Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

In this episode, we explore the significant shifts in German politics with the dramatic rise of the AFD, now the second-largest party in the nation. Despite their electoral success, deeply entrenched bureaucratic maneuvers prevent them from exercising their political mandate. We delve into the players involved, revealing the tactics used to maintain the status quo, and discuss the controversial stances of the AFD. From anti-immigration policies to their pro-Russia stance and internal splits over Israel, we provide a comprehensive overview of this seismic political change in Germany.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone! So in this video we are going to be talking about one, how we are seeing a radical change in German politics with the right and the quote unquote far right winning extremely large amounts compared to previous election cycles and we're going to be discussing how the entrenched bureaucrats in German deep state is preventing them from even Being able to vote within their own Congress, despite being the second largest party in the country now.

And the largest party being a conservative party as well, and the conservative party betraying them. Okay. Sort of start with a map here to give you an idea. This first map you're seeing here, you see almost all red right here? Hey, that's the SPD. Okay. So that's like a left leaning party. The gray is one of the conservative parties and the blue, the little blue you see here is the AFD, the one that all the other parties are afraid of.

They, they literally [00:01:00] mark their, their members as domestic terrorists and are constantly surveying them. And we will go over this as well. This is this election cycle. The next one, blue or gray. Just conservative across the board. It's like that Reagan election. Except for one little, like, even Berlin is half gray, with the other part being the littlest holdout of the still red.

Wow. Is that not absolutely insane? And so now you might be hearing all this and be like, Well, I mean, of course the AFD, Must be like extremist, rightist, you know, whatever's right, right. Let me tell you about the person who runs the AFD. I don't even think you know this about.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, my, my coming into this with only having seen references to the AFD and headlines would, would be, I mean, I'm, I'm assuming it's not accurate because.

It would be crazy if this were the case, but they're basically [00:02:00] saying that the AFD is, you know, the small square mustache people that they're just that. So

Malcolm Collins: the person who runs the AFD is Alice Wheatle is a 46 year old lesbian. She, is in a same sex relationship with a Sri Lankan. They have two sons together.

Simone Collins: She,

Malcolm Collins: okay, so she is in a interracial gay relationship with two kids. She has a doctorate in economics, is fluent in Mandarin, and formerly worked for Goldman Sachs and the Bank of China. She sounds super cool. She sounds like someone I want to be friends with. I like that. Right?

Simone Collins: Doesn't she?

Malcolm Collins: And she splits her time for this ultra German nationalist.

between living in Berlin and Switzerland. But she is known for increasingly radical positions, such deportations, in terms like re [00:03:00] migration which you kind of need in Germany at this point, if you want there to be any hope for a future of a German state. But we'll get to that later. But by this what I mean is if you look at Current immigrant birth rates versus native German birth rates and current immigrant in going rates, if you plan on there being a Germany and you can look at the rate at which they, they integrate into German society, right?

Yeah, based on, you know, different countries. There will not be anything like what we think of as Germany today was German values. And I'm not talking about Western values. I'm talking about like anything other than like, really Sharia law.

What would happen to a gay couple in Gaza?

Executed according to Islamic law. Islam doesn't endorse gays. Islam doesn't endorse homosexuality. Just like Canada doesn't endorse a lot of things. So would you like to see Sharia law in Canada replace Canadian law? At some point, it will. You know, Because we are, we have families, we are making babies, you're not your population is going down the slum, right?

And by 2060, according to [00:04:00] Pew Research Institute, your research, by 2060, Muslims will be the biggest religious group the world over. What are you going to do then? Are you going to oppose Sharia even then? One day we can have a Muslim majority nation here in Canada.

Right In your face!

Malcolm Collins: Like, like we're not like, if you are a lesbian, you should be afraid of this.

For example. Yeah, she

Simone Collins: seems like the kind of person. Who would be uniquely interested in an intervention. I mean, when I read the book, Pray, for example, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she talks about the extent to which many, especially vulnerable people, old people, women, young girls, are victimized by primarily Muslim migrants in Europe,

Malcolm Collins: I'm making is that anybody who runs the math knows in 50 to 100 years, Germany doesn't exist anymore in any set of values that they claim to be doing on this, all this on the behalf of won't exist in the future.

And, and you can just run the [00:05:00] math. Like it's that simple. They just don't care. They care more about looking like the good guys right now than the longterm. But so, okay, you get an idea of who she is. So what does the party stand for before we go further into this particular election cycle?

Simone Collins: Yes,

Malcolm Collins: they are anti immigrant.

The party advocates for negative immigration and removing the constitutional right of foreigners to seek asylum. I don't think they're like removing their constitutional right to constitute on our country.

Simone Collins: Well, but that's, that's kind of what happened, right? I mean, it's this one point. with the Syrian war, you had Angela Merkel saying, yes, if you are a refugee, you can basically come here.

So yeah, I mean, like they really do have to reverse something that was a very foundational policy for a long time that completely impermanently changed. But I love

Malcolm Collins: the way the AI words it, their constitutional right to seek asylum. That's like me saying the government took away my constitutional right to demand sex for my wife.

It's like, well, that constitutional right removed rights from other people. So you see, [00:06:00] it's a problem. So, what else, what were there other policies here? They, they were anti Islam. The AFD states, Islam does not belong to Germany. Not, not does not belong in Germany, but does not belong to Germany and seeks to restrict its influence.

They're anti caliphate. They're

Simone Collins: not like anti religious freedom. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: They're they have your skepticism. They they oppose many EU policies as they should. When we see that the EU is basically like USAID of Europe climate change denial. They deny human cause global warming. Not going to speak on that because that could get the video restricted.

And they have a pro Russia stance. They have criticized sanctions against Russia and Germany's support for the Ukraine. So, very much sort of mainstream MAGA like party. Yeah, well, no wonder

Simone Collins: then, JD Vance was speaking with them. Elon Musk has spoken with them. That makes So much sense.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so I was trying to like, look up because they [00:07:00] were like, Oh no, they actually are like Nazis.

They actually are like anti Semitic when I, when I was trying to, and I was like, you know what? I'm going to bet that they support Israel despite being called Nazis and that all of these German leftist parties right now are anti Israel. Can I just check? Yeah. But there has been a racist split within the party.

Historically the party was sort of uniformly pro Israel. And now as proof of their Nazism, quote unquote, some members like co chair Tina Tripula have criticized Germany's weapon exports to Israel and called for de escalation. While other members of the party disagreed with this stance and called it quote, left wing pacifist nonsense.

This sounds like. This sounds like this party knows how to f**k.

Simone Collins: Oh, these are the ones that have the good parties.

Malcolm Collins: Right, right, right. So, so again, I'm trying to find like, what is all this horrible stuff they're doing, right? They must be doing something horrible. So in November 2023, a secret meeting took place near Potsdam, Germany, involving [00:08:00] members of the AFD party and other far right groups.

This meeting has since become a major political scandal in Germany. The details include, okay, so there is this. Apparently some, they call them neo Nazi activists, whatever that means. And members of the Identitarian movement and some even centrist people. Okay, it just sounds like anyone who wanted to come could come.

Very similar to like some events we've been at. Okay. Purpose, the meeting's primary focus was on a quote unquote master plan for mass deportations. They termed re migration. Okay, mass deportations are necessary if Germany is to survive right now. Anyone who runs the mass knows that targets the plan aimed to deport not only foreigners and asylum seekers, but also quote unquote, non assimilated German citizens with migrant backgrounds.

That seems, yeah. If

Simone Collins: you don't want to play it by Germany's games, get out of Germany.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, if you're, if you're going to be, for example, if you're going to treat women as property, if you're going to not give your daughters a choice in who they marry, if you're going to, because once you get an enclaves, it's big enough to do [00:09:00] that.

It doesn't matter what the country's rules are. Right.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: If you're going to threaten your kids lives, if they're gay, you know, if you're going to like, yeah, it undermines,

Simone Collins: it undermines the sovereignty of whatever state in which this is happening. If people will just blatantly. Disregard your own freedoms, protected freedoms and laws, then yeah, you should like either the country needs to get rid of those people fast.

Or it has to admit the fact that they're going to lose their sovereignty, period.

Malcolm Collins: And so how are, is this party that, that won as you saw in this last cycle how are they going to be kept out of power? All right. Okay. So what Germans have done and keep in mind, 85 percent of people voted in this last election cycle, which was the highest number since I think the, the like reconstitution of Germany after yeah, that's two sides combined.

Simone Collins: Isn't it normally for a nation or like, [00:10:00] if we're lucky, 50%, maybe more like 40.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, in Germany, I don't remember, but it's, it's, it's,

Simone Collins: it

Malcolm Collins: was the highest since Germany's reunification in 1990.

Simone Collins: Wow, yeah, so in the 2024 U. S. presidential election, approximately 63. 9 percent of voting eligible people voted. So, this is like, way, way higher. This is, this is meaningful. That's huge.

Malcolm Collins: So how are they being kept out of power? Germans created something they call the firewall. And we're going to go through all of the political parties that play here, how they lost power. But basically, The leftists got the mainstream conservative party, the CDU, to agree to never form a coalition with the ADU and to not count their votes in like basically not allow them to vote on things.

Just freeze them out. Just

Simone Collins: yes, they have not doesn't matter how many votes they got. It doesn't matter what citizens of Germany say. [00:11:00] I mean, no,

Malcolm Collins: it doesn't. This is a literal like to to an American. Germany looks like a state that has been captured by a group of. They have placed mainstream party members with reasonable, I'd even say the most reasonable opinion on things under constant surveillance by the state.

They have made ideas illegal. They have made families like ours illegal in the interest of German genetic purity because we use genetics. Did you know that it's, it's also illegal to insult someone in Germany? Yes, they, they have made it illegal to insult themselves. Now keep in mind, they insult this other party.

No, like

Simone Collins: literally people have been arrested. There's actually been a string of arrests in Germany.

Malcolm Collins: But

Simone Collins: they're

Malcolm Collins: an insult to this party. Because they do it all the time in the stuff I'm reading. So clearly I have a

Simone Collins: problem. Yeah, no, but like literally even if you repost a political cartoon, for example, that's considered insulting.

One example being, for example migrants, oh sorry, I'm sorry. [00:12:00] One example being a political cartoon with an illustration of an electrical plant saying jungle gym for migrants that someone I think just reposted and they were arrested for that. I think the fine for your 1st insult, because I think the, the, the situation escalates depending on how many times you've done.

This is 5000 euros, which is a lot of money and that it's a, it can, it can be higher depending on various circumstances. And it is not considered. Any less big to insult someone online. In fact, it's considered even worse because they've

Malcolm Collins: taken power. The citizens don't want them in power anymore.

They have frozen out the second largest party in the country. They've put them under surveillance and they have yet to understand that they are literally playing the Nazi playbook right here. They march in the street against the Jews in Israel right now. Well, I've seen leftist German marches on this.

They, [00:13:00] you know, river to the sea, talk about murdering the Jews. They don't see that they're the bad guys. I love that. They still call the pro Jewish guys, the Nazis. The guys who didn't forcibly take power in a coup, but what they do is they form these coalition governments and I'll put on screen here the ways that they might come together.

So the middle left and the middle right might come together to form a coalition or you might be able to get a near coalition of the middle right and the greens which are a far left group. But yeah, all right. So let's go over the various parties right now. So the, the, the mid right. Okay. And the last election cycle, they won 24 percent and this one they run 28.

5 percent to 29%. They grew, but like not as much as the AFD. But that's a lot given how much the AFD grew. Christian democratic union or the Christian social union. Now, Their key issues are, and this is the group that despite being the key group in [00:14:00] power refuses to allow the AFD to vote or partner with them, economic revitalization through tax cuts and deregulation, stricter immigration practices, maintaining the debt break, exploring nuclear options, strengthening NATO and supporting Ukraine.

What, why this is like the most cucked rhinos of,

Simone Collins: we were, it's like, let's give away everything and, and put German citizens last. I didn't hear anything about increasing the quality of life for Germans. No,

Malcolm Collins: they, they want stricter immigration policies. They want like this party claims to want that stuff, but they won't work with the other guys who want this stuff because they're too spicy.

These guys are very much like. Spark. They are, we went to this con, I went to this conference in the uk where they basically was crazy because in the crowd, you know, you have people like me to where they could have had me talk about Tism. Now they had Steve Shaw who like, no one is, I like Steve Shaw, but he's like, doesn't have the audience we have he doesn't have the prominence we have but he is way less [00:15:00] spicy and basically a lefty.

They'd have like Curtis Jarvin in the audience. And they put on some like nobody on stage who I'd never heard of. They had people on stage like hand wringing about trump, but this was to be like a pan european like conservative conference but the european conservative power players are so in the last generation That they can't see that things have changed and that they get edified by working with groups like the afd As we saw jd vance do when he went to munich the carpet bombing of munich when he went through and carpet bombed them with truth bombs, It's a recent speech he gave.

We didn't get a chance to go over it because I was at this conference, so I wasn't able to, you know, stay up to date with our videos. That's why they were all evergreen content recently. But anyway, the carpet bombing in Munich he went and he talked with the AFD and none of the other parties because he, the US is trying to normalize this.

Now, let's talk about the AFD. I mentioned them. They went from 10 percent in the last election cycle to 20 point five percent in this election cycle. So, you know, more than doubled. And then you have the, I love their anti [00:16:00] immigration closer ties with Russia opposing military aid to Ukraine, alternate economic approaches, including sanctions on Russia, lifting sanctions on Russia.

So basically just the MAGA, the way that MAGA is different from like old crunchy neocons and stuff like that. The social democratic party, the SPD, this party went from 26 percent to 15%. Completely crashed. This is the one that used to have that huge public support. They wanted targeting public investment and social spending, more moderate stamps on immigration were forming the debt break and continued support for Ukraine.

Then you have the green party. This is 12. to 13 percent in this cycle, 14. 7 percent in the last cycle. So just lost a little bit of support. Climate action and renewable energy expansion, reform, reforming the debt break for future investments, basically taking off the spending money without, without limit.

That's what these guys all want. Rejecting nuclear energy and supporting Ukraine. Then you have the free democratic [00:17:00] party, the FDP which. Is now at 4 percent so they don't get any seats. They used to be at 11. 7%. If you're below 5 percent you don't get any seats. Wow. They want, they want economic liberalization, stricter immigration policies and maintaining the debt break.

They're basically libertarians. It looks like. And then you have the left party which was at less than 5 percent in the last cycle and 19. 9 percent in Berlin this cycle. So nearly double from the last election and they're just social welfare nonsense.

I'd also note that the AFD outperformed among younger demographics which is obviously really terrifying to the existing power structure but I think there isn't much they could do. They have to basically pull off something that's impossible within German politics right now to gain power. So we'll talk a bit more about the firewall and where it's breaking, but any thoughts you had.

Simone Collins: I'm so glad this happened because I thought it was impossible. I thought that this was just a nation in [00:18:00] inevitable decline. And I think. That you did too. You were basically like, Germany has done it. Well, right now

Malcolm Collins: it's still in inevitable decline unless the center right party breaks, it breaks a firewall.

And I think Trump could do that. Really? Yes. If Trump and Vance basically call out Germany for what it's become, which is a non democratic fascist state. They, they cannot ignore the will of the people. They can't just. call off as J. D. Vincent, you can't just call off elections when you lose. And that's what the left and the bureaucratic class in Europe, the bureaucratic oligarchs in Europe have taken to doing.

And that I think saying you are not a friendly country right now, you are a failed democracy right now, and we can't normalize relations with Germany. Until Germany respects the will of the voters. So let's talk about how the firewall works. Exclusion from coalitions. Other parties have pledged not to form coalitions with the effectively shutting [00:19:00] them out of government formation.

Legislative isolation. Major parties avoid collaborating with the AFD on passing legislation. Institutional security. The AFD is under surveillance by German's domestic intelligence for alleged right wing extremism.

It's

Simone Collins: interesting how this is such an extreme case of using name calling to just completely disenfranchise an entire group and completely false name calling as far as I'm aware. I've sometimes. Heard it de escalated their description or association with the baddies de escalated to has some loose ties with known baddies.

But again, I don't even know how true that is because every time someone is called that online, they aren't, they're just. In some other ways and

Malcolm Collins: at the state, I tried to look to find like genuinely bad things they had done and I [00:20:00] couldn't find anything. It'll be things like saying Muslims are not or like Islam is not German, right?

For example, or German culture or some Muslims do not appear to be integrating into our society or you know, Great cases are disproportionately Muslim right now or like these are all just like a reasonable and obvious truth that go against the the grain to say, so you want to look at the fight that they've had was this because I actually met somebody at this conference who was talking to me fan of the show who's under surveillance by the government.

And he's like a leader of one of these parties and he's like, look, I've even gone to the government and been like, hey. Because they have him on the list that requires like constant monitoring to see if he's a terrorist. And they go, can't you just like, do the research on me, actually investigate me to find out if I actually am a terrorist.

And I'm like, just do it already. Yeah. And they're like, no, we can't. We're, we're stretched too thin, which basically allows them to put anyone they want to on this list, which automatically overstretches the list. Instead of looking at the actual terrorists, like [00:21:00] the, the one who drove a van into people at Christmas and killed six people, like they don't care about this.

Okay. So the classification as a, The suspected case in 2021, the BFB classified the AFD as a suspected case of extremism. This designation allows the agency to monitor the party's activities more closely. Legal basis, a German court ruled in May 2024 that this surveillance is lawful, rejecting the appeal of the AFD.

The court found quote unquote sufficient evidence to justify classifying the party as a potential threat to democracy. Scope of the surveillance, this classification enables the BFB to use intelligence methods such as wiretaps. Recruiting informants and monitoring suspicious activities of party branches.

Reasons for the surveillance. The court cited evidence that the AFD may pursue goals that contradict human dignity in certain groups. So, so, wha I love this ongoing process that the BFE continues to gather information and prepare reports of the [00:22:00] AFDs activities.

This surveillance is part of Germany's effort to protect its democratic constitution from extremist threats. That is wild. Now here is where we get a little bit of potential break in this, okay?

Simone Collins: Okay. January 29th.

Malcolm Collins: Malcolm Eddie is dire di mps from the far right alternative for Germany, the A FD.

Clustered around 46 year old party leader Alice Weedle in Parliament taking selfies. Weedle, dressed in a white roll neck and navy blazer, gave a reticent but pleased looking smile at the camera. Moments earlier, AFD had made history. For the first time since entering the federal parliament in 2017, its votes had influenced national policy.

The motion to restrict immigration was non binding. What mattered was that the entire center right opposition, the CDU, which brought it forward, and the Libertarian Free Democratic Party, FDP, who supported it, [00:23:00] relied on additional AFD votes to pass it. So they basically used AFD votes to pass a non binding resolution.

In so doing, CDU leader Frederick Meurs, who's the next guy to be prime minister, abolished a post war consensus among mainstream parties to ostracize the extreme and far right. They are not that extreme. probably to the left of Trump. Merz was avoiding eye contact of the ruling Social Democratic Party, S.

D. P., who was furious the AFD was over the moon, standing on chairs, embracing each other. Stung by criticism that they were making common cause with the far right, a dozen CDU MPs refused to back their party leader a second time.

He still won though. Weedle was incensed. Merz does not have what it takes to be Chancellor, she told reporters. The Conservatives aren't united. Last month, the collaboration at the federal level, it didn't seem to affect CDU standing in the polls, suggesting not all Germans are as affronted by the inclusion of the AFD in decision making as the Berlin [00:24:00] political elite.

And that is what it is. This is, you can see, this is just the elite because after this. They still had that huge one. Here I would note what I actually love is the way that the leader of the AFD dresses the, you know, what is it? Turtleneck with the blazer reminds me of the way that far leftist lesbian dresses, Ellen DeGeneres was born in Germany and became a MAGA mirror world.

Simone Collins: Ellen

Malcolm Collins: DeGeneres of that. Yeah. Mirror world. Ellen DeGeneres. It really is like a sliders episode or something where you went through a different world.

Is that f*****g Ellen DeGeneres running MAGA in this country?

Simone Collins: Oh boy. She seems super awesome. I. Not Ellen DeGeneres, you mean this lady. This lady,

yeah. Ellen

DeGeneres

is the worst!

The worst! She's the worst person in the world. Huge skank. Terrible.

Simone Collins: What I don't understand is how anyone would become a leader within [00:25:00] the AFD or try when it has been so clearly shadow banned, or not even shadow banned, just banned from the public discourse.

Malcolm Collins: A few things. One, and I want to remember here to put the scene of the Muslim who's yelling about what they're going to do when they take power in Canada in earlier in this episode. Okay, yikes. We had an episode around it, remember? He's like, you know, when we're

Simone Collins: Oh, him! Yeah, no, the guy who's just very matter of factly.

Yes! Oh, gosh, yes. Yes,

Malcolm Collins: so, the You can't help but like the guy. Yeah, right. Okay, so, the I think that one, keep in mind, like Vance met with them and not the other parties, just completely ignoring the firewall. The only way Germany gets any sort of sanity again is breaking the firewall. And, and until they do that, they are a country that is in rebellion against its people.

It is a Berlin elite that is in rebellion against its people while in the process of systemically eliminating them. I think it was something like in the Last 10 years, like the number of immigrants had [00:26:00] more than doubled.

So as of 2022, 24. 3 percent of Germany's population had a history of immigration. This includes people who have immigrated to Germany since 1950, who were the direct descendant of immigrants. So around one in four German citizens is non German. and if you look at first generation immigrants, you're looking at, , 17.

3%, so over one in six.

Like that is when you look at the differential birth rates in the United States, things like the great replacement theory, I just don't buy at all.

Like, you know, Oh no, not the trad cast Hispanics. They'll never be. Meanwhile over half of Hispanic males voted for Trump in the last election cycle. The left was like, oh, we maybe made a mistake with that. But this is very different. This is a group that is anti Like, I, I am able to be more moderate on my views towards immigrants because I live in the [00:27:00] United States.

Simone Collins: If

Malcolm Collins: I lived in Germany or the UK I would not be able to be as moderated on my views about immigration where I would need to say, one, we can't Because in these countries, they can't they can't treat all immigrants as if they are exactly the same when a disproportionate amount of the terrorism, when a disproportionate amount of attacks, even democratically on German values through creating these sort of Sharia enclaves and stuff like that.

Are coming from one specific cultural background and often just one country. I was talking to one of my friends in the UK really cool Indian conservative lady. She's like, you know, it's crazy. Like all of this, it's not coming from even just one religion. It's like, it's one sub region of Pakistan.

And if you were just able to say this one sub region of Pakistan, you'd, you'd end like 95 percent of the cases of the really horrifying, whether it's the [00:28:00] grooming gangs or whether it's the random attacks or whether it's the but they can't talk like that. Like everyone must be exactly the same.

Except for Germans who and another thing that AFD has gotten in trouble for is they're like historical revisionism. They have pride in their country. They have pride in its history. They're like, we need to stop doing this. I love they call them anti semitic despite how pro israel they are because they want to stop Being as effasive with the holocaust remembrance day, which is actually important Like if you want to have pride in your people germany has done enough I think by most people's standards in terms of the whole whipping themselves over the Holocaust.

I would even guess to most Jews today, like even in Israel, when I like talk with like extremist Jews, I'm like like, like laughing, well, you know, you could just ship all the people from Gaza into Germany and they'll like get this solemn look on their face because they know Germany would take them and they're like, no, we really shouldn't like that would kill Germany and they take it and you know, we need to like cut them some, like, so like [00:29:00] even the like pro.

Jewish Jews I know are like, Hey, don't Jeremy, you've done enough. Like, stop it. Stop, stop whipping yourself. Pull the knife out. Stop stabbing yourself. This is getting gruesome at this point. Okay. You are actually replacing your own people at this point. The show, the hint, and I mean, that's an offensive thing to say, but like, what do you think, Simone?

If you look at the, like the numbers, they are replacing their own people. Right? Like am I. No,

Simone Collins: no. It's just birth rates.

Malcolm Collins: Like, what are you going to do? Well, I mean, there's a lot of things. I love it. I was looking at this really funny because I was on air at British Tonight. I did the, like, big talk show that night when I was in the UK.

And one of the stats I was looking at was the difference between native born british and muslim fertility rates. And it was actually fact checkers. So it was channel four news and they're like, no muslims won't replace native british people. You see native british people may have a fertility rate of 1.

8 and muslims have a fertility rate of [00:30:00] three. But by 2030 native british people will have a fertility rate of 1. 8 and muslims will have a fertility rate of like 2. 3 or something. Now, hold on. This was done in 2014. Okay. Just 20, 24. Okay. So just 10 years later.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm .

Malcolm Collins: They British people weren't at 1.8 year.

Still, they projected 1.8 for 2030. Isn't, aren't they? One,

Simone Collins: one point. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh Lord. By the way, the, the latest I could find on the Muslim fertility rate in the uk it is now at. 2. 83. So it felt like 1 percent British one is, is, is tanking. And fundamentally, I just think when I talk to progressives on this, I'm like so you agree, to, to, progressives, you agree that Muslims are different culturally. They're, they're better culturally than us Europeans, right? They're better. But they, they have different practices. They have different practices around marriage.

They have different practices around how they relate to things like sexuality and [00:31:00] gender. And those differences are what make them unique and beautiful. And that it is not your plan. To erase their cultural heritage, right? We can agree on this. Okay. It's not your plan. Okay. Okay. So we both agree. Your plan isn't to erase their cultural heritage.

What happens to the native population if you are importing these people in really high numbers and we don't plan to erase their culture? Like, what's the logical outcome of this if their fertility rates are dramatically higher?

I don't, like, understand, it's like, okay, well then maybe they become a

Simone Collins: matter of not caring, for the most part, right?

Malcolm Collins: Well, right, and there's like, well, okay, the British will become a minority in Britain or, or, or in Germany or whatever, right, you know? And then they're like, but, when the, the Muslims are the majority, they will treat us with the [00:32:00] magnanimity that we have treated them.

What would happen to a gay couple in Gaza?

Executed according to Islamic law. Islam doesn't endorse gays. Islam doesn't endorse homosexuality. Just like Canada doesn't endorse a lot of things. So would you like to see Sharia law in Canada replace Canadian law? At some point, it will. You know, Because we are, we have families, we are making babies, you're not

Malcolm Collins: And I was like, what are you, look at Muslim majority countries, like we, we have an eye, we can see the countries where these people came from, how they treated local religious minority populations. They did not treat them well, and this hasn't been the case of Islams or at all history, this isn't a Muslim thing intrinsically, Muslims used to be of all the religions, like nicest to the minority population in their countries.

So I'm not attacking Islam in saying this, I'm saying this modern iteration of Islam that you are bringing into your country, it acts this way. Okay? Not all Islam, but the specific version of it that you are growing [00:33:00] within your country. And when you deconvert somebody from one of these groups, when you do acculturate them, they stop having kids at the same rate.

So the more extreme version is the one that's going to replace things, like I guess this is like the type of thing that would be called like an extremist, but I feel like I'm just walking people through logic that we all agree on. They just don't do the second step. They're like, okay, Islam is a unique culture with unique views on things like marriage same sex relations the way a religion should relate to its government, the way minority populations should be treated within a state.

And we can look and see how the people are acting and what they're voting for in their own countries. So they know what's going to happen, right? Like, I feel like this isn't, like, extreme, right? Like, this is, I guess it's extreme because then it's the, the, then so what? Well, then so what? We need to heavily restrict immigration.

There's, yeah, but there's no, no,

Simone Collins: no, because the, the focus. Is [00:34:00] on now and on immediate suffering. There just is no long term focus. And I think when I go back to my mindset of a very progressive person, it's just take care of everyone right now. Stop their suffering dot, dot, dot. Everything's going to be great.

It's going to be great. You know, we'll bring over the migrants who are suffering where they are now, and we will take good care of them and they will. And be so grateful and live thriving lives and be happy and all of us will do great. And by the way, we need help with our population right now anyway, et cetera, et cetera, there is no thought of.

Irrevocable damage. It really reminds me like the modern

Malcolm Collins: progressives, I see why they get along so well with the neocons because their view towards immigrants is very similar to the neocons view towards nation building, which is like, oh, we'll go into Afghanistan and Iraq and we will give them democracy.

And they [00:35:00] will be so grateful about all that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. They are going to just love us and treat us amazingly and just, and then other people were like, bro, it's a completely different culture. Like this extremist Islamic culture is not, they don't want to be friends with you.

And the problem is, is that other than us going there and murdering people, they're shipping them over here and having them murder people at home, you know? Like, it's wild! And then, you

I guess with the neocons, like, we sort of got to a point where, do they understand now that you can't do that? Like, different cultures are different? I guess they just became progressives. I mean, we saw Dick Cheney like you know, doing campaigning with, with Kamala Harris and stuff. One of the things that I heard said recently that really stuck with me maybe Adam Gold was watching somebody was saying this, there's something along these lines where they were just saying In history.

Oh, I remember who it was. Yeah, this was the guy who runs Sargon of Akkad had a piece saying this. He's like, look, everybody knows now, like, because we can see the [00:36:00] tide turning, whether it's this election cycle or what's going on in the United States that the far left message is Over at this point, like they don't have the power to continue long term, right?

And that they don't have the the birth rate numbers. They're losing political power They really only still control like the media and the heads of companies and those are being disintermediated by ai and new media. So like who knows what happens from there? Anyway, so we can look at all of this By the way, if people want to hire us for starting a DEI remediation firm that we're going to be seeing if we can work with Heritage on we got deiremediation.

com so anyway they, they look at, you can look at all this being in retreat, and we can sort of get a picture of how this is all going to be recorded in history books now, and the far wokest do not realize how crazy they're going to look in the eyes of history. Like, they think they're on the right side of history but they look like actual crazy people.

Speaker: [00:37:00] No, no, listen to me. I know it sounds crazy, but i'm not insane. I've come back to warn you

Speaker 2: Uh huh of

Speaker: what in my time a genocide is happening Who's responsible?

J. K. Rowling! Uh look! I have proof! What

Speaker 2: am I looking at here?

Speaker: A tweet!

Speaker 2: It says she doesn't like being called menstruator? I don't understand.

Speaker: Ha! Shh! You can't talk like that! Gay teenagers are going to kill themselves!

They're killing themselves! They're killing themselves! In 2024, J. K. Rowling becomes genocidal and makes transgender children kill themselves with her Twitter account!

Speaker 2: Transgender children?

Speaker 3: Like people will ever make kids trans.

Speaker: Not if we don't do something about it!

There's an entire movement of people, they're trying to stop 10 year olds from going on puberty blockers so they can have easier sex changes when they're older. Can't you see it's genocide?

Speaker 3: Wait, you think [00:38:00] not sterilizing children is genocidal?

Speaker 2: Come on, let, guys, we're just dunking on a mentally ill guy at this point.

Malcolm Collins: Like Trump was doing a speech recently where he got in a fight with the , governor of Maine. And, and he scolded her. Because he's not going to give Maine federal dollars because she is keeping trans people in sports in her states, right? Like, like, trans women beating up women in her state.

And Trump said in his speech, like, don't tell them, don't tell them, like, let her keep doing this until the next election cycle. We need this guys. He goes, keep it in this room. The left doesn't know that nobody likes this because this is a Yeah, this is a 90 10 issue because I don't know who this 10 percent is good

Simone Collins: point.

I, I just, there's, there's such different filters through which the polarized sides on each side view reality that they're now irreconcilable and irreconcilable. It's interesting how in [00:39:00] the past, there seemed to be more of a shared understanding of reality. There may be. A certain amount of out of touchness between people of different communities, but broadly, people kind of understood things in a similar way at least within a single culture, but that's not the case anymore.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, with the ADF, something interesting we're seeing, and I've pointed this out in the United States, is the main stream far right is becoming very friendly to gays. You see this with the AFD, you see this with, you know, Scott Pressel I've mentioned in the U. S., you see this with the people who are anti gay on the right, like turning against Trump, we have a video against this and this has been really, really interesting, but one thing that makes it more interesting in Germany is that the AFD is anti gay.

Gay marriage, actively anti gay marriage. But I think what we have seen is a lot of normal gays being like, Hey, if this is what winning gay [00:40:00] marriage brought us, I prefer just like a general acceptance than, than this, you know, being able to lead your parties, but maybe not get married. Like, and I, I, I remember, you know, talking to like one gay conservative and they were like, the moment we went too far.

was the cake. And if you guys don't remember the cake thing, it was a cake shop was sued because they had a religious people running it who didn't want to do a gay wedding cake. And they sued the shop for discrimination. And I totally like, I, I agree with that. That was when the movement jumped the shark.

Well,

Simone Collins: that's, that's when consent. And it was about imposing consent in a way that imposing their values

Malcolm Collins: on somebody else. Yeah, it

Simone Collins: curtailed someone else's private life. And, and business. In a way that revoked their consent. And that's But the point

Malcolm Collins: I'm making is being anti gay is not cool in conservative circles right now.

And I think it's important to keep reminding people of this. You [00:41:00] lose your AFDs if you go anti gay. You lose your Scott Presslers if you go anti gay. Who's anti gay? Who is anti gay now? It's so funny when I was at that ARC conference, you know, for like the old school conservatives, it's these old, sad conservatives, they're anti I remember one I was talking about was like, well, there's not even real conservatives here.

He's like, you know, some people here don't want to ban gay marriage and like keep gays out of our events. Wow. They're still alive, huh? He wasn't just anti gay, he also was anti Trump and was mad that USAID was being shut down. What a delusional person! This is insane. He was from Eastern Europe, so he might have been on the dole or something from USAID or one of these things.

Maybe. So just like a classic, slimy, old But that's a good,

Simone Collins: you know, a lot of people claim to have unpopular opinions, and they just don't, you know? That's

Malcolm Collins: But this opinion wasn't unpopular at this event. This [00:42:00] event was just like the faction of the conservative party that we should consider the enemy of Trumpism, of the AFD and that still control factions of things like the center right party in Germany, where they tried to use conservative values but not have any improper ideas.

But if they allow the left to set the stage of what improper ideas are, if they allow the left to, like, treat, like, terrorist mainstream conservative ideas, like, hey, we need to be selective with immigration in this country, these people really don't like us. How do you know they don't like us? Well, maybe the constant terror attacks.

Simone Collins: I

Malcolm Collins: mean They do keep

Simone Collins: murdering us. I bet though, if we were talking with someone from that side, they'd be like, well, it was because we'd mistreated this person so terribly. They've faced so much hate and discrimination when entering our country. They deserve better. We haven't done well enough. It's like they say they want to

Malcolm Collins: kill you before they go to your country.

You can go to their countries. [00:43:00] Okay. Anyway. Love you to death, Simone. Any final thoughts?

Simone Collins: Just that I love you. You're special and pretty.

Malcolm Collins: So we've got to tell our followers about the Krampus assisted unaliving that Oh my God.

Simone Collins: Right. Well, for context, we decided to do Krampus as a Christmas tradition starting this year. So Malcolm got a very expensive Krampus costume, like a very realistic, terrifying mask of a horned goat man. He even got hooves for his legs.

And then he borrows my giant black wool cloak which is somewhere around here. Oh, and his hands. His prosthetic hands and he, he scared the children, except for our son, Torsten. We actually have video footage of this. Torsten is just staring out the window while Malcolm's out there in a Krampus costume.

And he's like, look, a monster. And everyone else is, well, I think our youngest daughter thought it was just Malcolm because it sounded exactly like Malcolm going [00:44:00] rawr and Octavian. Didn't really get it until Krampus somehow broke into our house and searched through their room briefly or walked to the room looking for children to, you know, beat and throw into a burlap sack and take away.

And now he sort of built Krampus into his lore of the world, meaning he occasionally talks with Torsten about how he's going to become a Krampus hunter. You know, how like in, in vampire worlds, there, there's a. Calling a vampire hunter. And in, in his world, he, there are Krampus hunters. So he's like, well, I'm going to be a Krampus hunter.

Also at night I haven't

Malcolm Collins: heard the Krampus hunter thing yet.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, that's the thing. That's the thing he's talked about at night. He talks about locking up because he wants to make sure Krampus is not able to get inside. Well, yesterday when Malcolm was taking care of the kids, Malcolm was not giving Octavian a screen he was requesting because we only have very limited times for [00:45:00] a screen.

And Octavian, what did he say?

Malcolm Collins: He said, Okay, so he said something along the lines of like I'm sad and I am angry and I am going to unlock all of the doors tonight so Krampus can get me and take me and I'll be dead.

Simone Collins: Amazing. The new death by cop. Death by Krampus. So I gave him a lot of shame for that all night. I was like, Octavian, why would you, why would you say that? Krampus could probably tell you said that. Now Krampus is going to come for you. And he got real scared. So scared that he managed to bolt a whole new set of doors in our house, making it very difficult for Malcolm to read them bedtime stories at night to go through a different set of doors because we sort of set up our house like a fortress.

Anyway fun times, huh?

Speaker 5: [00:46:00] Oh,

in the land of sausages and beer, a tale of politics you'll hear. Bureaucrats with cunning grace, building coalitions all over the place. Parties unpopular hand in hand, joined to thwart the people's demand. A firewall built with secret schemes to keep the AFD out. Out of their dreams, deep state show in Germany, the plot did grow.

Bureaucrats with hefty plans, keeping the power's hands.

Thought their voice is [00:47:00] loud, but bureaucrats hid behind a cloud with meetings held behind closed doors. Together, new report, the AFD left out in the cold, while coalitions took a hold. The people watched in disbelief, as bureaucrats spun their myths. Deep state coup, oh what a show In Germany the plot did grow And swift crafty plans Keeping the powers hands

Militias took a hold The people watched in disbelief As bureaucrats [00:48:00] spun their mischief Deep state cooool show. In Germany, the plot did glow.

Deep plans were from voters hands. So

in this tailgate, that's ruled from out of sight. The voters will, they did restrain, leaving many to question the game.

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone discuss the pitfalls of online neutrality and the importance of taking a clear stance. They critique centrist influencers who refrain from aligning with any political side and explain why this can be intellectually and morally weak. The conversation delves into examples like Short Fat Otaku, Asma Gold, and political figures such as Trump and Bernie Sanders. They argue that supporting or opposing a figure should be based on actions rather than inherent traits, and emphasize the ethical imperative to reveal biases and support movements actively. The discussion touches on the ideological investment in political figures akin to financial investments and the inherent responsibility that comes with it. They also highlight the differences between honest loyalty and manipulative neutrality, urging viewers to stand up for their values publicly, even if it invites criticism. Finally, the episode concludes with personal insights on family dynamics and the learning curve in understanding loyalty and criticism.

[00:00:00]

Speaker 8: What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! I want to talk today about being a stan. Specifically, I want to talk about a type of online influencer which honestly disgusts me. And it has been brought up by the number of people who are sad about how quote unquote Republican or conservative we are.

Okay. to be this other type of influencer, which I hate, and I want to talk about intellectual reasons why I hate them, and why it's so dangerous to become this type of influencer. Alright, let's do it. Who is always like, everyone's bad. They are skeptical about everything. They They refuse to have a team.

Speaker 8: I hate these filthy Neutrals, Kif. With enemies you know where they stand, but with Neutrals, who knows?

It sickens me.

Malcolm Collins: They refuse to holistically support anyone. [00:01:00] They refuse to stand for anything. And, it, it bothers me. A lot. One that, one that this is expected of me, and two that people sort of fall for the shtick. I, I'd say probably the worst offender of the YouTubers who I actually watch to any extent of this is Short Fat Otaku.

Where he constantly refuses to, even though a lot of his positions align with conservative politics, identify with Trump, Trumpism, conservatism. And I'd also say, actually, to an extent, Asma Gold used to be like this, where he constantly played the role of the centrist. And I think increasingly he is dropping that role.

And unabashedly saying, Oh, I really like this. I really like this. you know, like I can't, I'll be excited to really dig into the Trump administration when they make mistakes. Like right now I like what they're doing, but I'll really dig into them when they make mistakes.

And I think that there is this. I don't [00:02:00] want to call it perverse because I get

Simone Collins: it. No, I think it is somewhat perverse, or at the very, the very least, it's a sign of insecurity because they're afraid of being subject to scrutiny if the person that they think did something good ends up making a mistake.

I also think it's a sign of intellectual weakness because it's a suggestion that's saying like, Oh, I think this person did something cool means that you suddenly endorse 100 percent of what they do and that is obviously not true. If you don't control someone, you don't, you

Malcolm Collins: don't control what they do. A hundred percent.

And what I picked up from what you said here is you need to be able to Invest in movements and people and investing in movements and people means taking responsibility when those movements and people make mistakes

Simone Collins: or

Malcolm Collins: you are never going to have your movement be successful. So let me explain what I mean by this.

If I, for [00:03:00] example, say I like that Trump did X and I like that Trump did Y like during the campaign trail, but I am unwilling to say. I endorse Trump as a candidate. I support Trump as a candidate. When you, when you say I endorse him or I support him or when you take that position in a way, it's like telling people to invest in a stock because you don't know how that stock is going to do in a future you are using your best judgment based on the information you have, you know, collected your intelligence, what you have seen your ability to judge people to try to predict how that political stock is going to do in the future.

And an individual can say, why is it valuable? Like why, why should anybody be making these kinds of judgments? It is because

you will large extent. That's part of the reason people are watching you. They are watching you to report on the facts that you have access to, but then to two other things, very critically. One. Reveal your biases. [00:04:00] If you don't reveal your biases, and this is one of the other things that I really hate about people when they do this is they are pretending that they are unbiased and in so doing, they are manipulating their audience.

Our audience knows you and I are biased. And when they get information about us, about Democrats or Republicans, that information is biased. It's not us pretending, like, if Republicans did something bad, we would dig into them as harshly as we dig into Democrats. We wouldn't. For example, Asmy Gold, famous centrist, he wouldn't either.

Anyone who's seriously watching knows, he would not dig into Republicans, Asmy. Take it he would for Democrats, but if you present yourself and he doesn't present himself this way as much anymore But if you present yourself as somebody who's going to do that on both sides you are misleading your audience, but then more than that it's my job to as somebody who is In part like our audience [00:05:00] relies on this with our biases or everything like that to Spend more time than they've spent Investigating political players, investigating political parties as those parties are changing.

Cause that's what we talk about all the time on this. And if I'm going to do all of that, I need to, when I tell you, and I do need to tell you, like as somebody who's investigated all of this and as somebody who spent a lot of time thinking about this, I think this party is a safe bet. If you have this value system, I need to take responsibility in the same way I would if I tell somebody to make an investment or sell an investment.

And I'm not always going to be right. But anyway, I want to hear more thoughts from you. So you're, you're, you're a genius.

Simone Collins: One thing that I've noticed is it's, it's an active, like you were saying, active manipulation when people choose to not make their stanzas clear, because it is a known human bias to assume that if you like someone in general [00:06:00] and think they're cool, that they're going to hold the same ideological points as you do.

Unless you suddenly hear them say otherwise. So, a lot of people, I've seen comments on our channel before, from people who are shocked, SHOCKED, that we hold certain views. Because, they just assumed that because, on some other videos, on unrelated topics, where they liked our takes, and they thought we were In general, same reason.

Is it more that they think

Malcolm Collins: that we're more conservative or more progressive?

Simone Collins: It's both. Yeah. It's a mixture of the, it's a mixture of the two. And so what people who choose to withhold their opinions on these issues are doing is allowing people to just assume that there's agreement when there may not be.

Yeah. So one, I think that's manipulative and I think it's inherently dishonest to do that. Because you are one allowing people to believe something that's maybe not true. So you're kind of lying to them. And two, maybe these people would change their minds if they were presented with compelling information that may, they may not be exposed to.

It's really important that people don't end up [00:07:00] in bubbles online. And I know that sometimes just showing your hand could make people bounce away from you, but there's a small number of people who's. Views are given more nuance by differing opinions, and it's worth it to share your opinions to do that.

But it's, yeah, I just see it as really ethically dubious to do that. Inherently, it makes you untrustworthy. When you choose to withhold information and when you're not predictable in your stances on things, aside from just shitting on everything you are not someone that other people can trust because they don't know what your objective functions are, what your ideologies are.

I would like to think that people, at least who've watched a certain number of our videos, are able to pretty easily predict what we're gonna say about anything, even if they really don't like What, what we're going to say? Well, no, I, I

Malcolm Collins: like that people can't always predict what we're going to say. Really?

That's why a lot of people watch this channel, because they're like, I'm consistently surprised by your takes, and those are the videos [00:08:00] that they often like the most. Hmm, interesting. But they know that these takes are given by people who are invested in this particular political ideology. I think that's really important.

To word it another way, the takes follow an internal logical consistency but are still surprising to people because the logical consistency that they follow is unique enough that people who are coming to it may not have experience with it. And it's a logical consistency which leads to the support of one particular political party over the other given the information we have right now.

And for people who may not have friends with, who support that political party, or may struggle to understand how people support that political party,

it helps them a lot. By the way, this episode is one we filmed a little bit ago, , but I felt forced to release today because Romanian TV did an episode called The Centrist.

This is a guy who does the troll avatar, where he [00:09:00] was, , talking about short, fat otaku, and I was just like, ah, two on point.

A few other things I'd note here is being invested in a political ideology, like being invested in a particular stock or crypto or anything like that, doesn't mean that you're never going to change your mind. We, early on, had a video where we were very, very promotional of Bitcoin, and then we had a video where I'm like, I no longer have the same conviction in Bitcoin that I used to have.

And I think that that to me, you know, whether it's an investment or whether if somebody is always pro Bitcoin, no matter what to me, that's a really negative thing because that's an ideologically captured person, right? Somebody who is able to be pro Bitcoin. And then be anti Bitcoin when it appears that it is no longer serving the ideological alignment that they have.

And they're willing to say, I made a mistake here, right? Or I don't think I made a mistake. I think that the underlying value proposition change that that may also happen with candidates, right? How many people do you follow? Like if you follow conservative, modern conservative influencers, [00:10:00] like new, right?

Influencers who used to be Bernie. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. This doesn't remove these individuals credibilities in anyone's mind. They, they were individuals who told you at an earlier time, based on the information I have, I support Bernie. And now, they say, based on the information I have, I support Trump.

And these individuals have taken a hit for supporting Bernie. I mean, Bernie has turned out to be basically he and you watch the RFK trials where he's out there harassing RFK for his stances on things like vaccines. And yet, you know that Bernie is the number one senator for pharma, donations.

So this is not a new thing either, here he is in the 2015 16 cycle where you can see he was also number one,

uh, and here he is in this last cycle where you can see he's number one.

And I'd point out here that his campaign has come out was a very slimy way of trying to get out of this Which is to say oh, no, no, no. No, you see, um, we rejected all [00:11:00] contributions over 200 from PACs executives and lobbyists So this money is just from rank and file employees , which Hides that , yeah, but he didn't put a cap on the quote unquote amount he was getting from rank and file employees,

, so that does not mean that rank and file employees who wanted to donate quote unquote rank and file, I mean, these people can be, , high level people within these companies, that wanted to influence him, , could not donate large amounts to his campaign to influence him, and you really only get numbers this big if you're getting large amounts from individuals.

Yeah, that's really plausible, Bernie, that you happen to just accidentally, with employee small dollar donations, beat every other senator raising from pharma companies corrupt money, and you also just happen to accidentally be one of the people most adamantly against the Kennedy appointment and Pharma in that particular fight.

Now, [00:12:00] you could say, well, what if it's coincidence? You know, Bernie raises lots of money from small donors. And he just coincidentally raises a lot more from donors in the pharmaceuticals industry.

This is an argument I could possibly buy if it happened one year or something like this. The fact that it's happening consistently year over year for like a decade and more than that. It's orders of magnitude higher than the amount that this industry is donating to specific candidates who, , they want to lobby to get their stuff done.

Like, it doesn't make sense to me. How is he raising orders of magnitude more, and we're talking like 5, 6x more, , from this industry, than this industry, which has a, an existential profit driven motivation, to give money to senators to get them to back their project or get their project through or build artificial barriers.

why is it that he's able to out raise them to such an extent just accidentally and year over year and he happens to back everything the industry does?

Simone Collins: [00:13:00] That blew my mind. When he told me that this morning, I could not believe it. That's insane. Yeah, no, he's

Malcolm Collins: a genuine corporate slimeball without a single degree of integrity to his name. That's really

Simone Collins: wild. That's really crazy.

Speaker: You have said the Covid vaccine was the deadliest vaccine ever made.

End of quote. The

Speaker 2: reason I said that, Senator Sanders, is because there were more reports on the VAERS system, on the vaccine adverse event reporting system, which is the only surveillance system, that and V safe. And there were more reports of injuries and deaths than any other, than all other vaccines combined.

Was it the scientists that had saved 3 million lives? According to FAIR. Did I, I don't know because we don't have a good surveillance system. So you disagree with the scientific community that Oh, I just, I'm agnostic because we don't have the science to make that determination. Really? Okay.

Simone Collins: But I understand

Malcolm Collins: why people, before they knew all this about him, before [00:14:00] they knew that he would lean in to like a disabled guy like RFK, who genuinely, if you watch RFK, RFK is not about making money, RFK is not about He genuinely just wants to help people and to watch Bernie like attack him knowing that Bernie is getting, what was it like 1.

5 million in the last campaign? Alongside Elizabeth Warren, who is the second biggest pharma donor. I can't

Simone Collins: believe it. Their brand is so not that this is so surprising to me.

Malcolm Collins: Plus Elizabeth Warren, right? You know, and I think that you see where the integrity really was all along. You know, you see that he's out there attacking Trump for stuff that equally applied to Biden, and yet he never attacked Biden for this stuff.

Why not? You know, it. I think people originally like, oh, this person doesn't have a spine or an intellectual core, but that doesn't make me respect them less because they were willing to do something that other people weren't willing to do. Somebody who's like, I'll turn against Bernie the moment he makes a mistake, versus somebody who said, I support [00:15:00] Bernie given what I know, and then later was like, I was wrong.

I respect the latter more than the former, infinitely more than the former.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

To be more specific here, what I respect is somebody who's willing to take a stand. Say something like, I support Barney, and I'm willing to take responsibility if he does something that I disagree with in the future, or that is in the, , not best interest of people who share a similar ideology as myself.

It is totally respectable to say, you know what? I made a stand, and I was wrong. What I don't think is respectable is to refuse to make a stand in the first place. Somebody who's willing to, when they maybe internally support Bernie, say, oh well, both sides are good, that I don't like. I am okay with you if you were formerly a staunch Democrat or Communist and now you recognize that is wrong.

If you were a fence sitter then who leaned left and a fence sitter now who leans right, I am not okay. I'd also note this in the [00:16:00] context of the recent stuff about ukraine because somebody could be like well Did you mess up in saying that we should invest in trump? Like is this a mistake and i'd say no I actually really agree with what he's saying about ukraine right now If you look at the position that he has to make on ukraine at the moment, we basically have a choice which is Does Ukraine make territorial concessions to Russia this year, or do they make territorial concessions to Russia next year after thousands, tens of thousands more deaths, or territorial consolidations to Russia the year after that, after Hundreds of thousands of deaths. There is almost no world now in which Ukraine doesn't end up making territorial concessions to Russia. That being the case, is Zelensky willing to do that? And what we have seen in his statements is no, he is not willing to do that.

And he is hugely motivated not to do that, given that they're not holding elections right now. Something that we, by the way, in the United States, continue to do during [00:17:00] World War II.

because a lot of people are like, well, you know, a lot of countries stop holding elections during war periods. And it's like, well, not us.

At the same time, Trump saying, well, Zelensky only has 4 percent support within his own country right now, that does not appear to be true. Although it does appear that he probably couldn't win an election cycle if what happened right now.

, the point being is that he has a vested interest in the war continuing at this point. And a personal honor interest. I mean, a lot of people have died on maintaining the territorial borders as they have been now, I think for almost half a year at this point.

So that'd be half a year of deaths being completely pointless if we call it quits now, but it's likely going to be what then another year. It's just doubling down as bad investment after. Good. And so I completely agree with Trump on this point. And for the individuals who are like, well, if Russia gets what they want, then they're going to start attacking NATO countries.

Very unlikely at this point, because Russia has basically expended an entire generation on this war. , if this [00:18:00] war ends now,

might they attack another country? Even if they do, it's a very high likelihood that They'll just be absolutely destroyed, invaded, and dismantled. It would be the dumbest, dumbest, dumbest thing for them at this point. It's not that it's impossible, but it would mean the end of Russia, just because they do not have the manpower.

To maintain an offense, as we saw, even when part of their own forces decided to double back on Moscow, they had no internal defenses. They've thrown everything at this, leaving nothing internally to defend themselves. If they were fighting against a country who could just march on Russian territory, Russia would be boned.

And that's what we would see was a NATO war.

This actually reminds me going into this election cycle on the discord, , somebody was saying, look, I want to support Trump, but I struggle to because I am afraid what he and JD might do to IVF or making it illegal. And I [00:19:00] need this to have kids. So at the end of the day, that is my number one voting issue.

And they say, Malcolm. Do you still recommend voting for him, even given this? And I was like, yeah, I, I do. And that's me making an investment. I could have been really, really wrong on that. And yet, we already know that they signed an executive order to make IBF cheaper. And so, I played the right hand there.

I do you think that in general public sentiment is shipping shifting on flip flopping because in the past I grew up under the impression that the worst thing you could do as a politician was change your stance on an issue.

Whereas now, like, as I've grown intellectually, the thing I respect most is people who change their opinions when presented with new information. Do you think that the public understands this more broadly, or do you think that we are not there as a society?

Malcolm Collins: I think that we will likely undergo some big points where this becomes more acceptable.

I think we've undergone a number of them already. I think, for example, a huge one was the [00:20:00] J. D. Vance. Nomination is VP.

Simone Collins: What? Oh, because he was a never Trumper.

Malcolm Collins: He was a never Trumper. He was the most, he was the face of the never Trump

Simone Collins: movement. Yeah. Well, then you have people like Mark Zuckerberg, who was a huge donor in favor of Biden in the 2020 election, who then in response to Trump.

Like saying fight fight fight in response to being shot in the head Yeah, saying that was one of the most like badass things we'd ever seen like I really I respected No, I respect that.

Malcolm Collins: But I will say with Zuckerberg, and this is where it matters. Do you switch sides before it's obvious who's gonna win?

Zuckerberg was too tentative. He did not go in. For Trump, like Elon did Elon went in when it could have destroyed everything he had ever done in terms of wealth, anything like, [00:21:00] he's like, you understand I make most of my money off of like government contracts, I am beyond effed if Trump loses this election, and this is when the, everyone, all the polls had Trump losing the election, and Elon went in.

And he didn't just go in, he went to the campaigns, he went to the rallies, he put effort into this. And I think that that's why he edified himself in the mind of the general public in a way that Zuckerberg did. Or, or J. D. Vance. J. D. Vance went in on Trump when, when a lot of people still thought that Trump didn't have a chance.

Same with you and me. We were not always pro Trump. In, in the Trump first election cycle, I, I did not support Trump at all. And I was very hesitant on Trump in his second election cycle.

