domain:firsttoilthenthegrave.substack.com
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
21hr ago
True, I was thinking marginally so the first would be much higher. I am highly skeptical women would only sleep with the top 5% of men.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
22hr ago
We have about 74M women that are the denominator for our TFR calculation. According to the World Bank the United States has a TFR of 1.7. That means if all those 74M women had 0.5 babies (or half of them had 1 baby) that would raise US TFR by 0.5 to 2.2 (woops, I said 2.3). I assumed we'd pay each of these women the US median income as a stand in for knowing their actual income distribution. So the cost is 74,000,0000.540,480=1,497,760,000,000.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
22hr ago
I think people concerned about TFR often advocate it as a mode of social organization and I had received some other replies downthread suggesting it was the way we ought to be going to boost TFR. So, mostly people here I think.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
23hr ago
I mean, it's not that big of a change, like, numerically. I bet it would be a pretty big change in the lives of the women having the children. It's true the state could punish people but, being a liberal, I am pretty averse to that as a strategy.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
23hr ago
It's not that motherhood "sucks" as an activity, but being a stay at home mother does have significant opportunity costs in the form of lost income and other expenses. A million a kid is probably far too much. I suspect you would raise fertility pretty significantly if you paid women merely they wages they would have had if they had not stopped working in a kid-independent way.
SSCReader
2hr ago
It made me hate the world.
Why would it make you hate the world? Men lying to get laid, is as old as the hills. Hating that behavior (and perhaps the people who use it) seems the more accurate response?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
3hr ago
An exercise to the reader: 65% of men in Britain walk more the 3 miles a day, but only 40% of men in Ethiopia do the same. The top 20% of Ethiopian walkers walk on average 20 miles a day (and over grueling terrain), whereas the top 20% of walkers in Britain average only 4 miles (over sidewalks). Which population is more likely to be negatively affected from the problems of long walks? Clearly you are very smart, or at least you wish to indicate that, so I do not need to explain further. Whether the above distinction also applies to Japan versus Israel is an empirical question which you lack the intellectual humility to even consider, whereas my take is “let’s try to find the data”.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
6hr ago
No, humans have wanted forever. Another key ingredient is technological development. Specifically labor saving devices that reduce the number of hours required to maintain a household and make women more productive outside the home.
Grauwacht
11hr ago
The original law seems overly broad anyways. Why shouldn't I generally be allowed to conceal myself, as long as I'm not doing anything wrong? This kind of overly broad suspicion against the public is a sign of sick, low-trust society. Why not construct the law the other way around? Mask wearing is allowed unless committing a crime, being on a protest, etc.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
19hr ago
Except it's not a few months, it's 76 years.
Immaterial. The moment you deny the claims of the Palestinians to the land, you implicitly deny the much older and less substantial Israeli connection to the land. If the Palestinians don't have any claim after 76 years, the jews definitely don't after several thousand.
I'm not sure what you'd consider morally acceptable action on the part of the Israelis, unless it should be to just commit mass suicide to save the Palestinians the time?
One state solution with full democracy, or a two state solution. This would also have to include a tallying up of the damage caused by each side to determine if reparations have to happen too, not to mention trials for some of the more egregious acts - every single use of white phosphorous on civilian populations deserves criminal investigation at the least.
Leaving aside the fact that the Palestinians didn't control the region before 1948
I don't care to rehash the tired old argument about how the Palestinians didn't really exist, if you want to have that discussion go talk to somebody else and simply accept that I disagree.
If 9 million people who didn't choose to be born where they were accept getting slaughtered,
This isn't actually something that I said - please don't put words into my mouth. I in no way suggested that the Israelis accept getting slaughtered.
I'll repeat my question about whether you think Jews with central European ancestry are entitled to the land in Germany or Poland their ancestors lived on?
