Simone and Malcolm Collins debate the causes of declining birth rates and potential solutions after reading a provocative proposal from writer "Arctotherium." They analyze his argument that improving men's status relative to women could incentivize marriage and higher fertility.

Topics discussed:

* Statistics showing drastic fertility declines across multiple countries

* The role of female empowerment movements and decreased male status

* Policies like defunding education and affirmative action to aid men

* Reversing cultural changes from the sexual revolution

* Flaws in the "baby boom" theory and viability of copying it

* Biological drives behind having children after tragedy

* Standards for modern dating contributing to dismal marriage rates

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] And again, this is like men are losing their status. They're checking out. They're not getting educated. They're not getting jobs or they're getting depressed. And it's showing up differently. Like, you know, I think generally women are much more likely to publicly complain about things. identify as depressed and say all these things.

Whereas men don't, they're very quiet and they silently suffer and they just back out of society.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: So we're going to go over these numbers. This is year over year fertility decline in these countries. So you already know one number in Korea year over year for Q3. It was what, 14%? I thought it

Simone Collins: was

Malcolm Collins: 11%. It was just incredibly hot, like double digits decrease in a country that's already doing that bad. And Seoul's already at 0.

53 fertility. A rat row. So here we go. Romania, 19%. 4 percent decrease year over year, Latvia, 19 percent decrease year over year, [00:01:00] Lithuania, 17. 8 percent decrease year over year, Estonia, 16. 3 percent decrease year over year, Mongolia, 16. 1%, uh, I don't know what this is, Federation BIH 10. 10%. Serbia.

Simone Collins: Oh, no, it's not Hungary.

Malcolm Collins: is 9. 1%, Netherlands is 9%, Belgium is 8. 5%, Russia is 8. 4%, Croatia is 8. 2%, Hungary is 6. 6%, Armenia is 6. 1%, Thailand is 5. 9%, Kosovo is 4. 8%, Uh, well, 4.1% and Uzbekistan is only 3% or 2.8%, so not that bad. Oh, good for you. 17.6% and Japan is 11.9%.

Simone Collins: [00:02:00] So roughly the same as what we saw for South Korea. If memory serves, yeah, if, if,

Malcolm Collins: if, if you are somebody who works in the field of statistics, a double digit year over year, decrease.

Is catastrophic. Catastrophic. This is not like a small thing. This is not an irrelevant thing.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and we're talking to people about this day in, day out. Yesterday we had like a 90 minute conversation with someone writing a book about this. And, and this is where sort of like I, I read something this morning that now like.

Because, you know, our solutions to prenatalism, they're like very gender egalitarian. They're like, how do we make this work in a society where we keep high levels of education, high levels of, of prosperity, high levels of, of, of gender equality and choice, and also the choice to not get married and not have kids if you don't want to.

And I'm like, okay, okay, okay. But then I'm reading this sub stack and I'll tell you more about [00:03:00] it. And I'm just like, oh man. So I'd never heard of this author on sub stack before. Arctotherium is, is his name. And he, he writes in this, this analysis of the baby boom. Assuming he's a he for reasons that will become apparent later in my rant about all this that basically nations that have.

undergone a first demographic transition, sort of, you know, when a nation becomes prosperous and more gender egalitarian and blah, blah, blah with more education, they start to see a decline in fertility. And he argues that baby booms prove that this decline can be Reversible. Okay, great. You know, that's hopeful.

And I'm like, this is going to be great. I want to read this. I want to hear his analysis as to what it is that drives a baby boom, you know, and so that maybe we can like come to new ideas and I can read someone else's ideas on what might aid. pronatalism in an era of demographic collapse. And it seems, you know, like I'm, I'm reading this and it seems [00:04:00] like we're very much on the same page with values.

He writes, quote, many theories of fertility decline claim that it is the inevitable result of various good things, technological advancement, wealth, education, science through weakening religion, urbanization, individualism, and declines in childhood mortality. Since almost no one really wants. to go back to being high mortality, low tech, extremely poor, rural, and ignorant.

The story goes, we simply need to live with it. There is good empirical evidence for all these things mattering. But what the baby boom shows is that it is possible to have it all unquote. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally agrees. Like we're on the same page. Yeah. Okay. Like he's, he's got me. Yeah. Right.

And then, and he he, he then connects baby booms, this magical reversal that we're all trying to make happen to marriage booms. And I'm like, okay, this totally makes sense. We agree. This is, you know, a crisis of relationships. Absolutely. What he does quite compellingly with tons of graphs and a lot of stats is [00:05:00] show that really marriage is, is a big driving factor here more than I had thought.

thought when it came to specifically baby booms you know, he points out that for example, most fertility and the highest fertility is with monogamous married couples that couples that stay married have the most kids. And, and we've seen this from other people too. There's a shocking

Malcolm Collins: statistic here that you would tell me like of people who stay married for X amount of years, something percent of them have a kid.

