Bloggers note: At work since the early 70s Abortion policies world wide is decimating continents ... a report! A simple report that could be documented for each country. In Canada alone we lost over 7 million Canadians to this planned extinction all under 50 years old and half of them women.
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Demographer and American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt joins Peter Robinson to explain why birthrates are collapsing across the globe—from China and Japan to Europe and the United States—and what this means for the future of prosperity, freedom, and global power. Can immigration save America? Will Africa remain the great exception? And is there any way to reverse the “baby bust”? Nick Eberstadt answers them in this episode. Subscribe to Uncommon Knowledge to stay notified for the next episode: https://www.hoover.org/publications/u... Inspired by Thomas Sowell? The Hoover Institution is hosting two national contests in his honor. Winners will receive $5,000 and an all-expenses-paid invitation to a special Sowell celebration. Enter here: https://www.hoover.org/thomas-sowell-...
TRANSCRIPT
>> Peter Robinson: All around the world,
something dire is happening. For the first time since
the bubonic plague,
demographer Nicholas Eberstadt
on Uncommon Knowledge now.
[MUSIC] >> Peter Robinson: Welcome to
Uncommon Knowledge, I'm Peter Robinson,
a fellow at
the American Enterprise Institute.
Nicholas Eberstadt earned both
his bachelor's degree and a doctorate in political
economy from Harvard.
His books include the 2016 bestseller,
Men Without America's Invisible Crisis.
In recent years, Dr. Eberstadt has
devoted himself to studying demographics,
in particular to global depopulation. Our text today, Dr. Eberstadt's recent
article in Foreign affairs magazine,
the Age of Depopulation. Nick, welcome back to Uncommon Knowledge. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: Thank you for
inviting me back, Peter.
>> Peter Robinson: All right,
the depopulation bomb. Nick Eberstadt in Foreign Affairs, quote,
humans are about to enter
a new era of history. For the first time since
the Black Death in the 1300s,
the planetary population will decline. We'll take this continent by
continent in just a moment,
as you do in your article,
but give us an overview. How has the population behaved over these
last seven centuries since the bubonic
plague and what's happening? >> Nicholas Eberstadt: Right, well, since we last met our intrepid heroes
in the 14th century, the world's
population has probably increased
by something like a factor of 20.
Not regularly, but very, very steadily. The reason for this is because
human beings tend to procreate and
they tend to procreate at slightly higher
birth rates than their death rate levels.
And that means gradual and indeed
exponential population growth over time.
What's happening now is new and
I dare say completely different.
In the past, when human numbers declined, it was usually as a result of a calamity.
You say the plague, wars,
other sorts of pestilence, upheaval, natural disasters.
This time it's different, global health
is higher than it's ever been before.
It's continuing to increase with a few
very small footnotes that are exceptions
around the world, but not enough to
affect the overall totals or trends.
What's happening now is that
we are marching towards below
replacement fertility,
towards a global pattern of childbearing
which will be insufficient to
sustain global population.
And that is entirely new. >> Peter Robinson: All right,
I just have to.
You just said it,
you just said it very well. But it is so
striking possibly because I'm a boomer and
grew up with the notion that we
were suffering overpopulation.
I've called this segment
the Depopulation Bomb, after Paul Ehrlich's famous
book of the late 60s.
I think it was a 68 book called
the Population Bomb that predicted such population growth that by
the mid-70s he was wrong, of course, but
by the mid-70s,
there would be mass starvations. Now, what he was wrong about, Ehrlich's
thought, conservatives always thought,
was that he missed human intelligence. He missed our capacity to grow, not
that he was wrong about the population.
The population would grow, but
resources would grow even faster. Okay, but this is not that argument.
This argument is that he was
wrong about the numbers. Population is going to shrink as
we boomers depart from this world,
not continue to grow. I'm just asking you to repeat it so
I'm sure I've got it.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: We are on a long
term march, seemingly unstoppable
to planetary below replacement fertility.
It is possible we already
have breached that threshold. It'll take us a couple of years because
we have to look in the rearview mirror
till the statistics catch up with us. >> Peter Robinson: All right, Asia,
we'll go continent by continent. Very briefly, Nick Eberstadt again,
this is from Foreign Affairs.
In China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan,
by 2022, every population was shrinking.
Again, to a boomer like me,
the idea that China, we were raised with a notion
that China was going to grow.
