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> Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed. This makes very little sense. People sometimes appeal to the safety of children cynically
by dionidium 2mo ago
> Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed.
This makes very little sense. People sometimes appeal to the safety of children cynically, but it's very often sincere, since parents genuinely do worry a lot about their kids.
You can tell people to ignore these appeals, but it won't work, and you'll be leaving better arguments on the table.
- cobbzilla 2mo agoYes it’s normal to worry about your kids. It’s normal for family and friends to worry about your kids. When a politician is worried about your kids, you should be worried about your rights and freedoms. Not only for your own sake but for your kids too!
- slg 2mo ago>When a politician is worried about your kids, you should be worried about your rights and freedoms. Not only for your own sake but for your kids too! What rights and freedoms should I worry about when a politician wants to make sure my child is fed by supporting food stamp programs or free hot lunches at school? The idea that any attempt to help a child is inherently suspect honestly says something distrubing about your own worldview. You can't imagine someone genuinely caring for a child that isn't there own?
- GiorgioG 2mo agoPoliticians don’t care about your kids, they only care about your vote.
- slg 2mo agoThis level of cynicism is only possible if someone has never interacted with people on a local political level. Once again, it's more a reflection of your own worldview than an accurate reflection of all of humanity. There are some people who genuinely have empathy for others and want to do good. The way some of you refuse to believe that is truly disturbing.
- stressback 2mo agoThere are some people who have genuine empathy for others and want to do good, and they aren't politicians. The only thing disturbing about this is you don't see it.
- slg 2mo agoOnce again, you can only say this if the idea of "politician" is some abtract concept that you can dehumanize. If you get involved in local politics, I guarantee you will meet someone who cares.
- cortesoft 2mo agoSo you should just oppose everything any politician proposes?
- zmgsabst 2mo agoIn the case of food stamps, that was the leverage by which social engineers destroyed the black family via incentives for single mothers — collapsing from 75% married (circa 1950s) to 25% married (modern). The “Welfare State” is nothing but modern share cropping from the party of Jim Crow.
- romanhounds 2mo ago[dead]
- slg 2mo agoJust so I'm clear here, you think half of Black moms have pushed their child's father away for the lucrative reward of food stamps? And that scenario was preplanned by some unnamed "social engineers"?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- zmgsabst 2mo agoThe sharecropping nature was intentional, ie, their vision of subservient people generating wealth for the state which it then distributed for their basic needs rather than those people owning property by which they could do for themselves. That it destroyed black families (among others) is merely happenstance rather than intentional racism — stemming from the overall failure of technocratic managerialism. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UPxpKe4N8b8 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UPxpKe4N8b8
- tadfisher 2mo agoYour narrative is embellished and does not correlate strongly with the data [1]. Embellished: marriage rates are 33.8% for Black women and 37.8% for Black men, neither of which I would round to 25%. Uncorrelated: marriage rates dropped sharply among people of all single races on the Census except for Asians. It has dropped more sharply for Black respondents, but anything disproportionately affecting the lower and middle economic classes would disproportionately affect Black families. Show me some data, and not outdated welfare policies from the 1980s, that supports the "social engineers" causal narrative better than plain deindustrialization. Or deindustrialization combined with good old American racism and mass incarceration. I am willing to change my position on this. 1: https://usafacts.org/articles/state-relationships-marriages-and-living-alone-us/ https://usafacts.org/articles/state-relationships-marriages-...
- inigyou 2mo agoYou should be worried the politician is going to enslave people to make the food for the children.
- slg 2mo agoI find it difficult to give some people on this site the benefit of the doubt when they say nonsense like this. How can you possibly believe that free hot lunches in schools leads to slavery? Like what is the literal chain of events that you imagine happening to lead from one to the other?
- cobbzilla 2mo ago> You can't imagine someone genuinely caring for a child that isn't there own? I just said the opposite. I can imagine many people genuinely caring for a child that isn’t their own. I am skeptical when a politician who does not know my children claims to care about them. To borrow an LLMism: It’s not cynicism, it’s the reality of history. We the people have been duped many times over. Caveat Emptor.
- slg 2mo ago>I just said the opposite. I can imagine many people genuinely caring for a child that isn’t their own. Sure, but limited to "family and friends". Following that up with "who does not know my children" indicates you clearly view empathy as extending to merely one's personal relationships and you seemingly can't imagine caring for a stranger's child. I'll grant you cyncism is not the correct description of that worldview, but I stick by the general label of disturbing.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- cobbzilla 2mo agoSure the school board parents are politicians too, they care about kids, no disagreement. If you’d stop straw-manning me for a moment you might notice you still misunderstand my point.
- adrianN 2mo agoThere are many scenarios in which politicians can be legitimately worried about the kids. For example if they want to install crosswalks and enforce speed limits around a school, or if they want to increase funding for social services. I do believe we should allow for a lot more nuance in our political opinions and avoid most statements that can be made in the constraints of a short comment on social media.
