Take a profound and distant journey. Call it Deep Travel, Immersive Travel, Slow Travel, or Vagabonding. Francis Tapon guides you to the intersection of travel, technology, and transformation. The podcast will compel you to go beyond your comfort zone. Occasionally, you‘ll also delve into the misunderstood world of cryptocurrencies.
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Derek has accomplished numerous impressive feats. He founded CD Baby. In 2008, he sold CD Baby for $22 million and donated the proceeds to a charitable trust dedicated to music education. After selling the company, he transitioned into writing and speaking.
Derek's books are short, dense, and profound. In honor of his style, I've broken up my interview with him into three fascinating segments.
It would be great if you could buy Derek's new book, Useful Not True, from Amazon, as I receive a small commission. However, if you want a much better deal, do what I did: buy multiple copies of his book from Derek Sivers's website. It's significantly cheaper than Amazon, especially when purchasing multiple copies, as each additional hardcover copy costs only about $4 more.
How Derek Sivers and I met
Derek Sivers stumbled onto The Hidden Europe, fell in love with it, and reached out to me 10 years ago, telling me how much he loved my book.
I had no idea who he was, but soon found out.
A-list celebrities, such as Tim Ferriss, have interviewed Derek on multiple occasions.
Still, I'm not one to fall for celebrities, unless she's Megan Fox.
What makes me most thrilled about interviewing Derek is his philosophy: he's a stoic.
This guy sold his company (CD Baby) for $22 million and gave the money away to charity. He loves to experiment, travel, and think out of the box.
It pains me that he and I missed each other when I visited his city in Wellington, New Zealand. I was there for a day, and it happened to be the day that he devotes entirely and exclusively to his son. I wish he were a less responsible father.
About Derek Sivers
Derek Sivers is focused on creation, learning, and living a minimalist, highly intentional life.
Background: Born in 1969 in Berkeley, he moved frequently during his childhood, including to U.S. cities and England. His early focus on music began at the age of 14, when he was trained at Berklee College of Music. He transitioned into entrepreneurship.
Career: Started multiple companies, including CD Baby and HostBaby, sold them in 2008, and since then has focused on writing, traveling, and intrinsic creativity rather than money or fame.
Life Philosophy: Influenced by Stoicism, skeptical and open to changing perspectives, values self-strengthening for the future, and embraces the paradox that opposite views can both be true.
Work Style: Loves to work alone intensely for long hours (12+ hours daily), prefers solo creative pursuits, and values deep focus and minimalist distraction. Uses minimal tech tools, avoids apps and cloud dependence, and prefers phone conversations to in-person socializing.
Personal: American by origin, a world citizen, and expat living in various countries for extended periods. Has a 12-year-old son with whom he spends significant undivided time weekly. Identifies as an introverted extrovert with a strong social time limit, values voice communication, and dislikes noise and crowds.
Values & Traits: Minimalist in possessions and technology, single-task oriented, future-focused, deliberate, avoids addictions, hates wasting time, and values silence and quality over quantity in relationships and experiences.
Creative Interests: Loves and creates music with a focus on innovation, song craft, and high-quality recordings. Prefers analytical listening and creative originality rather than mainstream trends.
Overall, Derek leads a carefully optimized life that prioritizes creativity, learning, and meaningful personal connections, with a strong emphasis on independence, long-term thinking, and simplicity.
Connect with Derek
Derek Sivers d@sive.rshttps://sive.rs/
Get my audiobooks, ebooks, and hardcovers at sivers.com/e?t=n0fw4KGN40U4D71fsive.rs/u = USEFUL NOT TRUE: reframing because belief → emotion → action
sive.rs/h = HOW TO LIVE: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion
sive.rs/n = HELL YEAH OR NO: what's worth doing?
sive.rs/m = YOUR MUSIC & PEOPLE: humanistic marketing for creatives
sive.rs/a = ANYTHING YOU WANT: make your business a utopia
Derek has accomplished numerous impressive feats. He founded CD Baby. In 2008, he sold CD Baby for $22 million and donated the proceeds to a charitable trust dedicated to music education. After selling the company, he transitioned into writing and speaking.
