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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   35077 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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If I arbitrarily take thousands of dollars from someone and their family, and they have no recourse, it would be an oppressive action and they would be said to suffer from oppression. If I arbitrarily take their property, it would be oppression. And so this same idea of oppression is merely extended, to something more important than money or property, which is the ability for people to fairly and justly have influence over political matters and the future of their community.

Pro-choice voters would be oppressed if pro-life voters had extra points allotted to their vote. And fecundity places extra points on groups and “kinds of people” capriciously.

My values are almost certainly different than those of my grandfather

Granted, but there are strong trends of political interest by demographics and families, and so while in your case you “accidentally” happen to be unaffected, that doesn’t mean others aren’t negatively affected. There are also other ways in which your influence is reduced — not at all the polls but still in the polis. If you have to transfer your resources to others with worse values and behaviors, or your children attend a school in which worse students negatively affect your children, or you have to pay more for policing. Now I suppose we can construe these things to also be political opinions (“I am pro all welfare and redistribution”), but it takes the bite out of the moral claims underlying these things, and then it’s the question of “is a slave who loves his slavery really a slave?”

which is the ability for people to fairly and justly have influence over political matters and the future of their community.

You have that influence right now. If you want to continue having that influence once you are dead, then yeah, it depends on your descendants. You don't get to moan about "fecund privilege" if you can't have a dead man's hand control over the future, which you never invested in by having children, because you only cared about the right-now.

I do not want humanity to become a dystopian baby- making competition. And I see no reason why births or babies should have anything to do with political power. And so I get to argue against it because I think it’s a bad philosophy. And you get to moan about my arguing against it.

And I see no reason why births or babies should have anything to do with political power.

Well, see, it's because people. People only come about via births and babies. No people, no reason for politics or political power. "I have no kids and will be dead in thirty years but I should get to set the course of society long after I'm dead" isn't much of an argument. If you're dead, you no longer have an interest in society. The people alive at the time have that interest. You may think that such-and-such a system will mean a better future for all, but once you're dead, the people carrying out that plan will be those who, you know, are the result of births and babies.

If you have no babies, then the people who do have babies are going to end up with the political power, because they are the people who are going to be around and alive when it comes to politics.

There are nations. nations have borders. Within those borders, they have distinct cultures. Cultivate a good culture within your nation's borders, and if you build something worthwhile, don't allow people from incompatible cultures to enter in too-large numbers. Perhaps more importantly, recognize that culture isn't just something that happens, and take the control and shaping of your culture very seriously.

This seems like the astronaut gun astronaut meme, humanity always has been a baby making competition. The gigantic change we're reeling from over the last two generations is technology that makes it relatively easy for women not to regularly make a baby during their fertile years.

Now you are using more terms (arbitrarily, unjustly) without defining them or explaining why they rise to the level of oppression.

while in your case you “accidentally” happen to be unaffected, that doesn’t mean others aren’t negatively affected

You are completely moving the goal posts. Your claim was that "parents are oppressed for having their legacy reduced in influence" -- i.e., that my grandfather is oppressed by my rejection of his values, not that I am.

Democratic ideology already acknowledges that, were a power to take the property of a citizen without good reason, it would constitute oppression. I’m arguing that fecund privilege is arbitrary because it reduces the power of cohorts of citizens, whether we’re looking at cultural or genetic cohorts etc. It is arbitrary because it reduces the power of a cohort for something out of their control —in some cases the antisocial actions of others — and which has no bearing on the functioning of the polity (the number of children of others). As the examples have shown, a cohort that does all of the right things will have their power arbitrarily reduced.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arbitrary

As my claim is that children are connected to their parents in identity (well-acknowledged across domains, and even in progressive ideology), a grandchild shares in the oppression of their grandfather just like a Tutsi in the fallout of genocide. If a Tutsi has to live under a society governed by Hutu because they committed genocide against his grandfather’s generation, that Tutsi is oppressed. Also, my argument answers why your grandfather would be oppressed: “there are strong trends of political interest by demographics and families,” and “shared values and behaviors”. His influence over the polity is reduced in a Democracy-filled polity, even if you vote totally different.

We already have a system that allows for inheritance of power, concentration where you have fewer kids and disbursement when you have more: it's called property.

Why turn votes into property?

Well, speaking of arbitrary, you are arguing that my grandchild should be given more political power than someone else's, simply because of decisions their grandparents made. That is the quintessence of reducing the power of someone for something out of their control.

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