Demography Is Destiny

The West is in a dismal state today. Despite unprecedented material wealth, our collective social capital has never been lower. Sometimes it feels like the West is in a state of civil war, with chaos and destruction reigning in many major cities. Most of this was predicted at least half a century ago, by those who studied the demographic trends.

The American fertility rate was over three children per woman from 1950 to 1964. This period of high fertility became known as the “Baby Boom”. The rate fell sharply after 1964, and by 1978 it had fallen to 1.8 children per woman. This demographic pattern had serious economic consequences.

As the Boomers entered the workforce en masse, an incredible economic phenomenon began. Because there were a great number of workers, and very few elderly or young dependents, the economy was unusually profitable. This is measured by something called the dependency ratio, which is the ratio of people in the workforce to people not in the workforce.

The dependency ratio was high during the Baby Boom, on account of all the children, but it began to plummet from around 1980, after those children entered the workforce. This led to a time of great profitability, which lasted as long as the Boomers were in employable age groups.

By today this process has begun to reverse. The first of the Baby Boomers hit the pension age of 65 in 2010. Ever since then, the dependency ratio has risen. In 2000, there were five workers per pensioner in America; by 2050, there are expected to be 2.9 workers per pensioner. We are about to go through a time of great unprofitability.

The saying “demography is destiny” refers to the fact that the macrotrends of Western economies since World War II have followed demographic trends.

When the Boomers die off en masse, a process which is beginning now, the dependency ratio will improve. This will also lead to a sharp decrease in housing demand. The combined effect of these two major changes will create an economic boom lasting several decades. Unfortunately for most of the people reading this article, the post-Baby Boomer boom won’t fully start happening until after 2050.

The situation might seem bad for the West, but it’s even worse in the industrialised countries of the Far East. Their fertility rate collapse is a more extreme version of the Western one.

China had a similar economic boom to the West from 1985 to 2010, with a large demographic bulge of working-age people keeping the dependency ratio low. But China today, despite being infamous for its population, only has a fertility rate of 1.7.

In 2010, the old-age dependency ratio in China was 11%, meaning nine workers for every pensioner. By 2060, it is expected to be over 50%, meaning two workers for every pensioner. Considering that they are only a middle-income nation today, and that future economic growth is uncertain, a dependency ratio of 50% threatens to cause extreme poverty.

It’s worse still elsewhere in Far East Asia.

In 2020, the South Korean fertility rate is less than 1.1 children per woman. At a fertility rate this low, the South Korean population will halve every generation. The fertility rates of people in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan are only slightly higher, around 1.4. Their populations should decrease by a third every generation. China’s should decrease by a quarter.

Some might argue that Europe and Far East Asia are overpopulated anyway, and the environment would benefit from a sharp population decrease. The trouble is that the rulers of both places are accustomed to a certain standard of living, and, if given the choice, will act to maintain that standard of living even if succeeding generations have to suffer for it.

In Western countries, falling populations have been preempted by mass immigration. This has prevented Western economies from shrinking, keeping stock prices and house prices high, and the ruling class happy. However, the result of this process has been the collapse of social cohesion, reflected everywhere in less trust.

A nation that opens itself to mass immigration also opens itself to division and, eventually, chaos. The historical record is clear on this subject, as is the science. Changes in kinship intensity have direct and far-reaching political consequences. If demographics lead to a decrease in a nation’s kinship intensity, then that nation’s destiny is discord and war. The civil unrest in today’s America is merely a foretaste.

That demographic trends are capable of tearing nations apart from the inside can be understood mathematically. Taking the example of France, it can be seen that the destiny of any population with a low fertility rate, once it comes to host a foreign population with a high fertility rate, is to be conquered.

If the white population of France is 50,000,000, and their women reproduce at the rate of 1.5 children per woman, the white French population will fall to 28,125,000 after two generations. If the Muslim population is 5,000,000, and their women reproduce at the rate of three children per woman, the Muslim French population will rise to 11,500,000 after two generations.

