Latest / In the Valley of Giants / Where the People Are Going | Dr. Brian Asquith | ITVOG Ep. 33

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Where the People Are Going | Dr. Brian Asquith | ITVOG Ep. 33 · In the Valley of Giants

0:01
But if you were able to sort of dramatically lower the cost of
0:05
entering into this field, you'd have more competition.
0:08
New companies need to hire new people.
0:10
Like I don't think that you're going to completely eliminate
0:13
the human role at any of these companies.
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I. Think women want to be out there
0:16
and have careers and work? I just think that that
0:19
fascinatingly, because they want to produce more in the secular
0:23
field, what's happening as the economy because the population
0:27
is suffering. So instead of adding a lot to
0:31
the economy, which which they do, I think ultimately maybe
0:34
that sort of aggressive, ambitious desire ends up perhaps
0:40
hurting the economy far more than than it helps.
0:43
Right. Like you can go, but you know
0:45
ATM should have like decimated bank tellers, right?
0:49
And in fact, there are more bank tellers today than there were
0:51
before ATMs were invented. Think that there are a lot of a
0:55
lot of causes that can contribute to making whatever
0:57
the desire is worse to make it even less palatable.
1:00
But at at the end of the day, if at the core of it is that
1:03
there's no value in having children and the value just is
1:07
to be ambitious in in your secular environment, then I
1:11
almost think it's that simple. Hello, everyone.
1:18
Today we're joined by Doctor Brian Asquith.
1:20
Doctor Asquith is an economist based in the US that specializes
1:23
in population decline. So we discussed three important
1:26
topics today. One is of course population
1:28
decline. What are the causes of
1:29
population decline both in the East and the West, and what are
1:31
solutions both the East and the West of population decline?
1:35
2 is we spoke about the patriarchy and how matriarchal
1:39
roles in modern society is changing the business and
1:43
population landscape of the world.
1:46
And lastly, we spoke about AI and occupation.
1:50
What is AI doing to the current job market?
1:52
What is it going to do to the job market?
1:54
And what jobs can we look for that being pervious to AI taking
1:59
them over? It was a pretty interesting
2:00
conversation. I learned a lot.
2:01
Hope you do too. Doctor Brian Asqua, thank you so
2:06
much for being with us here on the show today for.
2:08
Having me of. Course, I have a whole bunch of
2:10
questions because I have absolutely incredibly ignorant
2:14
in many things, but especially when it comes to economics.
2:17
So I think you're going to be a fantastic resource for me and
2:20
I'm sure our listeners. So I read some of your articles
2:24
and one thing that I found, again, especially as a very
2:27
ignorant person to be very interesting is that you seem to,
2:31
to link population decline with economic decline as well, at
2:36
least historically. I'm not sure you mean to say
2:38
that one causes the other necessarily, but that they're,
2:41
they, they're definitely happening at the same time and
2:43
that you assume that they are related.
2:46
So why is that? What is?
2:49
What is the connect? Is it?
2:50
Is it the lack of ingenuity and therefore less capital,
2:55
competition and less invention? And your view, what is it?
3:00
I think that's the easiest way to put it is that you can, you
3:03
know, the economy is a big complicated thing.
3:06
There's this and that that people talk about.
3:09
But, and it's very simplest idea, if you want to think about
3:13
the economy, you could say the economy can be boiled down to
3:17
the total number of people and how much output per person there
3:21
is. You multiply those two things
3:23
together and you're to get the total output of the economy,
3:25
right? Just it's one equation.
3:28
So that means that if the number of people you have is going
3:33
down, that means the total amount of output in your economy
3:37
is going to go down if that output per person number stays
3:40
the same. So that's what's really worrying
3:44
people about population decline, is that unless output per person
3:49
kind of rises proportionately with the decline in population,
3:53
then in a very real way a lot of societies are going to get poor.
3:58
Like how exactly that will look or you know how to play out will
4:02
vary and the details are complicated, but that's the
4:05
problem in a nutshell. Well, that's interesting because
4:08
I mean, as we know, the population today is far greater
4:11
than the population was 70 years ago.
4:14
And and yet we're seeing that decline in terms of economy and
4:18
I'm assuming that's because you're looking at regions.
4:21
So I actually don't know is North America, have we grown in
4:25
population over the past 60 years?
4:27
Is that happening? Yeah, that's right.
4:29
So I mean, most, most places out the world have increased.
4:33
If your benchmark is 60 years ago, the most population decline
4:38
either hasn't really started yet or it's started relatively
4:42
recently. So this is more a prospective
4:45
problem than a current problem in most places outside of say,
4:49
like Japan. OK.
4:51
So you're you're foreseeing we're in the beginning of a
4:55
population decline in a lot of areas?
4:57
That's right. So I should say Japan and
4:59
Eastern Europe has also seen a lot of outright population
5:02
decline. That's right.
5:03
So, yeah, I think that, you know, as time goes on, barring
5:10
some big change, either the technology level where that
5:14
output per person really dramatically increases or, you
5:18
know, a baby boom or something like this, it's going to become
5:20
a steadily growing problem throughout the world.
5:23
And I think it's steadily growing problem in our
5:24
consciousness. So let's use as an example
5:27
Hungary. Sangre has a pretty aggressive
5:29
population issue. Are they facing economic decline
5:32
as well? Yeah, I think that that's their
5:35
worry for sure. That's their worry.
5:38
But are you seeing trends? I mean, are we seeing economic
5:41
fluctuation or at least trends to the lower end?
5:44
Yeah, to tell. No, no, I think, you know, they
5:48
have like most of Eastern Europe.
5:49
So here's the context, right? Most of Eastern Europe has this
5:53
problem particularly acutely for two reasons.
5:56
Why does that ever since the fall of communism, all Eastern
6:00
European countries have started becoming a lot like Western
6:02
European countries and that they have low birth rates.
6:05
And Western European countries have had low birth rates not for
6:07
quite some time. Like Germany's birth rate has
6:10
been below replacement since like the 1970s.
6:12
So that's a really long time. But Western Europe has had a lot
6:15
of growth and and sort of industry, technology and
6:20
immigration. So that's kind of offset some of
6:22
it. Eastern Europe has not had
6:24
immigration. They have a lot of out
6:25
migration, right? A lot of those countries join
6:27
the EU in the mid 2000s, two, 1004 democratically, and you
6:31
have this huge wave of prime age adults, people who could be
6:33
prospective parents. They move West.
6:36
So you have low birth rates and you have a lot of out migration.
6:40
So if you're hungry, you're on these countries and you're
6:43
worrying about population decline.
6:45
I think that they often prop up in the news around this issue
6:48
not because they're so distinctive from their Eastern
6:50
European peers, because they've done the most to tackle it
6:53
aggressively. Unfortunately, I've, you know,
6:56
their policies are pretty generous and they evolve a lot
6:59
around like income tax exemptions and family support,
7:02
marriage bonuses. They tried a bunch of different
7:04
things. I hate my understanding of the
7:08
evidence is that it's made a difference, you know, relative
7:11
to like what the counterfactual doing nothing would be.
