With you on that. We’re stuck with a wiring harness that had to accommodate a hunted/hunter dynamic and the necessity of eating whatever was available in the dead of winter for countless millennia. I once heard a paleontologist describe the likely strategy of the ancient inhabitants of the central plains: if out for a walk on a winter’s day, feast on a frozen carcass if you’re lucky enough to find one. I was living in that neighborhood at the time. There are many thousands of square miles of the USA - of the entire planet - that are perfect for raising large herds of grazing stock and not so great for agriculture otherwise. Maybe someday we get to the point where that fact is recognized by activists who have rightly resisted the denuding of the Amazon for the sake of more Big Macs, a point I agree with them on completely.
For most humans through most of history at least since the invention of agriculture, meat has been a somewhat rare and precious prize. We can live well without it, or you and I wouldn't be alive to talk about it. (Or I wouldn't, at least. Maybe you're descended from aristocracy.)
Don't get me wrong; I place no particular value beyond the instrumental on the life of whatever pig or chicken or cow or lamb died to fill my supper plate, and I'm not here to moralize at anyone about how they draw their own line. But if meat gets too expensive, I'll eat more beans and lentils.
Since the invention of agriculture perhaps, but the vast majority of our species' history was decidedly in the hunter-gatherer camp. 10,000 years is a long time, yet pales in comparison to a million.
Not saying agriculture hasn't altered our nutrition and diet needs, it has. And the benefits of food storage and nutrient diversity alone go a long way towards agriculture making us healthier longer. But our guts really aren't all that far removed from pre-neolithic days for needing at least some meat for a well-rounded diet.
I omitted game from my list earlier, as I lately omit it from my diet. Wouldn't surprise me if things get tough for city deer who've lost their fear of humans, though, by and by.
Sure I can. If humans need meat for evolutionary reasons, then farming in a way that makes you happy will restrict meat to the rich. Factory farming and Big Macs are ways to get meat to the poor.
That’s still just an argument from convenience, not one from evolution.
We evolved to hunt and kill animals. We didn’t evolve to be constantly satiated from fairly fake meat multiple times a day. It’s slowly killing a lot of the population.
Ethical meat is like 50% more expensive. Basically no one in the first world wouldn’t be able to get enough meat if they switched and bought less.
You can be snobby all you want. But it’s wide scale torture for your convenience. And with very little effort you don’t have to take part.
Yes, it's not like our hunter-gatherer ancestors sat down daily to dinners of beef steak and roast chicken. Of course it varied greatly according to location, but for a lot of HGs, the typical lifestyle seemed to be "we kill a large animal (antelope, bison, whatever) once every couple of weeks or so, we eat it, then it's gone and we eat nuts, berries, fungi, small animals (frogs, birds, fish) until one of us manages to kill big game again, repeat." That's the impression I got from Jared Diamond, at least.
The reason we have mass factory farming, is that if we didn't every family would have a backyard cow for milk, a pigpen, a large garden, and no time to leave the house to do other things. Which means we'd have no internet, nor transportation system, nor power grid, nor mobile phones, nor any of the other trappings of modern society. Those things take work days much longer than eight hours, they take high density housing in big cities where you can't farm. The commute times from the hinterland would be staggering, there would be no cafeteria nor restaurant food, because food service doesn't scale.
You're arguing for an Arcadia which never existed and will never exist.
These binary arguments bug me. Just because we can’t do it perfectly means we shouldn’t bother at all? Is that what you’re saying? Why would you jump straight to every person needs to be a homesteader?
With quite little effort and cost we can reduce a lot of suffering. Not all of it.
Definitely. And it's a miracle how well it all works.
Over the last few decades that infrastructure has seen a lot of improvements regarding animal well-being. More and more people now care about this issue. They can choose to eat less, but higher quality and more ethical meat. And the market has be very good at meeting that demand.
It hasn't required massive, disruptive changes to reduce a considerable amount of suffering.
"Can" being the operative term here. It's a consumer choice, so if a majority of consumers decide they want cheap, abundant meat they should be accommodated.
I was convinced of that when I was 8. It's fine if you want to be a vegetarian or vegan, I'm not going to argue. But humans evolved to eat meat and I'm not going to be lectured.
I used to feel the exact same way about veganism. Then I just tried it and it wasn’t as hard as I thought (and certainly not as hard as it would have been 10 years ago or if I was poor). It’s always a mild inconvenience but it’s at least one issue where I feel like I’m doing the right thing.
I've been a vegetarian for 30ish years. Started due to concerns about the environmental impact of meat production. I've come to appreciate that my food choices have zero impact on that concern and that being a vegetarian is a pain in the ass pretty regularly (and I live in a place with a ton of veggie restaurants, etc). Unfortunately, I've tried to return to an omnivorous diet and find that after all these years, eating meat really grosses me out. So, I'll continue to be a reluctant vegetarian while making sure my kids eat any and all food presented to them.
Why do you think your choices have zero impact on meat production? I'd think that production is responsive to demand in some way - obviously at some tiny margin, but not nothing. Maybe you'll save a few animals from a life of factory-farmed torture over the course of your life? It's not nothing! (I say this as a non-vegetarian who thinks he should be.)
Also, consuming more non-meat options presumably does the same on the other side of the ledger, especially if your supporting new veg. technologies like Impossible/Beyond.
And for those who don't see themselves jumping straight into veganism, there are a lot of very worthwhile and quite convenient choices they can still make.
You can buy non-factory farmed meat. It's more expensive but better quality. There are a tonne of delivery services out there now. And it's the type of consumer choice that actually has an effect at the margin. Some meat, egg and dairy producers have made real changes to meet this demand.
Check if you have a 4-H program nearby. You can buy beef quite cheaply that was raised in very, very good conditions.
And I doubt this is the audience, but hunting is one of the most satisfying hobbies you can have, and gives you a whole new appreciation for meat.
I think I'm one of the few vegetarian hunters/fisherman out there (obviously my family eats the meat). When done properly, it is probably the most efficient way to procure food. And, even more importantly for me, it allows my kids to connect to a deep rural culture that can counterbalance their day-to-day norms.
The only problem with that is it doesn't scale. Factory-farmed cows and chickens *vastly* outweigh edible wild animals like deer. If all Americans switched from factory-farmed meat to wild game, America's deer/bison/elk/whatever else you can eat would be extinct within months if not weeks.
Agreed. Although in many rural areas donated meat from hunters does scale based on donations to food banks. But definitely not a big picture solution to the problems of factory farming.
