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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   13848 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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This post is a follow-on from a conversation with @Amadan, who observed that I wasn't reading his posts correctly. I thought that hiding an apology behind a button most wouldn't click through would be what the kids used to call a bitch move, so I decided to make it a top level post.

^^^I ^^^also ^^^didn't ^^^want ^^^the ^^^effort ^^^to ^^^go ^^^to ^^^waste

You know what, I went back and read through the thread and it turns out I was misremembering the order of things. I thought you rejected faceh's proposal about tightening college admissions with the browbeating comment. My mind gets a little clouded with this subject sometimes. I think I owe you an apology in the form of a bit more effort, so here goes:

My belief is that the TFR crisis can be broadly understood in terms of basic economics. Sure, there are a million billion variables that go in to the exact shape of the curves, but I believe the fundamental problem is that the supply and demand curves don't meet at a point that produces a longitudinally viable volume. Therefore, any proposed policy must influence those lines to move TFR upward. To put it bluntly, this involves coercing either bid up or ask down. Browbeating. And we need to do it while remembering the goal isn't just more children, but ones raised in wholesome environments that set them up for the social and economic success we need to operate our societies, so "pay women billion dollars per child" is out. I'll note that some of these solutions involve catching women up to around the level of browbeating that men currently experience, and I hope this doesn't run afoul of the standard because it doesn't involve much additional browbeating on men. Lastly, I'd comment that these are not my preferred solutions, mostly because they involve coercion, which is a game I believe when played under real cultural and political conditions will result in much male loss and few additional births to show for it—but more pragmatically because I believe they are impossible to implement on a timescale that matters. I think the only real way out is to quintuple down on our current strategy of hoping for technology deux ex machina.

However, if we were willing to implement some painful measures to buy ourselves some more time, here's what that might look like if it were up to me:

Demand side measures, or, how to sweeten the deal for men:

  • Wholesale refactoring of no-fault divorce and the "best interests of children" doctrine. This is of special interest to men, who under current conditions hold virtually no protection against their investments into family being stripped away from them at any time and for any reason. Solutions to achieve this could be a list onto itself, but I believe the core of the idea needs to involve a rather humble proposition: what if we reformulated the doctrine of "the best interests of children" to take into account that save for extreme circumstances divorce is not in the best interests of children. The doctrine needs to be modified in whatever way necessary to accommodate this and to allow for the application of active deterrence against divorce. Sure, you can still divorce on a whim without any fault, but you're probably not going to like the terms if children are involved. To freestyle a lighter measure example off the dome, this could involve requiring filing parties to attend a humiliation ritual wherein they are browbeaten with every stat and fact known to mankind about how bad divorce is for children, and they must affirm personally and publicly: "yes, I am a complete piece of human shit, afflict all of these maladies on to my own flesh and blood for my own selfish gain".
  • Wholesale refactoring of filial duty and the taxation model used to achieve it. This is of special interest to men, whose earthly contributions to the human union lean more heavily in the direction of provisioning. Put simply, social security and other forms of elder welfare need to be either phased out or replaced with something far less permissive to the old and intrusive to the young. Obligations should be limited to flow within the family unit as much as possible. This would both incentivize family formation and grant more interpersonal and civilizational stake to the reproductive generation, something sorely lacking under current conditions.
  • Requiring of female duty to the well-being of children, in basically any form whatsoever. As it stands, there's very little from women our civilization actually demands for the benefit of children. She can drink, snort, and smoke however much as she likes while carrying her child and nobody can actually stop her. I'm gonna be honest with you guys, I don't know what moral platform our society thinks it has to demand even a single hair off a man's head while it tolerates this behavior from women. The benefits to children are straightforwardly obvious, but it would probably also do well for the morale of men to know that women's participation is an adamant expectation rather than a whispered plea. This would extend to limiting the provision of single mother benefits to the worthy.
  • A sea change in the tone by which our society speaks to men regarding their place in it, particularly in how it relates to his role as husband and father. I'm not going to start enumerating examples because once I do I'll never stop, but I'll point you in the general direction of concepts like the man cave and the world not owing you (male) anything.