And you could say, oh, it took me a long time. Oh, I was a poor judge of character. Whatever. I was. It took me a while to see how evil the Democrats had become. Or how good Trump was, I think. And when I saw that, now I'm willing to, in part, [00:22:00] I could say almost as penance, is say, I really have faith in his administration.

And for some people, they see us and they're like, Oh, well, I've built my personal reputation or whatever on like a Well, Trump is just so uncouth, and it's like, yes, he is uncouth, but that's not what I'm judging him on. I'm judging him on, is he gonna do right for my value system?

Simone Collins: Well, so then I think this means that we need to slightly shift the default definition of Stan.

When I first learned about the culture, within the context of fans of K pop and then later kind of like Taylor Swift, who no matter what, if you said something bad about their idol, you were going down like you really had to be careful about what you said. And these are people who you know, stans, I think the concept of stan culture is such that you will back this person no matter what, and I think that exemplifies It's actually exactly the wrong kind of support that you should lend to a movement or a person.

The point should be that you appreciate the [00:23:00] actions of a movement or a person and not, for example, their inherent nature, because you can't control that and that is subject to change. Similar to Like, good compliments for a partner or a friend or a colleague are not, like, about their inherent nature, but about their actions.

Or about moments. Like, wow, you know, the, the, the way that you made breakfast for me this morning, or the way that you helped me with this without even me asking was just, it really made my day. It's so much more meaningful as a comment because this person put effort into that then like wow your shirt looks great You know cuz that's or you know, you look pretty And I think that philosophy should extend to this too.

So I don't know maybe maybe Stan is not the word we should be using maybe it's just more about lending support to things that we think are good instead of just trying to look good by criticizing everything. It's so easy to criticize and it's so hard [00:24:00] to support, especially something that's controversial.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. And I think that here's an example, right? Like obviously we're big supporters of Elon's and the media has repeatedly tried to get trumped in Elon to fight each other. You look at the drudge report, like every, it's like. But the Drudge Report today, oh my god, I love the things they had on Elon today.

It was the best. Okay Trump Musk wage a two front war as donor does president's dirty work. This article was just amazingly, I tried to be anti Elon, but if you're pro Elon, it was the most pro Elon. The next one goes, Elon moves with lightning speed to exert control over government. The next one says, The young inexperienced engineers helping.

The next one says, Given unfettered access to private data of government employees. The next one says, You said staffers told to stay out of HQ after billionaire closes it.

Simone Collins: USAID. Yeah, [00:25:00] yikes.

Malcolm Collins: Next one says, New official declared a competent white man must be in charge. Next one says, Senior FBI official forcefully resisted firings.

And let's see what happened to him. Oh, next one. EPA tells more than a thousand they could be fired immediately. So you see this, they're trying to make Elon look like a monster, but I think to people who see what they're like, Oh, yeah, this is what I was waiting for.

Simone Collins: I will note here that since the speech that JD gave in Munich, I have begun to see this administration as not Trump and Elon, but Trump, Elon, and JD all moving ahead on their own unique fronts, almost as unique executive branches. And as somebody once pointed out, in my entire lifetime, I have never seen a vice president who wasn't just an appendage to the president.

And instead, what we're seeing with JD Vance is a Fully independent actor who has his own goals and is marching forward with them as [00:26:00] fast as Elon or Trump is. You know, while Elon is doing the specifics within the government and Trump is managing everything, we have J. D. Whether it is his approval of big balls or his takedown of the EU, doing the verbal stuff, like the the speeches and new ideas that need to be laid out to remake this country and Fight the cult that has taken it over.

Well, not this country, this world, which is again, I call them the triumvirate

Well, there's one other aspect actually, not to change the subject too quickly, but

showing support for someone, especially when that support is not universal. Rather than just criticizing things that everyone agrees are bad is, is one of the most meaningful ways to show your value to someone and to be useful to someone possible. So there's fertility.

I'm well, how are you?

Okay, so everything looks good. Okay, that's great news.

Pneumonia didn't take

Malcolm Collins: [00:27:00] him out. He's a fighter. He's a fighter. You got to keep going, Simone. You got to keep taking the medic medications.

Simone Collins: I will. Okay. Let's see. Back to what I was

Malcolm Collins: saying. Is it Elon recently? Sorry. Where I'm like, that is a bad investment sign in, in the Elon sphere. Specifically like the boosting accounts on various games.

To try to look like he was a world player when, you know, he, and he said, he said, look, you can't compete with the Asians unless you do that. And he is right about that, right? And he did pretend and then banning Asma gold for on, on X. And he really do that.

Simone Collins: Oh my God, he did.

Malcolm Collins: And honestly, it was.

Not a good look and it's one of the things where I need to be like, okay, I'm reevaluating do I Does this make me judge his ability to handle these government things less to handle the government shrink downs less does it? No, it doesn't. But it's something that I need to [00:28:00] take into account, which stains my reputation, because I supported him and continue to support him.

And I think that that's the important thing. Are you willing to take these stains on your reputation, because you made a bet on somebody else?

Simone Collins: I do, I do take it, exception to Current societal trends around assuming that because you support someone for one thing means that you endorse everything else they do because that's the

Malcolm Collins: difference between endorsing everything else you do and saying that overall they're a good bet.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but I think that it's really clear that Elon Musk is a he's very consistently good at some things and he's, he's very famously controversial on some other things. He's, he's, he's famous for doing certain things that get him in trouble, and he's done those things multiple times. In that way, he's extremely trustworthy because he's also rather predictable.

And that, that makes him, you know, someone that I personally would trust, like, from a [00:29:00] political or policy standpoint, more than a lot of other people, because he acts pretty consistently.

side note here, because I know some of our fans will be like, Oh, what about your knights versus kings dichotomy in terms of males? Because I talk about alphas and betas and I say this is a bad dichotomy. You, you actually have most males divide into the knights or kings category. , and one of the things about kings is they don't like following other people.

And I know I fall into this category to, , , a moral fault, which is to say that I struggle to be a part of a clique when I am not the head person of a clique. That is not a sign of being extra manly. That is a sign of a weak personal ego . , , so I have this mindset and so people can look at that and say, Hey.

Malcolm, how can you stand to support somebody else as being above you, like Trump and Elon and J. D. Vance, the triumvirate, , and , the answer here is a fewfold. One, I, , am sort of the figurehead of a movement, the pronatalist movement, [00:30:00] and people support me, whether it's because that move in or because of this channel, not because of me specifically, but because they trust me to make the decisions that are in the best interest of other people who support a similar ideology.

And if that. requires sublimating myself to another individual, even if it goes against my pride. Of course, it is my duty to do that.

Or I have betrayed the individuals who put their trust in me and for what benefit? For the sake of my ego? I, I betrayed my values, and in the past that was most likely to see my values realized in the world, especially when those values are aligned, was what the potential collapse of our civilization. I gave up on fighting that just for my ego?

But even outside of that, the individuals that I'm sublimating myself to, the reason I am able to say I support these individuals decisions , without the strong emotional.

Dissonance [00:31:00] that I might otherwise feel is that none of these individuals have ever signaled that they think that they're better than me. And I wouldn't say, for any reporters who might be listening to this, I am not saying that I actually know any of these individuals or talk to them. But, they have Let's just say publicly, always treated me with respect and as an equal despite having significantly less wealth and power than them.

, which is something that is going to make it very easy for someone like me to follow them and say, okay, yeah, this individual isn't lording this over me. I mean, I actually think that that's why Trump did so well in the first election cycle.

Is despite his big ego and everything like that It doesn't rely on putting other people down or seeing himself as better than other people

But the, yeah, the other point I was making, though, is that Your value to other people can also be widely determined by, especially if you yourself has a good, have a good reputation by costly signaling, which is putting your reputation on the line to support them.

When they're doing [00:32:00] something controversial and improved this could be anything from like writing a letter of recommendation. Just someone who maybe, you know, earlier in their career and who just needs a good reference to, you know, standing up for someone online. And whenever we get attacked on Twitter normally no one stands up, but recently a couple people, you know, will actually stand up for us and be like, Hey, look, look at this point, look at that point.

But

Malcolm Collins: they're putting their reputation consistently on the line. If we do something crazy in the future, they get attacked for it. They could even lose their jobs for it.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and I mean, But I, I now regard those people very differently because, you know, when, when someone is willing to stand up for you. Now, I don't think that Elon Musk feels that way about the people who stand up for him online because they're.

There's so many. It doesn't really matter. I think this matters more on a micro scale. But I, I just want to point that out. That like, standing up for someone

Malcolm Collins: I disagree with what you're saying here a little bit.

Simone Collins: Where

Malcolm Collins: I'd push back is this idea that you can reach a level of [00:33:00] fame where the people who stand up for you don't matter.

To Trump, they obviously still matter. They may not matter to Elon, but they do matter to Trump.

Simone Collins: I think they matter to Trump coming from certain people on like certain news networks or like channels that really matter to him. But just random. Random people.

Malcolm Collins: Vetting people for jobs? I bet you he has people look at what they said online.

Did they stand up for him, or did they turn their back on him?

Simone Collins: That's a test of loyalty though, not so much of like, Oh, I'm gonna feel sad if this random person I

Malcolm Collins: disagree,

Simone Collins: it's not a

Malcolm Collins: test of loyalty. If it was a test of loyalty, JD Banz never would have passed. It's a test of where are you now?

Which is different from traditional loyalty, I think and I think this also is true for our fans, you know, we have a controversial reputation and when people decide to support us They put their potential careers at risk. They put a lot of stuff at risk like when we're out there people can see us as Liz Cannons, and we're not [00:34:00] actually as Liz Cannons as we appear.

We actually have, like, lists of the things that we're willing to break rake on lists of the things where we're willing to be controversial like, the positions we hold on trans stuff are not, like, Me shooting off the cuff. This is like days of conversation I had with Simone. Like, are you comfortable going out and taking this position publicly given what it could do to our careers, which is you know, maybe now it might be mainstream.

Maybe, maybe we made the right investment on this position early on. But when we first made it, it was. a very risky position to make, especially given that we have trans friends or had trans friends. I don't know, I haven't had the guts to talk to them since then because I don't want to deal with it, you know, it's like, whatever, right?

But the, the point being is we took a stance on that when it was still a really risky stance to take. And so I'd say that for our own audience, like in the same way and people can be like, well, why, why, why do you, when it comes to Trump or Elon or whatever, act this way? It's because I would want other people to [00:35:00] act that way towards me.

And I think if I'm the type of person who's going to go out there and say, Oh, I always support people when they do exactly what aligns with my value system, and I always attack them if they do anything that deviates from my value system. I, I would, I, I don't think that anyone could really support me, right?

Like, how could you? Because you know that this person lacks any loyalty to others. Because that's what loyalty means in the age of the internet, you know, people have forgotten I think the concept of loyalty right like They're they they they think that showing a lack of loyalty is a thing of value Instead of being able to say I disagree with what the king did here, but i'm still one of his knights, right?

And I still you know Broadly, I haven't been driven to betray the kingdom yet and I think that's what loyalty is loyalty isn't following somebody Whenever they're doing exactly what aligns with your value system, that's just serving your own best [00:36:00] interest. Loyalty is being a reliable ally, even when somebody doesn't exactly follow your value system.

And I think that if you ever want a movement or an ideology to become mainstream, to influence the mainstream, you need to be willing to be loyal to people who don't. Always a hundred percent in line with you.

Simone Collins: I think that's always, I mean, or I'm under the impression. That's what alliances were from the beginning. The whole point in there being an alliance is because you have two parties that are distinct, that are not exactly the same. There's no such thing as an alliance. If you're on the same page with everything, because then you're just the same entity.

So an alliance means you're different. An alliance means that there are some things on which you disagree. So I agree with you on that and you can't really build anything that's powerful or meaningful without having some alliances. So I I'm with you on that, but.

Malcolm Collins: When was in the online world what an alliance or [00:37:00] loyalty means has changed like you used to be able to Maybe voice your misgivings privately Or even vehemently privately and still be a loyal ally to someone that isn't true in the age of the Internet

If you voice misgivings, you need to do it couched in a, I still support this person.

Phone: Yeah. And I'm wondering, have I seen that recently? Have you seen that recently?

Malcolm Collins: No, I honestly haven't seen many people who to me like demonstrate loyalty and integrity as I define it as online influencers. Among so many people it has become so normalized to be like, I can't wait till they mess up so I can turn on them.

Whereas that's not the way I feel with the administration at all. If Elon or Trump messes up, I am going to feel like I misled people. And I'm not going to take any glee in reporting on that or saying like, I'm disappointed in this behavior or, or what they did here. And [00:38:00] I think that this sort of preemptive glee and the, and the mistakes of your own side shows such a degree of disloyalty that makes me really sad that this has been normalized or even glorified in our society.

Simone Collins: Hmm. So, what you'd like to see from, I guess, our own family, our own kids, is Loyalty, but with a willingness to criticize respectfully and tactfully. For example within a small group, you may show loyalty and especially signal public loyalty to someone. But if you're concerned about what they're doing, you privately air those concerned with them at first.

And don't actually show any public hesitation around them. Unless you've completely lost faith. Like they're really showing that they're unwilling to change their views. And that's actually something that you discussed with me a lot in the very beginning because I had this tact, like this thing that I would do.

Or just to [00:39:00] like keep this social peace around your family. I would just throw you under the bus when the family piled on. Like when you, I don't know, we're, we're doing something. Controversial and the family just was being really mean to you. I just couldn't deal with the social conflict. So I'd be like, yeah, they're right.

Just knock it off, Malcolm. And you were like, Simone, this doesn't make you look good. It makes you look like you're, you just completely don't respect me at all as a partner and like you're two faced as a partner. And And what you really should do is if you disagree with me, and you absolutely should air things with me when you disagree with me, do it in private, you know, like wait until after, but don't do it in public because that makes you look bad, it hurts me.

And it doesn't really help anyone else. So, I think that, that's, that's also something that I've learned from you, which is absolutely yes, disagree with someone. Do it in private at first. And yeah, maybe in the end, if they don't listen to you, if they show that they vehemently disagree with a view that you hold really strongly, then [00:40:00] yeah, you're probably going to publicly detract from them.

But the classy, Way to disagree with someone is to show support for them. Be a pro and then behind closed doors are your concerns.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And the final thing I'd note on this is someone might say, well, what if neither party really represents my value system, right? If you're out there saying, well, I invest in this party, I invest in, I, I think that this party will do a good job.

And I think when I invested in the current. Trump party. I did not expect them to even do as good a job as they had. I feel like in terms of an investment in

Simone Collins: past expectations is

Malcolm Collins: surpassed expectations in terms of payoff. And I feel really edified for, and even if they make a mistake in the future, I'm gonna be like, yeah, but did you really think they would do that much on like DEI and stuff?

But so you can be like, what if neither party represents my values, right? Supporting No party in an election [00:41:00] supporting no side in a conflict is not the default option. That is the most extreme option you can take in a democracy or a voter based system. I'm not saying that you should never do it, but you need to understand that is the burn it down option.

That is the, when you're out there and saying neither party is better than the other party, that is an extreme effing position to take. And people treat that position like it's a trivial, safe position to take. That is not a, that is saying that you literally think that both parties are so corrupt that there is no difference between them.

That is, that is, and it's not an insane position because it is true in some democracies at some periods in history,

Simone Collins: but

Malcolm Collins: it is a bold effing position to take, but people take it as if I don't agree with everything [00:42:00] either party says and it's like, yeah, but that's not what you're being asked. Okay, we have to choose one side because this is an election because this is the democracy.

Okay. And if, and if you choose a throwaway candidate, like the Green Party or something like that, then you also need to take in mind, do I believe that the two major parties are so fundamentally corrupt that there isn't, I'm not saying that they're not corrupt, there is corruption within both of the parties.

Simone Collins: Oh, there's also corruption within small parties,

Malcolm Collins: but that there isn't a party that's better than the other party, that there isn't one. Because it matters in a democracy, if one party happens to be better than another party. It effing matters. Because, if, if, what do you think would be happening right now if Kamala had won, for example?

Simone Collins: I mean, we're of

Malcolm Collins: the same. I'm just assuming

Simone Collins: the same, like, deep state that's been doing everything as it has been doing everything in million

Malcolm Collins: in condoms going to Gaza [00:43:00] for a while. Yeah, it

Simone Collins: would just be the counterfactual, which was what was happening before, which was not good.

Malcolm Collins: 150 million in DEI contracts?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it's not the counterfactual, it's the destruction of, of, of democracy.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but that's what was happening. That is the kind of factual, but anyway,

Malcolm Collins: I think you continue

Simone Collins: a big trend that I've seen in maybe with the rise of just online scrutiny and people being afraid of being criticized online.

Is a fear of doing or saying anything that can get you criticized. And I think a lot of what we're discussing has to do, not necessarily with a fear of endorsing certain people, but just a fear of being criticized for anything at all. And part of me fears that this is only going to get worse as people become more terminally online and have fewer offline sort of friendships and sources of [00:44:00] reinforcement and.

Happiness and connection.

Malcolm Collins: I think, I think what we need to do is we need to reward the people who risked criticism. If you don't Except,

Simone Collins: here's the problem is that people are much more loss averse than they are reward hungry. And that's just true, like it shows up in, in social science studies and research.

And the reward needs to be big enough. I guess, I, I just, I'm, I'm not really sure if this trend can be counteracted. As, as sad as that sounds. And I, I get that it's important for us to extol the virtues of supporting something and, and standing for something. And I would argue that, you know, like from Churchill giving.

That famous quote of something like, you know, you've, you know, so someone hates you, that means you stood up for something sometime in your life, something along those lines. Like, Churchill said that because it was rare for people to stand up for something, like, even then. And that was before there was this level.

of like online [00:45:00] criticism and scrutiny that there is now. So I would say that this is a very deep set human tendency, and it's very nice for us to say. I wish that people stood up for things more, but

Malcolm Collins: You could say it's nice for us to say that. We have put our f*****g money where our mouth is.

Whether it's in supporting political candidates, supporting unpopular causes, or anything. We have consistently put ourselves in positions to be criticized.

Simone Collins: Well, and I guess the final conclusion that I'll make is, here's the ultimate pitch for standing up for something. You will not matter in the larger scheme of history if you don't stand up for anything.

Because either you are riding a wave that is inevitable and that will happen regardless. With you, with or without you. Meaning that you didn't matter in that wave. You were just part of the wave. You were, you were a molecule within the ocean. No one cares. The only reason why you have made a dent in [00:46:00] space time and history Is because you have done something counter to the wave.

You've done something counter to what your normal intuition and default basal lazy instincts would do. So, ultimately, most people are going to say, it's not worth it for me to do this. And they're just not going to do it. But, for those few people who quote unquote want to matter which means you have actually made the world different because of your existence.

You really need to take this seriously, because if you don't stand up for anything, you literally will not matter. Sound good?

Malcolm Collins: If you don't stand up for anything, you stand for nothing.

Simone Collins: Bleh.

Malcolm Collins: Bleh.

Simone Collins: She, she stands. Do you stand,

Malcolm Collins: little industry? Aw,

Simone Collins: she's pooped a lot, so.

Malcolm Collins: Let's get that poop HANDLED! She, she invested in the poop [00:47:00] emoji, and it is, it is doing well.

Simone Collins: Yeah, she stands defecation. For sure. All right. I think our whole family does because now Octavian is obsessed with poop jokes. So

Malcolm Collins: he loves poop jokes. I just think it's so funny because I remember liking poop jokes.

Simone Collins: Oh God, it's genetic, isn't it? He's

Malcolm Collins: not even liking gay jokes. Okay. It's poop jokes. Like I was like being a fun head as a kid. Okay. Like, Octavian, like in poop jokes, whatever.

Simone Collins: God. No. I'm trying so hard. I at least I'm like, Octavian, you have to start using different types of jokes. You know? Like you can't just say the same thing.

You have to use variation. And then like, he just keeps using variations of poop and like, he's just gets diaper classes. Yeah. Like he can't, he can't. Nah, we gotta, we gotta work, workshop this. I'm like Octavian comedians train comedians. Comedians develop a craft. They work really hard. You know, you, you, you can't just say classmate is effing

Malcolm Collins: hilarious.

His teacher hates it. We get calls from his [00:48:00] teacher. I don't care. I'm like my five year old is making poo jokes. You deal with it, lady. Five year olds make poo jokes. He's not making jokes, like ethnic jokes or something.

Simone Collins: I need to teach him a few of those. No, no. I have a whole new world to be afraid of. Because she calls the mother, not the father, obviously.

I guess teachers have learned intuitively over all this time to call the mothers about the new girl's use. You gotta call the

Malcolm Collins: father, cause he'll be like, oh yeah, that's a good one. I

Simone Collins: taught him that one. Yeah, oh god. All right. Well, gird my loins for whatever new report he comes home with tonight. I love you, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: I love you, too.

Simone Collins: Oh are we doing leftover Mapo Tofu for you tonight? I thought we were doing Dan Dan. Oh, yeah. Is there leftover

Malcolm Collins: Mapo Tofu? I don't think there is.

Simone Collins: There is. Yeah. But if you have that for lunch tomorrow. I think it's too late to freeze, but if you have it for lunch tomorrow, it's fine. So I'll do

Malcolm Collins: it for lunch tomorrow and tonight we'll do Dan Dan.

Simone Collins: Is it like, is there actually a [00:49:00] jar that says Dan Dan?

Malcolm Collins: I'm going to look to see if there is. I'm going to go down right now.

Simone Collins: OK, I will handle the poop and then I will be done. So you just love you.

Malcolm Collins: Love

Simone Collins: you.

Oh, gosh.

Speaker 4: What are they doing, Titan? It's start! It's starting! It's starting! It's starting! It's starting? Yeah! The quesadilla? Quesadilla! Quesadilla! A quesadilla! Quesadilla! Quesadilla! Toasty!

In this video, we delve into the fascinating phenomenon of Chinese economic dominance in Southeast Asia and beyond. Malcolm and Simone discuss why Chinese communities, often compared to Jews in their financial prowess, control significant portions of local economies in countries like Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam despite being small minorities. The video explores historical, cultural, and socio-economic factors behind this trend, including the influence of Confucian values, the impact of historical migrations, and the concept of 'Guangxi' or trust-based networks. The discussion also contrasts the Chinese experience with that of Jews, examining different cultural traits and survival strategies. Join us as we navigate through data, historical anecdotes, and personal insights to understand what drives the remarkable success of Chinese communities across the globe.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be discussing the Jews of Asia, the Chinese. And people might say the Chinese are the Jews of Asia. Look, it's something that people have said. But also, isn't it a

Simone Collins: thing for like, How to make money like a Jew, aren't those popular books in China?

Yeah, Chinese

Malcolm Collins: people, like, in China, there's this whole category of books, like how to make money like a Jew, or how to do finance like a Jew, or how to teach your kids about money like a Jew. There's some

Simone Collins: kind of, like, this, these people get it thing going on.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but we're going to be discussing a phenomenon where Chinese people make up the vast majority of income for specific regions through Southeast Asia.

So like outside of China why this phenomenon might be happening and what we might actually be able to learn from Jews about this phenomenon, because it's happening with this vastly different culture in the Chinese, what's causing it and where can we look at people like, oh, it's the middleman. Like, like, merchant phenomenon.

It's not the middleman merchant phenomenon. That's a stupid idea. That's, that's what people stay to try to avoid the offensive takes. I'll put a map on screen here [00:01:00] so people can understand how extreme this phenomenon is. Okay. So, the bottom number on this map is the percent that is Chinese, ethnically Chinese of these economies.

And this is Han Chinese. And then the top percent is the percent of the. Total economy that they control. Oh, no. So, in Myanmar, 3 percent are Chinese, 76 percent of the economy is Chinese. Oh,

Simone Collins: no. Laos,

Malcolm Collins: 1 percent are Chinese, 99 percent of the economy is Chinese.

Simone Collins: Why are we stepping on this hornet's nest? In Vietnam,

Malcolm Collins: this is the hornet's nest.

I am sticking my Thing in with a bat,

Simone Collins: just shaking it around. Okay,

Malcolm Collins: great. And this, this had been all removed from Wikipedia. I had to go to like old version of Wikipedia because they're like, this is too offensive. In Vietnam, 1% are Chinese. They own 41% of the local economy in Thailand, 14% are Chinese.

They own 81% of the local economy. God. And in Malaysia you've got 22 percent Chinese, 63 percent of the local [00:02:00] economy.

Simone Collins: Oh, come on.

Malcolm Collins: In Indonesia it's a little confusing here. I can't tell because they have like one side here and the other side. Well, okay. So in, in Malaysia, it might be like the bright side of Malaysia is like 10 percent Chinese, 24 percent of local economy.

We'll see in Indonesia. Oh, this is Singapore. I'm looking at here. It's the one little thing here in Singapore. It's 76 percent are Han descended. They control 96 percent of the economy in Indonesia. 3 percent are Chinese descended. They control 74 percent of the local economy in the Philippines. It's 3%.

They control 62 percent of the local economy.

Also note here that the level of economic development of these countries seems correlated with the percent of Han Chinese within them, with Singapore being the highest.

This is in this is like calling them. The Jews of Asia is honestly underselling the situation. If Jews control, maybe maybe Jews do control this much of the local economy and they're just better at hiding it.

Simone Collins: I had so many that there's, there's also that.

I mean,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. [00:03:00] So, so if I go into you know, something I had written on this, so over these Chinese entrepreneurs and investors play a very, role in the commerce and industry throughout the economy of Southeast Asia, compromising less than 10 percent of the population of Southeast Asia. Overseas Chinese are estimated to possess foreign exchange, reserving over 100 billion and control two thirds of the retail trade and 80 percent of all publicly listed companies on the stock market across the Southeast Asian region.

10 percent of the population, 80 percent of the stock market through their economic, though their economic prominence is particularly conspicuous among the public companies listed on all major Southeast Asian stock markets, 90%. Oh my God, the small and medium sized South Asian businesses are also overwhelmingly Chinese or overseas Chinese.

They control 70 percent of the region's corporate wealth and 86 percent of the billionaires are of Chinese ancestry.

Simone Collins: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Okay. So you can see why

Malcolm Collins: I

Simone Collins: wanted to dig into

Malcolm Collins: this.

Simone Collins: Yeah. There's, mm [00:04:00] hmm. This is, I, I mean, I, I want to be surprised. I'm not surprised, but also I had no idea. I had no idea.

This is like, I mean, I, if you'd asked me to guess. I would not have thought it was slightly

Malcolm Collins: outsized.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, the other thing to note about these people is most of them immigrated out here, and we'll get to this in a second, hundreds of years ago.

Simone Collins: They are not

Malcolm Collins: recent Chinese immigrants.

They are not doing this off of the CCP. They have a very different culture than recent Chinese immigrants may have that is much more authentic to the original Chinese culture,

Because they didn't undergo the cultural revolution.

Simone Collins: Right. Okay. Oh, wow. So in some ways you could argue because they were, they were part of an intellectual class that if they had stayed in China would have been systematically killed and starved.

That they can't have a leg up. Wow, that's really interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Part of the question is, why is China so [00:05:00] dumb? I'm sorry, China's dumb. This is just one of those episodes, isn't it? Has made catastrophically bad decisions over and over and over again. I mean, true,

Simone Collins: true. Honestly, like, I, I, I, I'm super, I was just watching.

More history on what happened during the cultural revolution the level of profound death and suffering like i'm just yeah i'm, sorry, no pity that was I feel that they have

Malcolm Collins: spite themselves somehow had some level of wealth right now, but most of the wealth right now is based on a You can see our episode on what's the future of East Asia, a literal pyramid scheme based on their property market, which 76 percent of their wealth is in.

It's about to collapse. And they had a brief period of a really enlightened leadership yay, the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Um, I actually think that Deng Xiaoping, the guy who was in charge during that, he's a great leader for China. I'm sorry he did the few things,

I also think the Tiananmen Square Massacre is, [00:06:00] within the West, often mischaracterized as a very simple act of evil, without considering that the people who ordered it had gone through the Cultural Revolution and fully understood the scale and level of death China might face if it underwent another revolution.

, and that is what they were trying to prevent.

but generally there was a string of good leaders, but if you look historically, they've had tons and tons of bad leaders going back to the Dowager Empress.

And now they've got the new Dowager Empress, Xi Jinping. I love it. I was, I was saying China is absolutely boned and a call was like a head Chinese person, this was in one of our secret societies just. China has constantly risen from the ashes and has a great long history of rising from the ashes. And I was like, excuse me, why do you keep finding yourself in the ashes?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Who lit the fire, lady? Yeah, who lit the do you think Who keeps setting everything on fire? And

Malcolm Collins: now you're headed for the ashes? But [00:07:00] we see this

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-8: Outside of China and other parts of East Asia.

Malcolm Collins: like this incredible Han ethnic group that is just doing economic dynamism. And I think that this is the key to this. But if you ask AI, if you ask like articles, they're like, Oh, this is downstream of Confucian values, right?

Where I'm like, Oh, this might be downstream of like Jewish culture. But here's the problem with saying this is downstream of Confucian values. Traditional Confucian values, which form the basis of Chinese cultural values, are not necessarily supportive of entrepreneurship. The ideal person in a Confucius thought is a scholar bureaucrat rather than an entrepreneur.

And this is, like, known to anyone who knows Confucius values. Some entrepreneurial attributes conflict with traditional Chinese cultural values. For example, Taking initiative and innovating can be seen as disruptive to the social harmony of Confucian thought. Han dynasty society placed merchants at the bottom of the social hierarchy below workers, peasants, soldiers, and students.

So this was not a light class. [00:08:00] So how did this happen? This is like a really interesting question to me. If when you look at modern Chinese society, it is you know, people are like, Oh, what about like deep sink or whatever, right? This new AI that's literally just trained on chat GPT. That's how they did it so quick, quickly.

That's why it thinks it's GPT. If you ask it questions, that's why it gives you answers. If it's GPT, like, yes, they found a way to make it really cheap by cheating. That's like their entire mainland CCP society. It's built off of but so this brings me to a question. Why? If mainland society in China is so decrepit, deficient in the new Ottoman Empire why are their cultural offshoots so incredibly good?

Why is Singapore doing so well?

Why is Taiwan doing so well? Why do they have these fabs that our entire world relies upon for modern [00:09:00] technology and no one else seems to be able to copy them?

Like, they try to, like, build fabs and, like, The United States and they're like, I'm sorry, you people just like are not good enough at following orders are smart enough to run these like you, you, you cannot run the, you white people lack the ability to run these fabs.

We would let you run them if we could. We can't.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-9: And you want to be like, well, no, they're just trying to hold on to the technology. It's like, yes, that's part of it. But why can't we copy them then? Clearly, there's economic, self defense, all sorts of motivations to be doing this, but we seem to be unable to do it.

Malcolm Collins: So why are all of the world's chips that like the entire world economy, everyone has tried to copy this, you know, the US has tried to copy this like the UAE has poured so many billions of dollars into trying to copy that they can't copy this. Why? What about the

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: The Taiwanese.

Malcolm Collins: allows them to do this?

What about these people in the Southeast region allowed them to do this? What in the United States, and this is where I think you're beginning to find something that [00:10:00] makes them quite different from Jews. Why in the United States do Chinese people economically so dramatically outcompete other ethnic groups in the United States, other immigrant groups in the United States, which they do.

Who is he? Average income. The median Asian household wealth in the United States was 553, 000 in 2022. Dramatically higher than other income groups. Despite this success, they have challenges reaching senior management roles. Asian Americans hold only 13 percent of professional roles at large employers, but only 6 percent of senior management positions. Asian Americans share a CEO position at the S& P 500 companies, has remained around 2 percent for the last decades.

According to BCG Henderson Institute survey, Asian Americans represent only 3 percent of executives, far below the US population share of 6%. Which, Makes no [00:11:00] sense. So the, so now we're untangling a riddle here. Okay. Here is the riddle as I lay it out in East Asian communities, Chinese people end up with dramatically more.

Well, so Chinese immigrants from an earlier period end up with dramatically more wealth and in leadership positions at a dramatically higher level.

Singapore

And Taiwan have each individually.

become an economic and technological powerhouse that is literally unassailable on the world stage. China is a bumbling buffoon. America's Chinese community out competes other Americans at general economic opportunity, but under competes when it comes to senior positions.

Alright, do you want to take a crack at this before I do?

Simone Collins: No, you go ahead, you go ahead. [00:12:00]

Malcolm Collins: And, and all of this seems to be directly contrary to what is allowed the Jews to succeed, which is as I've said, I, I suspect in our episode on like, why did you succeed? Because it's not due to inbuilt IQ differences. You can see our episode on this below the United States average IQ.

Which shouldn't even be close given the number of Ashkenazi Jews in the country, it looks like everyone else is like functionally retarded. So. If, if Israel, and as I argue Jews outcompete because their ability to like go to outsiders and engage, like we get emails from our podcast, 95 percent of our emails are from Jews.

Like if you were an intellectual influencer, Jews will just reach out to you and be like, hey, here's a idea or here's a thing. Other cultural groups don't do this. Chinese people definitely don't. Highly

Simone Collins: intellectual and get, yeah, I don't. Have we heard from anyone who's Chinese? No, we've heard from people who have traveled and worked extensively in China, but I don't think

Malcolm Collins: No, I haven't had any Chinese people reach [00:13:00] out to us in the same way that Jews do.

Which is really interesting. Yeah, certainly, yeah, I think

Simone Collins: we've had a couple people of Chinese descent, I would say like two to three generations, at least, removed from mainland China reach out to us about sort of logistical and operational things. But not about philosophy,

Malcolm Collins: not about philosophy.

They're not like, Hey, I disagree. So, so this has got me thinking, okay, what's going on here? Because the Chinese seem to be like, like thriving in a totally different way than the Jews are thriving.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So I think this is my hypothesis. I'm gonna call it the Cuban hypothesis.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So, I've mentioned this before, if you ask an American, describe your average Cuban to me, like a Floridian, because I lived in Florida for a long time, they'll be like, ah, Cubans, Cubans are really, really capitalist.

They're really, really good at business. They typically run like large successful businesses. And I'm like, huh, that's, that's, that's, that's really interesting. [00:14:00] What are the politics of Cuba? And they're like, Oh, the exact opposite of that. So, okay, how is it the case that American Cubans are really good at business?

They're really mercantile. They're really capitalistic. But the politics in Cuba hate everything about that. Right. And, and are bumbling buffoons on the political stage. It is because the politics of Cuba specifically squeezed out this section of society. I think this is what happened with China.

And I don't think the communists did it. I think who did this was we got two squeezes. We got the Han dynasty when the merchant class is literally the lowest class in their entire society below the workers, below the students, below anyone.

So if you're a merchant class in Han society, where are you going to be keeping your wife and kids?

Simone Collins: I guess anywhere but Han society because it sucks for you there. Anywhere but Han society. It's almost like how Silicon [00:15:00] Valley ended up selecting for people who are willing to take big risks and they weren't really respected elsewhere.

So, like, all the nerds went to Silicon Valley, but with China, it was basically, like, all the nerds and all the people who are willing to take big risks and build businesses just needed to be anywhere but China. So they just went to the adjacent area.

Malcolm Collins: China squeezed out all of its capitalistic and mercantile power in multiple squeezes.

So it had a chance to redevelop in China, and then they have the Cultural Revolution, and who leaves during the Cultural Revolution, who leaves with

Shanghai Shek, and he takes them all to Taiwan. Taiwan

was founded by the previous military regime, they went to every competent scientist or mercantilist or artist or engineer that they knew because they wanted to.

Because they wanted to jumpstart this new empire.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-7: For clarification, this can be thought of almost sort of like looting. It wasn't like they were intentionally trying to start some sort of a egalitarian, high minded intelligentsia empire. [00:16:00] They stole all the famous art they could find, they stole all the gold they could find, and they stole all the economically productive people they could find.

Malcolm Collins: And, and

Simone Collins: then, and then the people, so also I think there's, There's the note that to leave your country and start fresh somewhere else, especially in the past when they're like, you know, immigration was tough. You didn't know like there was no like social safety net.

You're only looking at the people who survived this gauntlet. So it's not just that the most entrepreneurial and brave and risk taking and mercantilist and scientific or whatever people were leaving China. It's also that. The ones who managed to survive in these other countries were the ones who were both that and also good at it.

You know, they could follow through and they delivered.

Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. And, and then in the United States, I think you had a different population, you know, they'd already been squeezed a few times and they came to the United States and I think they struggled a bit more than the other [00:17:00] populations and they struggled to reach these higher level positions.

And this is where something that we pointed out here gets really interesting. And this is me being Incredibly racist because I'm going to have to try to make a judgment based on like the Chinese people. I know the Jewish people. I know

Simone Collins: what I have

Malcolm Collins: seen as patterns in their behavior and my interactions with them to try to find out why they might be culturally or genetically different, right?

In terms of sociological profiles, the way they engage with ideas. With Chinese people, what I've noticed, and I think that this is why of every one of these three populations, the group that is out competing all the others is this Han dynasty group that left,

Simone Collins: why

Malcolm Collins: are they doing so uniquely? Well, it's because I think that we, we often talk about humans as two things laying on top of each other.

You have the biological hard coded hardware, which is like your predilections, everything like that. And then you have the faster evolving social. infrastructure which acts as sort of a scaffolding for that. [00:18:00] Chinese people had a higher emphasis historically on the scaffolding part of this identity that they had and that Confucius scaffolding, whatever you want to call it, even if it doesn't seem entrepreneurial, was actually really important to being Chinese and acting and working Chinese.

And that the ones who maintain that, because if you look at the Chinese in this bamboo network, as it's called, they are much more like OG Chinese, like pre cultural revolution Chinese. They have much more traditional Confucius values in the way their families are managed and the way they marry and the way they select wives for the kids and the way all of that.

And I think that that has served them uniquely well.

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: one outcome that I've noticed when I think of my Chinese friends, whether they're in a prenatal network or anything like that is especially when I contrast them with Jewish people, because we're going to say like, okay, these, [00:19:00] these two groups are different in some way.

How are they different? The Chinese friends I have get really passionate sometimes about things. It might be like a, a fandom or like in cars or something like that, but they don't get passionate about. ideologies in the way that, for example, a Jew will. Like a Jew, for every one of the tracts we release, we have like five Jews and no one else reaches out to us.

And these aren't even like only about like Jewish things. And they're like, here are all of the theological points we need to discuss about this tract. And, and you'd never get this from another community. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Also such respect for that. I love it.

Malcolm Collins: Protestant converts to the tradition already. We were like, Oh, Catholic converts who are like, Oh, I want to get married in this.

So I want to, they're like, either you guys are evil and insane. Or I agree with this. This seems about right to me. It's never, Hey, let's talk through every detail of what you just said. Whether Jews are doing this for cultural or genetic [00:20:00] reasons is largely irrelevant. As I've said, culture is a mix of the two.

They do do it. And the people who do this the very least in conversations that I've had are the Chinese. When I get in an ideological conversation with Chinese people, it's very clear they are interested in the right answer. Like the right answer from like a functionalist perspective.

Simone Collins: Well, you would argue that they're consequentialists, which we quite appreciate.

Malcolm Collins: Right. You would, like, you think this would work really well. And I think that this is why China has gravitated towards a one party system. I actually think a one party system is natural. More efficient. For this cultural tradition.

Which is to say that they are interested not in fighting for the sake of fighting.

I don't want to say Jews fight, Jews fight for the, Jews know that Jews argue for the sake of argument. They love, of all people, they love doing that. There's much less argumentation for the sake of argumentation and much more like, hey, we're actually trying to find out, like, how do we fix this? Right, guys?

And. That [00:21:00] leads to one party system sort of making sense, but when you remove the rest of the Confucius values, when you remove the rest of their culture, they suffer for that more than any other people on earth, I think. And, and I actually think that with East Asian culture, largely speaking, like you want to fix Japan, go back to Bushido.

The these cultures rely on cultural history much more than other cultures. They rely on the scaffolding much more than other cultures. And so why aren't they reaching these high level positions in the U. S. It's because if you are a culture that relies really heavily on cultural scaffolding, you are a culture that relies on, and we have actually seen this in studies that have looked on.

I think if you're talking about this in a negative context, you're going to call this conformism. It's not really conformism, it's communalism versus an independent or clan ish drive. Individualism

Simone Collins: versus collectivism.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but there's really three systems. There's clan based individualism and collectivism.

Individualism doesn't work. It's complete fantasy of the modern ultra progressive movement. [00:22:00] Clanism works. This is like my family above all else, okay? But then collectivism is or not my family, but like my cultural network or my ideological group or whatever my tribe. Yeah collectivism is much less likely to be interested in fighting for the sake of fighting because that's not the way a collectivist sees things.

And I think that a collectivist mindset, especially within a society. subpopulation where they aren't the majority is going to really outcompete a majority population, especially if they have this cultural continuity of like ancestral Confucianism. Do you have thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: No, I mean, this checks out and I'm relaxing because it's less offensive than I thought it would be.

That's great. Not that I could think of anything more offensive. I was just, you know, I mean, this is a. We're dancing, we're tap dancing around the third rail. You know, the Fred Astaire moves, they're great, but it's also like high stakes.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Well, I mean, it's about also finding out what's true. And this is like an interesting question.

When you look at these [00:23:00] differences in income, like this to me poses an interesting question, especially if I contrast it with Jews who also have control a disproportionate amount of income. This is like a statistical fact. Okay. Like, I'm sorry, people. It's a fact. But they also have a disproportionate amount of like political power, disproportionate amount of Nobel prize winners, a disproportionate amount of like what, what, why is this?

And this is actually something you'll also note with the Chinese, by the way, if you look at Chinese Nobel prize winners, if you look at Chinese winners of like, a lot of them are immigrants out of mainland China. Now you can say, well, this is because mainland China is sort of structurally against them.

Okay. Maybe, or it could be that these were the communities, even in a modern context that are going to do well. Like if I'm a family today in China, that's going to leave China. What, what, what, okay. What are traits that are going to be associated with my family? We're going to be wealthier. We're going to be, do you know, 50 percent of Chinese immigrants to the United States, when contrasted, I forgot whatever it is with the U S population of a college degree we're going to be more educated.

Simone Collins: We're going to

Malcolm Collins: be, you know, so of course, this is going to select for a cream of the crop mentality. The question is, can you continue to motivate reproduction?

Now I want to talk about trust based networks [00:24:00] called Guangxi in Chinese. The Band Maid Network relies heavily on Guangxi, a Chinese concept referring to personal connections and reciprocal obligations.

These networks are built on trust, often within families or ethnic communities. In regions where legal systems may be weak or corrupt this is prevalent in Southeast Asia. Trust based relationships are a reliable way to conduct business. Ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs often prefer to work with others in their community because they share norms, language, and cultural understandings.

A Chinese business owner might source goods from another ethnic Chinese supplier or hire relatives because they trust them more than outsiders.

Simone Collins: And this is seen

Malcolm Collins: a lot when you have a high trust society operating within a low trust society. What do you mean

Simone Collins: by that? I mean, because it, Guangxi implies to me a lack of trust.

Like, only if I know you really well, and, you know, we've built trust over time. Like, it implies to me that the culture is extremely low trust, which has always confused me, because how can [00:25:00] you have a very collective Okay, so suppose you have

Malcolm Collins: a clan based society, which a lot of these other societies are, okay?

Sure, okay. They, they their families will screw over other, like, let's say, Indonesian families. One Indonesian family might screw over another Indonesian family.

Simone Collins: What they're

Malcolm Collins: saying is that a Chinese family that's immigrated there and is part of this minority community is not going to screw over another Chinese family.

And that single differentiation leads to these communities to be able to, in part, play a role in out competing these other groups.

Because, and this is true if you're talking about these Southeast Asian countries, a lot of them Can screw each other. If they have more access to the wall, if they have more access to politicians, if they have more access to whatever, they can screw someone else over.

And if they're the strongest political group, then they can screw everyone over. So if you have a minority society and it was any degree of trust within them, because I think that's the thing that people forget about nepotism when it exists at a community level.

And when people are like, oh, Jews are nepotistic, that's why they're out competing other groups, and it's like, nepotism was always allowed, like, you [00:26:00] were allowed to be nepotistic with other Mormons, you were allowed to be nepotistic with other Catholics, you were allowed to be nepotistic with other Calvinists or Protestants why weren't you doing that?

And the answer is, well, you know, our culture, we do screw each other over occasionally. I was like, okay, so why was it that the Chinese minority community or the Jewish minority community had higher trust with in their culture, right? Like, it's like you're, you're, you're calling them out for saying, how dare all of you trust each other?

And it's like, well, you know, you could have built a culture that did that yourself, but you didn't. And if people are like, oh, come on, like, Catholics certainly build high trust. No, every organized crime wave in, like, American history, the mob, the mafia, the recent Hispanic immigrants, these are family based.

Systems where they all do not trust each other in the slightest. You know, this is not a good way to build a lot of wealth. So in the Appalachian region, where my family is historically from you know, they did not trust other [00:27:00] people outside of the family network. Right. And so if you have like Jews living in that region, they'd be able to dramatically outcompete us economically, but Jews never really migrated to that region because they were immediately killed.

Basically, this is the thing about the Appalachian people and this is glazed over in history books. But it is really funny if you look at, like, Mormon spreads throughout a map, and you see it, like, hits this region, it's like, completely stopped spreading. You know, Quaker spread on a map, like, completely stopped spreading.

Why? Because this group just killed anyone who was outside of their, their networks. No, they killed other families as well. It's just that they didn't have as high a value on life as other people did. You can see our videos on this. They really liked gouging out eyes and, and stuff like that. And, and we've just like forgotten that this existed.

Like these, these cultural memories of like feral people in the hills who murder everyone. Where like, them were like, ah, it's so funny that we have a cultural memory of that. That couldn't have possibly been a real thing.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but go back to the episode because Malcolm gleefully [00:28:00] reads detailed accounts of the, you know, eye gouging nails people People

Malcolm Collins: slipping on eyeballs after a brawl, like, whoa!

Famous people you've heard of, like Daniel Boone talks about it, like Picking out a grape.

Okay, we don't have

Simone Collins: to, no, let's let, they can go to that episode. I'm

Malcolm Collins: just saying that there was a reason why nobody migrated to their, their, their territory. Yeah. But the, the South Asians were not quite so violent, but they were as corrupt.

And so they were able to be outcompeted by this. And I'm not going to say that there isn't a level of corruption to nepotism, there absolutely is. But nepotism alone should never be able to defeat a dominant cultural group. For nepotism to defeat a dominant cultural group, you need two additional things.

You need the dominant cultural group to not trust each other. So a lack of nepotism within them, because if they have nepotism within them, that's not a problem. And you need the dominant cultural group to Have a corrupt legal system. Often our degree of a correct legal system. Otherwise, the legal system could offset the advantages [00:29:00] gained by the additional trust allowed for by nepotism and and we should note that these communities also didn't get like a.

Leg up or like you're looking at how much wealth they owed many overseas chinese communities were historically marginalized in their host countries For example indonesia and malaysia. They were denied access to land ownership or government jobs and they turned to trade and commerce This is

Simone Collins: where I think there finally is some similarity with food, which is yeah here you have selective pressures of Othering and sort of forcing you to sharpen your people and culture.

So it's beneficial in the long run

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. Oh and the bamboo network is really based around family conglomerates which is what it has allowed it to thrive as much as it has. And I think that this Is also like when you are a discriminated minority for so long in another culture It becomes easier to trust people of your cultural group especially if there is some degree of cultural punishment for anyone in that cultural [00:30:00] group who breaks this trust.

So, let's say you're a minority group, like, people like, how do groups like Jews or like these minority Chinese populations build a degree of cultural trust? Well, if the mainstream society doesn't allow you to own land, doesn't allow you cultural government jobs, doesn't allow you anything like this, and the law system treats you unfairly you're going to care a lot about acceptance within your own community because not only will they do differential business with you, but if you screw them over, they will kick you out and you will have no way to do business.

So this is something that's also not talked about as historically these individuals when they would you know, say, Oh, I'm going to cheat my fellow Jew or I'm going to cheat my fellow Chinese, like Confucius original. So. The whole network, it goes around really quickly and all of a sudden they can't get any contracts at all because the mainstream population won't deal with them and their community won't deal with them.

Yeah, so they

Simone Collins: have to make do with their network so the network becomes strong.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, and this is why this network has a higher degree of trust.

Because you can't risk [00:31:00] burning that trust as easily as somebody from another cultural group.

Simone Collins: That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. And so that, again, this is where things are finally dovetailing with.

Jewish networks in that they're in a hostile land. They are forced to be better and stronger. And they are forced to also trust each other and work together really well. That makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: So, I'm wondering, what are your thoughts, Simone, on all of this? Do you think my hypothesis is correct?

Simone Collins: I'm vaguely trying to think back to the different things that we've read on different national IQs, and like, specifically where different groups performed better.

Malcolm Collins: I looked and I couldn't find a lot of evidence because I specifically looked. I was like, do they outperform like native populations on like testing and stuff like that? I

Simone Collins: thought that there were some like, sort of, quanti mathematical performance was higher. That's what I'm kind of remembering. And I'm wondering if some of this is a product of.

[00:32:00] Industries that are really thriving right now like there being some kind of natural predisposition in the way that like we've, we've posited that whether it be cultural or genetic and likely they're intermixed because cultural. And genetic features kind of intermix over time. Right? You know, they sort of get bred into people, but also the culture shapes the people that because Jews have been really sort of shaped into people who, on average, may have a leg up with communication.

And with public debate and public intellectualism that they ended up disproportionately represented in areas like law and arts and you know, sort of fields that, that in the end have been very influential as America has grown, which has given them like outsized influence. Maybe there's some kind of cultural plus genetic trait in Han Chinese.

That has them [00:33:00] that gives them a leg up with things like semiconductor development, like with really lean, effective manufacturing, things like that. The

Malcolm Collins: average IQ of Singapore is 110.

Simone Collins: Okay. Come on. Like that

Malcolm Collins: doesn't

Simone Collins: help.

Malcolm Collins: That's sort of cheesing on the rest of the world at that point. Yeah,

Simone Collins: come on. I mean, IQ absolutely helps.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-10: No, this is one of those, depending on the source type things,

um, in one, uh, it goes to 1 0 8 0.87, and in another, it's at 1 0 5 0.89. Uh, the one I have for Taiwan, by the way, is 1 0 6 0.47. [00:34:00] For the United States, you're looking at 97.4. For the UK it's 99.1. For China, it's 1 0 4 0.1.

Simone Collins: You know, it's not the only thing, but it helps. And I mean, I think what you also know, just by the nature of how Singapore was formed, you have a combination of IQ and will. The average IQ

Malcolm Collins: of Israel, by the way, is 92. Wow,

Simone Collins: so Singapore. Or 95.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, I'm just saying, like, there's something, yeah, it's not just culture and selective pressures and what is it, what is it called, survivorship bias?

But it, it's also, there's some, there's something going on.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I mean, it is selection bias. If I created a country that was for only like the very smartest of Jews that country is going to smoke every other country.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I think, well, and that's, I guess that's

Simone Collins: why you were like, why when, for [00:35:00] example, China more like to a greater extent, took back Hong Kong.

Were countries not like free visa, like move here, like to anyone who was like, I guess over a certain

Malcolm Collins: income level. Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah. Above. Yeah. Like, why not? Like you, you just got like a, like a, a flash sale of brilliant citizens. Why are you not? I mean, I think New Zealand is trying to start to do this.

Malcolm Collins: People overvalue ethnicity and undervalue micro communities, is the point of all.

Simone Collins: And performance. Yeah. And, and I, I was just saying this to someone who listens to the podcast sometimes recently because they were trying to argue that like national IQs really matter. And you had argued in some previous podcast about the reverse Flynn effect and that you thought the most important factor was that.

Mostly lower IQ people, maybe having more kids and, and his argument he linked to a Substack article was more like, no, actually it's more that lower IQ countries just have [00:36:00] higher birth rates still. And I, I argued in response that like, no, our argument always has been that whatever the IQ of a population is at any given point, it doesn't matter because selective pressures can so quickly change that.

And like the, the smartest population today, like, like you point out, like with China. Like, the Han Chinese, before, like, the, the full rise of, of, Yeah, well, I mean, look, Being so hostile to them you know, may have been very, very smart, And then they, they squished out all these incredibly agentic people, And these aren't, we're not necessarily talking about IQ as a trait in isolation, We're talking about, in this case, like, Just kind of, success and prosperity.

Social profile,

Malcolm Collins: mercantilism, risk taking, all of it. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And like, these are the things we care about. Again, like, there's so many people who have insanely high IQs who get nothing done in life and we have zero respect for that. Like, I don't care how smart you are. You can be dumb as a rock and get a lot done.

So, whatever. But Again, like, I think that that's our big bugaboo with things like IQ. [00:37:00] Like, I don't care what your group is right now. I care about selective pressures and culture and future geopolitical trends, and I do think things like what society will need and value in the future are really important things that cultures and nationalities and countries need to be looking at.

Because, again, like, maybe this kind of, like, the ways in which Han Chinese appear to thrive really worked well with the rise of technology. And the ways that Jews are super powered, on average, in various ways, like, really worked well with the rise of media and law and forms of civilization that, That needed that kind of talent, what kind of talent is going to be needed in a post AI world?

Like who's going to thrive? What traits are going to thrive in that world? And who's going to have influence around

Malcolm Collins: that?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Because I don't, I don't know if it's, if it's like, Jewish intellectual engagement. I don't know if it's going to be, you know, Han [00:38:00] Chinese, get it done, build s**t, you know, make things precise, whatever I, you know, like what, what's I, it's hard for me to, to think through, cause it's, it's hard for me to know how AGI is going to play out, but I'm very curious to

see,

she's been difficult

Malcolm Collins: today, but now

Simone Collins: she's being, she's

Malcolm Collins: well I think yeah, it's, it's a question and the question is, is how much can you even control what dice you've been given are going to matter, you know, and are those dice going to be relevant in the current.

Yeah. Like what if

Simone Collins: you've been dealt like successful middle management bureaucrat dice, like this is the worst hand to be dealt in this generation. Right. How, how do you even adapt to your family? What do you do, you know, do you, I don't know, do you go change your marriage criteria and like try to do a bunch of outgroup, outgroup breeding and rebuild your culture?

Malcolm Collins: I actually disagree. I [00:39:00] think whatever dice you were given, you should try to build a family culture that is copacetic with those dice, whether it's adopting traditional Confucius values or whether it's. Or updating them for modern context as we have with our religious beliefs, right? You know, like, are you going to adopt and innovate or are you going to retreat?

I see. Yeah. So basically

Simone Collins: if you've been dealt a blowtorch, you can't be like, well, I'm going to turn it into a snow machine. You have to figure out where your blowtorch matters.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. Like, okay, so here's with me, right? Like,

Simone Collins: I

Malcolm Collins: am a person who affects science. I am a person who, in my early career, was a scientist in the republic.

