TRIGGERnometry - Population Collapse is Coming - Alex Kaschuta

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

Alex Kaschuta is a writer, cultural critic and podcaster from Romania. She is the host of the Subversive Podcast and YouTube channel (@AlexKaschuta) and also publishes on Substack: https://www.alexkaschuta.com/ Check out our first interview with Alex here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzWx8U4POCg Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 Intro  01:32 The Fertility Crisis  06:14 Are Falling Birthrates Cultural? 10:25 Contributing Factors to Childlessness 12:45 What Can We Do About The Fertility Crisis? 14:53 Do We Prioritise Immediate Pleasure Too Much? 18:34 The Rise of Surrogacy  22:35 How to Promote the Benefits of Parenthood 25:39 Sponsor Message: Locals 26:40 What Can be Done Culturally to Promote Parenthood? 30:58 The Correlation Between Birthrates & Immigration 35:16 How Status & Social Media Affect our Worldview 40:05 Can We Move Away from the Internet? 43:08 The Left/Right Paradigm  50:34 Problems With Democracy & Government 54:53 Decentralised Ways of Organising Society 58:44 Value-Based Societies 1:05:21 Equality of Opportunity Vs Equality of Outcome 1:13:05 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I think it's about 3% of the world population are living in countries where fertility is not declining. So the idea that, you know, the population is growing is very old news. Immigrants get old. Immigrants stop having kids as well. You know, it's the same type of thing. You're just getting in essentially a new dependent class because, you know, they're not going to... They usually have, you know, maybe more children than the typical, you know, westerner for maybe one or two generations. but it declines already fairly steep once they get here.

Are we going to get off the pill? Are we going to get off of the Industrial Revolution? Yeah, you know, it's the toothpaste meat tube type situation. I don't want people to end up in that position where that realization comes that late and there's maybe not a huge amount you can do about it. And I think that's tragic, actually. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry on Location.

I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin. And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations, we're fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is returning to the show. She's a writer and the host of the subversive podcast. Alice Kusuta, welcome back. Thank you so much for having me.

And as we said, we're on location in London, which is why we are more fancily dressed than normal. And the set is what the set is. But anyway, welcome to London. It's great to have you back on. I've been following your writing. and the things you say on social media with great interest, you just spoke at the NACCON conference,

where we are as neutral media, of course we are. What are you thinking about right now? What is sort of piquing your curiosity? What is interesting to you at the moment? I think the main theme of the conference seems to be the fertility crisis. You're doing your job. Yeah, I'm doing my part.

I've been actually praised for my pregnant lady outfits when I came in here. Thank you. I've worked a lot of them because, yeah. You need pregnant lady outfits I've learned. So I think this has been kind of in the ether. It's also been on my mind. I was thinking about actually speaking on this topic,

but I'm kind of glad I didn't because it seems to be very well covered. It definitely would have brought something really redundant to the theme. And it seems to also be very spicing in the UK context because I've been looking at, okay, how have people reacted? And even like the insinuation that, you know, mother and father type of combo should be normative in society. It seems to have sparked like pretty much insanity in the UK media. And yeah, I mean, the idea that, okay, you know, the fertility crisis seems to be tied into the idea that, okay, the only way to solve this is some form of coercion.

And this is what, you know, the fascist at Natcon want you to do. And yeah, it's... Make the women have the babies? Yeah, exactly. But before we get into that, a lot of people who are really not familiar with any of these conversations will be thinking, what fertility crisis? We've got a population problem. Population is going to boom.

Everyone's going to die of climate change, et cetera. So what is the fertility crisis? I don't think that's the case. I mean, at least in terms of kind of the newer data that we have is that I think it's about 3% of the world population are living in countries where fertility is not declining. So the idea that, you know, the population is growing is very old news. The population is falling pretty much everywhere. And it's not falling in the sense of, like, you can't feel it in the water right now.

If you go out on the street, plenty of people there. You know, you might see more elderly people slowly. But it's not something that's like an urgent problem. But the fact that, you know, the population pyramids in pretty much every region are reversing. And you have many more older people than younger people is something that, can have extreme like knock-on type domino effect consequences that, you know, people are just starting to model and starting to realize. I mean, it's predicted that a country like South Korea, who has, you know, abysmal birth rates, they've fallen under one child per couple, like the TFR is like

0.9 something. They're essentially going to die out. So this is kind of, we're watching the last South Koreans slowly kind of march onto it. So they're grave. If this trend continues. And they're not going to die out in like 500 years. This is pretty much in about 100 to 150 years. You'll see the last South Koreans say goodbye to them. And, you know, this is only just like a startling example, but the same trend line applies to pretty much everywhere in the West, with very few exceptions. I mean, like consistently over replacement fertility rates you have in places like Israel and like the Amish community, in Mormon communities in the U.S., but even they are just about a replacement and probably going to

fall under replacement very soon. So this is a form of, you know, essentially what people are trying to do now is to identify what exactly causes this. And, you know, overall, there's, there are many factors that can go into it. There's, you know, environmental factors, you know, even like kind of xenoestrogens in the water, things that might affect, you know, we've heard about declining testosterone, you know, fertility issues for younger and younger women, the fact that most people who want to, you know, have children after a certain age need IVF. There's all sorts of factors going into it. But I think the conclusion that a lot of people at NatCon arrive at,

and one that I have as well, is that the main factors are essentially cultural. Like, we've really, you know, once children became optional, we've really kind of lost the will to have them in the sense, because they are really a burden in a way. And I think people can, you know, they can't really model their lives with children, but they know how they feel right now and they know that, okay, you know, sleepless nights, cost of daycare,

you know, I'm renting. I don't want to have that hassle. You know, all these things. It's just not worth it to a lot of people. Is it really cultural, though? Because, look, the housing crisis is a UK very specific problem, but that's part of it.

But just more broadly, urbanization means, you know, Peter Zahan, who we've had on the show and talked about this, when you live on a farm, of free labor. When you live in the city, they're like an expensive pair. Of course, yeah. It's fun, mate. It depends what you do. Well, one can argue that, you know, urbanization is something that's kind of tied into cultural as well. I mean, the incentives for urbanization are kind of memetic as well. It's not like, it's not just people chasing money, but it's,

you know, it's a culture that forms after these kind of, after the industrial revolution as well. People kind of gather it in urban centers to, you know, to work on the factories. And if, certain kind of culture emerged around that. And then a fertility rate dropped to the level of that culture of people, you know, being together in that environment. So I think what we've reached now is the point where kind of a lot of these memes converged. And for the life that the typical individual leads in these cities, yeah, it's just, it doesn't make logical sense to have children.

And, yeah. And as well, governments aren't really doing anything to incentivize people. I mean, the Hungarian government does, to be fair to them. Yeah. But certainly the British government, you look at... It's a tough one, yeah. You look at what they're doing. You think, well, they're just exacerbating the problem, aren't they?

Yes, in a way they are. But if you look at, you know, places that had incentives for, you know, raising the birth rate, it is marginally productive. Even the places who've imposed, like, you know, kind of significant incentives like Hungary, it's... It kind of works. I think they've bumped it up by point. point two or point three after, you know, massive cultural programs and all of that.

