Elon Musk says civilization will "crumble" if we don't have more babies

As other have said, this has nothing to do with people, in general, having kids. The global population continues to grow - there’s more than enough children being born in the world for the purposes of global capitalism, the only reason to be concerned about lowering birth rates. (We won’t even go into issues of growth beyond sustainability, something Musk has pretended to care about in the past.) It’s only developed countries with the declining (or declined) birth rates, so whenever someone starts saying shit like this, it’s about one thing and one thing only - all about white people having more children. This is purely an oblique “replacement theory” reference. Musk has gone full, overt white supremacist on us. (What a fuckin’ shocker.)

Honestly surprised anyone takes him seriously these days. He says enough incredibly stupid shit, in public and private, including about the stuff he’s supposed to know all about, that I find it impossible.

Well, yes, but he’s taken at face value and treated like someone who knows what he’s talking about (even when he clearly doesn’t), which is perverse. He’s shown, over and over, that he either is clueless or lying.

Yeah, that’s what the recent court cases, where you have literally the same people arguing both for forced births and against any sort of vaccine/mask mandates, show - there’s cis het males, who have bodily autonomy, and then there’s, well, everyone else, who doesn’t.

More than that, he’s an extremely lucky capitalist (having lucked into the ground floor of several companies that were wildly overvalued when sold, making him an absolute fortune. But the culture doesn’t want to acknowledge the role of luck in success, so the luck gets treated as genius, instead.

Racists, for one.

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The Car Used In Tesla’s Promo Video For Autopilot Hit A Barrier During Filming According To A New York Times Story

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Coincidentally, Some More News just had a segment that if people, specifically the Government, want people to have more than one kid (if that), we need to work on making it actually affordable/practical for that. And laid out some ideas that would reduce inequality.

I tried to queue it up to that segment.

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New rule, effective immediately: when any person earns $500M or more they shall immediately and forever thereafter have their lips sewn together in a permanent and undo-able fashion.

This is the important point. We (here I use “we” meaning Americans, because I’m not sure the same bias appears in other countries) have stuck in our national consciousness the insane notion that whenever someone “succeeds” at something and becomes a public figure, that person becomes qualified to give expert opinions on every subject. Being a rich reality show star qualifies you for the Presidency. Being a rich movie star makes you an expert on comparative religions. Being a rich electric car company CEO makes you an expert in population studies. Being a rich pillow manufacturer makes you an expert on electoral politics. The operant word is rich. We still believe the myth that a rich person is a superior being who became rich by being smarter, working harder, and thinking more deeply than the rest of us. You’d think that after all the Enrons and Madoffs and Theranoses and Sacklers and Trumps that we’d wise up.

If you’re very rich and talk loudly (and endlessly) people will assume you’re worth listening to. To quote Tevye, “And it won’t make one bit of difference if you answer right or wrong–when you’re rich they think you really know.”

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“Man born into wealth worries about running out of servants”
I think my headline is better. You’re welcome.

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Strange. It seems as if the dipshit ultracapitalist’s only metric for whether something (like population) is succeeding or not is whether or not it is growing at an unsustainable and irresponsible rate. Can’t imagine where he got that idea from.

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Not sure of the context here since comments have been deleted, but I’d assume that in a phrase like “replacing ICE vehicles with EV’s” the initials “ICE” stand for “internal combustion engine”

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Gotta love the ones that are suddenly spouting the “my body, my choice” message, although they don’t seem to have yet applied that to anyone else.

I’m having my first hormone appointment (well, the “pre-treatment, what do you want to accomplish, here’s what we can do” one) at Planned Parenthood in early January. It’s not been lost on me that PP is being attacked again. I’ve been braced for a confrontation every time I’ve visited my local location, but luckily haven’t had it happen yet.

There’s a clinic not far from my work that gets a group out front about once a week or so, and I always make sure to flip them a rude gesture, especially as I often have to stop at the traffic light directly in front of them. It’s kind of a futile gesture, really, and does nothing to change anyone’s mind, but it feels cathartic.

Guess ultimately there’s never going to be a best time to go on hormones; it’s always going to be dangerous, I’m always going to be making myself an even larger target, but at least I’ll be in good company.

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Privilege means never having to acknowledge that other people exist.

I’m pretty sure there’s nothing you could say which would change their minds. (I’m sure there are some who can be convinced, most likely in a horrible-hindsight-I-never-thought-it-would-happen-to-me sort of way, but an argument in front of PP probably isn’t going to do it.) In a screwed up situation like the one where they have more of a right to harass people than of people to get health care, you may as well get some catharsis out of it.

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How are we going to feed the capitol machine of infinite growth if we don’t throw more babies into it?

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No, no, no, it’s pure genius, I tell you. Starting with choosing the proper parents to be born and raised by before even being conceived.

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… and just the right generation to be born into so that he could benefit from apartheid without being blamed for it

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Same here. One and Done!

Also, if Elon would be so kind as to only fuck himself, then maybe we wouldn’t have population issues…

Elon, you’re so smart (supposedly); maybe you can figure out a way that we can create sustainable economies that are not based on constant population growth and ever increasing consumer markets?

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Yeah, our present government is lead by the Social Democrats, racists to the core (because that’s how to gain power in DK). So much so that Germany will not send refugees back to DK, since they view us as an unsafe country (mainly because we are constantly trying to send back Syrian refugees, despite the fact that everyone, UN, EU etc, says it’s not safe).

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Obligatory link about this phenomenon and Elon Musk in particular:

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Well capitalism is a giant pyramid scheme. It requires constant growth or the cracks start showing through.

This is why governments hate the idea of limiting population growth even though we are all competing for a finite number of resources.

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Plenty of governments have supported population control measures - China is one example, as is any government who have used less coercive measures, such as the legalization of abortion and birth control and the emancipation/education of women… In fact the most effective way to limit population growth is to emancipate women and let them make decisions about their reproductive health. Turns out we have ambitions outside the home and generally speaking don’t enjoy being baby factories and dying in childbirth… who knew?!?

[ETA] And let’s not forget that such fears of “overpopulation” have a pretty dark history. Again, China is a prime example about their over-reaction to “overpopulation”… how many girls were murdered because of the one-child policy, do you think? The problem is always a distribution problem of capitalism, not a population problem. Right wingers have been whinging about how the poor are going to cause a population explosion that will end humanity for centuries now and it has not once proven to be true. But, if you REALLY want less children, the actual way to do that is to emancipate women and give them full control over their reproduction. That’s really all you need to do.

All of which are off-topic, as Elon Musk is not a government… and reproduction choices is really none of anyone else’s business… so… ya know…

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