I'm not a vegetarian but I used to be, and I am currently married to one. One thing I say to people all the time is you don't have to be a vegetarian or vegan, but you can still drastically reduce your meat intake. Most people eat meat at every single meal, and to me that's just insane. I eat meat probably 3-5x per month at most, and it always feels like a treat. It's usually a nice salmon at a restaurant, or a good burger (cheeseburger and fries would be my death row meal).
My ethical values would dictate that I be a vegan, and that may be in my future someday; I actually don't think it would be that hard, but, like Freddie, I'm frankly just kind of lazy and undisciplined (sorry, coconut ice cream doesn't cut it). But for now trying to just be really conscientious about when and how I eat meat, and really limiting my intake, works for me. Even if more people just did that it would make a huge difference in meat demand, and thus, on factory farming, I think.
It's not just the actual death of the factory farmed livestock, which is still terrible, it's also the misery they endure over the course of their short lives. Cages too small, not enough room to move about, no going outside or sunlight, standing above a pool of waste, growing so quickly and so fast that legs are barely able to support the animal, etc.
If animals are stressed, they don't grow well, their growth is stunted, they injure themselves and others.
If you're going to state that putting social animals like chickens in a cage is horrible, the same argument is valid about putting students in a school bus. If chickens grow up in a cage, and that's all they know, living in the cage is 'home.' Just like the allegory of the cave, infants who grew up in a cave wouldn't want to leave it. You're projecting your vivid experiences on an animal which grew in a limited psychological environment ... they really hate that.
[the last four words were a joke on anthropomorphism].
So they wouldn't live at all if we didn't have factory farming. It's not like they'd have a better life. It's the life they have or no life at all. And in the end, the life they had was taken by a human. Not sure why you get to find one life not worth living, or death preferable if it doesn't offend you.
"So it's either have no life or live a life of misery?"
For the billions of animals who are only brought into this world to be eaten, yes. And I suspect they'd choose life. It's you who wants to doom them to non-existence.
I'm guessing you've never been to a factory farm? At many of those sites, animals suffer for the entirety of their lives and the meat that is produced is compromised due to the inputs necessary to raise animals in those conditions. Contrast this to hunting, where the animal lives free until its death, which is hopefully quick. The difference in environmental impact is equally stark.
It's not hilarious at all, there's a meaningful difference between "this animal got killed and eaten but at least it lived a natural life in its natural habitat" and "this animal spent a miserable life in a tiny cage and then was butchered in a horrible slaughterhouse." What TwKaR and Dewey said.
I think most animals would rather live and wouldn't say "Well, at least I was killed by a moralistic smug jackass who thinks my life is worthy of murder."
Oh, that's a world of difference in how they die. Factory farmed animals die within a few seconds. Wild-killed animals often die over hours. We had two moose calves killed right near our camp in Alaska, they didn't die within an hour.
I'm never going vegan for two primary reasons, which are baked goods and fiber crafts. Baked goods because trying to replace butter and eggs rarely works well, and fiber crafts because wool is great and we'd all be better off if people started wearing wool instead of plastic again. The sheep need us to shave them regularly anyway.
But I do cook vegetarian and rarely eat out. It's cheaper and healthier and I generally feel more satisfied afterwards. I do still eat meat, but it's a meal every couple weeks, which is a compromise I can live with.
I think this Q+A should be a semi-regular feature.
And, as a Mainer, I agree with much of what Yglesias says in that article about Maine and also have the reactionary response that he should shut the fuck up and mind his own business since he has no idea what life is like for folks who actually live here for more than a few weeks a year.
I think _Iran_ is the party that intended to drag Israel into a quagmire. Right after October 7 I remember reading an interview in the New Yorker with an expert in the region who pointed out that all of the actors here--Israel, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.--are intimately familiar with each other. They've been dancing together for so long that they understand their adversaries at a very deep and fundamental level. Thus it's impossible that Iran and Hamas wouldn't have understood what Israel would be forced into doing as a result of the over the top brutality of the October 7 attacks.
The neocons have had Iran in their crosshairs for decades. Now, you say The NewYorker has an “expert” who says everything converges on Iran, the Puppet Master and “outside agitator,” directing all those backward folks who couldn’t possibly have their own understanding of their own situations, and take actions without being told.
The same people, and their intellectual inheritors, who dragged us into Iraq 21 years ago and hopped on Trump's coattails to try to foment a war with North Korea in 2017. And yet still somehow in 2024 they manage to find suckers.
If it was me, I'd be pretty embarrassed, at this point. How do you get rooked by somebody who's been running the same three-card monte game so long the cards are old enough to vote?
The Middle East is only a monolith in the minds of those who don't live there. Within the Middle East there are various actors with different issues and priorities, so I am not sure of the point. I think it is only looked at in this way from those looking in from a further outside.
I think the expert consensus is that Iran has been seeking to expand its regional influence for decades. They are a primary sponsor of both Hezbollah and Hamas and they are intimately involved in the current conflict.
If the question is "Why?" wrt October 7 I think a decent theory is that Iran didn't want to see two traditional adversaries in S. Arabia and Israel normalizing relations.
An event leading to predictable consequences isn't the same as an event stripping an actor of all agency and forcing them into a particular set of responses -- in this case, the mass murder of civilians. Of course a military response was predictable, but no more so than that ongoing casual violence against Palestinians would provoke violence in response. I don't suppose you think Israel "forced" Hamas carry our Oct 7?
The current wave of civilian collateral damage in Gaza is just as predictable as the indifference of the world at large to said civilian collateral damage in Gaza.
The point I'm making is that human beings of all stripes--Jewish, Muslim, Christian, black, brown, white, whatever--are pretty similar in their capacities for violence/revenge/indifference/whatever. It's not pleasant but the disproportionate responses of the US/Israel/whatever to provocation are not peculiar to those countries, they're a general feature of humanity. How many civilians died in the Iraq invasion?
Given how these things rapidly spiral out of control I place far more blame on the side that poured gasoline onto the fire after a period of relative calm. Remember Jake Sullivan talking about how the Middle East was quieter than it had been in years?
I have a similar take on the morality question. Although I tend towards virtue ethics, I treat moral philosophies like spices; you use one approach for THIS problem, and another approach for THAT one, etc.
I do have to say, though, that I think utilitarianism is a nice fallback position. When I can't figure out if X action is virtuous, and I don't know what duty applies, I ask myself, "Who is this action going to hurt?" If the answer is "Almost no one", I thank utilitarianism and move on.
