4 ms·
Consider even more traditional methods of elder care such as apprenticeships and village elders. It is rather mysterious how we take kids in prime physical sha
by VLM 10y ago
Consider even more traditional methods of elder care such as apprenticeships and village elders.
It is rather mysterious how we take kids in prime physical shape and mush for brains and lock them into ignorant echo chambers for years while we take wise and skilled old people with worn out bodies and brains full of very expensive experience and lock them into lonely old folks homes next door and then make sure they never mix. Its almost like our culture is so stupidly designed someone is trying to sabotage it.
You'd have to expand the concept of apprenticeship beyond current restrictive beliefs and expand the idea of teachers aide quite a bit. If all some old duffer does is make sure the kids don't tip over an unchained acetylene bottle in shop class, its still worth it if all he does is sip coffee the rest of the semester. Three old duffers stand at the table saw all day doing nothing but safety and technique critique.
Advanced disciplinary procedures are interesting to contemplate. Not so much the return of corporal punishment but you'd be surprised how well kids wanting attention can react to being assigned to work with a team of five old people. You will do your math homework alone or with the five grandmas ...
Note that this is a fair trade unlike your gerontocracy because the kids derive considerable value from the old people.
Where it gets weird is when you mix unemployed people in. Say due to ageism I'll never get paid to write code again because I'd be too expensive or unwilling to work 60 hour weeks. If welfare paid my bills would it be that bad if I did nothing but volunteer computer lab tech all day?
- tptacek 10y agoI don't understand how we continue to dignify the premise that elder care in our existing marketplace isn't a fair trade. We want our elderly family members to be comfortable. If nobody was available to perform these services, we'd do them ourselves, at great personal cost. Instead, we exchange money for the services of specialists. Everybody comes out ahead. We don't need "the kids to derive considerable value from the old people" to justify these economic transactions.
- internaut 10y agoI hear a litany of complaints from parents about paying for childcare, and also with paying for grandpa/grandma's nursing facilities. If you add up the costs and deduct them from salary + cost of living, very, very few middle class families are going to come out ahead. It is expected (in my country) that a retirement home is so expensive it shall require the sale of the family home, so inheritances don't pass to the children or grandchildren. I've worked before in nursing care facilities/retirement homes, and I'm certain most of the people there receive very little simulation and few visitors. It's a miserable and lonely existence. I'm a fan of using markets for lots of things, but the market mechanism is overly used for this particular usecase and lots of people are under enormous strain because of it. Basically the only case in which they ought to be used is in the final months/years where the person is too frail or incapacitated i.e. like state care systems. tldr; I do not in fact believe it is economic. Additionally it damages a heap of other things ranging from cultural transmission (long term repercussions) to mental health on a personal level. It is a bad deal.
- DashRattlesnake 10y ago> It is rather mysterious how we take kids in prime physical shape and mush for brains and lock them into ignorant echo chambers for years while we take wise and skilled old people with worn out bodies and brains full of very expensive experience and lock them into lonely old folks homes next door and then make sure they never mix. Its almost like our culture is so stupidly designed someone is trying to sabotage it. It's really a failure to think holistically. When you break a problem down and over-specialize, you can turn a solution into two or more problems. I'm reminded of something I read about farming: traditionally livestock production and farming were done on the same farm. The livestock ate healthier and could be of higher quality, and their manure fertilized the soil for the crops. They were separated in the name of specialization and efficiency, and that created problems of agricultural mono-cultures, unhealthy livestock, fertilizer runoff, and the disposal of concentrated livestock waste from factory farms.