Falling Birthrates are a Good Thing

Declining birthrates, population numbers, and the horror of Malthusian reality.

Trends usually are not newsworthy. An astute observer of media will realize that there is an inverse relationship between frequency and newsworthiness. If it makes the news, it’s notable. So, when a trend line starts to make headlines, that is particularly notable. Birth rates and the incoming demographic crisis have become a hot topic over the last year — mainly because they look bad. Industrialized countries in the West and Asia are experiencing a steep birthrate decline, indicating that the population is shrinking. Are declining birthrates an apocalyptic scenario for industrial society? If so, what can we do about it? In this essay, I will argue that Thomas Malthus is both correct and grossly misunderstood.

The Malthus question is undoubtedly a Dark Enlightenment issue. Nick Land stated that his essay, ‘The Dark Enlightenment,’¹ was originally meant to take a more Malthusian approach, but he instead opted for a Hobbesian assessment of modern society. Understanding the Malthusian conundrum is still critical, and Malthus’s ideas must be grappled with to have proper expectations of the future. Long-term planning is extremely critical and extremely lacking at this stage of Western civilization. As we try to patch the holes brought about by short-term issues, we ignore the operating system of reality and its side constraints. We cross over bounds we perhaps we should not cross, and we are woefully unprepared for what comes next.

Mac Baconai

Leader/Entrepreneur Maximization

In Man and Technics, Oswald Spengler describes how nature exacts revenge on man by confining him in Culture.² Once he is supposedly emancipated, he finds himself in new self-imposed bonds. "The Culture, the aggregate of artificial, personal, self-made life-forms, develops into a close-barred cage for these souls that would not be restrained. The beast of prey, who made others his domestic animals to exploit them, has taken himself captive," Spengler says.³ The house is a symbol of this fact, Spengler says, and so is the increased population, which hides the individual in the vast sea of people. Man colonizes the whole Earth. One nation now rubs up against another, creating a new frontier. The limits on space arouses in man old instincts of hatred and violence. Spengler states that the frontier, "of whatever kind it may be, even the intellectual frontier, is the mortal foe of the Will-to-Power."⁴ Population density has a constraining effect on the spirit of man.

In addition, Spengler notes that even as population numbers grow, the quantity of leaders remains small. Hands multiply at a faster rate than heads. Spengler states, “It is, in fact, the pack of the true beasts of prey, the pack of the gifted who dispose, in one way or another, of the increasing herd of the others.”⁵ Yet despite retaining some essence of the beast of prey, the leader is still in chains to the new organization of mass society and must undergo efforts to preserve inward freedom. Here begins "the individualism that is a reaction against the psychology of the mass.”⁶ Large population numbers compel the carnivore soul to rail against the captivity of Culture, attempting to shake off the spiritual and intellectual limitations imposed by it. They do not want to be absorbed in the mass. Some examples of this rebellion are the conquerer, the adventurer, the hermit, and some kinds of criminals. I would add that the entrepreneur likely fits the bill as well. "The idea of personality," Spengler says, "in its dark beginnings, is a protest against humanity in the mass, and the tension between these grows and grows to its tragic finale.”⁷

This rebellious nature, the spirit of the beast-of-prey, is what drives the natural leader to greater achievement. The Austrian economists would describe this figure as the entrepreneur, the main character of economic action. In some cases, the beast-of-prey drive inspires instead the inventor or the thinker, but these types do not have as great a command over the work of the hands as the entrepreneur does. The entrepreneur translates entropy into extropy, creating value by necessity. I will not dive deep into the entrepreneur’s function in the market here. If you would like to learn more, go read Mises and Schumpeter. What is more concerning, though, is how population growth impacts the entrepreneur. Spengler’s assessment seems to indicate that the leader/entrepreneur share of the population shrinks as the population increases. Consequently, there is a diminishing return of economic innovators as the population grows.

Modeling Spengler is difficult because Spengler approaches history and human development from the perspective that cultures act as autonomous organisms. However, to discuss whether or not Spengler is correct, it is necessary to make some assumptions. IQ is the likely best metric to measure the number of entrepreneurs/natural leaders. Sure, some other convoluted X factor may consider this or that, but that is unimportant. The goal is Faustian achievement, maximization of the beast of prey spirit, and domination over reality. IQ is predictive for reaching these ends.

The IQ Question

Kell (2013)⁸ indicates IQ is a predictor of job success. Hunter (1983)⁹ argues that the embrace of IQ-based hiring would save $80 billion per year in 1983 dollars. In 2024 dollars, it is $250 billion a year. However, some contend that IQ may not be a reliable indicator of job success, pointing to various methodological issues with these studies. Richardson and Norgate (2015)¹⁰ argue that the evidence does not indicate a correlation of IQ with job performance. They summarize the studies that indicate IQ is correlated with job performance:

The Schmidt and Hunter approach (1998), as first devised, seemed relatively straightforward. First, the results were collated from as many studies as were available. Then, the variance due to sampling error in the reported (observed) correlations was estimated. Then, the mean of the observed correlations was computed and corrected for measurement unreliability in the criterion (i.e., job performance) and for restriction of range in predictor and criterion measures. This produced the results now so widely cited in vindication of IQ test validity.

Hunter and Hunter (1984) first reported the application of these methods—usually referred to as “validity generalization,” or VG—to the hundreds of studies reviewed by Ghiselli (1973). In addition, they reported a further meta-analysis of 515 studies carried out by the U.S. Employment Service using the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB). This produced corrected correlations in the range 0.5–0.6. Similar results have been reported from application of the same methods in more recent studies. For example, in meta-analyses of European and British studies, Salgado et al. (2003) and Bertua, Anderson, and Salgado (2005) found raw correlations between 0.12 and 0.34, depending on job category. However, all correlations virtually doubled under correction. Lang, Kersting, Hülsheger, and Lang (2010) report similar results from meta-analysis of 50 studies in Germany.

However, they are still critical for methodological reasons.

