PBD Podcast - Marian Tupy On Why Gen Z Hates America | Ep. 236 | Part 1

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

In this episode, Patrick Bet-David and Marian Tupy will discuss: The connection between capitalism & de-population Whether population growth and economic growth are connected  Which formula decide why people have more or less kids  Why Gen Z's Hate America  FaceTime or Ask Patrick any questions on https://minnect.com/ Want to get clear on your next 5 business moves? https://valuetainment.com/academy/ Join the channel to get exclusive access to perks: https://bit.ly/3Q9rSQL Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N Text: PODCAST to 310.340.1132 to get added to the distribution list --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pbdpodcast/support

30 seconds. Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm so close, I could take sweetly the story. I know this life meant for me. Yeah, why would you plan on galiah when we got that David? Value came in, giving values, contagiousness, world, entrepreneur's, we can't no value that hate it. Howdy run homie, look what I've become.

I'm the under one. Okay, so today's podcast will be about whether the population growing is an issue or under population. Like a lot of people are saying, well, you know, this whole concept about the way the population is growing is a very bit concerned. There are some data that we're saying that by 2100, we will flatline and the population will no longer grow. And there are some people that are wondering whether India's going to pass up China. We have a lot of different things to talk about.

We have the right person in how second-time with us on the podcast. Marion Tupi, who has got a new book called Super Abundance. He's got very interesting ideas and thoughts and a lot of good research here. Born in Czech, grew up in South Africa, went to school in UK and today's in DC and he's a die-hard LeBron James fan, which we'll maybe talk about later on today. That was a joke the last part. It's good to have you on, man. How you doing?

Thank you. I'm delighted to be with you. We are as well, man. We're excited to have you here. So, so, look, when I think about here, senior policy analysts, center for global liberty and prosperity, Cato Institute editor, human progress.org. And then you turn on the news right now, which hopefully we'll get into some of these stories. What we saw happen this week, this has been a very weird week by the way, like to say the least. What happened with the trains in Palestine, Ohio?

Let's just make that the basis, Palestine, Ohio. What happened with the trains in South Carolina? And now yesterday, I believe Houston. Houston? Then you have the the star link, seeing the things that it saw over Japan. You know, then you have the the balloons, the first one that they took their time and then the second one, second balloon, the third balloon, matter fact, I think the fifth one made it here, right? There's just, I'm talking about it, where you go. There's not joking, like it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, no, and nobody, it's

getting a known, but nobody is, I don't even think that they're not balloons at this point. You bet at this point, listen, the way they're shooting it down, they're probably going to be shooting it down. You're probably going to be shooting it down. You're not going to hit it with a burner gun. You're not going to be sick. So anyways, but going to you, you know, your background, your background, what you've done, if you don't mind taking 30 seconds, sharing with the audience, your background, and then let's get into your ideas of why you think we shouldn't be concerned with the

population growing the way that it is. Right. Maybe we should be. So I think that it all started with growing up on the common is, oh, you can get closer to them. I absolutely. So growing up on the communism, then coming to the capitalist west and realizing that, you know, different regimes and different countries have different sets of political and economic arrangements. And so I was always interested in what makes countries rich and what makes countries poor. And then given I only have 30 seconds, what happened then is that I realized that there's this new growing green religion which talks about human beings as being, you know, basically a cancer on

the planet. And I believe in the exact opposite. I think that the more people we have, provided that they are free so they can exercise their minds, their thinking, can invest in the market, benefit from it, profit from it, that actually having more people in the world is better because we create more economic growth and more prosperity for everyone.

That's interesting, you're saying that. So I know I said 30 seconds, I want you to feel more comfortable going because it is a long time for everyone. That's interesting, you're saying that. So I know I said 30 seconds, I want you to feel more comfortable going because it is a long-term podcast. But, you know, so for me, being where I grew up and where I'm at now, it's very important for us to know, you know, like it was always wanting to find out

how those won't become rich. Can everybody become rich? What are the principles that help somebody become rich? So for you coming from the check back, Ram and I lived in Germany, there was a lot of folks from Czechoslovakia and 89 that were escaping, you know, a family that was very close to me, the staff family, Jan and Katarina Staf, the specifically family that I remember, you know, and they would tell me stories about what it was like there. So for you, what does it, what conditions and climate helps people become rich and the same as helps some people become poor?

