← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Walter Yannis
Thread ID: 15299 | Posts: 29 | Started: 2004-10-13
2004-10-13 09:59 | User Profile
[URL=http://www.catholicexchange.com/vm/index.asp?art_id=25593]Catholic Exchange[/URL]
Secularism's Demographic Conundrum
10/13/04
One by one, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and now Newsweek are declaiming that our long-term problem is not too many people, but too few people. Long blinded by the myth of overpopulation, they have only lately seen what we at PRI espied from afar, that birth rates were falling so far and so fast that depopulation was inevitable.
Now it is upon us, and they cry out in alarm: Newsweek magazine, in its September 27 issue, carried a major story by Michael Meyer on the "Birth Dearth." Meyer begins by saying "Everyone knows there are too many people in the world." Wrong. Many of us in the pro-life movement have known for years about the demographic disaster of plummeting birthrates and aging populations that loomed before us like an iceberg in the North Atlantic.
He then describes the crowded urban world in which he lives (by choice), as if this somehow excuses his former belief that the planet was teeming with people. All it proves is that there has been a global exodus from the countryside into the cities, which has left many rural areas virtually empty of people. This is a well-known and non-controversial fact.
What Meyer breathlessly claims as new ââ¬â that people around the world are having fewer and fewer children ââ¬â is in fact a decades-long trend. Fertility rates have fallen by half since 1972, dropping from six children per woman to 2.9. The UN has been reducing its population predictions regularly for the past two decades. While it currently projects that the world's population will "continue to grow from today's 6.4 billion to around 9 billion in 2050," this is probably too high. Plummeting birth rates will probably knock another billion or so off of that number in the years to come. And once the peak is reached, we are in for a roller coaster ride of frightening dimensions, as the bottom literally drops out of the world's population.
Europe will be losing 3 to 4 million people a year by mid-century. Asia will be close behind, as the voluntary childlessness of the Japanese is matched by the forced pace of population reduction due to China's one-child policy. China's population will peak at 1.5 billion in 2020 or so, and then dramatically shrink. By mid-century, Europe and Asia could be losing a quarter of their populations each generation. Mexico, as the head of that country's National Population Council recently told me, is having barely enough babies to maintain the current population, and fertility rates continue to drop. While birth rates in Africa remain high, the AIDS epidemic continues to claim new victims, and Africa's long-term demographic destiny is in doubt.
Economic growth and population have always been closely linked. If you take away a significant portion of the population, the economy ââ¬â retail sales, housing starts, investment, the stock market, you name it ââ¬â is almost certainly going to go into a tailspin. Meyer admits that "The potential consequences of the population implosion are enormous," but he doesn't have a clue as to what to do about it.
Sure, he speaks blithely of how "enlightened governments" like "France and the Netherlands [are] institut[ing] family-friendly policies that help women combine work and motherhood, ranging from tax credits for kids to subsidized day care." But his claim that "Scandinavian countries have kept birthrates up with generous provisions for parental leave, health care and part-time employment" is simply not true. The nations of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway are dying just as surely as their less "enlightened" counterparts to the south.
The hard fact is that such programs, beloved of radical feminists because they discourage marriage and encourage women to work outside of the home, have done nothing to reverse the birth dearth in Scandinavia ââ¬â or anyplace else, for that matter. You can put all the women to work in the factory or the office, or you can encourage marriage and stay-at-home moms and have a birth rate above replacement. It is highly unlikely that you can have both. Women are unlikely to be trapped into the classic double bind ââ¬â several children and a full-time job ââ¬â by such relatively minor inducements.
Meyer also claims that "Environmentally, a smaller world is almost certainly a better world, whether in terms of cleaner air or, say, the return of wolves and rare flora to abandoned stretches of the east German countryside." This is exactly backwards. People don't cause environmental degradation, poverty does. And it is prosperity that provides the financial and human resources to deal with it. A depopulated world is likely to be a poorer world, and a poorer world is likely to be a dirtier world. Does Meyer really believe that the elderly are going to give up their entitlements to pay for expensive environmental clean-up programs?
But the biggest omission of all is Meyer's failure to address the obvious inanity of continuing to promote abortion, sterilization, and contraception in a dying world. As long as the "women's health care" that we provide the developing world consists largely of disabling their reproductive systems, we can hardly expect the birth rate to bounce back.
Steve Mosher is the president of Population Research Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to debunking the myth that the world is overpopulated.
2004-10-13 10:42 | User Profile
Have you already seen this thread on mine, Walter?
[SIZE=4]"Population crash awaits South Koreans too - they have 1.17 children per woman "[/SIZE]
[url]http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15090&highlight=korea[/url]
Petr
2004-10-13 10:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr]Have you already seen this thread on mine, Walter?
[SIZE=4]"Population crash awaits South Koreans too - they have 1.17 children per woman "[/SIZE]
[url]http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15090&highlight=korea[/url]
Petr[/QUOTE]
1.17 kids per woman. Now that's pitiful.
Mosher indicated in the title that these trends indicate that "secularism" has a "demographic" problem, but the article didn't elaborate on that at all.
I think it's pretty clear what it meant, though. Those communities with strong religious moral underpinnings are the ones who are winning this demographic race. The future would thus appear more religious and less secular than the present.
Make hay while the sun shines, friends. The future belongs to the fertile.
Get in there and reproduce!
Walter
2004-10-13 13:27 | User Profile
According to the CIA Factbook, half of Mexico's overflowing population is under 24.6 years of age. Fertility rate is 2.49 children per woman (2004 est.). Likewise, the CIA factbook doesn't show a problem for the over-populated South Korea (North Korea still has a high birthrate). Wait a few more years to see if there really is a problem. 3rd-world countries can easily reverse any insufficient birthrate just by easing off the Family Planning breaks.
And, there's no danger of humans going extinct as the population is increasing in Africa at history/world-record levels. The world's population is still rapidly increasing.
The only race that faces a population crises is whites. I see nothing that is going to stop the implosion of the white race. Secularism/paganism is the death of whites. From here comes such things as sexual preferences for women and delusions of guilt which prevent whites from having enough children.
What compounds the problems for whites is that only white countries have high immigration rates. Mexico and South Korea aren't being flooded by immigrants, so when they decide to have more children, there won't be any non-natives standing in the way.
What do you pagan WNs have to add to this thread?
2004-10-13 14:23 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]3rd-world countries can easily reverse any insufficient birthrate just by easing off the Family Planning breaks. And, there's no danger of humans going extinct as the population is increasing in Africa at history/world-record levels.
It's been awhile since my college sociology demographic studies, but I seem to recall that the African/3rd World high birth rates are washed out by their high infant mortality rate and low life expectancy. They have a high number of children because they know not many will survive into older age. A demographic characteristic of all the third world, I believe. I haven't looked at the actual numbers, though.
The only race that faces a population crises is whites. I see nothing that is going to stop the implosion of the white race. Secularism/paganism is the death of whites.
I couldn't agree with this any more. Living in the far suburbs of a major American city, the only families I see with number of children above replacement level are definitely Christian church-goers. 'Course I realize that's just my own observation and limited to an area of the country that is more religious and conservative than the rest, but I have to think it is a general truth.
