Pro-choice and veg*n?
Hello VegWeb, it's been a while. I was reminded to log in the other day when I got into a debate with a friend about abortion. She challenged that as a veg*n I should also be pro-life by default, which led me into a pretty interesting examination of why I agree with these two philosophies.
I personally maintain that legalising abortion allows women to make important decisions regarding their bodies and futures, and brings the numbers of those seeking dangerous backstreet abortions down. In those countries which legalise abortion, such as my native England, I consider it a right of women in need, although never a method of birth control. Legal limits for abortion exist for a reason; if it isn't a viable foetus, I don't consider it murder.
As a veg*n, I neither support nor participate in the slaughter or torture of animals because I believe that compassion and right should not be extended only to those who have the ability to ask for them. I couldn't kill an animal (except in absolute, last-chance-to-survive emergency), and if I eat meat that's being done on my behalf.
Looking at the reasoning behind my support for legal abortion and veg*nism, I don't feel hypocritical for my decisions.
What about you, dear VegWebbers? Are you inherently conflicted? Which way does your allegiance lie on this tricky moral question?
Paraphrasing Wayne Gretzky, "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it was in the 20th century".
Iran did have a burst of politically-driven natalism quite recently, but according to CIA's total fertility rankings for 2008, Iran's fertility rate is currently 1.71 children per woman on average, and continuing on a downward trend, while maintaining a stable population in the long term requires about 2.1 children per woman (or more if you have high mortality rates for infants and young people).
The same decline is also occurring in almost every single country in the world! It will take several decades for the worst of the third world places to reach negative growth, but that change can happen much quicker than you'd expect, especially since some of those third world places still have infant mortality so high they actually do need to average 3 or even 4 children per woman just to break even. And there's simply no known way to raise the fertility rates back up to a sustainable level without employing a lot of very nasty government force.
And it's a bad thing that the world population is declining? Treatments for age-related disability and disease continue to improve. Assisted death is finally getting the open discussion it merits.
The reason for the 'ageing population' is mostly the baby boom - but just because our numbers ballooned to unsustainable levels does not in any way mean we should increase the number of humans in the world, or even maintain it. The world is vastly overpopulated; a slight remission of the cancer might just be what saves us. A good parasite doesn't kill the host, remember.
Yes, this leaves us with a period of time in which the old, the sick, and the dying are in the majority. But oh well - we as a collective need to come to terms with the fact that we can't just keep dragging out an empty life year after year simply because the ideal of life is sanctified. Grandma will die, and she'll die regardless of whether you have two or twenty children visiting her in hospice.
I think everyone has the right to make their own choices, thus I haven't tried to get eating meat outlawed. I don't agree personally, but we have the right to choose what we put into our bodies. Thus, we should also have the right to choose what grows within our bodies and what we are willing to nourish. Your friend is just trying to catch you in a lie, since apparently all omnis think we're all up to something.
And it's a bad thing that the world population is declining?
It's not declining yet except in a handful of countries, the best example probably being Japan - once a seemingly unstoppable economic powerhouse that's been floating on economic inertia ever since the consequences of its low fertility rates kicked in around mid-1990s. Of course Japan still benefits from its economic interactions with the outside world to some degree. A world-wide fertility rate similar to Japan's would be a lot more devastating.
Treatments for age-related disability and disease continue to improve.
That is a good thing, but medical services and care for the elderly don't just rain from the sky, someone needs to provide the necessary labor to make those things happen, and the supply of labor will diminish quite sharply while the demand of people who need to be cared for increases.
Assisted death is finally getting the open discussion it merits.
My position on that issue is easily predictable from my outspoken belief in individual self-ownership.
The world is vastly overpopulated; a slight remission of the cancer might just be what saves us.
There is no known limit to how many people this planet alone can support, but even in the 1950s the technologies to support HUNDREDS of billions of people were already being speculated about: irrigating the deserts, building multi-story greenhouses, seaweed farming, cornfields floating on top of oceans, etc, etc, etc. And that's on this one tiny planet alone!
Grandma will die, and she'll die regardless of whether you have two or twenty children visiting her in hospice.
Immortality through science is quite conceivable, but it is going to be pretty darn expensive. Whether you will get that metabolic rejuvenator when you're 60, that artificial heart when you're 70, that anti-cancer pill when you're 80, that anti-Alzheimer's cybernetic implant when you're 90, that full internal organ regeneration when you're 100, that digital brain dualizer when you're 110, etc will depend on your own financial ability to afford those things (which your descendants could contribute to), and whether those things become available for you in time will depend on the health of the human economy overall, in which demographic growth does play a very important part.
