This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The main ethical difference I can see between conscription and 'forced' childrearing is the immediacy of the consequences and the duration of the commitment.
If a nation is faced with an invading force or a war over critical resources and can't front enough manpower into the fight, they will very likely cease to exist. So the country, or perhaps the state the governs it, if it considers preservation of its people a priority, has a strong basis for forcibly recruiting men if there's insufficient volunteers. "If we don't make you fight, then we're all going to die."
By comparison, if women start abandoning or delaying the childbearing role, there's no immediate danger, you won't even feel the pinch for decades. There's no enemy that will march over you in the end. And likewise, conscripting them doesn't mean sending them to a distant battlefield to fight on a frontline. They would continue to exist in your society, living fairly normal lives for the 20+ years it takes to raise all those kids.
Plus, the Faustian bargain it presents has some upsides: more women in the workforce means more economic productivity, and more money to spend on luxuries. And hell, fold sexual revolution into the deal and you get more sex for pleasure, with fewer duties tied to it, and able to optimize the activity for things other than procreation.
By the time anyone asks "wait, who is raising the next generation to carry us into the future" you've already reconfigured your whole economy around other pursuits.
So there's a legitimate question: if the threat is not immediate, at what point are you actually justified in pressing women into service? How dire must things appear? How much foresight are you allowed to use?
And something small to consider: if some men will go to pretty serious lengths to get out of a draft, what might women do to render themselves ineligible as brood mares?
As I pointed out with my comment, there's also a big question of convincing people the threat even exists to begin with. Right now more Americans believe the opposite is true and that overpopulation is a larger threat than low birth rates. Large amounts of people fundamentally believe in a limited amount of wealth and resources in society and that having more people just cuts into their own share. Even conservatives (who are more sided towards birth rates being an issue but still 40% believe in overpopulation more) do it when they complain about immigrants "taking jobs", so I'm pretty sure this divide is just because birth rates has become memetic among parts of the online right and not reflecting a deeper view about growing the pie.
Meaning even if you convince society to press women into some sort of top down birthing related authoritarianism, it's likely going to be getting them into having even less kids.
"Even conservatives (who are more sided towards birth rates being an issue but still 40% believe in overpopulation more) do it when they complain about immigrants "taking jobs""
This seems very obviously false. Do you actually believe this? That conservatives who complain about immigrants taking jobs are concerned about sharing a fixed pie with more people rather than with immigrants who will do jobs for less money forcing the price of labour down. I'm far from a conservative, but I've heard the second plenty (from people on both sides) and never, even once, heard the first.
office-theyre-the-same-picture.jpg
The price of labor will be forced down if the pie is fixed. If the pie is growing and immigrants are adding more jobs as well as more goods and services, it means that wages throughout the economy offer more buying power.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link