Simone Collins: Like they have a lot of kids, like their like average fertility is quite high, but I can't remember exactly what it is. But like several, several people from very different philosophical, philosophical camps within the pronatalist movement all have this thing of like, you know, monogamous marriage is a very key driver of fertility.

So I'm like, okay, like

Malcolm Collins: I'm trying to remember this. It's something like on average, a couple that stays married for 30 years has an average number of like 4. 5

Simone Collins: kids. Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a really high number of kids and yeah, I, I have to look up that stuff. It sounds unbelievable. We'll find it. Yeah, it did seem [00:06:00] unbelievable, but it's, you know, I think it's easy for anyone to agree that yes, you know, like stably married couples and he, he has a lot of graphs in the south and we'll of course link to the sub stack post that, that sort of show like the fertility.

for married couples living together, married couples with a partner that's absent, separated couples and like various levels of divorce and singlehood and obviously like highest fertility is, as a thing, clearly, I mean, even among our friends who are super pronatalist, the ones that have the most kids have a partner who's there to help them with the kids.

Obviously it's, this is not rocket science. So then this, This author proceeds to say, okay, so what caused this marriage boom? He says the answer appears to be a rise in young men's status compared to young women's. Now that was interesting to me. I haven't heard anyone talk about this before. So I'm like, okay, I'm intrigued.

This is good. I'm getting my popcorn out. I'm chewing. This is good. He writes the marriage boom can be explained almost entirely by a combination of female labor force participation down young male wages up. And male employment. Oh, sorry. [00:07:00] And male unemployment down. And now I'm like, like, I'm

Malcolm Collins: a little nervous.

Or male employment down

Simone Collins: is what you meant to say. Yeah. Male unemployment down, meaning male employment up. So like, I'm starting to get a little nervous because there's this camp within prenatalism, right? That's like, well, the whole problem is when women got educated and then they got on the pill and, and then they, and so what we have to do is just stop, stop female education.

I'm like getting a little nervous. I'm like, Oh man, is he like one of these guys? But here's, here's where he like gets like the rollercoaster is going back up. Like I'm like, okay, this is good because he says note that what matters here is relative gains, not absolute gains. Women did not make less money.

During the baby boom, he means, and we're not less educated in 1960 as compared to 1930, merely less. So in comparison to their male peers, the mechanism here is clear. Young women want money and status. Young men have relatively more money in status. Women can get men's money [00:08:00] and status by marrying them.

Marriage leads to babies. Thus the baby boom. And I'm like, Oh man, like. Okay, this is resonating again. You're kind of right there. Like,

Malcolm Collins: okay, continue, continue.

Simone Collins: Great. Well, and I just want to make a note here that like a big problem that we have encountered when trying to match make friends. And when we talk with people about relationship markets and whatnot, is this problem of women.

really wanting a man who is higher in status than them. Even if they're super feminist, even if they're super independent, they still want a guy who's higher in status than them. So this male, this like relative male status thing is totally real. No matter how progressive you are, you know, no matter how woke you are, you're still, you're still super into that.

So totally agree. But then here's where I'm like, Oh, but like, is he right? But like, Oh is he says what ended the baby boom in three words, second wave feminism. By this, I mean, the suite of changes referred to as the sexual revolution, no fault of worse normalization of premarital sex, de legitimization of marriage as the normative form of family.

Combined with a concerted [00:09:00] political campaign to raise women's relative economic and social status. Okay. So I, I totally agree with some things here and I'm like, Oh, with other things. So his prescriptions and let's just discuss his prescriptions one by one. So we'll, we'll stop after each one.

Malcolm Collins: But hold on, before you get further, there was something you would talk to me about this morning, which I think is important for people to understand is he did a very good job of showing that historically what people have argued is like, it's the pill that caused this.

Right.

In graphs, when the pill was introduced versus when various women's rights movements happened and succeeded. Yeah. And it seems to correlate much more with women's rights than it does with the pill or any sort of fertility.

Simone Collins: And, and, and this is tentative. This is not a perfect argument because after, after I read this, the one graph he showed was the legalization of the pill in Japan.

And he demonstrated that fertility plummeted in Japan before. The pill became publicly, like widely available, but [00:10:00] after second wave feminism started to have influence. Now I pushed back on that a little bit because one, I know how culturally behind on picking like up trends. Japan has been, I mean, when my parents were in Japan in the eighties, it was.

