So "the old norms" are just cultural particularities? The specific example you gave of a previous norm is fair play--you don't think that has any moral content?
I think that fair play and honesty are morally required of Christians (and, frankly, of everybody). Furthermore, I think that the vast majority of people also think that, but they're constantly bombarded with cultural production that tells them that everyone else is cheating and so being honest makes them chumps. I'm surprised to see you participating in that cultural production.
As a Chinese, I never felt like I fit into the old anti-communist order because well, my grandparents were Communist. Later on, after my grandparents died, I tried to flounder about in the seas of DEI 2016 core far left radic-lib stuff and capitalize on gender non conformity.
But today, the age of the Libtard is going away. I've been attending churches, but I've already gotten tired of mainstream churches and have drifted toward TLM. At the same time the big government pro welfare shtick that I hear in the Catholic and Anglican communities grosses me out as a libertarian.
It seems to be a trap for dumb chads who just want money and corruption from their government jobs because it's like the CCP for WASP college boys who dress dark academia.
Why do you read articles like Renn's? Prognostication is what we do. What's for dinner? We want to know about the future.
I'm merely talking about the past (did you notice? ) and applying what we observe in the TFRs actuariallly to the current trends. If they continue, it will be grim.
As for supper? I will have to wait and see. You are absolutely right, I know absolutely nothing about the future. Let's hope I am not a good guesser. I'm believing the future looks bad.
Based off your previous essays I think I know what you think but I would like to hear your thoughts on isolation vs. infiltration in light of low-trust. Isolate by moving to small conservative towns or infiltrate by acquiring power in the cities?
Of all the challenges we have, the biggest is to re-establish social trust. Unfortunately, our leadership class routinely engages in behavior or enacts policies that erode trust (mass immigration, "trust the experts" when they repeatedly show themselves to be wrong or misleading), and they obviously feel quite free to ignore the expressed will of the public on many of these as well.
I am not sure our political system or courts are capable of allowing a peaceful and non-authoritarian resolution to these problems.
I am interested to hear more about your thought on tech and the “neo-Luddite” stance of the new right. It feels like most new tech is more digital tools that don’t solve problems.As an example lots of people are excited about AI tools in healthcare, like ambient listening, thinking it will resolve provider burnout. The problem is that there are not enough clinicians, payment is built on volume, and many patients are medically sick and spiritually sick, unwilling or unable to adopt healthy behaviors. Ambient listening doesn’t solve any of that. So I wouldn’t say I am anti tech or a neo-Luddite. I just am not willing to accept that all tech is equal, all tech is good, and all tech is progress or that all of our problems require a technological solution.
AI is groundbreaking for high IQ agentic people to manage our own health, and there is probably lots of room for upside there. It's not that hard for a smarter-than-average middle-aged person, supplemented by AI, to outperform a distracted and overworked doctor, especially if he has access to the full record of medical data on himself.
But I don't know that AI does much for the median person, or for the elderly.
Right now I think there is more value in payers and providers using AI to engage in an arms race over coding and payment disputes than using it to actually provide better/more cost-effective care.
The US healthcare payment system is probably an example of something that needs to be destroyed root and branch, as we look ahead to the next era.
On doctors ordering tests and prescriptions: more of a "want" than a "need." Those barriers are actively harmful for some but keeping human doctors in the loop to some degree is probably net beneficial for the median American. Though I would like to explore major reforms even there.
Trump's focus on trying to force electric companies to keep burning coal while attacking (not just cutting subsidies for) anything labeled "green" is a good example.
A luddite position would be to ONLY burn coal. But maintaining coal, at present, as a partial energy source is not a Luddite position, but a practical one and at least temporarily a necessity. A luddite position would be the cessation and destruction of nuclear power plants as Germany did or the near impossible regulatory hurdle of American energy projects.
Some of what the Trump Admin is doing on coal is irrational and could fairly be called "luddite". E.g. forcing utilities to keep coal plants open that are too old, uneconomical, and naturally near retirement.