I am not a person who could be. A scientist. I might want all of my chips in the science field, but that is not, you know [00:40:00] me, Simone, like, I couldn't even survive, you often joke, I couldn't even survive in a large bureaucratic company. Yeah, you admire

Simone Collins: it, but it's, you don't have the aptitude for pure scientific work.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. In, in, in long focus and work like that in diligence

Simone Collins: and organization. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I

Malcolm Collins: mean, you, you're very diligent,

Simone Collins: but you're not in like an organized way.

Malcolm Collins: Well, not only that, but I'm also not that kind of a shape rotator. Like I am really I, I, I can do math because I'm a uniquely smart person and I can do physical and chemical shape rotating.

To like understand molecular science, but it doesn't come

Simone Collins: naturally to you. It's not like the shapes rotate in front of you as in anticipation in a

Malcolm Collins: class and molecular scientists, I'm always the bottom. Oh, what am I uniquely good at? I can smoke people who have spent their entire lives studying, like, for example, textual analysis of the Bible.

And I've been seeing this more and more recently as people reach out to me and I'm like, Oh my God, this person's an expert and [00:41:00] they suck compared to me. Like, why am I this good at, at Bible stuff? I literally didn't study this at all growing up and somehow I can just be like, Oh, don't you know about this story or this story?

And why, why does this all like, Oh, of course, because my ancestors sorted for this for generation after generation after generation. I'm naturally good at business stuff. I do not admire business stuff. I do not want to be the, the talker, hater trader, huckster negotiator. But Simone's always like shocked.

She's like, wow, you've got a stupidly good deal on that. How are you so good at negotiating? And I was just like, I don't know. It's just like what I'm like, I. I am not high culture, okay? I am a overly aggressive, overly vulgar, overly ambitious, overly, like, I, I, I have a knowledge of who I am, and that lends itself to a few professions, whether it is being a creative and trying to make this AI video [00:42:00] game, or trying to do the boldest thing possible, as people have said, like, multiple, like, people are like, Malcolm, you always just, like, have some idea, and are just like, I'm gonna you.

Do it, no matter how crazy it is or that, or being the type of person who people like to follow because they're like, well, and this is another thing, like my ancestors have done this, or people like to, like, even as a kid, like, I didn't even meet, I, like, one thing that happened in my high school is like, I thought of myself as like, like a nerd.

Whatever kid. And I learned the kids, I didn't even know, like didn't, my name is like a write-in for like class president, like some kids organiz. I was like, why did you do that? And they're like, well, because everybody like trusts you. I was like, but what? But you don't like me? And they're like, yeah, but like we, we know that you're like the, you do something fun and interesting.

But again, trust,

Simone Collins: trust is predictability too. You can predict someone you can trust. It doesn't have to be liking.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and I guess, like, I know what my good traits are, but they're not the traits that I, like, ideologically identify with. But, like, [00:43:00] I don't, like, try to force myself to be a scientist. Yeah, but I think,

Simone Collins: so, yeah, to, like, extrapolate this back to, like, a larger thing and how should people look at their own cultures and families and future and relevance in a post AI world, What are you good at?

What, what, what is your genetic inheritance going Collectively as a family and personally. And how can you find a place for that to fit in the future? And then invest in that. Find the

Malcolm Collins: things that you seem to have just like all the dice rolled in your favor, like with this media stuff, I didn't know I was good at playing the media.

I didn't know I was good at this sort of like larger social manipulation. Apparently I'm awesome at it. But I didn't Like this isn't what I wanted for my life. I wanted to be a famous scientist, right? I want to be people like this anime, Dr. Stone. You should watch Dr. Stone. They're like, you'll, I am not Dr.

Stone in Dr. Stone. I might be the greed guy. I greed is justice is what he always says. [00:44:00] But yeah, I, I, I am definitely not a doctor. I want to be a Dr. Stone, but I just lack any of those capabilities.

Simone Collins: Well, anyway, know your strengths, know your weaknesses. I need to make you Mapo Tofu. So I'm going to peace out.

I'm so excited. Love you, Simone. I love you too. Gorgeous. And I love your beautiful treats.

Speaker: Okay, you go on here. Hey, go search it. I'll go. Wait, wait, wait!

Join hosts Malcolm Collins and Simone Collins in an engaging conversation with HoMath as they delve into the complex issues surrounding modern dating from a male perspective. This episode explores the impacts of societal changes, the role of AI in personal development, and practical advice for young men navigating the current dating landscape. Discover HoMath's innovative AI app, 'Self Max,' designed to help individuals optimize their lives and better understand their personal goals. They also discuss the broader implications of AI on the job market and society, as well as practical advice for women in today's world. Don't miss this thought-provoking discussion on the future of relationships, AI, and societal evolution.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, this is Malcolm Collins and we are today here with HoMath I think that you so articulately pull apart the problems with modern dating, particularly from a male perspective. And you do it in a way that is.

More realistic than us because I always have to assume that there's some way out of this like I in my head like I'm like, okay, like it's astronomically bad right now, but there's got to be like, I have to tell people things with the assumption that we save civilization.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it's nice to feel that way.

If you, if you can, you can figure it out now. But

Malcolm Collins: that's what I want to talk about with you is, if you're forced to try to see a path through this, for a young man, or for society, how do you do it?

Speaker 2: So, for a young man, there are two ways of going about it. You can either be really selfish, and you can try to figure out how to just be your, your, the harem master.

You know, because [00:01:00] that's where things are going. We just, things have broken down. And if you can turn yourself into a local, I think they call it a contextual alpha, a local 10,

Simone Collins: then you can,

Speaker 2: yeah, then you can just win on in your small pond, if you can find a, a pond small enough, because even out in like you drive five hours East of Portland.

Oregon and you get to towns where the girls just leave like all the pretty girls are just like well I can get someone to ship me somewhere else. So

Malcolm Collins: yeah,

Speaker 2: there really aren't. Yeah, there really aren't any small towns any small ponds anymore

Malcolm Collins: This is what people do like I did this a lot in high school around like subgroups like it's oh You want to hang out with the goths because there isn't like a Chad in the goth.

Yeah

Speaker 2: That's why the goths do that because it's about the makeup and not about like, you know competing It's just like a, it's a way to jump off to the side and say, I'm the top of something else. So there's that. And then there's trying to fix society. This one's easier. It's easier. It's more rewarding.

Trying to fix society is what I'm trying to do because I don't, [00:02:00] I wouldn't find any satisfaction in this. It just, I don't see any reason to, to accelerate the problem if it's going to cause. I mean, it causes society to break down, you know, and I don't want to live in a broken down society. I find it very unpleasant.

So I'm trying to fix it and I'm doing that by, I don't know if you guys are aware that I have a a subscription product based on this, this mind map that I made called self mask. No,

Malcolm Collins: go into this. I want to know.

Speaker 2: So I was promising people to make a map like really, really early on when I was making content, I said I was going to cover everything that you need to maximize about yourself in order to you know, get the best possible position you can in the dating market.

And I started doing this and I said, well, everything is kind of kind of tied to everything else. So I needed to make an entire system of how the mind works. It starts with what you want, what you want, moves into the way that you think. And then your things, your, your The things you think about move into the behaviors you choose and the way you appear to others, which interact with your [00:03:00] environment, create your situation and then you view it and then you can think about that again.

Change what you want or change what you do. So I just put it all on paper and I have a couple of developers who are coding this into a system so you can. Go to the site and type in like, I don't know what I want. And there's a, what do you want exercise? And it figures out what you want. And then it says, well, what are you doing?

And where, where would you go to get what you want? So it leads you through the process. So this is as far, how far I'm going to try to fix society. I'm creating AI apps that are 10 bucks a month so that people can go, how do I you know, pick myself up out of this mess and I'm going to. Give, I'm going to fill it with exercises and I'm going to try to structure it as much as possible to not let people use it in that, in, in that way to, you know, people, people, I love

Malcolm Collins: this because it is very similar to the system that we did when our first book ages ago we built a [00:04:00] system for like improving yourself and it's very similar.

To what you structured there, which is to say, you know, we say first decide like what you think has intrinsic value and we go through all the things a person might think has value, then build your like ideological tree of how you see reality, which will have like a core stump that might be like a theology or might be like a political worldview and then it branches into micro hypotheses.

And then with these two things, craft the version of yourself that would best be able to maximize your things of intrinsic value. Because people are always like, Oh, be, be who you really are. And I'm like, there is no who you really are. That's just like who the world serendipitously made you.

Speaker 2: That's funny because these are things that I have been saying recently.

I, I have a video I'm working on called the table. You know how are you familiar with the dating language? How the guys will say, what do you bring to the table? And the girls will say, I am the table. Yeah. So. The, the male version of that is I want her to like me for me and I'm making a video that's based on there's, there's no you, there's [00:05:00] only things people can see about you and you can control some of those.

So that's, that's interesting that you said that and at the same time had the same idea for the structure of how this works. I, I said recently, I think on a tweet, probably I tweet a lot. I said that. When you find the same, when you find the truth, it's always the same truth as everyone else who found the truth, because the truth is true.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I completely agree. Another thing that we say in that book that, that probably aligns with stuff that you said before, is Everyone is a, you, you are a side character in everyone else's, you know, life you have ever met. And if you try to structure the you that they're interacting with to be a main character, you're going to come off like a Mary Sue.

And side characters are simplistic. They have easy to understand flaws. They fit into stereotypes. And if you can craft yourself into that type of person, you're going to fit much easier into the life of whether it's a woman or somebody else, because they're going to. Have a [00:06:00] slot. They can fit you in.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. That's, I think you're talking about kind of like development, like ego development there that people tend to think of. They begin life thinking about themselves and their needs. And we are, I made a video recently about The maturity crisis and about how people are not climbing up the levels of development.

This is just a short I'm going to print out a whole page. But are you familiar with ken wilber?

Simone Collins: No, I don't think either of us are No, what did he do? Did he like coin this like term the maturity crisis? I mean we're all talking about infantilization

Speaker 2: yeah, no, he he conglomerated a bunch of different systems of like a spirituality and psychological development and so on and so forth This is, he has a system called all quadrant, all level.

This is my depiction of the quadrants. It's about how you have to, if you're looking at a situation, you have to understand the interior of your mind, the outer of the experience, and then the collective of both, so the culture and the system. And then there's [00:07:00] also developmental psychology, which is the part that people always are always the most interested in.

And the maturity crisis is, I don't know if I coined that term. I might have heard a few people use it, but I don't know who they were. And it's basically that what's happening right now is we live in a culture where everybody is. Especially the men are not growing up to the level where it would be if you're using the Lawrence Kohlberg level set of levels that would be law and order morality and men are not growing up to that They're staying in the good boy morality.

So you're seeing a bunch of grown men who are like look at me I'm doing the nice thing

Simone Collins: And it's

Speaker 2: that doesn't work It doesn't keep society going. Men have to, men typically develop more than women. On average, women tend to stay on average in the good girl stage and men move into the law and order stage.

And that would be levels three and four out of six, but now we're seeing a lot of people stay in the lower.

Malcolm Collins: So I think that you've captured something really huge here [00:08:00] that I want to pull out, which is to say that if we look at the challenges that we're facing as a society right now, in part within dating markets and stuff like that, it's, it's, it's true.

It's not just easy. It's also true to look at the market and say, well, the market has the switching costs are too low for women right now. And it leads to all of these problems of your man dating and everything like that. But these are things that you and I. Cannot fix. So we've got to look at the bigger structural problems.

And what the biggest structural problem that society has right now is that people are not given the mental scaffolding and tools to build complex metaphysical frameworks for right and wrong and about structuring their lives. And ironically, I think a lot of this came. I'm gonna say, like, from, I don't know if you're, our, like, the, the religious, like, right side created a lot of this problem in the 80s and 90s when they [00:09:00] were like, kids can't be taught anything other than the metaphysical framework I'm giving them at home in school.

And so the school then stopped teaching all of that stuff and then and they became afraid to talk about, like, meaning and purpose and why you exist. And so, then the home life became secular. And now all of a sudden that entire framework, both the school and the home, is giving people no reason to exist.

Speaker 2: Right, exactly. We're, we, we no longer have any cultural cohesion around meaning. And that is, it's very ironic because It actually stems from a pretty high level of development. This the sixth one here. I gave them rainbow colors to make them easier to remember. The Wilbur system is everybody makes a different set of levels and they call them beige and tangerine and all kinds of nonsense.

No one can remember. So at level six, what has happened since the sixties? This was the first emergence of it. This is like ancient, this is like homeless people, this is like tribes, this is like the Roman [00:10:00] Empire, this is like medieval times, industrial times, and the information age, basically.

Simone Collins: And

Speaker 2: the morality that emerged around the 1960s, beginning in the very early, late industrial, early information age, is that there's any way to look at things.

Anyone can look at things anyway, and it's all valid. So, that's a very high level of development, but it also means that you can't run a school, you can't run a government because everyone disagrees on what's the right way to see things. And if all you ever do is talk about, well, here's how I see it, here's how I see it, then people never actually learn the rules.

So this level tends to dissolve this one so people cannot climb the ladder. That's a running theme for Millennials and Gen Z and whoever comes next. That they're not able to climb the ladder of, of wealth and of maturity and of, of, they're not replacing the boomers and their jobs because they don't have the skills.

They seem to have cut out the path upwards in development.

Malcolm Collins: I want to hear your thoughts on something I feel I've been seeing [00:11:00] recently. Which is the rise of what I call and where would it be on this chart of aesthetic morality were like a lot of people when they're breaking morality systems down, it'll be like, oh, you know, it might be a consequentialist morality.

It might be ideological morality, but then I've noticed this new morality where, when people are asking what they should do or what choice they should make, it's about fulfilling of specific aesthetic vision of what a good. Version of themselves is an example of this. When it really hit me that some people were doing this.

So that's watching this influencer Hamza, who's like a masculine world, sort of like Andrew Tate type influencer. And he was talking about one difficult decision he had in his life about, like, should he move to the city or the countryside for like where he was working? And then he asked himself. What was the most masculine decision?

Like a man, what would, what would the man do in this context? And I started to, as soon as I saw him say that, I started to realize that so many of the influencers who are packaging systems of like how to act for people, package it [00:12:00] around some aesthetic ideal, whether it is, what would a good Christian do, or what would a man do?

Or what would a woman do? And we've even gotten to the state where we've confused. Genders with with moral ideals.

Speaker 2: Yeah, when you say aesthetic, is that a word I should know?

Malcolm Collins: Aesthetic. I'm mispronouncing the word aesthetic.

Speaker 2: Like, Oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, aesthetic, like visual, like sensory.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but also, I mean, I think he means identity. Like, I mean, people also have become Incredibly obsessed with their identities, their brands as though, okay, this is my now my identity. I need to change everything about my life to fit it and all of my decisions are going to be downstream of what conforms with this identity rather than I understand what you mean now, yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I understand what you mean. I'm sorry about that. I, I, I think that what you're talking about is people that are, are so desperate for identity that they're buying, like, pre packaged, almost like a brand name. Like, they just want, like, a box of pancake mix [00:13:00] that you just stir and you have a thing.

They're just like, I just wanna buy a being a thing. Yeah. And so they, they go to Andrew Tate University and then they go, I'm, I'm Andrew Tate now. That's, that's my identity is I'm just gonna be the next Andrew Tate. I opened this up on my computer. By the way, I had a larger map that I made of the Wilbur levels.

So yeah, it's it's, it's large. I'm going to make it principle at some point. But yeah, I've noticed that as well that people are people are purchasing identity, especially when they have less of it. And that comes from. People who recently immigrated into a country and people who don't have strong parenting and who don't don't come from a many traditions and it seems like almost like already.

We don't have any for any form of enduring identity. Now,

Simone Collins: well, I don't you also think it's not sure if I

Speaker 2: caught the whole question, but.

Simone Collins: No, no, I think it's a failure to become an adult because I feel like as kids, we tend to like to [00:14:00] buy identities, right? Like I'm a goth or I'm an e girl now or whatever.

And then as we grow up, we discover like, Oh wait, I have inherent values and can kind of make my own self in the world. And also the way I manifest, I don't have to be part of a team. Like, I think it's maybe part of this infantilization that you're talking about too.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I

Malcolm Collins: think we just got

Speaker 2: persistent.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Continue.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it definitely is. I, this was part of the video that I was talking about with the maturity crisis, how I just drew these three different versions of, of what you can be as an adult, you can either be just the man child or the guy who's just getting wrecked because you have all of the responsibility and you get nothing for it.

But there's a way through that. I'm trying to encourage people because like, it's true. The system is just not helping people grow up. Yeah. If you go to college, you get in debt and then you go into the work world, they just, you just get used and I don't know, I don't know how to teach people how to run [00:15:00] businesses.

I'm trying to teach people to go to get good at something that they can't take away from you. So you can grow up and be mature and develop competence without spending all your time just being soaked. For all of your living energy, but we are having, yeah, we are having a lot of, I don't really know what to say to them when they show up in my comments and my, you know, in my, in my mentions or whatever.

I don't know what to tell these guys like, hey, stop enjoying your life and go do something hard. That doesn't work. You know,

Malcolm Collins: well, one of the things and I have like this is not your, your attitude with this stuff, but it's one that I've been beginning to adopt more and more is, is I, we talked about this in a recent, like the genocide of males video where I'm like, you know, there was a period in human history, if you go to the early agricultural period where one man was breeding for every 14 women, and even if you look at the past generation 60, percent.

I think it was like [00:16:00] 62 percent of males had kids and something like 82 percent of women had kids. And it's like we males are biologically designed to be disposable by society.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: And people come to me and they go, how do I, What's the system that's going to win for every male and I'm like, it's not gonna win for every male, but part of the cool thing about it is, is the core reason why a lot of males are going to fail is not looks or height or anything like that.

It is that. I think to an extent, biologically or due to what happened to them before in their life, they're not able to engage with the types of systems that you're putting in front of them. They're not able to say, okay, now I'm going to do the hard thing.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. They're not having an opportunity to do that for sure.

Malcolm Collins: I want to Oh, continue.

Speaker 2: I think I can see Simone speaking, but I can't hear her. You're muted Simone.

Simone Collins: Sorry. I'm next to a [00:17:00] baby and she's also trying to join in and I'm trying to keep her, but is I'm thinking about this and trying to think what I would do if I were a dude and I would probably want to know.

With some certainty, what bucket I'm in, like, am I in the bucket of people who are going to reproduce and have success? Or should I go into basically the MGTOW bucket and just have a really good life, kind of live mostly off the grid, hike, have a dog, collect cars, like ride my motorcycle, have a good time.

And then, you know. Like euthanize myself. So don't die alone and get eaten by my dogs.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Kind of. That's a lot of them also don't have the money to do those things. Like they're never getting a motorcycle, you know? So it's not only are they not going to make it with the ladies, but they also are like delivering pizza 10 hours a week and living with mom.

So I don't know, like, I don't know what to say to them that I keep. I don't know if I have a drawing of it. I guess I'll draw it while I'm talking to you, but I keep [00:18:00] giving them the same Image over and over the same symbol, which I'm using for self max. My product is just a red upward pointing arrow to symbolize that really no matter where you are and what you're doing in life, all living things have to be going somewhere.

You have to be growing because everything else around you is moving. So you have to be headed somewhere.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Speaker 2: and that's what that's what the if you can cultivate that mindset then everything else will naturally emerge from it I don't know What specifics to tell most of these people? but if I can at least give them the attitude of I should be looking for something like instead of sitting on the couch and There's just a lot going on in the younger generations that I think the older ones don't get like gen z tells me that Nobody leaves the house anymore.

I tell them You should go do events and go out and go be, and they say, but you get there and it's just like three [00:19:00] dudes, you know? Yeah, you know, honestly though, like, have you been out

Malcolm Collins: recently? It sucks. They're not raw. Oh my God. This happened to me recently where I went to a thing with my kids, right?

Like I, I, I remember when I was a kid, I'd go to like a birthday party. So I went to a birthday party, not a single parent talked to each other the entire time. All of them were there with phones. Like I don't even. Think it's like just Gen Z. Like we as a society have just been like, why do you, and so as Gen Z, they're having this problem.

And what I wanted to ask you about is, but almost like what next? Because, you know, you're talking about the guy on the moped and everything like that. As we see AI take more and more jobs, where do you, how do you think like dating markets adapt to that? How do you think that people, because we need to be asking these questions ourselves, like anyone who's young today is like.

Okay, given where A. I. Is going to be in 15 years. What skill do I learn? What do I do? How do you think about that?

Speaker 2: I don't think about it. That's scary. Thanks for ruining my day. Yeah, [00:20:00] that's I don't I really don't know what people are going to do. That's going to be worth anything. I think that as we automate everything like we've lost our manufacturing, I don't know if we're getting it back.

If if I actually does grow to the point that Where the lower levels of intellectual labor are not needed. And maybe even higher ones. Maybe we have AI lawyers at some point.

Simone Collins: Oh, we will. No, no, no. I'm sorry. But like, but like Harvard MBAs, Stanford MBAs are already seeing pretty severe delays in the rates at which they're getting hired.

These are the top MBA programs. I think

Malcolm Collins: the Harvard, it was 13 percent of last year's classes unemployed right now. That's crazy.

Simone Collins: They'll eventually get jobs for now. Well, I don't know, maybe, but like, no, we're talking. Like white collar elite jobs are not going to exist anymore. But anyway, carry on. Yeah.

Yeah. Well

Speaker 2: sure Do we do you do we know that's because of ai or is it just like it seems like it's because yeah

Simone Collins: If you listen to like the all in podcast, for example like these vcs [00:21:00] and ceos are like Oh man. Yeah. Like I'm now using chat GPTs premium feature to do work that I used to hire like McKinsey to do.

Speaker 2: It's like, you know,

Simone Collins: 50, 000 and it's doing the part that I

Speaker 2: hadn't heard. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. It is exceptional work. Like being an analyst now, basically like, sorry, you're done being a lawyer. Forget that. Like lawyer stuff's easy. The one thing that's going to be hard is like managing court cases, like sibling criminal court cases in, in the court of law.

But that's. Honestly, very easily surmountable. So yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think people are going to have to learn to either, you know, not want things or go farm, you know, go do go homestead because if we have a technology infrastructure that gets everything done without as many people needing to do it, Then what we can't all be delivering each other.

Uber eats. That's if you if you're delivering Uber eats, you don't make enough money to buy Uber eats. So I don't know [00:22:00] if we're going to get unlimited. What was it? Universal universal basic income. I guess it's unlimited. I don't know if we're going to get that. But if we do, I don't think that's very good either.

Because the, you know, the leftist view of things is that You know that things happen like this by themselves, like capitalism, the money goes to the top, the female attention goes to the top. It's sort of nature just does that. And the leftist solution is, well, why don't we just like redistribute it down to the bottom?

And if you do that, then the worst examples of humanity thrive as much as the best. There has to be something that differentiates quality people from low quality people.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, they also it's not persistent. Like every time that has been attempted the, you know, Elite groups are the descendants of elite groups that got disenfranchised end up like taking over.

Malcolm Collins: She's talking about Inquino where they basically inverted society. And if you look today at the people in government positions, they're actually the the distant kids of like the people who are disenfranchised. But I think a more interesting thing. Are you familiar with the Sam [00:23:00] Altman UBI study and what happened with that?

Speaker 2: No.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, it was so crazy. Okay. So they, for three years, gave out a thousand dollars a month to one group of people and then to another group it was $50 a month. So they could sort of control for the two groups. Mm-hmm . The group that was given a thousand dollars a month at the end of the, the experiment had, what was it, $30,000 less in total wealth.

And I think it was just like

Simone Collins: $3,000. It wasn't that much, but basically they, they worked less, they didn't spend more time with their children.

Yeah.

And they. Did not, they had materially less wealth which they just got

Malcolm Collins: lazy.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they got lazy. And it

Malcolm Collins: got lazy. There was another study done on this recently that, that sort of backed up this result that we'll probably do another episode on, but it drew me recently when I was thinking about this, like what happens if you have UBI intergenerationally and.

Somebody on YouTube was had a really insightful thing here where they were looking at Native American communities that had gotten massive government grants for like intergenerationally and how that destroyed the communities entirely. And it made me realize just how badly UBI can [00:24:00] rot a culture if you attempt to do it multiple generations in a row.

Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And we, you know, we've had families. In America, we've had generations and generations of people who have been just on welfare. I think that that's going on a lot of inner cities. I think that's been going on in Appalachia for a while, like, ever since they gutted the manufacturing industry, the entire Rust Belt is just kind of on food stamps.

I think that that's I don't know how you get outta that. I, I don't know what we do about it. There has to be some way to make people do this, to, to make people, you know, try something and then, and then separate them out into people that succeed in people that don't, and the people that don't succeed.

You can't have like 90% of them starving because then. They're just going to get angry. I don't know. You know, I don't know what the, I know what the, what the, what the principles are. I don't know what we see how it's going to

Simone Collins: play out if, if things don't change. Like, I think it's pretty simple is one. We do get some form of [00:25:00] UBI, like everyone will be fed and two, it's actually not going to be that expensive to keep people.

We'll say like, not violent radicals, because basically the, Between AI and like just really good virtual environments, they're going to be living in sort of fantasy worlds where they do live a good life and have their virtual girlfriends and boyfriends and, you know, children and whatever. So they're, they're out living a fantasy that's not real, but in essentially they're just kind of like.

being euthanized early they don't have kids. They basically don't inherit the future. And they also sort of opt out of reality because they're no longer working. They're only basically consuming money and food and living in their little pleasure pod of, you know, virtual AI driven fantasy. Then there's this small subset of society.

That does like catch the red arrow. They, they move upward. Maybe some of them air gap and become like Amish. And sort of like, like you were saying, homes dead and live off the land. Maybe there are some other groups that choose to build some form of agency in the world that is, [00:26:00] is, is useful to AI and compliant with it.

And then of course there's like the very, very elite that are empowered by the AI. And that utilize it and live in their world cities, but basically like all those people at the bottom. Are basically, they're just being genocided. I don't know how else to put it, but like, they're just going to be wiped out.

They will not exist. And, and it's not just men, it's women too, but it's certainly way more men than women. Oh, it's

Speaker 2: going to be, yeah, it'll be like 80 percent of the male population and probably, yeah, probably about half of the women. Seeing that that's roughly the number that are, you know, empowering themselves by not having kids.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. And I think some people hear this and they're like, come on, are we really going to move into a society where rich men take like 11 wives? I'm like, excuse me, do we have Elon here? Do we have, do we have Andrew Tate in the room? Like, yeah, it's not even that though. Like

Simone Collins: when you look at and I can't remember the exact number of like, men who have children.

Versus women who have children, what, like 60 percent of men in the U. S. I [00:27:00] already have that

Malcolm Collins: statistic in this, it's 60 to 80%.

Simone Collins: Okay, yeah, and so yeah, just the point that like men already are basically, they're not having concurrent wives or partners at the same time, but just like the serial partnering is the same thing functionally.

Yeah, the

Speaker 2: more desirable men just have an easier time. Mm

Simone Collins: hmm.

Speaker 2: And that's just the way that nature works. That's how that's how walruses do it too. I made it put them in my last video about it.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Speaker 2: we have to accept some degree of that. But at the same time, you have to have enough people doing the stuff that like, I don't know, when are we going to have?

When are we going to be at the point where we have robots? Planting the seeds, harvesting the crops, bringing them to the truck, bringing them to the processing plant, processing them all the way until someone has to eat them. And, and then if the, if the robots are doing that, then who's eating the food then?

Cause there's no one's needed to do the jobs.

Malcolm Collins: We're basically already there with, with crops. I mean, crops right now is it's one guy on like an [00:28:00] automated system doing what used to be. Some, some.

Simone Collins: There, there's really, really high variance. Some crops are 100 percent handpicked still. Some are to a great extent, depending on the farm.

Completely machine picked and it's really impressive to see some of these machines that are like very very advanced and granular. But yeah, like, yeah, I've seen I've seen some pretty

Speaker 2: interesting ones.

Simone Collins: I love I love that stuff. It's so it's so fun. Yeah, they have one that

Speaker 2: knocks only the green potatoes out as they throw them.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Oh God, I love that. I love that. But I just, I think the thing is people are so not ready for this and it is going to blindside our society. I want to

Malcolm Collins: talk about women for a second here. What would you do, so we've got two girls right now, what would you be telling a daughter if you were raising one?

Speaker 2: Oh boy, that's interesting. If I was raising, well, how old is she?

Malcolm Collins: Well, you're looking at one of them, and then the other one is not much older.

Speaker 2: Okay, well, I'd be telling them, like, wipe your mouth, I guess, I don't know. But, if she, if she was getting old enough [00:29:00] to, that she was going to be making her own decisions.

Which is I think what you're getting at. Yeah, I think what I would say is I would I would tell her how Men think and i've got something on that in here somewhere I would I would explain to her how the world works how people think what she can expect to be treated like and the reasons for that so that she's Equipped to make the best possible decisions.

I don't know if I'm going to find this thing in time. There it is. There was a video I made a while ago about a young girl displaying a good amount of insight where she was, she was, first of all, sick of her dad saying, oh, boys don't go around boys. And then she realized that he's doing that because he knows what the boys think about her.

So she had a thought about a thought about a thought, which was a higher level of. Yeah. A higher order of thinking than a lot of people her age. And I was like, oh, that's great. And that's the kind of thing that I would be saying. I would be trying to [00:30:00] install that kind of metacognition. I would, I would be saying if, if you show up this way.

The world will react to you this way. It doesn't matter if you like it or not. That's what people's programming is. That's what I did not get taught when I was a kid. My, my parents, yeah, my, my parents and my teachers failed to tell me how the world was going to react to me. It was almost 100%. You can do what you want.

Simone Collins: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. What

Speaker 2: a crazy thing to tell someone. That's insane. It doesn't, the world does not agree. It just doesn't agree with you. Oh, I want to be a journalist. Okay. Here's 10.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think one of the things that we, we did a video on the, it hasn't gone live yet. We titled it thought maxing our daughters.

But the question is, how do you one of the, one of, I think the biggest mistakes that people are going to make in raising daughters within this generation is they're like, well, you don't [00:31:00] want to be valued for your body. Right. But the problem is, is that the, the world right now with social media, you know, it's YouTube, it's Twitter, it's et cetera.

And if you're a woman with a following on one of these sites, you are in part valued for your body. Yeah. And if you have. Yeah, if you pathologically develop some hatred of this or fear of this, then you're not going to get in front of a large audience and have an impact.

Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, that's, that's part of, it's kind of a part of what I'm trying to teach people with the whole Ken Wilberg, the whole integral thing, this whole thing here.

That you can't just say, Oh, it's bad to value people for their bodies or it's bad to be valued for your body. That's just like one of the layers of thinking that people do, whether you like it or not. It's just a part of the mind that's on. You have to understand that that's what people are doing and you have to take the good you can get from it and avoid the bad that comes from it.

Whereas I think what you were saying is that [00:32:00] if you get too A verse to that, then you won't be able to function in the online world. Right? Like, if you understand that people are, if you're an attractive young girl, people will part will partially be watching because you are an attractive young girl.

Right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, it's, and it's, it's something that you're not going to be able to avoid even if you're purely intellectual, like the example I'd use here is like shoe on head shoe on head is like a reasonable intellectual with reasonable ideas that are worth listening to that doesn't mean that part of her audience isn't there because she at one point was an attractive young girl.

Speaker 2: Yeah, but she also isn't like. At least not as far as I've seen. I don't think she does. I don't think she's leaning on it She's not wearing skimpy clothes or anything like that. You know, so she's more like a brett cooper.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah

Speaker 2: Yeah, and that happens everywhere all the time That's that's attractive people which there's fewer men than women But if you're attractive people will look at you more And even babies do that.

So it's just like that's how we're built. So yeah accept it

Malcolm Collins: It's, it's actually a very interesting thing when I think about it for [00:33:00] men, because I think attractive men there's like an audience of intellectual men where you, you need a certain level of buffness to enter it. Like, I'm thinking like your Joe Rogans, your Chris Williamson's, stuff like that, where they're like genuine intellectuals in my book, but like, it's clear that their audience required first a level of physical mastery, which I guess is a level of self care.

Speaker 2: Yeah. A level of, I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

Malcolm Collins: Well, their level of physical mastery is a level of self mastery. Yes, yes. It demonstrates

Speaker 2: competence, yeah.

Simone Collins: But I think it also signals more to the gender to which they market.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Than the opposite gender. In other words, I think Andrew Tate physically appeals more to men than he does to women.

Yeah. And I think like Hannah Nealman of Ballerina Farms. Physically appeals more to women than

Speaker 2: yeah, I had a I don't know if you guys followed my Content this deeply or this early, but I have [00:34:00] a story that I tell sometimes about that's what happened to me Early in life when people told me you can do and be whatever you want and people should like you for you I didn't really Pay attention or take care of myself.

And I had a physical transformation I lost a lot of weight and built a lot of muscle And this same girl that I liked since I was 11 Suddenly the tables turned and she was into me and I was like, I don't know about that And

Simone Collins: amazing

Speaker 2: yeah, and if people don't understand how how big of a, of a difference that makes until you are one.

And then the other people will just say, Oh yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Malcolm did that to me. Malcolm, Malcolm taught me that people judge you by what you are on the outside. When I was like, it's all about what you are on the inside. And while we were dating with the promise that we'd break up. Cause that was our agreement.

I was going to be single forever. I was excited about it. Yeah. It was like, well, you're not going to achieve your goals in life if you look like you do right now. And so I changed my appearance. Totally. Got a promotion. Complete, like got invited to speak at [00:35:00] events, just complete transformation of my entire career and people who knew me from before and hadn't seen what I looked like after were like, that's not true.

You're not.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think the problem for you and for women is that women especially get emotionally rewarded for dressing in a way and acting in a way that causes people to think left of them intellectually. So. She was dressing like a hipster, you know, in those sorts of outfits that sort of like are, you know, and, and people were rewarding her and smiling more at her.

Well, I was

Simone Collins: wearing like mini, mini skirts and red fishnet stockings and yeah, like I was not great. Not great.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I get it. Yeah, it's good.

Simone Collins: I don't know though. Like, do, do hyper muscular men also someone get treated

Speaker 2: Yes, I did get treated like a male thot, kind of, when I went from, like, I lost a lot of weight and put on the muscle.

It was really quick. And all of a sudden, there were, like, older [00:36:00] ladies making sex jokes at me, like I used to make at girls when I was really, like, in high school. So, I joined this program, like a spiritual program. And there were like 47 year old ladies saying something about telling me that I should wear a g string or whatever.

I remember jokes like that. Yeah. And so like I did get, I suddenly was getting sexualized by people who I did and did not want attention from and I was like, Oh, that's so that's exact. That's what women are talking about. You get the attention you want and the attention that you got. Okay,

Malcolm Collins: that's fascinating.

That was really interesting. Okay. So the final thought I wanted to end this with or to sort of think about is this AI app that you're creating because I think it's really amazing. for having me. We're building a video game world right now, and one of the settlements that makes it through in the video game world trains an AI on scripture and basically just this is what happens to the Mormon faction.

They basically live in a community where an AI, they go, they ask it what they should do, what they should want. And it's one of the only [00:37:00] factions that seems to be working broadly. And so I'm wondering how you think about people may interact with AI systems like the one you're building. For building purpose and self improvement.

What are your thoughts on that? Cause that's such a weird thing to be happening.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that, I think that if this goes the way I want it to, because I don't really under understand AI that well. And sometimes I get very frustrated with some of them. Like I can't get grok. To get the pictures right sometimes, and it's just like, no, I said without Superman, and it just gives me Superman again.

There, there are things that maybe they'll get fixed in time. I don't know if they're gonna train them to understand language better. What I'm hoping we can do with AI is to like what I'm doing with my life right now is I'm telling young people what no one told me when I was young. It would have really helped me if someone could have said, Hey, girls do this and bosses do that.

And the And, you know, the [00:38:00] people don't respect you if you do this and that. And it would it would have cleared a lot up for me. If a I can can do that for people individually and they can interact with the system that like knows everything that humanity does. It knows all of our phenotypes and all the genotypes and all of the minds that it builds and it can test your personality and say, well, if you're like this, then that's one of the things that we're doing with self max.

We have the big five. We're gonna put other personality tests on it. So the A. I. uses your personality to respond to you. So it says this solution might work better for you because you're this personality type. I think if that sort of understanding of the human condition can get sophisticated enough in a I, then it will be able to lead people to the right decisions.

So there's just less mystery. And figuring things out. You still have to do it. Nobody can do it for you because that's just like the physical nature of the world. You have to do it yourself or you can't [00:39:00] be what you want to be if you don't do the things it takes to be it. But I think that the best case scenario is that AI becomes really good at separating the wheat from the chaff.

So, like, here's what you should listen to about Andrew Tate, and here's what you shouldn't. Like, this is, if you do this, this is what it's gonna get you. It worked for him, but that's very rare. And most of the time that people think like that, they end up in jail for dealing drugs or whatever. So, it should be able to To meet people where they are, tell them about what they're thinking, why they're thinking it, make it clear to them.

That's one of the things that I'm really good at. I used to do a personal life coaching sessions. I might go back to that. And during the sessions, I was very able to. Take whatever it was that people were experiencing and show them. Here's what you're going for there that you didn't know. Oh, yeah, that's it.

I either need to learn how to do that better or to quit that because that's unhealthy or something like that. But it can reveal people to [00:40:00] themselves when you do that. And then also. When they become conscious of that, then they can make more and more choices about their behavior. And then it can also tell them about how the world works, which I have absolutely no experience in because I've been inside reading books for 20 years.

Malcolm Collins: That is fantastic. Well, it's been a joy having you on. I really encourage Our watchers to go check your channel, go check this app. Where can they find out this? It's called

Speaker 2: it's called self max. ai. I think I wrote it down here and I'll write it down. Self max, S E L F M a X dot a I. If you type that in, I'm pretty sure it's the first thing you're going to get.

And we're building it, upgrading it. People are saying they like it so far. And I'm

Simone Collins: excited about that. I like that. We, when we read the pragmatist guide to life. The biggest thing was like, all right, all right, all right. So you've like given me a guide to like figuring this out by myself, but like now, like, what do I do?

Like, can you just tell me what to do? And I love that this is like, all right. Well, based on like, we're going to sort of take a Bayesian approach using [00:41:00] like the data you've given us. Here's your best path forward. Just a lot of people really would love that. I think that's, that's, I, I kind of wanna check it out now.

But yeah, your channel's so great. Even like, thank you. If you're, if you're part of the, like 10% of our channel that's female, you should also check it out. Like it's really, really interesting. Yeah. And to, to the point of like, you could be able to think from the perspective of other people. This is a great way for you to see.

In very concrete terms, the dynamics that make life really hard for dudes. So, yeah, anyway, really love your work. Thank you so much for coming on. All right. Yeah.

In this episode, the hosts engage in a controversial discussion that questions why Christianity fails to increase fertility rates among Asian populations. They dive deep into surprising statistics comparing fertility rates across religions in various countries like Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, noting a stark contrast between Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, and even unaffiliated beliefs. The conversation explores hypotheses such as the challenges created by being a minority religion, the influence of Western modern values, and the aesthetics of Christianity in East Asia. They also examine how religious communities have evolved over time to match or mismatch with traditional cultures, ultimately investigating whether these cultural dynamics affect birth rates. Additional discussions touch upon unique cultural aesthetics, such as anime and other media inspired by foreign religious imagery, and intriguing projects related to improving pronatalist efforts in South Korea.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! Today is going to be an interesting and controversial discussion focused on the question of why doesn't Christianity work for Asians?

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: specifically when I say why doesn't it work here, I mean at increasing fertility rates. Because these numbers are going to shock you and I'm going to lead right in with the numbers. So I think a lot of people know that, okay, you're a Christian, you're a conservative Christian. You're going to have more kids if you're in a Western country, if you're in Europe, something like that.

Right. You know, this is a broadly known thing about fertility rates and it's also broadly known that Buddhism has the lowest fertility rate of all of the religious systems. Right. Right. Also

Simone Collins: like the end game of Buddhism is like, Genocidal conscious beings! Well,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, we'll

Simone Collins: get into why

Malcolm Collins: Buddhism has a low fertility rate, but I think the on the ground fertility rates of these religions may surprise you, And another thing you'll, you'll note here, surprisingly, is generally, as we've noted, if you are in [00:01:00] Europe or you are in the United States, if you are an average Catholic, you are going to have a lower fertility rate than the average Protestant at the same level of income.

Pretty dramatically lower, you can see our episode on this. But! It's the exact opposite in Asian population. So we'll also be talking about this because Catholics actually have a higher fertility rate there. So if you go to Japan, if you are a Protestant when this sample with cash, you had an average fertility rate of two, but if you were a Buddhist, you had an average fertility rate of 2.

1. Now keep in mind, this is an older sample, so the numbers are much lower now, but this is, you know, when this, this is the data I have, okay? So if you were a Buddhist in Japan, you had a higher fertility rate than if you were a Protestant. Now, if you were, if you were a Catholic, you'd be converted to a fertility rate of 2.

5. What is also interesting here is that in Japan, the no religion was two and the protestant was two. So no religion and protestant had the same fertility rate at this time in Japan. Korean, if [00:02:00] you were a protestant, you had a fertility rate of 1. 99. If you were a Buddhist, you had a fertility rate of 2.

35. That's so wild! Why? What? Yeah, and if you have no religion, it's 2. 96, so about the same as Protestant. Catholics here are actually, in Korea, are beaten by Buddhists. In Korea, the Catholic fertility rate is 2. 32, where the Buddhist is 2. 35.

Now let's go to Taiwan here, alright? In Taiwan, if you're a Protestant, you have a fertility rate of 2.

5. This is the one where they have a big jump over no religion, which is only 2. 06 when this sample was taken. Keep in mind, these are older numbers, they're way lower now. Note, these numbers are limited to women in their first marriage, and this study was published in 2016. If you are a Buddhist in Taiwan, you have a fertility rate of 2. 7 to the Protestant 2. 5. And if you are a Catholic, it's 2. 8, so slightly higher.

Now this [00:03:00] is from a different study here that is looking at these over time for various religions. Okay,

okay. So if you were a Buddhist in 1985, you had a fertility rate of 2. 71. If you were a Catholic, it was 2. 14. So much lower. If you were Protestant, it was 2. 27. So again, much lower. And if You were not affiliated. It was two point. Yeah. Yeah. 2.

Simone Collins: 47.

Malcolm Collins: So not affiliated, not affiliated in 1985. Korea beat both Catholic and Protestant.

Simone Collins: What is going on there? Could it be? Okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I have a theory. I want hypotheses because then you can, you know, make me look wrong. My guess is that because Christianity is a minority religion in these countries that you [00:04:00] are narrowing your population and creating additional barriers to marriage and coupling that ultimately delay childbirth and therefore reduce lifetime fertility.

Malcolm Collins: Minority populations when they are persecuted almost always have higher fertility rates. So, I mean, there's a few instances where you like, Native Americans and stuff like that, but generally being in minority population and feeling persecuted increases your fertility rate.

Simone Collins: Because

Malcolm Collins: you, you have a reason to, like, exist, you know, this is

Simone Collins: Yeah, but, like, maybe it's just hard as a Japanese Christian woman to find a Japanese Christian husband.

Malcolm Collins: I imagine you'd have more default in common with him, but maybe, but that's, that doesn't seem to be with the data. Especially if your

Simone Collins: local Christian church does not have a really robust dating infrastructure set up, which I, I haven't, I've, I've, I've toured one Christian community in Japan in my life.

It was kind of weird. And to my knowledge, it had absolutely no infrastructure for young couples.

Malcolm Collins: Nothing. Fascinating. So, we'll get into why that might have been the case [00:05:00] in a second. Okay. Okay. Onward. 2005. So this is a bit further forward from the 1985 sample, okay? Have things begun to change.

The not affiliated fertility rate has crashed. Remember it used to be 2. 47? Now it is 1. 40. So this is for not affiliated. But. The Buddhist fertility rate has also crashed to 1. 59. Okay. But also, the Christian fertility rate has crashed. The Catholic is still below the Buddhist at 1. 48. That is wild.

And the Protestant in, in this moment was actually above the Catholic at 1. 50. So, what? Could this be a

Simone Collins: selection thing? Like, so it could be an aesthetic thing too. Like the people Who are attracted like sort of an outsider in Asia being attracted to Catholicism is more like they're attracted to the aestheticism and maybe even the asexuality because there are big factions of Catholicism that are very asexual nuns and priests are asexual.

Could it be that there's a weird [00:06:00] selection effect taking place that like the hooks that are attracting people and the aesthetics that are attracting people are the non. I think you got part of it here,

Malcolm Collins: but not in the way that you were thinking. Okay. Okay, well, let's just lay it out here before we go to 2015.

Yeah, I'm dying for this. What else would Christianity be associated with, especially in like the 80s, to somebody in Korea or Japan?

Simone Collins: America?

Malcolm Collins: Modernization in Western values.

Simone Collins: Oh, s**t. Yeah, okay. Okay. It's just, it's just increasing the, the, the adoption curve of the, the anti natalist flag. Yeah, so

Malcolm Collins: we'll get to all that in just a second.

I want to go to 2015 because people are going to be like, okay, is this trend reversing? Because I've heard some people argue that the trend is reversing based on anecdotal data. Unfortunately, the actual data does not agree with them that strongly. If we go to 2015 for the not affiliated, It's down to 1. 13. So, [00:07:00] okay, not good. Are Buddhists above unaffiliated? Yes, they are. 1. 33. Okay? What about, what about the Catholics? How are they doing here? Are they beating the Buddhists yet? No. 1. 16.

Almost as low as the not affiliated at 1. 13. Guys, guys, guys. If you go to the Protestants here, where are they? 1. 28. So they're getting stomped by the Buddhists.

So, let's get into what some of the papers that have been going into this have been saying, because I just find these numbers fascinating. Like, is this not an interesting question? Why is Christianity lowering rather than raising fertility rates in East Asia?

Simone Collins: Right. Because, I mean, in Scott Alexander's long and fascinating blog post reviewing a book about the rise of early Christianity, his end conclusion was kind of like, well, maybe Christianity rose because the memes are just [00:08:00] better.

Like, it just imparts more fitness to people. And you and I have argued in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion that in the end, religions that spread really well impart fitness to their adherents. And fitness is in large part reflected in birth rates. So why would a a, a religion that has imparted quite a lot of fitness to adherence in, in in Europe, especially of parts of the, the Middle East not be working in Asia.

Why,

Malcolm Collins: why? Well, one of the hypotheses you put out there is they are extreme minorities that might have trouble dating because of that. So I'm gonna put on the screen putting a chart on the screen here so you can get an idea. Are these groups extreme Minorities? You might be surprised by the actual data.

So by 2015 what percent. What person is Buddhist? 14. 1%. What person is Protestant? 20. 7%. What? So [00:09:00] they should have an advantage! What is going on? What person is Catholic? 8. 5%.

Simone Collins: Okay, that shouldn't be bad.

Malcolm Collins: Now, what if you, what if you go to the past? What do you go to the past, okay? Let's go 1985 here, okay?

1 percent is Buddhist, 27. 5 percent back then for Catholics, it was 5. 9 percent and 18. 7 percent for Protestants. So, you can see the Christian groups have grown over time. Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: clearly. But I guess they're growing through conversion more than birth rate.

Malcolm Collins: And Buddhism has lost like half of its participants over that period.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, could it be? Also, I think, you know what? I think what you said about this being more correlated, not with an adoption of the actual religious values, but of the aesthetics, to really hold weight, and here's why. In Japan, when I traveled through there as a teen, there were like lots of [00:10:00] Christian looking chapels.

They were just used for weddings. Like, people weren't really Christian, but you might have, like, your traditional Shinto ceremony, and then you'd, like, do photos and maybe a wedding in like, a building that was purpose built to kind of have like show weddings that looked like they were in chapels. And that it was really about the trappings of the aesthetic and the aesthetic was Western.

I mean, this was at the same time when a lot of a lot of women were dying their hair, the sort of Auburn chestnut color and, you know, dressing in. Lolita clothing that was largely, like, sort of inspired by, like, frilly European dresses. And there was sort of this idealization of westernization and riffing on it.

But it wasn't full adoption of the memes. And that's something that, like, for example, Japan, and I think South Korea is also really good at this, but, like, I've always thought of Japan as being a master at this, of, like, taking foreign ideas and just Making them cooler, but also kind of abstracting them from their core values and purpose.

So the

Malcolm Collins: studies do, there's [00:11:00] a lot of studies on this because I read them. I was like, okay, what is this? Yeah, they do show that in the eighties Christian churches. We're seen as being uniquely pro things like contraception family planning many of these concepts they saw as like Western and forward.

So this is a Western

Simone Collins: thing. It's not a Christian thing.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But they saw the two as a combined entity in the eighties. Now, this has dramatically changed, if I'm going to read a passage here from one of the studies Christian churches have not kept up with recent radical transformation of the notions of sexuality, marriage, and childbearing.

For example, studies have shown association of Christian affiliation, especially with Protestant churches, with more conservative orientations in matters such as dating and sexual partnership, e. g. Lee, Joe, and Kim, 19. Or in more general social and political views, e. g. Jang 2018, Kang 2004, Kang 2012. [00:12:00] As a result, Catholicism and Protestantism, which were once the vanguard of Korean modernization, are increasingly seen as symbols of traditionalism in today's Korea.

So you can say, oh, this is, this is good, and we'll get to, in a second numbers. On how actually I'll just get to them right now. Why don't I just throw them up right now? How actually traditional are these different religious traditions? And so I'll read something about the study that was done here.

So the E. A. S. S. also contains 18 questions on individuals attitudes towards marriage in general, e. g. It is all right for a couple to live together without intending to get married. Gender roles, e. g., a husband's job is to earn money. A wife's job is to look after the home and family. Relationship inside the family, e.

g., the authority of father in a family should be respected under any circumstances. And familial piety, e. g. , children must make efforts to do something that would bring honor to their parents. On a scale from one to [00:13:00] seven, they either strongly disagreed or strongly agreed.

And so in answering questions like these, where did people of different religions come up in sort of their conservative scale, okay? And here we're going to look at Japan. Korea and Taiwan. All right. So if you were a Buddhist you would come up as quite conservative on this stuff. It was a 25. 7 percent in Korea.

It was 29. 77%. And in Taiwan, it was 25 percent for context. If you were a Catholic, you would come up. As 0. 28 percent in Japan, 11. 05 percent in Korea, and 0. 83 percent in Taiwan.

Okay, I'm

Simone Collins: realizing something here, which is when I think about sort of the inverse of this, and I think about Americans who adopted Buddhism or other Eastern religions, [00:14:00] They often have very, very low birth rates and are unmoored from their traditional cultures. And it's, they're, they're like, it's almost like a proxy for them being taken over by the urban monoculture.

And I wonder if there's some element of this where it's about being unmoored from your ancestral culture and like, Making a concerted decision to abandon it.

Malcolm Collins: Rather than just adopting our belief system with technopuritanism to work on their ancestral culture if they have a strong connection to it.

Because it might be the only way that they have out of this. . Let's, let's go to some of these other countries here. Remember, I was going through. Okay, how bad is this for? Catholicism. Let's look at Protestantism. So in Japan, where Buddhism is at 25.

7 percent very conservative attitudes, Protestants are 0. 14 percent very conservative attitudes.

Simone Collins: It really seems that adopting a foreign religion is more about rejecting your ancestral religion.

Malcolm Collins: 25. 08%

[00:15:00] Protestantism was at 3. 99%. Keep in mind, much more than Catholicism, but still, like, not that high. The only country where it's high Very interesting here is, remember how Protestantism had been in Korea for a long time? Even if we go back to the 80s, we're looking at 18 percent of the population. Well, in Korea, while Buddhists had a 29.

77 percent very traditional attitudes, Protestants had a 25. 67 percent very traditional attitudes. So, almost the same as Buddhists, whereas Catholics were only 11. 05%. Very traditional attitudes

Simone Collins: and your argument there is that at that point it had become more of a historical and traditional religion

Malcolm Collins: exactly So Christianity does work within these countries if it's been working within a community for many generations.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: keep in mind that we argue that these things co evolve together. So there's yeah One is, is adopting a new tradition a rejection of your ancestry? You know, like if you're in India and Christianity's been there [00:16:00] almost since the time of Christ and you're from the Christian community, You are rejecting your ancestry and your heritage by believing anything else.

So one is, does this disconnect you from pride and your ancestry? But then the second is, does this Did you co evolve with this? And by this, what I mean is we can see that historically, if you look at like a Korea, right, Protestants have lower fertility rates than Buddhists. And it's likely because some elements of this culture people who would have been bred out of the culture due to personality elements, like maybe being overly obsessed with aestheticism or something like that, are not bred out in Korean culture.

And so you see this lower birth rate at first, but after those people are bred out of the population, then you get a population where the software package, this Protestantism, is designed to work with this new sort of, The strain of Korean identity and culture and genetic line, which is why it's hard to just paste one [00:17:00] religion onto a group that has no connection historically to that.

And so I think that where you see people coming out of this in like Korea. Let's look at the fertility rates here to see if this, this backs was what we're seeing. So if we look at the more modern fertility rates in Korea for Protestants how far is that below Buddhists? It's not as far below as it used to be.

So in 2015, Buddhists were at 1. 33. For Protestants, it was 1. 28. So really almost as high as the Buddhist rate. If we go back to 1985, was it different? Yeah, it was quite different. For Buddhists, it was 2. 71. For Protestants, it was 2. 27. So we see the gap there. Decreasing as time goes on now if we look here and keep in mind, this may not be like pure like evolutionary pressure, it may be the culture better adapts to this new environment over time, or this new population with different predilections, different ways of relating to [00:18:00] authority, like, Koreans relate to authority in a different way than people from the Western world relate to authority, and they're like, why, how would that change their relationship with God?

And it's like, oh, okay, obviously that's going to change their relationship with God. So I, I think that the, you know, if this religion has been honed for an audience that is an anti authoritarian audience like, like, suppose you have like an Appalachian more like Protestant, like a reflexively anti authoritarian population and you had a religion that was not designed but co evolved with that.

And then you put it on a pro authoritarian population. It's just not gonna thrive.

This is probably also why in these East Asian, more authoritarian cultures, Catholicism significantly outcompetes Protestantism in terms of fertility rates, because it better harmonizes with their

Just trust the guy in charge mindset.

but I wanted to go into a piece by Mercantor. Do you have any thoughts on this before we go further? [00:19:00] Mercantor, big fans of this, this guy's work, really fun, one of the first people to write on us. And he mentions us in this particular piece as well, on Korea's fertility rate.

Simone Collins: Oh, wow.

Malcolm Collins: Did he's talking about like, are they building their own quiver full movement?

Simone Collins: Quarter full is

Malcolm Collins: a Christian movement, which first caught the eye of the mainstream media with 19 kids accounting, a reality show starring the Duggar family. It was going strong until sex scandals hit the founder and the Duggars themselves.

In recent years, the American prenatalist movement has taken a techno optimist turn. It's best known representatives are Simone and Malcolm Collins, who feature frequently on news sites and TV shows. And it started. At recent pronatalist conference, they described themselves as atheists, which not really anymore, maybe in some of the earlier stuff about us.