Supply side measures, or, how to sweeten the deal for women:

  • Far steeper penalties for dereliction by men. The penalties are already plenty steep if you compare them to what women presently suffer, but not nearly steep enough if the aim is to make women's investment into family formation less scary and shield children from harm. The penalties for up and leaving should be made ruinous and inescapable. Again, measures to this end could form a list onto itself. Would essentially be a modern form of shotgun wedding, but done by faceless bureaucracy instead of by patriarch, so much easier on modern sensibilities.
  • Child support needs to be massively increased in the average case. This can be done by calculating support based on a basket of goods agreed necessary or beneficial to children's developmental success, rather than income. Some men won't be able to afford it. As I've remarked in the past, we have a persistent need for materials such as lithium and rare earth metals, and I think these men can help mine it.
  • In lieu of ill-advised cash bonuses per birth, subsidies for necessities that improve the lives of both women and children, such as housing and food stipends, attached to the child and their guardian, of course. These interventions need to be both greater in volume and more selective than current programs, in order to maximize both reproductive incentive to adults and benefit to children. This is of special interest to women, who due to reasons of physicality are often most impacted by these needs.
  • Expansion of pregnancy-related protections. Needless to say, measures where the well-being of mother and child intersect should be expedited. Regionally, however healthcare ultimately shakes out in the US, women should be exempt from whatever the hell is causing them to walk away from hospitals with not just a child but tens of thousands of debt. Due to the defined scope of this exercise and the well documented negative fertility interactions, measures where women and employment intersect should be deemphasized. If we do anything at this intersection, it should involve keeping women out of the workplace for longer during and after pregnancy, but in a way that doesn't involve direct subsidy by unrelated men. Ideally this should range not just from the big stuff but also to the small stuff like being allowed to park in disabled spaces and drive in carpool lanes; we ought to search wide for easy opportunities where slipping such privileges into existing infrastructure would be sensible, beneficial, and dignified for all parties.

If you haven't noticed, there's a strong pair of themes that run through these propositions. They mostly involve offering men a more durable ownership share in family formation, and women more durable guarantees regarding child-rearing. I know some readers are probably bursting at the seams to point out that a lot of this is just traditional marriage and romantic norms with extra steps. Why don't we just stop beating around the bush and go back to what works? Uh huh. How's that been working out? Mainstream conservatism has taken notice to how unpopular this position is and has largely adapted to this reality by promoting what I've take to calling neotraditionalism: offering a model of male obligation without the durable ownership. Good luck with that.

But this does cut to what I believe is the core of the issue. I think that advocating for any program that even smells like the above would get you accused of being a cryptopatriarch in a cool minute. The basic problem is that our civilization is emotionally allergic to a key active ingredient of the medicine, and that's not something any amount of sugar-coating can help. Take the religious shell away and put it in a container that's as secular and facelessly bureaucratic as we are, and I don't think it makes a difference to the overall reaction. There's also the question of societal patience. This is separate from the consideration of TFR and its consequences. As many including some here have contentedly noted, the current crop of men don't seem to bear an eagerness to form and maintain families that's just waiting to burst out given a few tweaks in policy and culture. This isn't something my program would change. I don't think any ever could. Men as a class have been subject to a campaign of demoralization and dispossession that began decades before I was born. Undoing this may very well require awaiting a completely new generation of men to come of age. This would require a level of patience with the male sex our civilization transparently does not possess, not even remotely close.

These are insurmountable problems. There's nothing to be done.

Would you like to hear about my $100T longevity moonshot instead?

There is a simple and straightforward way, common in our society, to induce people to commit their time to doing X instead of Y: pay them more. If you think the marginal women having another kid is more beneficial to society than whatever else she would be doing with her time then society should be willing to put its money where its mouth is. This circles back to your point about economics, though in a rather different way. Women's work outside the home is, by market standards, much more valuable today than it was 30 years ago. The opportunity cost to women of having children is correspondingly higher. As Vox pointed out back in 2018, women suffer a large and persistent decrease in earnings (that men don't) after having children. Women delay having children due to a desire to secure financial stability for doing so. This leads to them overall having fewer children, due to age-related difficulties with pregnancy. If you want more women to have children, pay them for the imputed loss in lifetime earnings.

I should probably just link Parenting as a public good.

Hungary tried spending like 5-6% of gdp on family subsidies and managed to go from a 1.23 to 1.39 and falling as of 2024. I do like this idea, as I'm trying to have a kid it's also in my self interest, but the data just doesn't really seem to support this it's this easy.