It's not declining yet except in a handful of countries, the best example probably being Japan - once a seemingly unstoppable economic powerhouse that's been floating on economic inertia ever since the consequences of its low fertility rates kicked in around mid-1990s. Of course Japan still benefits from its economic interactions with the outside world to some degree. A world-wide fertility rate similar to Japan's would be a lot more devastating.
Then what's the problem with reducing birth rates? How would a global reduction in population be 'devastating'?
...the supply of labor will diminish quite sharply while the demand of people who need to be cared for increases.
...
Immortality through science is quite conceivable, but it is going to be pretty darn expensive...
Yep. So sad. People will die. Immortality through science may be conceivable, but so are a hell of a lot of other things that aren't sustainable or right. You say yourself - it would be expensive. Unfortunately, there's just no way of distributing the resources we have available on this planet in such a way that everyone could afford to be made immortal. It would only lead to a class divide in which the rich elite live forever, and an inferior class of 'breeders' suffer and die and raze the planet to provide for their 'superiors.' It would be more of the same - only worse.
There would be a period of time during which a lot of people would die off; naturally, of old age. And yeah, that's a little bit sad for those they leave behind, and the quality of palliative care might take a few hits. But it would pass, and the next generation would not have the problem of an aging population.
Assisted death is finally getting the open discussion it merits.
My position on that issue is easily predictable from my outspoken belief in individual self-ownership.
So I take it that your position on the issue is that it should be perfectly acceptable for an individual to decide the time and manner of their death?
There is no known limit to how many people this planet alone can support, but even in the 1950s the technologies to support HUNDREDS of billions of people were already being speculated about: irrigating the deserts, building multi-story greenhouses, seaweed farming, cornfields floating on top of oceans, etc, etc, etc. And that's on this one tiny planet alone!
Don't be stupid. "Anyone who believes that infinite exponential growth is possible in a finite universe is either a madman or an economist." In the 1950's, there were also predictions of colonies on the moon and flying cars. Instead we have an even more inflated population trying to subsist on the same stale and unsustainable methods. In fifty years, we've made our environmental situation worse and done little to nothing to help it - mainly because taking the steps towards ecological neutrality would cause your beloved consumerist/capitalist system to suffer.
And even if we did have floating cornfields, farmed seaweed, skyscraper hothouses, and what the hell - flying cars, too - we'd still be displacing the native flora and fauna, impacting the natural balance of the ecosystems, and depleting the world's finite resources in a manner which is in direct conflict with your ideal of 'immortality.'
Then what's the problem with reducing birth rates? How would a global reduction in population be 'devastating'?
I've already mentioned a lot of reasons: loss of potential economic growth, lesser "economy of scale", fewer ideas being created, skyrocketing price of labor, lesser incentive to invent new technologies and colonize space, etc. All other things being equal, an older society will also be more resistant to new ideas and technologies, because a lot more 20-year-olds go to college than 60-year-olds. And then you have the inevitable growth of socialism, with old people looking to government instead of their children to take care of them, which means ever-more taxes on the ever-shrinking working class.
Unfortunately, there's just no way of distributing the resources we have available on this planet in such a way that everyone could afford to be made immortal.
In a free market system the distribution of resources occurs on the basis of merit: you create an idea that creates a billion dollars and you get to keep most of it, you spend your days beating your head against the wall and you get nothing. This encourages people to use their time to create value, which is what pushes the human civilization forward. As the super-rich find ways to tweak their bodies to keep them alive ever-longer, everyone will be incentivized to work harder / smarter, which means greater economic growth.
Just look at the industry that has been one of the least regulated and thus most successful in the last few decades - computers and information technology. The first computers were so expensive only mega-corporations and the super-rich could afford them, but this naturally incentivized a lot of companies to compete for those dollars, with this technology becoming better and cheaper with each release cycle (aka the trickle-down effect). If the government had in 1970s declared that every citizen has a right to computer access time, I'll bet we'd still all be time-sharing on mainframes that are less powerful than some modern cellphones!
So I take it that your position on the issue is that it should be perfectly acceptable for an individual to decide the time and manner of their death?
Affirmative.
Don't be stupid. "Anyone who believes that infinite exponential growth is possible in a finite universe is either a madman or an economist."
First of all, the universe is not known to be finite, and if several million years from now we discover that it is then we can adjust our philosophy accordingly. At this time we are definitely capable of sustaining a much greater population than ~8 billion, which is where population is expected to peak a few decades from now before beginning its possibly-irreversible decline.
In the 1950's, there were also predictions of colonies on the moon and flying cars.
