Today it’s common for parents to have kids without thinking of how doing so impacts others’ children. That causes harm. Here are seven ways family planning today hurts impoverished kids, and how to end the harm.
4. All of the above limits the freedom, or the relative self-determination of future generations, the vast majority of persons who will ever live. Free people will fight to change this, and liberate others.
The fix?
We can end this harm by moving from top down and dysfunctional parent-focused planning towards child-centric or bottom up systems of Fair Start family planning. This move ensures climate and biodiversity restoration through birth equity entitlements that ensure parenting delay, a level playing field for all kids, and smaller more sustainable families. It’s fairness and freedom for all.
TAKE ACTION: SIGN OUR LETTER TO THE UNITED NATIONS URGING THEM TO DO THEIR JOBS, AND SECURE HUMAN RIGHTS, STARTING WITH CHILDREN’S RIGHTS FOR ALL FUTURE GENERATIONS.
There is a truth many are hiding via greenwashing and other moves, to avoid or reduce climate liability: The obligation to pay just and effective Fair Start family reparations.
The portion of wealth made at cost to this baseline is subject to that use now as the most effective form of climate reparations today, and many are leading by example, paying those costs to families to avoid million dying as temperatures rise. Government cannot assign wealth until they fulfill fair start obligations, the obligation that justifies their authority. Why? Law is a unique obligation because it can be coerced. After the Enlightenment and the development of democracy, that is so because we assume law represents the will of the governed. Logically then, the first obligation is to have and raise children in a way that actually makes that true.
We caused harm by using family policy to quietly convert public progress into private benefits, and must pay now, compensate the harmed and be free of that obligation. Some of those who benefited the most from not giving what they should have in the past are covering those reparations, via effective programs like Seeds, using hard metrics like the Children’s Rights Convention, climate restoration via birth equity, and Tucker/Dasgupta’s optimality.
These entitlements ensure parenting delay, readiness, reallocation of entitlements for birth and rearing equity, and smaller or ecocentric families that raise influential citizens – not economic inputs with little say over the rules under the rules they must live. We are not bound by written constitutions, but whatever justly constitutes our power relations to make those relations consensual, which comes very close to the ideal of decolonization, ensuring at the same time the protection of the most vulnerable: Future children and nonhumans.
If freedom always requires some level of self-determination, it would be impossible to ensure any version of it without birth and development conditions for all children that meet minimum thresholds so they can self-determine rather than be determined (e.g., climatologically) by others, and one test for whether that is occurring equitably would be treating growth as inverse to self-determination, relative to the absence of human power/nature (which requires, at a minimum, climate restoration). This formula leads to a free and equal future – Tucker/Dasgupta’s optimality.
Who we should be, via children’s rights, logically always comes first – and sets an overriding baseline for all cost and benefit analysis, including climate reparations. One’s positionality, intergenerational and otherwise, is key in this analysis. Money often controls how one sees this work.
Be effective.
Take Action: Find and “pull” high profile levers to be effective family role models by paying what they owe, and bend the arc of who we are becoming towards justice. How? Start by asking public figures claiming to do good in the world to actually tell the truth. Ask them to account for how the family norms, policies and relative ranking of obligations they never accounted for has undone those values and created the climate crisis and vast inequity.
Effective Altruism (EA), described at the most general and inclusive level, involves prioritizing charitable funding using a particular standard:
“People in effective altruism typically try to identify issues that are big in scale, tractable, and unfairly neglected. The aim is to find the biggest gaps in current efforts, in order to find where an additional person can have the greatest impact.”
Reason 1: Focusing on scale and wellbeing, the climate crisis is the greatest threat to human and animal welfare, accelerating beyond what we have expected. Recovering the costs that were externalized and using them to fund effective family reforms to protect kids through better birth and development conditions, is the most effective long-run way to address the crisis.
Be effective.
Family reforms have the greatest long-run impacts on everything, including climate emissions, child welfare, animal suffering, and human rights and democracy. That’s not odd. We, and what we do, are the products of our creation and pasts.
Many EA funders ignore the issue because they have made money on growth (including the sale of plant-based products), wish to continue doing so, and wish to avoid family reform based reparations. But those are not good reasons, and the benefits of many EA funded efforts (and veracity of fundraising claims) have been reversed when one factors in growth. Not starting with child rights also commits the fallacy in Reason 4, below – ignoring child-centric human rights as the system of actually inclusive obligation that overrides all competing interests and sets the baseline for cost and benefit analysis, telling us what words like “good,” “impact,” and “problem” mean.