I do not have a good understanding of Hungary's economy so it's hard for me to assess the scale of their interventions relative to the opportunity cost. The exemption from 15% personal income tax seems like it comes the closest to defraying the drop in wages but it only kicks in after 4 children while my impression of the research is that the wage drop kicks in after the first child.

The GDP figure should give you an idea of the scale, pretty massive really. They also have a "baby loan" system where a couple can get $35k and the loan is forgiven if they have 3 children in 10 years which frontloads, that $35k is about two years of median individual income so quite a sum. There's also a fairly substantial mortgage subsidy that scales with child count but it's a little complicated. For some year, ending in 2022 they also had a pretty big subsidy for a larger car if you had 3+ kids. They really threw everything and the kitchen sink at the problem.

Phrased differently, this is just a massive tax cut for married couples that have kids. Which is has been a big part of mostly Republican tax ideas for decades now.

If I'm a guy making $100,000 at my job, and I'm paying 20% of my income in taxes each year but, if I get married and have a kid, that goes to 5% for the life of the kid, that's about $1,200 per month that could go to the kid. A 5 second google indicates that this is actually close to bang on for childcare monthly costs. Making up the difference would be mom having a part time job, or just coasting on savings for a year or two before getting a raise to say $125,000.

If we could get this massive tax advantage, we'd be set, right? Probably not. I am quite convinced that the deeper issue is in women having a totally irrational fear of being "trapped" because they aren't making their own money. It's almost a Jekyll and Hyde monster tale. They marry a guy because he's nice, funny, smart, and a good provider. They have a child because they both want to and love each other. Then, suddenly, he's demanding sex after dinner every night, beating her, and neglecting the child. The heroine can't leave because she's a helpless woman with no recourse (nevermind family, friends, or just a community that wouldn't tolerate spousal abuse). It just doesn't track. I'm not blaming women here, either. I think a combination of feminism-consumerism-hyperindividualism has convinced both men and women, but, especially women, that not having the means to support yourself (even within the context of a family) makes your morally reprehensible.

Your last paragraph is, I think, part of why the discussion on the left is often framed as wages rather than tax cuts. The two proposals are only really equivalent with some assumptions about what you mean by "tax cut" and the underlying facts. If its implementation is as a reduction in one's tax rate or taxable income then they are only really equivalent if you are earning sufficient wages and paying sufficient tax to benefit. I have in mind something more in the vein of Unemployment Insurance or perhaps the refundable EITC. In the most straightforward case, the woman having the child expects to face some lifetime earning reduction of X. If society thinks her having that child is worth more than that lifetime earnings reduction it ought to pay her some amount Y > X. Or, women themselves presumably capture some of the benefit of having kids so perhaps society should only pay something like 0.5*X. The general point is that we need to set the payment amount such that it is actually competitive with the opportunity cost, or we are not going to get anywhere.

I think a combination of feminism-consumerism-hyperindividualism has convinced both men and women, but, especially women, that not having the means to support yourself (even within the context of a family) makes your morally reprehensible.

I suppose my perception is not that it's perceived as a moral failing per-se. Rather, lots of women have heard horror stories from other women about feeling or being trapped in a bad situation due to a lack of access to money. I'm optimistic that this is not the typical case but I think it's understandable women want some downside protection. I, personally, would be uncomfortable in the woman's position in some stories I've read.

I know what you mean, and it is a thorny problem when it is a unforeseeable circumstance. People change and get strange. Marriage and children do change husband and wife.

But, I am also now thinking of a friend's cousin who matched with a guy on tinder, found out on the first date that he was fresh out of a 7 year prison sentence for armed robbery .... and will be celebrating her 2 year anniversary with him, I believe, in February.

Mate selection is important. "Follow your heart" has to be one of the most catastrophic psyops of all time, for men and women but, again, especially, for women. If you can envision that idea that the man you are marrying will use his provision of resources as a way to trap you in a non-consensual relationship, perhaps you shouldn't marry that guy. If your friends and family voice hesitation in their approval of a mate, you should probably listen to them. That actually makes me think of another psyop - the young woman (usually an aristocrat) who doesn't want to marry the man she is "supposed" to (usually a very eligible and stable male aristocrat) and, instead, follows her hear (see above) to marry the black sheep / sad boi / romantic poet that she really loves. They always end up happily ever after, and, suspiciously, he's often some sort of hidden prince who is absolutely loaded.

