I apologise for being rude but it sounds like you have limited compassion if you haven't been able to think this one through. What do you want to do, sterilise the poor?
I would remind you that despite a poor background children can and do still excel and even if they don't these children are often the backbone of our industry. You might not approve but these people are still the workforce and generation of tomorrow so you should afford their inception a little more respect and empathy.
Only occasionally. And that does not justify raising children in a difficult environment!
> What do you want to do, sterilise the poor?
I agree that the parent phrased that post very poorly.
However many countries did a lot of effective work to prevent unplanned parenthood, including education and access to contraceptives and abortion rather than sterilization or punishment.
> even if they don't these children are often the backbone of our industry
This sounds like the world need enough desperate people to accept exploitative jobs or go to war and so on? I hope humanity can do better than that.
You and I both know neither of us have enough information to assert how often it happens. I am merely stating it DOES as a counter weight to effectively killing off poor geniuses or rather poor "good enoughs".
> However many countries did a lot of effective work to prevent unplanned parenthood, including education and access to contraceptives and abortion rather than sterilization or punishment.
Yes! This is the available path to us which we should take.
> This sounds like the world need enough desperate people to accept exploitative jobs or go to war and so on? I hope humanity can do better than that.
That's a very extreme way of interpreting my words. Many of these children will become construction workers, carpenters, plumbers, administrative types, catering workers, chefs, musicians, entertainers, IT admins, etc, etc, etc. I am suggesting that my parent post is underestimating the reach of some of these children and falling for the gutter-press focus on the worst case examples. Many of these people will become good enough citizens. I live in a vaguely deprived area and the kid across from me isn't educated and is definitely working class but he's learnt from his tough upbringing and has a pretty good head on his shoulders. For every worst-case example there are tons of kids like this. Baby => bathwater.
Reversible sterilization for everyone by default, temporary reversal for a fee. Make people pay for externalities.
Having children is a luxury, we only need to start treating it like one.
RESPONSES
(THANKS FOR THE ANTI-SPAM, HN! IT MAKES IT SO MUCH EASIER TO HAVE MEANINGFUL CONVERSATIONS)
> Why are you focusing only on the financial aspect and ignoring the parents education, general behavior and mental health, and living conditions, safety and so on?
All these qualities (1) heavily correlate to their wealth and (2) much harder to have any objective measure of.
Also, you are painting a false dichotomy between "rich" and "poor". A lot of middle and lower class people can raise healthy and happy children unless they have problems with mental health / violence / substance abuse & so on.
> taking away the only joy in some people's lives
Looking at children as a source of joy instead of a recipient of unconditional care and effort sounds very narcissistic.
Many people find joy in other expensive hobbies, too. The difference is: Doing such a different expensive hobby won't make someone who you produced suffer because you lack the necessary financial backing.
Raising children is a very resource and labour-heavy endeavour. Rich people have more resources and labour. It's only logical that they can afford the children while poor people don't.
Most of humanity was born to parents with no monetary income at all, and volatile access to resources and shelter. Imagine that!
Which I consider independently from my main argument as a stupid idea.
Not at all. An economy based on competition and inequality automatically generates as many poor as needed to balance out the super rich. It's really basic math.
I.e. 'stick the winkie in the hoo-hah and wiggle it around'
This is a completely false definition of "killing"
No we're not.
Killing requires something to exist and be alive first.
You're choosing not to have children. In wolfgke's description, he's choosing for you.
Big difference.
Poverty is not a disease, as Quarrelsome pointed out.
Poverty isn't even a constant, it's dynamic. People go in and out of poverty all the time.
We also don't know the correlation and the causation between poverty and various indicators such as IQ, achievements, etc. (are you poor because you have a low IQ or do you have a low IQ because you're poor? etc.)
On top of that, where do you draw the line for poverty? Is it the lowest 10%? 20%? 40%? What if the statistics change next year, and I go from 40% to 30%, am I allowed to have children this year? Are my children taken away from me?
Etc., etc.
You haven't thought this through, or as I said, you're a wonderful troll! :)
Here I mean things like appreciation of education, work, stability of families, etc.
What could we do to change these patterns? (Apart from the usual recipes like making schools better. FWIW I'm from a country which has one of the most equal distributions of both income and wealth, but even this does leave a lot of people quite unhappy.)
Besides this, I guess the next best investment is in refining democracy and its safeguards, as well as the actual government, so that:
a) lobbying by corporations and very rich and powerful individuals doesn't corrupt the system
b) the system is as efficient as possible (there's always going to be inefficiencies but you'd want most of the tax money to actually be used for what they're meant instead of administrative overhead)
More than that, there's not much we can do. After all, at some point we have to rely on free will :)
At least what I read about the number of poor black American kids growing without a father: it's shocking. There seems to be a widespread collapse of culture of having a stable kernel family. What could be done about it?
There exist lots of diseases known to medicine that can be cured, but people can still get reinfected even after a treatment.
Heck you might gain a bit of sympathy then so maybe it wouldn't be a completely bad thing...
Or the South Side of Chicago.
Doing quarantine does not kill the disease agent. That is not what quarantine is for. Quarantine is for preventing the further spread of the disease agent.
For killing the disease (agent) there is the immune system or drugs such as antibiotics or virostatic agents.