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Comment Re:Economic harship (Score 1) 281

I find this all framed a little oddly.

What I see here seems to be people arguing from the predetermined biases without regard for the topic.

For example, claims of it having to do with abuse in any direction would require some substantial evidence.

But then, there's also bias in this:

"If you want to somehow tie feminism into the declining birth rates, especially given the relatively recent MeToo movement, a less tenuous tie would be the increase in awareness that women have to how abusive men are ..."

And in this:

"But it's the womens fault still?"

The idea of "fault" here seems to imply that falling birth rate is something that is wrong that needs to be blamed on somebody.

The available evidence of falling birth rate can actually be "tied" to feminism fairly easily, but in terms of women having choices and tradeoffs, including women becoming more educated and building careers. I don't think anybody would argue that these choices didn't emerge as a result of feminism. I don't know that anybody, or very many, would say that is a bad thing. Rather, an consequence of staying in school, going to university, and building a career is that marriage and having children is delayed, and having more children would mean more time out of their career.

For example, the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) summarizes the research nicely in their article, "Why is the birth rate declining" (May 6, 2021): "Between 2007 and 2020, the TFR in the United States declined from 2.12 to 1.64.3 This decline may signal a longer-term drop in lifetime fertility shaped by broader social factors, including postponement of marriage and childbearing to older ages and long-term increases in women’s educational attainment and labor force participation. Although most American women say they expect to have at least two children, many women delay childbearing whether by choice or circumstance to the point that they may end up having only one child or no children at all."

Refs:

Martin O’Connell, “Childbearing,” in Continuity and Change in American Families, ed. Lynne M. Casper and Suzanne M. Bianchi (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2001).

Eve Beaujouan and Caroline Berghammer, “The Gap Between Lifetime Fertility Intentions and Completed Fertility in Europe and the United States: A Cohort Approach,” Population Research and Policy Review 38 (2019): 507-35, https://link.springer.com/arti....

You'll also note that while fertility rates declined for women of most ages, the rates actually increase consistently from the late 1970s to today for women in their 30s. That is, women have children much later than they used to, and have fewer of them total.

That is inconsistent with any links to abuse (in any direction). It a simple matter that the changing role and available choices of women -- which of course has a lot to do with feminism -- is a trade-off. There's finite time available. Women can't have children at the same rate as they used to, and stay home with them, and go to school, and build careers. That's impossible.

Instead, what we've learned is that when the choices are opened up, a very large portion of women prefer education and career over having children, or having them while young, or having as many. Is that a bad thing? It certainly has consequences on populations and demographics, but would it be better to declare the outcome "we" want and then force women to do the bidding to get that outcome?

By "we", I mean collective discussions about what "should" happen in society. A free country means the outcomes can't be dictated; if you want to dictate statistically outcomes, you have create an unfair, unfree society where individuals are forced to do what is necessary to get that outcome.

This is fundamentally the result of freedom along with the rapid increase in standard of living. People aren't forced into things by circumstance, government, or social pressure. (Sure, I've heard some objections that women have been pressured to not stay home and have children, but at the scale of whole population that would require a lot more evidence than pointing to a few feminist leaders who have said women shouldn't do that.)

It is what it is. It isn't a "fault" or a blame. It is an outcome of freedom and choice.

Comment "Thanks, Americans!" (Score 1) 222

Sure, Americans pay taxes and inflated costs of goods to provide military security for Europe, drug development, technology development, etc. so they have more money for healthcare, arts, and leisure.

Everybody should need to work less as technology and productivity increases while maintaining the same standard of living, but nooooo, we can't have nice things.

Materialism plays a small part but GenZ has correctly realized that they can never live as well as their grandparents under this regime.

Boomers are happy to shout "avacado toast!" at them from their country-club golf carts.

I wrote here about coming Age Wars a decade ago. Let's hope somebody comes to thier senses.

Comment Re:Replaceable batteries (Score 2) 158

Great news: someone lied to you... BEVs didn't need battery replacement every seven years.

As it happens, my daily driver is a seven year old BEV, a Tesla Model S. Its estimated range was 335 miles when new and is 315 miles now. Assuming we can trust the car's estimate (I, for one, do trust it) my car still has 94% battery capacity after seven years.

My car is far from worthless, but it's not for sale. I like it and I am keeping it.

Comment Re:How does the FTC have this authority? (Score 1) 96

They don't - something like this needs an Act or Congress.

SCOTUS made up some BS "Chevron Deference" in the 80's which has been abused like this since.

The current /Maine Fisheries/ case should dissolve Chevron deference.

We may like the FTC proposal on this one but with that kind of power and no representation it's only counting the days until they do something we absolutely detest. And then there's no effective recourse.

Comment Here's the deal (Score 2) 66

if a youtube or reddit post mentions an amazing financial, or spiritual, or etc. advisor quickly in response to someone's story. And the story has too many upvotes in too short a time, I recognize it as spam.

IMHO, with spam like that, you go after the cloud of accounts upvoting it. Track their behavior, see if they are posting, see if they regularly vote for spam. Then shadowban or kill the accounts (let them upvote but don't show the upvotes). The advertiser can create *an* account quickly. But they can't subvert/create a cloud of several hundred accounts easily.

And you also put some kind of metrics in place for upvotes that compares their voting habits to known human users. If the thing is upvoting 30 times a day and most humans only upvote 12 times a day (or none), then flag the account for closer observation.

And most of all, you need a really good moderation advisor for this kind of thing. I recommend Lance Modoman. He's the real deal. He saved my forum.

heheheheh.

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