"My expectation is that pretending to have schizophrenia is the next big thing, which is truly fucked."
Oh God, I'm imagining the posturing article by someone who has self-diagnosed as schizophrenic where they explain that it's REALLY all about being open to connections and patterns that normal people can't see. It's almost like a superpower!
I hate Matt Yglesias far more for his bizarre, real life hobby of being an irritating parking narc more than I do for any of his banal, basic bitch Acela Corridor takes on politics (although make no mistake, I do hate those, too).
A few weeks ago in a column, he described himself as an intellectual. I almost spit out my coffee. Journalists, or "take artists" if you will, are not intellectuals, nor should they aspire to be.
That one little comment revealed to me the privilege he was brought up in, which Freddie nicely summarized herein.
It's very funny that people who pine for an Amsterdam or Tokyo-style urban environment are so triggered by this, which of course is why he keeps doing it.
I once parked my car in the same parking lot of The Director of the California Transportation Commission. It said so on a placard on the car. The car was one of those old restored 1920s cars, where the canvas top was an afterthought. Of course the 'historic vehicle' license plate was out of date.
The CalTrans Commission oversees the California Transportation Department which is cars & roads for the state ... of course the registration was out of date.
His parking narc is one of his more attractive attributes. His incessant paeans to destroying communities for more housing and endless immigration are incredibly unattractive.
Freddie often says he's a Marxist, but rarely, if ever seems to write about it here. If you just read FdB and Matt Y's arguments in substack, I think you could reasonably conclude that FdB is to the right of Matt.
Are there any posts in Freddie's substack that lay out his Marxist views? I don't know any current Marxists who are as intellectually thoughtful and coherent as FdB (trying to put it nicely), and my current belief on it is that it's basically indefensible as an economic system. Maybe FdB has some better arguments than I've seen elsewhere?
4. What about my comment had a snotty attitude? I called you "intellectually thoughtful and coherent" and I tried to make it clear I was looking to see whether you've made stronger case for Marxism than I've seen elsewhere.
I went out of my way to make this a civil comment, on a post in which you refer to Matt Y. as a "glib cunt." Your comment ("why is googling beneath you", "pointless posturing on your part.") is 20x snottier than mine. Ban me if you want, but come on.
1. I subscribe to your substack, I've read dozens of your posts, and I haven't seen it.
2. Where do I say my mind is made up? I mention my "current belief", which implies the opposite.
3. Fair enough, I could've googled this or researched your podcast output.
I get to be snotty; you see, I'm the boss here. That's the privilege of being the writer.
I don't write much about Marxism because most people's minds aren't open to it sufficiently for it to be worth it. IF YOU USED THE FUCKING SEARCH FUNCTION you'd immediately find this explaining exactly the questions you're asking: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/its-ok-to-not-be-a-marxist
This is a bit of a "never meet your heroes" moment for me.
A more reasonable and decently charitable response to my initial post could've been: "Here's an article from two years ago [Link.] I don't write about this because I think everyone's mind is already made up on the subject."
Brother: it is your responsibility to find out if basic questions about things I've written can be easily discerned with a Google search. You have continued this dialogue without providing an answer as to why you didn't simply use the search function or Google, I suspect because you know that that would be the constructive thing to do.
I am not a politician. People don't pay for my work because they expect me to perform customer service. They pay me to be myself and express my unique point of view. I'm doing that here, with you. If you don't like it, you can vote with your feet.
That's the one of your four points I conceded was fair. The reason is because the thought came to me as I was reading this post (so I was here), and because it's often more interesting, efficient and valuable to pose a question as part of comment section. Maybe someone would point to their favorite work of yours about the Marxism. Maybe *you* would would link what you think is your best work on the subject, and maybe that's not the article that Google returns first. But I suppose the most honest reason is it just didn't occur to me - I put about the amount of thought into it that is befitting an internet comment with stolen minutes at work.
I don't expect you to perform customer service, I promise. I think not responding to my comment would've been fine (I didn't address it to you or even expect you to read it - I think *that* would've been an obnoxious request for customer service.)
And you have continued this dialogue without providing an answer as to why you thought my initial comment was snotty. I know, you're the boss here, but I was making what I thought was an interesting request to your other supporters, and I did so in a way that was complimentary of you.
My guess -- you have a ton of unfair bullshit and hostility directed to you every day. Because you live in the hostile world of a non-consensus intellectual, you see hostility where it doesn't exist. Probably inevitable for your line of work.
I enjoy his writing - I think I joined here after reading a piece he wrote on writing itself that started with a lyrical passage on what it's like to be a kid. His work on education has informed and probably changed my views on that topic.
Thanks for the links. I read the article and it did explains a lot. I use this as a means of expanding my rather limited perspective on the world. I'm curious, but not to the point of wanting to spend hours and hours in research.
So hard to infer tone from text. I've inferred snottiness et cet when the sender's tone on their end was innocuous / curious. I wonder how much social media heat is from the V.O.s we impose on incoming messages. Maybe Heaven is a sonic realm where we at last get to re-hear all the incoming mssgs in their Original angelic voicing.
I am a critic of neoliberalism myself - although everyone seems to have a different definition of "neoliberalism".
I especially feel that more government transparency, a more objective press, less government corruption, and less interference in the politics of other nations (CIA shouldn't be routinely working to overthrow foreign governments) are some things that we should be able to unite around - regardless of ideology. Unfortunately, while voters may agree with this, those who succeed politically, tend to be those who believe a "normal" level of corruption is fine, so long as it is their team - and "their team", often means the group of establishment Democrat & Republican leaders paid by the same set of donors, making decisions behind closed doors. While the Overton window of what constitutes "normal" corruption grows ever wider, all groups start to excuse and ignore any and all corruption by their own "team", while believing the other "teams" are infinitely more corrupt than their own.
What I don't get, is how one can actually believe that Marxism is the answer, given what we have seen through history.
But:
1. Marxism has zero chance of being implemented in the US, at least not without totally destroying the existing order first.
2. We should be able to discuss these issues without immediate accusations of bad faith.
3. Government driven by rigid ideologies of any kind will not result in the optimum system. I would argue that the US system has been close to optimum in terms of balancing free market with safety nets over the last 80 years or so. Not perfect, and can definitely be improved. And the deterioration and politicization of our institutions does not bode well.
A huge impediment is entrenched wealth and power that obfuscates facts and divides voters. It is hard for me to see how Marxism would not permanently empower a corrupt government to be even worse. At least our present system allows some corrupt and incompetent systems to fail, and for competent and less corrupt systems to rise.
