I know these are real questions because as an attorney I lied for EA investors and philanthropists (including one well known one now at Open Philanthropy) as we pushed animal rights campaigns being undone by growth, which maybe is better understood as inequity, or losing, to growth beyond specific ecosocial thresholds, an equal and influential role in deciding under which rules one has to live. We knew we were using a system that was becoming increasing illegitimate based on values we all share – and we did it anyway, intentionally avoiding fixing the base because it might harm donations and is very difficult to do.
These campaigns did more to enrich the white kids of wealthy Impossible investors at deadly climatological cost to black children than on balance help animals. We intentionally framed things in terms of using “our resources” – a core EA tactic – to frame away and hide the fact that much of the wealth was made by externalizing deadly costs on others.
But EA can pivot, and here is one way to do it.
Urge the EA-minded to discuss #themissingfactor. Urge anyone as identifying as EA to say 1) how they have accounted for children entering the world on the veracity of their claims. Rather than doing good, have they been greenwashing investments? Also, ask them 2) how they now intend to offset the arbitrary birth-positionality based benefits they gobbled up at deadly cost to others – relative to easy metrics like being able to eat every day – with priority on children as they enter the world?
There are right answers to these questions, and they start with entitlement theory, and treating birth-equity and development as the first and overriding entitlement / human right. The on balance impacts on the voiceless vulnerable, nonhumans and future generations, is what matters.
EA leaders like Peter Singer can talk about welfare all day. In the end he and others have always relied on systems of coercive obligation, legal systems, the legitimacy of which were all premised after WW2 on self-determination, in order to make their EA claims make sense. Given the climate crisis we know that system was actually more other-determining than self-determining (usually rich determining poor), and he should admit fault and assist with the fix – priority reparations that eliminate birth inequity.
TAKE ACTION: Urge anyone that identifies with the EA movement to answer the questions above.
If they claimed to further human rights and democracy, or the racial and other forms of equity on which those ideals derive, they will have omitted the fact that the horrific child welfare standards they accepted would have reversed the progress claimed, using simple measures like representative ratios, than their after-the fact-policies would have saved. You will also find they benefited, at deadly cost to oethers, from omitting that fact.
Would those being protected have wanted to the full story to be told?
Note that there is no specification of a concrete ecological baseline that would have prevented the climate crisis, or an equity standard that would have avoided those least responsible for the crisis absorbing most of its deadly costs. That is a very material omission, one that hides the primary obligations – based on equity – we owe would-be parents.
Freedom, or self-determination, by definition first flows from the restoration of nature (a baseline defined by the relative absence of human influence) achieved via delayed parenting, which is entitled through birth and developmental equity funding pegged inverse to wealth. This is owed as the first and overriding human right, and it allows each to be relatively free – from the ecological and social influence of others – and thus capable of constituting a system of legitimate governance. Ignoring this fact created the state of affairs we see today, and the inevitable death of millions. One of the leading political philosophers in the nation has backed this truth.
The omissions make the baselines in the summary static, inverted relative to the environment humans need, and dangerously abstract. Legal theorists generally debate whether something is law or the supreme authority/obligation, based on whether it derives from 1) social sources and processes, 2) particular values, and/or 3) values specific to law (or what many call the rule of law). All of these are evidently problematic without accounting for how children enter the world and are raised. This assessment should be unique to issues of birth equity because it alone requires dealing with the creation of legal relations – generally occurring at birth.
And this is clear: That omission benefitted mostly wealthy white families at deadly cost to countless children of color. We constitute ourselves as free persons by changing the way we speak, and through that how we see the world.
Here is the fix, and start by demanding those claiming to do good in the world not make deadly omissions.
Joyce Tischler is rightly regarded by many as key to the flourishing of modern animal law as an area of study, practice, and discipline.
She has this to say about Fair Start, and the idea of getting ahead of the threats animals face by changing our basic family systems:
“I have seen the projection that there will be approximately 9.8 billion human beings on Earth in 2050, followed by the question: how will we feed all of those people? That’s a simplistic question. If our planet is to remain habitable, we need to ask different questions, and develop family planning that limits or reduces the number of humans, in a thoughtful and compassionate way. Fair Start is asking the right questions and developing innovative answers.”
Professor Jose Barrientos-Rastrojo is a brilliant ethicist and professor at the University of Seville (Spain).
