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Should having children be regulated?

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15:45 / 18.12.02

to salvage something from the original post that, as far as i can tell, got dropped along the way:
In the proposed solution to overcrowding, birth control injected into the water supply was mentioned. Anyone considered the effect this would have on the men and the children? How is planned pregnancy to occur when you're drinking anti-kinder drugs every few hours?
Something for consideration....

17:17 / 18.12.02

ideally people would never ever ever have children until they were emotionally financially and physically in a position to do so, and were absolutely sure that they wanted them. ideally kids will get a perfect public education, not only acedemically but also socially. kids would never be subject to ridicule or prejudice or ignorance, either their own or anyone elses.

ideally a lot of things would happen, but the fact remains that there is no one who can be trusted to make such decisions for the whole of society. so the only solution I can see is to do the best we can with what we have, realistically, instead of dreaming of what would make things peachy

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:41 / 18.12.02

So, the world is a better place if children are born into loving families, of whatever disposition, who have the emotional and material needs to make that child's passage into adulthood a lovely and groovy thing.

But this does not necessarily mean that we should surrender our fertility to government agencies, without first considering very seriously whether we trust those government agencies with that trust. An example: we allow our government agencies to set our tax levels, knowing that if they abuse that trust their are mechanism by which they can be reprimanded. We do not trust government agencies to make chocolate illegal, but we do trust them enough to let them take a dim view (in the UK at least) of unlicensed firearms.

So, perhaps the question is, do we see babies as chocolate or guns, r where along the sliding scale we put them? And is it the role of government to limit the flow of children, or to do whatever they can to ensure that whatever cildren are produced have the best possible chances? Is it more profitable to limit the number of children who might suffer crappy upbringings and thus subsequently hand on misery to man, or to limit the possibilities for crappy upbringings for the children who are produced?

Tryphena Absent

23:23 / 18.12.02

There's a major problem brought up by sterilising all women but no men, I haven't read the earlier parts of this thread but I'm going to be cheeky and assume this hasn't been said, the problem is related to that little thing we call feminism. You cannot limit women's chances to have children through the state and not do the same to men because it makes them unequal and that is something that half the human race has had to fight for over a very long period of time. Some women find it hard enough to bear children, sterilisation would possibly make it more difficult for those women to conceive then it already is, as the irritating Judith Butler would say women have as much right to control their own bodies as men (and vice versa). To take away reproductive rights is as much an infringement as taking away the opportunity of contraception/ abortion.

Tryphena Absent

23:26 / 18.12.02

Oh and I'd just like to add (for the record) in a totally unreasoned (and un-head shop) way that I find the whole idea of this kind of reproductive control absolutely disgusting and morally abhorrent.

If you want you can delete this post, sorry to give you more work.

16:45 / 19.12.02

But it's not disgusting. My final solution was ideal. Birth control in the tap water. The tap water works on both men and women. If you want to have children, and you've been drinking the tap water, you'll have to stop drinking the tap water for two weeks. So in order to have a child, two people would have to stop drinking the tap water for a period of two weeks.

And everyone knows about the tap water. This would also be great for emberassed parents with 12 and 13 yr old kids. Maybe they'd be too uptight to ask their children if they'd like to go on the pill, but with the water, their children would be taking a contraceptive, and the parents could say "My little Suzy's no slut, but she has to drink water doesn't she?"

I don't think it's disgusting at all.

16:58 / 19.12.02

Jack: dosing the water supply would achieve the desired results on an immediate time scale, true, but the longterm effects seem to have been left out of the equation. It's already known that exposure to certain chemicals in plastics and the like cause severe side effects such as asthma and premature development of children. One can only imagine the effects of overexposure to hormones and even more chemicals from birth throughout life. I cannot see how a broadband chem solution would be "ideal".

19:05 / 19.12.02

but that damage can all be repaired...
with Nanotech!

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:35 / 19.12.02

There is a thread in the Laboratory to discuss the best scientific method of contraception. Scientifically, Jack's idea is of course utterly moronic, unless you decide that feeding men, children, women, smokers, diabetics and so on the same set of hormones, while filling the water table with hormones that will stop food animals from breeding, is a fantastic idea. As MJ-12 says, if we are talking about a magic hormone with no side-effects, then we might as well assume, as special boy Torquemada did, that not only fertility but also all bodily weakness can be cured by NANOBOTS, and just go down the pub.

