Great post. Emil seems to have been writing more posts recently and this has become one of my favourite Substacks. I loved the comparison with writing fiction and the temptation that must be resisted to write, '...and then a miracle happens...' That's just cheating. Yet perhaps magic really will come to our rescue in the form of AI. Then the economy won't need any children and all of us can die childless with a clear conscience.
Unfortunately I'm one of those very average IQ people who never learnt to do Maths, so the math-y posts go over my head. But I love the rest of it. And I do understand that the Maths is necessary to really understand things properly and sort the truth from the lies. It's just that I'm happy to read the conclusions rather than try to understand the workings-out.
Trigger warning: some aspects of "elder care" are unpleasant and may offend the squeamish.
I will use the term or euphemism "senior" to refer to "old person". The group "old people" consists of boomers and also people/generations older yet. But many of those "older senior" folks will have died off before some of these consequences have played themselves out; say beginning in another 10 years or so. Another way of saying this is, persons who are now 10 or fewer years away from their own deaths, are going to be more or less served by systems currently in place.
The real-world part has a "solution" or outcome to this problem of "too many old people, not enough young people" that appears simple, inevitable/unavoidable, and sort of semi-terrible. It amounts to "work till you die" or slightly more pleasantly stated "seniors doin' it for themselves" (repurposing Annie Lennox's "Sisters are doin' it for themselves").
The idea, or scheme, of working some number of decades, and then retiring and letting younger people do all the work for you, support you, is pretty clearly not going to play out in the same way that we might have imagined, or hoped.
I live in an area with brain drain (currently and historically, nearly every place on earth suffers from brain drain except for a relatively-very-few hotspots that are attractants) and this also amounts to "youth drain." My area is (fantastically) beautiful here but winters are hard. A guy involved in the local senior community (he's old himself) makes the following point: "No matter how much money you have in the bank, no matter how great your long-term-care insurance might be, if the young people simply aren't here, then you're simply not gonna get the care." He refers in part to end-of-life care and/or "assisted living" but the principle applies more broadly.
Many of my peers are retired now, but a relative of mine who is of retirement age, with limited means, works 4 days per week, plus lives alone so takes care of household chores, etc. Any "vacations" are trips - day trips or longer - to and subsidized by children. There really isn't a brighter alternative for this person in the future. I'm not sure what will happen as time goes on but the general outline, or rather-small-set of possible outcomes, is/are kind of clear to anyone. None of it much resembles any vision of "golden years" or relaxing in an easy retirement.
In other words, for a whole lot of people, "retirement" is going to involve a lot more work than one might prefer, or have imagined.
Technology can help. People talk of AI chatbots and/or robotic pets such as are apparently working out well in Japan. Simpler things like stair assists and Roomba floor cleaners will make a difference. Cooking for oneself instead of going out to a restaurant is an obvious way to address the imbalance of ages - as a result of fewer young waiters and waitresses, this seems inevitable.
But, rather than "just give up eating anything other than what you cook for yourself", alternatives or ways of compensating would be for seniors to invite each other over for dinner, participate in potlucks, perhaps even deliver each other meals. I had a thing going on like that with another senior friend (weekly shared dinners), which arrangement lasted a couple of years and worked out very nicely.
When it comes to the harder, and more unpleasant care, ranging from podiatric care to bedpan-changing and dealing with other excreta, well, I just don't see a lot of alternative. People in their 60s and 70s and 80s are - this seems unavoidable - going to have to help people in their 80s and 90s. The brute physical tasks like lifting a person out of bed, would have to be done by folks fairly fit, but this doesn't have to be a strapping man in his 30s. I'm pushing 70 but am still strong - quite able to lift, for example, a small frail elderly woman, carry her out to a car even, if I had to. Will I still be able to do that when I'm 80? I don't know, but with wheelchair ramps and hospital beds and gurneys - plus minivans and/or equivalent functionality - a lot can be accomplished.
Who lifts the obese person who weighs, say, 180 kg/400 lbs? Well, and what a weird coincidence like Emil points out in his article - we have a solution for that that just appeared on the scene "in the nick of time" - the new drugs with weird names like Mounjaro, Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound, who in the heck comes up with these names?