I think it is God's judgement on Europe and America, leaving us to the consequences of our own arrogant pride. I think the best thing we can do as men is pray, find a good wife and have many children.
2004-10-13 16:08 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]It's been awhile since my college sociology demographic studies, but I seem to recall that the African/3rd World high birth rates are washed out by their high infant mortality rate and low life expectancy. They have a high number of children because they know not many will survive into older age. A demographic characteristic of all the third world, I believe. I haven't looked at the actual numbers, though.
"Population in the least developed countries (LDCs) will triple by 2050" - United Nations Population Fund. In black Africa, the infant mortality rate is about 10%, that hardly puts a dent in the very high birthrate. Life expectancy is short in Africa, but long enough to have a high number of children.
I couldn't agree with this any more. Living in the far suburbs of a major American city, the only families I see with number of children above replacement level are definitely Christian church-goers. 'Course I realize that's just my own observation and limited to an area of the country that is more religious and conservative than the rest, but I have to think it is a general truth.
That's exactly my observation, as well.
I think it is God's judgement on Europe and America, leaving us to the consequences of our own arrogant pride. I think the best thing we can do as men is pray, find a good wife and have many children.[/QUOTE]
I concur completely.
2004-10-13 16:43 | User Profile
[COLOR=DarkRed] - " The only race that faces a population crises is whites. I see nothing that is going to stop the implosion of the white race. "[/COLOR]
I mostly agree with your other points, but do you really have push your defeatism like that?
In ancient Israel, prophet Isaiah asked God in his vision, whether the apostate Israel would be entirely destroyed by pagans:
[COLOR=Blue]6:11 Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate,
6:12 And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.
6:13 But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.[/COLOR]
Or, as my personal English Bible puts it, "the holy seed is its stump."
Even though the tree itself may be felled, a remnant shall survive that will be the source of a new growth.
This "holy remnant" idea then controlled Isaiah's thinking throughout his book. Christian Whites, who are seeing God's judgment beginning to descend on the apostate majority of White race, should hold onto same kind of determination.
The "holy seed" must survive.
Petr
2004-10-13 17:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]It's been awhile since my college sociology demographic studies, but I seem to recall that the African/3rd World high birth rates are washed out by their high infant mortality rate and low life expectancy. They have a high number of children because they know not many will survive into older age. A demographic characteristic of all the third world, I believe. I haven't looked at the actual numbers, though.
You should know enough to question these pinko college courses somewhat. More precisely, Third World birthrates are high because of the different, and practically higher, role people in traditional cultures place on children.
I couldn't agree with this any more. Living in the far suburbs of a major American city, the only families I see with number of children above replacement level are definitely Christian church-goers. 'Course I realize that's just my own observation and limited to an area of the country that is more religious and conservative than the rest, but I have to think it is a general truth.
I think it is God's judgement on Europe and America, leaving us to the consequences of our own arrogant pride. One thing sociologists do agree on that I think is fairly close to the truth is that the number one factor in declining birthrates is the emancipation of women. When women have competing interests besides the family and children, naturally enough birthrates always go down.
This ties into of course into the subversive influence of feminism on women, which of course MacDonald closely ties to the influence of the Frankfurt School and other jewish intellectual influences on our culture.> I think the best thing we can do as men is pray, find a good wife and have many children.[/QUOTE] One certainly needs a lot of prayers to find a good wife in this day and age.
2004-10-13 17:07 | User Profile
[COLOR=DarkRed] - "In black Africa, the infant mortality rate is about 10%, that hardly puts a dent in the very high birthrate."[/COLOR]
Black race is not immune to this infertility phenomenon, even though it may the LAST ONE to go through it.
In at least two African countries, death rates (due to AIDS) are already higher than birthrates, and the population is dropping:
South Africa:
[COLOR=Purple]Birth rate:
18.38 births/1,000 population (2004 est.)
Death rate:
20.54 deaths/1,000 population (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sf.html#People[/url]
Botswana:
[COLOR=Purple]Birth rate:
24.71 births/1,000 population (2004 est.)
Death rate:
33.63 deaths/1,000 population (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/bc.html#People[/url]
In Lesotho it is already close:
[COLOR=Purple]Birth rate:
26.91 births/1,000 population (2004 est.)
Death rate:
24.79 deaths/1,000 population (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/lt.html#People[/url]
In addition, among many black nations in the Caribbean area, where life is already more civilized, and therefore modernist attitudes more dominant, you don't even need AIDS to make the population growth to stop soon:
What these Caribbean countries are today, Africa will be tomorrow:
Puerto Rico:
[COLOR=Purple]Total fertility rate:
1.91 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rq.html#People[/url]
Jamaica:
[COLOR=Purple]Total fertility rate:
1.98 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/jm.html#People[/url]
Trinidad and Tobago:
[COLOR=Purple]Total fertility rate:
1.77 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/td.html#People[/url]
Guyana:
[COLOR=Purple]Total fertility rate:
2.06 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/gy.html#People[/url]
Guadeloupe:
[COLOR=Purple]Total fertility rate:
1.91 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/gp.html#People[/url]
Martinique:
[COLOR=Purple]Total fertility rate:
1.79 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/mb.html#People[/url]
Barbados:
[COLOR=Purple]Total fertility rate:
1.65 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/bb.html#People[/url]
Netherland's Antilles:
[COLOR=Purple]Total fertility rate:
2.02 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/nt.html#People[/url]
St. Vincent and the Grenadines:
[COLOR=Purple]Total fertility rate:
1.9 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/vc.html#People[/url]
Dominica:
[COLOR=Purple]Total fertility rate:
1.98 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/do.html#People[/url]
Bermuda:
[COLOR=Purple]Total fertility rate:
1.9 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/bd.html#People[/url]
British Virgin Islands:
[COLOR=Purple]Total fertility rate:
1.72 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/vi.html#People[/url]
Anguilla:
[COLOR=Purple]Total fertility rate:
1.74 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/av.html#People[/url]
There you have it - the black race is not immune to childlessness.
When the birth control drugs become widely available among pagan Blacks, I fully expect them to misuse them as recklessly as they do other drugs as well.
Petr
2004-10-14 01:57 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr]There you have it - the black race is not immune to childlessness.
Your references are mostly not black African countries. Try places like Niger: Birth rate:48.91 births/1,000 population (2004 est.) Death rate:21.51 deaths/1,000 population (2004 est.)
Nigeria: Birth rate: 38.24 births/1,000 population (2004 est.) Death rate: 13.99 deaths/1,000 population (2004 est.)
Cameroon: Birth rate: 35.08 births/1,000 population (2004 est.) Death rate:15.34 deaths/1,000 population (2004 est.)
Congo: Birth rate: 44.73 births/1,000 population (2004 est.) Death rate: 14.64 deaths/1,000 population (2004 est.)
Countries like South Africa are expected to be a bit of an exception because of the greater white influence and presence. Still, South African black women probably are having an average of at least three kids, more than enough to preserve the South African black population while the whites are quickly dying out.