Derek's books are short, dense, and profound. In honor of his style, I've broken up my interview with him into three fascinating segments.
It would be great if you could buy Derek's new book, Useful Not True, from Amazon, as I receive a small commission. However, if you want a much better deal, do what I did: buy multiple copies of his book from Derek Sivers's website. It's significantly cheaper than Amazon, especially when purchasing multiple copies, as each additional hardcover copy costs only about $4 more.
How Derek Sivers and I met
Derek Sivers stumbled onto The Hidden Europe, fell in love with it, and reached out to me 10 years ago, telling me how much he loved my book.
I had no idea who he was, but soon found out.
A-list celebrities, such as Tim Ferriss, have interviewed Derek on multiple occasions.
Still, I'm not one to fall for celebrities, unless she's Megan Fox.
What makes me most thrilled about interviewing Derek is his philosophy: he's a stoic.
This guy sold his company (CD Baby) for $22 million and gave the money away to charity. He loves to experiment, travel, and think out of the box.
It pains me that he and I missed each other when I visited his city in Wellington, New Zealand. I was there for a day, and it happened to be the day that he devotes entirely and exclusively to his son. I wish he were a less responsible father.
About Derek Sivers
Connect with Derek
Connect
Sponsors
Derek Sivers On Things That Are 'Useful Not True' - Episode 1/3
Derek has accomplished numerous impressive feats. He founded CD Baby. In 2008, he sold CD Baby for $22 million and donated the proceeds to a charitable trust dedicated to music education. After selling the company, he transitioned into writing and speaking.
Derek's books are short, dense, and profound. In honor of his style, I've broken up my interview with him into three fascinating segments.
It would be great if you could buy Derek's new book, Useful Not True, from Amazon, as I receive a small commission. However, if you want a much better deal, do what I did: buy multiple copies of his book from Derek Sivers's website. It's significantly cheaper than Amazon, especially when purchasing multiple copies, as each additional hardcover copy costs only about $4 more.
This podcast is an edited version of the video, where I have removed the unboxing section, as it's challenging to follow in an audio-only format.
After reviewing the Keystone 3 Pro, I wanted to inspect the Keystone Tablet Plus, a steel slab similar to the Coinkite Seed Plate and the Scaletron Crypto Seed Capsule, both of which I've reviewed.
Watch the video below for my review, but also read the text below, as it includes one additional PRO and one additional CON that I did not mention in the video.
1. Reusability! Unlike the Coinkite Seed Plate or the Scaletron Crypto Seed Capsule, the Keystone Tablet Plus is reusable. If you change seed phrases, you rearrange the letters accordingly.
2. Extra security! Two security features make the Keystone Tablet Plus stand out. First, the package includes tamper-evident tape. Second, it has a hole that allows you to put a padlock. Admittedly, neither of these features prevents a thief from outright stealing the metal plate and cutting the lock off. However, they can alert you if someone is trying to snoop on your seed phrase slyly and quietly drain your wallet.
3 Cons of the Keystone Tablet Plus
Keystone 3 Pro
🌱 What Is BIP39?
🔐 Why Use BIP39 Words Instead of Random Passwords?
✅ Human Usability
✅ Error Resistance
✅ Cross-Compatibility
🧭 Why Not Just Use Random Passwords?
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Plan B's Bitcoin Stock-To-Flow Model Will Die in 2026
Five years ago, I predicted Plan B's Bitcoin stock-to-flow model (S2F) would fail in this decade because it had 8 flaws.
During Bitcoin's spectacular 2022 crash, many analysts declared the S2F models dead.
I surprised everyone when I (one of Plan B's most prominent critics) said, "It's not dead yet."
The reason Plan B's stock-to-flow Bitcoin models are not dead is not because they're correct, but because they have a wide range of acceptable values that will allow them to survive until the next halving.
In 2025, the S2F average price has risen to a staggering $500,000, while Bitcoin (BTC) hovers around $120,000 as of August 11, 2025, when I released this video.