It is these corrected correlations from meta-analyses that are almost universally cited in favor of IQ as a predictor of job performance (and, by implication, that IQ really does measure something that can be called intelligence or general ability). But many doubts have been expressed regarding those methods, and results have been subject to continual criticism. Generally, meta-analyses are rarely straightforward and, at times, have been controversial. Although undoubtedly useful in many subject areas, as Murphy (2003) says, they are often viewed with distaste because they mix good and bad studies, and encourage the drawing of strong conclusions from often-weak data. In the IQ-job performance studies in question, quality checks are often difficult because the original reports were unpublished, sometimes with parts of original data lost. In addition, the corrections themselves involve many assumptions, for example about normality of distributions and randomness of effects, which are rarely articulated in primary reports (Murphy, 2003, Landy, 2003) described them as the “psychometric equivalent of alchemy” (p. 157).

Richardson and Norgate’s contention is unconvincing, coming across primarily as nitpicking the numerous studies that indicate IQ is predictive of job performance. In addition, IQ is positively correlated with academic achievement and lifetime earnings (but not lifetime savings). Most credible scholars seem to agree that IQ is predictive of job performance, which makes it a suitable metric. Some contend that IQ, or general intelligence, is not useful for measuring non-industrial people groups. I agree with this point, but that is unimportant for the issue at hand because post-industrial civilization is our concern. Is IQ predictive for various hunter-gatherer-type abilities? Probably not, but that is not Faustian civilization. Within Faustian civilization, as well as the now-developed East, IQ predicts positive outcomes. Still, it is important to look at aggregate IQ instead of only individual IQ.

Hafter (2017)¹¹ shows that IQ is a robust predictor of economic welfare growth. For each point increase in IQ, there is an increase of 4% in average economic welfare. Hernstein and Murray show that a 3-point increase in population IQ results in a 25% reduction in the poverty rate, an 18% reduction in welfare recipiency, and a 20% reduction in child poverty. Increases in population IQ lead to improvements in many areas of life.

What is IQ? It is a measure of something, or at least a few things. Full-scale IQ tests measure about six different metrics of cognitive ability. But what IQ is at a fundamental level is hard to say. What is important is that IQ measures something that predicts outcomes well. When the average IQ is high, outcomes are better.

The Flynn effect is the observed effect that IQs have been increasing. No evidence indicates that the Flynn effect requires a growing population to take place. The Flynn is largely due to environmental factors, based on existing evidence. There will eventually be a ceiling for optimizing environmental factors, and research does not indicate that mankind is evolving in some way that would increase intelligence. That is to say, the Flynn effect is not caused by changes in genetics, and we should, therefore, see the Flynn effect stop when we have effectively eliminated all environmental detriments to intelligence and put in place all environmental benefits to IQ (of which there seem to be remarkably few).

IQ follows a normal distribution. The bell curve of IQ is consistent regardless of population size. If the population was extremely small, it would probably turn into some other weird shape, but doubling the population would have no impact on the proportion of both genius and mentally challenged people. It would remain roughly the same. Therefore, it seems Spengler is incorrect in saying that natural leaders increase less than followers. Unless, of course, IQ is not the best way to measure the number of natural leaders. It seems to be the best option based on current research, however, so we can confidently say that Spengler is wrong.

Therefore, a growing population means there will be more smart people. This creates positive outcomes for everyone. Birthrates are falling, and this will lead to negative outcomes in the medium and long term. Governments should engage in every possible policy to increase the birth rate. The end! The conclusion has been reached, problem solved!

No, not quite. There is more to the population question. We have not even gotten to Thomas Malthus yet.

Malthusian Misreading: The Population Bomb

Most are familiar with the basics of Thomas Malthus’s argument. Population increases exponentially, whereas food supply increases geometrically. As a result, human society will come to a point of research shortage and become unable to feed itself. Malthus was a big idiot, the narrative goes. He did not foresee technological advancements leading to greater crop yields, supporting the 8 billion people alive today. Neo-Malthusians have since risen, prophesying doom and gloom for humankind if we do not curtail population growth. Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, is the most famous. His book has been rightfully derided and denigrated. The popular Neo-Malthusian is often environmentalist, finding its current expression in the climate change alarmists.

Climate change alarmists argue that the developed world must stop having children and stop eating meat because mankind is going to run out of resources. Conservatives and libertarians rightly deride these people for having a backward view of reality. The Simon-Ehrlich wager¹² is famous for the anti-neo-Malthusians coming out on top. A 1999 CATO commentary meets the environmentalist neo-Malthusians with well-deserved disrespect:

The mystery is why anyone takes these modern-day Chicken Littles seriously anymore. After all, every objective fact and environmental trend is running in precisely the opposite direction of what the widely acclaimed doomsayers of the 1960s — from Lester Brown to Paul Ehrlich to the Club of Rome — once predicted. Birth rates around the world are lower, not higher, today than at any time in at least a century. Global per capita food production is 40 percent higher today than as recently as 1950. The “energy crisis” now is such a distant memory that these days oil is virtually the cheapest, not the most expensive, liquid on Earth. In sum, the population bomb propagandists have all the intellectual credibility of the Flat Earth Society.¹³

Mankind’s ability to produce sustenance and resources has yet to hit an upper limit. Even though the population increases, technology comes in to save the day and ensure plenty for everyone.

Thought experiment: say the global population doubles. That would certainly be a strain on resources. But new farms and technology to fill in the gap would probably ensure survival. But how far can this go? Multiply the global population by 100. Eight hundred billion people on Earth. Let’s make it a nice 1 trillion. It is hard to believe that Earth could support that many people. Maybe it could. Maybe some technological advancement could enable Earth to comfortably support this many people. But such a belief can only be taken on faith, not on purely economic or scientific grounds. The point is that the classic understanding of Malthus’s population growth warnings will probably be true eventually.

