Western birthrates

[urodacus]

[quote=“Charlie Phillips”][
Baxter just got caught mixing H5N1 with a normal human flu virus:

google.com/hostednews/canadi … pnu5OIby9w

They shipped it to labs in 18 countries.

Just a mistake of course and the news buried in back-page paragraphs of obscure newspapers. Maybe you and the OP could get a job with Baxter, Urodacus and make your dreams come true.[/quote]

[quote=“New Scientist ran the story as such:”] IT’S emerged that virulent H5N1 bird flu was sent out by accident from an Austrian lab last year and given to ferrets in the Czech Republic before anyone realised. As well as the risk of it escaping into the wild, the H5N1 got mixed with a human strain, which might have spawned a hybrid that could unleash a pandemic.

Last December, the Austrian branch of US vaccine company Baxter sent a batch of ordinary human H3N2 flu, altered so it couldn’t replicate, to Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, also in Austria. In February, a lab in the Czech Republic working for Avir alerted Baxter that, unexpectedly, ferrets inoculated with the sample had died. It turned out the sample contained live H5N1, which Baxter uses to make vaccine. The two seem to have been mixed in error.

Markus Reinhard of Baxter says no one was infected because the H3N2 was handled at a high level of containment. But Ab Osterhaus of Erasmus University in the Netherlands says: “We need to go to great lengths to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen.”[/quote]

parly what gave me the prompt for that ridiculous comment.

but seriously, it is mostly those pussy footed, heart bleeding, useless appendages known as liberals who believe that the world is beyond its useful sustainable carrying capacity. As if there could be any such thing! Technology and the Bible will fix everything, you mark my words. and then those liberal pussies ultimately call on another uniquely liberal invention, the theory of Gaia, and say that the world will survive but humanity will disappear in a ‘corrective move’. I mean, what absolute twaddle.

pass the Krug, my kind sir. i wonder what the poor people are doing today? feeding more babies, i guess.

[BigJohn]

@GuyInTaiwan

I disagree. The planet has a limited number of resources. There isn’t enough of everything to go around. It’s as simple as that. We’ve made a big mistake letting China get as powerful as it is, amongst other places. It’s going to have massive leverage over the West (it already does), and it’s going to (as it should) use that power ruthlessly.

So the Chinese are quite right in some respects that the west wants to keep them down, at least in terms of how people like you think. Don’t forget, "POE stands for Peace On Earth as well as Purity of Essence.

@GuyInTaiwan

At what point would gay rights not be part of a classical liberal agenda as well as a modern liberal agenda? I don’t think they differ in that respect.

That’s total obfuscation. I said why would that be considered avoiding consequences, which you defined as liberal. Please answer the question before you pose your own.

[quote]
As for universal healthcare, sure, but how do you fund it? This is always the problem. Maybe we’d like people to have a whole lot of stuff too, but how do you fund it? Most of the developed world is going to run into massive funding problems very soon with social security, healthcare and other social programs.[/quote]
Most developed nations fund universal healthcare. Canada does and is fiscally in great shape - the current downturn excepted.

@BigJohn

What I meant by kindness is perhaps better expressed as tolerance and inclusiveness. I will accept you as who you are and try to help you, not judge you for being weak and say “you fucked up or had bad luck so you can rot.”

This is the whole problem. If no one is ever judged for fucking up, then what incentive is there for not fucking up? Before you ask, yes, I think all those fuckers on Wall Street should have been hung out to dry, as should those who invested with them.

Judge for fucking up, but don’t leave people to rot, I say, at least in the case of social programs for the poorest.

[quote]

@BigJohn

Anyway, even if you don’t have to deal with “losers” in your gated mental community, they still exist. How is it useful to a nation to have a permanent underclass that feels disenfranchised? Plus, there’s a fairness dimension here: A lot of the winners are thieving corrupt rat bastards, and many of the losers just had bad luck. Hence, we can’t build a system that only rewards performance if we value fairness.