Depends on the individual context. There's a big difference between someone having their home stolen by the nazis, and someone selling off their property at the height of the Weimar republic and moving to America. That said, I was under the impression that Germany essentially already did this.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
23hr ago
I agree that the opportunity costs are much lower if women work while also raising kids but I've been operating on the assumption people want women to become full time homemakers, which I think is much more disruptive. I do not have any kids of my own but your experience makes sense to me. I'm under the impression there are a lot of up-front cost for kid 1 that can probably be re-used for subsequent kids (toys, clothes, etc).
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
23hr ago
Maybe $2 million for some people, true. Most would be much less. According to FRED the median US personal income in 2022 was $40,480. According to the US census there are about 74M women between the ages of 15 and 50 (the age categories used for calculating TFR). Let's say we get half of them to have a child (that would boost US TFR to ~2.3). If we gave each of them the median income that comes out to about $1.5T per year. That would be about 15% of the US federal budget, 10% more than we spend on Social Security. This is much less than I expected it to be!
WhiningCoil
35m ago
If the OP has experiences anything like myself, you hate the world because "the world" seems to be actively propagating preposterous lies and blood libel enabling sociopathic behavior among a select group of untouchables. And the "victims" that choose the sociopathic untouchables over yourself have credulously lapped up every lie, directly leading to you being thrown under the bus by people you trusted. Family with deep ties, friends you've known for decades, coworkers you overcame profound challenges and found success with. The anointed sociopath with politically relevant melanin content washes all that away. You're lucky if even a single person overcomes the firehose of bullshit propaganda, overcomes their cognitive dissonance, and even privately supports you. If you expect public support, you are out of your fucking mind.
SSCReader
50m ago
Again the vast majority of that is about him manipulating other people, weaponizing their beliefs to his own advantage. Cult leaders do the same with religious beliefs. It just seems odd to hate his victims. Like it would be odd to hate the world because some people fell for Jim Jones. I can understand hating your former friend or indeed Jim Jones but the fact that people fall for a presumably at least superficially charming person doesn't still seem like a great reason to hate the world, rather than hating the people who manipulate the world. The people who went to bat for him, presumably did so because they believed he was a sympathetic victim not a monster.
I've encountered people like him (minus the fire axe, substituting a broken pint glass) and many people did believe he was a lovely person and he took advantage of that over and over. But it didn't make me hate the world so much as hate him. People generally assume other people are operating in good faith in personal relationships and that allows people who are willing to cheat and lie to take advantage of it. You are a victim of him, but so are the people that believed his lies and manipulations. They didn't side with him because they hated you, they sided with him because he knew exactly what to say and how to say it.
You and the world are both victims of people like him. Hating your fellow victims is I think missing the point. Having said that it seems like a terrible experience and I am sorry you were dragged into his machinations.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
1hr ago
Intellectual humility is not code for "I'm going to maintain my preconceived notions prior." Your take is not to find the data, it's to dismiss the data presented that directly contradicts your implication that Israeli fertility vs Japan is due to women in Israel working more part time.
In fact, your claim was that it's "obvious" that this is the case, which doesn't sound very intellectually humble to me, so it's a little strange that you are turning around and using that cudgel against me when it turns out that it's not so obvious after all.
Why ii) no longer works is explicable by the same dynamics Scott complained about in "Untitled": yes, workplace sexual harassment policies are written in an extremely sweeping fashion, and yes, men who are charming and socially adept and who are interested in one of their colleagues will probably just ask her out, without worrying about whether it's technically in violation of the policy or not. But conscientious socially awkward men will worry about this, as well they should given that they're the only men likely to be reported for violating it. (Yes I'm trotting out this meme again, I don't care: I was effectively shunned from an entire community and industry for the crime of politely asking a girl if she wanted to get coffee sometime and I'm still mad about it - anyone saying "just ask her bro, the worst she can say is no" is full of shit.) Regarding iii), some of the same dynamics as ii) apply,
I believe you when you say you've been treated unfairly but I think this is an exaggeratedly bleak depiction of modern in-person dating. I'm a milenial and I've asked out colleagues, classmates, hit on girls in public or who I've only met once etc and *I've never been reported to the authorities for it (that I know of). And I'm definitely closer to the bottom guy than the top one in that meme - I'm sitting here posting on the Motte after all.