Economics of Population Size

Despite free-market fans often dismissing Malthus, many in the Austrian economic school have written on the economic dynamics of population size. The average libertarian or conservative will go after the population bombers, arguing that climate change and pessimism about resources are bad reasons to limit the population. What they miss is that, even though nations should not actively pursue falling birth rates for such reasons, falling birth rates are not a catastrophic state of affairs.

Richard Cantillon, inspiration for the marginal revolution and proto-Austrian economist, wrote on the population question. He “took a scientific approach to population,”¹⁴ his Mises Institute profile says:

He recognized that humans might multiply like “mice in a barn if they have unlimited means of subsistence,” or that population might fall substantially over time. Cantillon even recognized that international trade would affect the level and distribution of population, as land-poor countries could export manufactured goods to land-rich countries in return for food, fiber, and raw materials, and thus support a larger population than otherwise. Here, Cantillon is often mistakenly labeled a mercantilist, but Cantillon remains a value-free economist on the subject of population size. However, he does offer the prince technical advice of a nationalist nature on how to achieve a greater population, which supposedly is good for national defense. For example, he bemoans the export of large amounts of French wine in order to pay the very high market price of a small amount of lace imported from Brussels.

For Cantillon, large population size is primarily important for national defense but not much else. Speaking positively, smaller or larger population numbers make no difference. What is important is ensuring that each individual has their preferences met efficiently. GDP per capita captures this to some degree. Per capita GDP is often recognized as a better indicator of economic well-being than pure GDP. Declining GDP is not nearly as detrimental as declining GDP per capita.

Ludwig von Mises argues in Human Action that the free market price system automatically regulates population numbers to ensure the well-being of everyone. If there are too many people in the short term, the average standard of living will fall. Therefore, families will automatically regulate to ensure comfortable lives for them and their children. Without proper economic indicators, socialist economies could not possibly allow for familial self-regulation and would have to regulate sex at the central planning board.

A socialist commonwealth would be under the necessity of regulating the fertility rate by authoritarian control. It would have to regiment the sexual life of its wards no less than all other spheres of their conduct. In the market economy every individual is spontaneously intent upon not begetting children whom he could not rear without considerably lowering his family's standard of life. Thus the growth of population beyond the optimum size as determined by the supply of capital available and the state of technological knowledge is checked. The interests of each individual coincide with those of all other Individuals.¹⁵

Mises even goes so far as to argue that contraception is a critical component of a prosperous economy. Being Catholic, I resent him for this, but his point is clear. Economic well-being depends on proper regulation of population size. Specifically, population numbers cannot get too big.

Those fighting birth control want to eliminate a device indispensable for the preservation of peaceful human cooperation and the social division of labor. Where the average standard of living is impaired by the excessive increase in population figures, irreconcilable conflicts of interests arise. Each individual is again a rival of all other individuals in the struggle for survival. The annihilation of rivals is the only means of increasing one's own well-being. The philosophers and theologians who assert that birth control is contrary to the laws of God and Nature refuse to see things as they really are. Nature straitens the material means required for the improvement of human wellbeing and survival.¹⁶

Peter St. Onge writes in the Mises Wire that population growth is not necessary for economic growth. Rather, population decline may lead to economic growth. Conversely, economic decline may lead to population growth. He argues that the Black Plague that killed off a third of the European population deserves some credit for the subsequent economic boom in European society. He writes:

Because if the population declines by a third while capital including arable land stays the same, you get a surplus. Same resources divided by fewer people.

Think of zombie movies where people are running around with nearly unlimited resources at their disposal — free cars, riverfront penthouses. That, in diluted form, is what a declining population gives us — more land, more highways or buildings, more resources per person.

Now, if the population’s declining not because of a terrible disaster like the Plague, rather because people simply want fewer children, then you don’t even get the massive hit from losing productive people.¹⁷

Population size is generally a non-issue for economic growth or decline. A shrinking population is distinctly positive for per capita wealth because everyone gets a bigger piece of the pie. St. Onge does note that increasing the global population tends to lead to a general increase in investment since there are more people able to work in more factories.

Another consideration for the economics of population numbers is social security wealth transfer programs to assist the elderly. This turns population decline, which could otherwise be a positive, into something nearly apocalyptic. It shows social security systems for what they are: a Ponzi scheme. If there are not enough people at the bottom of the pyramid, it is going to topple. Such a system is unsustainable in the long term anyway because population numbers cannot increase in such a way to keep this widening pyramid standing.

Nick Land, Malthusian Horror

As stated in the introduction, the primary impetus for diving into the Malthus question was Nick Land’s limited writings on a Malthusian understanding of population. In ‘Malthusian Horror,’ Land states that ‘The Dark Enlightenment’ was originally meant to include more Malthus, but Hobbes took over.

Nick Land suggests that Malthus was right. There is a principle in what he describes as “Classic Malthus” that has significant and penetrating application.¹⁸

Land hones in on Malthus's quote: "The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race."¹⁹ He notes that "in some shape or other" is a particularly horrific phrase.

Land argues that Malthus is correct in that there is some hidden condition that "makes a grim perversity of all humanity’s efforts to improve its condition.” Both Malthusian relaxations and Malthusian pressures, which correspond to reductions and increases in mortality, respectively, are manifestations of this hidden condition. "Malthus subtracts all utopianism from enlightenment. He shows that history is put together — necessarily — in a butcher’s yard," Land states.²⁰

Economic advancement does not have to mean humanitarian improvement, and Darwinian evolution does not have to mean biological progression. "It is from Malthus that we know that when anything seems to move forward, it is through being ground up against a cutting edge."²¹ Land seems to suggest that the rejection of Malthus makes one a dreamy fool. This 2014 essay is abysmally short and leaves a lot to be desired.