After three generations, the French population will be some 21 million, and the Muslim population some 17 million. By that time, the majority of fighting-age males will belong to the Muslim population, and France will be a de facto conquered land. Muslims will have achieved with their wombs what they could not achieve with their swords 1,300 years earlier, at the Battle of Tours.

Much the same logic was followed by French financier Charles Gave, who outlined it in a paper he wrote for the Institute of Liberty. He was immediately attacked for promulgating the great replacement conspiracy theory, only it is no conspiracy. It’s a simple extrapolation from currently known values, and its logic is inescapable.

The fertility rate in France has been famously low for over a century now. The fertility rate in neighbouring Algeria, by contrast, was over seven children per woman as recently as 1980. The consequence is that, by today, there are two to three times as many Algerians in France as there were French people in Algeria in 1940, when Algeria was a French colony. France is now itself a colony in all but name.

France’s destiny is to become an Islamic state. This follows inexorably from their current demographics, and is no harder to predict than was the German victory over France in World War II. This victory had been forecast over half a century beforehand, by people who knew that Germany had a much higher fertility rate than France, and who had calculated that this would eventually lead to an overwhelming German numerical advantage.

The single most important demographic trend of this century is the one that predicts that the population of Africa will quadruple by the end of the century. Currently around one billion, it is expected to be four billion by 2100, which will mean that almost half of the world’s population will be African.

Countries like Niger and Somalia are still reproducing at the rate of over six children per woman. The total African fertility rate is 4.4 children per woman. The sad reality of this population explosion is that, by the end of this century, the majority of Africa’s megafauna will be extinct in the wild. Most megafauna are already threatened thanks to human population pressure, and they will not survive an African population of four billion.

The societies of Europe are unlikely to survive it either. Europe today is barely capable of defending their borders against migrant inflows from the South. In the medium-term future, with an even smaller European population and a surging African one, they won’t be capable of defending them at all. The destiny of Europe appears to be getting overwhelmed by the surplus African population.

The next century looks like it will bring a drastic decrease in the high IQ populations of the world, and an equally drastic increase in the low IQ populations of the world. The inevitable result will be low IQ people surging into high IQ territories, and a profound increase in the average amount of human suffering. Demography really is destiny, and it suggests that the world’s destiny is a grim one.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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Why Inequality Destroys Nations

One often hears the argument that inequality destroys societies, but it isn’t easy to understand why. The mainstream media tells us that a rising tide lifts all boats, and so people ought to enjoy the bounty of the modern day without worrying about how other people have more. But the economic psychology of inequality is complicated. This essay explains.

Casting an eye over a list of countries ordered by their degree of income inequality, one trend leaps out: unequal countries tend to be shitholes, and egalitarian countries tend to be decent.

Among the most unequal countries are places like Brazil, Mexico and the majority of African countries. Among the most equal countries are the European ones, Canada, Australia, Japan and South Korea. The pattern is obvious: a strong correlation exists between economic equality and overall quality of life.

The reasons for this can be understood if we compare the motivations of individuals in equal societies to individuals in unequal ones. The simple rule is that once inequality gets to the point where you no longer have a stake in society, then you no longer have a stake in society. This has behavioural consequences.

In an equal society, the members closer to the bottom of it still have enough of a stake to feel engaged. They are not so far from the decision-making level that their desires are ignored. Having a meaningful chunk of power, they are incentivised to work towards society’s betterment (or at least its upkeep).

In equal societies, all members feel a sense of ownership. A sense of pride at the quality of life offered by the society follows naturally. With ownership and pride, a person will take action to uphold that society. This is why people in countries like Sweden, Canada and Australia tend to perform prosocial behaviours like putting their shopping trolleys away and disposing of their litter in bins.

In an unequal society, the members closer to the bottom are without influence. Decisions are made so far above their heads that they aren’t consulted. As such, the people at the bottom are not incentivised towards prosocial behaviour. They perform antisocial behaviours, like aggressive panhandling, theft, robbery, sex crimes and murder.