Well, not everybody can become wealthy, you know, everybody can become successful. You know, you can only work with whatever God-given talents, slash DNA you have. But the first prerequisite for having at least a shot at being successful and reached is you have to live in a country where you have basically the freedom, both political and economic freedom. What do I mean by political? Well, freedom of speech, for example,

is incredibly important to be able to interact with people like you exchanging ideas learning from each other, maybe innovating something together, then applying those ideas in the marketplace. And if it works, then of course, profiting. Now, that only works under some form of a free market system. If you are in North Korea, it doesn't really matter what great ideas you have. You cannot implement them. First, you cannot vocalize them because you

have a complete ban on free speech. But also, you cannot really implement them in practice. There is no market where you can succeed with your ideas or your innovations. So I would say a free market over time has proven to be the best way in order to generate economic growth. And it's not just capitalism in the way that we understand it over the last 300 years. But even if you look at the past, it's localities that have allowed for greater openness where the government took its boot of the next of ordinary people,

where people were able to flourish and become rich. That includes Song China in 12th century AD, an incredibly sophisticated and wealthy societies. And then when the Ming come in, basically they have 800 years of stagnation, simply because the government changes, and they change the political and economic ideas and institutions that they have. Similarly, say, for example, in ancient Rome, second century, very high level of stability, which then gets replaced by obviously the collapse of the Roman Empire in dark ages. So you can have these florist senses of economic growth, but they usually peter out because politics change and whatever.

And my big concern about the United States right now is that I would like us not to be one of those countries where we have a sort of a 200-year period of high economic growth and then suddenly everything stops and we have stagnation for the next 500 years. By the way, if you look at stats, which countries have grown the fastest over the last, I'm sure there's data on this, the last 50 years. I know India slowed down ever since they came up with their one child policy. No, China.

I'm sorry, China slowed down. India keeps making babies. The average age right now in China is 38.4. I think we're 36.4. I think India's 26 or 27 years old, they're very young and they're, if they haven't already passed up China in population, they're about to. But what countries are you seeing

where the level of population growing exponentially is matching innovation? And which ones are you seeing that where the population grows, innovation is declining. What trends are you noticing? Well, I would say that economic growth is really a combination of population and freedom. So you don't have to have a growing population,

necessarily if you're compensating for it with higher degree of economic freedom. So China starts to liberalize after 1978 and they have a very high economic growth rate. In fact, they are the most successful economy over the last, say, 40 years. What, the 58 or 60 years? 1978.

In China, sort of, drops hardcore communism. I mean, it takes time for them to liberalize in more areas. But the point is that during the 1980s and the 1990s, for the last 40 years, China has been growing quite rapidly, even though they did have the one child policy. Now, my argument would be that if they didn't have the one child policy, they would be growing even faster. India also has succeeded a great deal, partly because they started liberalizing, they started having a more capital system after 1991 reforms. And India has never implemented the kinds of draconian anti-population policies that China has.

So those are two success stories. Ireland is another success story. The great disappointment over the last 30 years, at least, must be Japan, Japan, which has basically stagnated. But also many countries in Western Europe, Italy hasn't seen growth in the last 20 years and place like that. How has Italy not seen growth? There are some of the most attractive people in the world. They should be making babies.

Like I would assume, like when you're Italian, stallion, you're thinking, slide all these attractive people, for them to have that kind of emotional control of any, it's got to be patriotic. It's not, right? So just, okay, so can you call up that data? Data I just sent you. Pull up the data I just sent you. The link I just sent you, where it shows, countries whose population has grown the most.

Can you go up for, we can have actually the leaders bulletin? I don't know if the link I just sent you shows me a leader's bulletin. Do you see? Actually, the map is quite telling. If you look at the map, you see that Africa is the darkest, has the darkest view of the column the map. And that's because Africa is still growing.

In fact, Africa is the, sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where women have more babies than in necessary for replacement level. Replacement level is 2.1 children per woman per lifetime. And pretty much everywhere else in the world. Can you explain that 2.1 children per woman per lifetime, that's the replacement level. If you want to keep populations stable,

you need on average 2.1 children per woman. We spoke about that last. Yeah. And as you can see, pretty much nowhere else in the world do you have a growing population except in sub-Saharan Africa. So the question there is, why is sub-Saharan Africa even in spite of its growing population, not generating a lot of economic growth?

And the answer is because they are generally not free. If you grow up in the slums of... Marry get a little closer. Oh yeah, yeah. If you grow up in the slums of Lagos, for example, you could be a genius kid, but there is simply very little that you can do with your life. You're probably going to get a crappy education. You're probably never going to be able to go to university or implement your ideas in the marketplace because you don't have the capital or whatever.

So once again, I emphasize that growth, economic growth, prosperity is an outcome of population times freedom. So is there any correlation between lack of technology for, look, which country make like if I look at this, a statistics from 2012 to 2021, you see what countries have grown their population the most. Okay. Iraq, very interesting, not sure why, 37%. Okay. Gole-alor, gole-alor, Chad Somalia, Benin, Maldives, Uganda, 33% Kuwait, 27% Afghanistan.