Therefore, even though BTC has increased by over $100,000 from its $15,000 price in November 2022, and should be a cause for massive celebration for BTC fans, Plan B is lamenting the relatively low price appreciation of this "strange, flat bull market."
In my annual S2F update, I'll examine how the S2F model is doing and explain why it will begin its slow and painful death at the end of this year.
YouTube is now dubbing my English videos into 10 other languages:
Dutch
French
German
Hindi
Indonesian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Polish
Portuguese
Spanish
In my "After the Spike" video, YouTube only offers 8 languages.
I don't know why.
I'm fluent in French and Spanish, so I can confirm that the translation is surprisingly accurate! I suppose it's the case for other languages that I don't speak.
Rather than a left/right political spectrum, I prefer the 5 categories in the pictured grid. Take the test to discover where you stand.
The terms "left" and "right" on the political spectrum can be confusing, partly because their meanings have evolved significantly over time and differ across countries and historical contexts.
The same applies to the term "liberal."
Initially, "left/right" originated from the seating arrangements during the French Revolution, where those who sat on the left supported revolutionary change. At the same time, those on the right favored the monarchy and the status quo.
Today, “left” generally refers to progressive, reformist, or socialist policies, and “right” to conservative or traditionalist views. However, the specific policies and ideologies associated with each can vary dramatically between countries and eras.
In the United States, “left” is often associated with Democrats or progressives, supporting ideas like social welfare, civil rights expansion, and government intervention in the economy.
In parts of Europe, some parties that call themselves "liberal" actually promote free-market policies (which, in the U.S., are usually considered “right” of center).
In Latin America, "right-wing" can sometimes mean supporting authoritarian regimes, while “left-wing” can carry connotations of populist or anti-imperialist movements, which again differ from European or North American understandings.
The term "Liberal" is another example of shifting meaning:
In the United States, "liberal" tends to refer to people who favor more government intervention in social and economic affairs, aligning with the political left.
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"The Media" is More Diverse Than You Think
Episode 354
Saturday, July 19, 2025 • Duration 02:17
Do you know people who wail about "the media"? Whenever that happens, it's always an incomplete sentence. They should say, "The media I disagree with."
Saying "the media" implies there is only one media or that they have a united message.
Media isn't unified. Just skim the Internet for a few minutes, and you'll get wildly different points of view and reporting.
In the mini-episode, I elaborate.
This mini-episode is another Public Service Announcement from a grammar Nazi. It's my simple effort to clean up sloppy English.
The University of Texas authors, Dean Spears and Michael Geruso, have written a mind-blowing book! It's my second favorite book of 2025! My favorite 2025 book is They're Not Gaslighting You.
Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-JfpjJRkok
Podcast
The Population Whimper
When I was born, Paul R. Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb, was a mega-bestseller. Although I never read the book, my generation believed the book's message that humanity is dangerously overpopulated. The book gave me one major reason not to have children. The book made intuitive sense, built on Thomas Malthus's observations, that if our population continues to expand, we will eventually hit a brick wall.
However, Ehrlich, a Stanford biologist, made these stunningly wrong predictions in The Population Bomb:
Mass Starvation in the 1970s and 1980s: The book opened with the statement, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now."
England's Demise by 2000: He suggested that England would not exist by the year 2000 due to environmental collapse related to overpopulation.
Devastation of Fish Populations by 1990: He predicted that all significant animal life in the sea would be extinct by 1990, and large areas of coastline would need to be evacuated due to the stench of dead fish.
India's Famine: He predicted catastrophic food shortages in India in the 1990s that did not materialize.
United States Food Rationing by 1984: He envisioned the U.S. rationing food by 1984.
Instead of all this doom and gloom, here's what happened: we went from 3.5 billion (when Ehrich wrote his doomsday book) to 8 billion people today, most of whom are fat. Today, our biggest problem isn't famine but obesity.
Three criticisms of After the Spike
1. Wildlife lost
2. Increased energy consumption
3. Designer babies
One trillion humans in this millennium?