- inigyou 2mo agoThere are no politicians worried about kids. There are politicians worried about the votes of people who worry about kids, which is effectively the same thing.
- account42 2mo agoIt's very far from the same thing. The former calls for solutions that protect kids, the latter calls for solutions that can be sold as protecting kids.
- red_admiral 2mo agoPoliticians often have kids too, and what parent does not worry about their own kids? Is it that much worse if a politician genuinely cares about other people's kids too?
- Tangurena2 2mo ago> When a politician is worried about your kids, you should be worried about your rights and freedoms. Not only for your own sake but for your kids too! I work with those politicians. They have kids too and they are just as susceptible to media/propaganda/fearmongering as you are. However, unlike you and I, they can do something (usually wrong) about it.
- slg 2mo agoThe main example that comes to mind is anything having to do with the environment. “The kids” will face the brunt of our actions (or inactions) on that front so a “for the kids” argument is completely valid. Dismissing a proposal simply because of a “for the kids” element is incredibly reductive and will genuinely end up harming kids.
- cgriswald 2mo ago“For the kids” arguments are distinct from arguments worrying about future generations in that they are almost entirely focused (ostensibly) on preventing harm to children while they are children rather than “all our descendants including the adults”.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- slg 2mo agoThen let's ban child safety locks, child labor laws, and any law that distinguishes child abuse from other forms of abuse. Let's also allow minors to buy tobacco and alcohol while we're at it if we're claiming that any law that exists to protect children as children is inherently misguided.
- cgriswald 2mo agoI think if you spoke to the people actually making the claim they’d define it a little better to include only cases where adults are being asked to give up rights, freedoms, or privileges. But you can ask them. I didn’t take a position on the argument. I pointed out a distinction.
- inigyou 2mo agoChild safety locks make adults give up freedom because the lock has to be unlocked, which is like asking for ID. At least that's the anti-AB1043 logic. AB1043 says every phone must have a child safety lock.
- throwaway69123 2mo agoI have no problem parenting my own kids, why do I have to give up my rights because others cant.
- fyredge 2mo agoThe same reason you pay taxes. Not everyone is law abiding, taxes pay police to uphold order. Child laws improve upbringing, reducing chance of future criminal acts. We live in a society, you wouldn't be on HN otherwise.
- dmitrygr 2mo ago> parents genuinely do worry a lot about their kids As they should. Perhaps they can put their efforts into parenting and not into limiting our freedoms?
- fyredge 2mo agoWhen irresponsible parents raise irresponsible children, the effects will not be limited to themselves. I don't want to go back to open smoking, causing increased rates of cancer to everyone just because some people want their freedom to smoke. Preventing tobacco sales to children greatly reduced that.
- intended 2mo agoThis is coming up again and again because The current status quo does. Not. Work. There is direct evidence from trials, in which Meta researchers told executives that features like infinite scroll and others “ are inherently at odds with well-being” There is no effective fight for freedom if there is no effective understanding of the politics and social forces driving change. The freedom of the internet in the 90s was in itself a social revolution, not just a technological one. Fighting for a status quo that didn’t work for children and even for many adults is a losing fight. Fighting for privacy and against ad tech, and against addictive design features for all users is a far stronger fight.
- inigyou 2mo agoThose who sacrifice freedom for a functioning society deserve neither. We should just keep doing the thing that doesn't work, because the alternative is sacrificing freedom.
- intended 2mo agoThose who defend freedom should do so by being effective at it. The internet was a magical thing when it was introduced to society at large. However this is NOT the same era. If we are fighting for privacy and freedom, then why the heck is ad tech still allowed to be accepted as part of this conversation? If we are talking about freedoms, this is one of the greatest moments to say lets not sacrifice any privacy at all in the first place? There is no functional and effective defense of our values if people are showing up to argue what they feel like fighting, instead of where the challenges actually are.
- matheusmoreira 2mo agoSincere or not, their arguments are automatically voided by the simple fact they are building a dystopian cyberpunk panopticon. Nothing justifies that oppression. Not even children.
- Llamamoe 2mo agoOh, I'm sure a lot of those people have been convinced to back these laws out of sincere desire to protect children. The problem is that those laws are NOT designed to protect children, and the people who convince politicians and the public to support them are NOT doing so out of genuine concern to protect children. The real, underlying reason why they are being pushed for so hard is to destroy privacy and control people which is going to make everyone but the elite less safe, children included. Especially if and when we get another Nazi Germany type regime and realize that - oh shit, they have 24/7 overview of where every single person in the world is, what they do, what they think, what their worldviews and identities are. It's impossible for any of this to end well.
- inigyou 2mo agoThe real underlying problem is that all the mass surveillance companies proposed laws that look like they protect children, and clueless politicians agreed, while the rest of us just shouted on HN about how they're building a digital dystopia instead of proposing any alternatives. The politicians have to choose between banning electronics for children, or mandating ID scans because those were the options presented.