Take your example of Jamaica, their pregnant women come to the US to have their babies (and then the family usually stays). Jamaica has a migration rate of -4.92/1,000. Compare that to their death rate 5.93/1,000. Almost as many people move out of the country as die, and those leaving are the young people. Most of your examples are misleading in similar ways that obscure the real black reproduction rate.
Incidently, even with Jamaican women giving bith in the US, Jamaica's birth rate is still about three times higher than the death rate.
When the birth control drugs become widely available among pagan Blacks, I fully expect them to misuse them as recklessly as they do other drugs as well.[/QUOTE]
I don't know why birth control drugs are not already widely available, assuming you're right about their limited availability. I don't see them choosing to use them, or not being able to use them effectively if they have them. Birth control is a tool. Someone has to be motivated to use it, and use it effectively. Whites are motivated to use it through the percieved need for two-income families and the sexual preferences that are raised to whatever level needed to get most women into the work place where having children would get in their way.
2004-10-14 09:10 | User Profile
[COLOR=DarkRed] - "Countries like South Africa are expected to be a bit of an exception because of the greater white influence and presence. Still, South African black women probably are having an average of at least three kids, more than enough to preserve the South African black population while the whites are quickly dying out."[/COLOR]
Oh boy, you really are persistent in your defeatism, now are you?
The DROP of South Africa's Black population is entirely due to the huge AIDS epidemic and appalling mortality. They are fighting against it by distributing condoms - which in its turn will make their birthrates sink.
The White population of South Africa still has modestly positive birthrates.
So, if we would want to nitpick, we could say that right now the White population of SA has a GREATER POPULATION GROWTH than Blacks.
(I am not arguing that Whites in South Africa wouldn't be in a really tight spot right now)
[COLOR=DarkRed] - "Incidently, even with Jamaican women giving bith in the US, Jamaica's birth rate is still about three times higher than the death rate."[/COLOR]
That is only because their "boomer generation" has not yet started to die off.
Their birthrates by themselves are by no means impressive.
[COLOR=Blue]16.94 births/1,000 population (2004 est.) [/COLOR]
You've also got to be able to interpret these numbers.
For example, the most populous country in Africa:
[COLOR=Blue]Nigeria: Birth rate: 38.24 births/1,000 population (2004 est.) Death rate: 13.99 deaths/1,000 population (2004 est.)[/COLOR]
That makes for a population growth of about 2,4 % a year.
BUT, in the beginning of the 1990s, Nigeria's annual pop. growth was more than 3 %! It has dropped A LOT during the last decade.
Back then, Nigeria's birthrates were probably on the same level as REALLY backward Niger is now:
[COLOR=Blue]Niger: Birth rate:48.91 births/1,000 population (2004 est.) Death rate:21.51 deaths/1,000 population (2004 est.)[/COLOR]
Even Nigeria has lost about 30 % of its population growth during the last decade!
If this trend continues (and it can very well become even more drastic), its population growth will be just about 1,4 % by the end of this decade.
I confidently dare to declare that EVERY AFRICAN COUNTRY has already passed their highest point of population growth. From now on, it's only a way down.
Petr
2004-10-14 10:19 | User Profile
[QUOTE]I confidently dare to declare that EVERY AFRICAN COUNTRY has already passed their highest point of population growth. From now on, it's only a way down. [/QUOTE]
A factor here is continued western assistance. I wonder if the time will come when the first world will make a consicous decision simply to write off Africa.
Africa's average IQ = 72, and so a dignified poverty is the best that Africa can hope for. But even that would require allowing whites to run things, as they did in the once-prosperous Zimbabwe. But that would be psychologically unacceptable to black self esteem and racially suicidal for whites with their overweening need for grand displays of racial selflessness, and so the thing just can't work.
At some point whites will have to choose between (1) pouring precious resources down a rathole onto infinity, or (2) confront the fact that blacks can't maintain (much less develop indepdently) a technoligical society without whites running things. But since that is impossible in the long due to African racial pride and white racial stupidity, the only realistic choice is to leave Africa to its fate.
The population of Africa would sink like a stone without westeran aid. It's ugly, but it's reality, unfortunately.
2004-10-14 11:12 | User Profile
You know Walter, I really don't want to be needlessly hostile towards Blacks, or deny their humanity.
I've read that countries like Eritrea and Botswana have managed to keep their societies together - although Eritrea has suffered through its war against Ethiopia, and Botswana from a horrendous AIDS rate.
Petr
2004-10-14 17:47 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr][COLOR=DarkRed] I mostly agree with your other points, but do you really have push your defeatism like that?
I'm not big on propaganda. I'm a realist. The Iraqi resistance would have been a much greater challenge of Saddam were a realist instead of believing his own propaganda that the Iraqi military could repel a US attack. Being unrealistic just makes someone less successful.
Maybe if South African whites faced the reality that they couldn't keep control of South Africa forever, they would have constructed a homeland from part of South Africa for themselves while they still had control.
A man's strategy needs to be based on a sobor and honest view.
The candidates facing certain defeats in upcoming elections can keep their chants "We're going to win!"
This "holy remnant" idea then controlled Isaiah's thinking throughout his book. Christian Whites, who are seeing God's judgment beginning to descend on the apostate majority of White race, should hold onto same kind of determination.[/QUOTE]
A remnant will be all that's left of whites in short order.
I'm sure God will always preserve a remnant of his people. But, that doesn't mean you're not going to be a stranger in your own land.
2004-10-14 18:02 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr]The DROP of South Africa's Black population is entirely due to the huge AIDS epidemic and appalling mortality. They are fighting against it by distributing condoms - which in its turn will make their birthrates sink.
I know South Africa has a whole as a slightly postive birth rate. But, how do you know whites themselves do? Just 50 years ago, whites in South Africa were a quarter of the population. .
What happens when AIDs has an easy cure? No longer will AIDS be killing, no longer will Africans be avoiding unrestrained sex or using condomns.
Their birthrates by themselves are by no means impressive.
As I indicated before, birth rates in North American black countries are lower in part because of young women coming to America to have their babies. It's not because they discovered responsible reproduction. I also expect that in North America that whites are applying much more population control pressure on black countries.
[COLOR=Blue]Nigeria: Birth rate: 38.24 births/1,000 population (2004 est.) Death rate: 13.99 deaths/1,000 population (2004 est.)[/COLOR]
That makes for a population growth of about 2,4 % a year.
It's like compounding interest. Still, I'm not arguing that there will be moderation in black birthrates. The experts still predict continued rapidly increasing black populations. And, I predict further declines in the already low reproduction rates of whites.
I confidently dare to declare that EVERY AFRICAN COUNTRY has already passed their highest point of population growth. From now on, it's only a way down.
I won't disagree with that. But, it's still very high. Essentually all non-white countries have high birth rates or their governments have gone to great lengths to ease massive over-population.
No matter how you try to make it look, the percent of people who are white is rapidly declining and will soon be minorities in their home countries. You know that's real.
