r/ScottGalloway

They say that the industrial worlds drop in birth rate will cause massive problems in the future. They also say that robotics and AI will cause there to be so few needed workers that will need universal basic income to support the masses.

Came across a video where they claimed romance is in decline because dating apps are declining, (among other things) and Scott’s take was to blame AI companions and porn. What surprised me was that there was no meaningful pushback.

Practically nobody is “dating” AI companions. The people on Reddit who say they do are fringe outliers.

Dating apps are struggling for much more obvious reasons, like: catfishing, low trust, and bad incentives, that has made the experience worse.

Porn also cannot and does not replace real human interaction.

The kids are alright, at least when it comes to romance. Young people are still meeting in real life. The bigger issue is that they have significantly less spending power than previous generations, which affects what they can spend on dates and social life in general.

I normally enjoy the guests who disagree with my priors. They stretch my notions and sometimes change my perspective. That being said Jason C is not that. He is the classic socialism for me and my rich friends, and rugged capitalism for you. I used to listen to the All in pod, mostly during COVID when it was primary an investor/business pod. My jumping off point was the Silicon Valley bank debacle. Those so called “capitalists” had clients who had money deposited in that bank. Suddenly the folks who said there wasn’t enough money to fund programs to strengthen the middle class, were screaming to whoever would listen that they needed to be fully insured for a bank run they created. Which they ultimately succeeded in lobbying for.

My point is I only could listen to the pod for 5 min before turning it off. He is so hypocritical. It’s easy to argue for fiscal conservatism and a government tightening the belt when he doesn’t feel he needs it’s services. But when the chips were down those ideologies gave way to naked self interest at the drop of a hat.

Did I midd something or is everyone back on chat gpt subscription?

Scott’s (former?) arch nemesis… was so surprised when Ed announced him on the episode

Ed: They are robbing us blind

The Mooch: Meh, they all do it, that's just the way it is in Washington, relax young Ed, pat pat ...

Me: And that's ok with you? That's ok with America? Just watch them do it with impunity, without calling them out and doing anything about it?

Heck no. Shout shame. Keep their feet to the fire. Good on you for being outraged Ed.

The Mooch has gotten too old and rich on looking the other way. His poor kid from long island act is wearing thin, he has now become part of the problem.

This administration has demonstrated to be a free for all for grifters. It is up to our generation to call the grift out and make sure there will be appropriate consequences for illegal behavior, at all levels. Ed for president.

TL/DR: The economy made two incomes mandatory. The culture reframed that as liberation. Now mothering has no status and reproduction feels like a threat to identity instead of an extension of it. The fix is two parts. Structural: make single-income families economically viable again so the choice is real. Psychological: recognize that reproducing and raising the next generation is not a lesser pursuit than career.

Open letter to Professor Galloway (feel free to tear it apart)

South Korea has spent billions incentivizing births. Nothing moves. I think I know why, and it connects to everything you've been saying about masculinity, fertility, and big tech.

Terror Management Theory (Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, 40 years of empirical research) proposes that humans are animals who know they'll die and that everything we build, career, status, culture, defends against that awareness. TMT researchers, Greenberg, Solomon, and Pyszczynski called these "immortality projects."

The fertility crisis is an immortality project crisis. The culture's path to significance shifted from reproduction to individual status. Once children threaten your career and identity rather than extending them, reproduction becomes a cost. You can't buy people out of a death anxiety response. That's why the money doesn't work.

But there's a structural layer underneath the psychological one. Women gained the autonomy they needed and that was necessary and non-negotiable. But simultaneously, wages stagnated and housing costs exploded, so two incomes became mandatory. Then the cultural narrative reframed that economic necessity as liberation. Now a mother who wants to be home with her kids faces identity pressure on top of financial pressure. She's told she's not enough and now begrudges her kids.

The culture told women that raising the next generation is less valuable than producing quarterly reports. That's an inversion of what actually matters by any biological or psychological measure.

The fix is structural, Henry George, Fred Harrison. Land Value Tax. Tax the unimproved value of land instead of labor. Land tax and no income tax. Housing becomes affordable. Single-income families become viable again. Not mandatory, viable. The choice feminism fought for becomes a real choice instead of one nobody can afford to make.

Your big tech critique fits the same frame. Every product replaces a physical experience with a symbolic one. Followers for tribe. Porn for sex. AI validation for honest human friction. They're selling virtual significance so convincing that people forget to reproduce, which is the one form of continuity that's actually real.

The left can't say this because it sounds like sending women back to the 1950s. The right can't say it because it means the free market failed families. Your platform is one of the few places it can be said.

It happened with fiber optic cable where companies spent a ton of money to lay that cable across the oceans, and then it was underused, and the companies went bankrupt, bought the rights to the cables , for pennies on the dollar became the main reason places is like India can do so much work for America. Then there was the internet.com bust occurred in 2000 all kinds of Internet, startups just failing before the Internet really took off. Most recent example seems to be electric cars all the manufacturers lost billions of dollars trying to go into electric cars and find out that there really wasn’t that much market for it yet. Is this so-called AI boom just gonna crash until it eventually finds real acceptance with a ton of people to justify the insane amount of money spent on it.

RIP to quality. Same as it ever was.