My issue is depopulation. The birth dearth. The refusal of people like me to have children.
I am a voice in the wilderness. I post on a great many topics, and this one draws very few responses. I'm going to continue in any case, but I would like to know something about you, my audience. The Substack polling capabilities are limited, but better than nothing. In my poll I ask:
Your generation.
1) Silent Generation (through 1945)
2) Boomer (1946-64)
3) Gen X (1965-1980)
4) Millennial (1981-1995)
5) Gen Z (after 1996)
Marital Status
Number of children
Number of grandchildren
If I missed you (Greatest Generation, Generation Alpha, great-great-grandchildren), or if you have more than four children or grandchildren, congratulations and please let me know via a comment.
As far as having children goes, this is the worst of times, this is the best of times. It is frightening because of Covid, the war, civil disorder and an impending economic collapse. The number of children being born is down about 10% from an already low level prior to Covid.
According to the Centers for Disease Control life expectancy has fallen close to three years over the past three. They attribute it to Covid and lifestyle issues – unhealthy diet, fentanyl. I suspect otherwise. Whatever the cause, we are dying out at a pretty good clip. Life expectancy for men fell to just a shade over 73 years. Think of all the money they are saving on Social Security!
Ed Dowd analyzes insurance company statistics about deaths and disabilities. Here's my review of his short book, but if you don't have time for that the Daily Clout provides this summary on line.
In addition to people dying and becoming disabled, they are simply not having children. Naomi Wolf present statistics on the effect of the Covid vaccines on fertility.
In the grand scheme of evolution, it is reproduction that matters. It is a tragedy when old people, or incels and sexual minorities who wouldn't have had children anyhow, die prematurely. But it doesn't matter to evolution.
Our evolutionary track had already been significantly affected by the anti-fertility memes that started in the 19th century and accelerated into the 20th. People felt guilty about having children. They felt that they could not afford them. Many were pleased to be relieved of any felt obligation to have them. Compounding the collapse, the rash of young and working age people dying and the impact of the Covid injectable products on our ability to reproduce is going have a significant effect on our evolution.
Our numbers are shrinking, and the shrinkage is guaranteed to accelerate. Though it is impossible to know the how far-reaching the impact of the jabs is going to turn out to be, there is a good chance that parents having been vaccinated will even affect the fertility of the children that they do manage to have.
These gloomy predictions apply of a global level, though more to the rich industrial nations that most enthusiastically pushed the injectable biological products. Though there is no central authority maintaining uniform statistics, the following graph gives a pretty good idea. Though shown here as “no data,” we know that Canada, China and Australia have all been highly vaccinated and that most of Africa has not. If they had the data, Ukraine would be yellow on this map.
Whatever substance there was to the longtime concern that the world was overpopulated, people can stop worrying. Populations are plateauing and dropping all over the world. The effect is most pronounced in countries such as those of North America, Western Europe and China that consume the most resources and contribute most to pollution. The same can be said for global warming – fewer people will mean lower consumption.
Evolution, per the opening paragraph above, is a question of who is having children. What will societies be like after they lose the people who don't want them or can't have kids? What will life be like in those places?
Africa and the Arab world, which depend on agricultural and technology imports, may have to fend for themselves to a larger degree. The farmers who grow export crops to feed them are dying out. On the other hand, being less jabbed they will not suffer so much from decreased fertility. Fortunately birth rates had already been falling due to increased levels of education, especially among women.
The Americas won't be much affected. Most countries can grow enough food. Some of their populations had already plateaued. They may now shrink due to lower fertility.
Although populations will shrink in the rich countries, so long as they have the will to do so they will still be able to defend their borders. They certainly have the military strength to repel any threat from hungry people in distant countries. The greatest danger will be the large number of people from poor countries already within their borders. Some, such as the Scandinavian countries, are already taking measures to discourage immigrants and encourage those they have to go home.
What is tragic at a national level can be beneficial to individual people. When large numbers of people die and remain unborn, the survivors will enjoy increased opportunities.
