Re:Dick Smith (Entrepreneur)
by inopinatus on Sunday November 21, 2021 @09:54PM
(#29302208)
No doubt that when repeated in whatever echo chamber they come from, those arguments attract nothing but approval.
However, since they're quite clearly a load of intentional misrepresentation and false equivalences, they don't wash with a critical outside observer.
> You can't have that as your argument
Excuse me, no, as with the previous misrepresentation of countervailing positions, once again you don't get to decide what someone else's argument is. This coercive attitude is consistent, but it doesn't hold any water.
There's no proposal to eliminate governments and ruling classes, so ignoring the realities is facile. The outcome of a downward trajectory is literally killing people, and this is not OK.
Many people are. Our current global population is massive. Humans and their livestock account for 96% of all mammal biomass on earth and we're rapidly exterminating the remaining 4%. And people want it to grow significantly, e.g., the person I just replied to.
> On the contrary, advocating for population reduction is inherently classist, since this requires government management, and ruling classes will inevitably protect their own ranks first.
No it doesn't, that's just false. The most highly consuming countries on earth have naturally stable or declining populations.
And making arguments about the ruling class protecting their own ranks or deploying authoritarian government control over others doesn't really make sense because they do that now, they'll do that when populations are growing, they'll do that when populations are shrinking. You can't have that as your argument.