Once you have birth control and abortions and whatnot,
now you can still satisfy the limbic instinct, but not procreate.
So we haven't yet evolved to deal with that,
because this is all fairly recent, the last 50 years or so for birth control.
I'm sort of worried that, hey, civilization,
if we don't make enough people to at least sustain our numbers,
perhaps increase a little bit, then civilization is gonna crumble.
Just as the old question of, will civilization end with a bang or a whimper?
>> Will civilization end with a bang or a whimper?
That is Elon Musk freaking out about low birth rates, and
he's blaming birth control for the low birth rates.
Now, the high costs associated with raising kids in a country that offers
absolutely no financial support could be a problem as well.
But he doesn't get into that because, God forbid,
we have a government that we pay through our taxes that works for us.
We'll get to that in just a moment, John.
But let's talk a little bit about weirdo rich people who are super concerned about
whether or not we're banging it out and whether or not we're procreating enough.
And look, to be sure, the way our economy is run, you need a workforce.
And in order to have a workforce that replaces an aging workforce,
you need to have kids.
I get that.
But if you're genuinely concerned about it, I don't know,
how about incentivize having children by making it easier financially?
Now, let's get back to the weirdos like Musk.
This isn't the first time that Elon Musk has brought up this issue.
He's made similar comments in the past, including what I'm about to read you.
So Musk, who has had 10 children with three different women,
told a business summit in December of 2021,
if people don't have more children, civilization is going to crumble.
Mark my words.
He has described population collapse as the biggest danger to humanity
exceeding climate change [LAUGH] and warned that Japan,
which has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, will eventually cease to exist.
John, you are having a reaction to these concerns from Elon Musk.
Share your concerns with me.
>> We have found something worse than the two decade long effort that Fox News
has engaged in to destroy everyone's faith in academia, science expertise.
That's worse.
A fake replacement for it.
There are actually people who are experts on these topics that do research and
write books about this.
Elon Musk does not.
What he does do is he has a name that people know, and
he talks about a thing as if he understands it.
There are so
many things in that very brief audio that he clearly does not understand about this.
First of all, we talked about this a little bit on TDR this morning,
the idea that, well, we only had abortion and birth control now, I mean,
it's only been 50 years that we've been able to satisfy the limbic instinct
without reproducing, that's not true at all.
There have been condoms for a really long time.
There have been things people take to induce miscarriage.
There have been all sorts of things for
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years that people have been using.
The idea that Japan is going to cease to exist, he doesn't seem to
understand that incentives change over time as situations change.
The same sorts of changing incentives that are leading people in the modern era to
want less kids, particularly as some areas become overpopulated,
will change as incentives as the population falls,
perhaps making them more likely to have more kids.
He seems to think that once you turn, there's no going back.
There's no reason to believe that.
And there was no good follow up question from Tucker Carlson.
Anyway, whole thing frustrating.
>> Wow, there was no good follow up question from Tucker Carlson?
>> No, Tucker Carlson just did this,
as if what he was hearing was Socrates lecturing or something.
You have a blithering idiot across from you.
Ask a good question.
>> Okay, so look, Elon Musk is a goofball, but he's not the only
person who is pretending to be very concerned about low birth rates.
And who knows, maybe he genuinely is.
I mean, he does have ten freaking kids, ten kids is a lot of kids.
But anyway, there is a pronatalism movement, okay?
Taking hold.
They don't really have real solutions.
>> They are like NATO, they want more countries to enter it.
I guess. >> Not NATO-.
>> Trump is gonna be pleased.
>> Natalism.
>> They don't pay their due.
>> Pronatalism.
That's hilarious.
Okay, so the core tenant, according to the Telegraph, which I think is a, anyway-.
>> What?
>> Isn't the Telegraph tabloid.
>> I mean, you can do profiles of these sorts of people in all sorts of
different-.
>> Yeah, and they've given quotes.
So let's get to who these people are.