Second wave feminism was not exactly a thing. Like I, I think, I think he's totally off there. He's grasping at straws. When you actually look at the release of the pill and second wave feminism making its rise and I had Claude sort of walk me through both of them, you know, I, I got the legalization of of the pill at various stages and then I also saw like the various, like, big milestones, like big publications and protests and media events for second wave feminism that would have spread those ideas and led to normalization.

It'll happen at the same time. These things are so intertwined. I think it's impossible for someone to successfully parse them out and using Japan as an example is just not. So I, I questioned his methods here. I still think it's a compelling argument and I do think frankly, and you and I agree it is culture and not scientific intervention.

So I don't think the, the pill is, is [00:11:00] any more. Strongly influential on pronatalism as a like legalizing abortion is like we found that when you make abortion illegal, it doesn't bring back birth rates. Right? So like this is, you know, may temporarily cause a spike, but it doesn't permanently cause a spike.

So again, I. I don't think he's wrong, but I do question his methods anyway, that's kind of beside the point. I think he, he makes an extremely strong argument and this idea of relative male status to female status is really important, but I find nice about it is his point that like this doesn't mean female disempowerment.

This doesn't mean women work in the home. Like this doesn't mean that, you know, women, it is not a handmaid's tale scenario that he's asking for at all. He's just saying, you gotta give men a chance to excel in society really fundamentally, but let's go back to his prescriptions. I think they're actually quite interesting.

And this is a, this is a clever guy. He, he encourages first roll back the welfare and pension state and lower income taxes. This is interesting. He argues [00:12:00] this because he believes that a lot of the like lack of dependence on marriage and lack of interest in marriages that, you know, women can do just fine without a partner.

And a lot of that's because of welfare. He, he believes that women are disproportionately. Reliant on welfare and able to qualify for welfare, which is I think accurate. Oh, did

Malcolm Collins: you hear about the thing about, I think it was welfare or something that one of our friends was telling us about women versus men.

And they were like, men basically never, ever qualify for this program. That makes sense. The people think that they do like it's, it's, it's broadly equal access. It really isn't, I think it was welfare. I think it was, it might not have been welfare.

It was something like welfare. It was

Simone Collins: very social programs,

Malcolm Collins: government assistance program.

Yeah. And it turned out that while it says it's open to both genders, it's really not. They're like, look, I work in the approvals department and we approve like five men a year. Oh God, and literally just tons and tons and tons of women.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So yeah, I agree with that. And I think that that is [00:13:00] a dampener on marriage.

And I mean, in general I think that you and I would argue that we would prefer from a perinatalist perspective, but also from like a societal health perspective that local communities. It's the fact that physically 40%, more than 5 percent of people the rest of the system is disempowered Yes and yeah.

that's where you're at. And to me, How do you see what's So then on to the next one, and this is also super interesting and I, we love it, but for different reasons, he, he argues that we should roll back the regulatory state why he says affirmative action in favor of women is is common across The baby boom countries, as is disproportionate female employment in state created regulatory jobs such [00:14:00] as human resources.

So he's basically saying that like a lot of women have employment and positions and incomes because of massive sprawling government bureaucracy and rules and regulations that like a, a gyno

Malcolm Collins: they do. Outcompete men in bureaucracies exactly. Is one areas where women do really well. Right.

Simone Collins: Exactly.

Exactly. So if you get rid of the bureaucracy, you're getting rid of this headband is not staying in. You're getting rid of you're, you're getting rid of a lot of female employment. So he's like, well, you know, one way we can get women more dependent on men, or at least like lower in status is by removing government bureaucracy.

I mean, you and I are super in favor of anything that eliminates government bureaucracy. It hadn't occurred to me that this would disproportionately. affect women's employment. So I'm like, ah, but, but at the same time, no, rip off the bandaid. Like he's right. One, this is like, this is not helpful bureaucracy.

It is toxic. And again, like it, we're [00:15:00] not removing women's opportunity to get work. We're just removing an industry that we think is a cancerous growth that also like, You know, is, is disproportionately favoring them kind of in an unfair way. So that's the next one. So do you kind of agree? Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I agree with that.

I don't agree with everything. I'm gonna get to where I don't agree when you're done with these.

Simone Collins: Okay. All right. This is fun. So the other is he wants to end affirmative action for women and ban or de facto ban as similar lobbying organizations for men are. The thousands of organizations, scholarships, and programs that exist to promote women's career success.

This is interesting. I agree.

Malcolm Collins: I think if you are sane and you look at the statistics, like, Oh, whatever gap.

Simone Collins: Yeah, wage gap. No, no, no, that, that is, it's b******t. It's that, that's over. We've, we've solved the problem. And I think at this point now, and I've, I've seen this happen. Like I was we were currently at a, a [00:16:00] few weeks ago, we were at a retreat with a lot of really high performing people in government and media, et cetera.