More interesting from a Head Shop perspective is the fact that Jack has not considered that the 40-odd dollars it would take per week to drink bottled water would very easily be manageable by middle-class families, no matter how fucked up they might be, even if, in fact, if they were having babies purely to molest or eat. Whereas it is a big hole in the budget of the kind of trailer-trash he seems more concerned about. So, in effect, we are placing a flat fee on fertility. That isn't universal birth control; it is just a tariff on conception, payable to the makers of Evian.

23:39 / 19.12.02

My ideas aren't moronic. The technology just hasn't caught up to my ideas. And I'm not trying to be stubborn, I came here to get insight before I enacted this new program. I think you'll agree my ideas have been evolving with the help of everyone's input. So, another change in policy. Those people, rich and poor, should call our 800 number and simply have the hormones stop being pumped into their water system. Call again when you'd like the hormones put back in. And please have your social security and special pin number ready. Wouldn't want one of the children cancelling the hormones to try and get a baby brother or anything like that. With the help of the world's great scientific minds, I can enact this policy ASAP.

ONLY NICE THINGS

00:07 / 20.12.02

Can you control the water supply in such a way as to pump *different* water into one house to its neighbours? Or would that also be done by NANOBOTS? And would we trust the governing bodies to shut off the supply of magic, consequence-free hormones to everyone, whenever asked? Will they have been made entirely honest and egalitarian through NANOBOTS?

You seem to be equating the question "should our fertility be controlled by government agency" with "wouldn't it be nice if people could decide when they wanted to be fertile?". Very different questions. You are also prety much back where you started, since one of the conditions of being "stupid" in your original post is surely not being competent to know whether you should be breeding or not?

21:04 / 23.01.03

Started thinking about this thread a couple days ago after hearing a piece on NPR. Apparently, many state governments are already trying to control how many children certain families are having.

In New Jersey (and possibly other states), a mother on welfare can expect $60 extra for her first child, $60 extra for her second child, but no more. A mother could have 15 children and she won't recieve anything more than a mother with 2 children gets.

The politicians who passed this law (it sounds like it was passed in the mid-90s) very clearly stated that they were trying to keep welfare mothers from having kids just to get the money. This strikes me as fairly ludicrous, since trying to raise a kid on $60 per month sounds overwhelmingly challenging by itself, even without trying to turn a profit.

So, this is it.... without nanobots or water supply tampering, governments are attempting to regulate how many children certain families can have.

I suspect we would probably all agree that this is a perfectly horrible way to go about things, bordering on state-sponsored child abuse, eh?

And to hear the activists talk, it hasn't actually decreased the number of children mothers on welfare are having. So, it's not only cruel, but it apparently doesn't work as well.

(Something like 50% of mothers on welfare are in their 20s. I don't know about you, but my twenties were spent living paycheck to paycheck, so I feel it's safe to say these moms need any help we can give.)

22:47 / 24.01.03

In all seriousness, it's pretty well impossible to get around the biological ability to breed - human rights and all, technology, bottled water... People manage to get around contraception very nicely when they want to. I do think that a parental fitness test is entirely appropriate. My old neighbours abused their kids, and not too long after I reported them to the appropriate authorities, they moved. Could be they were evicted, could be they were taking off to avoid losing their kids. Truth of the matter, they never should have been allowed to take a baby home from the hospital in the first place. Period. We've gotten so caught up in the rights of parents that we've really stopped looking at the rights of children. But this is one of my little causes, I'm off topic. Please forgive me.

15:27 / 29.01.03

Actually, it's astonishingly easy to affect water going to House A and not House B. Or equally have you not heard of water softeners, scale reducers, blah blah. Coca-cola are now test-installing direct-feed Coke into houses, with a supply and everything. Jacks' solution seemed to cover both questions (Government control, individual choice).

Stupid is asuming there will *never* be a drug that can work as contraceptive on humans while not affecting animals.

Stupid is slating the posts that recognise that this sort of thing would happen in the future, and address the technology that (hopefully) would have evolved to the point of usefulness by then.

Stupid is the word used for uplanned pregnancies - and since we established that a lot of 'problem' pregnancies are unplanned, giving people an option which *doesn't* involve forced contraception is a *good thing*. You're saving these 'stupid' people from themselves.

Nice to see after a month away that the abuse (sorry 'debating') is still going on.

Moronic is leaving a thread in a huff, deleting all your posts then coming back to make it worse. Or not being able to decide on a name and sticking to it. Take your pick.

15:46 / 29.01.03

"Jack's solution" is a dystopian sci-fi nightmare, allowing the fasicst-government-approved "right people" to survive and prosper, while the recalcitreant underclass who refuse to be "re-educated" are essentially exterminated by withholding health services from them.

