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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 20, 2025

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People collecting pensions they were promised as part of their work agreement is not parasitism.

People who are net negatives are parasites irrespective of the method they've used to swindle the rest of society. If they have managed contracts which state they should receive more from the system than they have contributed, then these people are a drain. It makes little difference whether they then extract this tribute with sword and cutting throats or through the laws of a bullshit system of their construction. What obligation do later generations have to maintain a Ponzi scheme which they did not vote for, and in some cases was constructed before they were given the right to vote. If the elderly have unilaterally erected a contract in my behest, that I should be drained for their benefit, then what is this contract worth? Surely, tyranny by lawfare is still tyranny.

Indeed, let us then abnegate all prior agreements we no longer consider binding on us because we don't like the costs. This will be very reformative and beneficial.

This will be very reformative and beneficial.

Perhaps it would be. It seems to work for foreign policy. Tautologically if we remove contracts which are harmful to society, then society will benefit. Of course, you'd have to factor in the increase to future counter party risk evaluations. But perhaps we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with if boomers had operated under the assumption that future generations would annul any one-sided agreements that they should be robbed. And now is a good time as any to set new precedent. Surely, anything will beat continuing our civilizational death spiral in Boomertopia?

I think generally "harmful to society" is understood to mean "would be better for society if they hadn't been made". For it to be tautological you'd have to mean "contracts which are more harmful to society than the harm incurred by breaking them" and that is, I think, harder to demonstrate. The whole issue with, eg, student loan forgiveness, is that it incentivises people to choose based on the short term consequences, expecting they can always renegotiate at government-point the long-term consequences later.