Note on private school - I know good ones locally have rates at the 5K for 1 kid, 4K for second 2K for third, and it goes up to 6K in grade 12. Not a big increase, but still costly. As for government programs offered to families. Well I think Canada is reasonable in a lot of them. Your taxable income details what you may receive. Make enough you get no help. Having 12 kids (and the little buggers are expensive) should never let someone get government funds. Having 12 kids would be a lifestyle choice YOU made, and not someone else's responsibility to take care of. If my lifestyle was expensive hookers but I can afford it, should I get government assistance just because I can get my dick hard to do that too? NO. To an extent I think lifestyle choices need to be factored in (I think taking family income works as good as it can at this point), as well as parental responsibilities. Let's be honest though. People need to step up and raise their kids anyways and stop making them and ask others to do it for them.
Quick word on private schools: If you keep your eyes peeled and work hard, they don't have to break your bank. I'm not going to give a number for what my education might have cost, but I will say what I actually paid was a fraction of that, and the vast, vast majority of the credit goes to my parents for doing everything in their power to make sure I was well set up.
Sex is the only reason any of us exist. We are living organisms. Our DNA commands us to propagate. It is in the elite circle of urges that will never ever ever go away as long as the human species exists. And apparently people think you can stop that by getting rid of abortions and welfare? I think the word is "laughable." Some people need to read past the "moral hazard" part of the econ textbook.
From the 'I am the Law' thread. I LOATHE the current 'for the good of the children' argument. Both the idea that children's rights should trump all others, and the notion that by stamping on other people's rights we're protecting children. f we really gave a fuck about the good of children, we'd stop dicking about with restricting the freedoms of non parents, and start introducing some safe guards about what kind of bozo's are allowed to have them. The vast, overwhelming majority of violent and sexual abusers of children. Most kidnappers are parents. Most child murders are committed by parents and the vast majority of neglect and abuse through inadequate provision is because parents shouldn't have had fucking kids in the first place. You don't ever have the right to be a shitty parent, and if you actually had what it takes to be a good parent, you'd be fine with a trivial test requirement. And really, who gives a fuck what bad parents want? We don't let people have heroin, because they fuck up their own lives. Why should we let them fuck up a kid's life because they've got an irresponsible impulse? If you want kids, and you're willing to be a good parent and spend the rest of your fucking life looking after then, spend a couple of days before you knock someone up proving that you've got what it takes to get it right. If you can't manage that, how the fuck are you going to be a decent parent? While we're implementing my sweeping social reforms, please note that if you have children, you'll have to set up filters on the television and the internet to restrict them from getting content that you don't want them to have. The only government intervention will be to require that material inappropriate for minors be labelled appropriately, and suggest that any information published without labels be treated as unsafe for children when you setup your filters. No more 'for the children' censorship unless you get off your ass and set up the filters in your own home. If you don't want your kids seeing signs or advertising that you might consider inappropriate, you should remain in designated family friendly reservations, or keep the children in vehicles with restricted visibility. Your children aren't societies problem. And outside of schools, playgrounds and other spaces explicitly designated as for the primary use of children, owning a child that operates at an unacceptable volume for more than 30 seconds or more than 5 times an hour will result in severe beatings. If you can't teach your kids to behave in adult spaces then you can't take them there.
Just to point out, I don't advocate what I posted, I was just stating what the people who do believe that way of thinking are really trying to get at when they talk about how they don't believe in propping up welfare while also being anti birth control and abortion. On the flip side, casual sex, at least in the US, hasn't been a typical thing until fairly recently. You don't need to go back farther than 50 years to find a time where sex was viewed VERY differently than it is today. Keeping that in mind, it wouldn't be difficult to change the way we think of sex within a few generations if people began to pass, through governmental interference, policies designed at their core to curb casual sex. I know it sounds ridiculous, but there are a lot of beliefs that can be changed over time that seemed at the time immovable.
Pretty much exactly 50 years. Basically 1962. Or the day before the pill was approved by the FDA. Because casual sex prior to the pill was gambling with with pretty high odds. Prior to the 1930's, 50 deaths per thousand live births was just the reality of pregnancy. And even as late as the 60's when the pill came out - the physical costs of casual sex were staggeringly high. The pill was largely approved because of thalidomide's emerging risks. The social costs were even more staggering. The social perspectives on casual sex shifted wildly towards more liberal casual sex because suddenly wasn't associated with a high likelihood of pregnancy. The free love moment was largely predicated on the fact that it was no longer a life destroying idea. Unless you start to treat contraceptives like cocaine (major jail terms for people who possess them) - you're never going to diminish people's urge to fuck with legislation. But the free love movement's association with the pill I think shows with equal clarity, that while the desire for children and libido have some shared evolutionary history - they're not intrinsically tied. Discouraging people from breeding is a very, very different thing from discouraging people from fucking.