Conclusion
Verdict
Excerpts
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Exercising Your Explorer Muscle. Exploring vs. Exploiting. Exploration in our DNA
Episode 352
Friday, July 4, 2025 • Duration 14:26
Happy 4th of July, 2025! Celebrate your independence by exploring outside!
The Explorer's Gene examines human exploration broadly, going beyond traditional expeditions to investigate why humans explore everything from new foods to music.
0:00 Tips
02:00 Endurance & Exploring
05:30 Exploiting vs. Exploring
07:00 Exploring in our DNA
09:00 Many ways to explore
About the book, The Explorer's Gene
The Explorer's Gene is made of 3 parts:
1) Why do we explore
2) How do we explore
3) What does exploring mean
Written in an engaging style that combines narrative stories with scientific research, it's comparable to Malcolm Gladwell's work but with stronger research foundations.
It has a comprehensive scope and accessibility. It investigates human and animal exploratory behavior.
The book connects external exploration to internal growth, offering insights into decision-making and personal development.
It blends entertainment with scientific rigor, appealing to readers interested in human behavior, science writing, and personal growth.
Derek Sivers is focused on creation, learning, and living a minimalist, highly intentional life.
Background: Born in 1969 in Berkeley, he moved frequently during his childhood, including to U.S. cities and England. His early focus on music began at the age of 14, when he was trained at Berklee College of Music. He transitioned into entrepreneurship.
Career: Started multiple companies, including CD Baby and HostBaby, sold them in 2008, and since then has focused on writing, traveling, and intrinsic creativity rather than money or fame.
Life Philosophy: Influenced by Stoicism, skeptical and open to changing perspectives, values self-strengthening for the future, and embraces the paradox that opposite views can both be true.
Work Style: Loves to work alone intensely for long hours (12+ hours daily), prefers solo creative pursuits, and values deep focus and minimalist distraction. Uses minimal tech tools, avoids apps and cloud dependence, and prefers phone conversations to in-person socializing.
Personal: American by origin, a world citizen, and expat living in various countries for extended periods. Has a 12-year-old son with whom he spends significant undivided time weekly. Identifies as an introverted extrovert with a strong social time limit, values voice communication, and dislikes noise and crowds.
Values & Traits: Minimalist in possessions and technology, single-task oriented, future-focused, deliberate, avoids addictions, hates wasting time, and values silence and quality over quantity in relationships and experiences.
Creative Interests: Loves and creates music with a focus on innovation, song craft, and high-quality recordings. Prefers analytical listening and creative originality rather than mainstream trends.
Overall, Derek leads a carefully optimized life that prioritizes creativity, learning, and meaningful personal connections, with a strong emphasis on independence, long-term thinking, and simplicity.
Derek Sivers d@sive.rshttps://sive.rs/
Get my audiobooks, ebooks, and hardcovers at sivers.com/e?t=n0fw4KGN40U4D71fsive.rs/u = USEFUL NOT TRUE: reframing because belief → emotion → action
sive.rs/h = HOW TO LIVE: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion
sive.rs/n = HELL YEAH OR NO: what's worth doing?
sive.rs/m = YOUR MUSIC & PEOPLE: humanistic marketing for creatives
sive.rs/a = ANYTHING YOU WANT: make your business a utopia
This guy sold his company (CD Baby) for $22 million and gave the money away to charity. He loves to experiment, travel, and think out of the box.
It pains me that he and I missed each other when I visited his city in Wellington, New Zealand. I was there for a day, and it happened to be the day that he devotes entirely and exclusively to his son. I wish he were a less responsible father.
Derek Sivers is focused on creation, learning, and living a minimalist, highly intentional life.
Background: Born in 1969 in Berkeley, he moved frequently during his childhood, including to U.S. cities and England. His early focus on music began at the age of 14, when he was trained at Berklee College of Music. He transitioned into entrepreneurship.
Career: Started multiple companies, including CD Baby and HostBaby, sold them in 2008, and since then has focused on writing, traveling, and intrinsic creativity rather than money or fame.