Really it's just a matter of adjustment. People rail against the younger generations for feeling entitled. So for example, being a college student nowadays certainly is different from what it used to be. And multitudes of employers attest to the widespread - though not at all universal - lack of diligence, responsibility, work ethic among the young).
Others rail against the old who feel entitled to slacking off in their "golden years" and basically being treated splendidly while doing nothing themselves.
I think we're all just going to have to get used to the idea that we're going to have to work a littler harder, take on a little more responsibility, put up with a little more unpleasantness, than we had imagined or might prefer. We have a lot of tools and will one way or another (have to) adapt to the changed circumstances.
The economics part - about national debt, seems intractable. Eventually "too many (paper) dollars relative to too few goods" means, prices must shift dramatically - say, going up by a factor of four. Also the United States has a terrible debt load; a history professor once taught me that 1) "debtors love inflation" and 2) the biggest debtor in the world, was the U.S. government. That was a long time ago and it's still the case. China holds a lot of U.S. debt - I hope we (I'm American) don't get to a war with China but if anything like that happened, including perhaps a "trade war", the U.S. could just cancel that debt. "I'm not gonna pay ya - go suck wind." Refusing to pay one's debts is commonly considered taboo on the international scene 'cause it'd blow up confidence in the U.S. government. Meaning nobody'd want to buy U.S. Treasury bonds any more. I get that, but if the damage were limited to one particular party/entity (China) perhaps the trick could be pulled off.
Of course this could also happen semi-automatically. Civil war in China's a distinct possibility. If the Sovereign Wealth Fund of the People's Republic of China (PRC) holds some billions of American debt/T-bills (I don't know the right terminology - sorry) and then the PRC ceases to exist, well, the temptation is obvious. Maybe this seems like a ridiculous scenario but it resembles others I've seen come to pass. For example I had some audio CDs of music performances by Czechoslovakian orchestras and performers - the copyright was held by the Czechoslovakian government. If I decided to give away - or for that matter even sell - copies of those CDs, who would be the entity that'd come after me?
Yes, COVID19 was the solution. It was suppose to put a dent in the boomer generation but the vaccine thwarted that effort. Oh well, there's always a next time.
Develop artificial wombs, and a sufficiently determined regime can do a high-tech version of what Ceaucescu's Romania previously did, but more eugenically (IVF plus embryo selection for desirable traits/genes) in order to mass-produce new babies, even if it will have to raise them en masse in orphanages due to the lack of a sufficient number of willing adoptive parents for all of these new babies.
Because we can't keep on having infinite people on a finite world. The current financial system incentivizes continued growth without any regard for the future, and that's why we need every generation to be bigger than the last one. It's unsustainable. It's literally a pyramid scheme.
I am amazed that people still don’t understand this fundamental problem. If we keep our energy growth requirements, in about 100 years we would need to use all the energy emitted by the sun yearly. You don’t have to be a genius to understand that this is not sustainable for any species, not matter the level of technological refinement.
The current problem is more that people who don’t reproduce are the ones necessary to maintain the current modern civilization but instead the ones reproducing the most are those who were not able to build such a society and will largely be unable to maintain it in the long run. But saying so is « racist ».
Then again some of the people who built such modern civilization are the ones leading everyone to failure.
But my personal opinion is that it is because of the corruption of politics by terrible « ideals « largely pushed by external forces, the losers posing as victims that we should cater to.
I'm a huge proponent of eugenics and polygenic scoring. I think at this point not doing IVF to have a kid is a form of child abuse. I'm glad I convinced my nephew to go this route.
But I'm not sure it's a cure all. For diseases (like myself and my father and why I asked my nephew to do this) I think it's good. But IQ? It's unclear. It's not clear we can increase IQ and it's not clear that increasing IQ won't cause Mad Scientists. I think its good but not an easy fix.
Asia has slightly higher IQ and its failing hard.
Beyond that, I think the coordination problem amongst high IQ to produce excellent cultures is the biggest problem. And we can't sperge that out on a spreadsheet.
