The greatest power we have over others is the power of creation, to create future generations – the majority of people – and shape their destinies. We do this through family planning policies, and practice, at the first border of human power.
This child-centric and collective form of family planning is how we constitute communities of free people. Any policy – on any subject – that does not start with a fair start in life is fundamentally unjust, and disregarding of the right of the majority.
We can also pursue policies, like those focused on parents doing whatever they want (the sort of thinking displayed by those who refuse to wear masks in a pandemic), and those that ensure a growing population of workers and consumers to serve concentrations of wealth and power, that do not do not ensure values like welfare, equity, nature, or democracy. This approach is preconstitutional, and not sufficiently other-regarding or child-centric to physically constitute free communities.
We either proceed from an unjust position and remain precons, or choose to be just and free people going forward. Precons are dangerously shortsighted, and the only truly fundamental threat to freedom in the long run.
The right to a Fair Start in life is the first and overriding human right, obligating us to target those concentrations – and people like Ivanka Trump and other wealthy families like the Raymonds – to limit and decentralize their power and pay what they owe. They benefited from, and furthered, a lie at the heart of our systems of human rights and democracy. Government and all political obligations derive from people, who derive from their creation. The duty to ensure a Fair Start in life – the god norm – overrides all other rules, like the property rights that empower people like Ivanka.
Making them first apologize and then pay, via Fair Start incentives and entitlements, is the most just and effective way to compensate future generations for things like the climate crisis, with impacts that are ten to twenty times more effective than the downstream measures other nonprofits are promoting. Don’t get scammed. First things first – let’s start by creating optimal and just populations.
Our forbearers died to protect freedom. What will you do?
Who has the most at stake when we have children? The children, given the impact on their lives. One would think, then, that in designing family planning systems our governments – which undertook that task in the mid-20th Century – would make them child-centric. They did not – largely because that would have entailed investing heavily in each child, and cooperatively giving each child a fair start in life, or things like minimum levels of well-being, equity relative to other children, an effective voice in their democracies, and a natural world.
Instead governments, and the interests that control them, lied and intentionally misinterpreted Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the right to have children. They treated the act of having children as something self-determining for the parents, rather than other-determining, for the children we have. They did so, employing the concept of privacy, not to protect people but to protect their concentrations of wealth from collective obligations to invest in all children.
Governments and special interests opted to ignore basic values and the needs of future generations, and embrace a strategy that would ensure population-based economic growth, exploiting children as consumers, workers, and other forms of economic input. They used people to create profits. The move converted politically empowered citizens into consumers, workers, and taxpayers with almost no influence over the systems they are subject to. These concentrations of power used people against people, filling the word with uneducated and vulnerable followers wiling to give up values, like democracy, for higher incomes. These concentrations did not produce actual and objective value as much as they exploited patriarchal policies mass producing people in violation of human rights, including the right to participatory systems from which we could reasonably asses values, costs, and benefits. Every crisis we face today, from the population-driven climate crisis, to the overcrowding and poor public health that causes pandemics, to massive political and economic inequity, flow from this maneuver, or the scam one Nobel Laureate recently described.
Empirically, the most just and effective response to these crises is to target the growth-based concentrations of power, and their modern adherents and beneficiaries, to limit and decentralize their power into future generations, through Fair Start distributions of wealth as ecosocially equitable family planning incentives and entitlements. We can go into a future ridden by climate and other crises with more and more unprepared and unequal people, or with fewer and highly prepared people. There is no real choice to make here.
How can do we we proceed? How can we bend this arc of growth?
We all grew up with the myth that we were abstractly “constituted” in nation states by founding fathers in the past. That is inaccurate. For human rights and democracy to make any sense, it is more accurate to say we are constantly and physically constituting, as new generations join the dynamic “We the People” of us. For those things to make sense, we have to correct the self v. other determining lie, discussed above. Again, think a switch to child-centric and values-based family planning, or physically constituting through a just creation (or re-creation) norm – the norm which no other norm can precede.
