Secret History #3: Death by Gerontocracy

So good afternoon class. Today we do death by gerontocracy. Gerontocracy just means rule by old people. Last class we discussed the decline of Western society and civilization and why it's happening. We discussed the theories. Today we will look at what the reality on the ground is. What the actual trends are. What are the current examples of decline in the Western world. All right. So let me start with this young man. His name is Axel Rudakubana, and he was 17 years old when last year he took a knife and walked into a dance studio in Britain and proceeded to stab the little girls inside the dance studio, and they are five, six, seven.

He kills three of them. He is quickly arrested by the police. And as you can see, he is a very disturbed young man. He clearly has a mental illness. Otherwise, why would he go kill children? And he was sentenced to 52 years behind bars. So he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison. So justice was done. What happens next is that all throughout Britain there are riots and protests. What happened was that rumors start to spread online about the attack. They claim that the young man was an asylum seeker, an immigrant, and because there are too many immigrants coming to England, everyone's safety is at stake.

So, as you can see, these protests were extremely heated. They were extremists. They were anti-immigrant, and ultimately it led to violence between the police and the protesters. And this is happening all throughout Britain. Last summer, the country of England burned, basically, literally burned. So these protesters were setting cars on fire and they were targeting immigrants in Britain. Remember that this 17-year-old boy is actually not an immigrant. He was born in Wales to parents who are from Rwanda. So he is a British citizen. As you can see, the men who participated in the protest, they're not sad about what they're doing.

They feel virtuous. They feel righteous. They feel proud for protecting their people against So the question for us today is, why is this happening? Why are all these civil conflicts caused by immigration happening throughout the Western world? So this is happening in Britain. But as you know, immigration in the United States led to the victory of Donald Trump in last year's elections in the United States. A lot of the conflict comes from the fact that immigration is happening too fast in the Western world. So after COVID you see this large spike in immigrants.

The other issue is that most of these immigrants are coming from countries in the Middle East, in Africa, in East Asia. So it's clear that these people are different from you. So before there might have been a lot of EU, European immigrants, but now it's just mainly countries outside of Europe. So the British people feel as though they're being invaded by The demographic changes to British society are stark. I'm not sure if you can see this clearly. But the dark brown are places where in the past 5, 10 years the immigrant population has tripled, has tripled three times.

Okay. And as you can see there are quite a few pockets where immigration is sort of overwhelming the local population. So if you go to Britain, there are some places where you feel this is like Morocco or this is like Rwanda or maybe even Egypt. So the British people feel they're under siege, and this is happening throughout the Western world. So this is Australia. Australia, after COVID, a huge spike in immigration, and most of them are coming from non-European countries. So the greatest spike is in India, but then you also have China and the Philippines as well.

These are the three major sources of immigrants to Australia. The same is happening in France, where you're seeing a huge spike in immigration, and again most of the immigrants are coming from African or Middle Eastern countries, and so the French feel as though their culture is being diluted. It's being attacked and This is happening all throughout Western Europe. The UK, France, Italy and Germany are seeing a huge spike in immigrants and refugees and so their culture feels threatened.

What's also happening is a huge spike in inflation. So this is something called the CPI, the consumer price index, which is just measuring the price of basic goods like food and shelter. And as you can see, there's a huge spike in prices. So as these immigrants are coming into your country, you also feel as though your quality of life is getting worse and worse. It's getting harder for you to afford basic goods like rent and food. It's getting harder for you to support your family.

The major increase is in housing prices. So Canada these past 5 years has seen a huge influx of immigrants and this has caused housing prices to skyrocket. In the United States, which has a much larger economy than Canada, the housing prices are pretty stable. You can still afford to buy a house if you're a young person in the United States, not in Canada. You see this huge spike in Canada. The housing prices are now unaffordable. This is a chart that shows you economic growth as compared to housing prices. So as you can see, in the United States there's a correlation between income and housing prices.

Okay, this is pretty reasonable. In Canada, it is not reasonable. So GDP is going like this, but housing prices are just skyrocketing, and that's why Canadians feel as though the Canadian dream of one day having their own house is basically dead.