All of these countries are actually
shrinking and have been for three years at least. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: Yeah, it's really
hard to wrap one's head around this, but
the childbearing patterns
in East Asia are about 50%
below the level that would be needed for
long term population stability.
We are flirting with
a regional average of about
one birth per woman per
lifetime in East Asia.
And in some places like Taiwan,
like South Korea, like large portions of enormous China,
we're already well below one
birth per woman per lifetime.
>> Peter Robinson: Help
me with the math here. I'm tempted to say the math is as simple
as this, father, mother, one child.
That means the overall population
halves in each generation, can that possibly be true?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: That's about
correct for the region as a whole, unless something radical changes,
we can expect the rising
cohort of babies of newborns
to be half as large as
the parental cohort. >> Peter Robinson: And now China,
I'm staying with Asia for just a moment.
China had famously imposed
a one child policy in 1979, but replaced it in 2016 with
a two child policy.
And all my Chinese friends in California
tell me it's very easy to buy your way out of the two child policy.
If you want three or four,
there are fees you pay and bribe. You can have a big family, big ish family
in China if you want, but nobody does.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: No, no, I mean, what's happened in China
is really fascinating.
After that catastrophic and cruel one child policy
was not even suspended.
But after the quota was adjusted, the the overlords in Beijing thought
that they were going to be able
to tweak the size of the herd kind of
the way that a rancher would with flock.
But the pigs in animal farm or whatever
the analogy is, didn't go along with that.
There's exactly the opposite happened. The total number of births
dropped by about half.
And what I think we see in that
particular case is a massive vote of no confidence in
the Xi Jinping dictatorship.
>> Peter Robinson: All right,
India once again, Nick Eberstadt. Sub-replacement fertility
prevails in India.
In India, where urban fertility
rates have dropped markedly in the vast metropolis of Kolkata,
officials report.
Reported that in 2021 the fertility rate
was down an amazing one birth per woman,
lower than in any major city in Germany or
Italy, even India.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: It's very hard to
wrap our heads around this one, Peter. I mean I first visited Kolkata when
it was called Calcutta in 1975.
It was teeming with children,
it was teeming with children. I mean the fertility level was
probably around five births per woman.
Now, one birth per woman. This has happened in your lifetime,
in one guy's lifetime that's happened.
>> Peter Robinson: And
you're not that old, Nick. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: Well,
thank you for saying that, but it's happened really fast in any
sort of historical measure of time.
>> Peter Robinson: Europe, Nick Eberstadt. For half a century, Europe's overall fertility rates have
been continuously sub-replacement.
Half a century since the fall
of the Soviet Union, Russia has witnessed 17 million
more deaths than births.
The 27 countries of the European Union
reported just under 3.7
million births in 2023,
down from 6.8 million in 1964.
Last year France tallied fewer
births than it did in 1806,
the year Napoleon won the Battle of Jena.
We think of Europe as the center
of Western civilization. We boomers still think of it that way.
What's going on? >> Nicholas Eberstadt: Well,
we now have East Asia and all of Europe,
including Russia, as net mortality
zones in our global population.
More deaths than births now. And that gap looks only to be increasing
as far as a demographer's eye can see.
>> Peter Robinson: Latin America, you
write that birth rates are down throughout Latin America and the Caribbean and indeed
in North Africa and the Middle East.
To quote you once again, Iran has
been a sub-replacement society for about a quarter a century.
And In Turkey,
Istanbul's 2023 birth rate was just 1.2 babies per woman,
lower than Berlins now.
So if I understand you correctly,
across the entire globe, there are only two exceptions
to this trend of shrinking.
One major exception and
one minor exception. And we'll save the minor exception
because it's the United States.
The major exception is sub-Saharan Africa.
Explain the degree to which it is
an exception and then if you can, why. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: Every
continent on earth except for
Africa is now already below replacement.
>> Peter Robinson: Replacement is 2.1 or
roughly 2.1. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: Every continent but
Africa is exhibiting childbearing patterns
that are inadequate to provide for
long term population stability.
They're going to increase for a little while on population momentum,
but that jet can't fly.
I mean, they're all on course for depopulation absent
compensating immigration.
With the exception for
now of sub-Saharan Africa, sub-Saharan Africa is still 75% or
Sub Saharan Africa is about
100% above replacement. Africa as a whole, if we add in
North Africa, maybe 75% above replacement.
But birth rates are declining
basically everywhere in the world with tiny exceptions.