Think getting past the systems of coercion and incentive that the scam described above maintains, the systems by which we are determined by others. Instead, imagine reaching the self-determination/actualization of democracy where our voice matters and we trust the people around us. In this process we find a binary distinction between those free people sufficiently other-regarding to constitute democracy through child-centric collective family planning, and those who are not – people who in the end we we would reasonably exclude from constituting, or precons. A classic example would be those who reject the values above and who see people as a resource, rather than an end in themselves. If the creation of persons represent the truest border of human power – to follow a “one border” thesis – we can envision precons on one side, and free people on the other. And whether someone or some group embraces child-centric and fair family planning is the test.
Government and its rules derive from people, who derive from their creation. A just creation norm is the ultimate obligation, and there are no just systems without it. Put another way, to be free people we have to first orient the formation of power relations around the justice of child-centric and fair family planning, over the inevitable resistance of the precons described above.
This is not an abstract proposition. Imagine a group of people, in quantity and quality, you would need to host an effective constitutional convention. That is what a truly free and equal “We the People” means, and falling fertility rates globally signal a sea change in our species that makes a shift to a qualitative, people-not-population, and Fair Start revolution feasible. Bending the arc of growth around this change, towards values and equity, is an act of self-defense, defense of others, and liberation.
These facts are indisputable: 1) Many benefitted from the scam describe above by placing costs – ecological and social – on others, in violation of multiple universal human rights that allow us to constitute as free and equal people. 2) In order to most justly and effectively compensate future generations, who should be treated as a majority and whose rights matter, for those violations we have a fundamental right to target those most responsible and who benefitted the most from blocking the process of constituting. They hold power over us and future generations because people with guns defend the status quo, and not because it is just. 3) We best do that by taking and using portions of their concentrated power and wealth, measured against the relevant fundamental baseline, to constitute free and equal groups of future people via the effective vehicle of Fair Start incentives/entitlements.
In other words these entities, like Exxon, should pay for the costs they externalized on others. And they must do so by complying with the first human right – Fair Start.
Take action: Fair Star will be urging the Biden Administration to issue an executive order that would require U.S. firms to disclose their past, present and future role in promoting that Ponzi demography and the harm it caused. Contact info@fairstartmovemeny.org to participate.
While a lot of people celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks and beer, some are asking what it truly means to be free, and how to create a world that ensures that freedom for all with equal opportunity, a meaningful role in more effective and participatory democracies, and the freedom from others – and the climate crisis – that we find in nature or the nonhuman world. That sort of freedom is what human rights and consensual governance looks like, and we get there by ensuring an equitable start in life for everyone. Fair Start family planning creates an actual social contract that works, and nothing has a greater impact on the crises we face today.
Enter Cassie King and Matt Webber. Cassie and Matt are exemplifying what it would mean to constitute communities that are actually free, in part by compensating future generations for the harm we have caused them through the climate, inequity and other ecosocial crises.
Cassie, an activist and nonprofit professional said this about family planning:
Current corrupt concentrations of power push a growth model that promotes unsustainable family planning policies. They see us ordinary people as economic inputs in their machine, to use for our reproductive and other labor. It’s our job to fight that narrative and elevate the worth of every individual to have their basic needs met, on day one. My partner and I hope to adopt children one day and I feel the urgency to ensure that my future child, and all children, have the resources and opportunities that are their right.
Matt, a donor to the Fair Start Movement, said this:
I support the Fair Start Movement because I know that any claims I have to property and wealth are subject to ensuring every child a fair and equitable start in life, the first and overriding human right. I’m willing to step forward, as a donor, and say that. I challenge others to do the same.
Together, they are exemplifying a real new deal, one that fixes the fundamental source of the biggest problems in the world today, and leads to a comprehensively liberated state of affairs. It’s not about population. It’s about people, the vast majority of people, who will exist in the future. It’s about putting their interests first. And if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to plan for a child.
