TRE Special #7 - Global Fertility, a Response to Neema Parvini

Does it sound all right? Okay. No,

this darn thing. What?

>> He said he was going to give parliament

the right to a free vote

>> and then he explained what he meant by a

free vote.

>> You're saying that we should organize

our societies along the lines of the

lobsters.

>> Turner just once.

>> You do not you do not have a monopoly on

patriotism. And I resent the fact that

your implication that only you were a

Canadian.

>> At any cost at any cost. How far would

you go with that? How far would you

extend that? Just watch me.

>> Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr.

Tony Blair and Mr. Christopher Hitchens.

>> Hello and welcome to another edition of

the redson special um series of videos

where we address uh in detail a specific

topic. In this case uh for the first

time I will directly respond to another

creator in this intellectual space uh

academic agent uh has written a series

well written recorded a series of videos

uh called Nema part ofi versus the

rightwing where he takes on uh

right-wing ideas

um and uh attempts to posit proper

arguments against them. The video that

I'm going to concern myself with here is

Nema Pervini versus right-wing ideas.

Number six, the declining birth rate.

In my view, this is an

uncharacteristically

poor uh framing of a very complex issue.

Um,

we're going to do a couple of things

here. We're going to look at the

arguments uh Parvvini presents. uh we're

going to then uh try to get a picture of

actual historic birth rate trends and

population trends over time and then

we're going to present an argument for

how I think how I think the situation

should be framed and understood. So uh

without further ado uh let's let Mr.

Parvini speak for himself. for those

decrying the declining birth rate and by

declining birth rate I'm talking about

global birth rate um but also birth rate

in the west as well um but it's

declining every all around the world

especially in the developed parts of the

world they tend to have three flavors

okay so the first flavor is the Elon

Musk style where he worries about growth

for his capitalist schemes okay second

there is the Christian style concern

where they simply believe more people

equals

God's will or God's good or whatever

more people equals good equals God

something some

you know more believers whatever it is

or whatever the Christian justification

for it is they want more people okay

third style where they worry

specifically about white white births

compared to for the demographic.

>> Okay. So, you can see uh here the gist

of the video. Uh he presents three

arguments that come broadly from the

right. He fairly and accurately

characterizes these arguments. Uh the

first argument is that is the kind of

more people, more GDP, more more good

argument. You see this very often from

the tech, right? Uh Elon Musk is the big

champion. Uh but there's kind of two

unspoken elements to this uh this

argument. The first unspoken element to

this argument is that um

the political formula of the global

American empire is predicated on

increasing populations. It's predicated

on it's full of these embedded growth

obligations that if you fail to realize

damage the credibility of the system. uh

Parvvini is attacking this argument

because he correctly intuitits that the

uh correct mechanism to subvert the

global American empire is to break out

of this frame and say uh actually no,

I'm not going to solve your problem for

you. So that that's the first argument

he takes on. The second argument is a

vague cluster of Christian arguments. I

don't blame Parvini for this

characterization because uh there's a

lot of different flavors of argument

made from Christians as to why uh birth

higher birth rates are good. Uh and so

he's not incorrect to kind of vaguely

associate the group and a cluster of

non-specific arguments. And then the

third argument is the kind of eth

ethnationalist argument that says if my

group is big my group should be bigger

than your group my group should have a

greater share of the future.

Um so we got three arguments that I

think uh share and by my group they mean

white people typically. Um we have three

arguments that share one common bad

framing in in my opinion. Um in my

opinion there is no such thing as global

birth rate because there is no such

thing as global community or global uh

governance. Uh there are only spec

there's only specific governance of

specific people. There's a a bond

between a leader and a group of

followers however large that group of

followers is. Um there are only specific

people. There there is no one uh common

humanity.

Um

I think it's worth at this juncture

taking a a step back and

um

having a look at some of Parvvini's

factual claims and then uh coming back

to why I think this is a bad framing,

how I think it should be framed instead,

and what the consequences of an

alternative framing would be for how we

thought about this issue.

Okay. Uh so let's just play a little bit

more of Pervini in his own words and

then I will respond to it.