Reason 4: This broad description of EA at the beginning of this blog reveals a fallacy. The term “altruism” frames the thinking in a way that excludes human rights obligations (which override decisions based on personal altruism) on the wealthy funders who back EA to first pay for costs their wealth has imposed on others. And those costs were imposed by fundamental reliance on a system of coercive legal obligation that did not include the average person, including black persons in the United States, at any real level of influence over the rules under which they would be forced to live. To the extent EA advocates believe in self-determination they have a fatal problem in using people for economic growth. They have to fit all those they create in terms of quantity and civic quality for shopping malls back into the participation-capable town halls meant to regulate the former. That’s impossible, and truly free persons will make compliance with the law contingent on their role in making it.
For example, initiatives to study wild animal welfare would logically have to start from a position that protects the animals being studied, which requires climate restoration as part of an overriding human right to birth equity. Funding a research project while simultaneously relying on system of growth eradicating those animals and harming the poorest humans is disingenuous.
This is not about different worldviews.
EA advocates all live day-to-day the values of not wanting to fall below minimum thresholds of welfare and self-determination in their lives – they are often simply too antisocial to extend the values to kids like Jazmine, who was slowly beaten to death as an infant, and would rather use a system of oppressive, “growth over parental readiness” power relations to make returns on investments.
TAKE ACTION: Urge EA advocates, like@dylanmatt, to be both just and effective in their thinking and funding.
Urge Dr. Aruna Rao to go beyond micro-equity towards macro-equity, the basic norm.
Oxfam routinely makes statements promoting human rights, dignity, and equity.
Those statements could be based on an error/fallacy/impossibility that actually undermines these values.
Fair Start politely submits a few questions for Dr. Rao to consider: How are you accounting for children being born into the world (the creation of actual power relations), and whether the political systems we all back with our taxes, and otherwise, are investing in those children to give them a fair start, or exploiting them for growth? Did you assume the legitimacy of current political systems without conditioning that legitimacy on the creation – via the obtaining of children’s rights – of fundamental childhood relations in a way that actually empowers people, consistent with what is implied our being free and equal persons by the preamble of the U.S. and other constitutions? Would you consider supporting family planning entitlements that ensure parental delay and readiness, climate-safe migration, leveling the playing field for all kids, and smaller or more ecocentric families such that each person plays an equal and influential role in creating the rules under which they must live?
Where does Justice really begin?
Without the fairness in creation we may be quietly undoing the values we want to further. And by making statements about furthering articular values at a micro level without addressing them at a macro level, we are reinforcing a system that is fundamentally unjust, one that hidespower to reserve it. The connection, in the case of the animal rights movement, was recently exemplified by a dispute at a well known organization where green/growthwashing has a devastating effect on the nonhumans the organization claimed to protect.
The error simply involves the failure to derive political obligation all the way back towards intergenerational justice, rather than stopping the analysis – as is common – at static baselines. The basic condition of any rule is that it should be fair, but the first rule does not regard how we should act, but rather whom we should be. Returning to the preeamble question above, if the condition were met we would be able to break each fundamental polity into a functional constitutional convention at any time. That is not the case in the United States today.
If governance derives from the people then constitutionalism, or the limitation and decentralization of power, starts with the creation of relations, not written documents. That process is antecedent to government issued entitlements – like rights to extreme wealth or the authority of institutions – that ensure massive ecosocial inequity. Because of this error we do not really empower people, as we ignore the fundamental creation of their power relations, and as such our language and actions create a fantasy world of freedom that never sufficiently limits and decentralizes power. If freedom always requires some level of self-determination, it would be impossible to ensure without a primary obligation of birth and development conditions for all children that meet minimum thresholds so they can self-determine rather than be determined by others, and one test for whether that is occurring equitably would be treating growth as inverse to self-determination, relative to nature (which requires, at a minimum, climate restoration). Our failure to act in accordance with this inversion shows we do not think persons should be politically equal.
Free persons will condition their obligation to follow the law on their being empowered – relative to the ideal – to determine it, and how it limits and decentralizes the power others have over us.
