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 -
Italy’s birth rate is decreasing further to 1,2:
https://archive.is/T6thJ
The article notes that Meloni is herself a single child, but fails to mention that she also only has a single daughter. Still the low birth rate is a core issue for her and her right-wing coalition, but as in leftwing governments elsewhere they can’t find policies to reverse course.
The carrots are not working, so there should be sticks implemented. Not sure how, but we should make childlessness painful.
Russia's birth rate has roughly followed US birth rate trends, except for the major dip during the 1990s, which happened for obvious reasons. What is noteworthy is that this is despite major efforts by the Putin government to incentivize people to have kids.
It's not clear to me that the state can really do much to incentivize people to have kids. To me, birth rates seem to be mainly driven by how much the economy incentivizes people to have kids and by the availability of contraception. A 19th century farming economy by nature highly incentivizes people to have more kids than a 20th century tech economy. Also, when the economy is doing well and people in general are making more money, birth rates tend to go up. But not by enough to make up for huge technology-driven changes such as the change from a farming economy to an information economy.
Birth rates are also driven by cultural attitudes, see the classic example of Orthodox vs non-Orthodox Jews.
Any other than a completely totalitarian state has very limited means to change any of these things. The ship has sailed on contraception. You will almost certainly never be able to effectively remove access to birth control in any modern Western country. Cultural attitudes have shifted too much in the last 70 years and there is no reason to think that they will shift in the other direction by any significant amount.
In any case, if you tried to make childnessness painful for me I would try to make the effort painful for you. So you also have to account for the large number of people who are very much passionately opposed to your program. And our lower birth rates are not going to change things fast enough to give you enough political power to freely enact your proposals, since a large fraction of your kids are always going to be coming over to our political side of these policy ideas and relatively fewer of ours will go over to your side, for similar reasons as to why people from Istanbul, Moscow, and San Francisco are generally speaking not moving to small rural towns en masse.
Robin Hanson has suggested making a financial asset out of future tax revenue, and giving some of that to parents.
That could reach the necessary scale, I think.
Source for anyone interested in the details
See also:
The Unincorporated Man, in which every person is "incorporated" at birth into tradable shares, of which the parents get 20 percent held jointly, the government gets 5 percent, and the person cannot sell the last 25 percent (which is enough for him to support himself in this high-productivity future setting; the percentage might have to be higher in the present day)
Income-share agreements
More options
Context Copy link
I see Hanson has two kids. Why didn't he have more? When someone is suggesting bigger family sizes, I think it's a legitimate question to ask.
That used to be the case that the elderly parents would move in with or remain in the family home with the eldest son or other married family member who would then look after and support them, on the model of "they took care of you when you were unable to do so, now it's your turn to support them". But then socially we decided that we didn't want that, and if you take the model of "move to where the money and jobs are" (again, another debate on here recently), then families by default were broken up - parents in one state, children scattered all over, having their own families and own lives elsewhere.
We've done away with the expectations of supporting the parents and any suggestion of "I have to give a percentage of my wages directly to them, just because they decided they wanted to live on Easy Street and have kids to take care of them" is going to be resented. Besides, this is what we're doing currently with social security - you pay in, then in old age you get the benefits, but they come from the payments made by the younger workers. We don't have enough younger workers and there's already a lot of resentment about "Boomer voters going to vote in elections so they get a bigger slice of the pie".
Maybe I hate my parents, don't want to pay them back, so I deliberately fail at life in order that the "future tax revenue" is as small as possible. What are they gonna do, have a late-late-late term abortion?
I don't expect people are going to stop caring about their own life.
Also, he suggests that the asset can be sold and transferred, have financial derivatives made, etc.
That's why I think it's foolish. You're packaging up someone's life as a bundle of "we can make PROFIT off this" and that's not how it works. Who wants to be an indentured servant, even to their parents? And the experience we've had with packaging up and selling on and that bundle gets sold on etc. should make us wary. "I owe my soul to the company store, 21st century version" - the vulture fund that bought my future tax earnings is sending me to the salt mines.
I've never found Hanson a compelling thinker, and the more of his batshit 'let's just imagine for a second that you gently rape a sleeping woman' thought experiments I hear about, the less impressed I am.
But you literally already have to pay the money, just to the government.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link