He had this to say about the Fair Start movement:
Hace unos días, me entrevisté con Carter Dillard, un abogado estadounidense con avezadas ideas para enfrentar algunas de las problemáticas que ya está viviendo nuestra infancia y juventud como el cambio climático o injusticias económicas provocadas por la acumulación de capital. Su propuesta implica la devolución de los beneficios obtenidos por el capital a aquellos que han sido desplazados y arrinconados en la pobreza. El movimiento Fair Start promueve un cambio y una devolución por una cuestión de justicia social en medio de esta apropiación indebida. Sin dudar, sus propuestas merecen, cuanto menos, ser reflexionadas.
And in English:
A few days ago, I interviewed Carter Dillard, an American lawyer with seasoned ideas to confront some of the problems that our childhood and youth are already experiencing, such as climate change or economic injustices caused by the accumulation of capital.His proposal involves returning the benefits obtained by capital to those who have been displaced and cornered in poverty.The Fair Start movement promotes change and giving back as a matter of social justice in the midst of this misappropriation.Without a doubt, his proposals deserve, at the very least, to be reflected upon.
“”We are at a crossroads of human civilization – where we find ourselves facing many symptoms of ecological overshoot playing out in our climate, the loss and degradation of Nature and environmental resources, and social, economic and political tensions. From floods and fires to the loss of snowpack and water, the extinction of species, to road rage, strained service delivery, corruption, unemployment, crowding, the threat of autocracy and partisan violence – all are destabilizing our societies.
The key to resolving all of these symptoms – each grave in its own right – is facing the systemic, structural inequities and attitudes of entitlement that have brought our societies increasingly to their knees.
Fairness, tolerance, humility and the needs of future generations – of our own and other species – are crucial if we are to successfully run this gauntlet of the next decades and still retain a civilization. Esther Afolaranmi and others have been promoting structural changes through ethics, law and public policy instruments that lead us in the right direction. Their work needs to be heard if we are to take a highly unequal, dysfunctional society and set it on a wiser and more just path.”
“I advocate that Black birth equity, through reparations, should be the primary action taken to resolve consequences such as corporation induced climate change — in particular, because those who are negatively impacted the most are Black communities in California and their future Black children.” — Dr. Breeze Harper
A phrase like “false premise” sounds like philosophy talk, and hardly relevant to our day to day life. But all it really means is that someone is making an argument, or doing something, which they would justify by referring to something that is not true.
The premise we all live under is that we are obligated do certain things, like follow the law because we are included in legitimate systems of governance that empower each of us. The premise is that there is a legitimate/obligatory “we” (one that creates oughtness) from which we all think and act.
It is a false premise that there is a obligatory “we” from which to live our lives until we change these facts because without a change we start by exploiting and thereby harming, rather than empowering in a way that is measurable with clear benchmarks, others. It is a false premise that there is a obligatory “we” if we start with zero actual protections for infants and animals, and zero actual protections is the case in our legal system today, almost universally.
Ask anyone what policy they are using to functionally protect children as they would enter the world – using a metric like equity for example, and thus indirectly protect the animals humans would otherwise consume. They will have no real answer because to ensure that protection would require obligating would-be parents to plan in specific ways, something that is widely considered forbidden because of an obscure policy mistake by the United Nations between 1948 and 1968.
Fact: The contributions of those who ignore their false premise, like many academics working on population ethics, began with them being born into a coercive legal system of entitlements from which they benefitted at deadly cost to others. That system, the dominant system controlling our actions because it alone is meant to be inclusive and reflective of its subjects, never was because of the falsity described here.
Actual inclusion and empowerment is what creates value and choices in the world. Growth, without minimum levels for those born with nothing, only benefits those who want cheap labor, lots of consumer demand, and a bigger tax base. There is no obligation without including those subject to the obligation, equitably, in the process. No reasonable person would start with that “ought” because constitutions do not start with the exploitation of their constituents, and the loss3 of self-determination. You can see this all around you. How much do you trust those with whom you share the world? And could that have been different had there been different family planning policies in place to give kids what they actually needed – the beginning of justice, where common good is aligned?
Instead governments could reverse this harm with one simple change at the United Nations – using child-rights as their basis for legitimacy, and funding birth equity level family planning entitlements as the priority climate reparations so that women have children at a time, place, and with resources that ensure those children thrive. A legitimate remise, an obligatory we, would start with minimum thresholds of personal welfare, expecting equal access to opportunities, participating in and adhering to political/legal systems that purported to represent the governed through birth and development conditions that ensure a role in making the law and and protecting the capacity for each to choose who has influence (including climatologically) or power over them, using and enjoying an environment relatively conducive to human and nonhuman health, enjoying a right to have a child in relatively safe conditions, etc. Consumers do not need to be emancipated in this way. Citizens do.