And I, I came across a couple of people. Who's primary complaint about their job and their organization there in their industry was that there were a bunch of, of affirmative action people who were like totally fine people, smart, wonderful, whatever, but they were just, they were simply not qualified for the position and they were in it and it was hurting the organization and these people care deeply about the missions of their organizations and they were just so frustrated by the fact that like That people were getting promotions.

People were getting positions that they frankly just weren't qualified for. So I'm against this in principle. I'm not against this. Cause I'm like anti woman. I'm just like, listen, if you're not qualified for it, you should not get the job. So I totally agree with him. There's

Malcolm Collins: like these board positions they have in California where you have a certain number of women on your board.

And we know women who just like professionally take these positions. Yeah. And it is. And then they're not qualified. Yeah.

Simone Collins: It's like an exploit that they figured out. Well, I think the other issue that we found with a lot of these [00:17:00] affirmative action things is like, they don't serve actually persecuted.

To increase

Malcolm Collins: equality. No,

Simone Collins: they don't. No, they, they, they serve very intelligent, already wealthy, already well connected people who are, who are smart enough and well connected enough to even know about these opportunities. What they

Malcolm Collins: do is they serve to increase equality among the friend group. Of the people who's in power in our society.

Yeah. So the people who are legislating these laws and stuff like that, they're like, Oh, are my friends more employed? Are my female friends more employed? Now they stick on women. Yeah. Yeah. Of course they are now. So it's like

Simone Collins: the same 35 women, you know, or like the same 35 in, you know, diversity quota thing here.

Yeah. It's, it's, it's totally. So I totally agree. Here's another one that we super agree with that is also like. That I like, you know, for the reasons he's into it. I'm like, ah, but yeah. Okay. Okay. Defund education because right now women, I mean like totally the, I mean like education, [00:18:00] obviously like academia is morally broke.

Truth broke, like it's not functioning anymore. Things aren't replicating. It's, it's totally like overtaken by these cancerous growths. You know, even, even just like school endowments. now are so big that they're just kind of there to like keep earning money. It's ridiculous. So

Malcolm Collins: I think even secondary education, when you look at the plight of the average secondary education, you know, high school teacher, middle school teacher, you know, they don't earn much money.

They don't do is just lay off a good 75 percent of them, replace them with AI

Simone Collins: and free them up for work that they actually care about. Yes. If they're

Malcolm Collins: going to complain about how much they're being paid. Then we should consolidate resources on those of them that statistically are showing

Simone Collins: better outcomes.

Well, and, and actually, you know, we, we talked about this during the pandemic there, there were issues of, of many teachers unions. I'm not going to name names or name like which school districts I heard this from, but from, you know, people working in school districts, we're finding that the teachers. When it was time to go back to school, [00:19:00] refused to go back to school.

They didn't want to reopen the schools. And this is why you see actually in districts where teachers unions were stronger schools opened later. So the school closures in the end, like the tail end of the pandemic did not correlate with actual pandemic outbreak levels. They correlated with the strength of teachers unions.

Why? Well, because. Many of these teachers. Oh, and oh, sorry. The other thing, not just, not just going back to school. Did they resist? They also resisted doing more than like three or four hours of synchronous learning per day. So like literally they would not be on camera live with their students or talking live with their students for more than four hours of the day.

Why? Because they take it on side gigs. They were doing learning pods. They were doing tutoring. Frankly, these people had found lucrative, a gainful employment doing work that they found to be more impactful. And I don't blame them. Who wants to teach to a standardized test? Who wants to go to a classroom?

Malcolm Collins: I think to take that level of a play as a teacher's union to be like, we will not do more than three hours a week. That's [00:20:00] like that you only do that sort of thing with your boss when you genuinely don't care about losing your job.

Simone Collins: Like, well, no, they, they know they can't lose their jobs though. In many cases, I mean, it depends on the district, but like, I think it's more of an issue of, of, of impunity of strength of teachers unions.

And just sort of knowing that, like,

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, public sector unions shouldn't be legal.

Simone Collins: It's, I mean, yeah, but so anyway, like the defund education thing, we totally agree with. And, and again, when you also look at educational attainment and you're right, actually, you know, this starts even at primary school, men are, men are screwed over in primary school.

Men are really underserved and, and not well treated by the legacy education system, the current education system. And so, yeah, a way to give men An advantage, a better way to stick out is it's to defend education and or deemphasize education is a like credentialing process because you know, a big problem is women will look down upon men who do not have their level of education or greater and yet it's like it's like saying like.[00:21:00]

You know, but like, Oh, so I expect you to excel at, at my level or better in a system that has been systematically biased against you since you were in kindergarten..

It's so screwed up. So I totally agree with him there. She's, she's telling the truth

Malcolm Collins: about the kindergarten thing. You look at men, how they do in kindergarten.

