Outlaw83
2mo ago
From the outside, the problem is all the supposedly "better" right-wing candidates fail more spectacularly, at least in the US in elections that aren't in blood-red areas.
Or at least ones that people of your political persuasion would agree with.
But J.D. Vance underran the entire Republican ticket in Ohio in 2022. Blake Masters lost a winnable Senate race. All of the other politicians somewhat friendly to your sort of arguments are in deep red seats a corpse could win reelection too. Hell, I wouldn't say Mark Robinson is on your side, but he's a populist right-winger of a sort and he's losing by 10 in North Carolina. Maybe I can give you DeSantis, but he fell on his face on the national stage.
Obviously, this would not be the real result, but they polled a Harris-Vance race, and it was 59-37 Harris. That's with the guy among current politicians, I'd argue, is the most normie-friendly of your set.
Trump's celebrity + Hillary running + COVID helping Trump like it did every other incumbent politician (only he was incompetent enough to blow the COVID boost basically all incumbents got worldwide) gave a sheen on Trump's political popularity that gave you guys the idea that people liked your ideas than they really did.
If the choice for the median voter is an HR lady stomping on their face forever telling them to put their gender in their bio and calling people by their chosen name or whatever you guys are selling, until you find somebody far better at selling yourself to normies, not online weirdos (I say this as an online weirdo of another political ideology), the HR ladies are going to keep winning, at least in the US.
Yes, with a dip in the economy, a Brian Kemp/Joni Ernest ticket in 2028 could totally win if Trump eats one too many Big Mac's, but that's not what the online right want
Outlaw83
2mo ago
Except some currently high skill American residents are the descendants of low skill immigrants and refugees. If you actually want long-term dynamism and growth, you actually have to roll the dice on people without the right papers and hope for the best. Worked pretty well the first 250 years or so.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
I mean, one should be able to look at the crime rate of Springfield, Ohio over the next few years and see if things shift that much. Of course, history shows that at least w/ the first generation of immigrants, crime is likely to go down.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
Yeah, Detroit had a bad run with a combination of the capitalistic incompetence of the Big Three ownership + corrupt leadership + the general Sun Belt migration.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of the most economically dynamic and innovative and growing regions of the US are far more diverse, with the places that are less diverse mostly slowly dying out. This includes red states too - Houston, Miami (weird how the amount of Haitians wasn't a worry for all the VCers and blockchainers a few years ago), etc. There aren't a ton of super-white areas of the country with massive growth. Even a place like Nashville is diversifying as it grows.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
he one issue of course is whether the people of springfield were asked about whether they wanted mass migration
Sure they did. They got to vote in elections. They just got outvoted and we have free movement within this country, and it turns out, it's easier to resettle migrants in poorer places than richer places for obvious reasons. Less waste of government funding by NGO's placing them in a smaller city than San Francisco or New York.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
So, there's some talk downthread about Springfield, Ohio, Haitian immigrants and such. Putting aside I guarantee in the late 19th century there was in fact plenty of examples of massive population changes, even in more rural parts of the country. Ironically, many of the same people who put forth those population changes are now the ones scared of immigration, so in 50 years, as is American tradition, these Haitian immigrants will be saying we shouldn't be letting in the Bangladeshi's or whomever.
But, the interesting thing is the questions about "why" anybody puts up with them and well, at least according to local business owners, because they're more likely to show up to do the job and not fail a drug test than the righteous pure American's currently living there.
https://youtube.com/watch?si=nke3DETnGvcaAHE4&v=FA80DOcJnu8&feature=youtu.be - Youtube video
https://x.com/otis_reid/status/1833578554778374462 - Quote from the factory owner.
Of course, 2016 J.D. Vance would probably agree with this factory owner about the get up 'n' go of this socioeconomic group of people instead of defending them from economic competition from supposedly mentally deficient Haitians.
