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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28496 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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But that is exactly what is happening. People are going for immediate happiness over long-term satisfaction.

They're reaching for the local maximum by not having children.

While it might be true that for a majority of women, having children is actually the global maximum of satisfaction, there are also clearly many women for whom that is not true. It makes sense to support women's right to control their own reproduction so that women can make the choice on their own.

It also makes sense to pay attention to women material and social conditions so that they can do things that both make them satisfied and that is critical to the continued survival of society.

Just throwing our hands up in the air and saying that this is women's choice when it both seems contrary to their wishes and hurts society seems strange to me. Its not like we're asking people to give up all other pursuits and dedicate their entire life to just raising children, we're asking for 2-3 children per couple.

I mean, you still need to convince something more than a small sliver of the population that women basically choosing when they have children is hurting society. The problem this argument, societally, isn't so much left-wing college students at NYU, it's sorority girls at Alabama & LSU who are putting off kids almost just as much. Look at how quickly even an Alabama legislature had to scramble when one judge made that ruling on IVF.

Probably because the Alabama Republican's were hearing from their very own Trump-voting, pro-life, very conservative aunts, wives, and daughters to fix it, now.

Incentives decide this. Change the incentives and the behaviour changes. It could still be women's choice, just under a different incentive structure.

I think we should change the incentive structure so that conservatives no longer advocate for the limitation of the economic and personal freedoms of women. It would still be the men's choice, just under a difference incentive structure, so they no longer talk about how women just need to have fewer options than men for the good of society.

Do you believe I'm a conservative or that I'm arguing for any of that?

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.

I believe the world is better and worse, and that it could be just better. I won't refuse to analyse society because parts of the policies I have supported (and support) have had some negative downstream effects, I try to allievate those downstream effects.

I agree, but supporting women's having better material and social conditions is not incompatible with granting them more freedom to control their own reproduction. One can do both.

On that we agree then. What I object to is the framing of this being the result of what women "want", I don't believe it is.

That people are less satisfied than even under the previous bad system should be a massive wake up call.

That's only if you believe either reporting of life satisfaction in 2024 or 1954 (or whenever you think women would be happier if they just accepted it was their lot in life) is actually good data.

Instead I should just invent data that conforms to my preferred reality?

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.

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