straight out that you want them to not exist? They are going to pick up on your explicitly stated intention to eliminate their kind. Like I said to begin with.
Anyway. Let’s say you’ve eliminated the unintelligent autistic people. Do you or do you not allow the rest to live? At what level of IQ do you flick that switch? How do you distinguish between bright and brighter? Health and long life don’t have anything do with it. Autistic people are fat and thin, old and young, fit and sickly. Obviously if your autistic child is likely to be a Republican too, you should abort him. But what about an autistic Democrat with a normal IQ and a great deal of resilience to adversity? Or an autistic Democrat with a genius IQ but, sadly, a predisposition to excessive drinking? Do you keep browsing through all the combinations?
People make a lot of big decisions and big investments. Buying a house. Getting married. The really hefty choices become the really hefty regrets. But imagine having your child’s entire life in your hands. Every aspect of her personality. Everything that makes her what she will become. You’re mapping out her future, leaving next to nothing to chance. You’re responsible for all of it, and she’s just living out the existence you decided on when you ticked these hundred boxes instead of those hundred boxes.
The old-fashioned way seems like it would be less of a psychological burden. Less of an existentialist nightmare. Because at least for the moment a mother can always say of her child, “She has a life of her own.” Or, “It’s her decision to make.” The mother of the future won’t have the excuse of a child’s free will. She’ll be responsible for her daughter’s life in a way that no mother is now. The daughter will be blameless. The mother will be the author of every chapter in her daughter’s story.
The masses are defined as those who end up paying for the government they ordered, and end up poor. Do not allow yourself to be deceived, the accounting system is very accurate at assigning cost to buyer. Seldom is one successful at having someone else pay for one’s own goodies. I think that being deceived by by elites is what defines the masses.
What about agglomeration effects? China seems to be banking heavily on the idea that having the world’s largest economy will lead to a lot of agglomeration effects in technology and advanced manufacturing.