6 ms·

This is correct. It is not the government's job to raise our children. The more we ask the gov't to do that we should do, the less power we actually have. Some

• throwawayqqq11 5mo ago
  I am sick of these "government bad" takes. They lack constructive suggestions, like your "sink it" nugget, they lack decent problem descriptions, as if anything after the sinking (likely private governance, aka feudalism) is immune to the ills of big-gov, and on top perpetuate reductivist arguments as if any kind of restrictions of freedom is by definition bad. This broad rejection without good reasons is borderline sociopathic. ... and parental control is not the gov raising anyone.
  • forgetfreeman 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    • hunterpayne 5mo ago
      Your post says far more about you than libertarians. Remember, every time you give the government a power, you are creating an avenue for corruption and by design putting someone who probably isn't qualified in charge of decisions they lack the experience to make reliably. There you go, a simple argument that increasing government power has a drawback that you never consider. And that's why you post says more about you than anything. Such an extreme position is impossible to defend and anytime you try either a) the person you are debating isn't very skilled at debating or b) you are just being stubborn and ignoring facts and arguments you don't like. I suspect its B.
      • forgetfreeman 5mo ago
        And every time you remove legislation you open up entire new vistas of corporate depravity and as the last 40 years have comprehensively demonstrated, "market forces" are not a viable replacement for legislation. Increasing government power is a liability only and solely when folks make a habit of electing incompetents and the corrupt. Governance as a concept is fine, what you're actually arguing for is better politicians.
        • kyledrake 5mo ago
          Having the government burrow into your Linux install like North Korea is totally fine as long as the people doing it are competent and not corrupt!
          • tardedmeme 5mo ago
            telling Debian it should ask you during setup whether you're over 18 (which you're allowed to lie about) is the same as North Korea now?
            • kyledrake 5mo ago
              "telling" is a really curious euphemism for forcing volunteer Debian developers at gun point or they'll get thrown in jail. People in recent history seem to have forgotten that this is how governments enforce laws. If it was not, why would anyone bother obeying the laws if they didn't like them? Governments are dangerous monopolies on force and the use of that force shouldn't be casually tossed out like candy at a parade on crap like this. If it doesn't matter if you lie, what's the point of even doing this, to prove that we're insane? Or is it the pretext for requiring a remote server id carding service in the future under that guise? Keep driving down this road and you end up with an end game that looks a lot more like North Korea than a free society with limited government.
              • tardedmeme 5mo ago
                The law defines it as a product quality issue. Meaning you can return it for a refund and a company that keeps selling broken products may be ordered to recall them or to stop selling them until they're fixed. You can't go to jail for selling broken products, and this doesn't apply to free software since it's free and has no warranty (which is only allowed because of the fact that it's free.). Do you think the rule that children's toys can't contain lead is equivalent to living in North Korea? That's the same kind of law as this one. You also have a lot more flexibility to negotiate on product quality. If you have a good reason why you can't meet normal product quality standards because your product is sufficiently different from the normal products in that category, you can usually put a prominent warning label on it to cover your ass and then you're fine.
  • Aerroon 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    • forgetfreeman 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      • trinsic2 5mo ago
        The current form of government and the last administrations have allowed this environment to exist. We don't have antitrust regulation being enforced and citizens united is still in effect. This is only going to cause things you describe to get worse and the U.S. government is complicit in this because we have a two party system that works directly or indirectly for the establishment. I'm not sure if you are encouraging more government intervention, but its clear this is not working. Its like going to a criminal gang and asking for security while they ransack your community and charge you for it.
        • forgetfreeman 5mo ago
          That's a problem with the politicians folks have chosen to elect, not an issue with the concept of governance. And while I agree with your analysis proposing we all wait patiently for "market forces" to resolve whatever ludicrously unethical bullshit industry is up to at any given time is also clearly a non-starter. So now what?
          • trinsic2 5mo ago
            It's more than just politicians we elect. There is a systemic problem that needs to be adressed before we can elect candidates that represent our wishes. Citizens United needs to be abolished. Money needs to be removed from politics and we need enforcement of anti-trust laws. Governance only works when it represents the people, that is not what this government does right now and no amount of electing the right candidates is going to fix that until we have those two issues addressed.
      • 5mo ago
  • iugtmkbdfil834 5mo ago
    Friend, we have a fair amount of suggestions ( including constructive ones! ). Do you know why? Because we mostly know how to make education decent for individual students like: - keeping class sizes small - keeping class within similar development range ( AP with AP. short bus with short bus ) None of it is a secret, but government can't (edit:or won't) make it happen. Hence regular people just doing the best they can within the system at their disposal.
    • zdragnar 5mo ago
      I know people who will adamantly insist that keeping classes within similar development ranges is harmful and will vociferously reject any such proposal, up to and including things such as "gifted" schools and the like. It's why some schools in (iirc) California did away with higher maths like calculus entirely. Sadly, it seems there's nothing actually common about common wisdom.
      • iugtmkbdfil834 5mo ago
        I will admit that I never heard a serious argument from anyone that did not rely on issues not related to individual student's education. If you have any materials on those, I would love to read some of it.
        • galangalalgol 5mo ago
          Montessori advocates for mixed age classes where more advanced help teach the less advanced, as the teaching itself solidifies it in the more advanced student's mind. Not sure if it is valid. But it is something with studies and meta studies that may have been done well or poorly, not just an aesthetic choice. I think Vulcan style training pods driven by AI like khanmigo will end up being better education than the vast majority of students will ever have access to in person. Or consider it the realization of "a young lady's primer" from diamond age.
