I never thought I’d see this, but Amanda Marcotte, card-carrying feminist working for Slate XX, has just advocated ending the welfare state.
Amanda “examines” (ie. mocks with snark devoid of intellectual substance, as is typical of these kinds of publications) the idea that not having enough people of working age to support those who don’t work is a problem.
But near the end of her post, she veers way the hell off the reservation:
What really galls me about Last’s piece (and most like it) is the underlying assumption that human beings exist to serve society and not the other way around. Oh, sure, Last mentions a few conservative-friendly policy ideas to help people afford kids—such as reducing the number of kids who go to college, attacking Social Security, and pushing people to move to the suburbs—but if reducing day care costs doesn’t do it, there’s no reason to think these tweaks will either. The reader is left with the feeling that the only solution to save capitalism is to clip the wings of half of the population so they can spend more time laying eggs.
I’d argue instead that if the system is set up so that it fails if women don’t start popping out more kids, then it’s a broken system and should be reworked to account for the reality of America today. If women don’t want to have more children, then instead of abandoning women’s equality as a goal, we should rework our economic system so it doesn’t rely on a steadily growing population to function. After all, the point of society is to serve the people in it, not to reduce us to cogs in a machine that serves no one at all.
This reads like libertarian propaganda. You could put this up at Reason to hearty cheers of comradery and brotherhood (all voluntary of course).
First, she argues that human beings do no exist to serve society, rather the opposite. The individualism expressed here would do Rand proud.
I can’t wait until she gets specific and starts decrying forcing individual to pay taxes to feed the machine.
Then she argues that if the current system requires pumping out children to sustain itself, we should reform the system. She is arguing for the end of both SS and Medicare.
If this is the new direction of feminism I approve.
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Now, I honestly think it’s unlikely that Amanda Marcotte is going to be voting for Gary Johnson next election. I highly doubt she has carefully examined her views and decided that individual freedom was the goal of politics. Rather this is probably just a case Amanda replaces thought with wish.
She probably just saw someone pointing out one of the logical outcomes of one of her life choices and reflexively through out whatever she came to her so she could avoid having to acknowledge that actions (or nonactions in this particular case) have consequences.
It probably never even occurred to her that SS and Medicare depend on an ever-growing population to remain sustainable. It probably never even occurred to her that her desire for “free” stuff (like child care and contraception) from the government forces other people to serve society.
It is almost sad that non-thought like this can be published by a somewhat “respectable” operation.
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It seems Judgy Bitch found this article as well and posted on it before me. Check it out, it’s a gooder.