7:14
But none of it has brought the fertility rate back up to the
7:17
replacement level. So that's why they still face
7:20
demographic challenge instead of addressing, in spite of
7:23
addressing the problem really aggressively.
7:25
Yeah, I thought it was shocking. When I was in Hungary last year,
7:28
I was in Budapest and I was speaking to one of the locals
7:33
and they told me how bad the the population he does and that he
7:36
remembers even when he was a kid, how there just seemed to be
7:39
more people now that there's less and what the country is
7:41
trying to do to compete. Said something.
7:43
I can't, you know, verify his claims without doing a search, I
7:47
suppose. But he said that their country
7:49
was getting so desperate that they offered that for every if
7:52
you have four children and the company will pay off any
7:55
remaining mortgage that you may have, even if it's a new
7:58
mortgage. And he said, and yet, you know,
8:00
that really hasn't made much of a difference, which suggests
8:03
obviously a a tremendous cultural shift where people just
8:08
aren't interested in having having children anymore.
8:11
It's just not it's not something that people are interested in,
8:14
which I'm assuming is going to be because I mean, I'm going to
8:18
say it like this, even though it's not going to sound so
8:20
clean. But there's less of a focus on
8:22
the old patriarchal society. I think women want to be out
8:27
there and have careers and work. I just think that that
8:30
fascinatingly because they want to produce more in the secular
8:34
field. What's happening as that the
8:36
economy because the population is suffering.
8:38
So instead of adding a lot to the economy, which which they
8:43
do, I think ultimately maybe that sort of aggressive,
8:46
ambitious desire ends up perhaps hurting the economy far more
8:52
than than it helps. Would that be an accurate
8:55
assumption you think, or am I stretching way too much?
8:58
No, I think it's a one of those things where honestly no one
9:06
explanation sort of matches the data.
9:09
And maybe at this point since I'm venturing into the land of
9:11
explanations or attempted explanations, I should add a
9:14
disclaimer that, you know, I'm doing this interview in my
9:17
private capacity and that the views I'm expressing and do not
9:19
necessarily represent the views of my employer, which is a 5O1C3
9:23
nonprofit etcetera, etcetera. But you know.
9:27
That's that's that's what people say before the episode gets
9:30
interesting. Oh, you know, I'm not, I don't
9:35
think I'm going to say anything that's going to cause me to get
9:38
a call from our comms department.
9:40
But but more seriously, it is genuinely the case that no one
9:45
explanation seems to match all the data because you see sort of
9:50
declining birth rates almost everywhere.
9:53
Like for example, Iran has a below a substantial below
9:57
replacement fertility rate, right?
9:58
Tunisia has a substantial blow replacement utility rate.
10:01
You've seen even though places like Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan have
10:07
not yet sort of crossed that threshold where the fertility
10:11
rate has sort of fallen below the replacement rate and then
10:14
very likely population decline the future, they have seen
10:17
substantial declines from their eyes.
10:19
So you're seeing birth rate declines in very patriarchal
10:23
cultures and very non patriarchal cultures even within
10:28
Europe, for example. So here's I think an interesting
10:31
way to sort of say that this is like complex and kind of hard to
10:34
really understand along just one dimension or even just maybe 2
10:41
dimensions take within Europe. So within Europe, roughly
10:44
speaking, depending the measure you want to use, you would say
10:48
that like there's Scandinavian country, particularly gender
10:51
egalitarian and the Southern European countries that sort of
10:54
Mediterranean or less gender egalitarian.
10:57
You pick whatever language you want, but there's like a,
10:58
there's like a, a gradient, right, that everybody sort of
11:00
recognizes between these countries.
11:03
The birth rate is higher in Scandinavia than it is in Greece
11:06
or Italy or Spain. So even when you're sort of
11:09
controlling in a very rough way for they're all Christian, you
11:14
know, they all share sort of a, you know, they're very different
11:17
countries a lot of ways, but they share some similar
11:20
cultural, cultural similarities. And many of these places are
11:24
part of the European Union nonetheless, like the gradient
11:27
sort of runs where the birth rates higher and the more
11:30
egalitarian places and lower and the less egalitarian places.
11:33
So, you know, then you could say, well, maybe it's about how
11:38
generously the state supports you for having a kid, right?
11:42
Like how generous daycare provision, etcetera.
11:45
Well, you know, OK, the Scandinavian countries are good
11:47
at that. But you know, the birth rate is
11:50
quite high in places like the birth rate is high in places
11:55
within America such as like Utah or the Dakotas, which are
12:01
definitely not as generous with their late child care provision
12:04
as they are. But Brian, you know, you're
12:06
coming about it. I think backwards like you're
12:10
saying there are certain there's certain measures that have been
12:13
taken in order to increase population and in certain
12:16
societies it seems to work versus in other societies that
12:18
don't. I'm kind of I'm flipping it to
12:20
maybe you're not saying that so you'll you'll correct me, I'm
12:22
saying. Nothing.
12:23
OK, I'm saying clear like a little things seem to work a
12:26
little bit, help a little bit, but nothing is like nothing.
12:30
Nothing. Not one policy is induced A
12:32
dramatic change. Where yeah, but I'm saying that
12:36
that's because what I'm what I'm trying to get it is I think that
12:38
the focus might be wrong. So easy for me to say no,
12:42
nothing. But it's it's the it's the
12:44
cause. It's the it's the culture shift.
12:48
I think that here's here's going to be my sweeping claims.
12:51
I think that a woman want to be in the workforce.
12:54
I think women aren't as interested in having children.
12:56
I think women are worked like workhorses because they're
12:59
expected to be amazing moms, which is already a full time job
13:03
and amazing wives, which is already, you know, a really,
13:05
really big job and also to advance in their career.
13:09
So something's got to go somewhere because you can't have
13:12
three full time jobs and you know, not break at some point.
13:15
So there's just so much there's like there's more of there's
13:18
more of a core shift. So you can try to take care of
13:21
these issues by or where the product of this issue rather by
13:25
throwing all sorts of different solutions.
13:27
But I think the problem really is with is with women.
13:30
I think it's with with men also, by the way, we've caused that
13:32
issue with women. I think that's partially our
13:34
fault, but instead of having more, for lack of a better term,
13:39
conservative outlooks on life and the extreme value of family
13:44
propagation, perhaps religion is going to be associated with
13:47
that. What comes forth is population
13:51
decline, and I bet you that in in most societies where we're
13:55
going to find less conservative outlooks, we're going to find
13:59
even more population declines. So you mentioned Utah.
14:01
So again, I'm making big generalizations and assumptions,
14:04
which I probably shouldn't. But I bet you if you compared
14:06
Utah to California that Utah's population rates going to be
14:10
significantly higher than whatever California's is.
