hydroacetylene
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User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
Paging Alfred the great... a fine king, the best! He had some great people in Wessex, it was a very dangerous situation. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
I admit to having enjoyed coming up with this.
Maybe 'oddball future history' will be a feature I start on in the friday fun thread.
hydroacetylene
7hr ago
China does not have universal high school.
No doubt the Chinese are capable of psyopping the crème de la crème of their society into three kids is better than none. But effective government propaganda is hard, and it has to hit the middle and lower classes in these cases. Does China have an equivalent of country music pushing the idea that having kids is the obvious culmination of a romantic relationship? Is the ministry of culture able to pivot to producing this, or is it stuck with the usual East Asian model of gay virgins who might think you in particular are appealing but really, focus on your studies? Is there a critical development window for exposure to childcare(afaik we really, actually DON’T know this, but it’s plausible)? And I mean obviously, is China just old enough that the damage is done, a 2.5 ish tfr among current twenty year olds won’t change much? Are the economic incentives too hard against women having kids(in practice female coded jobs in America expect resume gaps and maternity leave even if they don’t like them)?
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
China's fertility rate is low enough, and has been for a long time, that it's pretty much stuck. Exposing teenagers to childcare causes higher fertility desires but China does not have enough children to do this; China is also aging rapidly and will be running out of impressionable young people sharpish. And orientals have low rates of coupling, too.
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
It's interesting to note that Argentina is notable for it's anomalously high fertility rate into very recent times; this was plausibly due to its policy of targeting pro-natal gibs at lower class teenagers(which they had a lot of).
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
Yeah, a lot of these people think doctors are for 1) childrens and maternal care 2) emergency medicine and 3) really serious illnesses like cancer. Normal adults go to chiropractors, nutritionists, etc.
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
Right, the coordination problem to actually do this is a tough nut to crack, even in a totalitarian society.
TradCaths do this by having enough babies/toddlers that there are generally more of them wanting to be held than there are adults wanting to hold them; thus teenaged girls get lots of baby holding time and decide they like it(because most do). This is likely not an option for a country with a TFR of 1.0. The party might bring this up at meetings, but they probably bring up lots of stuff no one believes. China also strikes me as an… unlikely candidate for the kind of religious revival which boosted fertility in the stans.
hydroacetylene
11hr ago
I am connected to two tribes of rural republicans, albeit not the poorer sorts. Having been around poor people who didn't like democrats, their likelihood of voting is rather low.
hydroacetylene
11hr ago
The year is 2100. The US, China, even Brazil- all, faced with declining populations, they drain their hinterlands- not exactly demographically healthy themselves in lots of cases- for workers to maintain their economies. Vast swaths of Latin America are empty; the world's largest hippo population is now in lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, having expanded from their range in Columbia since the human population left the place empty, having walked to the US or Mexico or Brazil for better economic opportunity cleaning bedpans and pouring concrete and sewing jeans. Venezuela itself has not a single soul under fifty; they export all of them to be hired by Exxon and Pemex and then expat in their home country extracting oil. In China, Tajik and Kazakh workers earn a good wage in the factories, they fly back to their home countries on the holidays to build better hovels they'll retire in. The taliban still holds on in Afghanistan, having deported their entire Hazara population to Iran, desperate for young shiites to prop up the country.
India can no longer fill its sweatshops; Pakistan has attained conventional military superiority due to having more young people and retaken Kashmir. US backing is sufficient to keep Pakistan from expanding further south. In the middle east, Israel regularly conquers territory from its neighbors with declining population, and partners with Ethiopia to occupy Yemen and keep Egypt occupied. Further south in Africa, the megastates launch grinding trench warfare over resources they can trade for Russian or American or Canadian or Argentine grain. A small handful of western mercenaries can turn the tide for million man armies; the Afrikaner breakaway state in South Africa secured international recognition by acting as backer in several cases.
hydroacetylene
11hr ago
This will probably be the Chinese when they eventually realize how easy it is to increase TFR
Uhh... Fertility is a coordination problem. Coordination problems are hard.
A lot of rural welfare users simply don't vote. It's extremely common.
The rural poor also understand that they're a peasant class and hate everyone who's in line ahead of them, which to be clear is most people. Given the economics of rural areas these people are a lot more dependent on local elites(who are very solidly republican) than the poor elsewhere; and a condition of that dependency is voting correctly.
hydroacetylene
12hr ago
Rural republicans are mostly people who are stuck 'in the gap' where they don't have medicaid to begin with- they make too much. Rural medicaid users might vote republican if they voted, but alas, they do not.
You are forgetting that medicaid is not actually universal healthcare. It's entirely possible to go without healthcare in the US because you don't qualify for welfare. There are some pretty brutal benefits cliffs.
hydroacetylene
12hr ago
But Nestle and coca-cola are already losing a fight with the Trump admin; obviously someone can outcompete them if need be.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I mean, you’ve never tried to flirt with a woman you just ran into? Imagine that but….
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Aren’t their pockets they believe this right now, due to climate dooming? They don’t seem like the happiest people.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I mean, if they really believed that Trump was going to institute an authoritarian regime and they couldn’t stop it… well none of these people strike me as true believer martyrs(republicans usually don’t either). They’d be loudly cheering on Trump so they don’t get purged.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I never said it was pro-social.
Ultimately fertility is a coordination problem and coordination problems are hard. But you have selfish reasons for wanting it to be solved even if you don’t care about the prosocial ones or the intangibles.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Yes, looking at women(other than your wife) in bikinis is sinful… but Jesus also says that those who lead others to sin are more sinful- he specifically says it would be better for them if they were killed.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
This seems super culturally mediated, though--I'm not sure I'm in a good position to just tell a pious Muslim or devout Amish that his feelings about bikinis simply don't count the way that a modern woman's feelings about wolf whistles does.
Women shouldn’t be allowed to wear bikinis in public, but neither that nor speedos nor the Borat swimsuit justify potential violence the way a particularly forwards/lewd catcall would.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I do think there is highly significant asymmetry of discomfort between a woman being catcalled and a pious man seeing some legging-clad ass
There 100% is. Women walking around in their underwear is an unfortunate commentary on the state of society; it’s not directly threatening.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I understand you cannot be brought around to prosocial motivations.
Who do you expect to pay your social security and wipe your ass when you’re old? Is it a work until MAID plan?
hydroacetylene
2d ago
I assume prep billboards are funded by grants to ‘raise awareness’ and ‘destigmatize’ and have little or nothing to do with the people who view them.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Can someone explain to me the chain of events that led to the UK paying to get rid of the chagos islands like it’s a tree trunk or something? I understand Starmer wants to be rid of them for reasons that are stupid but why is he paying to do so.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
That’s certainly possible; I went through individually with an FSSP priest who recommended it but I didn’t try it.
Awfully bold of you to assume the Dinosaurs didn't build a civilization.
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