That can be said about any plan for social change.

-S-

 

Yet a crackhead cannot love a child? So yeah i'll say it, when i had my kid i smoked a helluvah lot and did some drugs i shouldn't have, but when i had my son i gave all that shit up and i've spent every day loving and supporting him, so you're saying people can't change? I work my ass off every day of my life to support him, and i may not be rich, but i love him and i give him what i can, so i shouldn't have been allowed to have a child? Nobody can see the future, you can only assume, ignorant people like you think that they know exactly what is going to happen.

 

You excel at not paying attention, don't you. I've covered this as well. The sterilization is not permanent, it's enacted on a probationary basis. If you fuck up, you're sterilized for one or two years, depending on the offense. Now, had you been busted for smoking prior to conception, then no, you wouldn't have been able to have your son.

I never said a crackhead can't love a child, but love isn't enough to put food on the table and keep the child warm in the winter, is it? In this system, you have to prove you're not a crack head before you have kids, not wait until after you have him/her and the rest of us just hope and pray you won't skip out buying baby food and diapers to get your fix.

-S-

 

We're not living in china, where the government has a right to tell you if you can have a child, and how many. Having a child is a natural right, because it is how a species grows, and you who seems to always agree with science, are trying to take away a natural right in evolution? and again i ask, how can anyone make the decision on who deserves to have a child or who doesn't, What if they all agreed that they didn't see you as a fitting parent before you had your child? how would you have reacted shake, you wouldn't have been able to say, well i'm going to have my child, they wouldn't let you, and you're saying you wouldn't react badly to that? you're saying you'd just say "well if these outsiders who are looking at my life in figures and records say that i wouldn't be a fitting parent i guess i wouldn't be"? I don't beleive that at all.

 

While I don't endorse ShakeZula's solution, I wouldn't be so quick to judge the Chinese...not when the country is home to 1.4 billion people. Twenty years ago, half of them lived in poverty.

 

The government has the right to take away your child; what's the difference? And why is having a child a natural right? Says who? What is a natural right, anyway? Can you define that for me?

Explain to me this, Murk: If I don't meet the basic requirements to keep my child after he or she is born, why should I be allowed to have children? If it's my right to have them, whether I'm fit for the job or not, then I should be allowed to keep them, right? If having children is a natural right, shouldn't raising them be a natural right?

Please, to answer.

Now, if I'm a drug addict with no job, no visible means of support and I'm crashing in my buddy's basement and the State says, no, you can't have a child, guess what, they're right. You wouldn't entrust the care of your child to such a person, so why should they be allowed to make one on their own? If it's me and in a couple of years I get cleaned up and I look back at the wreck I was, chances are I'm going to say 'thank god I didn't have a kid, I might have ruined his life, too.'

-S-

 

I'll repeat it

I'm so glad you aren't in a position of power, Hitler Jr.

 

Kimi, you've surely read A Brave New World. I see this as something akin to the cloning and predetermined class system that Huxley outlined in his book. When I first read that book I was shocked and appalled at the idea, but then, when you get in deeper into their society and you see what a wonderful world they've created, I thought to myself, 'that's not such a bad idea.' I don't know that I'd be all for it but I can certainly see how it would be appealing when compared to our world now.

This little sterilization measure, while obviously not so severe, I think would help to drastically uplift our societies. Not to a utopian one as in BNW, but it would be a huge leap forward instead of being stuck in this mire that we're in now.

Just wondering your thoughts on this whole thing when filtered through the ideas in that book.

-S-

 

Yes, I've read it, but it's been awhile. I think there are always attractive aspects of many of the utopian societies found in literature. I'm just not sure it's worth the price you pay in terms of authoritarianism and forced conformity. Such power is always abused, it seems, and rigidly-controlled societies run counter to our basic concepts of self-determination.

But I think we may ultimately be forced into something like that, unless we're content with a laissez-faire approach that leaves one fifth of the world happy and healthy while the other four-fifths starve to death. And that, I think, is where we may be headed.