14:13
No, it is so Utah. Utah's growth rate is higher
14:17
than California's and it has to do with the real RI think almost
14:21
surely has to do with the with the Mormon church, right.
14:26
Like, you know, wherever the Mormon church sort of has a very
14:29
large share of a county's population, You see higher birth
14:32
rates in America. You don't like county by county,
14:35
you can have a rough you actually can't know the
14:37
religious composition of each county with a really high degree
14:41
of accuracy because of a pretty good guess.
14:43
And places, counties that have like a lot of Mormons, a lot of
14:46
Amish, a lot of Orthodox Jews have higher birth rates.
14:50
It's a very clear pattern, right, that like religion seems
14:54
to increase the birth rate. I guess why I think that the why
15:03
I think that it's more say that it's like, I would be more
15:09
comfortable saying the decline of religion is a bigger part of
15:12
the story rather than just oh, it's like a change in desires by
15:19
men versus women or just women or just men.
15:22
It's because because this is such a global phenomenon where
15:27
really you only see like one type of group resisting, right?
15:32
And like that one type of group that resists are sort of like a
15:34
religious group, whether it's Orthodox Jews, whether it's
15:38
Amish, whether or there's some other types of like Christian
15:42
denominations that resist. I think for the Muslim world
15:45
world, it's just like a little bit hard to tell right now
15:48
exactly what the pattern might shake out to be.
15:51
But like, but you know, when you have one type of group of
15:56
resists and that's the common denominator versus like the
15:59
whole rest of the world experience this phenomenon.
16:01
And when you look at the whole rest of the world, like what do,
16:06
what do all these places have in common?
16:08
It's hard to say. It's very, you know, it's a lot
16:12
of people have spent a lot of time trying to figure this out.
16:15
There's a Nobel Prize winning economist who just released a
16:18
paper putting out her theory about right.
16:20
Like it hasn't maybe like I would say there's a lot more
16:23
attention you pay to this, but hasn't been completely ignored.
16:26
Smart people. I've read a lot of papers about
16:27
this. As you saw from one of my
16:29
articles, like people have put some time and effort into trying
16:33
to figure this out. It is really hard to pick out
16:35
like 1 explanation. It's this, this is what's
16:39
causing it. We can maybe we can't fix it
16:41
because it's a change and expectations like you're saying.
16:43
And I do think changing expectations upon the part
16:46
right, like I do think that the rise is that there is a very
16:49
clear correlation between the rise of women getting are the
16:54
changes to sort of female educational entertainment layer
16:57
participation and number children.
16:58
They have. It's very clear the data that
17:00
that correlation exists. But because there's also so many
17:05
other things going on and it's so global, I think that I, I
17:09
think it's just more accurate to say that like a, a rise in
17:13
secularization is a more clear and obvious fit than just the
17:19
gender dynamics. And here's The thing is that
17:22
like there's something like there's a really interesting
17:25
data point in favor of the secularization idea, if I may.
17:31
OK, all right. So the first documented decline
17:36
in fertility isn't within like the modern era.
17:41
This has happened. This empath that the Romans had
17:43
a problem with the birth rate. But like in the modern era, the
17:46
first country to experience like a big decline of fertility was
17:51
pre industrial France and like in the late 1700s, right?
17:55
And so what's strange about this is that it occurs before the
18:01
industrial revolution. So it's not like, oh, people got
18:03
wealthy and they had less kids. That didn't happen.
18:05
There was no obvious change in mortality rates.
18:09
You know, there was nothing and the economy suggested this was
18:12
going on. You said early 1700s.
18:15
Late 1700s. Let's OK, so after the so after,
18:18
so right after the Enlightenment.
18:20
Let's just for the sake of this conversation, say modernity
18:22
begins with the Industrial Revolution, right?
18:24
The first factory start, railroads begin.
18:27
We'll call it the French. We'll set the French Revolution.
18:30
French Revolution was abetting modernity.
18:33
You know, this is not a scientific starting point, but
18:36
just a informal one. OK, so the birth rate decline
18:39
happens in France before the French Revolution, but it's
18:42
concentrated in the Paris Basin and in like southwest France.
18:47
So like greater Marseille. OK, so any explanation that you
18:52
could possibly think of for what might be going on just doesn't
18:55
apply there. It's not money, it's not
18:56
education. People weren't getting literate
18:58
or some people getting literate, but like none of these things
19:01
quite fit what seems have been going on.
19:03
People documented this because a lot of the the probate records
19:07
and a lot of the burial records will survive from that time is
19:12
that people are just secularizing of these areas.
19:14
Like you see a decline in people naming their kids after Saints.
19:17
You see a decline in people like leaving money to the church
19:20
after they die. Like all these things were just
19:23
kind of implies that like for these pockets of French people,
19:27
they just stopped being as religious for whatever reason
19:31
and happened in these parts of France and not other parts of
19:33
France. But exactly concurrent with this
19:37
sort of like secularizing parts of France, you see a big birth
19:41
rate decline. And so to me, that's like the
19:45
strongest, most consistent evidence is that when the when a
19:52
place becomes less religious, you often see a birth rate
19:55
decline. And then maybe that becomes
19:59
maybe there's some downstream that becomes all these other
20:01
things that we associate with like the modern era.
20:04
But like, that's the very clear pattern.
20:08
Yeah, you know, so perhaps I'm going about this from my my
20:12
background as although I love cold thinking, but I also am a
20:17
student of the soft sciences very much as they're called, or
20:19
at least used to be called in my day.
20:21
So as a psychologist looking at this, which I think is a bit
20:24
different, like it seems, it seems so much simpler to me.
20:29
So I don't know. Do you play basketball, Brian?
20:32
I mean with my son, but otherwise.
20:34
OK, I don't play basketball. And if my son asked me to play
20:37
basketball, I will try to have him play something else because
20:39
I don't I don't like playing basketball.
20:41
People do things because because they want to do them and people
20:44
don't do things because they don't want to do them.
20:46
You know, we plan to have, you know, those.
20:50
We're just backed up. But put in the schedule.
20:54
We're going to have an episode about sexuality and Judaism.
20:57
So there's AI think Katsuki Rebbe.
20:59
If I'm mistaken, it's another Rebbe and where he says that
21:03
after a person engages in intercourse with his wife, he
21:06
should be thanking the creator for this intense pleasure that
21:09
he experienced. So I can understand why a man
21:12
and woman, after experiencing something very pleasurable,
21:15
would want to thank God for such a pleasurable experience.
21:18
There is no idea of this after a woman gives birth, OK.
21:22
And no woman like, you know, finishes child of birth and is
21:24
like, wow, I'm so happy that I experienced that, right.
