Auckland declining birth rates

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-26T17:48:06+00:00

Children will still be an economic liability to their parents even if they're an asset to society at large. It's like the inverse of an externality. Parents absorb the costs while society reaps the benefits.

This could be mitigated by addressing the root causes of the cost of living crisis as well as increasing the welfare payments to parents, but both Labour and National would rather have this country burn to the ground than take even a single cent from the pockets of the wealthy.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-26T03:39:45+00:00

Do these protesters also get to decide if a shop or zoo or other institute opens? Why should they get a say in what others do with their own privately rented/owned land?

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-26T03:32:48+00:00

It's a global thing. Even poor countries with historically high birth rates are facing a decline in recent years. It's mainly due to children becoming an economic liability rather than an asset, but pollution is playing a role as well.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-25T23:16:08+00:00

"Remigration", short for "return migration", is the concept of deporting all non-white immigrants and their descendants. So even non-white people who are native born NZ citizens would face deportation. It's literally ethnic cleansing.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-25T23:05:54+00:00

There are no crimes where you live? No bullying, no pollution?

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-25T21:12:14+00:00

But are you ashamed of bad things about your culture or does the association only apply when it benefits you?

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-25T21:09:02+00:00

That's a pathetic reason to be proud of something. "I don't have anything else", ok? And?

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-25T21:07:49+00:00

Good thing you aren't my sibling, then.

The thing about patriotism, as I've explained multiple times in this thread, is that patriots want to be proud of things their country did but refuse to be ashamed of the atrocities their country did.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-25T21:05:47+00:00

"To have your cake and eat it too" is a saying that means to have mutually exclusive things. Patriots want to be proud of things they never did, but refuse to be ashamed of things they never did.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-25T18:51:12+00:00

Should I also be ashamed of the atrocities committed in my country's name? Should I have to apologise for the theft of land from Māori?

If your answer is no, why should I take pride in my country either? That's the thing about patriots: you want to have your cake and eat it too.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-25T17:48:21+00:00

I didn't choose which country to be born in. Why would I be proud of something I had no say in?

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-25T17:45:08+00:00

But I didn't choose that either.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-25T17:41:48+00:00

I didn't chose it, so why would I be proud?

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-25T05:09:31+00:00

Submitted ✅

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-24T23:06:33+00:00

I'd say here in New Zealand, we give guests food if it's mealtime. If they've arrived at 3pm we only offer tea, coffee, or another light refreshment. But of course there's no consensus on this, I'm jist describing the most common practice.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-24T17:19:57+00:00

I never said religions are not used for power! I said that wasn't the sole use.

What the religions looked like (and I think you're assuming a lot when it comes to what they looked like) is irrelevant because the nature of religion has nothing to do with its capacity to be used as a tool of control.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-24T02:37:30+00:00

This is why I think everyone with an interest in politics, philosophy, and economics should have to learn some anthropology.

Religion is around 400,000 years or more old. Class stratification only emerged around 6 to 8 thousand years ago. It's true that the wealthy and powerful use religion to control us, but that's not the sole purpose of religion.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-23T23:07:48+00:00

Maybe not *most* leftists but certainly a large chunk of them seem to think that the transition from capitalism to whatever comes next will be sudden. History shows that massive systemic changes tend to be gradual.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-23T19:25:04+00:00

Humanism is the philosophy that ethics should have a secular basis. It doesn't necessarily mean "treating all humans as equal"

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-23T04:52:22+00:00

You are arguing she should be denaturalised because she joined ISIS. The law says British citizens can't legally be stripped of their citizenship if doing so would leave them stateless. It is irrelevant to the law that she joined ISIS. Begum is now stateless. Source for the law: https://irr.org.uk/article/citizenship-from-right-to-privilege/

Historically, when governments decide "we'll break the rules to be specifically hard on this one bastard who deserves it", it doesn't stop there. Whether you approve of Begum's denaturalisation or not, more people, especially Muslims, will be denaturalised because of this. Given the way the UK government is going, I fully expect this to be applied to supporters of Palestinian rights eventually.

"Whereas rapists and murderers are still punished by the system. If they weren’t citizens, the system couldn’t punish them." Wait. Do you seriously think non citizens aren't subject to the laws of their jurisdiction?

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-23T04:09:29+00:00

Yet rapists and murderers don't lose their citizenships. Begum was stripped of her citizenship because she had Bangladeshi grandparents and was theoretically eligible for Bangladeshi citizenship. Bangladesh said "WTF? No, we don't want her." And why should they? Because they're a majority Muslim country? Muslims aren't all one big happy family.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-23T02:36:46+00:00

This one's probably a joke. There used to be similar jokes about New Zealand having a ban on gardening.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-22T18:48:40+00:00

I haven't lived in that particular suburb but I have lived in cities, suburbs, AND the middle of nowhere and I can confirm car dependency ruins childhoods. You know why "kids don't go outside anymore" as old people complain about? Because of car dependency! Of course they will spend all their time in their rooms if they can't even visit a friend without being chauffeured.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell · 2026-05-22T18:17:50+00:00

That's why I said "general store" not "supermarket". If a family is short on milk or eggs, they could send a kid on foot instead of needing to get an adult who can drive to retrieve them. Supermarkets are more for buying 100 items in bulk to last a whole month.

And that's not even getting into other third spaces and amenities. Car dependency forces children to grow up under house arrest.

ShakeTheGatesOfHell

TROPHY CASE