A line I like from Matt Christman, another person who can't help but get mad at Yglesias and who I sincerely hope is on the mend health-wise: "Marxism is a lens through which to view history".
Defending 20th century Communism is dumb, but using 20th century Communism as a cudgel to avoid the application of vulgar Marxism as an analytical frame is dumber, IMO.
I wouldn't point to any. I wouldn't refer to myself as a Marxist either, really. I don't know that there can be any more coherence to a totalizing 2024 politics based on Karl Marx's thought than there can on Jefferson or Madison's. We're stuck figuring out the present as we find it.
But in terms of making sense of that present and understanding how the system is constructed and operates, all models are imperfect, but Marxist materialism seems to strike out less and make for a good leadoff hitter in that sense. When you're violating a simplistic materialist analysis, that's a red flag (no pun intended).
This is more or less how I feel about Marxism after I made an effort to learn more about it. I would have to agree with Matt Christman, and I think the best way to introduce people to Marxism is as a historical lens.
There's an episode of Mike Duncan's "Revolutions" podcast on historical materialism which I would recommend to anyone as great introduction that is about as objective as I think is possible. It's about 30 minutes long, but it does a good job of being understandable for most people while also explaining some important concepts.
"Again and again, Israeli propaganda has proven to have no basis in fact. There were no 40 beheaded babies, there were no babies in ovens, there were no babies cut out of the wombs of their mothers. And you should be far less credulous about similar reports of mass sexual violence."
This in turn raises the questions: If Hamas were in fact behaving so horribly, why has Israel presented so much evidence which turned out to be crude fakes at best?
Why is it that I find most people's online discussion of their own Mental Health Issues to be just more attention-seeking and navel-gazing, but not your discussion of your own mental health issues?
Because I'm an exceptional writer. People think that what's worth reading is the subject matter, but it's almost always the quality of the expression. That's why people who show up to MFA programs because they have what they think is a great idea are usually the ones who struggle the most. Ideas are cheap. Craft is not.
Thanks Freddie. I'm a dietary vegan myself but ethically I can't claim to be vegan - if vegan means "ahimsic" or something like that. Here on the Grid, we're all compromised, immersed in a form of life that's very bad for animals. I read recently that the roadkill rate on American roads is something like a million a day. Not to mention the habitat takeover and migration disruption those roads entail. . . .and that's just roads. . . .
Most people are natalist by evidence of .... having children, loving them, and celebrating when people expand their families through childbirth? There should be a different word for people that use childbearing as a political tool to outbreed their enemies.
I highly doubt that most anti-natalists are people who very much want children, but deny themselves having children because of their moral stances. Anti-natalists are people that didn't want children in the first place, and need to come up with a morally superior rational to justify their position. Whenever I hear someone being ant-natalist, all I want to say to them is, "Its OK to not want certain things, even children." Like, just be secure in your personal choices.
The argument against anti-natalism goes unarticulated because, well, it would be rude and socially awkward to try to argue someone who does not want kids, but is pretending that not having kids is a morally superior path because they are insecure about their choice, out of their position. If someone truly does want kids but is choosing against it because of perceived moral issues, than I would see that as very, very sad, and also perhaps of product of media brainwashing paired with cognitive distortions, and, they would be best off discussing their ideas with a professional, like mental health professional.
You've talked before about playing dungeon crawler RPGs on PC in the 90s. Have you ever considered writing about these experiences playing these games or the appeal of such games to you as a kid? I'd be interested in reading it.
For anyone interested in the topic, I'll happily recommend Jimmy Maher's 'Digital Antiquarian' at https://filfre.net - an excellent resource, multiple books' worth of great history and strong writing.
To quote the Bill & Ted fake quote from Socrates in the full page ad during its first run in the theaters “I would praise it more, would that I had more thumbs”
Of special note to me is the delving into computer games from the 1980’s, particularly Infocom (hence the site’s URL)
With you on that. We’re stuck with a wiring harness that had to accommodate a hunted/hunter dynamic and the necessity of eating whatever was available in the dead of winter for countless millennia. I once heard a paleontologist describe the likely strategy of the ancient inhabitants of the central plains: if out for a walk on a winter’s day, feast on a frozen carcass if you’re lucky enough to find one. I was living in that neighborhood at the time. There are many thousands of square miles of the USA - of the entire planet - that are perfect for raising large herds of grazing stock and not so great for agriculture otherwise. Maybe someday we get to the point where that fact is recognized by activists who have rightly resisted the denuding of the Amazon for the sake of more Big Macs, a point I agree with them on completely.
For most humans through most of history at least since the invention of agriculture, meat has been a somewhat rare and precious prize. We can live well without it, or you and I wouldn't be alive to talk about it. (Or I wouldn't, at least. Maybe you're descended from aristocracy.)
Don't get me wrong; I place no particular value beyond the instrumental on the life of whatever pig or chicken or cow or lamb died to fill my supper plate, and I'm not here to moralize at anyone about how they draw their own line. But if meat gets too expensive, I'll eat more beans and lentils.
Since the invention of agriculture perhaps, but the vast majority of our species' history was decidedly in the hunter-gatherer camp. 10,000 years is a long time, yet pales in comparison to a million.
Not saying agriculture hasn't altered our nutrition and diet needs, it has. And the benefits of food storage and nutrient diversity alone go a long way towards agriculture making us healthier longer. But our guts really aren't all that far removed from pre-neolithic days for needing at least some meat for a well-rounded diet.
That's fair.
I omitted game from my list earlier, as I lately omit it from my diet. Wouldn't surprise me if things get tough for city deer who've lost their fear of humans, though, by and by.
Sure, but that's not a very good excuse for mass factory farming. Or eating Big Macs.
It's very easy to buy more ethically produced meat now.
It's very expensive to buy more ethically produced meat, and I don't see why poor people should give up big macs just so you can feel superior.
That's a fine argument to make. But you can't make it by pointing to historical and evolutionary reasons.
Sure I can. If humans need meat for evolutionary reasons, then farming in a way that makes you happy will restrict meat to the rich. Factory farming and Big Macs are ways to get meat to the poor.
That’s still just an argument from convenience, not one from evolution.
We evolved to hunt and kill animals. We didn’t evolve to be constantly satiated from fairly fake meat multiple times a day. It’s slowly killing a lot of the population.
Ethical meat is like 50% more expensive. Basically no one in the first world wouldn’t be able to get enough meat if they switched and bought less.
You can be snobby all you want. But it’s wide scale torture for your convenience. And with very little effort you don’t have to take part.