The government screwed it up by subsadizing trillion-dollar wars for oil, which is the only reason we've had stagnation in the energy sector these past few decades, which has put a chokehold on space travel and pretty much every other industry as well. But e does equal m times c squared, and there's a whole lot of m on this planet alone - energy shouldn't have been a major issue for our civilization.
Another way government has screwed us out of flying cars is by monopolizing the air safety industry (which is also why we had 9/11), with anyone trying to build a flying car facing a multi-billion-dollar legal battle with government red tape right off the bat.
Instead we have an even more inflated population trying to subsist on the same stale and unsustainable methods. In fifty years, we've made our environmental situation worse and done little to nothing to help it - mainly because taking the steps towards ecological neutrality would cause your beloved consumerist/capitalist system to suffer.
Most of what you believe about the "environmental situation" is based on politically controlled blind faith, not actual science (not to be confused with church-science or government-science). The only problem of unsustainability that exists in the world today is a problem of socialist economics, to which virtually all other problems can be definitively traced.
And even if we did have floating cornfields, farmed seaweed, skyscraper hothouses, and what the hell - flying cars, too - we'd still be displacing the native flora and fauna, impacting the natural balance of the ecosystems, and depleting the world's finite resources in a manner which is in direct conflict with your ideal of 'immortality.'
The native flora and fauna is of a much lesser value than the things that man builds for his benefit. If our civilization is allowed to grow (with irrational religions like socialism really being the only things that stand in our way), then we can someday leave this tiny planet, restoring it to its original wild state if that's what became valuable to us again, and/or export its flora and fauna to thousands of other terraformed planets, moons, and space stations, whereas without human intelligence it would have just inevitably have gone extinct!
So, getting back to the topic of this thread - I support a woman's right to choose, but any claims that reducing total human fertility is a good thing are socialist lies. You see, socialism is a self-destructive religion, with its ruling class seeing each individual as a potential threat to its power hegemony, as well as a burden that needs to be brainwashed, fed, and told what to do. Capitalism, on the other hand, doesn't see a human being as just a butt filling a seat and a stomach that needs to be fed, it sees an individual as a sovereign entity that exists for its own sake, and is capable of using its hands and its mind to pull its own economic weight while making the world a better place in the process!
The native flora and fauna is of a much lesser value than the things that man builds for his benefit. If our civilization is allowed to grow (with irrational religions like socialism really being the only things that stand in our way), then we can someday leave this tiny planet, restoring it to its original wild state if that's what became valuable to us again, and/or export its flora and fauna to thousands of other terraformed planets, moons, and space stations, whereas without human intelligence it would have just inevitably have gone extinct!
I cannot even comprehend this. We aren't the gods of this world - we're its offspring. We have no more right to go gallivanting off colonising the universe than the Spaniards did to take over Central America. We wouldn't be crusaders or missionaries; we'd be sepsis.
So, getting back to the topic of this thread - I support a woman's right to choose, but any claims that reducing total human fertility is a good thing are socialist lies. You see, socialism is a self-destructive religion, with its ruling class seeing each individual as a potential threat to its power hegemony, as well as a burden that needs to be brainwashed, fed, and told what to do. Capitalism, on the other hand, doesn't see a human being as just a butt filling a seat and a stomach that needs to be fed, it sees an individual as a sovereign entity that exists for its own sake, and is capable of using its hands and its mind to pull its own economic weight while making the world a better place in the process!
Socialism is a societal structure which acknowledges the importance of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts; appreciates the benefits of interdependence. Capitalism is a soulless rat race where the individual is supposedly glorified, but in reality is just more charnel for the murder machine. I subscribe to neither - but especially find rampant capitalism distasteful.
I cannot even comprehend this.
Unsurprising, especially if you went to a government-controlled school where they taught you that "science" is obedience to a government-dictated orthodoxy and not an empirical pursuit of solutions for man's own benefit.
We aren't the gods of this world - we're its offspring.
We are not "gods", but we are rational beings that are capable of manipulating our environment for our own benefit. A man is not a slave of an ape, and an ape is not a slave of a rodent, etc. Rights don't come from chronological snobbery, they come from immutable inescapable self-evident economic facts.
We have no more right to go gallivanting off colonising the universe than the Spaniards did to take over Central America. We wouldn't be crusaders or missionaries; we'd be sepsis.
The Spaniards and other colonists were wrong to violate the Natural Rights of the native populations they have conquered, just as we must be respectful of any other "rational economic actors" we may encounter in the universe, but everything that cannot own itself is a natural resource that "rational economic actors" must be allowed to bring into their economy and make use of for their benefit.
