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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33352 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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I don’t think it’s a good idea. It’s not either sex that wouldn’t go for it, it’s the broader edifice of liberalism.

This is a subject that turns avowed conservatives into communists. Expecting powerful social enforcement to stamp down inequality is the most archetypal authleft solution. Given any reasonable level of freedom, it’s going to lose out to structures which work with rational self-interest instead of against it. I’m not willing to throw out enough liberties to make up the difference.

Then again, I suppose I must be on the good side of this inequality. I’ve got my job, my prospects, and my girlfriend I met in college. No property, yet, but that can change. Despite what other respondents might suggest I’ve never dated a girl who was a crazed gold digger or a sociopath. So perhaps it’s just my privilege telling me to let freedom ring.

This is a subject that turns avowed conservatives into communists

And avowed communists into conservatives. If hypocrisy exists, it goes both ways.

Expecting powerful social enforcement to stamp down inequality is the most archetypal authleft solution.

"Authleft"? I would just "left" or even centre sufficies, given that thinking reducing (economic) inequality is beneficial, is by no means restricted to tankies.

I don’t follow. How does it make communists into conservatives? What tankies are coming out and campaigning for monogamy? Maybe there are examples from post-Mao China…

Enforcing a preferred social structure from above is quintessentially authoritarian. That’s true in the case of wealth inequality, and it’d be true if applied to marriage.

It makes tankies into conservatives when they argue in favor of a (sexual) free market, with winners, losers, and those with absolutely nothing.

Do you want to eliminate welfare for those who can't compete economically?

Eliminate? No.

Reduce? Probably.

Reform? Definitely.

I’m not exactly a card-carrying libertarian. I do, however, think that sexual market controls go too far.

What sexual market controls do we have? Or are you speaking hypothetically?

Hypothetically since I was answering this question:

Is anyone here even against something like a really strongly socially enforced monogamy?

I am against it, in theory, because I don’t see how you get to that level of social enforcement without trampling individual liberties. “Market controls” probably isn’t quite the right analogy, depending on who’s doing the trampling. It’s definitely not a description of the relatively laissez-faire onanism we have currently.

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