          • coryrc 5mo ago
  • burnte 5mo ago
    I am categorically not a "government bad" person. There are things that only government can do to help society and it's an important institution. However government shouldn't take over things in your household. I feel for the government to do a thing it should have to demonstrate that the state has an defensible interest. Gay marriage? Gov't has no business in marriage. Gov't demanding age checks in apps or in electronics? No, gov't doesn't need that. > like your "sink it" nugget, they lack decent problem descriptions Let me be clearer then: The legislation has passed but it is 100% possible to repeal that law. And it should be repealed, and we need to not let up pressure on California until it is rescinded. It was a bad law that was not thought out at all and fails to solve any problems. I'm not worries about corporate feudalism and app age checks. I'm not sociopathic, you're just making broad assumptions.
  • chickensong 5mo ago
    I dunno, "government bad" seems like a pretty reasonable default. Governments typically have a high amount of corruption and are generally unhealthy organizations. It doesn't make sense to delegate more responsibility to an entity with such structural issues.
  • saghm 5mo ago
    I'm not a libertarian; I just don't get why I should have to prove my age on every device I own regardless of what I access online when I don't have kids. Parental controls already exist on devices, so that's not really what this is legislation is proposing. I don't have a concrete solution because I don't even agree that "theoretically we don't know for sure that this device couldn't be used by a child to access pornography" is a problem that it's my job to solve as someone with no kids and plenty of mundane uses of the internet like paying bills, contacting medical providers, filing taxes, etc.
• hansvm 5mo ago
  On the other hand, I know several "home-schooled" people [0] who literally can't even read and later married people more than twice their age or had other serious deficiencies in their life potential. The government can probably step in a little more here and there. [0] I also know home-schooled people whose parents are far better than any teacher I've ever had and whose education and achievements reflect that obvious fact. Home-schooling itself isn't the issue, and I'd prefer that it remain possible.
  • burnte 5mo ago
    Public education is extremely different from age checks in apps. Yes, homeschooled people are generally really dumb because humans are not born with the knowledge of the world or how to teach it. This is different from California telling Debian to ask for user ages.
    • coryrc 5mo ago
      You have that backward. The home-educated typically score 15 to 25 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests. -- https://nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/#Academic https://nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/#Academic
      • tcfhgj 5mo ago
        Site: National Homeschool Education Research Institute First independent search result: > The US-based NHERI describes itself as a leading research institute in the field of homeschooling. However, its neutrality is often questioned.
      • in_cahoots 5mo ago
        I read one of those papers. Only between 10% and 25% of homeschool families completed the test. And that's of families that could be located because they had previously interacted with major homeschool testing companies; there isn't a national list of homeschooled kids and many parents homeschool precisely to avoid standardized testing. Plus in many cases the parents were the proctors. This is hardly a robust finding.
• codedokode 5mo ago
  But it seems that many parents do not bother to do anything to raise their children properly, including setting up parental controls.
  • echelon 5mo ago
    Let me be very explicit so we're not dancing around the topic: The potentially all-powerful government shouldn't know: - what vices a person has - what religion a person has or doesn't have - what porn you watch - what alcohol and drugs you buy PERIOD. All of these things can be exploited. To control jobs, to control finances, to extort influence, to shape ideology, etc. The government shouldn't be able to catalog those things in a database for later misuse. The government shouldn't be able to install friction or barriers that make it easy to cordon off and kill these things at a later time. The "think of the kids" argument can go to straight to hell. Nobody's having children anyway. This is a very real (not logically fallacious) slippery slope right into the pages of 1984. It's not about kids. It's about control over society as a whole. They're going to force you to use your ID to access the internet, force you to use an approved device, and the minute you step outside of allowed behavior, you'll be punished. Shackles and telescreens are coming, and they're using this argument to build it.
    • stouset 5mo ago
      Nobody here disagrees. What should be the case is that sites are broadly required to flag what kind of content they serve so parents can choose to exercise their own level of desired control.
      • dpkirchner 5mo ago
        Surely parents can look at the sites and decide for themselves whether or not they are suitable.
        • stouset 5mo ago
          I am certain that with even two minutes of thought you can understand why this makes zero sense.
• xorcist 5mo ago
  Earlier today there was a large thread on HN about the golden age of child rearing, from time immemorial to about two decades ago, when children started getting sent home and parents got a stern talking to from the police, just for owning a pocket knife or biking home alone. We really can't have it both ways, that every failure of the child is blamed on the parent for lapsing in their almost totalitarian oversight, while also idealizing the idea that children must make their own mistakes and gradually growing into responsibilities and self-governance. Except having access to the Internet, apparently. Taking a step back, this all smells like madeleines and a yearning for the good old days when everyone rode bikes and nobody owned smartphones. That's not really a productive stance on anything. (If you would ask me, and I'm sure nobody would, I would think that there is a sort of trade-off here but with a clear answer: Make clear restrictions about buying cigarettes, alcohol, abusive content and extreme porn. But these restrictions aren't meant to be technically perfect. It's ok that some kids will learn to lift the limits and explore what is forbidden. At least then they would know that there is some reason society collectively considers these things off-limits, and that they soon will be in a mistake of their own making.)