Government derives from the people which derive from their creation. A just creation norm thus precedes and overrides everything else, including the government assigned property rights that have created massive power differentials between rich and poor. Free people will further this truth; precons, or those opposed to just and free communities, will oppose it. Cassie and Matt are engaging in the discourse of decolonization, of physically constituting justifiable and consensual communities of free and equal people. Cassie and Matt are exemplifying what it means to change power structures, and demand justice, at the most fundamental level. They are echoing the spirit of people fighting for freedom in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a suit that treats the government’s failure to respond to the climate crisis as a grave violation of our right to be free in nature from the power of others.
Forget the idea that the borders of human power are lines on a globe. Cassie and Matt are living the truth: The borders of human power that really matter are the conditions in which we are born, and the nexus of our communities with the nonhuman world. Those are the borders where our most basic values align. We were not constituted by god-like founders and ancient constitutions from the past. To constitute just societies means to limit and decentralize human power, first and foremost through the actual constituents – the “We the people.” In other words, we constitute just communities through Fair Start family planning – changing our polities/economies into legalities, and Cassie and Matt are leading the way.
We maximize autonomy by doing equity upfront – birth equity, in the fullest sense of the concept, including one’s share of democratic rulemaking authority. We don’t maximize it by continuing to pretend the inherently interpersonal act of creating children is an act of autonomy, and then chasing equity through invasive and ineffective measures downstream and later in life.
We can spread this modeling, and this simple discourse: “Part of your wealth is my and my future child’s family planning entitlement and incentive.”
The rich and powerful hold their privileged positions because of a racist, colonizing and ecocidal family planning model that exploited future generations and the nonhuman world to create wealth for a small group of people. These people hold their power over others because men with guns are there to defend it – not because it is just. Fair Start is our justified demand to limit and decentralize that power using a zero baseline baseline for distribution, in favor of democratically empowering future generations.
TAKE ACTION:
Speak truth to power. Help us approach and engage these five people who together well represent concentrations of public and private power, and the intergenerational injustice that created it.
Elon Musk, who is a perfect example of our unjust family planning system and someone who also continues to promote it as a means of enriching himself. Contact him via his partner Grimes.
These people hold privileged positions, in derogation of true democracy. They are uniquely situated to promote Fair Start as the best means to compensate future generations for the harms we have caused them. They can lead by example, like Cassie and Matt, and in being willing to support birth equity can show how to put people over property. We have a right to the resources at the top (including the platforms of influence privileged people have to communicate) to further Fair Start – the first and overriding human right.
If Matt and Cassie can work to change the paradigm away from the isolationist family planning model that helped create the ecosocial crises we face today, so can these five high influencers.
Fair Start joins Zero Hour, actor Mark Ruffalo, and dozens of other groups filing amicus brief in support of lawsuit arguing for a constitutional right to nature, which would prompt federal climate action
The Fair Start Movement has joined dozens of organizations together to file an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in support of a groundbreaking lawsuit brought by the Animal Legal Defense Fund and Seeding Sovereignty, a project of Earth Island Institute, that aims to compel federal government action on climate change based on a constitutional right to nature and wilderness. There is no freedom without nature. It sets the spectrum for autonomy from other persons, the buffer between us and their impacts upon us. The climate crisis is the erosion of the that buffer.
The case is currently pending before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The case is based simply on the plain meaning of the liberty right “to be let alone,” a constitutional right promised by the Supreme Court and enforced in a variety of contexts, but none as important as this case. While the government routinely protects our right to be let alone in terms of being free from surveillance or intrusion into our homes, it is this version of the right – protecting the ecological baseline of nature in which we can be free from others and thrive – that matters most.