So one strange thing is that as Canada lets in more immigrants, and as house prices go up, you would think that they would build more and more houses, but as you can see, housing supply, it's pretty flat, even though immigration is going up. Does anyone know why this would be the case? Why is it that you have a policy of letting in more immigrants, but you don't have a policy of building more housing for them? That's kind of strange, right? Can anyone guess why that would be the case?

So it's making homeowners very happy. And that's why you have this crisis in Canada. The other issue that's really problematic in the Western world is that as the number of immigrants goes up, native people, the native population, are not having children. So this is Canada, where the birth rate, the blue is the birth rate, it's steadily going down whereas immigrants are going up. So it's the immigrants who provide most of the new people in Canada. In fact, right now, 25%, a quarter of all Canadians are first-generation immigrants.

Sorry, first-generation Canadians, meaning that they're immigrants to the country. And if you just look at this trend, in 40 years' time, 50 years' time, there'll be very few white Canadians in Canada. And this is causing a lot of conflict and tension in the country.

So you have these huge issues. Housing is unaffordable, inflation is going up, ethnic tensions are increasing, but the Canadian government still insists on increasing the number of immigrants in the country. There's no policy rollback where it's like, you know what, let's have a moratorium, clearly our policy is too rapid and we need to slow things down. In fact, as you can see, they're actually going to ramp up the process. The goal for Canada right now, Canada's population is about 35 to 40 million people. They want 100 million people, 100 million people in Canada by the year 2100.

And guess what? The majority of these people are going to come from India and probably China. And as we discussed, the percentage as part of the total population is just rapidly increasing. So in Australia it's almost a third now. In Canada it's a quarter. In Germany it's a fifth. And these percentages will go up and up and up, leading to more and greater ethnic tension and immigrant protests within these countries.

As you can see, the number of immigrants coming from India far surpasses that of other countries. And these are just legal immigrants. We're not counting students. So there are millions and millions of Indian students right now in Canada on student visas and they're looking for a path to permanent residency, to citizenship. And that's what leads to situations like this. These viral videos online where you have thousands and thousands of Indian students lining up for hours and hours because they're applying for a minimum wage job at a restaurant or at a store.

Life for these Indian students is just terrible. A lot of them live eight to a room. This one room that was meant for one person, there are now eight students living in that room. At the same time, what's really interesting is that the Indians are now an extremely powerful political force in Canada. This was the former prime minister Justin Trudeau meeting with representatives of the Indian community because he depends on them for his In last year's federal election, 22 people of Indian descent were elected to parliament. So in parliament there are 343 seats.

22 of them now are How many Chinese? How many MPs of Chinese origin? There are less than 10. So even though the Chinese have been there longer, and even though there are actually more Chinese than Indians, the Indians are an extremely powerful political force. Now a lot of it is because Indians come from a democracy. So they're very good at debate. They're very good at organizing. They're very good at collective action. And that's what leads them to excel in the Canadian political system. At the same time, we can imagine that if current trends continue, if the immigrant population from India, and if the Indians continue to amass more political power, there could be a situation where the Indians take over the Canadian government in like 20 or 40 years' time.

So there's a real risk that in Canada the native population gets replaced by the Indians. And this is happening elsewhere as well. Yes. A question.

Okay. So this leads us to a paradox. If immigrants are making life worse for everyone, especially young people, who are the future of these nations, why is this happening? So I want you guys to keep this in the back of your mind. You probably know the answer already because you know how property prices work, right? Okay, so let's move on to another topic. So Canada, like 10 years ago, introduced a new policy called MAID, medical assistance in dying, and the idea here is that if you feel life is meaningless, if you're depressed, if you feel that you cannot cure your disease, the government will help you kill yourself.

The government will let you die. Now the big question then is, yeah, but 25 years ago this was illegal in the world, right? Suicide was illegal. If you helped someone kill himself you'd be put in prison. This would be basically So what's the difference between suicide and the government helping you kill yourself? Well, there really isn't. But the government says there is a difference. So this is a brochure from the Canadian government explaining to you why suicide is bad. Suicide is bad but suicide by government is good.

Okay. And it's really stupid. It's disgusting. Stupid. It's disgustingly stupid. What they say is that if you do suicide, well, you do it alone and you shock your friends and family. But if you do MAID, then everyone knows you're killing yourself and so they won't be so sad when you die, right? If you kill yourself, you might screw it up, but if the government does it for you, you won't screw it up because it's being facilitated by professionals who know what they're doing.