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has fathered 11 children with 3 women, is a fertility evangelist and is not known to be religious. A couple years ago, a promoter of pronatalist values emerged in South Korea, Lee Byung chun, a missionary from Kyanto Church, a small missionary sending church in Busan, in the country's second [00:20:00] largest city.

found a new calling. He calls his campaign the 303 project. The aims of the 303 project are to encourage marriage before 30, having at least three children. So it's oh I think he maybe means here 33 project. To, to mean have kids before 30 and have at least three children. kids. I think it's really important to have kids before 30.

Lee was inspired by Eastern European and American Protestant missionaries in China who often had six or seven children. These are probably migrant Ukrainian and Russian Pentecostal or Baptist churches in the USA. Lee and his wife have four children who have already pledged that they will marry and have children early. He then started the 303 club in which couples as well as single people pledged to strive towards 303 goals or 33 goals. He frequently quotes. The biblical verse which gave the quiverful movement its name, like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth.

Blessed is the man whose [00:21:00] quiver is full of them. When I actually read that line, I was like, that's remarkably good advice from the Bible. If you notice here, it's saying children born in a man's youth, which is pointing out that for most of your life, you are not going to be able to have healthy kids. You get a short window in your youth.

to have kids. Children and childbearing are activities of youth, not activities of middle age.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: His campaign seems to be getting traction. Hundreds of searches are promoting his message and pastors and young couples have become activists. According to the newspaper cookie. Imbo pastor Lee's congregants at the Kinto church had an average of 2.

4 children last year, triple the national average. He's getting the number up, but 2. 4 ain't gonna save anyone. I mean, we we're, we're only at four now ourselves, right? Like the recent slate plea is bemoaned. How few kids we had. Why are they the pronatalists?

Simone Collins: Listen, [00:22:00] hopefully

Malcolm Collins: we haven't had a sex scandal yet.

Okay. Maybe that's why. Simone, am I going to get in trouble for, well, the sex scandals they had were from their kids. So we've got to work on that.

Simone Collins: I really am not concerned about our kids. Then you do

Malcolm Collins: not know me as a kid, especially if our kids are famous. I don't know how you get away without a sex scandal.

If you're famous on the internet and like a 17 year old horny guy

Simone Collins: I hope we will train our children. Well,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, I hope so too. Maybe get some true believers out of them. However, he then here notes another thing called the Dangjing Donggil Church. Li Beizhongchang has some competition. For more than 20 years, the Dangjing Donggil Church in the country's World Southwest has provided daycare and after school childcare services at half the standard cost.

Unlike municipal daycare centers, they are open until 10pm. There are several in the [00:23:00] city. According to TV interviews with the pastor at Donggale Church. According to a recent news report in April 2024, the mayor of Dongji o, Sanghwan, a city of 100, 000, estimated that 12. 4 percent of all newborns are from members of the Donggale Church.

They account for the fact that Donggale had the highest TFR in the South Chejong province at 1. 03. This is the highest fertility of all of the districts of the province. Well, isn't this

Simone Collins: just the message we've been sharing that You may say, okay, well, South Korea is boned, but all you need is a small number of families with a very high fertility rate.

Theirs isn't crazy high, but still and they will just inherit the future. This is not an everyone has to get involved problem. This is an only people who make children their autistic special interest problem thing. A religious and that's why we

Malcolm Collins: all hold hands as a united team. Now keep in mind this 1.

[00:24:00] 03 number, which is the average for their province can be compared to a, at the time of this national average of 0. 72. Now he notes here, of course, 1. 03 is still abysmal. But in South Korea, anything above 1 is high. Dongil Church has inspired other Korean churches to provide budget child care for members at reduced cost by making use of church facilities, which usually stand idle during weekdays.

As Korea continues to sleepwalk towards extinction, some Korean Christian leaders are stepping up and taking action. These two initiatives are only a drop in the bucket, but they offer hope that increasing fertility rates is not impossible, even in South Korea.

Simone Collins: So. That's really encouraging. That's, that's super encouraging. That, that's also the sign that, okay, I'm taking away a couple of things. One, letting go of tradition, and especially letting go of hard culture. is the death knell to you inheriting the future. Either you can lean into your hard culture [00:25:00] and or adapt it for the present day, or you can create a new hard culture.

But to just give up and or adopt some foreign religion or culture kind of is a cop out to just be like, Well, I'm not my mainstream nation's religion. I'm this hipster version, but also like not really leaning into the ideology of it. It's just not not going to work. But what's also helpful in this is that it's really not about any failure of Christian doctrines or values here.

It's about. This wasn't really Christianity being adopted. It was traditionalism and hard culture being rejected,

Malcolm Collins: right? I disagree to an extent here. I mean, if you know Korean Christians or Taiwanese Christians, they're some of like the most devout Christians I know. Oh,

Simone Collins: performatively, yes.

Malcolm Collins: No, they believe in like young earth and stuff like that, like they're really [00:26:00] traditional.

Well, these are the immigrants to the U. S. who I've met. Now that I remember the statistics that show how non traditional they are within their own countries. Okay, I might be wrong here. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Keep in mind, the Koreans who immigrate to the U. S. have higher birth rates.

Malcolm Collins: So like,

Simone Collins: yeah, I mean, how is that super?

Malcolm Collins: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, okay, okay, okay. So yeah, they're just like the true believers are the ones that I'm interacting with. And in Korea, it might be more of an aesthetic choice, as you mentioned.

Especially in a society that exists. hierarchical, I can really see the choice of, as you've mentioned, it's like, are we getting a Western marriage?

Are we getting a Korean marriage? Are we getting a Western Japanese? Many

Simone Collins: of the aesthetics of Christianity, especially in like a highly structured hierarchical culture, could probably feel very rebellious and refreshing to an outsider who just wants to reject the traditionalism. Because keep in mind, Christianity is about breaking down the hierarchy, you know, this is not about, [00:27:00] like, you know, what he Something about camels and stuff.

Malcolm Collins: Well, a lot of anime has actually bemoaned that their anime like this is making it So I think this was specifically the case was evangelion but I know it's the case with some like classic anime where if you look at older classic anime, they would put Christian tropes throughout the anime of like crucifixions of savior narratives of stuff like this without overtly saying this is like Jesus, just kind of putting it in, putting it in because they thought it was like edgy and cool, like to them, but keep in mind, this is a religion about a guy who died after like being tortured and like, you know, for them, Christianity felt edgy, profane, gothy, maybe a little like, you know, you go to Christian churches and they got all that.

So they, they're seeing Christianity in this way and they're adding it to their works in maybe the way that like you know, [00:28:00] avatar, the last airbender might've added Buddhist elements to try to be like edgy and philosophical. And I've heard interviews in the past with the creators and they're like.

Yeah, if we'd known how popular this would get in the U. S., we might not have done that. Because some of these shows get really popular with like Christian groups that see them as like Narnia or something, you know, like, like, you know, that has explicit and intentional Christian narratives to push a Christian agenda.

Where they didn't mean to do that. They were just trying to be like edgy and gothy and, and, and like, just sort of like choose a foreign philosophy. Which I find pretty interesting,

Simone Collins: no, no reason behind it. Just kind of liking the aesthetics. Like there, there was that issue of a lot of cosplayers and in some Asian countries, just wearing.

Nazi uniforms because they looked cool and they had no idea like just no idea because then I don't know they've got Not I don't think

Malcolm Collins: they care as much if it's Japan. I'm gonna tell you that much They don't have the same memory of that time period that we have

Simone Collins: I was I mean, yeah There were other things happening at that time.

Malcolm Collins: But no, but [00:29:00] also think about like how cool like, okay, I'm making an anime And I can, you know, put characters in like preacher outfits and stuff like that. And this isn't a thing for my culture or my history. They have been much, they, they done this in really big levels that like Western studios don't anymore.

Where like they're coded as like the good guys, because for them, this is like weird and out there. And a good example of this recently. Is fire force. I don't know if you've seen anything. You should google fire force. It has some of the coolest outfits I've ever seen where it is a world that is a combination of firefighter outfits.

What? Is this the one with the ghosts that you've watched? No, it doesn't have ghosts. And catholic preacher outfits. Wait, hold on, I'm looking at it. Go, Fire Force anime.

Simone Collins: Anime.

What?

What?! Like, non firefighter! What is happening? Yeah, like, non firefighter outfit and everything, who also turned into Do they use, like, holy water when they're [00:30:00] dousing the evil demonic fires from buildings?

Why are

Speaker 3: they They create fires themselves and, like, fight other fire things. Anyway, it's awesome. I'm so confused. Like, honestly, the anime, the plot. not that strong. But the, the aesthetics are so beyond top tier that I'm like humbled by look up, look up fire force. None.

But How? He's so steadfast in his faith. He's always in prayer.

Speaker: I'll take care of him.

Speaker 3: Please, keep back

Speaker: sister, the prayer.

Speaker 2: Right, of course. Um, the flame is the soul's breath. The black smoke is the soul's breath. Ashes thou word and art. May thy soul return.

Simone Collins: And yeah, it's like this like metallic reinforced preacher's collar.

What is happening right now? The cross sword. Okay. And it

Malcolm Collins: lights on fire. Oh, well, I

Simone Collins: mean, well, it had better light on fire. Of [00:31:00] course. I love the, the barefoot. Flaming footed firefighter, because it's great to run into a burning building when you're barefoot. But his feet make flames,

Malcolm Collins: sweetheart.

Simone Collins: Well, I'm so glad they do.

Malcolm Collins: He can do, like, fly stuff. It's pretty awesome.

Simone Collins: Sorry. Yeah, the nun outfit is the best. You see what I mean?

Malcolm Collins: Like, you wouldn't get a positively coded faction in Western media being dressed like preachers, by the way, in the game world that we're building right now, so many of the positive factions are descended from religious extremists.

Like one is Catholic religious extremists. One's Mormon religious extremists. We've got Amish, we've got, you know, and, and we really go heavy into the aesthetics and the traditional stereotypes of these communities to build something awesome, because that was something that I loved. From the anime I used to watch as I always mention, one of my [00:32:00] favorite characters in old anime is Wolfwood from Trigun who's catholic preacher themed, and I just like, so cool looking, what, oh, and, and you don't get this in western media anymore.

You used to, in like the 80s, you'd get, you know, catholic vampire hunters, which I always thought looked so cool. Yeah, totally. But you you don't you know, you know, I haven't seen done which could be cool. Maybe I should work on doing this I I have not seen somebody really make Orthodox Christianity look cool?

And I don't know if it's because it's like too bedazzled, but like, there's gotta be a way to do that. Come on! There's no such

Simone Collins: thing in anime as too bedazzled. You don't know

Malcolm Collins: how you make them look cool? Okay. You gotta combine them with, and if you guys haven't seen this you should watch it, it is so much better than the new Dune.

The new Dune is like, bad. Like, I haven't even watched the second one, it's, it's

Simone Collins: Don't! It's just, why did she become a walking eye roll?

Malcolm Collins: The Frank Herbert's Dune miniseries that was made for the Sci Fi [00:33:00] Channel, it is God tier cinema because they made it like a theatrical play instead of like, like if you watch that's what we're

Simone Collins: What's his face just like?

Malcolm Collins: Show but anyway if you if you watch the aesthetics of that Frank Herbert's dune miniseries from the sci fi channel and you combine this with Eastern Orthodox outfits. Oh,

Simone Collins: so like Benny Jezzeret meets Eastern Orthodox.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, I think you could create, well to like, because what you would do is you take the Eastern Orthodox outfits, but you'd have them do the sort of like hand actions that like the guild does when they're talking to people that are like over the top, or the Bini Jesuits, like they have all of these like actions they're supposed to do that like signal stuff and you can Bini Jesuits?

Oh! Yeah, they're like secret. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins: The

Malcolm Collins: secret like code talking to each other all the time while they're having a conversation. And you, and you combine, this was like the [00:34:00] swingy incense things. I don't know. Like Catholics do that too, but like the, the Eastern orthodoxy, you can get some really

Simone Collins: cool, cool stuff.

Well, I want to see an anime character who uses a swingy incense thing as a weapon, you know, like, Oh, this has gotta be a thing. There's gotta, there's gotta be a thing. It's gotta be a thing. And I'm sure that the number of times in history that one of those has been used as a weapon is not zero. Yeah. So, we can rest easy tonight.

Actually, I like that.

Malcolm Collins: That'd be a great weapon for this faction. Like, to wrap it around your hand, to have like a That, oh, that'd be so cool! Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I, no, I love that as a weapon. Or like, a great

Simone Collins: weapon.

Malcolm Collins: Combine them with like, you know, monks. You have like the Shaolin thing, with like the, Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Incense thing. And then you have on the side of it, like spikes. So it's like a flaming. Oh my

Simone Collins: gosh. Yeah. You got the fire. You got the spikes. You know, red, red, hot flaming incense thing. Yeah. You know, it's in people's eyes,

Malcolm Collins: they, they they're leaving the building cause it's like burning down and they got those like over the top outfits was like the [00:35:00] swinging things.

Yeah. That, that'd be cool. Looking for post apocalyptic. And then like in an

Simone Collins: emergency, you're like exploding. Float it into a smoke bomb or something. It'll, yeah, there's just so much you can do. So much. How did we get, what did we, what did we get here?

Malcolm Collins: We were talking about how in East Asia the Christian stuff was seen as like edgy and an

Simone Collins: aesthetic.

An aesthetic flourish, right? Yeah. Sort of cool foreigner stuff.

Malcolm Collins: And I need to make their stuff cool. What else could I do that's cool? You know, you got me thinking here for the game world. You know something I haven't, I was thinking, like, what in the East hasn't been done well in Western media? Because everybody's tried the, like, Buddhist y nonsense.

I actually think that's super weak sauce to, like, include. Everyone's tried the, you know, Shinto stuff. You know what I haven't seen done? And, and a lot of old stuff did Muslim inspired. All Dune is Muslim inspired, first of all, right? Like, that's like, okay, how can we make that edgy? Sikh. Go for an over the top, like, Sikh warrior faction.

Like, the old Sikhs that [00:36:00] are You know, they, gosh, they were so cool. If you read like old accounts of them like one of the ones I remember really vividly is they were hired disproportionately to when the British were fighting Muslims, because I don't want to say that like some parts of Sikh culture were really specialized to fight against Muslim culture which was the dominant.

Alternate culture against them and was quite a martial culture within those regions. And when the British would recruit people to, to go out and fight with them, they would recruit Sikhs for a lot of the senior positions and everything like that. And there was one account where they're walking through a battlefield and one of these guys jumps up, he'd been playing dead from the, the Muslim side.

And the Sikh, like, sort of sidekick to, like, the main British general sliced his head in half. Um, Because he had, you know, they've got those giant swords on them. And Sikhs even have, like, some unique weapon types. I can't remember, but I think the, [00:37:00] the, not just do they have the knife thing, but I think the circular blades might be unique to Sikhs.

Okay, yeah, they're chakrams. So, they're not unique to Sikhs, but they're strongly associated with Sikhs. They are basically like a, a frisbee, like a modern frisbee. Like a circular thing with a hole in the center. But the whole side around it is A blade. And you hold it in your hands, like two circles, and they would fight with these up close

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: throw them like a frisbee at someone, you know, like Oddjob might have one of these.

Gosh. Come on, this is like, I haven't seen this in video games. This is cool.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It seems to be like the least practical weapon in the world because you are Yeah, there's a reason

Simone Collins: why this isn't pervasive. Okay, let's just be But that doesn't mean it's not cool.

Malcolm Collins: I think that they like, built them into their, like, big hair things, which is why they were known for them.

Simone Collins: Hmm. So the portability was favorable.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, you build it into [00:38:00] your outfits, right? You know. Love you to Desimone. This went way off the rails. What's what's in East Asia? That's cool. What could I be picking up from them? That's cool. We have a faction that is descended from Koreans, by the way that I love.

I love them. So this faction, what we did with them is one of the Korean corporations, when they started having fewer and fewer people, they decided, well, we'll just make our own people using you know, tanks that age people. So, so it's. Sort of like artificial wombs that create people at older ages because they don't want to deal with kids, you know They want to create workers but what they ended up doing was creating people who are genetically specialized for roles within the company to create sort of a a version of like The horror of, like, the worst version of a Korean life without certain proteins so they can't easily leave the company.

And the entire company is structured sort of like an ant colony with, like, casts and everything like that. And you have, like, the management cast who is created for this. You have the worker cast. But my favorite thing about this [00:39:00] world is one of the casts is the cast that does all public facing stuff.

Which is a Teen female idol cast. Um, This is all of the females. And they always have to be like signaling and they dress like in super cute outfits all the time. And so they're constantly like, if you go to like a reception desk, that's who's gonna be there. And like all the workers for like every meal, they get like shows of like Korean, like, pop diva type things.

With the understanding that they're all euthanized when they hit the age of, like, 27. Of

Simone Collins: course. Of course.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because they're, you know, that's their purpose. And they're super okay with this. They're like, if you as a player, because I like discussing interesting philosophical concepts, if you discuss, like, isn't this horrible?

They're like, you want me to be old? Yeah, burn bright, die young. Yeah, I mean. Why would you do that to me? Um, Yeah. And if you're like, well, what if you want to be like a mom? They're like, the company makes the people and they'd make people better if they could. Because they've been adapted to not question the company.

It's like a chi, like Yeah, yeah, yeah. Horrifying, like [00:40:00] tribal thing. And I thought this was a really fun faction. That's a very fun concept. I like that. Yeah. Okay. All love you to .

Simone Collins: I love you too. You okay with Dan, Dan Als tonight?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, Dan Dan works for me. Would you like

Simone Collins: me to sauté along with the ground pork peppers and, and garlic?

I'm assuming that would be a plus. Absolutely,

Malcolm Collins: yes. I would like you to sauté that along with the noodles. You are my Princess and I love you and you're perfect.

I love you too. Thank you

for being married And I am totally whipped guys for those guys using I'm too nice to someone some people come to see you too Nice to someone some people say I'm too mean I feel bad when people say I'm too mean But they say I'm too nice.

I'm like I I should be like what look at all the stuff you did for me just today

Simone Collins: What did I do for you today?

Malcolm Collins: You you

Simone Collins: got did you get the chickens? Did you give them water?

Malcolm Collins: I did go to the chickens. I did give them water and I got my hand pecked by one of them b***h. Oh, who was it? It was a, a black one in the, the, the more [00:41:00] crowded, you know, ghetto side of town.

And it went for my finger when I was pouring the water and I had to like, close the gate. I, because I wasn't able to lure them to the other side with scraps this time.

Simone Collins: Oh, I'm sorry. I should have showed you where the big scraps bowl is.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I couldn't have put them outside today anyway, because it was all muddy.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. We don't

Malcolm Collins: want them. Yeah. Yeah. From the melting snow.

Simone Collins: Well, I bet that was Chey. One of the black chickens is Chey and they're like very friendly. But I'm sorry about that. No, it's, there's this one midnight Maran that always goes for me and then it's back to me a bunch of times because she thinks my fingers little sausages.

And she's like. That the midnight

Malcolm Collins: maroon are the black ones, right? They're the ones.

Simone Collins: Oh, sorry. Yeah. I'm Talking about the green eggers. Yeah. Sorry the the the brown ones. There's a great Yeah

Che got you but

Malcolm Collins: I need to remember to do a little clip here

Speaker 5: Hey! Do you want to make a bit of money?

You see that? [00:42:00] It's made of chicken. It's actually made of chicken. You kill it, you've got free chicken. You can sell it to people. Or don't kill it. F*****g eggs come out of their arses. F*****g hell.

Simone Collins: I love them so much. They are wonderful. They're wonderful, beautiful birds.

And they're so friendly and sweet. And I want to be a better mother. That's why we lock our kids in with them

Malcolm Collins: to entertain our kids. Survive, mother f****r!

Simone Collins: But I want to make, I want to make an egg, sorry a chicken tunnel for them. I've seen all over Instagram now, chicken tunnels. So they can run around your property, protected from the eagles.

I'm okay with

Malcolm Collins: making a chicken tunnel. If you want that to be a major project, I think that'd be a lot of fun.

Simone Collins: I think it, yeah, I'm, I'm very much in favor of this so that they can explore the world.

They, they yearn, they yearn for freedom. But also, we have so many predatory

Malcolm Collins: birds. A chicken tunnel, though, is just another avenue for a fox to break in.

Simone Collins: Well, then maybe we can, it's [00:43:00] just that the, the like the hamster balls for chickens, they're really expensive. Like the good ones are 60 plus each.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you're not even going to get time to have them all run around.

Simone Collins: I know each one has to take a turn and like who's time to like Switching that. There's also, we could theoretically construct a mobile coop that you can like wheel around see, it's just like a chicken wire.

Malcolm Collins: Simone, I'm going to tell you something that you may not know.

Simone Collins: They don't care. Is

Malcolm Collins: they're chickens.

They're made of chicken. Your heart is too big. Your heart is too big. It's

not too big. It is just, it is the size of a chicken, small chicken, small chicken, juvenile chicken. All

right. Have a good day. Bye.

Bye. God.

Simone Collins: You know, it really breaks my heart about the fact that like the babies laugh when you tickle their neck is I like fear that it's this [00:44:00] evolved. Trait of babies to like, look extra cute whenever someone's trying to choke them to death.

Could be. I'm like, I'm, I don't like it. I don't like it, but it's also really cute.

And, but they don't seem scared. So you try to choke our baby,

Malcolm Collins: that's what a progressive reporter is going to be

Simone Collins: like. No, I'm just trying to make her laugh. Simone frequently tries to choke child. No, I just, I tickle her. But only like when I touch her on her neck does she think it's ticklish. And, see look at how cute she's being.

Cause, you know, I don't know. You're trying to

Malcolm Collins: kill her with your murder gloves.

Simone Collins: I see

Malcolm Collins: those assassin

Simone Collins: gloves you're wearing. I'm trying to hide the, obviously, like, Completely ruined hands I have right now.

In this episode, the hosts delve into the complex and often controversial topic of gender roles in household and childcare duties. While one host argues that women naturally prefer and are better suited for tasks like cooking, cleaning, and childcare, the other host counters with anecdotal experiences, social expectations, and humor to provide a nuanced view. They cite various studies that suggest women tend to gravitate towards household tasks and enjoy them more, often influenced by both evolutionary and cultural factors. Additionally, the episode explores the disparity in standards between men and women in fulfilling these roles. With a blend of data, personal stories, and humorous insights, this episode examines whether traditional gender roles are a product of innate preferences or societal pressures.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] speaking of childcare duties, I have a big duty in this bears outfit

Malcolm Collins: , okay. I'll let you do the things that you enjoy doing. Have a good time with your little recreational task there.

And I will see you shortly.

Simone Collins: Hello everybody. I am so excited to be speaking with you today Though very conflicted because as a san francisco bay area raised Woman, I was raised in blank slatism and women can do everything in my life should be about having a career and never getting married and never having kids and yet today I am going to argue to you that women have no place to complain that they share an undue burden in household tasks because of one woman.

They choose to do more household tasks than men, and two, they enjoy them more, and this is backed up by both science and humor both of which I think are very legitimate. This

Malcolm Collins: episode is going [00:01:00] to focus on that women Should be in the kitchen.

Even if they have a job, they should also be in the kitchen.

What's worse though,

Simone Collins: is that they, they want to be in the kitchen.

Malcolm Collins: Well, so actually, Shu On Head had a thing about this recently, where she was like, doing an episode, and she let it slip. She goes, you know, all women, and of course, she didn't mean all, she meant most women when, when somebody says this. But she was definitely speaking about herself.

They go, they want a man to take care of them and support their babies. And I've like,

Simone Collins: I can't believe she said that. Like, honestly, that's, I mean, it takes balls to come out and say that as anyone.

Malcolm Collins: Right. I mean, this episode is definitely going to be one where the you know, like Funday, Friday type people, the people who love to criticize conservatives for saying what is reasonable and statistics based because they're like, no, but we should all live in a fantasy world that doesn't exist.

And again, to clarify what she's saying here is women shouldn't feel [00:02:00] forced into these positions. However, creating societal expectations around women not taking these positions, which we have done as a society right now where it is as a woman, you feel bad. If you are doing too much of this stuff, you are being a trad wife.

And many women are like, I would never, it's a white, white nationalist to be a trad wife, right. To, to, to cook meals and do the dishes and dress well. And you know, so they, they are going to feel bad and feel this cognitive dissonance. Yeah, but then

Simone Collins: the problem is that the converse of this, let's say that a woman like politically is like, okay, well, we have to split everything 50 50 just to make things right and proper as they should be, they'll be less happy.

Because they'd rather do

Malcolm Collins: a lot of these things

Simone Collins: by the statistics and again, not

Malcolm Collins: every

Simone Collins: woman, not everyone we're talking about, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but you'll also see going into what some of these household labor tasks are that like most women would be like, Oh, but well, I, I want to do that, like, you know, home aesthetics decorating for [00:03:00] Christmas.

Women are like, Oh, I mean, you know, like they'll be like, Oh, it's such a struggle. You know, I'm just decorate for Valentine's day, but like, and shopping, Oh God, I'm so sorry. You don't want to go shopping anymore. That's okay. That's okay.

Malcolm Collins: Simone get into the data.

Simone Collins: Yes. So big hat tip to Diana Fleishman for cluing us into this.

The, the research that we're looking at this for the research, research portion of this episode is a paper called gendered perspectives on sharing the load, men's and women's attitude toward. Family Roles in Household and Child Care Tasks, one, they just sort of note the general research that in broadly, acknowledges this to be a truth universal that there's this like sort of mismatch between labor and desires. They cite, for example, Miller 2020 in that young people today are holding onto traditional views about who does what at home.

And young people are no more likely than older couples to divide household chores equitably. So both young and old people are still kind of [00:04:00] Attracted to these traditional roles, which should be surprising to people they, they also site Steve Stewart Williams, who's really, I think, active on Twitter and really interesting that selection has equipped human family females with not only the physiological apparatus for maternal care boobs and vaginas, I guess.

But also the psychological drives that are necessary to operate it successfully. That is strong communal tendency. So women also kind of have evolved the tendency to want to take these tasks on. They,

Malcolm Collins: and let's be clear about what is, is meant here because this is clearly seen across studies that women perform and feminists will laud.

Oh, women perform better at emotional tasks. Women are better in group dynamics. Yeah, but once it has

Simone Collins: to do with like home labor, they're like, But, but, they also, they, they cite Wood and Eagley in 2002 research they point out this isn't just like across studies, this is across cultures. Females engage in more childcare than males do in every human [00:05:00] culture for which they're reliable data.

So this isn't like a United States thing, it's not a trad European thing. It's not a Chinese thing or a Mongolian thing or a Nigerian thing. It is. It's a thing. You know, a man woman thing. It also they cited from Brennan some 2020 research so fairly recent national data indicated that women are more likely 44 percent more likely than men at 25 percent to say that given the freedom to do either they would prefer to stay at home.

to take care of the house and family rather than work outside the home. So there's also this greater interest among women. So this is sort of the premise into which the researchers were coming into this. They're like, the actions have stated that women are gravitating toward the home and they're gravitating toward childhood.

What they wanted to explore was, well, okay, so women spend more time on household labor and childcare. Is this a product of their preference? Because normally people are like, Oh, it's culture. It's obligation. It's because they have tits and the [00:06:00] kids need to breastfeed. So of course they stay home. Well, what they did was survey 323 emerging adults.

So like young adults and 113 middle aged adults that probably being on email about one, how much they like, or dislike 58 different household tasks. and 40 childcare tasks to how they prefer to split up each task with a partner. Like, would you rather have your husband do this or your wife do this?

And three, how their ideal prioritization of work and family will play out. And basically they found across both younger adults and middle aged adults that men more than women liked tasks involving outdoor labor and home fixes and maintenance. And these effects were large. We'll, we'll look at the tables together.

And two, there was not a single childcare task that men liked more than women did.

Malcolm Collins: So Fascinating! Well, here's what people say, they'll say that women, they may have liked these tasks more than men, but they must have not liked them on average. Well,

Simone Collins: no, but the problem, like I said earlier, like, there are a bunch of these tasks in here and we'll look at some of the [00:07:00] tables where I'm like, I don't even think of these things as like, like scheduling.

Shopping, emotional support, like these are like, I don't, I, I wouldn't Women complain about

Malcolm Collins: emotional support being labor all the time, Simone, but let's get into the, let's get into the charts. I'll go into the, that's something, yo, they're always like, when they're talking about like a husband paying a housewife and they're trying to break out everything a housewife can pay.

Oh god, yeah, the emotional labor! They're always like, being a psychologist or you know. It's like, well, you're not being a good psychologist, you know?

Simone Collins: Well, okay, what we can look at here is figure one from the research which I sent you via WhatsApp of how emerging and middle aged adults felt about various tasks.

So you're going to see, there's this, this spectrum of going to hate it versus going to love it. That's broken down by men and women. Now, there are some things that. Both men and women are not really into thing number one being disciplining children, both men and women lean toward going to hate it, but actually [00:08:00] men, which this actually surprised me, men are going to hate discipline more than women.

Like women are more chill about discipline. What do you think's going on there, Malcolm? This is, you know, it's with younger men. Middle aged men actually are neutral, which is interesting. What, do they like grow balls when they grew older or something? No, I think

Malcolm Collins: it's this younger generation of men has been raised to be very afraid of doing anything that they see as violent.

Because they're all

Simone Collins: seeing therapists. That's got to be it.

Malcolm Collins: Not just that, but the stigmatization of a men. A man in any way touching a child in a way that could be seen as like disciplinary. This isn't even corporal punishment that this could be like,

Simone Collins: right, right.

Malcolm Collins: But engaging was, I mean, remember I've had crowds freak out on me for just being turned with my kids.

They,

they, they are taught that because they are men, they are not allowed to engage with children in this way. And they face negative repercussions for it in society. And I think that that's what you're seeing in this chart right here. Yeah. And then we have a seeing in the older crowd is [00:09:00] that men historically did take on this role of discipline and we're

Simone Collins: more okay with it.

Whereas when, and it's

Malcolm Collins: interesting here, if you looked at this historic men disciplining children, that was out of everything in the entire chart that, that, that if you're looking at like the average hate amount, because people were like, well, women don't like doing these things on average. It's just, they like doing them more than men.

Yeah. No, that's not actually true. Women do like doing these things on average, and the only one where both men and women dislike doing it on average, men are the one who adopt the responsibility. This is child care. The, the, the one potential alternative You mean discipline?

Simone Collins: You mean to this one.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it's scheduling and coordination.

Where women in here, I'm looking at the older age range where, where women do take it on. It's interesting that the older men are like, I freaking hate

Simone Collins: scheduling. That is so you Malcolm. That is incredibly you. There's one other area where, and this is only for middle aged adults. Men are more excited about a child care related task than [00:10:00] women, that is to say like more men, slightly on average, reported they were going to love cognitive support than younger women.

Here's my take on this, is when we're looking at emerging adults, they have younger children. And when we're looking at middle aged adults, they're more likely to have kids who are seven years old, 13 years old. And I kind of feel like men get more excited about providing emotional support and like mentoring to kids once they get older.

What's your thought there? Do you think that resonates? The

Malcolm Collins: what? Women? The

Simone Collins: reason why men are slightly more excited, middle aged men are slightly more excited about cognitive support than women in this study is because specifically they have older kids by the time they're middle aged.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I imagine. I really like interacting with older kids at a cognitive level.

And I. No, from a lot of men I talk to, they do too. Like when a kid hits that like 10 year old range they become really, really smart. No, like

Simone Collins: 7 to 10, that's when they're brilliant. [00:11:00] Before puberty hits, when they're still like really, really smart. I think that's the, that's the sweet spot. But yeah, I mean, I, I thought, but like you look down here, so scheduling and coordinating, shopping, like.

This is, you know, it's such like women, I feel like most women would be like really pissed if they like, if they were blocked from doing this, they would act as though it was an act of like disempowerment. My God, if you managed our schedule, I don't know if we'd have a marriage, you know? Because I freak out when people do any of that.

So, I thought that was really interesting. I'm checking figure two to see if there's Okay, yeah, actually, so it's, it's interesting. If you look at figure two, you'll see how the emerging and middle aged participants of this research wanted to divide labor. You know, if women, you can sort of see where women wanted men to do more stuff. Actually. Wow. The only time women want men [00:12:00] to do a childcare task more than themselves. Is with discipline when they're younger

We're looking now at figure two which shows the share of work essentially that Each person wants the other partner to do either like I always want myself to do this or I always want my partner to do this the only instance In which women and this in this case is only young women would slightly prefer that their partner always do something is discipline This is the same cohort where actually the men but the men are willing

Malcolm Collins: to take on the task if you see younger and older men are willing to take on the task of discipline, um And, and yeah, so that is really fascinating that the only in the task that nobody wants to do that men end up doing it and that in the test that most people want to do.

It's just that women want to do them more.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And, and men, men for the rest of things also like would prefer that their partner. It was slightly not hugely that they would, men would prefer that their partner do [00:13:00] the scheduling and the shopping this, this preference actually increases with age for men.

Yeah. And then the preference of the opposite direction, women being like, no, I really want to do this scheduling and shopping also increases with gravity. As age increases with the rest of things like nighttime care, emotional support, the preference for self versus partner is actually quite slight, but when it comes to scheduling and coordinating and shopping it's very interesting to see that as people get older, they're more like set in their gender roles, which is super interesting.

As a side note here, I really think all of this needs to be considered in the context of the famous paper, The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, , that looked at how, as women received, quote unquote, more rights, or as feminism, quote unquote, was winning more, Females, when compared to men, became less satisfied with their lives.

Specifically, if you go back to the 1970s, females were significantly more satisfied with their [00:14:00] lives than men, and as time goes on, both male and female satisfaction begins to drop, but female satisfaction drops further, to the point where, in the 1990s, women were both on a net unhappy with their lives and dramatically less happy with their lives than men were. While there are many explanations for this, the stats that we're talking about here could explain this. Specifically, women are forcing themselves to do things they don't like because it creates cognitive dissonance with the female ideal of what a woman should like to do or be.

Malcolm Collins: No, this next one I find interesting. The

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because it looks at how much they enjoy various tasks and here we're seeing a number of tasks that men prefer to do and

Simone Collins: now we're switching from childcare to household tasks. So we're looking at things like home fixes and maintenance, outdoor labor, finances, indoor cleaning, gardening, food, prep, family scheduling and home aesthetics.[00:15:00]

Malcolm Collins: And you, you see that men really prefer to do tasks, like, and, and do enjoy tasks. And women disenjoy these tasks. Huh. Like home maintenance and fixing. Huh. Outdoor labor. Huh. And finances. Finance isn't really,

Simone Collins: essentially young women, especially. We're gonna hate managing finances and men kind of hate it but probably then I guess would end up doing more of it and then you get to middle age men actually don't seem to hate managing finance as much maybe because they like get more wealthy.

I kind of feel like it's because they're further on in their career. It's less about managing debt and more about managing wealth.

Malcolm Collins: I, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's because they are more old school just because they're older and they grew up in a different generation where there was a stigma around that.

As we filled out historically, women often manage the family's finances. Yeah.

Simone Collins: That's what this, this really surprised me. Like the one thing that I expected to be a woman's thing. For sure was finances and I also had thought of it as a traditional thing just like you did So I was quite surprised by this what's

Malcolm Collins: [00:16:00] really interesting here is if you look at the Things that women are doing versus things that men are doing like the things that men are doing specifically like home maintenance

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: outdoor labor.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: this is stereotypical male labor This is the patriarchy they would say dividing a house in the way that is the default preference for both parties Is, as the one reporter who did the piece on us, like, oh my god, I can't believe, you know, she's so oppressed, she's so living this horrible life, and all of this hatred is just people, you know, as I said, I think it's against Quote unquote tradwives I think in the looser sense rather than the very strict, if you, if you tradwife, then everything will be okay, which I'm against.

But the idea of a traditional gender structure in a household, which they'll call tradwives is so, deleterious to them.

Simone Collins: Mm hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And likely, I mean, if you look at this chart of [00:17:00] preferences, if you're like, huh, why do progressives have such higher rates of mental illness and also experiment with ways of structuring their family that don't lean into the traditional gender roles?

This very chart explains that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like they're, they're actively choosing to not do stuff that they'd probably love doing, which is.

Malcolm Collins: Here's one that did surprise me. Gardening. Gardening. What, you thought that'd be a dude thing?

Simone Collins: It becomes a dude

Malcolm Collins: thing with age. Yeah, it does become a dude thing with age.

Yeah, I think Winston Churchill

Simone Collins: had his whole gardening era. His gardening and painting era, didn't he?

Malcolm Collins: People who don't know, I'm big into gardening. I could tell you so much about gardening.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I'm negative on gardening. Yeah, there's some things here where I'm like, I don't know, but like, whatever. I'm trying to think, like, to my traditional tropes on gardening, and it was traditionally more of a male pursuit.

All the, like, landscaping architects I can think of historically were male. Then there's Winston Churchill, and even in storybooks like Peter Rabbit, it's [00:18:00] Mr. McGregor's garden. All right? Mrs. McGregor may have, have, have cooked Peter Rabbit's father into a stew, but it was Mr. McGregor. who is tending to his cabbages, all right?

You know, and he was the one who killed Peter Rabbit's father.

Malcolm Collins: He was out in the garden. Here's what I wonder about this, because this actually is interesting to me, because gardening falls as outdoor labor. I would actually guess that these numbers are not wrong. If I'm thinking from an evolutionary perspective, women were much more likely to stay at home while men went out on big risk, big reward things, whether that was raiding other settlements or going on big game hunts, et cetera.

You're talking about like the vast majority of human evolution, which women would have been tending the farm more.

Simone Collins: Yeah, like, well, so, oh, yeah, great example. Abigail Adams, right? I mean, John Adams was like never home for a huge portion of his career within France. He was out in meetings. He was like forming America and she was holding out in the fort, you know, [00:19:00] getting experimental smallpox vaccines and taking care of their land.

I'm sure they had some staff, but like still I don't know. But anyway it's, it, yeah, there's some surprises here, but most of it makes sense. You know, men take to the outside, they fix the big stuff. Women like this granular stuff. Food prep to me is kind of interesting because when you look at the food industry, like when it comes to high cuisine most famous chefs and sous chefs and whatnot are like, are male.

And I, I've always seen kitchens from like a commercial standpoint as being a highly masculine environment. So I don't know, when I think about cooking, I actually really, really think about men, but maybe that's only elite cooking. Basic cooking is a woman thing. I don't know. I don't know. My dad cooked a ton at home.

And also, interestingly, my dad did all the shopping. So And a lot of the cleaning, too. And he's not a girly man. So, I don't know. Of course, caveat, caveat, all of this is on average. Everyone deviates a little bit. No one adheres to this, like, completely. But at the same time, Malcolm's point [00:20:00] stands. Which is that, like, a lot of people who politically avoid leaning into these things, because they feel like ideologically it's wrong or that they're all societal fantasies and not actual inbuilt tendencies and preferences are going to make themselves more miserable.

And it's maybe showing up in the mental health data that we're facing. So, when you, when you look, so now we can look at finally figure four, which is sort of showing how people wish to divide these tasks. And it's very clear. That women really prefer that men do the home maintenance and finance or and home fixes and maintenance and men are like, yeah, I prefer to do it.

Same with outdoor labor similar with finances, which is interesting. I mean, our reversal there is that I do all the finances. You do all the deciding, but I do all the execution. So maybe it's mixed.

Malcolm Collins: Are you looking at another? I'm looking at figure

Simone Collins: 4. Yeah. Figure 4 is the last figure here. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And this is about preferred task split.

Yeah. They have much higher preference here.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. The one area where there's a really profound [00:21:00] difference in age is that young or emerging adults are well, at least young men are far less likely to be like, I'm only going to have my wife decorate and do home aesthetics. I think men are getting more interested in, in home aesthetics like in younger generations and women have both young and older women are more like.

Already entrenched in their feeling of ownership of home aesthetics. I actually

Malcolm Collins: feel like the home aesthetics is about men conceding over time.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah, it's just like over time, it's like, I'm gonna give up, like she's, she's got this Christmas thing and I'm not gonna get in the way of it.

Malcolm Collins: She wants do Y, I do not care about this particular battle.

But here's where I

Simone Collins: get kind of confused, it's like, there were these stereotypes of what is it, the so and so's family Christmas, the van, Whatever. Come on. Like, what's the, like, with the guy getting electrocuted by Christmas lights and being obsessed with setting up with the Christmas lights. Like, there is a common American trope of dad being obsessed with [00:22:00] Christmas decorations.

And that's where I'm getting a little confused by this. You've seen

Malcolm Collins: National Lampoon's Family Vacation, but they never they never did, the men didn't decorate. He'd do like outdoor decoration, like the Ah, so that falls under

Simone Collins: home maintenance and fixes. Okay. All right. All right. Well, that explains it. He

Malcolm Collins: clearly did it as like a home maintenance type of project, not as an indoor decoration type of project.

Simone Collins: Okay. That's That's fair. That's fair.

Malcolm Collins: So I, I think that what you're seeing here is just the typical retreat of the male.

Simone Collins: Yeah, everything makes sense. And I, I think that this, this this study is good. And basically the, the finding that they had that is really important and a great contribution to the research is this isn't just societal.

This isn't just the fact that like, men are stronger. So lifting trees outdoors is easier and women have breasts. So it's easier to stay at home and. And feed the Children, right? It's it's also that they kind of prefer these things. And I think that's a really helpful finding. But I think there are many more elements to this.

[00:23:00] That have been missed and that you can find using a version of natural experiment that I May overweigh in terms of my standard of evidence. You can tell me if you agree with this, but no That's not

Malcolm Collins: overweight memes are not overweight

Simone Collins: Here's my thing just let me make my pitch to you based campers out there listening somewhere.

I think that If there is a joke online or a meme online and it has a lot of likes or a lot of views, that means that it indicates a level of truth that really resonates with people. And it wouldn't get a lot of traction if it wasn't, like, true. Because Malcolm's theory, which I think is very, very robust about humor, is that we laugh at things because it's kind of surprising or unexpected, but it totally makes sense.

So I think that there's a bunch of, like, sort of, very common joke tropes that I keep seeing. On, I mean, I, I'm only looking at like YouTube shorts and Instagram reels, but they're also on Tik Tok because they're originally from Tik Tok that I think are really indicative of additional reasons [00:24:00] why women disproportionately do childcare and household labor.

So I'm going to start off by sending you. A clip from Micah and Sarah.

Speaker 5: Hi! Oh, come on in. How are the travels? Good. This is our place. Sorry, it's a little messier than usual.

Speaker 6: We need to set unrealistic expectations of how we live! This place needs to be spotless! Everything needs to go! Everything needs to go!

There should be no trash in the trash can. I want them questioning if the bin is even real.

Malcolm Collins: Oh gosh, that is So you, when we Not when we have guests over, when we have the cleaner over. Like, we don't have a cleaner, but we have occasionally splurged on a cleaner, like once every three years or something. And you will have a spasm about the house not being clean enough No, I mean, also

Simone Collins: when we have guests.

But like, yeah, no, I, this is, and here's, here's the truth that I think this reveals because this so resonates and [00:25:00] I mean, I'm not alone, like, this has been liked by over 140, 000 people women fear judgment more. This was not captured in the research. Women are like, they do not want to be judged. Like, they don't want, yeah, like, I know this feeling of like, I don't want anyone to think that I've ever used my trash can.

Like, this is, this is an embarrassment. Like, and even when we have guests, I'm like, Oh my God, like, I can't believe they can see that. But

Malcolm Collins: why can't you apply logic to that and be like, I can't.

Simone Collins: I can't. And that's, that's one of those other things that I think is inbuilt. Like there are these inbuilt preferences.

And I think, again, when women actually She's saying

Malcolm Collins: is that women lack a capacity for rationality. They are panicky, irrational beings. They should be kept in cages like little birds. Or they'll, or their little hearts will beat till they die. This trust is real though.

Simone Collins: Like, I, I, I, I cannot deal with it.

And so, like, yes, I think, [00:26:00] but I think this is a very important factor that is underrated that again would explain this and. It's not something that women can help. It also means that like kind of women have to, if you want, if you want to not feel the pain, you're going to have to do some more work cleaning.

I don't know what to tell you. So, but, but this isn't just a loss of rationality. And I'm going to give you two examples with this, which just kind of exemplify that both especially with childcare, but also with health. Women just don't want to deal with the fallout. So here is clip one for you to take a look at.

Speaker 3: This is the um, uh, Um, Uh, transcript. Okay, so, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh.

Simone Collins: So, I mean, we've had days like this. In fact, I might send you a clip of like that video I took of you just after a couple of hours of you watching the kids. And what the room looked like. I think it's accurate. Like, and that's just a tickle. Sitting

Malcolm Collins: back

Simone Collins: watching TV. I'm like,

Malcolm Collins: Hey, the kids are

Simone Collins: fine.

On the [00:27:00] ground. Like the floor is just covered with stuff. Yeah. I, I think maybe the kids

Malcolm Collins: are alive and I'll clean up what you want me to.

Simone Collins: But yeah, I mean, like, that's the thing is, is women don't want to deal with the fallout. And also men and women have like distinctly different parenting styles. And I think sometimes women are just like, what the kids need now is not daddy parenting.

So I'm going to give you another clip that I think exemplifies that.

Malcolm Collins: Take a look. Let me know.

Speaker 7: Goes, where the day flows? Shake that white ass like a mother

Malcolm Collins: This is very long at bedtime. Huh. Yeah. You always get so mad at me at bedtime, you're like, you just got the wrong dump! Yeah. For people who are watching this on audio, the mom's like kneeling and like rubbing the baby's head and whispering to it and the dad's twirling it around in the covers. Yeah, like, like a theme park ride.

I do know that when I'm with the kids at night, they're always like 20 times more excited by the end of that. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm like, can you please

Malcolm Collins: put the

Simone Collins: kids [00:28:00] to bed? And then they're like, ahhh! And I'm, I'm downstairs leading a revolution. Yeah. And I can, I can like literally feel the house shake as they, you know, so I think that this is another factor as proven by views of humorous videos of why women sometimes just choose to take on the burden, even when they don't want to, they're like, I just, I don't want to deal with the fallout.

So there's this social judgment. Here,

Malcolm Collins: where if you are saying to the man, well, then you should do it in a way where the wife doesn't have to deal with the fallout. The problem is, is the fallout that she is afraid of having to deal with is, is not an intrinsically negative outcome. It is only negative from the perspective of a feminine preference.

I am not having a bad time. The kids are clearly loving it.

Simone Collins: They're thrilled. They're having a great time. It's just. The mother, unless she's responsible for cleaning up. Although, I will pause it. I will submit [00:29:00] for the jury's consideration another exhibit, which is that men sometimes just literally have such low standards that even if they tried to meet women's standards, like they would fail.

And I think this exemplifies your standards with cleanliness quite well. So I'm just going to have you take a look at this YouTube short here.

Speaker 2: This is how a woman can tell if their, if their clothes are clean. They're clean. Some men do it. Oh yeah, it's clean.

Simone Collins: Do you catch it? So this is a man saying how men and women, just if you're listening audio only. Seeing how things are clean, he, he pulled and like it's clearly a man in his own environment because he's in this filthy room. He pulls like a garment out of a drawer and like looks at and he's like, it's clean.

And that's how like women judge that something's clean. And then he picks like some kind of garment off the floor, sniffs it. Then, like, some, like, kind of, like, dripping piece of mucus attaches to his face from the garment, and he's like, It's clean. And that is, that is you with clothing. Like, you, [00:30:00] you, you, obviously, it's stained.

If

Malcolm Collins: they smell bad, they're not clean. If the clothes still smell good, then it's clean. This is not even about cleanliness. This is about the purpose of washing clothing and the, the lifetime value of clothing because clothing falls apart if you wash it too frequently. So you really should buy, if you buy cheap clothing on Shein, which we don't do.

No, no, no. This is true of. All this is true of a nice suit. This is true of jeans. This is true of everything. Everything has a shelf life.

If

you just wash something, whenever you feel like it, you might as well be lighting clothes on fire. That is a completely wasteful action.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You know what? There, there used to be this kid in my, in my middle school class.

Really, really nice guy. Everyone can hated him. And you know why? Because he smelled

Malcolm Collins: so bad.

Simone Collins: Because he wasn't smelling

Malcolm Collins: the clothing, as I pointed out. This is why you need to

Simone Collins: smell. [00:31:00] That's the purpose of cleaning.

Malcolm Collins: I think he would smell

Simone Collins: lunch too. And he took, he took showers like multiple times every day.

But he wanted his, his nice sports clothing to stay clean.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: and this is my, this is why you smell so, you know, but I think I don't, I don't think he was

Simone Collins: able to smell

Malcolm Collins: it.

Simone Collins: That's the thing. Smell tests only work. Sorry. Hold on. Smell tests only work when you're not smell blind. Malcolm. So I'm just saying, listen, I'm sorry. The audience for the most part has been, and of course I will say there are many exceptional Male outliers on this.

I, I, I had friends in college. Who, okay, admittedly had severe OCD, but were way cleaner than I was. So, I mean, yes, there are absolutely men who are clean. But, yeah, anyway, I will also say, though, and I think this is a really interesting example, like, given these tropes of men, and given that some men are actually exceptionally clean, or good at doing household tasks and [00:32:00] organizing, that just like with sex, we talk about how, for example, there's sort of like a market shortage of dominance.

So if you're willing to be a dom as a male or a female, you kind of have a huge advantage on sexual marketplaces. What we're seeing is actually a similar thing here in some circumstances, that actually being a man who organizes and cleans up and like, I

Malcolm Collins: disagree on this in the extreme. You are now taking the jobs that females have a stated and shown preference for having.

Simone Collins: I disagree. So let me, let me at least submit to your consideration. An Instagram account, he, I think he's also on YouTube. This is a guy named Mason Smith. There is a

Malcolm Collins: reason that the metrosexual male did not last.

Simone Collins: This is the guy named Mason Smith, he goes by Dad Social, that's his tag.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, okay, okay.

And I'm

Simone Collins: sending you like one example of like a typical clip he does.

Speaker 9: The look on her face at the end is what my dreams are made of. Now recently my wife's been talking about how she wants to get into cooking more and I thought this [00:33:00] was the perfect place to start.

Simone Collins: And what, what makes a Mason Smith have a big audience basically it's, you know how like there's been all these jokes that like women porn is like men being like, I'm going to listen to you and nod and say, Oh, that sounds terrible and not give any advice.

Speaker 11: Hello there. Well, hello. How was your day? Do you need to talk? Cause I'll just listen patiently and say things like, Uh huh. How annoying. She's clearly jealous of you. And well, it's his loss. FoR just 24. 95 an hour.

Speaker 12: Yes, please.

Speaker 11: It's the yellow button, sweetie.

Simone Collins: We're like, I

Malcolm Collins: understand that this is women porn. I understand that women watch this and think. Oh, this is so great to watch cause I like watching unattractive man. And I like watching organizing stuff. This is not who women like to marry.

[00:34:00] You

are conflating two incorrect things. You are the guy who is watching the girl on the stripper pole and seeing all the other guys like being like, Whoa, she'd make a great wife.

And the guy next to him was like, no, she wouldn't. She is literally the antithesis of what would make a good wife. And every other guy in this room knows that. And you're saying he's like, he's a, she's a fantasy.

Simone Collins: Cause these are two things at once. Like. A fit male plus doing, doing a thing that women like anyway.

Okay. Well, this kind of actually, this, this, this, this actually does dovetail with my final argument which is that women are this, I think there, there might be some kind of and we talk about this again in the pragmatist guide to sexuality, this concept of super stimuli. We're like, let's say that like a bird has evolved over time.

To sit on blue objects because it's eggs happen to be blue and it needs to evolutionarily like someone's nest. So, you know, the eggs can incubate properly. But then if you give it like blue rocks that are [00:35:00] more blue than its own eggs, it's going to sit on those blue rocks. So that's a super similar life.

And I kind of have this feeling that there are some forms of cleaning related social media that indicate the presence of a, like a, a instinctual. Super singular

Malcolm Collins: and I bet you that no male watches these.

Simone Collins: I know. I know. Well, then are you familiar with clean talk?

Malcolm Collins: No. Okay. No, no male is familiar with clean talk because women are programmed to clean the house.

I'm sorry. I don't mean to be like, look at a woman could be like, this is a very offensive thing to say. And I'd say, well, then give me the gender breakdown on who watches clean talk. And they're like, well, that doesn't count. And I'm like, how does that not count? Women? I know, I know,

Simone Collins: I know. I, I, so I've, I've given you an example of what clean talk looks like.

It's, it's from a YouTube short, I don't have to talk. So that's why it's, it is actually one of tick tocks, largest and fastest growing communities. It has the hashtag clean talk has amassed over 150. [00:36:00] Billion views making it one of the platform's most popular genres and adjacent head tag hashtags like hashtag cleaning Have 63.

2 billion views Hashtag cleaning hacks has 11. 4 billion. 〈

Speaker 4: Rubber Banding Sound〉 〈Splashing Sound〉 〈Rubber Banding

Simone Collins: Views For

Malcolm Collins: somebody who enjoys cleaning and so yeah, I mean it's also like

Simone Collins: this this this is very much like To me, a sign of demonstrated, instinctual, like, like almost porn level reaction to a stimulus of like, Oh, clean. This is porn. You are gaining nothing from watching this.

But that's, but the important thing is that porn is related to a deeply, that instinctual. And I, I'm arguing that [00:37:00] here is proof that cleaning for women is also a deeply set institution. And so

Malcolm Collins: I

Simone Collins: am doing you a

Malcolm Collins: favor when I allow you to, to, to burden me with not having to clean the house. And you in your spare time, instead of learning something new about the world, instead of exploring reality or politics or what's happening in society.

I can't respond to

Simone Collins: the fact that from my Raynaud's in the cold, my fingers are so swollen that I can barely strip a bed from sheets. And you

Malcolm Collins: are, you are watching other women and men. Clean things, recreationally, and yet there are women out there who do not use the privilege I bestow to you of cleaning our house.

Simone Collins: Lucky me. [00:38:00] I want to say a huge thanks to Diana Fleishman for sending us this topic. She is the best and also getting us in

Malcolm Collins: trouble with all of these, these, these, these, the fascist wokies

Simone Collins: she has a book coming out, how to train your boyfriend, which she is finishing in mere days, Diana Dave, and I'm sure as soon as you've been

Malcolm Collins: pushing her on this,

Simone Collins: she's going to finish it in mere days.

And you should, you know, look out for a pre order and make a pre order. It's going to be a spicy and delicious book on how to manipulate men. From a science based perspective, you know, none of this old, you know, Well, everyone knows

Malcolm Collins: you are the true master at male manipulation. Everyone always asks, Oh, who wears and they, and the dad saves America show.

We're both talking to you. Who wears the pants in that relationship and in the car is the

Simone Collins: ironic thing, though, like my autistic mind always goes immediately to like, well, what's the empirical proof? Let's [00:39:00] be honest, Malcolm. You like to go commando in our house all the time, even when it's 50 degrees in the house.

