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How does one measure's failure disprove the other measure's success? Especially since the measure that worked is still in effect, and is still being promoted - it's not like "countries" have total control over what's going on inside them, and are free from outside (and inside) influences.
Same question, as above.
Getting women to join the workforce, attempting to close the wage gap when they have (even though it primarily comes from men picking more lucrative careers and devoting themselves to work relatively more), and the denigration of motherhood in mass media, and all status-granting institutions.
Ok I think that was a combination of changes brought on directly by technology (women always did a large amount of critical labor within the household, farming or making clothes or similar, cleaning, physically maintaining the household, and as technology automated that having them work made sense) and changes brought on for direct political, eg progressive, reasons which in turn was enabled by technology. I believe little of that had the explicit aim of lowering the birth rate. There was, of course, the overpopulation panic, but I think the impact of that was very small compared to the global trend of progressivism and technology!
I don't get it. That is my entire argument - this is exactly how the measures to reduce the population are being implemented to begin with! "Progressivism" is being introduced through deliberate centralized efforts, and "overpopulation panic" has been it's feature for over a hundred years. Why are we assuming that this is just some magical "global trend" appearing out of nowhere, rather than it being an expression of these deliberate efforts?
Because it isn't a 'magic global trend that appeared out of nowhere', it's a central political/moral/philosophical development of modern history, something that basically all politicians, intellectuals, philosophers have been debating for the past few hundred years? You can read historical progressives and talk to existing progressives, and they're much more concerned about stuff like freeing women from domination than they are overpopulation.
And where do central developments of modern history come from, are they by any chance deliberately implemented?
I mean, it's only so long you can twirl mustaches and laughing like a me monocled villain, without people noticing. Also the reaction to fertility concern belies them supposedly not caring about it.
I honestly do not understand how one can have this perspective while also having read, like, multiple wikipedia articles or a single book. It indicates what appears to me to be a complete misunderstanding of history? Like, are you implying that the reason liberalism and progressivism exist is that it's a ploy by the elites to reduce the global population? I don't get it.
Yeah real life isn't a movie where the villains are indicated to the audience with artistic foreshadowing.
This is the same bad logic as "the conservative reaction to concerns about structural racism proves they're actually racist nazis". In politics, people on all sides have a lot of insane reactions to a lot of things, often without particularly deep philosophical reasons.
Uh... which wikipedia article (interesting argument, by the way) conclusively proves central developments of history aren't deliberately implemented?
Yeah, because you're used to not having to spell out the core assumptions of your arguments. I'd like you to actually do that.
Well, but speaking of listening of actual, historical, progressives, they did kinda sound like mustache-twirling villains.
Step me through it. If I react negatively against, say, "let's make abortion easily accessible", I think it's reasonable to conclude that I am against making abortion easily accessible. When I react negatively to the concept of structural racism, it's reasonable to conclude I disagree with the validity of the concept of structural racism (or at least the way it's applied to the current society). When do racist Nazis enter into it? Likewise, when I react negatively to "hey, let's find a way to keep fertility rates from crashing", I think it's reasonable to conclude I don't want to keep fertility rates from crashing. I don't see any flaw in the logic of my argument, only in the example you gave.
Just, like, a holistic understanding of history? Like, in one sense, progressivism and liberalism were very much deliberately implemented, propagandized, and put onto the masses by the elites. But they did that because of some combination of really believing it, it being in their material interests, and all sorts of other things. I don't think there's room for 'womens rights movements exist mostly because some people (who?) wanted to do population control'
You didn't answer:
Which was the most important question. I strongly disagree with what I understand you to have said so far, but I still don't really understand what your core point is.
Most directly, they just pattern-match it to a 'thing conservatives say' and then react negatively because it's a thing conservatives say. That's most of it.
They imagine, because politics makes people insane, that you want to force women to have children and not ever have abortions and be submissive religious housewives. If you made them choose between a fertility rate of 1.2 and 2.0 they'd choose 2.0, but people generally don't have reasonable preferences about society as a whole, so they just don't think about it
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