What Trump is doing on wind is even more irrational and seems to be entirely guided by a personal aesthetic preference of his. If you want to block new projects, that's one thing, but throwing a wrench in the works of existing projects where the capital has already been deployed is just asinine from any perspective. Anti-business, anti-consumer.
Delaying coal plant closures in a non-stupid way is perfectly rational and not luddite. Even under Biden the regional power grids (e.g. PJM) were saying that coal plants were being retired too fast and it was presenting risks to grid reliability. The fact is that at a time of surging power demand, it's in the public interest to have an excess of reliable fossil fuel power, and electric utility regulation needs to factor that in.
So the correct approach is economics over vibes. Nuance and balance.
I would love to think about this in the lens of church and ministry. Obviously we saw the small church evolve to the mega-franchise church. But it seems that small church is making a comeback again along with smaller franchise churches.
This was such a great article. Thank you! If I may, I would like to boldly offer a resource that I think might be very helpful in this conversation. Written by worldview speaker and author, Darrow Miller, this book offers perspective and wisdom from the past with strategy for the forming of the future. You, Mr Renn, are actually referenced in this book in chapter 3. http://occupytillicomebook.com
Childless chumps. We are sitting at the top of a roller-coaster big hill called, "Doom's Steep Decline." A declining population is doomed. Rural Japan is a ruin. The modern rural population has declined from 35% to 8%. The median age in rural Japan is >60. They will give you a house and some land if you will move out there. Schools, hospitals, transport- they are all disappearing. Japan has the oldest mean population in the world at ~49. It will plateau around 58. The TFR (birth rate) is at 1.22 - in fifty or sixty years, Japan will lose half its population.
The US is at a TFR of 1.6. Canada is at 1.25. The whole world is basically averaged out at 2.1 -ZPG has arrived ahead of schedule. South Korea is at 0.68, China is at 1.0 - that's one child per family, yes siree. Eu =~1.3. The transition has begun, all right. But the promise is - even dead cats bounce if they fall far enough. The transition looks like a depopulation bomb. And Renn looks like a chump ignoring the horrific demographics that are descending on our childless future.
Aaron writes a lot about the fertility collapse. Just not in this article. You're barking up the wrong tree here.
But also this is an article about America, and the fact is that fertility in the US is higher than the rest of the rich world (and even a growing slice of the Third World). Whatever pessimism the rest of the world ought to be feeling, we should be feeling somewhat less. This is one reason this will most likely be the Second American Century.
The US TFR right now is ~1.5, Which Japan hit in the early nineties. Canada is now at par with Japan right now ~1.25. The EU is at 1.38.
I'm so optimistic about the Second American century. Renn says we need more housing. Right. All that growth - economic and social prosperity - driven by....??? Medicine??? All the entrepreneurial, animal spirits, of a rest home.
As things stand now - South Korea, over the next 45 years, will depopulate from 51 million to 15 million with their current TFR of 0.68. We are so lucky we are not South Korea.
Why doesn't Renn imagine South Korea's transition. We are dorm mates, right?
Exactly. Postfamilialism (what a word!) is a cross between an existential crisis and a global suicide pact. It's not an aspect of transition to a Second American Century. It's a culture of death.
Not to mention that those who are procreating are of one particular political persuasion. Now if we could just stop sacrificing our own children to the alter of leftism...
I don't think this is a problem that can easily be solved. I'm not of the school that it's a matter of propaganda in schools, etc. It's a matter of technology-induced social drift.
Broad strokes liberalism will win out for net converts as long as the pace of social/technological change is high, because at such times conservatism comes across as maladapted. Rather than coming across as wise and experienced, old people come across as behind-the-times luddites, their knowledge irrelevant.
Yeah. Sure. The TRF could get a lot worse, just like it has for at least the last forty years. What do you see reversing the disastrous global trend downward? Why are women going to choose to have more children?
