“Animal Cops,” for those of you who are unaware, is a reality TV series that follows Humane Society staff around various cities (Detroit, Houston, Phoenix) as they rescue critters from various predicaments. Typically, the predicaments involve humans either neglecting animals under their control, or outright abusing them. One common story: some poverty stricken schmoe is unable to provide adequate food and veterinary care for his/her dog. Dog gets sick or injured, cops are called, an investigation is made and the Poverty Stricken Schmoe is legally obliged to sign over the dog to the Humane Society, who patches it up and adopts it out. Poverty Stricken Schmoe is warned that if they cannot afford a dog, they shouldn’t *have* a dog, and if the cops are called again for a dog being improperly cared for, poverty Stricken Schmoe is going to jail.
I’m a big fan of private property rights, such that if someone buys a Picasso for $50 million, it’s theirs to do with as they please. This includes hiding it, burying it in wet cement, neglecting it in a leaky attic, or taking it out back and setting fire to it. But if instead of an inert painting someone procures themselves a critter capable of feeling pain and fear, your rights to do with it as you please are reduced. You now have a definite responsibility.
And… if the transition from “painting” to “puppy” carries with it responsibilities, in my opinion the transition from “puppies” to “human babies” carries with it even *more* responsibilities.
So, imagine my chagrin while watching this:
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The short form: a woman has 15 children. Lives with 12 of them in a motel room. Uses the system to squeeze thousands of taxpayer dollars out of social workers. When she gets thrown into jail, her kids go to a shelter; when she gets out, her family won’t take her and her kids in because she refuses to help control them. So, back to the shelter the kids go… and back to jail she goes because she threatens violence on shelter workers.
Gah.
If you want to have 15 kids, go for it. But if you cannot provide for those kids… you shouldn’t have them. Consider: who can watch “Animal Cops” and argue with taking a house full of malnourished semi-feral cats from some old lady living on Social Security and who clearly cannot provide for them? It is better for the cats if they go somewhere where they *can* be properly cared for. So if it’s good enough for cats, why is that not good enough for children?
We recently had a commenter promote monarchy as the proper form of government. Fine. One of the first rulings of King Scott The First, God Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico, will be that if you are on taxpayer-funded welfare (for some specified period measured in months, not years)… you are by definition unfit to parent. If you cannot take care of yourself, clearly you cannot take care of someone else.
And then, following the “Animal Cops” teachings, come the spayings and neuterings.
The story seems to be that this woman is going to lose at least a number of her kids, who will be fostered out. While that’s obviously for the best for the kids – damn near any foster family will have better role models than this horrible, horrible excuse for a mother – the greater societal question is… how in the *hell* did a woman this incapable of raising kids wind up with 15 of ’em? It’s clear that society would have been better off, and the taxpayer would have been less oppressed, if 15-20 years ago someone would have offered her ten grand to have her tubes tied. The local vet clinic will run the occasional special where you can bring in a cat or dog to get spayed for something like forty bucks… so clearly the operation isn’t that big of a deal.
Grrrrr.
And it gets worse:
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80% of students want the US Government to give them *everything.*
17 Responses to “We’re Doomed”
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You’re an unfit parent. Your children have been remanded to the care of Carl’s Jr.
F*ck you. I’m eating!
I say take it one step further, once everyone comes of breeding age (12-13) they make a deposit in the sperm or ova bank, enough for them to have as many kids as they want. They are then sterilized, boys get a vasectomy, girls get their tubes tied, or an IUD, Tubal Ligation, whatever, if it is something reversable, so much the better. Then once they are adults, and can prove that they are a fit parent and want to have children a person can then either get the surgery reversed, or get their sperm/ova for invitro fertilization if it cannot be reversed. Automatically you get no “oops” pregnancies except in couples, or individuals, who have been desterilized, but who can support children. No more crack babies, no more welfare moms (except in cases where an actuall catastrophy occurs that puts a person who was working on welfare), the crime rate drops, the gang rate drops, all children are then wanted children, and within 2 generations we have a society full of wanted people that are properly invested in. Yes people can still screw up their lives, but they don’t involve kids then, they don’t breed another generation of screwed up people.
Yes there are downsides, some people may not be able to get desterilized, that’s why they make a deposit, just in case. But, as the technology improves a conception block that can be removed will be more viable. Yes some will use this as an excuse to be more promiscuous, so there would be a spike in STDs but once again kids are not being involved. Will this result in some population segments virtually disappearing, oh darn yes it will. And how do you enforce it, easy, if you want to services of any kind you have to submit, if you want your kid to go public school you have to submit, but on that note within a generation public schools will not be a cesspool anymore because all the kids will be wanted and invested in, not just thuggy little future bangers being dropped off at free state sponsored daycare, etc…
> I say take it one step further…. They are then sterilized…
Ye gods, no. That puts the power of deciding who gets to have kids into the hands of the government, along with legally mandating unwanted surgical procedures. My idea is to get government out of the baby-makin’ process as much as possible. Make sterilization cheap and entirely voluntary… make it government funded and give a financial bonus for doing so. You’ll end up saving a *lot* of tax money in doing so, without forcing anyone to do anything.