Now, to quote a lot of Twitter, it is true the Haitians are ruining that community's traditions, by actually getting to work and not showing up high.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
As a partisan Democrat, my issue with Joe Biden was he could not win the election. He can still do the job of President, at the very least no worse than 2nd term Ronald Reagan, he just couldn't be President & run an effective campaign due to his age.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
Right - the US Draft is like the Queen's/King's Assent in UK. Sure, in theory, they could veto something, but the monarchy would be effectively over the next day in an overwhelming vote supported by strong majorities of every party.
Anything that would require a draft would be met with unequalled volunteers anyway. I realize this part of the Internet thinks all of the Red Tribe thinks the military is all woke and ran by transgender furries and woke anti-racist generals, but the actual cause of the downtown is the best ecoonmy for low wage workers since the late 90's and much higher actual standards of recruits. But, if China or Russia actually did do some wild attack or whatever, and we needed recruits, they would come.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
Now, it's local front page news that'll disappear in a day or two if nothing else new pops up, instead of part of the wider culture war and part of the Presidential election.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
unavoidable
I mean, women are figuring out how to avoid it, it turns out.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
The true problem for 'it's inherent for women to want to have babies' arguments isn't PMC girlbosses in suburban Virginia or whatever people may think are destroying society. It's that even in places like Iran or Saudi Arabia, where women continue to be very socially conservative in a variety of other ways - marrying early, openly religious, and so on, are also happily controlling their own reproduction instead of just jumping into babies as quickly as possible.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
I think you're actually correct, in the general sense that fairly socially conservative people support contraception, IVF, et al (see Alabama quickly changing the law), plus a general libertarian-leaning view about abortion among a lot of Republican's (see pro-life referendums losing by large margins even in Kentucky) but stuff like that is a disproportionate view among the 'coastal elite' of conservatives/right-wing rationalists.
See the general reaction to JD Vance, even among a decent amount of Republican's.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
Putting aside the weird "save the white and Asian race from dominance by the scary blacks and browns" at the end, I think here's the issue why the people in this thread aren't getting it.
There's the population of women.
There's the population of women that are OK w/ the pain of childbirth (or maybe they're lucky it's less painful for them) and the worries, because they enjoy being a mother that much more, and so on.
Then there's the population of women that thinks the pain is too much, doesn't want children, whatever.
It used to be the latter population was basically forced to be mothers, because that was their only option in society, outside of spinsterhood. Now, they don't, or maybe instead of having five by 27, they have one at 37.
Nobody among the latter group is saying the former group should stop having children. They just don't want to be forced (or "forced") to have more children by the state or society. Group B always existed in one form or another - they just never had a voice before, and if you're used to a society where all women either legitimately or have to act like they want to be mothers, it can sound fake or like some plot or whatever.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
It made it much worse among a very small segment of people who became obsessed with it, as opposed to being front-page news the day after it was found.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
I mean, by 2024 standards, a lot of 1900 Western Europe was indeed a "shithole."
Outlaw83
2mo ago
Again, I'm sure stuff like lack of day care or the current housing situation and so on is the reason for some of the current drop in fertility rate. I just think it's a much lower percentage than people want to claim. Because again, there are European countries who support women having children much more and it hasn't made a dent either. Sure, all of what you said is why were' a 1.65 instead of 1.82 or whatever, but it's not why we're at 2.3.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
I mean, I'd actually bet that in 2024, the life of say, a 19-year old female psychology major at a mid-tier state school (aka, the average American college student) is actually less hedonistic in many ways the median non-college educated 19-year old in the United States, working a low wage job.
Also, well I'd question the actual type of person you described actually has the qualities you describe of if it's all anecdotal just-so stories based on cultural preference, the reality is by time those rural farm kids hit 40, it's extremely likely the supposedly hedonistic college kids are ahead of them by every standard that matters, including a lot of hedonistic measures, outside of those that increasingly smaller amounts of social conservatives care about deeply - ie. how many kids you have.
Now, I do think in reality, the actual best preforming person is probably the type of person much of this comment section would despise - a serious female high school athlete who goes to college but stops playing athletics and ends up being the type of corporate girlboss that has her eggs frozen at 40, but is married and successful economically, and indeed, probably doesn't have much of a hedonistic life unless not having as many children as you can is now considered hedonistic.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
Sure, as you said above, if you wanted something closer to German-style tracking when it comes to education, I could see the arguments for that. But, that's not saying, "hey, you're 14, go find a job because we're not going to even attempt to educate you anymore" like some here seem to prefer.