Yes, it's not like our hunter-gatherer ancestors sat down daily to dinners of beef steak and roast chicken. Of course it varied greatly according to location, but for a lot of HGs, the typical lifestyle seemed to be "we kill a large animal (antelope, bison, whatever) once every couple of weeks or so, we eat it, then it's gone and we eat nuts, berries, fungi, small animals (frogs, birds, fish) until one of us manages to kill big game again, repeat." That's the impression I got from Jared Diamond, at least.
"It’s slowly killing a lot of the population."
The data stands in opposition to this notion. Outside of the pandemic, human life span continues to grow.
Is your 'ethical meat' really ethical, or merely green-washed?
The reason we have mass factory farming, is that if we didn't every family would have a backyard cow for milk, a pigpen, a large garden, and no time to leave the house to do other things. Which means we'd have no internet, nor transportation system, nor power grid, nor mobile phones, nor any of the other trappings of modern society. Those things take work days much longer than eight hours, they take high density housing in big cities where you can't farm. The commute times from the hinterland would be staggering, there would be no cafeteria nor restaurant food, because food service doesn't scale.
You're arguing for an Arcadia which never existed and will never exist.
These binary arguments bug me. Just because we can’t do it perfectly means we shouldn’t bother at all? Is that what you’re saying? Why would you jump straight to every person needs to be a homesteader?
With quite little effort and cost we can reduce a lot of suffering. Not all of it.
For 330 million Americans and 7 billion human beings worldwide you need a massive, industrial food infrastructure.
Definitely. And it's a miracle how well it all works.
Over the last few decades that infrastructure has seen a lot of improvements regarding animal well-being. More and more people now care about this issue. They can choose to eat less, but higher quality and more ethical meat. And the market has be very good at meeting that demand.
It hasn't required massive, disruptive changes to reduce a considerable amount of suffering.
"Can" being the operative term here. It's a consumer choice, so if a majority of consumers decide they want cheap, abundant meat they should be accommodated.
I was convinced of that when I was 8. It's fine if you want to be a vegetarian or vegan, I'm not going to argue. But humans evolved to eat meat and I'm not going to be lectured.
We evolved many traits that we now resist, minimize, or otherwise don't engage in.
Can't blame me for trying.
I used to feel the exact same way about veganism. Then I just tried it and it wasn’t as hard as I thought (and certainly not as hard as it would have been 10 years ago or if I was poor). It’s always a mild inconvenience but it’s at least one issue where I feel like I’m doing the right thing.
I've been a vegetarian for 30ish years. Started due to concerns about the environmental impact of meat production. I've come to appreciate that my food choices have zero impact on that concern and that being a vegetarian is a pain in the ass pretty regularly (and I live in a place with a ton of veggie restaurants, etc). Unfortunately, I've tried to return to an omnivorous diet and find that after all these years, eating meat really grosses me out. So, I'll continue to be a reluctant vegetarian while making sure my kids eat any and all food presented to them.
Why do you think your choices have zero impact on meat production? I'd think that production is responsive to demand in some way - obviously at some tiny margin, but not nothing. Maybe you'll save a few animals from a life of factory-farmed torture over the course of your life? It's not nothing! (I say this as a non-vegetarian who thinks he should be.)
Also, consuming more non-meat options presumably does the same on the other side of the ledger, especially if your supporting new veg. technologies like Impossible/Beyond.
I should have said "zero material impact" and I do avoid factory farmed zombie meat whenever possible.
And for those who don't see themselves jumping straight into veganism, there are a lot of very worthwhile and quite convenient choices they can still make.
You can buy non-factory farmed meat. It's more expensive but better quality. There are a tonne of delivery services out there now. And it's the type of consumer choice that actually has an effect at the margin. Some meat, egg and dairy producers have made real changes to meet this demand.
Check if you have a 4-H program nearby. You can buy beef quite cheaply that was raised in very, very good conditions.
And I doubt this is the audience, but hunting is one of the most satisfying hobbies you can have, and gives you a whole new appreciation for meat.
I think I'm one of the few vegetarian hunters/fisherman out there (obviously my family eats the meat). When done properly, it is probably the most efficient way to procure food. And, even more importantly for me, it allows my kids to connect to a deep rural culture that can counterbalance their day-to-day norms.
I'm not a hunter but frankly, I think if you're going to eat meat, it's the only ethical way to do it.
The only problem with that is it doesn't scale. Factory-farmed cows and chickens *vastly* outweigh edible wild animals like deer. If all Americans switched from factory-farmed meat to wild game, America's deer/bison/elk/whatever else you can eat would be extinct within months if not weeks.
Agreed. Although in many rural areas donated meat from hunters does scale based on donations to food banks. But definitely not a big picture solution to the problems of factory farming.
I didn't say it was practical, I said it was the only ethical way to eat meat.
I'm not a vegetarian but I used to be, and I am currently married to one. One thing I say to people all the time is you don't have to be a vegetarian or vegan, but you can still drastically reduce your meat intake. Most people eat meat at every single meal, and to me that's just insane. I eat meat probably 3-5x per month at most, and it always feels like a treat. It's usually a nice salmon at a restaurant, or a good burger (cheeseburger and fries would be my death row meal).
My ethical values would dictate that I be a vegan, and that may be in my future someday; I actually don't think it would be that hard, but, like Freddie, I'm frankly just kind of lazy and undisciplined (sorry, coconut ice cream doesn't cut it). But for now trying to just be really conscientious about when and how I eat meat, and really limiting my intake, works for me. Even if more people just did that it would make a huge difference in meat demand, and thus, on factory farming, I think.
`But for now trying to just be really conscientious about when and how I eat meat, and really limiting my intake, works for me.'
There would be much less suffering in the world if every meat eater did just this.
I think it's hilarious that anyone would object to factory farming but advocate hunting. Like the chicken and deer give a shit how they die.
It's not just the actual death of the factory farmed livestock, which is still terrible, it's also the misery they endure over the course of their short lives. Cages too small, not enough room to move about, no going outside or sunlight, standing above a pool of waste, growing so quickly and so fast that legs are barely able to support the animal, etc.
Step back and 'steel-man' that argument.
If animals are stressed, they don't grow well, their growth is stunted, they injure themselves and others.
If you're going to state that putting social animals like chickens in a cage is horrible, the same argument is valid about putting students in a school bus. If chickens grow up in a cage, and that's all they know, living in the cage is 'home.' Just like the allegory of the cave, infants who grew up in a cave wouldn't want to leave it. You're projecting your vivid experiences on an animal which grew in a limited psychological environment ... they really hate that.
