The Gaming Den

Neeeek wrote:You obviously have no idea how a law firm works or any idea of the costs involved. Seriously, lawyers are often underpaid, and do more work at below-cost prices (or just for free) than any other profession, and it's not a close thing.

Ah yes, pro-bono work ... good smoke screen.

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat39.txt

The only occupation I see without a monopoly restricting entry now or in the past (ABA got convicted for it) with higher median wage than lawyers is engineering manager. I must admit though, pharmacists and physicians are better at monopoly ... that kinda surprised me.

Kaelik wrote:

CatharzGodfoot wrote:So, how do you punish poor people for having children without punishing the kids?

By not letting them have kids, I thought that was established?

Alternatively, if we lived in a Socialist Utopia, we could arrange for everyone to be able to feed themselves, live well, and go to school, without their parents having a cent.

But then how do you prevent poor people from having children? Economic coercion can be ignored, because any economic punishment will end before it harms the kids. Temporary methods of birth control can be bypassed, and permanent methods are immoral.

The socialist utopia pretty much bypasses the issue completely, so I'm going to ignore that. I'm interested in how you think there is any other solution.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:

Kaelik wrote:

CatharzGodfoot wrote:So, how do you punish poor people for having children without punishing the kids?

By not letting them have kids, I thought that was established?

Alternatively, if we lived in a Socialist Utopia, we could arrange for everyone to be able to feed themselves, live well, and go to school, without their parents having a cent.

But then how do you prevent poor people from having children? Economic coercion can be ignored, because any economic punishment will end before it harms the kids. Temporary methods of birth control can be bypassed, and permanent methods are immoral.

The socialist utopia pretty much bypasses the issue completely, so I'm going to ignore that. I'm interested in how you think there is any other solution.

There's the option of saying you get money based on having X kids, and we won't give you more money if you have more kids, so here's your free IUD. The problem with that approach, though, is that it ends up punishing the kids when that money is forced to be spread out among more children.

Actually "empowerment" doesn't have much to do with power (to give faculties or abilities to). Here is an example of enpowerment. Back in the great depression there were a lot of soup lines. But they weren't giving out "free" soup. The people on those lines had to do something to get that soup; they had to perform some sort of "work." And they welcomed the opportunity to do that because at the time there was no work available anywhere.

So they wanted to work; they felt powerless because they could not find work; they were "empowered" by being offered the opportunity to do some sort of work which in turn made them feel human again. And they also got the ability to "feed" themselves and their families, another empowering moment.

One could agrue that was the real purpose of the WPA and so forth ... empowering people who could not find work with work they could be proud of. As a side note, I have never seen a WPA built structure that I wasn't impressed with.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Economic coercion can be ignored, because any economic punishment will end before it harms the kids.

Um... Why would that happen?

CatharzGodfoot wrote:permanent methods are immoral.

Clearly you do not know me very well.

Kaelik wrote:Clearly you do not know me very well.

Oh, we know you far too well.

tzor wrote:One could agrue that was the real purpose of the WPA and so forth ... empowering people who could not find work with work they could be proud of. As a side note, I have never seen a WPA built structure that I wasn't impressed with.

The problem is that everything the WPA did we can do today with a fraction of the labour ... for major infrastructure projects direct material investment exceeds labour cost, unless you intentionally make them work with old inefficient methods (which are probably more dangerous too) infrastructure projects are not a very economically efficient way to get people a job.

Kaelik wrote:

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Economic coercion can be ignored, because any economic punishment will end before it harms the kids.

Um... Why would that happen?

Because we're already operating on the assumption that we won't punish children for their parent's misdeeds.

Kaelik wrote:

CatharzGodfoot wrote:permanent methods are immoral.

Clearly you do not know me very well.

Alright, how about this: permanent methods are stupid because they'll just be abused by ideologues seeking to reduce the gene pool, which will weaken our species.

Also, these days you're not going to be able to spend public money on anything without the tea party whining about it. "That is taking money out of my pocket for people who aren't entitled to it, blah blah blah".

The Tea Party has no solution for the demand gap ... all they can think of is lowering minimum wage, which would almost certainly decrease median discretionary income altogether ... hello deflationary spiral.

The tea party is bad at math and economics. They can go fuck themselves for thinking the 1800's was a good way to do things.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Because we're already operating on the assumption that we won't punish children for their parent's misdeeds.

No we are operating on the assumption that if the parents are terrible human beings who choose to have kids they can't pay for, we can't be responsible for saving their children. Since you are apparently unaware, people who know that having a kid will lose them welfare, who have a kid anyway despite being offered free birth control and abortions, are people who are going to fuck up their kids anyway, and there's nothing we can do about it, because they are terrible people. There is no reason to arbitrarily decide that it's really important that we feed these people enough to not die, even while we let their parents turn them into shitty people.

Kaelik wrote:Alright, how about this: permanent methods are stupid because they'll just be abused by ideologues seeking to reduce the gene pool, which will weaken our species.

Are you accepting federal money in the form of welfare? Congratulations, you get your tubes tied/vasectomy, which can be reversed at the cost of lots of money, or for free if you get off welfare.

How the fuck are ideologues going to convince all the jews to get on welfare, and stay on it for their entire lives?