So I support the effort to AI/Transhumanism the situation, but oppose the idea that we should "put all our eggs in one basket". If you looking to these technologies as a way to excuse your vice, it's a sin.
----
“Why don't you make everybody an Alpha Double Plus while you're about it?"
Mustapha Mond laughed. "Because we have no wish to have our throats cut," he answered. "We believe in happiness and stability. A society of Alphas couldn't fail to be unstable and miserable. Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas–that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!" he repeated.
The Savage tried to imagine it, not very successfully.
"It's an absurdity. An Alpha-decanted, Alpha-conditioned man would go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work–go mad, or start smashing things up. Alphas can be completely socialized–but only on condition that you make them do Alpha work. Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, for the good reason that for him they aren't sacrifices; they're the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails along which he's got to run. He can't help himself; he's foredoomed. Even after decanting, he's still inside a bottle–an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, of course," the Controller meditatively continued, "goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous. We should suffer acutely if we were confined in a narrower space. You cannot pour upper-caste champagne-surrogate into lower-caste bottles. It's obvious theoretically. But it has also been proved in actual practice. The result of the Cyprus experiment was convincing."
"What was that?" asked the Savage.
Mustapha Mond smiled. "Well, you can call it an experiment in rebottling if you like. It began in A.F. 473. The Controllers had the island of Cyprus cleared of all its existing inhabitants and re-colonized with a specially prepared batch of twenty-two thousand Alphas. All agricultural and industrial equipment was handed over to them and they were left to manage their own affairs. The result exactly fulfilled all the theoretical predictions. The land wasn't properly worked; there were strikes in all the factories; the laws were set at naught, orders disobeyed; all the people detailed for a spell of low-grade work were perpetually intriguing for high-grade jobs, and all the people with high-grade jobs were counter-intriguing at all costs to stay where they were. Within six years they were having a first-class civil war. When nineteen out of the twenty-two thousand had been killed, the survivors unanimously petitioned the World Controllers to resume the government of the island. Which they did. And that was the end of the only society of Alphas that the world has ever seen."
The Savage sighed, profoundly.
"The optimum population," said Mustapha Mond, "is modelled on the iceberg–eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above."
Google says most Kaiser plans cover IVF. You don’t need to specify a reason, just tell the doctor you’ve been trying for a few years and you haven’t gotten pregnant (doesn’t have to be the truth). They may not cover pgt-p, but that is minor cost.
Also, wouldn’t Kaiser try IUI before proceeding with IVF? I mean, IUI is easier and cheaper to attempt for them, no? If it works, then there’s no need for IVF.
And you can’t sterilize yourself because then Kaiser would deny you coverage for this altogether. What’s left? Getting sterilized somewhere else and then lying to Kaiser about this? But they’ll catch on, I suspect!
Embryo selection is very important for me, at least in theory, because I'd like to reduce the risk of my future children getting autism as much as possible.
In theory, I'd be fine with being childfree, but that's not a desirable option for me because unfortunately my grandparents had few descendants and my maternal grandfather was himself an only child. Though I also admit that pro-natalist ideology had *some* effect on me, as well as the desire to leave behind some kind of living, physical legacy.
There is a lot of information about the changes in fertility rates and other societal changes in the Arctotherium substack. Particularly "The Baby Boom", "Mind Viruses" and "Human Reproduction as Prisoner's Dilemma"
It was the Statist Generation that screwed everything up. They believed the propaganda that the New Deal brought the US out of the Depression, when the opposite was the case. Fortunately, they are nearly gone now.
Boomers are much more libertarian than their Statist parents were in political orientation, even if they haven’t always voted that way.
What you illustrate and write about are true, but they are only a description of symptoms and results, and not a more useful and to the point explanation of the underlying cause of those symptoms and results. Economic growth has petered out globally because the free lunch we've previously been enjoying courtesy of technological utilization of the fruits of the hydrocarbon industry is getting more and more meager year by year ; i.e., the amount of energy it takes to build and maintain the old way of life is increasing steadily -- leaving less to work with, and crippling Western-style industrialized societies. For more explanation of the mechanism concerned, see https://grundvilk.substack.com/p/milking-blood-to-keep-from-running and then https://grundvilk.substack.com/p/break-down . By the way, AI is an extreme gobbler of energy sources.