Why are they increasing at the levels that they're increasing? Qatar, a lot of these are Muslim nations. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Israel 18.37% Philippine, 17% Iran, 16% growth from 2012 to 2021 on them growing the most Turkey. By the way, again, a lot of these are Muslim nations. Keep going, keep going, keep going to see where we go. Okay, India, 11.2% Canada

10.7% Costa Rica 994 Switzerland 8.84 Ireland the right there Mexico 8% Norway's pretty much 8% Brazil 7.5% US's population has grown 5.74% Since 2012 we're ahead of UK, but keep going. I'm trying to see if anybody, okay, China's 4.3, they're, they're seeming to have a net negative population in 2022. Some of the numbers that I saw people that are fleeing and leaving Spain.

Okay, now we have negative, which you were talking about Italy, minus 0.72 in the last 10 years. Japan minus 1.53. Armenia 3.23. Ukraine, Greece, Ukraine is down 4%. Romania is down 5%. Keep going, keep going, keep going. Croatia is down 9%. Puerto Rico is down 10%. And then you have at the bottom of the line, okay, Puerto Rico is St. Martin. So when you look at this core, is there anything that says why Muslim nations are growing faster than others?

Is there anything we know about that or no? I actually don't know. I, it's in, well, it's in the religion in the Quran that got Muhammad said for them, the spread spread out as much as they can because their average I think is three kids, but the majority of the Muslims that we see are like four or five kids.

But it's a, it's a, it's a religious thing where in the Quran, it says to be flourish, and as many kids as you can. So, okay, so let's kind of see if we can come up with something. So one, to me, you just said is religion. 100% is in the Quran. So if we put religion as one, can we put culture as,

because even Mormonism, right? Like more. You know, the moment you have five kids people ask if you're more. 100% at four, they think you're still maybe my new question. Yeah. But at five, they ask if you're

like, wait a minute. Yeah, where do you, are you? Yeah, I get into the book. I get asked if I'm Hispanic, but I know you draw the line. Yeah. We're from a Bounty full Utah. Yeah. So religion, we have culture. I know you draw the line in the fight. We're from a bountiful Utah.

So religion, we have culture. Do you notice that the less there is technology, advancement, distractions, more babies are being born? Is there a correlation between that? Like, you know how back in the days people say, well, we had 11 kids, but because we had no TV. If there's certainly a correlation between being a rich country and having few babies, partly because most rich countries

also have a very high percentage of women who are in the workforce. And staying at home, taking care of children has a much higher opportunity cost than going and work in the marketplace. So let's say that a woman becomes a banker and can bring in quarter of a million or half a million dollars a year home. Staying at home, basically, in taking care of children, means that the cost is between quarter of a million and a half a million Right, whereas if you are a woman say for example in an African village and you are not really a part of the official workforce But you still work obviously. I mean you work you work at home your homemaker or whatever

But you are not actually bringing bringing in any monetary income then Then then the household is not suffering that kind of opportunity cost. You know what else I'd want to know? I'd want to also know which countries in the world lead an abortion. Is there a way to pull up this data? Pretty sure it's going to be. Which countries in the world lead an abortion? What are abortion laws in, if we can just pull up leading, what is that?

Tapping into the high subversion rates, annual per thousand woman. So you have at the top is Russia. Russia. Interesting. 53.7 out of, but that's all for long. A lot has happened since 2000. Yeah, but just have to even know,

even though it's 2004, look at the stark difference between one and two. Oh, yeah, no, ridiculous. Can you scroll in on that? A little bit. Not man Russia. You know, it's not even close. I don't want to know who has the least. I guarantee you can be a lot. I bet you Mexico is going to be the number one

that does not have to go to the bottom. Let's see the bottom shows the opposite 10, come close. Mexicans are not having abortions, bro. They're just like, no, we're good. That's pretty wild. That's dope. I told you I just like 0.1% like I tell your expertise is AI and abortion So miss you. He's moving to Mexico. Yeah, thank you Can we get into these numbers a little bit? Yeah, where were you going with this with the abortion? I'm trying to see

The areas that are growing with more more kids so his his argument was that women higher education, they not only don't want to have more kids, they can't have more kids if you're a career, if you want to make your career a priority over maybe other places where you're working, but you're working for different reasons to hear it's more to want to compete. So women is one. What else would be the reason for some of these countries population to be grown as fast as they are and some that are not but good you seem to have a question. Well, the Russia thing, if it just throws me for a loop here, I didn't want to go down the abortion alley over here but that very interesting how much Russia is leading the world in abortion.

Do you have any rhyme reason for that? You know, all of these things, you things, whether countries are growing, whether they are not, whether the population is declining, how many abortions they have, they can have many different causes. And I don't think that we quite know exactly how they all interact with each other, but Russia is a country which has had a problem with basically having a very negative view of the future. This has been a case since really the 1970s. China, Russians have been suffering from the problem of alcoholism for a very long time, dying early.

