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I’m not going to disagree with your overall thesis, but there is something I find oppressive about the idea that society manages 75% of your life, rather than m

by jl6 9y ago

I’m not going to disagree with your overall thesis, but there is something I find oppressive about the idea that society manages 75% of your life, rather than managing your own life during adulthood.

snowwrestler 9y ago
Yeah, the word "manage" is not great because of the supervisory overtones, which have oppressive connotations. What I mean in more words is the process by which we create the logistics we need to thrive (food, clothing, shelter, power, comms, currency, etc), combined with the incentives to produce the society we want to live in (physical safety, freedom of expression, opportunity for work and love, etc.). It's hard to talk about this without judgmental overtones. But essentially what I mean is, picture your best life--how do we make that possible for each and every person? It won't happen by accident. And it's to everyone's benefit it we can make it more likely. And when that doesn't happen--when people don't have the skills to find work, when they commit crime, when they fall to addiction, when they're mentally or physically ill, etc... at that point we do sort of "take them under management." They go on unemployment or disability, they go under medical and mental care, they go into prison. Those are direct costs we all pay, and probably even greater is the opportunity cost of that human life. (And not just from a strictly economic perspective, but also art, emotion, love, etc.) But people become part of society when they're born. And a lot of what makes each person who they are, is set during childhood. Letting a person go without investment for 20 years, then paying direct costs to manage them if it doesn't work out, doesn't seem smart to me. If you take any life and trace it back to the beginning, early management is in the family. But there is a lot that society can do to help that process be more successful. And I would argue it's in all of our benefits. And again, to make it clear, I'm not talking about authoritarianism. In modern democracies, in an ideal sense, we should be managing ourselves. To some extent we're discovering the society we want as we go along, so our management system need to be adaptable, and that's what democracy should give us. I'm advocating for certain policy choices we can make democratically--give women more power of their lives and reproduction. Invest fully in the health and education of all children. Provide support to families so that they can do a better job of raising their kids. Etc.

by jl6 9y ago

snowwrestler 9y ago

Yeah, the word "manage" is not great because of the supervisory overtones, which have oppressive connotations. What I mean in more words is the process by which we create the logistics we need to thrive (food, clothing, shelter, power, comms, currency, etc), combined with the incentives to produce the society we want to live in (physical safety, freedom of expression, opportunity for work and love, etc.). It's hard to talk about this without judgmental overtones. But essentially what I mean is, picture your best life--how do we make that possible for each and every person? It won't happen by accident. And it's to everyone's benefit it we can make it more likely. And when that doesn't happen--when people don't have the skills to find work, when they commit crime, when they fall to addiction, when they're mentally or physically ill, etc... at that point we do sort of "take them under management." They go on unemployment or disability, they go under medical and mental care, they go into prison. Those are direct costs we all pay, and probably even greater is the opportunity cost of that human life. (And not just from a strictly economic perspective, but also art, emotion, love, etc.) But people become part of society when they're born. And a lot of what makes each person who they are, is set during childhood. Letting a person go without investment for 20 years, then paying direct costs to manage them if it doesn't work out, doesn't seem smart to me. If you take any life and trace it back to the beginning, early management is in the family. But there is a lot that society can do to help that process be more successful. And I would argue it's in all of our benefits. And again, to make it clear, I'm not talking about authoritarianism. In modern democracies, in an ideal sense, we should be managing ourselves. To some extent we're discovering the society we want as we go along, so our management system need to be adaptable, and that's what democracy should give us. I'm advocating for certain policy choices we can make democratically--give women more power of their lives and reproduction. Invest fully in the health and education of all children. Provide support to families so that they can do a better job of raising their kids. Etc.