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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32414 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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Increasing the TFR is monumentally difficult and with your set of constraints just about impossible. A majority of the things anyone is going to suggest in this thread will be blocked by your hypothetical supreme court if that supreme court is the averaged-out federal judiciary of all current first-world countries.

Anyways, I think a lot of the policies I would have suggested (for them to be blocked anyways) are already covered. Mostly economic policies that make housing cheaper, remove subsidies towards women as a class, remove pressure from the middle class, etc. I think @wlxd's answer is excellently put.

Here's an alternative body of ideas to tackle the TFR problem. I'm just going to copypasta a reddit comment by u/jss78.

In Finland, my solution would be perhaps surprising: I'd try to help boys do better at school.

Finland has a peculiar problem where girls do a LOT better at school compared to boys. Most kids whose education stops after elementary school are boys. At high schools, 58% of students are girls, and the percentage remains similar at universities.

This leads to a multitude of social problems, not least because in a high-tech society the job options for the elementary-school-only educated boys are limited. Enter long-term unemployment, drugs, alcohol, depression, suicide.

But it's also suspected to contribute to Finland's remarkably low birth rate. Because girls pursue higher education more than boys, some problematic patterns emerge:

Small towns have an excess of poorly educated young men. Cities and university towns have an excess of highly educated young women.

So our young women and young men are, firstly, in different places, but also they live in very different social spheres. The urban, highly-educated women vote liberal and eat vegetarian, while the poorly-educated small-town men are the core base of right-wing populist parties. Obviously, these people are unlikely to even talk to one another, let alone procreate. (emphasis mine)

That's my #1. Apart from that, a better job market with better long-term employment prospects would help with financial confidence. The government support systems for families with children are already at a very high level compared to the rest of Europe.

I think this comment is directionally correct, if not to the mark. Of course, it had a lukewarm response in mainstream Reddit.

Intuitively, I think that one of the principal components between all first-world countries struggling with TFR issues is that females are given far too (IMO undeserved) much status (college being the end all be all is to blame). @wlxd's first paragraph somewhat brushes on this idea. Most female-dominated white-collar occupations are just glorified email jobs or secretary jobs with different names. And people can feel that, they won't say it but they will make memes about it.

In no sane world should a "human resources coordinator" with a Communications degree who sends out emails for a living, feel that the Electrician who wired up her house is beneath her. She is just as much of a 110 IQ boring, passionless midwit as she thinks the Electrician is, but at least one of them is useful to society.

My solution isn't to necessarily make boys better at school, it's to make girls worse. But anything that could knock some humility into the emailing class, let that be propaganda, defunding useless degrees (defunding education as a whole would be amazing, but that's reserved for the kingdom of God.), whatever.

Yes I do think increasing the "Fuck rate" will increase the birth rate. This will have all kinds of nth-order effects from increased "accidents" to those "accidents" making an email job not so appealing or unfeasible, just scratching the tip of the iceberg.

Wildcard: This entire enterprise might be outside the scope of politics to fix altogether. Population dynamics can be chaotic and that includes humans too, the premise that TFR could be increased at all is not written in stone.

In no sane world should a "human resources coordinator" with a Communications degree who sends out emails for a living, feel that the Electrician who wired up her house is beneath her.

Counter point - We lived for millennia without electricity, but communicating is a key factor in building community, consensus and indeed society. Creating and nurturing those bonds has been a female role for a long time (see who tends to organize church events et al even where the milieu is explicitly patriarchal). It is those artificial but carefully maintained social ties that are what have allowed us to scale tribes into cities, nations and overarching cultures. Those roles are high status because they are absolutely VITAL in a societal sense.

