"Society Is A Ponzi Scheme" - Warning On Population Collapse & Hopeless Generation | Eric Weinstein

I think we're getting to the point that normal porn has gotten really sick. That if you're not a prude about eroticism, um some of the things that you're seeing pushed have to do with the fact that our brains are now habituated to all sorts of things that you probably would never have seen visually unless you were like Genghis Khan. Right? Because everything's on demand. And so the search for novelty uh I think it's taking in some cases quite a dark turn even for people who are pretty okay with the idea of pornography and eroticism as being a an important part of an adult diet for the mind. Where it where it worries me is kids, for sure. And I'm maybe even less worried about today than I am in 15 years when you have VR that is bordering on photo-realistic, and that's where uh whoever you want in Yeah. you know, choose your own experience. That's very disturbing. But I I'll be honest, I'm more concerned right now about um people finding partners to have children with. I think that this is a an economic epidemic that we don't feel comfortable talking about. And why aren't people comfortable talking about Well, because for example, if you have a fair idea that you're at risk for not having the family thing work out, like it's gotten a little late in the day and you don't see a lot of prospects lined up, and you've had a few relationships that haven't ended in commitment and resources and children, and the economy doesn't seem to want to come up with a 30-year plan to fit a mortgage and getting some kids through college, um I think that the transition from the previous world has been pretty brutal, and a lot of people don't want to say, "Yeah, I really want a family and if it doesn't work out, I'm going to be it's going to be a major hit to my life and my sense of myself." And we need, you know, in part, I think that a lot of us don't want to see um young women forced onto the apps. You know, which seems like it turns life into this From dating perspective? Yeah, like a sing It's just, you know, somebody Somebody said that this is a singles bar in my pocket. And wherever I'm bored, I just go to the singles bar and start swiping. And I thought, "Okay." And how do you feel about it? He said, "Well, in the aggregate, I feel pretty terrible about that, but I can't stop." And so you now you've commodified all of this stuff, and I don't think it's a good deal for young women at all. Um I think that, you know, young women have been used to putting men through their paces and demanding a lot. And you know, saying, you know, "Jump this high." and seeing who can clear the bar. And when that power is not present, and when men can't win these competitions and have those competitions really mean something, we derange as a society because society is about continuity, and continuity is about babies. So, no matter what you want to do, you can take it away from babies. I remember I was talking to a young woman who was like 26 or something. And she asked me if I had kids, and I said, "Yes." And I said, "Do you have kids?" And she like practically spit out her beer. Like, "What?" And I thought, "Do you think it's really a crazy question that I would ask a 26-year-old woman if she had kids?" Um and then, you know, she thought about it. It just feel felt very remote. And this is the economy that we're bequeathing to people. And my belief is is that if the median individual cannot count on being able to, you know, have a home in a reasonable city that has lots of jobs, so that if one job doesn't work, they can switch, and one person can stay home. Doesn't have to be the dad. Doesn't have to be mom and a dad. Can any pair, but you need somebody with the freedom to stay home to raise children while somebody else can be counted upon to go be the breadwinner in an economy that isn't, you know, absolutely razor's edge. This is nuts. And, you know, it was driven home to me recently when my father turned 85. We were at a party for his friends, and some of their closest friends lived in in our neighborhood when I was growing up. And they were saying, "Oh, yes, you know, when we moved in all those years ago, um there were 14 boys who used to play on the street, and now there are none." Oh. And I said, "What do you mean there are none?" She said, "What?" Young families can't afford to live on the street. And I said, "Do you have any thought in your mind that that was a catastrophe that happened to your street? And that maybe your generation had some responsibility, this is the silent generation, so before the baby had something to do to say, 'Hey, maybe this is not good for society if young families' She said, "Well, the these homes are perfect for families." And I said, "But you just told me that there are no families on your street." So, this is an epidemic, and this is deranging us, and this is a lot of what's behind this kind of sense of injustice and people trying to um find groups, I think, to take care of. Cuz you've got a lot of maternal instincts that are not grounding in happy, hopeful homes raising kids. That's really interesting. What do you think is um the sort of key driver? Is this uh student loans? Is it um the average salary isn't going up? Like, and part of the what drives my question is I know what I pay, so my my previous company I had at one point 3000 employees about 1500 full time and then another 1500 part time. Here I have 20 plus employees full time and then another I don't know 7 or 8 part time and I know what I pay them and it's a good wage. It's a hell of a lot more than I was making at their age. That's probably the easiest way to say it. Okay. So where is it that just the way that we are and what we pay is not indicative of what other companies pay? Is it Is it something else? Is it something else? going to just going to be really kind of brutal. First of all, we were in an orchard with lots of low hanging scientific fruit where you could take the scientific fruit and turn it into technology in short order. We're still making scientific advances but most of those that are even fairly profound are not instantly convertible into technology. So there might be low hanging fruit in a new orchard but we haven't found the new orchard so we're