21:28
So I think that that the reason why this population decline is
21:32
because of women don't want to have kids, men don't want to
21:35
have kids. So I think that there are a lot
21:38
of a lot of causes that can contribute to making whatever
21:42
the desire is worse to make it even less palatable.
21:45
But at at the end of the day, if at the core of it is that
21:47
there's no value in having children and the the value just
21:50
is, is to be ambitious in in your secular environment, then
21:55
I, I almost think it's that simple.
21:56
Like I find it perhaps this would be considered propaganda.
22:01
It's, it feels like it is to me. But I wonder if instead in
22:04
Hungary, they were, instead of pumping in hundreds of millions
22:06
of dollars of, of trying to give all these subsidiaries that they
22:10
that they sponsored getaways for people to reconnect with their
22:15
faith, be them Muslim or Christian or whatever few Jews
22:19
they have left, etcetera. I feel like that would be
22:21
infinitely more successful than just throwing cash at a problem
22:25
and hope that it goes away. That's that's more the the the
22:28
angle, but I'm trying to take. Yeah.
22:30
You know, I mean, I think that the question always is right.
22:34
Like, would that work? So it would work in the sense
22:37
that if, you know, the evidence suggests that if people became
22:40
more religious, the birthday would go up.
22:42
Right. It's not, it's not.
22:43
It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be religion.
22:45
It has to be valuing children. So if you can spend it a
22:47
different way, you could be like the the focus on legacy.
22:50
You know, nature is right. You know, we killed God.
22:52
A lot of the world does does not believe in God or in any
22:56
significant way. And OK, that's a separate
22:58
discussion. You know, we can have a
23:00
theological one, but in terms of how you're not going to have a
23:02
kid if you don't value 1. So instead of throwing money at
23:04
people, try to try to incur. Instead of trying to discipline
23:07
people into having children, even giving them awards or
23:10
punishing them, maybe philosophically go for a shift.
23:13
You know, I think fundamentally, fundamentally, I think that it's
23:17
will run into the reality that it, for a lot of people, it
23:22
doesn't make sense unless, as you say, they adopt this
23:25
mentality that like it's just important for me to do no matter
23:29
what the costs and no matter what the, the pain and the time
23:34
I lose and whatever it means for the rest of my life.
23:36
I do think that that's probably true.
23:39
And I'm sort of inspired to think about this because there's
23:42
a Spanish economist to spend. He's also kind of like
23:44
philosophically inclined. Actually, I think that was like
23:47
a second match. He speaks and kind of like this,
23:49
you know, he's very comfortable citing people from possible or
23:52
but and I heard him speaking president guy and he just said
23:56
he said something that I had that I wasn't aware of, But I
24:00
think it does kind of frame what's going on, which is that
24:05
it's actually like very unusual from a historical point of view
24:10
for people to be raising more than two or three kids at a
24:13
time, right? If you think about it like if if
24:16
the on paper birth rate, if you go back 102 hundred years ago
24:20
would say our fertility rate would be something like a woman
24:23
would expect to have like 5-6 kids or the course of a
24:26
lifetime. Sure, on paper that's true.
24:28
But a lot of those kids would die, right?
24:30
Like a certain fraction that would die.
24:32
You know, people had a certain amount of birth spacing that
24:35
they would do formally and formally.
24:37
A lot of cultures had some practice around this, so that
24:40
the reality for most people was that, you know, they were really
24:44
only raising two or three kids at a time for the most part.
24:48
And so the situation that you have now that you see like
24:52
particularly religious communities, but even some
24:53
secular people have big families where you have like.
24:57
That's a good point, yeah. Yeah, 5 kids in your house at
24:59
the same time, Like that's just not something that I think most
25:04
people historically experienced and don't.
25:07
And it may be like maybe we just have some like deep.
25:10
I think the reason a lot of like people do settle on like two
25:12
kids is that maybe we just sort of have some deeply rooted
25:16
intuition that this that is this just something like natural
25:19
about that. And now that we have the ability
25:21
to sort of like, you know, control how many kids we have
25:26
when we had a much better than they did in the past, that's
25:28
just sort of the default for people.
25:30
So I think that that's one that like, you know, the ability and
25:35
modernity to have a lot of kids, if you want it is act and have
25:38
them at the same time is actually something that is a bit
25:41
novel. And I think that, you know, the
25:46
other the other thing you're sort of running against is that
25:50
it's also true that in in today's world, across the world,
25:55
even in places like even in places that Lawrence has
25:58
developed as the US or you know, your example is that like it
26:04
just economically doesn't make sense, right.
26:06
Like kids used to be a benefit like kids used to be, you know,
26:11
help you improve your economic position life.
26:13
And now they don't right. There are costs and when you
26:17
something so much. Longer too.
26:18
What's that and for longer and getting long, right, right.
26:22
And you know, even very even what we think is a sense of very
26:26
poor countries are urbanized. Urbanization is another thing
26:29
that correlates with lower fertility.
26:31
That's one thing that's actually very distinctive about the
26:34
Orthodox population in America, but also in Israel is that
26:38
they're probably one of the only subpopulations that I can think
26:42
of that have maintained a very high birth rate in an urban
26:45
setting. Like the Amish don't do that,
26:48
right? Like the other sort of examples
26:50
I gave them, high fertility subgroups.
26:51
They don't do that. Only the Orthodox shoes, as far
26:54
as I know, maintain and the ultra wealthy in New York City,
26:58
I think it's the other example, ultra wealthy in New York City
27:00
have very high birth rate, but like it's pretty much those two
27:04
grew, you know, that's, that's a very small, small number of
27:07
people. So like in terms of mass
27:10
phenomena, it's really just the OR the ultra Orthodox Jews.
27:14
Fascinating, but and and not Afghans meaning and not.
27:19
Is the Middle East significant? Excuse me?
27:23
They're rural, right? Like that's a Afghanistan is
27:25
that's true, yeah. You know that's.
27:27
True, that's true. It's not even.
27:28
Within the Middle East, when people urbanize, the birth rate
27:31
goes down, right? Like, you know, so Egypt, like
27:34
Egypt, for example, is a very urbanized society.
27:37
I think less urbanized people realize and they're like their
27:40
birth rate is maybe a bit, you know, there's some variation
27:43
like Egypt's birth rate maybe is a bit higher than one might
27:45
expect given their level of urbanization.
27:48
So again, last time I let Egypt's birth rate was like
27:51
fertility, I should say fertility rate because those are
27:53
different things. The fertility rate was something
27:55
like the average woman is 2.3 kids, you know, replacement
27:59
replacements like 2.1. So like they're growing.
28:02
But like if you're imagining that it's a land of huge
28:05
families, that just doesn't seem increasingly to be the case.
28:09
Interesting. You know there are not.
28:12
There aren't a whole lot of exceptions to the urbanization
28:15
and fertility rate rule. Do you think it's is it, I'm
28:21
switching now a little bit to morality of being an economist.