Life Philosophy: Influenced by Stoicism, skeptical and open to changing perspectives, values self-strengthening for the future, and embraces the paradox that opposite views can both be true.
Work Style: Loves to work alone intensely for long hours (12+ hours daily), prefers solo creative pursuits, and values deep focus and minimalist distraction. Uses minimal tech tools, avoids apps and cloud dependence, and prefers phone conversations to in-person socializing.
Personal: American by origin, a world citizen, and expat living in various countries for extended periods. Has a 12-year-old son with whom he spends significant undivided time weekly. Identifies as an introverted extrovert with a strong social time limit, values voice communication, and dislikes noise and crowds.
Values & Traits: Minimalist in possessions and technology, single-task oriented, future-focused, deliberate, avoids addictions, hates wasting time, and values silence and quality over quantity in relationships and experiences.
Creative Interests: Loves and creates music with a focus on innovation, song craft, and high-quality recordings. Prefers analytical listening and creative originality rather than mainstream trends.
Overall, Derek leads a carefully optimized life that prioritizes creativity, learning, and meaningful personal connections, with a strong emphasis on independence, long-term thinking, and simplicity.
Derek Sivers d@sive.rshttps://sive.rs/
Get my audiobooks, ebooks, and hardcovers at sivers.com/e?t=n0fw4KGN40U4D71fsive.rs/u = USEFUL NOT TRUE: reframing because belief → emotion → action
sive.rs/h = HOW TO LIVE: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion
sive.rs/n = HELL YEAH OR NO: what's worth doing?
sive.rs/m = YOUR MUSIC & PEOPLE: humanistic marketing for creatives
sive.rs/a = ANYTHING YOU WANT: make your business a utopia
3. Ease of use. I forgot to mention this in the video. Unlike the Coinkite Seed Plate or the Scaletron Crypto Seed Capsule, the Keystone Tablet Plus doesn't require you to awkwardly and permanently bang out your seed phrase. It
1. No passphrase option. I forgot to mention this in the video review, but I thought about it after reviewing the Scaletron Crypto Seed Capsule.
2. 304 stainless steel might not survive a super-hot fire. It should survive a standard house fire, but if it's unlucky enough to go through hell, it may not make it. An affordable solution to this is to place it in a fireproof envelope to double your protection.
3. Won't survive a crushing. True, but this is highly unlikely.
In case you missed it, check out my review of the Keystone 3 Pro, an outstanding cryptocurrency hardware wallet that can also serve as a Bitcoin-only hardware wallet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5Mdqq5GrXo
Visit the Keystone website to learn more about the company and its cryptocurrency products.
BIP39 seed phrases are a cornerstone of modern cryptocurrency wallets, and understanding why they exist—and how they function—reveals a great deal about the balance between security and usability in cryptographic systems.
BIP39 stands for Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 39, which defines a method for generating and using mnemonic phrases (typically 12–24 words) to back up and restore wallets. These phrases are derived from a specific list of 2048 words.
Random strings such as x8F$3kL@9z! are hard to remember, write down, or type correctly.
BIP39 uses real words that are easier to recognize, pronounce, and transcribe.
The word list is carefully curated:
No words sound too similar (e.g., “lead” vs “led”).
Each word is unique in the first 4 letters, minimizing confusion.
This reduces the chance of mistakes when writing or entering the phrase.
BIP39 is a standard, meaning wallets from different providers can interpret the same seed phrase.
This makes it easier to switch wallets or recover funds if one provider goes offline.
While random passwords can be secure, they:
Lack of standardization for wallet recovery.
Are error-prone and hard to manage.
Don’t offer checksum validation.
Aren’t interoperable across wallets.
BIP39 strikes a balance between security, usability, and portability—which is crucial when dealing with irreversible financial transactions.
In the UK, "Liberal" historically meant support for free markets, individual liberties, and limited government, often closer to what Americans would call "libertarian" or even (in some cases) "conservative."
In Australia or Canada, "liberal" can fall anywhere along the spectrum: in Australia, the Liberal Party is a major right-of-center party.
