A Eulogy to Communist, Socialist, & Collectivist Ideology.

During my naive and idealistic youth, I dabbled around with socialist and communist ideology for about a year. That is, until my economics education started to take an effect on me and the way I approach understanding and making sense of the world. Since then, I’ve pivoted to a highly pro-capitalism economic philosophy for the past several years.

I’ve read the Communist Manifesto. I’ve read Marx & Engels’ work. I’ve read modern communist work. I’m far from ignorant about socialist and communists ideas, ideologies, and philosophy on political economy. And at this point, I’ve additionally read an ungodly amount of economic theory, research, literature, and history.

I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but communism and socialism is fundamentally flawed in the naive assumptions that the philosophy is built on. It assumes that everyone is altruistic and puts the interests of the whole above the interests of the individual. This is simply not realistic. There are many, many individuals in the world who are not altruistic, and rather they are motivated only by self-interest. This fact alone is precisely why communism and socialism fundamentally require an authoritarian and fascist political system in order to work.

The Undeniable Superiority of Capitalism as an Economic Philosophy.

Not only are capitalist markets are far more efficient and effective than central planners are at allocating resources and adjusting to the demands of the revealed preferences over goods and services for all individuals, capitalist-based economies thrive by the brilliance of their market-based design that truly doesn’t get as much admiration as it deserves. The truly brilliant feature of capitalist economics, is that rather than being based on the necessity of altruism, capitalist markets make the assumption that people are rational agents.

The terms rational and rationality in economics are commonly misunderstood. This is because these terms are technical jargon with a definition specific to the field of economics that differs from the colloquial definition of rationality that is more frequently used by non-economists. In economics, rationality and being a rational agent simply means that individuals, i.e., economic agents, make decisions that are in their own best-interest.

As a behavioral economist and former alcoholic, I definitely have some of my own disagreements with this definition. Us behavioral economists have improved upon economic models by incorporating various behavioral and psychological components into our models to more accurately model and account for realistic human behavior and decision-making processes to accommodate for what this rationality assumption neglects in traditional economic models.

The brilliance of capitalist economic models is that assuming all economic agents make rational decisions and choices provides precisely the mechanism for why capitalist-based free market economic models do not depend on every individual being altruist at all times, no matter the cost. Instead, capitalist economic models that assume rationality are designed in a way such that these mechanisms for trade result in fair outcomes between even the most self-serving and antisocial individuals. These economic models for trade assume that everyone seeks the best deal for themselves that results in maximizing their utility (i.e., satisfaction, happiness, etc.). So, given that all the economic agents participate rationally in trade, the model for trading systems naturally result in trading outcomes that maximize the utility for all economic agents participating in trading and in markets. Through designing an economic system of trading based on the assumption that people seek to maximize their own self-interests, we have a system that works in producing fair outcomes for all participants regardless of the moral and ethical nature of the individuals participating in trade and markets.

The capitalist free market design for economic systems of trade is far superior than collectivist, communist, and socialist ideas about economics and trade because those mechanisms fail the moment a person deviates from the required subjective morality-based social norms rooted in the ideals of altruism and collectivism, including even in cases where individuals only do so, not because of moral rot, but out of necessity of self-preservation stemming from human’s survival instincts. Economic systems based on collectivism, communism, socialism, and altruism attempt to subjugate, control, and suppress societies because reliance on these ideals are fundamentally at odds with human nature. As follows, attempts to enforce adherence to altruistic and collectivist ideals above all else fundamentally require political systems to become fascist and authoritarian in order to uphold the functionality of their economic models.

Communism inherently requires authoritarianism within politics and governance over societies.

Capitalism grants individual liberty, autonomy, and agency to constituents, and enables libertarian politics and governance over societies.

The grievances you hold about the current state of living conditions within the U.S. are completely valid, but the blame for the issues inspiring these grievances are misplaced. The issues that have contributed to adversity and inequality within the U.S. are due to our pervasively corrupted political system, not capitalism.

Regarding San Francisco and the Berkeley-Brained Communist, Socialist, & Collectivist Ideological Brainworms.

Trust me when I tell you that I understand this ideological brainworm perspective completely. I used to believe the same ideology and lies that you’ve been fed and convinced of due to over-exposure to the socialist ideology that is pervasive within the culture in Berkeley; and, that is further exacerbated to increasing extremes as a result of the astroturf political campaigns and the psychological operations that are conducted extremely frequently in Berkeley by our communist foreign geopolitical adversaries (e.g., primarily Russia and China). Our foreign adversaries orchestrate these efforts to attempt to weaken us through pushing propaganda and policies that are destructive to our communities, infrastructure, and economy as a form of soft power warfare.