So there's a lot of stuff with depression and basically not seeing Russia as a place that is going anywhere. Now, one possibility is that you are not having children partly because of economic uncertainties, but also partly because life generally is tough and a lot of Russians just don't see a future for that country. As opposed to, for example, Israel. Israel, the interesting thing about Israel is that it is a wealthy country, but women, even though they are highly educated and they are working, still keep on having children above the replacement level.

And that's not just the orthodox Jews, but also secular Jews. And one possible explanation that I've come across is that because Israel has been growing so fast and has had such a positive attitude about its future for the last 20 or 30 years, that people feel, yeah, I can have a third baby because the likelihood is that my income in 10 years time is going to be much higher than it is right now. Now that is not the kind of calculation that you can make in Russia or in Italy for that matter.

Interesting. Well, in Israel, I would assume that has a lot to do with tradition, culture, economic freedom, being free. You know, there's a book, Start Up Nation about the miracle that is the state of Israel, essentially, it leads to your point right there. Yeah, I mean, Patrick has already written down that there are cultural aspects to this and religious aspects to it. So for the Orthodox Jews, it's obvious why they want to have their connections with our friends the more men.

They might be winning. But culture, the general perception of how the country is doing and where it's heading can have, I think, an impact on how many people. Speaking of what you alluded to with Russia, this outlook of negativity, like looking into the future and not being able to see yourself having a good life, I actually want to hone in on what's going on in America today

because as you're saying these stats, right, you know, it comes down to political and economic and socio-economic and you see these numbers, Rob, I slacked you something. If you can, the amount or the share of generation who is proud to be American is falling off a cliff. It's actually insane.

And it's something that I actually feel very deeply about. If you look here, the net shares of each generation is say they are proud to live in United States, baby boomers who are essentially our parents, in their 60s, 70s, 73% are proud to live in the United States. Gen X, who are in their 40s and 50s, 54% and then it breaches the, below the 50% threshold when you get to millennials, 36% and Gen Z, 16%. You're talking teenagers and 20s, something, your olds who are abundantly not proud to live in the United States.

And as you're saying these stories about economic freedom, check, okay, say whatever you want for the most part. I'm wondering where did this shame come from based on your findings, why people in a young people in America are not proud to be American. That's something that deeply, deeply bothers me. So once again, I think there are probably a lot of causes at play. So I want to talk about one or two of them, but before I do that, just get, let's get the numbers right.

So right now, native born American women have about 1.7 children per woman per lifetime. And again, you need 2.1. 2.1 to replace yourself. Yeah. So it's mostly immigration, which is still driving our population forward. So America is still growing in terms of its population. We are not shrinking like the Japanese, for example. But it's mostly driven by non-native American women

who are having more children than immigrants. Immigrants. Now, possibly, I think one of the reasons Native American women who are having more children than immigrants. Now, possibly, I think one of the reasons that I, that is sort of in my mind, is that I do meet a lot of young people. And part of the reason why they feel so bad about America is because they are actually deeply ignorant about the rest of the world. There is very little understanding amongst the young about just how rich Americans are vis-à-vis

the rest of the world. Now, I understand that income is not the only thing which matters. But still, in spite of all of our problems, 9, 11, financial crisis, COVID, etc. We are the richest generation in the whole history of the United States. We are much richer than our ancestors were. And not just that. Americans are much richer relative to the second most developed part of the world, which is Western Europe. Even middle income America, I mean, if the Western European income, if you compare it to the American states, the 50 states, it would be on par with Louisiana and Mississippi, the poorest states in the Union. Those are the average incomes.

How do you calculate that? What's your formula did they use to define them? I think this would be GDP per capita, as far as I recall. I mean, I saw it online a number of times, from reputable sources. I think one of them was Timbro, which is a Swedish think tank. And the reality is that here in the United States, Mr. Cipi and Louisiana are the poorer states in the Union. And if you go to the richest,

they are roughly twice as rich as the poorer states in the Union. California, New York, sir. California, New York, and Western Europe is on the level of America's poorer states. Again, so let's go back. So what causes people to keep having kids, what causes people to stop having kids? So aside from a law mandated by the government like China, let's set that aside.

That's a law. We can't do nothing about a law, right? This is depressing to look at this. It's very disappointing to see how Gen Z feels about their, what do you call it, how patriotic they are. But I'm not surprised. Gen Z spends the most time with teachers. And by the way, you know what I'm gonna tell you, the craziest data about teachers, I'll tell you the craziest data about teachers here. We just got the statistic this last week,

based on the research we were doing with Kai. Do you know what percent, and they got this data exactly on how people gave money contributed towards their political party? What percentage of Hollywood do you think votes Democrat? Ninety percent. It's exactly ninety-ten. What percentage of professors in universities are Democrat to Republican?

