Fixing the fertility crisis (in one sentence)

We made RW cool again. Now it's time to Make Natalism Cool Again

Every crisis is an opportunity—and the fertility crisis is no different.

Yes, the West has fertility and demographic issues, and yes, if the trend continues, it will have dire consequences. But no, it is not a foregone conclusion that it will lead to collapse, as the doomers and black-pillers so deeply want to believe.

The opportunity exists for those who choose to see the crisis differently. For those who choose to zig when others zag. These kinds of people both create and front run trends.

A new trend is on the horizon, one that will solve the fertility crisis.

A Matter of Status

I won’t waste your time here with all the stats about how bad it is. It’s bad, we know it’s bad and if we don’t act, it’s only going to get worse.

The question is what actions should we take?

The overwhelming majority of those who discuss this issue have focused on material conditions: the rising cost of living, the unaffordable housing, etc. All those issues are true, but something was missing until I recently read this excellent essay by

Johann Kurtz

about the relationship between status and birth rates. I highly recommend reading it if you haven’t. (He’s got a whole list of excellent essays on this topic, including this one on the UAE anomaly):

It's embarrassing to be a stay-at-home mom

Johann reminds us that status is one of the most powerful drivers of human action. When it comes to fertility, status matters more than financial incentives, more than moralizing at young people, more than religion and more than state intervention.

Status matters because it defines your position in the social hierarchy. Money, which people (especially the poor) think is an end, is in fact just a means to acquire status.

So yes, material conditions are important so that having children is feasible; but connecting it to status would make it desirable…

Status is power. It opens and closes doors, dictates how you’re treated, which rules apply to you, and how much of the truth you’re allowed to see. It shapes not just what you can do, but who you can be. It’s the invisible currency that governs everything from relationships to institutions—and yes, fertility too.

But… What gives one status?

Well, it’s not only derived differently for different people, but also for the same person at different stages of their life.

For older people, status might be associated with the achievements or the size of their extended family. But for young people, whose lives are fresh and about themselves, status means being cool. (I remember, because I was young not so long ago.)

And what’s been cool for the last few decades? I can tell you what’s NOT been cool in the West: being a 20-something-year-old parent…

What was cool in the 90s and 00s was “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” and “raging against the machine”. So were being a pick-up artist, playboy, boss bitch, tech bro, yoga teacher, spiritual nomad, gay, lesbian, bisexual, nerd, liberal, rapper, Obama-supporter, activist or reality TV star (the olden days’ influencers).

All share a few things in common, namely excessive individualism, libertinism and liberalism. And if those are cool, guess what’s not? Conservatism, tradition, faith, gender roles, hence father- and motherhood, hence Natalism. For decades now we’ve existed in a predominantly liberal society where having kids was just not cool, and the fertility rate came to reflect this. This explains why, as

Johann Kurtz

put it, Liberal societies don't have children.

BUT!

This is changing…

Harnessing the Social Web

The collective unconscious has inertia. Fringe ideas find appeal in some obscure corner and, through mimetic contagion, create a chain reaction that slowly develops a critical mass. These ‘gradually then suddenly’ movements always feel ‘too slow’ for the people at the front, and come ‘out of nowhere’ for the people at the back.

We on the Right, especially Millennials, have watched leftism creep through society since childhood, slowly embedding itself until it reached a fever pitch between 2021–2023. Yes, many of us ‘saw it coming’—we can trace its roots back decades to the Civil Rights Movements or further. But when the lockdowns hit, DEI ideology took over institutions, and dysgenic glorification became mainstream, it still felt like it ‘came out of nowhere.’

Still, every action has a reaction, and the extremity of the insanity generated an opposing force which made the ideas that had become fringe (religion, conservatism, tradition, rationalism, racism, etc) “cool.”

This happened slowly (at first) and then, after Elon took over Twitter, gained momentum, achieved critical mass and has now become a force to be reckoned with. It’s strong enough to turn the tide! It’s an incredible thing to behold.

This time, though, it happened so much faster. Liberalism had been creeping for decades: being a boss bitch went mainstream in the 90s with the Spice Girls, at the same time that being a Soy Boy went mainstream with the Backstreet Boys. It took another couple decades for this to get really wild. So what accelerated the process for the opposite movement?