I actually think I spend more hours per day on average wearing pants because I always wear pants in the winter. That is true! I am naked

Malcolm Collins: a

Simone Collins: great deal of the time in

Malcolm Collins: the

Simone Collins: winter. A prodigious amount! Which, you know, I mean, you have a lot to show off. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna complain. But, I literally wear pants for more hours per day.

Of, of the year. This is

Malcolm Collins: Uncontestable. This is Uncontestable. If you, if you know our house I care even, even when I'm like forced to like go down and handle the kids or something, I throw on a bathrobe. Yeah. No

Simone Collins: pants. No pants. No pants. Who wears the house? Who wears the pants in this household? It is correct.

Internet rumor confirmed. Confirmed. I'm whipped.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway I love you and I appreciate that you studied and learned that I force nothing on you. I only give you what you would already prefer. [00:40:00] I did not brainwash my wife. She brainwashed herself by reading research. That is. The, I think honestly, if we want feminism and the patriarchy to die, the first thing we need to torture science because the trans community started this trend.

We need to move it to the other, other parts of the, the urban monoculture, other parts of the woke mob got to take a flamethrower and just. Blowtorch science or we'll call it corrective research. We're just like nothing. It's more white supremacists in science, to be honest.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, like who started it?

Well, a bunch of landed gentry white dudes. You know, what was it called? The association of science.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and here it is science today. Still, when you collect data empirically showing that women and men prefer traditional gender roles cross cultures rules.

Simone Collins: Not a good look, huh?

Malcolm Collins: I love it [00:41:00] when people are like, well, the men and women are acculturated to this.

So my wife is so acculturated to liking cleaning that she just watches it for fun in her spare time.

Simone Collins: But here's the thing is I grew up. Being a blank slate is and also living in a household that was not normative from this perspective because my dad did the majority of the shopping, at least half of the cooking and a lot of the indoor cleaning, like maybe, maybe an equal share.

And he was actually very meticulous about it. Like, he was the one who was conceding about the way that the shirts had to be folded and all this. So I, I, it's not like I even normalized to like, some kind of cultural thing. Like, I, I would have normalized to expecting men to like, do all these things. So, yeah, I, I, I just, I have to concede.

On average, women just prefer this stuff. And then I think humor demonstrates furthermore that women also have additional social sensitivities that make them more likely to have proclivities to clean and do child care. Plus they don't want to deal with the [00:42:00] male fallout because men also just have lower standards.

And that's my thing is whenever we talk to the press about like, Male and female equality. Is it like actually most men are willing to step up to do these things. They might not love it, but they're willing to step up. Women are not willing to accept their work. And I think that's the bigger issue is, is the husbands are like, yeah, sure.

Like whatever it takes. But then like women are like. You call this acceptable. This is not acceptable. So

Malcolm Collins: And that's the fault of female neuroses.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and like, either you get to have to, like, lower your standards for house care and child care, or you've got to do it yourself. And I prefer to do it myself.

Not lower your standards.

Malcolm Collins: And this is the, this is, this is the psychological trick for women. What are you, okay,

Simone Collins: what?

Malcolm Collins: I have different standards for childcare and home care than you have. I care about things that you may not be paying attention to. Like, for example, washing clothing less so it stays good longer.

Oh, yes. [00:43:00] Varnishing the floor less so that you don't strip the top layer off. It's historic, after all. What about the lead

Simone Collins: dust, Malcolm?

Malcolm Collins: All of this stuff. Remember when

Simone Collins: Aladdin came to our house and he's like, the only reason why your children are not developmentally delayed is that your wife diligently wetmops your floors.

Come on, Malcolm. Give me some credit.

Malcolm Collins: Wetmopping? You know that lead dust is better handled by Swiffering. I told you No, no, no. It's very different.

Simone Collins: Power mopping is where the water goes on and it gets sucked back up. If you're just taking like a cloth and swashing it around, that's no good. But if you're doing what I'm doing, which is basically combining them up with a vacuum where the water goes down, gets brushed on the floor and it gets sucked back up, that is the best thing you can do.

This sounds like a fantasy to me. Malcolm, you could call Aladdin.

Malcolm Collins: He was

Simone Collins: my wingman. Ah, anyway speaking of childcare duties, I have a big duty in this bears outfit to go wipe off. And then we're going to do another episode. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, okay. I'll let you do the things that you enjoy doing. [00:44:00] Have a good time with your little recreational task there.

And I will see you shortly.

I feel like she hates

him!

This is what hatred looks like! I have

Simone Collins: no

idea how humans work!

Simone Collins: And before I forget, guys. Marge is right around the corner. NatalCon is about to be happening and there are still some spaces left. So if you're keen to join us, hang out with some really cool pronatalists of all stripes and base camp listener, please go to the natals. Con website and enter the code Collins for 10 percent off your registration Two days of non stop hack fun.

I'm super excited for it. I hope to see you there.

Also if you have a kid who is four years old or younger who is born through IVF And you want to help to contribute to science and the advancement of polygenic [00:45:00] risk for selection Please email us and we will connect you to a very interesting IRB study in which we too are participating as parents

Malcolm Collins: Oh, also something I'm looking to hiring for the game dev team is if you are interested in AI art around AI related video games.

Even if you are not a traditional artist, if you're familiar with, like, Loras or many of the different systems for creating AI art, we are going to be including a lot of it in the game and need people to generate good concept art. At scale. And so if you're interested in that do reach out.

Simone Collins: Thanks malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: It would be paid Not much, but

Simone Collins: Still we're not getting paid for any of this. So

Speaker 14: Did the future police give you the coolest things? Toasty, what do you like the most?

Speaker 13: You guys gotta share. Remember, your promise to the future police was to be nice to each other. Oh, thank you, [00:46:00] Toasty. It's an animal book.

In this episode, Malcolm Collins delves into the game theory of gender dynamics and explores how different societies have handled gender roles, using historical context and data-driven analysis. He discusses the primary problem marriage solves—the prolonged dependency of human offspring—and compares human and chimpanzee productivity graphs. Malcolm reviews a piece by Arctotherium titled 'Human Reproduction as a Prisoner's Dilemma: The Decline of Marriage in the West,' offering insights into adversarial reproductive strategies and varying historical gender cooperation models. He highlights the consequences of modern shifts in societal norms, including unilateral divorce and welfare state implications on marriage and gender dynamics. The episode concludes with a conversation on the reasons behind declining marriage rates and the broader societal impacts. Tags: #GenderDynamics #GameTheory #MarriageDecline #SocialNorms #HistoricalContext #ReproductiveStrategies #WelfareState #DivorceRates

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: This is Malcolm Collins. Today we are going to be exploring the game theory of gender dynamics. How different societies have dealt with the game theory of gender dynamics. Multiple local optimums. So we're not just going to argue that pure Monogamy is the only local optimum and we're going to be using lots and lots of data to do this.

And we're going to be exploring this through a piece that I thought was very well done by Aporia, one of the best magazines out there. They've gotten in trouble a lot with Hope Not Hate, which is how you know they're good. This piece is written by Arctotherium. And it's titled, Human Reproduction as a Prisoner's Dilemma, The Decline of Marriage in the West.

Simone Collins: Yeah, the title doesn't suggest that things are moving in a great direction for

Malcolm Collins: marriage. Well, no, they're not, but I think solving the marriage problem is a big segment of the way to solving the population problem.

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: I think [00:01:00] he lays this out with data in a way that is clearer than I had thought.

other people lay it out and brings up a few of the less obvious problems. If you're only looking at this from a modern context of what's wrong with the dating markets, instead of looking at a historic context. So let's dive into it. Simone get started here with this graph. I'll put on screen.

Simone Collins: The core problem marriage exists to solve is that it takes almost 20 years and an enormous amount of work and resources to raise children. And he shows this graph.

Malcolm Collins: Which it compares humans and chimpanzees in terms of the net productivity of humans and the net productivity of chimps over their lifetime.

Simone Collins: . The caption reads, In hunter gatherer societies, it takes almost 20 years for the average person to become a net producer of food. Until then, they are dependent on others, mostly their parents, who have a direct genetic stake in their survival. The numbers are similar for agrarian societies.

Malcolm Collins: Is, is this Up and [00:02:00] down line here is the amount of food that an individual is producing over their lifetime, or their net productivity.

So you see in humans, if you're looking at hunter gatherers, they don't end up net producers of food until they're around the age of 19. And then they shoot way up and they're like huge producers of food compared to chimps. Whereas chimps actually become food neutral at around the age of five and they go up almost immediately.

It appears that this period where chimps are lower because it immediately snaps to like, I'm a net producer of food at the age of five. But I don't contribute to the tribe yet is the period of which they are just like cling mode to mom because it's not going up and down. And then after that, at the age.

of a little under 15. They start producing for the tribe. My guess is this is just when they reach sexual maturity and start caring for children of their own.

Simone Collins: He continues, this makes human reproduction analogous to a prisoner's dilemma. Both father and mother can choose to fully commit or pursue other [00:03:00] options.

In this context, marriage provides a framework for encouraging, legitimizing, and stabilizing commitment. Defection. If human reproduction is analogous to a prisoner's dilemma, what does defection look like? A natural consequence of sexual reproduction is adversarial reproductive strategies. Females must expend significant biological resources, but can be certain of maternity, which allows maternal investment to pay off as soon as a child is born.

Males don't need to spend much biologically, but can't be certain of paternity. Making parental investment inherently risky by default. This leads to two idealized strategies that maximize the benefits for each sex in humans. The idealized male strategy is to have as many wives slash exclusive sex partners as he can afford plus opportunistic extra pair couplings consensual or otherwise the idealized female strategy.

Is to secure investment from a man while retaining the option to trade up for a more attractive man at any time plus opportunistic hidden extra pair couplings [00:04:00] with attractive men,

Malcolm Collins: both of these strategies, I assume most of our audience will understand what he means by that and see that as obviously true.

This is just like, obviously the genetically favorable thing for both parties. It is a

Simone Collins: truth universally acknowledged. Both of these strategies greatly damage the interests of the opposite sex. Cuckoldry is equivalent to death for a man from a Darwinian perspective. And in evolutionary environments requiring paternal investment, abandonment is equivalent to death for a woman.

Losing decades of youth and all of the resources invested in a pairing is devastating for both.

Malcolm Collins: So all of this, I think, is just laying out what we all know is true, like the obvious prisoner's dilemma that all couples are facing. Now he goes into the different strategies that people have chosen to deal with this in a historic context.

Simone Collins: Men defect, slash, women cooperate. A defect slash [00:05:00] cooperate society in which men act to secure the collective interests of their sex without regard to those of women looks like Meiji Japan, which was monogamous, or early 20th century Arabia, which was polygamous. In these societies, women are effectively property.

Divorce is common, Meiji Japan had the highest divorce rate of any country with records in the world, and devastating to women, who lose their children, economic status, virginity, and youth.

Malcolm Collins: So if you look at this chart here, which I find really interesting, it shows that in late 19th century Japan, they divorce rates several times higher than those of Northwestern Europe or the Anglosphere.

And these are really high. The divorce rates of Japan of this period are higher than what America's was in like the 1950s. Which is absolutely wild. Most countries did not reach this until you get around, let's say, 1950s, 1960s. And what this means is they can be like, okay, what does he mean that this [00:06:00] is an ideal situation in both Saudi Arabia and Japan if Japan was a monogamous society during this period?

What he's saying is these men functionally have multiple wives. So Because in Saudi Arabia, they just literally have a harem of wives that they're breeding with simultaneously in Meiji, Japan, which you may have is you are a rich man, you marry or just upper society man, given how frequent divorces were here you marry, you know, one girl when you're, you know, 18 and you stay married to her until she 30.

Or 35 and not producing kids as easily. You just marry the next wife. Then when she hits 30, you just marry the next wife. Basically who's the actor who does that, but doesn't have kids? Leonardo

Simone Collins: DiCaprio.

Malcolm Collins: Leonardo DiCaprio ing it. That's what they were doing in Meiji Japan.

Simone Collins: Thank God. He continues, however, a simple comparison of divorce rates between different marriage regimes is misleading since divorce is at the whim of the husband in defect slash cooperate societies, men are free to invest [00:07:00] in their family and children, which is not true in societies where men can lose their families against their will.

Furthermore. Paternal certainty in defect slash cooperate societies is guaranteed, which means such societies can be highly functional, especially when they have monogamy to reduce male , sexual competition. Meiji Japan was phenomenally successful economically, demographically, and territorially until destroyed by an overwhelming outside force.

Malcolm Collins: So this is really interesting. What he's pointing out here is so when you have a prisoner's dilemma, there are two strategies, right? Which is to say, or sort of three potential outcomes. No, I'll reword that. Sorry for potential outcomes. Both sites cooperate. Both sites defect. Or one side defects, whichever one it is here.

What he's showing is a side in which societally everyone basically agrees that males are defecting. That is what is happening in polygynous cultures where they are hurting the women's outcome and like, say, Saudi Arabia, where they take on [00:08:00] tons of different wives or in majority Japan, where they dispose of a wife.

The moment she's no longer reproductive age. That is hugely deleterious for women, but when men socially make this choice, which is deleterious for women, those societies stay competitive on a geopolitical scene,

Simone Collins: which is

Malcolm Collins: really fascinating.

Simone Collins: That is interesting. Depressing. Unfortunately,

Malcolm Collins: while men might be the disposable gender even within these societies, because more men in Saudi Arabia and in Meijing, Japan are actually disposable.

Like the lower category of men that's not breeding at all is larger in the societies where male defection, these are not better societies for men. These are better societies for the very best men.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Which is a very, very small number. It's like maybe 20 percent of men or, or less are getting all the benefit.

Yeah. But basically most men are worse off and most women are worse off. Most men are

Malcolm Collins: worse off and most women are worse off, but they appear to function. That is not true of the [00:09:00] men defect, women defect condition or the women defect condition.

This is something that always gets me when men laud men who go into these men defect women cooperate relationships, like, say, Andrew Tate, where they'll have, like, 5 or 6 different women that are supposedly producing their children, in that these scenarios actively hurt. Average and below average men, the very men who are often looking up to these individuals who are betraying them as much as they are betraying the women that they are in a relationship with.

To laud this behavior is to cuck yourself, Because ultimately this behavior, when normalized, cucks a large percentage of males in a society.

Let's go into men defect, women defect.

Simone Collins: Yes, as Arctotherium describes it, a defect defect society looks like the most primitive parts of sub Saharan Africa or the Amazon rainforest.

Women sleep around while adult men [00:10:00] prey on women and children and regularly kill each other for access to women. As men have multiple wives and wives are not loyal, there is no respite from intra sexual competition. You can always be replaced. And he includes a graph here

Malcolm Collins: among Himba of Southern Africa, the vast majority of married men and women have extra sexual pair partners and 48 percent of Children are not the husbands.

That is wildly high percent reporting extra pair partners. If you look at the 15 to 25 range for men, it's a hundred percent. For women, it's over 75%. So they're around 80 percent of the 26 to 35 range. Again, men, a hundred percent for women over 75% the 36 to 46 range men. over 75 percent women over 75%.

That is wild. During your entire reproductive life cycle. You are for around 75 percent of people sleeping with other partners

Simone Collins: when you're not incentivized to invest in the future, to think long term [00:11:00] as Arctotherium rights without paternal Certainty men have no investment in the future and spend their time fighting, dancing, or resting rather than working.

Economically, these societies are desperately poor and largely incapable of collective action. In war, they shatter like glass when faced with an enemy that expect chastity and fidelity from women. He shows a graph then of ethnicities and historic plow use, noting that defect defect societies tend to be ones without a history of plow and plow use pre 1500.

Plow agriculture requires male labor to sustain a family, which meant that groups that didn't enforce paternity certainly could not survive. Defect defect societies are reliably the poorest, most technologically backwards, and most violent. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. When, when, when It's almost like a tragedy of the commons issue of just like, why would I invest in anything?

Why would I not just try to take

Malcolm Collins: the commons issue? This is the issue of socialized land use. So [00:12:00] what a lot of people don't realize is one of the biggest problems with socialized land use, like the government giving you a property. And we saw this in a lot of communist countries is when people do not own a property, there is no advantage to improving that property.

Right. And so what you saw in these communist countries is that people's houses would fall apart. They would even like partially strip them of valuable materials themselves They became like dust piles really quickly Where in countries where they gave people houses to own and then potentially sell in the future what people did to those houses was?

Work to improve them because that improves their value. If you own property in the U S like even if you inherit it, even if you get it for free, you have a value in one maintaining and to improving that property. This is what we're seeing at the level of a family. If your family is like a net cost to you, like I know I'm going to be with my wife in 20 years or 30 years.

I have a reason to [00:13:00] work to both improve my relationship with her. If we're having some level of discord and to improve her as a human being, as a mother, as an employable asset in our society, et cetera, and you have a motivation to do that for me as well. In these other societies, there is no motivation.

Simone Collins: I really want to double click on this point when there's no reason to invest in the core thing that a human owns, their family, Then it makes sense to spend your life optimizing for in the moment recreation. And what are the forms of recreation that you can access with no accumulated resources? It's dancing, fighting, and resting. And that's why you see that so much in these societies.

And it's something we're beginning to see more within our own society as people become more sexually promiscuous and less stable in their relationships.

However, in our society, [00:14:00] because the resources needed to access different forms of recreation are lower, this can appear like playing lots of video games. I'd also note that this Tendency to invest in a family or, you know, a woman that you own or kids that you own is likely why there's a big boost to earnings both when a man is married and again when they have children.

Because men in those scenarios just have less motivation to rest and more motivation to invest.

Even in the cooperate defect where men would leave women. Those wives probably had very little incentive to invest in their husbands and help to build up their careers, probably knowing that their husbands would drop them, like, and in those

Malcolm Collins: societies that worked because women were largely unproductive.

Anyway, as economic assets. So it didn't matter that the husbands were [00:15:00] not attempting to improve them. One of those societies would likely be curb stomped by a modern, truly monogamous society. Yeah. Just technologically and economically if they went to war. But if that. Other society is captured by the woke mind virus or something like that.

It's irrelevant because they are just not going to like the, the bureaucracies are going to suffocate them.

So this is really interesting of how bad you get as a society when you hit a boast defect condition.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: intergenerationally speaking.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but let's get to the good, the good one. Men cooperate, women cooperate.

Arctotherium writes, the Western solution to the prisoner's dilemma can be summarized as follows. One, monogamy. Two, marriage by mutual consent. Three high standards of premarital chastity, especially for women and fidelity for divorce is difficult. The marriage contract can be created by mutual consent, but cannot be unilaterally dissolved.

And [00:16:00] five men materially support their wives and children. Let's deal with each pillar. In turn, Monogamy. Polygamy is a natural attractor state for humans since it satisfies the desires of powerful men to have multiple wives and the desires of women to have elite husbands. Monogamy requires both elite men and many women to sacrifice their desires.

In exchange, it provides strong checks on negative sum intersexual competition. Powerful married men are not constantly on the lookout for another wife and can devote their efforts to other pursuits, while less powerful men, who would be shut out of marriage in a polygamous society, have fewer evolutionary incentives to stab their compatriots in the back.

The result is a much more cohesive and powerful society, but it's not just male coordination that benefits from monogamy. As Joseph Heinrich in 2020 notes, it's Quote, because of how monogamous marriage influences social dynamics and cultural evolution, inhibiting female choice [00:17:00] by prohibiting women from freely choosing to marry men who are already married, results in both women and children doing better in the long run on average.

This occurs because of how the social dynamics unleashed by Polygyny influenced household formation, men's psychology, and husband's willingness to invest in their wives and children. End quote. Rather than invest in additional wives, men in monogamous societies invest in their original wife and children, with the result that almost everyone is better off.

Malcolm Collins: So this is what I was saying earlier and it's just a really important point when you quote unquote own your wife, you know, women are like Own your wife There is value or are they like?

Simone Collins: Own your wife

Malcolm Collins: Or or your wife owning you when it's a mutual state of ownership, which is what true monogamy is Oh, i'm, sorry.

This is so There was this song that was sent to us by one of our fans and it is like the worst. It's just a woman complaining and they got like big fans, everyone in the crowd.

Speaker 2: All day, every day, therapist, mother, [00:18:00] maid, nymph, then a virgin, guest, then a servant, just an appendage, lift to attend him, 24 7, baby machine, you make me do too much labor.

Malcolm Collins: And it's like, you cannot have a happy relationship if you don't want to do labor for your husband, because clearly you're describing a scenario where the husband is doing labor for you, like going out working, everything like that, but you are completely unappreciative of this.

When we are both appreciative if whatever relationship you decided works for you. And that's the thing that I think people miss when they try to go like trad was relationships and everything like that is they focus on the wrong parts of trad, they focus on husband does all the work in the factory or, or just whatever to bring home the money.

The wife stays at home, raises the kids. You don't really need to do things that way. There are other ways that things can be done. Lots of other historic ways that things can be done. As we mentioned, Sword and Shield relationships like the Vikings, where the wife manages the farm and does the stable source of [00:19:00] income, and the husband does the reward source of income.

Well, I think

Simone Collins: it's, again, it's more of a fantasy, this idea that the wife isn't Doing work aside from just cooking meals and raising the children, like managing, there's so much more than that. And also assisting a husband in his career is a big part of what I think many who are like people who are seen as housewives are doing.

Well, and that's what

Malcolm Collins: they said, you know, we did an episode on what people used to tell people to look for in a wife. So if you go to like the early Puritan period or something like that, they're always like, make sure your house can manage the household well and manage the servants well, and people hear that.

And they, they think that means like. Cook and clean. It's like, no, like if you look at what's, you know, Sam, Adam's wife is doing

Simone Collins: hiring procurement. They're doing HR. They're doing coaching. They're doing conflict management. They're doing is run the farm.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It means you are running the asset that is producing income.

for the family. That is what it means when they say be able to run the household. Well, that means while the husband is out in [00:20:00] Washington doing his politics stuff, the wife is running the farm, bringing in the income, selling the goods. This is not a woman who isn't productive. The point I'm making here is when you think about traditionalism Monogamy, or meaningful phonogamy, and we'll talk about what that means, is the actual part of traditionalism that works here, which means the husband and the wife persistently own each other.

And yeah, commit to each other. Just commit. Commit. Commit, commit. And I don't even think that this needs to be like, not that sexual or whatever. Like, I, there are some couples I know where the husband and wife are totally committed to others the other, and they have outside sexual relations sometimes.

And people can be like, how is that not breaking this? And it's like, it literally doesn't break any of this. Because what this is about is probability that the kids are the husbands or the wives. Is one partner going to leave the other partner in these scenarios? I'm thinking of that is [00:21:00] not a risk at all.

And so I think that people can misunderstand what the meaningful part of a traditional relationship is, which is owning your wife. And I want that to be clipped out of context. Because when it really is wife owning the husband as well, it is a permanent stake that creates a motivation for investment.

Simone Collins: Well then let's bring this back to reasonableness by pointing out his second pillar, marriage by mutual consent. He writes, this comes from Catholic doctrine, quote, What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder, unquote. And particularly benefits women who cannot be forcibly married against their will.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, but this guy has a huge bias here. There was another piece that we did where it was looking at you can check it out is Asian low fertility genetic. And we point out that if you look at Anglo Saxon courts going into the pre Christian period, there was a strong belief [00:22:00] that you should stay married to whoever you choose to marry.

So the idea of who you choose to marry existed in these territories. Okay. Okay. Pre Catholicism.

And a lot of Catholic areas actually had arranged marriages, as we know from like anyone who has studied royal history of that time period. So I don't like understand what they're going for. My understanding is that the Protestant areas actually had less arranged marriage or less pressured marriage than the Catholic areas.

But whatever the case may be, I don't know, remember

Simone Collins: the podcast we did looking at Scott Alexander's review of the book on the early rise of Christianity talked about how basically like empowering to women Christianity was, you know, it was like, be nice to your wife. Wives matter. Don't kill your children.

I don't know. I see this pretty Catholic to give women. Consent and

Malcolm Collins: avoid. No, but we're, we're talking here about do arranged marriages trump what the family would prefer. And if you're talking about noble arranged

Simone Collins: marriages involve [00:23:00] consent from women, I don't know why people think arranged marriages mean I'm going to force you to marry.

What he's talking about

Malcolm Collins: here is not that this line that he read from the Bible, because I know how this applies, what therefore God has joined together, let no man put us under is not. saying a woman can turn down a guy who her family has chosen for her. It's saying if a woman eloped without the family's knowledge, then she gets to marry that guy.

This is like the shotgun married line. This is not the women can turn down an arranged marriage line. And it was applied pretty liberally. So it did mean that basically you could within even Catholic countries, my understanding, largely speaking, If you wanted to get out of like an arranged marriage or what your family wanted to do, if you eloped with someone, that still counted as marriage.

Simone Collins: Well, okay, leaning back into the more traditional leanings of his five pillars. High standards of premarital chastity, especially for women and fidelity. This ensures two things. First, and most importantly, it ensures paternal certainty and minimizes sexual [00:24:00] jealousy. Second, it makes marriage the gateway to sex, which strongly encourages young people to get themselves into the long term pair bond that is the ideal environment to have and raise children.

Actually, you and I have been talking about this a lot recently, this, this argument that Uncontrolled sex drive is not actually the major driver of birth rates and prenatalism, but we, we, we have talked about the fact that like there are plenty of religions. I think the LDS church is a really good example of this presently that use marriage as the gateway to sex, forcing you to marry younger, which does help with fertility.

Malcolm Collins: It causes people to make. Catastrophically bad decisions about who they marry because they are marrying to gain access to sex and I think that just people need to be much like this This is one. I I actually pretty strongly disagree with i'm not saying that women should sleep around a lot before marriage I don't know because

Simone Collins: sleeping around before marriage also is a it's It's procrastination.[00:25:00]

It's distracting procrastination. Yeah, you should be focused on getting married. Yeah, it's

Malcolm Collins: distracting, I agree. But I think that's a very different motivation than what he's talking about here. Which is the way that some traditional systems used it.

Simone Collins: I mean, I think he's looking at it more from a male perspective, but also throughout the history of, like, Catholicism and Christianity.

It was just well known that men would sleep around a ton and then get married. Like, it didn't really count for men. So

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that is true. We, we, this expectation was from women and I, and there's an expectation. You know, and the way he's writing this here, he knows that he means for women.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But, I, I Well, he writes in parentheses, especially for women when it comes to premarital chastity.

He's explicit about that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I, I do not Think for the game theory as he has laid out. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but for the game series, he has laid out to maintain steady. So long as you have a security around paternity, I do not see this as that much of breaking the entire contract. [00:26:00]

Simone Collins: All right, he continues.

Divorce is difficult. The marriage contract can be created by mutual consent, but cannot be unilaterally dissolved. This allows for greater specialization of labor within the household and greater investment in, quote, relationship capital, end quote, including children. It also shifts the balance of power within the relationship to the more committed partner.

Oh. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Do you, so this one gets really interesting because he goes into it a bit more and I had never thought of it this way. Is making divorce easy, fits the balance in the relationship to the less committed partner. When, when divorce is easier. Oh, because you can just

Simone Collins: walk away. But why would divorce being harder give more power to the person who's more committed?

Malcolm Collins: Because you're not giving it to the person who's less committed. Yeah, but the less committed

Simone Collins: person can just quiet quit. Like, that's true. I

Malcolm Collins: think, I think what he's thinking of here is he's more focused on his later argument about it, giving power to the less committed partner [00:27:00] when divorce is easier.

And the reality is you can just quiet quit in this situation. It doesn't give more power to the more committed partner. Like if you wanted to leave

Simone Collins: me, but you couldn't, you just be like, well, I'm just going to be a dick to you and I'm not going to help out with anything. And I could do the same. Right.

And that, that doesn't,

Malcolm Collins: it does, at least it does at least not make the situation harder. And I will note to the previous comment when I was like fidelity in women before marriage and I was like, I don't know if that's really necessary to maintain the bargain. Somebody might take that to mean like, oh, he's just justifying his wife slipping around.

Actually, Simone had only ever kissed one person other than me when we first met. Yeah, people are gross.

Simone Collins: I don't think people understand. Like I. I was just talking with Malcolm. I literally wouldn't be married if Malcolm didn't exist in the world. There is only one person in this world for me. I would be, not an incel, I would be an intentionally celibate, never interact with human kind of person.

Well, that's not helpful for people. I know it's not helpful, but I'm just Yeah, like I'm just to clear up anything. The point

Malcolm Collins: I'm [00:28:00] making here is this isn't cope. My wife actually did not, like, she did not sleep with anyone. She did not do anything more than kiss anyone else before meeting me. I am not saying this is cope for me.

And I slept around a lot beforehand. So this is like low male sexual fidelity. I'm just thinking about my own children and like if I told my kids to incredibly heavily discount any potential female partner. Now, I know it does increase the risk of divorce, but I think as soon as you say, I'm not dating women who have slept.

Around before marriage you have so wiped such a large portion of women off the pool in a modern dating market

Simone Collins: Unless you start early

Malcolm Collins: unless you start early. Yeah, but I mean you have got to start really early I think before you have a feeling of how this woman's gonna turn out I i'm really not pro marriage before like 19 I think you really need to reach that age for a woman

Simone Collins: Yeah, but Malcolm, look at the plummeting rates of sex.

The number, the percentage of women who actually haven't had [00:29:00] sex by we'll say age 25, 26 is actually increasing over time. And I, I, I'm not of this hopeless. Now. I'm also not of like it. I don't think that being a virgin is a prerequisite for a good marriage for anyone. And I think they're good arguments, especially for sex before marriage between people who have committed to each other because you kind of want to make sure you're sexually compatible.

I mean, it's not like the most important thing, but It kind of matters to me, like, I'd be really concerned about, you and I had sex once. We had

Malcolm Collins: sex before marriage.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So. But you, you being a San Franciscan, like far lefty when we met, it was not even like a question of if we were going to have sex.

You planned to use me for sex before marriage.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And then never married.

Malcolm Collins: To be

Simone Collins: fair, but yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That was the plan. She wanted you to try sex so she could say she done it and then live alone forever. That was, you, what you wanted to, I was a sex toy to this harlot who [00:30:00] seduced me with her pragmatism and diligence.

Anyway, keep going. Okay,

Simone Collins: where was I? Ah, yes. Okay. Men materially shush, shush, shush, shush. Men materially support their wives and children. They are not expected to provide for children that are not theirs, nor for children born outside of wedlock. If men do not have access to their children, they are not expected to support them unless they are personally at fault.

This should be seen as a contract between the prospective husband and wife. Like any reasonable contract, both parties are giving Something up and getting something in return. I, it seems reasonable.

Malcolm Collins: I wrong agree with the way this is worded here in divorce law and paternal support, which is, I think this another big problem with no fault divorce is a woman can leave a guy, then take the kids and expect.

Support for the children she had with him, which really messes up the dynamics of marriage. I think if a woman like [00:31:00] if a woman is at fault in a divorce, like she was cheating on the man or something, if she expects to have access to the children, the man does not need to pay her at you mean

Simone Collins: exclusive access.

Like if he doesn't get to be around the children, I think

Malcolm Collins: if it's like 50 50 paternity care, like, like childcare, she, she still doesn't get any child.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Well, yeah. If he's shouldering the burden and taking care of the kids. No, no, no.

Malcolm Collins: He's not shouldering the burden entirely. This guy is earning more.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah. But okay. Yeah. But let's say that. He spends 10 days with the kids and then she spends 10 days with the kids. Then, yeah, no one needs to support anyone else. In

Malcolm Collins: a traditional divorce course, you understand, he still has to pay her. Really? Yes, he has to pay her if he earned more than her. So imagine she was a stay at home wife and he was out as a lawyer or something like that.

And then they get divorced. That's even in the absence of

Simone Collins: kids, though. That's different.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah, it's not in the absence of kids because in the absence of kids, you're not paying child support.

Simone Collins: Okay. So this [00:32:00] isn't, you're not talking about alimony or also child support is still

Malcolm Collins: child support to the person who in the relationship earned less money, whether it's the man or the woman.

I didn't know that.

Simone Collins: Okay. Sorry. That's wild. Just when I think things couldn't get worse for men who. The point being

Malcolm Collins: is I am 100 percent pro child support in instances in which there is a no fault divorce, i. e. both people are just like, we don't get along anymore because that's required to maintain any sort of same contract where the man just doesn't leave a woman when she reaches too old in age.

And you need it whenever a man is at fault, the man was cheating. The man was doing something against the initial marriage contract. However, if the woman decides on the divorce and the man doesn't want it. Or if the woman, and she can't prove that he was beating her, she can't prove that he was cheating on her, she can't prove or worse, he can prove that she was doing those things to him.

No, no money, no child support because this [00:33:00] removes the incentive to live that kind of lifestyle, which hurts everyone in society.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it, it does, but I guess it also encourages less prudent marriage decisions when you feel like you can just get out of it, especially if you feel like you can get out of it and get money.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, so I was talking with this is at the Heritage Foundation and I was talking with a lawyer there who so this is a conservative community that he was talking about in California, right? And he was talking about how it became in the same way that like transgenderism swept through the community, like a trend more recently.

Do you remember talking about the path to divorce? Swept through the community like a trend and it was almost seen as sort of like low class to like not have an ex it was like well, oh like you're only on your

Simone Collins: first marriage, huh? It's a little

Malcolm Collins: pedestrian and low class to only be on your first marriage And the women would go to other women and be like, oh, yeah Don't you want to like, you know, you could leave him you can get all the money that he has right [00:34:00] now like And it actually worked as a sign of class because the men who were earning more wives felt like they could get more out of a divorce.

So it really was a signaling that the class status of the man, whether his wife had attempted to divorce him to be able to stay at home and do nothing and live off of like child supported alimony. That's a

Simone Collins: big deal. But yeah, a divorce catch. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: and it's like a long term this ended up terrible for the people who got like swept up in this trend No, but it was seen as like a trendy cool thing, especially if you do it amicably, right?

Simone Collins: I don't know. I I don't know financially supporting someone unless he was like these people were like Continuing to sleep with all of their ex wives. It was basically a harem if that's what is being described. I don't think No,

Malcolm Collins: but it's like now what you're missing is okay I've got an ex wife and i'm sleeping with 20 year old secretaries and stuff like that [00:35:00] because i'm super rich that's that's what was happening in these communities, you know, i'm i'm sleeping with my My kid's babysitter or whatever, right?

Like Look, these are not, these are not communities that you and I would consider high class, but we're talking about like LA nouveau riche, I could see how this could swipe, like flow through a community. And I was pointing out, and it's interesting in our age range, like if I look at our friends who are married, I don't know anyone who's divorced.

I don't know anyone in our friend group who's divorced. Oh

Simone Collins: yeah, good for our friends.

Malcolm Collins: And they're like, well, it's because you're young. This hits when you hit your early forties,

Simone Collins: I guess. Yeah. My friend's parents started getting divorced around like the fifth grade, you know, 10 11. And all of our kids are super young, so give it time, I guess.

We'll see. To be determined. Let's continue. So, he writes, Breaking the bargain. Pillars one [00:36:00] and two of the solution remain intact. Western countries are still formally monogamous and marriage is still by mutual consent. Though without any broad religious or philosophical justification, this may change.

Popular support for legalizing polygamy has surged in the 21st century U. S. But pillars three to five were systematically demolished by mid 20th century, mostly between 1916, 1980. Yeah. So here you see a

Malcolm Collins: graph and what this graph shows is the chronology of events in the women's rights movement in the U S.

He says, I include the scare quotes here because this movement should be seen as a zero sum struggle for political and economic power. Affirmative. He

Simone Collins: put women's rights. Yes,

Malcolm Collins: correctly included as a major achievement by Goblin. And if you look here, you see most of the major changes happened between 1965 and 19, let's say, 80.

[00:37:00] And then you see there were some after that, but the vast majority 1965 and 1980. So you're looking for things that happened post then. And this is where you see women just gaining a huge amount of power in society.

Simone Collins: Gosh, yeah. He writes, this is a chronology of laws because lies are laws are highly legible.

What matters is people's behavior. Sufficiently strong social norms are indistinguishable from laws and laws. Are interpreted by judges, meaning legal practice may change dramatically without any significant change to official statutes. That's true. The sexual revolution, there are, there no longer exists any expectation of chastity until marriage, but within marriage, there's still the expectation of fidelity.

Though without any enforcement mechanism beyond social stigma. To marry. Rather than a gateway to sexual opportunity, marriage has become a chain restricting it. He shows a graph of women's sexual [00:38:00] partners before their first marriage, from the 1970s to the 2010s.

He writes, Note that these numbers are lower than reality because they are self reported. When hooked up to a lie detector, women claim about one more sex partner than they do when asked normally. The graph shows that the number of women who have one partner before marriage has allegedly plummeted from a little over 40 percent in the 1970s to around 22 and a half percent in the 2010s.

Whereas four to five partners has increased from about 6 percent in the 1970s to about 28 percent in 2010. I think what

Malcolm Collins: people are missing here is how rare, even historically, virgin women were before married. And this is even when they might be lying, were in a historic context. If you look at the 1970s, it was only around 20 percent of women were virgins before marriage.

Yeah, this doesn't even

Simone Collins: show two partners,

Malcolm Collins: or sorry, zero partners. It doesn't show zero partners. It [00:39:00] does. It shows virgins before marriage. Well, virgins before marriage. Before marriage. Okay,

Simone Collins: I see. It's, it's literally

Malcolm Collins: the rarest, but they started

Simone Collins: out as 20 percent and now they're at like 5%. Oh, look at you, Malcolm.

I mean, not that I was, we were, you're a 5 percent or 5 percent married though. So I guess I would still

Malcolm Collins: count as in the 2010s. So we'd be maybe past then. I don't know. But the point is, is, Oh yeah, well no, I, I, I think that this is what it's asking. Like maybe the partner other than

Simone Collins: spouse probably is what they mean to be asking about.

But also it's notable as it having over 10 partners. Was maybe around two and a half percent of women in the 1970s, and it's up to about 20%, like 18%, almost 20% in, well, and then another,

Malcolm Collins: hold on, hold on. Another 20% is, is, is four to five partners. Yeah. And then another the 40%

Simone Collins: have had over four partners.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Which is. Well, no, no, no more because six to nine percent is at what is that like fourteen [00:40:00] percent? Oh lord. Yeah. Okay. Yeah Well, okay. Anyway, people are sleeping around more so he continues whereas the pre 70s dispensation aligned sex drives with pair bonding desired for raising children The present one sets them in conflict with each other.

Malcolm Collins: So I really want to pull this apart because I find this particularly interesting and I'm not denying that this is happening. I just don't know if realistically the way he wants to nudge culture is the only way to fix this or even the most realistic way to fix this. So the point that he's making here is marriage now constricts sexual access rather than gives sexual access.

So if I am a man . And I enjoy sleeping with lots of women. Now when I get married, I get less sexual access than I had before marriage.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean, I think for high value men, but only for high value men, cause no one else gets to sleep around. It does act as a disincentive to marry.

And here I'd note for anyone who [00:41:00] wants to be like, well, sex in marriage is more magical. You know, you can have better relationships with just one partner. And it's like, look, this might be true with women, but just statistically, this is obviously not true with men. If you look at the studies on this, men prefer variation in their sexual partners and the evolutionary reason why is really obvious because multiple women can carry your kids simultaneously as a man, of course, you're going to have.

preference for sleeping with a woman who is different from women who you have recently been sleeping with.

I say this because if the way that you are attempting to motivate a potential behavior is through lying to an individual, i. e. well, as a man, you're really better off just sleeping with one woman. That will be more pleasurable for you. , you will eventually fail if a person makes major life decisions around a false promise and then comes to realize that.

Malcolm Collins: It very much acts as a disincentive to marry. [00:42:00] And for women. It is the same thing. It is a disincentive to marry if they enjoy sleeping with lots of partners or if they enjoy sleeping with a high value partner, they couldn't get to marry them and is sleeping with other females, which is more likely. Now the question is are there other ways around this?

Outside of convincing all of young people to be more chaste because that seems like a very losing battle especially if I am talking to Like like let's be honest here if I am talking to me as a kid like this is what I try to imagine my kids as being and I was like Hey it's like better for society, man.

If like that girl, look, I know she's hot. I know she's willing to sleep with you, but like, don't sleep with her because like in a vague, like social sense, this is sort of better for the low value men. When she does marry, she'll be better. I'd be like, you can write off. This girl is down a [00:43:00] clown and I have access to her tonight and I may not have access to her tomorrow and you can.

Right off. Because how do you convince a young guy of this, right? Yeah. Or, oh my gosh you know, so it's really, really, really, really hard because you don't really have something big to offer them. Now, young woman, I can at least say, oh, you'll have access to better Partners for marriage. If you don't sleep around a lot now.

And then the young woman will say to me you don't understand like high value guys will not really consider dating you these days. If you're not sleeping with them. Even the ones who are willing to be monogamous and I'd have to say. That's kind of true. I mean, there are a few, like, really religious guys, but I'm thinking of your average high value male they're gonna have a really, like, me, for example, right?

Would I have seriously considered marrying you if you didn't date me for, like, a year beforehand? No, I wouldn't have. Would I have dated you for a year if we weren't having sex? [00:44:00] Absolutely not. So when you remove this, you cause a lot of damage within the existing social structure in terms of actually finding partners.

And so then it's like, okay, well then how do you actually solve this problem? And it is remembering that sexuality and arousal is vestigial and unimportant to finding purpose in life or what you should want for your life. When you go to a kid, and you demystify sex, not through saying sex is evil, or sex is scary, and stay away from sex, and everything like that, but you're just like, sex is totally unimportant, and to be honest, masturbation, if you just want arousal, is generally gonna be easier.

It's generally gonna be better, it's generally gonna be easier, and it's gonna be a much more efficient use of your time.

Simone Collins: Much more convenient.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. More convenient. And when a guy, like, accepts this, or a girl accepts this because they have [00:45:00] slept with other people, they're like, oh, wow, yeah, sex is kind of clunky and boring, and I don't Well, I,

Simone Collins: I just, I, I slightly disagree.

Because for, for a lot of people, I, in fact, you, even yourself argue the Pregnant is Guide to Sexuality. Sex for men right, oh boy. Sex for men is largely, for many men at least, about proving a narrative to themselves. I agree. It's not really about enjoyment and then sex for women. I think often like those women who have higher sex drives, it's more about the dynamics and not about the actual.

I agree. So I don't, I guess you could use, I mean women do use like romance novels and various like fantasy scenarios to just do that in their imagination, but I do think that some women find it hard to not do that with their reality. The

Malcolm Collins: point I'm making here is that it is easier, if I am talking to a young man, to break the narrative that sex has value in or out of marriage.

Not that, oh, wait for marriage so you can get this awesome sex. Because this causes problems. Like, this is why, if you [00:46:00] look at, like, the Girl Defined sisters, like, one of them seems to be in, like, a very serious crisis with their marriage because they thought that sex was going to be, like, this amazing thing when they got married.

Instead They're pretty solid, yeah. But, like,

Simone Collins: they went through an adjustment because she did wait until marriage for sex. And then they expected sex was going to be amazing and then it wasn't. Instead, what you tell

Malcolm Collins: them is Sex is like, I go to this young guy. He's like, I get to have sex with this girl.

And I'm like, I want you to really focus on having sex with this girl and ask yourself afterwards. Did you just waste a whole day seducing this girl? Would you could have just stayed at home and masturbated? Video games. I mean, like, yeah, there are other masturbated and played video games. Was this.

Better than that. We need to parse out

Simone Collins: marriage from pleasure. Like, there are more efficient ways to inject pleasure directly into your bloodstream. I'm not talking about the use of substances. But, I mean, like, metaphorically. And, [00:47:00] and then, then you need to separately figure out your life and your values and your, like, okay?

You're making weird things.

Malcolm Collins: If you motivate marriage with sex, you're going to have a bad time because it causes people to focus on the wrong traits in marriage. Well,

Simone Collins: and it gets people also to anchor marriage around pleasure in general and enjoyment when that's not exactly what marriage has ever been about.

If

you know,

Malcolm Collins: say sex. does not matter that much. You may use it to try to increase your feeling of self worth or your personal narrative. But if you are doing that, you are living in life that is pointless and without value. You may use it because you're not like objectively getting more pleasure than it from like good masturbation.

Because with good masturbation, you can do literally anything. You can be in literally any scenario. So like you, you're not getting more from it than that. And so it's not a magical thing in or out of marriage. The point of marriage where you will get more pleasure and more [00:48:00] fulfillment from marriage isn't the sex you're going to have on your marriage night.

It is from the children that you will have with your partner. Children are strictly better than sex or masturbation.

Simone Collins: Well, you're literally creating the future of humanity. And that's the other thing is I think it's. There's way too much anchoring in the discussion of family planning and prenatalism in general around children, having children.

Because it takes the focus away from how profound it is, what you're actually doing. You're creating people who are going to live full lives and have impacts on the world and in turn have children. Like, you are creating the, the equivalent of yourself. You know, a fully conscious. adult human, you know, God willing if they can make it that far, right?

So it's just so much more meaningful. Like imagine everything you've experienced in your entire life and double

Malcolm Collins: this, this, this, this argument here is around like the magic of sex. [00:49:00] Like if you wait to get married, oh, you'll have this magical sex. Don't say that. Don't say that because it's not magical.

Simone Collins: So stupid.

Yeah. No, because all

Malcolm Collins: these people end up like seriously disillusioned with their religion, with their, with their, a

Simone Collins: big argument that Malcolm has made to sum it up more quickly is if you, if you build your religion around a bunch of lies that are easily disprovable with the internet or life experience, you're going to get a lot of detractors because maybe even a bet that's provably wrong.

Just opens you up to vulnerability. That's why politicians don't answer questions straight.

Malcolm Collins: The point here is tell kids the truth. Not that sex within marriage is magical, but children within marriage are magical. And sex is largely pointless and vestigial in humans. And that you can generally, if you're arousal maxing, do that without using another person as a human fleshlight.

The point of marriage and what is magical for marriage [00:50:00] isn't the marriage night sex. It is the kids that you will have, whether those kids are created through sex or something else, like IVF, et cetera, given how hard it is for many couples to have kids.

Simone Collins: Unilateral divorce. The most obvious effect of unilateral, i. e. no fault divorce, is more divorces. He includes a graph ratio of divorces to marriages in the United States, ranging from 1860 to the year 2020. He describes the graph with there's much talk about the decline in US divorce rates since the 80s, but the reason for this is that marriage rates have also dropped note that the rise in divorce post World War Two corresponds to marriage becoming much less selective with the spike.

Post no fault divorce corresponds to the institution becoming much more selective.

Malcolm Collins: So what you'll see here, and this is really interesting, if you look at this, this graph here, yeah, you see the divorce rate rising over time. But when no fault divorce was introduced in the it looks like [00:51:00] 19, like 73 or 4 here, you immediately had a spike.

And I think this is the like ratio of divorces per year per marriage. Around 0. 3 to around 0. 5 and what's fascinating is this around 0. 5 number that it settled at. This was before the 1980s. So like 1975 has stayed steady until about today. It looks like so what we're actually seeing is not a drop in divorces, but a drop in marriages, which makes it look like we have a big drop in divorces as a society.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: Continue. He writes, It's worth considering what this actually means. Each divorce represents years of effort and investment wasted and often perpetual and unwanted obligations. It often means broken families and the misery that accompanies them. In the United States, only 52 percent of first marriages survive the first 20 years required to raise children.

[00:52:00] And he includes a table. of the probability that a first marriage will remain intact, survive, at specified durations among women aged 15 to 44 years by selected characteristics. This is using United States data from 1995, 2002, and 2006 to 2010.

Malcolm Collins: Hmm. Okay, well let's see what this actually The

Simone Collins: characteristics include all women, and then broken down by Hispanic origin and race, age at first marriage, education, religion raised.

He describes Well,

Malcolm Collins: hold on. I'm just looking here to try to find out what it is. Okay, so it was white couples I'll just look at this. Okay

Simone Collins: Well, he explains he says this table also shows my marriage has become an upper class institution Murray Society no longer works to keep marriages intact, meaning it requires a certain amount of foresight and a lack of impulsiveness to maintain it.

Oh, girl, girl. You want to move around? You can move around. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So this table shows why marriage [00:53:00] has become an upper class institution. Society no longer works to keep marriages intact, meaning it requires a certain amount of foresight and lack of impulsiveness to maintain one. And so we just, you know, being white people, I'm going to use the white group here. If we look at what percent of marriages are surviving for five years, you're looking at 80%.

But once you get to 20 years, you're only looking at 54%, which is much lower than I thought. Now keep in mind, this includes marriages of the older generation because it's looking at 20 years from 2006 to 2010. And in truce, when I look at older people, they get divorced at really high rates. So when I look at like our friend group, like basically no one gets divorced.

I, Genuinely believes that this rate is falling because when I at least think you think it's gonna

Simone Collins: stick You think it's gonna stick that people are not gonna get divorced later in life

Malcolm Collins: I I do not think they're gonna get divorced later when I think of my friends who are married I just know so few of them that I can imagine getting.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: they're solid Yeah, but I felt that way about my friend's parents until they all got divorced. So [00:54:00] What do I know?

Malcolm Collins: Right? Well, I'm okay. Let's look at education, right? So, oh, this is interesting. If both partners have a bachelor's degree, the probability that they will still be married in 20 years is 78%.

That's Arctotherium's

Simone Collins: point that this is a social class thing now.

Malcolm Collins: Well, but how does this make sense that you like stay married for so long? Yeah. How does that, what? Explain. Like, what do you mean it's a social thing to not get divorced? Like,

Simone Collins: I think there may be stronger, perhaps stronger social norms, maybe more conscientiousness of thought into the marriage in the first place.

Malcolm Collins: Interesting. And by the way Or maybe better sourcing of resources?

Simone Collins: I don't know. Like

Malcolm Collins: If you're like, I'm religious. This will protect me. If you are not religious at all, the probability that they, like, most people are atheists, right? The probability that they'll still be married in 20 years is 43%. All right.

So that's, that's low. Right? Like I'm like, that's less than half. So [00:55:00] you're like, Oh, it must be much higher for Protestants and Catholics. For Protestants, it's 50%. And for Catholics, it's 53%. And you might be like, wait, that sounds even lower than like the average. Well, what's going on here? It's other religions that are boosting it being at 65 percent for other religions.

I assume this is because there's more first generation immigrants than the other religions categories, which have you know, more traditional mindsets around saying. . And so it's like, where, what is this other religion? It's probably like Muslims, first generation immigrants, Hindus, stuff like that. Arranged marriages. Anyway.

Simone Collins: He continues, but unilateral divorce doesn't just destabilize marriage.

It also changes the power dynamics within marriage from favoring the more committed partner to favoring the less committed partner. Hence, quote, under unilateral divorce, the distribution of resources within marriage favors the spouse who wished to divorce, end quote. This is from Reynoso in 2024. In addition to destabilizing marriage, unilateral divorce [00:56:00] incentivizes poor behavior within it, since the threat of ending the marriage on unfavorable terms for the undutiful partner no longer exists.

This, quote, weakens the bargaining power of dutiful partners who wish their marriage to continue. Who wished to end their marriage because of serious mistreatment by the other partner end quote. That's from Roe Thorne 1999 He continues unilateral divorce is sometimes portrayed as an advance in human freedom But this is a mistake by removing the ability to credibly commit the long term relationship unilateral divorce prevents couples from reaching a mutually beneficial bargain that Greatly assists in raising children without forced marriage, which has never been a part of the Western tradition unilateral divorce actually removes an important choice.

In the words of Robert wrote for 1999.

Quote, to get married is. No longer such a major commitment and no longer offers the degree of security, which at once did since divorce is now relatively easy and the [00:57:00] responsibilities and rights of the married and unmarried are increasingly similar. These developments are often presented as an advance in human freedoms and say allow individuals to exit unilaterally from unhappy relationships at minimum cost to themselves and with the minimum delay.

However. This is a one sided view, since it ignores the benefits and freedoms associated with trust and security. The fact that individuals can now exist easily and unilaterally, oh, can now exit easily and unilaterally from a relationship that makes it difficult for couples to make credible commitments to each other.

They can promise anything they want, but most of these promises are no longer legally enforceable, and many are undermined by social policies, which reward those who break their promises. So that ends the quote because it no longer guarantees security or anything else. Marriage is much less useful and therefore less appealing writes Arctotherian.

So this

Malcolm Collins: is a really important point. And I think it's made really powerfully here, more powerfully than [00:58:00] I've seen in other places. Because what we're seeing here is that as soon as, and this is actually really interesting about the introduction of no fault divorce laws, is while divorces spiked on like a per year level after no law fault divorce laws going into the 1980s, they then stayed stable and yet they had been rising for a long time before that.

It's almost like they reached their natural level of I might trade up or attempt to trade up at this stage. And he's saying that as soon as you get this, marriage becomes dramatically less useful to most partners. And if you're like, oh, well, if I do the valuable thing and like, get married young and move forwards, the, the marriage rate, remember I was talking about like, oh, don't.

You really start dating until 19, right? Yeah. If you marry at under 20 years old, the percentage of those marriages that still exist within 20 years is only 37%. So you're looking at an, like a fairly small, you're really [00:59:00] taking out a bet against yourself with this sort of thing. And this is, is helped by these effects that we have talked about.

The person who is being. Less like, okay, if one person is investing less in the relationship than the other person, the person investing less is the person most advanced by the divorce. So if I am a guy

Simone Collins: most advantaged by the divorce,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. So if I have a guy and I have like a really dutiful wife who's really working to care for the kids and everything like that, and I'm sleeping with my secretary and I'm sleeping with like a bunch of other people.

And my wife doesn't know about this and then she finds out about this and she gets angry at me and I'm like, whatever, I want to keep doing this. I, as that guy, am benefited from divorcing that woman. If I am a woman, and I am adding very little to the relationship, and I'm just really posting off of the money that relationship offers me, and I just don't want a job and the husband's like, well, you know, we really gotta pull together, like, you need to get a job, etc.

I am advantaged because I can get money from him, I can get in terms of alimony, in terms of child [01:00:00] support, by ending that marriage. Whoever is the freeloader in the relationship, whoever is breaking more of the terms of the marriage contract is the person advantaged by Hmm.

Simone Collins: Mm hmm. Okay. All right, Arctotherium writes, The welfare state, given that women will do most child rearing and that men are more productive, most of the funding will involve some sort of reforest transfer from men to women.

As with all redistribution, this would seem to carry the risk of punishing work. Yet in the case of marriage, it doesn't. A man provides for his wife and children, who he has some legal and social claim on, as well as an obvious genetic interest in. The welfare state changes this. And of course, you've talked about this all the time with that concept that really blew my mind.

It's like, Single women really being nuns married to the state. He shows a graph of net fiscal impact per capita broken down by [01:01:00] male. Women basically are negative, except for a little slight positive between the age of, like, 45 to 60.

Malcolm Collins: So all women are a drain on the state except for women between the age of 44 and 64.