So the core tenet is deceptively simple,
our future depends on having enough children, and yet life in developed
countries has become hostile to this basic biological imperative.
How has it become hostile?
Are you kidding?
I'm a woman, okay?
I'm a woman.
And all I hear all day, every day is, are you going to have kids?
When are you going to have kids?
How come you guys don't have kids?
You're married, right?
You guys don't love each other?
Why don't you have kids?
When are you going to have kids? When are you going to have kids?
You're going to die alone?
Have kids.
>> I was actually wondering-.
>> Have kids, have kids, have kids.
All day, every day.
Like all day, every day.
>> Yeah. >> My best friend's mother who lives in
Kentucky but visited a few weeks ago, like the second she saw me,
she's like, so are you guys gonna have kids?
>> I get it.
>> Okay, so like-. >> It's people showing interest, but
I understand it, everybody [INAUDIBLE].
>> Don't show interest because what you are asking someone is deeply personal and
also creepy, like, are you and your husband banging it out with protection?
>> And when you do, do you take all the protection?
>> It's super creepy.
>> And then also, maybe they've been trying maybe not you, they, I mean they,
the person you're talking to.
Maybe they've been trying for literally years.
Maybe they've gone through a sequence of devastating miscarriages.
Maybe you are unearthing, unknowingly, a traumatic experience for them.
>> By the way, and I love my best friend's mom.
It's like, it's just an example-.
>> No, I hate her, never met her, not a fan.
>> It's an example of what the culture is actually like,
despite what these fools say.
>> This is the anti-natalism movement, by the way, the Telegraph should call you.
>> No, I'm part of the freedom movement, okay?
And the freedom movement is make the choices that are right for you.
Having children isn't right for everybody, okay?
And if you're genuinely concerned about people not having kids for
whatever reason, you incentivize it by making society supportive toward people
who wanna have kids, not through rhetoric and discourse, but through policy.
You get what I'm saying?
>> You trick them psychologically with a book they won't ever read.
Look, I don't know, to the extent that I agree with that statement that life has
become hostile to it, I would say the economy has become increasingly hostile.
Maybe that's a part of this movement.
I don't know.
>> No, I have not seen that.
>> If it is then respect, I guess.
>> So, look, mostly Silicon Valley people are part of this, right?
Now, there is-.
>> They pretend to be poor, right?
If I remember correct, I think so.
Okay, so I'm probably thinking about that.
>> Not poor at all.
But I do want to draw your attention to one couple, not in Silicon Valley, but
in Pennsylvania.
Okay, Simone and Malcolm Collins,
they are also convinced of the merits of the pronatalism movement and
have taken it upon themselves to engage in this crusade to
save the world by encouraging others to breed.
Okay.
>> That's fine.
They look lovely.
They look happy, I guess.
>> In 2021-.
>> They are cute.
>> In 2021, I'm not going to comment on how they look,
I think that they should mind their own business.
That's what I think.
>> Okay.
>> They look happy.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Anyway, but let me move on.
So in 2021, they actually founded this group called
Pronatalist.org with $482,000 in funding from an Estonian
tech billionaire named John Tallin who supports similar causes.
So what I don't understand is while they are signing on to the pronatalist
movement, if you could even call it a movement, and while they received nearly
half a million dollars in funding to push this movement, or at least their portion
of this movement, they admit that they have no solutions for the low birth rates.
So how did you get paid?
Why did you get paid?
Why would anyone hand over half a million dollars to you if you're,
what are you doing?
What's your point?
>> I can think of a few reasons that different groups that might be kind of
dissimilar ideologically might want to support that, as I'm sure you're going to
get into there's obviously, I'm not saying they are, but historically there has been
a fairly explicitly white supremacist train of thought that leads to this.
I'm sure that they have nothing to do with that, but sure.
>> Well, so there is a problem with the pronatalist movement in
that the branding does bring up some pretty dark elements of the past.
So falling birth rates are also a common preoccupation of
neo Nazis little bit of a problem.
