WFH may be dead in the US, but it sure is alive and well in Europe.
Same in UK (from my anecdata)
Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
31–40 of 316 posts
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#32Please do not use the occasion of the death of thousands of Iranians in a war we launched against them as some sort of illustrative point about return to office and birth rates in the West.
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#33The 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…
It isn’t political.
What isn't political?
TFA? It certainly is.
The term pronatalist? Maybe it shouldn't be, but TFA is a political commentary on the term.
I'm just trying to understand how this word is being used. And all the answers thus far indicate that it does indeed encompass political beliefs.
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#34The 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’s important history and connotation behind pronatalist narratives—particularly with eugenics, xenophobia, and gender (in)equality.
Vogue did a decent overview of this[1] and history is littered with all kinds of examples if you go looking.
1. https://www.vogue.com/article/dark-history-of-the-far-rights...
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#35WFH may be dead in the US, but it sure is alive and well in Europe.
Not in most of Europe. Most of the CEE along with Western European countries like Netherlands and Ireland have ass-in-seat requirements for American companies to unlock FDI subsidizes when opening a GCC. Additionally, management culture in London as well as Paris is very hybrid work oriented. There is a decent proliferation of WFH roles in Europe, but those are the same roles in the US anyhow - we're posting those in…
> Not in most of Europe.
I live in Spain, and received WFH job offers from Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedish and German companies. For all intents and purposes, WFH doesn't seem "dead" in Europe at all, as far as I can tell.
> like Netherlands has ass-in-seat requirements for American companies
That might be true, but doesn't really tell us about Dutch companies, just what American companies want/does in Europe, doesn't really reflect what European companies are up to.
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#36[deleted]
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#37The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. -- W. B. Yeats
Special mentions to Paul Ehrlich (the "population bomb" guy). Got all his predictions wrong, never changed his mind, got a lot of money for it eg from the Ford and the Rockefeller Foundation. His ideas led to millions of forced sterilizations and abortions in China and India, with his full support, by far surpassing anything the Nazis did in that regard.
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#38> 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 imperio…
Correct, the term "pronatalists" is in scare-quotes, suggesting that their belief/concern is fake.
> Correct, the term "pronatalists" is in scare-quotes, suggesting that their belief/concern is fake.
Or it's genuine, but almost completely trumped by other concerns, which I think is the more psychologically plausible explanation than conscious deception. They only pursue pronatalism without contradicting their other priorities, which makes their actions ineffective.
Or their belief is twisted: they're pronatalists, but not pro your natalism (e.g. they're really only interested in a master-race of SV founders reproducing).
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#39Unfortunately 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…
Correct. Pronatalism is a just a front, sometimes for pure racism. Remember that Musk grew up in Apartheid South Africa. They're worried about demographic shifts away from white dominance of the US. Also, according to the article, Musk "called children and called declining birth rates a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming," which is not so much pro-natalism as it is dismissive of global warming, beca…
> Remember that Musk grew up in Apartheid South Africa
And cited his opposition to apartheid as the central reason that he left the country as soon as he could, at age 17, because he didn't want to be a part of that system.
There are so many legitimate reasons to criticize Musk, but this isn't one.
Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
#40The 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…
Pronatalist also usually implies a racist/nationalist angle, some of the reason you want more births is because your people are genetically better than immigrants in some way. This isn't universal, but it's often true.