For example, consider the fentanyl crisis that has resulted in so much tragedy and despair within our communities. The fentanyl that now floods our streets is manufactured in China and imported into the United States through our shipping ports using Chinese freight ships that have constantly been coming and going between the shipping ports in China and Oakland ever since the decision was made to move our manufacturing industry to China.

Once the CCP successfully imports their fentanyl into the United States, they then exploit the vulnerable economic conditions of undocumented Honduran migrants, whom lack the right and opportunity to obtain lawful employment here. In consequence, these Honduran migrants are coerced by their circumstances to accept illegal work as distributors of this fentanyl in order for them to survive here given the severe neglect of our extremely flawed and outdated immigration system.

Have you ever done a deep dive looking into when the decision was made and who was involved in making the decision to move our manufacturing industry to China? Have you ever heard of the woman whom is married to Mitch McConnell? His wife, Elaine Chao, who was originally born in China but is now a citizen of the United States, just so happens to be the daughter of the largest shipping magnate in China. But that fact alone isn’t entirely concerning until you consider the fact that Elaine Chao, daughter of the largest Chinese shipping magnate, served as the U.S. Secretary of Transportation during the time when the decision was made to move the U.S. manufacturing industry overseas to China. I’ve never heard of a more extreme conflict of interest than this in all of my studies nor throughout my entire life.

Moving U.S. manufacturing to China was promoted as a good thing for Americans, as it enabled mass consumption of imported goods at lower prices. Those lower prices were made possible due to the lower costs of importing products that are manufactured in China. These lower prices for goods and lower production costs for manufacturing goods were only made possible through capitalizing on cheap labor through the exploitation of Chinese peasants, which the Chinese Community Party was happy to accommodate by oppressing the Chinese people into such extremes of impoverishment and desperate living conditions that the Chinese people had to accept the only employment available to them: this manufacturing work that only compensated them with near wage-slave labor conditions.

All the while, China’s elite class, those in government as members of the Chinese Communist Party, lined their pockets and amassed themselves with wealth from the financial proceeds that they were able to extract out of the labor costs that ought to have been distributed to the factory workers whom contributed their labor to the production of goods within China’s new manufacturing industry. That money that should’ve been distributed to provide dignified pay to these laborers was instead embezzled by China’s leadership, made possible by the Chinese Communist Party’s successful efforts in manufacturing a despotic society of desolate economic conditions and despondent labor conditions, in which the Chinese people were left with no choice but to submit to these coercive and exploitative labor market conditions.

Our foreign geopolitical and economic adversaries focus their efforts towards undermining the United States with special attention and increased effort specifically in the San Francisco Bay Area because it is both the technological and intellectual capitol of the world; and this provides the United States with a comparative advantage that grants us superior power and influence in setting and shaping the international stage of geopolitics, international relations, and the global economy. Our adversaries know that destabilizing the culture, politics, infrastructure, and economy that exists in the San Francisco Bay Area reduces our power and influence to effectively implement containment policies via soft power against their adversarial, oppressive, hostile, and authoritarian regimes, and in turn, provides them better odds of success in pursuing their geopolitical and economic goals.

It is absolutely necessary that the United States remains the global hegemon. The narrative that China’s desire for a multipolar world and shared global hegemony is rooted in a call for fairness in representation and equality in power and influence on the international stage. This is a complete bullshit lie. U.S. hegemony is absolutely essential for containing our adversaries, and only the United States has the military capacity and values to lead the way in these containment efforts.

If you’re wondering why these containment efforts against our foreign adversaries are so fundamentally essential, it becomes perfectly clear once you’re aware of the geopolitical and economic goals of our foreign adversaries, and the lengths to which they will go in order to achieve these aspirations if they aren’t kept in check with containment policies.

The Russian Federation

Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin want to re-establish the Soviet Union, with or without the consent of the people occupying the territory within the other nations that would need to be captured in order to achieve this goal. As stated by Vladimir Putin himself, his decision to invade Ukraine was motivated by “not wanting NATO forces along the Russian border.” Presuming this statement from Putin is true, this means that the Russian Federation intends to continue its territorial military expansion through additionally invading all nations belonging to NATO that share a border with Russia. These nations include Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Turkey (source).

Furthermore, if Putin succeeds with his war in Ukraine, it is generally suspected that Putin will continue this military expansion further with military invasions to take the territories that currently belong to Moldova, Poland, Czechia (formerly the Czech Republic), Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Belarus.

