The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
-- W. B. Yeats
Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
11–20 of 316 posts
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#12Unfortunately this is an argument from the wrong angle, because it assumes what the pronatalists 'mean' by their belief. It's the same way that arguing with Musk about being a free speech maximalist is fundamentally a failed argument, because he doesn't actually believe in free speech. The silicon valley pronatalist stance is because they want to be patriarchs in full control of their family. They want absolute contr…
>The silicon valley pronatalist stance is because they want to be patriarchs in full control of their family.
I am not sure what % of pro-natalists that applies to, exactly, but keep in mind most people in Silicon Valley voted for Clinton/Biden/Harris in 2016, 2020, and 2024 and most are not weird traditionalist cultural conservatives. There are many progressive left-liberal pro-natalists who just 1) don't want humanity to go extinct and 2) know that population decline in a country can lead to various issues, including economic problems. Immigration can help with some of that, but reproduction rate is declining or low in basically every single country and so immigration will eventually also not be a sustainable solution.
I think the majority of vocal pro-natalists are probably right-wing/racist/misogynistic, but the core pro-natalist stance in itself (as opposed to a stance of "whites are being out-reproduced", or something) is, in general, still a completely reasonable and I'd argue moral position.
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Unfortunately this is an argument from the wrong angle, because it assumes what the pronatalists 'mean' by their belief. Thank goodness you didn't assume what they mean as well, then.
I believe in, quite simply, the fact that their actions outline what they truly believe. Elon Musk said he was a pro gamer who was top of the ladder in Path of Exile 2, then he was found to be cheating having hired folks to play the game for him. If someone calls themselves a free speech maximalist followed by banning people who criticize him, then he cannot by definition be a free speech maximalist.
You are projecting your thoughts on Elon Musk (which you do have some evidence to support) to a much, much larger swath of individuals.
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#14Unfortunately this is an argument from the wrong angle, because it assumes what the pronatalists 'mean' by their belief. It's the same way that arguing with Musk about being a free speech maximalist is fundamentally a failed argument, because he doesn't actually believe in free speech. The silicon valley pronatalist stance is because they want to be patriarchs in full control of their family. They want absolute contr…
Do you think anti-natalism is or should be the default for humans?
Saying you don't think declining birth rates is the highest priority does not mean you think people should not have children.
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#15"Pronatalists" and this administration that they support is anything but. They've made employment more precarious, driven up costs, attacked public education, destroyed public health policy and on and on. Any claim on their part to be pro-family is either delusional or an outright lie.
Yes, work from home is beneficial for employees, but what's best for their employees is not what they're interested in.
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#16The one thing I can't find a quick is a definition for "pronatalist." The obvious definition without the scare quotes is "those in favor of families having children." But we have scare quotes and references to men who definitely desire extreme levels of control over others.
It looks like "pronatalist" policy is "say you support increased birth rates while simultaneously being against any economic policy that would support families."
Which looks like the conservative playbook for decades. "Yes, more people in need, with limited education, so we can scare them into supporting more of the same."
Do I have that right? Or did I miss some nuance?
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#17> Return-to-office is functionally anti-natalist policy beloved by “pronatalists”.
> ...
> The loudest “pronatalists” (Musk, Andreessen) spent two years killing workplace flexibility while funding nearly a billion in elite fertility tech.
So the message here is SV pronatalists aren't actually pronatalists, because pronatalism is way down on their list of priorities, especially bar below the priority of "be an imperious boss."
Capitalism seems to like to choke everything that's not maximum capitalism, reproduction in this case. It has no future unless humanity can be replaced by capitalist machines, but fortunately we've got top men working on that.
Imagine this for a sci-fi story: a dead world, its dominant technological species extinct, but it's mindless LLM-powered machines live on, mining raw materials and trading on a stock market.
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe in, quite simply, the fact that their actions outline what they truly believe. Elon Musk said he was a pro gamer who was top of the ladder in Path of Exile 2, then he was found to be cheating having hired folks to play the game for him. If someone calls themselves a free speech maximalist followed by banning people who criticize him, then he cannot by definition be a free speech maximalist.
You are projecting your thoughts on Elon Musk (which you do have some evidence to support) to a much, much larger swath of individuals.
I believe if you reread my post, you will find I isolated out my criticism to a very specific group.
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#19Huh?!?
Pronatalists didn't kill WFH - offshoring did.
I've mentioned my experiences in board meetings about this topic as well [0].
WFH proved to the leadership of a number of previously hesitant companies that async and distributed work doesn't impact delivery.
But wait, why should I even keep paying a Silicon Valley salary for someone living in Tulsa, when I can have my existing Eastern European or Indian employees move back to the old country and open a GCC hub for me?
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#20The one thing I can't find a quick is a definition for "pronatalist." The obvious definition without the scare quotes is "those in favor of families having children." But we have scare quotes and references to men who definitely desire extreme levels of control over others. It looks like "pronatalist" policy is "say you support increased birth rates while simultaneously being against any economic policy that would su…
There are a lot of flavors of "pro-natalist". For example Elon Musk is a "pro-natalist" but he seems to clear favor white Christian people and himself especially. Others are pro-natalist but have a general eugenics bent, rather than just white/Christian supremacy. And then others are pro-natalist in a more general sense, in that our culture in general should encourage at least rough replacement levels of fertility so that that we should avoid a population collapse.