2004-10-14 18:23 | User Profile
[COLOR=DarkRed] - "What happens when AIDs has an easy cure? "[/COLOR]
There's not going to be any cure. AIDS is constantly mutating and actually only getting started.
[COLOR=DarkRed] - "As I indicated before, birth rates in North American black countries are lower in part because of young women coming to America to have their babies. It's not because they discovered responsible reproduction. "[/COLOR]
Do you have any statistics to support this phenomenon you suggest, instead of just some anecdotal evidence?
Or are you simply refusing to accept (for whatever reason) the FACT that Black birthrates are going down and fast?
Quite frankly, I think that you have a slightly superstitious attitude towards darker races and their supposedly boundless ability to reproduce.
(which I think is related to that another self-hating stereotype popular among Whites, that Blacks are always superior lovers)
Also, I think you have already internalized some of the baby-killer terminology when you talk about childlessness as "responsible reproduction."
As Michael Hoffman puts it in here:
[COLOR=Blue]"Our sickness has grown to such an extent that some elements of the white separatist movement have come to equate large families with a Third World mentality, when in fact, before circa 1930, white couples traditionally had huge families."[/COLOR]
[url]http://www.zundelsite.org/english/zgrams/zg1997/zg9701/970116.html[/url]
[COLOR=DarkRed]- "No matter how you try to make it look, the percent of people who are white is rapidly declining and will soon be minorities in their home countries. You know that's real."[/COLOR]
Of course I am aware of that this will happen if the current trend continues. I simply refuse to be dominated by defeatism and consider it inevitable.
Do you know anything about the art of psychological warfare? Even so many racialist Whites are really doing the work of their enemy when they spout this "the coloured wave is coming and there's nothing we can do about it" line.
We are constantly being bombarded with globalist propaganda, that one beige world is inevitable, and I believe that this brainwashing has effected even WNs more than they'd like to admit.
I personally intend to crusade against this kind of attitude.
(I have not read Jean Raspail's "Camp of the Saints" myself, but based on what I have heard about it, I cannot comprehend how so many WNs can appreciate that kind of misanthropic, utterly defeatist tripe so much.)
Petr
2004-10-14 18:33 | User Profile
[COLOR=DarkRed] - "I'm a realist. The Iraqi resistance would have been a much greater challenge of Saddam were a realist instead of believing his own propaganda that the Iraqi military could repel a US attack. Being unrealistic just makes someone less successful."[/COLOR]
I don't think your estimation of the situation in Iraq is very "realistic."
I don't think that hardly any Iraqi, Saddam least of all, thought that they could repel a frontal American attack, should it ever come - so they saved their energy for this guerilla fighting that we are now witnessing right now.
You should never, ever confuse pessimism and cynical despair with "realism."
Petr
2004-10-14 18:57 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr]You know Walter, I really don't want to be needlessly hostile towards Blacks, or deny their humanity.
I've read that countries like Eritrea and Botswana have managed to keep their societies together - although Eritrea has suffered through its war against Ethiopia, and Botswana from a horrendous AIDS rate.
Petr[/QUOTE]
I don't think I'm hostile toward blacks. I genuinely wish them well. But when viewed objectively, the chances of their pulling themselves up from misery to a dignified poverty are nil.
They're dumb, Petr. They can't maintain under their own steam the infrastructure a modern society with clean hospitals and working utility systems demands.
It's sad, and I don't relish the thought, but that's just the way it is.
Reality on reality's terms.
Walter
2004-10-20 02:08 | User Profile
Birthrates are down principally because of socioeconomic changes. In premodern agricultural societies, an incentive exists to have large families (e.g., the 'boy' can help out on the farm). Large families were an economic plus. On the other hand, in postindustrial consumer cultures, which are heavily aesthetically oriented, such incentives no longer exist.
Consumerism and the Brave New World
Critiquing consumerism is hardly an original undertaking. Indeed consumerism has been subject to so much intellectual criticism that few peopel today are willing to admit that they practice it -- even as they continue consuming. Most critques of consumerism, however, miss the mark rather badly. Probably the most familiar criticism is that consumerism represents a crassly materialistic way of life as opposed to a more aesthetically oriented way of life that would be more fulfilling. People should quit buying so much junk and instead appreciate great literature, fine art, and classical music. But this argument actually demonstrates how complete a hold consumerism has on our thinking. As we discussed in chapter 4, consumerism is itself based on an aesthetic orientation. It may be a crude aestheticism -- consumers, for example, buy the latest popular music, which will be forgotton within a few years, rather than the enduring classics -- but it is nevertheless aestheticism.
This point can also be seen in the way individual critics generally evaluate North American and European culture. Intellectuals who argue that consumerism is crassly materialistic usually express a preference for Europe over North America, because they see European culture as less materialistic. But this comparison actually proves my point. North American and western European societies are in fact both consumer cultures; the patters of consumption just differ slightly. North Americans tend to consume things: their homes are cluttered with electronic gadgets, and their garages are filled with gas-guzzling SUVs, Western Europeans, on the other hand, tend to consume experiences: they spend their money on expensive food and elaborate vacations. European consumerism may be, in some sense, slightly more sophisticated, but it is nevertheless consumerism.
This illustration of how thoroughly an aesthetic orientation pervades our thinking can serve as a powerful introduction to my adaptation of Tocqueville's analysis to consumerism. I want to argue that the advertising culture that drives consumerism amounts to a form of subtle tyranny through propaganda because of the way it isolates people, and that ultimately consumerism becomes an unavoidable, all-encompassing way of life.
We have already to some extent discussed the isolating effect of consumerism in chapter 4; the consumer economy tends to isolate people from others by creating an obsession with individual choice and privacy. Individual in a consumer society greatly resent anyone interferring with their own private consumption and individual "lifestyle." This has two critical results. First, as we discussed in chapter 4, attempts to maintain standards of public morality are regarded as intolerable impositions of some people's values on others and are eventually discarded. Second, people tend to isolate themselves physically from others who do not share their personal "lifestyle" choices by, for example, moving to suburban areas and shunning public transportation.
Here is where consumerism perfectly fits Tocqueville's analysis. Although people in present-day Western societies are taught to think that this increase in choice and privacy is profoundly liberating, it actually leaves people utterly susceptible to the psychological manipulation of an advertising culture. This can indeed be seen in the phrase that I just used: "people . . . are taught to think that this increase in choice and privacy is profoundly liberating." The obvious question here should be, who precisely teaches this? The answer, of course, is the advertising industry, which drives consumerism. Individuals in an advertising culture are subject to an unrelenting barrage of propaganda, comparable to, and indeed possibly greater than, that of the most tyrannical governments in human history. As we have dicussed, this advertising is often not so much an attempt to get people to buy specific goods as to indoctrinate them into thinking of consumption as a way of life. As our example above indicates, this program has been spectacularly successful: not only have people in present-day capitalist societies thoroughly internalised the idea that people should express oneself through consumption (as we discussed in chapter 4), even people who attempt to critique consumerism think in these terms.