It is unclear how far Putin intends to go with his territorial military expansion, and whether he intends to expand it to only Eastern European nations belonging to NATO or if he intends to carry out a complete territorial military expansion campaign on to re-take the entire Eastern Bloc as to re-establish the entirety of the territory belonging to the former Soviet Union. Putin’s lengthy commitment to describing the long history of Russia’s territorial disputes during his recent interview with Tucker Carlson seems to suggest that Putin may indeed be planning to go as far in his territorial military expansions to re-establish the Soviet Union in its entirety.

It is my personal perspective, based on analysis of the Russian and European geographical landscape, that Putin intends to indeed continue his military expansion into Europe, but as far as and only to the extent of invading the nations that can be deemed necessary to take in order for the Russian Federation to expand its territory to include mountain ranges that can serve as defensive geographic blockades encompassing the vulnerable geographic landscape of Russia’s current territory, which is nearly entirely an open plateau that leaves Russia incredibly vulnerable to attacks and foreign invasions by its neighboring nations.

The People’s Republic of China

The Chinese Communist Party claims that Taiwan is part of China. This is not true. Taiwan is recognized as a sovereign nation by the United States.

1. To better understand the U.S. stance on the “One China” Policy, review the brief overview from the Center for Strategic & International Studies nonpartisan publication What Is the U.S. “One China” Policy, and Why Does it Matter? (CSIS, 2017).

2. For more information about U.S. relations with Taiwan, I recommend reading the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs 2022 Fact Sheet on U.S. Relations with Taiwan.

3. For a better understanding of the People’s Republic of China’s One China Policy, refer to the following nonpartisan document The Origins of the U.S. One-China Policy that was prepared by Specialist in Asian Affairs Susan V. Lawrence in collaboration with the Congressional Research Service (CRS) for congressional committees and Members of Congress in September of 2023.

The One China Policy has nothing to do with uniting the Chinese people.

First of all, the Chinese Communist Part really only cares about Han Chinese people. The rest of the Chinese people receive the detained, tortured, organ harvested, and/or genocide treatment instead:

In January, 2021, U.S. Secretary of State, Michael R. Pompeo, released a press statement covering his determination of the genocide of Uyghurs and the atrocities in Xinjiang. The following are excerpts covering the main determinations from the press statement, but you can read the full press statement here.

After careful examination of the available facts, I have determined that since at least March 2017, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), under the direction and control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has committed crimes against humanity against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other members of ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. These crimes are ongoing and include: the arbitrary imprisonmentor other severe deprivation of physical liberty of more than one million civilians, forced sterilization, torture of a large number of those arbitrarily detained, forced labor, and the imposition of draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement. The Nuremberg Tribunals at the end of World War II prosecuted perpetrators for crimes against humanity, the same crimes being perpetrated in Xinjiang.

In addition, after careful examination of the available facts, I have determined that the PRC, under the direction and control of the CCP, has committed genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state. The governing authorities of the second most economically, militarily, and politically powerful country on earth have made clear that they are engaged in the forced assimilation and eventual erasure of a vulnerable ethnic and religious minority group, even as they simultaneously assert their country as a global leader and attempt to remold the international system in their image.

Additionally, you can also learn more about China’s human rights violations by reading the U.S. State Department’s 2022 report on it here (U.S. State Department, 2022).

China states that their ambition is to “reclaim” the territory of Taiwan (which they will attempt to accomplish through military force in Taiwan and in the South China Sea in roughly 5 years). This stated ambition is likely a half-truth.

The primary reason China wants to take Taiwan is because the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is based in Taiwan. If China is able to successfully take Taiwan, the CCP will gain control over TSMC. How lovely of a system these damned commies have created for themselves! If the CCP gains control over TSMC, then the CCP will have successfully obtain a monopoly over the entire semiconductor manufacturing industry, enabling the CCP to entirely dominate the market and the future for artificial intelligence, the most promising and powerful computer technology of our lifetime.

If this is allowed to happen, the entire world will get to operate under CCP censorship and Skynet (yes, they literally named it after Skynet from the Terminator movies), China’s artificial intelligence-based surveillance technology system that uses video footage from the massive amount of cameras they’ve installed throughout Beijing to monitor and track everything civilians do and then goes even further with this technology by using it to assign, determine, and adjust the social credit scores of each person in order to significantly control their population and individual’s liberties as well as opportunities in life! This is like that one Black Mirror episode, but somehow even more dystopian and authoritarian. We absolutely cannot allow China to obtain this monopoly over the semiconductor manufacturing industry nor dictate the future of artificial intelligence for humanity. Nope. Not a chance. No fucking thank you.