*Never faced any serious social consequences for it (edit)
Goodguy
1hr ago
Did this functional social covenant between governments and people ever really exist to the extent that you think it did? Take America, for example. In 1776 and then again 1861, tens of thousands of people in America rebelled against the government because they thought that the social covenant was being violated. Then, the late 19th century and early 20th century was the heyday of communism in America, with a massive labor movement that viewed the government as being allied with their enemies. Government-citizen relations got a bit better with the New Deal and then post-war prosperity, but huge numbers of people still rejected the covenant and rebelled against the status quo, fighting against the Vietnam War draft for example.
SSCReader
2hr ago
In the mind of the progressive the black man is a loyal slave to the black woman, subservient to her 'sexualized black body' and incapable of independent thought.
This does not comport with progressives I know. Black women are higher on the progressive stack than black men because black men are still men, you are much more likely to hear about how black men oppress black women, than progressives saying they think black men are subservient to black women. Though likely it would take a black woman to start that conversation because white progressives would see themselves as punching down if they were to critique black men generally.
Skulldrinker
3hr ago
Yes, he just didn't constantly bring up his Blackness.
sliders1234
6hr ago
I am down with it. It’s the one thing that would make communism better than capitalism. The ability to force your tfr higher.
If the choice is national suicide or communism then communism is better. And as we discussed in the taxes needed to fund a sufficient incentive it would basically take communism to raise that level of money.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
6hr ago
There is a huge difference between incentivizing children with a guaranteed payout based on what degree you have and getting into an accident that paralyzes you.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
18hr ago
I'm not sure there exists a statistic real enough if it's not in the direction you expect.
FiveHourMarathon
You can get anything here except red ink
22hr ago
I'm honored to be summoned.
Assume I know that what I really need to do is eat less, exercise more, and be happy. I agree.
But I'm now in a place I want to solve problems with money and convenience instead of hard work.
I'd view this formula more as a process: Spend Money To >>> Make Things Convenient So You Can >>> Eat Less, Exercise More, Be Happy
Target places in your life where you can use a little bit of money intelligently to improve your life outcomes, and don't be ashamed to spend it. Buy books, spend a little on going out in the right places, don't be afraid to buy a more expensive item when it's the right one.
Fitness wise, Home Gym Master Race is for me. I'm aware I could have bought about 1/5 of the things I have purchased and stuck with them, I don't really need a rack and barbells and kettlebells and a landmine and a moonboard and a rowing machine and an AirDyne bike. There are people who got fitter than me without most any of that. I often go months, or even years, barely using different items. But I come back around to them when I'm in the mood. Rather than having a barbell and forcing myself to stick to it even if I'm hating it, when I get bored of one thing I switch around. I climb for a while, then switch to working on my deadlift, then try to hit a KB pentathlon, etc. Obviously I'd be better at any one thing if I stuck to it, but I don't know that I would stick to it.
As for supplements for working out/QoL, if you're done breeding you should probably skip the minor leagues and just get on TRT at some point. I've fooled around with supplements and will probably continue to, but I'm aware that I'm nibbling around the edges while leaving the big money on the table. Because of that breeding thing, mainly. I did find that Collagen pills tended to help with minor finger injuries from climbing. The biotin in them also causes hair growth/health to improve, but for me it only seems to impact the unfortunate areas of hair (nose, pubic) rather than the ones I'd actually want.
I will say on a prior recommendation from TheMotte, I ordered a shit-ton (for me) of Modafinil online, and I've found it super useful in that I can just decide not to sleep one night, or power through a day when I didn't sleep the night before. I take half of one pill, 50mg, before an all night party or when I'm spending all night reviewing contracts. This happens maybe once a month, but when it does it's a lifesaver. But that's just me, I happen to have the opposite of whatever the alcoholism gene is, so the risk profile may be different for you if that doesn't hold, I know some people online report problems with it but they're using it a lot more than me.
Women don't want to spontaneously play pickup basketball because they will be criticised for doing it for 'attention' :/
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