Cat Hughey, Director at Fair Start, had this to say:
“The sacredness of all human life and the more than human life culminates at a moment that we hold space and protections for all equally. The Fair Start Movement holds that the full-fledged experience of humanity exists when we embark on fighting the climate and ecological crisis by ensuring that every child can restore nature and value its health. By environing wilderness and its right, we in turn protect our future generations’ ability to exercise freedom, democracy and, most importantly, keep at bay ecological and social catastrophe.”
The right to be let alone, applied in this case to require the federal government to take the greatest measures possible to stop the climate crisis and restore nature, would ensure our children enjoy the natural world generations past have enjoyed. The Constitution guarantees that.
Nature, like equity and democracy, is part of every child’s right to an ecosocial Fair Start in life, and we have a right to ensure that right by all means effective. No government that fails to ensure that right is legitimate. The Fair Start Movement knows future parents will do what it takes to protect their children’s right to an ecosocial #fairstart in life.
What’s next? The Fair Start Movement intends to file federal litigation challenging a state abortion ban not as a violation of personal privacy, but because such bans interfere with the first and most fundamental human right: Every child’s right to a Fair Start in life.
Have you recently become interested in the philosophy behind the Fair Start Movement? From family planning reform to environmental activism, there are so many ways that people can get involved in order to establish a more equitable society for children and parents. Maybe learning about this concept has even sparked your interest in starting your own nonprofit! If you’re considering this major undertaking, check out these resources first.
The First Steps
Starting a nonprofit doesn’t happen overnight. Here are a few tasks that belong on your checklist!
Want to build your nonprofit around family planning? Read up on the movement to find out how your nonprofit can become part of it!
Work out everything from your fundraising strategy to your overall message in your initial business plan.
Next, you need to think about your budget — be realistic about how much you expect to bring in and spend.
Finally, you can begin hiring your first team members! Look for candidates with a combination of skills and passion.
Money Matters
How can you bring in funds for your organization? And how can you ensure that your money goes far? These financial management tips will help!
These strategies can make your fundraising efforts more effective.
From tracking important dates to distributing paychecks on time every month, a payroll software and calendar template that automatically does calculations for you is a great tool.
Don’t forget about everything you’ll need to take care of come tax season! Check out your reporting requirements ahead of time.
Great Management Skills
You want to polish your leadership skills and motivate your team to succeed. These resources are full of essential management recommendations.
In addition to your hired staff, you can create a volunteer program to give other people the chance to help out!
Becoming a better leader takes time, but networking with others in your position can help you learn.
You might feel simultaneously excited and nervous about starting your nonprofit. At first, you will have a lot to learn about nonprofit management! But as time goes on, you’ll realize that you’re making a real impact, and building a brighter future is possible.
Want to create a better world for all children? Get involved with the Fair Start Movement. Sign up on our website today to find out how you can lend a hand to our campaigns!
For demographers and other population experts population decline is the expected and desired outcome of decades of family planning interventions meant to end and reverse unsustainable population growth. Why the media alarmism then?
And yet people like Matthew Yglesias and the media outlet Vox continue to push women to have kids. Many have said that we should punish climate change deniers for blocking policy reforms that could have mitigated the crisis. But all climate emission flow downstream from the increase in demand population growth creates. It is the fundamental driver. Aren’t the people actually making the crisis worse, usually to grow their investments, just as bad as the deniers? Did Ygelsias pushing women to have kids actually have an impact? The proposals to change federal child tax and care subsidy policy to encourage population growth that followed his advice suggest it did.
Let’s hold him and others, like Lee Raymond, accountable. We have a right to take the resources of wealthy people like Lee and Matthew who profited from poor and unsustainable family planning but never paid that costs that growth imposed on the environment, animals, women, and children. Why? Because every child’s right to an ecosocial Fair Start is the first human right, and it precedes and overrides any other obligation, including property rights.
It’s time to pay up. Those that really profited owe future generations – more than most.