Socialism is a societal structure which acknowledges the importance of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts; appreciates the benefits of interdependence.
What you described is not a definitive description of what socialism is or isn't. There's nothing "uncapitalist" about cooperating with others (and in fact genuine mutually-beneficial cooperation is only possible under capitalism) or doing things for reasons other than the pure profit motive. For example, open source software is very much a capitalist phenomenon, as is Wikipedia, private charity, private academic institutions, and so on. My efforts as a tax resister and an anti-socialist "troll" here certainly bring me no profit, quite the contrary. What differentiates socialism from capitalism is the use of force.
Capitalism is a soulless rat race where the individual is supposedly glorified, but in reality is just more charnel for the murder machine. I subscribe to neither - but especially find rampant capitalism distasteful.
What you are saying is contradicted by mountains of economic evidence -- ancient, recent, as well as contemporary -- of the benefit that capitalism offers in promoting rational behavior, ideal allocation of resources, better economic growth, and thus grater benefits to science, technology, and the average individual's well-being. Furthermore, capitalism is a morally superior system, which isn't something that I can teach you about in one forum post, but you could study and cultivate this morality within yourself with sufficient time and effort. Most of your education has been controlled with a pro-socialist bias since your childhood - correcting those wrongs would take quite a bit of time as well.
So, once again, the "overpopulation" propaganda is completely baseless and has been proven wrong over and over and over again. It is entirely as ridiculous as that famous quote popularly (mis)attributed to a commissioner of the U.S. patent office, who in 1899 supposedly had claimed that "everything that can be invented has been invented". The technologies to support multiple times more people than where the human population is projected to peak are already within our grasp!
www.vhemt.org. :)
If everyone was a member of VHEMT then their party would only last a couple decades at decades at best (or less if your business is in any way related to children), but then come to a screeching halt as ever-fewer people are entering the work force while ever-more people retire. Then - economic instability, crime, violence, old people fighting in the streets over the last scraps of medicine that the human civilization can no longer afford to manufacture, wanna-be dictators promising to restore order, etc, etc, etc. If you're 20 now, I seriously doubt a VHEMT society would make it possible for you to live past 50, and what a brutal and miserable life it would be toward the end! If, on the other hand, you want to live a long (possibly VERY long) and happy life, then the propagation of our species is in fact very important.
I have noticed that in our society it is frequently (but not always) the uneducated-and-want-to-stay-that-way type of people who reproduce the most. How many times do we here stories of people losing a bunch of kids to the system and still having more? How often do we see people with a bunch of kids to get more money from the government? (I know all people aren't like that, so don't jump me please.) I know several largie families with excellent parents, but I know many more large families with parents that don't give a hoot about their kids. Well-educated people that care enough to raise their children properly generally have only a few children. Its not just an economic issue, because this society really downs parenting and families in general. My point is that if this trend continues, it could lead to a lot of socioeconomic issues in the future. I agree the propagation of our species is important, but I don't believe it is simply a numbers game. It's just a though anyways. I wish I had more time for debate, but I'm supposed to be working. (I get paid by production and not hourly, so you can't jump me for being a terrible employee either.)
Furthermore, capitalism is a morally superior system, which isn't something that I can teach you about in one forum post, but you could study and cultivate this morality within yourself with sufficient time and effort. Most of your education has been controlled with a pro-socialist bias since your childhood - correcting those wrongs would take quite a bit of time as well.
Read: "I don't actually have an argument, but I'm right anyway."
Um... I've been presenting my argument quite diligently here over the past few days. It's not my fault if it flies miles above your heads... I've also never missed an opportunity to hyperlink to free market economists and philosophers for you to RTFM on. (There are also plenty of free audio-books, audio lectures, podcasts, quirky flash videos, etc.) I can't climb inside your head and think for you, some effort and desire to learn on your part is necessary as well.
And, in case you forgot, I have nothing against abortion rights, vegans, pet lovers, etc - just the people who steer dangerously close to using the blunt force of the state to impose their views on others. Your cheerleading of tyranny on the "fines for leaving animals out in the cold" thread is what I have the greatest objections to, but for this thread the greatest problem is the "overpopulation" delusion - it is a lie, and it has very dangerous consequences.
Not a lie; denying it has dangerous consequences. Shove too many rats in a cage, and they will eat each other. It's arrogant and naïve to assume that humans, who have failed to do so throughout the entirety of their existence on this planet, will suddenly learn to efficiently manipulate their surroundings without destroying them. The obvious alternative, in my eyes, is to reduce the human population so that what few and mismanaged resources we currently have can be redistributed, reducing consumption.
