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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Mostly, I'm sort of just amazed that this group generally leans right and would be incredibly quick to point out the possibility of unintended consequences for vast social engineering schemes proposed by the left, but is relatively uncritical about possible unintended consequences for vast social engineering schemes proposed to increase fertility.

As others pointed out, these things are pointed out a lot and for quite a some time. Welfare queen is the term used since the Great Society program was enacted by the right as a description of abuse of these types of policies. I also think that there is a growing opposition to what amounts to "nationalization" of basic roles of the family, the so called "cradle to grave" welfare system. In this system, atomic individual is basically just source of taxes and everything else is taken care of by the state be it child rearing through kindergartens and school system, healthcare as well as nationalized pension system. I think this system is unsustainable because it is full of various perverse incentives, it has agent-principal problems and is prone to corruption and gaming of the system. It goes against the very basic idea of subsidiarity where instead of families who are close to the problem you offer some centralized solution on national level. It is great system for population control but at the expense of basic human needs ingrained in each and every one of us, not to even speak about efficiency in its own supposed terms.