28:23
Is it, is it morally acceptable for an economist to therefore
28:27
suggest North America or world? But we'll just use North America
28:31
as an example. Your population is declining and
28:34
therefore we are heading for an economic crisis.
28:37
I'll try to change my question a little bit.
28:39
Let's let's over some, let's even make it more simple.
28:42
Let's say you came to the conclusion and you were 99.98%
28:49
confident that North America was heading towards a total economic
28:54
collapse, which would lead to epidemics and death and you name
28:58
it. And the, and the reason for this
29:01
is because there's a lack of resources and the only way
29:04
again, and my made-up universe that I just made-up to combat
29:08
this is everyone can only have one child from now on.
29:13
So as an economist, like again, I was asking more like the moral
29:16
role of an, of an economist, like what, what, what is your
29:19
more responsibility and your ethical ability within your
29:23
work? So I'll just share with you a
29:25
little bit. You know, my perspective, you
29:26
know, I wear many hats. Like I can think rabbinically
29:30
and I can think non rabbinically also.
29:31
I think that when the person does the best job and whatever
29:35
role that they have, it's when they don't really care about
29:39
politics or anything else tethered to it.
29:41
They just completely focused on their job.
29:43
So if if I were an economist, right, I wouldn't really care
29:48
about anything else other than my job, which is to dictate the
29:52
best way for the economy to move forward, at least in terms of
29:55
growth or saving it from economic collapse.
29:57
But I wonder as an economist, what your experience is and how
30:01
much morale, what what your morale moral system kind of
30:03
looks like when it comes to these sorts of decisions and
30:05
analysis? It's a great question.
30:07
You know, particularly in my job where, and my, my job is a
30:13
little bit special because I'm not a professor and you know, I
30:17
don't necessarily have the same sort of expectation of like
30:22
academic freedom as a professor. You know, my, my company in
30:26
particular, they, you know, we see our job as advising
30:31
policymakers and trying to help to make sort of like the best
30:33
decisions to sort of, you know, ensure joint prosperity and all
30:38
these other wonderful things. And so I think that is where the
30:41
population of the client figures into it that like what this is a
30:44
problem and this will make you porn.
30:46
You know, where we as economists would stand up and speak about
30:51
moral issues. There's not.
30:54
It's not a morally are. You tethered.
30:58
Are you tethered because of morality?
30:59
That's that's really the question.
31:01
Yeah, well, I think that I think that I'm bringing to the table
31:03
my, my personal background. You know, I'm Jewish.
31:07
I have a Jewish view of the world and that that comes
31:11
through when I think it comes to like the big, some of the big
31:13
questions. But, you know, if I'm sitting
31:16
down with like this, the governor of the state of
31:18
Michigan, you know, I'm trying to give like straightforward
31:22
nuts and bolts clients advice. You know, if I saw something
31:26
happening that violated my own personal ethics, you know, I'm
31:30
going to say something. But I'd be more inclined to say
31:32
it as like first speaking for myself and then if I thought
31:37
that there was like a credible way to say, look, and in
31:39
addition, this is my training and this is my background, that
31:42
sure, here's why. Not only do I think it's
31:43
immoral, but it's hard to get pocketbook, right?
31:45
Worse than a crime. It's a mistake to quote Ali
31:48
Rand, right? So I think that that's how it
31:51
would sort of play in. And I think that's how most of
31:53
us go about it. Like there are, you know, there
31:55
are associations for people who are economists of different
31:59
religious backgrounds. People do bring their ethics
32:02
into it. But, you know, first and
32:04
foremost, the job is to say this will make you poorer, this make
32:07
you richer. This will move the employment
32:08
rate. This won't, you know, people
32:10
don't call up a physicist to get a lecture on morality.
32:13
People aren't calling exactly. You know, if they want, if they
32:16
want to say morality, they're going to talk to you, right?
32:18
They're going to talk to a rabbi, a priest, whomever.
32:21
They're not going to. They're not, for the most part,
32:23
going to call someone like me. OK.
32:25
So you see, the reason why I asked that question is because
32:27
of the the disclaimer that you gave earlier on the episode.
32:32
And why do you feel the need to to distance yourself from your
32:35
economic opinions? If they look what?
32:38
What are you afraid of? No, I'm not.
32:41
I the disclaimer was more about making it clear that I'm not
32:46
speaking for my employer. It's a standard in my field.
32:48
It's a standard disclaimer. Like, you know, when I go to
32:50
conferences, people put it on their slides that like if they
32:54
work for the US Census Bureau, you know, my views express, you
32:57
don't necessarily represent the views of the federal governments
32:59
and whatnot. And, you know, I think that it's
33:04
sort of important to be, I think it's important to be clear that,
33:13
you know, you and I are having a friendly conversation and, you
33:19
know, an informal conversation, but that, you know, I'm not here
33:24
on the podcast to sort of like, you know, give advice per SE.
33:33
Like I'm not sort of treating this if I was sitting down.
33:36
Again, my example is the governor of Michigan, right?
33:39
This is not a conversation. You know that I necessarily.
33:41
No, we're having a chat. We're having a.
33:42
Chat, it's not going to ask me about what do you, what do I
33:44
think about, you know, women no longer working.
33:47
Nobody's going to ask me, right? This is this is a different kind
33:50
of this is a different kind of conversation.
33:53
And so because I'm sort of wearing a somewhat different
33:55
hat, you know, a version maybe of my economist hat, but but
33:59
still somewhat different hat that way at work, I think it was
34:01
important to give my that disclaimer.
34:03
I'm married to a woman. She's brilliant, she's quite
34:05
educated. In fact, I find it far more
34:07
pleasurable to interact with the opposite gender when they are
34:11
educated. I find it far more interesting
34:13
to interact with my gender when they're far more educated.
34:16
I think that, you know, power to the people, information to the
34:19
people and transparency is key. So I'm not advocating for the
34:22
the loss of the ability to do anything.
34:24
I just think that there's this lack of understanding of where
34:28
our morals are when it comes to economics on the small scale.
34:33
Like do do men and women realize in that when they're going to
34:38
build a household that that it's incumbent, at least the way that
34:42
they set it up or that's their view that both people have to
34:45
work full time, that it's going to affect their outlook and how
34:49
many kids that they're going to have and the fidelity also.
34:53
I mean, I, I firmly believe that people that, you know, cheat on
34:58
their spouses, they don't just like wake up one day and then
35:00
find the first person. It's not really realistic.
35:03
You know, there's emotional cheating which starts first.
35:05
So in order to have emotional cheating, where's that going to
35:08
happen? I, I, I don't know, but I, I bet
35:11
you, and I'm curious to study out there.