 

The problem with china, is the ratio of males to female is worsening due to sex selection abortions. if a family knows that they are having a girl baby, they will abort it because boys are favored, due to the limiting on having children

Humans evolve, because they reproduce, you denying 12.3 percent of the population GREATLY decreases the rate of evolution that we have. You deciding that because you believe they are unfit because of you're standards, that we will decrease the rate of evolution. Who do you think you are? i mean seriously, you're philosophies are in good intentions, you know who's else were? hitlers, and he wanted to do all this too, forced sterilization.

 

Yeah, I see what you're saying. I just can't get that worked up about it when we already take kids away from unfit parents where we can (in many places Social Services is a joke, they're lucky if they catch one in ten abused kids), I can't see what the deal is to simply prevent those same people who would otherwise not be allowed to keep their kids from simply having kids.

-S-

 

The law of unforeseen consequences at work...the planners, in their wisdom, failed to take into account underlying Chinese attitudes toward male and female children. That is certainly one of the pitfalls in trying to manage population growth.

 

Because, as you've discovered, the prevailing attitude is that having children IS a right, and it's one that people will probably defend to the death. Taking children away from unfit or abusive parents is a different thing -- such parents have committed a crime. Saying, in advance, that they're LIKELY to commit a crime smacks of prior restraint. We don't generally constrain people for what they MIGHT do...they have to actually do it.

 

You call me Hitler and don't answer either one of my questions.

I'll repeat them for you and if you still can't answer, I'll just start ignore you for the rest of the conversation. (not actually put you on ignore, you have to be really special for that, just not reply to your silly little comments.) So, the first question:

If I don't meet the basic requirements to keep my child after he or she is born, why should I be allowed to have children? If it's my right to have them, whether I'm fit for the job or not, then I should be allowed to keep them, right? If having children is a natural right, shouldn't raising them be a natural right?

And the second question:

Now, if I'm a drug addict with no job, no visible means of support and I'm crashing in my buddy's basement and the State says, no, you can't have a child, guess what, they're right. You wouldn't entrust the care of your child to such a person, so why should they be allowed to make one on their own?

So once again, please to answer.

-S-

 

But in this scenario, it is people who have already committed crime. Convicted felons for example. But the whole premise is if we, as the state, would not let you care for a child, we won't let you have one either. I fail to see the problem with this.

Now, teenagers would be an exception in the prior restraint area. They would be sterilized simply because kids having kids is never a good idea. But we restrain kids from doing a great many things for their own good, so I also fail to see the problem.

-S-

 

That's an opinion and the fact that it is held by you does not make it correct.

Correction.....we attempt to restrain kids from doing a great many things....

so in this case you are back to talking about enforcing your views and solutions.

 

Shakezula, reading through this thread I am absolutely CONVINCED that you are not, nor have ever been at any point in your life, on the breadline. You are a white middle class All American boy. Your parent/s are/were not at any time drug users or dealers. You come from a stable, extended family.

And from this elevated position in society - you judge people who are less well off than yourself as being unfit human beings.

Drug use is prevelant throughout the whole of every society. From your money-less loud-mouthed, badly housed member, right up through the higher echelons where people sit in their ivory towers, doling out decision after decision that keeps the poor penniless and the rich, well, richer I suppose.

And the difference between the two ends of the scale? The higher ups have the money and power to buy/bribe their way out of prison while the gaols are filled with those who need to rely on public defenders for justice.

If you are so certain that you are right, you should at least ponder the fact that rot in society spreads much like through apples in an apple barrel. It starts off with ONE bad apple, but if left unchecked will spread so all apples are affected. Jane Crackwhore is as likely to be from landed gentry as from the gutter!

 

So why don't we hold them responsible for what they DID do, instead of handing them a bunch of cash and telling them to run along and be good parents.

 

That was an adroit change of subject. Are you referring to your fabled lifetime welfare cheats?

 

No I 'm referring to the real welffare cheats, there is no fable. When you get a bunch of deadbeat dads allowed to go free and let the state pay for their kids, that's fraud, period.

The only people who do not think it's fraud are the cause of the socialistic problems to begin with.