My best guess is the blend of social media, the internet and smartphones. Memes travel faster than they ever have, and can accelerate trends quicker than ever before. Elon understood this, which is why his acquisition of Twitter was such a stroke of genius. Trump also gets this instinctually. It’s why he was so good at tapping into the relevant meme of the day:

So why does all this matter? Simple: if we are to fix the fertility rate, we need to recognise that (a) we’re on a new battlefield now, one in which digital is unavoidable, (b) things can change faster than they ever have c) we too can and must harness these new technologies and broadcast media to…

Make Natalism Cool Again

We live in a new world, and there is no going back. The ‘trads’ have the correct moral compass, but they are often facing the wrong way, yearning for a ‘rvturn’ to a time that will never fully come back.

The internet, and in particular social media, has irreversibly changed everything, and this is only the beginning. We are still on “Day 1” of the digital era.

Day 1 also means that we need to cut ourselves (as a species) some slack. Like all new technologies, first contact is the discovery phase. Furthermore, as we learn to use the tools, both we and the tools we use change. This symbiosis between man and machine is not new. Technology changes us and we change it. Then as it changes us, we change it again, and so forth.

Cyberspace is the latest tool, and it comes with the power to incept ideas and create trends, faster than ever before.

This technology, this power, is available as much to us as it is to the goblins that have been using it in perverted ways. Our problem is that we haven’t been using it properly: up until now, what’s been cool has been to show off your ass, tits and tattoos, or to virtue signal your allegiance to whatever woke agenda was the flavour of the month.

But recently, a new kind of cool has begun to emerge…

There are now very popular accounts featuring family life, pregnancy, etc. slowly making motherhood, fatherhood, family, relationships, natalism and fertility cool again.

But it’s not just influencers… Elon and Vance—i.e. very powerful people—are also thrusting it into the more mainstream consciousness:

Something very similar happened with Seed Oils and the MAHA movement. It’s now COOL to be a seed oil disrespector. We literally mogged the leftoids and flabby dysgenics into submission by making soy, seed oils and blue light cringe, and sun, steel & steak cool.

This is not to be taken lightly. It’s proof that we can make life, vitality, beauty, health, God and truth appealing. It’s proof that there is an underlying desire from the young to reach for something better—as long, that is, as they feel they’ll get more status from doing so than from the alternative.

This may sound cynical, but I really don’t mean it like that: there’s nothing wrong with seeking status—which is the recognition by your peers of some excellence you’ve displayed. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s wired in us.

Take Andrew Tate for example. One of the reasons he’s orders of magnitude more popular than someone like Will Knowland (for example) is because he is cool. He might be a little morally and ethically dubious, but for all his flaws, he is directionally right and he has what young people want: money, power, women and influence.

Will Knowland on the other hand, is boring, stiff and in comparison, poor. Both Knowland and Tate are judgemental, but one comes off as the annoying teacher, while the other comes off as the cool big brother. Who do you think is going to influence more young people?

For the record, I’m not saying Will’s message is worse. His message is healthier than Tate’s, and I personally align with him on more. But he does not inspire young people the way Tate does. This is crucial: it is after all young people who need to be having the kids!

Imagine someone as cool, rich and powerful as Tate, but advocating for family and responsibility.

Elliot Hulse has done a good job in this regard. For a while he went ultra Trad-Cath and started to come off stiff, but he found his groove again. He now blends many other ideas and actually has personality. He is a cool dad and he makes cool content that inspires young men.

There are examples on the women’s side too: Mary Harrington and Louise Perry are among the most prominent; but also

Megha Lillywhite

here on Substack, as well as a host of Instagram accounts for young mothers, housewives and homemakers, like Momanda or Ohmybread. A recent viral example is Melina: this wholesome video of hers got 2.7m views just the other week!

This approach is going to have a greater positive impact on the fertility crisis than any amount of moralising, conservadork-guilting, government handouts or long boring essays that only old people (who can no longer have kids anyway) will read and agree with. We need to focus on the young and inspire them.