I'm not in favour of a complete return to a system whereby humankind reverts to being a small population of scavengers on the savannah; we can't go backwards. But equally I object to the concept of a world ruled only by capitalism or straight meritocracy.
As to that 'fines' thread: seriously? You of all people should understand the idea of translating the suffering of a being which has the capacity to do so into suffering on the part of the one who inflicted that suffering. I can't say I agree with the idea of 'punishment' if we have to get down to complete black-and-white absolutes; I don't believe that revenge is an ideal solution to any situation.
Not a lie; denying it has dangerous consequences.
Shove too many rats in a cage, and they will eat each other.
There are many important differences between a cage full of rats and 0.4 gigatons of human beings in a 2,300,000,000,000,000,000 gigaton solar system - one star amongst at very least 70 sextillion! We currently only farm 3.2 percent of this puny planet's surface to feed ourselves, and only at about 15% efficiency, and that efficiency estimate doesn't take into account things like GM crops, multistory greenhouses, and so on. (Mushrooms and some forms of seaweed require almost no sunlight and can thus be stacked almost indefinitely.) And I'm sure you already know how agriculturally inefficient the common modern meat-centric diet truly is, with economically-motivated transition to greater veganism naturally resulting in yet another 10-fold agricultural productivity boost.
So there is no known limit to how many billions (more likely trillions) of people this planet alone can support, and in case you haven't noticed I am not arguing for unlimited population growth, only against the socialist "overpopulation" lies and programs (ex. the "one child policy") that are leading to a much more realistic disaster of population collapse!
It's arrogant and naïve to assume that humans, who have failed to do so throughout the entirety of their existence on this planet, will suddenly learn to efficiently manipulate their surroundings without destroying them.
What is it that human beings have destroyed exactly? Only pointless wilderness, which we could recreate in decades if we wanted to, but we found it more valuable to use those resources in the interest of civilization instead. Since the human economy can grow exponentially while the number of different species remains the same, human beings are far more likely to prevent the natural extinction of species than they are to cause it, as well as to clone already extinct species if we can find their DNA, and to genetically engineer new species that didn't exist prior to our presence here!
I'm not in favour of a complete return to a system whereby humankind reverts to being a small population of scavengers on the savannah; we can't go backwards. But equally I object to the concept of a world ruled only by capitalism or straight meritocracy.
It unfortunately is possible for a society to regress backwards, as has been the case during the various regional dark ages in human history. Irrational ideas have destructive consequences, and the ideas being popularly supported on this forum are in fact very irrational and very harmful. An objection to a world ruled by free market capitalism is advocacy of theft and violence!
As to that 'fines' thread: seriously? You of all people should understand the idea of translating the suffering of a being which has the capacity to do so into suffering on the part of the one who inflicted that suffering. I can't say I agree with the idea of 'punishment' if we have to get down to complete black-and-white absolutes; I don't believe that revenge is an ideal solution to any situation.
Yes, seriously. Natural Rights don't come from the alleged capacity for suffering, they come from a capacity to reason - which we can discuss in a more appropriate thread here.
pointless wilderness
No more pointless than human existence.
It saddens me that you feel that way, but I do respect your right to euthanasia if human existence is of no value to you.
Isn't it funny that whenever someone doesn't agree with an opinion, some simply assume it's because that someone doesn't understand or it is over their heads. I'm not picking on you in particular Mr. Libman, because I see it all the time. As I said before, insults do nothing more than put people on the defensive. Not that I want to you be better be able to further your beliefs which make no allowance for anything above economic value, but you might want to look into taking a a course on the art of debate and actually pay attention to the advise given on how to present arguements instead of just blowing them off becasue you don't agree with the opinions expressed. Learning tactics from the enemy is an important strategy.
Isn't it funny that whenever someone doesn't agree with an opinion, some simply assume it's because that someone doesn't understand or it is over their heads.
Another way to tell that someone doesn't understand your position is when they misstate it back to you, as you just have, and make other statements that demonstrate their lack of understanding.
As I said before, insults do nothing more than put people on the defensive.
Did I make any insults that I didn't back with facts?
your beliefs which make no allowance for anything above economic value
You are clearly confusing the philosophy and science of economics with mere bean-counting...
you might want to look into taking a a course on the art of debate
Coming from you that would actually be funny, if it wasn't also so sad...
It saddens me that you feel that way, but I do respect your right to euthanasia if human existence is of no value to you.
I never said human existence was pointless. Other species exist for their own purposes just as much as we exist for ours. Judging the worth of a living entity on its ability to contribute to a human-created societal structure is, quite frankly, disgusting.
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