domain:ashallowalcove.substack.com
Tree
4d ago
I don’t know, bit anachronistic, and they don’t bring up this ‘liege solidarity’ anywhere else.
My theory is that employees think they produce a lot of value, at least equivalent to their wages + welfare (+ a share of ‘unfair’ walmart profits, which they reluctantly grant those bloodsucking capitalists), and that this sum is stable and independent of other actors, and prices. They equate the value they provide with the effort they put in, which is usually a lot, because low-wage jobs really are tedious and unrewarding.
So they think that without the welfare, they’d just get more wages. The idea that someone's work might only be worth 5$/h just will not compute.
Israel strike kills Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza due to allegations of his leadership of a Hamas cell involved in rocket attacks.
Corrected headline: Israel strike kills a Hamas leader and his subordinates, engaged in active warfare with Israel, and those people have been also employed by Al Jazeera.
Israel faces growing global condemnation over its plan to take over Gaza City
Corrected headline: Leftist activists who have consistently opposed every single thing Bibi has been doing since he became Prime Minister now are opposing yet another thing Bibi is planning to do. People who have consistently condemned Israel for every single thing Israel has been doing since its establishment are now are condemning Israel for this thing too.
Yemen's Houthis say they launched 3 drone strikes inside Israel
We launched three drones in the general direction of Israel. They have been shut down, as usual, before they got anywhere near anything interesting in Israel, but hey, we got a headline!
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
4d ago
I'll admit it's the long trail that interests me least (western U.S. supremacist, sorry), but I'll certainly read it. I do find the contrast between "generally close to towns and amenities" and "terribly routed trail with steep ascents/descents over awful terrain" to be fascinating.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
4d ago
anomalously high fertility rate into very recent times
Huh, no kidding (only goes back to 1960). ~3 until the early 90s, then a slow decline to about 2.4 until about 2014, and then a dramatic fall.
Here's a more historical one (by 5-year increments). That late 70s/early 80s bump is intriguing.
Iran arrests 20 Mossad spies, executes nuclear scientist for providing classified information.
Likely none of them are actual Mossad spies, and now they have one nuclear scientist less (and probably a lot less people willing to become one). Keep going, guys, you're doing great.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
China's fertility rate is low enough, and has been for a long time, that it's pretty much stuck. Exposing teenagers to childcare causes higher fertility desires but China does not have enough children to do this; China is also aging rapidly and will be running out of impressionable young people sharpish. And orientals have low rates of coupling, too.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
4d ago
GPT-5 Thinking one shot this. The free Claude Sonnet didn't.
https://chatgpt.com/share/689f7c89-c6c0-800b-89c5-ba2988419f6c
hydroacetylene
4d ago
It's interesting to note that Argentina is notable for it's anomalously high fertility rate into very recent times; this was plausibly due to its policy of targeting pro-natal gibs at lower class teenagers(which they had a lot of).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4d ago
This sounds perfectly natural to me.
I think the complaint is that he actually hefted his mace before swinging (not while swinging, which is impossible), so it should be "He hefted his mace and swung at her".
hydroacetylene
4d ago
Yeah, a lot of these people think doctors are for 1) childrens and maternal care 2) emergency medicine and 3) really serious illnesses like cancer. Normal adults go to chiropractors, nutritionists, etc.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4d ago
And yet.
(in this metaphor, what's Xianxai? Gas station sushi?)
Lazuli
4d ago
LitRPG is the literary equivalent to a three-day-old, half-eaten Arby's sandwich.
Primaprimaprima
I am trying so hard not to say the MBTI type of everyone I reply to
4d ago
"Hefting his mace, he swung at her as hard as he could."
This sounds perfectly natural to me.
Agreed on all the political points though.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
4d ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ERNAqqNSId0?feature=shared
This matches my experience (growing up in a rural deep red area) of medicine. You go to the doctor for broken bones, bleeding you can't stop, or when you're in enough pain your wife makes you go.
theincompetencetheorist
4d ago
Yeah but my hypothesis has nothing to do with Trump. It is just suggestion to ask: "Cui Bono?". I make claims with little elaboration and very little proof but gives my view that it is an useful avenue of thought if it is simply matter of corruption regardless who occupies the White House.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
I'm in the process of writing a retrospective of my AT thru-hike, so keep your eye out for that.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
Because humans are not motivated to fundamentally change their life for a trivial amount of extra money. In fact, insofar as this is an extrinsic reward, it will decrease the intrinsic desire to be a parent, as it signals to the would-be parent that the reason to do things is to spend money, reinforcing the salience of being an independent capitalist-consumer slopenjoyer. The very offer of the extrinsic reward is demotivating to its intrinsic pursuit. (In the same way, it is terrible to give students candy for doing math correctly, as it teaches them not to intrinsically value learning and success, but only candy). If humans fundamentally changed their life for a small increase in funds, all retail workers would be flocking to the oil rig, and everyone in Appalachia would have left. Becoming a parent is the oil rig of human activity. It needs to be promoted through social influence.