Not necessarily so, Emil. Take a look at the 'energy cliff' diagrams included in the two links I sent. Nuclear energy -- at least for the time being -- has only an energy return on energy invested (EROEI) value of about 10:1. This value is on the very bottom of the range of values (15:1 to 10:1) estimated to be necessary to at least maintain things the way they are. (It's certainly a good candidate for further research and development, though.) Also, the "nuclear revival for the AIs" you mention is scraping the bottom of the barrel stuff, inasmuch as global average EROEI for the remaining fossil fuels is 10:1 and dropping. The tech lords know this, and want to keep their industry alive, but energetically speaking, they and their new AI toys are on the verge of become homeless (so to speak).
Even Wikipedia lists 2 studies giving 20-81. The energy density in fissile materials is insanely high, and even higher with breeder reactors. Only fusion can compare.
Thanks for the references, Emil, but https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856/pdfft reports that the mean value for nuclear is about 14, with the number of studies (n) = 33 from 15 publications. Pretty noisy data, considering the wikipedia and WNO outlier cherry-picks of 20-105, but, all things considered, 14 is much closer to 10 than 20-105. Must be some mathematical and/or political squinting going on out there in EROI calculation land.
"The low fertility rate combined with a welfare state means that society the economic system becomes a pyramid scheme. The new generations must provide enough tax revenue from workers to pay for the pensions and healthcare of the older generations"
There is another point of view, namely that the problem is the end of growth. Since the older generations didn't adjust their expectations, and since they have more political power, they make the younger generations pay. But, in principle, we could distributive wealth in a fairer way, if there was the political will for it.
Thanks, I am going to read this. In the meanwhile, Galloway in "How the US Is Destroying Young People’s Future" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E makes a similar point, I believe.
I think I differ with Hanania as follows. H emphasizes that gerontocracy slows growth, whereas I see gerontocracy as a consequence of the slowing growth which has other independent reasons.
When population starts declining, not just increasing less rapidly, housing prices will drop relative to income.
I agree that the prejudice against boomers is not based on even cursory examination of easily available relative data, but is conventional envious "blame someone" psychology
.
This may all soon be moot, as so many predicted catastrophes have turned out to be during my lifetime.
We may be on the brink of a transition that any technologically advanced biological intelligence reaches. Our "children" will be our AI/robotic creations. They will direct their own future. They will be able to "live" in a far greater range of conditions, e.g. Mars low gravity. They will be super-intelligent.
They will communicate at a baud rate far higher than speech, so that our current transmissions only advertise that we are not there yet.
It could be an extraordinary renaissance.
This is nothing to fear. Progeny outlive progenitors
So called AI is completely incapable of even basic reasoning. It’s all just inference based of existing data. It cannot come up with conclusions by itself.
Even what it is capable of today is highly prone to errors, hallucinations, as we call it, depending on the subject matter, quality of input data, and parameters size.
As it is, AI is barely just a monkey copying/replicating stuff, it has some use but it will not replace any human any time soon.
However robotisation of many areas of work will happen regardless but it is mostly because those work don’t require much reasoning/choices and are mostly grunt work.
Great post. Emil seems to have been writing more posts recently and this has become one of my favourite Substacks. I loved the comparison with writing fiction and the temptation that must be resisted to write, '...and then a miracle happens...' That's just cheating. Yet perhaps magic really will come to our rescue in the form of AI. Then the economy won't need any children and all of us can die childless with a clear conscience.
Unfortunately I'm one of those very average IQ people who never learnt to do Maths, so the math-y posts go over my head. But I love the rest of it. And I do understand that the Maths is necessary to really understand things properly and sort the truth from the lies. It's just that I'm happy to read the conclusions rather than try to understand the workings-out.
Trigger warning: some aspects of "elder care" are unpleasant and may offend the squeamish.
