I think we might be leaving the "boring" part of this dystopia

It seems like its just ethno-nationalists freaking out. Capitalists have been tackling this problem with immigration for a long time.

McDonalds threatened to replace their employees with machines, and when they tried it cost them millions....

"15 an hour? Meet your replacement!" was nothing but a scare tactic, if machines were viable they'd already be in use.

Lol. What? Who? Which "capitalists"?

I swear, Lemmy is sometimes just as bad as the far right talking about "antifa".

This is exactly why conservatives have strong armed the judicial branch to backtrack and erase the legal precedent of roe v wade. Its not about their moralist grandstanding. Wealthy people will still be able to safely and comfortably access reproductive health care but their goal is to force poor women/ couples to give birth to children who will be unwanted, unaffordable, and ultimately neglected or even abused living in poverty or becoming institutionalized which will put them at an even higher risk of neglect and abuse.

They know that many people are now refusing to work for the absolute garbage wages they have standardized across the US labor market. 54 years ago one adult working a full time minimum wage job could support a family of four with enough left over to save for retirement, their kids higher education and go on a modest yearly family vacation. Today however it takes both adults working 2 jobs at 80 hours a week with overtime at a base pay of at least $30/hour which is quadruple the federal and double my states minimum wage. Back in the year 1968 minimum wage of $1.60/hr with gold at $35/oz earned 95 ounces of gold annually at 40 hours a week employment. That would be $260,000 today. Even in 1950 (75¢/hr) it was 45 ounces($120,000) a year and 1956($1/hr)was 60 ounces ($160,000) and in the same time frame where minimum wage has lost 84-93% of its value corporate executive pay has ballooned from 30-60 times the median worker salary to 1000-5000 times that same metric today

There are several historical events that I believe show our government has been hijacked by wall street mili And prison industry profiteers who now control and ultimately own our representatives and had them intentionally devalue the US dollar to eradicate the progress made by the labor and civil rights movements in the 40’s 50’s and 60’s while they adequately adjusted their executive compensation to cover this massive theft of currency value. Since then corporate tax has gone from 72% to just 14% today and the tax for income above $200,000 up till Reagan was 91% and today its no different from the tax rates payed by working class people.

And these thieving fraudsters know that people with even a basic level of intellectual understanding are refusing to produce labor when it isn't worth their effort. More people now than ever are openly expressing dissatisfaction with the environment of labor and wealth distribution. So their solution is to force poor people to have children so they can reap the benefits by exploiting people who are so desperate they have no other option but to work for wages that don't incentivize the production of labor and lack any amount of dignity. This is the ultimate reality to the recent reversal of roe v wade by a corrupt court owned by fascist plutocratic oligarchs.

can’t wait for the socialists to be out on the streets when other peoples money runs out

But this came out of a public university in Colombia. Nobody ever suggested doing it for profit.

Yeah, that's the kind of persistent vegetative state you don't want to wake up from.

But really this kind of abuse of people in these states goes way beyond pregnancy. If we're willing to do this to women, why not keep vegetative patients of both sexes alive for years as continuous blood donors? I could easily see someone justifying that, especially if the victim has a rare or that universal donor blood type.

Or how about organ donation? We do currently take organs from deceased donors, but usually it's a one time deal. When it comes time, if the person is a willing donor, you pull the plug, and then harvest whatever organs you can that you have a recipient for at the moment. But you could make that a lot more efficient if you could keep the donor alive for a long time, perhaps years. Just keep them alive, waiting for someone in need. Someone needs the first kidney? Give it to them. Someone needs a second kidney? Give it to them and put the donor on permanent dialysis. Someone needs a hear or lung? Take the donor's and keep them going via artificial means. Or maybe we could take skin graft after skin graft, growing new skin again and again. Treat them like sheep being shorn. It's the difference between having to use a butchered animal up all at once vs being able to freeze most of it for later. Hospitals could have whole wards of these donors caught for years in a state of half-disassembled living death.

This is an ethical Pandora's box we REALLY do not want to open.

They did a comedy with Arnold and Danny devito called JR

That horror movie would make any HP Lovecraft stuff look like a children's book.