The climate crisis exemplifies the need for this perfectly, and calls for fundamental macro change with every micro change we seek so that we do not undo our values and accept any obligation to follow the laws when the systems that make those laws cannot possibly be inclusive and participatory, and are not reflective of the will of those they control. And yet, we can easily see that we orient from systems of obligation, like written constitutions, without deriving all the way back to just systems of creation.
Our lives and freedom are determined by obligation, and the dominant one is law. The fundamental creation of power/obligation relations – our birth and development – should have been determined over the last several decades by incentivizing resources that would have ensured birth equity for all children, and equal influence over the laws under which we must live. That never happened, but climate reparations are a chance to change.
The Fair Start certification program standards track capital itself, and forthcoming state attorney-general complaints, Lanham and other tort litigation – tied to climate loss and damage cases – will target relevant green/growth-washing claim, in many contexts. Because green/growth-washing comes from business, charities, media, politicians, academics, etc., all of whom are responding to capital which is predisposed to greenwash. Much of that capital hides behind philanthropy, but the reality is that relative to the Children’s Convention and in light of climatological impacts on infants, the wealth doled out does less good than the harm created by the system of inequity and growth that created it.
These complaints will target harmful, preconstitutional, discourse: Statements about furthering particular values at a micro level without addressing them at a macro level, which has the effect of reinforcing a system that is fundamentally unjust and undoing the of the values we proclaim. Effective Altruism exemplifies this, assuming ownership in its very name of wealth taken from women and children.
To be clear: Rejecting family reforms like fair start means we are knowingly inflicting ecological and other harms on others, via the system that enriches us all at cost to those others.
TAKE ACTION: Contact Dr. Aro at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aruna-rao-25183716/, and urge her 1) consider these questions as well as Humane Family reforms, and to 2) back changes in international law that would make Fair Start the first peremptory norm, such that it would authorize using extreme concentrations of wealth, the costs of which were externalized, to ensure children’s rights, the actual foundation of justice.
Always ask this question about fundamental power relations (a better concept than population), the place where many hide injustice.
Ask anyone claiming to do any form of good, whether they are conservative, liberal or otherwise inclined, how they have accounted for children being born into the world, and whether they are investing in those children to give them a fair start, or exploiting them for growth. Do they support family planning entitlements that ensure parental delay and readiness, relocation, leveling the playing field for all kids, and smaller or more ecocentric families? Or are they putting millions of innocent lives at risk to make money?
Family planning, for decades, should have been determined by the incentivizing presence of ecosocial birth equity resources. Instead – according to one Nobel laureate – that wealth went to the top and created the climate crisis and vast inequity. Those continuing that system are skewing the baseline for climate reparations, benefitting themselves at cost to others, and putting millions of lives at risk.
No theory of obligation to follow the law and respect the rights of others (including their claims to own their wealth) works unless it accounts for the creation of just power relations that give all a fair level of influence, and all power relations are fundamentally created at birth.Ignoring that fact is a scam that benefits some at cost to others, rather than discursive act of constantly reconstituting democracy – from the roots – through birth equity as an equal share of the powerpie, so that all can freely negotiate things like written constitutions, contracts, corporate formations, employment relationships, etc. and other things that define our day to day lives.
Ending the greenwashing, the lies, can save lives. The most effective way to save children, animals, the environment, and human rights and democracy is through Fair Start reforms. Don’t get scammed.
Can this work in practice? Yes, we can derive obligation all the way back. Look at the Seeds program in Uganda, and give if you can. We are changing the fundamental nature of obligation, doing what the United Nations and other organizations that failed to uphold basic human rights should have done decades ago.
Today, as we reflect on the incredible potential that lies within every child, let us reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that every child, regardless of their background or circumstances, has an equal opportunity for a bright and promising future.
To avoid scams and see the truth you can ask one simple question of any person or group claiming to do good: What have you been doing to deal with the basic connection between children being born, and things like child welfare, the climate crisis, animal rights, or anything else you might claim to care about?
Every child deserves a fair start in life, and it’s up to us to make it a reality!
To avoid greenwashing scams and see the truth about what is impacting your and your family’s future you can ask one simple question of any person or group claiming to do good:
What have you been doing to deal with the basic connection between children being born, and things like child welfare, the climate crisis, animal rights, or anything else you might claim to care about?
