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Is liberalism dying?
I see frequently brought up on this forum that Mitt Romney was a perfectly respectable Mormon conservative that was unjustly torn apart by the Left. In response to this, the Right elected a political outsider that is frequently brazenly offensive and antagonistic to the Left, as well as many (most?) establishment institutions. I am seeing the idea "this is a good thing, because if the Left are our enemies and won't budge from their positions that are explicitly against us, we need to treat them as such", probably expressed in other words.
This frightens me, as it seems to be a failure of liberalism, in this country and potentially other Western liberal democratic countries. Similar to the fate of this forum, where civil discussion was tried and then found to be mostly useless, leading to the expulsion of the forum to an offsite and the quitting of center left moderates like TracingWoodgrains and Yassine Meskhout, the political discourse has devolved into radicals that bitterly resist the other side. Moderates like Trace seem to be rare among the politically engaged, leaving types like Trump and AOC. They fight over a huge pool of people who don't really care much about politics and vote based on the vibe at the moment, who are fed rhetoric that is created by increasingly frustrated think-tanks and other political thinkers. Compromise seems to not be something talked about anymore, and instead, liberalism has been relegated to simply voting for your side and against the other side. To me, this is pretty clearly unsustainable, since the two sides seem to have a coin flip of winning each election and then upon winning, proceed to dismantle everything the previous side did.
We see this in a number of other Western liberal democratic countries. Germany and France both had a collapse of their governments recently due to an unwillingness between the parties to work together and make compromises. Similar states that seem to be on the brink of exhaustion include South Korea and Canada, though I'm told things are not nearly as divisive in Japan. China, though having its own set of problems, seems to not have issues with political division stemming from liberalism, since it's not liberal at all.
I am seeing these happenings and becoming increasingly convinced that liberalism is on its way out. Progressivism and the dissident right both seem to be totally opposed to the principles. This is a bad thing to me and a cause of some hopelessness, since America produced a great deal of good things during its heyday, and even still is doing awesome things. It is predominantly America's technology companies settling the frontier, and recently they've struck gold with AI, proper chatbots, unlike the Cleverbots of old.
Is liberalism dying? If it is, is that a good thing or a bad thing to you? If it's a bad thing, what do you propose should be done to stop the bleeding?
Yes liberalism is dying and for reasons that won’t come as a shock to anyone who has spent a good deal of time here.
There are certain principles of liberalism that are fraught with tension with realities on the ground. Specifically, liberals believe in a psychic unity of man, that all human beings are tabula rasas upon which magic dirt renders them their behaviour and social-economic functioning. This, paired with the idea that whites are inherently guilty and owe a debt to BIPOC that can never, ever be repaid, borders are therefore deemed hindrances and oppressive. Unlimited migration is the inevitable conclusion of the above, and since Caplan-esque Dubai policies are anathema to liberals, we get utility monster sub groups that are net-tax negative, coming in and bleeding the liberal welfare state dry (as an aside, it still amazes me that people think immigration is a solution to social security pension problems. It’s like throwing gasoline on the fire!). Only those deemed “far right” seem capable of the basic solution of enforcing borders and deportations, with the notable exception of Denmark, which may be the only way liberalism survives.
(What do you mottezins think? Is it possible that we all follow the danish model of strict outgrouping of foreigners? Or will that remain taboo among the centrists and liberals?)
I also see HBD as basically a time bomb waiting to explode. The advances in population genetics and cognitive neuroscience are going forward at an astounding rate. Everyone here already knows what I mean, and it’s only a matter of time before data and research seeps its way further into public consciousness, which it definitely can do faster now that right wingers are winning the war for social media platforms. We have accounts like cremiux and I/O basically churning out nonstop data supporting HBD at a rapid clip to an audience of millions, something previously completely unthinkable. All that remains is for the public to “get woke” to the IQ question, and it’s a matter of when, not if, that will happen. Maybe one way out is a Gattaca-style future only with publicly available embryo dna engineering for IQ.
Of course being the sort of person who would use embryonic gene editing is strongly anti correlated with fertility. We’re stuck with MK I humans.
The sort of person who's looking forward to using embryonic gene editing is strongly anti-correlated with fertility, but that's true of any interest in future technology. Once it's a staid, established technology, or even just a decently-well-tested technology, I'd expect the correlation to shrink and then vanish. Compare interest in AI twenty years ago (serious discussion among meganerds, plus thematic window-dressing in scifi entertainment) to today (OpenAI just passed 300 million weekly active users).
No, gene editing is a different kind of technology because it adds an extra step to the process of reproduction. The basic thought process behind high fertility is ‘sex is fun and babies are cute’. Adding further considerations, extra steps, has never done anything good for the fertility rate.
Your gattaca future is a South Korean future- TFR of .7 with mandatory investment in high status striver tomfoolery. Even in the movie it was implied this was the case- the borrowed ladder character was a failure because he was only an Olympic silver medalist, not gold.
You want more babies people have to be ok with mediocrity because most people are mediocre by definition. You can’t have a society composed entirely of the top 10% or top 1% or whatever- it’s utterly meaningless without the other 90 or 99 percent.
A 100 IQ Westerner is both perfectly mediocre and within the top ~10% of Third World cognitive ability; raising the baseline is a worthwhile goal in of itself. That said, you have a point re. extra steps: the question is whether independent fertility-increasing measures can offset the extra cost/inconvenience.
What independent fertility-increasing measures have ever worked, short of transitioning to a right-wing authoritarian regime with a state ideology that women belong in the home? Because that one's not in the cards.
AFAIK, all we really know is that authoritarian measures (kinda) work, very high religiosity works (almost too well) and just paying people to have kids doesn't (or only has marginal effect). The possibility space has barely been explored in the past 100 years; perhaps more moderate cultural nudges will suffice. (Of course, if you don't wan't merely "moderate" cultural change, this argument is moot.)
Besides, the role of woman as exclusive homemaker was adapted to a very different environment than the post-industrial age, back when being a homemaker entailed responsibilities other than "operate the washing/cleaning/cooking machine" and "make sure the kids don't kill themselves". Women have it too easy for their own good, and good times make weak(er) (wo)men.
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