15:48 / 29.01.03

(y'know. Just in case anybody missed the point.)

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:21 / 29.01.03

Torquemada, you seem to be struggling with the idea that the Head Shop is primarily interested in the ethics rather than the technology of the process. There is a thread in the laboratory all about the possible technical solutions to facilitate mass sterilisation. If you had read this thread, you would know this. Because you haven't, you do not. You would also have noticed that once you left, with your wacky insistence that Bengalis kill babies, based on your contact with a "fertility GP" (God, I love that phrase. I'm a general practitioner, but people dance around me in order to ensire that the crops grow), the level of discussion pretty much soared, and there was no reason to stay away from it, since you and Nick and I were no longer rotting the thread with personal attacks.

Fortunately, your return allows us to explore an ethical issue. Please note, by the way, that any further attempts to rot this thread will in all probability be moved for deletion.

The question of "stupidity": from a certain point of view, Torquemada is stupid. From another, I am stupid. Torquemada has professional qualifications that I lack. I have a degree from Oxbridge Academy, London. Somebody else may have neither technical qualifications nor a degree from Oxbridge Academy, London might be earning many times more than us, and thus paying more tax, but can neither do things that Torquemada's professional qualifications allow him to do nor things that my degree allow me to do. Which of these should be considered "stupid", for the purposes of being allowed to breed?

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:51 / 29.01.03

Jack (Fear) - I think he meant Jack Denfield's solution, not yours. However, again, I think that Jack Denfield's solution is now so weak that it is no longer in fact a solution, but merely a musing on how nice it would be if people never had unplanned pregnancies. Although it does, of course, also have the consequence that the person who owned the house would be able to decide whether or not anyone inside the house was able to breed. And also that people without social security numbers would not be able to breed. So, people who for whatever reason did not exist on the governments records would be unable to have children, because they would be unable to request that their contraceptive water be turned off. So, reproduction is no longer a right or a privilege - it is a commodity, access to which comes free with citizenship and registration. It's a fantastic way to overcome any of that tedious right to privacy; to get the "special PIN" one would presumably have to provide yet more information. Thank god we trust both government and private water companies only to use our personal information for good, eh?

I think Gridley's got an interesting offshoot, here - there are, after all, many ways to control reproduction without NANOBOTS...

16:56 / 29.01.03

Ah.

08:29 / 01.02.03

'the Head Shop is primarily interested in the ethics...'

Interesting. I was unaware of this 'rule'. Could you point me to a list of these rules? Ethics & science should never mix? Seems to me the scientists are more than happy to mix but others seem less inclined (non-ethical posts will be deleted? lol)

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:53 / 01.02.03

No, sleeperservice. Attempts to rot the thread by fights, battling and abuse will be moved for deletion; you've misread me.

On science - the Head shop's remit is:

Head Shop
Philosophy and Cultural Studies: Postmodernity, Deconstruction, Marxism, Queer Theory, Feminism - analysing the 21st Century.

This is the philosophy end, and as such if people want to talk purely about the technology of restricting fertility, then there is a very interesting thread in the Laboratory about it - there's a link on page 2. For the purposes of this thread, we can assume that science functions in any way we feel like, but further understand that if we extend this to create a utopian technological solution, then the discussion becomes a musing on how *nice* the future will be. So, Jack Denfield's plan assumes a level of technological advancement in the field of contraception that is, I suspect, unattainable, but more relevantly it also raises questions of government control, registration, and who, ultimately, has the right to assign fertility. These are the questions more relevant to the Head Shop. The science is relevant, but a purely scientific discussion is better placed in the Laboratory, since scientists will be more likely to read and contribute to it.

Hope that clears that up. Further questioning probably goes in its own thread in the Policy....

04:13 / 02.02.03

Oh wow, look what I found.

http://www.globalideasbank.org/inspir/INS-70.HTML

I guess without the nanobot water, people are using other means. This woman in Seattle, Washington is paying drug addicts $200 to be sterilized. She's paid almost 200 people so far. It looks like her opponets don't think that hard drug addicts are really in a position to rationally make this kind of choice. Wave $200 in a heroin addict's face, whose immediate goal is to cook up, and long term planning probably doesn't go through her mind at that moment. The sad part being that if she ever cleaned up, her earlier junkie induced decision could haunt her.

04:33 / 02.02.03

the correct link

10:49 / 02.02.03

Gridley,

I will offer you this one simple answer:
Because a person (and yes, it has to be a single mom, in your case) keeps making the choices and conscious decisions to bring have children into this world without proper planning or support, you immediately assume that the state of New Jersey must pay the appropriate amount of money for the next 18 years, over and over for every single chaotic, irresponsible mistake she makes.