In another short essay, Land states:

Can anybody read [the texts of Malthus’s students] without an immersion in moral terror? Our moral sensibilities are cancelled by the blood-mill of history — under the iron rule of a higher conservation law — making a horrible jest of even our most uncorrupted impulses towards the good. The philosophical virtue of the Scottish Enlightenment lay entirely in its meditation upon such perversion of purposes. It is from such heights that we have fallen into our presently-dominant — lazy, cowardly, and despicable — moralistic cant.²²

In ‘Hell Baked,’ Land states, “The logical consequence of Social Darwinism is that everything of value has been built in Hell.”²³ Things do not just automatically get better. You have to crack some eggs to make an omelet, the adage goes. Our current historical standing is built on a past filled with atrocities and actions that are beyond the pale today. The Roman Republic was founded with the mass kidnapping of the Sabine women. Worse things followed their kidnapping. Every country and every empire that has ever existed was built on bloodshed. Every successful business out-competed other businesses. The failed businesses were started with the life savings of a family man who could no longer feed his children once his venture went bust. Attempts to escape creative destruction (a necessary component of market efficiency) meant communism, which led to much more bloodshed with much less output.

In Man and Technics, Spengler describes how the tragic nature of our existence is due to our revolt against nature. Nature constrains man, declaring what is and is not possible. Man, through technics, breaks through the boundaries that nature sets. But nature is extremely powerful. Nature is like a rubber band wrapped around the wrist. You can pull it back, but the further you pull it back, the more resistance it will give. Eventually, assuming it is a durable rubber band, the resistance will win out over the strength of your finger, and it will snap back onto your wrist. Nature is always pulling mankind back to its natural state, so overcoming nature necessitates the endurance of much hardship. This is the idea Land gets at.

It is only due to a predominance of influences that are not only entirely morally indifferent, but indeed —from a human perspective-indescribably cruel, that nature has been capable of constructive action. Specifically, it is solely by way of the relentless, brutal culling of populations that any complex or adaptive traits have been sieved — with torturous inefficiency — from the chaos of natural existence. All health, beauty, intelligence, and social grace has been teased from a vast butcher's yard of unbounded carnage, requiring incalculable eons of massacre to draw forth even the subtlest of advantages. This is not only a matter of the bloody grinding mills of selection, either, but also of the innumerable mutational abominations thrown up by the madness of chance, as it pursues its directionless path to some negligible preservable trait, and then—still further—of the unavowable horrors that fitness (or sheer survival) itself predominantly entails. We are a minuscule sample of agonized matter, comprising genetic survival monsters, fished from a cosmic ocean of vile mutants, by a pitiless killing machine of infinite appetite. (This is still, perhaps, to put an irresponsibly positive spin on the story, but it should suffice for our purposes here.)²⁴

History is a butcher’s yard because nature does not let its constraints be violated lightly. This is the Faustian bargain of Western man: we will pursue greatness, but we will bear the great cost. All that we have was paid for in blood.

In 'Monkey Trap,’ Land describes one of the many traps that we (the monkeys) face is the trap of thinking that we have achieved a sustained Malthusian relaxation. He cites Gregory Clark, one of the aforementioned students of Malthus.

Gregory Clark is among those few to have grasped it clearly. Any eugenic²⁵ trend within history is expressed by continuous downward mobility. For any given level of intelligence, a steady deterioration in life-prospects lies ahead, culling the least able, and replacing them with the more able, who inherit their wretched socio-economic situation, until they too are pushed off the Malthusian cliff. Relative comfort belongs only to the sports and freaks of cognitive advance. For everyone else, history slopes downwards into impoverishment, hopelessness, and eventual genetic extinction.²⁶

Gregory Clark and Volkmar Weiss are the two “real” neo-Malthusians who make a legitimate case for why Malthus still has a place in our understanding of population dynamics. We will cover both of them below to explore the robust case for Neo-Malthusianism and its critical application to current population trends.

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Neo-Malthusianism

Gregory Clark, author of A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, formalizes Malthusianism. This enables a proper economic understanding of the Malthusian trap and lets us reframe Thomas Malthus. Malthus is understood today as an idiotic failed prophet who predicted decline right before the greatest ever period of growth. Libertarians and conservatives pride themselves on the fact that they can easily take down the false-prophet-Malthus disciples like Ehrlich, who add nothing to any respectable discourse. They have not defeated the real Malthus, nor have they defeated the real neo-Malthusians. What Clark demonstrates is that Malthus’s model of population growth and decline was exactly correct throughout all of human history, and he just so happened to lay out this understanding right before it seemingly no longer applied.

Clark states that the Malthusian Trap “ensured that short-term gains in income through technological advances were inevitably lost through population growth. Thus the average person in the world of 1800 was no better off than the average person of 100,000 BC."²⁷ Any time human society became wealthier, they had more kids, and per capita wealth went back to what it was before. The hockey stick of human history, which any student of economics should be familiar with, is an unprecedented escape from the Malthusian trap.

"The crucial factor was the rate of technological advance,” Clark states. “As long as technology improved slowly, material conditions could not permanently improve, even while there was cumulatively significant gain in the technologies. The rate of technological advance in Malthusian economies can be inferred from population growth. The typical rate of technological advance before 1800 was well below 0.5 percent per year, about a thirtieth of the modern rate."²⁸ It took a long time for technological improvement to break the natural constraints of the Malthusian cycle.

The Industrial Revolution began in England, quickly spreading to the United States and the rest of Europe. Understanding how the English broke the cycle provides insight into the nature of our supposedly post-Malthusian reality. In England, “economic success translated powerfully into reproductive success. The richest men had twice as many surviving children at death as the poorest. The poorest individuals in Malthusian England had so few surviving children that their families were dying out. Preindustrial England was thus a world of constant downward mobility. Given the static nature of the Malthusian economy, the superabundant children of the rich had to, on average, move down the social hierarchy in order to find work."²⁹ Noble blood, which was noble because it had certain attributes that enabled it to be at the top of society, flowed down to the rest of society whenever wealth increased. Clark suggests that the break from the Malthusian cycle came as a result of genetic changes in the English population: "An evolutionary account of gradual changes is a much more plausible explanation than has previously been appreciated."³⁰ The Malthusian cycle was markedly good for the genetic stock of society. Noble traits, from intelligence to disease resistance, were passed down to the lower classes.

