[MilStdJunkie]

300 grand minimum for the chance to throw half your genetics into the future.

That worth 300k? Opinions differ. I don't have an enormous farm filled with livestock for tiny hands to help with, so I'm going with "no".

Some people think I am immoral for thinking this, but they do not have farms either, so I'm not confident in their judgement. On the other hand, urbanites seem to think children can be replaced by kittens. This is more or less the core of the Culture Wars, so probably starting a huge Internet Fight here.

[greggsy]

I don’t usually respond to anti-children trolls, but this is a sub-thread responding to a comment around crypto, so there’s already overlap.

Anyway, I’ll bite: one of humanity’s instincts is to have a family. It’s not amoral, it’s at the core of our being.

[MilStdJunkie]

Dang, sorry that came off that way. I like kids. I didn't think that sounded like an anti-child troll. I got my three nibs for the summer, so I might let them know for their own good. Parents shouldn't leave their kids with trolls!

Humans have a complicated relationship with their "instincts". Why is that? We have culture, which can (theoretically) adapt very rapidly compared to information exchange via sex / virus / "some other mystery horizontal genetic transfer". How much more rapidly? It's faster, but how much faster is a hugely debated topic in anthropology and genetics. Same net effect: humans, probably since before they were humans, have felt almost constantly at war with their "instincts", since culture is always faster to adapt.

Here's another trick: how do you differentiate between an "instinct" and a general want? You kind of don't, and this opens up a rhetorical relationship with the whole concept of "instinct" that has a heavy history and lives into the present day. But do we know what our instincts are? We could jump deep into the fMRI rabbit hole here, saying this "pathway" this, and "horrible abuse of stats" that, but I think that's a waste of effort. It doesn't matter - not in this context, I DO think it's needed science - because both instinct and culture have the same desired end state: human - and American, if possible - survival. Why not just break it down old fashioned utilitarian style? Which is why I bring up farms. Post-agricultural, an industrial state NEEDS to support birth rates via direct subsidies, as in paychecks.

This never happens, so kids don't happen either, and we start talking about three hundred grand and instincts and trolls and all the rest.

We love blaming those at our same socio-economic level for the ills that we perceive in the world, but often it's our masters who gain the most from pointing us at each other's throats. The loss of traditional values, the shattering of the working class, the collapse of masculinity, the dehumanization of the black and of the woman, the ever-shrinking family, the escalating violence of state security, the complete loss of any sense of privacy or decency - it's the same force making these things happen. HAS BEEN MAKING them happen, for years, decades or even centuries.

How this country responds to that fact decides everything, including how we respond in a peer conflict. Would the Democrats necessarily mind a losing ground war that drains the countryside? Would the Republicans necessarily retaliate after a few dozen megatons land on NYC, LAX, SFO, PDX, and SEA? That's why I worry about this shit. Because as much as we might hate <INSERT AMERICAN YOU DISAGREE WITH>, I guarantee we really need to hate the PLAAF more.