Honest question: Why do you seem to doubt the possibility of that? I cannot give you a road map to the future any more than you give me one. For one thing, there is no "the future" there are futures plural, a superposition of potentia, and which set will be realized is beyond anyone's ability to foreknow (God excepted). I am only suggesting one possible reason why in some future world people (women and men both) might choose to have more children. I see nothing impossible about that. There's zero reason to think the current set of circumstances will apply indefinitely into the future. In fact it's highly probable that today's reality will not be the reality of a century, let alone a millennium from now.
Renn's article is his thoughts about the future, thoughts based on his observations of constant change.
The most important change is the collapsing, global TFR. Renn has not included the TFR in his thinking. He should. And you should tell my why women might choose to bear more children, instead of less.
The continuance and worsening of the K-shaped present is one possibility if the current course of deflating the debt through dollar debasement continues: those with assets are further enriched while those with savings/bonds and reliant on current income/pensions are further impoverished and trapped.
"Following the old norms in a country where nobody is doing so is a formula fit only for a chump, for example."
Aren't you supposed to be a Christian?
I wasn't aware that cultural particularities were Biblical commands.
So "the old norms" are just cultural particularities? The specific example you gave of a previous norm is fair play--you don't think that has any moral content?
I think that fair play and honesty are morally required of Christians (and, frankly, of everybody). Furthermore, I think that the vast majority of people also think that, but they're constantly bombarded with cultural production that tells them that everyone else is cheating and so being honest makes them chumps. I'm surprised to see you participating in that cultural production.
As a Chinese, I never felt like I fit into the old anti-communist order because well, my grandparents were Communist. Later on, after my grandparents died, I tried to flounder about in the seas of DEI 2016 core far left radic-lib stuff and capitalize on gender non conformity.
But today, the age of the Libtard is going away. I've been attending churches, but I've already gotten tired of mainstream churches and have drifted toward TLM. At the same time the big government pro welfare shtick that I hear in the Catholic and Anglican communities grosses me out as a libertarian.
It seems to be a trap for dumb chads who just want money and corruption from their government jobs because it's like the CCP for WASP college boys who dress dark academia.
Why do you read articles like Renn's? Prognostication is what we do. What's for dinner? We want to know about the future.
I'm merely talking about the past (did you notice? ) and applying what we observe in the TFRs actuariallly to the current trends. If they continue, it will be grim.
As for supper? I will have to wait and see. You are absolutely right, I know absolutely nothing about the future. Let's hope I am not a good guesser. I'm believing the future looks bad.
Based off your previous essays I think I know what you think but I would like to hear your thoughts on isolation vs. infiltration in light of low-trust. Isolate by moving to small conservative towns or infiltrate by acquiring power in the cities?
Of all the challenges we have, the biggest is to re-establish social trust. Unfortunately, our leadership class routinely engages in behavior or enacts policies that erode trust (mass immigration, "trust the experts" when they repeatedly show themselves to be wrong or misleading), and they obviously feel quite free to ignore the expressed will of the public on many of these as well.
I am not sure our political system or courts are capable of allowing a peaceful and non-authoritarian resolution to these problems.
I am interested to hear more about your thought on tech and the “neo-Luddite” stance of the new right. It feels like most new tech is more digital tools that don’t solve problems.As an example lots of people are excited about AI tools in healthcare, like ambient listening, thinking it will resolve provider burnout. The problem is that there are not enough clinicians, payment is built on volume, and many patients are medically sick and spiritually sick, unwilling or unable to adopt healthy behaviors. Ambient listening doesn’t solve any of that. So I wouldn’t say I am anti tech or a neo-Luddite. I just am not willing to accept that all tech is equal, all tech is good, and all tech is progress or that all of our problems require a technological solution.
AI is groundbreaking for high IQ agentic people to manage our own health, and there is probably lots of room for upside there. It's not that hard for a smarter-than-average middle-aged person, supplemented by AI, to outperform a distracted and overworked doctor, especially if he has access to the full record of medical data on himself.