Social custom also played a critical role in England’s great escape. English norms, which are the same norms that laid the groundwork for the American founding as well as the development of the global economy, were ingratiated in the population over countless generations. Norms and genes often go together, not because norms are genetic, but because an individual will normally inherit their social norms from the same two people they inherited their genes from: their parents. Therefore, as the genes of the aristocrats and nobles gained an increasing share in the English gene pool, so did the aristocratic norms. Clark states that “just as accidents of social custom triumphed over hygiene, marriage, and reproduction to make Europeans richer than Asians in the Malthusian era, they also seem to have given Europe a greater cultural dynamic."³¹

This understanding of the escape from the Malthusian cycle also explains why the exportation of European technology to the entire globe has not produced the same results everywhere. “The one thing that could not be replicated so easily or so widely was the social environment that underpinned the cooperation of people in production in those countries where the technologies were first developed," Clark states.³² McLuhan and other media theorists make similar observations. Just because some technology can be gifted from a first-world country to a third-world country, it will not necessarily have the same effects. The culture, which is downstream from both genes and the longstanding media, completely governs how new technology will be received. Clark states, "Societies without such a long experience of settled, pacific agrarian society cannot instantly adopt the institutions and technologies of the more advanced economies, because they have not yet culturally adapted to the demands of productive capitalism."³³

Uneducated people wasting their lives on platforms like Instagram will often lament over the low wages paid to third-world textile workers and other people in similar situations. Clark reframes this discrepancy in pay. It is easily understood once one recognizes that the factory, a European invention, did not bring with it the whole cornucopia of European social norms. "The introduction of such techniques in nineteenth-century England was accompanied by greater attention to worker discipline,” Clark states. However, “when workers in poor countries lack these qualities of discipline and engagement, modern production systems are feasible only when little is demanded of each worker, to keep error rates as low as possible. This concept helps explain the dramatically lower observed work efforts of textile mill workers in such poor countries as India. It is cheaper to have frequently idle workers than idle machinery or defective output."³⁴

England was able to break out of the Malthusian cycle. It brought Europe and the Americas with it. Some Asian countries followed last century. But what is the exact economics of the Malthusian cycle? Clark describes it as follows:

The Malthusian model supplies a mechanism to explain this long-run population stability. In the simplest version there are just three assumptions:

1. Each society has a birth rate, determined by customs regulating fertility, but increasing with material living standards.

2. The death rate in each society declines as living standards increase.

3. Material living standards decline as population increases.³⁵

Some models from Clark’s book are illustrative:

Clark, Page 26

When the birth rate increases, average income goes down. Clark states that “real income is lower and population is greater" after the birth rate rises at the new equilibrium. “Any increase in birth rates in the Malthusian world drives down real incomes."³⁶ Conversely, when the birth rate decreases, average income increases.

Clark, Page 27.

The death rate also plays a major factor. When something increased the death rate, everyone remaining got wealthier. Clarks states: "This Malthusian world thus exhibits a counterintuitive logic. Anything that raised the death rate schedule—war, disorder, disease, poor sanitary practices, or abandoning breast feeding—increased material living standards.”³⁷ This is the meaning of the butcher’s yard. All human advancement comes at a cost. “Anything that reduced the death rate schedule—advances in medical technology, better personal hygiene, improved public sanitation, public provision for harvest failures, peace and order—reduced material living standards."³⁸

It is now clear how the Malthusian cycle works. When births increase, average wealth gets lower, which increases the death rate, which raises average wealth, which increases the birth rate. The cycle is clear and basic, making it all the more remarkable that mankind ever escaped. Of course, technology also plays a critical role, but it did not break mankind out of the Malthusian trap until the Anglo-created Industrial Revolution.

Since population can change only slowly, the short-run effect of a technological improvement was an increase in real incomes. But the increased income reduced the death rate, births exceeded deaths, and population grew. The growth of population only ended when income returned to subsistence. At the new equilibrium the only effect of the technological change was to increase the population. There was no lasting gain in living standards.³⁹

The Malthusian cycle is a profoundly natural phenomenon. Ecologists and biologists understand that an animal or plant population must remain within the carrying capacity of the environment. Humans have a special knack for transforming our environment through technics, but we still must grapple with carrying capacity. Clark explains that “the Malthusian model dominates in evolutionary ecology as well. For animal and plant species population equilibrium is similarly attained when birth rates equal death rates."⁴⁰ This lends credence to Spengler’s view of nature as a constraint on the achievements of man.

England escaped the Malthusian cycle thanks to cultural and genetic evolution over multiple millennia. Countries with similar cultural and genetic makeups were able to adopt the Industrial Revolution quickly. The further a country was from the culture and/or genes of England, the longer it took for them to adopt industrialization. Asian countries have undergone massive cultural re-orientation, which has allowed them to embrace industrialization through the last century.

Genetic Cycles, Dysgenic Decline

German researcher Volkmar Weiss ties together a cyclical understanding of history and population growth rates, arguing that a population cycle drives human history. Based on the poorly auto-translated German Wikipedia page on Weiss, it seems that he may be racist toward Romani people. This issue did not come up in the article researched for this essay, but this essay should not be read as an esoteric polemic for anti-Romani racism. Weiss has a few books on IQ, arguing strongly for a genetic basis for IQ. He seems to be an IQ reductionist, which is a myopic view of human dynamics. That being said, IQ is a profoundly consequential and predictive metric, as discussed in one of the above sections. Therefore, understanding the factors that will increase and decrease average IQ in the long term is a worthwhile undertaking.