Ninety-nine-de-democrats. I would say more than that. For every one conservative, how many Democrats are there? Twelve. Twelve? It's one of twelve. It's one of twelve, one of thirteen. There's nine-de-four 12. 12. It's one of 12. It used to be it's one of 12. One of 13. There's

got 94%. Exactly. So one of 12 is a that's a follow on monopoly. All these people are worried about my not there's no big monopoly than this one. Yeah. But watch this one here. So when you think about Gen. C who did they spend the most time with? English teachers. What percentage of English teachers are Democrats? English teachers in K through 12. 99%. 97%. Oh, yeah. What percentage of health teachers are Democrats? Health teachers in school. Health and guidance.

I'm gonna say 95. 99%. They're the highest. Oh my God. English teachers are 97. Health is 99%. Here's a little one that they have a little bit of reason. Science and math.

What percentage are Democrats? Remember, this requires lodges. I of the safe i'll say fifth eighty seven percent to thirteen percent okay so ninety seven is uh... english ninety nine is health uh... eighty seven is math and science and jen zee's are spending time around them non-stop hence you're gonna be thinking like they do so i am not surprised at all they're being convinced that America sucks

and America's bad and America's this and get a little one of the benefits about having YouTube and access to different channels where you can kind of brainwash yourself out of the insanity stuff you've learned. You almost need to unlearn the crap that they've learned. But let me go back. This is what I'm interested in.

This is what I'm interested in. So to me, what I'm looking for is formulas. Okay. What is a formula for happy marriage? Spend, Adam, take notice. Are you married? Are you married? Okay. Let's just kind of talk about it. It'll open like, you know, Rob, what have we heard? What is a formula for happy marriage?

Don't lie to each other, be honest with each other. Respect. Respect each other. Okay. So women want to be loved, men want to be respected. Yeah. So don't publicly humiliate your husband. Yeah, have a good job. Be successful. You know, don't, don't be broke. So finances is another one where there's not a lot of financial issues. Faithful. Faithful, which is you're being faithful to each other. And maybe there is faith involved. You're going to some, you're practicing some kind of whatever church or denomination you have. What else would you say is the cause of a long lasting marriage?

Effective communication. Effective communication, maybe common values and principles. The children. Maybe you're having sex at least once a week and I know this statistic, I'm interested in statistics. You know what I just launched in PHP two years ago? A couple came up to me, we were sitting down, having a meeting together, and I noticed a trend with a few couples who had been married for,

this was couples that were married for 10 plus years. So many people started telling me that they don't have sex but once a month, and I said, that doesn't make any sense to me. In our business, we have something called a perfect week. A perfect week is when that week, you make a certain number of calls, a certain number of prospects, a certain number of appointments, a certain number of sales you do in a week. The new perfect week I added is a date night at least once a week and you have sex at least once a week. We've

added this, I said, treat your marriage as a perfect week. One date night, sex at least once a week. You'd be amazed how many people Sunday night, I'd 11, 15, 9, or getting it on. Like, babe, we got to get our perfect. We got to do. Oh shit. Get it. We are. Let's go. But I would have fixed that air sent. But but the but the reason but the reason why I'm asking this as funny as this sound and as like ludicrous this sounds, this is based on a lot of conversations you have with people. And if you're not having sex and marriage for more than a month, some's going on in that marriage.

Someone's not having. Okay. So you go to success, formulas for me having a million dollars in my bank account. I don't know, set aside $300 a month at 12% over 30 years or 40 years, you're going to have a million bucks. You know, what else? You do a thousand dollars a month at 12% over 21 years, you got a million bucks in your account, right?

If you can set aside a thousand dollars a month, that 12% there are formulas. How do you get a raise at a company? How do you keep increasing your salary? How do you stay in shape? I want to know what formulas causes people to stop having kids and for people to stop having kids and for people to have more kids?

More kids, lack of education, does that equal more kids? Lack of entertainment and advancement and technology is that what causes more kids? Is it cultural expectation of, hey, in our community, in our religion, you can have as many kids as you want, five, six, seven, eight kids. What is it? Okay. And then, like, the number that we have, that's 2.1. I like that because we have a number to go off of that we're at least growing our population.

I'm more interested to see what trends do we notice with some countries that are growing and declining? What is it? Why is that happening? I really do think in the Muslim nations, in the Quran, it does say children are a gift from God and they just, I know Muslim guys that have, I know a guy, one of my boys has five kids and their attitude is just flood the world as much as us as we can. So, so we'll be, we'll be a voice to be heard. And I mean, dude, it's, I mean, it's happening. The majority of Muslims, men that I know have at least three kids, at least average. And the same I believe

in Judaism, the insistence that children are blessing. Now, so I don't have the formula. What I can tell you and what we address in the book is that in the West, we are embracing the anti-formula, not that children are blessing from God, Hyapile, whatever, but that children are a curse upon the world. That humanity is a cancer upon the world. That to bring a child into the world is an act of ultimate selfishness. Let's say that you are a young and impressionable young person reading the New York Times Washington Post or the Atlantic. What are the stories that you would have encountered over the last six months?