And the level of fertility
in sub-Saharan Africa
is about 35% lower than
it was in the 70s or 80s.
There are already places in sub-Sahara
which are at replacement about
to go below replacement, like South Africa
off of the coast of sub-Saharan Africa and
places like Mauritius well below
replacement already, I mean, stick around.
>> Peter Robinson: So my impression,
again, you know this, I'm just asking questions. I seem to remember reading somewhere
that the two, in some ways most
economically hopeful countries in
sub-Saharan Africa are Nigeria and Kenya.
They seem to have their economies
sorted out enough to be growing. How are the birth rates
in both of those places?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: Nigeria is a bit
of a mystery because it's population
numbers have been shambolic for
a couple of generations.
They fought a civil war over cheating on
their 1963 census in the Biafran War.
Kenya is a lot clearer, and Kenya's birth
levels are coming down very rapidly.
They're not at replacement yet, but
they're coming down very rapidly. >> Peter Robinson: All right, so
this brings us to the minor exception,
the United States of America,
quote Nick Eberstadt. The United States remains the main
outlier among developed countries.
I must say that brings a little from,
to my patriotic heart. I like being an outlier among developed
countries resisting the trend of
depopulation. But even in the United States,
depopulation is no longer unthinkable,
explain. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: What makes the
United States demographically exceptional
for affluent democracy is its
unusually high birth levels and
its embrace of immigration,
those two things.
For the last 15 years, the United States has dropped
below replacement childbearing.
We're now actually 20 plus percent
below the replacement level.
>> Peter Robinson: For
the first time in our history. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: Well, I mean,
we had this happen briefly in the 70s,
there was a dip in the-
>> Peter Robinson: Not even in the 30s during the depression. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: No, for the 30s,
we were still barely above replacement.
There were a couple of years that
you could find it charting down. But this is a long period,
this past decade and a half,
we kind of have a new pattern. Our birth levels are higher than for
Europe or needless to say, for East Asia,
other places, but not enough to maintain
long term population stability.
On our current trajectory, we will get to be a net mortality
country within a decade.
This is where the immigration comes in. Immigration has added to our ranks since
the very founding of our republic,
of course, and it is set to continue
to do so, although nobody can
guess exactly what flows of
immigration are going to look like.
But at this stage, the Census Bureau
is now guessing that the US Population,
immigration included, is going to peak
within the next generation and a half.
>> Peter Robinson: All right,
why, what's happening?
Nick Eberstadt again. It is generally believed that economic
growth and material progress account for
the world's slide into population decline. Stop there, why are not children
viewed as luxury goods? Why don't we have more children,
the richer?
We are, you and I love kids. You and I both had a slew of them,
I think we would agree that that is
the most satisfying part of our lives, and we would therefore suspect that
anybody would find it satisfying.
The idea that the richer you get,
the fewer children you have strikes me as counterintuitive or at least worth
explaining, right there from the get go.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: Well, Hoover's
late, great Nobel economics laureate
Gary Becker kind of nailed
it back in the early 1960s.
Said all other things being equal,
the more money you have, the more of everything you want,
including kids.
But at higher levels of income and
higher levels of education, your tastes may change,
you may have preferences for other things.
You may assume that kids means college and
graduate school and
all sorts of expenses that you
wouldn't assume were yours
at more modest income level or
modest educational level.
So what we see is a huge change in
mentality, for more affluent people.
And that change in mentality,
I think, is the real explanation for
why richer people don't
always have more kids. >> Peter Robinson: You write again,
I'm quoting you,
all I'm gonna do is quote
you to yourself here, Nick. The most powerful fertility
predictor ever detected,
not how rich an economy is,
but what women want. There is an almost one-to-one
correspondence around the world between
national fertility levels, and the number
of babies women say they want to have. I presume that there are surveys of
this kind conducted all over the place,
all the time. Okay, here's the next question.
>> Peter Robinson: Does this suggest that
the children that women have always wanted fewer children?
That throughout all of history
they found children just trouble? And that suddenly the availability of
the pill and other forms of birth control
permit them to limit their families,
as they have always wished they could do?
Or have women changed their
minds about children? All this strikes me as a deep,
deep puzzle, am I wrong?
Am I missing something? >> Nicholas Eberstadt: You're
totally right, it's a almost unfathomably deep puzzle.
And I think in this same piece
I made my observation that the person who explains
it deserves a Nobel.