One result of this situation is that individuals in a consumer culture are intensly self-conscious in a way that strikingly parallels the paranoia of people living under twentieth-century totalitarian systems. For example, the intense pressure placed by advertising on teenage girls and young women to look impossibly thin has resulted in a virtual epidemic of bizarre eating disorders. Somewhat less drastically, the constant pressure found in a consumer culture to project a certain image affects even those who think of themselves as rejecting consumerism, because projecting the wrong image can harm career opportunities.
More generally, it can be argued that, entirely apart from the psychological effects of advertising, consumer culture eventually develops into a web of control that is virtually impossible to escape, capturing even those who reject its aesthetic ethos. This happens in two ways. The first is tthat a consumer society continually restructures itself in such a way that goods which were at one time luxuries, or even curiosities, become necessities. The obvious example here is, of course, the automobile. Over the past half-century, most North American societies have developed in such a way that it is virtually impossible to live without a car. A similar process has occurred with inventions such as telephones, refrigerators, and even personal computers. Perhaps more important, however, is that as the aesthetic ethos of consumerism relentlessly increases the pace of life in capitalist societies, people must consume more and more in services, including the services employed to make things that they might otherwise make themselves. Fast food is the most obvious example, but this type of consumption includes everything from routine automobile maintenance to clothes. For all its obsession with personal "choice," consumer culture offers little real choice about consuming; the only way to avoid copious consumption is quite literally to drop out of society.
The tyrannical quality of consumer culture was captured very presciently by Aldous Huxley in his 1932 novel, Brave New World. The Brave New World is essentially consumerism taken to its logical conclusion. Children in his society are brainwashed from birth into thinking that the sole purpose of human existence is consumption, meaning not just of material goods but of experiences ranging from the latest music to innumerable sexual relationships. Any attempts to ask about a higher meaning to life are strongly discouraged -- not by crude police-state methods such as throwing people in jail, but rather by the intensification of advertising-like appeals. People are taught that if they feel the slightest bit unhappy or angry, they should immediantly take a euphoria-inducing drug called "soma." When people began to die, they are whisked away to a treatment center where they are given massive dosages of "soma" and then euthanised; every effort is made to ensure that people will not become sad or engage in metaphysical questioning when confronted with their own mortality.
Huxley portrays a society where everyone lives a life of aesthetic consumption, and he shows the ultimate logic of such a society. Not only are the people in this society not free, they aren't even human. The residents of the Brave New World are manafactured in test tubes. This is done so that no aesthetically unappealing individuals can ruin the beauty of the consumer paradise. Here Huxley most impressively anticipated the ultimate direction of consumerism. In a society based on the idea of aesthetic self-expression, children will eventually come to be regarded as one form of such expression, one way of being a beautiful person is to have beautiful children, and the use of genetic engineering to create "designer children" becomes the next logical step. Consumerism, or rather a culture of aesthetic self-expression, logically leads to a society where only beautiful people are allowed, to a totalitarian tyranny of the aesthetic.
The End of Consumerism
"Whether or not consumerism amounts to an inferior way of life, or even a subtle form of tyranny, the most important critique of consumer culture is that it is not sustainable, that is, it really can't continue for very long without self-destructing. The most widely known version of this argument is, of course, ecological. Environmentalists argue that at the pace they are using up natural resources and polluting the earth and air, modern consumer societies will have rendered the planet uninhabitable within a century. This argument may be true, but ultimately I think it is weak. It can be critiqued by reference to the central issue in this book: it seems to me that people who make this argument underestimate human creative capacities. It is quite possible to imagine humans creating technologies that are not harmful to the natural environment. Indeed, that is precisely what has happened over the past generation: Western societies have dramatically reduced levesl of air and water pollution while becoming much wealthier. (Even environmentalists admit that most of the ecological problems of the next century are likely to come from developing countries, that is, countries in the process of becoming consumer societies.) A similar situation exists with regard to natural resources. During the 1970s it was thought that the world would run out of oil within a century at the most; now the world's known oil reserves are vastly greater than was the case twenty-five years ago. What has happened is that new technologies have made it possible to find and use oil reserves that could not be used or even discovered a generation ago. The argument that consumerism is self-destructive because it is ecologically unsustainable is therefore at least questionable.
Where consumer culture definitely is self-destructive, however, is one the level of human relations. This is true in three ways. First, as we have just discussed, as the logic of expressive individualism works itself out, both individual competance and bonds between people are destroyed to the extent that society slides into something like the subtle tyranny discussed above. This situation is unsustainable because such a society will eventually reach a stage where it cannot even produce what it consumes. This tendency can already been seen in present-day Western societies. There is powerful evidence that in present-day North America, younger people today are significantly less competant than their parents. Both analytical reasoning skills and general knowledge have declined dramatically over the past generation, while levels of psychological disorientation have risen significantly. As a result, relatively few young North Americans have the skills necessary to sustain the existing information economy. Most computer programmers in the United States, for example, are from India. Similarly, most engineering students at American universities are from East Asia. There has been a tendency to celebrate this increasingly prominent role of Asian-Americans as a victory for "diversity," but what this celebration hides is the fundamental fact that people born and raised in the United States seem to be incapable of doing such work, and the more fundamental fact that a society cannot indefinitely rely on immigration to fill its most demanding jobs, because eventually it will exhaust the pool of available immigrants.
Economists Robert H. Frank and Phillip J. Cook examine a second way in which the consumer economy is unsustainable. Frank and Cook argue that recently the United States has increasingly become a "winner-take-all" society. In a "winner-take-all" economy, markets are increasingly structured on the model of entertainment and sports. These types of markets have two primary characteristics. First, rewards are determined by relative rather than absolute position; in a race, the winner gets the same prize regardless of his margin of victory. Second, rewards tend to be concentrated in the hands of a few top performers; most actors, for example, are relatively poor and indeed spend most of their lives unemployed, while a few top stars make millions of dollars. Frank and Cook point out that these types of markets have been proliferating in American society over the past two decades, and account for much of the increase in inequality during that time. They are critical of such markets because such markets are extremely inefficient. The intense scramble for the top positions in a competitive society results in a huge waste of economic resources. Talented individuals who a generation ago would have been content to make a comfortable living as, say, electrical engineers, now attempt to become celebrity lawyers -- unsuccessfully in most cases, resulting in a situation where many highly intelligent people do routine legal work requiring considerably lower skill levels, and simultaneously depriving the engineering profession of the talent it needs. Ultimately, such a persistent waste of resources and misallocation of talent will prove economically destructive.
Frank and Cook tend to present these economic changes as being primarily the result of new technologies, but a very strong argument can be made that they are actually the result of the shift to an expressive individualist culture. As we have discussed, such a culture will be highly competitive and will tend to disproportionately reward "beautiful people," which will in turn result an excess of individuals striving for a few glamorous, high-paying positions at the top of the occupational pyramid.
