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The Future of the West – Through Children
Elon Musk has said that the earth is basically empty, and he is right. We could fit the entire world’s population in New Zealand without exceeding the population density of Manhattan.
The problem is that richer countries are in deep, deep demographic decline. Here is Japan’s population pyramid (2020):
This is deeply troubled. The average Japanese woman is too old to procreate.
The healthiest Western country (in terms of population growth) is Israel.
Check out this website and enter your own country to see the results. Demographics is, at some point, destiny.
The alternative is to invite immigrants and hope they assimilate (the path most of Europe has taken to overcome its own domestic population crises). That is a risky proposition, to say the least. And one that countries like Japan and Korea are quite unlikely to adopt.
Published in General
As a matter of fact, I do. Here it is
Key takeaway: Having enemies gives you a reason to procreate
Clearly, someone missed my point. You don’t get to pressure your children for grandchildren if you have no children. And good luck pressuring your only child to have 4.2 kids to redress your own generation’s failure.
Expressing regret can affect others, including those not your own, where pressure does not.
To paraphrase Trump, “They’re not electing their best.” For that matter, we sure aren’t. Afghanistan was a much better place before the Soviets crushed it because they could not have it.
I suspect Israel’s residential square footage per person is much lower than in many large Western cities. I don’t know it for sure, but I know MANY large Jewish families in very small apartments.
Yes, that was something I mentioned before/elsewhere and partly in regard to certain podcast hosts etc.
I might have also repeated this comment I saved from someone else, from some time ago:
Marry. Have babies. Homeschool them. Don’t dally too long with the having babies; life is short; generations are longer.
What a tiresome and borderline obnoxious comment.
Having kids is hereditary – if your parents don’t, you won’t.
Now that’s funny.
There are something like six million of these Jordyptian sojourners, and even their rocketry program is just getting started.
I tell everyone to decide how many children to have. And then have at least one more.
How much is theirs, versus Iranian, which actually means Russian and/or Chinese?
Spares don’t always work out — *cough HARRY cough*.
Ahem. 4.41
What “always” works out? And I don’t recommend having children as “spares”. And Harry is hardly a one-off in that crazy family. Charles should have followed his mother’s lead and had at least four.
In case anyone missed it before, this is a really good interview with Mark Steyn:
https://www.adrive.com/public/RaM8Mj/NARN%2012-02-06%20NARN%201%20Hour%202%20Mark%20Steyn.mp3
If they did both how can you be so sure that the dominant factor was religion and not stealing?
We’ll never know, will we?
Actually literacy was really low in India under the British. It’s when we got rid of them that literacy increased, famines decreased, Bollywood really grew and we got our Tech billionaires.
All of this happened because – along with India finally having representative government – Britain was no longer skimming India’s economic surplus. The economy grew, under the Raj, at an average of 1.2% a year. As soon as the Raj ended the growth rate almost tripled to 3.2% a year. What happened to Britain’s growth rate after the post-war reconstruction boom?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/nearly-1-in-4-israelis-will-be-ultra-orthodox-by-2050-study-says/
Ah, but would you have read Kipling?
I rest my case.
Nobody would have. Seems like you’re arguing that occupying India was good for Britain, which is kind of uncontroversial?
Am being silly.
I agree. The answer is for nations to start having families of five children or more. Yeah, there might be a donut in the population but it does preserve the culture.
Good point. I think the national influence on the world declines with reduced population. And unfortunately reduced population invites immigration.
I stand corrected.
Here is a great thread showing just how empty the world is.
Could you actually try to explain why?
Shaarei Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem delivers more babies — around 22,000 — per year than any other hospital in the world.
As I sit in my third floor Jerusalem apartment looking across the street at a playground filled with the young and the old, where grandparents come to watch their children play, I am struck by fulfillment of the prophecy in Zechariah 8:3-5:
“So said the Lord: I will return to Zion, and I will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and Jerusalem shall be called the city of truth, and the mount of the Lord of Hosts [shall be called] the holy mountain.
So said the Lord of Hosts: Old men and women shall yet sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each man with his staff in his hand because of old age.
And the streets of the city shall be filled with boys and girls playing in its streets.”
Can the fulfillment of this other prophecy from Zechariah (8:23) be far behind?
“So said the Lord of Hosts: In those days, when ten men of all the languages of the nations shall take hold of the garment of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'”
My guess is that having 4 if you have a “dud” that’s only 25%, but if you have two and one is a “dud” that’s 50%. And so forth.
And so fifth.
Ya see, rich countries create income by devising elaborate financial instruments like FTX and credit default swaps. Without rich countries using these to extract rents from their working class, the poorer countries would be stuck with old fashioned making things for income.
In a spiritual sense, that’s true. It is more blessed to give (e.g., export, or give charity ) than to receive (e.g., import, or receive charity).
Even though exporting makes you less wealthy in the material sense, it makes your fellow man in another country more wealthy in the material sense, which may make you spiritually wealthier, unless the person you export to is evil and will use his increased wealth to do evil. For example, making the Communist Party in China wealthier.
Even if you engage in a free commercial exchange with another person, which makes you materially wealthier (by the difference in importance that you attach to what you received, and the necessarily lesser importance of what you gave up) , you are still making that person materially wealthier, too. So it still might make you spiritually richer as long as the person you enrich doesn’t have evil intent.