RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://reason.com/2023/04/11/why-america-needs-to-be-open-to-debate/

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that,” John Stuart Mill wrote in “On Liberty” (1859), laying out the essential case for open, robust, and systematic debate. If you don’t test your beliefs by engaging with people who disagree with you, you’re more likely to make weak, incomplete, self-serving, or irrelevant arguments, leading to ruinous outcomes in policy matters or acrimonious misunderstandings in social life.

That’s where the group Open to Debate comes in. Founded in 2006 as Intelligence Squared U.S., Open to Debate has hosted hundreds of debates with the goal of “restor[ing] critical thinking, facts, reason, and civility to American public discourse.” Through a mix of online and in-person events, Open to Debate brings together artists, officials, public intellectuals, scientists, and entrepreneurs from across the ideological spectrum to work through contentious, heated, and seemingly irresolvable issues of the day.

Reason’s Katherine Mangu-Ward, for instance, was part of a debate that asked, “Is Capitalism a Blessing?” and Reason’s Nick Gillespie has argued for legalizing all drugs and against Medicare for All, net neutrality, and forgiving student loan debt. Open to Debate invites audience participation, and it airs all its programming on NPR, YouTube, and the group’s own website, where it provides voluminous notes and materials, all designed to help audience members reach an independent and informed conclusion.

In February, Gillespie talked with Open to Debate CEO Clea Conner about her group’s mission, its name change, and its push to host actual presidential debates rather than “joint press conferences with really rehearsed talking points.”

Reason: What is Open to Debate? What are the goals of the organization?

Conner: Open to Debate is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. We consider ourselves a debate-driven media company. So we are curating conversations and experiences where people can engage with opposing views on complex issues in a respectful and thought-provoking way.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/10/the-depopulation-bomb/

Today, the spectre haunting the global order is not communism, as Marx predicted, but seemingly relentless demographic decline. We can already see its consequences in everything from the fight over pensions in France to the persistent labour shortages across almost all the high-income world. In the future, a lack of human labour is also likely to accelerate a shift towards automation, reshaping economic and political conflict for decades to come.

The world’s population has long been growing on an upward curve. About 75 per cent of the world’s population growth has occurred over the past 100 years, more than 50 per cent of it since 1970. But now, according to the United Nations, population growth is on course to drop to near zero, especially in more developed nations. Globally, last year’s total population growth was the smallest in half a century. By 2050 it is estimated that some 61 countries are expected to experience population declines.

A majority of the world already lives in countries with fertility rates well below the replacement level (2.1 births per woman) – the level, that is, at which a country’s population would remain steady. By 2050, UN data suggests 75 per cent of countries will have fertility rates below replacement level. Some UN demographic projections now contemplate that world population could peak in 2086, with the global population about one billion below today’s level by 2100. Ours will become a rapidly ageing planet. In 1970, the median world age was 20.3 years. By 2020, it had increased to 29.7 years, and it is expected to be 42.3 years in 2100.

It’s no longer a question of if, but when global populations will start to decline. We are entering a new epoch, defined by the first large population declines since medieval times. A series of plagues halved Europe’s population between 1346 and 1460. The primary causes today are not war or disease, however, but social evolution, including the decline of the family and religion, as well as diminished economic opportunity and a soaring cost of living. Most rich countries have to contend with birth rates well below the replacement rate. Japan, which has a fertility rate consistently 50 per cent below replacement, is likely to see its population drop from 126million in 2021 to under 90million by 2065. Indeed, last year, Japan recorded twice as many deaths as births.