This is not to denigrate electricians, most of my uncles on one side of my family are electricians or plumbers (and most on the other side are teachers) but I think there is a tendency especially in the rationalish sphere to devalue just how important emotional and social cohesiveness is (possibly due to the fact that "normie" women are not exactly well represented either there or here). And from what I can tell in both my own and others marriages, and in every company and organization I have ever worked for it is nigh exclusively women in these "useless" communication roles that do that. There probably isn't much need for the Communications degree but building a corporate culture begins with communication that most men, again in my experience are not interested in. Women are heavily involved in the social shaming, rewarding and so on that is the foundation of our societies, top to bottom.

Which leads to the solution. If you want more babies, you have to convince enough socially influential women to shame and judge other women for not having enough kids. More easily said than done of course, but the only real answer. Social status, social shaming and judgement will outweigh any amount of financial incentives or law changes.

I already replied below, but this bit up here caught my attention:

Which leads to the solution. If you want more babies, you have to convince enough socially influential women to shame and judge other women for not having enough kids. More easily said than done of course, but the only real answer. Social status, social shaming and judgement will outweigh any amount of financial incentives or law changes.

Women already shame and judge the fuck out of each other, to a frightening degree. What makes you think re-directing this age-old social weapon will be to anyone's benefit?

Because you can't stop it. Something will be shamed. The fact that it has existed for so long suggests its important as it is nearly ubquitous as you point out.

So its either pointed randomly, or pointed at things we like or things we dislike. But it will be pointed somewhere.

Why would i be trying to be insulting? As far as I can tell you're agreeing with me?

Carefully creating and nurturing social bonds is a role that has historically been fulfilled by women through marriage and childcare i.e. assuming the role of wife and mother, mother-in-law, grandmother etc., forming communal bonds with other women in the context of childcare, motherhood and preparation for these roles.

Not through signing up for some bullshit job at a corporation.

But I think you already know that.

Yes, but roles adapt. A company of 1000 people needs those social bonds and culture just as a village of a thousand does.

A village of a 1000 is a community with traditions, a shared history, identity, familial/blood relations, tied to the soil etc.

A company of 1000 is just an urban office where mostly rootless people who otherwise have rather few things in common and usually have high turnover go to toil away for money in front of screens.

Precisely why it takes a lot of effort to create in the company.

A company is not a community, but, in the current context, a facilitator of corporate profit, nothing more.

I'm baffled by the suggestion that voluntelling people to put their pronouns in their email signature, attend pointless diversity seminars and wear green ribbons on their lapels is somehow improving social cohesiveness within a company.

That isn't all or even most of what HR does however. But even so thatv is exactly what building social cohesion is like. Attending church, publicly espousing certain views, being judged for being outside those views, are all replicated inside organizations.

Social shame and social judgement is the building block of society. It's the reason we're so good at, it limits the differences accepted in a society, or in this case a company.

Of course all that "social cohesion" goes out the window when it turns out a plurality of your work force goes through the motions purely cynically.

Does it? People going to church still cheated on their wives and husbands. Some went to church and then secretly snuck out to a gay bar. Social cohesiveness is largely concerned that we publicly adhere to the shared values.

If you think a rule is nonsense but you follow it anyway, whether engaging in Church or at the DEI seminar you are still following the rules outwardly. You don't actually have to be a believer.

Does it? People hoingvto church still cheated on their wives and husbands. Some went to church and then secretly snuck out to a gay bar. Social cohesiveness is largely concerned that we publicly adhere to the shared values.

Yes, it does. We're not talking about believers going to church, but occasionally falling to the temptation of sin, we're talking about half of the congregation secretly following a completely different religion. Social cohesion is not people following the rules when they're afraid they might get caught, it's them following the rules even when they know they could get away with it.

Which is why God can see all and HR can read your emails and slack chats and anyone you talk to can inform on you.

Social cohesion is exactly people following the rules when they are afraid they might be caught. We're selfish individuals at heart, society has to fight against that and it has a lot of tools in its box to do it. The basic ones are fear and shame.

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There probably isn't much need for the Communications degree but building a corporate culture begins with communication that most men, again in my experience are not interested in. Women are heavily involved in the social shaming, rewarding and so on that is the foundation of our societies, top to bottom.