Other Foreign Adversaries

Iran: Iran is a bit more simple, but also incredibly dangerous. Iran primarily just wants nuclear weapons, but Iran also wants to use nuclear weapons to wipe Israel entirely off the planet and start an entire regional nuclear war in the Middle East. No bueno.

North Korea: To be quite fair, pretty much all I have to share about North Korea are my own speculations. With that being said, here they are:

Kim Jong Un is a bit of a mystery to me, but what I can say about him is that he’s an authoritarian militant with an inferiority complex that he aspires to compensate for by building nuclear weapons so that he can pretend he’s a big man worthy of a seat at the table and serious consideration, despite the fact that he’s low-key insane. He also wants to nuke the United States, and honestly who knows who else he wants to nuke. The man is truly an enigma to me. He mainly just seems to want to prove that North Korea is a worthy adversary to be treated with serious consideration, which honestly just comes across as Kim Jong Un’s personal issues actualizing through bombastic, validation and attention-seeking behavior. Poor dude was probably raised by some pretty emotionally-neglectful parents.

With all that being said, I’ll regurgitate my overall point quite simply:

Marxist economists, socialists, social anarchists, commies, tankies, Maoists, and all other variants of collectivist ideologues are naive, brainwashed, ignorant, poorly-educated, and/or psychotic retards.

Capitalism is far superior to any of these alternatives to such an extreme extent that it’s frankly ridiculous to even spend any time comparing the two or discussing these collectivist ideologies with any serious consideration. Capitalism kicks ass and Marxist economists should have their degrees revoked.

SMA

Founder & Principal Writer

The Void

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So far, the entire online discourse surrounding pronatalism is dominated primarily by men, and it’s no mystery why. No, it’s not that women don’t want to engage in discourse about pronatalism and family planning. From time to time, I do see a woman say something during the conversations surrounding pronatalism. However, this is extremely rare. It’s extremely rare primarily because the men who are attracted to pronatalism comprise one of the most misogynistic, condescending, hateful, resentful, and hostile groups of people I’ve ever encountered on the internet, and that’s saying a lot! I’ve scoured the ugly and repulsive depths of 4chan; the disturbingly dark corners of dark web forums; the pitiful and tragic qualms on the now-banned redpill subreddit; and, a whole variety of the hate-filled anonymous forums that are scattered across the clearnet.

The pronatalist movement, as it currently exists today, primarily consists of screeching men who not only frequently publicly live-tweet their temper tantrums about declining relative birthrates in the West for the entire world to witness, but go even further to viciously attack, degrade, and maliciously manipulate women with career ambitions. Normally, and up until now, I’ve simply ignored, muted, and blocked these annoying crybabies and jackasses.

Elon Musk’s Contributions to Amplifying Pronatalism Discourse on his Platform, X

However, now that the owner of the X (formerly known as Twitter) platform, Elon Musk has decided to take on pronatalism as one of the causes to add to his hobby of LARPing as a social justice warrior influencer, pronatalism content and discourse is now being promoted and propagated through the entire platform thanks to his engagement with it. Yes, you heard me right, Elon. You are indeed a social justice warrior. I understand your concerns about “the woke mind virus” and fighting the societally-destructive communist ideology that has infected the political leftwing is a noble and worthwhile cause. For this, I applaud you.

However, you’ve gone so far in fighting leftwing politics and ideology that you’ve entirely wrapped around to the other extreme of the political spectrum; thus, actualizing the concept known in political theory as Horseshoe Theory; and, validating it through your very own lived experience, behaviors, and, I can only presume, your beliefs. That is, in your efforts to avoid falling victim to “the woke mind virus” (as you refer to it), or what polite society refers to as far-left extremism, which varies from social anarchism, democratic socialism, other more nuanced forms of socialism and communism, to all-out authoritarian communism, you ended up at the polar opposite end of the political spectrum, in the realms of far-right extremism.