In a society like this, not everyone feels a sense of ownership. Those who don’t tend to not contribute to society’s upkeep. In exactly the same way that rented cars and houses are treated much worse than personally owned cars and houses, a society in which people can only rent a stake (at best) will be treated much worse than a society in which people can own one.

The inevitable result of increasing inequality is a decline in prosocial behaviour and an increase in antisocial behaviour. You might as well throw that Coke can in the gutter, because it isn’t you that will have to pay to clean it up. In fact, the more damage you can do to society the better, because it will take the bastards who locked you out down a peg or two.

New Zealand might be in the middle of the inequality pack, but it’s still practically impossible to own a home here without inheritance. The average wage today has less than 40% of the housebuying power that it had 26 years ago. Our society is now so unequal that what used to be the elementary sign of having a stake in it – owning a home – is practically a dream unless you’re born rich.

This inequality has all but destroyed our society. It’s easy to see why if one imagines how it has affected people’s motivations.

As a non-landowner who will never own land while the average wage cannot buy the average house, I don’t care what happens to society. I have no stake in it and will never have one as long as the prevailing economic circumstances continue. New Zealand is someone else’s property, and as such I don’t feel motivated to defend it or to do any work to maintain it.

It’s said that if too many people drop out of society, then our economy would collapse, leading to New Zealand becoming ungovernable, perhaps even to civil war. I say: “Good!” If civil war means that I can afford a house in five years, then bring on civil war!

Many people will be appalled to hear such reasoning. But such reasoning is inescapable once a person has no stake in society. If the order of society as being maintained at my expense, then bring on the chaos! It’s irrational to reason otherwise unless one is content to be the slave of the rich, effectively a serf whose labour will never allow them to own land.

Given this psychological calculus, it’s apparent that increasing inequality will inevitably lead to society collapsing as fewer and fewer people feel like they have an interest in keeping it going. Prosocial behaviour will decline, and antisocial behaviour will rise, to the point where the fabric of society no longer exists, and we are back in Hobbes’s state of all against all.

Eventually, inequality will get so bad that intelligent people born poor will realise from early childhood that they never had a chance. These people will be hardened revoutionaries by the time they become adults, and will know nothing other than hate. They will be exceptionally dangerous and capable of ushering in a new order of the world.

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Why The Greens Should Lose Voters To TOP In Coming Weeks

With a general election now less than three months away, the various political parties are trying to position themselves front and centre in the mainstream media. Most days now bring a major announcement from at least one registered party. The announcements made yesterday have the potential to cause a great deal of support to switch from the Greens to The Opportunities Party. Numbers man Dan McGlashan explains.

In the second edition of Understanding New Zealand, I showed that the demographics of Greens voters and TOP voters were very similar. The correlation between voting Green and voting TOP was on the order of 0.8, which shows that the two groups overlapped to a major degree.

Both voting blocs are young, highly educated, urban and white. They are the kind of people who are doing relatively well but who do not wish to use the Government to force themselves into an even better position (in contradistinction to National and ACT voters). They are very similar in demographics and psychology to their social democratic counterparts in places like Northern Europe. In fact, many Green and TOP ideas originally became popular in Northern Europe before being adopted.

When I wrote the article linked in the paragraph above, in 2017, there were no major distinctions between the two parties. This year’s election campaign has already revealed some and will, I suspect, reveal more. Support for my suspicion comes from recent policy announcements.

The Green Party shot themselves in the foot yesterday with their announcement of a Guaranteed Minimum Income. This policy promises to ensure that no New Zealander need live in poverty, by topping up whatever income they get to a minimum of $325 per week. This would mean that all part-time workers would get topped up to $325 per week, as would beneficiaries (apart from pensioners, who already receive more than this).

Green Party support for a GMI will, in my estimation, cause them to lose a significant number of votes to The Opportunities Party.