And what this means is that processes that would make us a “we” – like an AI managed system of social credit designed around prioritizing resource distribution for birth equity – override those that do not. That process would have more justification for leaning on holdouts than the government, which should become a function of this process, would have to block it. We might begin this process in the animal law/rights and children’s rights movements, where the false premise has had done the most harm and contradicted the things we said we value. Our generations can’t get the benefit of future generations’ political obligation, not to target us for strict liability reparations required by the deadly climate catastrophe for example, because we never met our obligations to them.
What is an example of the #ImpactFraud mentioned above? Many animal or child welfare organizations claiming to do good start from a fundamental policy position with zero actual protections for infants and animals (the false premise), and in a way that undoes the values they claim to further. I was paid to omit the fundamental policies that were undoing the claims I made as an animal lawyer – and by those who wanted to take advantage of growth. I have lived the lies of people and institutions reacting to climate reparations liability by trying to hide that liability, deny their role, reduce the standard, etc.
The Vatican has for decades urged family planning policies that attempted to grow the base of the church, and its income, in a way that destroyed our environment and now threatens to kill millions. Their policies enriched themselves at deadly costs to others.
The Vatican has roughly thirty-three billion dollars in net worth. It’s not about population. People are not numbers. It’s about the impossibility of separating values like welfare, equity, and nature from their creation.
The curve above represents the opportunity to promote values like child welfare, parental readiness, the restoration of nature, and democracies where each person plays a greater role, or to exploit people as consumers, workers, and taxpayers. We should choose the former, and arc down.
This divided social justice / public interest movements into less effective silos – like misperceptions of animal rights – that did not threaten the status quo the way birth-equity (equally empowering shares in your democratic system of voting) would have. This in turn undercut democracy, leading to the oligarchic threats the United States faces today.
This now means they – the disenfranchised – will suffer the brunt of a crisis for which they were least responsible, including violations of their right to have even one child in healthy and safe conditions. And because of basic vote dilution, voter suppression, and other factors, they will be unable to use democratic processes to protect themselves, and may rationally choose other measures. And in the face of all of this, many governments driven by industry are paying women to have more children with no easy safeguards like “survive and thrive” baby bonds in place, while wealthy families and foundations reliant on growth fund charities engaged in distractivism.
What are you doing to assure the conditions in which children born and raised, including their environment and role models, are being improved so as not to undo the benefits of the work you discuss?
In asking these question you are looking for the #Impactscam: A growing body of peer-reviewed research had shown the basis of deadly climate greenwashing – which is killing millions – originates with child welfare policies that illegitimate political systems because they ensure no minimum threshold of self-determination or freedom. These policies literally set inequitable standards killing millions of those least responsible for the crisis. And those backing them are choosing to benefit at deadly cost to others, when there are clear alternatives – like moving wealth through externalizing deadly costs into the hands of young women able to save many lives.
These policies illegitimate governance because our generations can’t get benefit of future generations’ political obligation, not to violently target us for reparations required by the deadly climate catastrophe for example, because we never met our obligations to them. At the very least young women demanding birth equity reparations would have greater right to use coercion to protect their children than the state would have to defend existing property rights that harm their children. That said, nonviolence is more effective in achieving justice
Instead of changing the policies many organizations are hiding them – aware that they face liability for greenwashing, where the growth they embraced historically did more harm to their causes than their efforts did good. Many of them are going out of their way to evade liability, and thereby – at least inadvertently – reduce the reparations victims would be awarded.
The most just and effective solution? There are legal actions pending before the United Nations and other agencies urging more inclusive legitimacy. Self-determination derives by definition from conditions of development that ensure the capacity for us to choose who has influence (including climatologically) or power over us – to be free. According to a growing body of research, there would be no legitimate political entity to assign wealth or incentives that precedes this obligation. Who we should be, the “ought” of Children’s Rights and the hard metrics of being a legal person as opposed to an economic person, logically always comes first – before what we should do, and the allocation of other entitlements.
But there are ways to move towards fulfilling this obligation, upstream, and we work downstream on more traditional projects.
Take Action: Work with the Fair Start movement to factcheck claims by nonprofits. Read more here.