35:12
I bet you 90 to 99% of emotional infidelity starts at the
35:17
workplace. I bet you it's your your
35:19
coworker, the person you know, your boss, you're you're the the
35:23
woman next to you in the cubicle and you just have lunch together
35:26
and all has to do is, is evolve from, you know, emotional
35:29
infidelity, psychological infidelity to physical
35:32
infidelity. I'm not sure that people are so
35:34
aware of what happens and the shifts that we make in our
35:39
dreams when we set up the lives that are just more common in the
35:43
Western world. That's more my point.
35:45
I'm not saying that we should keep information from the
35:47
people, but I think that people should should know what they're
35:50
doing when they're doing it. I think that like, I think it's
35:53
a very, you know, I take your point and I think, and I've sort
35:58
of come to a similar conclusion about like the root of the
36:02
problem fundamentally is that we have a set of modern conditions
36:08
where, you know, partially a function of values, partially a
36:13
function of just like changes in society and in life make it so
36:18
that like it just doesn't make sense for a lot of people to
36:20
have a big family. And some people just like don't
36:23
even want one because, you know, they, you know, that they just
36:29
don't feel drawn to it. And there's no without sort of
36:32
that economic push, without there being that sort of
36:36
economic benefit, they just won't do it at all.
36:38
You know, ultimately, you know, ultimately there's just not
36:47
going to be an easy solution that doesn't involve sort of
36:52
nudging on people either really dramatically changing the cost
36:55
structure or cost discussion in like a very expensive way or a
37:01
change of people's value. Yeah.
37:04
Philosophical shift, You know, it's just, it's something that's
37:09
sort of baked into the cake. And with a philosophical shift,
37:13
like, you know, how is the government going to execute
37:17
that? I don't it's not obvious what
37:20
the answer would be, right? You can do propaganda like
37:22
there's been, there's a long and effective history of people
37:26
propagandizing against having kids, right?
37:28
Like I think I do think that government efforts to discourage
37:32
people from having big families worked and worked very
37:34
successfully. And there's a lot of evidence
37:35
for it. I have not.
37:40
I don't think that there's been a successful example the
37:42
opposite, but that might be my ignorance.
37:46
As it being done, I'm not even sure it's being done.
37:49
You know, just. I mean, like, I can think of
37:53
Maoist China, like I can think of a lot of examples of people
37:55
that are that societies that aggressively went the other way.
37:58
I can't think of any societies that were aggressive in terms of
38:01
propaganda pushing, have more kids, all the benefits, be it
38:04
religious, not religious familiar, you know, all the
38:07
studies of whatever it may be. Right, right, right.
38:10
You know, the you can maybe say that like the government of
38:13
Well, yeah, depends who you ask. Like you can maybe say the gun
38:18
hungry sort of move in that direction.
38:20
You know, Hungarian conservatives would disagree.
38:22
I think Hungarian liberals would emphatically agree.
38:25
I don't speak the language pretty difficult.
38:28
But you know, they've gone some way.
38:30
And, you know, I mean, I think that they're burnt.
38:35
I think their fertility rate is a bit better than like their
38:37
neighbors, like the Slovaks, the Jacks.
38:39
But like I'm not even sure that that's true.
38:42
Like it's just, you know, it's not it doesn't it doesn't it
38:47
whether it's working or not relative to the counterfactual
38:51
of doing nothing, it has not yielded the result of an of a of
38:56
a replacement or better birth rate.
38:58
And that is? Yeah, I want to see something
39:00
organized and then and, you know, reassess.
39:03
Sure. And I mean, I, you know, that it
39:05
could be that this Hungarian purchase far bigger than then
39:09
then you're saying slash, I know about, but I'm not hearing any,
39:13
any, any places, any countries, any regions that are using
39:16
aggressive philosophical or emotional pushes to, to have
39:20
more kids. But I'll use this as a pivot for
39:22
a little bit. What what, because this is just
39:26
cause and consequence. When you have a lot less kids,
39:29
then ultimately what you have is a really young population of a
39:34
smaller number than elderly population with a much higher
39:37
number, which raises a whole a whole different issue, which is
39:40
how to take care of that elderly population which can no longer
39:42
take care of itself. So I saw this really interesting
39:45
article, believe it was from the Wall Street Journal.
39:48
They sent a one of their journalists to a Expo in China,
39:54
and there were multiple floors in this Expo showing the
39:58
interactions on their advancements and artificial
40:02
intelligence and robotics and that a large, very large,
40:06
overwhelming piece. Of the Expo was focused on
40:11
household, household chores, so they had dedicated robots to do
40:17
laundry and to fold laundry and to clean things and etcetera.
40:21
And she asked around and the reason for why there's so much
40:24
investment is because they understand what they're going to
40:28
be hitting at least economically and socially with this sort of
40:32
population shift. And so they feel that they need
40:34
to be ready because they're not going to have enough organic
40:37
bodies on the ground in order to take care of that population.
40:40
So which makes me think of all the applications and artificial
40:45
intelligence, especially when it comes to economics, which I feel
40:48
like we could speak another couple hours about and probably
40:50
only touch the surface. But I think the immediate
40:53
reaction that people have when they think about artificial
40:55
intelligence and the job market is, Oh my gosh, AI is going to
40:58
take my job, which I'm sure AI has already.
41:01
I'm sure artificial intelligence has taken a tremendous amount of
41:04
jobs. You'll correct me if I'm wrong
41:06
in a moment, but I feel like the only safe market for, for the,
41:12
the, the AI revolution, which is still happening right now as we
41:17
speak, is, is commodities and, and religious posts like, you
41:23
know, you can have, if you have real estate, people are always
41:25
going to need a place to live. So someone's definitely going to
41:28
be renting, you know, your space in real estate.
41:29
People are always going to need gold and silver, but people are
41:32
not going to need you to think if, you know, we have an AI
41:35
philosopher or economist to do that.
41:38
And by the way, I can make the argument for an AI rabbi, like
41:41
maybe I should be threatened from an artificial intelligence
41:43
rabbi trying to take my job, although it can try.
41:47
So what's your outlook in all this?
41:49
You know, I think that like the core, I think the core of your
41:52
question, I'm going to do a little refactoring here.
41:55
That's OK. I think the core of the question
41:57
is kind of gets back exactly one more time to the other side of
42:01
that like little equation I gave at the beginning, right?
42:03
Like we talked a lot about what is the economy number of people
42:07
times the amount that they're able to create, right, per
42:09
person. So we tossed a lot of it about
42:11
the total number of people. And now this the AI bit is about
42:14
like how much is the average person able to do really, right?
42:18
It's like with an AI agent, you can do more.
42:21
And that's kind of what the people that sort of what that
42:23
robot, I suppose getting out in China, you know, I think that
42:26
that's sort of the optimistic. OK.
42:29
So like maybe the medium case for like how population the
42:32
client will play out is that, you know, ultimately, OK, no
42:36
people go down, but big due to robots and AI, the amount that
42:40
the average person will create will go up and they'll kind of
42:42
offset. So a few people, but will or
42:45
standard will be won't change that much, you know.
42:48
And to some extent I hope that's true because I don't want to be
42:52
poor. But that's a great model, like
42:59
in economy, so I don't want to be poor.
43:02
That's right, because I put it on all the T-shirts.
43:03
I don't want to be poor. I don't feel I feel like that's
43:06
a nice non controversial statement.
43:09
Nobody wants to be poor. Few people are poor, but you
43:14
know that that is the challenge, right.
43:17
It's one of the challenges is that you are going to have an
43:20
increase of elderly you're going to have even placement of
43:23
elderly outnumber the young number of young people.
43:27
And you but you know, you are seeing it in the employment data
43:31
actually is that even today where like maybe you would say
43:36
AI still has a long way to go before it gets implemented
43:39
companies and we aren't yet at the job apocalypse for like
43:42
thousands people getting laid off.
43:44
You still see in the monthly employment data that like the
43:47
strongest job growth is happening in healthcare and with
43:49
every healthcare nursing homes place like this basically
43:53
elderly facing jobs. I mean I think that the AI jobs
43:57
apocalypse story is way overblown but.
44:00
Really. Oh yeah?
44:03
Why is that? Well, I shouldn't say 100% over
44:06
blow. I could wake up.
44:07
And I'm an optimist and I think that way.
44:09
Interesting. OK, why?
44:13
You know, I think that it gets at something called Javon's
44:15
paradox I. Don't know what that is.
44:18
Yeah, yeah. So Javon's paradox is a really
44:20
interesting idea that it seemed after this, you know, early
44:26
British economists who lived at the time of the Industrial
44:28
Revolution and you know, at the time there were rapid advances
44:33
in making locomotives more coal efficient, right?
44:36
Like that was a big X, one of the big expense cost of running
44:39
locomotives, how much coal would have to use.
44:41
And so you could see in the data that like the that the
44:44
productivity of locomotives are getting vast and better over
44:48
time, right? And so this will mean that they
44:51
were becoming less expensive to operate.
44:53
And you would think that it as locals are getting sort of less
44:56
expensive operate that you would see a decline in the amount of
44:59
coal that was being used and need to be mined to operate the
45:02
big fleet of locals in Britain, right?
45:04
But instead, even as locals got more efficient, the total amount
45:09
of coal that people that that was being used in railroads is
45:12
going hot, right? Why?
45:14
Well, as things become less efficient or become more
45:17
efficient, they become cheaper to use.
45:18
They're cheaper to use, more people use them, as simple as
45:21
that. So total number of trains
45:26
rapidly increase as they got cheaper.
45:28
And the amount of coal use also sort of exploded.
45:31
So this is called Javan's paradox.
45:33
And you know, a similar logic is sort of I think at work with
45:38
people, which is that OK, yes, AI is going to, it does replace
45:42
a lot of tasks, right? But it just means that because
45:46
the average person can get more done with fewer inputs, that in
45:50
some sense makes people cheaper. Doesn't have to be wages will go
45:54
down, but it means like per hour people kind of are cheaper in
45:58
some fundamental sense. They were in the past.
46:00
You can do more people. So like right now think about it
46:05
like this, like software engineers.
46:07
My wife is a software engineer. She works for software
46:09
engineering company. And you know, but really you
46:14
don't see like a lot of small companies of software engineers.
46:17
They're just so expensive. Software engineering is a
46:18
relatively well paying job, but if software engineers can get a
46:23
lot more done now, maybe the small companies will say like,
46:26
hey, you know, with AI with $100 a month Claude subscription, I
46:31
cannot, you know, this person will be able to do so much more
46:34
for me than I would have had to pay them in the past.
46:36
It's not worth it to hire them. So you've been seeing actually
46:40
that there was a big decline of job postings for software
46:43
engineers and then recently there's been an increase.
46:46
Yeah, but that's the short term. Like here, let's just let's go
46:49
forward 20 years at the rate that, that that AI is going,
46:54
instead of looking up 1 of 10,000 accountants in Michigan,
46:58
there's only going to be 1. And all you have to do is, you
47:01
know, have your AI talk to that AI and you're going to have a
47:04
really, really easy data sheet. And you're going to submit that
47:07
to the IRS. And that's going to be it,
47:10
right? And the same thing for your
47:11
wife's job, theoretically, right?
47:12
You know, instead of having the whole team, I need to
47:14
coordinate, I'll just have a bunch of AIS talk to each other.
47:16
I was speaking recently to someone who works in aerospace
47:21
and for like the last 10 years he's, he's like a manager in an
47:26
aerospace company, forget which one.
47:28
But so his job was to manage like 20 or 30 people.
47:31
And he said that this year is the first year where he only
47:34
manages one other person. And then he manages 10 different
47:37
AIS which talk to each other. Yeah, so.
47:41
Like I don't what? He's probably going to allow.
47:47
Yeah. That's.
47:48
Brian, that sucks for the other 20 guys that can't, you know,
47:51
afford to buy lunch. That's my point.
47:55
It could work out that way, but like I think I don't I.
47:59
Don't see how it doesn't work out that way.
48:01
The only thing that I, that I can see is that society will
48:04
become so efficient and just being able to produce things by
48:10
using these tools that we're just going to live in an age of,
48:13
of massive prosperity. You know, Doctor Pooley wrote a
48:17
book. It's amazing.
48:18
I'm, I'm sure you've read it Over Abundance.
48:22
Very, very, very interesting book.
48:23
Yeah, I haven't, I highly recommend it.
48:25
Very, very interesting book. Very interesting book.
48:27
He talks about the the basic lowering cost of pretty much
48:31
everything as population has increased and efficiency has
48:34
increased it It's a fantastic book.
48:37
You'll tell me what you think about.
48:39
But I would say that maybe, maybe optimistically, I think
48:42
that AI could do that as well. Imagine you were able to have,
48:46
you know, cybernetics or robots and an artificial intelligence
48:49
being able to do all of your mining and all of the cooking
48:51
and all of the harvesting and humans just need a sit back,
48:54
relax and of course study Bible all day.
48:57
But you know, they would have all this amazing stuff at the
49:00
disposal. I think that's the optimistic
49:02
outlook. If you don't have that, Brian,
49:03
then if you have a system where I one person could have an
49:05
empire of 1000 robots that can each one of them, you know, out
49:09
think a million humans. There is no reason why I need
49:12
humans in my company at all. I mean, I'm going to break the
49:15
parade of distribution completely.
49:17
Right. No, I don't think it'll work
49:19
that way. It's like go out to go back.
49:21
OK, I'll go back to your example.
49:22
The aerospace engineer, right? Like great, he's got a good
49:25
program. He's got to figure it out.
49:26
That's good for him. But like the aerospace industry
49:31
is dominated by only a couple firms, right?
49:35
Like you have Boeing, you have Airbus, you have a couple other
49:38
companies up there like Associate, like a defense
49:39
contractor, like Lockheed Martin and whatnot.
49:41
But like, it's a tiny number of firms.
49:43
Why is the tiny number of firms? Because it's so capital
49:46
intensive, right? Like building an airplane
49:48
requires such a huge amount of money and there are only like a
49:52
certain number of companies are able to buy the final product
49:57
that you just sort of have this situation where it's effectively
50:01
like an oligopoly, right? Like it wants a company.
50:04
It's a kind of national champions, and that's it.
50:06
And of course, these companies, because there's only one or two
50:08
of them, are like incredibly inefficient.
50:10
Boeing has had all sorts of problems, Airbus runs in the
50:13
problems. The defense contractors are like
50:16
horrifically inefficient. Everybody knows this, right?
50:19
That like in principle, you would get like better products
50:22
if the if you're able to have more companies.
50:24
But right now it's not possible, right?
50:28
But if you were able to sort of dramatically lower the cost of
50:32
entering into this field, you'd have more competition.
50:35
New companies need to hire new people.
50:37
Like I don't think that you're going to completely eliminate
50:40
the human role at any of these companies.
50:42
And so in principle, if you're lowering the cost venture, maybe
50:47
be more productive. You can see more entry like in
50:49
aerospace, maybe not the best example because even in that
50:51
case, you're only going to have a certain number of entrants.
50:54
But you could imagine that logic would apply to lots of different
50:57
kinds of industries. You make even more efficient,
50:59
you make them able to do more, even if like that company isn't
51:03
necessarily going to hire more. You're going to sort of make it
51:06
easier for new companies to get started.
51:08
And in that way, employment grows.
51:12
So you you see like us going from 20 companies to 2 billion
51:18
and that's just going to. Maybe not 2 billion, but like
51:22
but maybe more, right? Like, you know, accountants are
51:25
a great actually example, which is, you know, why didn't the
51:31
invention of the calculator in the spreadsheet just like
51:33
totally decimate the accountants when these things were invented?
51:37
Because you still need human interaction.
51:39
OK. But like in theory, in theory,
51:42
like my company, once I had a calculator and a spreadsheet, my
51:45
company could have needed from just going like a team of
51:47
accountants to do all the additional subtraction to maybe
51:50
like two or three, right? Like a smaller number.
51:53
But like, you have not seen a collapse of unemployment and
51:55
accounting going back, you know, half a century ago.
51:58
There are many more accounts today than there were then.
52:01
What happened like once accountants were able to do a
52:05
lot more thanks to the calculate the spreadsheet companies like,
52:09
oh, like there are many more ways we can be implied, many
52:12
more things that we need calculated.
52:14
It's true. Like like the number, there are
52:17
a lot of things there. You know, there's a lot of bad
52:19
software out there. There's a lot of things that
52:21
could be automated that aren't because it's too expensive, it's
52:23
not worth the time, or you don't have the right QA people like it
52:27
would be. My expectation is that even for
52:30
the, like, medium run, we're going to discover that this
52:34
technology needs a lot of people behind it.
52:37
And we're still quite a ways away from a time where it's
52:40
like, you know, Star Trek where like, you have, like you have.
52:45
In my dreams, Brian, come on. Sorry, you know, like we're
52:53
we're still, I think quite a bit a ways away from like a scenario
52:57
where these machines are so good that there's like a true job
53:01
apocalypse and like 90% of humanity lives, you know, and
53:05
these like terrible conditions where we just get like a little
53:09
stipend from the government and that they know we've seen so
53:11
everything like that Matrix style situation.
53:14
That sounds like a great book. It could be.
53:17
I don't think we're there yet. I think, you know, most, most
53:21
technological changes, whether it's like accountants and
53:24
spreadsheets or like bank tellers.
53:27
Another classic example. You know when they're not ATM
53:31
machines, right? What the heck do you need a bank
53:32
teller for anymore, right? Like, you can go, but you know
53:36
ATM should have like, decimated bank tellers, right?
53:40
And in fact of it, there are more bank tellers today than
53:42
there were before ATMs were invented.
53:44
Why? Because ATMs made it cheaper to
53:46
open up bank branches, So banks opened up many more bank
53:49
branches than they had in the past, right?
53:52
They usually there'll be like one.
53:54
In most towns that weren't big you'd have one branch of a bank
53:57
right? Now I drive around even my mid
53:59
size city and most banks have multiple branches in town right?
54:03
So. You have more tellers, so my you
54:07
know, the meta point here is like, I don't know you and I
54:09
don't know they got like we could wake up tomorrow and like
54:12
these companies come with such an amazing age coding agent or
54:17
AI agent that it truly would like decimate people.
54:21
But just like the history and what I've seen from this
54:24
technology so far makes me think that like the doomers are just
54:28
like high on their own supply a little bit like it, doesn't it?
54:31
Doesn't have to be doomed it, I said.
54:32
Or we could live in a super decadent, you know, society,
54:36
although hopefully not like that one.
54:37
What is that? What is that film, kids film?
54:40
Where is it Wally, where everyone is like the Wally where
54:43
everyone is like, let's hope we don't turn into that.
54:46
OK. Yeah.
54:46
Yeah. But it, it could, it could end
54:48
up, it could end up positive. But just to just to be clear,
54:51
Brian, ladies and gentlemen, buy real estate.
54:54
Yeah. Well, you know, so if you buy
54:57
real, it depends where you buy real estate, right?
54:58
With the population declining, right, Demand, you know, demand.
55:02
OK. All right.
55:02
I buy real estate in Israel. How about that?
55:05
Buy Yes, buying Israeli real estate is probably a good idea
55:08
given the popular. OK, great.
55:11
This is not this is not investment of.
55:14
Course not. Of course not.
55:15
Of course. But if you're really smart, it
55:17
sounds like it'd be really smart if you did it now.
55:21
We ran out of time. We have like just a minute or
55:22
two left. Is there any questions or
55:24
comments or message that you want to leave our viewers with?
55:28
Yeah. The message I would leave your
55:31
viewers is there's one lesson that economists sort of get from
55:37
their studies over and over again.
55:39
It's that sort of net outcomes are hard to predict, right?
55:43
You can think that you will know that if A that causes B
55:48
changing, B will call, will cause reversal A.
55:50
Or, you know, if you do this, it can seem so intuitive that you
55:56
can get a certain answer from passing a law, changing a
55:59
policy. Human behavior is very hard to
56:00
predict. People adjust along margins that
56:04
you wouldn't, that are very hard for even the smartest people to
56:07
guess. You know, the insights of my
56:11
field are proceed carefully, take your time often.
56:17
Don't say it's usually unwise to second guess people's
56:20
preferences. And the world is a big,
56:23
complicated place, you know, and that's true.
56:25
You're going to get that out of the study of religion.
56:28
You're going to get that out of literature, and you get that of
56:31
economics, too. Golden words, everyone.
56:35
Brian Asquith. See everybody?