The question of population numbers is integral to democracy. Volkmar begins with a scathing attack on end-of-history ideas. His East German communist teacher once told him that there would be nothing after Communism. Now, leaders in Western liberal societies say the same thing. But regimes go in cycles, he says, citing Aristotle:

But Aristotle knew also: “The first and principal instrument of the politician is the number of the people; he should therefore know how many, and what they naturally ought to be.” And Gunnar Myrdal added in 1938 (p. 33): “No other factor – not even that of peace or war – is so tremendously fatal for the destinies of democracies as the factor of population. Democracy, not only as a political form, but with all its content of civic ideals and human life, must either solve this problem or perish.”⁴¹

Weiss's cyclical theory of political history goes: democracy tends toward communist disintegration, which tends toward autocracy to save them. Progress cannot go on forever, because it comes with various counterproductive trends. He cites mass Islamic immigration into Europe, the rise of social spending, and the declining birth rate as trends that indicate progress cannot go on forever. Progress will be stopped by a cataclysm or a revolution, Weiss suggests.

Many sociologists hoped for a demographic transition in which developed nations would reach some kind of population equilibrium. This has not happened, and developed nations in the West and otherwise are experiencing below-replacement birthrates. This is happening in both new and old industrialized countries. Birth rates are trending down in Japan, Korea, Germany, and Italy, as well as many other nations. This is occurring in diverse societies from the Americas, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and East Asia. It is impossible to blame some single policy. It is also unlikely some specific policy will reverse this trend. Japan, Korea, and Hungary have all attempted various birth rate boosters to little or no avail.

Weiss cites Spengler's argument in Decline of the West that the downward turn of the population cycle begins in cities:

In the period before the onset of the demographic transition, when fertility rates are positively associated with income levels, the Malthusian pressure generates an evolutionary advantage for individuals whose characteristics are positively correlated with child quality. Under such conditions, those who are successful in competition, those who acquire and hold more territory, or develop skills that lead to higher productivity, are also more successful reproductively, and so increase the percentage of their genes in the population. High-quality individuals generate greater wealth and have more resources to support a larger number of offspring of higher quality. As the percentage of individuals of quality type increases, technological progress intensifies. Positive feedback between technological progress and the level of education reinforces the growth process, setting the stage for an industrial revolution that facilitates an endogenous escape from Malthusian controls.⁴²

Selection pressures led to more smart and industrious people, which enabled the escape from the Malthusian cycle. The selection pressure is reversed in industrial society. Now, the wealthy elites have fewer children, whereas the lower classes have more. As a result, the culture and the genes that result in low-class characteristics make up a greater share of society. Nick Land describes a similar phenomenon in his essay ‘IQ Shredders.’ He describes how Eastern supercities, like Singapore and Hong Kong, attract all the best and brightest talent from nearby countries. The high-intensity economic lifestyle in these cities makes childrearing extremely difficult. As a result, the best and the brightest have few or now kids. They do not replace themselves. Talents and capabilities fade away amid short-term economic gain.

The demographic transition generated a reversal in this relationship. In the Malthusian regime there is a positive correlation between income and fertility rates whereas in the modern growth regime this correlation is negative (Lam, 1997). Once the economic environment improves sufficiently, the evolutionary pressure weakens, and the quantity of people gains dominance over quality.⁴³

Weiss argues that a reverse Flynn effect is underway due to adverse selection pressure. The more educated a woman is, the fewer children she has on average. There is a worldwide dysgenic trend in which IQ is falling across the industrial world. Anyone with a high IQ in the lower or middle classes is upwardly mobile, tends to end up wealthier, and, in turn, has fewer children. Weiss argues that the Flynn effect does not have a genetic cause, which is true based on all available data. The reverse Flynn effect has both a genetic and institutional cause.

High child poverty rates are correlated with declining average IQ. Weiss states:

On the basis of a “List of countries by population in 1907” (Wikipedia, entry from the Nuttall Encyclopaedia) we are able to calculate a world average IQ of 94, the same as in 1950. Given the available demographic data, hence from about 1960 to about 2004, the world average IQ has dropped about 8 points under the assumption of stable average IQ for each country. However, as shown above, for some Latin American countries these averages are not stable but are in obvious decline. A decline can also be expected for numerous industrialized countries because of immigration of an unqualified workforce from the Third World, dysgenic birth rates or selective emigration of qualified people (for example from former communist East Europe to the West). Summarizing from all these data, we conclude that a drop of world average IQ of more than 10 points, even up to one standard deviation of about 15 points, seems to be potentially real and imminent. This means a drop of about 3 points per generation, or even up to 5 points.⁴⁴

Weiss describes this trend with the term human capital deterioration.

We cannot stop the cycle - we have understood it too late. Spengler argues that we can only understand history long after the fact, and being amid theoretical reflection at all is always a sign of the end of the age. It's the same here. Creating policies that will fix or reverse this trend is impossible in a democratic society. Democracy is entropy, as Nick Land argues. It lengthens behavioral feedback loops, therefore promoting base hedonism. Garnering public support for pro-family policies would be an extremely hard task. "Nowhere in the Western democracies can such a policy... have any chance of success."⁴⁵

In the end nearly all women with medium and high IQ can be found in professions and high-level occupations that make the rearing of a large number of children difficult. The childlessness or child paucity of the upper third of society has the consequence that average IQ is decreasing, and the cycle of societal achievement enters a declining phase, a phase that is now spreading to most advanced societies around the world.

Feminism doubtlessly bears a lot of responsibility for this state of affairs. If traditional gender roles were still intact, the smartest among us could be having many children and raising them, but instead, the most intelligent women are girl-bossing through life at the expense of humanity’s future.

It is by such cyclical means that nature regulates population density in a feedback loop. The full cycle requires the destruction of social order and a disorientation of female individuals away from the normal pattern of successful reproduction and rearing of offspring. Western societies call such behavior “emancipation” and “feminism.” Under healthy conditions, the exhibition of virility, such as the heat of the deer and the courtship of cocks, or among men the exhibition of social prestige, have procreative purposes. In ascending societies, men with power also have acccess to the most attractive women and the potential to produce the largest number of descendants. In societies that have entered the declining cycle, the courtship of men and women, their awareness of the latest fashions, the brand of their cars, their prestige journey to the Seychelles and their cooing on the telescreens become ends in themselves not related in any way to the number and quality of their children. In the work life, educated women are under an achievement pressure, which defers the production of children, resulting often in the birth of only one child. Only a few can pay for service personnel that can make a full-time job and a family with many children compatible.