>> Um Europe conquered the globe with a

fraction of its current if every c if

every country has a declining birth

rate. If you just allow the excess the

the excess population on top to die,

every nation will be in the same boat.

So relatively speaking, nobody will be

worse.

>> Okay. So Parvini here is pointing to

um population dynamics as a feature of

geopolitics.

Um so he points out that having a larger

population doesn't necessarily mean that

you will out geopolitically out compete

your rival. He also points out that um

that if there's a common trend among all

nations of the world then that trend can

be allowed to run to its conclusion

without conferring a specific advantage

to any particular group. Right? this is

a a way to address the kind of white

nationalist claim that um this is the

dissolution of their people u broadly

speaking.

Now let let's have a look at actual

demographic history here and trends u

because I think the way he's posited

this is not quite accurate.

So uh in the year 1000 uh Europeans

represented 15% of global population. In

the year 1700 they uh represented 21% of

global population. Uh this level

actually peaked in the year 1950 uh when

Europeans represented

uh 25% of global population. And uh

interestingly for the purpose of this

argument rapidly declined so that by

1972

even though there were more people in

Europe as a fraction of global

population uh they had declined to just

18%. So very radical change very rapidly

as a consequence of the population

explosion primarily in Asia at that

time. Um

so

demographic trends of this kind are

local. they're not global. So, uh,

in the period between 1,00 and700,

the demographic trends in Europe

diverged sharply from the demographic

trends in the rest of the world, leading

to a larger population.

That uh period of relative population

expansion coincided with the uh relative

increase in geopolitical power out of

Europe. So it's true that there isn't a

onetoone relationship between number of

people and uh the geopolitical success

of any given group of people but it's

also true that the geopolitical success

of a group of people can be is strongly

linked to their demographic success. Uh

so a group of people which is

geopolitically successful is likely to

be demographically successful. a group

of people that is demographically

unsuccessful is likely to be dem likely

to be geopolitically unsuccessful as

well. So these these two things are

linked in a way that the proposition

that uh

um that Europeans were always a minority

both during periods where they were not

in a position of geopolitical dominance

and in periods where they were in a

geopolitical do position of dominance.

Uh I think that

framing here uh misses

tries to kind of handwave away

this link. Uh and this link can be seen

among various groups through history.

Um

equally uh the idea that demographic

trends are are in common across the

globe particularly the trend to reduce

toward reduced birth rates is in common

across the road the world I think is

just not factually correct and one of

the strange features of modernity is

that it's seen uh very rapid very

substantial shifts in the relative size

uh of demographics in various regions.

So we talked about the population

explosion in Asia in the post-war

period. Um there are a couple of factors

to this. Uh one factor to this is the

widespread adoption of antimmalarial

measures whether they're they're

pharmacological or whether they're uh

through the use of pesticides uh

dramatically increase the carrying

capacity of South Asia. Um so that even

uh despite the massive famines that

occurred through the region and the kind

of ravages of communism uh that occurred

uh in the post-war period uh still you

saw a massive demographic increase

throughout the region um because of this

effective increase in carrying capacity.

Um so you see these kinds of shifts uh

pretty frequently and if we move this

forward you'll see a comparable shift

uh in the African population big second

derivative change coming in the the 60s

so that uh you can see the share of

global population which is African uh is

now something like twice the share which

is European uh whereas the opposite was

true in 1950. So these kinds of changes

do happen. They happen uh they have

happened frequently in modernity uh for

a variety of reasons and they have

dramatic consequences. Um a lot of the

migration waves that are driven out of

Africa would are a direct consequence of

this period of very high fertility uh

beginning in maybe 1960 uh and

continuing on to today.