You look at men, how they do in high school and middle school, dramatically worse.

Simone Collins: I mean, look, think, think about our children in. In daycare now

Malcolm Collins: men now are underperforming. If you look at the young ages, right? We're like you're you're you're Likely gonna see the biggest impact of all this gender policy.

They are underperforming More than women underperformed at the very height of quote unquote misogyny. Yeah, if you Look at the education gaps in things like high school. And then you compare that with the very height of the income gap during the women earn less whole thing. They don't even come close.

I should note here that I meant at the height [00:22:00] of when people cared about the pay cap, not the actual height of the pay gap, obviously at the actual height of the pay gap, you know, in the 1920s or something, obviously it was larger, but I'm talking about like, in the eighties, when it was like, oh, women earn 10% less than men. Where if you look at men in school systems today, they definitely do more than 10% worse than women.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So like, suffice it to say, we agree. Here's a place where I'm, I'm pretty.

Malcolm Collins: He's so funny. As women will be like, well, men should work harder if their, if their education rates are lower. You'll see this, you'll see this. That's, that's going to be, anyway, you were going to say something.

Simone Collins: His, his next prescription is, he says pronatalist monetary incentives should be targeted at married husbands rather than mothers.

For example, he argues that like if this, for example, had to be. gender neutral, which he seems [00:23:00] to be opposed to. He would want to see pronatalist incentives in the form, not of like, you know, support from the state, but rather income tax breaks. Because obviously that would like disproportionately benefit men who pay the highest amount of income tax.

Which is interesting. Here's where I feel conflicted. I really feel like you know, if you, if you are going to support, you know, parents, it is, it is often the case that men are, are less available. Like not everyone is the incredible dad that you are. And you may not realize that Malcolm, because you were like the dream dad.

And I, you blow my mind every single day. And our kids adore you and I just. Oh, I don't, but you're not real Malcolm. You're not like you, like, I don't know how you exist. You are not human. I hope I don't wake up from my coma. I want to stay in this coma. Please do what, you know what, whatever. Like if you guys can read my mind in my coma, do not wake me up.

But anyway, I'm just like, I do feel that there are, obviously there are billions of toxic moms that are terrible and, you know, obviously the kids would be better with dads, but still like, [00:24:00] I don't know if like we should just be assuming that. You know, men should hold all the cards. You know, they're not necessarily the best people to hold the reins here.

So I, I, I don't know about this. I, I, I do. I do. I, I, I would love actually though, I think a really great perinatalist policy is support in the form of an income tax break. That is great because it, it, it rewards productive members of society. It, it, it incentivizes people who are likely to raise very successful kids to have kids.

I think it's great. So I, I kind of agree with that. And then the final one is roll back the sexual revolution. And, you know, he's referring to no fault divorce. He's referring to sex before marriage, or at least like sort of encouraging or not shaming sexual promiscuity. You know, weirdly we're, we're, we're on the same page with that, but not really weirdly.

Like with our daughters, we're not going to say, we're not going to say we, we would hate you for having premarital sex. We would shame you for doing that. Like, you know, being promiscuous, we would [00:25:00] just say, listen, here are the trade offs. You need to be aware of them. You need to be realistic. And I, I also think that no fault divorce is important.

You know, our argument in the pragmatist guide to relationships is if your relationship isn't working and if, you know, one person knows that they will be way better out of it, it doesn't matter if it's both. Like that, the sooner you end it, the better. The, this idea of, of, of sticking people in marriages is pretty toxic.

So I don't know about this whole no fault of worst thing either. I think people should be able to leave toxic relationships easily. What do you think? So.

Malcolm Collins: Two statistics here which are really interesting and I think undermine a lot of the arguments. Well, one, this one doesn't undermine as much, but it's something people should really know.

Okay. This whole, like, black pilled men's movement, like, women can screw you over, divorce, rape, you're entering this situation you could never get out of. Yeah. It's B******t.

Simone Collins: No, men are screwed over in divorce court. Hold

Malcolm Collins: on. Hold on. It does happen. Yes. But it happens. So here's an example of a statistic. Oh, [00:26:00] right.

Simone Collins: No, no, no. I know what you're about to say.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah. You would think it's fake if you believed what this movement was telling you. Right. But it's not fake. It's, it's, it's a real statistic that of child custody cases, where the man tries to win the custody battle,

doesn't just immediately say, I'm not trying around 70 percent are won by men.

Simone Collins: So that's, yeah. And that's, that, that really blew my mind when we first were told that. Yeah. Well,

Malcolm Collins: no, because a lot of these movements have an interest in lying to people. They want people to feel better about the situations they have created for themselves. Because just as much as the progressive movement wants to say, none of this is really your fault.