Having children in selfish, children will consume or will produce more CO2 into the atmosphere and during the lifetime than five trucks or whatever. And what we found was that actually public opinion polls are beginning to reflect this kind of apocalyptic vision of the future where increasing numbers of men and women around the world, but primarily in the West, are saying we cannot bring a child into the world because the world is going to end, famously AOC said four years ago, and in 12, that the world is getting worse, which is another falsehood. Now, it doesn't mean that the world doesn't have problems. The world has, God knows how many problems,

but compared to when, when you compare us to 2050, 200 years ago, the world isn't much better shape. Yet somehow, people have this notion that the world is getting worse, it is going to end. We are going to run out of resources. We are going to dispoil the planet. The planet is going to explode. And so increasingly people are saying we cannot bring a child into the world that is about to end.

And so the point that I mean, you think people are thinking about that? Well they say so explicitly. It's in the book, we put point to opinion polls that show that people really believe that we are heading towards some sort of planetary catastrophe. So Mary, what do you tell those people that are saying, because right now, I think we're at 7,900,000 and growing. We crossed 8 billion in November of last year, officially. You didn't get think I think I think I think I'll have the balloon. Whatever. So, but, Mary, what do you tell these people that are they're concerned about all the natural resources that that we do have? So are you saying with that growth comes all the stuff like,

you know, the fake meat that they're making, you know, eat bugs? Like, are you saying that there's enough natural resources here that we could flourish no matter how high this number is going to get? Oh, absolutely. There is plenty to go around. And when shortages do occur within the market mechanism, you can always produce more. We produce much more wheat per acre of land than our ancestors could. That is why we are able to feed 8 billion people around the world. Have you noticed that in spite of all of this population growth, so again, let's start with the numbers.

1800 Thomas Jefferson is president of the United States. There is 1 billion people in the world today, Biden is president for better and for worse. There is 8 billion people in the world. And yet, we are able to feed on all of these people. And actually, we are beginning to take some of the land which we used for agriculture and we are beginning to return it to nature, to animals and to flora.

How do we do that? We increase wheat production or yield on one acre of land. This is how you do it. If you're running out of fish, we are currently running out of fish in the wild. Much of the ocean is becoming depopulated of fish. What do you do? You turn to aquaculture. You start breeding fish in ponds. 50% of all of our fish consumption now is fish grown specifically for the purpose of being eaten, so we don't catch them in the wild, and hopefully we can get to 100%.

Should at some point in the future, should it happen that we are going to somehow run out of cattle or chicken? Well, we are just going to grow cells of chicken or beef in you have of liquid. And we are going to produce food that way. It's not going to be impossible food. This is actually going to be, you'll be eating a steak. A actual steak. Yeah, it's just happened to be grown from a cell

of probably a fantastic cow. So all of those listeners out there who always wanted to eat a white ago steak, but cannot afford it because it's it costs $300. One day we'll be able to take the genes or the cells from the best cows in the world. Maybe the ones from Japan and everybody will have a stake for five or ten dollars. I can't wait. So that's what I'm saying is that is that the amount of resources in the world is only subject to human knowledge. It's human knowledge that matters because we can always create more. We can grow more.

Is your contention that with population growth, we're at $8 billion, we're at $1 billion and $1800 years ago, plus, that the more people, the more minds there are, that's the more technological advancements will come of it, the more you get smarter, more efficient, more innovative, and better things will happen because there's more people not despite it. That is the fundamental premise of the book. The thing to remember is that not everybody can be an inventor or an innovator. Only a small fraction of humans will ever invent or innovate anything. It's in single digits. It's probably around 5 or 6%.

But everyone reads the benefits of those innovations. Precisely. Precisely. I mean, I wish to God that we could have 8 billion owned masks. Oh, God. That the world would look very different, but we don't. But my point is that 6% out of population of 300 million people who lived at a time of Christ or Caesar Augustus, really the world's population was 300 million or 6% of one

billion people who lived at a time of Jefferson is still much smaller total number than if you have a population of 8 billion people. So if that fraction of humans who innovate stays the same, then if you have a population of 8 billion people. So if that fraction of humans who innovate stays the same, then obviously you're going to have many more people like that in a population of 8 billion. And it is these people who have... it's only human mind, currently, that can produce new ideas. It is new ideas that you can turn into inventions. Then those inventions get tested in the marketplace to separate bad inventions from good inventions, the VHS from Betamax, you know, and the diet coke from Crystal Cogo, whatever it was called, I can't remember that.