But yeah, the trend line still, you know, they're really fighting an uphill battle. It seems to be very hard to lift. I think the only country who's actually gotten back from below replacement to above replacement is Georgia, because they've been, I think the local patriarch, people are very religious in Georgia, baptizes every third or fourth child that a family has. So, like, big families are incentivized to, you know, get to the special ceremony. to meet the patriarch and have to a child baptized by him. So, yeah, I think a strange, exotic type of incentive

that I don't necessarily know would work here. I don't know if the Archbishop of Canterbury would pump people up to have lots of kids. But, yeah, I mean, you know, the housing crisis, I think, is really an important thing as well. But if I think back at, you know, all of the squalor and struggle that my ancestors went through and just the material conditions that they had children.

And, you know, I don't think the fact that they rented and didn't own was a big problem for them. Or, you know, the cost. They had different social technologies around them as well. Like they had family. They had support networks and all of that. But it was also culturally the thing that you did. And it was not really optional in the sense that you would, you know, if you didn't do this, you were probably going to be stigmatized or you would.

feel bad about yourself if you, you know, you were a spinster or you didn't, you know, participate in growing the clan and in all the traditions that tied into that. And when, you know, you had the cultural, not the cultural revolution, the industrial revolution and all the things that kind of came with it, you know, the family just didn't work the same way. You know, people moved away for work. They, they preferred to live alone because, you know, family is wonderful, but it's also kind of a hassle. And if you can help it, you'd probably move away from in-laws. And most people did. So it's also the abundance that the industrial revolution and all the technologies coming with it created that allowed us to atomize ourselves because, you know, like in economics,

it is a revealed preference. People like to, you know, mind their own business. You know, it's like we were talking before this, you know, community is something beautiful. But it's for when other people do it, it's much nicer. You know, other people really need community. I'm kind of a loner myself. But we also ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the pill. Yeah. Yeah, I think the pill is a major factor in there. The thing is, birth rates were falling before the pill as well. So it's kind of a trend that was already in motion, and the pill was definitely not decelerant. It really kind of, yeah, helped to stoke the fires of a trend that was already in motion. So it's not the pill, or the pill may

have contributed, let's say. So when we talk about the cultural developments that are a product of urbanization, whatever. So what's going on, Alex? Because there's part of me that thinks that when we delve into this issue, we're going to find a lot of things we don't like pretty quickly in terms of, you know, the correlation between prosperity and the number of children people have. You know, do we need to be poorer so that we start reproducing? Is it about women's liberation? If we liberated women too far, like that would be a question some people ask. I'm not saying I'm asking it, but people will start to ask all of these questions. You talk to, I've been talking to a lot of people at the conference about it, like Louise Perry, she's like it's all about prosperity.

You talk to Eric Kaufman, he'll say, well, it's about religion, you know, and he's not religious, but religious communities reproduce and non-religious basically don't. Like, where do you see the crucial piece of this? Yeah, I think it's, you know, unfortunately, it's hard to kind of delineate which particular ingredient in this, because these are all kind of factors that accentuate each other. and it's hard to say what the first domino was when you're like 100 dominoes down the line. So I think, you know, in a way, the education of women was a big thing. You know, it kind of freed women from marriages

that were not necessarily of convenience, but in the sense that, you know, they really were dependent in many ways for men, for protection and for financial support, which, you know, not saying anything about the quality of those marriages, a lot of marriages, you know, are arranged or, you know, maybe coerced. a little bit in the beginning and people end up having a really good marriage.

So not saying that that's a bad thing, but it's, you know, the fact that people did have a lot more options, like in the case of having children as well, I think led to decline in marriage rates and then, you know, and the revealed preference of not having to deal with each other is bullshit. And so the inevitable question is, if we are to address this problem, what do we do? Yeah, you know, it's like kind of a, Pandora's box type situation, putting the tooth base pack in the tube. It's a tough one. I mean, I feel like obviously what I'm part of and what I'm trying to do is kind of more of a, you know, incentivizing people culturally to, you know, adopt this meme of pronatalism because, I mean,

I can be only a testimonial of one. It's been really a miraculous thing for my life. And I know for my husband, as well. I mean, yeah, I don't want to speak for him, but yeah, I can because, you know, he's very happy being a dad. And, yeah, the people that I know around me are also, you know, completely enamored by their children. There's also, you know, the downside is of building this up too much because obviously there are downsides. You know, I think there's also kind of a very trad movement now that it's like, oh, you know, this is going to solve all your psychoses, all your problems are going to be solved by having children. It's all upside. Obviously, it's not, I mean, you know, people have the instinct that this is going to derail their lives and they're very, very right.

It's going to completely restructure the way you relate to yourself to your partner, to your life, to what your priorities are. But for most people, this is a good thing. I really think so because a lot of the problems that people have psychologically with kind of the burden of modernity is this aimlessness of, okay, what is it that I'm supposed to be doing? You know, there's no guardrails. It's all about you self-creating. you know, building this unique, you know, snowflake type thing that only you represent, you know, finding your authenticity, going to whatever silent retreats and meditating on what it is to be alive and stuff like that. And I've personally found by doing this stuff, it feels like it's kind of an

eternal circle. You're kind of always back to square one. And it's like, you know, whenever you think you've had this major epiphany that you've kind of fought yourself out of your thinking process, you're back in the shit. Do you think part of the problem as well is that we are, accustomed to living a life where our own pleasure is the main thing? Yeah, I think that's, that is part of the problem. It's, it's, it's a hard problem to solve because that's kind of the most immediate thing that you want to do because, you know, in a way, we're at base, we're all animals and, you know, you want to scratch an itch and, you know, eat the, eat the candy and do all that stuff. Plus, there are so many ways to scratch so many itches that you didn't even know you had

and probably didn't have until, you know, yesterday when you saw, hmm, people are having this itch online. Maybe I should scratch it. So I think that's, you know, something that people underestimate, like the memetic power of a lot of the stuff that comes in from the internet. I mean, you know, the kind of more benign way is that, you know, some company convinced you to buy shoes off of the internet. The more kind of vicious way is that, you know, your 14-year-olds convinced to chop up her breasts because she saw 500 TikTok videos of people saying, this is really satisfying do it so yeah i mean it's it is a very strange new world and it is you know kind of all about this because we don't have a structure to fit into to say okay how what is what is life you know

life is you wake up you go feed the animals you have this this this this responsibility this fills up your entire day um and then you go to bed and you you know say your prayer and you you know you report to to this authority and you're kind of inbuilt into the system. And everyone else believes the same thing because obviously this is what you believe. I think, you know, since timing memorial, we had something like that. Now we don't have anything like that. And people are told, okay, it's time for you to make up on the fly, whatever you think that thing is, you know?