But they don't deserve
a Nobel in Economics, they deserve a Nobel in Literature,
because you have to understand the
intimate complexities of the human heart.
The profound changes in zeitgeist,
the differences
in mores that have unfolded over time,
those variations.
We have to remember that we
are the world's singular and
most adaptable animal, that's why Paul Ehrlich got it so
badly wrong.
If we were all insects,
he was a professor of population biology, studied insects, right?
And if we were insects, we would have
had a very bad time after the 1960s. But we not only adapted our circumstances,
we not only came up with adaptations
that would allow us to prosper
with greater numbers,
we also changed our life expectancies,
we changed our family formations,
we changed our desire for children.
>> Peter Robinson: Nick Eberstadt,
what is happening might be best explained by the field
of mimetic theory.
And now you're in trouble because
you are required to explain what mimetic theory is, and
how it might explain what's taking place?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: Well, back slightly
after the Stone Age when I was in college, what was really in vogue was this
concept of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson.
>> Peter Robinson: Yes,
yes, also an insect man. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: Also an insect man,
and very plausible argument,
seemingly incontrovertible, was that we as
creatures bound by our DNA
had built in habits and
built in approaches to
living arrangements,
social arrangements and other things. But now that we see poor
countries in the world,
very poor countries in the world,
places like Myanmar, like Burma.
Where women seem to be voluntarily
choosing to have fewer
children that would be required
to replace their cohorts,
it doesn't look as if we have a built
in mechanism, a built in thermostat.
>> Peter Robinson: We're
hardwired to children. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: Yeah,
we're not hardwired to replace ourselves, it doesn't look like that.
It looks much more as if mimetic theory, whose I guess great proponent was
against Stanford's Rene Girard.
I across the street neighbor. Wow, how cool is that?
May be able to explain a lot
more of what we're doing. To oversimplify mimetic theory,
it's social imitation that people
are affected by what they see and what
they want is affected by what they see.
And that there's an enormous
amount of complex social learning,
in the arrangements that we live in. My favorite expert,
the great Mary Eberstadt,
uses mimetic theory in this way, she describes what she calls
a cat stuck in a tree problem.
And her point is that anytime that
the fire department comes out to help
the little kitty get down, that is a cat
that was not raised around other cats,
that was a house pet because it
never learned from other cats how- >> Peter Robinson: How to get down.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: And
just in the same way that kitty didn't learn how to get out of the tree,
people who are not exposed
to the social imitation and
learning that would come
with large families,
find it very hard to regain that. I'm trained to think as an economist
that people's desires change,
they're kind of exogenous desire for
kids goes up, goes down, people will adjust accordingly.
But it may be that it's very much harder
to return to replacement fertility,
once you go far below that
than we might expect. >> Peter Robinson: So on my favorite as
well, but you have a special reason for
considering her your favorite. Because she is, of course, Mrs. Eberstadt,
on this notion that mimetic
theory may explain it, it could be that having lots of
kids is like the Latin language.
Once its use is lost,
once it no longer becomes
current, it very quickly just disappears. So it's a kind of lost art,
lost knowledge, is there something to?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: I think
there's something to that. I mean, even if we look around the world
today without getting very fancy and
scholarly, we can see that
in a place like Israel, which is still, I think,
the most fascinating
exception to modernity
with regard to fertility. Secular Jews in Israel report
notably above replacement fertility,
whereas, for example, secular Jews
in the United States, way below.
>> Peter Robinson: Way below. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: And so
part of it is the context, part of it is the neighborhood
where you live.
Part of it is. >> Peter Robinson: You're explaining
something to me that puzzled me for a long time. I have an Israeli friend who told me that
in his neighborhood, he has five children.
The next house is six, the next house
is seven, and then there's four. And he said, the women,
the ladies say to each other,
four is the new two.
In other words, it's a kind of shared. That country is in some
ways a neighborhood,
and it's a kind of
neighborhood expectation. That's the mimetic? >> Nicholas Eberstadt: That
would be mimetic. I think that would be mimetic and
it cuts both ways.
>> Peter Robinson: Yes, it cuts both ways. So can we buy our way out of this?
The New York Times this past spring, the White House has been hearing out
a chorus of ideas in recent weeks for
persuading Americans to get married and
have more children. One idea would give
a $5,000 cash baby bonus to
every American mother after delivery,
close quote. Hungary is famous for
giving tax cuts to families with more
than a certain number of children.
