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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26009 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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This post kind of comes off as a self-indulgent power fantasy. You'd need God-empress level of political power to enact those policies, so the whole thing is basically implicitly assuming that you're infinitely stronk, and then writing a long detailed list of all the ways you'd use your unlimited power to put the screws on people whose life choices are (in your view) incompatible with the greater good of society.

And if we hypothesize some alternative society in which those policies would be popular, then would you even need them in the first place? Hm, maybe they would still be useful to fix the pro-natal attitudes and fight against any potential value drift.

Anyway, while I don't expect you to explain how you're planning on becoming God-empress, I'm still curious how would you roll out those policies? Would there be some transition period so for example people who were already old and infertile when the policies came into effect wouldn't get screwed up without any chance to avoid it, or would their unavoidable impoverishment be a sacrifice you'd be willing to make to keep things simple and on track?

That's not a sensible or fair criticism. The point of the post was to illustrate that effective policy solutions are certainly conceivable, they're just outside the Overton window.

And if we hypothesize some alternative society in which those policies would be popular, then would you even need them in the first place? Hm, maybe they would still be useful to fix the pro-natal attitudes and fight against any potential value drift.

On plenty of issues factions that are minorities impose their agenda on larger more disorganized majorities by capturing institutions of power and by creating organizations and lobby groups. Then they promote propaganda about those opposing their blatant actions being conspiracy theorists.

Also, after policies have been promoted by energetic factions with power, a certain % of people are willing to change their mind. We have seen this with gay marriage. This doesn't apply to all policies, some might be too extreme to not be disliked by the majority, but it does apply to many.

If natalist measures are implemented, then you are going to get people who go along with it who previously wouldn't have supported these kind of policies. Part of that might also be the power centers promoting propaganda.

And beyond just changing one's opinion, the policies, quotas themselves affect behavior.

I think it's a fine post. From a practical perspective we need to:

  1. Decide what must be done

  2. Decide how to do it

@2rafa has given us #1. #2 is probably impossible without god-empress status. So the alternative to their post is to throw up one's hands and say "it's impossible".

I am actually somewhat bullish on China solving this problem before the West because they actually have the state capacity to take the radical actions necessary.

My suspicion re. China is that a lot of senior communist party elites are very bitter about pro-fertility efforts because they themselves were only allowed one child (despite being in the ruling elite of one of the most powerful nations in the world). Eg. Xi himself only has one child, a daughter.

I think Chinese childhoods are also just horrible experiences all around, so people don’t want to have kids regardless of how well they’re being paid.

I don't think Chinese childhoods are horrible experiences all around, and upper class Chinese parents certainly don't think that.

Unfortunately, they probably won't want to take actions that penalize those currently in power, which makes some of these harder.

I have no intentions of coming to any kind of power. These are just an illustration of the fact that this isnt an impossibility issue, it’s a willpower issue. There are solutions, they’re merely considered undesirable.

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