So, while you (Elon) have publicly made claims implying that you’re closer to a political centrist on numerous occasions, the evidence that’s demonstrated by your behavior and the causes you choose to promote on your platform beg to differ. If cognitive dissonance is getting in the way of allowing you to see the way you now present yourself online, there’s a plethora of examples within your activity on X that demonstrates your political alignment resting firmly within far-right extremism. To be completely clear: in your fight against far-left extremism and “woke” ideology, you’ve wrapped entirely around to now habitually perpetuate and promote the ideology and propaganda of far-right extremism. Commonly, and presumably unknowingly (at least, I hope unknowingly), you even have gone as far as to promote and engage in FSB (The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) propaganda and disinformation campaigns, which now proliferates throughout your platform more so than ever over the course of the last few months; and frankly, my main concern for you is that I’m not sure there’s a single person in your life anymore who isn’t petrified of you with enough courage to tell you the truth and point out the propaganda you’ve fallen victim to now. In other words, you’ve lost your balance in your flight from one extreme only to end up with your beliefs captive to those at the other extreme; and, now the sycophants whom surround you have blinded you from seeing this, Elon.

As I see it, the pronatalist movement, as it exists in its present form today, unironically has approximately the same chance of succeeding as communism, and, putting the practical dysfunctions and failures of communism aside, the pronatalist movement will fail to even launch primarily for the exact same reason communism perpetually fails to launch in the United States. That reason is because, just like the supporters of the communist movement in the United States that we’ve come to know and despise, the vast majority of the supporters of the pronatalist movement in the United States are just as hostile, repulsive, barbaric, and idiotic as the communists that you’ve devoted so much time and resources to fighting their braindead and destructive ideological politics. The reason both communism and pronatalism will inevitably fail to launch is that the supporters of both of these ideology-based political movements perpetually alienate individuals, who may otherwise be allies in the fight, from participating in and contributing to these movements due to the unprompted abuse and hostility from the majority of the movement’s current group of supporters. Don’t get me wrong. I’m for pronatalism. I want to see a trillion human beings proliferate across the galaxy and realize humanity as an interplanetary species.

A Personal Experience Demonstrating the Problem Within Pronatalism’s Cultural Problem

With that being said, let me share with you the experience that prompted me to write this article. It started with a well-intended man, normie macdonald, posting a screenshot on X (post linked here) of the attention-grabbing aspects of an article published by The Economist with the title “How motherhood hurts careers” and an image of a rather useless graph that only a journalist is capable of designing for public consumption.

When I noticed this screenshot of this clearly clickbait article, I was extremely doubtful the journalist of the article was able to do any justice in writing about this important topic. So, I took it upon myself to add to the discourse with what I hoped would bring clarity to the conversation that I identified as missing due to the tragic state of journalism today. I did this by bringing the attention of other X users to the 2023 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, which was created at a later date than the original Alfred Nobel Prize to award excellence in research for the field of economics and is instead decided by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, but that’s besides the point. So, taking into consideration the audience of the individuals that primarily compose the pronatalist movement, which has a tendency to attract a lot of resentment, lonely, spiteful, childless, and aging single men of low educational attainment belonging to middle and lower socioeconomic classes, I accommodated for their reading comprehension levels by sharing a summary brief of the prize-winning research paper that outlined the main findings and takeaways from the paper rather than the paper itself.

Now, before you make any judgments about this description I presumed about these men, it turns out I was overwhelmingly wrong in my presumptions. In fact, the situation is so much worse than I had even imagined. I recieved countless replies, some of which I’ve included some of my favorites below for your viewing pleasure:

• Entirely unprovoked malicious and manipulative attacks:

• Man who doesn’t understand anything about childcare (e.g., formula nor pumping breast milk for bottle feeding):

• Man claiming “we live in a society” AKA deal with it; unwilling to help to solve the problem they complain about while expecting women to fix it for them. Did someone say mommy issues?

• Man assuming I’m a liberal and taking joy in his mistaken assumption that I’m committing to be childless ???

• Man telling me to enjoy the cats and that they will eat me eventually (tbh I’m more of a dog person)

If you’d like to read more of the reactions I received in response to my reply, you can find them on X here.

Claudia Goldin’s Contributions to Economics Research

Moving forward, I decided to share this research because the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Novel was awarded to Claudia Goldin in 2023 for her work in labor economics, economic history, and specifically her focus on investigating the causes underlying the gender pay gap, demonstrating “how and why gender differences in earnings and employment rates have changed over time”1.

To quote the National Bureau of Economics Research (NBER)’s statement on their research associate Claudia Goldin:

“Research associate Claudia Goldin has been awarded the 2023 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for having advanced our understanding of women's labor market outcomes." The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained that Goldin "provided the first comprehensive account of women's earnings and labor market participation through the centuries. Her research reveals the causes of change, as well as the main sources of the remaining gender gap.”