Can Bitcoin help?

Going back to the beginning of this essay, it’s important to temper what I’ve said above with economic reality:

Even if we succeed in making natalism cool again, it’s not sustainable if people cannot afford to look after themselves and their children.

So where do we start? Do we push for cool natalism or do we focus on economics? Can we do both effectively?

Well… For better or for worse, it turns out that ‘material conditions’ correlate heavily not only with baby-making, but with most markers of a healthy society. As you look at the following charts, keep in mind that the US went off the gold standard in 1971:

WTF happened in 1971??

The quality of the money—especially how well it keeps its value in time—directly affects our perception of the future, reducing its uncertainty. Now despite what the goldbugs may think, we’re not retvrning to a gold standard: the brute physicality of gold made it way too easy to centralize and therefore control; and so that’s exactly what happened.

Thankfully, we now have Bitcoin.

For the first time in decades, people can save again, without being penalised inflation and other financial shenanigans. I can’t stress how critical this is for society and fertility rates. If making it “cool” is the draw, or what ‘pulls’ people toward wanting to have babies, savings that cannot be stolen or eroded is what gives people the ability to do it. It’s the foundation.

Now…I’m hardly in the ‘naive Bitcoiner’ camp: I don’t think Bitcoin fixes everything.

However… Whether it’s because Bitcoin attracts a certain kind of people or because it changes them to some extent (probably a combination of both) I am encouraged by what I’ve seen in the community regarding health, faith, personal responsibility, etc.

All those things are clear signs of a lowering of time preference or, in other words, of being more future oriented. This is achieved by reducing the relative uncertainty of the future, and few things do that (faith does, for instance) more effectively than capital / savings (this is literally what being wealthy means).

Bitcoin in this regard is critical. It is the purest, most high-quality form of capital we’ve ever known.

We don’t fix fertility long term, until we fix people’s time preference; and we don’t fix people’s time preference (sustainably), until we fix the money.

So you need both. You need to make it both cool (i.e. high status), and economically viable — meaning NOT dependent on bullshit handouts from idiot bureaucrats—which often backfires anyway. (Free daycare initiatives for instance trap parents in a system of meritocratic workism—which is antithetical to family and fertility).

As I argued in The Bushido of Bitcoin, thanks to Bitcoin, we have the capital to make conservative/traditional values cool again, and we have the savings to support lower time preference—both of which will lead to improving fertility rates.

To Summarise

If you make something ‘cool’ or appealing to young people, they will flock to it. The period of life you are most interested in being ‘cool’ is when you are young (and consequently fertile). If we can make natalism, maternity and fatherhood cool, then you will see more and more young people want to have kids, and consequently the birth rates will rise.

I think the trend has already started to reverse. The charts are always going to be lagging indicators, so we’re not going to see it right away, but I’ve met many young people thinking about families and rejecting the liberal doctrines force-fed to them by the mainstream. They are flocking to the counter-narrative being led by the popular and ‘cool’ among us. The counter-culture is now young families. The overgrown 30-something year old kidults are now washed up warnings. They’re no longer inspiring.

Notice it says 2018… We’ve been silently winning for a while!

And, like I said, cool has to come along with economic carrying capacity. Young people must be able to save for the future. Cool is great, but when push comes to shove, young children need to eat, they need to be sheltered and they need to be raised.

As the credo goes in The Bushido of Bitcoin: You need capital and character to change the world for the better. So it goes for fertility too. You need to make it cool to draw in young people, and it needs to be economically viable - not just from the standpoint of how much they can earn, but more importantly, whether or not their savings can retain purchasing power without needing to become a gambler, trader, investor or whatever other sort of financial nonsense is disguised as “work” today.

So…

Let’s support young people. Let’s make Natalism, Motherhood and Fatherhood cool again (already happening). And let’s get this god damn money fixed up, so that our efforts are not ultimately in vain (also already happening).

Until next time.

Aleksandar Svetski

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I’ll be doing more of these short-form essays as I explore the core themes from The Bushido of Bitcoin and prepare to write the second book in the Bushido series: The Metaphysics of War & Beauty.

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