Firstly, I’m not saying it is useful to have a permanent underclass, but welfare (and many other liberal ideas) adds to that precisely because it removes the incentive to be anything else but that. It also secures more votes for the political class. Many of the winners are indeed thieving, corrupt bastards. Firstly, in one sense, good on them if they get away with it. In another sense, maybe I should have worked harder or been more ruthless myself to get in their position not mine. Regarding luck, I don’t believe in the concept. Finally, I don’t entirely believe in fairness. In one sense, like everyone in the West, it’s been beaten into me from a young age, so it’s hard for me to let go of the fantasy. In another sense, I realise it is a fantasy. The world isn’t fair and never will be.[/quote][/quote]

That’s no reason for anyone to be an asshole.

But let’s agree to disagree. I’m sure I could convert you to my cause quite easily, but I’ll just let you rot in your social Darwinian hell!!! :raspberry: :bluemad: :loco:

[Jaboney]

@dantesolieri

Now, you may have discussed this before and are wearied by the subject. That is an effective and appropriate answer but that is not how you approach answering the previous poster. I think that you owe him an apology.

I’m under no obligation to tolerate intolerance.
(Something else to reconcile with charges that liberals won’t defend anything, yadda yadda yadda.)

[Buttercup]

@Jaboney

I’m under no obligation to tolerate intolerance.

That’s the sort of dig-your-heels-in rhetoric that silences debate and encourages social exclusivity.

Liberals believe they are dogma free and stand only for common sense and common decency. As do most people. Who can respect that?

[Jaboney]

[quote=“Buttercup”][quote=“Jaboney”]
I’m under no obligation to tolerate intolerance.
[/quote]

That’s the sort of dig-your-heels-in rhetoric that silences debate and encourages social exclusivity. [/quote]We all have our red lines. With me, it’s advocating social darwinism; with you, titty photos.

[Dog_s_Breakfast]

Western birth rates will soon be a non-issue. Western death rates are about to see a hefty increase. Economic depressions tend to do that. Ironically, the birth rates in the third world are likely to be little affected as the economy circles the drain. That’s because residents of the third world are already well-adapted to living in poverty - they know what they have to do to survive. For them, the economic depression will be like falling out of a ground-floor window. For an American, it will be like falling out of a skyscraper. After living in a charmed life in a 5000 square-foot McMansion, moving into a tent will be a challenge that I think many will not survive. We shall see.

cheers,
DB

My friends, the axe, it is a’coming. It is swift. It is sharp. And it brooks no rationalization, no specious justification. It will come as you stand by your pie charts and calipers with laser pointer in hand. It will whistle through the air in the middle of your tired Powerpoint.

• Cherenkov

[GuyInTaiwan]

[quote=“Jaboney”]Oh, I could muster a whole lot better than that, but as it’s already clear that your position is intellectually and morally bankrupt, what’s the point?

Reconcile that with your assertion that (straw man) liberals are unwilling to defend liberal institutions.[/quote]

You may indeed call me morally bankrupt (and I could fire that right back at you, but so what?), but how can you call me intellectually bankrupt when you’ve proposed the most flimsy intellectual attempts yourself. For instance, your claims about the success of the liberal-democratic state in the 20th Century. When challenged upon this, you didn’t even respond.

As for liberals being unwilling to defend liberal institutions, two perfect examples are the Danish cartoons and Aayan Hirsi Ali (and Theo van Gogh) in The Netherlands. That things get to such a state is a bad omen. The horse has already bolted if people are defending this free speech after rioting and murders (and threatened murders). Also, plenty weren’t/aren’t defending them, instead calling for typical politically correct measures.

Again, I ask you, at what point will there be enough of a voting bloc to seriously roll back some of the liberal institutions in some Western European nations? At what point will the reaction to that be a rise of the far-right and blood on the streets?

