DanArmak comments on Equality and natalism - Less Wrong

10 [deleted] 24 October 2012 03:53PM

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Comment author: DanArmak 26 October 2012 09:17:22PM 0 points [-]

Distributing free contraceptives, without requiring people to posess or use one, only increases the range of options open to people. From any kind of utilitarian standpoint, this looks like helping people to achieve what they want (if they choose to use contraceptives, they don't want children) while also achieving what you want for them to do, which is a clear win.

Of course, from an American cultural and political point of view, this wouldn't fly, because the permissibility contraceptives is a big point of blue-green politics there. Even if only a minority actually wants contraceptives to be illegal, the issue is strongly enough associated with politics that most people won't be able to think about it; they'll think about us vs. them instead. So you won't get anything done.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 26 October 2012 11:43:08PM 1 point [-]

Distributing free contraceptives, without requiring people to posess or use one, only increases the range of options open to people.

Neglecting the cost of the contraceptives and the cost of distributing them.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 October 2012 02:30:30PM 0 points [-]

ISTM that condoms aren't that expensive...

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 27 October 2012 09:06:30PM 0 points [-]

In that case why is it so necessary to distribute them for free?

Comment author: [deleted] 27 October 2012 10:45:35PM 0 points [-]

The inconvenience of buying them? (I'm just hypothesizing; I'm not in the mind of people who don't want children but still have unprotected sex, so I don't know why they do.)

Comment author: drethelin 31 October 2012 06:00:59PM -1 points [-]

Either: not being expensive is a privileged view, and they're far more expensive to poor people and why don't you care about poor people?

Or: if they have access to free birth control but still don't use it, we can legitimately start talking about how their culture is the problem without people accusing you of being racist/classist/ etc.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 01 November 2012 04:19:28PM 0 points [-]

if they have access to free birth control but still don't use it, we can legitimately start talking about how their culture is the problem without people accusing you of being racist/classist/ etc.

The whole point of making those accusations is that they can't be refuted by evidence, or rather it is the person presenting disconfirming evidence who is accused.

Comment author: DanArmak 26 October 2012 11:54:47PM 0 points [-]

If they're funded by donations (of people interested in them being used), where is the problem?