What is Fair Start? It’s about people, not population. It’s about shared values and thinking qualitatively about the future, not using poor and unsustainable family planning to grow economies. Read the Allegory of the River, and why Having Kids talks about constituting democratic communities instead of framing our work around the concept of population, to understand more. Let’s make family planning truly inclusive, and geared around creating democratic communities where everyone has a voice.
It’s simple: Fair Start family planning means smaller families sharing resources to invest more in every child. For some, the closest analog for this new model would be responsible family planning incentives. But Fair Start resources are actually entitlements held by future children, and funded through non-traditional means. Those opposed to remodeling favor our current system of unsustainable families, unearned privileges, and undemocratic influence, over giving kids a fair start in life.
All kids have a fundamental human right, ecologically and socially, to a #fairstart in life. It’s the first human right. Help us secure it against those who threaten our future.
Groups and individuals from around the world are signing on to an effort to change the old model that focuses on what parents want toward a new model that focuses on what all kids need. The new model, called Fair Start family planning, is the beginning of real social justice. The reform can begin with the United Nations secretary general simply acknowledging the need for change.
Sign on, and urge any organization you support or can influence — nonprofit or for-profit — to also sign on. Sign here, or contact us at info@fairstartmovement.org for more information.
Every crisis we face, from the climate to Covid-19, is a function of family planning laws and policies that actually do nothing to ensure planning. They do nothing to give children minimum levels of welfare, or birth equity, and nothing to promote sustainable environments, or functional democracies where each voice matters. All of these problems, social and ecological, root in the people that comprise them.
The reasonable reaction to this situation would be to reform these systems to address the problems, especially given the massive impact changes in family planning systems make on things like climate emissions. Any discussion of family planning is an opportunity to do so. So why is the New York Times publishing empty pieces that celebrate thoughtlessly having children and simply hoping for the best? The most recent piece does nothing to address whether a more collective model of planning could mitigate the crises, sets up a false dichotomy of anti/pro-natalism, and spends the rest of the piece dressing the former up as nihilistic and the latter as a glorious leap of faith that even Kant would endorse. The author manages to ignore that if we followed Kant, we would in fact find a universal norm for family planning that did not simply exacerbate the problems and injustice we see today but address them as a collective action problem, a norm like Fair Start.
The New York Times can do better than push people to have kids with babies = hope messaging. It can address the problem one Nobel Laureate laid bare: Those in power like Times editor Dean Baquet sit atop a population pyramid, the growth of which they are incentivized to promote as a means of expanding their wealth and influence. Baquet and the Times benefit from the growth, but don’t pay its costs. The costs of that expansion, including the inequity that floats Baquet and his son Ari above the masses, are leveled on others, especially on future generations who will suffer in the climate crisis. Family planning is the first border of justice – address that issue, Dean and Ari, and let People Magazine publish thoughtless pieces on hopeful baby making as a solution to the crises causes by the same.
Take Action: Urge @deanbaquet, or his son Ari, to explain how they intend to promote the reform family planning laws and policies to address the crises we see today, and account for the social and ecological benefits they enjoy, but others will not.
The recent climate-driven grid failures in Texas highlight a key threat to our children’s future: Systems upon which more and more people are dependent, and which themselves are threatened by that very growth. Nothing exacerbates these “loop” problems, like the ecologies upon which we are dependent and which the climate crisis threatens, more than poor and unsustainable family planning.
Not everyone is at the same level of risk in these situations. The wealthy people and their families who have benefitted from population growth, like Ted Cruz and his kids (who vacationed in Mexico while poor children in Texas died), find ways to avoid the risk.
If we are willing to plan responsibly, we have the right to take the resources necessary from the top – and people like Cruz – in order to ensure all children a Fair Start in life. Why? Because having kids is the first and overriding human right. It comes before the exploitative systems that government and corporations conspired to create.
Contact Ted Cruz and urge him to support Fair Star reforms that will protect Texans in the long run, and to ensure justice for all.