To quote from the Nobel Prize Press Release:

“Goldin showed that female participation in the labour market did not have an upward trend over this entire period, but instead forms a U-shaped curve. The participation of married women decreased with the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society in the early nineteenth century, but then started to increase with the growth of the service sector in the early twentieth century. Goldin explained this pattern as the result of structural change and evolving social norms regarding women’s responsibilities for home and family.

During the twentieth century, women’s education levels continuously increased, and in most high-income countries they are now substantially higher than for men. Goldin demonstrated that access to the contraceptive pill played an important role in accelerating this revolutionary change by offering new opportunities for career planning.

Despite modernisation, economic growth and rising proportions of employed women in the twentieth century, for a long period of time the earnings gap between women and men hardly closed. According to Goldin, part of the explanation is that educational decisions, which impact a lifetime of career opportunities, are made at a relatively young age. If the expectations of young women are formed by the experiences of previous generations – for instance, their mothers, who did not go back to work until the children had grown up – then development will be slow.

Historically, much of the gender gap in earnings could be explained by differences in education and occupational choices. However, Goldin has shown that the bulk of this earnings difference is now between men and women in the same occupation, and that it largely arises with the birth of the first child.”

In announcing the prize, the Academy released both a high-level summary of Goldin's contributions “History helps us understand gender differences in the labour market”2 and a longer account of her work in “Scientific Background to the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2023”3, both of which are referenced in the footnotes.

Additionally, Goldin delivered her prize lecture4 on December 8, 2023:

Goldin’s full research and relevant data sources can be found in the references provided at the end of this article.

So What Can We Learn From Her Work?

To summarize, the insights provided by Goldin’s work suggest that the modern gender pay gap resulting in lower earnings for women is, on average, due to women taking time off to participate to childrearing and childcare. While many women are happy to take this time off to participate in motherhood (and they absolutely should if that’s what brings them joy, meaning, and value in life). However, this is not the case for every woman. It has become increasingly evident that a growing number of women prefer to prioritize their career ambitions over motherhood as economic mobility becomes more accessible for women. Furthermore, these circumstances pose a substantial, tragic double bind for women who desire both the opportunity to explore their career aspirations and value motherhood. The main takeaway from Goldin’s research is that currently, our society is still designed such that women are forced to make a trade off between career and motherhood.

When a woman with both career and motherhood aspirations is forced by circumstance to choose between these limited options, the results are tragic not just for the woman, but also for the family dynamic and society as a whole. These woman are faced with essentially three options, all of which are at a high risk of resulting in tragic outcomes:

1. This woman prioritizes her career ambitions over motherhood at the cost of sacrificing her opportunity to raise children, resulting in resentment and regret as she will likely feel unfulfilled and face many challenges with isolation later on in life. Not only is this tragic for her, but this also contributes to the declining birthrate that concern pronatalists. This is not a viable solution.

2. This woman prioritizes motherhood over career at the cost of sacrificing her career ambitions. This woman will grow to become resentful of her husband and children, and it some cases may even blame them for it. This option often results in unfair treatment and cruelty towards the family she sacrificed her dreams to make possible. This can contribute to postpartum depression, dysfunctional and abusive family dynamics, and in some cases, even divorce. This is not a viable solution.

3. This woman attempts to balance her career ambitions and her desire to be a mother. Few women (varying on the intensity of demand for her time and energy from her career and the temperance of her children) are able to manage this balance reasonably well. It’s much more common that this woman is forced to make trade offs between the two that result in neglecting her career, her children, and her marriage. This too is not a viable solution.

So what is a viable solution? This is precisely why I chose to engage in this pronatalist discourse, perhaps naively hoping for a mature, constructive, and solution-oriented brainstorming session to explore alternatives to the status quo that may result in effective changes that allow women to have more options for navigating this dilemma that don’t result in tragedy. However, I’m not convinced that changing labor market dynamics, public and corporate policy, nor employment norms alone make an effective solution for this predicament.

While I’m sure there are changes that can be made through public policy, such as substantially increasing child tax credits or prohibiting hiring practices that discriminate against mothers; and, while I’m sure changes can be made through corporate policy to adjust working conditions as to mitigate discrimination against pregnant women and mothers, or enabling more opportunities for men to participate in childcare with policies such as paternal leave or delegating a number of days with paid time off (similar to vacation days) for parents so they may both engage in childcare to alleviate some of the constraints contributing to this career-parenthood trade off; however, these government and employment policy decisions may not be effective nor enough.