No one forced her to have kids, and except for rape, no one held a gun to her head and said keep having unprotected sex, as long as you want because the government will pay for it.

But then responsible families who can support their kids and pay every tax the governement sticks on them, and suffer crappy service from the government (who is forced to pay for unplanned kids every single time) should not feel indignant about the poor life decisions of those who demand money from the government because they have unplanned kids.

I am glad I get the vote to manage my checkbook and not Gridley.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:31 / 03.02.03

So, Sharkgrin, what's your solution? Should mothers judged to be unfit be compelled by law to be sterilised, or possibly offered a cash inducement to be sterilised - say, a 50% increase in the benefit they are receiving for their existing 2 children? That would only cost as much as paying for a third child, after all...Or would it be fair for the hard-working middle-class families to either persuade with money or compel with threats these unfit and, more to the point, unprofitable mothers to be sterilised? That would, after all, take a level of bureaucracy away from the overtaxed (in every sense) state of New Jersey...

22:27 / 03.02.03

Sharkgrin writes:

a person (and yes, it has to be a single mom, in your case) keeps making the choices and conscious decisions to bring have children into this world without proper planning or support, you immediately assume that the state of New Jersey must pay the appropriate amount of money for the next 18 years, over and over for every single chaotic, irresponsible mistake she makes.

What an odd notion. Do you mean to suggest that a young single mother who is on welfare makes a conscious decision to have children in just the same way that, for example, a wealthy, well-educated childless professional couple in their late thirties would? Do you sincerely believe that these 'mistakes' are made because of irresponsibility and have nothing to do with stress, despair, lack of education? Have you, you personally, never in your life made a lousy decision -- or failed to make a good one -- because you felt like shit or were broke?

Don't you think that families are to some degree able to be responsible because they have a good life, and not the other way around? Wouldn't that explain the direct, predictive correlation between socioeconomic status and birth rate?

01:24 / 04.02.03

My solution is real easy.

Every family that brings children into the worlde pays for the children they bring into the world. I do not favor tax breaks for anything, to include even having kids. If people suffer in the short run (i.e. no government hand-outs) for having kids, I ASSUME (and this statement may be true or nor, but it's my premise), in the long run, they will better plan for those trivial life decisions, which are currently a draining society's resources - like having kids.

Oh yeah, I have a kid, and yeah, I'm single, and yeah I pay all my taxes for crappy education and crappy public service.

That twisted Morrison comic book, the Filth? It only takes one rat too many to drag the whole society into chaos. I hate the notion of kids suffering, but right now, irresponsible parents have no incentive to stop pumping out kids, at least by your arguments.

Back on topic: Sterilizing the population is atrocious. I am for mandatory vasectomies, with free reversals when the males actually decide to have kids. At least they will have put thought into raising them at that point.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:52 / 04.02.03

That's a comic book, dude. Unless plan B is curing world hunger with Kryptonite, it's not particularly relevant.

Vvasectomies is an interesting one - it circumvents the question of the abuse of male power as sterilising does not, but it also means that only men get to decide when to have kids. For example, would the government allow you to have your vasectomy reversed in order to contribute semen for inseminating one half of a lesbian couple who wanted children? Fro that matter, if somebody wanted to pop out dozens of children, all they would have to do is have their vasectomy reversed at 18, then turn to crime to feed them. Which, incidentally, is part of what your taxes are paying for - people having enough of a standard of living not necessarily to have to bash you on the head and ransom your kid back to you.

Meanwhile, we are talking about performing what would normally be elective surgery on millions (billions, in fact) of people at a certain age (any ideas when, medically? When are the male reproductive organs well-developed enough for vasectomies to be performed?), without their consent, and then forcing them to apply for another surgical procedure later in life to get their fertility freak on. I find it very odd how Barbeloids seem to assume that their governments have their best interests at heart in this and only this situation.

A lot depends on whether the reversal is automatic, in which case we're just talking about putting a condom on the men until they want to take it off, which might not even cover the costs of the operations in savings, or subject to approval, in which case we're opening the gates to a lot of potential social engineering. After all, how long ago was it when single parents such as yourself were generally seen as dangerous, irresponsible producers of emotionally disturbed future drains on the state? Who are we entitloing to make those decisions for us.

09:23 / 04.02.03

Indeed.

