Childless Cat Men

Being young is not what it used to be. The old have all the power. And they increasingly do not care about future generations.
This was not always true. Traditionally, there were way more young people than old. Humans have always had more offspring than they do today, particularly in the West.
Yet improvements in public health as well as women’s empowerment has encouraged humans to have less, if any, children. This, as well as the affordability crisis, has been a major accomplishment in terms of sustainability.
Think about it. Young people today are so focused on getting ahead in their careers or just making ends meet that they may not have time to start families, let alone care for them. This is not merely a convenient coincidence; it is precisely the point. A major focus of many global NGOs is replicating this trend in the developing world. As U.V. Rao wrote in his chapter “Population Control: A Critical Factor in Economic Development,” in the 1994 book Overcoming Indifference, edited by Klaus Schwab: “Equally important is augmenting female literacy and pushing towards a radical change in the power equation in man-woman relationships.” Not because it is simply the right thing to do or because of universal human rights; so, they have less kids. He continues:
Evidence from India shows that high literacy rates, especially high female literacy rates, are associated with low rates of population growth, infant mortality, and maternal mortality, as well as a higher life expectancy.
Many organizations argue educating is the best way to reduce climate change and meet the United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Former General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) Sharan Burrows writes for the Club of Rome: “Stabilising planet Earth, stabilising those ice sheets, means empowering women.” Less people, less polluters, less problems.
For those concerned about a labor shortage, don’t worry. Most advanced countries have are developing AI and other emerging technologies to fill the gap. As Blackrock CEO Laurence D. Fink has pointed out, countries like Japan whose birthrates are in freefall may actually turn out to be in an ideal position:
We always used to think the shrinking population is a cause for negative growth, but in my conversations with the leadership of these large, developed countries that have xenophobic immigration policies, they don’t allow anybody to come in, shrinking demographics these countries will rapidly develop robotics and AI and technology…..And if the promise, and it’s going to happen, if the promise of all of that transforms productivity, which most of us think it will, we’ll be able to elevate the standard of living of countries, the standard of living of individuals, even with shrinking populations.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp argues much of the resentment toward elites in the West is caused by mass immigration. Perhaps it will become less necessary to import workers when robots fill the void. Elon Musk, however, thinks population collapse is a much bigger threat than global warming.
The decline in birthrates is cultural. Rene Girard pointed out that humans are mimetic or tend to imitate one another. If other people your age are not starting families, then you are less likely to as well.
US Vice President JD Vance criticized this trend, lambasting what he referred to as “childless cat ladies.”
Vance would later retract his comments, but what he really should have done is extended the critique to include men.
French economist Thierry Malleret writes on The Rise of Singledom:
Fertility rates are collapsing globally, not only because married women (and couples) decide to have fewer children, but also because of fewer couples. In short: relationship rates are trending down. In the US, the proportion of single-person households has grown from less than 6% in 1960 to roughly 30% today; and in capital cities like Stockholm and others, the proportion can reach 60% or more. The rise of singledom is a worldwide phenomenon, expected to grow by almost 50% before 2040, and concerning mostly people with low disposable incomes. It is part of the ‘ageing – collapsing fertility rates’ global megatrend, but with a distinct twist in terms of investment implications: (1) more small housing in urban areas, (2) greater focus on leisure & entertainment, luxury, travel and hospitality, and wellness.
Since humans have traditionally had many more offspring, they have had a vested interest in the welfare of future generations. This is no longer the case. People are increasingly only concerned with their lifetimes, not what happens thereafter. Unless they can live longer if not forever, they will be dead anyways, so why should we care if the world goes to hell? This is nihilism that Alex Karp is about to rail against in The Technological Republic, available in a bookstore near you on February 18th.
Some of us may remember a time when spending your early days partying was normal. But now everything is online, everybody is angry, and the only thing that matters is climbing the ladder. If you do not ace your ACT, get into a good college, do a couple of internships at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs, and land your dream job at 23, you probably never will.
This phenomenon has had varying yet similar effects on men and women. Patrick Deneen writes in his 2008 book Why Liberalism Failed, recommended by Barack Obama:
Its (liberalism) defenders often point to the liberation of women from conditions of inequality as a significant example of liberalism’s success and regard any critique of liberalism as a proposal to thrust women back into preliberal bondage. Yet the main practical achievement of this liberation of women has been to move many of them into the workforce of market capitalism, a condition that traditionalists like Wendell Berry as well as Marxist political theorists like Nancy Fraser regard as a highly dubious form of liberation. All but forgotten are arguments, such as those made in the early Republic, that liberty consists of independence from the arbitrariness not only of a king but of an employer. Today we consider the paramount sign of the liberation of women to be their growing emancipation from their biology, which frees them to serve a different, disembodied body “corporate”America—and participate in an economic order that effectively obviates any actual political liberty. Liberalism posits that freeing women from the household is tantamount to liberation, but it effectively puts women and men alike into a far more encompassing bondage.

For Deneen, “Part of moving toward a postliberal age is recognizing
that while liberalism’s initial appeal was premised upon laudatory aspirations, its successes have often been based on a disfigurement of those aspirations.” What he appears to be arguing for is choice. How much choice do people really have over major life decisions when they can hardly make ends meet?
Older generations have never been more out of touch. Given the rapid pace of technological and social change, it is difficult for them to understand what it is like to be young nowadays. Listening to your elders has always been good advice; but how could they understand what it is like to date in an age where a majority of this occurs on Tinder?
The old now learn from the young.
So, we are increasingly governed by a group of old people who care about nobody but themselves and their lifetimes. They conspire together behind the scenes, criticize anything newer installments of the human race do from their high posts, and leave those who will bear the consequences watching as one crisis unfolds after another, powerless to change the ever-wrongheaded course of history. Schwab writes:
The median age of the world is less than 30 years old, which means that young people are actually the most important—and most affected—stakeholders when talking about our global future. These are also the people who have the most innovative ideas and energy to build a better society for tomorrow. We should move away from a narrative of production and consumption to one of sharing and caring. Young people are the best placed to lead this change. Let’s give them that opportunity.