The Western world is in the throes of cultural degeneration, a toxic convergence of ideological failures and biological decline that threatens its social cohesion and future vitality. Drawing on Jeffery L. Degner's analysis in the Mises Institute, we argue that the West's embrace of globalised economic policies, inflationary distortions, and multiculturalism, coupled with a catastrophic fertility crisis, is dismantling traditional values and national identities. From the homogenising effects of economic policies to the fragmentation caused by unchecked immigration, cultural decay is both a product of misguided human choices and a harbinger of demographic collapse. A Misesian perspective, emphasising human action over biological determinism, offers a path to reclaiming cultural integrity.
Degner, channelling Ludwig von Mises, asserts that culture arises from human action, choices shaped by ideas and economic realities, not merely material processes. In the West, ideological shifts toward globalised economics and multiculturalism are eroding the foundations of traditional societies. Central bank-driven inflation, as Degner highlights, fuels "massification," a process where distinct cultural identities dissolve into a homogenised pursuit of survival. In countries like Australia, where housing prices in Sydney and Melbourne exceed $1.5 million due to inflationary pressures and demand from 437,440 migrant arrivals in 2024-25, economic desperation forces individuals to rank short-term gains over long-term cultural investments like family and community. This mirrors trends in the U.S. and UK, where rising costs push young people away from homeownership and toward transient, consumerist lifestyles.
Multiculturalism, as critiqued in other blog articles, accelerates this decay by valuing diversity over shared values. The influx of migrants, particularly from India and China in Australia, has created cultural enclaves, turning marginal electorates like Parramatta (8.9% swing to Labor) and Bennelong (9.34% swing) into political strongholds. This fragmentation undermines the Anglo-Western traditions that once unified nations, replacing them with competing ethnic factions. A 2025 X post from Australia lamented "cultural erosion" in urban centres, reflecting fears that globalised values, promoting individualism and relativism, are supplanting shared heritage. Multiculturalism's failure to demand assimilation fosters division, weakening the social bonds essential for a cohesive society. It is all part of the New World Order plan.
The West's cultural degeneration is starkly evident in its fertility crisis, a biological symptom of ideological failures. Countries like Australia (1.6 children per woman), the U.S. (1.6), and much of Europe (1.5 or lower) have birth rates well below the replacement level of 2.1, signalling a retreat from reproduction. Degner critiques Robin Hanson's claim that this decline is a biological response to reduced survival pressures in a wealthier, healthier world, arguing instead that it stems from human choices shaped by economic and cultural distortions. Hanson's "forager culture" of decadence, promiscuity, and short-sightedness finds echoes in the West, where urban elites choose careerism and consumerism over family.
In Australia, young couples delay or forgo childbearing, chasing educational attainment and economic status, markers Hanson identifies as detrimental to fertility. This mirrors Degner's point about the West's obsession with status-driven mate selection, which Charles Murray notes has dominated since the mid-20th century. The biological consequence is a shrinking demographic base, threatening economic sustainability and cultural continuity. For example, Europe's aging population, projected to have 30% of its citizens over 65 by 2050, strains welfare systems and healthcare, eroding social cohesion as fewer young people sustain aging societies.
Hanson's biological determinism, which attributes cultural decay to a lack of survival pressures, is inadequate against Mises's methodological dualism, which Degner champions. Mises argues that human action, driven by ideas, values, and responses to scarcity, shapes culture, not mere biological instincts. The West's fertility decline and cultural fragmentation result from choices influenced by flawed policies. Inflationary monetary policies, as Degner notes, force couples to choose income over children, evident in the U.S., where rising costs deter family formation. Multiculturalism, by devaluing shared traditions, encourages short-sighted individualism, seen in the UK's urban youth embracing globalised lifestyles over local heritage.