And I don't think most people, probably very few people are equipped to actually do that, you know, to create their own authenticity from scratch. And then they fall prey to a lot of this stuff that's just like out there in the And a lot of the stuff is really predatory. Like, you know, whatever, slot machine gambling now. It's like, you know, salt machines used to be really bad in like even the 80s. But nowadays, they have essentially the same logic inbuilt like candy crush. And you have people just like sitting in front of the slot machines, you know, peeing on themselves after three days and, you know, like dying of dehydration because this stuff is just so powerful. And we're really

not equipped to deal with it. And yeah, like I said, not just a slot machine. It's like everything things like that now. And, you know, the free market idea is that, you know, there is a need. The market's feeling a need. These people have a need to, you know, dive the hydration in front of a slot machine because they keep doing it. They keep pulling the lever. Free will, they're consenting to do it. So, yeah, I think a lot of our environment is set up like that. And, you know, maybe this trad stuff and, you know, kind of back to the land, all this stuff is kind of a bit of a backlash against that. You know, I don't necessarily think it's all, you know, super wise. And I think a lot of people, you know, I hear stories of, you know, like 19 and 20 year olds now getting married,

just in being afraid of all this stuff that we're talking about, the predation that they see around them. And then they get really kind of disillusioned by the fact that, you know, marrying some random 19-year-olds who thinks that, you know, the West has fallen off the internet is not like an idyllic way of living. And it's not really like, you know, in the pictures of you walking for a wheat field with your babies and stuff. So, yeah, we're definitely at a sort of kind of metaphysical crossroads and how we relate to ourselves and in the West in general. And people feel like they've lost a lot.

But we're still kind of fumbling in the dark about what to do, what to do about it. And one of the interesting things that has risen with this whole natalism conversation is a rise of surrogacy. Now, you look at it on the surface, you go, okay, this is. is, you know, this is good. You know, people who can't have kids can have kids. What's wrong with that? And then you look into it and you go, oh, this is dark.

Yeah, yeah. It's a strange thing because obviously the kind of the more kind of napkin presentation of the case for surrogacy is really nice. You know, you have, you know, women who maybe don't, are not of, you know, great means, you know, but are willing to do it for kind of generously to help someone who maybe is infertile and they really want their own child. and this is the only way they can have it. It's really, you know, it kind of pulls on a heart string, especially if you're someone who knows, you know, are infertile yourself or, you know, it's tough out there.

Like I said, you know, a lot of people are having trouble with this. And it feels like, oh, you know, you scratch my back, I scratch yours type of situation. But I think the case for it or against it in a way is kind of a case of like virtual ethics. It's like if we allow this type of activity to start, And if we allow this little edge case where, you know, it's obviously virtuous and mice, the thing is not going to stay there. You know, we have, you know, slippery slopes are all around us and we've been slipping on so many.

And at this point where I think surrogacy, especially commercial surrogacy and cross-border commercial surrogacy is already a little bit of a strange beast. Because, you know, especially now with the war in Ukraine, you know, this is kind of a lot of the uncovered was essentially that a lot of, people who are evacuating were these kind of like big brother style houses of women who, you know, were living kind of in a cluster home, I don't know, pregnant with some Westerners baby and they were kind of being kept in sort of, I don't know, observation so that the moms and dads or whoever was ordering the baby from abroad was, yeah, was kept in check of how the ladies were doing and stuff like that. So I don't know. It was, yeah, I mean, you could see this. We're still at the beginning.

beginning of this. And this is already kind of, you know, it feels a little bit predatory. And it feels a bit predatory to interrupt and just completely, like, commercially severed the bond between mom and baby. I mean, I've, I've had a baby. I'm going to have one again very soon. And it's the idea that, you know, in the hospital, even though if I signed the contract before, obviously, you know, I consented to this previously without knowing how I'd feel when the baby arrived, I would just have to give the baby, you know, just hand it over and say, Sainara, I'm going to go home now. So, yeah, there's also a lot of, you know, physical cost involved.

Yeah, it's, you know, recovering from pregnancy is not always easy. There's risks of, you know, risk that is really hard to calculate in advance as well in terms of the impact on your health, you know. Some women, you know, end up having, like, stress fractures, uterine ruptures, all sorts of, you know, things that just happened in the course of, not being pregnant, might lead to infertility for themselves afterwards. So yeah, I mean, obviously if someone's more of a libertarian bent, they say, okay, you know, put this in a disclaimer, put it in the contract, obviously let them know that this, you know, side effects might include

this, this, and this. But I think when it comes to something so profound as the bond between a child and mother, you know, I don't think your body knows that, oh, this is someone else's egg and this is some, you know, third-party sperm. And, you know, this is, you know, this is, It's a strange. It's a different situation. But yeah, it just feels like, you know, one of those slopes that, you know, it's, you can tell when you reach the precipice that it's like this, this is the direction that's going into. And we're just about there. And we're taking the first step down the slope. And it's, you know, the darkness at the bottom is essentially, you know, people ordering babies for anything. Well, it comes back to the point you were making about

the market. It's like, what is the commodity that's being traded in that? exchange and it starts to get a little bit creepy very quickly and the first rancis says once you look into it then it sort of starts to make sense a little bit but i want to come back to what what can be done about it because um i was chatting to a bunch of young women at the conference uh and i actually did something i don't usually did which i just stood back and listened for a long time and there's a kind of different set of perspectives on this because there are some uh some people who go, well, you know, we got to put the message out there and whatever. And there are other people who I think quite rightly say, well, look, like a guy on stage telling me a bunch of statistics about when I'm supposed to get pregnant by isn't really going to persuade me to do it.

And I did, you know, since I've had my son a year ago, I've been putting out like wholesome thirst traps on the internet about like, is this is how fun it is. This is how much I'm enjoying. He's a cute photo or whatever, even though I'm going to stop doing that. what is the way to just let it's not about persuading people into doing stuff it's just like letting them know that that option that we talked about has all these benefits that you might not see because you're living in you know in a big city you may none of your friends have kids you know the one of them were saying i didn't hold my first baby until i was 30 which to me and probably to you being eastern european you're like what you know no that was the case for me as well i was it yeah i didn't have to believe I was like totally surrounded by babies my whole time. I know that's pretty normal in the Eastern Room because I'm just a bit of a freaks. So what do you think is some of the, what is the best way to communicate about this issue in your opinion?

I think there's kind of a two-pronged thing. I really, I agree that the young ladies, one that's really be convinced by, you know, a graph here. Look at the graph. It's real bad if you don't pop them out tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think that's good. And I do think kind of your approach of thirstrapping is probably more suitable to how to do it. I think people seeing high status people, people that they look up to, people that they want to emulate doing these things and presenting it, like I said, in a bit of a realistic manner.

Because, you know, you can also have the overshot where it's just all just wheat feels and, you know, women surrounded by seven babies, you know, a rail thin with their, you know, wonderful blonde hair, you know, flowing in the wind. that happens but it's rarely the case it's usually a bit more hectic if you have seven babies you know they're not all chill all the time and all this type of stuff so yeah i mean it's that's kind of i'll stop posting his photos and i'll just stop stop posting his napis and like the kitchen table after he's done throwing stuff everywhere yeah just i think if you put like five adorable thirst traps of wonderful things throw a dirty nappy in there occasionally to remind people that you there's a bit of a downside on there as well And the reason I feel really strongly about this is I don't know if I've told this on in public before,

but I did this discussion unheard a few months back. And Freddie who, Freddie says, who hosts it, he said to me, he said, there's something different about you since you became a father. There's something different. And I went, well, yeah, the future is not an abstraction anymore. It has a face and it has a name. which I hadn't thought about before but that's what came to me in the moment and then as we were standing outside

I'd broken all my post father promises and bummed a cigarette of Freddie and I was him and I was standing there smoking and this couple walked out of the club and the woman came over to me and she was like oh I'm so glad you said that you know you really changed the way I think about you know I'm really blah and she was like

you could tell she was really inspired and she was like we're going to have children now you know i was oh right now we'll go for it but but then i we were talking a little bit more and i and i how old are you and she went on 43 i mean it still can still happen it could it could but probably not yeah and i felt that that was a kind of sign to me that I shouldn't keep quiet about it because I don't want people to end up in that position where that realization comes that late and there's maybe not a huge amount you can do about it. And I think that's tragic actually.

