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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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Because slavery is done for the interests of the slaveowner and at least in theory, authoritarian parents are acting for the long term benefit of the children. And even callous authoritarian parents are not going to be as callous as slaveowners.

Kids are not, generally, capable of understanding the distinction.

Because slavery is done for the interests of the slaveowner

Reproduction is done for the interests of the parent.

Kids are not, generally, capable of understanding the distinction.

No, I think they understand the distinction perfectly (in that there is none). "Slavery" might be a loaded term (parents and adults more generally will take reflexive offense to children calling it this, even if you ignored that it's an insult to their legitimacy on its face because it is loaded, something children also are well aware of), but in their defense it is a perfectly accurate description of the situation.

[Mistake-theory description of biological reality below]
Children are, by their nature, property; something they have in common with women. Scalable primary resource extraction is difficult to impossible to establish for them. Thus, sons work for you until they become too large to physically dominate (which is the definition of "adulthood" for men), daughters you sell at physical maturity (the definition of "adulthood" for women) to the highest bidder (they're a net loss otherwise), and your wife is such a purchase.

Now, this isn't to say that some fathers treat that property very well- as if they didn't own it, almost (and property that has 2 legs needs to be motivated pretty strongly to stick around; you can do that through love or fear, fear is easier and always your fallback option as a father but it's less productive in the long run so generally worth putting in the effort to not do that)- but that doesn't make the balance of power any different and selfishness on the part of the parent (or the surrounding society- like Asian nations and their ludicrous education systems, or certain US states where the State will punish you if you're let outside) will always push that balance towards fear.

Really, at the end of the day, we're just haggling over the price. For example, something that can break this reality is if scalable primary resource extraction in terms of a man's body is completely obviated by mechanization/technology/market forces- if that happens, the bride price goes to infinity, and with that men can no longer meaningfully own women. This happened to children at the same time for the same reasons, so you had a lot of effectively-emancipated "teenagers"... until the Great Depression put a so-far-permanent end to that (with a slight rebound for them around the '60s).

Chains that set lightly upon you are still chains; what harm does noticing them do?

Why would the knowledge that a parent has been acting for longterm benefit increase a person’s internal motivation regarding longterm planning and delayed gratification?

And even callous authoritarian parents are not going to be as callous as slaveowners

But there are no shortage of high performing Asians who genuinely feel that their parents were callous in their adolescence, showing no love, driving them like a slave.

When they say they were driven like a slave that's metaphorical. It isn't actually the same thing as being driven like a real slave.