There is, however, another avenue for navigating this predicament in which everyone wins — family planning, but it requires both genders work together to support each other and both split their labor between employment, childcare labor, and household labor. Additionally, policies can be designed in order to make surrogates, nannies, and childcare more affordable and accessible to families below the higher brackets of socioeconomic classes may also prove to be a potentially viable remedy. One possible avenue for making these services more affordable and accessible could be to offer large tax credits to individuals who earn their income through childcare employment, and surrogates could have taxes waved for any income earned from surrogate work.

I don’t know which of these potential approaches would be the right way to move forward. Frankly, I don’t know if any of these suggestions are the best, most appropriate approaches for moving forward to a better future for all. But, I’ve shared them here to open up a conversation so that we may hopefully start some sort of productive conversation to discover solutions of compromise that works for everyone together that respect individuals’ rights to self-determination; eliminates the career-motherhood double bind; reestablishes birthrates to meet the replacement rate in the West; and, doesn’t result in tragedy.

Respecting your partner’s right to self-determination by enabling them to follow their dreams and ambitions in life without needing to sacrifice parenthood is possible. I’ve witnessed it in my own parents during my entire life. As a result of supporting each other’s career ambitions while balancing the responsibilities of childcare, not only did my parents raise two incredibly badass kids, but my mother also was able to work her way up to become the executive director of a non-profit that she turned into one of the most successfully funded non-profits in the state while my farther was able to grow his career & companies to a great deal of success worthy of praise and admiration too. So, while my experience may only be one data point, the alternative path I’ve shared here, the one in which I was raised to believe was the norm for most of my life, just might be a better path that could result in better outcomes for individuals, couples, and their families. It’s certainly better than the 1950s nuclear family model of family planning that resulted in Prozac Princesses forced to be SAHMs, which frequently resulted in suicide, severe depression, and sometimes even involuntarily hospitalized by their husbands once they no longer found value in their wives . We cannot return this tragic period of family planning.

I will regurgitate this point again here to avoid any confusion: Women, if your highest desire in life is to be a good mother and have children, I get that and I completely support your right to make that lifestyle choice! I too once felt that way before I realized that this path alone wouldn’t be fulfilling for me personally. Personally, I would probably blow my brains out from the lack of intellectual simulation living a life of PTA meetings, soccer mom duties, household maintenance, and braindead pop culture book clubs alone. Of course, that’s just my personal preference and we have every right to have different preferences!! I’m certain there are many women in the world that would find joy in that lifestyle, but it is foolish to assume that we all want that lifestyle.

I don’t judge you for having preferences different than my own. I’ve never said you shouldn’t be a full-time mother, given that’s what you value and brings you meaning in life! I’m simply saying that it’s not for everyone, and I know from experience that I don’t have to settle for a mediocre man who will try to force that lifestyle on me and coercively manipulate me into accepting that lifestyle at the abandonment of my desire to do something else that I value and find meaning in with my life.

The only thing I’ve ever advocated throughout this entire cesspool of discourse is that we, men and women, not only should, but NEED to brainstorm and problem-solve potential solutions for improving opportunities that liberate women from the double bind of feeling conflicted, and sometimes forced, to choose between sacrificing either motherhood or career.

Yes, you CAN have both. You CAN have it all! I’ve seen it with my own damn eyes growing up with parents who valued, supported, respected, and loved each other enough to do both! Ignore the bitter, resentful, abusive, and manipulative incels that try to convince you otherwise. They will tell you that you’ll end up childless and alone. They will tell you this not because it’s true, but because ending up old, childless, and alone is their greatest fear. The reason they’re alone and childless is because they’re weak, abusive, and repulsive men, whom women don’t want anything to do with, especially now that women have the opportunity to survive and thrive without suffering the unhealthy codependency that accompanies being with these men like the women before us in a world where women had less agency and less autonomy. These men are bitter because women no longer need to be dependent on them to survive. The oppressive constraints on women’s autonomy and agency in the past no longer exists, but these conditions of the past linger within these men, whom are convinced that they’re inherently entitled to a wife and children. They are not.

Ladies, you won’t die childless and alone, but if these men don’t change and become more decent human beings, they will and their bloodline will deservingly die with them.

There are unfortunately even more malicious methods that these men may attempt in order to oppress women back into the ways of the past, such as banning abortion, and perhaps even rape and forced labor. To those men who may consider attempting this path, I will grant you this one and only warning: I will transform every woman who wants to resist you into fearsome militants capable of ending your entire bloodline, so that these women may protect their god-given and constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is not the way to a better future.

