Comment on I think we might be leaving the "boring" part of this dystopia

Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  We need fewer babies.

  I don’t know who this “we” is. Circumstances vary heavily by household and neighborhood.

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  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I don’t know who this “we” is.

    The inhabitants of planet Earth. Making a baby is one of the largest carbon footprint things anyone can do. The climate is actively writing humanity’s (and plenty of other critters’) eviction notice via the heat we’re pumping into our planet.

    The needs of the individual household include not being cooked to death, and I’d wager that supersedes whichever other circumstances you had in mind.

    We need fewer babies.

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    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Making a baby is one of the largest carbon footprint things anyone can do.

      The median Indian resident produces carbon under the threshold for a sustainable climate. And that country has some of the highest population growth in the world. Babies aren’t the reason your carbon footprint is high. Coal fired power plants and ICE powered automobiles and AI data centers are what’s driving up the emissions rate.

      The needs of the individual household include not being cooked to death

      The emissions of a single household are minuscule relative to the emissions of international industry. Not having a child will do nothing to discourage Andressen Horowitz or Jack Ma from shoving another billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere in pursuit of a larger ROI.

      We need fewer babies.

      We need fewer billionaires.

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      • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The carbon footprint of having a child will depend on the family it’s being born into, for sure. I don’t know jack about the median Indian resident, but I’m fairly confident that their carbon footprint is higher than zero, so even looking at them as a best case scenario, reduction is still beneficial. And the emissions of industries will reduce alongside the population they target and workforce they deploy.

        AI data centers

        Yeah fuck that shit.

        Billionaires

        Yeah fuck those pieces of shit. Population reduction needs to happen in tandem with guillotine day, as you’re 100% right that the damage they’re doing is wildly beyond the scope of -any- decision you or I could make, good or bad.

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• boonhet@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  But like… why babies? We already have way too many of those. We need fewer babies.

  Capitalism has a need for unlimited growth and also most national pension systems globally take the current working generation’s money to pay for the retirement of the current retired generation - so the future working generation needs to be big enough to support the current working generation in turn.

  My own country did a footgun thing here. We had a mandatory 2nd pillar system where you contribute to a fund, the gvt matches (well, doubles) your contribution, and that gets added to the normal 1st pillar national pension when you retire, either you take it out as a lump sum, or get paid a portion of it per month. You literally couldn’t take money out of it prematurely. Except the right-wing populists decided to allow taking money out of it with the caveat that you can’t rejoin it for

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  • psud@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    But governments are not willing to do the one thing that would make for higher fertility - make the country a nice place to live, with enough support for parents so having a child isn’t an economic disaster

    I wonder what my country will be like with half the number of people. We’re building so many houses, my town has two new suburbs opened in the last ten years as we head toward peak population, but our fertility rate is just over 1.6, replacement rate is 2.1. many countries are worse

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  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Cancer has a need for unlimited growth, that doesn’t mean we should coddle a tumor: cut that shit out, then put it under the microscope so we know how to stop it from happening again.

    Your county’s findings that right-wing populists are trash are consistent with a myriad of similar ‘studies’ around the globe. Mine just elected an orange neonazi who loves making decisions that hurt the quality of human life, so we’ll be adding plenty of data to that pile pretty soon here too.

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• MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  If we’re going to delve into some seriously murky ethical water here, why not forcus on something there’s an actual need for, like organ and blood harvesting?

  Speaking of, I just watched the MST3K episode on The Clonus Horror. It didn’t end well.

  Tap for spoiler

  It didn’t start particularly good either. And the middle was a slog.

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• pumpkinseedoil@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  That’s already a thing in many countries, an opt-out program for organ donating, so by default they will take my organs if I’m braindead

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  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I mean a step or two beyond that- like keep a braindead body alive via feeding tube and ventilator so it’s just constantly generating blood that drips into donor bags. Keep just enough in the body’s circulation to keep it ticking, but bag the rest – it would produce WAY beyond the output of a mind-intact donor.

    Bone marrow transplant? Done. Skin grafts? Hit it. Fucking hair for wigs? Plasma? Hell, even fecal transplants are a thing (restores GI microbiome that got wiped out… it’s gross as fuck, but it’s a thing - and it requires the donor to follow a VERY specific diet, that can now be force-fed).

    Basically anything the body passively generates that we have some use for; keep a braindead-human-cattle-donor on life support and milk it for all it’s got.

    …that sounded a bit bit like a sales pitch - gist is to illustrate just how far we could take this. Putting the focus on babies will just worsen the population problem, but also showcases an extreme lack of imagination!

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    • psud@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      the population problem

      That’s on track. Children are too expensive now so birth rates everywhere are below replacement rates already or will be soon

      We may find the real population problem is we will have fewer smart people to help us fix the climate problem

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      • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        We may find the real population problem is we will have fewer smart people to help us fix the climate problem

        Oh no, there’s no ‘may’ about it - we’re 100% fucked on that front.

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    • Rooty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Ok, repeat after me: “Warhammer 40k is not an instruction manual”

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      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Silence, Heretic

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    • anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I doubt the blood is more useful than all the organs required to produce it.
      But if I lie braindead in a hospital, I would be happy if my body is divided up in the way a doctor determines to be the most useful for society.

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      • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Depends on the needs of the patient. If you’re bleeding to death and the hospital you’re actively dying in is out of your blood type, then absolutely blood is more useful than organs.

        If you need a new lung, a huge stock of blood transfusion bags isn’t going to do you much good.

        The goal would be for supply to outpace demand for all of the above.

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      • Shapillon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It really depends on your blood types.

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