All right? If you think this is stupid, there's more stupidity to come. Right? And what this tells us, we discussed this last class, is one major sign of decline in society is the over-bureaucratization of society, where the government interferes in everything.

This is the number, actually the number of deaths from euthanasia in Canada. As you can see in 2016, it started at about a thousand. By 2021, it's at 10,000. So the numbers are going up really Why? Well, because if you want to kill yourself, they won't stop you. This is the number of days required to be approved for suicide. As you can see in the Netherlands, sorry, this is Oregon, actually. This is Oregon, United States. The number of days has been going down, but it's still like at most a month.

In Canada, they'll do it in like 10 days for you. They won't even think about it. They're like, "You want to kill yourself? Do it, man. Good for you. Good choice." Doctors have been trained to do no harm, right? Well, and death ought to be the last resort. But in Canada, death is now the first resort. If you go to a doctor and say, "I want to die," the doctor's like, "Sure, let's do it, man." That's pretty All right. Why are people killing? So, if you see the approval rates, they have been going way up.

It seems as though they have a quota. This is 2019, only 75% were approved. Now, it's 81%. It's almost like they have a quota. They're trying to kill as many people as possible, right?

As you can see, this number is the percentage of people who die because of euthanasia. This is the Netherlands, which for the longest time had a very open policy when it comes to euthanasia. And yeah, it's going up, but this huge spike is Canada. It seems as though Canada is in a rush to kill as many people as possible. So who's Yeah.

It's poor people who are dying, right? This is pretty And this is even more interesting. This is the most disgusting part. If the government were to approve your death, you would think that there would be a rigorous process, right? It would be the last option. But let's understand why people are killing themselves. And the two main reasons. The first major reason is loss of ability to engage in meaningful activities. It's because you're not happy. This is a lame reason to kill yourself.

Also, loss of ability to perform activities of daily living. It's harder for you to go buy groceries. It's harder for you to walk around. So again, what's happening is that poor people are dying and poor people are encouraged to kill themselves because the poor are being a burden on the medical system. And that's the entire basis of euthanasia. So let me ask you this question. Why is it that 25 years ago we discouraged euthanasia? In fact, it was illegal to conduct euthanasia even if the person was suffering from brain cancer and the person was just basically in hell every day.

The government would not allow euthanasia. Why not?

Right? So what mattered back then was social cohesion, social capital, social trust. And now what matters is just numbers. How much does this cost me? How much revenue will this generate? So that's the difference in the world today. Before, we cared about social cohesion, we cared about morality. Nowadays it's all just money, money, and this is interesting for us. Another sign of decline is growing financialization. We talked about this last class, right? Well, guess what's happening in the stock markets throughout the world? It's booming. It's booming.

If you're a rich person, you're just getting richer and richer. 10% of the population owns 9% of the stocks in America. So this is an indicator of how wealthy the rich have become in the past 20 years. In the year 2008, if you bought Amazon, you would buy for $7. Now it's like $300. So that just shows you how wealthy the rich have become due to government policies. At the same time, we talked about this last class, productivity, the real economy, the amount of work you do, it's going way down.

So we have this absurd situation where the fake economy, the financial economy, is going way up, but the real economy of jobs, of people doing work, of being productive, is going way down. Meaning that we live in a fake And the government responds by lying to people. People know their lives suck. People know that basically the economy is in a recession. That's what the facts say. But what does the government do? Well, the government says that, oh, it's not really a recession. What it really is is a state of transition.

Okay, this is what we call gaslighting. This is blatant gaslighting. Rather than just say, you know what, the economy is in trouble and we feel your pain and we're going to work hard to solve the problem, they're telling you, "No, no, no. It's not black. It's white, guys. You're lying. Your eyes, they're lying to you. Don't you see? You're not seeing clearly. Get new glasses and your life will be a lot better." That's literally what they're telling you. Debt, right? We talked about this last class as well.

This is US debt. You can see how the debt is booming. So, until the year 1980, for 200 years of America's existence, there was very little debt. Now look at this. America right now is $37 trillion in debt. That's the government. The people, with their credit card debt, with their mortgages, they owe $17 trillion. They'll never pay that off. So basically, the middle class in America, it's finished. The government has no more resources. This is what decline looks like.