[Buttercup]

@Jaboney

We all have our red lines. With me, it’s advocating social darwinism; with you, titty photos.

Fair enough. I’m a ‘rich’ female, though. One directly affects me in a negative way, one makes my life better.

GiT talks a lot of shit (IMO) but he’s also right about the dangers of the welfare state. Britain is a mess and the politics of the last 30 or 40 years have created an underclass that will take a long time to get away from, if the will even exists. Many many Britons feel exactly the same way, with high taxes and no returns for the lower middle classes in terms of an acceptable level of healthcare, education or provision for the elderly. They utterly resent the welfare classes who do not need to work, and uncontrolled immigration from the EU combined with lax ‘asylum’ laws have led to an increasingly right-wing mood.

Compared with Taiwan, a society with adequate social provision, low taxation and no welfare culture of entitlement, and it’s not difficult (right or wrong, I don’t much care) for people to make certain connections.

However, GiT, it’s easy enough to rail against social welfare when we already have anti-biotics in the bag and aren’t going to die because some Dickensian wraith sneezes on us, and we have enough years of schooling to take us all around the world and able to post on bulletin boards. Me? I’d have gone to school anyway, and I don’t really mind sharing my cash so lazy peasants’ kids can go to to school, but hey, maybe I’d just get bored if I only had ‘people like me’ to talk to and recognise the folly of people like me being the ‘ruling’ class.

Are you doing your bit to raise western birth rates, GiT?

[GuyInTaiwan]

[quote=“dantesolieri”]I am not sure that he was advocating social Darwinism. I think that his point was that demographics do matter as nation states are composed of populations that need to have a common purpose/identity. The fact is that there is civil war and unrest in Bosnia, Lebanon, Cyprus, Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan-Bangladesh, southern Russian republics, Xinjiang, Thailand and that it is Muslim-based. That is not to say this type of problem does not exist in any other society.

The problem is that many Western nations are finding that their Muslim populations are not integrating. While this is also true of the Hispanic population in the US, the difference is that the indoctrination of intolerance and violence is much more widespread among Muslims. This is a simple fact that any search of any given day’s news will reveal. What happens when a Western society grants women constitutional rights to equality but the Muslim religion forbids it. Can you base on society on different rights for different segments of the population and should you? This is not only an issue with Muslims but given the levels of violence involved, it certainly has national policy advisors worried. To pretend that this is not the case may give you a frisson of moral superiority but the problem remains and a blaket of political correctness regarding discussion of the subject is not an effective answer.

Now, you may have discussed this before and are wearied by the subject. That is an effective and appropriate answer but that is not how you approach answering the previous poster. I think that you owe him an apology.[/quote]

Thanks for your defence/response. To clarify, in some ways, I am a social Darwinian, though in effect, any non-socialistic, state-based response is such, so it’s kind of pointless to say it. I just simply don’t believe that history has generally borne out the peaceful transfer of power, let alone an amicable and equal sharing of power voluntarily. Someone is always on the make. The transfer of power from the British Empire to the U.S.A. is perhaps an exception, but generally, one country gains power at the expense of another and there’s a certain degree of kicking and screaming involved.

I think you’re right to predict that growing Muslim populations have many in politics worried. At some point, major parties will have to start actively courting a new voting bloc, or form coalition governments with such parties. This is true of any political movement. Of course, the response to that may well be far-right groups. All in all, I think we’re going to see a less moderate Europe in the next few decades. People seem to think that the ten years of relative peace after the collapse of communism, and prior to that, the odd situation of the Cold War (which actually could have gone quite differently in a lot of countries such as Austria, Italy, Finland, Greece and even France), mean that all of a sudden Europe, and people in general, have solved their age-old problems.

[GuyInTaiwan]

@BigJohn

So the Chinese are quite right in some respects that the west wants to keep them down, at least in terms of how people like you think. Don’t forget, "POE stands for Peace On Earth as well as Purity of Essence.