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. Casual sex happened all the time in the USA since the settling of this country, it's just that it was exclusively the right of males and pretty much entirely viewed as the fault of wanton female slutbags. People have been fucking and trying to find ways to deal with the unwanted consequences of fucking for millenia. Look at newspaper ads before the Comstock Law was enacted and you'll see plenty of ads for abortifacients, and it wasn't only married women who were purchasing them. Look at those advertisement pages after the Comstock Laws were passed, and you'll see that the ads have disappeared and been replaced with significantly vaguer ads. Here's a little tip for reading the ads: if it has a picture of a woman or uses a term like "restores feminine regularity", it's not talking about probiotic yogurt. There was certainly less social acceptance for a woman openly enjoying sex out of wedlock (there's still a disparity, but it's mild compared to what it was in the past), but there's been very few periods where fucking a lot of women wasn't seen as a manly and healthy thing to do. Your idea sounds ridiculous because it is. Reproduction is the primary command within DNA, be it a virus, a plant, or a human. You seek to curb a force like that with a couple of laws? How well did Prohibition work? And people never shoot each other for stupid reasons, drive faster than the speed limit, or use fireworks that are illegal in their region, right?
I'm not saying passing laws to outlaw casual sex is going to change people's minds about doing it. What I am saying is subtle changes in laws or changes in the way welfare is doled out could very well have an impact on societies view of casual sex. Yes it's in our DNA to procreate. However based on changes in society, we can no longer lord over a plot of land and any women residing on it are free for the taking. As society has evolved, so has our beliefs on topics over the years. It's quite possible that things held so dearly today as rock solid beliefs are looked at as ridiculous another 50 years in the future. Many of the shifts in society are not one big moment in time that shocks everyone into a different way of thinking. Many of the changes are gradual, generational changes. Again, I'm not supporting this type of thinking, just pointing out that seemingly small inconsequential changes can have long reaching effects on society as a whole. I agree. With regards to the focus of the thread, it can be debated that you can't easily discourage people from fucking, but you can certainly discourage people from breeding. With that in mind, you can see how the jump could be made where it is no longer a personal right to have children and it turns into a privilege or even worse, a lab experiment. Personally, I have mixed feelings on the issue. On the one hand, the amount of people alive on the planet is staggering. I'm not suggesting that we start killing the old folks and anyone who has no use as manual labor, but our species is doing a pretty good job of sustaining our population. We aren't in any danger of suddenly dying off, but down the road it might be in the best interest of our species to start to regulate what genetic traits get passed on to continue our survival. The counter point is strictly a selfish ego driven thought. I'm the last male in my family line to carry on our name. If I don't have a child, specifically a son, my last name dies with me. To have someone take away the right to be able to have a kid and continue on my name because I don't qualify on a genetic level or otherwise is ridiculous sounding. If I find someone willing to have a child with me, I shouldn't be denied the opportunity.
I think he means abortion is not acceptable as birth control, And they happen as often as you blink your eyes i.e. your spring break tix are non-refundable and you just got "beach body ready". Let us not debate abortion too much kids. It leads to fire. And flames.
Chiming in late to the focus apparently: Is having children a right? Yes, yes it is. IF, under some crazy set of circumstances, we wound up in a situation where having a child required a license then I would use the following scheme: 1) Sex Ed starts early, like 10 at the latest, so ignorance is curbed as much as possible. (actually, I am in favor of this even without the horrible totalitarian regime necessary for the rest of this) 2) To get a license a potential parent needs to take a class that is publically funded. This class teaches you basic parenting skills like childhood nutrition, some budgeting, child safety, etc. If you take the class you get a license, there are no other factors to look into about the parents for the license. 3) If you get pregnant accidentally, take the class and get the license retroactively. Hopefully number 1 reduces accidental pregnancy. 2 and 3 are wildly immoral and unethical, but assuming we were in a mindset to so heavily regulate childbearing and someone put a gun to my head, they are the approach I would take. Because, really, when it comes down to it I don't so much care about the wealth of parents and I don't think that's the true metric we should use. I want parents who are the kind of people who would put in the effort and time to take a class on parenting. Everything else is window dressing.
Me plating the older guy here again: when the hell do youse guys GET sex ed? We had it taught to us in grade five, so I actually WAS ten. The reaction from ten year olds were as you expect: shitloads of giggling and a lot a boys raising their hand with glee in their eye. Of course, this led to my classmate Levi Johnston knocking me out with melon wine coolers and deflowering me in a tent, so I think that sex ed is bad and we should stay virgins until marriage ...just like every other fucking idiot that has ANY issue whatsoever with sport-fucking.
Yeah, it's a right. Although I wish it was more of a privilege. I work with a portion of society that is in and out of correctional facilities. These are people that have told me to my face that they cannot pay anything toward their court ordered fines until child services gives them their kids back and they have their welfare benefits start back up to pay their obligations to the court. Yeah. Five days a week I will think "And why are you allowed to breed? Five kids, no job, three fathers, seriously? I do this job long enough and your kid will be on my caseload at some point, I'm sure." I'm cynical. Just because you can have a kid doesn't mean you should.