Totalitarian societies are fantastic at increasing pronatality when they understand how to do it, which Romanians and Hungarians do not. The best to do this through essentially non-theistic measures were the Nazis (as you mention). They increased the birth rate by 40% in 7 years, even though their understanding was also pretty mediocre.
Child-bearing is considered holy and a pregnant woman is shown the utmost consideration as one unselfishly doing her part for the good of the state. Children are extolled as worth far more than material comforts. In the schools the youth are being inculcated with these beliefs.
Nazis say that under the individualistic point of view a pregnant woman was treated with a certain amount of derision and scorn; she was foolish to undergo pregnancy; she and her husband would be more sensible to buy an auto or spend money on themselves in other ways
[Integral was the] “reviving of self-respect among the German people, and of their faith in the future of Germany. They claim that both feelings were dying out under the previous régime, and people were increasingly unwilling to raise children in such an atmosphere”
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/217103
(Unlocked link) https://sci.bban.top/pdf/10.1086/217103.pdf?download=true
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
4d ago
Nazism did value motherhood, and does seem to have increased the birthrate, but unfortunately also massively increased the death rate.
This prompted me to look at other fascist/military dictator states around then. It looks like Italy crashed hard, Portugal stayed about flat, and Spain was flat with a small increase. I haven't found a good chart for Peronist Argentina specifically. I had seen the Franco chart before, but interesting to see that Italy was so different.
- Fight Club
- Snatch
- Way of the Gun
- The Usual Suspects
- While You Were Sleeping
- Cyrano De Bergerac
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
It’s hard in a non-totalitarian, non-centralized social ecosystem. Otherwise it’s as easy as top-down educational reform and media promulgation.
It’s not religion qua religion that’s essential here, it’s how women are reared and judged. Gypsies aren’t very theistic. China can implement these changes without touching religion. I think the few pronatal factors which are intrinsically theistic are just: (1) increased sense of social safety and abundance from a God, (2) increased use of exaggerated paternal / filial language (when one speaks of God being a Father and Provider, they don’t realize it but this is implicitly pronatal, inspiring a desire to be a parent as God parents). The other pronatal factors in religion can be divorced from the religious package. You can induce obedience to many behavioral prescriptions without God.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
Centralized communist parties don't have a good track record in increasing TFR. Ceaucescu tried and only managed a blip. Even taking the rest of your thesis as true, it doesn't work because Communism is essentially modern in the ways you're objecting to. Communism (theoretically) values work, not motherhood.
Nazism did value motherhood, and does seem to have increased the birthrate, but unfortunately also massively increased the death rate.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
Right, the coordination problem to actually do this is a tough nut to crack, even in a totalitarian society.
TradCaths do this by having enough babies/toddlers that there are generally more of them wanting to be held than there are adults wanting to hold them; thus teenaged girls get lots of baby holding time and decide they like it(because most do). This is likely not an option for a country with a TFR of 1.0. The party might bring this up at meetings, but they probably bring up lots of stuff no one believes. China also strikes me as an… unlikely candidate for the kind of religious revival which boosted fertility in the stans.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
I think the argument is basically feudal. The employer is basically considered a liege lord to its employees, owing them some minimum standard in living. If the king (government) has to step in and provide additional largesse directly, that's a failure on the lord's part.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
It is trivial to change TFR and eventually China will realize it, and they will be able to solve it via totalitarianism while we are unable to follow suit. You (1) judge the social value of girls and women exclusively by their aptitude and progress in motherhood; (2) inculcate pro-fertile values in adolescent girls (eg media, stories, idols), (3) train girls in the skills for motherhood.
The reason the Haredi female TFR is so high regardless of country or income is because they do this. The reason that you have some fundamentalist Christian families with high TFR is because they do this. The reason the Gypsy TFR is 1.5 to 2x the national average of whichever country they live in, despite being urban-dwelling, is that they do this. The reason I have cousins on one side of family who are going to average 4 kids each is that I know their parents so this. There was a longitudinal study where girls were given a fake baby that they had to mother throughout school; the longterm effect was 1.5x higher TFR. (I think I found this on themotte but forgot the poster).
carrot on the stick
Women care so much about their social valuation that they will starve themselves to gain more more of it; they will spend two hours a day decorating their face and hair and wardrobe; they will even go through a miserable period of hard work and stress with little monetary reward only because it secures status (we call this “academia”). In more fertile eras, these pressures were toward motherhood; a woman who wanted to be an academic would be laughed at and derided.
Anyway, China will realize this, they will totalitarianly implement changes and likely in such a way that it targets high IQ Chinawomen, and we will be fucked (impotently) because we are ruled by entertainment and corporations, not a centralized communist party.
(also paging Mr @hydroacetylene)
I would say that the heft is part of the swing. You lift and make a motion towards your target, but I would not say that the swing starts only once the weapon is at the correct height.
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