And I think a whole slew of people from our generation, we're both 40. If you're a woman our age and you haven't, you know, you're in, you're in trouble, right? So this is a really serious issue, not just like for the survival of South Korea, but like, for people's sense of fulfillment and well-being and happiness and all of that. And increasingly, I meet and hear from a lot of people who are in that position. So it's a really important issue. But as we talked about, the top-down, do this. This is what all of that isn't going to work. So other than you and I thirst-trapping people online, what else can be done culturally about this if it's a cultural issue? Yeah. I think, you know, the policy wonk type stuff I think should be done.

not necessarily because each individual policy does something, but because it signals that this is a kind of a priority of the state. And I think it should be because, you know, very few things are as serious and as imminent. I think the problem that we have with kind of democratic politics is that people think in like four or five years cycles. And it's like, okay, what's burning now? And these things, like this is like generational, multi-generational issues. And it's very hard to bake in kind of a long-term view

because, you know, what's the return going to be on whatever, you know, politicians' priorities for the next five years? So I think that's a challenge. But given the fact that, you know, a lot of people really are having this problem, and the fact that this is, like, the main theme of this conference is not just because it's filled with, you know, weird, like, Westminster Wong's, because it isn't. It's filled with a lot of people who maybe have gone through, you know, trying to have children or have gotten, to some issues with it. We're talking about housing.

We're talking about all this stuff. And they're trying to solve these issues. And I think this is symptomatic of a change in the culture as well. I mean, you didn't hear about this five years ago, though. It was already kind of a problem in the South Korea sense. It was already kind of an issue. But now it's an issue as well because I feel many people from the millennial generation or so are starting to feel the burn of this as well.

Like they're seeing people in their cohort either trying to have children, managing to have children or, you know, having pretty kind of depressing lives, you know, trying to, you know, keep going to the clubs with their, you know, wrinkly, whatever. And, you know, it's not, it's just not, yeah, it's not a satisfying thing. So I think it's, it might have a chance to just be picked up. And, you know, through a myriad of thirst traps from, from influential people such as yourselves, I think it's going to, yeah, you know. Because also as well, it.

leads to the problem of mass immigration, where we have a labor shortage in this country. And the only way to fill it is to get people from overseas. And that creates its all but its own problems. Yeah, of course. I mean, this is, again, the five-year cycle. It's like, yeah, for the next five years, this is an extremely good, you know, you're going to solve, patch the problem. But immigrants get old.

Immigrants stop having kids as well. You know, it's the same type of thing. You're just getting in essentially a new dependent class because, you know, they're, you They usually have maybe more children than the typical, you know, Westerner for maybe one or two generations. But the declines already fairly steep once they get here. Because of urbanization, because of the incentives of living in the space, because of, you know, the fact that obviously their children will be educated.

They want them to come here to be educated. The girls will be educated. They have other aspirations for their lives. And then, you know, even if they're in a bit more of a traditional context, you know, the memes of modernity are flooding. in the pill, you know, maybe they didn't have the pill back in Afghanistan and definitely have it here. Yeah.

And what is high status in the culture is not, you know, being the tried wife or whatever, having lots of kids. It is, I don't know, participating in all the self-creating, cool authenticity stuff that we discussed before. So, yeah, I think that's... But it also leads to problems within a nation because the lack of cohesiveness within the nation, you know, people from different cultures mean that it's not as homogenous as it once was. That leads to problems, leads to problems of national identity.

So, you know, there's a flip side to mass immigration as well. Oh, of course. I definitely. No, no, no, definitely. There are many, many issues with mass immigration. I mean, like I said, for fertility, I would say, yes, it's kind of a bit of a patch in the short term. but in terms of kind of what it does to national cohesion. And this is kind of like very vague terminology.

That's what people attack it. It's like, oh, what does this cohesion even mean? Well, you know, if you go to Bradford, you see what cohesion means. You know, if you go to places where cohesion's broken down, you know, I know it when I see it type of things. A lot of kind of modern politics is about kind of the rule of experts, you know, bring your own spreadsheets, bring your own graphs and type of stuff. And I feel like a lot of the problems that you have of mass immigration is just, you know, kind of the silent disenfranchisement of people who used to live here. You know, it's like this whole like white flight type discussion, people just kind of, you know, slowly moving out.

It's hard sometimes to quantify or people don't really want to quantify it because it's not a not a favorable statistic to the incentive structure that the people in politics want to build. So it just, you know, you just wake up one day and like, you know, Bradford is majority, I don't know exactly. Bangladesh, Pakistani, something like that. And, you know, people might say, oh, it's just the way the cookie crumbles is fine, whatever. You know, but it's not just that. You know, you obviously have the grooming gang crisis, I mean, scandal, you know, whatever, just like this pervasive insanity that happened with the majority Pakistani grooming gangs. And also because there's kind of a silencing on this and, you know, people don't really want to rock the boat.

They don't want to be anti-immigration. like that. These things tend to escalate to a point where, you know, it's, it's really, it's really unsustainable. And yeah, this stuff doesn't make it into the, into the GDP calculation. It just, you know, overall GDP is growing, you know. It doesn't matter what Bradford looks like. It doesn't matter if, you know, that, you know, the girls are tortured and Telford or something like that. GDP line goes up. That's what, you know, most of the policy wonks care about. So, yeah, that's kind of what's going to flow into the statistics. That's what the experts are going to care about.

But, yeah, I think, like, that's a lot of the stuff that's kind of low status and so right-wing politics and things like that is based on, you know, things that are nakedly visible to the eye that are, you know, obviously painful for people experiencing them. But that somehow don't make it into the statistics, you know. It's one of the things I wanted to ask you about because you're one of the people that I see talking about status a lot, high status, low status. status. And I think Ed West talks about this quite a bit as well. It's a very interesting way of looking at why some ideas are popular and another's not, because I think it's tempting,

particularly if you're like us, you care about truth. It's sort of tempting to think, well, if something's right, then other people are going to, but that's kind of not really the way we think about these things, is it? Yeah, I think status is a really important variable that, Yeah, a lot of people overlook because, you know, yeah, people tend to think that, okay, the world operates on truth claims, okay, if something's more science-based, is something more kind of knowledge-based than something else, it will somehow, for some mechanism, went out in the end. But in reality, kind of the way power works and the way ideas become influential is

who exactly holds these ideas, you know, how do they propagate the fact that that they hold them, who is influenced by them. And, you know, it's kind of, you know, we hear that, you know, the argument from authority is a fallacy, but it's pretty much how arguments work, you know. And even you, like, for example, if you want to inform yourself about whatever kind of, you know, strange topic that you don't know much about, you know, you go to ex-expert and see, okay, what is the consensus in the field, maybe you listen to one or two speakers or something, and then you, from authority, take that guy's,

word for it. And now because we have so many domains, pretty much every domain of life is a domain of expertise, and that's kind of what we believe in. You know, the argument from authority is pretty much what we all believe. And then status in every field is how kind of that authority is conveyed, okay? And so you have that in... Pandemic was a good example of this. And actually, whichever side of the argument you come down on,

and this is what I was going to ask you about, because now with... I feel that so many of the issues that we're talking about are a product of social media because social media gives status to ideas that aren't true but sound good and punishes ideas that are true but don't sound good, I think, in a way that even discussion in the mainstream media doesn't even reach that level. Like the level of derangement on many things in social media is amplified by the fact that it really rewards things that sound nice and therefore high status versus things that don't.

