This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Romania managed to double it's TFR through decree 770. It's not totally implausible that white South Africans could have had a 5+ birthrate with similar policies- it was higher than Romania's in the mid 60's, which is probably high enough to make the bantustan plan work.
Of course the South African white population weren't going to undergo decree 770, Romania did it because it was a dictatorship. But sudden very large increases in TFR are what happens when you ban contraceptives. Wiki says that the white South African fertility rate was 3.1 in 1970, which if banning contraception had the same effect as decree 770 would give a fertility rate above 6. Of course contraception was probably somewhat less prevalent to begin with because of an already high fertility rate, so the effect would probably be more mild, but even a tfr of 4-5 would give a lot of breathing room for the Boers to figure out how to adjust their population to increase the white percentage.
As an aside, it's interesting how the apartheid government never even tried to adjust population. Not through white immigration, not through population control programs for blacks, not through attempts to boost the native white fertility rate. Obviously it's a hard problem, but it's interesting that they didn't even try.
It seems like governments mostly focus on solving acute problems rather than long-term progressive ones. The payoff for fixing birthrates wouldn't come for at least twenty years after the fact, only once the added batches of children begin reaching maturity, while the costs would begin immediately. Governments are typically run by people who only expect to be in power for short durations, so for them it's better to deal with staving off coups and electoral defeats. That means focusing on who gets the $$$ and making the right noises.
There's also a weird tendency for normies to deny all matters pertaining to biology in pretty much any context. Possibly, this due to narcisism. Or maybe it's about optimizing for personal social advancement over coordinating against civilization threats. It is as though they sit at the very precipice of oblivion maintaining attitudes of perfect nonchalance. As long as they do not fall in, they are content; and those who do fall in do not have the luxury of further action. That's essentially what happened to the white South Africans, and probably all other fallen societies.
More options
Context Copy link
The apartheid government did try to limit birthrates through population planning policy from 1974. But attempts were mainly messaging; my suspicion is that many Afrikaner leaders were deeply religious Protestants and would have resisted more radical methods to limit black fertility. Promoting white fertility would have also been tough, because the country had pretty porous borders and contraception would also presumably still be available to the black population, who could obviously sell it.
I’m also very skeptical of the decree 770 approach, birth rates began falling again soon after as people began circumventing restrictions and altering behavior. Also I think incentives are very different in a communist society, if the state strongly recommends you do something it’s the singular route to professional/social advancement. The threats the state can levy are typically weaker in a capitalist society.
In terms of big mistakes for the Boers, first place is not being in favor of more European immigration even if it meant diluting Afrikaner power and second place is probably not retreating to the Western Cape en masse from the late 1960s. What white South Africans needed to pursue was a two state solution on non-bantustan terms. Hand over the majority of the country, retreat to Western cape, sign single market and economic integration. This would probably have been internationally acceptable until the mid/late-1970s. I agree that by the time the serious anti-apartheid movement reached its height in the late 1980s there was pretty much no alternative course. The problem was they were an agrarian people and didn’t want to leave all that good land in the rest of the country.
Well yes, I don’t think decree 770 would have worked as well in South Africa as it did in Romania, but given that apartheid fell apart when it did due to a demographic time bomb for a regime that did, at the end of the day, have moral scruples, a rise in birthrate could have bought the Afrikaners enough time to find a third option between ‘let the kafirs in charge’ and ‘cartoonishly evil enough to make us blanch’. And banning contraception probably would raise the birthrate enough to make a difference. Ultimately communist Romania is our only datapoint for direct comparison, and that’s unfortunate because it’s apples to oranges for a variety of reasons. But the large birthrate decline over the course of the seventies among SA whites is probably due almost entirely to contraception becoming more widely available, and IIRC the example of similarly-low-state-capacity Latin America shows that legal restrictions on contraception really affect how quickly it penetrates the population, so I think at the very least a South African decree 770 for whites would have kept Afrikaner birthrates above 3 for much longer, and in a best case scenario for continued boer dominance results in a baby boom over the seventies that allows apartheid to find a third option when it becomes clear it’s not a tenable long term system in the eighties.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link