The third destructive aspect of consumer culture, and undoubtedly the most important, is that as the logic of an expressive individualist culture works itelf out, Western societies are failing to reproduce themselves. When the fundamental goal of human existence is aesthetic self-expression, children are likely to get in the way. Or, perhaps even worse, children themselves may be regarded as a form of self-expression, as we mentioned above. Leaving aside the possibility of "designer children," less dramatic manifestations of this mentality can be ssen in the way many North American parents relentlessly push their children toward high achievement (something that undoubtedly contributes to the high levels of psychological disorientation mentioned above). In either case, a complete lack of interest in children or an obsession with creating perfect children is not likely to result in large families. As a result, birthrates in Europe, and to a lesser extent in North America, have been so low for a generation that in the absence of high levels of immigration, these societies will literally cease to exist within a couple of centuries. This problem does not apply as immediantly to the United States and Canada, because these countries do indeed have high levels of immigration, and their populations are actually growing, but most European countries are starting to experience population decline. In any case, it is important to understand that immigration cannot be a long term solution to this problem, because as immigrant grops begin to assimilate to the dominant expressive culture, they too will cease having children -- or, if they do not assimilate to the dominant culture, they will eventually make up a larger and larger proportion of the population and themselves become the dominant culture. In either case, the critical point is that a culture of expressive individualism cannot, even in sheer demographic terms, last very long.
What is even more important that the possible eventual disappearance of Western societies is the most immediate problems of an aging population. Within thirty years, all Western societies, including the United States and Canada but more drastically Europe, will have a huge population of older people and a much smaller population of younger people trying to support them. Furthermore, because of the destructive effects of the consumer culture on both technical skills and psychological stability, this younger population will almost certainly be less productive. Thus Western societies will be facing a situation of severely deteriorating economic well-being."
Murray Jardine, The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society: How Christianity Can Save Modernity From Itself (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004)
2004-10-20 13:55 | User Profile
Fade:
Interesting article.
Certainly the economic and cultural arguments against consumerism are correct, as far as they go. There is a positive disincentive now to have children in our post-industrial consumer economy, unlike in earlier agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies. This sends a clear signal to couples to limit the number of children they have. Modern technology makes contraception mostly safe and reliable, and so we stop reproducing ourselves, because those are the signals we get. That all gets expressed in the complex of signs and symbols we call culture.
But obviously the signals are distorted since in the long run (not so terribly long, on an historical scale) this is economically unsustainable.
When viewed from the grand perspective, in the long run negative population growth (NPG) is a calamity for any nation that "achieves" it in economic terms. NPG limits future ecnomic growth (I read somewhere that in order to have high per capita income you first have to have some capita) and creates terrible distoritions in terms of workers per retiree. There are big environmental problems, since paradoxically enough economic growth helps countries deal with pollution. The military is weaker because of fewer young men for the ranks. Fewer geniuses are born, so technoligical innovation slows. It destroys the extended family (in China, the new generation has a hard time imagining what an aunt, uncle, cousin of niece is) and thereby atomizes society and makes it vulnerable to state encroachments and ruinous state regulation of the free market. All of these things are very bad, and ultimately lethal, economic consequences.
We see then that NPG is failed economics.
But here we run into the BIG FAILURE of modern economics: the inability to quanitify social capital.
What is "social capital?" Social capital is the health of the society within which the free market economy adheres. All of the things I listed above are hard to quanitify in economic terms. How does one place a dollar value on society's health, in terms of strong extended families, clean air and water, a strong military, and patriotic citizenry? These things are referred to nowadays as "social capital."
In theory, social capital is widely accepted now among economists. [URL=http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14175]Adam Smith himself taught [/URL] that the free market can only work under certain social conditions; e.g. people must be generally honest and fulfill their contracts. Most folks must be sober and hardworking. Religion is a GOOD THING because it encourages socially responsible behaviour, without which the free economy could not function. Smith also took for granted that economies were national in scope and were aimed at the satisfaction of needs within defined territories. Adam Smith saw the economy as adhering in the broader social organism. In modern parlance, Adam Smith recognized the vital role of social capital.
But here's where modern economics goes awry. It can't quantify this ephemeral (but also clear existant) social capital, and so IT SIMPLY IGNORES IT in its key calculations. Economists are saying "we know social capital exists, but we can't quantify it well, and so therefore we must exclude it completely from our models." It's the shocking non sequitur at the heart of our economic system. It is the source of much madness.
For example, our economists can measure the velocity of goods and services flowing through the economy, so they want to do whatever they can to increase that. But what if, for example, advertisers sell sugar to kids making them fat and increasing childhood diabetes? That never shows up on the GDP figures. In fact, the fact that kids have diabetes now ADDS to the GDP, since they're now consuming medical services they might not have purchased previously. Our economists ignore the value of healthy kids and celebrate the "growth" of the medical services sector. Or take as another example clean water. Drinking water from the tap doesn't register on the GDP figure, and so our economists ignore its value. But they do measure the value of bottled water purchases.
The same reasons apply to the NPG problem. We can't quantify in dollar terms the value of large, extended families where mom stays home to raise the kids (homeschooling is another great social benefit that doesn't show up on the models), and so we ignore it. No, that's not even it. We don't simply ignore it, but rather we take the next step in illogic and postively claim that it doesn't exist.
But that's patently nuts. As we've seen, the cost of the bottle of Diet Coke I'm drinking includes the unquantifiable costs of, for example, the health of the workers and their satisfaction with their social lives. Just because we have a hard time quantifying these things most emphatically does not mean that they're not part of the price of a Coke.
With this in mind, let's examine the prototypical childless Yuppie couple. It's clear that they are, as a group, freeloaders. Just in terms of social security and medicare, they will have paid only part of those costs during their working lives. In fact, in our pay-as-you-go system, they only will have paid for the older generation - less than half of the total costs. The other, larger part of the true expense of their retirement is the cost of raising the children who would in turn pay into the system during their retirement. But they got away with not shouldering any of those costs. Clearly, then, our childless Yuppie couple are trying to get something for nothing. They want the benefits of social security in their old age, yet they want to fob off on other people the costs of raising the next generation of workers.
And their freeloading doesn't stop at social security and medicare. All during their lives they are enjoying the benefits of social capital - safe neighborhoods created and sustained by healthy families, a flourishing economy driven by the prosepect of new producers and consumers coming on line - while avoiding the costs of creating these things themselves. That $20 jar of French mustard registers in GDP, but the value of Mrs. Yannis sewing a button on an aging sweater doesn't. Thus in the eyes of the average economist, the Yuppie is "productive" while Mrs. Yannis is the freeloader, when clearly just the opposite pertains.
It is a classic case of cost externalization, and the law encourages it. But the [URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735534748/qid=1098280859/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/102-2879949-9763349?v=glance&s=books&n=507846]entire law merchant is based upon the notion that all should carry their own costs[/URL]. The failure to recognize the value of social capital in designing the law creates an opportunity to externalize costs onto others legally. Instead of spending their money on the needs of their children, childless couples spend it on expensive vacations, fancy cars, and the restaurants. This insanity is part and parcel of the race to the bottom we call "consumerism," as everybody scrambles to internalize the benefits of a strong society while trying to fob off on others the costs of maintaining the same.
This will continue until we're able somehow, someway, to recognize the value of social capital in our everyday thinking about economics.