It would still be voluntary, but if you don’t subscribe to it you become a new lower class. Any kids you have because you don’t submit get nothing, or if they don’t get fixed, they get nothing, no services, no schooling, no free medical care. If you don’t work in the system you have to everything from outside the system, your kids would have to go a private school, private medical, etc…
Yeah I would like to keep the government out of it too, but in a case like this you might have to have a least government oversight, and the rules allow you to procreate could not include eugenics. Instead it relys on things like: Do you have a career (ie not minimum wage at McDs), do you have a stable home (ie not movign around all the time or living in a friends closet), do you have reliable transporation, do you want to have kids, have you been convicted of any violent crimes, etc…
Yes tax incentivise(sp?) it as well, but make the accessibility to public services contingent on it as well. And of course you can always loose your parenting liscence if issues arise, like you start beating/neglecting your kids. Once the technology is there you can even suspend the licence to prevent further children due to say loosing your job or voluntarily if you decide you don’t want more children.
I know two families similar to that first one. They do this by choice. They may be genuinely stupid. My gut feeling about all this is that we need to give IQ tests to everyone and avoid breeding by those who are too stupid to take care of themselves. One of the first things my daughter told me when she started living on her own was that some sort of test needed to be given to those who wished to have children.
I hear the college kids around me saying much the same thing. They have no grasp of the concept of personal responsibility and less of any sense that exertion leads to anything useful. I also blame the public schools for the same reason.
I think it was when Bill Clinton got elected that I realized we were doomed.
I thought of some sort of an injection in both male and female babies or kids when they are still in
prepubescence stage which could be reversible if the desire to have children is there instead of
irresponsible pregnancy.
The solution is not to stop people from having children, People should have as many children as they want.
The solution is for the government to stop sending out checks.
> People should have as many children as they want.
No… people should have as many children as they can *afford.*
Even if the government decided to stop funding the creation and maintenance of a permanent poverty underclass by paying people to have babies, you’d still have the occasional crazy person who’d pop out baby after baby that they couldn’t afford. This would not only be burdensome to society at large, it would be burdensome to the babies.
Just as you’ve got Crazy Cat Ladies who will let themselves descend into hellish living conditions in order to keep a bunch of cats in hellish living conditions, you’ll have Crazy baby Ladies. Octomom comes to mind. Getting the government out of the business of funding that will go far, but it won’t end the problem entirely.
The animal cops are rather disturbing to me, that and the anti-“hoarder” mindset that says that if you have the same number of books as an Edwardian estate in a smaller state, that you should be moved–let alone if you collect interesting packaging shapes for model making. There seems to be some movement afoot to make sure that we all live in boxes with some device in our ears and spartan IKEA furnishings–so even as we are taking chickens out of cages, we are placing people in them.
I think the animal cops should be defunded and shut down–lest the next thing to go are animal testing labs. The fundies want to stop embryonic stem cell research–still the gold standard due to pluripotency; the left wants to shut down animal testing labs, ranches, hunters, etc.
Libertarians will allow both animal testing and stem cell research, but would federal fund neither. I would federally fund both–so I have near zero constituency in Congress. But that’s me I suppose…
Way to go, promote socioeconomic eugenics extrapolating from an extreme example and worry not whether serial/compulsive pregnancy actually is a statistically significant problem anywhere: Or whether these people really are just outliers, something that by definition exists outside the norm in any given issue. Or whether kids from these circumstance can still thrive in later life ( … with or without the experience of being Newton Leroy’s assistant janitors, for instance). Or … Just goes to show that totalitarian impulses need not be governmental (as if that wasn’t obvious by theocracies already) but that the intent beyond rulelessness of the anarchy type can be just as purposeful in any ideology.
You should be very careful with “common knowledge” arguments (of which I take the above post and comments are). An anecdote from 1980’s Soviet Russia: There was an ambulance medic who took an interest in the fates of dissidents who instead of being sent to the gulag were locked up in mental wards (saw him interviewed in a documentary detailing the fall of the system). In one case the medic inquired from a psychiatrist about the pathology of a particular “patient”: None was very apparent but when the “patient’s” inability to assimilate into society (quietly) came up, the doctor’s response was: “See? It’s obvious, then.”