This Misesian perspective rejects Hanson's view that cultural degeneration is an inevitable biological response. Instead, it points to deliberate human decisions shaped by economic distortions and ideological shifts. For instance, government policies in Australia favouring urban development and migration often cater to globalised elites, marginalising traditional communities and fuelling resentment. The resulting massification of attitudes prioritises immediate survival over long-term cultural investments, leading to a homogenised, rootless West.
The West's cultural degeneration manifests in fractured communities and eroded traditions. In Australia, traditional family structures are giving way to single-person households, driven by urban migration and globalised values. In the UK, the decline of Christian communal practices, replaced by consumerist trends, reflects a loss of spiritual cohesion, as discussed in Mrs Vera West's blog critique of the sexual revolution's impact on social norms. Political systems are strained, with immigration-driven diversity in Australia leading to ethnic-based voting blocs, as seen in Parramatta's 70.2% Labor vote in areas with 45.4% Indian-born residents, discussed by James Reed and Brian Simpson today at the blog. These trends, amplified by economic pressures, create societies where short-term individualism overshadows collective identity.
The fertility crisis compounds this collapse. Low birth rates reduce the pool of future cultural stewards, weakening the transmission of Western values. In the U.S., policies promoting education and careerism have created a "childless elite," whose values dominate media and policy, marginalising family-centric norms. This biological decline, driven by ideological choices, threatens the West's ability to sustain its cultural heritage, echoing Hanson's warning of a return to a decadent, forager-like state.
To reverse this degeneration, the West must value human action over deterministic narratives. Economically, curbing inflationary policies and redirecting resources to support families, through childcare subsidies or tax incentives, could ease pressures deterring reproduction. In Australia, for example, expanding rural development could counter urban-centric massification, preserving local traditions. Culturally, rejecting multiculturalism's emphasis on fragmentation in favour of assimilation is critical. Policies encouraging shared national identities, like Australia's historical emphasis on mateship, could unify diverse populations.
Education systems should balance global competitiveness with cultural preservation, teaching values that value family and community over status and wealth. Public campaigns, leveraging platforms like X, could counter globalised consumerism, as seen in posts advocating for traditional Western values. By fostering long-term cultural investments, the West can rebuild a cohesive identity that withstands economic and demographic challenges.
The West's cultural degeneration, driven by ideological failures like globalised economics, inflation, and multiculturalism, and compounded by biological decline through plummeting fertility, is a crisis of human choices. Economic distortions and fragmented identities erode traditional values, while low birth rates threaten the region's future. Through a Misesian lens, the solution lies in rejecting deterministic explanations and embracing policies that empower individuals to value family, community, and cultural continuity. Only by restoring shared values and economic stability can the West halt its slide into cultural collapse and reclaim its vibrant heritage.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/culture-degeneration-biological-or-ideological
"Is Culture Degeneration Biological or Ideological?
The process of cultural decay is front of mind for those engaged in the pronatalist movement. The question of how it happens was raised by Robin Hanson in his recent appearance at NatalCon. His goal is to discover what cultural elements have contributed to fertility decline, which he contends will accelerate movement towards a self-destructive way of life. Conversely, he looks to the positive developments that have come before us and they are evidence that "culture is humanity's superpower." From his standpoint, this ability has come about because of natural selection and that humans have proven themselves capable of cultural evolution, and now, perhaps, cultural devolution.
Another claim he lays out is that one of the drivers of cultural evolution is the importance of status recognition. The idea goes that humans tend to mimic the behaviors of those perceived to hold lofty stature. For Hanson, one of the most powerful modern status markers is educational attainment. When it comes to marriage formation, he's onto something here. Indeed, as others have pointed out, this is a primary driver of mate selection in the modern West. Charles Murray has demonstrated that this is, in fact, one of the most important parameters in mate selection since the mid-twentieth century.
For Hanson, this is a poor marker for mate selection, especially if one values a growing population. Just as wealth had been a highly important status marker for marriage in the past, which in his view has previously led to fertility decline—education as a status marker has done the same. If this selection mechanism leads to lower overall fertility, it then arguably turns into cultural decline (something that Hanson doesn't thoroughly define).