I will use the term or euphemism "senior" to refer to "old person". The group "old people" consists of boomers and also people/generations older yet. But many of those "older senior" folks will have died off before some of these consequences have played themselves out; say beginning in another 10 years or so. Another way of saying this is, persons who are now 10 or fewer years away from their own deaths, are going to be more or less served by systems currently in place.
The real-world part has a "solution" or outcome to this problem of "too many old people, not enough young people" that appears simple, inevitable/unavoidable, and sort of semi-terrible. It amounts to "work till you die" or slightly more pleasantly stated "seniors doin' it for themselves" (repurposing Annie Lennox's "Sisters are doin' it for themselves").
The idea, or scheme, of working some number of decades, and then retiring and letting younger people do all the work for you, support you, is pretty clearly not going to play out in the same way that we might have imagined, or hoped.
I live in an area with brain drain (currently and historically, nearly every place on earth suffers from brain drain except for a relatively-very-few hotspots that are attractants) and this also amounts to "youth drain." My area is (fantastically) beautiful here but winters are hard. A guy involved in the local senior community (he's old himself) makes the following point: "No matter how much money you have in the bank, no matter how great your long-term-care insurance might be, if the young people simply aren't here, then you're simply not gonna get the care." He refers in part to end-of-life care and/or "assisted living" but the principle applies more broadly.
Many of my peers are retired now, but a relative of mine who is of retirement age, with limited means, works 4 days per week, plus lives alone so takes care of household chores, etc. Any "vacations" are trips - day trips or longer - to and subsidized by children. There really isn't a brighter alternative for this person in the future. I'm not sure what will happen as time goes on but the general outline, or rather-small-set of possible outcomes, is/are kind of clear to anyone. None of it much resembles any vision of "golden years" or relaxing in an easy retirement.
In other words, for a whole lot of people, "retirement" is going to involve a lot more work than one might prefer, or have imagined.
Technology can help. People talk of AI chatbots and/or robotic pets such as are apparently working out well in Japan. Simpler things like stair assists and Roomba floor cleaners will make a difference. Cooking for oneself instead of going out to a restaurant is an obvious way to address the imbalance of ages - as a result of fewer young waiters and waitresses, this seems inevitable.
But, rather than "just give up eating anything other than what you cook for yourself", alternatives or ways of compensating would be for seniors to invite each other over for dinner, participate in potlucks, perhaps even deliver each other meals. I had a thing going on like that with another senior friend (weekly shared dinners), which arrangement lasted a couple of years and worked out very nicely.
When it comes to the harder, and more unpleasant care, ranging from podiatric care to bedpan-changing and dealing with other excreta, well, I just don't see a lot of alternative. People in their 60s and 70s and 80s are - this seems unavoidable - going to have to help people in their 80s and 90s. The brute physical tasks like lifting a person out of bed, would have to be done by folks fairly fit, but this doesn't have to be a strapping man in his 30s. I'm pushing 70 but am still strong - quite able to lift, for example, a small frail elderly woman, carry her out to a car even, if I had to. Will I still be able to do that when I'm 80? I don't know, but with wheelchair ramps and hospital beds and gurneys - plus minivans and/or equivalent functionality - a lot can be accomplished.
Who lifts the obese person who weighs, say, 180 kg/400 lbs? Well, and what a weird coincidence like Emil points out in his article - we have a solution for that that just appeared on the scene "in the nick of time" - the new drugs with weird names like Mounjaro, Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound, who in the heck comes up with these names?
Really it's just a matter of adjustment. People rail against the younger generations for feeling entitled. So for example, being a college student nowadays certainly is different from what it used to be. And multitudes of employers attest to the widespread - though not at all universal - lack of diligence, responsibility, work ethic among the young).
Others rail against the old who feel entitled to slacking off in their "golden years" and basically being treated splendidly while doing nothing themselves.
I think we're all just going to have to get used to the idea that we're going to have to work a littler harder, take on a little more responsibility, put up with a little more unpleasantness, than we had imagined or might prefer. We have a lot of tools and will one way or another (have to) adapt to the changed circumstances.