But, I think frankly, even in that world, the vast majority of workplaces aren't going to train a bunch of 15-year-olds to do work they can probably find somebody older to do at the same wages, without the extra worry, plus again, even by the standards of 30 years ago, a lot of those jobs aren't economically efficient to do in the US, and again, that's a good thing we're productive enough doing other things we don't need our 14 year olds working and instead, have the economic output that we can educate even the least-wealthy on the off-chance a few of them out of a hundred become something more than a lifetime factory worker like they would in your reality.
Also, a not-so-secret part of why even in a world where having college degrees being mandatory for jobs were illegal, a lot of workplaces would still prefer college-educated people because it shows them you can follow directions and finish something, even if the directions and tasks were possibly not related to the job.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
I mean, I think the timing in the US is more coincidental and proof of other things going on, like the dramatic drop in teen pregnancy and general increase in access to good contraception. As I've said elsewhere, the overall birthrate slope lines up with pre-Depression rate continuing to drop, outside of the Baby Boom being an outlier. It's increased far recently, which may be a cultural thing, or like I said, things like IUD's being given to teenagers essentially eliminating a lot of accidental births, but the general shift was already happening when our grandparents were still children.
For example, in Iran, the percentage of women in the workforce reached a peak of 20% of the workforce (which means by simple math, a lot weren't) in the early 2000's, and hasn't significantly increased since then. Despite this, outside of a small 0.5 TFR rise in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution, the birthrate continued to drop from it's heights to about 2.0 in 2002, but despite women in the workforce not increasing and by some measures, decreasing TFR has continued to drop.
Now, what has changed is education. The literacy rate has quadrupled, primary & tertiary school attendance went up a lot more. Also, and I think this is highly undervalued - maternal mortality rate has also dropped by 2/3 in the past 20 years from 45 to 15 - so from quasi-Third World to nearly first world numbers. Oh, and also, contraception usage is ~75%.
Sure, entering the workforce is probably part of it, but I use countries like Iran as an example as if a quasi-authoritarian religious state can't really pull this is off if they educate women for rational reasons, even if they have limited access to the workforce by Western standards, then nothing in the the Western world is stopping this.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
Yes, it worked in a time when America was a less productive country doing lower quality work that was so less advanced an uneducated 13-year-old could pull it off.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
I mean, part of "raising their child like an average Nigerian" is a 200x higher infant mortality rate, so yeah, even putting aside differences in culture or economic status, that's a pretty giant one. If Nigeria had Swedish maternal mortality rates, you'd probably get big drops in TFR as children became a more precious thing.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
If you think the society where women's access to contraception was a better one for women, then, yes, you're a social reactionary, even if you may favor some social programs.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
I look at the actual actions of people, which show that women aren't freely choosing the option of having more kids and working less, when they have the option instead of just working and having fewer children, even in societies giving far more direct help than the US does.
Yes, in the cases of well-off people, they can do that, because again, they can pass the cost when it comes to time and energy of raising children to other people, like well-off people have forever, but that's impossible for the modern American middle class, unless ironically, we import like 30 million immigrants to work at the equivalent of 1889 Irish nursemaid wages.
But even then, from what I've read here and other places, that still basically exists in India for middle class women and birthrates are dropping there as well.
Outlaw83
2mo ago
This is just an extension of the weird rationalist view that everybody hates school and it's pointless.
You bring the median American 13-year-old from 1924 to live the life of a median American 13-year-old in 2024 and they'd kill their own mother to stay in 2024, so it's not as if the previous generations loved working.
Plus, no, it'll mostly be technological advances. The reason why we don't need 13-year-olds to work at the factory anymore isn't Mexican's, it's that for there to be a cost-effective factory in the US, your workers actually need to be fairly intelligent and efficient, even without a college education.
It's more about getting apolitical people out to register more than anything else, if I had to guess.
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