"Communications coordinators" are the type of people who destroy corporate culture, not create it.

Great corporate culture is created from a groups of people working together to solve difficult problems. So to build this culture, you want to hire intelligent and conscientious people who are passionate about solving the types of problems your organization needs.

Having worked everywhere from blue chip tech companies to the civil service, I very much disagree. The high performing go getters are required but they don't care much about corporate culture, but the 90% of people in the organization who do the grunt work benefit from it highly.

Most work in most organizations does not involve solving difficult problems. Your high performing, high IQ, problem solvers will do great regardless of culture (though a great team with a great facilitator will do even better than one without). The work of billing and managing and the boring day to day work required for a company to survive benefits from cohesiveness and shared culture.

You're off topic. You were supposed to defend "human resource managers" by showing how they build corporate culture, and you're arguing whether or not high-achievers are more important than average workers.

I've also worked in a bunch of places, and never saw an HR activity that didn't feel like a communist rally. You march, you smile, you clap, because if you don't you get a one way ticket to Siberia.

I'd also like to note that we've had communication and community building without communication degrees for longer than we've gone without electricity.

Yes, and what do you think being judged for not going to church or not going to the rally is? It puts social pressure on you to conform. Thats what social cohesion is, limiting the options available.

You may not like the culture they are building and enforcing, just the way i don't necessarily like that small town America forced gay people ro stay in the closet but it is a step towards a more homogeneous culture. And often that is led by "church ladies" or the equivalent. HR are the church ladies of your company. They tell the pastor you were seen at a strip club or with a woman other than your wife, so as to shame you and enforce certain standards.

And i already noted the communication degree is probably not necessary.

Yes, and what do you think being judged for not going to church or not going to the rally is? It puts social pressure on you to conform. Thats what social cohesion is, limiting the options available.

Social cohesion is persuading me to work for the benefit of the group. You can make me go through the motions with threats of ostracism, but you're not going to make me walk the extra mile for you, not unless there's something in it for me. That's the opposite of cohesion.

Maybe you're an outlier but history shows us people will do a lot to avoid being ostracised. Fear and shame are strong motivators and every cohesive society uses them liberally. Because they work on most people.

We learn them as kids very early. You'll get mocked for having the wrong shoes or being a nerd, or nowadays not being a nerd, and most people react by publicly at least going along with it. Not everyone of course, but enough.

People here are likely to be more contrarian than average, but for most people thesectools are extremely effective.

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Counter point - We lived for millennia without electricity, but communicating is a key factor in building community, consensus and indeed society. Creating and nurturing those bonds has been a female role for a long time (see who tends to organize church events et al even where the milieu is explicitly patriarchal).

This work may be important, but formalizing it and ranking it within the same hierarchy as male status is not inevitable, and in fact is historically fairly recent. In most pre-modern societies a young woman who helped facilitate social relationships in her village would not on that account consider herself to be of superior social rank to a blacksmith or a baker and therefore refuse to consider them as partners, the way the HR manager now considers herself the social superior of the electrician.

Rather, young people of both sexes would usually have the same social rank as their fathers. Because about as many male vs. female children would be born to families at each social rank, there was little possibility of an excess of women who couldn't find similarly-ranked men.

She probably would internally consider herself socially superior to an uncouth blacksmith even if she wouldn't say it.

But the very social pressures she uses are used on her by other even more socially influential women to promote marriage et al.

Tales of women having to put up with and improve poorly socialized men are age old. You can't fix that "Women are wonderful" effect so don't even try. You just make the alternative of spinsterhood even more shameful. Once she is attached to Perrin she can turn her talents to improving his status and thereby her own. Women wanting to "fix" a man is an age old stereotype, presumably for a reason.

The shaming by other women of being single and childless is your key factor to push the union. Assuming as per the OP's conditions we can't mandate arranged marriages at least.

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