I've never seen this happen in real life, and, far more frequently, I've seen mothers desperately tell their daughters, "hey don't marry this deadbeat!" But, following the heart, they sometimes do and the consequences are disastrously predictable.

I'll de-genderize all of this. The problem is in the assumed pure autonomy of the individual to know what is best for themselves in all circumstances. "Live your best life" and all of that. But that's a recipe for consistent cycle of FAFO learning. I ask my friends and business partners for advice constantly and they do the same with me. There's not necessarily a hierarchy or approval mechanism to it, but its a fantastic way to interrogate different opinions from people who care about you and who have different mental models of how things work. As a society, however, we've carved out this weird exception for literally the most consequential decision you will ever make. Marriage.

I don't think I disagree with any of this. For many women who end up in that kind financially trapped situation, could they have made better choices earlier? Likely so. The cases where there are no red flags in advance are quite rare I think. Heck, the reason my parents never married is because my father's gambling problems were a deal breaker for my mother! But I think the question about what to do when one ends up in that situation is still important. Whatever process we have for mate selection is not going to be perfect at avoiding these kinds of problems.

Correct. Perfect is impossible and also the enemy of the good.

The solution is eliminating no-fault divorce and actually requiring some sort of proof beyond a threshold for divorce. "I don't think he cares about my problems" doesn't cut it. "He routinely screams at me and berates me, the cops have been involved a few times" checks out. That precise rubric doesn't matter so much as having one and sticking to it.

Still, there will be edge-of-edge cases. This is precisely where I don't want to over-engineer a policy. That is because policy surgically targeted at hyper edge cases usually has a bunch of unintended consequences for the median case.

I guess I don't see how eliminating no fault divorce and making it harder to divorce in general helps this. Bad enough that a woman is in an abusive situation. Now she has to create a paper trail. Hire a lawyer. Convince a judge. And if she can't do that she's compelled to remain. Why is that better? Why would shifting to this arrangement make women more inclined to marry? Less likely to be concerned about their ability to support themselves?

Why is that better?

Makes pre-marriage discernment of true compatibility more important. Both parties have to be thorough and sober in thinking about the future together.

Why would shifting to this arrangement make women more inclined to marry?

It wouldn't. But it would boost the initial social value of getting married and seriously boost the social value of staying married to a good man. Downstream, cadding and slutting would be socially de-valued. People admire people who can do hard things. If marriage is (somewhat) harder, it becomes more admired.

Less likely to be concerned about their ability to support themselves?

Again, because of the social esteem of having a stable marriage, men with the ability (and _stability) to support a wife and children would be valued higher relative to face tattoo bad boys who are "fun" but can't hold a job.

I think framing it solely as "shouldn't women in bad situations be able to get out of them?" is a kind of false choice. Because, upstream of this, you could reframe it as "we shouldn't let women get into bad situations so easily." Which is exactly what I am saying. I'll admit this actually runs against my usual stance of "let people do things." But, the society level costs of shitty marriage culture is self-evident. THE number one predictor of poor life outcomes for kids is a single parent household.

I am quite convinced that the deeper issue is in women having a totally irrational fear of being "trapped" because they aren't making their own money.

I have heard from several different elder millennial lady attorneys (obvious sample bias) that their Boomer mothers verbally beat into their heads that they had to have their own income and never be dependent on a man. As an outside observer, their marriages seem to be... fraught.

By that reasoning, employers who employ women are free riding because they don't have to pay for the harm to society from discouraging women from staying home and having children. So there should be a special tax on anyone who employs women so that when hiring women they have to pay the cost of that harm (and the receipts of this tax should be given to women who stay at home with children).

i suspect you would oppose this plan.

I'd be in favor of this plan, personally. It is basically the same as paying people to have more children, yeah. Might be more popular to do it in a non-gendered way, tax people with too many childless workers, but effectively that's still a tax on women working.

I suppose it's all a matter of framing. I don't think women are obliged to give society children such that their failure to do so is a "harm" to society in a sensible way. Would it be sensible to say you are doing "harm" to every person you could give money to, but don't?

It's the flip side of paying women to have children--if paying women for children is good because it creates incentives for them to have more children, hiring women is bad because it creates incentives for them to have fewer children. So employers who hire women should have to pay to make up for the bad incentives.

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