Uh the other claim here that I think is

really worth addressing and dismissing

because it's incredibly common is that

fertility trends are downward everywhere

in the world. Uh and quote unquote

especially in the developed world. Uh

this is not

exactly true. So what we're looking here

at here is a historical chart of the TFR

of the United Kingdom 1800 to today. Um

there are a couple things that I want to

draw uh the audience's attention to. Uh

first that the

decline in TFR uh that was experienced

in the United Kingdom overwhelmingly

occurred between uh 180

and 1930

uh and not in the sort of post-war era

as a consequence of birth control or

whatever else. Right? the TFR changes uh

in uh the United Kingdom uh whatever

they were caused is by well we can

discuss what they were caused by but uh

they're not they're not associated with

the kind of with post-industrial Britain

they're not associated with uh the

modern period really at all they're

associated with the late British

imperial period um and the fertility

rate in the United Kingdom has actually

been pretty stable since about 1935

with this uh interruption in the

post-war period. Right? The thing which

is easy which is easy to explain is TFR

decreases due to urbanization and

dassination and irreligiosity.

The thing that is difficult to explain

is the post-war population and boom.

This is why so much sociology in this

area area is just kind of nonsense

because they start the data set sometime

in the post-war period or they explain

the population decline in the pre-war

period as a consequence of the war and

the social dislocations of the war when

in reality the population the the

fertility declines in the 30s are really

uh prior to the war and actually they

stabilized during the war. So they're

not a consequence of the dislocations uh

associated with the war. They're a

consequence of something quite

different. The aberration is the

post-war period. The the trend is

stabilized from the 30s and is very very

consistent since then. We're looking at

the United Kingdom. We could look at a

dozen different western countries and

see fundamentally the same picture that

uh the demographic transition occurs as

a result of the rural to urban migration

associated with uh the late 19th and

very early 20th century and that TFR

through these countries has actually

been relatively stable since then with

this exception of the post-war moment

that you know uh all our parents thought

was normal but was definitely not

normal.

Um by contrast throughout the develop

the developing world the third world um

you see a very different trend. So this

is uh TFR data from Papa New Guinea. Um

you see a different trend where

fertility rate has con the fertility

rate has consistently declined since the

1970s

um without interruption and without

breaking trend. So in actual fact the

decline in birth rate is not not

centered in the in the developed world

but in the developing and undeveloped

world. Right? Um the big declines in

global birth rate that are going to

cause the peak of global population are

not as a consequence of western

industrial countries. They're as a

consequence of the collapse of fertility

uh in

countries which are not industrialized.

um places like Vietnam, places like uh

India, places like uh places like

Indonesia, places like uh Iran. Uh

this is an important uh piece of

information to know about the the kind

of factual landscape into which we're

speaking.

It's true that that today the map of

fertility has uh

has many underdeveloped countries still

with fertility rates in substantial

excess of fertility rates in the western

world. uh which means that the share of

population associated with uh these

countries will continue to increase

relative to Europe and North America.

Um however

uh while fertility rates are relatively

stable in North America and Europe, they

are rapidly declining throughout uh the

third world and interestingly also in

Southeast Asia.

Okay. So what does that tell us? Well,

that tells us that the future

demographic uh distribution of the

planet is going to be quite different

than it is today uh as long as current

trends hold which is indicative

historically of a movement of

geopolitical power away from the west

and towards some of these countries and

interestingly away from China as well uh

towards a a true a truly different

future. Now it may be that uh that the

trend which held uh through the sort of

uh second millennium AD does not hold uh

in the future. It's hard to say. Uh but

that is that that is the demographic

trend which exists.

Um

okay so that's the factual landscape. Um

now I want to let Dr. Pervini speak in

his own words here for a minute. Um, and

then I want to talk about how I think

this should be reframed.

During the Black Death, the English

population

havedved, but wage rates doubled. It's

still one of the biggest jumps in wage

rates on record.