We can just give you money. It all goes away. There's an aspect of the red belt movements is the same way. Totally.

If you want to argue on the other side of this, there was a pretty good article that made arguments on the other side of this called misrepresentation of gender bias in the 1989 report of the gender bias committee of the Massachusetts Supreme [00:27:00] judicial court. This piece does make it pretty clear that these numbers do appear to be legitimate.

However, there are different ways you can run the data that will lead to you. Finding stuff like when mothers sought sole custody, the court granted the request at a rate 65% higher than when fathers made the same request . The larger point here.

Is that the numbers are not as holistically and overwhelmingly weighted. Towards the side of mothers, just get whatever they want.

As many men's rights activists would have you believe it is more, a men in women are biologically different and have biologically different wants and behavior patterns on average.

And that leads to differences in how much they want things like sole custody of kids.

Malcolm Collins: You know, I haven't done the video yet. I haven't posted it yet because I'm, I'm a little scared to be this antagonistic to our audience, but it's the one on the reason you haven't found a wife is really your own fault.

But

Simone Collins: yeah, but we leave you that about pretty much everything. [00:28:00]

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, with everything, it's about radical self responsibility. I agree. And those are the factions of society that will survive. But I am a. I mean, the black pill movement, the black pill movement towards marriage and stuff like that justifies it's own failures by lying to itself about the real world successes.

They're like 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, 50 percent of marriages do not end in divorce. Not anymore.

Not even close. I think it's something like 20, 25 percent I'll find the statistic and put it on the screen. Nice. But yeah, no, and even when that 50 percent number came out, that was because they were counting the same marriages.

So my dad went through like four or five marriages. So okay. If he went through five marriages. Right? And he was in a sample size with five other people, people would say 50 percent of marriage is in a divorce, right? And then those five other people never got a divorce at all. And it's like, no, my dad just is a really unpleasant person to be married to.

Nope. You want to take the other side of this argument? What you can [00:29:00] do is say yes, millennial divorce rates are very low, but their marriage rates are also very low. So it doesn't really matter that their divorce rates are low.

I just like to always try to present both sides when I can.

Malcolm Collins: And, and no, this is, this is important to know. Like a lot of people pretend like the law is much more against them than it really is because it allows them to take paths of inaction. So that's one thing. Second thing is this whole baby boom b******t that he's doing. Okay. Okay. Okay. We know from studies, I think it was in Thailand or something, somewhere in Southeast Asia, that if you look at regions where tsunamis hit versus regions where tsunamis didn't hit, but they were, you know, culturally, economically, otherwise similar, you saw baby booms in the regions where the tsunamis hit.

Mass deaths, like periods of

Simone Collins: intense struggle. And yet not, not even where the tsunamis hit, but where people lost like children, you know, where there was like extra tragedy.

Malcolm Collins: So it [00:30:00] is tragedy. It is loss of human life. It is this extreme suffering.

Simone Collins: No, no, no, no. It's, it's not, it's not suffering per se. It's having a reason to have kids.

It's having a reason to fight. No, I

Malcolm Collins: disagree. The baby boom was not an intentional reason to have kids. It was men coming back from a war that had experienced intense tragedy. They weren't trying to, like, repopulate the country's, like, Soldier base or something. That was not the reason behind the baby boom.

It was literally, I think that tragedy and suffering and extreme hardship triggers a drive to reproduce

Simone Collins: in humans. I don't, I don't know if it has to be tragedy and suffering. I think that there are, for example, look at the Amish. Okay. High birth rates. They are not like subject to huge amounts of tragedy.

There are

Malcolm Collins: other things that can trigger a high birth rate. Yes. The point I'm making is that the baby boom is not a replicable phenomenon. Mm. Not without a World War

Simone Collins: No. Or, or without significant cultural intervention, giving people a reason to have kids. [00:31:00]

Malcolm Collins: No, because then that wouldn't be replicating the baby boom, that would be replicating something else.

Okay.

Simone Collins: Okay. But what? Okay. So you're, you're referring to the baby boom as a reactionary to tragedy event, blah, blah, blah. But like, we're just talking about increasing. We're talking about reversing demographic transitions resulting from prosperity and education. I understand.

Malcolm Collins: But his whole piece.

Simone Collins: Was about the baby boom.

All of these statistical

Malcolm Collins: trends. Yeah. Yeah. He is looking at the baby boom. And he is using the baby boom as a proof point. And yet we have other evidence that correlates with this,

the tsunami study that shows that you would expect a baby boom, even if nothing else was there. Tragedy leads to fertility.

Among other things. Yeah. Among other things, but. One of the biggest tragedies in human history was the second world war. Okay. The people who went through this, anyone who's talked to them. I don't know if you talked to your grandparents or what they experienced during it. It was not fun.

