> We have the highest prison population per capita as it is. It’s been tried. Over and over.

You are conflating a flawed justice system (prison) with teaching morality. They are not the same.

I don't read the parent as conflating a flawed justice system with teaching morality.

I read it as using the failure of the justice system as an example of his larger point: Personal responsibility is a personal lesson that requires personal choices and experiences. It’s not something you can publicly mandate.

The justice system was one example of a failed attempt to publically mandate morality.

I don't think the aim is to teach that "millions of people are just morally deficient," as you put it. Rather, the aim should be to reinforce that everyone has the capacity to do good or bad, and the direction of your life is influenced partially (if not majorly) by the average value of your decisions.

In some aspects of our culture, shame still exists to great effect. For example, drunk driving is a behavior that never gets a pardon. Words never spoken: "We shouldn't judge Joe for his DUI, for if we were in his shoes, we may have done the same."

The drunk driver may deserve all sorts of considerations: They struggled with alcoholism, their judgment was impaired at the time, they needed to go to work in the morning, they couldn't afford an Uber, their designated driver didn't show, they didn't speak English well enough to coordinate another ride home. In function, no excuses are allowed. As a culture, we believe that no matter your situation, you must always make plans to avoid driving drunk.

What if this same type of intense shame existed towards other behaviors we wished to not see? To name one: What if we intensely shamed parents who let their young children become obese? Instead of blaming food deserts, lack of nutritional knowledge, lack of time to prepare meals, and so on, what if the blame went directly to the parents who are letting their elementary age children graze on a party sized bag of Doritos?

Or my personal favorite application of shame at a societal level: shaming people for dodging taxes.

It sounds cool in theory, but in practice, it's just another tool wielded by the powerful. In practice, it's used most heavily for stuff like forcing people to express support for unjust wars, or to be quiet about a powerful person's abuses. Go to any conservative community and you can see the effects of what you're describing.

> Instead of blaming food deserts, lack of nutritional knowledge, lack of time to prepare meals, and so on, what if the blame went directly to the parents who are letting their elementary age children graze on a party sized bag of Doritos?

Most people who would be in any way affected by a society-level shame campaign already feel that way. You're talking about small pockets of communities that aren't fazed by mainstream society's norms. Mostly ones in small-town conservative areas that are heavily shame-based, but just about different things from what you care about.

So it seems it's not more shaming that you want, it's just that you want everyone to be shaming people in line with your personal system of morality.

Things are only illegal because we agree to make them illegal, and for no other reason. Same for "norms": the rules that are not enforced by a court, but by the "stink eye" of your peers. In each of these realms each individual is defendant, prosecutor and judge. It's complicated and confusing, and I'm sorry. But that's how it is.

But what it is NOT is the state teaching personal responsibility. That's...stupid. I feel like I'm supposed to come up with more analysis, but it would just be a euphamism, or a post hoc rationalization, of the fact that I find the attitude stupid. Low intelligence. Dumb. And moreover I find myself so angry at a family of rhetorical jabs that get replicated over and over again by the weak minded that find some success with them against even weaker foes. But in the end your mischaracterization of society itself for some sort of short-term social benefit will only result in loss. For you, for me, and for the very system that taught you enough language and logic to deploy the weapon.

Shame on you!

(It occurs to me that an honest expression of contempt is out of fashion. But fuck it. Fuck fashion.)

It can’t really come from public policy by definition. Public policy would look different in a world where people expect personal responsibility. But it cannot be mandated by the state. Its a value.

>Do you really want the state teaching “personal responsibility”?

but they do. All those "eat healthy", "don't do drugs", "play outside 2 hours a day"? They were all funded by some government if they were displaying in public schools. It's not the only nor even primary pillar, but it is a big one.

And of course I don't need to specify how they indirectly teach/punish personal responsibilities with subsidies. Slashing the subsidies on corn would cause more radical changes than any sort of propganda they show on ads.