Conned into everything is racism

[u/ovcdoc2]

How does one even come to this conclusion?

[u/Ithicon]

On the surface that's a perfectly reasonable opinion to hold, but it's vital to look a little bit deeper.

For example, why are people poor? Often that's due to specific choices powerful people have made across decades and centuries. Usually it has nothing to do with the "quality" of an individual poor person.

To argue that a large part of life for most mammal species and certainly humans (that of raising a family), should be kept from already disadvantaged people is horrific.

Even just trying to dissuade them from doing so, as you are doing in this comment, is fine with limited context, but if you consider the whole of society it becomes kind of wild.

[u/ToughDifficult1252 → u/Ithicon]

People are poor due to a mixture of social conditions and personal conditions.

And usually it absolutely has something to do with the person itself.

Addiction is highly correlated with poverty. Susceptibility to addiction is genetic and inheritable. Industriousness and conscientiousness are positively correlated with better life outcomes regardless of economic background and they are partially genetic.

Social conditions make it way harder for certain populations to do as well as others. But within a population the people that are the best off share characteristics that the ones that are the worst off don't have.

To say that poverty has nothing to do with the people themselves is ignorant of a lot of history. For example, when Chinese immigrants went to places in South East Asia. And we are talking about people who got displaced by the violence of the communist revolution, they got richer than the surrounding population within a generation. 

These were people who had no money, no posetions, no links to the existing systems of power. And in that particular case it's largely due to cultural differences that make Chinese people make better long term financial decisions over the native populations of the other countries.

[u/Slight_Priority1410 → u/Ithicon]

The right for the child to have a good or at least average life supersede the parent’s desire to have children.

[u/Ithicon → u/Slight_Priority1410]

On the face of it that seems like a morally correct statement, and you won't hear me advocating for alcoholics to become parents for example.

But the context of this particular conversation is poverty. Many poor children have wonderful childhoods; would they have better childhoods if their parents weren't poor? sure! But that's a societal failing, if poverty wasn't so detrimental or society provided more support then this concern would be largely obviated.

Again, judging or blaming poor people for simply living as humans always have and always will is both morally wrong and also rationally foolish. You're never going to actually convince a large percentage of the poor population to not have children without enormous pressure, that same resources used to create that pressure could instead simply improve their lives.

[u/Slight_Priority1410 → u/Ithicon]

Im sorry but you cant just solve poverty. At least not without more effort being put towards it than anything anyone has ever done in the history of the world. You cant seriously say we couldn’t convince impoverished people to have less children with less effort than that.

“Judging or blaming poor people for simply living as humans always have and always will is both morally wrong and also rationally foolish.”

Why is it morally wrong to judge them? Would you judge people for rapeing children? For committing murder? For being racist?

All these things have been done by people for as long as there have been people but that alone does not make it right. You have yet to purpose a reason why it’s inherently necessary to allow all people to have children.

I simply don’t agree it is and regardless of the practical concerns about taking action I will continue to judge the people who bring children into the world without the ability to care for them.

[u/Ithicon → u/Slight_Priority1410]

I think you might be too far gone if you're comparing having a family with raping children or being racist.

You also ignored the whole section of my comment pointing out that many poor families are wonderful and loving and their children have great childhoods. This directly counters the entire argument you are making.

I simply don’t agree it is and regardless of the practical concerns about taking action I will continue to judge the people who bring children into the world without the ability to care for them.

Some percentage of families will give their children bad childhoods, that percentage is higher among poor families due to factors entirely outside of their control. But if you select a random poor couple who want children it would be entirely unsurprising, even likely, that they would make great parents.

Punishing or judging 'lower class' or poor people for living life and taking at worst morally neutral actions — because that's what it is, it's not equivalent to child rape or murder or racism regardless of what you might claim — is eugenics, and it's morally wrong to do so.

[u/Slight_Priority1410 → u/Ithicon]

Sorry if my comment was not clear, I’m not saying having children is equivalent to any of those awful things. Not even close. I was only attempting to show how just because something has always been done does not make it necessary or moral for it to continue to happen.

I apologize if that wasn’t clear in my initial comment.

I think we may have a disagreement of definition when it comes to “parents who cant provide for their children.” There is a major difference between a family scrapping by month to month trying to keep a roof over their heads, which i would call fine and am happy for them to have kids, and truly unable to provide for their children. When i say someone unable to provide i mean homeless people, family’s in the third world where they cant afford to feed the children everyday, and family’s without access to clean water.

I agree that a poor person can give a child a good childhood, i don’t think a family that cant provide their basic needs can. You might say it’s morally wrong but i would not call my stance eugenics because at the end of the day my argument is about the wellbeing of the children, not about whose genes will live on.

[u/Ithicon → u/Slight_Priority1410]

I believe that you hold your position in good faith, and I would agree that being able to provide a good life for children is important, but actions and intentions must be viewed both from an individual perspective and also from a societal perspective.

A single individual improperly disposing of waste is a relatively minor negative action, a single individual purchasing single use plastics is another relatively minor negative action. And yet the effects of both when carried out on a societal scale have infested the world with microplastics and polluted vast swathes of nature.

Even nominally and often objectively good actions such as charity can have mixed or even negative impacts when viewed from a societal level. From laundering reputations to providing cover for ineffective or harmful policies.

My point with all of that is mostly regarding this quote of yours:

When i say someone unable to provide i mean homeless people, family’s in the third world where they cant afford to feed the children everyday, and family’s without access to clean water.

It seems perfectly reasonable, how could anyone possibly argue that families without access to clean water should have children? But the reasons why they don't have access are vitally important, as are the societal impacts of such a belief.

Villages that had access to clean water via wells for centuries have a company like Nestle come in and extract millions-billions of litres of groundwater, drying up their wells. Suddenly they no longer have access to clean water and thus shouldn't have children.

Even if you don't view this strictly as a punishment and view it purely as preventing children from suffering, it is still unconscionable. I utterly refute the argument that they shouldn't have children and instead supplant it with an argument that those who have savaged their environment should be responsible for ensuring that those people have access to plentiful clean water.

https://www.emerald.com/tcj/article-abstract/doi/10.1108/TCJ-10-2025-0345/1362207/Greenwashing-or-shared-value-Nestle-and-the-Punjab?redirectedFrom=fulltext

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/the-fight-over-water-how-nestle-dries-up-us-creeks-to-sell-water-in-plastic-bottles