Okay, so this is uh a really

straightforward and and fundamentally

correct argument. Uh so historically

there have been a number of negative

disruptions in population. Uh the black

death in England is probably the best

documented example in history. Um and

disruptions, negative disruptions due to

disease and population

usually result in

positive wage changes. So wages for the

lower and middle class tend to go up uh

and often are associated with uh periods

of prosperity in the following years. Um

there are a couple of comments that I

would have here. Uh first um

population disruptions associated with

disease uh like the black death are

fundamentally different than population

disruptions associated with the changes

in fertility. And here's why. Um

when a a serious illness passes through

the population, it tends to eliminate uh

the unfit. Uh so that's the elderly,

that's those who have chronic health

problems of various kinds. Uh that's um

in in some cases it's babies as well. Uh

but

um fundamentally you end up with a

population after the event which is

younger and healthier than the

population which existed before the

event. Um and a population which is less

burdened with dependence both young and

old than the population before the

event. It's therefore not surprising

that the per capita economic performance

of the uh of the state afterwards is

much better. Right? They're relieved of

the burden of the elderly. They're

relieved of the burden of young children

and uh they're relieved of the burden of

the sick and the piece of the population

which is left is healthier and stronger

than the aggregate average prior to the

event. you should expect prosperity to

follow that assuming that group

competition doesn't cause a problem. Um

so

this the the statement he offers is

correct and uh

in in like a number of ways. The problem

is that's not the kind of uh change that

we're seeing in the modern world. Um,

population changes as a result in

declining fertility don't leave younger,

healthier, stronger, less burdened

populations behind. Instead, they leave

older and much more burdened populations

in their place. Right? So, uh, we have a

situation where

declining fertility leads to much larger

shares of the population being old as

opposed to young. And so the population

in their active working years becomes

burdened down with the need to care for

for these older people. Uh these older

people tend to be much less healthy. Um

and so there's that aspect to to the

burden of care as well. Um and these

older populations tend to be acid

accumulators and tend to accumulate a

disproportionate share of political

power in the country and drive

stagnation. You might imagine that uh

imagine the vibe of a country dominated

by young people uh as kind of in keeping

with the character of of young people.

They're excitable. The horizons are

infinite in their mind. They have a a

frame of mind and a way of being which

sees the future. Whereas if you imagine

a country politically dominated by the

old folks home, it's dominated by care

harm morality. It's dominated by risk

aversion. Um it tends to be very

conservative of the order as it is. Um

and it tends to have very very little

thought for time horizons beyond the

next decade or two. Um, I hope we're all

recognizing a pattern uh here that might

match our current political situation.

So, it's not true that demographics are

determinative of uh polit of politics

and society, but they certainly have an

influence. And certainly if you had to

choose between a young and dynamic

population and an old and causited

population, uh that choice kind of makes

itself.

Now uh that's uh wages that's um the

kind of

dynamics of a population that has

suffered a a disruption.

Parvini then goes on to make a broader

point about living standards. Um and

that point about living standards I

think is

complex and nuanced. Um so he talks

about uh

the availability of assets compared to

uh the number of people competing for

assets and he suggests that lower

population densities lead to a greater

uh greater availability of resources per

person. Now

it's very difficult to assess this

argument because there's very little uh

data to um ride on except that at an

intuitive level uh a huge fraction of

the resources that exist in our world

are not uh labor input dependent. That

is to say um the experiment of adding

population to western countries or even

adding population uh this is a picture

of Cairo uh which has this these immense

blocks uh where human beings are

essentially warehoused. There's

something like 20 million people in

Cairo. There's no productive industry in

Cairo of any consequence. uh there's no

if you eliminated Cairo from the history

of the world for the last hundred years

almost nothing will have changed right

it doesn't provide anything it is uh a

warehouse of humanity with no tilos

particularly except maybe the the

raising of Islamic prayers um

this is and and not only that the people

who live there live in this kind of

absolute misery

In part, it must be said, because of the

crowding. They live stacked on top of

each other in these tiny concrete boxes.

Um, this is not how mankind was meant to

live. And so in a sense here, Parvvini

is correct that population density is um

a form of reduction in standard of

living and that these

dense blocks of migrant populations uh

are resource consumers

uh and not providers of resources.

Um

you can see this in Canada as as a great

example. Um if you were to look at the

fundamental economic productivity of

Canada, you would see it distributed

across the regions in in kind of an

interesting way. Um

there's the mining industry is

incredibly productive and is very spread

over the the country. The oil industry

is very productive and is concentrated

in a couple of regions. The uh the

agricultural industry is extremely

geographically spread and extremely

productive. The forestry industry is

extremely geographically spread and

extremely productive.