Power is always in a state of flux. Someone who doesn’t have it is always trying to get it. Aside from that though, do you think a Chinese superpower would be a force for good in the world?

That’s total obfuscation. I said why would that be considered avoiding consequences, which you defined as liberal. Please answer the question before you pose your own.

I thought I distinguished between classical liberalism and modern liberalism, but I should have been more clear. I was merely saying that under both sets of ideas, tolerance for individual lifestyles would be standard, so there’s no point distinguishing them on such points. Where they differ is usually on economic matters (and the funding of various social programs).

Most developed nations fund universal healthcare. Canada does and is fiscally in great shape - the current downturn excepted.

What’s the sustainability of that funding? I’ve heard Japan and many European nations won’t be in such great shape within a couple of decades.

Judge for fucking up, but don’t leave people to rot, I say, at least in the case of social programs for the poorest.

I guess that’s where drawing the line at any one point is open to conjecture and we probably wouldn’t agree.

[quote]That’s no reason for anyone to be an asshole.

But let’s agree to disagree. I’m sure I could convert you to my cause quite easily, but I’ll just let you rot in your social Darwinian hell!!! :raspberry: :bluemad: :loco: [/quote]

Haha. Okay.

[GuyInTaiwan]

@Buttercup

[quote=“Jaboney”]We all have our red lines. With me, it’s advocating social darwinism; with you, titty photos.

Fair enough. I’m a ‘rich’ female, though. One directly affects me in a negative way, one makes my life better.

GiT talks a lot of shit (IMO).[/quote]

Sometimes, as much as you piss me off, you’re one of the few people here who appreciates my true qualities.

However, GiT, it’s easy enough to rail against social welfare when we already have anti-biotics in the bag and aren’t going to die because some Dickensian wraith sneezes on us, and we have enough years of schooling to take us all around the world and able to post on bulletin boards. Me? I’d have gone to school anyway, and I don’t really mind sharing my cash so lazy peasants’ kids can go to to school, but hey, maybe I’d just get bored if I only had ‘people like me’ to talk to and recognise the folly of people like me being the ‘ruling’ class.

Of course. Am I playing fair? No. I realise the West has it good, and I don’t want to share that around. Having said that, (of course) I don’t think there is a moral imperative for us to do so. That’s the nature of power. The oppressed don’t become the mouth-piece and champions of the other oppressed, they become the new oppressors.

Are you doing your bit to raise western birth rates, GiT?

Yes and no. Yes because I’m/we’re planning on having three kids, though I should say “developed” rather than “Western” since I don’t know that I will ever go back to live in the West. They’ll grow up partly Western, and partly Taiwanese, no doubt.

No because I’ve led a very self-indulgent Western lifestyle and will be having kids later than my forebears, although I’ll also be living longer than them, so perhaps that will balance out. I’m not sure.

[urodacus]

Just a reminder that Darwin was not a social Darwinian. Charles Darwin was a rich scion of a wealthy family (the wedgwoods, by marriage) but he did not advocate using the survival of the fittest as a eugenic mechanism. Social Darwinism is an oxymoronic invention of the selfish.

[Fortigurn]

@Jaboney

We’re already over-populated. A negative growth rate merely means that we’re on the path to a correction.

Who’s already overpopulated? Are you speaking globally, or with regard to a particular nation?

@urodacus

but seriously, it is mostly those pussy footed, heart bleeding, useless appendages known as liberals who believe that the world is beyond its useful sustainable carrying capacity.

Which is patently untrue.

As if there could be any such thing!

There is such a thing, but I doubt that anyone has quantified it properly yet.

Technology and the Bible will fix everything, you mark my words.

Remove the Bible, and that’s what Australian liberals say, ‘Science will fix everything, continue to consume!’.

@GuyInTaiwan

[quote=“BigJohn”]That’s total obfuscation. I said why would that be considered avoiding consequences, which you defined as liberal. Please answer the question before you pose your own.