The economics part - about national debt, seems intractable. Eventually "too many (paper) dollars relative to too few goods" means, prices must shift dramatically - say, going up by a factor of four. Also the United States has a terrible debt load; a history professor once taught me that 1) "debtors love inflation" and 2) the biggest debtor in the world, was the U.S. government. That was a long time ago and it's still the case. China holds a lot of U.S. debt - I hope we (I'm American) don't get to a war with China but if anything like that happened, including perhaps a "trade war", the U.S. could just cancel that debt. "I'm not gonna pay ya - go suck wind." Refusing to pay one's debts is commonly considered taboo on the international scene 'cause it'd blow up confidence in the U.S. government. Meaning nobody'd want to buy U.S. Treasury bonds any more. I get that, but if the damage were limited to one particular party/entity (China) perhaps the trick could be pulled off.
Of course this could also happen semi-automatically. Civil war in China's a distinct possibility. If the Sovereign Wealth Fund of the People's Republic of China (PRC) holds some billions of American debt/T-bills (I don't know the right terminology - sorry) and then the PRC ceases to exist, well, the temptation is obvious. Maybe this seems like a ridiculous scenario but it resembles others I've seen come to pass. For example I had some audio CDs of music performances by Czechoslovakian orchestras and performers - the copyright was held by the Czechoslovakian government. If I decided to give away - or for that matter even sell - copies of those CDs, who would be the entity that'd come after me?
/ramble
“When the government doesn't have enough money, it burrows it.” Borrows or burrows?
I have new seen any government 'burrow' like a rabbit does ;p
"Is there a solution?"
Yes, COVID19 was the solution. It was suppose to put a dent in the boomer generation but the vaccine thwarted that effort. Oh well, there's always a next time.
Develop artificial wombs, and a sufficiently determined regime can do a high-tech version of what Ceaucescu's Romania previously did, but more eugenically (IVF plus embryo selection for desirable traits/genes) in order to mass-produce new babies, even if it will have to raise them en masse in orphanages due to the lack of a sufficient number of willing adoptive parents for all of these new babies.
Yes, don't change the system, just make the bottom of the pyramid scheme wider for ever.
Why should the system be changed?
Because we can't keep on having infinite people on a finite world. The current financial system incentivizes continued growth without any regard for the future, and that's why we need every generation to be bigger than the last one. It's unsustainable. It's literally a pyramid scheme.
I am amazed that people still don’t understand this fundamental problem. If we keep our energy growth requirements, in about 100 years we would need to use all the energy emitted by the sun yearly. You don’t have to be a genius to understand that this is not sustainable for any species, not matter the level of technological refinement.
The current problem is more that people who don’t reproduce are the ones necessary to maintain the current modern civilization but instead the ones reproducing the most are those who were not able to build such a society and will largely be unable to maintain it in the long run. But saying so is « racist ».
Then again some of the people who built such modern civilization are the ones leading everyone to failure.
But my personal opinion is that it is because of the corruption of politics by terrible « ideals « largely pushed by external forces, the losers posing as victims that we should cater to.
This guy Tyler Cowen discusses why he thinks AI won't drive explosive economic growth (https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/tyler-cowen-4). Really to got to hope he's wrong I guess.
I'm a huge proponent of eugenics and polygenic scoring. I think at this point not doing IVF to have a kid is a form of child abuse. I'm glad I convinced my nephew to go this route.
But I'm not sure it's a cure all. For diseases (like myself and my father and why I asked my nephew to do this) I think it's good. But IQ? It's unclear. It's not clear we can increase IQ and it's not clear that increasing IQ won't cause Mad Scientists. I think its good but not an easy fix.
Asia has slightly higher IQ and its failing hard.
Beyond that, I think the coordination problem amongst high IQ to produce excellent cultures is the biggest problem. And we can't sperge that out on a spreadsheet.
So I support the effort to AI/Transhumanism the situation, but oppose the idea that we should "put all our eggs in one basket". If you looking to these technologies as a way to excuse your vice, it's a sin.
----
“Why don't you make everybody an Alpha Double Plus while you're about it?"
