Forums serve as a rent a child service...

[Rashiminos]

I think a license for parenting is definitely needed, with very harsh punishment for illegal parents. Playing with another human life is not a right you have.

Don't wake the eugenicists.

 

[Lord Baal]

I have found that a lot of average middle class people are walking piles of human waste who don't give two hoots about other people besides themselves and their family members. I'm starting to see why all those purges happened in former Soviet states.

I think a license for parenting is definitely needed, with very harsh punishment for illegal parents. Playing with another human life is not a right you have.

As much as I might actually agree, in principle, as a practical matter this is impossible. The amount of government control necessary for something like this would put 1984 to shame.

 

[Yeekim]

I have found that a lot of average middle class people are walking piles of human waste who don't give two hoots about other people besides themselves and their family members. I'm starting to see why all those purges happened in former Soviet states.

I think a license for parenting is definitely needed, with very harsh punishment for illegal parents. Playing with another human life is not a right you have.

Not sure if serious...

 

[Goodfella]

I'm starting to see why all those purges happened in former Soviet states.

Link to video.

 

[downtown]

I have found that a lot of average middle class people are walking piles of human waste who don't give two hoots about other people besides themselves and their family members. I'm starting to see why all those purges happened in former Soviet states..

FWIW, the families mentioned in the Reuters story don't appear to be middle class. They appear to be quite lower class.

 

[aelf]

In all seriousness, I do think that child-bearing and parenting needs to be regulated. Doesn't strike me as much harder than banning firearms in the long run, although the initial stages would be rather difficult what with nobody understanding why this is necessary or people simply being too selfish to see the point.

And it has nothing to do with eugenics.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Regulating child-bearing? Good luck with that.

 

[Farm Boy]

It can be done. You can force people to not have kids. You can force people to have kids. Doing so, or the methods used to do so tend to be accurately described as human rights violations or war crimes depending on context, but eh. If you pretend the people in the government are going to be theories rather than people I could see how one could be convinced that it's a good idea.

 

[bhsup]

although the initial stages would be rather difficult what with nobody understanding why this is necessary or people simply being too selfish to see the point.

And it has nothing to do with eugenics.

I love this way of thinking. If you disagree then you clearly just don't understand the issue. No way you could possible have alternative views on it because that just... no, that's silly, you just don't understand.

 

[aelf]

Yes, it's also the way of thinking that identifies certain people as sociopaths who just don't understand what's the big deal about killing other people.

 

[Farm Boy]

You are going to have to explain for those of us, who don't understand, why this mode of thinking is appropriate both in situations where somebody is being protected from murder and where somebody's ovaries and uterus are being placed under the control of rich and powerful men. Sound a lot like the worst forms of patriarchy to me at first glance. But I know there are hypothetical situations(which I find pretty extreme) where I would be willing to entertain lots of possibilities, even breeding controls. Like say on a 100-year journey on an interstellar spaceship. If there is only so much oxygen, there is only so much oxygen. The same could conceivably be extrapolated to life on Earth. There is only so much of everything. I think, probably, we'd be waiting for the magical talking unicorns to show up though if we think that enforcement of breeding rights isn't going to functionally wind up sick brutal and twisted though. Kinda exactly how we enforce the same concept already through wars.

 

[aelf]

Whoever said the rich and powerful men will be in charge? Sounds like libertarian hysteria to me.

And reasons? I dunno... like what we see in this thread (i.e. would-be parents seeing fit to play with another person's life for their own ends)? I mean, it's not like a licensing system has to be more difficult than the process of getting a driver's license. Oh wait, once they're born they're the parents' property, amirite?

 

[Lone Wolf]

I mean, it's not like a licensing system has to be more difficult than the process of getting a driver's license.

The sheer amount of forced sterilizations/abortions (how else you would prevent people from having kids?) is likely to produce quite a lot of backlash and be more difficult to enforce then driver's licences. Plus, judging someone's fitness to be a parent before someone actually is a parent sounds difficult and arbitrary.

Whoever said the rich and powerful men will be in charge? Sounds like libertarian hysteria to me.

Well, since they're in charge now, they'll certainly be in charge of your program, once implemented in current conditions. In fact, it has certain nasty precedents (forced sterilization of Roma/gypsies in Scandinavian countries, abduction of children from Australian Aborigines).

 

[aelf]

The sheer amount of forced sterilizations/abortions (how else you would prevent people from having kids?) is likely to produce quite a lot of backlash and be more difficult to enforce then driver's licences.

Yes, like how if you drive without a license, the government cuts off your limbs. How else would you prevent people from driving illegally?

Well, since they're in charge now, they'll certainly be in charge of your program, once implemented. In fact, it has certain nasty precedents.

Yes, those people we can't trust to regulate driving. Nasty. Requiring a license for driving is a human rights violation, I tell you!

 

[Farm Boy]

Parental custody is similar to property ownership? That's news to me. Hasn't been legal to own a human around these parts since that little kerfuffle we had ~160 years ago. Custody is a set of legal obligations with latitude on how those obligations are met. Maybe it's different some places. A parent may have some legally sanctioned control over a child's circumstances which allow him or her to limit modes of behavior they deem harmful, but they certainly do not have the legal authority here to demand say, an abortion or sterilization(temporary or permanent), or even the levying of a legally enforceable fine. That would imply ownership.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Yes, like how if you drive without a license, the government cuts off your limbs. How else would you prevent people from driving illegally?