He also distinguished between micro and macro cultures—with smaller peasant groups typifying the former and the modern, nation state embodied in the latter. Hanson observes that macro cultures are susceptible to devolution to a higher degree than smaller, more nimble cultural units. The current state of the West, in his view, is represented by a "global monoculture of elites."
Here he echoes a process that Bernd Widdig referred to as "massification" (Vermassung) and interestingly, Widdig saw that this process was a consequence of—wait for it—inflationism. He defines it as: "the transformation of formerly distinct entities into larger and larger numbers, which causes the single entity to lose its former value and distinctiveness." Widdig's account of the cultural attitudes and practices that emerged in the midst of the Weimar hyperinflation come forth in a somewhat obscure 1994 article that's unfortunately loaded with critical gender ideology. Its value, however, is made in a simple observation that—for the middle class in the midst of an inflationary episode—this loss of purchasing power and identity is, "an attack not only on their social status but also on traditional structures of gender identity and sexual dichotomy."
Indeed, the sexual division of labor is impacted by inflationary monetary policy—men become more like women and women more like men. As this division of labor is reduced, the male-female distinction is eroded due to the universal pursuit of increased income in the labor market. Josef Pieper called this phenomenon "proletarianization." One would expect that, when the "massification" of gender is intensified, that the consequences of gender differences, embodied in mating, fertility, and child-bearing and rearing will recede. Cue the fertility crisis.
Returning to Hanson, from his evolutionary perspective, he believes the fertility crisis isn't economic in nature, but is a biological response to a more peaceful, healthier, and wealthier state of affairs. Further, he claims that this more fruitful life has led to less pressure to reproduce, and that—because of the decreasing degree of biological threats (despite the howling of green doomsdayers)—fertility is less urgent for our species, and fewer children are born.
For Hanson, the change in biological pressures that are presented in the modern world has fundamentally altered human nature and culture. He further asserts that humankind is devolving backwards toward a "forager culture." In such a culture, there's more promiscuity, travel, democracy, laziness, decadence, and short-sightedness. At the same time, there's less religion, childbearing, slavery, and war. The reason? It is because the "selection pressure has been turned off." Essentially, the cultural decay that he describes is merely a biological response to a lack of threats to species survival.
If one adopts Hanson's worldview—that human beings are merely physical material—then all of this is a plausible and an eminently reasonable set of claims. At the same time, the implications of his approach and conclusions smack of Teddy Roosevelt's so-called "strenuous life" which exalts "strife" as the means to achieve "true national greatness." Simply put, the application of biological threats like war and the fertility problem solves itself—at least among the survivors.
However, this anthropological claim stands in stark contrast to Mises's methodological dualism. Early in Human Action, he noted that,
Reason and experience show us two separate realms: the external world of physical, chemical, and physiological phenomena and the internal world of thought, feeling, valuation, and purposeful action. No bridge connects—as far as we can see today—these two spheres.
For Misesians, human action and its outcome—culture—originate with the human mind, not from merely materialistic processes.
Ultimately, Hanson's thesis on the degenerative trend in culture and fertility needs to be rejected on anthropological grounds. His perception of men and women as merely physical entities—without real thoughts and ideas—can't account for the differing fertility choices made among couples. Further, it's the Misesian anthropology and economics that provides the best explanation of the drivers behind fertility decline. Indeed, as couples have different ideas about the value of children, the experiences that are most important in their lives, their views on how to deal with scarcity and even inflation they seek differing solutions. However, when an external force like central bank-imposed fiat inflation is foisted upon all, there tends to be a "massification" of attitudes that is more short-sighted than it otherwise would be. To be sure, raising children is no short-run matter and neither are long-run cultural investments that stand the test of time. When this set of ideas takes hold, cultural degeneration is sure to follow."