The Treband from a Ferrari, and you will end up basically with innovations that increase productivity, human productivity, and therefore our standards of living. I want to go back to what Pat sort of questioned you on, was about whether or not, whether it's the media, whether it's politicians, whoever it is, mainstream media, that is trying to convince people not to have kids. What I want to hone in on is America and Western civilizations. I want to know what percentage is white college educated women who are basically saying,

I'm done with having kids. This dream of being a mother, a housewife, a homemaker is, it's not for me, I just want to work and make money and then that is leading to sort of population decline. Can you hone in on that? So I don't know the numbers because the studies that I have seen the public opinion polls have not been broken down by race or political, political persuasion. But what just go with your gutter. No, but what I can't tell you, what I can tell you is that the richer the society becomes, the higher you go up the maslow hierarchy of needs, at the bottom you have your clothing, your food, your water, your security, and at the top you have self-actualization.

And basically, what tends to happen is that it is in societies where people are extremely rich. And again, we are extremely rich by historical standards, where people have all this time and all this money to basically devote themselves to pet projects, such as, I don't know, I want to live in the United States where all the plastic is banned, or I want to transform the United States into a society where there are no guns or where there are

abortions and things like that. The point is people have all this time and all of these resources to pursue their pet project. Now the pet project can be good, the pet project can be bad, but it's only rich people who have this amount of time to do that. Yeah. Can you pull up Maslow's hierarchy of needs? hierarchy of needs.

So it's very interesting, because I want to get your opinion on essentially what you said. I interviewed this, you can remember the Freedom Forum, it's book Gary Casparov. Yes, yes. Okay, so I was invited there via Pat a year and a half ago. And I interviewed who is essentially, forgive me, I forgot his name, And I interviewed who has essentially,

forgive me, I forgot his name, he's basically host the Daily Show, but of Iraq. Oh, really? He's a comedian, humorist, satire. And I said, what's your biggest wish for the people of Iraq? And you know, you would assume, you know, living under no fear and tyrannical governments.

And he says, my wish is for them to just come home every night and watch reality TV. And that'd be the biggest thing on their mind. I said, why, what are you talking about? He says, do you understand how lucky you are in America to go to your job, to work, to just live your life, do what you want to do and come home and have the freedom to just watch meaningless dribble on TV.

Because you're not concerned that a bomb is coming over your head, that someone in your family is going to get dragged out of the house for having distenting political views, and just you're not scraping by for food, water, shelter, any of the basic human needs on the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And he goes, my wish is for the people of Iraq to just watch the Kardashians mind-numbingly mindless. But he goes, unfortunately, we can't do that. Life's tough. And that was such a stark example of holy shit.

That's how we're at an America today. We have, life is so easy. It's so good that our biggest issue is like, whether Chloe lost four pounds today on the Kardashians, if you've been known as Pregnant or not. Or what ever it is. And it's just, things are so good here in the West in America that it's almost manifesting. Like things are so bad because we have so much time to focus on minor things that don't

affect day to day life. Yeah. Is that essentially your premise? Yes. And it gets a little bit worse than that, and in a sense that you see, at the top of the pyramid, things are only zero-sum. At the bottom of the pyramid, if you have freedom, if you have people, they are going to provide

for water, food, shelter through normal market mechanism. We have sort of tackled that particular, that level at the the muscle, of the muscle pyramid of needs, back in maybe like the 40s or the 50s. But again, the market can provide more food, more shelter, more sleep, innovation, growth, etc. But at the top of the pyramid, the problem with self-actualization where it becomes zero sum is that your idea what a perfect society may be in direct conflict with mine. So maybe you're prioritizing equality of outcome

over my prioritization of liberty and the ability to succeed or fail within the market system. And so when we are at the top of the pyramid and you insist that everybody should have equality of outcome, that affects me negatively, immediately, because it means that I have to forego something if I'm better off than you are. And that's what leads to social conflict. I think that's part of the reason why we are at each other's throats is because we are all at the top of the pyramid, but we have very different ideas about how the world should be structured

in the west, because life is so easy about how America should fund. By the way, Pat, what was, they do this sort of like debate, I don't know if it's in Cambridge or in Oxford, it's in the UK, and they had this comedian come on and basically sort of clown-wokeness. Constantin Kissin, he runs a podcast. and they had this comedian come on and basically sort of clown walkness. Constantine. Yeah, Constantine Kissin, he runs a podcast. Okay, you've seen it. Yes, I have.

I don't know if you can pull that up, Rob. What a prime example of this, because you basically, you talked about like, bowing to the idol of greenness, what was the terminology you used just a little green religion? The green religion. Eco fanatics. And he religion, eco-fanatics. And he said, let me tell you why the climate change

and the global catastrophe is never gonna, no, is gonna work on it. Can you go back to that Maslow's hierarchy of needs? And he basically said, you have literally billions of people in all around the world, India, China, third world countries, Africa, you know, Middle East, who are still on the bottom level, who are still just fighting for air-water food shelter, all that.