Simone Collins: Okay. I don't know.

My grandfather loved

Malcolm Collins: [00:32:00] it. Tell me about that.

Simone Collins: He, he loved both the great depression, like his, and you know, he, he, this is my maternal grandfather who's like the Calvinist one. The Dust Bowl came and they were like in Oklahoma. And they're like, you know, one bedroom, one outhouse farm with a big family.

And they're like, I think I'm going to stay. And they did. And he told me during the dress

Malcolm Collins: bowl, like everyone's leaving. I don't know if you guys are ready to take a breath. You're the one family that's like farming has become so much more rewarding now that we're playing on, on a dark souls level difficulty.

Simone Collins: It was very much like a, this is fine scenario, but like they were, they were actually refined. And they're just like, well, let's just eat fire now. Let's eat sand. He, he, he, he, like I have these memories. It was like sitting at this, at their dining room table and him showing me his photo albums and talking about the high school plays he was in and the fish pond that they made and how he would eat fish out of it.

And like, they had very, very little. But he was very, very happy. And then the war came and he like went out of his way to like [00:33:00] lie about his eyesight and hide like this and that, so that he could go fight. And he was so proud about you know, dropping, you know, he was, he, he flew cargo planes, like dropping troops behind lines at D Day, like he just, he thought it was the best thing ever.

He was, he, and like when, when he when he died he was found holding the, the, the memory books, the photo books from those times. Like that was what he, he saw. No, I think that my, like another side of my family got those because they live closer to him and, you know, got the stuff, but like, I'd love to get scans of the photos, but yeah.

Yeah. So like these, this was his time. So again, hold on, but this isn't

Malcolm Collins: so great for everyone. Okay. I mentioned in the previous video about demons and like creating teams for our kids. It's like our family's intense desire to go to war. It is our cultural tradition. You know, and then Scott

Simone Collins: Alexander, no, not just go to war, just like fricking struggle.

Like, Oh, let me [00:34:00] stay.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Star slate codex piece. It's like the Calvinist tradition is They are generally against war, but rapidly pro every war that's ever happened. And if you look at something like my dad, like it's so funny, the way that he got out of the Vietnam war he so wanted to go. That he signed up, like, super early, underage, and then, so he was in, like, ROTC, and, like, really tried to get in early, and because he tried to get in so early, he was disqualified, and apparently was, like, psyched.

Psychotically, like, interested in it. He was disqualified over something trivial to them. Which was like, a, a small

Simone Collins: knee injury. He got pulled across The sound his knees made when he walked, I think.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He calls them his Rice Krispies. I've never heard this. Yeah, but he really tried But then that disqualification stayed on his record.

So he wasn't able to be drafted. Even though he really, really wanted to go to war early, early, early in the war.[00:35:00] So no, I mean, we see this you know, across the family, this, when a war happens, that they're like, just get me out there. Let's go. And you've seen this with me when, when various international events have happened.

I'm like, should I, should I get on a plane? Should I go out there? Should I get a gun? Do you think they'd let me fight? And you're like, Malcolm, no, no, no. You need to stay here. You've got three f*****g kids. Take care of your kids.

Simone Collins: I still think this was a huge missed opportunity though,

I'm sure this is like highly illegal and there's no way this could ever exist, but like a travel business that would outfit and train, but in like the glamping sense. So, you know, like best gear, best, you know, like really nice hotels in their training session. Any, any person who wanted to go fight in an international conflict that was taking place, you know, like you can, you choose your package.

Malcolm Collins: Just international conflicts where you're like, the good guys are really clear in this one.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. Presumably it would be

Malcolm Collins: anyway, we don't want to say which ones those are Simone. That's why we, we

Simone Collins: will [00:36:00] keep our mouths shut on that front. But yeah, I'm sure there's just no way that that could ever happen, but it would make.

It would make so much money and people would be so happy and they would die doing what they loved. But anyway. Anyway, Simone,

Malcolm Collins: I absolutely love you. You are amazing. You create the hardship which motivates me to have kids.

Simone Collins: Well, wait. Before we, before we end this, like. I, I, I see your disagreement with this guy arcotherian, primarily that

Malcolm Collins: he, I think he's pointing to a real phenomenon.

Yeah. I do think that you know, the way that women's rights movements grew did hurt female fertility. I just don't think it's the solution. I think that I, so I'm,

Simone Collins: I'm actually like, I'm a little bit more bullish on him than you would think, but for different reasons, like I also just read this essay by Jonathan Haidt.

Where he, he had originally been like, ah, yes, like young progressive women are suffering mentally the most. And now he's changed his mind and he's like, Oh, actually like young men are not all right either. And [00:37:00] here's how and why. And specifically what he pointed out is all the ways in which young men are retreating from society.