Do you think that's a big part of it, the social media entering into the fray and that's one of the reasons that there's such a separation now as well? Yeah, I think social media kind of exacerbates what is already present in human nature. Yeah, I think if you were in like a little band of people in your village, you had kind of the same instincts of, okay, I'm going to trust a high status guy and I'm going to think this guy's a loser because he's whatever, since whatever loser signals and I'm not going to believe his religion. I'm going to believe this guy's religion. And that's kind of what you have on social media. I mean, whoever you follow, they're the influencers and you're going to kind of side with them, even if they make some crazy statements. Because an interesting thing that I've noticed about even like political social media is that

the clustering of positions is sometimes not very coherent. Like, you know, you had, for example, with COVID at the beginning, the most intensely lockdown, pro-lockdown, pro-masking, people were people on the fringe right because they were kind of early on this. There's a lot of them in Asia for some reason. And they were really kind of, you know, on the barricades and learning about this and telling people where to get their masks and stuff. And then it kind of flipped when it became a little bit more mainstream.

People, you know, at first it was all about hugging your friends in Chinatown and stuff like that in the mainstream. And then it flipped. It was all, you know, this is the end of the world. We need to lock down. And you could see this kind of the status hierarchies like solidifying in real time because, you know, it wasn't clear exactly what the position was at first. But then it was clear, okay, you know, my people believe this.

We believe, you know, vaccines are holy. We need the masks. We need the lockdown. It's all good. If you're against this, you're a part of this other tribe. And obviously, there's also an incentive for the other tribe to say, oh, really? Well, then yes. Exactly.

Yes, I am the anti-masking people. I am anti-vaccine people. And it just lead to, like, definitely more derangement in terms of, like, people holding on to positions really strongly than you'd have in, you know, the village with the loser guy and the high status chat telling you what religion to follow. So, yeah, I think there's definitely a lot of kind of mechanics built into the internet that, like the slot machines, we're not used to, like, social escalations that we're not used to dealing with in real life. We're not built for that scale of, I don't know, exacerbation of ideas. And is the answer to get off the internet?

Just sorry. Yeah, is that the only answer? Because I don't think we are going to get off the internet. Yeah, yeah. It's a tough one. To be honest, with all these technologies, like, you know, are we going to get off the pill? Are we going to, you know, get off of the Industrial Revolution? Yeah, you know, it's the toothpaste meat tube type situation because we need it.

I mean, you know, we both make our living off broadcasting on the internet. You know, I want to read the comments, see what people are talking about. I want to see who the guests are. I'm kind of stuck stuck in it in a way. And I feel like just personally, I'm just now I'm trying to kind of moderate my use of it, you know, trying to be, you know, trying to be, yeah, I don't know, try to be very paternalistic with myself and how I use it because no one else is going to be. But I can see how, you know, how much of a downward spiral it can be for other people who, you know, for some reason or another, maybe don't have, you know,

good self-control. Not that I have extremely good self-control, but, you know, I'm really, you know, doing my best to do this. But, yeah, it's, you know, it's another thing that is and can be predatory if it's not put to good use. And I think this is kind of a dynamic that you see a lot nowadays in terms of, you know, the space we're in with all these technologies and all the stuff that's really changed in the last 300 years is really good and gives like insane returns to a very small percent of people. You see just everywhere from dating markets, from the economy, you know, there are a few people who are very well placed in terms of being like very high IQ, high conscientiousness, low neuroticism type people who can just take this stuff and just like

plug into it, like, robotically and just, you know, make the most money, you know, get the best partner, things like that. And then that works out for them. But because it is such a, there's so many wild cards here for the other people, this is essentially like predatory, the fact that this is all just like completely, you know, very like, you know, build your own adventure, non-paternalistic. We don't judge type stuff. But it is really, yeah, it's quite aggressive for the, for the people who are just not equipped to deal with it. So, you know, we've kind of built our society around the idea that, you know, freedom is perfect. It's really good. But I think there are gradations of how much any individual person can consent to this stuff, both in the sense that the stuff is getting

more predatory by the year, like every year the stuff, you know, with A-B testing, like everything more refined. And I feel like a lot of people who are at the top, you know, tend to be very libertarian about this, it's all fine. But I feel like there's, it's coming for you. Like, you're not, you know, you might say you're going to plug into the AI and become like a Superman, but you're not a Superman yet. You know, even with your high IQ type stuff, it'll get you. Like some, one of these traps will get you eventually. And, you know, it's, you know, for now it's okay that it's just kind of like consuming the plebs and whatever. But yeah, it's coming. It's coming to a, to a theater near you. I couldn't agree with you more. And I think what people failed to realize with social media

is that it is dementing. And that we like to think that we're immune. I certainly did until, you know, one day you end up losing your head and just getting drawn into an argument. And before you know it, you were seven, it was seven o'clock in the morning, you're looking out, and it's the sun is setting. And you've spent however long, you know, saying things that you deeply regret. Yes. We've all been there having me. Yes. I mean, one of my rules on the internet is to not engage in beefs. And one of my other rules that I don't follow pretty much is to not read comments, but I do read comments in the end. And then people tell me like, oh, you know, you're really fat. And I'm like, well, whatever. But one of the things that moving on, but still

focusing on the internet that I find really interesting is the left-right paradigm, where people used to say, I'm left, I'm right. Well, because everything has become niche due to the internet, what you see is political movements becoming fractured and fragmented. And at first it happened with the left, where I originally was on the left, and then I saw wokeism and we all know what happened with that. But now I'm seeing on the right, and the fractures start to appear on the right. So what do you think of that, what's happening on the right? And where do you place yourself? Yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, if you asked me that, maybe a year or two ago, I'd probably have like a name for the place where I place myself.

But now I'm not so sure just because I'm kind of in the more kind of dissident right right wing space and I kind of know the different factions now. And it does feel like the fracturing is more of a product of what's going on with the medium itself, like with the internet itself and the incentives that are set by the platforms. So obviously, you know, what are these movements? They all are, they have a few key influencers, some of them. And they kind of set policy for the movement.

and to grow your specific circle, you kind of have to cleave off audience from the other circles. And then you enter into these beefs for whatever point of doctrine. There's beef around, you know, should we be a wife guy or is, you know, loving women and having a peaceful home with them gay, you know, or something like that. What a conversation. This is an important conversation on the right. Obviously, there's a split between religious and atheist right-winger. or people who are maybe more into like pagan vibes and things like that.

That's a big fault line. So, you know, that's kind of, you know, and obviously the influencers in these spaces, especially because now there's more attention to these spaces because there really is a lot of, you know, generative, interesting stuff happening there. That's why I'm in the space. They're getting a lot of attention.

You know, there's a bit of money, actually. People are getting whatever sign-ups and whatever sub-stack money. And, yeah, there's more incentive to present yourself, as the actual air of the right wing in general, and this is the program. And my 10-point program is much more coherent than your 10-point program. And, yeah, people fighting over-immigration.