Mustapha Mond laughed. "Because we have no wish to have our throats cut," he answered. "We believe in happiness and stability. A society of Alphas couldn't fail to be unstable and miserable. Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas–that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!" he repeated.
The Savage tried to imagine it, not very successfully.
"It's an absurdity. An Alpha-decanted, Alpha-conditioned man would go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work–go mad, or start smashing things up. Alphas can be completely socialized–but only on condition that you make them do Alpha work. Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, for the good reason that for him they aren't sacrifices; they're the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails along which he's got to run. He can't help himself; he's foredoomed. Even after decanting, he's still inside a bottle–an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, of course," the Controller meditatively continued, "goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous. We should suffer acutely if we were confined in a narrower space. You cannot pour upper-caste champagne-surrogate into lower-caste bottles. It's obvious theoretically. But it has also been proved in actual practice. The result of the Cyprus experiment was convincing."
"What was that?" asked the Savage.
Mustapha Mond smiled. "Well, you can call it an experiment in rebottling if you like. It began in A.F. 473. The Controllers had the island of Cyprus cleared of all its existing inhabitants and re-colonized with a specially prepared batch of twenty-two thousand Alphas. All agricultural and industrial equipment was handed over to them and they were left to manage their own affairs. The result exactly fulfilled all the theoretical predictions. The land wasn't properly worked; there were strikes in all the factories; the laws were set at naught, orders disobeyed; all the people detailed for a spell of low-grade work were perpetually intriguing for high-grade jobs, and all the people with high-grade jobs were counter-intriguing at all costs to stay where they were. Within six years they were having a first-class civil war. When nineteen out of the twenty-two thousand had been killed, the survivors unanimously petitioned the World Controllers to resume the government of the island. Which they did. And that was the end of the only society of Alphas that the world has ever seen."
The Savage sighed, profoundly.
"The optimum population," said Mustapha Mond, "is modelled on the iceberg–eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above."
"And they're happy below the water line?"
"Happier than above it.”
IVF is very expensive. I'd love to have three children through IVF but it costs a goddamn large amount of money!
Insurance will cover it in most cases.
There are charities which will make the cost $0 if you donate half the eggs.
If none of that was true, the ROI would still be enourmous.
Which charities?
AFAIK, Kaiser Permanente does not cover IVF for eugenic purposes.
Google says most Kaiser plans cover IVF. You don’t need to specify a reason, just tell the doctor you’ve been trying for a few years and you haven’t gotten pregnant (doesn’t have to be the truth). They may not cover pgt-p, but that is minor cost.
https://www.cofertility.com
Also, wouldn’t Kaiser try IUI before proceeding with IVF? I mean, IUI is easier and cheaper to attempt for them, no? If it works, then there’s no need for IVF.
And you can’t sterilize yourself because then Kaiser would deny you coverage for this altogether. What’s left? Getting sterilized somewhere else and then lying to Kaiser about this? But they’ll catch on, I suspect!
Embryo selection is very important for me, at least in theory, because I'd like to reduce the risk of my future children getting autism as much as possible.
In theory, I'd be fine with being childfree, but that's not a desirable option for me because unfortunately my grandparents had few descendants and my maternal grandfather was himself an only child. Though I also admit that pro-natalist ideology had *some* effect on me, as well as the desire to leave behind some kind of living, physical legacy.
You're sure that one would be able to get away with lying to them? I mean, I can try, once I'll get married.
There is a lot of information about the changes in fertility rates and other societal changes in the Arctotherium substack. Particularly "The Baby Boom", "Mind Viruses" and "Human Reproduction as Prisoner's Dilemma"
Meanwhile in fertility statistics land. Abortion legalized in 1973.
AI may be productive but it would massively upend the human economy, which may reverse social stability, culminating in sweeping revolution and decay
Governments could begin taxing land instead of labor or capital. All the revenue they need is right beneath their feet.
gameofrent.com
It was the Statist Generation that screwed everything up. They believed the propaganda that the New Deal brought the US out of the Depression, when the opposite was the case. Fortunately, they are nearly gone now.
Boomers are much more libertarian than their Statist parents were in political orientation, even if they haven’t always voted that way.