There are a number of proposals to prevent the externalization of social captial costs. As to social security and medicare, one possible solution would be to make the number of children people have and raise a factor in determining benefits. This would send a strong signal that there are costs to retirement and they are expressed in having children. There are other schemes for monetizing the costs of pollution, such as freely tradable carbon dioxide quotas.
I've posted several threads under Distributism on the [URL=http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15350]Mondragon [/URL] Cooperatives of Spain. In economic terms, Mondragon is an attempt (a very successful attempt, I should add) to ensure the internalization of social costs. The founder of Mondragon, Father Arizmendi, probably didn't think about it in those terms, but I really believe that's what he struck upon.
There is third way between the horrors of socialism and the spiritual desolation of consumerist capitalism: [URL=http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12726]Distributism[/URL].
Walter
2004-10-20 14:21 | User Profile
Good post, Walter. A couple of questions:
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]With this in mind, let's examine the prototypical childless Yuppie couple. It's clear that they are, as a group, freeloaders. Just in terms of social security and medicare, they will have paid only part of those costs during their working lives. In fact, in our pay-as-you-go system, they only will have paid for the older generation - less than half of the total costs. The other, larger part of the true expense of their retirement is the cost of raising the children who would in turn pay into the system during their retirement. But they got away with not shouldering any of those costs. Clearly, then, our childless Yuppie couple are trying to get something for nothing. They want the benefits of social security in their old age, yet they want to fob off on other people the costs of raising the next generation of workers.
To the contrary, I'm sure if they are like most they probably would just like the option to opt out of the whole social security thing. It's not like any of us are going to see those benefits we've paid for all these working years anyway. Scrap the whole system if'n you ask me.
And their freeloading doesn't stop at social security and medicare. All during their lives they are enjoying the benefits of social capital - safe neighborhoods created and sustained by healthy families, a flourishing economy driven by the prosepect of new producers and consumers coming on line - while avoiding the costs of creating these things themselves.
They don't create those things for themselves, but they certainly pay for them. In the case of living in a safe neighborhood, probably pay through the nose. How can they be freeloading if they are paying through the nose for these things? To my mind, a freeloader would be someone enjoying these benefits of society, while being unemployed and not even trying to gain work. But if one is working and spending their own money, I don't see how anyone, government included, should be telling them how they can spend their own hard-earned dollar.
In my opinion, social capital would dramatically increase if we could just axe about 75% of the federal, state and local governments and bound them within their respective constitutional duties.
2004-10-20 20:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr]There's not going to be any cure. AIDS is constantly mutating and actually only getting started.
There have been many huge breakthroughs in medicine in the last century. AIDS can now be controlled by drugs. I wouldn't say that there's not going to be a cure or at least immunization against it.
Do you have any statistics to support this phenomenon you suggest, instead of just some anecdotal evidence?
I already pointed to Jamaica's emigration rate, which is nearly as high as the death rate. They're coming to America to have their babies, if they're close enough to come.
Quite frankly, I think that you have a slightly superstitious attitude towards darker races and their supposedly boundless ability to reproduce.
Experts still predict a long-term exploding black population. It has nothing to do with supersitition. It's what they say much reason to doubt it.
Also, I think you have already internalized some of the baby-killer terminology when you talk about childlessness as "responsible reproduction."
Not at all. By responsible, I mean first of all not having children you cannot support. But, yes, it also means adjusting the number of children that are needed. Whites need more. Black Africa needs less.
[COLOR=Blue]"Our sickness has grown to such an extent that some elements of the white separatist movement have come to equate large families with a Third World mentality, when in fact, before circa 1930, white couples traditionally had huge families."[/COLOR]
Pagan WNs don't have enough children. I doubt it has anything to do with them thinking big families are so 3rd-world. It's that they don't believe in family and their women don't believe in mothering.
Do you know anything about the art of psychological warfare? Even so many racialist Whites are really doing the work of their enemy when they spout this "the coloured wave is coming and there's nothing we can do about it" line.
I haven't said there's nothing that can be done about it. I'm saying that we need to prepare for it.
Most whites have the attitude that whites control things, that they will continue to control things. They think that whites are in such absolute control that any suffering of non-whites is the fault of whites. And, the day will come where whites are a minority. It has already happened in several states. And, whites will increasingly be a smaller minority.
What you call defeatism is what I call looking outside the hole at what's coming. Whites don't have control and maybe it would be good for them not to suffer under that delusion.
If you're on the Titanic and it's sinking. You have two choices, the Bush way which is painting a rosy picture on everything. "It's just a little leak. It can be fixed." Or, the defeatest way which is "The boat is sinking... let's build lifeboats."
2004-10-20 20:33 | User Profile
Tex:
Your points are well taken.
The point that I'm trying to make isn't whether social security is a good thing or not.
The point is that there are social costs to a couple not having children that are truly staggering, although again they're hard to place a dollar figure on.
Think of the time and money you spend on your kids. For me, its not even just that. It's my whole life. And that of my wife. In contrast, the childless Yuppie couple invests their life's energies into themselves. There are some exceptions, but several of my old friends are in that category, and it isn't like they decided to forego children so they could live like Trappist monks.
In terms of the level of self-giving to the future of the nation, it isn't even close. I'm invested in the future of our nation, they obviously are not.
Imagine, God forbid, that I have to send my kids to fight to defend our nation. My kids are going, the childless couple's kids aren't going because they don't exist. That's our pain, and their gain. And then when, God willing, my kids make it back in one piece, they'll have to work to pay the state pensions and medical costs of the childless Yuppie couple. Again, my kids' pain, my childless friends' gain.
I respectfully submit that those of us with children shoulder enormous costs in terms of time, emotion and money that make our childless Yuppie couple look very selfish indeed.
The problem, I think, is that we have a hard time imagining the magnitude of these social costs. I respectfully submit that you're missing just have very large they are.
Walter
2004-10-20 20:37 | User Profile
[COLOR=Red] - "AIDS can now be controlled by drugs." [/COLOR]
Drugs can only make the progress a bit slower, which only gives irresponsible gays and Negroes more time to spread it around before they finally fall down.
[COLOR=Red] - "I already pointed to Jamaica's emigration rate, which is nearly as high as the death rate."[/COLOR]
THEIR FERTILITY IS GOING DOWN INCREDIBLY FAST, just believe me on this one.
[COLOR=Blue]"The 1995 contraceptive prevalence rate was 64, and the total fertility rate stood at three children per woman."[/COLOR]
[url]http://www.paho.org/English/SHA/prfljam.htm[/url]
Their average fertility has dropped by one third in 9 years!
And it was definitely even much more than three around 1970s and 1980s, and Jamaicans emigrated in even larger numbers back then.
Petr
2004-10-20 20:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Imagine, God forbid, that I have to send my kids to fight to defend our nation. My kids are going, the childless couple's kids aren't going because they don't exist. And then when, God willing, my kids make it back in one piece, they'll have to work to pay the state pensions and medical costs of the childless Yuppie couple.[/QUOTE]
I appreciate your points, Walter. But wouldn't the easiest solution here be to just end the state pensions and medical costs?
2004-10-20 21:12 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Tex:
Your points are well taken.
