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Comment by blep_ | Hacker News Reader

> Any less than 2.1 and you have to have an uncomfortable conversation about which nation is going to be the sacrifice.

Only if you're the sort of person who cares about such things. I don't see any moral imperative to make sure any particular ethnicity or culture continues.

Before someone calls me the usual assortment of bad things, please take a moment to consider (1) the difference between treating existing people well and making new people, and (2) that I mean this literally and not in the "all the cultures besides the US should go away" sense, and would still take this position even in the blatantly racist "but that means you'd be a minority" situation you're about to try to catch me with.

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Why is it racist to care if you're a minority? Current minorities care about it a quite a lot. Not only that -- they see a moral imperative that their particular ethnicities and culture exist. Are some groups "allowed" this, and not others?

Of course the term minority/majority is relative to the scope you're talking about, too. The "majority" of Americans are global minorities.

So if I understand correctly, you are afraid of becoming a minority because you don't want to be treated like the current minorities?

Mask off moment there.

No. You just dislike reciprocity

(2) was intended to proactively dismiss one specific attempted "gotcha" that I hear often in response to this view: people think I'm saying that it's okay for minority cultures specifically to die out, and that I would feel differently if it was American culture being overtaken as a result of high birth rates in some other country and low birth rates in the US. This is not what I am saying. I don't think American culture is special.

> Are some groups "allowed" this, and not others?

So no, my position is that no groups are "allowed" this.

Another way I can express this, that may be more clear, is that a culture isn't a thing on its own. It's a description of the way its members live. Those members may be very attached to that way of life, and it is immoral to take it from them (see (1) above), but the question of whether new people start living in that way is morally neutral.

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