And again, this is like men are losing their status. They're checking out. They're not getting educated. They're not getting jobs or they're getting depressed. And it's showing up differently. Like, you know, I think generally women are much more likely to publicly complain about things. identify as depressed and say all these things.

Whereas men don't, they're very quiet and they silently suffer and they just back out of society. The analyst study

Malcolm Collins: shows this

events in their life as being worse than men perceive equivalent events in their life.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So in other words, men are not the squeaky wheel in society. They're not saying, Oh, look at me.

I'm suffering, but they are, they're being completely screwed over by society. And I do think that that's a really big issue. And I think that what this guy really I stepped on and pointed to that. I just not really thought of before was the role that relative male status in society plays in making marriage markets work.

But

Malcolm Collins: everyone is suffering in society. And the point [00:38:00] is, is there any justification of that suffering? Any lean in where you say, Oh yeah, it's our suffering. I can say your suffering is real deal with it. It is so much less than your ancestors. So much

Simone Collins: less than your ancestry. I agree. But, but again, I, I think what's, what we're looking at here is a really interesting economic question of how do you allow for male excellence to return in society to, in a way that it, that, that enables marriage markets to recover and return.

Because again, women prefer

Malcolm Collins: men, not an economic question. You can't do that. You can't unring this bell. What you need to do is you need to make cultural, not economic changes. Hmm. You need for people to see having kids as an. Existential

Simone Collins: issue. But again, people aren't going to get married and aren't going to have kids.

If women don't feel like they can find a guy who's, who's of slightly higher status than them. No,

Malcolm Collins: many women will marry if culture shames them more for not marrying it and not having kids, then it shames them for marrying somebody lower status in them. I think [00:39:00] women are very status sensitive. They are.

If you changed the reward mechanisms slightly, ever so slightly, you'd see a massive difference in results.

Simone Collins: Mm, well and maybe it's about framing where status comes from. So if we reframe that status is not You know, what master's or bachelor's degree you have, you know, it's about like, you know, your earning level and your achievement and your initiative, then like, yeah, men are, men are going to be able to make a comeback perhaps.

And I don't even think this is

Malcolm Collins: the issue. I mean, we have this journalist right now who's talking to us, she's writing a book and she keeps hampering on to this point is how can progressive women find husbands right? Without compromising their values, i. e. without compromising at all. And the answer is you can't because your values are evil.

no, sorry.

Simone Collins: Well, no, because both sides, both men and women today have [00:40:00] very unreasonable standards. The young men that we meet all want models who somehow are also

Malcolm Collins: really smart. And they think they'll find them on these international trips, and they won't. They are

Simone Collins: deluded. No, no, they, they are finding models.

It's just that these models are not value aligned and they're not going to pull their weight in the relationship. They're going to, these are going to be toxic relationships in which the men are basically put into unsustainable roles. The women are put into unsustainable roles. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

And but women are the same way. They, everyone expects a perfect partner out of the box. They don't realize that this is a thing you have to build over time with an imperfect person that you make perfect through your joint commitment to shared values and goals and everything. So I agree with you. I, I still though I, I, I have from this point onward, I'm not convinced completely by your argument.

I do think that there needs to be a way. To, to give men more space in society, that there is a huge amount of bias. We'll say from like, just from a bureaucratic perspective, as this guy pointed out that,

Malcolm Collins: that sort of like, I agree, Simone and whether or [00:41:00] not women should have less rights is something you can think about while you're in your cage tonight.

Your wife cage, my wife

Simone Collins: cage. And well, I'm, you know,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, I'm joking by the way, we don't have a wife cage, but

it's, it's a luxury model, honestly. It's, it's nice. Okay. It's like a little chain that goes around the kitchen and she can walk around.

Simone Collins: People are going to believe you though. They're like, there's a lot of people who have little like dungeons in their houses with like actual little cages. They're, they're totally going to believe that we

Malcolm Collins: Right?

That I have a wife cage. Yeah. We, we don't. Whether or not women should have fewer rights and that they would then be satisfied.

Simone Collins: But I know, I don't, I don't think women should have fewer rights. I just feel like men are uniquely disempowered and disenfranchised right now, right? I feel like there's a lack of

Malcolm Collins: correction.

I agree with that, but I don't think it's as much as Black Pillars said.

Simone Collins: Agreed. No, totally. But, you know, totally, totally overdone. So, yeah. Anyway, thought this [00:42:00] was interesting. Love you. You are amazing. Goodbye. Ciao, ciao, ciao. And you are a good

Malcolm Collins: wife. Kiss, kiss. Love. Bye, bye. And yeah, I guess I sort of cheated by playing this hottest.

Simone Collins: Bye, Malcolm.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe