Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the 235th episode of the Atlas Society Asks. I'm Jag. I'm CEO of the Atlas Society, coming to you from a different location because as many of you know, I live in Malibu and the situation's a little dicey there at the moment, to say the least. But there was no way I was going to miss this episode because I've been looking forward to it. And I'm excited to have Hannah Cox join us. She is a writer, political commentator, president, co founder of Based Politics Substack, of course. She is also our Instagram star with our Instagram takeovers every month. And I'm very excited to say that she is going to be emceeing at Galt's Gulch 2025 in Austin. So, Hannah, thanks for joining us.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Well, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. Also, very much looking forward to this conversation as well as our big event this summer. That's be absolutely amazing.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Yeah, so like, originally, I mean, it's, it's a just a wealth of riches with the topics that you choose to comment on.
Originally, I think we were going to be talking about your take on unions and your criticisms of them for resisting these innovations which are keeping America less productive when it comes to trade and to international shipping than it really ought to be. But we switched things up because again, lo and behold, I, as you know, I'm a huge fan of the based politics commentary and as well as Histrionics, which is your series in which you tackle issues relating to the sometimes battles, sometimes, you know, relationship between the sexes. And one of the reasons I'm just such a big fan is that you are a rare voice in the liberty scene willing to call the right out on some of its nonsense. And one of your more provocative takes recently was to push back on the catastrophizing about falling birth rates. So why did this topic catch your eye?
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Well, I think first and foremost, I, like many libertarians, have a background coming out of a more social conservative sort of worldview. I grew up very evangelical, very Southern. And so I have always had these kinds of narratives circling around me. Right, that you should get married young as a woman, you should focus on having kids, and that really should be your priority. And I've always rejected that. I think that's one of the things that predominantly led me towards libertarianism because as I aged, I realized I didn't totally align with kind of the conservative dogma around the way people, people should govern their lives. And so it's been interesting to me to see sort of a resurgence. I think there was a time period in between Bush and Trump where that sort of fell away. The conservative movement moved away from these social topics, and it really has come back with a vengeance, particularly in online circles. And I often hear people say, you know, why do you care? It's just people talking online. But as you and I both know, culture very much does shape politics. Increasingly, our culture is taking place online. So I think these conversations do matter. I think that they carry weight. And I really have had a lot of distaste for things like the trad wife movement and really starting to try to encourage young people, but particularly women, to forego an education, to forego their ability to access a career, and instead to simply get married and have kids. And if that's what somebody wants to do, by all means, I think that they should do that. But if they're going to do that, they need to do that with the knowledge of the pitfalls that have accompanied that for many women throughout history. There are very good reasons why first and second wave feminism needed to occur. And those are very important gains that we've had that I've been privileged to access throughout my lifetime. But we're not that far removed from a time period. You know, my mom, when she was born, could not open her own business account without the signature of a man. She couldn't get a credit card on her own at the time she was born. So I think that it's really important that we continue to remind people of those gains and how recent that they are and continue to fight for them and also ensure that women and men, when they're entering contracts, which is what marriage is, are protecting themselves, and if they choose to have kids, that they do so knowing the cost of that, that they do so, knowing what that's going to take. Because what we ultimately want is for people who have kids to first and foremost, stay together with the partner that they procreate those children with, and secondarily, to be a strong and good force in that kid's life who's capable of fully raising them into highly functioning adults. We've seen a lot of trauma that comes when people who should not be having kids do procreate. So I have had a lot of issues with this huge push for us to use the government in order to come in and address the declining birth rate. I think there are real reasons that we see that birth rate declining that the government is incapable of fixing, first and foremost. I think secondarily that the Doomsday mentality around its decline can be assuaged through a number of other factors. And I think oftentimes there is a big government agenda there because if the birth rate does decline slowly over time, which is what we would see happening, that's not really a calamity for anybody, except for the proponents of big government that need an ever increasing tax base to keep their Ponzi scheme operation going.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Right. Well, you know, you said that it's culture that shapes politics, but it begs the question, well, what shapes culture? And we would argue as objectivists that it's philosophy, that it's values. And so I think part of what has made me a little uneasy about some of this debate is, well, let's really talk about, you know, individuals and their rational self interest, their right to pursue their happiness, not necessarily to be feeling that they have some amorphous duty to fulfill these collective goals to the fatherland or the motherland or what have you. And I am more of an objectivist than a libertarian, and I did not come from either a religious or a conservative background, but really more from a secular liberal one and still feel very strongly about a woman's ability to control her reproductive destiny and that this needs to be her sole moral discretion in terms of a choice. So I think it's interesting now when we look at that online debate that you've been witnessing and participating in in analyzing declining birth rates, what are some of the convent explanations by the red pill crowd and what do you think they're missing?
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Well, I think the dominant excuse that you often hear, sort of the straw man that they assume sums up the reason why people don't want kids, is that they will say people are just simply selfish, which I know both you and I would say to that. So what? There's nothing wrong with people being selfish and selfishly pursuing their rational self interest so long as they aren't hurting anyone. But I think that they massively miss the mark. I mean, they, the, they create quite the caricature around people who are foregoing having kids, particularly women. I think first and foremost that there are a lot more women who would like to have kids than who are currently having kids right now. And that is simply because they are not finding the proper mates in order to procreate with, particularly at a younger age. We do see that marriage rates have ticked up. I think some of that is due to more women entering academia. Some of that is true, that women are putting off having a marriage or kids until they are a bit more established in their career. But as someone who is just, you know, shortly outside of that time period in my life, that's not what I witnessed with women around me. I witnessed a lot of women in their 20s who very much wanted to get married and wanted to have kids. And what they found were a bunch of man children who hadn't fully gotten their acts together, that weren't really ready to settle down, that were playing games and that weren't actively pursuing marriage with them. And so I really think a lot of this does trace back to what's happening with men in our culture. And I think that there's a huge calamity happening with men, actually, if we start digging into it both with the fact that they are not obtaining degrees at the same rates as women, we're seeing their income start to fall behind. Women, we often see that they are quite isolated in their social circles. They aren't forming communities. These are really serious problems that need to be addressed. And instead of actually focusing on why that is happening and what needs to change in order to ensure men can keep up with women, there's been a lot of attacks on women, right? You'll see a lot of the red pill men say, well, women are hypergamous, meaning that women are only attracted to men who make more money than them or who are, you know, seen as above them. And I would say some of that is biological and some of that's just common sense. Because even in this day and age, given the fact that we do have equality under the law, we still don't have equality in relationships the vast majority of the time. We still know that it is women who tend to do the bulk of the work in the home. They tend to do the bulk of what's called the emotional labor or mental labor and running the household. They do the bulk of caring for kids. They're more likely to take time away from the workforce and able to care for kids. That's particularly true given how expensive daycare is. And so it makes sense that women want to look for a mate who is at least on the same social platform as they are, if not slightly above them. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. The problem is that they're not capable of finding enough men who are in that position because of what's happening amongst the male population in our society. So I think it often gets misdiagnosed and the blame gets dumped on women for just being selfish or feminism rotted their brains, or they just, you know, aren't thinking about it till it's too late. Which is hilarious. They tend to seriously believe that women are somehow completely unaware that they have a certain time period with which they can have kids. I don't think any woman is unaware of that. It's something that's very much hanging over the heads of people who do want to have kids every day as they age. And that's why we've seen, you know, fertility treatments and services like freezing your eggs take off drastically, because a lot of women are trying to plan. So I think there's a lot of very real reasons that we need to talk about for why people aren't having so many kids and can't really find those mates in order to have kids when they do want to have them. But that's not really what's being discussed amongst the red pill. It's just a lot of, like, blaming the other side and dumping on one another and kind of painting these really bad stereotypes. And honestly, at the end of the day, what it's ultimately doing is creating more and more of a gender war between men and women, more and more of a divide, and it's turning a lot of women off to associate with men in general. You see these movements like the 4B movement. You see a lot of women on American platforms like TikTok discussing their experiences, not only interacting with men online and these kinds of subjects, but also their experiences in the real world as they are encountering men, as they're being mistreated by men, and just deciding to forego relationships and kids altogether. So I think that's what actually needs to be more teased out. The economic concerns are there for why people aren't having kids as well. And a lot of that traces back to things our government has done. But I don't actually think that that is the dominant reason people aren't having kids.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Well, and then add to the division between the sexes the fact.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness, I'm so sorry.
Must be Amazon. One second.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: All right, well, I was just going to mention that on top of that, you have young men who have been moving to the right, if you will, moving in a more libertarian, more conservative direction. And then you also have young women. So I think the statistic was only that only 12% of young men considered themselves to be on the left, and only, you know, 14% of young women considered themselves to be more on the right or conservative. So that is yet another issue that is complicating this subject.
All right, well, I see we have got a lot of people commenting, and so I want to be able to have Hannah back here to talk about it. You know, one thing I've also noticed is that it's interesting that I would say a disproportionate number of objectivists have decided to forego having children. Of course, Ayn Rand never had any children. Neither did Nathaniel Brandon or Barbara Brandon.
Our founder, David Kelly, hasn't. And I wonder whether or not it might be because they are more comfortable with pursuing their self interest and they are also not considering it some kind of duty to do something beyond what, what it is that they want to accomplish in their life. All right, so let's see. We'll dive into some of these questions.
Iliacin says dating apps have also had a negative impact on relationships. It incentivizes instant gratification, among other unhealthy mindsets.
I would agree with that. I, you know, wrote an article, date the Atlas, not the Shrug, which lost me a relationship, but got me this job in which I talked about how, you know, treating kind of commodifying the opposite sex and treating men and women as if they were the same and not recognizing those differences is contributing to that.
Alan Turner asks, is it men being man children, or society leaving young men behind? I do think that's a fair point. And I have had on this space the author of Men on Strike, who argues that men kind of dropping out of relationships is in fact a rational reaction to many of the sort of messaging about toxic masculinity and also, you know, the Olympics, the hierarchy of identity politics, continuing to posit white men as the problem. So I don't know if we've got Hannah back there. She is okay.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: Sorry about that. Of course, that always happens right when I'm live that somebody shows up at the door.
These are interesting questions. I really appreciate the point about society failing men. I do think society has failed men. I think that the red pill misses the mark on some of its complaints around the legal infrastructure. I've done a good bit of work debunking some of their talking points around that. I don't really agree that the courts are like drastically stacked against men. And I think oftentimes men are quite negligent and not structuring their contracts and marriages with prenups and other things at their disposal. So there's a little work to be done there. But I think that gets overblown. That being said, I do think society has really failed men and I, and I think that comes down to more of a cultural issue. I think that we do have a huge epidemic in this country of what I call deadbeat dads, you know, not just dads who have taken off and left, but dads who are just not active participants and actually raising their kids and really mentoring their sons and ensuring that they get the tools that they need to be successful. I think women, particularly women my age and younger, were the daughters and granddaughters of women who fought in first and second waves of feminism. And so we were really coached and instructed, you know, get your education, work really hard, make sure you've got your finances in order, make sure you pursue these pathways, look out for these pitfalls. And I think women really heeded that advice. And the proof is in the numbers. And on top of that, you've had a lot of, you know, society cheering women on and really encouraging them and uplifting them. And I don't think that same thing has happened for men. So I think that's an important point. As for the dating apps, I met my husband on a dating app, so I might be a little bit partial, but I also think they get unfair blame. I think what really happened was, and I think a lot of what Covid did was teach people that they didn't have to be parts of their community anymore, that they could just stay home and expect for connections to fall in their laps. And we don't just see this in dating and in trying to find mates. We also see this as far as people saying that they don't have any friends or that they're really lonely or they don't feel like they have a village, they don't feel like they have a community. And yet you constantly hear people complaining about, people don't come to their events, people don't come to their baby showers when they throw them, people don't offer to help people move anymore. And so if you don't want to use the app, fine, they're a tool. But you also have to get out in society and do the work of forming real relationships. And I think that is what's really not happening across the board.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: You need old online dating and IRL in real life showing up and taking social actions. All right, so, Hannah, in a recent X post, you wrote, quote, I'm personally unconvinced birth rate decline is the calamity Elon thinks it is. Would it decimate current government and social welfare structures? Yes. And to that, I say good. End quote. So can you unpack that for us some more? Do you think that in declining birth rates, there is maybe a potential prompt to rethink the welfare state?
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that there could be I think it's a form of systemic disruption that would certainly have some unpleasantries to it, but sometimes that's necessary to get to the other side. I mean, we are already at the brink of many of these social programs collapsing. It's actually quite sad. People my age just openly say, you know, I'll never see my Social Security. And they just accept it as if that is an okay thing that you're going to pay into the system your whole life and never see it. But that is the likely scenario right now because politicians don't have the guts and the spine to reform it or to tell the older, the older base that hey, guess what, we're going to have to lift the age. We're going to have to make some cuts and reforms here. They're terrified and so they won't do the things that need to happen even just to make these programs sustainable with the current population that we have. So I personally think that it is totally fine if they are forced into a corner in order to make some of these cuts and changes. I think that might be the only way we actually get rid of some of these government programs or see some real meaningful change is for something like this to happen there. There's a very frequent talking point I hear on the left. The left is also very interested in the birth rate decline, but they tend to cheer it more so while the right is hand wringing over it. The left is obviously has. They have their climate concerns around it. But the dominant talking point I hear from them is more so that in not having kids we are undercutting capitalism. That capitalism is built upon the need to have an ever expanding base of consumers. And that's why the right is so concerned about it. And I don't think that that's true. Capitalism functions just fine whether you have 220 million people or you have 320 million people. And capitalism in a are capable of adapting to those scenarios. And I don't see that as being something where, you know, we're going to have our economy just bottom out. It could shrink. But that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Again, if it happened tomorrow, then yes, that could be very bad. But it would happen over a period of decades in which companies and investors have time to plan for that. On top of that, in a true free market system, which we'll see where we end up around this question, especially over the next four years. But immigration is also of course, a another solution to birth rate declines. If you actually have a free market system, you have labor that's able to move where jobs are available and the US continues to be competitive and to continue to provide new opportunities for people, then we will always have an influx of people who are willing to come here and work. And so if we do have a decline in the birth rate, it would be answered by immigration. So I do not see this as being a huge problem for anybody but the government. And for that I have nothing but celebratory feelings. I think the reason the right does not feel that way is first and foremost, we know where they are on immigration these days. They don't want open immigration. They particularly don't want to see our population have a large number of immigrants in contrast to native born Americans. And so they in particular are very concerned with the birth rate because they want the birth of certain people to fill the economy versus being open to allowing immigration to answer that.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: You know, I think what's also interesting is in terms of the right bemoaning declining birth rates and the left celebrating it. I think one of the things that the left fails to think through is, well, if they are going to be having fewer and fewer kids, and the demographic data shows that conservative young people have a higher fertility rate, essentially that they are reproducing procreating at a higher rate than the left.
I mean, just demographics speak for themselves. And at some point this is going to impact the way people vote as well. So I want to shift and talk about ways in which the current government policies and regulations might in fact be contributing to declining birth rates. For example, inflation caused by the printing of money undermining young people's confidence in their ability to provide for a family, or excessive regulations contributing to a scarcity of housing options for young people, which makes it difficult to contemplate marriage, much less having a family.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there are countless ways the government has created an environment. I saw some in the comments asked do I think nihilism is affecting the declining birth rate? Yes, I really do think that there is a sentiment that things are not getting better and that you don't know what kind of world you are birthing kids into. And I think that's something that previous generations did not have to contend with. You know, up until my generation, Americans felt relatively assured since the 1940s, 1950s that their kids would have a better life than they did, that they would have better economic opportunities than they did. And that no longer feels certain in the least when you add on to the economic concerns. You also have, you know, the military industrial complex that has been waging war across the globe that has been increasing the chances that we ourselves have something happen here on our homeland or that we get involved in another kind of world war escalation. So I think that has many people feeling very pessimistic. And then I think you just add on how busy Americans are. And you know, I am a hard worker. I believe in hard work. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I do think when you look at the schedules of people, this is one reason I've been a big proponent of remote work. You look at what your day looks like and then you think about adding a kid in there, it doesn't seem like a pretty picture. It doesn't even seem like a picture where you get that much time with the kid. For most people. Most people feel like in order to obtain the quality of life that they want, they need a two person income. For most Americans, that would likely be true. And then you'd add into that that you have to commute, so you have to pay for childcare. Even once the kid is of school age. You have to have some kind of supplementary care to get them to school or get on a bus and then to get them off the bus and have aftercare. So that's very expensive. And then you're paying for other people to raise your kids. And so I think a lot of people are looking at that sort of time calculation and thinking they're already tired, they're already worn out, they already don't feel like they have time for themselves, and they don't really feel like they have much to offer a kid. And I think I've made this argument, I think perhaps because it's personal, I've always known I don't want to have kids. And I feel like I've spent a lot of time thinking that through. And other people that I have encountered who don't want to have kids, they tend to put a lot of intentionality into it. I actually find that most people who don't want kids have thought about it a lot more deeply than many of the people I meet who do have kids or who want them. And I think because of that, they've actually ended up with a conclusion of I don't really have what I feel like I would need to give a kid. And so they're actually being unselfish in choosing not to create a life that they don't feel certain they can provide a good path for.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: All right, let's get to some of these comments. Candace Morena says of Hannah she's great and I agree. So I want to encourage all of you to go ahead and sign up for her YouTube and let's take a look at some of these comments.
Jackson Sinclair. People should be free to do what they want, but there does appear to be some correlation between libertarian types and not having kids. Ideas won't be translated to the next generation. But again, as I mentioned, I think, you know, perhaps objectivists or libertarians might not be having kids to the extent that conservatives are. But overall, I would say that generally those on the right are procreating at a, at a faster rate.
And, and let's see, lock, stock and barrel says remote work, like anything, has opened up new opportunities and new challenges. I guess that was referring to our little earlier disruption.
So let's see. According to Statistica, Statista.com, birth rates were highest in this country in the early 19, 7th, 19th century and have been on a slow decline for 200 years, with the baby boom being an atypical blip. How much of falling birth rates is just a natural result of increasing wealth?
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Well, wealth and also increasing options. You know, I think that we have to consider the fact that your grandmother probably didn't want all those kids that she had, and that's very upsetting for some people to hear. But prior to birth control, which really, you know, that movement took place in the 1970s, women didn't have the ability to plan how many kids that they wanted. And and so that really has opened up a lot of options for people. And I think it's not just women who are choosing to have fewer kids. It's most men want fewer kids as well. And so I, I think that, that, you know, certainly plays a part. I think having more wealth probably also plays a part. A lot of the reason people used to have a lot of kids is because they needed the labor. You know, if they had a farm or they had a family business, they needed kids to work in that business in order to keep it afloat. And if they had, you know, a child who passed away, which was much more common before the innovations we've seen under capitalism and as our wealth has increased within the health care system, then you had to replace that kid. And so you did have much larger birth rates, I think in large part due to those factors. I also think think religion was what was much more common during those time periods. And obviously many religions do preach and push people having a large number of kids. And that's obviously because religions also need to replace themselves and make sure that they continue to have a base of people. So I, I think there's many factors that contribute to it. This one reason I've been so fascinated with this conversation, because it just impacts all of these different policy and social areas in our society that are kind of, you know, coming together and impacting the birth rate. So the birth rate is sort of the tangible byproduct that people are focusing on, but it ties into so many other things that are happening. And that's why I think it's ludicrous that so many in the nationalist right camp in particular think that there is a way they can centrally plan and come in and manipulate that birth rate back into their favor.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: So you were talking about religion and also advances in healthcare. I think of my grandparents in rural Louisiana, Catholics. They had three infants die before my mother and her three siblings were born and survived. So how might advances in reducing child mortality and rates actually be impacting the rates negatively? The rates of birth rates?
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Right. Well, if you have two kids and you feel pretty certain that they're going to live to adulthood, you're probably going to stop. You know, most people have about two, three kids and. And they feel like that's enough and so they stop. Whereas again, before people, number one, didn't have that same option to stop. You know, I look at my dad's family. His family was quite poor growing up. His, my grandfather worked in a pipe factory and had an eighth grade education and they ended up having four kids. They could not really afford those four kids, but they, you know, there just weren't a lot of options to prevent that. And so they raised the kids that they had and were given. And I think for other families who, you know, really did need to ensure that they had kids to work in the family business or to take over the family business, take over the family property, they would have children and some would pass away. And then I think they would keep having kids because they wanted to ensure that they at least had several that survived to adulthood. So, absolutely, I think those kinds of factors have impacted it and I think. But I think nothing more than birth control. You know, if I look at the medical innovations, I really think giving women and men the ability to plan with their partners how many kids they want to have with a high degree of certainty, you know, it really is phenomenal. I mean, you're looking at like a 99.9% chance of success if taken correctly. I don't think anything has probably had a bigger impact on the birth rate than just that ability to actually Choose. And that is is one major reason I see no problem with it. Right. I don't believe that the birth rate decline is the calamity they pretend it is. But I have to be honest, even if it were going to be a bigger deal in the economy or have a bigger. A bigger impact on our lives, I still would stand by the fact that people should be able to choose what's best for them. And if having fewer kids is what they choose, then that's the right pathway forward. And we should not be trying to pressure them or manipulate them to make such massive life choices based on what would be best for the government or the collective good.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: So you also wrote that, quote, in recent decades, women are largely surpassing men economically and that 37% of households are ones in which women pay the bill. So how is that dynamic changing relationships in general? And is it changing what people are looking for in a parenting partner?
[00:31:20] Speaker B: I don't think it is. I think it's actually having a negative impact right now. Now, that could change over time. We could see as we have more generations that are coming up and that are sort of, you know, used to equality and have gotten through some of the growing pains of being on equal footing, that we see some dynamics start to change. I think right now it's had a very negative impact because again, I do think that women are biologically programmed to look for men who are at least on equal economic footing, as if not slightly above. And so when you have a larger percentage of women who are obtaining degrees, who are obtaining master's degrees as well, who are then accessing not only more lucrative positions, but better positions, you know, they're not doing manual labor. They tend to have more office types jobs, they tend to have more remote work, more leisurely kind of structures, probably more time off, that becomes very difficult for them to find a man if there's not as many men in that same position. And so it's not just a question of, you know, the biological attraction to providers for women. I also think it's a question of, you know, finding people that you have things in common with, you have a lifestyle in common with, and that you can structure a life with. It would be very difficult for me to have kids with somebody if they had a radically different work structure than I do. And again, most of the labor would end up falling on me. So I just think women aren't willing to sign up for that arrangement. And even when they do, it must be pointed out, it doesn't often go well for them. We actually have A lot of studies showing that when women make more than their husband, their husband is instrumentally more likely to cheat on them and leave them. And so it's not just women that are not coping well with this new dynamic. It's also men who I think have not yet figured out, if I'm not the provider, if finances are not the dominant thing that I'm bringing to the table, then what is my value? What is it that I have to offer a partner? I would say this is one reason we really need to focus on the workload, balance and relationships. And I think that while it's perfectly fine for women to look for men who are at least on equal economic footing as them, one major thing men could be doing to contribute and to be more attractive partners, even if they are slightly behind where a woman is at financially, is to take on more of the household burden, take on more of the child rearing burden. And I think we are starting to see some shifts in that direction. I think there's still a lot of work to be done, to be sure, but we are seeing a growing mentality around men where there's no longer this expectation of, you know, she cleans and she cooks and she runs all the errands and she does all the shopping and she's the one on the PTA meeting. But there's still a lot of work to be done. You know, my husband has two kids, I have two step kids now. And he's a very involved dad, an amazing father. Absolutely incredible. But it's fascinating to me to witness sort of from the sidelines, like he'll be on a PTA meeting for school for them and he will be the only man on that phone call. And I can give you countless examples like that. And so I think there really has to be a change in that sort of dynamic between men and women before we could get to a place where it might be okay for both women and men if the woman is making more and that to be a satisfactory situation for both parties.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Well, what you said just really resonated with me. And this may be tmi, but I remember an early partner and we were talking about the decision about whether or not we should have have a child. And I at the time was the breadwinner. I was a senior vice president at Dual Food Company. I was working, you know, 247 and he was a jiu jitsu instructor and he's a wonderful guy. So I said, well, you know, we're going to need this, my income to pay for the necessities of this child.
So it would, you know, really be hard for me to take on the, the responsibilities of being the primary, you know, caregiver and all of that. Would you be willing to do that? And he said no.
Okay. I don't know how we do the math on this.
Yeah, money doesn't grow on trees, so could have been a different, different situation. But I think in retrospect, I'm pretty happy with the way it went. All right.
My modern Gault asks Hannah, do you think the push for college education has made marriage and children difficult, especially with the debt?
[00:35:43] Speaker B: Yes, I think the debt is a huge problem. I've been very critical of our higher education model. I, I'm hesitant to sort of throw in the towel on higher education as I see a lot of people on the right doing. I certainly think there are a lot of scam degrees and a lot of things that aren't worth their salt that people are paying for. But I do still believe that getting a college degree, particularly if you're someone who's not coming from money, is the most expedient pathway to the middle class and to a stable middle class lifestyle. As long as you pick a good degree, you know, you're not going for something that's simply indulgent and you're actually getting something that's based in real market value. So I think that people need to be very smart in what they and how they pursue higher degrees. Obviously the costs are through the roof and quite clearly we all know that traces directly back to government's involvement in the student loan business. But I think there's this false perception that there's no way to get a degree affordably. And that's also just not true. You know, a lot of the costs that are incurred in college debt come from the lifestyle of going to college. And so people can still live at home and get a degree. People can choose to go to a local school, to a tech school, to community school, to a trade school, get their first two years under the belt, then transfer to a four year school. There are tons of scholarships that are available. There's, you know, the lottery system in many states that supplements, if not covers the vast majority. So there are still a lot of avenues people can take in order to get a degree affordably. And then of course, there's also a ton of opportunity when it comes to the trade schools or, you know, pursuing entrepreneurship, which I'm a huge proponent of. But I do think that people are not, young people are not being coached very well when it comes to their choices around school. Their brains aren't fully formed yet. They're not even 25 years old. So the fact that we're letting them make these calculations without that kind of guidance and take on these kind of, this kind of debt before they really have the wherewithal to know what they're doing, I do think is a huge problem. And we need to do more to educate people to ensure that they are making smart choices around that. So I think student debt plays a role. I also think the average student debt payment is around like $250 a month. So it's, you know, it's not a good situation. I don't think that that's the predominant reason people aren't having kids. But as I've said elsewhere, I don't even think the economic factor is the predominant reason people aren't having kids, which is what the proponents, the, the natalist and the people kind of in the national are pushing. They want government intervention in order to try to sway people and pursue them, persuade them into having more kids. And most of their solutions look like using government programs to give tax credits or to subsidize daycare or to give other kinds of handouts. And we know from other countries that have pursued those same policies that they actually don't work. And if anything, they, they have an impact on moving the birth rate decline even further down because of the tax burden that they incur. So I don't think that simply handing people money is going to solve the reasons for why people aren't having kids. I just think it goes a lot deeper than that.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: Right. And at this point, with us being 36 to $37 trillion in debt, you know, if we decide to continue to spend money that we don't have, you can have all the kids that you want, but what are, what kind of future are you giving them? Right. You're basically having more kids so that they can pick up the tab down the road. So, you know, thanks, thanks. Thanks, grandma. Thanks, Grandpa.
So, you know, this is a statistic I was looking for earlier between more conservative and more progressive adults. One example is in this analysis that looked at a sample of 100 conservative adults versus 100 liberal adults. The former would raise 208 children compared to 147 for the latter. So maybe talk a little bit more in, in ways in which you feel that ideology, particularly on the left, is contributing to this issue.
[00:39:49] Speaker B: Well, I do think that the left definitely has a more pessimistic viewpoint. And I also think the left tends to have less attachments to religion. And so you don't have the sort of like trad, religious, social conservative sort of push that is leading people to make these choices or to feel like they have some kind of obligation to do this. And again, I, I think that that's a problem on the right. I don't like that young people are being sold that narrative. And I think if you really start digging into this and paying attention, there are many women who were sucked into that sort of teaching or that indoctrination when they were young and who got married to people that they really should not have married and who had kids and then were kind of trapped in those situations. And there's, there's countless stories of how this turns out very, very badly on an interpersonal level in the long run for people who kind of fall prey to these peer pressure campaigns. So I would pick the less mentality over the rights, actually, when it comes to this issue. But I also want to point out that just because the rights having more kids, I don't know that that necessarily means that they will have, you know, this army of conservatives. I often see people saying that on Twitter, like we're going to just outbreed them and posting all of their kids. But as somebody who came from that sort of background, that kind of family, you know, I grew up trad. I was homeschooled. I was one of four. My family was like on the small side of our homeschool group. And compared to other families in our church, there were all of these people that were in like the Quiverful kind of movement, which is, you know, most well known by the Duggar family. So, I mean, most of my mom's friends had six, seven kids plus, and that was the norm around us. And I can tell you right now that I keep in touch with a lot of people I grew up with, and most of them turned out pretty libertarian. So I don't know what that says about those kinds of movements. I think honestly, growing up in that kind of like oppressive mentality can actually have a, an opposite reaction where people really reject that and want to move away from it. I also will say it could be the homeschooling because I think we all got very solid educations and were really taught logic object skills. And so we were just able to think through things for ourselves and moved away from it. So who knows how this pans out in the long run. But I certainly think that you have a lot of mentalities and doctrine on the right that is leading people to still procreate and perhaps to even feel more optimistic about the future. Obviously, I don't think you have the same climate concerns that those on the left have when it comes to this issue. And so that it's, it's definitely easily explainable why you see those differences.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Well, when I think of you having conservative evangelical parents and you're turning out libertarian, you know, I had more traditional Democrat parents and I turned out objectivist and Republican. So, you know, that's a complete shift. I mean, going from conservative to libertarian. I know it can sometimes feel like, you know, a complete 180 degree turn. But you know, you didn't become a socialist, you didn't become anti capitalist. So there's, there's still that. So let's talk about just this whole issue of optimism, effective acceleration, a more optimistic view of technology.
Do you feel like any part of the decline is, is having to do with a culture being in less of a growth mode than in past generations, feeling comfortable versus generations that built this country? Maybe some of them mistakenly believe that there's not much of a frontier, there's not much more for humanity to achieve. So really not so much a woke perspective, but more of a, a stasis one.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that you bring this up, Jags. It's actually the number one policy dispute my husband and I have. I am very much a tech optimist. He works in tech and he's very much a tech pessimist and has a bit more of a doomsday mentality on it. But I think he's more in the norm, the way that he views the coming kind of AI revolution and what the job landscape is going to be like. It's, it is uncertain times. You know, we, if you look at the conditions we live in, everybody alive today has had to undergo more transformation when it comes not just to our economy, but just to our way of life over a 20 year time period than any other generations have ever lived through. I mean, we really have been through a lot and it's hard to predict what life is going to look like because I think there is a feeling that that's only going to increase. The change and the adaptation and the innovation are only going to rev up as we move more and more into the AI era. And so there is sort of that idea of like, what does work look like? What kind of jobs are going to be for people? Is everybody going to end up on ubi? Are we all going to be, you know, pushed into like a socialist system and you know, what does the, what is the coexistence amongst people look like if that happens. And so I think there is just a lot of uncertainty and a lot of people have much anxiety around that. I also think people's mental health has not been great since COVID Obviously we've seen skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression and just mental health issues in general. We keep. I can't ignore the impact that can take and the impact that would have on someone's choices on whether or not they want to have kids, whether or not they, you know, want to have kids for the future that kid will have, and also whether or not they feel like they have the capacity to raise a kid while struggling with mental health issues. So I think that all of those things play a huge role. I choose to be optimistic, I think is the best way to put it. I am prone to anxiety myself, but I love looking back at former, you know, tech revolutions and, you know, big periods of change in our history and seeing sort of the people who had the same exact fears at that time period wringing their hands and warning that all the jobs were going to go away and people weren't going to be able to, you know, have their livelihoods anymore. And seeing how over time they were proven wrong and only that they were proven wrong, but that really, they were proven wrong in really great ways, which is that, yeah, some jobs went away, some things stopped, some things didn't exist anymore. But it tended to be jobs that weren't good, jobs that required more manual labor, jobs that were lower paying and they were replaced by better jobs and the opportunity to work less and to have, you know, easier jobs as far as the manual capacity goes. So I'm hopeful that that will continue to be what we see happening over the next couple of decades. But I do very much understand the fears and concerns and uncertainty that people have around that.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: Well, that kind of reminds me and brings me back to what we were originally going to talk about, which was these unions and the ports and being able to argue simultaneously, this is terrible back breaking work. We need, you know, a 200% raise because this work is back breaking. Oh, and by the way, we also don't want any new technological innovations that are going to make it less back breaking work. So I don't know how one wraps one's head around that. The other thing that when you were talking and talking about COVID which I like to refer to as lockdowns, because it wasn't the virus that did this to us, it was the policy interventions, certainly those policy Interventions had a tremendous and very negative impact on mental health. But there is also the conversation worth having. And now perhaps we will be able to have it in a more open way about whether or not forcing young women and young men to take these experimental MRNA products, which. Did they have an impact on women's menstrual regularity? Did they have an impact on sperm count? So I guess I feel a little bit more optimistic that we'll be able to have an honest accounting of that, because it is a very real thing having to do with important choices in people's lives.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Before COVID even hit one of the top DMs I would get from people, particularly from moms, were women asking me about my opinion around.
I don't know if I'm allowed to say the v word on YouTube. Can I say it?
Vaccines. And I would always just say, I am so glad I'm not a parent, because I don't have to think through this. I don't have to worry about this. I don't know. This is not my area, area of expertise. You know, go to your doctor. I don't know. And then Covid happened, and of course, it sort of. Everything came to a head. There was no. You had to talk about it. You had to look into it. And what happened was really atrocious. I mean, for anybody who is a supporter of bodily autonomy, it was very scary time. It was actually terrifying how few people really spoke out over that when it. When it mattered most. But I think because the few people who did stick their necks out did so, and because they were able to successfully went in that battle, There has been a real title change around this, where I think it's. I love what we're seeing happening with the Make America Healthy movement. I love that we are now having real discourse around not only our medical industry, but also our food system and how government regulators are, you know, very corrupt and in bed with the very entities that they're allegedly regulating, as Ayn Rand so beautifully predicted would happen, and Atlas Shrugged. And I think that those are really important, important things. I've seen a lot of moms at the forefront of those fights. I was at a Senate committee hearing a couple of months ago where they were talking about many of these initiatives with Callie and Casey Means and rfk, and it was just really exciting to see all of the women in the room. Many of them had young children and babies and strollers, and you could really tell that they were showing up to fight for their kids. Future. And they were informing themselves and they were ready to take an important stand. So I think there, there's a lot of uncertainty if you choose to be a mother or a father right now. There's a lot of potential threats out there. But I also think we're in an era where, thanks to the age of information and also thanks to the work that's been done, especially over the past three, four years, there's strong coalitions being built for people to educate one another, to educate themselves, and to start meaningfully fighting back against some of this corruption that has overtaken our systems. And I think that that's a really exciting forefront, and I'm really proud of the parents who have chosen to dedicate their time to doing that, because I, I know it's, you're very busy if you have kids. And so when they're choosing to take that on as well, it's very exciting. And I love so far that most of the initiatives I'm hearing, you know, there's been a few strays here and there, but most of the initiatives I'm hearing proposed under this entire umbrella have nothing to do with government regulation. And they're all about educating people and they're really about using the market to solve these problems, which is so exciting.
[00:50:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we talk about the food supply. I mentioned earlier that I worked for a dozen years at Dole Food Company, and of course, it's one of the world's largest providers of fruits and vegetables. And my job was to educate people and market people. And some of the things that you see at The Atlas Society, 365 Days of Ayn Rand. Well, before that, there was a 365 days of nutrition Pocket Guide to Objectivism. Well, before that there was a Pocket guide to nutrition. And you know, I, I think that part of what could also be contributing to this is that when you have half or more of the population being obese and people just aside from what that does to your own health and your own fertility, but it just what it does to how you feel about yourself and whether or not you want to be in a relationship. And so one of my favorite of your recent commentaries, Hannah, was your commentary on Ozempic. So hopefully that will also be in the mix and helping people get, get healthier and being in a place if they want to have children, that they're going to be able to do it without, you know, hauling an extra 100 or 200 pounds of adipose tissue around.
[00:51:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I hadn't actually thought to tie that in. I Love that you brought that up, but that's such a great point. I mean, if you look at the number of Americans who have struggled with obesity and the number of Americans who are having drastic impacts their lives, not just their health, but of course that impacts their relationships and it impacts how they feel about themselves and impacts their ability to get out and socialize because of that. So I think that there's, you know, really exciting innovations that are on the table with Ozempic. As I mentioned in my episode, it's. It's not just the obesity part that I'm so excited about. I'm really excited about the research I've done around its ability to potentially treat addiction, particularly alcohol addiction, and also to be a stopgap measure for people who are in the process of developing Alzheimer's. So I think there's a lot of exciting stuff on the forefront here. And it's really important because while we were very right to criticize the COVID vaccine and I think there was a lot of corruption behind it, there's been this sort of boomerang effect on the right in particular, but I guess kind of around like crunchy granola, people on the left too, to just throw the baby out with the bathwater and to have no trust in, in pharmaceuticals now and to just everything that's in the pharmacy world is bad and everything that's natural is good. But we need to remember just how many gains have been made over the past hundred years or so when it comes to our ability to treat diseases and to cure diseases thanks to that industry. And so it's not all bad, there's still good things coming out as well. And I just, I hope people use a bit more discernment and treat things as an issue by issue kind of thing.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: I think that is so important because I think, I think while it is absolutely correct to be skeptical of government controlling information being the one that is, it's the self styled arbiter of what is reality, what is truth, what is information, what is disinformation. And certainly skeptical to government mandating violations of bodily autonomy. At the same time, particularly as objectivists, you know, we are marveling at human achievement and human achievement includes medical innovations. And one of the things that I'm hopeful about, Ozempic as well. And all of this class, this class of pharmaceuticals is not just what they themselves do and have the potential to do in terms of other applications, but what they have the potential to do to our mindset. Right? Because this was again, one of these issues that was Never going to change. It was almost like it was some kind of divine curse, right? That unless you manage to figure it out and have the proper arrangement of self control and exercise and discipline, that you were going to have to suffer the consequences. And now we have another tool in our toolkit. And just the fact that it is a breakthrough to remember that breakthroughs are still possible. We live in a world with many breakthroughs to come. So I guess on that note, I'd ask Hannah if there's anything else that you want to add, any advice that you'd give to the young people out there, or maybe just tell us a little bit about your having read Ayn Rand, what you take away from it. Because honestly, most of the time I'm hearing you and I'm like, that's an objectivist, but probably don't call yourself that, but you seem like one to me.
[00:55:11] Speaker B: You know, I think I mostly am. I just, I don't tend to think to use the label, if anything, but Ayn Rand was probably the person that was the most important in shaping my ideology. I know a lot of libertarians would say Ron Paul, but I missed that wave. I wasn't really paying attention to politics during the Ron Paul era. I came around a little bit later and my dad actually gave me a copy of Atlas Shrugged. My dad's an intellectual. He's, he's conservative. He's not an objectivist or a libertarian, but he's got some underpinnings. And. But I was asking a lot of questions. I was starting to push back on a lot of things I'd been raised around and, you know, kind of having intellectual debates with him. And he brought home. Alice shrugged and said, I think you're gonna vibe with this. I think you're gonna find a lot of similarities with her line of thinking. And I don't agree with everything, but I think, I think this is where you're at. So I devoured it and I loved it. I mean, it's like reading a fortune teller, you know, when you think about the time period with, with which she was writing it, and you see all these things that have come to fruition that she predicted and described. And I just think she was such a keen observer of human nature, and I think she had such an incredible way of breaking down very complex ideas and beliefs and motivations that humans have and explaining them to people. So I absolutely adore Iron Rand. I can't explain how instrumental Atlas Drugged has been. To me, I think it was definitely kind of the bedroom rock of Me forming my ideology and it's, it's the number one thing I've always been attracted to when it comes to objectivism is just the, the very premise that there's nothing wrong with being selfish. I think that that is such an important breakthrough. Humans are selfish. You're not going to change that, accept that reality. It's not the worst thing. It's okay as long as that selfishness is able to be used in a way where you have to serve others, which capitalism, libertarianism is that tool. It ensures that in order to get your own needs met, in order to thrive, in order to succeed, you have to be of value or use to others around you. And so it's a very complementary idea, I think oftentimes where libertarianism, I guess sort of drops off, is there. We're very good at talking about the economic side of things, whereas Ayn Rand was really good at talking about the personal application of things and how this plays out at an individual level and in your interpersonal life. So I love her. I also love her work on relationships, by the way. Has had a huge impact on my mentality around that. That too. So, yeah, I'm a fan girl. Absolutely.
[00:57:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you know, our friend Jeffrey Tucker said that before Ayn Rand, the battle for liberty was merely intellectual. After Ayn Rand, it was deeply spiritual. And, you know, people are understandably given the way that selfishness is traditionally used, we get pushback on that, that. But, you know, if you think about it rationally and you think about it over the long term, the, the kinds of things that we tend to associate colloquially with selfishness is like cheating or lying or being arrogant or cutting people off. You know, if you act that way over the long term, you're going to be alone. No one's going to want to be with you, no one's going to trust you. No one's going to see you as somebody with integrity. And how is that in your rational self interest at the end of the day? So thank you for that, Hannah.
[00:58:30] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much for this conversation. I loved all of your, all of your thoughts and all of your questions. I knew that you would do a beautiful job with the subject matter. So very, very happy to have this discourse and I hope everybody enjoyed it.
[00:58:42] Speaker A: Yes. And so everybody, number one, follow both Hannah and follow the Atlas Society on, on Instagram, because she does, again, a marvelous takeover. She takes your questions and she provides one minute answers every month. And then also make sure to follow her on YouTube. We put that link in there. I'm also going to ask our gremlins behind the curtains to put the link to Galt's Gulch, which is coming up in June in Austin. Hannah is going to be there. She's going to be the next mistress of ceremonies. So you are not going to want to miss that. And I would love to see some of you guys that I see every week, but I haven't met yet. Would be really great to meet you in person. And be sure to join us again next week when author Kara Dansky. We had her on one of the earliest episodes of this podcast. She's going to be rejoining us on the Atlas Society asks to discuss her latest book, the Reckoning how the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls. So we'll see you then.
