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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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TFR is directly driven by rural VS Urban and cost of living.

Those who live in rural areas have more kids.

Forcing Urbanization by importing immigrants who settle in cities rapidly increases both urbanization AND the cost of living, cascading TFR downwards.

You're making the problem worse and forcing the children produced by the native rural population to support a bunch of aliens when their old age comes in 20 years (you don't get to be the kind of skilled immigrant slected for in your 20s or even early 30s)

Ethnic Expulsions would be the best thing for birth rates.

Lowered cost of living and rapidly increased perception of risk correlates heavily with higher TFR. There's a reason over 50% of Gaza is under 18

I think you missed my point.

The arguments brought up above against immigrants apply every bit as much to children. All those kids are going to be taking up jobs, housing, etc. People should have just one kid at most to ensure that the good times keep rolling and the CEOs have to keep paying more and more.

Is this supposed to be a gotcha? Are you implying that you can't see any functional difference between the two options? Or are you just trying to bait them into saying something that you can label as racist/eugenicist?

I don't really care about baiting people on a pseudonymous Internet forum for wrongthinkers.

My question is simply, what is the distinction? You mention eugenics, but smart immigrants are actually much worse for the housing market because they earn more money and can pay more for housing.

If a population could mutually agree to all have fewer babies, while pensioners agreed to stop collecting to make way for new generations, it might be good; if that's somehow easier than the rich all agreeing to build as many houses as possible, and so on. But if your rivals/enemies/the lowest-functioning are having lots of kids, you don't want them to be the only ones. All those kids are going to be taking up jobs, housing, etc., but at least your kids are in that group, and having more kids means more success chances for your family overall. Importing a bunch of foreign competitors doesn't benefit you even genetically.

Or maybe I went off half-cocked, and I'm missing the point just like you say Kulak did. Seems kind of rude of me to have butted into the exchange and demanded an answer, really.

it might be good

I really don't think so.

But if your rivals/enemies/the lowest-functioning are having lots of kids, you don't want them to be the only ones. All those kids are going to be taking up jobs, housing, etc., but at least your kids are in that group, and having more kids means more success chances for your family overall. Importing a bunch of foreign competitors doesn't benefit you even genetically.

This doesn't really add up.

  • my neighbor having kids doesn't benefit me even genetically, no more than a guy immigrating from Nigeria

  • people making arguments like this against immigration are rarely in favor of something like open borders for e.g. law abiding 110 IQ immigrants, which leads me to think that the quality of immigrants is not the crux of the issue

  • If you want your family/clan to thrive, they need other people to have kids with. Who if not your neighbor?
  • Didn't you just say that smart immigrants are worse?
  • If you have a growing internal population, why do you need immigrants?

I don't actually have a problem with TFR > 2.1 or immigration. I certainly didn't say that smart immigrants are worse. My point is, all the anti immigrant arguments above apply to people having kids. They take jobs, they take housing, some I presume are good people. Yet the people making these arguments are probably not against people having kids.

Do you think that they have reasons other than the ones mentioned; or are they just stupid?

Ethnic Expulsions would be the best thing for birth rates.

This is the theory. Now, let us look at the example of countries that recently tried this recipe for growth.

Croatia Birth Rate

Serbia Birth Rate

Bosnia And Herzegovina Birth Rate

Civil war, ethnic cleansing and atrocities galore, but any rebound and growth is not evident.

Now compare and contrast Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Israel post 48...

That it sucked to be an Eastern or Central european post-communist seems to me the unique factor in those examples