picking fruit that has a very different characteristic. So that's the first part is that our pipeline got screwed up. Okay. But how does that really play out in like dollars and cents? So I'm thinking of this street, right? It's the perfect analogy. So you have a street the houses have a price to buy, they have a price to rent. So when I think about okay, what is stopping somebody from either buying or renting? So if the prices are too high Prices are too high. So then is it that the prices are artificially too high because we have a bunch of empty houses and people who are buying as an investment and they're just being stupid or you're fairly familiar with my theories and acronyms and things. So you you've probably heard about the embedded growth obligation, ego. what I I and I get that and that scares me and I totally buy into it. What I don't and for anybody listening and tell me if I [ __ ] this up but like basically we have a system that's entirely predicated on continued growth and that growth slowed down starting the 70s or 80s and we've done a lot of [ __ ] shell games to make it seem like we're growing and that the one that when you give I'm always freaked the [ __ ] out by is the essentially Ponzi scheme of education where higher education you're teaching people to be professors but there's only going to be so many professors or the law firms only going to be so many partners so it's like Every graph tells the same story. So but what I don't understand is if that's been the same since the 70s like I didn't even graduate high school until the mid-90s and this is nothing ever seen I mean look there were times I couldn't quite pay my bills there were times where you know I was sharing an apartment with a bunch of people but it's like it it never felt like the system had broken in some impossible way and this isn't me saying that it isn't broken this is me just saying I want to really understand Okay. like where we've gone wrong. Well so this is what I say to my friends in San Francisco so they've got good jobs they're programmers they're having a blast they're going to Tulum and you know traveling to Bali and all these things and so I say you're living in a group house. What do you think about buying your own home and asking that gal you've been going out with for a couple years to get married? And like the conversation just gets really weird. Well I'm not so confident that I can commit to a 30-year mortgage and you know prices are insane and I'm not positive that she's the right one for me and you know all these things or if I talk to my female friends they have a set of different stories. Which is like I'm so tired of little boys who never grow up. Is this a psychological malaise? Like cuz that explanation I can understand. excited about low variance futures needed for children as we see them. don't see things popping off like this isn't Beijing in 2006 where it's just like the sky's the limit or Well, I think people have a have a pretty strong sense. Well, like I hired a millennial who I'm very good friends with. And I noticed that he was like not that committed to certain kinds of projects. He would he would work hard, but he also had a very clear sense of you know, my obligation ends at this point. I said, well this person. Okay. Keep going. And um Keep going. And um I said, well, why why why do we have a difference in in our sense of work ethic? And he said, oh, because my generation watched your generation get screwed by the baby boomers and we're not falling for it. Do you buy that? Yeah. That sounds like [ __ ] to me. And and when I say I am happy to be convinced, what I want is the [ __ ] truth, dude. Because I have no interest in Let's get to the truth. Because so, I have a psychotic work ethic. Why? Because I didn't used to and my entire life changed when I changed my work ethic. But you fe- Look, you're talk- I sounds to me like you're talking about founding companies. I've done both. I've been an employee and I've founded companies. So, I've played both sides of the fence. And how did how did the employee Well, look, I I don't want to over index on I mean, because you know, there are particular lawyers and particular law firms who aren't founding anything who are doing just fine, but it's a minority position. And what I believe is is that we are in a situation in which we are not excited by the future and the people who are real stakeholders in the system have in general been very focused on making sure that the pyramid is always supplied. So, this idea for example of you have to go to college, the debt has to become non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, we get to load up the universities with administrate- all that kind of stuff. And then, of course, the main one, which is really bizarre, which is there's the secret weapon. And the secret weapon is immigration. And the great part about immigration as a as a invidious tool for one generation to screw another generation with is is that if you call it out, there's only one explanation for why you would fight having other people added to the bottom of a pyramid scheme. Which is you must be a xenophobe or probably a racist. And the answer is no, I'm really just trying to choke your supply of new virgins to add to this pyramid scheme so that you can continue to transfuse yourself. Yeah, that's interesting. Um So, let me see if I can uh steel man this quickly. I This is the one time in my life where I am the one that has a hard out in 5 minutes. I'm so [ __ ] horrified. This is so interesting to me. Um so, I'll try to do it quickly. Okay, so um we have a pyramid scheme in that there are only so many jobs and I'll even abstract it from being a lawyer, which is very easy to understand. There's only so many people make partner. Being a teacher, it's easy to understand. You can only create so many other teachers. And obviously, we're talking at higher education. Um and I'll just say your normal job. Now, I've told my employees this. Like, "Look, every step you go up, you there's fewer available positions until you get to the CEO and there's only one." So, there's only like you you can get promotion. I've never thought of there being sort of a a money does not strike me as the finite resource. The promotion strikes me as the finite resource. You can