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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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Refer to the other comment I just made, if such practises had large negative externalities then even my libertarian tendencies would be overwhelmed and I'd do my best to stop it from happening.

I currently contend that negative externalities (namely pissing off people and whatever weight the baby has) aren't significant enough for me to care in a vacuum, but if the human race was about to go extinct I'd certainly raise a fuss. (No, current sub replacement population growth in the West isn't at that level of concern, and likely never will be).

So, the life of a baby is contingent on many factors, but the primary value is what it's owners assign to it, such as a $100 bill is just a particularly aesthetic arrangement of dyes on fiber except for the fact it accrues value by other means, with the intrinsic value being of both being quite small. If you're burning your money, that's something that raises my eyebrow but I won't stop, similarly if you're committing infanticide of your child. I don't approve of other people doing either to things that don't belong to them.

As for population ethics, that's a concern primarily for standard utilitarians, I recognize that repugnant conclusions exist under their axioms, but I simply don't see much relevance under my own idiosyncratic worldview.

To a degree I consider it akin to the issues of designing a perfect voting system, if it turns out that all possible designs necessarily have tradeoffs on one front or another, then tough luck, either swallow the bitter pill or reformulate your needs. I'm largely agnostic to small changes as long as I'm not getting Dutch Booked in the process.