You've written about Mongolia,
which gives an award to mothers.
The Mongolian star.
Can we buy babies? >> Nicholas Eberstadt: We can try,
but I think we've got a century and
more of experience with pronatal policy,
and the results are very disappointing for
people who think that we can buy our
way out of below replacement fertility.
The record is that baby bribes or
baby bonuses are very expensive.
And in terms of moving the demographic
needle, they do very little.
Well, what they can do sometimes
is that they can create a little blip among people who kind
of take the money and
run, who are planning to have a second or
a third child, more or less anyhow. That's why some Swedish demographers
talk about what they call the Swedish
roller coaster. When a new pronatal
program comes into effect, the birth level goes up a little bit,
but then it goes back down after that,
below where it was before
the program started. >> Peter Robinson: I see, they're
buying babies forward, so to speak.
Well, the new geopolitics of this world
that we are entering from your article in Foreign affairs, quote,
humanity's shrinking ranks will
inexorably alter the current global balance of power and strain
the existing world order, close quote.
Okay, let's talk through
a couple of these coming strains. Europe and Africa, as you've noted,
Europe is already hollowing out.
By contrast, sub-Saharan Africa,
to quote you, tomorrow's world will
be much more African.
But the outlook for human capital in
sub-Saharan Africa remains disappointing.
Just at the crudest level,
over the next 25 years, aren't there going to be a lot
of empty villages in Italy and
Spain and France that look wonderfully
appealing to people from Nigeria and
Kenya and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa? That is to say migration.
Europe feels beset by
migration to begin with, it hasn't seen anything yet.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: There
may be a lot more pressure for migration than we've seen so far.
And there are a lot of situations
in which migration is a win-win.
There are other situations in
which migration is not a win-win. One of the reasons it's
going to be more difficult
to attract Africans to
an emptying Europe is because the level of skills and
knowledge for so
much of the sub-Saharan
population is limited.
One of your Hoover scholars,
Erik Hanushek, has done fantastic work on trying to
come up with global measures of skills.
And stunning and uncomfortable as it is, his numbers suggest that
over 90% of the rising
generation in the sub-Sahara
doesn't have even the basic
rudimentary level of skills
that's measured in these tests.
The basic level one, what would that be? Looking at a clock that's
not a digital clock and
telling you what the time is,
being able to read a simple sentence and tell you what it means,
that sort of stuff.
You've got to have skills
to be able to fit in and- >> Peter Robinson: Once again, suited to modern society.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: Modern economy,
that's one of the reasons that I think that doubling and
tripling down on education in sub-Saharan
Africa is an absolute imperative for
success of our future. >> Peter Robinson: All right,
more geopolitics.
Historian Niall Ferguson,
another Hoover fellow of mine, has already begun referring to our
conflict with China as Cold War II.
And China has only too many allies. Putin's Russia,
the Iran of the ayatollahs,
to which Nick Eberstadt replies, quote, the coalescing partnership among China,
Iran, North Korea and
Russia is intent on challenging
the US-led western order. But the demographic
tides are against them.
China's birth crash,
the next generation is on track to be only half as large as
the preceding one will unavoidably
slash the workforce and
turbocharge population aging. So this new world may bring
all kinds of problems, but
at least we can relax about
the challenge from China. Or am I over reading this?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: Let's
put it this way. I have a sick fascination with
the country of North Korea, and
as far as I can tell,
North Korea's GDP is approximately zero.
It causes an awful lot of trouble
internationally outsized trouble.
Because if you have a revisionist
radical government in world order that's predicated
upon cooperation and
complex economic arrangements, you can
cause a lot of damage really easily.
>> Peter Robinson: Nuts with nukes
are going to be a problem whether their population is growing or not. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: And if you have
the second largest economy in the world
possessed by the CCP, by a revisionist
dictatorship, you can cause a lot
of trouble in even if the balance
of power is tilting against you.
>> Peter Robinson: All right. Military question, China presents
a question mark when it comes to
depopulation and a willingness to fight. I haven't seen this anywhere else, actually I haven't seen much of almost
anything that you write about anywhere
else that's one of the things that
makes you so singular as a scholar. China's military will be manned
in large part by young people who
are raised without children. Would China risk a force of only
children in say and invasion of Taiwan,
question is anybody
studying this question? Do we have anybody at
the Pentagon who's asking how
demography affects the willingness to
use such military as you may have?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: I think there's
a certain amount of speculation, at this point we're at the musing and
speculating and
anecdotal analogy portion of the show. >> Peter Robinson: [LAUGH]
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: It's an open
question whether casualty tolerance
is going to be affected in China or
in other parts of the world
by the proliferation or
the rise of the only child or
of armies composed of only children.