Although some of the smarter Green supporters have been trying to remedy the error by describing the policy as a universal basic income, it isn’t one. It’s something significantly worse – so much so that The Opportunities Party have stolen a major trick on them through their support of a UBI.

Those who counter that the Greens’ $325 is much better than TOP’s $250 need to take into account that TOP’s offer leaves the part-time worker much better off. The worst thing about the Greens’ guaranteed minimum income policy is that it massively disincentivises part-time work.

Let’s assume, for simplicity’s sake, that our part-time worker is doing 20 hours a week at $19 an hour, for a total of $380 before tax (let’s say $327 after tax, according to this tax calculator).

The Greens’ proposal would see this person not benefit at all. Earning $327 would see them receive no top-ups. This means that, incredibly, anyone working less than 20 hours a week might as well not bother showing up to work anymore. They wouldn’t get any net benefit from working 19 hours or fewer, because their total wage wouldn’t be higher than the $325 guaranteed minimum.

TOP’s proposal is entirely different. A part-time worker working 20 hours would first of all get the $250 universal basic income. The full value of any wage they received from an employer would then get added to that (minus taxes, of course). Because that wage would be taxed at a flat rate, they would come out miles ahead compared to the Greens’ proposal.

Let’s use an extreme example, and say that the part-time worker’s taxes go up 5% under TOP’s proposal (this is not close to being accurate, but let’s assume it for simplicity’s sake). This would leave them with $308 of their wage after tax, plus the $250 UBI, for a total of $558 – i.e. $233 ahead of where they would be under the Greens’ proposal. Even if their taxes went up 10% (an absurdity) they would be over $200 a week better off.

So the Greens’ proposal amounts to maximising the risk of the welfare trap. Anyone employed for fewer than 20 hours would have no incentive to continue with their job. If they can’t get full-time work, they’re better off not working at all.

This is arguably even worse than the status quo, in which beneficiaries make slightly less than $325 but can earn up to $150 from part-time work before their benefit is docked. Someone on the Jobseeker’s Allowance working eight hours a week would make around $250 from the Jobseeker’s Allowance plus $150 from their part-time job, for a total of $400.

A cynic might even say that the Greens’ policy was intended to create welfare dependency in the knowledge that welfare beneficiaries heavily support left-wing parties (as I demonstrated here). That’s possible but it’s more likely that the Greens have erred on account of their naivety and fundamental misunderstanding of economic psychology.

With regards to 21st Century welfare policy, TOP have cleverly positioned themselves close to alt centrism. They oppose the Establishment but are neither left nor right. By supporting a UBI – something closer to a right-wing position – TOP have avoided giving in to the politics of envy that have caused many centrists to become disappointed in the left in recent decades. This gives them a major point of distinction with the alt left, represented by the Green Party.

By avoiding ACT’s politics of greed and the Greens’ politics of envy and dependency, TOP have set a pragmatic, sensible course as the centrist alternative to the Establishment. I predict that the superiority of their UBI proposal to the Greens’ GMI policy will win TOP a significant number of votes from the Greens. The next move to distinguish themselves from the loony left should be for TOP to abandon any proposal to raise New Zealand’s refugee quota.

Understanding New Zealand, by Dan McGlashan and published by VJM Publishing, is the comprehensive guide to the demographics and voting patterns of the New Zealand people. It is available on TradeMe (for Kiwis) and on Amazon (for international readers).

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Why The West Should Replace China With India

It’s apparent to all that the world is currently undergoing a strategic realignment. When the COVID-19 dramas have settled down, we will be left with a new set of alliances and global political arrangements. This essay will argue that the Western World should use this opportunity to replace the economic ties it currently has with China.

To a major extent, those who are powerful in the non-Western world are only so because of the favour of Western elites. China’s economic miracle is chiefly the result of the transfer of manufacturing capacity from the West since the early 1980s. After forty years of this, China has grown into a major world power.