Secondly, how the fuck are you so stupid that you think the gene pool will be weakened by people not having kids. That is fucking retarded. Lots of people don't have kids right now, the gene pool isn't weakening.

Kaelik wrote:

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Because we're already operating on the assumption that we won't punish children for their parent's misdeeds.

No we are operating on the assumption that if the parents are terrible human beings who choose to have kids they can't pay for, we can't be responsible for saving their children. Since you are apparently unaware, people who know that having a kid will lose them welfare, who have a kid anyway despite being offered free birth control and abortions, are people who are going to fuck up their kids anyway, and there's nothing we can do about it, because they are terrible people. There is no reason to arbitrarily decide that it's really important that we feed these people enough to not die, even while we let their parents turn them into shitty people.

Or maybe the kids' parents think that your rules are stupid, and that it makes more sense to have children when they can be full-time parents and are most fertile.

Which is no reason to punish the children.

Kaelik wrote:

Kaelik wrote:Alright, how about this: permanent methods are stupid because they'll just be abused by ideologues seeking to reduce the gene pool, which will weaken our species.

Are you accepting federal money in the form of welfare? Congratulations, you get your tubes tied/vasectomy, which can be reversed at the cost of lots of money, or for free if you get off welfare.

How the fuck are ideologues going to convince all the jews to get on welfare, and stay on it for their entire lives?

Secondly, how the fuck are you so stupid that you think the gene pool will be weakened by people not having kids. That is fucking retarded. Lots of people don't have kids right now, the gene pool isn't weakening.

When did I start talking about Jews? All that has to happen is that social and legal pressures push a specific group into extended poverty, and eventually that group can be made mostly extinct.

Furthermore, tubal ligation and tubal reanastomosis are both serious surgeries that can have big unintended consequences.

Finally (fair warning, this is a slippery slope argument), forcing doctors to perform unwanted surgeries creates an environment of callous disrespect of the patients' wishes in favor of the dictates of the government. Which could have far reaching effects beyond fucking over the poor.

Catharz wrote:Which is no reason to punish the children.

Society cannot and will not save everyone. Any assertion that it should must be instantly disregarded, because that is a fantasyland and we don't actually live there.

If cutting off payment to some welfare families for violating the terms of their welfare hurts children (and it does), yet helps in form of being able to make demands and stipulations of those on welfare that improve society overall (and it could), then it needs to happen.

People who can't afford kids shouldn't have kids. And there needs to be a mechanism in place for discouraging them from having kids. And if punishing the parents incidentally punishes the children, that is a tragedy, but imagine all the kids that would be helped because their family is being encouraged to be economically stable?

The solution here is to not throw money at families that are being irresponsible, proportional the amount their irreponsibilities need covering, just because children happen to be involved. The key is to help people in need, who are either currently responsible but just on hard times or willing to live responsibly as the terms dictate.

Edit: Kaelik's examples of sterilization are extreme and bad, and they are not easily reversed. But there are much better ones which still work.

What about establishing maximum number of children based on income bracket, and turning the excess into food that we export to other countries?

Prak_Anima wrote:What about establishing maximum number of children based on income bracket, and turning the excess into food that we export to other countries?

The Jonathan Swift approach? I think Count mentioned that, earlier.

saying "the socialist utopia bypasses this problem" is like saying "the capitalist utopia bypasses this problem" or "the communist utopia bypasses this problem"

it's a non-answer because a utopia cannot exist.

you idiots.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I have heard many rich people accuse to me that poor people were breeding in order to get their money. I have never met any, but every tea party member I know can rattle off a list of names when pressed. I think it's because tea party members know scummy people.

while I'm not a tea party patriot, I know several people who are abusing the welfare system. obviously not all of them (my grandma used medicare after the nursing home devoured her savings) but some of them do abuse the system.

Psychic Robot wrote:saying "the socialist utopia bypasses this problem" is like saying "the capitalist utopia bypasses this problem" or "the communist utopia bypasses this problem"

it's a non-answer because a utopia cannot exist.

you idiots.

Idiot singular. The point about a utopia was to demonstrate that since those can't exist, we can't hold ourselves to the standard of saving every single child from the stupidity of their parents.

yeah but we can only hope that those children die out quickly to prevent the genes from spreading. or I suppose we could try to rehabilitate them through foster care but tbh it's a losing game. people are going to fuck shit up whether we're in a capitalist society or socialist society.

maybe aldous huxley can save us, who knows

btw that bit about them dying is a joke, we're supposed to feed the hungry and shit jesus said so

RobbyPants wrote:

Prak_Anima wrote:What about establishing maximum number of children based on income bracket, and turning the excess into food that we export to other countries?

The Jonathan Swift approach? I think Count mentioned that, earlier.

Wasn't the original modest proposal about eating the poor? Mine is more sending the poor's kids away to be eaten by others...

no it was about eating babies you philistine

Psychic Robot wrote:no it was about eating babies you philistine

Ah, my mistake.

This is sad, now some dumb ass has made it so that PR types in lowercase when he's trolling, which is all the time.

Quality of discussion didn't go up, but quality of punctuation went down.

untrue.

when I type something that I feel is worth anything, I type with normal grammar/punctuation