No one's having children anymore. So the world sucks and young people are like, "Screw this. I'm not having kids." This is happening throughout the world. Canada is selling its resources to outside investors. So oil is a big Canadian resource. As you can see, a lot of the big players in Canada are actually American or overseas. When it says Canada, it usually means British people. So Canadians don't even own their own resources anymore. So let's summarize what we've learned today. Let's look at the signs of Western decline.

You've got higher property prices. This happened throughout the Western world. Inflation and lower quality of life, higher stock market valuations, which means greater Less real economic growth, fewer and fewer people doing real jobs. Euthanasia for the poor, just killing off the poor people. Mass immigration, population replacement, lower birth rate, greater public and private debt, bureaucratic gaslighting, where the government no longer acknowledges problems. It just lies to you directly, and privatization, asset stripping. So all this is happening in the Western world. The question now is why would this happen?

And there are different theories. We'll go over some of the major theories. There are lots and lots of theories. We'll go over the major ones. And there's going to be overlap between these theories. And some of these theories make a lot of sense. So one major theory is the idea of neoliberalism. The idea of neoliberalism is the belief that all that matters in society, all that matters in life, is economic growth. If your society can generate more economic growth, all problems will be solved. So if your economy runs really fast then everyone will be happy.

That's the idea of neoliberalism. Then you have techno-feudalism, which is the idea that some big corporations, usually these tech companies, want to control the world and so they want to turn everyone into slaves, and if you don't have a house, if you don't have your own property, then you can be controlled by these companies. Techno-feudalism. World government, where the United Nations has this conspiracy to control the entire world, to destroy national sovereignty and create a unified world government. Population replacement theory, and the idea here is that the problem for governments in the Western world is that white people are opinionated.

They believe in democracy. They believe in freedom and they're hard to control. So let's replace the white people with Chinese and Indians and Filipinos because Asian people are more obedient, right? That's the idea. And again, these are just theories. I'm not saying they're right or wrong. And we'll go into these theories later in the semester. Now, the last reason is bureaucratic incompetence. The government is just stupid. Now there is overlap among these theories and there's some validity to all these theories, but what I want to show you is that there's actually a much better way to analyze this.

Whenever you have a problem, you always ask yourself, who is benefiting from this, right? So when we're talking about housing prices, well, clearly property owners are benefiting from this, right? So if we took all the groups, and there are millions and millions of different groups in society, we just analyze who benefits from all these trends that we discussed, the answer you would get is rich pensioners. These are the people who benefit the most from these trends and therefore we can suspect that they're the ones behind these trends. So let's go over them.

Property prices make sense, right? Because they're old. They have houses. They probably have two or three houses. So they want to see the property prices go up. Higher stock market valuations make sense because they own the most stocks. Euthanasia for the poor makes sense because they want good medical care. If poor people are standing in line, that's a problem for them, right? So just kill the poor people and they'll have better access to healthcare, right? If that frees up the healthcare system. Mass immigration means cheap labor. If they're old, they're 70 or 80 years old, they need gardeners.

They need cooks. They need nurses, right? Immigrants. Do you guys want to be gardeners and cooks, laborers? You don't want to be. So we have to bring in immigrants and everything else. Okay. Inflation, em growth, lower birth rate, gaslighting, it doesn't really affect them. Does that make sense? So all these trends, some of them are really good for these pensioners and the rest doesn't really affect the pensioners, and that's why we can assume for analysis that it's the rich pensioners who are most responsible for what's going on.

Does it make sense to you guys? All right. So how can we understand this? Well, the problem that we're facing is never in human history have we had so many old rich people before. And you can see these trends where in the year 1900, people who are 75 and older were just a small fraction of society. But you can see how fast they're growing. People over 60 years old, really growing really fast. There's a problem because if they keep on living they accumulate more and more resources, which creates a lot more inequality.

Now I'm not saying that all old people are rich. In fact, that's not the case. If you just look at statistics you will find that wealth is pretty much evenly distributed among demographics. So there are young people with a lot of money but there are more old people with money. So there are lots and lots of old people. The purple are old people who are poor.