Because political contexts, historical developments, and party platforms differ by place and time, these terms do not have a fixed, universal meaning. As a result, simply labeling someone or a policy as “left,” “right,” or "liberal" can cause confusion or miscommunication unless the specific context is clearly defined.
Dean Spears and Michael Geruso's new book should have been called The Population Whimper because it says the opposite of what The Population Bomb said. Forget a catastrophic demographic explosion. We're going to suffer a catastrophic demographic implosion.
The graph on the cover of After the Spike sums up the problem: during a 200-year time period, the human population will have spiked to 10 billion and then experienced an equally dramatic fall.
For a book packed with counterintuitive arguments, it's remarkable that I can only spot three flaws. Admittedly, these are minor critiques, as they will disappear if we stabilize below 10 billion.
The authors correctly argue that the environment has been improving even as the human population has been growing rapidly. For example:
Air and water are now cleaner than they were 50 years ago, when the population was half its current size.
Our per capita CO2 consumption is falling.
Clean energy production is at an all-time high.
There's one metric that authors overlooked: wildlife.
As the human population doubled, we've needed more space for growing food. This has led to a decrease in habitat, which is why biologists refer to the Anthropocene Extinction.
While fish farms are efficient, overfishing continues.
The Amazon gets denuded to make space for soy and cattle plantations.
The loss of African wildlife habitats is acute, as the African population is projected to quadruple in this century.
I imagine that the authors of After the Spike would counter:
National parks didn't exist 200 years ago.
Green revolutions and GMO foods have made the most productive farmers ever.
De-extinction may restore extinct species.
And they're correct. There are bright spots.
However, as we approach 10 billion, wildlife will continue to suffer and be marginalized. The book should have mentioned that.
Dean Spears and Michael Geruso would likely agree that if humans continue to grow nonstop, wildlife will continue to suffer.
However, they aren't arguing for nonstop human expansion. They want stabilization.
Dean Spears and Michael Geruso celebrate humanity's progress in energy efficiency and productivity. However, they overlook these facts:
1. The Rebound Effect (Jevons Paradox):
As energy efficiency improves, the cost of using energy services effectively decreases. This can lead to:
Increased usage of existing services: For example, more efficient air conditioners might lead people to cool their homes to lower temperatures or for longer periods. More fuel-efficient cars might encourage more driving.
Adoption of new energy-intensive activities: The increased affordability of energy services can enable entirely new consumption patterns that were previously too expensive to adopt. Think about the proliferation of data centers for AI and digital services, or the growth of electric vehicles. While individual electric vehicles (EVs) are more efficient than gasoline cars, the rapid increase in their adoption contributes to overall electricity demand.
2. Economic Growth and Rising Living Standards:
Increased demand for energy services: As economies grow and incomes rise, people generally desire greater comfort, convenience, and a wider range of goods and services. This translates to greater demand for heating and cooling, larger homes, more personal transportation, more manufactured goods, and more leisure activities, all of which require energy.
Industrialization and urbanization: Developing economies, in particular, are undergoing rapid industrialization and urbanization. This involves massive construction, increased manufacturing, and the expansion of infrastructure, all of which are highly energy-intensive. Even with efficiency gains, the sheer scale of this growth drives up overall energy consumption.
Emerging technologies: The growth of data centers, AI, and other digital technologies is leading to a significant increase in electricity demand.
3. Population Growth:
While efficiency might improve per unit of output, the overall global population continues to grow. More people, even if individually more efficient, will inherently consume more energy in total.
4. Shifting Economic Structures:
Some economies are shifting from less energy-intensive sectors (like agriculture) to more energy-intensive ones (like manufacturing or specific services).
Even within industries, while individual processes might become more efficient, the overall scale of production can increase dramatically.
5. Energy Price and Policy Factors:
Low energy prices: If energy remains relatively inexpensive (due to subsidies or abundant supply), the incentive for significant behavioral changes to reduce consumption might be diminished, even with efficient technologies available.
Policy limitations: Although many countries have energy efficiency policies, their impact may be offset by other factors that drive demand.