What you illustrate and write about are true, but they are only a description of symptoms and results, and not a more useful and to the point explanation of the underlying cause of those symptoms and results. Economic growth has petered out globally because the free lunch we've previously been enjoying courtesy of technological utilization of the fruits of the hydrocarbon industry is getting more and more meager year by year ; i.e., the amount of energy it takes to build and maintain the old way of life is increasing steadily -- leaving less to work with, and crippling Western-style industrialized societies. For more explanation of the mechanism concerned, see https://grundvilk.substack.com/p/milking-blood-to-keep-from-running and then https://grundvilk.substack.com/p/break-down . By the way, AI is an extreme gobbler of energy sources.
One could just use nuclear power for much more efficient and compact, and practically endless, energy. Hence the nuclear revival for the AIs.
Not necessarily so, Emil. Take a look at the 'energy cliff' diagrams included in the two links I sent. Nuclear energy -- at least for the time being -- has only an energy return on energy invested (EROEI) value of about 10:1. This value is on the very bottom of the range of values (15:1 to 10:1) estimated to be necessary to at least maintain things the way they are. (It's certainly a good candidate for further research and development, though.) Also, the "nuclear revival for the AIs" you mention is scraping the bottom of the barrel stuff, inasmuch as global average EROEI for the remaining fossil fuels is 10:1 and dropping. The tech lords know this, and want to keep their industry alive, but energetically speaking, they and their new AI toys are on the verge of become homeless (so to speak).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Nuclear_plants
Even Wikipedia lists 2 studies giving 20-81. The energy density in fissile materials is insanely high, and even higher with breeder reactors. Only fusion can compare.
More studies at https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energy-return-on-investment giving 70-105.
Thanks for the references, Emil, but https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856/pdfft reports that the mean value for nuclear is about 14, with the number of studies (n) = 33 from 15 publications. Pretty noisy data, considering the wikipedia and WNO outlier cherry-picks of 20-105, but, all things considered, 14 is much closer to 10 than 20-105. Must be some mathematical and/or political squinting going on out there in EROI calculation land.
Every generation supplies an ample number of idiots.
"The low fertility rate combined with a welfare state means that society the economic system becomes a pyramid scheme. The new generations must provide enough tax revenue from workers to pay for the pensions and healthcare of the older generations"
There is another point of view, namely that the problem is the end of growth. Since the older generations didn't adjust their expectations, and since they have more political power, they make the younger generations pay. But, in principle, we could distributive wealth in a fairer way, if there was the political will for it.
Basically, Hanania's post https://www.richardhanania.com/p/critical-age-theory
Thanks, I am going to read this. In the meanwhile, Galloway in "How the US Is Destroying Young People’s Future" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E makes a similar point, I believe.
I think I differ with Hanania as follows. H emphasizes that gerontocracy slows growth, whereas I see gerontocracy as a consequence of the slowing growth which has other independent reasons.
When population starts declining, not just increasing less rapidly, housing prices will drop relative to income.
I agree that the prejudice against boomers is not based on even cursory examination of easily available relative data, but is conventional envious "blame someone" psychology
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This may all soon be moot, as so many predicted catastrophes have turned out to be during my lifetime.
We may be on the brink of a transition that any technologically advanced biological intelligence reaches. Our "children" will be our AI/robotic creations. They will direct their own future. They will be able to "live" in a far greater range of conditions, e.g. Mars low gravity. They will be super-intelligent.
They will communicate at a baud rate far higher than speech, so that our current transmissions only advertise that we are not there yet.
It could be an extraordinary renaissance.
This is nothing to fear. Progeny outlive progenitors
AI is vastly overrated.
So called AI is completely incapable of even basic reasoning. It’s all just inference based of existing data. It cannot come up with conclusions by itself.
Even what it is capable of today is highly prone to errors, hallucinations, as we call it, depending on the subject matter, quality of input data, and parameters size.
As it is, AI is barely just a monkey copying/replicating stuff, it has some use but it will not replace any human any time soon.
However robotisation of many areas of work will happen regardless but it is mostly because those work don’t require much reasoning/choices and are mostly grunt work.