And other ethno nationalists who believe they are being outbred or
replaced by other races.
Also a zeal for large families has often been accompanied by
patriarchal gender politics.
But they claim, no, we want nothing to do with any of that.
Malcolm Collins, who's one of the pronatalists, says, people often compare
our group to Handmaid's Tale-like thinking, and I'm like, excuse me,
do you know what happens if we, the voluntary movement, fails?
Cultures will eventually find a way to fix this, how horrifying those
mechanisms are depends on whether or not our group finds an ethical way.
>> What in the hell?
>> I don't know.
I just don't think that helped his cause much.
>> There's a much simpler answer to that, buddy.
We're not the Handmaid's Tale because we want this to all be voluntary.
That's your answer.
We don't want anyone to be enslaved and forced to give birth.
And as far as I know, that is their position.
>> We want to take the nearly half a million dollars that this Estonian tech
billionaire handed over to us to lobby Congress to pass economic policies
that are friendlier to individuals and families who want to have children.
How about that?
>> That's not what they're, that sounds good.
>> That would be great.
>> I like that. >> That is not what they're saying.
>> For all I know, I would assume that they support that sort of thing because
that would increase the odds.
And by the way, not every group that's advocating for
something has to take care of every bit of policy that paves the way.
They might be trying to philosophically influence people in the hopes that those
people will also pressure government.
That's entirely possible.
>> They define themselves as politically conservative.
So it gives you a sense of where they might stand on social safety
net programs and economic policies that redistribute the insane amount
of wealth at the very top toward ordinary people who might forego starting
a family because of the astronomical costs associated with it.
I don't want to hear from another wealthy person about like, my God,
the falling birth rates.
If you are a proponent of tax cuts, if you are a proponent of gutting our social
safety net, you're not serious about your concern about birth rates falling.
>> Yeah, I'm not saying for them but for a lot of conservatives who
might at face value agree with them, it's almost perfect what they're doing.
So I don't know what they were talking about there with the cultures will
find a way to figure this out, the mechanisms will be horrifying.
I mean, I would say, well,
it seems like that's what conservatives are trying to do in banning abortion and
soon birth control and IVF and all that stuff like getting involved in all of it.
So then you force a bunch of people who have already made clear that they don't
want kids and in many cases don't have the economic means to raise them,
to have them anyway.
So you get what you want now they're screwed.
Their lives are gonna be significantly harder.
How do you think that the kids that they're gonna be raising,
they're gonna just be set up for success.
Obviously, that'll create all sorts of further economic and
social issues that the right can then use to fear monger and
demonize those people for another few generations.
So it's kind of like a closed economy of forcing people to have
kids that will then produce the culture war fodder that they need.
>> It is kind of perfect when you think about it.
>> That's not on these pronatalists.
By the way, what the hell is with that name?
We're told constantly that libs are bad at coming up with names for things.
We're the baby boosters or something.
Pronatalist, that sounds like the position you use to knock up your partner.
That doesn't sound like your philosophy or whatever.
>> All right-.
>> Do something appealing.
Put the word baby in it.
>> Our branding critic A team is here to share his [INAUDIBLE] for
the pronatalism-.
>> No, I can't do that, it hurts my back.
That's what it sounds like to me.
>> Now, finally, I'm just gonna leave you with this last comment from
basically Malcolm in regard to what they propose to do to increase the birth rates.
What is to be done?
Our solution is, we don't have a solution, he admits.
He says the only things proven to increase birth rates are poverty and
the oppression of women, which are bad and should be stamped out.
>> So I'm assuming that's true.
Generally, birth rates are higher in places where there's more poverty and
where women don't have rights.
You didn't need to bring it up, though.
I'm just spitballing here.
We wind the clock back 200 years.
No, no, wait, that would be bad, I guess.
I'm not saying he believes that, but
why do you keep bringing up these things that make you look crazy?
There's a perfectly innocent answer to all of this.
Theoretically, you're going for the vaguely ominous one every time.