May 1, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
07:31
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Well, I should talk, right? | |
| He wrote, the birth rate in 1850 was almost 300 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age. | |
| In 1950, it was 106. | |
| Today is 55, half of what it was 75 years ago. | |
| 20% of what it was 175 years ago. | |
| We need to start taking this problem seriously before we march into our own extinction. | |
| need to start taking this problem seriously. | |
| Now, of course, Survivability, you know, one in three, sometimes kids, one in two, sometimes didn't make it to their fifth birthday, so I get that there was a certain amount of infant mortality or excess mortality that was being made up for in the past, but... | |
| It's rough. | |
| I know, Trump's talking about, what, 5,000 bucks? | |
| Women who give birth 5,000 bucks? | |
| Not only will that not work, it'll do the opposite of working. | |
| Amish kids don't suffer the ailments common in our advanced society. | |
| Listen, I mean, maybe you're right. | |
| I did look up at one point, you know, the argument that the Amish don't have autism because they don't get vaccinated and so on. | |
| I would look up counter-arguments, please. | |
| I'm begging you as a whole. | |
| Look up counter-arguments. | |
| We all have a confirmation bias. | |
| We like to look up things that support our perspectives, and I understand that. | |
| That's human nature, and after a certain amount of experience, it kind of makes sense, right? | |
| I don't go and check out the flat-earth theories anymore. | |
| But just look up, right? | |
| Just look up the counterarguments, right? | |
| Look up the counterarguments. | |
| Maybe they're valid, maybe they're not, but... | |
| Really do try to make sure that you don't just do confirmation bias as best you can. | |
| *Sigh* | |
| And they tried in Hungary. | |
| They tried these baby bonuses. | |
| I think it was in Hungary. | |
| If you have four kids, you'd have to have pay income tax again. | |
| But honestly, I don't think that we can improve the birth rate. | |
| Until there is a certain amount of... | |
| We really can't improve the birth rate until there's much more of a free market in education and entertainment. | |
| So right now, it's the anti-natalists who are in charge of the education and | |
| media as a whole. | |
| So... | |
| So, until we can find some way to get more of a free market education in media society, then it's just not going to work. | |
| Because the hammering, the message, is so insistent, so relentless. | |
| I mean, you remember this, what was it, 2019? | |
| Five years ago plus, where I put out the infamous... | |
| I was quite proud of this, voted the worst tweet of all time. | |
| The infamous Taylor Swift tweet. | |
| Just pointing out that, yeah, she's 30. I hope she has kids, because 90% of her eggs are already gone. | |
| I think she'd be a fun mom. | |
| She should have kids. | |
| have kids. | |
| Because, of course, the opposite of pronatalism is short-term hedonism. | |
| It's more fun to go to college than to raise a baby in the short run, right? | |
| In the immediate, in the moment, right? | |
| Go to some keggers, show up to some classes, try and learn | |
| about World War II through one bloodshot eye at 8.30 in the morning. | |
| World War II Thank you. | |
| It's more fun in the short run. | |
| And of course, the reason why, I was reading about this with regards to China, because they had that one-child policy, now their population is falling off a cliff. | |
| It's brutal. | |
| Their population is falling off a cliff, and it's really, really hard to reverse, because your entire culture, your entire society starts to adapt itself to not community, not families, not communities, | |
| where there's just a bunch of, like, When I was a kid, I could go outside, into the neighborhood, at least ten kids to play with. | |
| At least. | |
| Often more. | |
| We had no money. | |
| Maybe somebody would have a soccer ball or whatever, but I would be able to go out. | |
| Of my apartment, the flat that my family lived in, I'd be able to go out, and there were always kids to play with. | |
| Now, if you live in the suburbs, friends of mine were telling me about this, right? | |
| If you live in the suburbs, what do they call them? | |
| Bedroom communities? | |
| And bedroom communities are, you know, people take their kids, they drop them off at daycare, they go to work, they spend their time at work, they come back, they pick up their kids, then they've got to, you know. | |
| Have dinner and bathe, and maybe there's some homework involved if it's school or whatever. | |
| And kids, you know, maybe there'll be some, maybe a bit on Sunday afternoon, some kids will be out. | |
| But I'm telling you, man, you know, I mean, I mean, obviously, I've mentioned this once or twice on the show, that I had a pretty rough upbringing at home. | |
| But socially, ah, socially, it was paradise. | |
| It was paradise. | |
| I think women lose a lot of status when they have kids. | |
| Childless women are so desperate to say how much better it is. | |
| Also, parents seem to spend, says Squiglet, seem to spend all their time complaining. | |
| I was utterly shocked how wonderful my kids are and how much joy they bring. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah, very true. | |
| Very true. | |
| Right, so parenting is a blast. | |
| So, if the government, I'm not saying it should, but if the government were to gain control of the media and it was like a pro-natalist government, they would just start pounding those messages and, I mean, people just, you know, most people just follow the social cues, right? | |
| Most people just follow the social messaging. | |
| Social messaging. | |
| Oh, the exemption. | |
| Only applies to the mother's income. | |
| No income tax. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I mean, it's wild. |
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