What will be the "big" Social Issues in 2050?

[King]

Social issues are not a thing. Everything has economic consequences.

Economic issues are not a thing. Everything has social consequences.

Things are not things. Consequences.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Social issues are not a thing. Everything has economic consequences.

Snowstalker is correct. Divvying things up into 'social' and 'economic' is political compass baloney

[politicus]

Social issues are not a thing. Everything has economic consequences.

Snowstalker is correct. Divvying things up into 'social' and 'economic' is political compass baloney

Economic is overly broad, but it is practical and some social issues have a very negligible economic impact. Arranging all issues along a single left-right axis for everything is definitely worse.

In Danish value issues are opposed to distribution issues ("who gets what") and I think that makes more sense. Even if distribution is obviously based on values.

[bgwah]

I have no clue. It is entirely possible that low birthrates among secular liberals will allow a revival of religious conservatism in the coming decades. I think a lot of you are prematurely declaring victory.

[Skill and Chance]

I have no clue. It is entirely possible that low birthrates among secular liberals will allow a revival of religious conservatism in the coming decades. I think a lot of you are prematurely declaring victory.

Agreed.  Immigration is driving the country left in the short-medium term, but the effect of native-born hipsters marrying at 35 and having 1 child while native born religious conservatives marry at 25 and have 4 children will be felt in the long run.  I'm quite confident that the anti-gay stuff will quickly go the way of Jim Crow, but I could easily see Roe v. Wade being overturned sometime this century.  If climate change ever gets bad enough to swing elections, I could see  environmental activists ending up in an alliance with millennialists on the religious right.

[King]

I imagine cloning oneself versus sexual reproduction will be an issue eventually. I don't think 2050 will be the year, though.

[Deus Naturae]

I imagine cloning oneself versus sexual reproduction will be an issue eventually. I don't think 2050 will be the year, though.

There's also the issue of cloning mindless slaves for work and sex. Both of which will happen regardless of what the laws on the books are. You just know people will pay to get ahold of porn stars' DNA and then clone them. Lisa Anne and Alexis Texas will live on forever as brain-dead clones in basements across the world. That'll take longer than 35 years to become a reality though.

[Rockefeller GOP]

Hopefully State funding of abortion will finally be allowed.

As someone who's decidedly pro-choice, God I hope not.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Social issues are not a thing. Everything has economic consequences.

Snowstalker is correct. Divvying things up into 'social' and 'economic' is political compass baloney

Economic is overly broad, but it is practical and some social issues have a very negligible economic impact. Arranging all issues along a single left-right axis for everything is definitely worse.

In Danish value issues are opposed to distribution issues ("who gets what") and I think that makes more sense. Even if distribution is obviously based on values.

I think this thread is starting to focus more on ethical issues. I think that's a better term for these new quandaries that the future brings. The future will bring many ethical dilemmas some of which we have grappled with for a while - is it fair for land and wealth to distributed among an elite? - while others will seem completely insane. Look at Deus's hypothetical above. Sounds bonkers, but what do we know what humanity will do with its new toys?

(Similar note, I highly reccomend Black Mirror for people interested in these topics)

Another thing nobody has really mentioned is the role of the military. As a Green, I hope that by then the the military industrial complex is starting to be seriously questioned and the roles of BAE et al. really examined. Some sort of international disarmament movement. I am fully aware that makes me sound like a disgusting hippy and I don't care.

[Lief 🗽]

By 2050 I assume we'll just have robots fighting our wars for us.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I have no clue. It is entirely possible that low birthrates among secular liberals will allow a revival of religious conservatism in the coming decades. I think a lot of you are prematurely declaring victory.

I think as the current state of things proves, we'll have angry moralistic dogma either way.

[traininthedistance]

Inevitably by then we will have moved on to zoophilia and Roko's Basilisk, of course.

Well, plus abortion.  That sh*t never gets old.  Or budges from 50/50.

[DC Al Fine]

Well, plus abortion.  That sh*t never gets old.  Or budges from 50/50.

This is true

[traininthedistance]

On a serious note...

Social issues are not a thing. Everything has economic consequences.

Snowstalker is correct. Divvying things up into 'social' and 'economic' is political compass baloney

I'm willing to agree insofar as we're limiting our ire to the sort of naive two-axis test that populates the internet, mostly as a front to plump "libertarianism" but in the PC's case to plump trueleftism instead.

But of course there are a number of important and relevant political cleavages that can't actually be reduced to the economic "redistribution" vs. "private property rights" axis. Racial/ethnic tensions; technocracy vs. anti-intellectualism; nativism vs. cosmopolitanism; just the plain old power play of two different industries or patronage systems going at it, etc.

It's not exactly accurate to lump all of these issues under a catch-all "social" umbrella, and it is true that they have economic consequences (and some of them, the last example especially, would possibly make it under "economic" in a two-axis model), but to paint them as simply epiphenomena of the class struggle is some warmed-over reductionist cow feces. 

[afleitch]

Probably matters of human transplants/augmentation will be an issue. It might, just might be possible to transplant, or be working towards the transplant of the human brain/nervous system into other bodies which could not only assist the disabled but potentially extend life. There will be some ethical concerns over that, possibly religious concerns too due to arguments over perpetuating life, the soul etc.