keep making more and more money depending on the health of the company and your contributions to it. So, that's part of my bias is that when I try to use just first principles, I'm like, "If this person is that valuable to me, I'm going to [ __ ] pay them because I have fear of loss. I don't want to lose them." So, which is why I default to create fear of loss in your employer if you want more money. but the company has to be doing well. So, let me stick to the Ponzi scheme here. So, um very interesting take on immigration. So, you have people coming into the system. They're willing to work cheaper than the other people would otherwise work in the system. to be careful about that, but keep going. It's interesting. I'm trying to represent your position. no, but what I'm trying to say is that really the biggest issue is push out the labor supply curve. You say that another way. Your wage is your price. Yep. And I bring people from foreign countries to make sure you can't compete cuz they'll do it for cheap. Yes. No, it's not even that. I mean, maybe maybe the idea is that you're you'll you're a superior source of labor. Who's you? Whoever you are. You're the domestic Let's assume that you're a worker inside of the US. Yep. The big play in some sense of the previous generations, the silent generation, and more importantly, the baby boomers was internationalism, which they called globalization. And the hidden part of globalization that wasn't the United Colors of Benetton was the idea if we can just break our dependence on each other and look abroad and talk tell a beautiful story about what we're going to do for Africa and Asia, then the idea is is that we can continue to grow our slice of the pie even though the pie might not be growing at the same rate because from my perspective as a silent generation or baby boomer, I'm focused on a slice, not the pie. And so, there was a huge amount of value gotten from tricking people into thinking that globalization was this beautiful Davos-inspired uh kind of philanthropy that was going to be a rising tide to raise all boats. And those Americans who had rights inside of our system, and this goes for Brits who had British rights and French who had French rights, whatever, had a right that was valuable, which is I have asymmetric access to my labor market, and that's how we worked as a nation. So, now you start the the world's greatest PR campaign, which is patriotism doesn't exist. It's only nationalism. Of course, nationalism is really ultra-nationalism, which is jingoism, which is a precursor to Nazism. So, you start saying, "You know, I kind of believe in citizenship and patriotism, and now you're telling me that that's I'm a bad person." And now you've got the Davos crowd talking about financial inclusion in Africa and Asia, and you notice that they're not really that interested in Michigan or Alabama. And it's a it's an why they're not, because I felt like I just didn't tell you till you told me that I was getting it wrong. Because the amount of value, you see, if I had to purchase your rights Uh-huh. and I wrote a Rights to what? Well, your asymmetric access to your labor market. I wrote a paper called migration for the benefit of all, published in the International in the um International Journal of Labor. I forgot I forget what the title is. Migration for the benefit of all, which said, "If you pay people for their rights, like if the baby boomers in silence said, 'Look, we think we can get better labor outside, and we want to pay you for the right to shop elsewhere.' Then the idea is that everybody would have been better off, and we would have all screamed kumbaya at each other as we got rich together. But instead, what they said is you're a protectionist, and a jingoist, and a xenophobe. We loaded them up with as much negative imagery as we could pos- You're just a bad person. And they were doing that though, so they can get cheaper labor, right? So, they can keep you from having leverage. But you keep saying it as we're will- we're willing to work below. But my point is is that if this coffee mug Mhm. costs $10, and now we have 10,000 coffee mugs, it's not that those coffee mugs are are willing to be uh bought for less. The entire cost of coffee mugs plummets. It's just pushing out the supply curve on labor and wages its price. So, it behaves much as supply and demand should. Now, you can then point out you can make lots of other arguments like, well, some of these people are starting business and people are not coffee mugs and these are the most vibrant members of our society. You know, you queue Stars and Stripes forever. You put your right hand over your heart, but the key point was is that all of these arguments were necessary to keep the institutional structure going as the Ponzi scheme ran out. And a lot of this has to do with what I've called fake growth. Downsizing, offshoring, immigration, securitization. It's just this mind-numbing uh parade of different techniques that these older generations have used to keep a system afloat that has been saying, "We're exhausted." Like, the law firms are supposed to fail. The universities are supposed to fail. All sort of the the the newspapers or don't make sense as a business model and things that you're creating and that we all might create would be replacing these things. But instead, what we've done is what we've come up with an exotic kind of economic parabiosis where we're going to transfuse our fellow Americans and the younger generations to pay for a group of people who are just far too expensive to keep living in the style to which they have unjustly become accustomed. So, I'm sorry about your heart stop, but I think that there's a tremendous amount to be excited about and enthusiastic about because in essence, getting back to your original point, you're right about the Matrix. For 50 years, we've been in a constellation of ideas suppressing the really interesting new ideas and calling names for on anybody who would propose ideas that would point out the unstable nature of of our market democracy. And right now, what we're doing is is we're living through the beginning of a global low-grade revolution of a type that we've never seen before. If you like that clip, check out the full powerful episode here, and I'll see you there.