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These systems don't last because of pity. They last because the old are more numerous because of the baby boom and they can vote. How many do you need to die off before the young (who themselves are delusional about benefiting from these systems) can actually vote them down?
Especially in countries that don't have a large Millennial cohort (iirc America is better off here). They're fucked.
If you have the young enforcing the laws, the young paying the taxes, the young doing everything, what power do the old people have? The power of the state? But the state is powered by the young.
Eventually there wont be enough to go around. When that happens, force comes out and the young have a monopoly on force.
People always say this. The manosphere likes to point out that men are the enforcement arm of every government, so this whole feminism thing is parasitical. Women don't really have rights, the logic goes, since those rights depend on male tolerance and enforcement.
Maybe (in that sense fat Mottizens like men don't really have rights either) and yet it lasts for now. Because enough men are willing to fight for the system.
And technological advances mean the bar for "enough" can drop pretty fast. How many people do you really need to run an AI-powered surveillance state?
Men still have strong ties to women - we are your mothers, your sisters, your wives. We are necessary to the continuation of the species. We are still economically and socially useful, as a gender.
I don't think we've given as much thought as it deserves to the concept of a group that is just useless. A group of people who do not reproduce, have weak friendships and no family ties. What happens to them when they retire and leave the workforce? I think there is something significant here that people need to pay attention to, because it's going to be a big shift in the coming decades.
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At a certain point if the bottom 30-50% of young(er) people get pissed off and poor enough, the protests up to and including genuine physical violence to seize the reins of power could be in play.
Old people can outvote the young handily, and that won't change for ~100 years given current demographics. But their power is only on paper, a revolution, where physical power rules, is much less favorable.
I'm not advocating for a butlerian jihad against Simon & Linda, but at the extremes it is a possibility
Why do you think the west is legalizing weed? So the lumpenproles in dire straights don't wreck shit when they demand change. You can deal with stupid hippies by turning on the firehoses, if they switch from beer and pipe glue they're less willing to fight the cops(and cops will be taken care of, governments aren't stupid).
Because policing it is retarded?
But yeah the soma aspect isn't a downside
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A specter haunts Europe. The specter of Nicolas (30 ans).
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Also seems a potential risk of a large immigrant body where suddenly they don't have any particular affinity or affiliation for the current crop of elderly people and seem more interested in bloc-voting in their own interests than native-born Westerners.
On a similar note, I am extremely curious to see how the Native American Government Funding Extraction Industrial Complex in Canada is doing in about 10 years.
They're absolutely raking in settlement, etc cash right now.
But once Canada is ~50% Indian, I'm curious how that will play.
Sandeep et al have a pretty good argument for why they shouldn't have their tax dollars paying to endlessly rebuild water treatment plants in rural Canada, they were being oppressed by the British at the same time the Indigenous people were!
As a recent immigrant-settler myself I have zero sympathy for the next unelected band leader whining about not getting a veto on infrastructure projects or people demanding more than the tens of billions that has already gone to reconciliation.
I have zero emotional attachment to reconciliation it's just that I am a guest and so it's the wypipos problem. If that ever changes...
There are many things in Canada whose future is interesting to contemplate.
Imagine the Ubermensch: half-Indian, half-Chinese, stronger than both. 6 feet, 200 IQ, fluent in English,Mandarin and Hindi. Able to converse with the major ethnic groups in the county and the majority of the world...except they can't speak French. Are they just not allowed to go into politics or run major corporations like Air Canada?
Will this just be the case forever?
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