[the last four words were a joke on anthropomorphism].
`If animals are stressed...'
That's correct so we take actions to ensure that they don't injure themselves or others; e.g., removing horns and cutting beaks.
`putting students in a school bus.'
Making kids live, learn, make waste, and play solely in the school bus would be constitute cruelty, in my mind.
So they wouldn't live at all if we didn't have factory farming. It's not like they'd have a better life. It's the life they have or no life at all. And in the end, the life they had was taken by a human. Not sure why you get to find one life not worth living, or death preferable if it doesn't offend you.
So it's either have no life or live a life of misery?
Also there are more painful and terrifying ways to die and then less painful and terrifying ways to die.
"So it's either have no life or live a life of misery?"
For the billions of animals who are only brought into this world to be eaten, yes. And I suspect they'd choose life. It's you who wants to doom them to non-existence.
Better to never have lived at all than to have a life in misery, for all living creatures
I'm guessing you've never been to a factory farm? At many of those sites, animals suffer for the entirety of their lives and the meat that is produced is compromised due to the inputs necessary to raise animals in those conditions. Contrast this to hunting, where the animal lives free until its death, which is hopefully quick. The difference in environmental impact is equally stark.
Animal lives free, has to find its own food, has to deal with other predators. You think one is preferable. Maybe they don't.
It's not hilarious at all, there's a meaningful difference between "this animal got killed and eaten but at least it lived a natural life in its natural habitat" and "this animal spent a miserable life in a tiny cage and then was butchered in a horrible slaughterhouse." What TwKaR and Dewey said.
I think most animals would rather live and wouldn't say "Well, at least I was killed by a moralistic smug jackass who thinks my life is worthy of murder."
Oh, that's a world of difference in how they die. Factory farmed animals die within a few seconds. Wild-killed animals often die over hours. We had two moose calves killed right near our camp in Alaska, they didn't die within an hour.
The death isn’t big deal it’s the difference in the quality of life.
I'm never going vegan for two primary reasons, which are baked goods and fiber crafts. Baked goods because trying to replace butter and eggs rarely works well, and fiber crafts because wool is great and we'd all be better off if people started wearing wool instead of plastic again. The sheep need us to shave them regularly anyway.
But I do cook vegetarian and rarely eat out. It's cheaper and healthier and I generally feel more satisfied afterwards. I do still eat meat, but it's a meal every couple weeks, which is a compromise I can live with.
I think this Q+A should be a semi-regular feature.
And, as a Mainer, I agree with much of what Yglesias says in that article about Maine and also have the reactionary response that he should shut the fuck up and mind his own business since he has no idea what life is like for folks who actually live here for more than a few weeks a year.
I think _Iran_ is the party that intended to drag Israel into a quagmire. Right after October 7 I remember reading an interview in the New Yorker with an expert in the region who pointed out that all of the actors here--Israel, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.--are intimately familiar with each other. They've been dancing together for so long that they understand their adversaries at a very deep and fundamental level. Thus it's impossible that Iran and Hamas wouldn't have understood what Israel would be forced into doing as a result of the over the top brutality of the October 7 attacks.
Makes you think, doesn't it?
The neocons have had Iran in their crosshairs for decades. Now, you say The NewYorker has an “expert” who says everything converges on Iran, the Puppet Master and “outside agitator,” directing all those backward folks who couldn’t possibly have their own understanding of their own situations, and take actions without being told.
Definitely should make you think.
The same people, and their intellectual inheritors, who dragged us into Iraq 21 years ago and hopped on Trump's coattails to try to foment a war with North Korea in 2017. And yet still somehow in 2024 they manage to find suckers.
If it was me, I'd be pretty embarrassed, at this point. How do you get rooked by somebody who's been running the same three-card monte game so long the cards are old enough to vote?
Sociopaths care nothing for hypocrisy and they are immune to embarrassment, as long as they have power.
I'm not talking about who says it, but about who listens.
Unless this listeners are prepared to do something about it, nobody of influence and authority cares.
No one of influence or authority cares whether or not any of us is a fool. Does that mean neither should we?
Iran's not an "outsider" in the Middle East. They're an insider and power player.
The Middle East is only a monolith in the minds of those who don't live there. Within the Middle East there are various actors with different issues and priorities, so I am not sure of the point. I think it is only looked at in this way from those looking in from a further outside.
I think the expert consensus is that Iran has been seeking to expand its regional influence for decades. They are a primary sponsor of both Hezbollah and Hamas and they are intimately involved in the current conflict.
The last time Iran attacked another country it was call "Persia" and the year was 1790 something.
They employ proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
If the question is "Why?" wrt October 7 I think a decent theory is that Iran didn't want to see two traditional adversaries in S. Arabia and Israel normalizing relations.
The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s (the first Persian Gulf war if one is pedantic).
>what Israel would be forced into doing
Damn, poor Israel getting forced to ethnically cleanse this way. If only they had any other options :(
Look at the US after 911. Anybody who believes that a military response wasn't inevitable is incredibly naive.
An event leading to predictable consequences isn't the same as an event stripping an actor of all agency and forcing them into a particular set of responses -- in this case, the mass murder of civilians. Of course a military response was predictable, but no more so than that ongoing casual violence against Palestinians would provoke violence in response. I don't suppose you think Israel "forced" Hamas carry our Oct 7?
The current wave of civilian collateral damage in Gaza is just as predictable as the indifference of the world at large to said civilian collateral damage in Gaza.
This has nothing to do with the point that I was making.
The point I'm making is that human beings of all stripes--Jewish, Muslim, Christian, black, brown, white, whatever--are pretty similar in their capacities for violence/revenge/indifference/whatever. It's not pleasant but the disproportionate responses of the US/Israel/whatever to provocation are not peculiar to those countries, they're a general feature of humanity. How many civilians died in the Iraq invasion?
Given how these things rapidly spiral out of control I place far more blame on the side that poured gasoline onto the fire after a period of relative calm. Remember Jake Sullivan talking about how the Middle East was quieter than it had been in years?
I have a similar take on the morality question. Although I tend towards virtue ethics, I treat moral philosophies like spices; you use one approach for THIS problem, and another approach for THAT one, etc.
I do have to say, though, that I think utilitarianism is a nice fallback position. When I can't figure out if X action is virtuous, and I don't know what duty applies, I ask myself, "Who is this action going to hurt?" If the answer is "Almost no one", I thank utilitarianism and move on.