Like, there's a... The major fault line now is between people who are kind of Christian, and they essentially are looking forward to, you know, a right-wing with kind of a Christian core as kind of the morality of whatever proposed state that they'd like to live in. And people who say, oh, no, no, Christianity. Essentially just means, you know,

open borders because you just let it in anyone in the world who's Christian. And that obviously has a lot of, you know, bad side effects in the sense that we're pretty much a square one. And we have the same social ills that we have now. But everyone's nominally Christian. So yeah, I mean, that's kind of the main divide here. And I, there is something to these arguments. Obviously, they need to be to be discussed. But the fact that they end up, you know, in the sense that, okay, we need to purge you. You know, we need to, we need to cleave you off. And we need to, whoever is with me has to stay on this side of the fence and whoever is not with me needs to leave. It's, yeah, it's definitely a, it's an interesting and lively time to be in right-wing politics on the internet.

But yeah, it's still, I think, one of the most interesting places to hang out. And you identify as being, to quote your words, a dissident right? What does that actually mean? What do you believe? It's just a moniker for the whole, the whole space. I mean, what do I believe? I mean, I've, you know, I don't think I'd say I have like a, you know, political program to implement tomorrow. But I'm definitely, I'm more of a kind of a suspicious of mainstream right politics. I mean, I shared the same values. I mean, I think we should have a society that has kind of a relatively core normative ideas of how to live life. You know, the two family type situation, two parent family type situation. And that policy should be geared towards supporting that. and, you know, we should be having kind of a long-term consideration of what our societies will look like, which brings in the kind of the birth rates conversation and all of this stuff.

I think religion should have a kind of a revered position in society, though, you know, my personal relationship of religion is a little bit tortured and I know. But, yeah, I think, you know, I'm kind of right-wing in the sense of, yes, my values align with pretty much, I would say most right-wing people who would consider themselves right-wing. What the dissident right brings to the table is kind of a... a more granular critique of power. Like, a lot of people in the dissidentite wouldn't say that, you know, okay, we just need to win the next election.

Because I think that the main epiphany that they've had is post-Trump, post-Brexit, is that things just don't work that way. You know, it's not like you win an election and you have power. Your side has power. And now you do your side's things. We discovered that, you know, there is a whole substructure, kind of managerial substructure. You call it the blob, call it the cathedral.

club, whatever you'd like, that essentially has a mind of its own, and it is fueled by status. It's fueled by what the elite, the actual elite, who is in power, not the figurehead guy who you voted in or out, and what they believe and what fuels them and what interests them. And for now, the major kind of ideology behind the elite is some form of wokeness. You know, the most interesting and powerful people in the world believe some form of of either because they are true believers, which I think most of them are, or because it is useful to them because it has some useful characteristics for the upper class, because they can essentially have kind of this very profound moral vision where they can not only feel good about

themselves for, you know, flagellating themselves because, you know, whatever, white guilt and all this type of stuff. They can hate the people that they usually hate, which is kind of the middle and lower middle class. And then they can also kind of virtuously give handouts to their client classes, which are the lower classes, you know, people, immigrants, you know, all the woke coalition, the woke pyramid that you want to, obviously they don't mingle with these people, but they are their client class and they can make promises to them. And they can gang up on the middle, obviously, because the middle is always the contender

for the top spot. You know, you're not worried about, you know, the people in U. You know, you're worried about the people in Cornwall, you know. and you don't want those to come and get you. So, yeah, it's... So, Alex, that being the case, if winning elections doesn't solve things, what is the dissidents' right version of the solution? There are many solutions.

That's always kind of where the thing breaks down a little bit because the solutions are typically a more centralized form of organizing society. Oh, there's a relief. authoritarianism, great. I mean, you call authoritarianism, but you know, democracy is something that's quite recent in human history. I mean, we've had some form of

of monarchy pretty much since time of memorial, there's always kind of, you know, that's kind of the hierarchy. You know, you have middle management, upper management, at the top, there's a CEO in any organization that's functional, you know, except for the state, where apparently we're all kind of cope, co-partners and we're all CEOs and in our own right, but in reality, that's not really how it

works. So I think that the main critique isn't that, you know, democracy on paper is bad, is that democracy in reality is essentially a shadow oligarchy. It's like, it's not that, you know, it wouldn't be good for it to be this way where, you know, we have these really relevant people who actually have power in government that we can all vote for in an informed way. And, you know, this is, this all sounds great. I buy into it. But witnessing the process of politics, how the sausage is made in reality, what you have is essentially a whole cast of people who you cannot see,

who are unaccountable, who are distributed within this whole kind of hydra of managerialism. And like with COVID, like who exactly, you know, has been held to account for the fact that most probably this stuff escaped a lab. Most probably a lot of the policies were completely misguided. an extreme amount of, you know, a lot of people died because of the policies. I mean, you know, because of issues with policies around the hospitals. So, you know, there's absolutely no accountability for the stuff. There won't be a Nuremberg trial for COVID because there are no figureheads, you know. You can shoot Himmler.

You can, you know, it's clear because he was obviously in charge of his division. He had his middle management. He had all the people under him. You can, you know, French Revolution style kill the king. because you know who he is and he's responsible for X or Y. So I think that's kind of the idea. It's like, okay, if you want to have any sort of functional organization, you need to have a chain of command

and you need to know who the guy at the top is because, you know, when you go out to have your little French Revolution to oust him, at least you know who he is. And that's it. And it sounds really... There will be a lot of people who would happily hang Matt Hancock from the gallows down the road from here, I promise you. Sorry, man.

But isn't that the problem with every... type of government. Every type of government, Constantine is obviously from Russia. You know, you had the figurehead, the leader, but you also had the shadowy bureaucrats. Chicheska is the same thing. My mom's from Venezuela, Maduro, I would happily kill, right? But he's also got his cronies, none of whom that I know. So isn't that the problem with all government addicts? Yeah, in a way, in a way it is. I mean, I think it's a problem of scale as well. And it's a problem of, you know, the fact that a lot of the managerial system that we have now in government, it really is kind of necessary. Like, you know, back in the day, you didn't have, like, FDA, EPA type organizations, which, you know, people might, you know, not think they're extremely effective, but you kind of need them now because the complexity of the whole system really is, like, incredible.

You know, you need to have consumer protection. You need to have all these types of things. So it really is hard to see who's in charge of these things. So, yeah, I think there is an issue with that. But I mean, you know, with Chowcchescu, we didn't shoot the guy and things did change. I mean, slowly and slowly. It's a bit unfair. He had like a 99% approval rating.

Yeah, yeah. The day before you were set. Yeah, it tells you a lot about democracy. It doesn't happen. Well, it's not really democracy. I just dropped my mind. Yeah, well, it's not a democracy when you don't like it, is it? Yeah.

You don't like the result. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, I think a lot of people on dissident right would say that, you know, our democracy might be closer to that than you think, you know, to the figurehead type. So what's the solution then as I fiddle my microphone back in my pocket? The solution, I mean, like I said, there's different proposals. I'm not sure that I, you know, buy any of them and like wholesale.