All other women are a net drain on the state that are helped by men between the ages of around 25 and 69 where men are net contributors to the system.

Simone Collins: This is mind blowing. This is mind blowing. Also, this graph is a great argument for euthanasia because while children cost a little bit in the beginning of 20 years of their lives, the, the, the cost to the state.

of people over the age of 70 just gets huge. Like, honestly, if people were euthanized at the age of, like, 70, the state would be so much better off. Oh god, it's terrible.

Malcolm Collins: Even, even, [01:02:00] yeah,

Something that was pointed out on the discord that I thought was really funny is that Simone is so much more

Interesting to listen to.

than Malcolm because When Malcolm says something that's like crazy or out there You know that he's heavily motivated by, , trying to entertain the audience, or shock people, or troll people.

But when Simone says something, you know every time she's totally serious.

And I feel like we play into the stereotype we're developing. Of just, for every problem, the solution is, well, can't you just kill them? This is literally Simone right here.

Speaker 3: I had the group liquidated, you little s**t. They were insolent.

Malcolm Collins: gosh,

Simone Collins: you

Malcolm Collins: fix so many of society's problems if you use the nice people at

Simone Collins: 69.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I guess you could just say, are they still contributing or not?

Because a lot of people still contribute after [01:03:00] this age, right? That's true.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And you can just, you could also, I mean, the state could also just say, You know, actually a fairly pernicious policy that I hadn't thought of before is just be like, after age 70, you get no social support from the state, which would really motivate people to invest in children as like, yeah, this is the only thing that's going to support me after I'm 70, because the state's not going to do it.

That, oh, did I solve social

Malcolm Collins: security for the United States? Euthanasia for everyone who doesn't have over No, no, no, I

Simone Collins: mean, sure. The only free state service you can get is Humane euthanasia. Everything else is off the table.

I mean, come on, it

would Anyway, yeah. He continues, Rather than merely supporting their own wife and children, men are expected to support women to whom they have no relation and from whom they can claim nothing in return.

Not only is this much less motivating, But it also removes a major incentive for women to marry in the first place. To your point about women being married to the state, the [01:04:00] state can simply extract a potential husband's wealth and transfer it to her. No marriage required in the long run. This is bad for women, too.

Even if they can raise children alone with support from the state, very few women want to do this. And by making marriage less attractive, the welfare state misaligns the short term financial incentives of young women. With their long term social incentives as potential mothers. I think these are very valid points.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: The Western Solution, a brief summary. If the Western European marriage pattern represented a cooperate cooperate solution to the prisoner's dilemma of human reproduction Our current dispensation represents an attempt to force a cooperate defect equilibrium on men.

Men are expected to spend their lives working for women and children that are not their own. They can be ejected from a marriage at any time, for any reason, and by default will lose their children in the process. It is little wonder that, as in the Roman Empire, quote, marriage became [01:05:00] unfashionable, especially among the men, but perhaps it would be More just to say that marriage on these terms was despised, for there seemed to be few advantages to be gained, many to be lost, unquote.

Unwin, 1934. Conservative commentators often lament this attitude and blame influencers like Andrew Tate, but they confuse the cause for the effect. Men didn't suddenly change their attitude toward marriage. Marriage itself changed and men's attitudes have slowly adjusted to the new reality.

Browbeating and hectoring, man up, can't replace the old incentives. Consequences of co operate defect. Men have the power to collectively force women , into disadvantageous marriage contract when they give up men in exchange for little. Although western men did not do this historically.

But the reverse is not true. Men have always had the option not to marry. And the alteration of marriage norms has made marriage less attractive for women too with predictable results. And he includes a graph.

Malcolm Collins: This graph [01:06:00] is insane right here. So if you look at the graph, if you look at the number of people who are married, you can see just how much we should expect marriage rates to drop going forwards.

So you're looking at the number of people per decade who got married. Yes, you saw little drops between the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and then a slightly more modest drop until the 1980s, but you see an astronomical drop going in to the 1990s. Where it is looking like you may only have, by the age of 30, around 25 percent of people born during the month.

Oh no, it's higher than 25%. What is that? Because this is like a logarithmic graph here. It looks like it might be like a 35%,

35 percent of, of people born in the 1990s married by the age of 30. Now, if you contrast this with people who were born in the 1980s, how many were married? It was 6 Over [01:07:00] 60%. It looks like around 65%. So you're looking at 35 percent one decade later, being married at the age of 30. Whereas like 62 or 3 percent being married for people born in the 1980s.

And it's like, what did you go one decade before that to the 1970s? Just to see how quickly we've fallen there. It looks like we're looking at around 75 percent to our year. What, 35%? This is horrifying drop.

It takes generations to see these effects in full. Not only are we the product of millennial, of selection for marriageability, social norms are sticky. At first, men see their fathers.

who worked hard to get married and their older acquaintances doing the same, and they imitate them. Women aspire to marry as their mothers did. Even when laws have changed, the norms do not immediately disappear. But they get weaker every generation. People see that marriage no longer offers stability.

They see their peers and parents ruined by divorce. They see that they can get the [01:08:00] economic and sexual benefits of marriage without giving up options. And the old norms erode. Current marital status and this is a graph here that divides whites and african americans So you can see that this hit the african american community earlier, which used to be in a better position as you can see in these graphs when I say better position, I mean more of them were getting married and staying married, but the trend hit them sooner Just provides a good illustration of what I mean when the incentives change marriage collapsed among blacks who are not the product of Millennium of Selection for Western Marriage, Almost Overnight.

Oh, that's an interesting take on why it collapsed so quickly for Blacks. I don't, is it that advantage stuff? No, I think it's that wokeism hit them further, but whatever. I mean,

Simone Collins: like, we went through these, like, well, one in the conversation with Curtis Yarvin, and then I think in another

Malcolm Collins: episode, where it's just like this It's called The Documentation of Black Culture, check it out, great episode.

Yeah. In whites, it has lasted longer, but each generation is less marriage minded than the last. Everyone [01:09:00] is responding to new incentives, but not at the same rate. I actually say that what we're actually seeing here is a little different than what he's describing because when I see our generation, I do believe that we will see this in our generation.

Marriages will like divorce rates are going to plummet. Because again, I just look at like the people I know who are married, like none of them seem at all likely to ever get divorced. And it's that we had a generation. Where people expected the scaffolding of the legal system to make their marriages strong and protect their marriages in the way it did the previous generation.

And that's the way the boomers were about so many things. And now we're entering a generation where people are like, Oh, I actually need to be responsible for who I choose as a partner in making this a solid marriage, which previous generations didn't feel as strongly.

Simone Collins: Just a quick pause. If there's a ton more, and I think there is Indy, like, I'm not going to get a word in edgewise for like another 30 minutes at this point because Indy is really tired.

So should we just pause this?

Malcolm Collins: No, I actually think we should make the rest of this a separate [01:10:00] episode. I don't know,

Simone Collins: I'll

Malcolm Collins: This episode's an hour and fifteen minutes long. That's a long episode.

Simone Collins: I'm gonna say

Malcolm Collins: we'll make another episode on marriages falling apart, and why that's terrible for society.

Simone Collins: I don't know, because like, I still haven't really gotten to the so what. I guess the so what for this is Like it's when you have no fault divorce, things fall apart. Is that kind of what we've concluded? Cause he, he's looking at more than just that, but I think we've converged on no fault divorce being the issue.

Malcolm Collins: I don't think no fault divorce is the issue. I think that this is one of the issues that he points to. I think no fault divorce is when the societal scaffolding is no longer holding a marriage together, but I think fixing that societal scaffolding is something we can aspire to, but not. Count on. And I think that we need to build our own scaffolding was the understanding that we won't get what our parents generation got.

You know, we, we are not them. We are not living in that world. And even before no fault divorce came [01:11:00] onto the table, as you can see from that graph, the divorce rate was going up. So, you know, we were gonna hit here eventually. In fact, if it continued to increase at the rate it was from 1880 to 1980, and you project it forward to 2024, we might actually be at the same rate of divorce we are now, even without no fault divorce.

No fault divorce just allowed it to jump to, like, its normalized state which is really weird. I don't know why it hasn't gone up since then. It's when it was going up historically, that's I don't understand. But clearly it appears to be at like a osmosis point right now, where it's like the natural divorce rate when anyone can screw over anyone.

But I think it's going to go down because I think new social norms are developing. And I think that a lot of these blackmailed people are still Approaching marriage the wrong way. They're approaching marriage around arousal or sexuality and not with the focus of their children and their religion [01:12:00] and their tradition.

Or they're approaching marriage with that and then in the middle of their marriage, they change their religion or something like that. In which case, you're kind of the one who defected. I, I, like, even if you're a smart, amazing person and you're like, I just realized this was wrong, I'm like, fine, but like the assumed contract when you guys got married is that you were going to continue to follow this value system, right?

Like I don't like I want you to do well. Recently a fan reached out to us with this scenario and I was like, I feel bad, but like, yeah, you broke the contract more than your wife did. If you're the one who left Christianity and not her. Especially if that was like the foundation of your interest in each other.

But, Simone, your, your thoughts. And you can talk over a yelling baby.

Simone Collins: No, it's bad audio. I, and I can't think straight when I have a crying baby that I can't take care of. Alright, alright, I love you.

Malcolm Collins: I'm looking forward to dinner.

Simone Collins: I love you too. Moppy

Malcolm Collins: dofu? [01:13:00]

Simone Collins: Moppy

dofu.

Malcolm Collins: And you can warm up the house a bit. You know, it's a little cold, even for me these days.

So what I'm literally wearing a full jacket. Yes.

Simone Collins: Well, and our bill literally, despite our house being on average, well below 55 degrees in all rooms is over 600. So yeah, which is insane. It's the middle of winter, sweetheart.

Malcolm Collins: Just,

Simone Collins: well, maybe we have to actually make,

Malcolm Collins: okay. We'll make the game work. We'll make the game work. We'll make it make so much money. It'll have the most money.

Simone Collins: The way money works is if you cut your income in half and plan on removing entirely, maybe don't double your heating bill or in this case like triple.

This is insane. Although I, I've seen some social media content suggesting that a lot of people are seeing insane price hikes on their electricity, not just because of this, [01:14:00] but because some States like the state of New York. Have introduced legislation or regulation that requires energy companies to spend a lot of money on green energy infrastructure development.

But what these companies are doing is just passing on all of the. Infrastructure development costs and more to the consumer. They're just kind of like sliding in additional income increases. It's very annoying, and that's also happening with us. That's

Malcolm Collins: happening in Pennsylvania.

Simone Collins: Well, we've received multiple emails from our energy providers saying we've invested in building more infrastructure.

And for that reason, you're going to see slightly higher energy costs. That's tough. I don't know. Like, well, they're kind of like. If you need financial assistance, we have payment plans but it's kind of just like saying tough s**t. Like you're not, you're, you're not going to get out of paying for this.

Like maybe you can go into debt.

Speaker 4: Yeah. [01:15:00] Don't you think one at a time is easier?

And you have your rocks. You're a strange, covetous dragon, Toastie. Hey! Oh, Titan, you want to steal Toasty's fork? I think she takes great pleasure. Okay, go ahead, steal. Go steal.

Go steal. Steal. Steal. Go ahead. We gotta keep this. Oh, Toasty, that's nice. Titan, you want some of these? Okay, take. Go ahead. Aw, that's so nice. Well, thank you for sharing, Torsten.

In this episode, the discussion revolves around fertility rates, demographic collapse, and fertility policy featuring Dan from More Births, a renowned figure in public communication on these issues. Topics include the significance of cultural attitudes over housing space in influencing fertility, the concept of a 'fertility stack'—various factors impacting fertility rates—and related statistics. The conversation also touches on the importance of a pronatalist culture, early marriage, religiosity, and the support of extended family, as well as the negative impact of high C-section rates. Join our hosts and Dan as they delve into these complex issues, debate their viewpoints, and discuss solutions for encouraging higher fertility rates.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. We've got Dan has here.

He is more births on X. He is a legend in communicating with the public on fertility and demographic collapse and fertility policy. And we are thrilled. And we just saw him in person a couple of weeks ago. Now he's here with us. On the podcast. And he's going to talk about his top theories, his thoughts on priorities.

Because I'm going to explain why they're wrong. Okay. And Malcolm's going to be, and we're going to see our own little base camp flame war here, marshmallows over the fire of disagreement. It's all good.

Malcolm Collins: Also he's in a fertility collapse task force. We're putting together with the heritage foundation, which I'm also really excited about right now.

So we've got right now, you guys, the heritage foundation guys, and Catherine.

More Births: Puckaloo. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: But. The argument we were getting into because you you were destroying it all you're saying you actually agree with me and I don't like this because But I was saying that because there were two core concepts You we wanted to go over with a lot of statistics in this episode One [00:01:00] is the importance of living space to fertility rates Which is something that you're known for frequently arguing and then the second is the concept of a fertility stack which is a collection of things that impact fertility rates And I was saying that I actually disagree even with the lesser fertility stack issue, because I think it draws away for the overwhelming importance of culture.

And I think that if we don't look at this as a culture first problem, it causes groups that could otherwise be saved to be able to. Push off their, their real problems to like secondary quality of life issues that they want to micro focus on. And I think giving them an excuse to do that is incredibly damaging to the wider conversation.

So I want to hear your debate here. And stats on why this stuff is so important.

More Births: Okay. Well, I, I'm, I'm, I have bad news. I, I actually do agree with you. There's a big problem here. I don't know. We, we want to, we want to be a [00:02:00] flame war here, but actually no, you, you are right. I mean, the, the most important driver of fertility above everything else is culture.

Yeah, absolutely. And. And so I do agree this this concept of the fertility stack. So I I can I can talk about what the major first

Malcolm Collins: first let's do the major things in the fertility stack then try to convince me that housing space matters at all Because I, I just say, and I, and I'll repeatedly say this is, is if you look historically in America, it was common for multiple families to live in one household.

Like that, that means that the only reason we care about living space before having kids is completely cultural. It's, it's like being trans or something. Like, I don't understand how I can say that one, if I'm like, this is inefficient and doesn't help people. So we should change our culture rather than change, you know, our biology.

When I look at houses, I'm like, well, we should change our culture rather than changing our environments because there's nuance

Simone Collins: to this. And I want to hear Dan's [00:03:00] argument and I can also throw in some things that some people have shared with me that have moderated my views on this.

More Births: Okay. Yes. Would you, do you want to talk about housing first or the, yeah, let's talk about housing first.

I guess the

Malcolm Collins: easier one for you to argue. Cause it's such a, your core thing.

More Births: Yeah. Yeah. So, Pro NATO belief and having a culture that's pro family is definitely very important. But, but, you know, housing, having the right kind of housing and housing space does matter also. And I just want to use the example of a group that is all around you guys, where you are in Pennsylvania, which is, which is the Amish.

So, so we have, you know, the, Example of Israel, which is a wonderful example of, of pro natal culture

Malcolm Collins: and very dense housing. That's gotten denser recently.

More Births: Right. No, very dense housing. That is there. That is actually, I would say their biggest limitation. But I would say, you know, the Amish have many of many similar values, you know, pro natal belief very religious, tight knit culture.

And they also have You know a lot of space and [00:04:00] a lot of room to grow and you get a fertility rate of of six

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but the core thing that correlates with fertility in American what is it dutch whatever speakers basically amish in america is the use of cell phones which is I mean, it's so overwhelming it cuts their fertility rate by into like a third of what it is when they don't use Cell phones which shows that that cultural intrusion matters more to them than the land ownership itself You And I also point out that if you're contrasting Amish culture with Jewish culture in the way it relates to land ownership, you can immediately see how Jewish culture negates the housing issue specifically with, with Amish individuals, it's believed you need your own house to get married and they'll even do like barn raises and like, you know, you make money off the land and everything like that.

If you go to Israel, if you go, and we've argued this in other videos, that Judaism is an urban specialized culture, I think today, 98 percent of Jews live in urban areas. If you go to rural parts of Israel and you look at the way they structure their, their cities, they look like micro dense [00:05:00] settlements instead of like actually like spread apart cities typically based around like a minion.

And it's, and I'll, I'll put pictures on screen of it cause it's really weird. But it shows that even if you give Jews a lot of land, because their culture is so adapted, For less space, they use the land in a way where they're not like taking it up with giant houses and everything. So, I don't want to say that you're I do hear

More Births: it.

I do hear it. No, I really do. I do want to 1 thing. I do want to emphasize this is and this is the core of the topic of I say the fertility stack is that there. It is multifactored and I would agree with you that pronatal belief and culture are the most important element and I have that, you know, as the top of the I also want to point out there is, you know, quite a, you know, quite a significant housing restraint, particularly when you can't have, [00:06:00] you know, all of you know, all of cultures you know, being as pronatal as, as you can.

As Israel. So I want to, I want to, you know, present some stats, show us some stats. Sure, sure.

Simone Collins: Well, and while Dan pulls up some stats I will point out that one thing that really changed the way I look at this is a mother that I speak with a lot pointed out that it made sense or it could work to have a really big family and a lot of kids in a really small house.

When you lived in a culture where obviously the kids are playing outside all day They just come home for dinner and they sleep they basically eat and sleep in the house And the rest of the time they're out playing in the neighborhood kids can't go out anymore. They're not allowed to go out There's no space for all those kids

Malcolm Collins: simone You're the one who brought up the wolves of new york kids So these were like a family of like eight people who lived in a studio apartment and they never went outside in new york Leaving once a year and they grew up perfectly emotionally normal and everything like that.

You do not need space. You do not need the outdoors. They may have a [00:07:00] modifying effects, but they are not. There are ways to build culture around this. And this is like if I was going to conceptualize a fertility stack, instead of putting culture at the top of it, I'd say a fertility stack is almost like a A chart on the wall that like you need to read and culture is the lens so somebody can be like Oh that housing number is fuzzy and it's like no just change out the lens like ka chink and it's like oh It's not fuzzy anymore you don't need to because if you change culture you can change the optimal amount of really almost anything in the fertility stack whether that's income or housing or space but continue.

Yeah

More Births: What I'm showing here on the screen is this is a map of fertility in Sydney, Australia. So you have great, it's greater Sydney. So all the surrounding area is the Sydney suburbs. And then you have you know, downtown Sydney is that area with a fertility of one. So you're, you're in the, when you're in single family homes.

[00:08:00] And, you know, and I want to emphasize that this is normies. Okay. You know, these are,

Malcolm Collins: this, this could also be a map of urban monoculturism. Well,

Simone Collins: I think this thing is, is, is fertility roundup. Zvi, who mentions your work and talks about it also points out that what we're looking at is a lot of selection effects too, you know, like people who are choosing not to have kids don't go to urban.

Oh, I,

More Births: I know that. That's a, that, that is a. A fair point. I do want to point out particularly, you know, in terms of the selection argument. Well, I don't know if we want to take a minute here to look to go over this chart before we go to go on. Sure. Let's go over this chart. Yeah. So we do see that that the fertility in the Sydney Suburbs is very healthy.

It's, you know, around two you know, up to, up to 2.

1,

In many of the Sydney suburbs, as, as you get to the urban core, you're down to 1. And then, and then in the, in the urban core of Sydney your fertility is 1. 0. And I, [00:09:00] there's a couple, there's one factor that I really want to emphasize is Is is that is most of the apartment towers you know, and in downtown urban areas, it's all, you know, high rise apartment towers.

And most of these apartment towers tend to be studios and 1 and 2 bedroom apartments. So they tend to, you know, they tend to be very, very small. And there's actually. There's actually pretty strong cultural norms now that didn't exist before where, you know, the boys are supposed to have their, you know, if you have a boy, they're supposed to have their own room with only boys.

If a girl is supposed to have their own room with only girls, and it's supposed to be separate from the parents. That's the, I'm not saying, I'm not pressing about putting a value judgment on that. I'm just saying that that's the norm that we have now. And it's a pretty strong norm because Child Protective Services, you know, We'll actually use things like that, you know, as a judgment for whether they'll take somebody's kids away.

[00:10:00] So, so this is, this is a pretty,

Malcolm Collins: you know, we need to stop that in government. I mean, I think that this is a great point. You know, if we get in with the Trump administration with this task force. We need to be removing those sorts of barriers with Child Protective Services. And I'd also note, when you're talking about the city and people living in these cramped spaces, a point that Zvi made in his roundup that I thought was really powerful, which is that you actually probably want smaller apartments being made in urban centers, rather than larger apartments, if what you care about is fertility rates.

Because they are smaller apartments than individual people. What is really correlated with a drop in fertility rates isn't living in smaller apartments, but it's living with roommates. That's the thing that has like the biggest drop. And so if you get a bunch of like two bedrooms in like the, the middle of a city, instead of really small studios, then that means more people are living with roommates, really, that's what's happening.

And instead of having more room to themselves and more money to themselves, whereas I would say like the number one thing for me for an urban center would [00:11:00] be to change the zoning. to make very inexpensive, extremely small units for people during the stage of their life where they're looking for a wife.

And I think you can already see, do you engage in the stage of life where you go to a city to look for a wife? Lyman stone did data on this, and I'm sure you've looked at it where he shows that actually being in a metro area is increases your lifetime fertility rate. Whereas it's living with parents or living with a group that decreases it.

You, you saw that one. To the extent that it helps

Simone Collins: you get married younger, it's really helpful. Also to the extent that you get married younger and make a lot of money younger, because there's additional research on housing and fertility shows that if you acquire a home at a younger age that has a positive effect on her fertility because theoretically that could be like an additional income stream.

It's more financial stability. It can make people feel more comfortable. But right now, of course, as a young person, it's really hard to buy a home. But if you go to a city and make a lot of money, find a partner like that's great. So I like that point. [00:12:00]

More Births: All right, let him talk. Right, right. So there is. What you just mentioned, I, I, you know, I, I think that, that, that, that I have to disagree with it and, and here's why, because you know, I did read, you know, Sfi's Fertility Roundup, and I, I think it's, it's, it, it is, it does jive with how a lot of free market economists think, but, but actually what has happened, and we have enough experience to see this is that East Asia has done exactly this.

East Asia has, has a ton of exactly what you're talking about. Very inexpensive you know, small apartments for singles one and twos. And what I, what I had a post that, that got a lot of I think on Sunday is I, I called it a, it's a de facto one child policy where the people have tiny apartment.

They're very inexpensive, but they're very, very [00:13:00] small all across Asia. And the places where that are built like this, this is where you see fertility rates, you know, in Seoul. Of you know, of I think 0. 55 or something in Seoul and, and, you know, it's, there's kind of a misconception that Seoul is very expensive.

Actually, the rents in Seoul are 75 percent less than in the, in New York city. So you're going to pay 25%. In Seoul, what you're going to pay in New York City. So I lived

Malcolm Collins: in Seoul in, in one of these units,

More Births: I've been to Korea three times. So we, we, we have both, we both know Korea, but go ahead, go ahead.

Malcolm Collins: So I lived in one of these units.

I would, I actually could not sing the praises of this style of unit enough for high fertility rates. And I'll explain why when I look at the shower units. So first I need to talk about how small these units are. The one that I lived in. Was probably about double the size of a twin mattress. In terms of like the room vault space.

Maybe, maybe three twin mattresses if you like cut them [00:14:00] up and like, the restroom was a toilet and then on top of the toilet was a showerhead. Like they didn't have a separate space to go for like showering and toilet. It was just in a corner and that was it. And it, it, It really felt like the room from it crowd.

I don't know if anyone's seen that episode where they get the TV that's too big.

Speaker: Man, these anti piracy ads are getting really mean. I think we're sitting too close to the screen, and the floor's all sticky over here. All right. Okay, let's move back then. I

still think we're too close. Well then, sit in the sink. I'm not sitting in the sink again. Okay, princess. Your flat is way too small for this telly. That's nonsense.

Speaker 4: What's wrong with you now? I need to go to the toilet. Well then, go.

I'll hold it [00:15:00] in.

Malcolm Collins: But the point being is I was able to afford this place very inexpensively while I had a high paying job and then send that money for my wife to get her graduate degree and save money. And then we used money I saved during that period to like buy a real house.

It. If I had to live in like a New York style, like one of these larger houses, I wouldn't have been able to save as much money and set myself up as much. Like, what are your thoughts on that?

More Births: Well, I, I mean, this is, this is why you know, I try to be sort of agnostic on what the answer is and just kind of, you know, be, be driven as much as I can, you know, by the data.

And I don't want to claim to be, to have a hundred percent of the answers, but I do want to say that You know, the lowest fertility rates that we see in the world are places, you know, whether it be in China or Korea or even even Tokyo, Tokyo does a little bit better. But Tokyo's fertility is still only around 1.

0. Right? But, but these are places where, you know, [00:16:00] housing is actually abundant and cheap, but it's very small

Simone Collins: when I think that if it comes back to culture, like again at this, like, I'm really interested in the effects of that psychedelics can have from a therapeutic standpoint, whether you're dealing with depression or PTSD, but the research all shows.

Basically, if you just. Have a trip. You just like, okay, whatever. Try it out, but you don't go in with structure intentions, you know, the sort of a framework and plan like you don't change. You don't see an improvement in your situation where it's you come in with this framework of you're working with a therapist.

Here's the plan. You're coming in with these intentions. It can be transformational. I think the problem is in these cities that we're talking about, yeah. There isn't this perception of, okay, you go to the city to find your spouse, to make the money, to buy your house, to start your family. It is you go to the city to have fun.

You go to the city to travel more. You go to the city, you know, to, to do all these things. And when, when we look at these Asian cultures that are especially struggling with low birth [00:17:00] rates, when you look at the cultural traditions around dating, they're just. Like, it's very, very hard for people to find partners.

So it's no surprise to me that people in these cities are struggling. If you shifted that, and I know Tokyo, for example, is trying you know, Japan is trying to create new dating apps, for example and if you changed what it meant to live in the city and suddenly there were tons of singles events, or perhaps sponsored by the government, where you get dinner and drinks and it's speed dating you know, I think that things could be changed really quickly because it shifts the purpose of that low cost housing.

More Births: So, I don't know, I've got another, another Yeah, put up

Malcolm Collins: more, put up more, but I

More Births: want

Malcolm Collins: to hear you address Before we go further, I want to hear you address the Limestone Metro statistic, because I found that very interesting.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): Specifically, this is the one here that being in a metro increases your overall fertility rate if you're in a metro when you're younger.

More Births: Well, okay, this is, there's a, you know, the, how, how are, the U. S. data classifies Metro [00:18:00] is really, It's not very granular is, is what I'm saying.

And I know exact, I, I, I've studied this data and I, I know exactly what he's talking about. I, I read, I read those papers a hundred percent. And so I live in an urban area. I, I live in a city according to the, the census data. So I'm in, I'm in an urban area, but I am, I am sitting here in a. A five bedroom single family home.

That's that's urban and it's all jumbled together. So

Malcolm Collins: i'm looking you have a Five bedroom home more births. We need to brought five bedroom. Do you have a backyard too? Well, no wonder you like housing you're you're living the life here. I it's not amazing It's a mansion. I'm gonna put on, I'm gonna put on visualization of more Bird house

Speaker 6: This estate is basically Buckingham Palace's less famous cousin. With rooms and stunning gardens, it's a quintessential British manor. It's said to have an underground pool and cinema.

Malcolm Collins: and I'll put on the [00:19:00] library.

Here we go. This is Hollywood.

More Births: Yeah. Yeah. We put, I have five tours and, and, and Seven. Seven butler's quarters. No, I'm just kidding. No, no, no.

Simone Collins: And I had a slide down, like a, you know, for mean butler

Malcolm Collins: kid. No, we actually my, my, my, I have a family member who insists on having an au pair for every kid they have, and they're a very high fertility family, and it is comical.

Simone Collins: I don't know. I can say this must be nice. Yeah, it must be nice.

More Births: No, it, it, I, I do wanna it does make it, it does make it a lot easier. And this is one thing that we need to talk about. I think you know, there, there an a, a great, you know, some of the great pronatalist communicators one of my, one of them is my friend, Tim Carney.

He has a book called Family Unfriendly. It's, he's a, he's a father of six. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a, he's a great guy. I hope, I hope you guys can meet him at some point. We

Simone Collins: did. We did. We had him we had him over. Oh, yeah, the night before we saw you he went to our first one. Oh, great. Oh, great.

Yeah. And he's [00:20:00] awesome. Yeah. We, we, we should probably have him on the podcast. But, but his

More Births: point, and it's a point that I think you guys have made also is that one aspect of Of parenting. That's important for from a pronatal perspective is for it to be easy. Like, you can't, you can't have this high impact helicopter parenting and, and have six kids as I do.

I mean, we were, we, we, we probably did a, a more careful detailed bit of work with our older ones than we, than we you know, but it, it, it, it's fine. And they actually get to be a more responsible and they, and more, more confident. You know, my, my, my 17 year old took one of the cars and she's, I, I don't know, I don't even, I don't think any of us even know where she is.

And, and that's, she's, she's, she's, she's, she's trustworthy and she's very responsible, so it's okay. And, but, but, you know, we can't, it is impossible. To helicopter her. I, [00:21:00] I don't have, I don't have the capacity. Yeah, and that is

Simone Collins: to your point, to her benefit. Also, helicoptering really does, like, I was just thinking today about how I introduced foods to our first kid.

Of like, I pureed the food at home. I spoon fed everything. Nothing went in the mouth. Nothing was swallowed. Like, and it was very stressful and very expensive. And now like with our kids, I just give them like stuff to chew on when they're teething and then just let them hand feed. With non choking hazard foods when they feel like it and I don't worry about it and it's so much more sustainable and that's just like all across the board.

So it isn't, but again, that's culture, but I didn't want to mention,

More Births: I didn't want to mention as well, you know, talk about, you know, urbanization, as I say, I, I'm part of the urban category and, you know, having a house in the suburbs is not the, is not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking, you can have pretty good density.

In the suburbs. What I'm talking about is these these high rise like we saw the man like [00:22:00] soul like Sydney, where the suburbs of Sydney have have quite healthy fertility, and it's that urban core, and you can argue why and there is an intersection. I do want to mention that there is. I do agree that there's an intersection with culture there.

Malcolm Collins: This didn't used to be the case. And I point this out to people, like people are like, Oh, city's always low fertility. That's, that's not true. Like there have been periods of immigration in the United States where everyone was like, ha, ha, ha, the Irish, you know, it's always like. Five families living in one house was tons of kids.

Like there have been periods in history where urban centers had high fertility rates, but they were always periods, not where urban centers had larger houses, but where there were cultures in those urban centers that normalized sharing the space.

More Births: Well, yeah, so no, you're, you're, you're right. Fertility has been, you know, fertility in during the during the baby boom in New York City was above three.

So, so, so you can, but, but I do want to emphasize what I was saying before is that is that we have [00:23:00] kind of a confluence of fertility. You know, modern expectations say that, you know, if a, if a boy is, is above like toddler age and a girl is above toddler age, they're supposed to each have a separate room and separate from their parents.

Yeah, I do agree that you know, having a lighter hand and having, you know, a lot more flexibility about these things is a great idea, but I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm also, you know, reporting things as they are. This is, this is the norm that we have. And in this, in this norm, you know, having a bunch of kids in an apartment is, Just not done it is it is not almost non existent In a great way that you could fix this and

Malcolm Collins: this is something that i'd love to do You know if we have a ton more kids like we go for mass production is vertical We need to do is get the like a bar that can support them and then basically just hang them [00:24:00] in bags so we can Okay

More Births: Bat cave or something like that.

Malcolm Collins: Meat hooks, meat hooks. Push a button and it goes, there's you, back and I hook up. No,

Simone Collins: we, we used to joke that we were gonna go to old morgues and buy the the drawers. You know, just pull out bets. Wait, Simone, I don't remember

Malcolm Collins: this cause I

Simone Collins: would

Malcolm Collins: have done

Simone Collins: that. And we've joked about that like a billion times every time we watch some kind of,

Malcolm Collins: Well, can you put like a an alert for this?

I want my kids to sleep in the morgue, George. We can pull them out. Your reporters would go apoplectic about this. But let's see more stats here, Dan.

More Births: I, I, okay. You, you want to see more on, on, on density? Yeah,

Simone Collins: then I also want to talk about, But the elements of the fertility stack, because I am curious, you, you ran us through it when we were in DC, but I want to hear

Malcolm Collins: the part of the recap of it.

Density wise, that density is okay. What you need is a cultural tradition of living in different levels of density at different stages of your life, [00:25:00] which is what I was raised with. And if you had this cultural tradition, which I believe we actually have, it's just Some people have forgotten it because we don't pass on our culture.

Well anymore. It's it's it's obvious to people Oh, I go in the city when i'm young and looking for a spouse and then I leave the city and have kids after that and yet you know One of the things I heard that really got me is you're supposed to go to a city and run Now people go to a city and sit and and they don't understand why their lives end up becoming a disaster But yes, tell me about this.

More Births: Okay, so this this is you know for for cities around the world You you know, I found and again, I'm trying to simply report things as I see them. You

know,

I'm trying to be a referee here and just present the data. 11 thing. That is a very strong correlation. Is that the higher the share of apartments as a fraction of total housing, you know, the lower the fertility rate.

So you have places, you [00:26:00] know, like China and Korea, Spain. Also, Italy. Also where almost all of the housing is apartments, they tend to have lower fertility and places on the other end of the spectrum, like, you know, you know, Atlanta is a good example where, you know, Almost all of the housing is houses.

You know, fertility you know, it is much higher. So

Malcolm Collins: sorry. Does anyone here believe that Paris has a higher fertility rate than Atlanta or Dallas? That seems unbelievable to me.

More Births: Well, you know, France overall has a, has, has a relatively high fertility. Well, there's a couple of things about Paris. I do believe that.

I do believe that data point because Paris has a very high proportion of Muslim immigrants. So I think that Well, I'm

Simone Collins: Catholic, right? I mean,

More Births: Catholicism helps. Yeah, but No,

Malcolm Collins: Catholicism doesn't help. Well, I think,

More Births: I think what we could be seeing in Paris, we could be seeing a strong effect [00:27:00] of Muslim immigrants.

Malcolm Collins: So in a lot of people, I'm sorry, I need to be clear about the stats here around Paris. France typically has a uniquely high fertility rate among its white population as well. It is not just the immigrants that are boosting it. Yeah, they, they probably have an effect. You're absolutely right about that.

But it also has a uniquely high native

More Births: fertility rate. Yeah, and France, you know, one thing that's really cool about France is we, we, I'm, I'm hearing baby industry there, right? Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm going to mute myself. That's wonderful to hear. You know, me and baby industry hung out and we, I got her to sleep, but at our last meetup, she's your

Simone Collins: biggest fan.

I think she, she can probably hear you and be like, Where's my Dan?

More Births: Right. So, but you know, what, one thing I want to say in Paris or in France's favor, is that, is it the French leaders like have no problem just saying like, Hey guys, for the sake of the nation, like everybody, please have more [00:28:00] children and like in, in the Anglosphere.

Like in England that would be gauche and like completely embarrassing. Like the French Prime Minister, and not just Macron, but like every French Prime Minister since World War II has said that. That, you know, it's important to Have children and you know, to, and to, but don't you,

Malcolm Collins: don't you like being in a subversive movement?

Like for American culture, isn't it even better that I can say have more children and it's subversive and cool and rebel? Like,

More Births: yeah, no, I, yeah, there, there is something, something cool about that to, to be the, the underground, the pro rebel

Malcolm Collins: beat the system out

More Births: pronatalist underground, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, you got to have we will replace you as our slogan.

Yeah. I'm a very

More Births: big tent kind of guy. So that's my own, but, but yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Actually, Simone, can we, can we talk to, to Kevin Dullard about making natalist clothes, make the [00:29:00] slogan? We will replace you.

More Births: Oh boy. Anyway but yeah, no, I do, I do want to emphasize. That the density and apartment living is not the only thing, but in order to I, as far as I can tell, in order to have healthy fertility and live in an apartment or a dense configuration, you really have to have a very pronatal culture.

So Israel has that, you know, 1 example that people give is that you have a high fertility in the. You know, one of the more dense places on earth is the Nile Delta, like around Cairo, Egypt, but mostly, you know, and that's true. You do have high fertility. You also have a high, I just saw data just this week that the, the per, the percentage of the population that believes in pure Sharia law is like [00:30:00] 80 some percent in Egypt.

It's like a hair. It's a smidgen higher than in Afghanistan.

Simone Collins: Whoa!

More Births: In Egypt? What happened? So like the, the common man in Egypt what is very extremely hardcore, like fundamentalist Islam.

Okay.

Your man on the street in Egypt. Yeah. So there's an interesting like political point here, which is you know, the, you know, our American leadership had the, had the idea that we need to knock off the military dictatorship in Egypt in order so that the people can get, you know, can be free.

And so you can have a liberal society. Actually, the military dictatorship was the reason for the liberal society because they were, they were keeping a lid on like, unlike the, the extreme radical fundamentalism that, that, that's the, that's like actually the, the core belief of like 80 percent of the population.

Simone Collins: That's one, it's such an interesting contrast to [00:31:00] Iran, which has so lost God, despite the government really trying to impose it. We did an episode on this, it's something like

Malcolm Collins: only like 26% of the population still identifies as religious and only like, 40% believes in, in like heaven. Yeah. And so this

More Births: is the power of grassroots culture.

This is a strong a strong data point in support of your, your, your theory of people rebelling against the government in a way. Because, because in Egypt you had a secular government and, and a grassroots that's like. You know, fervently religious and in Iran, you, you, you have had the opposite effect where you had a, a theocratic group on top.

And this is the point I

Malcolm Collins: am, I am like, like a lightning rod about, it is so important that people get it through their heads, that if you attempt to enforce, through laws and through government, religious systems, it is the worst thing you could conceivably do for it. It's going to

Simone Collins: [00:32:00] backfire if you make government do it.

Malcolm Collins: But for your religion, if you, if you want more extreme evangelical Christians or more Catholics, porn bans. We'll have the exact opposite effect. If you want more of that banning gay marriage, we'll have the exact opposite effect. Anything you attempt to do to heavy handedly enforce your religious values on a society has the effect of killing that religion within that society.

You can see this in the data. It is just an overwhelmingly powerful effect. But what I want to hear here, and this is something, you know, when we're talking about all of this, where I'm like, Oh my God, it is so important that people get it is the culture. And family culture, not about enforcing culture from the government, but like you have to take responsibility, i.

e. you cannot be like, Oh, the government will like ban porn and like, my kids will be fine or whatever. Like, how do you personally teach your kids when it's okay to get married, what's their sexuality, et cetera. And I [00:33:00] think if you don't take this culture first mindset. It's very easy. And I see this even with members of the prenatalist movement to say, I'm just going to raise my kids the way my grandparents, you know, like, IE, like we're going to go back to the way things were in the 1950s and 1940s and I'll raise them in that format.

And within a household that's operating within that format and they'll be fine. And I'm like, no, they won't. They won't. All deconvert you, you can see this in the data. You'll, you'll keep like one of your kids. And if we don't like hold that in front of people's faces, like you can't just do things the way you used to, you can't just enforce these values on people.

Then they end up focusing on this little stuff. Like, well, you know, I'm a traditional Christian and I'm trying to make, you know, housing smaller, you know what I mean? Like housing barrier.

More Births: Well, I do want to say the, the, in the data, housing. You know, does seem to matter quite a bit. So I don't want to dismiss it.

I don't want the other thing, you know, I don't want to say it doesn't matter. I'm not, I'm not going to say it's the most important thing, but I'm not the other. The other reason that [00:34:00] I stick to housing so much or that I mentioned housing quite a bit is that it's, it's so lasting. And if You know, these where you have a sea of urban high rises, you know, almost everywhere in the world that you see that you see, you know, fertility rates extremely low, usually below one.

I mean, so, so that that type of that level of density in the data, it just looks it looks very bad. But I, I will agree that the pronatalist culture is the, is a trump card that can overcome. You know, a whole lot and that's

Malcolm Collins: where people live is largely culturally influenced, right? Like, okay. If you're more urban monoculture minded, if the urban monoculture has infested your mindset more, you're more likely to live near an urban center.

And I, and I understand, like, it's one of these things to me where it's like, but I'm able to live in an urban center without that affecting me. I just don't [00:35:00] know if like smaller houses affect, or I have seen any evidence. And I mean, any evidence at all. That, that, that smaller living spaces affect already high fertility subgroups.

More Births: I did see, and I don't have it in front of me and I wish I did, but, but Limestone did find that even for Orthodox Jews, he found that even for Orthodox Jews, they had higher fertility when they lived in the New York suburbs than they did in, in the, So even

Malcolm Collins: cross traditions, cause that's the thing that really get it when I mean track across.

I don't, I think it's really like silly and I basically personally ignore any graph that's like people currently living in the center of Manhattan have a few kids. I'm like, obviously. Right. But what I want to see is people who have ever lived in the center of Manhattan, how does that affect their fertility rate?

Because again, I think that this is a life stage thing.

More Births: Well, you know, I had an interesting [00:36:00] conversation, which I. You know, with like a, a young professional I, I, I kind of did a, a tour of newly built apartments in, in Bethesda Rockville near, near where I live. And I was talking to people, you know, first of all one notable thing is that among, you know, I, I, I went there and I acted like I was Somebody looking for a three bedroom apartment and I went to the rental office and I asked and four different newly built towers that I visited had zero three bedroom apartments in the entire building.

I mean, I don't mean,

I don't mean none. I don't mean zero three bedrooms available to rent. I mean, I mean, the building was constructed with no units being more than two.

Simone Collins: That makes sense because from an investment standpoint, The understanding of the real estate market is this basically three plus bedroom houses are the worst possible investment because there is a.

Glut of that inventory from boomers becoming [00:37:00] empty nesters and moving out of their three plus bedroom houses is big downsize and then there's this massive population of dinks or one kid couples or families That only want two bedroom or can afford two bedroom houses and spaces. Yeah. Well, I don't I

More Births: I'm not I'm, not a developer.

I have a There's a developer that I'm communicating sometimes with on X.

Yeah. His

name is Bobby Feigen and I want to talk to him more about what exactly are the economic reasons, but it's, it's a pretty, it's a pretty dramatic fact that, that all over America, you know, three bedroom and larger apartments are built at all.

And I think it, I think it, I think it has something to do with the fact you get more, more paying renters per square foot, stuff like that. It may have something to do with rules around, you know, fire escapes and egresses and things like that. I'm not, I'm not sure. I really think it's about

Simone Collins: demographic trends.

More Births: It could be. I [00:38:00] don't, I don't want to say why they're, they're doing this, but this is what they are doing. They are, they are almost exclusively building like studios and ones and twos almost exclusively. Yeah,

Simone Collins: that totally makes sense. Yeah. And

More Births: so I talked to a, a, a guy who he was a graduate of, of UVA top graduate, high income, married.

He ha he and his wife happily married. He and his wife have one kid. He, he said he stopped at one. They live in a two bedroom apartment in one of these buildings. He said they would like to have four children. But he doesn't feel like he could do it in the space that he has. He said, if I had a single family home, I would I would love to have four children.

And I'm like, Holy s**t.

Malcolm Collins: Well, this is the point, right? Like he doesn't feel like he, I mean, obviously he can do it in the space he has, but the cultural expectations lead him not to feel like he can do it in the space he has.

More Births: Right.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

More Births: Yeah. That, that, yeah. So you're, you, you have a, you have a good point in the, in the past people.

[00:39:00] Would put a lot of people in, in a, you know, Lincoln's log cabin, probably one, one room probably had, you know, the entire family, plus grandma and, and uncle Jethro or whatever.

Malcolm Collins: But what I, what I guess I'm saying here is, look, you can, you can choose to fight. Like you're, you're choosing like a slider, like where do I place my fight on this particular issue?

Right. Why would I place any fight in the getting larger, cheaper apartments when I know that like, that fight is almost impossible to win, but the culture fight is at an individual, intentionally prenatal individual, pretty easy to win.

More Births: I, I, I hear you. That's, that is a, that is a good point. I, I do wanna.

Yeah, I am very troubled by by East Asia. I'm very troubled by Asia and the fact that they seem to have painted themselves into a corner with like basically 100 percent of their housing being, [00:40:00] I would say, Unsuitable to families by modern norms. And I mean, maybe it's possible to get people to have, you know, to, to, to put like six, seven people in one room again.

But

Malcolm Collins: I

More Births: want to

Malcolm Collins: elaborate on a point that you were making because you've, you've made it before more completely. Which is to say housing is very durable. You know, once you've built all of this housing, that's the way it is. So in East Asia, you can't be like, oh, you need to change all your housing to make it like bigger.

Like the housing is already there. Right. And it's going to be there for another 30, 40 years.

More Births: Right. So that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a problem. If, and you know, one thing I want to mention the fastest growth. Like of any country that, as far as I know, the fastest demographic growth of any country in history was that was the United States in the early part of its history.

So America went from like, I think about 3 million, [00:41:00] I may get this number. Not exactly right, but from about 3 million in 1776 to about 76 million in the year 1900. So just

Simone Collins: mostly, mostly, mostly birth rates, not immigration. That's right. That's exactly right.

Malcolm Collins: It was an average in our area, I think in the 1800s, it was an average of 14 children per woman.

Oh my goodness. We went

More Births: for it. Yo! And the thing that I do want to, there's a couple of things that were happening there. So, so the culture element was a big piece of it. You had these, you had these these great awakenings like round after round of great awakenings in the United States that, that, that, that re infused Americans with this fervent religiosity.

But another thing you had is the pioneer culture where. Where people and I could see this in my own ancestry. I, I had a, a lovely family friend who, who traced my family's ancestry back. I have, I have some of my ancestry goes back [00:42:00] to the Mayflower and you could see you could see that people you know, people would constantly, we're constantly going West and they would, they would stay in one place for like a couple of years and.

And then, and then everybody would go further west and you know, constantly spread out on new territory. And that seems to, you know, this, this abundant space and the ability to spread out seems to have been one of the factors that, that, that did play a role in America's Ability to expand so quickly demographically.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, I'd point out here that what really killed American demographics from this perspective, right. And I actually think when you talk about East Asian fertility rates and you're talking about cultural norms, you know, Oh, it was modern cultural norms. So. So let's let's like study where these cultural norms came from.

If you look at during our period of rapid growth, it was common even in the frontier. So you can look at our house, which was built originally on the frontier. It was originally built as like a stone house by one guy. And if you look at the way the house is divided in the way the [00:43:00] rooms are used, so you can see where like the piping goes at one point.

Four different families were living in this one house. They were all related, like brother, sister, et cetera, you know, so like you would marry someone while you were still living with your parents and then you divide your house up among all the siblings or something and then go out of one of you made a lot of money.

And, and so what changed this cultural norm? It was World War Two. After World War Two basically America had this big economic boom largely unsustainable. It was because it was exploiting the rest of the world. And This economic boom is where concepts like the possibility of a nuclear family were born, i.

e. a husband goes out and supports the rest of the family on one income. This is not the norm anywhere historically. This was just a result of an economic boom that happened in America due to a cheat code. That was basically like Europe's factories are all destroyed. And you know, all the everywhere else in the world that could produce high tech stuff had destroyed their economies.

And so we could you know, really gain from that. So we had this ultra luxurious lifestyle. Anyway, the [00:44:00] culture that was the birthplace of the pre urban monoculture. Culture was born here in America. And then that was exported to Japan. That was exported to China. That was exported to Korea. That was exported to all of these other places in regards to how much space do you need?

It was actually specifically after the war in America where it became common for people not to marry until the person they were going to marry owned a home. That is not traditional America. That's specifically, I think it changed from 40 percent to 80 percent after the war.

More Births: I do think that, you know, The housing aspect is one of, is, is one of the factors that I think gave us the baby boom.

So, so from 1946 to 1940, 64, of course, fertility in the United States, you know, shot up to like above three, which was amazing.

Malcolm Collins: But we can look at the data and we know that it's mostly medical advances. I would

More Births: say, no, I, if you're talking about the works in progress piece, I read everything. I read all of that.

Yeah. [00:45:00] I, I do, you know, they, they, they, they got some stuff. There's some stuff that I agree with most, most strongly. One of the things that I agree with most strongly is you had, you had a high rate of young marriage. So, so that was, you had people, women marrying at the, at an average age of 20, which was the earliest.

that women married like in, in U. S. history. So, so you had this, this really young age of marriage. So that was one cause of the baby boom. A

Simone Collins: huge cause. Maybe

More Births: the single, the single greatest cause, but another cause and the works in progress piece did point, point to this thing was you had a huge surge in suburban building, you know, so it wasn't fancy.

It wasn't They weren't these little houses

Simone Collins: in a ticky tacky. Yeah, they weren't like great houses, but they're fine. Actually enabled early homeownership to in the sense of like economic independence and security. Well, there's another thing I can say as [00:46:00] a father of

More Births: six, you know, one of my experience, my kids are very They can be high conflict at times.

Let me just, you know, which is a good healthy spirit, I guess, but it's not a bug. I think it's great. But having space, just a little space to spread them out and put them in little quarters over here over there. You know, is the greatest peace mechanism that I know of in our household.

Malcolm Collins: I agree, but you can do that without extra space.

So, so in our household, you know how we do this? We do this with teepees. We have little play teepees and, and when the kids are getting rough, we just set up all the teepees and we go, okay, go to your teepee and play there.

More Births: Okay. Interesting. I mean, the problem with older, you'll see, you'll see, it gets more difficult when they get a little older because, you know, my second daughter, she is an incredible talker.

She's the funniest person that I know. And, you know, I [00:47:00] mean, even a level of humor that, that, that, that is, is, is very remarkable, but, but she, she's really quick witted. And when she gets to arguing with her siblings. You know, it's, it's nuclear, it's nuclear. It, I mean, if you can have a nuclear war of, of words, you know, and the only thing that I know to do when that, when that happens is to get them in different parts of the, the house or somebody takes a walk or this or that, you know, and how, you know, having a yard, having a place for the kids, one aspect that I think is very valuable as well as is for little kids to be able to play in the yard, you know, basically relatively unsupervised.

And they, you know, and this is back to what Tim Carney was saying about kind of the, the lower effort parenting, as opposed to, you know, if I lived in an apartment, in a, in an apartment, in a high rise, I'd have to, we'd have to come up with things for the kids to do five times a day.

Malcolm Collins: You can't do that even in the suburbs.

Now it's illegal. We've got to see [00:48:00] that's called on us for having our kids play in the yard unsupervised.

Simone Collins: Yeah, we bought this place thinking, Oh, this is great. It's right by a park. Our kids can go play in the park. No, no, we would go with the virtual,

Malcolm Collins: you know, if we get into the administration with a, with a, you know, the panel, one of the things we really need to focus on is dismantling CPS.

Or at least re establishing norms around how you can call it and why you can call it.

More Births: Right, I, I, yeah, I do think, I, I, that is a, I, I do believe that that is a genuine issue, which I, I, I, I don't, I can't really put a finger on, on, in terms of numbers, but I think You know, they're they have very strict expectations about about density.

So so they are one of the enforcers of of the expectation of, you know, lower density and and, you know, they have a strong concept of crowding and you know, things like this. And also child's independence. You know, if they go to the park by themselves, these are issues that, you know, there's no none of these are indications of [00:49:00] abuse.

But but and I think it's it is very, you know, traumatic. You know, we're very fortunate, you know, knock on wood, right? That that hasn't happened. You know, to us, but it has happened to friends and and you know, even to a relative. And it's very traumatic. And I can see why after that happens, somebody would be very reluctant to have further kids.

Because it, because it's,

Simone Collins: it feels illegal. Like it literally feels like we're in trouble for having this many kids sometimes, which is. Not good. I mean, and it's not, and it's not just that too. It's not just CPS. It's also the level of regulatory control over child care, like the credentials you need to work at a daycare, for example.

And even like you can see the dampening effects on fertility just from their babysitting regulation. I mean, we haven't relatively lucky compared to some places considering that you can't just have your neighbor watch. Oh yeah. This is, this is a,

More Births: this is an antenatal [00:50:00] factor. You know, in, in DC, for example, very close to where I live there's a rule that you have to have like a college degree to watch like a, a, a small child.

And I don't see how, how college has anything to do with watching small children in terms of the skill set. There's no, there's no reason for, for that. And it just makes. Childcare much harder to get much more expensive. And you know, the, the fertility rate in Washington DC itself is around 1. 0. So, so, so what is

Simone Collins: this?

I mean, like no one lives in DC except for college students. So that surprised me, but I mean, I just, I don't know. I'm the idea that the government wouldn't have to. Control over anything like this. I mean, there's, most people don't know this, but there's even like, there's some states in the US have regulations on how many dogs you can have.

For example, some cities limit the number of dogs you can have. Like there's a lot of control over how people live and I don't like any of it. Hold on,

Malcolm Collins: so let's hear his, his stack idea. I want to hear the fertility

Simone Collins: stack. So what, aside from housing, [00:51:00] would you say really belongs in the fertility stack?

And do you have it ranked by most to least important? I mean, I know all this stuff. Okay, yeah,

More Births: I will. The most important thing I would say is pronatal belief and ethos. Alright, culture, yes. So I had a, I had a tweet about Mongolia. I don't know if you saw that, but it was, it was retweeted by the owner of the platform.

So it got like 10 million views or 15 million, actually.

Simone Collins: That's so cool.

More Births: Yeah. So, but yeah, Elon retweeted that, but it's about it was about how Mongolia has. Has this award that they give for mothers of four Children to six Children. If you're if you have at least four Children, you get the order of maternal glory.

Second class. If you have six Children, you get the order of maternal glory. First class. And that actually, you know, cause Mongolia's Fertility rate to to increase very sharply and they make a big deal out of it. And you [00:52:00] have so you have this this pronatal ethos and if you believe that having children is good, you know Is very good very important.

That is I would say the the The most important thing on your on your fertility stack. So that's that's element number one, and that can conquer so much. So if you want to look at a country like Israel that has high fertility, even though they're dense, even though they're educated, even though women have more education than men, even though they're technological.

These are all factors that are negative, right? But they have one factor that is paramount, which is that they believe Really, really intensely that having Children is centrally important. And that is kind of a trump card. It's not, as I say, it's not the only thing, but it's if it has, if it has a waiting, maybe that's at least 50%.

Maybe more. Okay. So next element of the fertility stack is marriage. So, Age of marriage or just marriage more broadly like [00:53:00] both so marriage rate Is one I agree with this one

Malcolm Collins: by the way

More Births: marriage rate is one marriage age Is is another so the the baby boom the biggest cause of the baby boom as I as i've said I think is marriage age when you when you get married at 20, which was the average age in Of the women married in the United States in 1960, the average age was 20.

Malcolm Collins: Half we're getting married, like, like dramatically. But yeah, for

More Births: everybody, for every old spinster who gets married at the age of 23, right? That means somebody else is getting married at the age of 17. Right? Well, a better

Malcolm Collins: for everybody getting married at 26. Somebody's getting married at 14. Okay.

More Births: Anyway, different world, different world. That. But, but yeah, yeah. So, I think, but when the average age of marriage was 20 like it was, you know, it was almost impossible not to have like three kids because you know, you have like a 20 [00:54:00] year span of, of fertility, especially, you know, one thing that people really need to realize is that fertility is far, far higher in the twenties than in the thirties.