But the population and particularly the

population increases that have occurred

in conjunction with modernity are

concentrated in these hubs of

unproductivity. Right. Um

just like Cairo all through the western

world there are there are these endless

barracks of subsidized service sector

workers. Right? If you look at the TFR

migration to Canada uh during COVID,

overwhelmingly it came to the big

cities. Overwhelmingly it came in the

form of service workers who are net tax

burdens on society and overwhelmingly

they're subsidized in order to keep the

price of a Starbucks low, right? so that

the professional managerial class who

are in control of the politics of the

country can continue to to have the same

standard of living driven by the service

economy by driving down the wages of

service workers. Um that's what that's

the story of the early 21st century.

driving down the wages of service

workers in order to allow these people

to maintain their sort of upper middle

class pretenses

at the cost at the cost of the aggregate

uh health of the the nation as a whole.

Um,

so it's not incorrect to say that if you

simply eliminated these people, the

fundamental infrastructure that exists

in places like Canada or the United

Kingdom, which was designed for much

smaller populations,

uh, would be relieved of tremendous

strain and the productivity in terms of

real goods of the nations in question

would be much higher.

That said, uh the idea that uh this is a

consequence of high fertility, I think

um misunderstands the situation. Uh if

you look at the history of Canada, it is

a unique feature of the late 20th and

early 21st century that migration is

focused on urban areas and the service

economy. Through most of Canada's

history, um, population growth and

migration tended to be associated with

the productive industries of the country

and the productive centers of the

country wherever they were. Whether it

be in the industrial area in the era in

the cities in sort of 1900 to 1950 or

whether it uh it be in earlier areas

where the agricultural sector of the

country was developed or where the

mining se sector of the country was

developed or where when the population

shifted out west to take advantage of

the oil discoveries in the the latter

half of the 20th century. Um outside of

this kind of narrow envelope, uh

population growth and population

migration tended to be associated with

productive tasks rather than um

rather than uh this kind of service

industry nonsense designed to prop up

standards of living for a narrow se

segment of society. Um equally you'll

see when you look at this population

density map of the country that the

country is by no means full and the

conditions of population density in

which these people live are entirely

constructed. Um so uh you could imagine

population growth which uh

in which uh this kind of urban

barracking of service workers was not

the dominant mode.

um

the pro

the po the the character of the growth

that you see is a direct consequence of

the political control of the elites that

currently operate the system.

Okay. So that uh kind of gives you a

sense of what I think of the arguments

as presented by parvini. It's very much

a mixed bag. He makes good arguments. Uh

he presents facts in ways that I think

are somewhat misleading. But I think the

actual problem here is that the

arguments are framed incorrectly.

They're framed on the idea that

population is a consequence of elite

policy decided globally and operates

globally.

I would instead say that when you speak

about uh TFR and you speak about

population dynamics in this intellectual

space, you're actually speaking to a

very specific group of people and that

the instructions on uh what what you

should do should be predicated on

speaking to a particular group of

people.

you you as a a leader of your particular

community have an obligation to try to

maximize the peace of the future that

that group of people might claim.

All right. Uh the choice not to have

children is a a way to guarantee that

you do not grab uh a piece of that

future on behalf of that group.

Um,

on the other hand, the choice to make

your group a dynamic group grabbing a

larger share of the future than other

groups is a choice associated with

effective leadership of your community,

right? Uh, the global global population

trends belong to God and they're they're

very much outside your control.

uh the global American empire is not

going to be in your control at any time

in the foreseeable future. If you were

sitting in Elon Musk's chair as an elite

associated with that empire, it might be

in your interest to try to uh increase

fertility trends across that empire, but

we're not going to be sitting there

anytime in the foreseeable future. uh

and so I think framing the issue in that

way is

um very foolish.

