2023-12-01

natalism.org ad: Why don't American couples want to have kids? An increasing percentage of American couples aren't only childless but don't want to have kids. ... population collapse (Elon Musk quote).. nothing will bring you joy like having kids. How do you overcome fear and doubt to plant to the seeds of trees whose shade we will never know? The future belongs to those who show up.

Good afternoon to the Natal conference. I'm Kevin Dollan. We are here to solve a problem that will define the next cenutry. In our lifetime, every belief system and every government and family will pass through a bottleneck predicated on a single question: will your children have children of their own? If you have a mortgage or 401k or checking account, this question could impact your life in a direct way.

The value of your financial assets, and anything you might buy with money, is defined by leverage and growth. Every country in the developing world is facing long-term population decline which would make growth impossible to maintain. This is the bubble of all bubbles. It's not just tech stocks, but the entire equities market. Not just a handful of cities going bankrupt from taxes. It's sovereign bankruptcies too. It's an everything bubble.

You might say, well it's a bubble and if it pops then we will pop it and move on. But in the aftermath of a bubble like this, a shrinking number of people will have to take care of older people. This problem is not self-creating. It will get worse and worse.

What does this look like? Societies like Japan or South Korea show us what might be the best case scenario if you let the air out of the balloon slower. You see young people unable to start families and chained to their desk at work. The tax base is evaporating. It's an orderly retreat from the planet. After it all, hopefully someone remembers to turn off the lights. I think Japan and South Korea are beautiful places that should continue existing.

China, Brazil and Mexico got old before they got rich. In coming decades, they won't be able to sustain their populations even if they work the young people and tax them to death. This is going to be a huge crisis. The United States will likely be somewhere in the middle. So far, immigration rates make fertility look better on paper. But it's not enough to take care of an aging population. It's not clear why people would come to the US to take care of an elderly population while their own grandmother back home is starving.

If we act now, we might be able to avoid catastrophe. Our political system is so damaged that this is going to be very hard. We have brought people expert in public policy, demography, genetics, and other fields.

I have 2 girls, and 4 boys. When I look around at who few millenials have started families, I feel like I caught the last bus. A lot of people in the US say they want kids but it looks like only few families will be created.

In surveys, only 10% of people say that not having children was an active decision. Some demogrophers called it "unchosen childlessness". I view this as a conservation project fundamentally. If the Bangalore tiger suddenly stopped breeding, I wouldn't say wow they are suddenly prioritizing their mental health or they are spoiled or something or oh good those tigers were too many and ruining everything. Instead, we would investigate and figure out what is disrupting this basic imperative. If we are built to do anything at all, it's make babies. There is no more vulnerable issue than this; you could tell a kid afraid of rejection that it's not life or death. But it is. You are asking someone to love you and believe that someone else like you should go on into the future, or should it go away forever? For hundreds of millions of young adults, it sounds like the whole world is saying: nope, not you.

For men at the top of the funnel, it's tens of thousands of swipes no. For women, it's lots of situationships and nobody saying yes you in particular should go on. There's nothing to be gained from blaming or asking who has it worse. We should have a space here free from that blood sport.

But I see why people are angry. We're not built to be rejected over and over again like that. I don't want anything like that for my kids. I want something better. There are social and political issues. I don't want grandkids just so they can fund medicare. I want them to learn that xmas morning is better as a parent than as a kid. I want my sons to have daughters and see them transform. I want to see all the little imperfections and embarrassing things they were concerned about as kids and then realize as parents that all of that is okay and not a big deal. You're supposed to observe your life again in the third person and see your life through your mother's eyes or your father's eyes. YYou're supposed to learn your parents' perspectives. These psychological loops don't close in any other ways.

Yes, life is not fair. But it should be normal to have these experiences. Parenting is just as fundamental as puberty. We should want each other to go on and continue into the future.

My personal line of attack on this issue is economic. I think that mainstream institutions that used to educate people and get them married is in terminal decline and hostile to life. I want to build something new on the outside. A place for likeminded capital and talent to build schools and marketplaces that make it possible to raise a normal family again. This is not for everyone. It's not a total solution. There are so many things that could be done.

I can tell you that we don't share a common culture here at this conference. We also disagree in stark terms about this issue and what it means and what we should do. But we here agree that life is beautiful and people should go on.