In effect she worked from the assumption of the USSR being the perfect society, ideology and state, hence it was only logical that the faults lay in those who didn’t thrive in it (and thus also any “imperfections” that the USSR might have were also contextually externalized; there’s always a “they” to blame and demagogue) – perfect circular logic. Now turn that around and reflect this on what you’ve expressed here. Also consider that acts of segregation, medical or otherwise, are very effective means of birth control (denial or type, whatever is the “desired effect”).
The West (Europe, US and Canada) also has a very dark recent history in sterilizing people on mental health basis (many times mere depression, sometimes postpartum, gravely mistreated and thus aggravated into something more serious) extending easily at least into the 60’s, probably further. This is quite incredible considering that the very same practices were rife in the Reich just decades earlier, having been actively promoted by the global elite (who allocated quite some resources to the pseudoscience, wishing for a compliant, obedient drone … erm, workforce which in its qualitative uniformity would then by some magic be more “efficient”) during the last Gilded Age (before ours, of course). Just goes to show that reproductive issues are bound to reflect some very dark basic prejudices, perhaps unconscious, that we have inherited from all of our evolution. In many species the males often resort to infanticide to get a competitive edge in procreation. Human (socio)evolutionary history is more of a balance between competition and altruism, but therein too outliers towards all directions and combinations will of course exist. Some directions are at times more applicable but in the big picture our ultimate survival hinges on diversity.
One further notion: Large families are the hallmark of a (comparatively) undeveloped societies – even more so failed ones – and economies. In a sense large immediate families are the ultimate logical reaction to very uncertain external circumstances, of which there’s ample empirical evidence from postcolonial Africa and so on. If this somehow still proves to be a wider, consistent trend in the US, I posit it’s more of a symptom than a cause of hardship. Now, I understand that sometimes unreasonable seeming statements serve the purpose of group cohesion (be it instinctively or through game theory), but this … we haven’t even forgotten what happened the last time over. Many aren’t over it today. Obviously we differ on many issues, but here and now, I’m just dis-app-ointed.
> promote socioeconomic eugenics
I promote giving people options that are better than the one this woman took.
Tell me: what would be evil or wrong with offering women under the age of say 25 not only free tubal ligations, but the equivalent of, say, ten years worth of child-welfare payments (including food stamps, housing allowances and public education costs) to get said tubal ligation?
If you do not like this, then what moral objection can you possibly have to a policy of *not* providing taxpayer funded welfare for children, under the assumption that parents requiring such welfare are thus unfit parent, and removing children in such a situation to a foster situation? Keep in mind that we do this for *animals,* why should children be less well provided for?
And I posit the vast, overwhelming majority of people (you need men to make babies, too – for now at least) indeed take better options – and thus I’m trying to expand on the issue to underline the wider motives of dredging up and entertaining these sorts of “social porn” stories. Surely it’s no help at all in this particular case. Or just try and suggest to the ladyfolk you know that if things don’t otherwise work out, they can always get pregnant a dozen times or so, “if they want it easy”: I wouldn’t possibly try and speak for them but surmise the most benign end of reasonably probable reactions might involve LOL’ling.
Besides, sterilization options are surely available through Planned Parenthood for example. I haven’t been in a position to benefit from their services, but even a superficial search revealed that they indeed offer sterilization services – for men and women alike. The immediate cost range for women (without insurance) seems to be 1500 – 6000$, albeit other possibly cheaper (subvented) options exist depending on state, availability and location. Since you obviously spontaniously considered at least partially universal coverage for the kinds of social engineering projects you deem worthy, how about expanding on that idea “freedomwise” and not weigh/skew such an excellent idea on your own priorities/gender biases alone? The more universally wealthy and healthy a society is (… and we do share most of our genome, microbiome and environmental stressors), the more reasonable family sizes tend to be – sometimes even too much so. Some European nations have resorted to actually quite heavily subsidizing childbearing because there’s a serious danger of age structures getting all skewed towards the geriatric.
One example I forgot to mention before, btw, is China and their “one child” policy. As I understand it they “incentivise” sterilization heavily, through both financial means and (intense) social pressure by neighborhood organizations. Apart from outright sanctions, that seems awfully close to what you’re sketching up here.
So I do like most aspects of universal care and its underlying logic, just not myopically suited for a *single* sociopolitical/gender viewpoint. When it comes to my “moral objections” to not providing for children by any means necessary, well, [satire]never knowing when you have to witness abject starvation of children is just such a bummer[/satire]. Seriously, you make just a load of assumptions here: That poor parenting is a constant in an individual, not recognizing that children actually have a future as adults independent of what we project on them (especially if those projections are poor or biased), that child services and protection actually exist and if they seem inadequate now [occams razor]then they are underresourced[/occams razor].
I won’t directly comment on/with the metrics of animal protection in this issue, I think it’s obvious what I think of using such language by the historical references I’ve provided earlier.