"My expectation is that pretending to have schizophrenia is the next big thing, which is truly fucked."
Oh God, I'm imagining the posturing article by someone who has self-diagnosed as schizophrenic where they explain that it's REALLY all about being open to connections and patterns that normal people can't see. It's almost like a superpower!
I hate Matt Yglesias far more for his bizarre, real life hobby of being an irritating parking narc more than I do for any of his banal, basic bitch Acela Corridor takes on politics (although make no mistake, I do hate those, too).
A few weeks ago in a column, he described himself as an intellectual. I almost spit out my coffee. Journalists, or "take artists" if you will, are not intellectuals, nor should they aspire to be.
That one little comment revealed to me the privilege he was brought up in, which Freddie nicely summarized herein.
It's very funny that people who pine for an Amsterdam or Tokyo-style urban environment are so triggered by this, which of course is why he keeps doing it.
I used to live in Japan. If anyone even considered doing this there, they'd be lynched, the Japanese fetish for law and order notwithstanding.
Well, in Japan I'm sure no one would ever think of getting away with the stuff that goes on in American urban parking.
The irony of course being that everybody loves those accounts that expose the awful NYPD placard abuse. It's vibes all the way down.
Yeah, I like that too.
I once parked my car in the same parking lot of The Director of the California Transportation Commission. It said so on a placard on the car. The car was one of those old restored 1920s cars, where the canvas top was an afterthought. Of course the 'historic vehicle' license plate was out of date.
The CalTrans Commission oversees the California Transportation Department which is cars & roads for the state ... of course the registration was out of date.
Being an "irritating parking narc" is definitely worse than covering up your license plate or printing a fake license plate to evade enforcement for breaking traffic laws. Note that 22% of speeding violations via cameras in NYC were considered uncollectible because of this: https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-license-plate-cheats-skirted-108m-in-speed-camera-tickets-last-year-audit-finds
His parking narc is one of his more attractive attributes. His incessant paeans to destroying communities for more housing and endless immigration are incredibly unattractive.
Freddie often says he's a Marxist, but rarely, if ever seems to write about it here. If you just read FdB and Matt Y's arguments in substack, I think you could reasonably conclude that FdB is to the right of Matt.
Are there any posts in Freddie's substack that lay out his Marxist views? I don't know any current Marxists who are as intellectually thoughtful and coherent as FdB (trying to put it nicely), and my current belief on it is that it's basically indefensible as an economic system. Maybe FdB has some better arguments than I've seen elsewhere?
1. I've already answered this multiple times
2. You yourself say that your mind is already made up, so this is just pointless posturing on your part
3. I've probably defined and advocated for Marxism on at least a dozen podcasts at this point; why is googling beneath you
4. Next person to bring up this question, particularly with this snotty attitude, catches a ban
4. What about my comment had a snotty attitude? I called you "intellectually thoughtful and coherent" and I tried to make it clear I was looking to see whether you've made stronger case for Marxism than I've seen elsewhere.
I went out of my way to make this a civil comment, on a post in which you refer to Matt Y. as a "glib cunt." Your comment ("why is googling beneath you", "pointless posturing on your part.") is 20x snottier than mine. Ban me if you want, but come on.
1. I subscribe to your substack, I've read dozens of your posts, and I haven't seen it.
2. Where do I say my mind is made up? I mention my "current belief", which implies the opposite.
3. Fair enough, I could've googled this or researched your podcast output.
I get to be snotty; you see, I'm the boss here. That's the privilege of being the writer.
I don't write much about Marxism because most people's minds aren't open to it sufficiently for it to be worth it. IF YOU USED THE FUCKING SEARCH FUNCTION you'd immediately find this explaining exactly the questions you're asking: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/its-ok-to-not-be-a-marxist
Here's a podcast from less than two weeks ago that is all about Marxism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyBDxa5k9KA
This is a bit of a "never meet your heroes" moment for me.
A more reasonable and decently charitable response to my initial post could've been: "Here's an article from two years ago [Link.] I don't write about this because I think everyone's mind is already made up on the subject."
Brother: it is your responsibility to find out if basic questions about things I've written can be easily discerned with a Google search. You have continued this dialogue without providing an answer as to why you didn't simply use the search function or Google, I suspect because you know that that would be the constructive thing to do.
I am not a politician. People don't pay for my work because they expect me to perform customer service. They pay me to be myself and express my unique point of view. I'm doing that here, with you. If you don't like it, you can vote with your feet.
That's the one of your four points I conceded was fair. The reason is because the thought came to me as I was reading this post (so I was here), and because it's often more interesting, efficient and valuable to pose a question as part of comment section. Maybe someone would point to their favorite work of yours about the Marxism. Maybe *you* would would link what you think is your best work on the subject, and maybe that's not the article that Google returns first. But I suppose the most honest reason is it just didn't occur to me - I put about the amount of thought into it that is befitting an internet comment with stolen minutes at work.
I don't expect you to perform customer service, I promise. I think not responding to my comment would've been fine (I didn't address it to you or even expect you to read it - I think *that* would've been an obnoxious request for customer service.)
And you have continued this dialogue without providing an answer as to why you thought my initial comment was snotty. I know, you're the boss here, but I was making what I thought was an interesting request to your other supporters, and I did so in a way that was complimentary of you.
My guess -- you have a ton of unfair bullshit and hostility directed to you every day. Because you live in the hostile world of a non-consensus intellectual, you see hostility where it doesn't exist. Probably inevitable for your line of work.
Oh, don't be such a child. You said something foolish and got a flick on the nose for it. Have some dignity.
oh fuck off. It's not childish to try to be decent.
Wait... how is he your hero, when you don't have the slightest clue about his work?
It's an expression, he's not literally my hero. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/never_meet_your_heroes
I enjoy his writing - I think I joined here after reading a piece he wrote on writing itself that started with a lyrical passage on what it's like to be a kid. His work on education has informed and probably changed my views on that topic.
Thanks for the links. I read the article and it did explains a lot. I use this as a means of expanding my rather limited perspective on the world. I'm curious, but not to the point of wanting to spend hours and hours in research.
This is embarrassing man. Unsubscribed
So hard to infer tone from text. I've inferred snottiness et cet when the sender's tone on their end was innocuous / curious. I wonder how much social media heat is from the V.O.s we impose on incoming messages. Maybe Heaven is a sonic realm where we at last get to re-hear all the incoming mssgs in their Original angelic voicing.
