I was wondering why I wasn't hearing more about Proposition 8 aside from sources in California. Then I read that the Defense of Marriage Act's quarantine of gay marriages hasn't been overturned. By gum.
Anyway, I was going to just say that it struck me as sort of funny that Brozy and my and Lunk and JB's marriage certificates say that we were married before God in this year of our Lord. I would think that religious people would be in favor of denying the state the right to act in God's name. If marriage were only the domain of the churches, I would think legislation to allow visitation rights, etc. for gay couples in civil unions would pass easily. But maybe I misunderstand American sentiment and people really are shooting for making it as unpleasant to be gay as possible.
And while I'm offending half of my friends, I've gotta say that on the ethics of birth rates, I'm inclined to agree with Will Wilkinson and Jared Diamond than Tyler Cowen and Greg Mankiw. As I see it, Diamond's fear that we could exhaust global farmlands, starve by the billions, and leave humanity in a pre-technological state without any easily accessible reserves of energy or minerals is at least possible, and would be sufficiently catastrophic that even the possibility should weigh heavily on our policy decisions. Contrarily, by limiting our population, we face--what? Slower technological progress preventing us from colonizing other worlds before an asteroid hits? Personally, I don't think we'd reach Mars significantly sooner with ten billion people on earth than five billion. I particularly object to Cowen's apparent assertion that ten billion people rating their happiness a six is ethically preferable to five billion people rating their happiness a nine. As long as we can avoid extinction, the aggregate happiness of our descendants dwarfs our own, and I would argue against Mankiw that most of them will be better off after Google has been around twice as long than if Google were twice as big.
To play devil's advocate to my own position, it seems to me that a more populated world is likely to be more interconnected, since transportation can benefit from economies of scale. So perhaps a more populated world will be less likely to see nuclear winter.
At any rate, if you're reading this, I almost certainly think that your particular children contribute more to humanity than they cost. So, uh, carry on.
6 comments:
(And, as usual, any reduction we make in our burden on the environment will largely be absorbed by China and India anyway. So. Good times.)
Eh. The world will end in a miserable depletion of resources (caused by meaningless cultural rituals)that will drive us all to cannibalism. Would you prefer that now or in ten years?
So eat, drink, and be merry before someone else steals your share.
I rather hope for nukes, myself.
Population controls would really only be effective if more prosperous countries had more babies while less prosperous countries had less. However, since it's very unpopular to say that and the reality is just the opposite, it won't happen.
By the way, about DOMA -- it will be voided at some point. It's only a matter of time.
Well, that has been the case with China. But yeah, on the whole, you're definitely right.
Encouraging to hear that from a lawyer. Will that simultaneously void all of the mini-DOMAs?
But maybe I misunderstand American sentiment and people really are shooting for making it as unpleasant to be gay as possible.
Yes.
You'd be surprised how little the concept of "live and let live" factors in. There is a bunch of bonafide hate that is shocking in its vehemence and sheer absence of moral quandary.
The 10th anniversary of the murder of Matthew Shepard is about to pass, and I'm not sure the world has improved a lot. A lot of the hate seems to stem from religious conviction:
When the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled that it was legal to display any sort of religious message on city property if it was legal for Casper's Ten Commandments display to remain, Phelps attempted and failed to gain city permits in Cheyenne and Casper to build a monument "of marble or granite 5 or 6 feet (1.8 m) in height on which will be a bronze plaque bearing Shepard's picture and the words: "MATTHEW SHEPARD, Entered Hell October 12, 1998, in Defiance of God's Warning: 'Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination.' Leviticus 18:22.
And that's part and parcel of the hate. People cite Leviticus, but in the very next chapter after that commandment, God tells them not to wear clothing woven of two different kinds of cloth. Is there some blended fabric brigade beating poly/cotton blend wearers to death? No.
Cowen's argument is idiotic, partiallly because there's no reason to think that 6 and 9 are even on a linear scale. Even if they were, that sort of pure utilitarianism is morally bankrupt anyhow; it leads to untenable questions, like: if we could murder one of out every 5 children born in a horrific orgy of blood, and all gain perfect happiness in all other areas from that, should we? (And if that circumstance every came about, beware those 6s.)
Heh, calls to mind Halo's Gravemind: "I am a monument to all your sins." Mind-blowing that people would want themselves remembered for their intolerance.
And yeah, the absurdity of the hedonistic calculus from premise to execution is one of the strongest arguments for libertarianism, to my mind.
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