>> Peter Robinson: All right,
back to the United States once again, Nick Eberstadt, the United States
remains the most important
geopolitical exception to
the coming depopulation. US demographics look great today and
may look even better tomorrow
pending it must be underscored,
continued public support for
immigration, close quote. Well now immigration is one of the most
vexed issues in all of American politics.
According to a Gallup poll last summer
this is actually before the presidential election, 55% of Americans wanted
to see immigration curtailed and
they went on to elect a president
who has done just that. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: Yep. >> Peter Robinson: All right, so
little Robinson thinks this through and
says uncontrolled immigration, or at least largely uncontrolled immigration,
I think it's fair to say we just
lost control of the borders.
Built political opposition to immigration
could it be that the reverse will? Donald Trump has said again and again and
I believe him that he's not opposed to
immigration he's opposed
to illegal immigration. So could it be that Donald Trump
in closing the borders for
now will permit the country
to relax about the issue and permit us to achieve a kind of
sanity over the longer term in
immigration policy, do you think that or? >> Nicholas Eberstadt: I hope so.
>> Peter Robinson: You hope it. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: I certainly hope so
I mean, I don't think you could
really have done anything
more brilliant to subvert and
poison American support for immigration
than the Biden administration did.
By its willful sacrifice of
border security with Mexico for
half a dozen different reasons. It's not crazy for American voters
to be horrified by that ongoing.
>> Peter Robinson: Nobody voted for that. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: No, and with border
controls, with national sovereignty,
with an approach where we get to choose
whom we invite into our country.
And with our fantastic
special secret sauce for assimilating newcomers into loyal and
productive Americans,
I think there's a very very
positive future ahead of us >> Peter Robinson: All right,
I'm quoting from a different
article in Foreign Affairs but
I'm quoting you still
this article is called America's Education Crisis is
a National Security Crisis.
The basic formula for material advance
reaping the rewards of augmented human resources and
technological innovation will be the same.
But today the US is only neck and neck with China in total highly
trained workers, close quote.
So even if demographic trends favor us,
I believe you argue and argue insistently
vehemently that we have to do a better job
at educating our own population correct?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: Absolutely,
I mean our advantages come
from our human resources and our dare say
unique political and cultural framework.
Which allow us to unlock
the value in human beings in a way
that you don't see any place
else in the world really. And look at what our system does to
attract talent from all over the world,
I mean unlocking talent from abroad
has also been one of the great
game changers for the United States
both domestically and geopolitically.
>> Peter Robinson: So let me ask you a
question that we've seen out in the states we depart for a moment from Washington
always a mentally refreshing
exercise out in the states we've
seen this expanding school choice.
Milton Friedman recommended
school choice six decades ago but we're finally seeing it.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: Yeah.
>> Peter Robinson: Possibly because this teachers union so embarrassed
themselves during the COVID lockdown.
Perhaps that plays part of it but one
way or the other we now have 29 states, plus the District of Columbia
have school choice programs.
I believe I should make that 30 states,
because I believe the governor of Texas has now just
signed a new school choice program,
now this is K12 we're talking about,
are you optimistic? >> Nicholas Eberstadt: That
has to be positive.
>> Peter Robinson: It
has to be doesn't it? >> Nicholas Eberstadt: I mean, the thing
that we see as very well Peter is,
the worrisome unevenness of
results within the United States.
We've got a lot of fantastic public
schools we also have a lot of mediocre ones and
we've got some horrendously bad ones.
Being able to fire a teacher or
reward a good teacher
is one of the few levers
that we have that really seems to increase educational
quality outcomes.
>> Peter Robinson: Okay, and
then I haven't thought this through but you being you I suspect you
will have thought it through at
least tentatively,
what about higher education? I mean, it seems to me you could argue,
one could argue I don't know what argument
you'd make but that's the point I'm
setting up a question for you here. That our institutions of higher learning
and particularly our most prestigious
institutions of higher learning with
which you are intimately acquainted,
really have become much too complacent,
much too self perpetuating.
And that this reaction
against them which takes all kinds of forms reaction against DEI.