The key takeaway here is that we need to work together to find compromises and solutions that support and respect each other’s rights to self-determination and a life worth living. The only reasonably effective solution to remedy declining birthrates is for these men to change their ways to support a family dynamic and a society where men and women are treated with equal respect and dignity, and where self-determination is an inherent god-given right granted to all.

If you want to participate in society, it’s time to learn your place in it alongside everyone else in humanity. So, to all of these specific variant of men, you have to make a choice about which path you will take when it comes to populating future generations: Will you adapt or will you perish?

References

Goldin’s Contributions in Economics Research:

Goldin, Claudia. 1977. “Female Labor Force Participation: The Origin of Black and White Differences, 1870 and 1880.” Journal of Economic History, 37(1): 87–108.

Goldin, Claudia. 1984. “The Historical Evolution of Female Earnings Functions and Occupations.” Explorations in Economic History, 21(1): 1–27.

Goldin, Claudia. 1986. “The Economic Status of Women in the Early Republic: Quantitative Evidence”. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 16(3): 375–404

Goldin, Claudia. 1990. Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goldin, Claudia. 1988. “Marriage Bars: Discrimination against Married Women Workers from the 1920s to the 1950s.” NBER Working Paper No. w2747.

Goldin, Claudia. 1995. “The U-shaped Female Labor Force Function in Economic Development and Economic History. In: T.P. Schultz (ed), Investment in Women’s Human Capital and Economic Development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Goldin, Claudia. 1998. “America's Graduation from High School: The Evolution and Spread of Secondary Schooling in the Twentieth Century.” Journal of Economic History, 58(2): 345–374.

Goldin, Claudia. 2005. “From the Valley to the Summit. A Brief History of the Quiet Revolution that Transformed Women’s Work.” Regional Review, 14(3): 5–12.

Goldin, Claudia. 2006. “The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women's Employment, Education, and Family.” American Economic Review, 96(2): 1–21.

Goldin, Claudia. 2014. “A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter.” American Economic Review, 104(4): 1091–1119.

Goldin, Claudia, and Lawrence F. Katz. 2000. “Career and Marriage in the Age of the Pill.” American Economic Review, 90(2): 461–465.

Goldin Claudia, Lawrence F. Katz. 2002. “The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women's Career and Marriage Decisions.” Journal of Political Economy, 110(4): 730–770.

Goldin, Claudia and Lawrence F Katz. 2008. The Race between Education and Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Goldin, Claudia, and Lawrence F. Katz. 2011. “The Cost of Workplace Flexibility for High- Powered Professionals.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 638: 45–67.

Goldin, Claudia, and Lawrence F. Katz. 2016. “The Most Egalitarian of All Professions: Pharmacy and the Evolution of a Family-Friendly Occupation.” Journal of Labor Economics, 34(3): 705–746.

Goldin, Claudia, Lawrence F. Katz, and Ilyana Kuziemko. 2006. “The Homecoming of American College Women: The Reversal of the College Gender Gap.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(4): 133–156.

Goldin, Claudia and Robert A. Margo. 1992. “The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-century.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107(1): 1–34.

Goldin, Claudia and Joshua Mitchell. 2017. “The New Life Cycle of Women’s Employment: Disappearing Humps, Sagging Middles, Expanding Tops.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(1): 161–182.

Goldin, Claudia and Claudia Olivetti. 2013. “Shocking Labor Supply: A Reassessment of the Role of World War II on Women's Labor Supply.” American Economic Review, 103(3): 257–262.

Goldin, Claudia and Cecilia E. Rouse. 2000. “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians.” American Economic Review, 90(4): 715–741.

Goldin, Claudia and Kenneth Sokoloff. 1982. “Women, Children, and Industrialization in the Early Republic: Evidence from the Manufacturing Censuses.” Journal of Economic History, 42: 741–774.

Goldin, Claudia and Kenneth Sokoloff. 1984. “The Relative Productivity Hypothesis of Industrialization: The American Case, 1820 to 1850.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 99(3): 461–487.

Data Sources in Goldin’s Contributions in Economics Research:

International Labour Organization. 2023. Data retrieved from World Bank Gender Data Portal, https://genderdata.worldbank.org/data-stories/flfp-data-story/.

OECD. 2023. Gender wage gap (indicator). doi: 10.1787/7cee77aa-en (Accessed 2023). https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm.

World Bank. 2023. Labor force participation rate for women ages 15–64 in 2018 and log of GDP per capita in 2018 (constant 2017 USD). Data retrieved from World Bank Open Data Portal. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.ACTI.FE.ZS.

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