Essentially yes. Again, we all start as parasites. A uterus primarily is just a way for pregnancy to be survivable. But in theory it is perfectly doable in males.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_pregnancy#Ectopic_implant

As that article notes, pioneers in reproductive healthcare have even commented that it would likely be possible. We just don't do it because it's medically unconscionable to deliberately create an ectopic pregnancy. It goes against the whole, "and first, do no harm" principle. But if we're throwing ethics to the wind and involuntarily impregnating people we consider already dead anyway, why not do the same to males?

I mean, sure. I have no problem with people signing up for this thing voluntarily. But it should never be something you can be opted into by default, like organ donation in some locales.

With all due respect, you seem to be actively seeking to be offended. This comes down to bodily autonomy. And providing an example of how this effects everyone is not some monstrous thing perpetuating the patriarchy. I think you're a little too deep in the gender theory here.

I'm a trans person. I have had to fight for bodily autonomy my entire life. The fight for bodily autonomy is what ultimately connects trans rights with what are traditionally labeled "women's issues." Ultimate the right to abortion or contraception is about the right of everyone to bodily autonomy. To have final ownership and control of your own flesh and blood effects women's reproductive rights, trans rights, the right to die, organ donation, etc. This goes way beyond just traditional women's issues.

And honestly, the scenario isn't convoluted or absurd. If the government did ever allow this kind of surrogacy, there would be no need to confine it to just one sex. Hell, I would be actively petitioning to apply it to everyone regardless of sex. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and I AM that pettty. I would absolutely demand that atrocities be applied equally. And if we're doing this, we're probably also doing involuntary organ donation. So again it all comes back to bodily autonomy.

What is horrifying about this proposal is not that it would be done to women. What is horrifying about it is that it would be done to human beings. And I don't feel the need to throw up artificial barriers and get offended that someone would dare to point out the broader implications of this beyond narrowly defined and ghettoized "women's issues."

I don't know, I think OP is making A Modest Proposal

I just threw up in my mouth a little when you pointed that out. Yes the article says that too, but this accurate re-wording kinda really makes it "click"

What if they are a rich corpse?

What I really hate about longtermism is that it actually tells us nothing about what policies are best, as we don't know what paths will lead to the best future.

You could argue that low taxes on billionaires will give them the resources needed to do space colonisation. Thus, in the long term, not taxing billionaires now is good. Or you could argue that a robust social safety net and UBI is the best path to a long term best future. How many Einsteins throughout history died illiterate peasants? By providing resources for everyone, we maximize our chances of the truly talented having a shot at elevating us all through new science and discoveries.

Hell, I could even justify a nuclear war through longtermism. Economies grow more worn-in and sclerotic over time. Every so often you need a historical arsonist like Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan to run through an area, burn the existing order to ashes, and give people a chance to start again. Existing elites prevent necessary change. And often the only way to remove them is to burn everything down. On the next attempt at civilization, they can learn from their predecessor's mistakes. For example, destroying the fossil fuel industry now is effectively impossible; they're simply far too entrenched and powerful. By voluntarily starting a global thermonuclear war, we will smash their power. Civilization can then rebuild powered entirely by solar and wind. Yes, we lose 90% of the human population today, but we prevent total human extinction via complete biosphere collapse, which appears to be the road we are on now. From the long term perspective, deliberately starting a global thermonuclear war is the only rational choice.

I mean a step or two beyond that- like keep a braindead body alive via feeding tube and ventilator so it's just constantly generating blood that drips into donor bags. Keep just enough in the body's circulation to keep it ticking, but bag the rest -- it would produce WAY beyond the output of a mind-intact donor.

Bone marrow transplant? Done. Skin grafts? Hit it. Fucking hair for wigs? Plasma? Hell, even fecal transplants are a thing (restores GI microbiome that got wiped out... it's gross as fuck, but it's a thing - and it requires the donor to follow a VERY specific diet, that can now be force-fed).

Basically anything the body passively generates that we have some use for; keep a braindead-human-cattle-donor on life support and milk it for all it's got.

...that sounded a bit bit like a sales pitch - gist is to illustrate just how far we could take this. Putting the focus on babies will just worsen the population problem, but also showcases an extreme lack of imagination!

Cancer has a need for unlimited growth, that doesn't mean we should coddle a tumor: cut that shit out, then put it under the microscope so we know how to stop it from happening again.

Your county's findings that right-wing populists are trash are consistent with a myriad of similar 'studies' around the globe. Mine just elected an orange neonazi who loves making decisions that hurt the quality of human life, so we'll be adding plenty of data to that pile pretty soon here too.