I'm not saying that old people are the problem. I'm saying that old rich people are the problem. They're a problem because they want their The pension systems in all societies made assumptions about old people. The major assumption that they made is that old people would die. Right? So, for example, in Canada, when they first created the pension system, the retirement age was 65 and they expected people to die when they were 72. So you have five to seven years of a good pension. Guess what, guys? They're not dying, right?

And that creates a huge problem with your pension plan. And you can see how these liabilities are going up over time. These are teachers, and as you can see the liabilities are going way up. Why is this happening? It's happening because of something called assumption changes. So two assumptions are being made. First is that old people will die. Well, they're not dying. The other assumption is that if you put money in the stock market, it will improve, right? The problem is that there's volatility in the stock market.

It goes up and goes down. And the smart people make money off the dumb. Guess what, guys? I'm going to ask you a question. In finance, where do the dumbest people work? You guys know in finance, the dumbest people work in pension funds. Why? Because it's a boring job. You just sit there and do nothing all day. So these pension funds are constantly getting ripped off by investment banks, where the smart people are. So if you look at all investment vehicles, pension funds have lost the most money, and this has created huge issues within government pension funds throughout the world.

Okay. So as you can see there's volatility in returns in the pension fund. When you put the money in, the returns will differ year by year, and that screws up your model.

If you're a young person, do not put money in the pension fund. Why? Because the value of the pension fund is going drastically down. When you grow up, when you mature, and you retire, guess what, guys? There's no money in the pension fund for you because all that money is gone. Why? Because there are too many retirees and not enough workers. All right. So back in the year 2001, you had a problem. You had 7.6 retirees for every 12.7 workers. Basically the ideal is 1 to 3. So one pensioner, three workers.

That's a healthy pension system. Now you have more pensioners than you have workers. This is a huge problem. These pensions will all go bankrupt in 5 to 10 years' time.

At the same time, as I said, old people are not dying. In fact, old people are coming to dominate society. This is America. You can see how many people are 85 and older. Whoa. Look at this. Look at this. The aging crisis in America is huge. But it's not just America. So by the year 2040 you have 65 million people in America who are over 65. You have 15 million Americans who are 85. And guess what? These 15 million Americans, most of them are the ones who control America.

So they dictate policy, and again this is happening throughout the world. It's particularly stark in Japan and Germany, but this is happening throughout the world. And this leads us to the idea of gerontocracy. This is Joe Biden, president of the United States, and this is Mitch McConnell, who was head of the Senate. They're both retired now, but they're both in their 80s and they were the two most powerful men in America. He can't walk straight. Whenever he walks, he trips. This guy is even worse because look at this.

The guy's brain dead. The guy is literally brain dead in public. He'll be like, and no matter what you do, this is brain dead. The guy, this is a brain freeze. The guy should not be one of the most powerful men in America, but he is. That's the world we live in, because he will not give up power. This is Dianne Feinstein. She died in office. She was 90 years old.

She was 90 years old and she was still working and she died in her office, and she was a senator in the United States. These people are literally fighting for life. They refuse to give up power. They only give up power if they die.

This is the US Senate. Again, the most powerful political institution in America. These are people who are above the standard retirement age, which is 662. This guy's 90 years old and he's still working. 90 years old and he's still working in the Senate and he doesn't want to retire. Chuck Grassley.

What does it mean to have a world run by old people? Now maybe in school, maybe at home you've been taught that old people are wise. They're tolerant. They're generous. They're benevolent. No, no, no, guys. No. The differences between these three generations, young, mature and elderly, are pretty stark. If you're young, you're rebellious. You want to change the system. If you're mature, you want things to move slowly. But if you're elderly, you're reactionary, meaning you don't want anything to change. If you change anything, they get upset and slap you.

That's reactionary. Young people are creative. Mature people want growth. But elderly people care first and foremost about safety. Young people are open-minded. Mature people want consensus, meaning they want everyone to get along. But elderly people are stubborn. They want things their way. We are now living in a joury which is ruled by elderly people. So we're going to live in a reactionary, stubborn system only concerned about the safety of these people. And so what does that Well, it means that the world will go into lockdown. When there's a virus, guess what?