Conclusion: While technological advancements and efficiency measures reduce the energy intensity of specific activities, these gains are often outpaced by the aggregate increase in demand for energy services driven by economic growth, rising living standards, population increases, and the adoption of new, energy-intensive technologies and behaviors. The challenge lies in achieving a proper decoupling of economic growth from energy consumption, and ultimately, from carbon emissions.
Humanity's per capita energy consumption has been steadily increasing with each passing century, a trend that is unlikely to change soon. Therefore, humans of the 26th century will consume far more energy than those of the 21st century.
The authors of After the Spike would probably argue that in 2525, we'll be using a clean energy source (e.g., nuclear fusion), so it'll be irrelevant that our per capita energy consumption increases ten times.
Again, short term, we're going in the wrong direction. However, in a stabilized world, we won't have a problem.
The authors of After the Spike never addressed the potential impact that designer babies may have. I coined the term "Homo-enhanced" to address our desire to overcome our biological limitations.
Couples are already using IVF to select the gender and eye color of their babies. Soon, we'll be able to edit and select for more complex traits such as height or even intelligence. It's easy to imagine a world like Gattaca, where parents collaborate with CRISPR-powered gene tools to create custom-made babies.
One reason some people don't want to reproduce is that it's a crap shoot. Any parent who has more than one child will tell you that each of their children is quite different from the others. Given that they grow up in the same environment, it suggests that genetics is a decisive factor.
Until now, we couldn't mold our children's DNA. Soon, we will.
If we were to remove the lottery aspect of having a child and allow parents to design their children, perhaps there would be a baby boom.
Dean Spears and Michael Geruso would probably argue that this is unlikely or centuries away from happening. We'll be descending the steep population slope long before we are homo-enhanced.
In the Bulgaria chapter of The Hidden Europe, I observed that Bulgaria is depopulating faster than any other European country. Having peaked at 9 million in the late 1980s, a century later, it will be half that size.
Despite that, in that chapter, I predicted that in 500 years, we'll have one trillion humans in the solar system, with at least 100 billion on Earth.
Paul Ehrlich's underestimated technology and the continued collapse in fertility rates. As Dean Spears and Michael Geruso point out, fertility rates have been declining since they were first measured. Had Ehrlich extrapolated the trendline, he would have realized that our demographic collapse was imminent, not an explosion. Furthermore, technology solved many of the problems Ehrlich imagined.
Is After the Spike making the same error?
Fertility rates won't fall forever. They must stop. Otherwise, we'll become extinct.
However, will fertility rates soar due to technology or some other reason? What could make our fertility rates return to three or more? Here are a few ideas:
We master fusion energy, providing us with ultra-cheap energy and dramatically decreasing the cost of having children.
Robots perform most jobs, leaving humans with ample time to raise large families.
As the negative effects of depopulation start rippling across the world, a global cultural panic erupts, prompting people to prioritize reproduction.
Homo-enhanced humans, merged with artificial general intelligence, decide to proliferate to dominate the planet.
Vertical farms and lab-grown cultured meat improve the environment so dramatically that humans feel less guilty about having three or more children, and generous subsidies offset the costs.
Admittedly, these scenarios are unlikely to occur during the next 50 years, so After the Spike won't become the joke that The Population Bomb became in 50 years.
Still, I predict that Ehrlich's great-great-granddaughter will write The Population Bomb II: Thomas Malthus Will Be Right Someday.
10 out of 10 stars!
The excerpts below are from an advanced copy, which may have undergone edits. Hence, some of these excerpts may have been reworded or deleted in the final print. The reason I am quoting them is that even if the excerpts are removed in the final edition, they illustrate the book's overall message.
It would be easy to think that fewer people would be better—better for the planet, better for the people who remain. This book asks you to think again. Depopulation is not the solution we urgently need for environmental challenges, nor will it raise living standards by dividing what the world can offer across fewer of us.
Despite what you may have been told, depopulation is not the solution we urgently need for environmental challenges like climate change. Nor will it raise living standards by dividing what the world can offer across fewer of us. To the contrary, so much of the progress that we now take for granted sprang up in a large and interconnected society.