In 1990, China had a smaller economy than Canada. Their GDP per capita was a pitiful $349 per year, putting them in the same class as Uganda, Mali and Rwanda. Today, China is second only to America by total economy size. Their GDP per capita is now in the same class as fringe Western nations such as Russia, Argentina and Bulgaria.

This development has brought with it great wealth, not only to China but also to their major trading partners. But with this wealth has come power, and with that power has come ambition.

China’s strategic goals in the South China Sea are evident: to take control of the entire region. As their economy continues to develop, their ability to actualise these goals increases. They are now wealthy enough to devote a vast sum of surplus capital to military outfitting and development. Some of this has been devoted to building artificial islands – rightly considered forward military bases – in the South China Sea.

Given that Chinese strategic goals often don’t align with ours, and that Indian strategic goals often do, it might be time for the West to make an immense pivot away from China and towards India. There are several reasons why this might be a good idea.

The most obvious strategic reason to replace China with India is the aforementioned military one. A close alliance with India would all but guarantee Western control over the Straits of Malacca, which is the jugular vein of Chinese shipping and trade. This would minimise the potential for China to get tempted into further expansionism.

Existing tensions on the shared border between India and China have flared in recent weeks. China has already moved a brigade’s strength of men into territory India claims as its own. This is an extreme provocation by any measure, if not an outright act of war. India’s response could lead to a wider conflagration.

If it does, it would be the perfect time for the West to throw our lot in behind India. Not only would it enable us to impose a collective will upon China in a weak moment for them, but giving assistance to India in their time of need would engender the greatest amount of long-term goodwill from their side.

More subtle are the economic reasons. China’s economy has advanced to the point where it is a competitor to the West in many ways, whereas India’s has not. Many Chinese firms have been able to drive Western ones out of certain markets by way of having a superior product. The general level of scientific knowledge in the Chinese population is now high enough that Chinese firms are likely to pose a consistent threat into the future.

It would be much better to co-operate with Indian firms, and to raise them to the level where they can compete with the Chinese ones, than to continue to raise Chinese firms so that they can compete with ours in the future. We can help India to adopt technology that both the West and China already have, at no strategic loss to ourselves.

As mentioned above, Chinese GDP per capita has increased sharply in recent decades. Today, it is over twice as high as the GDP per capita in India. This has brought with it increasing expectations of living standards, such that India now offers better opportunities to employ cheap labour. Factories could be set up in India at competitive prices.

The greatest reasons to pursue an alliance with India at the expense of China are cultural.

India is culturally superior to the West in several ways. Here we are not merely talking about lamb saagwalas. Their compassion for animals is such that India has more vegetarians than the rest of the world put together. This compassion is a feature of Dharmic religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism.

The sadistic Abrahamic religions have no such restrictions, and neither does Chinese culture with its hellish wet markets. As such, there is an opportunity for us in the West to learn from Indian culture and from the Indian approach to life, and to use its inspiration to better ourselves.

The Indian spiritual culture fills a need in the Western soul for answers about how to morally conduct ourselves in this life. This is not to claim that all Indians conduct themselves perfectly, or even better than Westerners do on average. It is merely to suggest that there is great value to Westerners in the spiritual traditions of the Indian people, in particular Buddhism and Hinduism.

Because India has cultural advancements that we in the West ought to learn from, there is the possibility of genuinely reciprocal trade. We have scientific, technological and commercial knowledge that they would benefit from learning, and they have spiritual knowledge that we would benefit from learning. It would be a two-way exchange.

A further point relating to culture is the shared love of cricket. That cricket is popular in India as well as in Britain, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand means that men from all of these places have a shared bond, and this naturally allows for some degree of solidarity. After all, it’s through sport that men learn to conduct themselves in wartime, and men bonded in such a fashion are bonded deeply.

No such bond is shared with China.

In summary, an entire spectrum of reasons suggests that the West ought to take the economic bonds that tie us to China, and to replace them with bonds that tie us to India. This would not only make a great deal of natural sense, but it would also strengthen the strategic position of the West deep into this century.

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