Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mutant-aesthetic]

I’m actually really curious what environmentally-minded lefties plan on doing about the fact that people in Africa are having way too many goddamn babies

Like Macron just recently pointed out that this was a huge problem and a lot of lefties went bonkers and got really mad but the African population boom and all the resulting effects are going to be more or less catastrophic for the planet

[sadoeconomist]

Screaming ‘that’s racist!’ whenever anyone mentions it seems to be how they deal with a lot of issues

For the left, environmentalism is just thinly disguised anti-capitalism, and for the globalist elite, environmentalism is about creating a world state. Actually trying to protect the biosphere from potential threats is not something anyone in politics is really sincerely concerned with - kind of a frightening thought

I don’t know that high population growth is necessarily such a terrible thing, though, having more people in the world has a lot of positives to it that usually winds up outweighing the negatives, even for impoverished Africans. Most of the time the people who are concerned with population growth have a skewed zero-sum view of the economy that only lets them see more people as more mouths to feed, but especially in the future that won’t be the right way to look at it

[mitigatedchaos]

Setting aside that not everyone wants to live in Coruscant, that depends enormously on energy prices, and I’m not optimistic about medium-long-term energy prices.

Much less a bunch of chronically malnourished people don’t give you as many of the benefits of high population.  There’s a lot of argument about the heritability of intelligence, but it’s less controversial that it isn’t that hard to damage intelligence development with environmental factors.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mutant-aesthetic]

I’m actually really curious what environmentally-minded lefties plan on doing about the fact that people in Africa are having way too many goddamn babies

Like Macron just recently pointed out that this was a huge problem and a lot of lefties went bonkers and got really mad but the African population boom and all the resulting effects are going to be more or less catastrophic for the planet

[mitigatedchaos]

The plan is to migrate them all here, because developed nations have infinite money and structural reinforcement.  Or there is no plan.  Just cross your fingers and hope it all works out.

Hitler is the Satan figure of modern progressivism/liberalism.  Anything that even has the slightest whiff of something he might maybe have once possibly considered doing for a few seconds is tainted by association.  On top of that, there have been previous racist actions in the developed nations.  On top of that, it has been decided that the majority whites of the developed nations bear the original sin for racism.

Telling people to have fewer kids is worth celebrating by progressivism, but only if you’re telling white people.  Telling anyone else is vile racism.  (Even, of course, if it would lead to terrible conditions in majority-PoC countries.)

For the progressives that actually notice that you can only consume what is produced, and that while the wealthy have a pretty good-sized amount of money it isn’t anywhere near unlimited, embracing any discouragement of population growth is considered too dangerous, a slippery slope to eugenics and baby licenses.

…even to the ones that “jokingly” suggested swapping everyone’s babies to end “genetic chauvinism”, I would imagine.

Of course the Conservatives keep trying to kill abortion in those areas with their controls on American government aid funding, so mostly they don’t really care, either.  Catholics I’ve encountered seem to believe that God Will Provide or something, one of them talking about the Earth supporting a potential population of 100 billion.

Only a few villains see this as an issue, like you, me, and Emmanuel Macron.

[squareallworthy]

I believe the progressive line on this is “education and improved public health lower the birth rate.” And it’s also the neoliberal line and not too far removed from the libertarian line.

[mitigatedchaos]

@squareallworthy‘s reading is probably a fairer one, and it’s what they’re hoping for with the crossed fingers.

@mutant-aesthetic

To add on, it should be noted that the birthrate is falling there, even if it’s still crazy high and may end up exceeding the carrying capacity anyway.  World population is forecasted to stop growing somewhere at something like 9-11 billion.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mutant-aesthetic]

I’m actually really curious what environmentally-minded lefties plan on doing about the fact that people in Africa are having way too many goddamn babies

Like Macron just recently pointed out that this was a huge problem and a lot of lefties went bonkers and got really mad but the African population boom and all the resulting effects are going to be more or less catastrophic for the planet

[mitigatedchaos]

The plan is to migrate them all here, because developed nations have infinite money and structural reinforcement.  Or there is no plan.  Just cross your fingers and hope it all works out.

Hitler is the Satan figure of modern progressivism/liberalism.  Anything that even has the slightest whiff of something he might maybe have once possibly considered doing for a few seconds is tainted by association.  On top of that, there have been previous racist actions in the developed nations.  On top of that, it has been decided that the majority whites of the developed nations bear the original sin for racism.

Telling people to have fewer kids is worth celebrating by progressivism, but only if you’re telling white people.  Telling anyone else is vile racism.  (Even, of course, if it would lead to terrible conditions in majority-PoC countries.)

For the progressives that actually notice that you can only consume what is produced, and that while the wealthy have a pretty good-sized amount of money it isn’t anywhere near unlimited, embracing any discouragement of population growth is considered too dangerous, a slippery slope to eugenics and baby licenses.

…even to the ones that “jokingly” suggested swapping everyone’s babies to end “genetic chauvinism”, I would imagine.

Of course the Conservatives keep trying to kill abortion in those areas with their controls on American government aid funding, so mostly they don’t really care, either.  Catholics I’ve encountered seem to believe that God Will Provide or something, one of them talking about the Earth supporting a potential population of 100 billion.

Only a few villains see this as an issue, like you, me, and Emmanuel Macron.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

@wirehead-wannabe

There this rightist thing that keeps fucking infuriating me more and more, where they won’t state outright whether their bundle of policy and norm and social technology proposals is supposed to help everyone or whether it’s supposed to help the ingroup. Like, is this whole localism-ingroupism thing supposed to be pursuing the utilitarian optimum, or is it supposed to be pursuing ingroup benefit at the expense of everyone else, or is it supposed to be giving up on the rest of the world and saving yourselves or or or or or or I’ve never found any socially conservative rhetoric that didn’t leave me ruminating for hours on end trying to extract something coherent and driving myself insane trying to articulate what specifically it even is that’s nothing me.

How much freedom should others have?

It isn’t a trick question.

The reason it doesn’t seem like localism-ingroupism is either trying to completely solve for global utility optimum or global freedom or fuck-everyone-else-ism is because it’s trying to find a balance between competing concerns.

If I am responsible for the well-being of everyone, then I become obligated to destroy their cultures and replace them with something more effective/efficient, because I am not interested in paying for the side effects of their dumb cultural policies.  

If there is total freedom, then like Hell am I paying for everyone else’s dumb decisions, because there will be no end, ever, to the subsidy.  And if it ever seems like my shining army of economic robots has finally defeated the scarcity and delivered the desired level of wealth at the same time as full freedom?  They’ll just have more kids and push the per-capita wealth right back down again.

This localism-ingroupism places non-absolute limits on freedom and non-absolute limits on obligation, making it feasible to transfer wealth to the worse off by limiting the effects of cultural policies that would destroy or overwhelm the ability to create that wealth in the first place.

And, it says “well if you want to do something that stupid, then go do it over there and don’t make me pay for it”, so there is still even more freedom, but it’s decoupled from obligation.

And, if every country works for its own benefit but without randomly trainwrecking other countries in the manner of the Bush Administration, then the effect is somewhat akin to the invisible hand - different climates, economies, and populations have different needs, so it makes sense for those close to these needs who are acquainted with them to make the law.

(Thus I oppose a number of measures which various right-wing or more dominance-focused nationalists would support.  Seeing as I’m trying to summon a new ideology from beyond the veil, I’m not necessarily a representative sample.)