But governments are not willing to do the one thing that would make for higher fertility - make the country a nice place to live, with enough support for parents so having a child isn't an economic disaster

I wonder what my country will be like with half the number of people. We're building so many houses, my town has two new suburbs opened in the last ten years as we head toward peak population, but our fertility rate is just over 1.6, replacement rate is 2.1. many countries are worse

I remember when we had a population in my town of 200,000 we are currently just short of half a million

We also let people take their money out of their retirement fund if they want it for buying a home (or rather put a deposit on a mortgage for a home).

I don't know who this "we" is.

The inhabitants of planet Earth. Making a baby is one of the largest carbon footprint things anyone can do. The climate is actively writing humanity's (and plenty of other critters') eviction notice via the heat we're pumping into our planet.

The needs of the individual household include not being cooked to death, and I'd wager that supersedes whichever other circumstances you had in mind.

We need fewer babies.

Unborn children get the fuck out of here. You don’t even care about the born children so get off your pious high horse of bullshit.

When you start supporting social welfare benefits maybe you can have a leg to stand on, but instead your insane ideology kills women and forces the birth of unwanted children who are the products of rape or incest, or who would not be viable for long in the world while risking the lives of the already living (mothers).

If they're suggesting the brain dead body of a woman be kept alive solely to breed, that's very vassal like to me.

I regards to abortion, I absolutely believe that people start as a cluster of cells and would choose the mother's life, livelihood, and happiness before the cluster. I think people that are "pro-life" are virtue signaling sycophants that are more concerned with being "right" over actually doing anything to help people. Imagine how many less abortions there would be if they put half of that energy into sex education, better access to contraception, and accessible education and extra curriculars. Imagine some of that energy pointed to the kids already here and needing support and care. But nah. Let's all stand outside of a medical facility and scare the patients and be assholes online. For the cluster. 🙄

but you do see Unborn Children as a “Cluster of cells” that can be murdered at a whim

Do you consider acorns to be trees?

You'll be pleased to know that it would be perfectly possible to use men in persistent vegetative states as well. In theory, it's perfectly possible for a male to carry a pregnancy ectopically. It just hasn't been done, because as the embryo grows, it latches onto and messes up the internal organs. The placenta has to be cut out like a cancer afterwards.

But if we're using people in vegetative states like this, there's no reason to throw out half of our potential surrogates. Males in vegetative states could easily be used as one time use surrogates. You first castrate the male to nuke testosterone production. Then you introduce estrogen and progesterone. Finally you implant an embryo in the abdominal cavity. After it grows to term, you remove it surgically and let the surrogate father die.

Marx was right about so many things it’s wild considering he was writing about this shit in the late 1800s. He wasn’t perfect but the fact that so much of it rings true in 2024 is impressive.

But like Jesus, it’s his fucking followers that are so goddamn annoying.

And the whole read more theory bro shit is fucking ableist and classist. I had a brain injury as a teenager and I struggle with longer reads especially stuff written in a version of English that isn’t current (sure it’s not Shakespeare which is impossible to me even before the TBI but it’s also not 2024 English) and also very dense. Most Americans can’t read beyond a sixth grade level, good luck getting them to read theory when they won’t even read simple novels for pleasure.

And no amount of theory reading is going to make this anarchist support an authoritarian system. I don’t trust people in power even if they’re people I agree with. There’s something fundamentally wrong with people who seek power regardless of ideology…

Oh neat, ironically Grey's is what I've been binging - I must not be to that episode yet. I do think there's a difference, though, between keeping a pregnant woman's body alive to allow her baby to be born vs. impregnating a brain dead woman.

It's the same dismissive thinking that suggests a robot can be a fry cook, what happens when an oddly shaped food item gets in a gear and it spills oil on the floor, who's gonna clean it up?

The cleansing power of fire, most likely.

True, but you can't always be sure someone is truly brain-dead.

man I read that so long ago, but I don't remember this....

How many viable children could a vegetable human create before the body just turns into meat slag? (Serious question)

they are proposing a human body factory for producing humans. you're the one calling them wage slaves. it's some gruesome Frankenstein shit but has nothing to do with C word

Dear sky daddy, Please make 2025 2029.

Hear me out: we let people who are into it shave all the braindead women?