But the idea would be, you know, a lot of people are interested in kind of more decentralized ways of organizing society, like, you know, like charter cities and stuff, where it's kind of much easier to have kind of a CEO figure at the top where it's, you know, small, you essentially buy into this community and then you also have exit rights. So you don't necessarily have voice where you vote for the guy, but it's like it's whatever, Constantine's Charter City. He's the boss here. I kind of like what he's doing with the place. And then I apply to get in. You know, Constantine says, you're nice. Okay, you can stay here. And if, you know, it hits the fan, you can have exit rights. How many wives am I allowed to have on this?

Because that's really the main thing. I don't know. It's your Charter City, Constantine. You have to decide. I am now part of the dissident right because this sounds great. I strictly won by the way. Strictly one by the solution, yeah. I mean. But this is kind of the American model. We saw this particularly during COVID. You know, a lot of our friends moved around the United States. Yeah. I think it's a good model. Yeah. Well, I am envious as hell. You do need a big country to do it and a federalist system. Or multiple countries. Or multiple countries. Right, exactly. But that is actually what happened is people are sorting themselves based on their

preferences about how they want to see their relationship between welfare and government and taxes and freedoms and opportunities and so on. And so you see those more liberty-minded people moving to places like Texas, like Florida, and there are plenty of people in California. I was just in California a few weeks ago. There are lots of people, you know, there's this narrative as like everyone is leaving LA. There are lots of people who are really happy living in LA and they're staying because they are comfortable with the trade-offs that they have. Of course. They don't like the machete attacks,

but as they told me, they have an app now. Yeah, of course. They have an app. Machete swerve. Yeah. Something like, well, right, is that what it's called? It's a head of a name. We should set them up here, mate.

You came up with that straight away. But this is literally a conversation I had with somebody. I was like, they were asking me about, oh, we see all these knife attacks in London. I was like, oh, yeah, I was just watching a video of some guy with a machete. And they were like, oh, yeah, we have that here, but we have an app. We put it in, and then everyone knows to stay away from that area for a couple of hours. There's a way in which these things kind of self-segregate at one point.

Right. It's like, you know, we're talking about white flight and stuff like this. You know, it's, you know, you could call it kind of Brazilification where you have the high-rise next to the favelas, and there's a really, really functional wall between them. And then, you know, people live relatively peacefully. There's some, you know, issues between them. But, yeah, that's kind of, that seems to be kind of the equilibrium that these, you know, these cities reach, you know, you have the kind of the donut cities model where, you know,

the inner city is just completely deserted. And then the suburbs are flourishing. And then you have kind of the commuter towns around. And then you kind of, people swear of each other, swerving the machetes. So it's essentially a future in which people start to build their communities according to their valley systems. I think that's probably most likely. I think I see a lot of people doing that already in practice or aspiring to do it. Yeah, there's not really, you know, you kind of have to coordinate around. something. I mean, obviously, I'd love that something to be like the nation state and stuff like that, but it might just be the case that, you know, the nation state was a social technology for a

different era where, you know, nations were at war with each other and you kind of had kind of nations representing relatively homogenous ethnicities, not just like, you know, economic zones. So now I think it might be that, okay, people will arrange themselves after maybe religion, maybe whatever, you know, they're transhumanist AI devotees. and if you want to, I don't know, whatever, have... Well, some set of values, you know, like, for example, we are here at NACCON, neither France or are particularly conservative or nationalistic, really.

We welcome you. But this is my point, exactly. This is my point exactly, which is that there is overlap in terms of values between different groups of people. I wrote a piece of my substack after we came back from America about the old-school liberals in America and conservatives trying to work out a way to work together on things that they actually agree on.

And that's kind of maybe what you're talking about. And I have to say, I joked about being part of the dissing and right, but I genuinely think that in Britain it's unlikely because we're too small a country. But in America, I totally see that happening. And everyone I talk to about their experience of doing that, they seem really happy.

They seem really happy. You know, like, this is, Rogan was like, oh, move to Texas is great. And there are people in Florida who are delighted to be there, like I said, there's people in New York. They love being in New York, and it's the value system that works for them. Hmm, I'll be thinking about this. Yeah, I think it seems to be like a natural way that things are kind of panning out. You know, there's a lot of talk about kind of theoretical ideas in these spaces. It's like, you know, the integral state. Everything's going to be Catholic. No, it's not. This is very very hard to that. It's definitely a two-face that was left a tube for a very long time ago, not putting that. back in. So yeah, you know, in theory, a lot of things are possible. I think in reality,

something like this is more likely. I mean, you have this as well in Irania, you know, in South Africa is kind of a relatively famous thing where, you know, you have the Afrikaners, having trouble with the surrounding issues politically. They essentially, you know, made their own city and there's very strict rules of what you can do. It's not like, it's, you know, it's not walled off, but it's very clearly enforced what's allowed in there and whatnot. A lot of people have problems with this because it's, you know, it's very, it's for the Dutch ethnics of the country, and obviously it's very monochromatic in Irania. But it's, yeah, it's one way of solving their problems.

It's a highly functional society in a sea of absolute chaos, and that's, you know, one way. It's like a very, you know, the anti-favela. I mean, the problem is with that is if it's done on racial lines, I'm kind of not down with it. I mean, they're down with it. Yeah, it's a functional society. So was apartheid, you know what I mean?

I mean, it's not apartheid in the sense that, you know, this is literally just private property. It's like a reservation. It's like if the, you know, Indians in America would say, okay, we just buy this plot of land and we live there, which is essentially what they're doing now. But it's just because it's endorsed by the state. But here it's not endorsed by the state. It's just these people know each other. They have private property and they have so much of it that it's essentially a town. And, you know, if you're at least a little bit libertarian, you say, okay.

that's pretty much fair enough. Well, I have no problem. If they can't come into your house, why should they come into their compound? Right. I have no problem with people, you know, wanting to, you know, have shared ideals and all the rest of it. I'm deeply uncomfortable when it comes to the racial aspect of it, where people just go, right, we are X group of people.

I understand that, obviously, but in that, you know, I think in a situation like this where you're essentially at war, This is, you know, whatever you think about. There's a lot of violence happening in South Africa. Great. The racial aspect for the people living in Irania is a good rule of thumb. You know, if it's if your family's in danger and if that's kind of the thing. It's not that people of different ethnicities can't come in around.

Like literally, there is, but they have a police force. So no, like, deviation from, you know, law and order will be tarred. You literally will be taken off the premises if you start, you know, mucking about. Yeah. So, you know, it's, you know, there's a limit to tolerance sometimes. I agree there's a limit to tolerance when it comes to things like crime. The thing where it loses me is if it's done on pure, if you're essentially creating a mini-ethno state.

I think they're creating a mini-ethno state in practice and not necessarily because that's, you know, that's the ethos of it. But it's like, you know, this is, it is for their community and they happen to all be Dutch ethnic or, you know, from Afrikaners, essentially. And I think, you know, they do this for a reason because not doing this has been, you know, quite fatal for a lot of them. So, you know, I'm all for freedom of association independent of what criterion you're basing it on. So would you accept that in other nations? Yeah, why not?

I mean, it's just, you know, you buy a plot of land in Venezuela. and populated with your very best friends, you know. And you have so much money to buy a really big plot of land. Is it discriminatory that other people can't come trespass? It's not, if you're building a society and you're saying that this group of people aren't welcome because they have these type of immutable characteristics, I would say that there's a real problem with that.