When we look at the history of past high civilisations, it is noticeable that it was a long time before internal decay lead to final collapse (Knaul, 1985). From a certain point on there were nearly only failures. The economy stagnated and the finances of the state and of the cities fell more and more into disorder. The number of people depending on welfare rose from year to year, although each new ruler declared it an aim to lower this number. The security of the citizens was no longer guaranteed; the relationship between man and woman had likewise changed as had the relationship between young and old. The whole society seemed to be stricken by an illness and incapable of making and implementing rational and necessary decisions. Although nobody wanted the decline, the states and their inhabitants accepted policies that steered themselves into an abyss in such a way, as though they had no other goal than falling into the abyss. Today, our situation is similar (Burnham, 1964).⁴⁶

In nature, all animal populations have a carrying capacity governed by resource constraints. If a population exceeds the carrying capacity, there is a population collapse. With animals and pre-industrial people, this has always been a regional phenomenon. "But today, for the first time, mankind as a whole has brought into being conditions that could lead to a catastrophic globalwide collapse of the human population."⁴⁷

During an upswing in prosperity, there is a phase in all states with a very young population, when large numbers of young men – third-born, fourth-born, fifth-born sons – search for purpose in their lives. As numerous statistics have confirmed, when such a structure of population is reached there nearly always follows an expansive and belligerent policy. When in Europe migration proved to be an inadequate solution, egalitarian ideology blazed the trail for communism and social democracy. It culminated in the revolutions of 1917 and 1919 in Russia and Germany. The structure of population and of age that existed in France around 1790, and in the German Reich and Russia around 1910, today obtains in parts of Africa such as Darfur, West Africa and the Congo, as well as in Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal, and many other troubled regions (Heinsohn, 2003). For the hour, By midnight, which will be shown by the hand of history in Europe to arrive around 2030, it will make nearly no difference whether in World Wars I and II England, Germany, Italy, or Russia were on the side of the victors. In all essential symptoms of the crisis they are similar, and in the abyss of history there will not be space for all.⁴⁸

Weiss predicts that the third world will have a similar period of belligerence as Europe did during the period of colonization. Booming populations mean that some would like to leave because of how crowded things have become. As the population numbers boom to record highs in Africa, it is no surprise that many are immigrating to Europe, the United States, and Canada. Spengler describes this as an act of vengeance by the third world against the West for a history of mistreatment.⁴⁹ Testimony by some migrants along the lines of “we are colonizing you back” lends credence to this view. Ideology seldom drives great historical shifts, however. More likely, third-world origin immigrants are seeking a land of economic success to escape their crowded homes. It should be noted that their homes are more crowded due to aid from the West, which creates Malthusian relaxation-like conditions without the prerequisite institutions that enable Malthusian relaxation in the first place.

The point of no return, after which there is no longer any escape from the cycle of constitutions, is the introduction of general suffrage. Without the consequences being clear to the masses, they cheer in a democracy with general suffrage. They assume they will be biologically steered to those actions that will make their momentary situation easier. But the actions bear in the long run the certainty of a degradation in the overall culture and economy. The politician who wants to win an election and power in the hope of correcting the deficiencies, only has to extol an increased dose of the remedy (which caused the awkward situation)-- progressive social redistribution (Anrich, 1973). Any party that tries to steer against the stream may survive one election, but certainly not a second.⁵⁰

Weiss, being a Spengler enjoyer, understands that optimism is cowardice. There is not an ounce of senseless optimism in his predictions, because there is not any optimism. The issue of genetic decline as a byproduct of the population explosion is catastrophic. It is a critical component of the decline of the West, going in cycles. After the decline, there will be a bottleneck in which few, if any, modern civilizations prevail, and then there will be growth once again, according to Weiss.

The Great Chaos that I foresee does not mean an apocalypse. In the cataclysm, the large and highly specialized animals always disappeared, but many smaller, unassuming species survived. The question is actually only whether after the Great Chaos a new Dark Age will last for a long time, and much of our civilization will be lost or whether a sufficient number of capable engineers, artists, and thinkers will survive. Whoever predicts that the earth will have only 2 billion inhabitants at the end of this century, contrary to a maximum of 9 or 10 billion around 2040, would not like to have his hopes confirmed, but rather hopes he will be disproved.

Whoever has travelled across Australia or British Columbia knows that a highly developed civilisation is compatible with a small population density. Until now, no disaster could throw mankind back to the era of the hand-axe. Hitherto, the course of technological evolution was not a cycle but a spiral. In the lap of our old world the new one is to be recognized by the fact that millions of lowly qualified are set free and become unemployed forever. Worldwide, billions of humans will become superfluous. History must pass through a bottleneck that may turn out to be the passage through the purgatory of a Great Chaos.⁵¹

Conclusion

What is the goal? The goal is a grand and prosperous future, especially for the West. The East, Africa, and others are also welcome to a mutually beneficial, great and prosperous future, but I am primarily concerned with the West. The question, then, is how to increase the number of smart people in the world. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be many good ways of going about this. Hard eugenic policies instituted by governments are doubtlessly wrong. They go against the entire Western conception of individual autonomy, as well as the dignity of the human person, as described in the Catholic faith.

In addition, policies aimed at increasing the birth rate generally seem to be failing across the board. There is nothing industrial nations can do about it. Clark stated: "Malthus wanted to establish that poverty was not the product of institutions, and that consequently changes in political institutions could not improve the human lot." There is plenty Western governments can do, however, to make things worse through policy. A falling birth rate is not necessarily a bad thing. It will be disastrous for social security, so leaders should aim to phase it out with a soft as possible landing. Considering the nature of democracy, however, that is a next-to-impossible task. A hard and violent crash landing is the most likely outcome.