[Antonio the Sixth]

"Economic" and "social' issues are neither inherently separate nor inherently one and the same. Rather, the divide between policy dimensions is highly dependent on how certain issues are framed. For example, in the US, the conservative movement has been very good at reinterpreting economic and redistribution-related issues through the racial lens. That's how "welfare" essentially became a code word from "black people who don't want to work and are mooching on our tax dollars". And that's why even poor whites are very anti-redistribution in their political attitudes. In Europe, these issues have tended to remain more separate, although the same dynamic might be in the works due to the rising weight of far-right parties.

[The Mikado]

The issue that has been a big issue since the founding of the U.S.: immigration. As long as the U.S. exists, immigration will be a hot issue.

[VPH]

-Human cloning
-Genetically modifying people
-Access to water as a civil right
-The role and capacity of artificial intelligence

[Hatman 🍁]

Climate change. Or rather, what to do about the havoc it's already inflicted on the world.

[Flake]

Climate change and physician assisted suicide.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Our society will have completed it's shift to a real-life idiocracy, so I doubt whatever "issues" people will debate in 2050 will not actually have any importance and/or not make any sense.

Imao DAE people dumb lol?

[pbrower2a]

Climate change... and robots.

[Penelope]

Probably something like this:

-The acceptance of LGBT individuals into mainstream American society. Outside of the South and the Mountain West, homosexuality and bisexuality (and other sexualities) will largely have mainstream acceptance. The more pertinent issue in the whole of the United States by 2050 will be the mainstream acceptance of transgender individuals. Unlike the battle for gay rights and acceptance, I doubt any one party will stand up for transgender acceptance, and it will instead be different coalitions and groups from within each party that slowly move things in the right direction.

-Are jobs a civil right for American citizens or a privilege granted by business? As more and more jobs start to be automated, the American unemployment/underemployment rates will steadily increase. Whichever party has "big money" on their side by 2050 will push for further automation to increase the productivity of the nation and the wealth of the upper classes. The other party will take on populist rhetoric and try to offer welfare or other forms of compensation to citizens who cannot find un-automated work.

-In the South to a lesser extent, and the Mountain West to a much greater extent, a woman's right to choose vs. right to life or other religious arguments against abortion.

-As others have said, genetic modification of the human body. However, I suspect this will be part of a larger divide between progressive, pro-technology groups and conservative, techno-phobic groups. The bioethics of human augmentation will be only one political issue that is debated; other possibilities might include the exploration and exploitation of outer space, the prevalence and morality of AR and VR devices, cloning of non-human organisms, genetic engineering, and perhaps even limits on human reproduction.

-Finally, in the vein of that last potential issue, should people have all the privileges they want, or should people be forced to make sacrifices for the greater good? Much of this will be in response to issues brought on by climate change, but I suspect these arguments will also start showing up whenever society begins to transition away from a fossil fuel powered economy. The "limits on human reproduction" issue may pop up here too, if overpopulation becomes a big enough issue in certain localities of the United States.

I'll go ahead and put an obvious disclaimer here, and say that this is just fun speculation. These issues are also quite economic, because Snowstalker and others are right in observing that most issues aren't just "social" or "economic" - most are a combination of both social and economic debates and consequences.

[Replicator]

Climate change is environmental not social to me, but by then our freedoms will be so limited that we'll be debating whether or not people should be allowed to saw their feces in half with their own urine. However, if it's up to Jerry Brown, we'll be extinct because water will be banned.

[muon2]

I think at least another twenty-five years are needed to even attempt a guess, really. Using current trends is fruitless.

Well, 50 years ago, would they have predicted that

Gays
Abortion
Drug Legalization
Discrimination in private stores
Religion

Would be social issues?

The answer is yes.

Few would have predicted fifty years ago in the pre-Stonewall era that gay rights would be an issue. Maybe abortion, but even there many of them probably would have predicted that fight would be over expanding access to something like what many pro-life advocates are trying to restrict access to be from what it is now.

I'm with Ernest here. Let's go through the list as seen in 1965. I was a boy then, and Torie can confirm from his perspective.

Gays. As Ernest notes Stonewall wasn't until 1969, and even then middle America paid almost no attention to it other than as another piece of the countercultural revolution. In 1965 gays were nowhere on the radar.

Abortion. This was an issue in 1965, but the more prominent issue was birth control due to the availability of the pill. The Griswold decision overturning Connecticut's ban on contraceptives happened in 1965. Issues surrounding birth control have been documented throughout human history and there is no reason to expect them to go away in the next 50 years. As some have suggested genetic choices may well replace abortion as the prominent issue, but abortion will still remain.

Drug Legalization. This was a rising issue in 1965 due to the availability of heroin to servicemen in Vietnam. It reached a peak during the 70's then dropped back. Regulation of mood altering substances is, like birth control, a timeless phenomenon. What changes over time is the chemical of focus, with some cycling in and out of the nation's attention.

Discrimination in private stores. In 1965 this was about black-white racial relations and not much else. If someone made a prediction that this would be an issue in 50 years they would have assumed that it was a racial issue only. Yet by the late 80's I heard little debate on the topic. Unless there is a specific group that is newsworthy in the 2060's I don't think it will be an issue. That said, I'll put out my future spin on this, the discriminated group in 50 years will be people without electronic IDs on their person and it will be a privacy vs safety issue.

Religion. Another issue that is as old as recorded history. In 1965 a discussion of this was likely to be about mixed families of different Christian faiths (I come from one). The other big issue then was prayer in school since it was in 1962 that SCOTUS ruled against NY's mandate for prayer. The existence of the Establishment Clause of the 1st amendment insures that religion will continue to be a matter of debate.