And you would outlaw it. I mean, what's the limit there? Is it, if there's a post office, then it's bad. but if there's none, then it's just like your backyard. You know, I really do think that people should have the freedom to do that. Obviously, you know, this is a question of taste, and I think it's also a question of the conditions you happen to find yourself in, and yeah, and what you've had to tolerate up to that point.

And, you know, it's, yeah, it's, you know, it's a tough place to live in. And the problem is, like, the Afrikaners really don't really have anywhere to us to go. It's not like they can go back to Holland. It's, like, the only place that they can live. And I've had people on my show who are Afrikaners from South Africa. They're working, you know, politically to, you know, to, you know, better their country. But the things that they describe to me, you know, they, a lot of people like in Cape Town stuff have, you know, bars on their doors. And there's, you know, they're literally called rape bars for a reason, things like that.

So, you know, there's a lot of, like, profound ethnic conflict, which happens along the white-black divide. And it's obviously you want to give people the best. benefit of the doubt. And a lot of these guys that I've talked to also have a lot of black friends. You know, it's impossible not to do in South Africa. But, you know, there's a reticence around these things for a reason. And, you know, I think it's, it can be reasonable in some ways. And Alex, we've talked about a whole variety of subjects. The decision and right thing is an interesting one because I see you kind of dipping into that as I watch what you talk about and stuff, and I've always just been curious to hear your views on it.

We've got a little bit of time left. What else are you thinking about? What else am I thinking about? Other than the babies? Other than the babies, yeah, I think everyone's babyed out. I mean, the subject of my talk, this NatCon, was a little bit more, I guess, more spicy, but also it kind of flew under the radar because people don't really, yeah,

they shouldn't engage with it as much. It's essentially something, that ties it to what we were discussing as well. It's around the concept of equality. We have this aspiration towards equality. I think it's kind of, it's very virtuous. We want that. We have kind of an instinct for fairness.

We want people to engage with societies to their fullest and have as much opportunity as possible. But I feel we kind of constantly hit a snag, especially people who are kind of more the classical liberal persuasion. And they really do want, you know, we talk a lot about equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome. We, classical liberals are for equality of opportunity, while they are for equity, equality of outcome.

And I feel like for people who are more conservative or want maybe to implement a more conservative vision of society, this is a bit of a trap because if you say, okay, I'm for equality of opportunity and I want everyone to have equal opportunities, it's a very hard thing to prove politically in terms, like, for example, if you implement a policy, okay, I want to say everyone in the society has maximum opportunity, we're doing the best we can so that everyone can equalize opportunities. And if after one, two, three, four generations, that doesn't happen. And you have pretty much the same distributions of people ending up at the top

from different constituencies. I'm saying this is kind of a multi-ethnic, you know, men and women are, you know, theoretically have equality of opportunity. And you have, you realize you have the same patterns, the same patterns, the same patterns. What you get is an extremely powerful left because essentially what they're holding you to is a quality of outcome. Because there's no test for equality of opportunity in the wild, but equality of outcome. If you don't get a quality of outcome after the set timer, you're going to be suspected of racism, sex, homophobia, all this type of stuff. Well, it's even worse than that because on many of these criteria, we are actually, there is a quality of outcome across these groups.

still not enough. Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, you know, the ideology of this stuff kind of takes on the mind of its own after a while. It's, you know, it's the equalization and kind of, it becomes a bit of a religious impulse, you know. Not only do we need to equalize these people, we need to uplift them and write historical injustice by penalizing the oppressor class, you know, the people who are at the top. So we're kind of in that phase of it as well at this point. I feel like my speech was more in the sense that we need to be a little bit more realistic

about what's actually possible as the right. We keep getting into the same, we stuck in the mud in the same equality of outcome discussion, equality of opportunity discussion. And everyone's like how we, you know, you also have to kind of realize that equality of opportunity, even if you were to try your hardest at it, it's pretty much impossible in practice as well because people come to the table with, you know, extremely different, backgrounds, you know, even putting aside genetics, I mean, the cultural aspects, the, you know, what did they, what nutrition they have in childhood, you know, how much can you, can you change that?

And yeah, I think it's just a losing game. And I feel like the right should be in the, in the business of offering like functionality, offering wide-ranging opportunity, but in the sense of, okay, like colorblindness, you know. Well, this is what I've always said is like, I really reject any sort of messing around with quotas and any of that. What we should have is no discrimination based on prejudice, right? You eliminate that. And then it's, sorry, it's every man for himself at that point. It's a tough one because, you know, in law now you have essentially the standard of disparate impact.

And you have that in the UK as well under the De-Equality Act and the U.S. under the Civil Rights Act, where it's pretty tough to prove that you were prejudiced or not. And the way people prove that there was prejudice is by seeing the outcomes. So if you don't have proportional representation and exposition, people would say, okay, this is discriminatory. Because it really is, in practice, pretty tough to say, okay, why did you take this candidate instead of this one? Well, you might say, oh, they had a better university education, but no, but they have more experience here. So, you know, it kind of opens you up to litigation now and pretty much everywhere in the West. So this is something that I think as a right needs to be walked back.

because it's an impossible standard, and it's like a cudgel. It's a rod for our own back. I do not recommend. And I know it's kind of goes, it's counterintuitive because people really want to have equality. It's instinctive. We want fairness. But fairness needs to play out in a different way.

And you can see this especially. I mean, I'm sorry to say with crime as well. I mean, you have rampant crime in the U.S. especially and a little bit here in the UK as well. And there's a lot of issues with policing along racial lines, There's a lot of issues with not, you know, rocking the boat with different communities, which we've seen with the grooming and scandal. So, you know, from a right-wing perspective, what you would need to have in regards to crime

is pretty, you know, pretty strict and clear implementation of law and order, independent of how disparate the outcomes are. And I mean that the outcomes will be disparate because they've always been disparate, you know. And there's all sorts of factors that flow into here as well, you know, cultural factors. crack epidemic, whatever, fatherlessness, which are factors as well. But they're also extremely hard to remedy and say, oh, we're just going to change the culture. It's like we're just going to say, okay, you have to treat your children like Koreans treat their children and that's going to write things. That doesn't really happen. It's not how you, how things happen is much more

organic. So we need to, unfortunately, treat the symptoms to protect the citizens from this, because a lot of people forget that the cost of crime is not just, you know, the fact that the poor guy ends up in jail, because that's what we focus on, it's the absolutely ruined lives of the communities that have to live with these people. And a lot of the sources of the most crime in the world is recidivism. Like people who are in and out of jail are not deterred by short jail sentences. You know, I think something like a three strikes law or something like that is genius, because it really is a very small percentage of the population that does most of the crime and that also destabilizes most of the areas where crime happens,

because there is a kind of a domino effect in crime as well. It's like if you are in the crime-ridden area and there's a lot of crime, well, you know, crime is the way you make your money, you know, gangs and things like that. So, yeah, I think that's, you know, this is a fruitful and effective area of the right. I mean, you could see this with Giuliani's policies and, you know, after the crack epidemic, you know, things went well for a while because it was pretty strict and draconian, and, you know, people didn't like it because it, you know,

it affected certain communities more than others. It's going to, because that's just how, this is just how it is. There you go. Well, Alex, thank you for coming back on the show. We're going to ask you some questions from our local supporters in a second, but everyone should check out your subversive podcast, and we'll see you on locals right now. What or Who Inspired you?