We're going to have to shut down because old people are afraid of catching germs. It will also lead to a police state. Now, police state does not mean that there'll be terrible police coming to beat us up. In fact, you know, in real life, most police that you meet are really, really nice people. But you'll have no individual freedom. So let me give you an example of this. In Canada a Chinese woman moved to Canada and she bought a house and her son is very naughty, and her son was so naughty that she wants to slap him.

But she knows that in Canada you can't really slap children, even in private, right? So she goes online and asks everyone, "Can I slap my child?" And everyone's like, "You can't do that because if you do that, your neighbor should report you to the police." But what you can do is report your child to the police. Tell the police your child is naughty and they'll come and help you discipline your child. In fact, you can get the police to come every single week. They like that.

This is what we call a police state. Intrusive government interference into your personal lives. Oh, and lots and lots of surveillance. Wherever you move, you'll be tracked. Whatever call you make, you'll be tracked.

In 2003, Britain passed something called the Online Safety Act. And the idea is if you say anything bad online, you can get arrested. So freedom of expression is being limited. This passed in 2022, 23 in Britain, but I assume it will pass everywhere in the Western Digital currency. The idea of digital currency is the idea of financial repression. So they're trying to eliminate cash because with cash is freedom. You can do whatever you want with cash. You can buy whatever you want for how much you want with cash.

But with digital currency, all your transactions will be limited and monitored. So in the future you will not be able to buy video games because that's bad for you.

Oh, microchip implants, guys, right? Isn't that great? Before you had cell phones, then you had facial recognition, and in the future you have implants, microchip implants. Immigrants, lots and lots of immigrants, because poor people, sorry, rich pensioners need help. They need nurses. They need laborers. They need gardeners. They need people to mow their lawn. So you have massive immigration coming into the country. Oh, but good news. It'll be easier for you to study in America from now on, right? Today, Trump announced he wants 600,000 Chinese students to go to the United States.

Right? Before, you guys were worried about not getting your visas and getting denied at the border. Don't worry, guys. They want you to go to the United States because you guys are the best labor. You're cheap, you're obedient, and you're studious, and you're young. So this is the plan, to let more Chinese students into America so you guys can take care of elderly people. Isn't that great? Good news. Oh, lots and lots of prisons, guys. Because elderly people are afraid of criminals. And also prisoners are free labor.

Isn't that great? Oh, and one more thing. War after war after war. All right. This is what is meant by death by gerontocracy. This is what it means to live in a world governed by elderly people. Elderly people are perfectly happy to send young people to die for their All right. Okay. Pretty depressing, but don't worry, things will get even more depressing as we go along. All right. Good. Any questions? Are you guys clear? Any questions?

Like for the above that you said, that elders control the society and they exploit young people, but is there a way that young people could overthrow it or have a method to solve this?

That's why they can send us to wars and we'll go fight wars. Does that make sense? All right.

And also because we respect our elders, right? Do you want to deny health care and pension to your grandparents? So everyone will be for this. There's nothing we can do about it, right? Good question. But like, humans' lives have a limit, like what will happen after they all died, because although they are elders and those rich pensions, there are still generations of humans. That's a really great point. So the idea is, what happens when they die off? Well, they're not dying off.

They were supposed to die at 72. Now they're living to like 100. Modern medicine is incredible. I have a friend who's like 90 years old. She's literally brain dead. She's literally brain dead. She's 90 years old, but she's filthy rich and she has access to the best health care. So I asked my friend who's a doctor, if you're filthy rich and you want to keep on living, how long could modern medicine keep you going even though you're a vegetable? And he said to me, 20 years.

20 years. 20 years of being a vegetable, but she has money, and she wants to keep on living, then she can do that. And that was not available before because of scarcity, right, because of lack of technology. But nowadays because of abundance, because of opio can live as long as they want to. And also what this chart tells us is that when the green goes away the red becomes the green, right? So you'll always have a society where the elderly are in control. Does that make sense? Unless of course there were maybe, I don't know, a catastrophe, a nuclear holocaust, who knows?

Okay. But yeah, given the way things are, the trend is that old people can control society for a long time, because if there's a war, it's not old people who die, it's young people who die. But good question. Any more questions?

Okay, great. So we'll continue this next class. Okay, thank you.