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Are you a parent? If you are, what degree of control do you think you have over what your child is exposed to during the times when they’re not with you? Not s

by ericd 5y ago

Are you a parent? If you are, what degree of control do you think you have over what your child is exposed to during the times when they’re not with you? Not saying I like the draconian levels that China is going to on this, but a lot of how your kid turns out is based on what they’re exposed to by their peers, and so some things are societal/population level problems. Parents can broadly try to affect this by controlling the school their kids go to, but that’s a very blunt instrument at best, generally much more expensive than less great schools, and a huge amount of work to redo. If they’re already struggling due to eg high housing costs relative to their wages (another one of our societal issues), then the parents are going to have a really uphill challenge trying to curate their children’s’ experience. It takes a village, and if your village is not working well, you’re going to have a hard time as a parent. This whole idea of nuclear families as independent units was never true and needs to die.

seneca 5y ago
I largely agree with you up until your last sentence. The mistake you're making is equating the government with the village. That is a fundamental mistake and failure that seems extremely widespread. Civil Society needs to address this problem. Bastiat has a passage in the Law which touched on this, though he is specifically talking about socialists: > Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

by ericd 5y ago

seneca 5y ago

I largely agree with you up until your last sentence. The mistake you're making is equating the government with the village. That is a fundamental mistake and failure that seems extremely widespread. Civil Society needs to address this problem. Bastiat has a passage in the Law which touched on this, though he is specifically talking about socialists: > Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.