And here you are at the top of the pyramid, self-actualizing what a green new world would be. Because it's never going to happen. Because you have billions of people just fighting for the basics, the basics of survival. Meanwhile, you're over here basically on your, you know, iPad in your air conditioned home, in your college education,

and just sort of looking down on people because they won't take climate changes seriously as you when they're literally fighting for their basic needs and survival. And that was the guys I think is entire purpose. Kissin. So I would sort of divide the world into two parts. One is the developing of the underdeveloped world. And they are obviously not going to buy into the whole decarbonization of the economy. Wherever you stand on fossil fuels or green technology, the fact is we are going to need fossil fuels

for many more years to come because they are the cheapest. And so the people who are still very poor say, most of Africa, most of Latin America, much of Asia, these people are going to be using those sorts of fuels. More than half the world is well over half of the world. And then the other part of the world, the Western world, also generally tends to be democratic. And so what we are basically saying is that we are asking, or rather the Greens are asking us to democratically elect for us to be poorer. And I think that much of the conflict in the West right now has to do with the fact that

in order to implement the Green Policies, all of us would have to suffer a great decline in our stands of living. And that's what's playing out already in places where the Green agenda is most advanced, United Kingdom and Germany. People are washing themselves in lukewarm water because they cannot afford hot water. They cannot heat their homes in the middle of winter. Europe is much further ahead of where we are heading if we embrace the same policies, the same green policies. We are just going to be much poorer. Or alternatively, we are going to elect governments that are going to behave in a very different fashion.

Yeah, so let me ask you a question about the book. How much research did you guys do with the book in regards to what religion has the most kids, which countries are the most optimistic, which states are growing and not growing within the states? What climates causes people to have more kids, because some of the content that I'm looking at right now is contradictory.

Did you go into looking at which religions are having more kids and why? We didn't look at religion. The book is devoted specifically to answering the question whether more people are going to exhaust global resources. Yeah, I guess I get that. And what I would want to know is,

so here's, I just sent you a bunch of links. So go to the one with, go to the abortion one that we looked at as well, earlier, which country has, you have the link up there, one of them, which shows which one of the countries is having the most abortions today, and who was at the top? By a mile, it was Russia, then it was Vietnam,

I think it was number two, and it was animal clothes. It was 53% to 32% go a little lower, go a little lower. Yeah, there you go. So Russia was at the top, 50, 37, Vietnam was 35, and then you have a few different countries there, and then if you go lower, you'll see where US is at. Go all the way to the bottom,

where you have the different list of countries. It should have US there as well. Does it have it or not? If you go all the way to the bottom where you have the different list of countries. It should have us there as well. Does it have it or not? You go all the way to the bottom. There you go. That's the list. Okay. 20.8%. So we're still up there. You know, China has 24.2% of the population that's getting abortions. But we're still up there at 21%. China is forcing you to get an abortion. Here we're not forcing you. You're choosing and we're at 21% right? Okay, so then I said, okay, why would you why would Russia have abortion as high as they do? You said they don't they're not optimistic about the future right to see like what the future looks like is the future bright or not. So because of that they don't want to have the kids

because they don't think it's a safe environment to have the kids, right? Then I went to the optimistic, most optimistic country in the world. And if you go to that one, I sent you the link to that as well. You have it in the top right, yes. One of them that said, there you go. Zoom this, zoom in in this one, which is kind of weird.

Pessimism and optimism go zooming just on that charge of statistic. Yeah, it shows that China, more things are getting better in the world than are getting worse. China is at the highest level, 86%. There's no way this data's accurate to show China is the most optimistic country in the world according to their data.

But that's exactly what this is. The choice India is second, and it's Saudi Arabia, then it's Malaysia. Now look at the one at the top. Over the last year, the world has become more dangerous. People are more afraid. Colombia, 91%, Peru, 90%, South Korea, 88%, look it's fourth.

US, it's 86%, meaning US is more pessimistic right now. 90% South Korea 88% look as forth US 86% Meaning US is more pessimistic right now than optimistic right now I'd love to see what your rushes on the leaders bulletin here if you can even go to the bottom or not to see if there is a Russia here or not on the bottom and then to broke it down by this okay zoom in a little bit to see what rushes out with this Russia's right there minus 4% so what's their score? If we're at 86, what do you see us on that list? We're at the bottom minus four. Okay. Russia's also minus four. Okay. We're where? But what does that mean? Minus four of what? 34% gray. Some would agree. When you really think about it, more things are getting better in the world

these days than are getting worse. No, Americans it, more things are getting better in the world these days than are getting worse. No, Americans don't believe things are getting better. Chinese think things are getting better. Hands there at the top.