> The immediate cost range for women (without insurance) seems to be 1500 – 6000$
Great! That’s a tiny fraction of the cost of welfare payments for a poor child. Offer that not only for free, but with a financial incentive, and you’ll not only save money, you’ll make society generally better by reducing the number of unwanted and unappreciated children.
> The more universally wealthy and healthy a society is…, the more reasonable family sizes tend to be
It goes both ways. You do not make a society wealthier and healthier by expanding the ranks of the welfare-consuming poor at a faster rate than the productive. This of course includes mass importation of unskilled culturally unassimilating aliens.
> As I understand it they “incentivise” sterilization heavily, through both financial means and (intense) social pressure by neighborhood organizations.
And yet Chinas population continues to expand.
>child services and protection actually exist and if they seem inadequate now [occams razor]then they are underresourced[/occams razor].
No. The US spends *vast* sums on children at the state and federal levels. Since the creation of the Department of Education, for example, per-student spending on education has exploded… while performance has substantially declined. Throwing *more* money at a system that’s not working because it’s fundamentally flawed is not the way to improve things. Sometimes a system, like a building, just needs to be emptied out, imploded, the rubble bulldozed, and either replaced with a new structure… or just turned into an empty field.
I’ve yet to hear a cogent argument why it’s morally proper to take a cat or a dog away from a person unable to provide proper care for it, yet a child should be left in the same situation.
“The US spends *vast* sums on children at the state and federal levels.” – Great. What would you have state and federal spend on? You can take that as a rhetorical question, if the answer is categorically “nothing (but the social engineering I approve of)”. You keep hanging on to the idea that a poor, unwanted or unappreciated child is a perpetual (financial) drag on whatever your idea of a society is. Children, however, do grow up. Quite fast, in fact. It’s another thing if you’re committed to not approving of them no matter what they go on to achieve.
As to the “welfare-consuming poor”, birthrate is hardly the main factor in maintaining or growing their numbers these days (… and they come in handy when labor costs need to be held in “check”, as does “mass importation of aliens”; I’m sure the number can be optimized, just as any other production cost) – and I strongly object to and reject the idea that there need be some genetically hereditary causality to poverty, which is pretty overtly the general idea behind your sterilization fantasy. Indeed there’s ample evidence that IQ and health gaps, save for perhaps a couple of measly points originally (hardly a deal breaker), are environmental (i.e. appear only later in development and show strong correlation, tens of points come adulthood) and thus can be amended by means less intrusive, immediate and more egalitarian than engineering individual bodies for some ill-advised “gain of negation” (… based on just the most extreme examples, no less).
You note that China’s population continues to expand. I take your word for it: You do recognize then, that your sterilization idea does not, in fact, work? Might this suggest that floating the idea, then, is motivated by something else than the prospect of success in attaining the ostensible “policy” goal?
Child services and protection are only tenuously connected to DoE and education in general, but following your logic worsening performance is of course partly caused by what you see as the overpopulation of the hapless and helpless poor. While I do believe that education goes a long way in diminishing poverty (much more so than I take you to believe), obviously the resources of child services and protection are for more acute, dire and tragic situations. That situations such as the one you saw fit to highlight can fester are indeed indicative of a lack of resources – not only financial but likely also political and societal.
As to your cogency or mine, or indeed our shared mind state space, we’re a long way from getting any of those established; what I categorically won’t do is validate your attempts to make human interactions analogous to animal husbandry or pet keeping. The latter two are disciplines, human interaction is fundamentally between equals and peers. Where we see wrongs we must consider our means of correcting those and then do our best. Sterilizations happen, poverty exists. Attempts to link the two directly for “gain” have been proven to be overwhelmingly negative, inneffective and ultimately without rationale time and again.
>What would you have state and federal spend on?
The Feds? National defense, interstate commerce, and not a whole lot else, as that’s pretty much the some total of what the Constitution says they should spend money on. The individual states? Depends on what their constitutions say.
>I strongly object to and reject the idea that there need be some genetically hereditary causality to poverty, which is pretty overtly the general idea behind your sterilization fantasy.
That’s a lie. Nowhere did I even remotely suggest that genetics has anything to do with any part of this.
> You note that China’s population continues to expand. I take your word for it: You do recognize then, that your sterilization idea does not, in fact, work?
There are two problems here:
1) China is using a population control system entirely different from what I propose
2) I never claimed that my idea would stop population growth.
> I do believe that education goes a long way in diminishing poverty (much more so than I take you to believe)
Considering that you have, as I just quoted above, *massively* misunderstood (or at least misstated) some basic points, it’s hardly surprising that you’re wrong here, too.
> what I categorically won’t do is validate your attempts to make human interactions analogous to animal husbandry or pet keeping.
So you feel that animals should be treated better than humans. Just so we’re clear.