We have the Trump administration saying,
I think you and I would both feel that the Trump administration says to
Harvard, knock off this and this and
this and this or we're gonna
take away some of your funding. It says to Columbia knock off this and
this and this and this or
we'll take away some of your funding. My own view is that this and this and this
represents an undue intrusion on the self
government of a private institution, but
that it sure is getting at something.
And that to the extent that this
administration shakes up and
makes in some degree or
other more responsive to the wider public,
to the national interest, these elite
institutions, it will have improved them.
Now of course there is the other argument. How dare you say such a thing? It's taking a sledgehammer
to these jewels.
I don't know. Do you have a thoughts on this? >> Nicholas Eberstadt: Yeah,
I mean we've got a really confusing set of
developments in higher education and
this isn't new.
I mean, this has been unfolding
really since the 60s. On the one hand,
we really do have the leading research and
development centers in the world
in our research universities
in the United States that has-
>> Peter Robinson: They really are jewels.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: That
part has to change. >> Peter Robinson: Right. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: What's troubling,
obnoxious and I think should
be totally unacceptable is
the sort of the long march
through the institution by
enemies of the open society.
And that has no place in institutions
of free and open inquiry.
And yet it is so obvious in so many universities, in so many departments,
in whole schools within universities.
One of the things which is most
troubling to me about political and
public life in the US these
days is the sort of slow death of truth that we're
seeing in the public square.
And it's not just statements that
are being made in the White House.
It's the contempt for truth that we see
in the media and it's the disregard or
sometimes the hostility towards
truth in the universities.
Dealing with this problem it's not easy. We don't have a magic wand for it.
This problem developed over the course
of a couple of generations. It's a historical problem at this point.
I don't know that it'll be resolved in
less than a historical period of time.
But sometimes it looks a little bit,
if you're in a university, it looks a little bit like
the battle of Stalingrad.
And it looks like you had house to house
to house combat to get safe spaces back, safe spaces for intellectual inquiry.
>> Peter Robinson: Yes. A few last questions, Nick. Here I'm gonna quote you from another
article, but again I'm quoting you.
This is published by AEI itself,
the American Enterprise Institute itself, America's suicide attempt, the sequel.
This is you. With the 2024 election, we saw a broad
political rejection of open borders,
reverse-racism via DEI, and
state abetted censorship.
But instead of correcting course, the US government now seems to be lurching
into an alternate mode of self-harm,
embarking on a project of dismantling
the international order, an order, ironically, that the United States
itself painstakingly helped to build.
First of all, you may want to
amend that since you published it. I don't know. But the question would be, with
demographic trends working in our favor,
the Trump administration
shouldn't be attempting to dismantle the international order.
It should be trying to shore it up. Is that the argument? >> Nicholas Eberstadt: My argument
would be that Americans are going to be
almost certainly worse off,
less affluent and less secure if we sacrifice the,
let's call it the Pax Americana,
the that we have helped to build
over the last three generations,
since the end of World War II. There are many,
many flaws in the existing world order and
many, many flaws in our system
of alliances around the world.
There are problems with the trading
system, with the finance system.
But again,
it's a question of compared to what? And if we're going to tinker with this or
radically adjust it,
we better think first
about what the unintended consequences of any big
changes might be if.
>> Peter Robinson: If we end
the Pax Americana, the American Peace. There is no other Pax that will follow it.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: Well,
maybe a Pax upon our house. >> Peter Robinson: All right.
The very first sentence of your essay,
the Age of Depopulation. I'm going back to our master text for
the day.
Today in Foreign Affairs,
although few yet see it coming, humans are about to enter
a new era of history.
What interests me is that
beginning dependent clause, although few yet see it coming.
Why is that? Why do so? Why aren't there cover stories on
magazine after magazine after magazine?
Why is it still Nick to
whom we must turn to get the latest on this gigantic issue?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: One reason might
be that we're kind of accustomed to
thinking that tomorrow is going to
be like today, plus or minus 2%.
It's an easy way to organize one's
thinking and one's behavior.
It doesn't help us much when there
are big radical disruptions ahead. Another is that the ideology,
I'll call it the myth of overpopulation, this kind of zombie idea
still circulates much too
far in the intelligentsia and
even in policy circles.
The final thing is that the world's
a big complicated place,
and the realm of the real and
the possible is much wider and
deeper than our own imaginations. And so our imaginations are probably
gonna be slapped by reality.
