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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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So anyway, I was discussing the great replacement theory with a far-righter earlier, and I said that immigration had little to no effect on native birthrates, citing Japan and Korea as examples.

That pointed to a far more likely culprit, education as a whole (not just women’s). South Korea and Japan can’t seem to stop "investing in the future" by making their and their kids’ lives hell. Naturally, to escape the vicious cycle, they end up abolishing the future.

Isn’t it weird that a prominent justification for making money in our society is ‘sending my kids to college’? Anyone who refuses to do so is shamed with accusations of selfishness and not wanting their kids to succeed. They then choose the alternative path where kids aren’t even in the picture, so they’re free to be selfish in peace. We’re copenhagen ethics-ing humanity into slow painless extinction.

Trads like to assign the blame to female education, but most of the arguments apply to men as well. People are wasting 5-15 years of their lives on a very expensive vacation, at best, when they could be having kids. We want them to make that important decision early, and nothing sobers a young man quicker than staring decades of drudgery in the face.

It’s time to abandon our rosy view of Education as just an intolerable burden on the living. The unborn are its primary victims. Your children cry out: “Mum! Dad! Why do you let my Evil Professor keep me here? Why can’t I liiive? “

Say No To School. Choose Life.

The fertility crisis is in some sense a fake problem. It could be solved tomorrow with common-sense birth control control. Make it illegal to give hormonal BC to a woman with less than 3 children (number adjustable as needed). All the proposals to increase fertility with tax-breaks and other incentives feel like responding to the lead crisis by increasing access to chelation therapy. Just take the lead out the fucking gasoline.

"alcoholism is in some sense a fake problem, it could be solved tomorrow with a ban on alcohol"

this was tried in america in the early 20th century and did not work. how do you expect a ban on birth control would fare any better in practice.

not to mention, such a ban would be a terrible violation of human rights, but I guess the only right people here seem to care about is freedom of speech.

how do you expect a ban on birth control would fare any better in practice.

It's much easier to distill booze on a farm in the middle of nowhere than it is to synthesize Progesterone

not to mention, such a ban would be a terrible violation of human rights

When Griswold v. Connecticut was decided, the US fertility rate was 3. We were coming off the baby boom. There were too many people.

Perhaps such a move literally tomorrow would be premature. There are still plenty of off-ramps the future could take, AI being the most obvious. Still, it would be prudent to start thinking about contingencies now. Think about what a society with a fertility rate of 0.5 would look like after 30 years. What if the whole Earth was at 0.5? What if it was 0.2?

If a society is sufficiently opposed to birth control that banning it becomes feasible, the ban would probably not even be needed under your standard, because birth rates would likely be higher than they are today, yet alone 0.5.

Possibly, but possibly not. I can easily imagine a world where everyone agrees that there need to be more children being born, but nobody wants to have children themselves. In such a scenario, the pro birth-control coalition is women 15-35 and the dudes that are fucking them, and the anti birth-control coalition is everyone else. You should be able to tell who wins politically in that situation.

its easy for you to say as a man that banning birth control is no big deal, but imagine you were a woman seeking to avoid the problems of pregnancy and childbirth, you would probably have a different perspective. but even from the man's point of view, pregnant women are less enjoyable to make love with because most men find big pregnant bellies to be unattractive, also giving birth stretches out the vagina making sex less pleasurable, young children cry a lot disrupting your sleep, stubborn ones can test your patience, and other problems that im not aware of because i dont have experience with them lol. forcing people to make babies by taking away their birth control is a form of enslavement and i would hope that former birth control users would have the moral integrity to not take away from younger folks what they themselves took advantage of during their time.

forcing people to make babies by taking away their birth control is a form of enslavement

Every single person in history was created by growing inside their mother for ~9 months. It’s not slavery, it’s paying forward your debt to society.

I am also amused that you seem to think that non having sex simply isn’t an option, as though this were some impossible thing, and that life without sex is hardly worth living. I assure you, from personal experience, that it is possible. It sucks in certain ways, but it is nowhere anywhere near slavery. If consequence free sex in enshrined as a human right, then please tell me where I can find the nearest STD-free government funded brothel?

Every single person in history was created by growing inside their mother for ~9 months. It’s not slavery, it’s paying forward your debt to society.

There is no legitimate debt that somebody did not choose to accrue.

If consequence free sex in enshrined as a human right, then please tell me where I can find the nearest STD-free government funded brothel?

What liberals mean when they say that birth control is a right is that following from the principle of self-ownership, it would be immoral for another entity to penalize people for the mere act of providing or consuming it, not that people are obligated to fund its free provision whether through taxation or elsewise. In general, if an act is not violating somebody's rights, imposing penalties for that act constitutes a rights violation.