Part I’s big claim: No future is more likely than that people worldwide choose to have too few children to replace their own generation. Over the long run, this would cause exponential population decline.
Whether depopulation would be good or bad depends on the facts and depends on our values. We ask about those facts and values, building up to an overall assessment: Part II and Part III’s big claim: A stabilized world population would be better, overall, than a depopulating future.
Part IV’s big claim: Nobody yet knows how to stabilize a depopulating world. But humanity has made revolutionary improvements to society before— we can do it again if we choose.
We won’t ask you to abandon your concerns about climate change; about reproductive freedom and abortion access; or about ensuring safe, healthy, flourishing lives for everyone everywhere. We won’t ask you to consider even an inch of backsliding on humanity’s progress toward gender equity. We insist throughout that everyone should have the tools to choose to parent or not to parent.
This book is not about whether or how you should parent. It’s about whether we all should make parenting easier.
In 2012, 146 million children were born. That was more than in any year of history to that point. It was also more than in any year since. Millions fewer will be born this year. The year 2012 may well turn out to be the year in which the most humans were ever born— ever as in ever for as long as humanity exists.
Within three hundred years, a peak population of 10 billion could fall below 2 billion.
The tip of the Spike may be six decades from today.
For every 205 babies born, human biology, it turns out, would produce about 100 females.
Average fertility in Europe today is about 1.5. That means the next generation will be 25 percent smaller than the last.
Birth rates were falling all along. For as long as any reliable records exist, and for at least several hundred years while the Spike was ascending, the average number of births per woman has been falling, generation by generation.
In the United States in the early 1800s, married white women (a population for whom some data were recorded) gave birth an average of seven times.
If life expectancy doubles to 150 years, or quadruples to 300 years, couldn’t that prevent the depopulating edge of the Spike? The surprising answer is no.
The story of the Spike would stay the same, even if life expectancy quadrupled to three hundred years. In contrast, if adults’ reproductive spans also changed, so people had, say, one or two babies on average over their twenties, thirties, and forties and then another one on average over their fifties, sixties, and seventies, then that would stop depopulation— but it would be because births changed, not because later-adulthood deaths changed.
Where exactly should humanity stabilize? Six billion? Eight? Ten? Some other number? This book makes the case to stabilize somewhere. Exactly where will have to be a question for public and scientific debate.
So the extra greenhouse gas emissions contributed by the larger population would be small, even under the assumption here that the future is bleak and we go on emitting for another century.
The environmental costs of a new child are not zero. Not by a long shot. Not yet. But they are falling. Each new person who joins the ranks of humanity will add less CO2 than, well, you over your lifetime.
Humanity could choose a future that’s good, free, and fair for women and that also has an average birth rate of two. There is no inescapable dilemma. In that kind of future, people who want to parent would get the support that they need (from nonparents, from taxpayers, from everyone) to choose parenting.
The most plausible way humanity might stabilize— and the only way this book endorses— is if societies everywhere work to make parenting better.
Globally, we now produce about 50 percent more food per person than in 1961.
“endogenous economic growth.” Endogenous means “created from the inside.” Ideas do not come from outside the economy. They come from us.
Because scale matters, a depopulating planet will be able to fill fewer niches.
A threat with a fixed cost: A threat has arisen that will kill all humans (however many) unless a large cost is paid to escape it (such as by deflecting an asteroid) within a certain time period.
Could a kajillion lives ever be the best plan? That question goes beyond the practical question that this book is here to answer.
Between our two families, we have had three live births, four miscarriages, and three failed IVF rounds.
Parenting will need to become better than it is today. That’s what we, your authors, hope and believe.
The opportunity cost hypothesis: Spending time on parenting means giving up something. Because the world has improved around us, that “something” is better than it used to be.
In no case is there evidence that more support for parents predicts more births.
Nobody— no expert, no theory— fully understands why birth rates, everywhere, in different cultures and contexts, are lower than ever before.
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