Also the notion that tough love, via the mechanism of increased economic hardship, will produce responsible citizens is a morally dubious one, IMO. It is also a favourite of the right to equate responsibility with economic self sufficiency. Thats not to say that some pregnancies aren't irresponsible, just that the eerily totalitarian arguments presented by some in this thread have more to do with bolstering socio-economic divisions and venting moral outrage, than they do with solving any problems. Unless, of course, the solution to these "problems" is essentially a eugenic one.

But thats already been said and perhaps doesn't bear repeating, given the hardline stance taken by some of the posters here.

13:18 / 04.02.03

Every family that brings children into the worlde pays for the children they bring into the world. I do not favor tax breaks for anything, to include even having kids. If people suffer in the short run (i.e. no government hand-outs) for having kids, I ASSUME (and this statement may be true or nor, but it's my premise), in the long run, they will better plan for those trivial life decisions, which are currently a draining society's resources - like having kids.

here's the first problem: whether or not your assumptions about how adults will respond to suffering brought about by their choices (and i very much believe that you're incorrect in your assumptions), you're ignoring the fact that the children in question will also be suffering.

more to the point, the children themselves will be suffering by being raised in an underpriveleged situation, with all the problems that that entails, which i thought was precisely what we were trying to avoid here (i.e. more kids raised in crappy homes who go on to be problematic adults and cause all sorts of headaches).

I am for mandatory vasectomies, with free reversals when the males actually decide to have kids. At least they will have put thought into raising them at that point.

are vasectomies 100% reversible? do they have any other adverse side-effects?

21:37 / 04.02.03

Do not assume the statement 'see the (rest of the world's) children suffering' changes my argument. I care about society's survival as a whole, not a generation's welfare hand outs. Few, if anybody, has yet to point out a deterrent to people having unplanned kids at this point - the one true evil against the rest of mankind.

Sterilization is garbage. At least with vasectomies, every one wanting to bring kids into the world has a chance to put thought into it.

If there is an equivalent procedure for women, that I 100% endorse that procedure for every faemale right here and now.

Are vasectomies 100% safe? I dunno, but the downside is many people's right to their own genetic propagation is stolen; NOT RAISING KIDS -barring adoptions, fractured families.

The downside to the current policy is overpopulation, parents not ready-to-be-parents, dysfunctional families, and a steady, undying welfare clientele. None of this includes the secondary effects of domestic/child abuse, prison over-crowding, generational welfare families, or such.

But the only response I seem to get is "everyone deserves the right to reproduce as much as they want -----> at whatever cost to society."

That's not an answer. That's a call for eventual extinction.

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:05 / 05.02.03

Wow. You must be reading this thread with *magic* spectacles. Is anyone else only seeing that sentence?

Anyway, let's be serious here. Apart from bankrupting the responsible single parents of New Jersey, surely our *real* problem here is the developing world. Too. Many. People.

Which is leading to creaking infrastructure but also, miore dangerously for the rest of us, to the need for enormous quantities of power and product, generally being created in environmentally hostile ways, because the countries in question lack the skills and materiel even to construct efficient industry. Unfortunately, that means they also lack the materiel to embark on a mass sterilisation/vasectomising program. Which means that, to make this work, we in the West are going to have to embark on a global sterilisation program, either through financial coercion or force. How's that going to throw down?

11:54 / 05.02.03

Steralise the darkies. Its the only solution. That way we can stop them sponging off us and perhaps even save ourselves from extinction. And, of course, it will help us maintain our relative rates of consumption.

Jesus.

00:25 / 06.02.03

Sharkgrin writes: Few, if anybody, has yet to point out a deterrent to people having unplanned kids at this point - the one true evil against the rest of mankind.

There is a very well-established deterrent to unplanned pregnancies: a raise in socioeconomic status, and the higher levels of education that go with it. If you know of cases where this is not true (not single families, but larger patterns of behavior) then I'd sincerely like to know about it because it would change my opinion substantially.

00:34 / 06.02.03

Haus writes: Which means that, to make this work, we in the West are going to have to embark on a global sterilisation program, either through financial coercion or force.

How would a global redistribution of wealth and a global program of education throw down?

I honestly don't think it would very easy, it might even be incredibly difficult. If we're going to talk about ethics, I would suggest that it is more ethical to actively try to stabilize faltering economies in developing nations, even if it means difficulty and discomfort for the (over)developed world, than to spray sterilizing meds into their airspace.

That's ethics. Then there's the murky business of technique -- how to do it? Is it even possible? But as has been pointed out, we don't discuss technology in the Head Shop, we discuss ethics.

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