No one gets to be snottier than Freddie 😂
Hi Tyler, I think this is what you're looking for: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/here-are-my-actual-dumb-opinions?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2Fboring%2520believe&utm_medium=reader2
ha, yes, this is exactly what I was looking for.
It was a journey to get here, thanks.
I totally get the rejection of neoliberalism.
I am a critic of neoliberalism myself - although everyone seems to have a different definition of "neoliberalism".
I especially feel that more government transparency, a more objective press, less government corruption, and less interference in the politics of other nations (CIA shouldn't be routinely working to overthrow foreign governments) are some things that we should be able to unite around - regardless of ideology. Unfortunately, while voters may agree with this, those who succeed politically, tend to be those who believe a "normal" level of corruption is fine, so long as it is their team - and "their team", often means the group of establishment Democrat & Republican leaders paid by the same set of donors, making decisions behind closed doors. While the Overton window of what constitutes "normal" corruption grows ever wider, all groups start to excuse and ignore any and all corruption by their own "team", while believing the other "teams" are infinitely more corrupt than their own.
What I don't get, is how one can actually believe that Marxism is the answer, given what we have seen through history.
But:
1. Marxism has zero chance of being implemented in the US, at least not without totally destroying the existing order first.
2. We should be able to discuss these issues without immediate accusations of bad faith.
3. Government driven by rigid ideologies of any kind will not result in the optimum system. I would argue that the US system has been close to optimum in terms of balancing free market with safety nets over the last 80 years or so. Not perfect, and can definitely be improved. And the deterioration and politicization of our institutions does not bode well.
A huge impediment is entrenched wealth and power that obfuscates facts and divides voters. It is hard for me to see how Marxism would not permanently empower a corrupt government to be even worse. At least our present system allows some corrupt and incompetent systems to fail, and for competent and less corrupt systems to rise.
A line I like from Matt Christman, another person who can't help but get mad at Yglesias and who I sincerely hope is on the mend health-wise: "Marxism is a lens through which to view history".
Defending 20th century Communism is dumb, but using 20th century Communism as a cudgel to avoid the application of vulgar Marxism as an analytical frame is dumber, IMO.
So, what is your historical successful example of implementation of Marxism which you would like to point to, as a model worth emulating?
I wouldn't point to any. I wouldn't refer to myself as a Marxist either, really. I don't know that there can be any more coherence to a totalizing 2024 politics based on Karl Marx's thought than there can on Jefferson or Madison's. We're stuck figuring out the present as we find it.
But in terms of making sense of that present and understanding how the system is constructed and operates, all models are imperfect, but Marxist materialism seems to strike out less and make for a good leadoff hitter in that sense. When you're violating a simplistic materialist analysis, that's a red flag (no pun intended).
This is more or less how I feel about Marxism after I made an effort to learn more about it. I would have to agree with Matt Christman, and I think the best way to introduce people to Marxism is as a historical lens.
There's an episode of Mike Duncan's "Revolutions" podcast on historical materialism which I would recommend to anyone as great introduction that is about as objective as I think is possible. It's about 30 minutes long, but it does a good job of being understandable for most people while also explaining some important concepts.
I know it's Valentine's Day and all, but please don't send us nudes, thanks.
You’re a cat, don’t you walk around nude all the time? Or does having fur count as “not nude”?
Of course I do. Unlike dogs, cats will not tolerate being put in silly getups.
Doesn't mean I want to see FdB follow my example.
"Again and again, Israeli propaganda has proven to have no basis in fact. There were no 40 beheaded babies, there were no babies in ovens, there were no babies cut out of the wombs of their mothers. And you should be far less credulous about similar reports of mass sexual violence."
This in turn raises the questions: If Hamas were in fact behaving so horribly, why has Israel presented so much evidence which turned out to be crude fakes at best?
Why is it that I find most people's online discussion of their own Mental Health Issues to be just more attention-seeking and navel-gazing, but not your discussion of your own mental health issues?
Because I'm an exceptional writer. People think that what's worth reading is the subject matter, but it's almost always the quality of the expression. That's why people who show up to MFA programs because they have what they think is a great idea are usually the ones who struggle the most. Ideas are cheap. Craft is not.
As someone who struggles to even have an idea, I'm really fucked!
"As someone who struggles to even have an idea, I'm really fucked!"
Do you read the great books?
There's a great void between discussing your issues & the people it hurts, as compared to flaunting self-diagnosed issues as a personality.
Thanks Freddie. I'm a dietary vegan myself but ethically I can't claim to be vegan - if vegan means "ahimsic" or something like that. Here on the Grid, we're all compromised, immersed in a form of life that's very bad for animals. I read recently that the roadkill rate on American roads is something like a million a day. Not to mention the habitat takeover and migration disruption those roads entail. . . .and that's just roads. . . .
Most people are natalist by evidence of .... having children, loving them, and celebrating when people expand their families through childbirth? There should be a different word for people that use childbearing as a political tool to outbreed their enemies.
I highly doubt that most anti-natalists are people who very much want children, but deny themselves having children because of their moral stances. Anti-natalists are people that didn't want children in the first place, and need to come up with a morally superior rational to justify their position. Whenever I hear someone being ant-natalist, all I want to say to them is, "Its OK to not want certain things, even children." Like, just be secure in your personal choices.
The argument against anti-natalism goes unarticulated because, well, it would be rude and socially awkward to try to argue someone who does not want kids, but is pretending that not having kids is a morally superior path because they are insecure about their choice, out of their position. If someone truly does want kids but is choosing against it because of perceived moral issues, than I would see that as very, very sad, and also perhaps of product of media brainwashing paired with cognitive distortions, and, they would be best off discussing their ideas with a professional, like mental health professional.
Is it too late to ask Freddie a question?
Is it too late? Who the fuck am I, the Oracle of Delphi? You can ask whenever you'd like. Whether I'll answer depends on the question.
You've talked before about playing dungeon crawler RPGs on PC in the 90s. Have you ever considered writing about these experiences playing these games or the appeal of such games to you as a kid? I'd be interested in reading it.
Yeah that would be fun! Whether I will remember enough to ever get it done, we'll see...
For anyone interested in the topic, I'll happily recommend Jimmy Maher's 'Digital Antiquarian' at https://filfre.net - an excellent resource, multiple books' worth of great history and strong writing.
To quote the Bill & Ted fake quote from Socrates in the full page ad during its first run in the theaters “I would praise it more, would that I had more thumbs”
Of special note to me is the delving into computer games from the 1980’s, particularly Infocom (hence the site’s URL)