The point that I'm trying to make isn't whether social security is a good thing or not.
The point is that there are social costs to a couple not having children that are truly staggering, although again they're hard to place a dollar figure on.
Think of the time and money you spend on your kids. For me, its not even just that. It's my whole life. And that of my wife. In contrast, the childless Yuppie couple invests their life's energies into themselves. There are some exceptions, but several of my old friends are in that category, and it isn't like they decided to forego children so they could live like Trappist monks.
In terms of the level of self-giving to the future of the nation, it isn't even close. I'm invested in the future of our nation, they obviously are not.
Imagine, God forbid, that I have to send my kids to fight to defend our nation. My kids are going, the childless couple's kids aren't going because they don't exist. And then when, God willing, my kids make it back in one piece, they'll have to work to pay the state pensions and medical costs of the childless Yuppie couple.
I respectfully submit that those of us with children shoulder enormous costs in terms of time, emotion and money that make our childless Yuppie couple look very selfish indeed.
The problem, I think, is that we have a hard time imagining the magnitude of these social costs. I respectfully submit that you're missing just have very large they are.
Walter[/QUOTE]
Excellent post Walter. Another point is people - in Europe as well as the US - are having to pay through the nose to live in a safe area with "people like us" (as Tex pointed out). Thus they delay parethood and have fewer children because of the costs, which is a vicous cycle as twenty-five years later there will be even fewer people like us, fewer 'nice' neighbourhoods, so it is more expensive to raise kids etc.
Or those who say "I wouldn't want to bring a kid into the world of today". Well the world of tomorrow will be a whole lot worse if decent people aren't reproducing.
The best way of living in an area full of decent people like me in my old age is to have more children!
2004-10-21 04:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr]THEIR FERTILITY IS GOING DOWN INCREDIBLY FAST, just believe me on this one.
20,000 Jamaicans move to the US each year. 200,000 "visit" each year. This is why Jamaica isn't growing as fast as most black African countries. But, it is still growing. A heavy white influence, probably population control efforts by the government, and black Jamaican women coming to the US to give birth.
2004-10-21 08:08 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Jim]Excellent post Walter. Another point is people - in Europe as well as the US - are having to pay through the nose to live in a safe area with "people like us" (as Tex pointed out). Thus they delay parethood and have fewer children because of the costs, which is a vicous cycle as twenty-five years later there will be even fewer people like us, fewer 'nice' neighbourhoods, so it is more expensive to raise kids etc.
Or those who say "I wouldn't want to bring a kid into the world of today". Well the world of tomorrow will be a whole lot worse if decent people aren't reproducing.
The best way of living in an area full of decent people like me in my old age is to have more children![/QUOTE]
Thanks, Jim.
My father (seven kids in my family) told me many times that, with the exception of the clergy and perhaps a few others, every man has a positive duty to have children. This contradicted everything I was taught in school, ans so naturally I dismissed it as "old fashioned" but now I see that he's right.
We all have a duty to the nation to have some kids and to raise them to responsible adulthood. While nobody wants to get the state involved in these decisions, the rules of the game must be stacked heavily in favour of men and women who marry and form families, preferably large families.
My childless Yuppie friends are more selfish than we can imagine. The level of personal committment to our nation's future is, with some exceptions, much, much lower than married couples with multiple children. Childless Yuppies live only for the present, and have not fully invested themselves fully in the continuing life of our group collective. They do not endure the myriad minor expenses and inconveniences of daily life with children. They will not bear any of the heartache of children going to war, or children getting seriously ill, or children struggling to make ends meet for grandchildren. They avoid all of that, and then turn around and expect families to form the social matrix within which they can "follow their bliss" as Joseph Campbell put it.
They deny the duties to the nation that were always assumed, and they get away with it. In fact, our culture celebrates them as the real heroes, since our culture values consumers like DINKS (double income, no kids) just as it disfavors misers like Christian homeschoolers.
Again, the problem most people have with this is the inability to recognize social capital. But social capital exists. The value of strong families is just as much an expense contained in the value of the cappuccino I had this morning as is the coffee beans and milk. While we have a hard time quantifying those costs, they most certainly exist, and I think it clear that they form a very large percentage of the real value of that cappuccino. DINKS fob off those costs on others.
No sane society would tolerate it, much less actively encourage it, as we do.
2004-10-21 09:34 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]I appreciate your points, Walter. But wouldn't the easiest solution here be to just end the state pensions and medical costs?[/QUOTE]
Yes, that would be part of it. But that's only part of it.
The socialization of traditional family functions like taking care of the aged is part of the complex of "structures of evil" that we have to deal with.
The other main legal structures of consumerism that I see are (1) routine use of the corporate organizational form, (2) usury, (3) a fiat money system.
All of these things lead to what I've heard referred to as the "employee mentality" - a dependent attitude that the boss will care for one in exchange for giving up decision making power.
The question is one of culture. We need a whole cloth approach to these questions.
One of the main problems with conservatism is its failure to recognize the evils inherent in legal structures I list above. I'm attempting to point out the reason for that failure: their inability to recognize the existence of overriding importance of social capital. As a result, conservatives have strayed a very long way from Jeffersonian ideals and have in fact made those structures form the very plinth of the "corporate libertarianism" that rules the GOP.
The emotional impulse behind the conservative movement is the loss of social capital, in the form of crime-ridden streets, broken families, and dirty air and water. But that's really the same impulse that motivates liberals like Nader. He sees the evils of corporations, but fails to see the evils attendant on "gay marriage" and abortion on demand. Conversely, conservatives see the evils of these things, but in reaction to the "cultural" aspects of the liberal program embraced the evils of corporations, usury, media advertising, and a fiat money system. Our nation has thus been divided into two camps, both of which are motivated by loss of social capital, but who are kept in conflict with each other by taking sides in a wholly artificial boundary between its effects.
The Naderites need to understand that the good life of healthy communities with clean air and water is not possible as long as a mother is free to kill her baby through abortion and the legal institution of marriage - the foundation for all social institutions - is mocked into meaninglessness by conflating the fecund marriage bed with the vomitous mingling of blood, feces and semen that is the essence of sodomy. The conservatives need to understand that they cannot simultaneously decry abortion, feminism, endemic divorce, broken families, and pornographic media advertising and programming while embracing the "corporate libertarian" philosophy of routine limitation of liabilities, fiat money, state-sponsored usury and outsourcing of jobs, and the rest of the mad economic program of the GOP.
And perhaps most importantly, liberals and conservatives will have to both reject the demonstrably false notion that multiculturalism is a good thing. It is obviously the greatest destroyer of social capital in existence today.
We need to understand that we all, ultimately, want the same things - the restoration of the good life of social solidarity, political subsidiarity, and clean air and water, to name just a few. We just need to get clear that, as is always the case in real life, these things are a package deal. Both liberals and conservatives are equally guilty of attempting to have it both ways, of wanting the impossible.
Distributism presents a unified cultural vision within which true conservatives and liberals can meet. Both sides would have to give up half their accumulated baggage. But I believe that it can be done, if only we could articulate better the Distributist vision.
Walter