For all his pretense at being low-brow, this guy is rather brainy.
A chilling academic paper titled “The Population Cycle Drives Human History — from a Eugenic Phase into a Dysgenic Phase and Eventual Collapse” landed like a soggy Sunday paper at the Chateau doorstep.
In the period before the onset of demographic transition, when fertility rates were positively associated with income levels, Malthusian pressure gave an evolutionary advantage to individuals whose characteristics were positively correlated with child quality and hence higher IQ, increasing in such a way the frequency of underlying genes in the population. As the fraction of individuals of higher quality increased, technological progress intensified. Positive feedback between technological progress and the level of education reinforced the growth process, setting the stage for an industrial revolution that facilitated an endogenous take-off from the Malthusian trap. The population density rose and with it social and political friction, especially important at the top of the social pyramid. Thus, from a certain…
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