So like by the age of. There's a something called a fecundability, and I actually want to, I want to share this chart. Here we go. This is one of the most important charts. exists in all of pronatalism. So we're going to it right now. This is the most important chart that exists right here. There it goes. I'm just sharing it now.

Simone Collins: Let's take a look here.

More Births: This is called, this is fecundability. And this was, this was done. This was a study that just came out in 2023. And so this is the monthly probability of a Being able to get pregnant. And I don't know, you know, the axis. So I, you can, I, I don't know if the, if the axis [00:55:00] scales according to, but, but so, so don't look at the axis as an exact percentage, but look at the scale of it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I don't know what

More Births: to, but I like to say

Malcolm Collins: they didn't go younger than 15. I'm just saying this graph has a totally other side to it here.

Simone Collins: It does show though. I mean like, and there's obviously also a lot of complicating factors around. Wait, hold on. How did they

Malcolm Collins: get the 15 to like 18 year old people?

No, I

More Births: don't think, I don't think, I think they, yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. That's an

Malcolm Collins: interesting question. All

More Births: right. But here we do see that the peak. Of like human fertility is at the age of 20

Simone Collins: And isn't that interesting that also is like the peak age like physical appearance that men just constantly want to date Like no matter how old they are.

They want to date women who are like 20 19 20. Yeah it just perfectly correlates with fecundity, which is

More Births: Right, that is [00:56:00] pretty remarkable. And another remarkable thing is that you know fecundability by the age of 32, it's already, it's already down to one third. Of what it was at age 20. So getting married in your twenties is so massive in terms of fertility.

It, it swamps, you know, almost everything else. And as, as I say, this is what, this is the easiest and most obvious explanation for the baby boom is that people were just getting married super young and they had, you know, so many highly fertile years You know, and there's another thing when you, when you get married young, I mean, I think my wife was 24.

So, and I was 27 When you get married very young, like we did, we had four and then, and then it was overwhelming and we, we were swamped and we, and we stopped and then, and then we, we caught our breath and you know, we're able to get a second wind and we still had time for a second wind when we were in our, in our mid thirties you know, to have two more.

And so [00:57:00] we but most people. at their mid thirties, they're starting with round one. So,

Simone Collins: yeah.

More Births: So, you know, that's another thing that the people in previous eras benefited from. If you marry early and you have kids early, you can, you know, you, you can, you can get kicked in the stomach and roll around and then, and then you can recover and get back on your feet again.

Simone Collins: Well, and now actually we're seeing an interesting trend and cause I think, you know, a big discussion that Malcolm and I have, our stance that we hold is. Pandora's box is open with, with modernity, with you know, globalization, with culture, like there is no going back. You can't undo it and just go back to how things were.

You're going to have to find a new way forward.

More Births: One of the interesting ways forward. And I do want to say, I very much

Simone Collins: agree

More Births: that, That we're not going to get out of this the same way we came in

Simone Collins: exactly You got to push you got to push through and one of the ways people are pushing [00:58:00] through which I think is really interesting Is couples are getting married young, which is really great.

They're freezing embryos And many of them are now then just waiting. So that actually will enable them to get pregnant at much later. Rare freezing

Malcolm Collins: is the number one, most important thing to high fertility. We'll

More Births: see. I, I, I, you know, I, I, I, as I say, I want to remain agnostic agnostic on something until I have seen data on whether you know, I, I, I, I, I, I do, you know, I'm a big, big tent pronatalist and I, and I think, you know, I'm, you know, and, and I, I held baby industry and it was wonderful.

And you know, I'm, I'm very much in favor of, of trying many things. I don't know. There is a, there is a possible scenario where where, where, where people, you know, put off forming a relationship that I saw some data that, no, hold on.

Malcolm Collins: No, but this is different embryo freezing versus egg freezing.

Mary freeze [00:59:00]

Simone Collins: good material young and see what, what this does embryo freezing. That is,

More Births: that is different. You're right, you're right. Because when you have

Simone Collins: a frozen embryo, like the, the, the big limiting, you already have a partner creating the embryos. It's not. Transferring them and carrying them like you could chemically delay menopause.

I think the oldest woman to give birth via IVF, she lied to the doctor, but she was in her sixties. So you can, like, it's amazing what you can do. Yes,

Malcolm Collins: it's the quality of the eggs at the age they're produced, which is, you know,

Simone Collins: we have to, yeah. So, like, I think that's, that's might be an interesting way that couples go forward.

Another, a very, a very common thing we're seeing among like a chic urban couples who are like up and coming is they get married young, as young as they can. And they freeze embryos and then they have kids naturally. And they're essentially creating the optionality to have high fertility, but still have kids the romantic traditional way, as long as they can.

While also [01:00:00] not compromising the health or feasibility of children later in age. So we're seeing interesting and promising trends on this front. But none of this changes the fact that early marriage is key here because freezing eggs and freezing sperm while a good idea to maintain optionality is just not as effective as freezing embryos and you can't freeze an embryo if you haven't done

Malcolm Collins: your printer yet.

And I do, I do agree with you. What is the biggest factor in what age you get married? Are you asking me? Anyone? Oh, the biggest factor? It's culture, it's obvious. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Culture. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

More Births: culture broadly. Yes, of course, of course.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, what's next in the fertility stack? What's next?

Yes. Yeah, what we got here,

More Births: religiosity is a, is a very strong factor. I mean, how, I guess religiosity is, yeah. I'd also say culture. Yeah. And, and you know, one thing we talk, you know, you, you've, you've talked about Catholic fertility and i, I, that what we, well, what I do seem to see is that. Where people do remain, you know, church going and faithful, they do have high fertility.

But [01:01:00] as we've seen in a lot of these Catholic countries, there's a high, very high rate of de de churchification,

Simone Collins: Deconstruction. Yeah.

More Births: So that's religiosity is another one. I mentioned the, the housing and the housing type. I really, and I'm, I, I'm, I'm gonna stick with my, my guns on that. That, that's a significant, not, not the only factor, but it is one of them.

It is one of them. It's a factor.

Simone Collins: It's a factor. And there's, there's tons and tons of research that show effect. So

Malcolm Collins: there is, there's research that show correlational effect. I actually don't think. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Correlation. Okay. Oh, okay. Yeah. Causation.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, is there causational data on this that you've seen Dan?

More Births: Well, I would say there is causation in the modern world in the sense that you know, your you will have a hard cap, you know, culturally. And, you know, this is also true for you know, rental, you know, apartment complexes will kick somebody out if they have too many kids you know, beyond the capacity that they have, you know, for example two [01:02:00] kids per bedroom is, you know, Is seen as like a limit that apartment complexes.

Oh,

Simone Collins: just in terms of like, this is our fire code limit of residence. They'll have their

More Births: own limits that they can. Wow. You know, and I, and I know this because when I was, when I was a young and when I was five years old, my, you know, my parents were having kids in an apartment and they, and my, my little sister was born and they got.

They got summarily kicked out and told to kick, you know, I had to go get a, if we get a

Malcolm Collins: task force

More Births: together, make this illegal. Yeah, yeah, that, that, that, that could help, that, that could help. But I do, I do think that people also make the conscious decision based on their own perception of, of space. So I, I don't want to, we've talked about that quite a bit.

I'll, I'll, I'll move on another. Another point another factor is men's earnings. Men's earnings in particular. Men's earnings are pronatal. Women's earnings are not, [01:03:00] actually. So there is It's, it's

Malcolm Collins: entirely dependent on the culture. In some cultures, the less money you have, the more kids you have. The, some cultures, more money means more kids.

Okay, unless

Simone Collins: you change the culture around women marrying, like, low, low income, like women right now, and almost like, I think this must be universal across culture, want to marry men who are of higher status than them and higher economic wellbeing. And if you, if you have depressed male earnings, which you totally see in the data I just saw an ex like a couple of days ago, a really great graph showing how income has changed over time since the eighties across different groups.

And while it has gone up for women significantly especially minority women. It has plummeted for non college educated men. Just plummeted. And like, no wonder I don't particularly agree it

Malcolm Collins: hasn't plummeted. My point is, is everybody knows it was in certain cultural groups and, and the majority of cultural [01:04:00] groups, the less money you have, the more kids you're going to have.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but then you need like even poorer women. All I'm saying is basically like women are more likely to marry young if there's a large body of like, Higher status than them. Single men willing to marry.

More Births: There is a, I do see a lot of that in that is something that's pretty strong in the data, which is that that male earnings.

Like a high earning man in most modern societies is going to have more children than a low earning man. And actually the highest earning, the highest fertility subgroup is people who are high income and low education. So that would make a lot of sense. So, so if you, if you can

Malcolm Collins: imagine like a, Low indoctrination, whenever you hear education, you should think indoctrination, high income, low indoctrination.

More Births: But there is another problem with education that is not just indoctrination, which is simply years of schooling. So, you know, if you [01:05:00] assume that somebody is not going to get pregnant while a woman's not going to get pregnant, particularly while she's in school and she, and she's going all the way for a PhD at the age of 32, then that's That's like, here, here, I'm doing the Donald Trump hands here, right?

You see what I'm doing

Malcolm Collins: here? No better time to have kids than when you're getting a PhD or something like that, and people have done it and been like, yeah, this is like when people should be having kids. It's wild. That

Simone Collins: really does bother me. I mean, one, there is a culture currently in higher academia that many pronatal women in academia have pointed out that is pretty anti nudalist that they're getting a lot of side eye for having kids and they're seeing, it's like, oh, you're, you're, Compromising your career.

I don't know how you're gonna make it work. Whereas like that should be the opposite of the case. You really should start your families while you're in school. It is one of the best times to do it. So academia is, should be held very responsible for this topic. Well, there is also

More Births: in relation to that, you know, we, we have are, you know, our, our friend Catherine Pakaluk, you know, she had eight Children and [01:06:00] also raised a further six Children from her, her husband's first marriage, his his wife tragically passed.

And then she so it was kind of, so she inherited his six Children after his first wife passed and then had eight more. And she is a tenured economics professor who has a PhD from Harvard. Exactly. So, but what did she do? How did she do it? This

Malcolm Collins: is the person who wrote Heather's Children, by the way.

Continue. Yes, Hannah's Children. Yeah,

More Births: yeah. So, but which I, which I have, I actually, I actually wrote the very, The very first review of her book actually it's such a good book. I love it so much yeah, I wrote the first I I got a copy before it came out and I I put the the very first review Nice, so but but yeah, she yeah, yeah, yeah.

And what she did was she, she spaced out her PhD over like twice as many years. And like, it, it took her like, like 12 years to get tenure or something like that, [01:07:00] and she just was okay with that. And now she's very successful. Now she's like world famous. She's becoming world famous. So, you know, she's doing fine in terms of.

Her, I mean, becoming a world famous public intellectual is probably like the height of human accomplishment, right? You know? So, and raising a big family. You just don't have to do it all at the same time, is the point.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well, she does have it all. It just takes a while. And you don't

More Births: have to, you don't have to, what, what you have to do is have, have children in your twenties and early thirties.

Yeah. She couldn't go

Simone Collins: back and get that. She couldn't be like, now I've done it. Now I'm going to have my, you know, huge family. It would be gone. It was always the

Malcolm Collins: spouse, wife slash husband first. And then. Security, not security first, then wife says spouse. And I'd even go so far as to say you will never have real [01:08:00] security if you do it the other way around, because if you get security before you get wife slash spouse then the, the, that wife sees you as a source of potential income, resources, et cetera.

And they are much more likely to divorce you. I think a huge part of the drop in divorce for our generation has been because people understand this now. And for the individuals who don't see this, who want the security first, you, you will never have security in your life because you are just a time bomb of divorce.

More Births: Well, there's another point which I've, I've emphasized before, which is that if you look at wealth in the United States and probably a lot of countries are similar wealth is very low in the twenties and, and it starts to climb a little bit in the thirties, but wealth really takes off. In the forties and fifties.

But if you wait until the forties and fifties, you, your, your fertility window has passed you by. So, so you actually have to, most people have to have Children when they're young [01:09:00] and poor. I mean, even Elon Musk, when he was like in his twenties, you know, his, his wealth was like one one thousandth. Or one probably much less than one one thousand It was probably like one ten thousand one one hundredth of thousandth of what it is now you know if the point is that that there's this trajectory that almost everyone follows in the in modern society where most people are poor in their 20s and then and then start to Start to gain a little traction in their 30s and then are really taking off financially in their 40s and 50s You you can't wait that long.

You have to You you have to start much earlier. So just a couple more going through the fertility stack a little bit more. So grandparents support is a big one. That's a big a big thing. It's called aloe parenting. And grandparents are the biggest source of that in Israel. For example, in Israel, you have these thick family Networks beyond the nuclear family that provide a great deal of [01:10:00] childcare.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that, that makes a quick side question here. It might not be related to this discussion, but what determines a grandparent's likelihood of helping with parenting?

More Births: I mean, I think it's pronatal belief.

Malcolm Collins: It's culture. Yeah. It's literally culture. Everything you're saying here is culture is all the time.

Simone Collins: Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: Huh. I got it. I

Simone Collins: mean. Continue, continue, continue. I just

Malcolm Collins: want to make sure that we understand that it's literally culture.

More Births: Well, yeah, no, it's, it's interesting because my own grandparents who were wonderful people, but they didn't have that, that culture. No, my,

Malcolm Collins: my, my family doesn't have that culture.

And so you are responsible as a perinatalist for creating that culture in your kids with your own actions.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, like we we've, we've baked it into our internal family culture of like, we are one, like we are. Happy to raise our kids, kids, you know, that is our you the most pronatal

More Births: grandparents type thing [01:11:00] that I have ever seen, which is, so in my neighborhood there's a Catholic couple that raised 11 children.

Okay. And then in a, in a decently big, but not enormous. You know, suburban house and then you know, of those 11 children, one of one of their kids had, like, you know, caught the bug, if you will, you know, got married young, married a wonderful young woman and wanted to have a big family. You know what the parents did?

They sold their house for really cheap to that son and his wife, like, way below market. And then they moved into an apartment. And so they, they kind of, and then, and then now they come over to their, to this house that was once their own house to watch the kids. That

Simone Collins: is wild. Wow. Dedication to the cause.

And they,

More Births: this is a young couple. They already have six, I think they're going to [01:12:00] get to 10 or 11, this, this young couple that lives down the street. And

Simone Collins: they would not be able to get there without that parent's support. And now they're young homeowners. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. So

More Births: I mean, that's like hardcore like here You want to do what we did you believe in having a big family take our house?

like

Malcolm Collins: You know, that's the culture that requires that you know, like, oh, yeah You know, right. What else is in this this this stack? What else is in the fertility

More Births: stack? Okay, so another one That almost nobody thinks about, but this is a significant factor across countries and across U. S. States is C sections.

So the higher rate of C sections that that there is the lower fertility would be. And I think, by the way, That this is kind of manufactured in the sense that I think

Malcolm Collins: this is a completely

More Births: irrelevant. This is more likely to be correlatory than you'd think. It's true in the data. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you why [01:13:00] is, is that doctors tell you that you can't have more than C sec more than they do.

Simone Collins: And that's, that is a big problem. That is something that

More Births: they shouldn't say, but they do. And I know that you've Simone, I think you've had four, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I've had four in my, my surgeon who's done two of those four the most she's ever done on someone is seven. And she says basically there's no correlation between the number of C sections you've had and problems.

It's all about specifically your unique biology. There's some women who like, no, like one C section, never again. And there are other women who it's like, keep going. That's a

More Births: wonderful point, which is that it is possible to have a lot more, but the messaging that doctors give overwhelmingly,

Simone Collins: Yeah. It's like, well, of course you're never going to have like two or

More Births: three only.

So there is like. And country like South Korea has a rate of C sections like, like 60 percent or 55 percent and this is not necessary and combine that with the kind of the message that [01:14:00] the C sections limit fertility. And then what you end up with is that there's a very strong negative relationship between the C section rates.

You

know what OECD country has the lowest rate of C sections? Ooh France? No, there's one OECD country with the highest fertility. Israel? Yeah.

Simone Collins: Oh, wow. That makes sense.

More Births: So Israel kind of, intentionally avoids un You know, unmedically necessary C sections. I'm a big fan of C sections that are medically necessary.

But the other thing is that there's a lot of miscommunication around it. I agree with that, yeah. Which, you know, I was very moved, Simone, when you said, I think you told Piers Morgan, right? You said, I'm gonna How many children are you going to have? You said it until they, they, they

Malcolm Collins: forcibly removed my uterus in a botched surgery.

Yes.

More Births: I like, I don't know if I, if my eyes got wet when I heard that, [01:15:00] cause like, that's, that's a really moving statement, actually. I think you're a, you're a lucky guy, Malcolm. I mean, you know, like

Simone Collins: there's, and this is actually an added, again, it's culture Malcolm's going to say, but you know, Back in the day, the rate at which women died in childbirth was similar to the rate at which men died in, in battle.

And I think, yeah, there's, there's this you know, like the way that women, you know, reach the hall of the Valhalla is by dying in childbirth. Like it's the, it's the honorable way to go in many ways. And, and they were willing to go that way. They were willing to undergo the risk in many cases, they still wanted kids despite the risk because they were There was glory in it.

It meant you were serving your country, you were serving your family, you were defending what you believed in. And I, I very much believe in bringing that back. And of course, I think a lot of the, the, the fears that young women have around things like pregnancy and the related risks, one, they're super overblown and, and it's actually a lot more nuanced in terms of like, is it bad for you?

Is it good for you? Does it hurt you? Like, is it actually [01:16:00] dangerous? There's a lot of nuance there. But also. The, the, the values are all wrong. Like it, even if it was really dangerous. And I, I, I questioned that, like, there's, we're going to have another episode or we go over this more. I think women should be like, well, yeah, like this is, if you're going to go, you should go doing this, you know?

Like, why do you really want to die? Like after. Like four crappy months on hospice care or you don't

More Births: have to die at all. And actually, actually, this is something that the rate, the risk, and this is a big victory of civilization is that, is that the risk of actual death and childbirth is very, very, very, yeah, it is extremely low.

I mean, even if you're even if you're on your seventh C section or whatever, which I hope you get to.

Simone Collins: Well, no, I wouldn't, you know, when you read Hannah's children, there are many, there, there are at least like two or three examples of women who did have to stop having children or chose to stop having children because their doctors were like, lady, you're going to get a heart attack if you do this again.

Like you literally like from a health standpoint, cannot keep having [01:17:00] children. Knock

Malcolm Collins: it off lady.

Simone Collins: We're in

But what I will say is. Having having a child should be seen more like in terms of the risks is similar to like being into running marathons.

You could really screw up your body getting really into like Ironman competitions and you can really screw up your body really getting into pregnancy. But like, these are things that like. They're hills worth dying on, and again, it comes back to culture.

More Births: Well, yeah, I mean, the, the, the question is you know, I, I think when I talk, talk again about the fertility stack, I think, you know, if you want to have higher fertility rates across society, I think you have to have, you also have to have something, You know, things that make a difference with with the normies, if you will, because I actually

Malcolm Collins: disagree with this.

I think that thinking of fertility rates is something to raise at a societal level is fundamentally misguided and will not work. You need [01:18:00] to think about how to raise fertility rates at the level of individual families. And then we're coming back

Simone Collins: to Egypt and Iran. We need grass

Malcolm Collins: roots, right? And then at the societal level, convince them it's worth doing and investing in.

All society needs to do like in terms of like actually fixing this is make people feel like they are living unworthy lives or humiliated for not having lots of kids. Like one of the things that we've been promoting recently as a channel is if you are a man, And you have three kids, fewer than three kids.

You are a cuck. You're being cucked by every man. You're paying taxes. You're being cucked because other men are replacing your genes in the nest. You are contributing to the next generation. And those kids are eating your, your genetic lines lunch. And when you build mindsets like this, like, Oh my God, I don't want to be cucked.

But there's also alternates. So one of the things that we offer was like our heart EA 501 c3 [01:19:00] foundation Is if you are just in a life situation where you can't have kids or whatever, right? You can donate to us and we will keep your genome on file for whatever civilization we end up creating Well, yeah, I

More Births: mean So, so, yeah, one more element of the, of the fertility stack, if you will, which, which, which again wraps around to culture and, you know, is, you know, having a culture of large families.

I mean, one thing that happened you know, In modern times is that we had this norm of two children. And if you have a norm of two children, you're going to have, you know, in a, in a modern society, it looks like you're going to have about one third of the population is going to have no kids. Typically just people, you know, some guys never can get a good job.

Some, Some women just don't want to have kids. Some people never seem to get their life together. You know, some women just don't want to date men that are that just are at the bottom of the of the social rung, And [01:20:00] so forth so you're gonna have

Malcolm Collins: this is why we need this is why we need harems I should have four wives.

Where are my sister wives?

More Births: Okay. Anyway

Malcolm Collins: continue.

More Births: So, What what what so what you what you really need is a norm of many types of larger families like you would, you need, if one third are not going to have Children, then you have to have a norm of three Children per family among everybody else to get to replacement.

So you just need to have a higher set point if you will. And this, this is one reason why I think Which is why I really love large families and you know, people like Catherine Alek with, with a very, very large family mm-hmm . Is, is that you kind of, you know, set the, the, the family size Overton window, if you will.

Mm-hmm.

So if

you can open that up, you know, if, if she has what I say, si, you know, 14 children. Then, then me with six children is not weird at all. Suddenly it feels

Simone Collins: like, yeah, [01:21:00] like, Oh no, I'm very conservative here. You don't feel like a freak. And I will say that I went into her book thinking, all right, I'm aiming for eight.

I'm aiming for eight. And then I came out of her book and I'm like, I'm aiming for 12 to 14. I can do this. Come on. We can do 12 to 14. We can do it. This is 100 percent dependent on my uterus, but like, it definitely just knowing I think a big thing and I was looking at different stat actually today. That was it.

It found that apparent receiving welfare. Non trivially increase the odds of a child taking using government services and welfare as well. Like basically we three, three times more likely

Malcolm Collins: three

Simone Collins: times. So we're, we're way more likely to do stuff if we're exposed to it. If we see it, if you come from a family with, with a lot of kids, you're more likely to be like, yeah, this is normal, you know, or a family, you know, this is a big thing with our school that, that we're developing over time is we really want to expose our children.

And other children within our culture and our cultural network [01:22:00] to very high achieving families and parents and, you know, with careers and influence and, you know, that are doing things that are exciting because we want kids to normalize. Oh, I could be a thought leader. I could be you know, building rocket ships.

I could be you know, changing germline genotyping. For, you know, generations to come. Like we want children to normalize to that because really that's all it takes. And you're absolutely right. Like if we normalize big families. People will be like, yeah, okay. Like this is doable. And it's amazing just for me, because I don't get a lot of exposure to large families, to people who have like five plus children.

And the few friends I do have who have a lot of children don't talk with me that much because they're kind of busy, you know, we don't live right next to each other. So just reading a book where I'm hearing interviews with these people, if it was able to have that much of an influence on me, like just imagine what a little bit more.

Our culture could do.

More Births: Yeah. I, I, I, I do think, you know, but that, that's the, that's [01:23:00] the $100 trillion question, which is the size of the global economy. Like, you know, building a, a broader culture, you know, we, we, we can have subcultures to survive. But the question is, can you, can you have a, you can't,

Malcolm Collins: you have to, you have to build a culture of building subcultures.

More Births: Yeah. We'll, we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. I, I don't, anyway. Great

Malcolm Collins: to have you on. Great to have you on. Great to talk. Wonderful, wonderful. See what changed the minds. Did I convince you at all that it does, it makes sense to think about this as primarily a cultural issue.

More Births: I, it is. I, I do, I have emphasized that culture is incredibly important, but I, I, I would also say that

Malcolm Collins: no, but culture fixes housing easier than you can fix housing.

More Births: Well, I, I would say, you know, even in, in Vienna in 1920, fertility was 0. 6. So Vienna in [01:24:00] 1920 was soul in, you know, this was before the pill. This was before, you know, modern birth. Oh yeah. And in cities, well, no

Simone Collins: ancient, ancient Rome was like this. Cities have been fertility shredders for as long as there have been cities.

That's always, I do think,

More Births: I do think that culture It doesn't exist on an island. I mean, you know, you, you talk about the urban monoculture and that, that literally is a reflection of the fact that there's a culture that that's particularly pervasive in cities that is antagonistic,

Malcolm Collins: evil culture that will hunt you down and erase you.

More Births: But, you know, I, I do think that you know, where, where people live can, can shape culture as well. I don't think the Amish could be the Amish. If, if they didn't. Have, you know, the rural living that they have. No,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. I push back.

More Births: Her righty Jews are all over in Manhattan. Well, but, well, the Amish and the Haredi are extremely.

No, that's true. Like, yeah, [01:25:00] but the Amish have chosen a bad culture. We'll see, we'll see. I, they may, they may, they may replace, they may be the one that, that who, you know, Robin Hanson you know, thinks that they're, they're going to be You know one of the winners of oh, he's

Malcolm Collins: super wrong So the okay, so just a side here So we often talk about the pax de romana of the urban romana Is the peace of rome it meant that there were a bunch of people who would have otherwise killed each other But were at peace because they were under the roman empire The amish are living under the pax de romana of the urban monoculture because they are extremist pacifists as soon as the urban monoculture falls groups that are like I don't even say my cultural groups.

Like if one of my kids was like, he was struggling and starving and his kids were at risk and he's like, yeah, but those Amish have some nice land over there. He's going to go take it with his gun drones or even an AR 15. It's easy. Like I, I guess what I'm [01:26:00] saying is, is it the Amish pacifism? As long as that's in place, the Amish are basically a negligible factor in long term human civilization.

More Births: We'll see. I, as I say, I, I, I try to, I try to focus maybe

Malcolm Collins: AI will protect them. Maybe AI will protect it. Wouldn't that be funny if AI is the reason people don't just kill the Amish and take their land. One

More Births: thing about the Amish. Is that they're not, they're, they're not anti technological just on a, they don't believe that technology is evil and it's sinful necessarily.

They actually that, that what they believe about technology is they're, they're very selective in anything that they think is going to like mess up their family culture. They, they, you know, cause I, I had an interesting, I was in Pennsylvania in in October probably not, not, not very far from where, where you guys live in Amish country.

And you know, there was a couple of young guys and they were there in a sheets use, [01:27:00] you know, Pennsylvania is full of sheets that they were, they were there using the ATM, you know, taking turns you know, getting all their cash out. And I was like, wait a minute. I thought Amish, I thought, But actually they do use technology.

They have no problem with it. They just, they just pick their technology that, that they think won't change their cultures. They may not use cell phones, but they have no problem using ATMs, for example. So I, I think that, I think that who knows.

Malcolm Collins: The problem with the Amish isn't their lack of technology.

It's their pacifism. That's what makes them so vulnerable.

More Births: But mate, we'll see. I, you know, as the old Chinese proverb goes, we shall see, right? Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: we shall. All right. Have a good one guys. Simone, what are we doing for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: Either tomato soup and grilled cheese or teriyaki chicken with wine, rice.

Because we haven't thought out more steak for you, but before we go, everyone go to x. com backslash more births because this [01:28:00] is and promote

Malcolm Collins: the conferences, the perennials episode. Yes.

More Births: Yes. So, yeah. Okay, go ahead. Sorry. Go.

Simone Collins: Oh, Dan, by the way, are you going to be there?

More Births: Yes, I'm going to be, I'm going to be one of the speakers.

Simone Collins: Okay, so join us and More Births at the Natalism Con in March in Austin. And you can get a 10 percent discount if you sign up today for Colin. So do it because you should save your money for kids.

More Births: Right, right. And I, again, follow me at More Births. More Births. I, I write as much as I can. About all, you know, all sorts of factors driving fertility, including culture.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And by the way, people are like, why is the prenatalist conference so expensive? I'd point out that last year, Kevin Dolan ended up eating cost on the conference, right? Like you can complain about the conference being expensive, but venues are expensive, right? Like the conference does not make money.

So keep that in mind if that is your [01:29:00] concern. Right.

Simone Collins: All right. Dan, thank you so much. And I am already looking forward to our next conversation. And

More Births: lots of love to you and the family. Okay. Good luck to everyone. Good to, good to see baby industry there. All right.

Simone Collins: She's rebelling now, but that's okay.

She'll get dinner next. Good.

In this episode, we dive deep into the surprising and often misunderstood statistics of deportations under Trump and Biden's administrations. We analyze the role of Title 42 and discuss why Biden's deportation numbers were so high despite his more lenient stance on immigration. The hosts explore how media narratives have differently portrayed these policies and how Democratic and Republican messaging has impacted public perception. They also delve into the broader implications of these statistics, touching on issues like Trump Derangement Syndrome and the state of current leftist and rightist media landscapes.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] This is Declarations

Malcolm Collins: by Administrative Cycle. Um, And what you see here is trump, for most of his presidency, doing about what Obama was doing until his last year in office.

Yeah, in fact, even kind

Simone Collins: of lower

Malcolm Collins: to start, which is interesting. But Trump's deportations completely dwarfed Biden's deportations.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, are dwarfed by Biden. Yeah,

This is so I'm so glad you researched this because I, I mean, you may not been that intrigued by this, but I was like, what is going on?

Malcolm Collins: So you see an explosion in illegal border crossing under the Biden administration.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. They're like monster, monster asleep.

Speaker: Pretty quiet out there. Yeah, a bit too quiet if you ask me. Give me those. Just seems like Mexicans don't try to cross into the U. S. as much as they used to, you know?

Speaker 2: No, they're out there, Charlie. Plotting their next move.

It's the curse of success, Charlie What the hell? [00:01:00]

Speaker 3: Uh, sir? Aren't them Mexicans running into Mexico? That don't make sense. You're going the wrong

way! Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hello,

Malcolm Collins: Simone! I'm excited to be here today. Today we are going to be talking about something that has been very Interesting for me,

Simone Collins: I've been, I've been so confused by this and I'm so glad you're going to share this

Malcolm Collins: story.

I actually just missed it entirely when people first were talking about it. Really? So there's two things that people have noted and there's been a number of articles that have been like, if you read like news, a lot of the progressive press has been lauding recently that Biden's deportations were vastly outnumbering Trump's deportations, even within the new administration.

And they were lauding this at the same time as they're freaking out about people being deported. [00:02:00] Oh,

Simone Collins: they're not deporting in any at all. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It was the same during the, the election cycle where they were like Biden deported more people during his A term as president that Trump did during his term and

Simone Collins: deporting is evil

Malcolm Collins: and deporting is evil and I'm like, okay, so I think both sides just sort of like ignored this statistic or they're like

Simone Collins: trying to selectively speak to different crowds.

At the same time.

Malcolm Collins: I think that the conservative side is like, look, you get to choose what you want to message to me. Trump says deportations are good. He appears to be actively trying to deport people. I'm looking at what ICE is doing and I just don't believe this. Like, I'm just not going to read this.

I'm not going to engage with this information. Yeah. Progressives are like, oh, this is the way to selectively dunk on conservative parties, but obviously think of their families. Yes. The

Simone Collins: children. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And what I'm here, I'm here left. What the, what, what's going on [00:03:00] here? How is it even conceivably possible that when Trump is like gearing up ISIS, sorry, not ISIS, ISIS, to the extent that he's gearing it up that, and, and I see all these people, I, I hear about all of this happening.

How is it even possible? This could be true. Is this just a complete fabrication? It is true. It's true for more evil reasons than you could conceivably imagine. And we're gonna get into the data. Oh, I am so excited for this. Okay, so what I was asking was, the article you're referencing is a Newsweek article titled, Immigrant Deportations Removal Trump Obama Comparison Charts and a bunch of different You know, progressive pieces are running with this.

Oh, Trump isn't, you know, deporting as many people as he should be. The first two weeks of Trump's second term, January 20th to February 3rd, 2025, approximately 5, 693 [00:04:00] undocumented illegals were deported or removed in 121 different countries. This rate of deportation is lower than Biden's last reported monthly statistics from 2024, which showed an average of 12, 200 removals per week.

If Trump's administration maintains its pace, it could result in about Half the number of deportations compared to Biden's complete fiscal year in 2024.

I will note here Daily Wire did a piece where they point out that there is some shadiness going on with these numbers. this is far from an apples apples comparison. They say , the figure used by Newsweek refers to any repatriation, a broad segment that even includes Border Patrol agents turning people away at the border.

In reality, according to publicly accessible data, the Biden administration removed just under 48, 000 illegals in all of the fiscal year 2024. The most of Biden's entire term. If you compare apples to apples, the number of illegal immigrants deported by ice, you'll see that the Trump administration has already been deporting three times as many illegal immigrants per week as the Biden [00:05:00] administration ever did.

the problem here is this is also not an apples to apples comparison as Biden administration didn't use ice in the same way that the Trump administration is using ice and they used a different, way shadier mechanism to do their deportations, which we will get to in just a second.

And where this is really striking is that the start of the Biden administration and the numbers of deportation were much higher. Now we go into the specific deportation numbers during Biden's presidency 2021 to 2024.

Approximately 4. 7 million individuals were deported or expelled, including removals under Title 42. We'll get to this in a second. Okay, because I have no idea what that is, which, well, I'll, I'll, I'll tell you what it is before we get into the, it allowed people to be exported. If they were from a country that had any sort of medical issue, not exported, deported, whatever.

So, if

Simone Collins: I, if I show up as a migrant. To the U. S., but I have cancer.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's like if your country has COVID or some other horrifying disease. Oh, [00:06:00] so I

Simone Collins: don't infect people with my

Malcolm Collins: horrible disease. Yes. So

Simone Collins: if I show up with like swine flu, then they can get rid of me fast. So

Malcolm Collins: comparatively, Trump only deported about 3.

3 million people. So keep in mind, Trump, first administration, 3. 3 million deportation. Biden's administration, 4. 7 million deportation.

Huh.

So now this is where it gets interesting. The, the title 42's role, because this explains a lot of it and we'll be getting into the horrifying nature of this. The

Simone Collins: Cygnus thing.

Okay. This is intriguing.

Malcolm Collins: So Biden heavily used title 42 to expel 2. 8 million individuals. Trump during his entire time only deported 200, 000 individuals as a rule 42. And yet

Simone Collins: he was, I mean, like the onset of the pandemic. That's very interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, so this is during the period when the Democrats were like, We get to be fascists without any repercussions?

We now completely control the media. As we see, even when it's [00:07:00] clear the public has turned against them, the media is still sipping for the Dems so hard. And it's like, I thought you guys would at least like Take the D out of your mouth for a second when you realize the guy was weird and diseased and about to pass out, you know, like, could you, could you take it out for a second and look around and be like, what's going on here?

But what was happening and we'll get to this before we get into the number, it's because the numbers get more interesting as you go into them is Trump was doing deportations the legal way. Okay. And Biden was just saying, if your country has COVID, we can skip the entire court system and get rid of you.

Simone Collins: So it was like the loophole way. There's a legal way and there's a loophole way.

Just to remind you, because the numbers may not have really sat with you the first time I said them, Biden deported 2. 8 million individuals this way. This way that skips the court system. Trump only deported 0. 2 million individuals this way. [00:08:00] 2. 8 million to 0. 2 million.

Malcolm Collins: And they just didn't care, but they actually had to do it because the rates of illegal immigration were so high during their period. Right. They don't get into because the net, this is the one talked about here, the net illegal immigrants was much higher under Biden than Trump.

Right. Yes. Yeah. I've seen those graphs. Yeah. Yet higher. This gets so confusing. Higher deportations, higher net illegal immigration. Let's get into all of this. In terms of the numbers, though some people have casted doubt even on these initial numbers. Cesar, Chaumetico, Gracia. Honduras, an immigration expert for Ohio State University, told Newsweek, I am doubtful that they could produce an accurate report of ICE's enforcement action so quickly.

The video was released on Tuesday morning and claims to report data through Monday. , I would be astonished if an agency that has never proven itself capable of releasing accurate data in a timely manner could process into its detention system people as late as Monday afternoon that someone at DHS [00:09:00] Headquarters could count and produce a video first thing this morning.

So basically he's like, look, this data is probably wrong Anyway, but actually then how does that explain the last Trump administration? How does that explain, right? So I'm gonna put on screen here for for our watchers

Simone Collins: You're sending it on WhatsApp?

It on WhatsApp. This is Declarations

Malcolm Collins: by Administrative Cycle. Um, And what you see here is Obama at the beginning, not doing much, but doing, you know, some. Trump, for most of his presidency, doing about what Obama was doing until his last year in office.

Yeah, in fact, even kind

Simone Collins: of lower

Malcolm Collins: to start, which is interesting. But Trump's deportations completely dwarfed Biden's deportations.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, are dwarfed by Biden. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: dwarfed by him. The numbers are not even close. And Biden's deportations go down over time. We should note this. This idea that, oh, they did so many deportations at the [00:10:00] end.

They did not. They started with tons of deportations. So, what the Biden deportations were, largely speaking, And you can see the Trump deportations led like directly into them was a COVID power freakout about trying to lock down the country. That's really what you're seeing here. We can do whatever we want because now we're a dictator.

That's basically what happened during COVID. Like, did we forget that like people were banned for platforms for saying things that everyone now knows is true? That people were Like this is like a big thing that like we as society cannot forget that people lost their jobs, their businesses for no reason other than so Kamala's VP could feel like a cool guy where he implemented the system where you could snitch on your neighbors and call the cops and have them arrested for six months for leaving their house during COVID.

Like

Simone Collins: the famous COVID snitch line. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: So [00:11:00] this is like, I was looking at all this and I was like, okay, so like, what the, what is going on here? Right? Well, I'm gonna a big part of what happened is it turns out that when you are giving immigrants, and Biden was, we know this now, see our USAID video, free money when you come to the country.

No matter how many you're exporting, you're going to be getting huge amounts of illegals coming into the country. If you advertise to the entire world, look at how great the U. S. is, we'll do anything for you. And here I'll do the scene from South Park, like it's so great in L. A. for the homeless.

Speaker 2: I hit it. Let's hope the crash doesn't work. California love California is not super cool to the homeless They're listening, let's go! They're leading them away! [00:12:00] We're gonna be

Speaker 3: eat all the donuts!

Speaker 2: You can heal if you're

Malcolm Collins: That's basically what the Biden administration was doing.

For immigrants, the entire time the administration was operational and where these numbers begin to make a lot more sense and where the narrative falls apart and where Trump is just holistically a more moral person than any Democrat is when you look at the numbers of illegals coming in and people can be like, what do you mean by this?

If you are out there saying. What about the families that are being split up? If you're doing some big crying [00:13:00] thing on TV about the families that are being split up, more families were being split up under Biden than under Trump. And if now you're asking, how is that possible? Yeah,

Simone Collins: that I, I honestly am surprised to hear that.

How is that possible?

Malcolm Collins: It's because illegal immigrants have been a self deporting under Trump. And not coming into the country under Trump. Oh, wait, okay, what do you mean, like, now? Now they're just like, oh, I've been warned. Yeah, basically somebody said, we're done paying your bills and they're like, oh, okay, bye.

That is what's

Simone Collins: happening here. If you self policing, yeah, which means like you have to pay less for the deportations. I mean, fewer flights, et cetera. Right. We

Malcolm Collins: are looking at in terms of families being split up probably more than a third less under Trump administrations and Biden administrations, even with all of these ice rates.

And these [00:14:00] ICE rates, you know, they're targeting criminals and stuff like that primarily, they might catch up other people in the sweeps, but I mean, they're all criminals because they're in the country illegal, but you understand what I mean Biden stuff was just like, oh, anyone that we can get away with based on our internal, like ethnic, whatever criteria, right?

So now we're going to talk about the decline in people crossing the border with this South Park scene in mind, right? Like, of like all the immigrants, all the good things to you

Simone Collins: for free.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So the decline in January, 2025, during the week of January 20 to 26, U. S. Border Patrol and Customs Border Protection encountered only 7, 287.

Irregular migrants at the U. S. Mexico border, a sharp drop compared to previous months. In December 2024, CBP reported 47, 000 illegal border crossings, which was already the lowest months since 2020. Wait, so

Simone Collins: it dropped from [00:15:00] 47, 000 to 7,

Malcolm Collins: 000? And, and the 47, 000 was already the lowest month since 2020.

Simone Collins: Oh, wow.

I think this is one of these great examples of how Trump, through his action, creates a chilling effect. And, and this is something that we first really discovered with things like foreign policy. We're just Things didn't happen under his watch because many foreign leaders were like, I don't want to like, I don't want to know what he does if I, I don't want to know what he does.

Malcolm Collins: I'm not going to invade Ukraine because who knows if he sends a bunch of missiles at Moscow, all those

Simone Collins: golden. Yeah. And so this, this is another example of that, which I mean, of course, why, like, why would I not have thought of that? But. That is so surprising. Oh, that's so cool and

Malcolm Collins: interesting. And the scale of illegal immigrants increased so much under the Biden administration that it reached 2 million encounters per year compared to 300, 000 to 500, 000 encounters [00:16:00] just a decade before his presidency.

Wow. And now I'm going to put, I'll share with you a diagram of the illegal crossings over time.

Simone Collins: Yes, please. This is so I'm so glad you researched this because I, I mean, you may not been that intrigued by this, but I was like, what is going on? So confused.

Malcolm Collins: So you see an explosion in illegal border crossing under the Biden administration.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. They're like monster, monster asleep.

Malcolm Collins: It's like,

Simone Collins: it's

Malcolm Collins: like monster asleep. It's like 8X or something, previous levels.

Simone Collins: Wow

Malcolm Collins: wee!

Simone Collins: Wah wah wee wah!

Malcolm Collins: And Trumps are already back to around what they were during the previous Trump administration cycle.

Would you look at that? Yeah, mods are back! Okay! Mods are back! It's really just a perception thing. That's what this is 100 percent downstream of, and the horrifying nature of this for Democrats is it [00:17:00] means that all of these horrifying statements they have about caring for families being split up and everything like that, that was happening because and more during the Democratic administration because they were so Horrifyingly racist and inefficient than it happened under the Trump administration.

Simone Collins: That is, this is the like secret or super underrated element of a strong president or king or prime minister, which is. You don't have to pay for anything like just them merely existing and being them gives you better deal It's like, you know, you want to pay for a

Malcolm Collins: marketing team

Simone Collins: what it's like you know, we're looking at making a pretty big purchase and we're having you do all the negotiation Because if I came in and did the negotiation, they would walk all over us and give us terrible terms.

And so we just put you there, like, I'm literally doing all the work, I'm filling out all the papers, I'm like, even signing the documents for you, which you probably legally shouldn't do, but like, I'm doing all the stuff, but like, we just have you [00:18:00] going and propose stuff, because that way they're not, you know, as likely to screw us over, which is so, like, and this is the same thing, is with Trump, they're like, well, like, if he thinks he's getting a bad deal, you know,

where do you think you're going? There you go. Yeah, they just, they just know that Trump won't stand for it and that Biden was asleep at the wheel. This is exciting. I mean, it's, I feel like I'm getting this whole additional thing that it's free that doesn't cost anything.

Malcolm Collins: We are. We are. We don't have that.

This is the crazy thing. And it's not just that it's free. I mean, parts of this are costing way more than they should. Like, Ice, if they're picking up an illegal migrant from a jail cell that requires one officer to go and handle that to no risk to them, where the Democrats are risking ice officers lives by putting these people back in their homes.

So whole groups seem to raid these homes. Innocents could be killed. And you see this in these sanctuary cities, sanctuary [00:19:00] cities should be called murder and grapist cities because that's what they are. The, the entire system is so funny when you actually look into all of this data, it edifies everything the Republicans are doing, and it makes the Democrats, even their most passionate arguments, like think of the families that are being split up, completely bounce back in their own faces because they are doing that more.

And I completely agree with everything you're saying here. And we need to talk about the larger democratic problem right now is messaging outside of this.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Cause we've had some conversations about this is. The Republicans have been doing a flood the zone strategy just going out there with everything all like we haven't even had an episode on like the Department of Education being shut down or the compartment of care for section being shut down.

I'm waiting for more data. Okay. I'm waiting for more data. We'll do it. Eventually. I don't want to waste your guys time until I can give you like a more [00:20:00] full picture of what's going on here. But the reality is, is that dims across the board and you consume much more democratic media than I do. Yeah.

They're just like, I'm not even gonna cover this anymore.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they're not talking about it. They're only The, the, the leftist content I'm getting obviously is a lot of butthurt about Doge and about Trump's executive orders and about Trump's appointments. And then it's, it's a lot of actually hate just for Democrats in general.

So I don't know the parties very much still TBD on where it's going to end up.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, they, they ceded the zone. They, they see, they're basically like, and Democratic watchers in media and stuff like that are like, I'm just not going to watch this anymore. Like it's too confusing. It's too over the board.

What Trump? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess, Trump has

Simone Collins: flooded the zone and Democrats have evacuated the zone.

Malcolm Collins: They have evacuated the media zone. And if you look at media, it's just constant panic about Trump. Oh my [00:21:00] God, our kid right now is riding in a tractor. The, the. You know the little tractor thing he got?

Octavian hopped in the barrel to ride back to the garage. Oh, no, he's writing him in circles. Oh, that's so fun. He's riding around in the little tractor barrel thing. No, but the, the, the democratic response to this has been very interesting. Like, I expected them to mount like a full blown no. They, like, Wizard Department of Education decided to go and harass this security guard, right, this, like, random guy standing in front.

I'm sure you've all seen the video by now. And they're just like, no, we're not going to let you in. And they're like, but we're a congressperson! It's like, well, then what business do you have in the Department of Education? You're not going to do anything but, like, screech at people. You are a, as Asmogold put it, a full boss raid of Karen's.

And this guy is tanking the entire thing. And everybody saw that. Nobody was endeared by that. And if you look at Reddit today, like I go to Reddit today and it's all anti Trump stuff. But [00:22:00] here's what people aren't noticing if you go to Reddit today. So okay, let's just go to like the top of Reddit today.

This is not what Reddit used to be like. So I got kids are effing stupid, which is one of my favorite subreddits. It's an anti Trump thing where Elon's kid is picking his nose in the White House. Like whatever, like how mean spirited could you be? This is the top post I'm getting. It's got 25 upvotes. The next one is Advice Animal on Musk.

Which is like, just mean about upvotes. Oh my

Simone Collins: god. It's as though, like, the vast majority of Americans Well, not vast majority. It's as though the plurality of Americans doesn't exist.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, if you go down here, it's a Big Shot Republican's Advice Animal, Winnie the Pooh meme 319 upvotes. Go down here.

It's an our gifts. Okay, and it said Elon Musk and thing making fun of Trump with a gift of him Having like a little robot dog was Trump's face on it 649 up votes the next one I have is an rpix one, a master and an apprentice, which is Elon Musk taking the master [00:23:00] look seven upvotes.

This is what the top of Reddit is these days. No one is using this site anymore. It's so

Simone Collins: funny because I think Redditors sort of point to Reddit as being like the thing that saves that internet. This idea that like. The way to circumvent dead internet is to just google, like, something something reddit.

Because then you'll find some archival reddit post that was actually useful before it came out.

Malcolm Collins: Maybe when reddit used to be used by people.

Simone Collins: And yet, and yet reddit now is like just as bad. And if you look at reddit

Malcolm Collins: like views, they look super high. Like reddit right now is like, oh, we're viewed by so many more people than we were historically.

And I'm like, I don't understand how that's possible. I scrolled down to the next Trump meme I could find. It's Elon's kid picking his nose on rpix, a mainstream reddit, subreddit, 39 upvotes. Like, this is wild. The next one I get is another R Advice animal with the kid saying, My dad owns you, [00:24:00] B. And it's got one upvote and one comment.

This is not the way, as somebody who proposed to my wife on Reddit and, and, and, and went viral for that, it's the first thing we really went viral for your average entire front page of Reddit would be in the tens of thousands of upvotes. You would see nothing was like three or four upvotes unless it had just been posted and this stuff was posted like an hour ago or something like, or 10 minutes ago, like this is wild that we're seeing this and it's because the leftist media spaces, whether it's drudge or the reddit or anything like that.

They have gone so insane that no one wants to engage with them anymore. And it's not just insane if you're a leftist. And if you believe on this, they make you feel bad. Now let's finally hear, wrap this up. I was talking about trying to arrange wisdom because I've seen some people analyze this, [00:25:00] say that

Simone Collins: again.

Cause you're kind of talking like you miss it,

Malcolm Collins: derangement syndrome. Let's talk about this. I've seen people talking about this, the, the. On a YouTube video that went quite viral that I saw on the topic. The thesis was, is it was just taking the worst possible interpretation of anything Trump was doing.

Simone and I had a conversation about this this morning and I, I, I disagree with this. Do you want to go into our theory on this?

Simone Collins: Well, I think you and I have different theories. So my theory is that Trump Derangement Syndrome is similar to the dynamic that Scott Alexander talks about in his blog post on the early spread of Christianity, and that like, one's basically a critical mass of the people in your lives.

Yeah. I think that what's going on is that anyone with Trump derangement syndrome literally doesn't know anyone who does not have it for the most part, or at least two isn't super leftist and I, no exposure to, especially in any sort of like caring or loving [00:26:00] relationship. That isn't super dehumanizing someone who supports Trump.

I, so my, my argument in this, this means it's totally disprovable. Is that there's no one with Trump derangement syndrome who also loves and intellectually engages with someone who supports Trump. And that it's a result of basically being surrounded by other people who share the same delusion and who also sort of prevent like heavily dehumanized.

And I really, really mean dehumanize those who support Trump. Like they're really not seen as human or logical or. At all, like, quote unquote, us, they're just these crazy people who don't understand reality or science or anything reasonable and who don't care about human rights and human dignity and are not empathetic and are sociopaths and are just monsters.

I, I furthermore think that the reason why Trump derangement syndrome isn't just, I hate MAGA people syndrome, but rather actual derangement because [00:27:00] leftist culture also has, This thing that pathologizes anything that otherwise would just be an inconvenience, right? Like if for example a teen has body dysmorphia, well, it's not just oh, yeah You're going through awkward teen years.

Everyone kind of hates their body for a while when they're going through their teen years It's you know hormones It's gross. It's kind of uncomfortable. Instead, it's no, you're trans. Let's help you change your gender or, you know, maybe you're kind of sad. Your job sucks. Like, you know, things aren't fun.

Well, you know, maybe you kind of just try to work through it and make your life better. No, you're depressed and you need to see a therapist for the rest of your life and you have an anxiety issue. You need to be medicated. And so I think that the reason why it becomes trying derangement syndrome is that you can't just acknowledge that things are wrong and or that you need, you want to fix them from an external standpoint.

When things are acknowledged as wrong, that means that you are undergoing trauma and therefore it's your problem and you need to see a therapist about it and you need to seek help for it because it is damaging you. And, and that's why I think it's derangement. But I [00:28:00] think you had a slightly different theory that it wasn't just about complete.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I don't think that's what it is. I mean, I think that's a part of it, but I think a bigger part of it is on the left, there has become this tendency to identify the core of your identity with some marginalized group. This is really important because this is how your status within their society is determined.

And now they have expanded the marginalized groups you can identify with, with like marginal differences in your gender presentation. Where people can be like, I'm, you know, bi, whatever, you know, and they're literally just like a normal cis person. Like they don't need to do anything. There's no cost to this.

It's just like, I sometimes feel a little girly. I guess that means you need to make my entire thing this now. And all of my problems in life are the result of this. So that's one thing, but it's also not just that it's like, okay, I'm a little autistic. Okay. Then that's like my full thing now. I'm a little you know, like, depressed, or I'm a little, whatever, whatever your thing is, it's like your full identity, [00:29:00] and you are a marginalized group because of it.

Simone Collins: And now, the It's, it's, yeah, it's also about identification, I guess, that like, any proclivity you have, like in the past, for example I was I, I loved cats as a kid. But now it's like, well, if I love cats, that means I'm an other kin and I actually believe I'm a cat and then I become a furry and then I'm a part of this community.

And what you're saying is like, in the past, you used to be like, ugh, like I hate the elected politician and that was just a thing. But now it's, I hate the elected politician. Therefore, I'm a never Trumper. Therefore, No, that's not,

Malcolm Collins: that's not the point I'm making.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so you're almost I'd say probably like 70%.

And actually we've seen this in the data. If you look at people who identify a mental disorder as a major part of their identity, like for women who are young, it's something like 73 percent or something right now. So this is the crowd that's voting for the left, right? Okay. So, they, they have [00:30:00] identified themselves in these marginalized groups and during this last campaign cycle, they identified Trump as promoting the extinction or being the core enemy of their marginalized group.

And so, if you are one of these individuals, and you have found one that are

Simone Collins: You are Anne Frank. You are hiding in here. You are literally,

Malcolm Collins: these people are living their lives, emotionally speaking, as if They are Jews and Nazis literally control our society and the holocaust is like well underway,

Simone Collins: right?

Malcolm Collins: And they look out their window and they look at the shopping mall. That's what they're seeing because it allows them to masturbate this fantasy. And this fantasy is very important for them because it justifies all of their. failures, their lack of action and everything they've been doing for the past year in their life, all the dehumanization of others, et cetera, for the past year in their lives.

This is where this punch in Nazi thing comes from. They literally think that there's like Nazis out there. They think [00:31:00] that they have the right to just attack random people who support with the majority of American support. 70 percent of Americans think Trump's doing what he said he would do in the campaign.

How many

Simone Collins: people do you think have been punched under the Punch a Nazi meme, like more than 10 or

Malcolm Collins: thousands.

Simone Collins: What?

Malcolm Collins: I think that you may misunderstand because you don't go to you know, what's the word I'm looking for here? Like protests or anything. If you got in the way, and I've seen this in London, like every day, the protest shouting death to the Jews, death to the Jews.

You see this in the London protests and people, you know, they're like, Oh, that's not so, Oh, from the river to the sea. Sorry. The death of the Jews. If you walk by this, I remember I was, I, I had walked by the churches and I walked by a group of Orthodox, not Orthodox, but ultra Orthodox Jews. And I was like, you guys need to walk the other way.

It's potentially kill you. Like the world we live in now that the left attempted to normalize. , So I think that when you. Wake up [00:32:00] and you're like, Oh my God, I'm literally like, and Frank, or I think for a lot of these people, even worse, they're like, Oh, it's my friend. I have so many trans friends whose Trump is going to erase.

Trump isn't erasing them. He's erasing their ability to molest little girls. Okay. Like, can we talk about like how that was a problem, how it was a problem that what's his face? The, the guy who did the swim thing. And everyone was like. Oh, so amazing. So great. How could they, and then it came out that he was showing his unhandled nethers, so, so his penis to underage women, every single swim meet that we used to historically like be like, oh, you're not trans.

You're a flasher who is targeting underage girls. That's a problem. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. We'll make this, this person, the key icon of our [00:33:00] movement. And I think that Because of this, because when Trump challenges their ability to participate in, in, in, in intramural sports, because that's the same as murdering them, right?

