tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post218859185303624156..comments2023-09-21T05:14:00.254-04:00Comments on Euvoluntary Exchange: FYIAD, the Ecstasy of the OtherkinMungowitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02340064320347875601noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5698599151422542939.post-41691434290315696432014-12-25T09:35:08.909-05:002014-12-25T09:35:08.909-05:00I look at the following question:
"Do member...I look at the following question:<br /><br />"Do members of the younger generation have an obligation to support an older generation by procreation?"<br /><br />I don't know whether Ayn Rand would consider this an example of "package dealing," but I certainly do. Many readers (David Brin comes to mind) have noted the near-absence of children and treatment of issues of human development in the novels of Ayn Rand. If anything, characters (especially protagonists) in Rand's novels are a more child-free population than the otherkin.<br /><br />To ask whether members of the younger generation have an obligation to support an older generation by procreation is to state that the means (procreation) is a built-in feature of the end (supporting the older generation). I worry whether Social Security and Medicare will still be around by the time I reach old age, but I don't believe for a minute that the answer to that question depends on "demographics." I think it depends on economics. Whether it can be supported depends on whether the GDP is big enough to support it, not whether the "working age" population is big enough to support it. Whether it will be supported depends (assuming that democracy isn't an empty promise) on whether public opinion supports it politically. Certainly a large working age population that is largely unemployed (or underemployed or underpaid) does not serve the interests of the retired population. Neither does a gainfully employed working population with political attitudes informed by TANSTAAFL, or "I got mine," or some similar logic.<br /><br />The politics of "entitlement" reform (more accurately, of austerity applied to safety net programs) presents the public with a "pick your poison" proposition: Do you wish to lower the value of Social Security benefits by (1) smaller benefit checks, (2) higher Social Security taxes, or (3) later retirement age? For my purposes, (3) is the lesser evil, assuming of course that there will be realistically available job opportunities for someone my age, with my resume—possibly a big if. My habit of viewing jobs (opportunities) as a scarce commodity comes from direct personal experience. If that is a flawed perspective, then the cure would my experiencing an economy in which opportunities for paid work are easy to come by. In my personal experience getting a job is like pulling teeth, and in my book the experiential carries more weight than the empirical.<br /><br />My sense of the otherkin et al. is that they are neither a threat nor a warning. More likely they (as well as the much larger number of culturally mainstream child-free folks) are simply an adaptation. A business adapts to the devaluation of labor by downsizing (or "right-sizing" as the PR types say) and perhaps a society adapts to the same phenomenon by downsizing the family.Lorrainehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13567383019731167967noreply@blogger.com