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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Remember we're looking at incentives. Sure the woman gets to decide if the baby happens or not, but the father still faces no direct repercussions from that.

The fact each woman in my pump and dump scheme gets to decide if they want to go through an abortion or not doesn't impact me directly. Without child support I can merrily do it as much as i like.

For there to be incentive for me not to do that, I must have some extra thing at stake. Me not getting to choose puts me back where I was. There has to be something beyond that. Something that can have a direct negative impact on me.

That used to be perhaps social pressure and the risk of a shotgun wedding or a beating from the womans family whose virtue was "spoiled". Now its child support.

All of those solutions recognise the man has no direct negative incentive to curb his behavior while the woman does (which doesn't mean all women do or will of course and birth control can reduce the risk of said disincentive).

If I sleep with zero women I have no kids, if I knock up 50 women and they all choose abortion I am no worse off than when I started. So that isn't a disincentive. Thats just allowing the women to undergo x to get back to the status quo. If I don't have to risk anything then, my behavior is not disincetivised. And given sex is fun and the urge to procreate, (especially if i don't have to do any work on raising the kids) my incentive is probably to keep doing it. The negative incentive needs to be high on a societal level.