Saying you have an intrinsic advantage in intramural sports. This is unfair. Feminists fought really hard to give women separate teams and leagues and everything like that. That Trump fights against this, right? And I think every reasonable human does fight against this. I love it when I talk to some leftists, they're like, well, all sports are unfair.

And I'm like, yeah, but feminists fought to carve out this small space that was safe for women. Why do you hate them so much? Can't we agree? Yeah. All sports are unfair due to biology, but we don't need to make them extra unfair. We don't need to watch a biological male beating up a biological female on TV.

That feels really uncomfortable for most people because they see the intrinsic evilness of allowing this to happen when this woman worked with the [00:34:00] limitations that are placed on all women to become the very best in the world at what she was doing. By the way, for the people who are wondering, like the Olympics thing, if you bought into the Democrat, the, the, the core person who was like, no, I've always been a woman and I had a disease or whatever, right?

There's actually video footage of her. I'll say her because, you know, that's the way she identifies now. On a talk show from, I think, like, three or four years before, where she is dressed as a male, identifying as a male, and using a male pronoun. Oh,

Simone Collins: no.

Malcolm Collins: So it appears that this whole woman thing only started with the Olympics and a lot of this, Oh, they've always been doing this.

It's just coming from parents being like, Well, now my daughter's head of the Olympics. I'll you know, take that on board. But it was not an actual real thing. This is the person who had always identified as me. And I think Because they look like it at the physicality of a male like this is obvious when you're looking at this like that's why they would have done this right?

And, and I think that when you're like, oh, they're going to come [00:35:00] and hunt down my friends in their house, they'd be like with the ice rage. They're like, oh, I have Hispanic. Friends and it's like, well, they're going after illegal immigrants. Are they illegal immigrants? And usually they're like, no, but like there was all these reports of like native Americans being arrested over this.

And then the head of the Navajo nations had to come out and be like, there has not been a single conformable report that I have been able to trace down of this ever happening. So it appears to be mostly fabrications because the left is one of you like, Oh, anyone who's Brown as being mouse, like. And people who came over illegally and like less than the Biden administration, but they want to act like, well, if I'm not Anne Frank, then my friends are Anne Frank, and I'm going to be this good moral person who cares about them when, if you did actually care.

About Hispanic children, migrant children, more harm was being done to them under the Biden administration. The cages for them existed under the Biden administration, on the border. [00:36:00] All of this, all of this stuff was happening under the Biden administration, and at a higher level, why didn't you care then?

Because you don't care about them. All of this is about an act for you, where you get to play the victim and get to hide in your house and be horrified. Because at the end of the day, we learned that when humans have access to whatever they could possibly want, all the forms of humanism, they can work.

Cause is that not our society today? Prep your prep episode. The. What they really want is a removal of personal responsibility to just be able to be like, I'm a victim. Everyone I know is a victim, and I'm just fighting for the good guys instead of actually considering who is suffering because of your actions.

Simone Collins: I guess that makes sense. Actually when, when, when you frame it that way. That, that checks out.

Malcolm Collins: Love you, Simone. Any final thoughts on this and their horrifying narrative and all of the statistics and all that?

Simone Collins: One, I actually think Trump [00:37:00] derangement syndrome is going down. And I think that Trump's approval ratings indicate a lot of cognitive dissonance in Americans. I mean, even if you hate everything that Trump does, I think there's a lot of people who just admire the fact that.

An elected politician is actually delivering what he promised. This is just unbelievable. Like, it runs against political The first political fundamental my parents ever taught me is that You vote someone into office and they disappoint you. That's like literally the first political lesson I ever remember learning.

I, like, I remember exactly where I was in a car, like, driving through some part of Oakland with my mother, and her saying that. And I was like, Like, this is crazy, but it's also so true. And the fact, like, this is the first time I've ever really seen that being challenged. And so I really think that that's starting to break a lot of norms.

They may think that, you know, not their guy, but you gotta hand it to him. [00:38:00] He's got things done.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I agree with that. I have been really shocked by how effective he's been to the president. Reddit, there's constantly like on the front page, like memes of like, you know, the United meme of like, we hate Elon, like the right and the left.

And it's like, no, no, I watch right wing content. I don't know anyone other than Steve Bannon, who's like a crusty old goober who doesn't like Elon. Steve Bannon, we saw what happened when your team ruled the White House. Nothing. You couldn't even get the basic things you claim to care about like transgender people out of sports.

Like, I'm sorry, I appreciate effectiveness. And all of us rightists do, and they are nailing it right now. And this has just been a very crazy time to live through where it's like, oh, a good politician. I didn't expect this, especially given his first administration. I was disappointed in him. He, he was a, I don't wanna say [00:39:00] he, he,

Simone Collins: I, no, he, he underestimated the extent to which the deep state would,

Malcolm Collins: why justify their position?

He, he was,

Simone Collins: he would sandbag in Stonewall at every step of the process. That is still happening, but this time they expected it and were ready for it. Trump thought the court thought he could go and. But he didn't understand the swamp, no. This is, this is Trump post swamp training. He's gone in, he's been trained by Yoda.

He's, he's, you know, done the stuff. He's done the

Malcolm Collins: swamp training by Yoda and he's now lifting the ship from the swamp, which is America. It's the return

Simone Collins: of the Trump and he's, he's gonna kick some ass. So, you know.

Malcolm Collins: Alright, well, I love you to death, Simone. This has been a lot of fun talking to you about this.

I am just shocked when I went over this data, because it was very different than I anticipated. And I realized that the right wing spaces, unfortunately do bring a lot of echo chamber as well. Like, I feel like a lot of people don't have good media anymore. And I really aspire to be that with my political [00:40:00] biases stated up front.

Because I look at the right wing media that I like. So like, I really like clownfish TV. I really like Nuxenor. I really like Leaflet. Has been gold.

Simone Collins: Leo Asba

Malcolm Collins: Gold. I haven't, I want to include leaflet in this 'cause I actually haven't seen her cover this, but I've seen Asba Gold, NNO and Clownfish TV in recent videos, like long after this had been debunked.

Report that the government was paying organizations like Politico to like $8 million to say horrible things about. Republicans and they'll admit they'll be like, Oh, yeah, well, I mean, this was for subscriptions, but like these subscription prices are suspicious and I would agree with that if the 8 million was accurate, but the actual price is 25 K in the last year, 8 million across all departments.

It wasn't just USA. Like as soon as you begin to go over it and you're like, Oh, these departments collectively make up 7 percent of the entire U. S. economy. With their purchases of Politico subscriptions [00:41:00] over a period of years, make up that amount when you're considering these are the ultra expensive, like unique subscriptions, like Look, it's bad money being spit, but it's not a conspiracy in the way it's being talked about as a conspiracy and it makes me sad because these are media sources that I used to consider very trustworthy and now I'm like, well, s**t, man.

Look, now

Simone Collins: we're even getting to the point where I feel like I'm getting more of my news directly from primary sources, which is great. The before I remember actually being so excited when really with the Obama presidency, that was the first time when a presidency decided to begin to really speak directly to the public through social media and other direct channels.

And now it's getting so direct. Like the recent press conference with President Trump at UNMA where X was present. I'm learning things that I had not heard anywhere else that I had not seen covered by the New York Times or any other media outlet. For example, like how retirements are processed by the federal government.

Did you see this clip?

Malcolm Collins: No, I didn't.

Simone Collins: Elon Musk was told that they [00:42:00] could only do like 10, 000 a month or something, like 10, 000 retirements a month. And he's like, wait, why? Like that, that didn't matter. And they explained to him that the retirement paperwork was physical paperwork that had to be filled out.

Like, so this isn't like, this is, I mean, obviously anyone could make this computerized system like this does not need to be physical paperwork, but it gets worse. So, then the retirement, like, package paperwork and all the calculations and stuff, which is done manually, apparently for like, you know, how much they're owed and their pension and everything, then the retirement paperwork goes into a manila folder and is carried down into.

A limestone vault, a vault, like an underground vault, and you have to take the elevator down and sometimes these people are

Malcolm Collins: literal villains. Okay. Yeah,

Simone Collins: the elevator breaks down. Apparently Elon Musk said he at least said in this press conference that he was going to post photos of this vault. But like, well, sometimes the elevator breaks down and then, then, you know, people can't retire and [00:43:00] like, like, literally, these people could be doing.

And this is just an example of what he's, he's, he's coming face to face with, you know, in terms of like literally a number of people that can retire are being capped by something so ridiculous. I mean, that, that is like, you, you, you see these, these memes from Indiana Jones of like top government secrets going to a giant warehouse full of big boxes that are managed by top men.

And you're like, ha ha, that's ridiculous. And yet, and yet we have a limestone vault. Where the retirement manila folders are kept for federal workers. What is happening? Like we don't need conspiracies about politico when we have limestone vaults for retiring. Yeah. Elevators that descend into the darkness to store the folders that no one's ever going to reference ever.

That should be electronic as of like the eighties. I mean, I just can't. I'm sorry. I can't. But anyway,

Malcolm Collins: I love you. So tonight I'm gonna have [00:44:00] obviously would you mind making some gyoza for me? So I have like something that, because I have about a third of the Mapo Tofu I ate yesterday.

Simone Collins: Okay.

So you want me to also just make a tiny bit of rice and then it's a tiny bit of rice, like a half a pack that I pre prep and then five gyoza.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: And then, okay. And I'm making.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, unless you want to make an entire menu dish. I'm just going to make

Simone Collins: 10 different things and hope that they eat like five bites of one.

Malcolm Collins: Unless you want to make something. Else for me and freeze them up. We don't food that we have.

Simone Collins: No, I'm not. No, it doesn't like tofu. It doesn't really freeze and thought very well. So

Malcolm Collins: I love you. The Muppet of who you made yesterday. Amazing. By the way, you are a skilled Muppet tofu maker.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I am. But also you finish, you did all the stirring.

I saw you stir.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I stirred it. You see, I provide so much help as a husband. We also

Simone Collins: added sesame oil, though you didn't realize that sesame oil is a dark colored oil, which is

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I thought it was a clear colored oil. [00:45:00]

Simone Collins: Sesame oil we have is brown.

Malcolm Collins: Maybe you're thinking of like Do we have all the sesame oil from our sesame oil jar in the, in the container?

Simone Collins: The, it's, it's in the, the, the jar. It's in that green jar. with a black sticker on it. So, you know, the difference between the olive oil,

Malcolm Collins: right? But I'm asking is, is that all of our sesame oil?

Simone Collins: No, we have a whole nother bottle. I'm going to refill it.

Malcolm Collins: OK,

Simone Collins: love

Malcolm Collins: you. Do that, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you, too. Bye!

Heads up, NatalCon is almost here. It is at the end of March and you can still register and get 10 percent off by entering Collins at checkout. So Google the Natalism Conference. It is in Austin. It's going to be awesome. We're going to be hosting some kind of base camp meetup while we're there and we'd love to see you.

So again, enter Collins at checkout to participate. Also, if you want to participate in some research and you have a kid who was produced through IVF, whoo, and they're under four years old, please reach out to us. We personally are participating in a really cool IRB study that [00:46:00] should help to contribute to the development of better PGTP testing for future couples, embryos, maybe even your own.

So reach out to us at Partners at Pragmatist Foundation if you'd like to learn more and be connected to the researcher.

Speaker 4: You can look at all the dinosaurs. Two minutes. Whoa! Whoa! There's so many dinosaurs inside you have all the big dinosaurs, Titan? I want to see! I want to see! I want to see! Show us the dinosaurs, Titan. Hey, look!,

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm delve into the concept of pronatalism through the lens of U.S. cultural anthropology. They discuss various historical perspectives on fertility and family planning, particularly examining how different American cultural groups viewed marriage, sexuality, and the ideal qualities of a wife. The discussion touches on the often proposed but overly simplistic solutions from certain modern perspectives, such as banning condoms and pornography, and contrasts these with the historical realities and cultural practices of early America. The episode covers a wide range of topics, from the Puritans' value of industriousness and intellectual conversation, to the Backwoods people's emphasis on martial prowess in women, and the Southern aristocrats' focus on beauty and social grace. The hosts also explore the implications of these historical practices for contemporary fertility issues, stressing that arousal and sexuality have long been decoupled from reproductive motivations. They argue that understanding these historical and cultural contexts is crucial for forming effective modern policies and personal decisions related to family planning and fertility.

[00:00:00]

Speaker: Hello, Simone! Today is going to be an exciting episode because we are going to, studying pronatalism through the lens of U. S. cultural anthropology.

Speaker 2: Ooh, academic!

Speaker: Yes, with the idea being. Right now, if you look at, like, the default plans for fixing pro natalism that I often hear on parts of the right, it's like, well, let's ban condoms, and let's ban porn, and let's ban, you know, whatever, you know, right?

And it's like, Okay, so this would increase fertility rates if, historically speaking, the primary reason people had kids was that they couldn't figure out how not to control their sexual urges. Yeah. And cross culturally, this is true, it appears, historically, of some cultures. However, for the vast majority of cultures, particularly that were important in the founding of America, this does not appear to have been true.

[00:01:00] And so what we are going to explore in this episode is what these cultures had to say about their own wife when they were trying to say, like, my wife is better than your wife about young men advice on who to date about what they found hot or attractive or they cheered on and songs and everything like that.

Only one of America's founding cultures. ever referenced the way a woman looked for the other cultures, basically never. And there's actually been some historical stuff looked at this, how attractive a woman was was not referenced was one culture. We'll get into the the Quaker culture in the Pennsylvania region.

So attractiveness is a sign of a bad wife. You wanted a wife who was playing. She was high class all these people are just gonna be stereotypes of what you expect, which is what I love so just like uh Preview here of the backwards people who you mentioned who are like super violent and make up the majority now of like trump's [00:02:00] face and i've always they really like tomboys.

So what did they have to say historically on notes of the state of virginia in? 1785 thomas jefferson observed that in the frontier regions, women were valued for being quote unquote robust and the ability to quote unquote bear fatigue. And Daniel Boone's own writings about his wife, Rebecca emphasized that quote, she could shoot as well as any man in quote, Oh, sweet.

I like that. Simon Kenton, a famous frontiersman wrote admiringly of Daniel Boone's wife, Rebecca quote. She could handle a rifle with the best of them and noted, quote, she could keep the farm and defend it too. That is an ideal woman. Yes, I agree. This, this, this thing you see was in the current frontiers of America, where you have the mud wrestling competition for women.

As we've, we've gone over in other episodes women fighting and showing martial ability is [00:03:00] goes back into American history, but we'll go into what the Puritans wanted and everything like that. But before I go into all of that, one thing I want to. Like really focus on is right now when people have kids the vast majority of kids that are had in the world Particularly in america are not had because of arousal patterns at all It is because a couple got together and decided they wanted kids

Speaker 2: And okay caveat because the the big drop in birth rates that we're seeing in places like latin america Result from basically impulsive teen sex, no longer resulting in babies because of increased birth control.

So I would say for like

Speaker: Everything here is that in every demographic of age range, fertility rates have increased or stayed stable except for under 24. You are right Meaning that

Speaker 2: like, I think the only time when people are having impulsive sex that produces babies, it's because They're insane, hormonally imbalanced teens, or maybe not imbalanced, but you know, like, hormonally revved up.

Speaker: [00:04:00] Their people with very low self control and very low IQ, and they're struggling to not get

Speaker 2: pregnant.

Speaker: Yeah, not myelinated,

Speaker 2: poor impulse control. Yeah, just like, should not be having babies. And honestly, it's not a bad thing. That they're not having babies like that's good

Speaker: And we'll get to this as we go into a lot of these quotes is the cultures that leaned into motivating fertility Through a lack of impulse control.

I. e through banning contraception through banning Pornography everything like that specifically, catholic and mormon culture are the cultures that are actually struggling uniquely was quickly falling fertility rates, whereas the cultures historically and and we'll see this if you look at the old puritan stuff, if you look at the old you know extreme protestant stuff they did not seem to care about sex or sexuality at all And I note that you actually have pretty big evolutionary differences between populations that we've noted The recent study showed, for example, belief in predestination is highly genetically [00:05:00] linked.

And people misunderstand how much of their culture is genetically linked or leans on genetics. An avid culture for generations since the founding of America has not used arousal to motivate childbirth. Of course, they are not going to be impacted by falling fertility rates as much as other cultures and really fascinating in a future episode.

We'll get to Catholics actually have a higher fertility rate when they are in other cultures that haven't genetically adopted to their techniques for increasing rate. i. e. if you're looking in Korea or China or Japan, Catholics will always outbreed Protestants. But if you look at cultures where these two religions are had within populations that have had these religious belief systems for generations, they underbreed Protestants.

That's

Speaker 2: very interesting.

Speaker: And even among the Catholics who have a lot of kids today and the Catholic communities that have a lot of kids today, what you'll see is they don't do it due to a lack of self control. They do it because of a desire to have a lot of kids.

So they have adapted and sort of made [00:06:00] it through this hurdle.

It's just up until the seventies the Catholic tradition really relied on this to keep the fertility rates high. As we can see from, well, the stereotypes of, The community and you'll see as we go through all these communities, they will fit the stereotypes you have of them.

Chris, it's important you learn about your Irish heritage.

Speaker: But let's go to the Puritans.

What were they looking for in a wife in their own words? Okay. Cotton Mather, Puritan minister, wrote in his 1710 work, A Christian at His Calling, that marriage's primary purpose was to raise up a godly seed and that physical relations should be approached with sobriety and moderation. [00:07:00]

Speaker 3: Okay.

Speaker: He told young men that they should seek wives that are industrious and prudent. If you look at his own diary entries about what he thought of his own wife, when he was looking for a second wife after being widowed, he wrote, quote, capacity for managing a household is what he was looking for. And her quote, excellence in discussing religious matters.

This was a woman who he had met, who he ended up. Marrying later. So he really appreciated her ability to have deep philosophical, religious conversations and her ability to manage the family finances. Which very

Speaker 2: useful. Yeah, I guess I'm very practically oriented.

Speaker: Yes, he noted among her chief accomplishments is she's accomplished in prudentials, meaning she was good at practical matters and decision making.

Speaker 2: Prudentials. I love that. Why is there not a section on the Collins Institute skill tree for prudentials?

Speaker: If you look at what he said about [00:08:00] his own wife after they were married, he said, quote, she wastes not her time in idleness or careless gabbing abroad, but is ever industrious in her. Proper business.

And that's how he was praising her not being like, oh, I got a hot wife here or whatever, right? William and we're going to go over lots of different cultures So we're not just going to go over the puritans. We're going to go over the southerners We're going to go over the backwoods people. We're going to yes William gouge an influential english protestant theologian wrote in his 1622 work of domestic duties That married couples engaged in physical relations With moderation, and primarily for the procreation of children, William Perkins, a prominent English Puritan theologian, wrote in Christian Economy, 1609, that the ideal wife should be selected for her, quote, godliness, faithfulness, and diligence in governing the family. He specifically advised young men to look for women who were, quote, skilled in household affairs, and, quote, [00:09:00] of good report for piety. John Cotton in his sermons and writings for Colonial Massachusetts emphasized that a potential life should be evaluated on grace and virtue, skill in household management, and devotion to God.

And If you look at the diary of Samuel Pepin's, the 17th century England, it contains numerous entries about what you should be looking for in a wife, family connections, financial management abilities, household skills, religious devotion, and educational background. Never mentions how they look. In the skillful physicians, and, and by the way, if you're like, well, no culture of this period cared about how they looked, you will actually see one culture, this is the southern culture in America, that frequently and primarily talked about how a woman looked.

Speaker 2: Well, now, okay, hold on. I'm, I'm pretty sure that even in these very practically oriented cultures, they still care about things like, I'm sure if a woman looked unkempt, it would be a sign of her lack of, Prudential skills, you know, so I'm sure they [00:10:00] looked at appearance and what if

Speaker: anything unkempt within the backwards people would have been seen as a edifying thing.

It would have been seen as a and we'll get to instances of this. So certainly

Speaker 2: not among the Puritans. So, I mean, it would suggest low

Speaker: conscientiousness. Right, among the Puritans it would, but the point I'm making is physical appearance in a historic context, if you are an American at least, was not what your ancestors used to motivate reproduction.

Speaker 2: And to attempt They were not looking to date hot Brazilian models. Sorry, viewers. Sorry,

Speaker: yes. Not to burst your bubbles! To motivate fertility you have already lost the entire game. Unless you're trying to create an entirely new culture that values attractiveness and arousal And if so, I would say why like if that's not your historic culture Why are you trying to recultivate that when the cultures that used to thrive through that like because castle culture, for example and here I'm [00:11:00] not talking about high Catholic culture.

I'm talking about like low or poor Catholic culture. If you're talking about like immigrants from Ireland and stuff like that, you see descriptions of this a lot. They have the successful iterations of their culture have completely moved away from that to caring about kids and really having a disinterest in sex and sexuality.

For the vast majority of high fertility cultures within the U. S. and around the world today, having kids is only sexy or arousing if you are really into scheduling.

Which, okay, given the nerdiness of our audience, might be more of you than would be representative within the general public. Great, let's all figure out when I can have sex. Okay, what if Jenna did her DVD commentary while she was getting bejazzled? You know what? We have to look at the whole month.

Ooh, yeah. There it is. I need to cross reference this with my menstruations. I'm gonna have to color code all of this. [00:12:00] Oh yeah, that's nice. This is, um It's getting hot in here, right? If I had a column for my basal body temperature, then I could schedule a round peak ovulation.

Oh God, this whole thing could be a spreadsheet. If we print it in Landscape,

Speaker: The skillful physician actually came up in a lot of these. It was written in 1659 in a popular marriage manual.

Speaker 2: Oh, ooh, okay.

Speaker: And it listed a number of qualities of a good wife, knowledge of scripture, ability to manage servants, skill in household economy, and women have been managing, managing the household wealth for a long time.

Managing household money and stuff like that, many people are like, oh, you let your wife manage the house and the money of the house and everything like that? I'm like, yes, of course, this is like very traditional. At least for my people good reputation in the community and temperance in behavior were the things that were cared about quote, it said, Oh yeah, and I [00:13:00] guess

Speaker 2: if we're talking about the hot crazy graph, they therefore probably not the sexiest women.

Speaker: No, they, they're at the bottom of the hot crazy graph. If they

Speaker 2: have even temperament, they've got to be pretty damn frumpy.

Speaker: Yeah. Can oversee her house, direct her servants, and with her hands, if need requires, do any housewifery. So it's about her own skill as well. Housewifery.

Speaker 3: Housewifery.

Speaker: Now, John Adams, when he was talking to his wife, you know, notable Puritan from early American, really important to the foundation of our country.

So we can see But also Abigail Adams,

Speaker 2: let's just be clear, was like an intellectual in her own right. A huge advisor in his own career. Also like not Not just a, she's, she wouldn't be a tradwife influencer. He would be like, she would have a substack, she would have her own following,

Speaker: if you will. Yeah, so he wrote about her to his friends, and when he wrote about her, he would constantly emphasize her intelligence.

And her character and he noted to a friend that she was a scholar and possessed a [00:14:00] mind that might have adorned a court he particularly praised her knowledge of literature and her ability to engage in intellectual discourse So what you'll see repeatedly here is its ability at intellectual debate on the topics that matter to these individuals either literature or religion That was the primary thing that edified a wife and her ability to manage finances and her industry very different to what people are bragging about today.

In Samuel Seward's diary, 1652 1730, it contains multiple entries about potential wives, where he evaluates them almost entirely on practical and spiritual grounds. In one notable entry about a potential match, he writes admiring of how she, quote, keeps excellent order in her family, end quote, and, quote, shows wisdom in the management of affairs, end quote.

He spends several paragraphs discussing her religious knowledge and household management skills without a single mention of her physical appearance. These people did not ruminate about this, and they did not think [00:15:00] about this, and actually if you look at them talking about what they were looking forward to on their wedding night, because you find this in some of the old Protestant intellectuals, they'll be like, Me and my wife will sit together by the bedside, and we will spend all night praying and having an intellectual conversation about God.

And like, they were not And what we need to understand here is different cultures have different motivation towards arousal and towards sexuality, and some cultures, when they didn't need this motivation, it became merely bred out of them to motivate reproduction. And I think that's part of what we're seeing here

to be more pointed, the core theme of the argument in this piece is that arousal and sexuality have been largely vestigial in humans for hundreds of years.

And thus attempting to use it to motivate fertility within a population is going to have about the same results as using your appendix to try to clean your blood supply [00:16:00] instead of your kidney.

Speaker: because you'll note that they didn't even talk about this in passing, and we'll get to this in a bit, because it's actually really interesting if you, like, analyze their writings more over.

They'll, they'll be very explicit in their sexual conversations, but they actually very similar to this channel where we will have very explicit conversations about the furries or about people who are into like the Omega verse or about like abnormal human sexuality, but we are like an anti horny channel.

You could almost say like, we don't, you don't like put on the horniness to get viewers. I don't. We're literally a husband and wife sitting in separate

Speaker 2: rooms.

Speaker: Yeah, we have no restrictions against talking about sexuality. And this is mentioned in Albion Seed, that the Puritan community of this period, they wrote about sexuality so explicitly that many of their works had to be censored to the 20th century.

But they didn't write about it with horniness, it was just practicality. Okay, so. Ralph Jocelyn, an English vicar, wrote in his diary about potential [00:17:00] matches for his children, consistently focusing on qualities like good housewifery, godly conversation, and prudent dealing. Now this is, this is what I was mentioning before.

The historical record suggests descriptions of women's physical appearance were actually relatively uncommon in formal writing and documents from Puritan and early Protestant periods. If you look at Amanda Vickery's The Gentleman's Daughter, 1998, they analyzed letters and diaries from the 18th century and found that while physical appearance was sometimes written, it was far less prominent in the discussion of character, accomplishment, or domestic abilities when discussing potential marriages.

David Hackley Fisher in LBMC noted that Puritan writing about courtship and marriage Tend to focus heavily on spiritual and practical qualities rather than physical attraction. The historical record suggests descriptions of women's physical appearance were actually relatively uncommon in formal writing and documents from the Puritan and early Protestant periods, which I find really, [00:18:00] really fascinating.

Now, if you're like, okay, so what were they looking for? Thomas Gadker, A Good Wife God's Gift. This was written in 1720 about what you should look for in wives or what good wives do. I mean,

Speaker 2: there weren't a lot of books around back then. How many written guides there actually are for like finding a wife?

Instead of just, I imagine that this was just going to be orally passed down folk wisdom, but you're quoting books. That's really surprising.

Speaker: Only the Puritans are we quoting books, this is what I'll say, okay? Everyone else didn't, didn't with the Faustus quoting letters with the, with the Backwoods people, it's songs.

You know, so yeah, people wrote in different ways. But the Puritans liked their writing, okay? So a good wife, God's gift, 1620, he said that good wives were early risers, good work women and we're not idle, but occupied with honest labor. Look well to the ways of her household. So, really, industry, ability at conversation, specifically intellectual [00:19:00] conversation with the husband, and this is just repeatedly brought back to it.

All these things. It's not like one guy had like a fetish for this. Nobody talked about how their wives looked. They did not care. They did not anticipate sex on their wedding night. They saw it as kind of gross and something that you needed to bear through to have kids. John Robinson, a Puritan pastor, wrote, The most praiseworthy quality of a wife was painful and diligent in her place.

Painful meant hardworking and industrious in the language of the time. I, I love that. So now we're going to talk about the Quakers, which were the most similar to the Puritans and what they told people they wanted, but they were really anti talking about sexuality. So in the way that like our show, like does not care about talking about sex or sexuality, we're just not horny about it.

They were like terrified of sexuality. So William Penn, in advice to his children, emphasized that a good marriage match should be based on the things that are of God, rather than worldly attributes. He specifically advised somebody looking for plainness [00:20:00] in a wife, meaning simplicity and authenticity.

And And the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting records from 1700's show that when marriages were being approved, so they needed to be approved they focused on the couple's commitment to Quaker principles, their clearness from other relationships, their ability to support themselves through honest manual labor, and their plain way of living.

You had to be extra plain. In John Willman's journal, Mid 1700s, he wrote about marriage in terms of spiritual compatibility and shared commitment to Quaker values. When describing his own marriage to Sarah Ellis, he focused entirely on her, quote, grave and modest deportment.

I love this. She had a very grave deportment, so you know she's a high quality woman. Not like her butt's nice or anything like that. This woman, let me tell you. She

Speaker 2: sounds like the, like, joke comedy skit version of a Puritan woman.

Speaker: Yes, a very, but this was Quakers, okay? So keep in mind, the Quakers are the ones who are all about, like, grave and honest, everything like that.

They wanted [00:21:00] honest, plainness, the Puritans wanted industry and intellectual conversation. So very different here, actually. They're sort of similar, but very different. He wanted a woman who was esteemed as a dutiful daughter, a careful and loving sister. Which is, is, is really, really interesting. Is that the, the Quakers wanted plainness, they wanted simplicity, they wanted a level of graveness.

All of this was like socially edifying for them. Whereas the Puritans were much more interested in their personal relation with the wife and how the wife would contribute to their income. Basically, I want her to be good with finances, good with work around the house, good at managing the servants. I want her to be able to have good intellectual conversations.

And this is one of the cultures that Simone and I are, are descended from. And, and the other culture we're descended from is the backwoods culture, which I'll get to right here. So we, know that Thomas Efferson said that he, he wanted them to be, they were robust. And had a to bear fatigue.

That's what they were judged on. Primarily. [00:22:00] And as we mentioned with Daniel Boone, he said of his wife, she could shoot as well as any man. As I mentioned, martial prowess. It was really important in these cultures. This is ability to defend themselves ability to defend the homestead. Because as I was told growing up is, you know, one of the descendants of part of this culture is weak women make weak sons.

And this is very different from the way the southern culture saw this, which we'll get to in a second. This was a greater Appalachian cultural group or the backwards cultural group of America. And so early American folk songs and stories from the frontier regions praise women for being strong enough to help with field work, capable of defending the homestead, able to bear children under harsh conditions and skilled at practical tasks like spinning, weaving and preserving food.

And as you saw from the book we read about my grandfather, he talked about this. He said that my mother could make a meal that a, a skilled chemist could not improve upon and that she could spin, you know, is the best of them and very interested in like My mom could do better wifing tasks than the best scientists and [00:23:00] industrialists of our era could do.

And as I mentioned, you know, Sam Kenton, he said of Daniel Boone's wife that she could keep the farm and defend it and handle a rifle with the best of them. But we actually see this in other areas. So In several accounts in the Draper Manuscripts, a collection of frontier histories and interviews, they mention women as being particularly valued for ability to man a defensive position during raids, process game and preserve meat, handle firearms competently, manage livestock independently.

And so this is why I think when you look about like the descendants of the greater Appalachian culture. While you see, like, the noodling girl and stuff like that, this is a girl who catches a giant catfish, but you see the women hunters as this esteemed group that you're supposed to, like, oh, this, this is what the perfect wife is.

It's a woman in camo who knows how to shoot, who knows how to defend her property. Very different from what you would think of the old Southern value, which is, like, the female aristocrat of the Deep South.

Speaker 2: Yes, although I think that these standards also, and even our [00:24:00] standards for partners now, are a big reflection of the society that surrounds them.

I mean, what you see here, Are indications that these are people living in a society with low I guess low trust or high levels of violence or what is it called? Like vigilante justice, you know, people are expecting. I literally

Speaker: do not disagree more with what you're saying right now.

Speaker 2: Well, I mean, while.

If you

Speaker: encounter examples across

Speaker 2: the board. Also, society, hold on. In which people are expected to process their own food. So this is like a low industrialized society. Versus like areas that were more, we'll say in like, early proto industrialized, where women were more expected to be able to like, manage accounts well, manage their finances.

Let's completely

Speaker: display your argument with historical and modern examples. So, as a modern example, we can look at many societies that are low trust, very violent, very clannish, like the Middle East where women are expected to shut up, do what they're told, and are [00:25:00] definitely not valued for their ability to fight, use guns, beat up other women to

Speaker 2: their surrounding societies.

But I still think that the standards of an ideal partner reflect their surrounding society. Well, and I'm pointing out that this isn't

Speaker: true. So if you look in modern context which is the descendants of the greater Appalachian cultural group where we have pointed out before that they have less selling context for Competitions for women, where women are very clearly being, this is not about like Degrading them or something.

This is men being like the woman who can beat up the other woman in a mud wrestling competition. And you see these women are not holding back. Like in one of the videos that I posted before, one of the women looks like she's holding back a little. And the other woman just goes at it and slams her and.

The audience loves this.

Speaker 36: Yeah! Oh! Oh! Yeah, man! We've been so ready! Oh, hang on, he's, he's got a pin somewhere! Woo! [00:26:00] Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! We're gonna give that a count. We got

Speaker 38: kickoff? Yeah!

Speaker 36: Woo!

Speaker 38: Woo! Yeah! Woo! Oh! She's up! She's good! She wants out! She wants out! Give up! No! We're gonna go

yeah! Woo! Nicely done!

Speaker: This is a modern context. The, the, the TV shows that these people grew up with, the radio stations, these people grew up with the news. They grew up with none of them lauded this. This is completely due to either genetic selection for these forms of preferences or a cultural memory that goes back generations in terms of what a good wife is and you saying, Oh, it's just what's around them.

This is like. factually untrue. Otherwise, what we would see is in the low trust Islamic out there regions right now where like ISIS is, they'd be like, oh, we want a woman who can fight, which is [00:27:00] not what they want because they aren't a truly martial culture. They are a culture that is a sort of ordered form of martialism, which we talk about in other videos.

You can see this in our other videos on this. But yeah, that's not true. Do you want to, do you have a counter argument to that or?

Speaker 2: I just don't find your argument to be very compelling. And I think that when you look at each of these cultures. And you see the amenities of people who control their lives.

Explain, if you don't find

Speaker: it compelling, explain how the Appalachian Cultural Group maintained this value without containing control of their media environment.

Speaker 2: What do you mean control of their media environment?

Speaker: They don't, so Appalachian Cultural Group, for generations, first, basically hasn't written books.

They don't produce movies. They don't produce any, any form of like, so when their kids are growing up and they're trying to normalize to what's culturally normal, they are reading books that are produced by whether it's Puritans during the past, or by modern modern. I think that's more of an argument

Speaker 2: in my favor.

That's an argument that. You grew up to respect the [00:28:00] fact that your mother can defend your home with a gun and that your mother can process meat because you are living, you're much more likely to be living on a farm in a highly rural area without a butcher in town. I wasn't

Speaker: living on a farm in a highly rural area and I still grew up respecting all of that.

All of this is about cultural transmission and not about the context of their daily life.

Speaker 2: I hear that and I think that there is. Some inherited interplay like we are realizing more and more with our kids that a lot of what We thought were just quirks of our personality are probably genetic. Just like how insistently are you interested in things?

Speaker: Attraction profile, preference for a wife, everything like that is genetic and that it needs to be paired with a culture that works with. Yeah, but I

Speaker 2: think that these are downstream of selective pressures, which were produced by their surroundings in society.

Speaker: Yeah, obviously all selective pressures are produced for their society.

But the point I'm making is [00:29:00] these things persist generations, like a hundred years after the selective pressures existed. That's not that

Speaker 2: many generations, Malcolm.

Speaker: That's a long time if you're talking about American history.

Speaker 2: Yeah, but not if you're talking about the number of ancestors. I understand if you're talking

Speaker: about the number of ancestors, but what you're acting like is that groups just basically cave to the surrounding cultural pressures when that's like objectively not true.

Speaker 2: No, but they

Speaker: also,

Speaker 2: keep in mind, they also select for similar cultural pressures. So, your family kept just migrating out to like new frontiers and trying to build their own new civilizations going out to Texas. My family made their way to California and, and tried to, like, you know, go out to the frontier there and rebuild San Francisco after it burned down in 1908.

So, like, again, like, these things have an interplay, and I think you're much more likely to find someone of Scots Irish descent who maintains those cultural values if their family continued to [00:30:00] lean into the environments that also leaned into the selective pressures that support those values.

Speaker: Yes, you're definitely going to find that, which means you need to pay attention to that and how you choose your family environment.

But I think the point you were trying to make earlier is a lot of this is just cultural and it's not. It's, it's, it's, it's cultural like, like modern pop cultural. I wasn't saying

Speaker 2: it was cultural. I was saying it was a product of their surrounding society. That, for example, in Puritan, in the Puritan colonies.

People needed devout, conscientious, sober wives because this was a highly religious settlement in which people lived in tight knit communities in which people played different roles. And you needed people who were very like, who played the right role within their communities.

Speaker: I really disagree with this.

All the stuff that you're talking about right now was an intentional cultural choice of the Puritans when they moved into these environments, which differentiated from the [00:31:00] cultural choices that led to the genetics that led to things like the Quakers or the Southerners or the Appalachians. And if you look at again, I disagree.

So you

Speaker 2: haven't even gotten to the Southerner criteria, but you know, this was. What we're talking about is the second sons of the UK immigrating and trying to make their fortune. These are people who came with wealth, they owned land, so they went for ornamental lives. And this is a product of the resources in their surroundings.

Speaker: Everything, so not just their mental profiles, but I think their physical genetic profiles. If you look at Quaker women it seems pretty obvious to me that they were selected by plainness. Like, no shade on, like, the Quaker community but this is a community that intergenerationally selected for plainness.

If you look at the Puritan community, you see, like, if you look at you, for example, Simone your physical appearance, you do not look that different from the Puritans that you would have seen in art back in the day. And I [00:32:00] can put art on the screen here, people can see you look. A lot like them in your physical facial features, which are really focused on one like intellectual conversational ability.

This is something that you were clearly selected for and industriousness and looking industrious. Like you have a face that looks like a wife. Who's going to do a lot of work and not put up a fight. But like I look at you, I'm like, Oh, this is a woman who looks financially sound and industrious, more than a rousing in a traditional sense.

If you look at what happened to the southern women, they became very ornamental in their looks. These women are the most traditionally attractive within the United States. I don't think most people would argue that. And if you look at the Appalachian women, they became very robust. Compared to the other women.

And if you like tomboys, you're going to like the women that are produced by this culture. And so I think that we also see this sort of etched into the characters. And this is something that we try to ignore because everyone's focused on, like, ethnic differences instead of, like, [00:33:00] interracial differences where we select it into these cultures.

And that, for example, if a woman looked like Simone, looked, like, industrious and prudent and, and intellectual she would be if she was born into a different culture, suppose she was born into the abolition culture and my family lived alongside that cultures that were like part descended from that culture you would have been selected into our family.

Right, like really early on in that cultural period or if you were born to a quaker family You might have found a higher quality husband within a purity family Because and this is how you get these sort of genetic vortexes that happen really quickly culturally that can end up mattering a lot more And the ethnic cultural vortexes that everyone's so focused on.

But if we go back to what were the backwoods people looking for, okay? So, William Byrd II, while not strictly a frontierman, wrote in his journals about backcountry women he encountered, noting with approval how they could ride a stride and handle An axe as well as a needle. So these are things that they [00:34:00] were seen as good about them.

Can they handle an axe as well as a needle? What was really interesting is Mary Ingalls who escaped native american captivity was often praised in contemporary accounts for her Not for her appearance, but for her quote Extraordinary constitution and ability to survive in extreme conditions So to be captured and to fight back about your capturers.

Remember I mentioned that like How do you choose a good wife? Who gets in a good position during a raid? Who can escape Native American captivity? This is not what the other cultural groups are interested in, but martial prowess was the number one thing that they were looking for. Toughness in a wife.

A bearish fatigue, as he said. So contemporary accounts of Betty Zane, who became a frontier hero for carrying a gunpowder during the siege of Fort Henry in 1782, were widely shared as retold,, so this is a woman who is being praised within these cultures. If you look at more modern iterations of women, you know, you don't just have the mud relish the lilies of today.

You don't just have the, the noodler women of today.

Speaker 29: That was [00:35:00] good. Woohoo! That's a good one. There we go.

Speaker: You have individuals like Annie Oakley, who secured her husband by beating him in a duel, and by Butler's own accounts, when he talked about what he liked about Annie Oakley, he emphasized her shooting and her practical skills, saying, quote, I fell in love with her courage and determination not, you know, what she looked like or anything like that.

Any any thoughts about the Backwoods people before we go to the Southerners here?

Speaker 2: I'm still just seeing the products of selective pressures of an environment, but carry on.

Speaker: Selective pressures were a selected environment, so it doesn't make any difference. No,

Speaker 2: they, I mean, okay, the Scots Irish did not Choose to go to the backwoods.

They were kind of forced in there by the quakers who were like get the hell out of here You are that's not really true. They came over on like the Okay, let's talk about

Speaker: where every group chose to [00:36:00] immigrate to because you are being just intent like I don't know. Do you not remember? Like the The

Speaker 2: cold and rocky ground of New England.

Speaker: They specifically chose settlements that were very rocky because they were harder to plow because they wanted to emphasize industriousness in their daily life. I feel like

Speaker 2: that's apocryphal. It seems It's kind of weird. I mean, there was no, no, no, no.

Speaker: Why did the Backwoods people move to the areas where there were constant Klan conflicts?

Speaker 2: Well, there were constant Klan conflicts among them, even in Scotland. Because they were

Speaker: moving from areas where there were constant Klan conflicts. They created the nature of the environment. The Appalachian Mountain area wasn't hostile because it was an innately hostile area or the Native Americans there were more hostile than other Native Americans.

And why? They weren't. No, they weren't. They were hostile because the Backwoods people were there fighting with the Native [00:37:00] Americans and fighting with each other. If you look at the pre area, the Native Americans in the Appalachian region were not more hostile before the Backwoods people got there than any of the other Native American communities.

Yes, the Backwoods people did act as a buffer zone that the Quakers sort of laid out in that region, but the Backwoods people also intentionally sorted into this region. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Well, anyway, carry on.

Speaker: No, but it's important to note. As you mentioned, we're like, if a woman was disproportionately you know, like, attractive to one of these groups, or had attitudes that was disproportionately attractive to one of these groups, she was likely to marry into them, which leads to this vortex.

But also, if an individual is born to a Quaker group and they are more martial, they are more interested in being rowdy and fighting and you know, Maybe like girls who are rowdy and fighting and everything like that. They're going to move out of that community and into the backwoods. If a Puritan was born that way, he's going to [00:38:00] move out of that community and into the backwoods.

If a Quaker was born less like focused on their status, less focused on how other people saw them and was more interested in intellectualism for intellectualism's own sake, they're going to move to the Puritan community. They're interested in being an ornamental wife. They're going to move to the Deep South's community.

This is the way these things work and create I feel like

Speaker 2: you're overstating the social mobility of that time.

Speaker: You don't need to overstate the social mobility because all of these groups lived adjacent to each other. So even if you don't have pure social mobility, you're going to have a degree of genetic social osmosis, which is going to strengthen every one of these groups within these regions.

And if you're talking about, like, the Southern You're like, oh, it's just an accident that the aristocrats from England moved to the part of the United States where slave cropping worked. The people who had never worked a day in their lives wanted to move and create a culture where they didn't have to work a day in their lives.

No, that wasn't an accident. That [00:39:00] literally was how they the original descendants of the Cavaliers. They weren't one of these other groups and that's the way they wanted to live their lives. What you're missing is you're looking at like the Backwoods region or you're looking at the Puritan region and you're saying that these regions motivated these cultural traits when in reality, it's the exact opposite.

Cultural traits motivated the groups that settled in these regions, not the other way around. When the original descendants of the Cavaliers. We're looking for a place to set up within the United States. They had colonies in the northeast as well Remember, they thought they could like find gold there and stuff but they didn't end up staying in those regions because they weren't able to build an easy life for themselves Which is what they wanted an easy life based on slaves or whatever else.

Speaker 2: So you're over You're also so new england was good for like small scale agriculture, which is exactly what these small puritan communities wanted Whereas what the [00:40:00] Cavaliers were going for was like large scale industrial farming, which the South was good for.

Speaker: Exactly, but the point I'm making is that their culture was not downstream of their environment.

Their environment was downstream of their culture. And you are implying that the environmental conditions shape the culture instead of the opposite, which is what really happened. And that better explains that cultures are actually much more durable, both genetically and intergenerationally, in terms of how you should find a wife, or how you should think about wives, or anything like that, than you would think.

And if you're growing up in a modern context, and you are attempting to Slap whatever you think of as generic masculinity onto a genetic cultural framework that wasn't built for that. You are going to fail. This is why and we'll do another episode on this in the future. In East Asia, Christians, despite their high fertility rate in other communities, actually have a lower average fertility rate than Buddhists in these [00:41:00] communities.

What? Why? It's because they haven't. Genetically work together for many generations, and they don't mesh. Well, you have everything from how you find a wife to what you find attractive to what you like in a partner to what you want to do is your white life to how you want to handle your business or start a business.

All of this is a genetic cultural pool that you need to take into account when you're thinking about this. And this idea of, oh, just ban porn or just ban contraception is so pig headed and wrong if you're looking at like actual American history, which is the point of making it. Okay. So if we're going to the deep South, what did they care about?

As she, you know, we've been talking about. So, Landon Carter's diary includes entries about potential matches for his children, where he discussed things like breeding, genteel manners and he noted one woman's , graceful carriage, and how she was well taught in the accomplishment.

Proper to her station Robert Carter, also known as King Carter of Virginia, wrote letters [00:42:00] about potential matches for his children that emphasize the importance of quote unquote good breeding and being from the better sort. In one of his letters discussing potential marriage, he noted approvingly that the young lady was quote unquote well bred and dances was exceeding grace.

Lucy Pike Brid was described in contemporary accounts of having quote, beauty and accomplishments. And that made her a desirable match. Her marriage negotiations, as recorded in various letters, emphasized her education in, quote, refined arts and her ability to manage a grand household in the proper style.

The, and you'll note here, so these women were lauded for something very different from the other women. It was when they care about their education. So when the Puritans talked about education, what are they always talking about? How good of a conversational partner? Was she able to engage me in in depth religious discussion or literature discussion?

Where in the South, it's, does she have knowledge of the refined arts? Like, is she able to signal her class status well? Is she of [00:43:00] the better sort? Is she beautiful? Can she dance gracefully? Very, very, very different sort of a thing to look for in a breeding partner. The Southern Cavalier culture presented a notable contrast with Puritan and Frontier attitudes.

In Cavalier culture, such as the American South, particularly among the planter class, there was much more emphasis on physical beauty, refinement, and social graces in describing potential wives. William Berks II's diaries in early 18th century Virginia provide a good example of this. Unlike His description's a backcountry woman.

When writing about potential matches in his own social class, he frequently mentioned the women's appearance, dancing ability, and social graces. He described one potential match as having, quote, a very good shape and a great deal of wit, end quote. Philip Vickens Philanthropy, a tutor in Virginia in the 1770s, wrote detailed observations of how young women in planter society were evaluated.

His journals note how young ladies were praised for their grace in dancing, beauty in department, skill in music [00:44:00] and entertainment, ability to manage social occasions, and accomplishments, where accomplishments were designed as things like French music and drawing. The diary of Colonel Landon Carter, a prominent Virginia planter has numerous appearances to ladies appearance and social graces that you would never find in, in Puritan or Quaker or even backwoods culture.

Which I find really interesting. And I think that as we think about how can we motivate high fertility within our own society, it's really important to note that within American culture, at least historically, high fertility, Both in a modern context and in a historic context was almost never motivated by arousal.

Speaker 3: Hmm.

Speaker 2: Yeah, there's, I mean, okay, you've demonstrated that across cultures, there are very, very different criteria. But none of these are like, how hot is she? It may be How much can she signal that she came from landed gentry, or how much can she signal Yeah,

Speaker: and the [00:45:00] one culture that cares about hotness, the southern culture

Speaker 2: That's not even hotness.

That's not even hotness. There was, I mean, it was about good posture, but that is a reflection It's about, like, beauty and class, yeah. Yeah, it's a reflection of investment in costly signaling that is a sign of wealth. So yeah, even, even the culture that we would argue is the most aesthetically oriented, it doesn't even have to do with being Attractive.

So that's really interesting.

Speaker: And I think that it leads to people to make massive mistakes in how they're treating this situation. Is that humanity, most of humanity, decoupled arousal from the number of kids you have centuries ago. Millennia ago. And yet Men today are like, how are you going to motivate sex if you have access to pornography or if you have another way to like

Speaker 2: this was, this was never the issue.

This was never the issue.

Speaker: Exactly. And I, and I also wonder if maybe these groups are less susceptible to [00:46:00] pornography. So one of the things I've noticed about groups, I've mentioned this. That are because one thing we've noted in previous episodes is that you really only see problems with pornography addiction in individuals who attempt to, like, keep pornography away from themselves or, like, regulate the ways that they interact with pornography, and I've been like, well, I've been really dismissive of it, but I've also noted that within Puritan culture, there is a note that as the culture began to degrade, really.

And culture that was really teetotaling, like really anti alcohol then became some of the most alcoholic culture there was. And I know it's a classic thing about Baptists, primitive Baptists, which is a type of Calvinist. The, the line from where I grew up is like, Jews deny Christ. Catholics deny.

I can't remember something offensive and Baptist deny knowing each other at the liquor store. It was the idea being that the drinking a lot is really common in this cultural group, but it's really common in both of our families. And we've had a couple generations to basically come to terms with this.

So we, we can handle it [00:47:00] now. Whereas. To an extent. I mean, I still take naltrexone to handle it. If I look at the cultures that may be struggling the most with spornography, they may be groups that had historic bans against stuff like this and motivated reproduction through fertility, like Mormon communities, which is where you hear about the most problems with porn addiction and stuff like that.

So it might just be that they don't have a genetic resistance to it that would have been built up by other communities.

Speaker 2: Hmm. That's plausible. Yeah.

Speaker: One of the things you said to me is you were like, look, once you're married and an adult, like basically nobody over 35 is having kids. Not even over 35.

Nobody I'd say over 28 is having kids because of arousal issues.

Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Yeah. Because of. Impulse control around sex. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I guess the one exception where we, I feel like we still see this taking place is with Mormons because they can't have sex outside of marriage and they are encouraged to get married really young and many do like expedite marriage [00:48:00] because

Speaker 3: they're

Speaker 2: kind of eager.

And then they do have, I mean, at least historically they've had better birth rates. I feel like things are kind of falling apart there, but that's the only example I can really think of where sex drive is playing a factor in fertility.

Speaker: When we talk about, you know, culturally or genetically, like, some individuals have been like, oh, you guys are really gross in that you create your children outside of Of the mom and dad having sex, right?

Because we use IVF, we use genetic selection, stuff like that. And I'm, and I'm like, oh my god, I like, I have the exact opposite inclination, which is what is grosser than knowing that I'm a product of my mom and dad having sex. Yeah,

Speaker 2: seriously. Come on, guys. It seems really

Speaker: disgusting. And then you read these ancient Puritan writings, where they're like, Sex should only be engaged in with moderation and only to produce children.

It was clear that these were not individuals who, they would have had [00:49:00] a, a more I'd say, temperate reaction to, like, gleeously enjoying sexuality. Which some groups have attempted to do to increase Where I see a lot of you, you, you see this in like, for example, some Jewish groups where they're like trying to make sexuality like fine and, and, and like enjoyable.

And they're like, oh yes, you really need to take joy when it's like these classic Puritans. They were like, no, like sex is a duty. Like schedule it. Okay, do what you have to do. The point is kids you can really always hear them sort of sighing under their breath. It's like I know and I think that if we deny These differences or specializations around having kids we're gonna have a huge time motivating Increasing fertility rate within people of different predilections, and if you don't know who your ancestors were, you should at least be able to search yourself for your own predilections and understand that maybe you are not a good candidate [00:50:00] to motivate having lots of kids because you don't have access to any other way to get off.

Or maybe you are not a good candidate for any other way. Maybe you would only have a lot of kids if you were young and reckless and had all other means of getting off denied to you. And I think it's this degree of self knowledge, which is really important that is sort of erased today because of this belief of Blake Slade ism and all humans are the same.

When we're not.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker: Anyways, love you to the next one. We can go to the next episode on Chinese people being the new Jews.

Speaker 2: Thank you for keeping me entertained, Malcolm. That that is, that is your duty as a husband. Do I

Speaker: entertain you as a husband? I am entertained.

Speaker 2: I am entertained. I will let you live another night in this house.

Yeah. Final thoughts. Just, yeah, I totally agree with you. Once again, we are highly disappointed by people who think that somehow it makes sense to ban [00:51:00] porn and ban condoms and all this other nonsense. If you want to lose our respect for your intellectual capabilities really quickly. Just come up to us and be like, why don't we just ban condoms?

Speaker: Well, I think that this works within communities that historically use this to motivate high fertility But you need to be strict in how you do it and you can't use the government as we pointed out For example, catholic communities when they are minorities in other countries have a much higher fertility rate than when they're the majority within their country

Speaker 2: Yeah, tend to your own flock.

You've got to have that internal strong community And if you don't have that then yeah, when you when you outsource it to your government all that internal strength Just goes away. It's no good.

Speaker: By the way, if you're wondering why we're not mentioning early American Catholics, because they basically didn't exist.

They were like 1. 2 percent of the American population. It might be like 1. 5 percent at the time of the revolution. People were like, what about Maryland? That was a Catholic colony. No, Maryland was only around 10 percent Catholic. Catholics basically didn't exist until the Irish and Italian immigrant waves.

The Great Replacement already happened. See [00:52:00] our episode on that. Love you today, Simone.

Speaker 2: Love you too, Malcolm. You already have the other link, so I'll just see you in there.

Speaker: So on Reddit, they were before the Super Bowl, they were like, Oh, Trump's going to get booed at the Super Bowl. It's going to be awful. I predict this is like the top post on Reddit. Then gets cheered by everyone. Taylor Swift gets booed. What? Wait, why did Taylor Swift get booed? I think just because she's so Even like normie was the person that

Speaker 2: she's dating was he on the team that lost so

Speaker: The people were not, you know excited

Speaker 3: I

Speaker 2: loved octavian's commentary on The super bowl. What do you have to say? Well, I have video of it. He refers to it as soccer. He told me that you know, the eagles should win That they're great. And that the other team, maybe he called it the red team. He kept saying, we don't know what they're doing.

We don't know what they're doing. [00:53:00] We don't know what they're doing. I'm like, well, what, what is their mascot? What are they? And he's like, I don't know. It was, it was really sweet. Remember when he came home, like literally wearing an Eagle's hat. I don't remember ever in my public school, there being discussion.

Of sports.

Speaker: So I grew up in Dallas and this is when the Cowboys like won the Super Bowl or whatever it's called. Did they do the Super Bowl? Anyway, yeah, they everyone would always be like, oh, what do you think of them? Cowboys when I like travel to other places. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. They're good.

Whatever

Speaker 2: happened to the Dallas. Oh, you know what? Now I feel like the Dallas Cowboys are actually more famous for their cheerleaders than they are for. They were famous for their

Speaker: cheerleaders when I was a kid, Simone. Yeah, their cheerleaders are in,

Simone Collins: yeah, but there was recently a Netflix documentary about them.

So then that's what people think.