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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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If the economy doesn't get it's Dalits through Dalit reproduction, it'll get 'em through cramming Brahmins into jobs that they feel are beneath them, which is WORSE for stability and prosperity

"Homemaker" being a central example of such a job (even among the Dalits, humorously). Which is why the Western way to deal with this is through massive amounts of immigration (doesn't hurt that it's also intended to solidify political control in the countries that participate in this, of course, but because the party that doesn't benefit from being the "gibs" party never stops immigration when they are in power, it's obvious there's something else going on).

Of course, for the Brahmins that don't believe that occupation to be beneath them, is that because most of the divide between Dalit and Brahmin is fake (education is a bar so low anyone can pass provided they show up), today's Dalits can reasonably be tomorrow's Brahmins, which will compete with the children of today's Brahmins if nothing else changes. And even for the Brahmins that are smart enough to pass the merit-based education (which cannot be passed simply by showing up), there's no guarantee their children will be similarly inclined/talented, thus making them less likely to pick up the homemaking occupation (parents that care tend to want their kids to have better lives, and they have fewer guarantees than they used to).

And the problem is that, really, there are no good solutions to this problem at present (nor in the past; recall this was Plato's big deal). And even if you do come up with one, any one of the Four Horsemen (or a bad reaction to their shadows) can and will send it spiraling out of control.

You could farm that job out; doing this in a lab intentionally can give you exact control over who ends up in what caste- as a bonus, you can damage the lower castes in such a way that they never figure out that they've been damaged, perhaps through intentionally causing fetal alcohol syndrome as in Brave New World.

Making caste genetic (like India functionally did) solves that problem but creates some others (specifically, moral hazard in the Brahmins; negative effects from X-ism/X-supremacy are mostly caused by that lack of accountability/responsibility) that we don't want to go back to.

Making caste class-based (like Britain has) solves that problem but creates similar moral hazard if not managed properly (it never is, that's a law of nature).

Making caste sex-based (like in Afghanistan) is stable but suboptimal in terms of economic productivity (to the point where having any natural resources around that isn't goats and opium makes this untenable). This is also only stable when women are on the bottom, because (like in Afghanistan pre-US-withdrawl) the enemy can just promise the men better terms and conquer the society without a single shot fired.

Making caste age-based (like in the Western world) only works on the ages that aren't yet capable of realizing it's happening or organizing against it; that usually happens around 18-20, but can vary based on economic opportunity and other factors.

You could manage your economy well by using manufacturing jobs- not as unpleasant and a better utilization of people who are detail-oriented enough, just not driven to actually do something more useful- as a brake on social mobility. But if you do that, you have to be very careful about external factors; if you all of a sudden have a massive wave of migration (horseman: war) you're too incompetent to control (which... is also kind of inherent to being middle class) this finely tuned system will get thrown out of whack, as it has been in Germany (and other European countries, to a point).

Real Communism(tm) was promised as a panacea, but unless you have a leader that's literally goodness itself it's impossible to sustain it [not helped by the means in which it is achieved] (which, interestingly, is exactly what the Christian afterlife promises).

And so on and so forth. Some of this stuff you can fix through Tower of Babel high enough technology, but I have it on good word that the poor we will always have with us.