Instead, uh what you're speaking to is

these tiny little subcommunities of

people uh some of whom you're already in

a position of leadership, some with

respect to, some of which you're bidding

for a position of leadership with

respect to. And I would suggest that uh

a policy that promoting antiatalism

among your own group is a kind of is

kind of deeply self-defeating. It's

encouraging antisocial tendencies in

them. It's encouraging the creation of

this kind of um

this kind of long house dominated by the

the desire for comfort of the the older

class. um having more children than you

can simply pass your current assets to

to keep in lifestyle is a way of driving

people to towards achievement and

towards accomplishment. Um and so I

think uh

the when you think about when you turn

the issue from what should the global

population do uh to what should the

people that I have influence over do the

answer becomes quite trivial. The people

you you have influence over should

maximize the piece of the future that

they grab. For most people that means

having children at above replacement

rates. Uh for for most people their

lives will be tremendously positively

transformed by the experience of having

children. It's an incredible blessing

from God. Um for most people uh that

means the embrace of the the difficult

task of building the future on behalf of

those children. Equally, I think you're

fundamentally disqualified from

political leadership if you don't own a

piece of that future. Um, you should,

um,

this is part of the argument that I have

made repeatedly that elites should be

bound to their group both territorially

and in terms of their kind of vision of

their own prospects and the the

prospects for their children, right? The

more that uh

you the elite that you follow as a group

is divorced from your own prospects and

their children are divorced from your

own prospects, the more that they can

make decisions that are um

horrendous and evil and uh the more that

they can walk away from their mistakes.

Um

encouraging fertility as a social norm

and encouraging f fertility among uh the

elites which lead your group will lead

to a healthier dynamic

uh and a stronger bond of future

prospects uh together.

Um the last thing that I I will say here

is that um

the

it's extremely likely that population

declines are part of the future that is

ahead of us. Um

I don't think we should war too hard

against that. We should simply say that

tomorrow belongs to us because we're

willing to take on the challenges

required to seize it.

Um let me repeat that tomorrow belongs

to those who are willing to take on the

challenges make the sacrifices in order

to build that future for themselves and

their their children and their

descendants for many generations off.

You have a unique opportunity in this

moment to seize that future. Embrace it.

Don't get caught up with whether or not

there are too many people, whether the

carrying capacity of the globe is too

large. Nobody knows. So if we look at

land under cultivation, land under

cultivation peaked in the late 50s and

yet global agricultural out output has

radically increased in the intervening

years. So when you hear somebody like uh

David Adenboroough talk about how we're

out of balance with the natural

environment, you're just full of

nonsense. Um we've not been taxing the

natural environment more intensively. Uh

like land use for agriculture is an

excellent marker of how heavily we're

taxing the the natural

the natural resources around us. Uh that

level of taxation peaked in the 1950s.

It hasn't increased since. And yet since

the global population is more than

tripled uh

productivity in the agricultural

sectors for staple crops for livestock

is through the moon. So I don't know

whether there are too many people or too

few people. I know that there's a vast

population devoid of tilos, devoid of

productivity that exists in order to

prop up the lifestyle of this useless

managerial elite that runs the American

empire. And I know that that's a

terrible, terrible situation. But I

decline to speculate on whether there

should be 1 billion people, 100 million

people, 10 billion people. That's not in

my hands. That's in the hands of God.

what's in my hands is whether or not the

group of people who I lead are going to

seize the future.

Um, having children is part of seizing

the future. It's not all of seizing the

future. There are people who who will be

called not to embrace it for various

reasons.

But

that future is is open. It's available

to anyone who wants to grab it. Don't

let yourself be propagandized into uh

letting go of what could belong to you.

Thank you very much. I hope you enjoyed

the video. I hope you learned something.

>> Kenda originally was put together by two

groups of people who didn't have much in

common but didn't want to be American.

>> The line just popped into my head. A

bunch of the boys was a whooping it up

and there I got my start. We have had a

flag. Flags can be changed.

But flags cannot be imposed the sacred

symbols of a people's hopes and

aspirations by the simple capricious

personal choice of a prime minister of

Canada. I have watched this country for

half of my life from abroad and we have

turned complacency into just that, a

national sport.

I I am resolutely opposed to all

innovation, all change, but I am

determined to understand what's

happening. I I don't choose just to sit

and let the juggernaut roll over me.