But I don't know that AI does much for the median person, or for the elderly.
Right now I think there is more value in payers and providers using AI to engage in an arms race over coding and payment disputes than using it to actually provide better/more cost-effective care.
The US healthcare payment system is probably an example of something that needs to be destroyed root and branch, as we look ahead to the next era.
We will still need medical personnel top write Rx, order tests and when needed to perform surgery.
Surgery - yes. At least near-term.
On doctors ordering tests and prescriptions: more of a "want" than a "need." Those barriers are actively harmful for some but keeping human doctors in the loop to some degree is probably net beneficial for the median American. Though I would like to explore major reforms even there.
Trump's focus on trying to force electric companies to keep burning coal while attacking (not just cutting subsidies for) anything labeled "green" is a good example.
A luddite position would be to ONLY burn coal. But maintaining coal, at present, as a partial energy source is not a Luddite position, but a practical one and at least temporarily a necessity. A luddite position would be the cessation and destruction of nuclear power plants as Germany did or the near impossible regulatory hurdle of American energy projects.
Some of what the Trump Admin is doing on coal is irrational and could fairly be called "luddite". E.g. forcing utilities to keep coal plants open that are too old, uneconomical, and naturally near retirement.
What Trump is doing on wind is even more irrational and seems to be entirely guided by a personal aesthetic preference of his. If you want to block new projects, that's one thing, but throwing a wrench in the works of existing projects where the capital has already been deployed is just asinine from any perspective. Anti-business, anti-consumer.
Delaying coal plant closures in a non-stupid way is perfectly rational and not luddite. Even under Biden the regional power grids (e.g. PJM) were saying that coal plants were being retired too fast and it was presenting risks to grid reliability. The fact is that at a time of surging power demand, it's in the public interest to have an excess of reliable fossil fuel power, and electric utility regulation needs to factor that in.
So the correct approach is economics over vibes. Nuance and balance.
We will have uses for coal for the foreseeable future. But it is definitely the fuel of the past, not the future.
Germany's actions on nuclear power can only be called "idiotisch".
I would love to think about this in the lens of church and ministry. Obviously we saw the small church evolve to the mega-franchise church. But it seems that small church is making a comeback again along with smaller franchise churches.
It will be increasingly important for like minded people to work together and maintain a refuge for others with a similar mindset.
Your examples line up with the "Fourth Turning" 80-year cycles which is exactly where we are right now. It will be interesting to see where we end up.
I haven't read the Fourth Turning, but Yes.
I don't see the Boomers as our "iconic generation". At this point they are fading from the scene-- they are becoming has-beens.
Fame skipped my generation (the Xers). Today it's Millennials whose star is rising.
Tell that to Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, etc... but I agree that we Xers are under-represented.
Thanks for this wisdom, Aaron. Very well done.
Sounds very Strauss and Howe/Fourth Turning.
Maybe change the Institutions table to read "national interest?" instead of "isolationism?" It's more descriptive of the reality you're pointing to.
This was such a great article. Thank you! If I may, I would like to boldly offer a resource that I think might be very helpful in this conversation. Written by worldview speaker and author, Darrow Miller, this book offers perspective and wisdom from the past with strategy for the forming of the future. You, Mr Renn, are actually referenced in this book in chapter 3. http://occupytillicomebook.com
Childless chumps. We are sitting at the top of a roller-coaster big hill called, "Doom's Steep Decline." A declining population is doomed. Rural Japan is a ruin. The modern rural population has declined from 35% to 8%. The median age in rural Japan is >60. They will give you a house and some land if you will move out there. Schools, hospitals, transport- they are all disappearing. Japan has the oldest mean population in the world at ~49. It will plateau around 58. The TFR (birth rate) is at 1.22 - in fifty or sixty years, Japan will lose half its population.