I thought I distinguished between classical liberalism and modern liberalism, but I should have been more clear.[/quote]

You were totally clear. You did make such a distinction. You never defined ‘avoiding consequences’ as ‘liberal’. You defined it specifically as a tenet of modern liberalism.

[Buttercup]

Well, I’m British. I think that makes a difference. I know many people with your viewpoints.

Of course. Am I playing fair? No. I realise the West has it good, and I don’t want to share that around.

No, my point was that ‘sharing’ benefits everyone. If all have access to medicine for infectious/contagious diseases such as, smallpox, I am at less risk of catching those diseases. Education for all benefits me: how ever much education I have, I am never going to build myself an aeroplane or perform surgery because I’m simply not clever enough. I can teach language and write books, though, which not everyone can. Any system needs diversity. It’s an over-simplified analogy, but it holds up.

What you advocate is the opposite of ‘survival of the fittest’. Children cannot survive by themselves. By levelling the playing field with social welfare, everyone gets to play the game. If education, for example, is not available to all, the ‘fittest’ get pushed out and the children of previous generations’ ‘fittest’ are favoured. Look at Britain’s Royal family to see how that plays out… Like it or not, your children are not extensions of how super you are.

I share my money, and knowledge (such as it is) and others share theirs with me. I’m more or less happy with that, although it pisses me off that not everyone has to (the very rich and the very poor get a free ride).

[GuyInTaiwan]

@Buttercup

Well, I’m British. I think that makes a difference. I know many people with your viewpoints.

Are you saying that because you’re British, you know many people who talk a lot of shit? If so, does it follow that either, 1) people who aren’t British aren’t good at detecting a lot of shit-talking, 2) there aren’t as many shit-talkers in other nations?

Of course. Am I playing fair? No. I realise the West has it good, and I don’t want to share that around.

No, my point was that ‘sharing’ benefits everyone. If all have access to medicine for infectious/contagious diseases such as, smallpox, I am at less risk of catching those diseases. Education for all benefits me: how ever much education I have, I am never going to build myself an aeroplane or perform surgery because I’m simply not clever enough. I can teach language and write books, though, which not everyone can. Any system needs diversity. It’s an over-simplified analogy, but it holds up.

I share my money, and knowledge (such as it is) and others share theirs with me. I’m more or less happy with that, although it pisses me off that not everyone has to (the very rich and the very poor get a free ride).[/quote]

Indeed. Sorry, I should have been more clear. I understand your example and I agree with it. I don’t want to share what little (relatively) I’m good at or have with others who don’t contribute either. I was saying that with regards to both the society I live in (which is why I like Taiwan – the welfare state is much smaller) and with some/many other nations.

[Charlie_Phillips]

@urodacus

Just a reminder that Darwin was not a social Darwinian. Charles Darwin was a rich scion of a wealthy family (the wedgwoods, by marriage) but he did not advocate using the survival of the fittest as a eugenic mechanism. Social Darwinism is an oxymoronic invention of the selfish.

True, it was his second-cousin Francis Galton who used Darwin’s theories to justify his own belief in his own intellectual superiority and the necessity for eugenics.

We now know that his theories were wrong. Nurture can make a difference of 20 to 30 IQ points. Intelligence is not determined by genetics. Physical anatomy is also affected more by nutrition and environmental conditions than by genetic inheritance. Genetics determines potential, not actual human development.

[dantesolieri]

I’m under no obligation to tolerate intolerance.

and I am disasgreeing that the first poster was being “intolerant” by discussing an issue that is of obvious concern to many. It is printed in many mainstream newspapers and it is front and center on many TV news broadcasts… I think that the interesting issue here is why you are so invested in showing yourself to be “intolerant of intolerance.” Why not shut down all debate as well about foreigners living in Taiwan who have negative things to say. Surely, that is the same kind of “intolerance?”