We're gonna have to rethink everything
that we assume about these arrangements.
>> Peter Robinson: You make an argument. I say we're on last questions but
this is a basic question.
You make the argument that
depopulation needn't be bad.
To put it crudely, a quotation and
then a brief video clip.
The quotation is you. Even in a graying and depopulating world,
steadily improving living standards and
material and technological
advances will still be possible.
And here is the video clip. >> Speaker 3: The birth rate is
very low in almost every country.
And unless that changes,
civilization will disappear. America had the lowest birth rate,
I believe, ever.
That was last year. Places like Korea, the birth rate
is one-third replacement rate.
That means in three generations,
Korea will be 3 or 4% of its current size. And nothing seems to be
turning that around.
Humanity is dying. >> Peter Robinson: And
Nick Eberstadt answers Elon Musk, how.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: We
have an extraordinary new, completely unfamiliar challenge
in front of us that's
posed by a disinterest in
having large families, by a change in our own desire for
our own progeny,
for continuing our own family lineages.
Have to remember that we're
the most adaptable species.
I think we'll be able to
adapt to this materially. As I say, I'm cautiously optimistic that
we'll be able to maintain prosperity.
My imagination isn't big enough to really understand how family life is going
to work in a universe where there are so
few siblings and so few relatives.
We'll adapt somehow,
something will fill social capital vacuum.
>> Peter Robinson: There
are people saying AI will do it. We'll have robots,
we'll have computers that know so much they can keep us company.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: Well, we get
into the post human world and stuff. But the threat to the family
is the part of this that I
can't really wrap my head around, I mean-
>> Peter Robinson: I
thought you were gonna be more cheerful. I thought you were gonna say calm down,
Elon. We may be half as many, but we'll still
be well off and enjoying ourselves.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: We can shrink
as a species for a long time and still have billions and billions and
billions of people on Earth.
And during that period of adaptation, we may also find that
there are intellectual and
spiritual and
ideological changes that make for
desire for children in consequential
portions of the planet.
>> Peter Robinson: Okay, so here's
the last question, again, I'm quoting you. People increasingly prize autonomy,
self-actualization, and
convenience and children, for their many joys, are quintessentially
inconvenient, close quote.
Well, now, hold on, let me repeat that. Autonomy, self-actualization,
and convenience.
And I put it to you both as
an academic and as a friend, because I'm attacking you here slightly
because I know you well enough, Nick.
I put it to you that autonomy,
self-actualization, and convenience represent a recipe for
an empty life.
And there is something that
you haven't quite said,
but that I suspect you feel
very sad about all of this.
That somehow or other I put it
to you earlier in the show, but I put it to you again now. Somehow or other there is something
spiritually amiss here that Israel, I once asked a young Israeli woman,
why is Israel still
above replacement level?
And her reply struck me as very profound. At least it has always stayed with me.
She said, my country, Israel,
my country is still a cause.
People have something to live for, for which they want to bring
children into existence.
So here's my last question. In this depopulating world,
what would Nick Eberstadt, a good and
holy man who is also a brilliant
demographer, advise Pope Leo XIV?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt: All right,
I don't think that the Prince
of Rome needs any guidance
from an economist or
a demographer about what makes for
meaning and
spiritual completeness in life.
What I suppose we need outside of clerical circles is a little bit
more introspection.
There have never been so
many people on earth as there are now. And there's so much loneliness.
I mean, we've cracked the formula for
abundance and
that may be necessary for
the sort of a fulfilling flourishing of our species,
but it's inadequate.
That's not game over. What we're seeing all
around the world with
this birth crash is a change in values and I think in an awful lot
of cases a substitution
of older values for
much less fulfilling ones.
You look at the iPhone and you see so many people gazing into
that anywhere you go,
even in low income countries,
it's like a modern
day Narcissus mirror and
it is irresistible. But it's also so inferior to the real
full life to the technicolor life,
that people can live here. So the quest for meaning is not going to
end once we head into depopulation, as I believe we will
sooner than most presume.
We're going to adapt and adjust to it and there's going to be, I think,
a great spiritual ferment and
churning as world population contracts.
Give it a couple of generations,
give it a little time. We're a very adaptable animal.
>> Peter Robinson: Nick Eberstadt,
thank you. >> Nicholas Eberstadt: Thank you, Peter. >> Peter Robinson: For Uncommon Knowledge,
the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation,
I'm Peter Robinson. [MUSIC]
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