The people who are being vaccinated in the rich countries are more often than not those who are employed. Their dying off will disproportionately shrink the pool of people capable of getting things done. For skilled work, labor demand will outstrip labor supply. Wages and salaries should go up for the more talented strata of society. This will work for the benefit of people who did not get the shots and who are born of people who did not get them.
In a further note, the number of superfluous jobs such as diversity specialists and drug counselors will probably diminish as there is more demand for people to do economically productive work.
Starting a family is a big decision. Their ability to produce healthy children is a major criterion in choosing a mate. As it becomes clear that not having been vaccinated makes a person healthier in general and more likely to have healthy germ cells, unvaccinated partners will be at a premium. This will be doubly true of those who possess the otherwise desirable traits of intelligence, a pleasant personality and appealing looks - the types who are now experiencing the most excess mortality.
As in past population bottlenecks, the people who survive Covid, the jabs and the depopulation drumbeat of the past century will be in a pretty good position. Their income may afford them the luxury of supporting stay-at-home spouses who can do a conscientious job of raising the next generation.
That's my take. Some hope may emerge from the gloom of this age. I am preparing my children to for the times to come. What else is there to do? If these thoughts do not bring me a vast following on Substack, so be it. It is an indication of the vastness of the opportunity that will greet my children.
That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the birds are nesting, crocuses and daffodils blooming, wives gaily dancing and singing, and children larking instead of studying.
"In the grand scheme of evolution, it is reproduction that matters. It is a tragedy when ... incels ... who wouldn't have had children anyhow, die prematurely. But it doesn't matter to evolution."
Hello, Graham,
An interesting, thought-provoking column, but I do disagree to some extent with the quoted text above. I think it is a disaster that a lot of our most intelligent are not replacing themselves, let alone increasing their numbers. As Gregory Clark showed in "A Farewell to Alms," English IQ was increased by the more intelligent, the prosperous middle class, replacing the less intelligent poor. And there was a similar pattern among European Jews, and I suspect among the Germanic peoples in general.
Today, this pattern seems to be reversed, even encouraged, and even those of higher IQ who do reproduce seem indifferent to or even hostile to passing on the civilization they inherited to their offspring.
Of course they are making a terrible mistake, not only for humanity in general and Western Civilization, but also for themselves in denying themselves the happiness that children and family provide.
I contrast the life led by writer Linh Dinh, whom you subscribe to, and whom I feel sadness for as he seems to have lost his way in life, with that of Hung Cao. Both were child evacuees from South Viet Nam in 1975 and had to grow up and establish themselves in an alien world. Hung Cao graduated from Annapolis and had a distinguished career as a naval officer, married a white American woman and has five children. He ran for congress last year and came very close to winning. Linh Dinh, on the other hand, seems to like and be interested in children, often photographing them and posting their pictures to his blogs, but he has none of his own.
https://www.hungcaoforcongress.com/
https://ballotpedia.org/Hung_Cao
"In a year when it seems Republicans nominated many candidates who are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, Hung Cao might be the best of the lot. He brings a sterling résumé — immigrating to the United States in 1975 as a refugee from Vietnam, graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County and then the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Deployed in combat to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, serving alongside Special Forces and SEAL teams, and returned from his last deployment in January 2021.
In the Manassas debate, Cao also showed a flair for political theater, holding up a Wexton flier that labeled him an extremist and countering that the incumbent was stoking xenophobia.
“ ‘Extremist.’ Where have you heard this word before?” he asked the audience at a mosque. “Where have you heard this word before? I fought for and served this country. I bled for this country. And I’m being called an extremist. I’ve served honorably for every American. I know lots of people that served with me didn’t agree with my politics, and that’s fine. I served with them anyway. I served with them as a commanding officer, I served with them in combat, to preserve life. And now I’m being called an ‘extremist.’ Where have you heard that before? This is how we tear people apart. I deserve to be called an American. I’ve earned that right. We’ve all earned that right.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/republican-hung-cao-stolen-election-reply/
Have moved to Hawaii an am very involved and invested in raising my two newest grandchildren (1 and 4). The pleasure is all mine and my wife's...and of course the little ones.