The US is at a TFR of 1.6. Canada is at 1.25. The whole world is basically averaged out at 2.1 -ZPG has arrived ahead of schedule. South Korea is at 0.68, China is at 1.0 - that's one child per family, yes siree. Eu =~1.3. The transition has begun, all right. But the promise is - even dead cats bounce if they fall far enough. The transition looks like a depopulation bomb. And Renn looks like a chump ignoring the horrific demographics that are descending on our childless future.
Aaron writes a lot about the fertility collapse. Just not in this article. You're barking up the wrong tree here.
But also this is an article about America, and the fact is that fertility in the US is higher than the rest of the rich world (and even a growing slice of the Third World). Whatever pessimism the rest of the world ought to be feeling, we should be feeling somewhat less. This is one reason this will most likely be the Second American Century.
The US TFR right now is ~1.5, Which Japan hit in the early nineties. Canada is now at par with Japan right now ~1.25. The EU is at 1.38.
I'm so optimistic about the Second American century. Renn says we need more housing. Right. All that growth - economic and social prosperity - driven by....??? Medicine??? All the entrepreneurial, animal spirits, of a rest home.
As things stand now - South Korea, over the next 45 years, will depopulate from 51 million to 15 million with their current TFR of 0.68. We are so lucky we are not South Korea.
Why doesn't Renn imagine South Korea's transition. We are dorm mates, right?
Low TFR is part of "postfamilialism"
Exactly. Postfamilialism (what a word!) is a cross between an existential crisis and a global suicide pact. It's not an aspect of transition to a Second American Century. It's a culture of death.
Not to mention that those who are procreating are of one particular political persuasion. Now if we could just stop sacrificing our own children to the alter of leftism...
I don't think this is a problem that can easily be solved. I'm not of the school that it's a matter of propaganda in schools, etc. It's a matter of technology-induced social drift.
Broad strokes liberalism will win out for net converts as long as the pace of social/technological change is high, because at such times conservatism comes across as maladapted. Rather than coming across as wise and experienced, old people come across as behind-the-times luddites, their knowledge irrelevant.
"Trees do not grow up to the sky".
No trend endures indefinitely other than basic physical processes based on physical constants.
Yeah. Sure. The TRF could get a lot worse, just like it has for at least the last forty years. What do you see reversing the disastrous global trend downward? Why are women going to choose to have more children?
When circumstances are radically different from today, so that the "return" of having children is positive again as it was for most of history.
What will create circumstances radically different "for women" that they will want to bear more children? Honest question.
Honest question: Why do you seem to doubt the possibility of that? I cannot give you a road map to the future any more than you give me one. For one thing, there is no "the future" there are futures plural, a superposition of potentia, and which set will be realized is beyond anyone's ability to foreknow (God excepted). I am only suggesting one possible reason why in some future world people (women and men both) might choose to have more children. I see nothing impossible about that. There's zero reason to think the current set of circumstances will apply indefinitely into the future. In fact it's highly probable that today's reality will not be the reality of a century, let alone a millennium from now.
Renn's article is his thoughts about the future, thoughts based on his observations of constant change.
The most important change is the collapsing, global TFR. Renn has not included the TFR in his thinking. He should. And you should tell my why women might choose to bear more children, instead of less.
I don't see it. Enlighten me.
It is an honest question
You neglected one major factor: DEBT
And the root of that problem: SPENDING
How those two are resolved will determine how much of your white space fills in.
The continuance and worsening of the K-shaped present is one possibility if the current course of deflating the debt through dollar debasement continues: those with assets are further enriched while those with savings/bonds and reliant on current income/pensions are further impoverished and trapped.
If this is true (which I believe it is and has been for decades), then why not invest in assets instead of complaining about the way things are?
Those who can, do (or should). But that K is not sustainable, especially if it extends for decades. It only ends in collapse or revolution.
Historically the only way any society has ever rebalanced its inequality has involved war, plague or some other highly lethal disaster.
You're repeating me.