This one question helps us spot the #famscam. It’s a scam run by nonprofits, advertising-driven media and big businesses – making it seem like we are reducing or refining consumption, and reducing climate emissions, through abstract top-down reforms, while quietly, bottom-up increasing the number of consumers to maintain profits margins. Animal “rights” organizations that do nothing about animal-killing growth, while making money on it by partnering with vegan food companies who rely on that growth, is a great example of the scam.
That process, rather than investing more in children, degrades the natural, nonhuman world you and your children need to thrive, creates vast inequality, and dilutes your voice in town halls that make the rules under which you live.
There are essentially two answers to this question:
t really makes no sense when you realize those growth-based policies violate human rights as well, robbing future children of what they deserve in life by ensuring no minimum levels of investment and welfare in each child.
By Appbirdky – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=131834975
Children are being tortured and killed by their parents. They will die in the climate crisis. Why? Because a few men in leadership continue to favor profitable population growth over sustainable and equitable family planning entitlements – something that betters the way we plan families and has the greatest impact – as the first human right. Continuing will ensure those least responsible for climate, inequity and other crises suffer their greatest consequences. We can change course by targeting these men, much the way movements in the past focused on choke points to make true change.
This question helps us spot the #famscam. It’s a scam run by nonprofits, media and businesses – making it seem like we are reducing or refining consumption, and reducing climate emissions, through abstract top-down reforms, while quietly, bottom-up increasing the number of consumers to maintain profitsmargins. The pro-growth policies they hid undid roughly 3/4ths of the climate mitigation attempted in the last few decades, and ensured there are more animals in factory farms, less wildlife and nature, and greater inequity, than ever before. That undoing will kill millions.
They are assisted by nonprofits, media and businesses that – through growthwashing – hide that growth and its impacts, creating a fantasy world of progress for animals, children, and the environment that is just not there. The pro-growth policies they hid undid roughly 3/4ths of the climate mitigation attempted in the last few decades, and ensured there are more animals in factory farms, less wildlife and nature, and greater inequity, than ever before.
Massive environmental organizations ran campaigns to protect particular tracts of land while quietly backing growth policies that have ensured mass extinction and wildfires on those same tracts of land. Giant animal charities ran million dollar campaigns to expand cage sizes in factory farms for millions animals, or featured vegan products as a form of cutting edge social change, while silently choosing family models that ensured billions of new animals would enter the supply chain.
Faking progress while hiding deadly growth, especially when we have a right to take the resources that would stop it, will ensure the death of millions. It’s a scam run by nonprofits, media and businesses – making it seem like we are reducing or refining consumption and climate emissions, through abstract top down reforms, while quietly bottom-up increasing the number of consumers to maintain profits.
Continuing will ensure those least responsible for climate, inequity and other crises suffer their greatest consequences.
To avoid scams, and see the truth, you can ask one simple question of any person or group claiming to do good: What have you been doing to deal with the basic connection between children being born, and things like child welfare, the climate crisis, animal rights, or anything else you might claim to care about?
Making the world a better and more free place requires dealing with fundamental human relationships as they are created, and how humans will relate to nonhuman ecologies, not theoretical relationships. And that starts with and requires changing the way we plan actual families, moving from systems based on what parents want to what children need, with the Children’s Rights Convention as a minimal planning standard. That means actually looking forward. It starts with using questions like the one above to call out liars, those who use fake versions of social justice that – when examined – actually start by using future generations to convert the nonhuman world into wealth for a few men.
How could we possibly think we are protecting animals while ignoring the creation of the humans who will harm them? Organizations avoid this issue because it is hard to navigate, and they can make money on low impact campaigns instead. Every problem we face today stems from family policies that inequity and pushed growth over children’s rights – treating us like fodder for shopping malls rather than citizens for town halls. Why keep making that mistake?
This does not have to be about making the world a better place. How are the children being born into the world today limiting your personal freedom? How will they degrade the climate you need to survive, increase other threats to your security, and limit your role in functional democracies – you right to an effective say over the rules under which you must live? How will widening inequality further degrade the communities in which you live? Being free means being obligated only to follow legitimate laws (including laws that protect wealth at the top) which begin by empowering each person to be relatively self-determining – and in a measurable way. It means taking democracy, the limitation and decentralization of power, seriously.
Either way, ask the one question of anyone claiming to work towards a better future.
TAKE ACTION:
Ask any nonprofit you support this crucial question: What have you been doing to deal with the basic connection between children being born, and things like the climate crisis, child welfare, or anything else you might claim to care about?
