Food and Energy Security should be rated much higher, along with self-sufficiency in general, since GPI and HDI could go to hell in a handbasket depending on what other countries get wiped out or rendered inaccessible to trade during a world war in general or nuclear war specifically. A lot of countries’ food output is dependent on fertiliser imports from places like Morocco and China.
Morgan Allen
On the topic of comparing French and German fertility- so far as I can tell, Karlin isn’t making any attempt to control for Muslim fertility as a component of the French total? There are probably some ultra-conservative French catholics bumping up the total, but insular French-Muslim communities by themselves could explain the French case in roughly the same way as the Amish.
Also, FWIW, the lower rates of Amish defection over time might not necessarily reflect genetic changes (although that’s also possible.) The larger external secular society might just be getting more chaotic and repulsive over time.
I don’t think Hanson has any terribly useful suggestions for solving the secular fertility crisis, to be frank. The founding myth of our present-day secular elites is of course the holy crusade against the Nazis, which means that any serious national discussion about raising birthrates (let alone ensuring eugenic fertility) will get crushed by Lebensborn comparisons and other thought-terminating clichés.
I would strongly recommend taking a look at Peter Zeihan’s work- he forecasted, among other things, the invasion of Ukraine back in 2015 based on an array of geographic and demographic factors, and expects many similar calamities in the coming years. (TLDR- Russia’s top-heaving ageing demography and insecure geostrategic perimeter is prompting it to expand to reach geographical choke points like the Besarabian Gap before it runs out of young men to draft.)
There’s an interview on the topic here that you might take a look at. Of particular interest and concern are his predictions of widespread famine due to disruptions of fertiliser inputs needed for agriculture in many parts of the world (due to natural gas and energy prices spiking, disruption of potash exports from Russia and Belarus, and phosphate exports from China recently being banned.) That’s effectively an existential risk to civilisation as we would recognise it with or without nuclear weapons being involved.