What is your proposal to prevent certain people from becoming parents, then? Taking their children away if the parents are observed to be abusive? But the current system already does that... it's just that spotting child abuse is not that easy.

Yes, those people we can't trust to regulate driving. Nasty. Requiring a license for driving is a human rights violation, I tell you!

Effectively regulating driving, by its nature, is much easier and lighter then your proposal (the details of which I'm not clear about), which will inevitably either be an ineffective hoop in the way of child abuse (filling "Are You a Good Parent" test on paper) or be grossly invasive.

That's another difference between driving and parenting - you can have your subject do a test drive, after which you determine whether he's a good driver, or not. You can't very well do a "test parenting"!

 

[Farm Boy]

That's another difference between driving and parenting - you can have your subject do a test drive, after which you determine whether he's a good driver, or not. You can't very well do a "test parenting"!

Well, the rather bigger difference is one controls a specific mode of travel on public ground(you can still drive without a license on private property). A driver's license also does not give you the right to move. You can still travel without one. Controlling who can and cannot reproduce is not an equitable in the least comparison. "Thou shalt not grow a child in your uterus" enters vastly different territory. You are licensing something we consider to be the very body of the woman and decreeing the early stages of pregnancy as not "hers" but "ours." This cannot be justified on grounds of child welfare as we already seize children from unfit parents, it has to be justified on the grounds of some sort of public efficiency or ownership. At which point you've simultaneously justified everything the pro-life crowd demands too just with a different intent in mind. Either way, you've removed everybody's sovereignty over their own body/health at the basest level. Particularly for women.

 

[aelf]

Look, there isn't going to be a fool proof way of preventing unfit parents from having kids. Just like there isn't a fool proof way of preventing incompetent drivers from driving or insane people from acquiring weapons. But those things are regulated anyway. Childbirth isn't really (except in places that disincentivise childbearing beyond a certain point - already a gross violation of human rights according to some people). Why couldn't it be? Just because we're so used to the idea that anyone can perpetuate their genes? I'm sure people were very used to the idea owning other people as property too.

Child abuse is bad, obviously. So what's our solution to that now? Hope that cases of it are brought to light and the children could then be taken away and given to foster parents who may again abuse them. Many people's lives are ruined that way just because we insist that anyone can have children. Why? Why not have some modicum of regulation at the root of the problem, i.e. irresponsible childbearing? I think children's lives trump the 'right' of adults to have children.

It's stupid that when this comes up all that people can reply with are, "Human rights violations! Forced sterilizations! Eugenics!". So many areas of life in modern societies are regulated without the need to resort to cruel methods, such as, again, driving a vehicle. No one here has said that unfit people should be prevented from giving birth at all costs. There has merely been the suggestion of a parenting license, which is like apparently equivalent to attempts at exterminating a whole group of people or something

 

[Lone Wolf]

Well, there're good precedents for "some people just shouldn't rear kids" being used in severely discriminatory way - and in liberal-democratic societies, none the less! - in a sort driving licenses weren't.

There has merely been the suggestion of a parenting license

So, how that parenting licence will be given (though "Will You Be a Good Parent" paper test?) and how it should be enforced? Given precedents, these are surely valid concerns.

I'm surprised you're portraying the opposition as "libertarian" - such proposals (some people should be prevented from breeding; some people should be prevented from voting) usually come from characters who are a bit too much drunk on a specific flavor of "libertarianism"...

(I guess preventing certain people from voting can also be radical leftist - the dispossessed capitalists, whether large or small, should have no right to vote blah blah blah, but it has a complete transformation of society as a pre-requisite, and said leftists would be firmly against current states adopting a "some people shouldn't vote" principle).

 

[Farm Boy]

You are getting the pushback you are getting, from me at least Aelf, because most people do not consider all rights equal in importance. Rights to your own body tend to top the list. You have no "right to sight" but you do get to have control over your own eyes. People do all sorts of messed up and horrible things using their powers of sight, but we don't blind them or staple their eyelids shut nor do we force them to pay a fine if they look at things without being licensed to see. We don't even do this to people who have shot and killed people, or tracked down and raped people, or been thieves or irresponsible drivers. The right to your eyes is absolute. Same as legs. Same as genitals. We don't take these away from you even if we decide to execute you! You'll have to note you do not have the absolute right to parent. If you are deemed unfit, you will not remain a person with parental rights. If, however, you want to get into legislating the womb, you don't get to label me a libertarian as some sort of derisive term for opposing the issue barring any super-compelling details you produce to justify it.

By the way, any parent or guardian, vetted or not may abuse a child. And it's really hard to use prevention of birth as an argument in favor of being "good for the child." Seeing as you are attempting to prevent something's existence "for it's own good" and if you prevent something from existing you cannot by definition ultimately know what would have been good for it - the only real compelling evidence you can possibly base this on is that you've seen a child, or a child grown into adult in a specific set of circumstances and decided that the world would have been better off without this person in it at all. Which is at least partway to deciding that the world would be better off if you killed that person now, or locked the away in an oubliette so they wouldn't have to be dealt with.