What leaders should not do is import foreigners to prop up the Ponzi scheme. The mass importation of foreigners destroys a country. Instead, social security should be allowed to fall, and as birthrates decline, the remaining population can enjoy a larger share of the pie for each individual. In addition, importing all the best and brightest people from country X will mean that country X will be left without its best and brightest, dooming that country to an even longer pathway to development. Clark suggests in the conclusion of Farewell to Alms that mass migration would be a good solution to uplift the people of the third world, but that harms both the developed Western countries as well as the third world countries. Foreign aid should also be shut down completely. There is no correlation between foreign aid and increases in well-being in underdeveloped countries. Quite the contrary, the few studies that have found correlations have found small negative correlations. Economic colonialism is likely the most humane and most mutually beneficial solution to the issue.

As Clark explained, in the pre-industrial period, there was significant downward mobility of noble genes and culture. Therefore, the traits that made men fit to lead spread throughout society. As discussed in Section 2, IQ is the best approximation for the leader/entrepreneur type, although it is not exhaustive. Therefore, in the Malthusian cycle, the traits that create leaders and entrepreneurs become more prevalent in society. In modern society, the reverse is occurring. Policies that make it easier or more comfortable for the poor to have excessive children should be avoided. Policies that prohibit childbirth should also be avoided, and the suggestion of such should be treated with the utmost disgust. But, when the government sponsors welfare programs to assist people with raising children or buying food, the first people in line will be the lazy. The last people in line will be the self-starters, the leaders, and the intelligent entrepreneurs, whose progeny (should they be born) will thrust us into the future.

A large US sample between 2006 and 2018 demonstrates a negative Flynn effect. This backs up Weiss’s assertion that average IQ is declining in the developed world. Scores for shape rotation have gone up, but everything else has gone down. The author claims that this does not necessarily mean people are getting less intelligent but rather that they are getting worse at taking these specific kinds of tests. This excuse is common and wrong, as other Substack authors have pointed out.⁵²

Low birth rates are not bad on their own. Ultimately, it is a value-neutral phenomenon that could have positive economic, cultural, and genetic consequences. However, social security and the temptation to tape it all together with mass migration will have a profoundly negative impact. The best solution is for the economic incentive structure and cultural pressures to promote family growth for the brightest among us.

But, let us not forget: history is a butcher’s yard. Nature is often not slow to make a mockery of mankind’s efforts to increase his lot in life. The construction of the Tower of Babel came at a great cost.

1. Read my further writings on Nick Land’s essay here:

2. Read my further writing on this section of Man and Technics here:

3. Spengler, Oswald. Man and Technics: A Contribution to the Philosophy of Life, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1932), 35.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid, 36.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Harrison J. Kell et al. “Who Rises to the Top? Early Indicators,” Association for Psychological Science (2013).

9. John E. Hunter, "The Economic Benefits of Personnel Selection Using Ability Tests: A State of the Art Review Including a Detailed Analysis of the Dollar Benefit of US Employment Service Placements and a Critique of the Low-Cutoff Method of Test Use. USES Test Research Report No. 47." (1983).

10. Richardson & Norgate, “Does IQ Really Predict Job Performance?,” Applied developmental science, 19(3), (2015) 153–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2014.983635

11. R.W. Hafer, “New estimates on the relationship between IQ, economic growth and welfare,” Intelligence, vol. 61, (2017) 92-101.

12. Simon-Ehrlich Wager (Wikipedia)

13. Moore, Stephen. ‘Defusing the Population Bomb’. (CATO Institute, 1999). https://www.cato.org/commentary/defusing-population-bomb

14. ‘Richard Cantillon’. (Mises Institute). https://mises.org/profile/richard-cantillon

15. Mises, Ludwig von. Human Action. (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998), 668.

16. Ibid.

17. St. Onge, Peter. ‘Is Population Decline Catastrophic?’. (Mises Wire, 2017). https://mises.org/mises-wire/population-decline-catastrophic.

18. Land, Nick. ‘Malthusian Horror', from Xenosystems. (Passage Press, 2024), 321. Also: https://web.archive.org/web/20200806193607/http:/www.xenosystems.net/malthusian-horror/

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid, 322.

21. Ibid.

22. https://web.archive.org/web/20191207032540/http://www.xenosystems.net/moral-terror/#more-4735

23. Land, Nick. 'Hell Baked’, from Xenosystems. (Passage Press, 2024), 109. Also: https://web.archive.org/web/20200623093410/http:/www.xenosystems.net/hell-baked/

24. Ibid.

25. Dirty word alert! “Eugenic” has a very negative connotation due to certain things the Germans did last century. Here, this word should be read simply as the natural trend of genetic improvement, which is an occasional byproduct of natural selection. Land does not mean eugenic in the Nazi sense.

26. Land, Nick. 'The Monkey Trap’, from Xenosystems. (Passage Press, 2024), 125. Also: https://web.archive.org/web/20200623181734/http:/www.xenosystems.net/the-monkey-trap/

27. Clark, Gregory. A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World by Gregory Clark. (Princeton University Press, 2007), 1.

28. Ibid, 5.

29. Ibid, 7.

30. Ibid, 10.

31. Ibid, 11.

32. Ibid, 13.

33. Ibid, 14.

34. Ibid, 15.

35. Ibid, 20.

36. Ibid, 26.

37. Ibid, 27.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid, 28-29.

40. Ibid, 33.

41. Volkmar Weiss, “The Population Cycle Drives Human History – from a Eugenic Phase into a Dysgenic Phase and Eventual Collapse”, The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, vol. 32, (2007) 328. https://d-nb.info/1225777259/34

42. Ibid, 334.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., 339.

45. Ibid, 342.

46. Ibid, 342-3.

47. Ibid, 344.

48. Ibid, 347.

49. Read my further writings on Spengler and the revenge of the non-Western world here:

50. Weiss, 348.

51. Ibid, 350.

52. Maybe You're Just Not Smart