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One thing that rolls around in my head when talking about the rise in transgenderism is the complexity of comparing outcomes. Now I don’t personally think this topic should be primarily judged through an outcomes lens, and my position isn’t based on it. However, it inevitably gets tossed around, and it’s also related to the question of how much a rise in transgenderism is revealed preferences vs changed preferences, so to speak.
It shouldn’t be controversial to say that a person who transitioned in the past, say even 2003, would have poorer outcomes on average than a person who transitioned today, due to both medical progress and social acceptability etc. Consequently, the baseline unhappiness for a person to transition should end up being higher in 2003 than 2023.
Thus there’s a lot of argument that the rise in transgenderism is at least partly due to a lot of people who would have transitioned in 2003 in a 2023 environment. And I think that’s straightforwardly true.
But I still think that doesn’t show the whole picture Consider the difference in comparing the level of happiness of a person who transitions today as compared to…
• If they didn’t transition today vs
• If they didn’t transition in 2003.
I think social contagion is certainly partly responsible in cause. [There are certainly some people who would never have felt gender dysphoria if they weren’t socialized into this, and I think it accounts for a lot of ROTD in young women, but I suspect it’s also less so in men with AGP, though I definitely suspect things like porn as @2rafa suggest also cause an increase in amount of AGP.] But I think it is also responsible partly for degree of dissatisfaction. How many people in a social context where transition wasn’t an option, would have been happier not transitioning than people not transitioning in a social context where it is an option? Again, the answer seems obviously a lot.
A person tempted to drink, but trying to remain sober is probably going to have a harder time at a party where they’re being encouraged to drink than in an environment where everyone is sober and encouraging them to stay so. So the real comparison is how much happier is a person who transitions in 2023 than that same person would have been if they hadn’t transitioned in 2003.
Obviously it’s a difficult if not impossible measurement. But I think there’s reason to believe that the answer on average is less happy. And if that were true, there’s an argument for a society that is less accommodating, knowing that the person who transitions is less happy, but on average the individual doesn’t transition and is happier for it.
Consider it a related thought experiment that could be measured:
Take a group of children and divide them into four blind groups. **Groups A and B **are given an enthusiastic conversation about and shown advertisements etc for Disney World and told they might get to go there this weekend. Only Group A is taken. Group B is brought to a local playground for the day.
Group C is also shown the advertisements and get the topic presented, but not told that they have a chance to go, and are told upfront they will be taken to a local playground, which they are. Group D is also taken to the local playground after being told they would be, and not shown any adversement for Disney, even though they are likely aware of it.
Even though we might expect that the kids in Group A might have a better time than the kids in group D, it’s reasonable to assume B will have the worst time of it.
Now suppose one wanted to make an argument that A’s overall satisfaction was not great enough over D’s or even C’s to be worth the expense of taking them there, and that C’s and B's satisfaction could be most effectively increased by including them in group D (avoid showing them DW promotions), rather than A’s (taking them to Disney World).
Now imagine that your opponent’s response was to compare A to B (the group who was told might go and then denied) and used B’s dissastisfaction to argue for making D’s into C’s, dissatisfied C’s into Bs, and then arguing it’s human decency to make A available to all Bs.
TLDR, my, not particularly unique point, is that I bet there's a lot of people with a given level of dysphoria, who would have lived a hardly affected life untransitioned 20 years ago, but would suffer much more for it in today's context, and that should be accounted for in extending social permissiveness.
Since many here will already agree with me, I'll go ahead and make the more controversial: The same argument above but for divorce, extramarital sex, and religious participation.
yes_chad.jpg
Or to elaborate: a lot of what our modern culture is selling as freedom and pursuit of happiness is absolutely fake, and we'd be a lot better of just forbidding it (in fact, I'll go out on a limb and say the only reason these things were allowed and promoted was to meet depopulation goals).
I don't even think the satisfaction / dissatisfaction comes quite from the mechanism you describe. Does cake taste good because I'm not allowed to eat it every meal, or do I not eat it because I know it would come with negative consequences, and would end up not tasting as good as a result of eating it so much? I'm pretty sure it's the latter, and so it is with all the other things you mentioned.
While the existence of depopulation goals is so well documented that it’s not a conspiracy theory anymore, they don’t seem to have been targeted at wealthy first worlders. So this theory has to account for why these things are more first world than third.
you've got to explain rather than just asserting its true.
on its face, this doesn't seem to make much sense to me: upper class would likely be quite averse to a shrinking population (this is why they are also broadly in favor of immigration). a shrinking population base can more easily demand higher wages on the basis that there are few able to perform their job. this is why you see such people like Elon Musk decrying the so-called "population crisis," with a smaller population basis, it can be harder to exert control in some scenarios (specifically for skilled labor).
you have two not necessarily competing "solutions" to this, Republicans will tend to call for banning of abortion and Democrats will tend to call for a very uh... liberal immigration.
i'd also argue that the type of low-skill worker is where depopulation would be least prevalent, why pay a living wage when you can pay illegal immigrants much less (and this wage gap has been documented1) for the same amount of work as a legal immigrant or a native-born.
1: See page 10 of the link. It seems to be relatively difficult to find strict numbers on like average wages, but it's likely I didn't look hard enough. Regardless, programs like E-Verify here in the United States tend to keep illegal immigrants out of most skilled labor, the hearsay seems reliable enough (I guess as much as it can be).
I mean, just look at the history of the eugenics movement, and what happened to it (spoiler alert: they did not go away in shame). Various iterations of "sustainable growth" are explicitly on the agenda on every world-spanning establishment organization from the UN to the WEF, and has been for decades. Some countries like China and India went to quite extreme lengths to lower their population growth.
That's the beauty of it: if you successfully decrease the natives' fertility, you can then use it as an excuse to increase immigration. By the second generation the immigrants from the fertile countries you're importing will turn into the same sort of hedonist-nihilist low fertility bots westerners have already become. Just keep marching fresh immigrants into the meat-grinder, and you have the best of both worlds - decreasing population, and a steady supply of low wage workers.
Except Elon Musk is now a "far-right extremist", and for every Musk I can find you 10 Rockefellers, Ehrliches, Huxleys, Strongs and Ghandis.
sure i'll give you China and India, but outside of that I still find the argument that this is happening on a mass scale outside of these 2 exceptions to be lacking and without merit
as ironically nihilistic as this comment is, it seems again a extremely poor choice. why not just do both? you can get unchecked immigration with a rising population, although it's admittedly not very stable at high rates of both, and also lock people into bitter political rivalries
being far right or whatever political philosophy you say he is does not exempt him from his primary motivation: wealth accumulation. his concern is a poor theatre. he is one of the richest men in the world, he is going to advocate policies that are going to be in his interest, while putting on a poorly done kayfabe of concern for humanity or whatever.
The cases if China, and India are undeniable, my claim is that the implementation in the West is a lot more subtle, so you're not going to see a smoking gun like this, but the the fact that the world elites were explicitly debating depopulation as a goal is also pretty much undeniable.
Wait... how was it nihilistic?
Because they don't want to? If their goal is to depopulate while maintaining their wealth, why would they want to increase population?
On this we agree. Though I don't think it's so much advocating for policies in his interest, as pandering to an internet tribe so the tribe will circle the wagons around him.
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