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It's easy to make that pronouncement from a nice white-bread neighborhood in the suburbs. But try living among the underclass for a little while. They need a he
by thras 17y ago
It's easy to make that pronouncement from a nice white-bread neighborhood in the suburbs. But try living among the underclass for a little while. They need a hell of a lot more authority in their lives than you do.
Right now, Britain is managing to fall apart due to mismanagement of alcohol: http://whiskeys-place.blogspot.com/2009/09/uks-cultural-collapse.html http://whiskeys-place.blogspot.com/2009/09/uks-cultural-coll...
I don't have the answers. But we've been spending and spending and spending social capital for decades. The cultural rug has been pulled out from everyone's feet. People interested in having a normal family have a harder time of it than they used to. Drug legalization will make those problems worse, not better.
- caffeine 17y agoYes, you do have the answers, although you can't assume they're correct: the article cites studies. This is exactly the point of doing Science (or at least sociological pseudo-science): Opinions Are Worthless.
- thras 17y agoThe scientific management of society has a checkered history.
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- onewland 17y agoBut citing your own blog article, the current management of society is doing a terrible job. What is your suggested approach, throwing darts at Post-It notes?
- caffeine 17y agoBy definition, if it's not working and you keep doing it, then what you're doing is not scientific management. Management by people claiming to manage scientifically, and management by scientists (not just of society, but anything) both certainly do have checkered histories, though, yes. The real barrier to science-based government is really the choice of objectives (i.e. what to optimize - GDP is OK but there has to be something better). Thankfully, the scientific method has proven itself quite adept at leaping into a domain where the important questions aren't even known. So maybe there's hope yet.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- natrius 17y ago"But try living among the underclass for a little while. They need a hell of a lot more authority in their lives than you do." That is unbelievably condescending. Sure, there are plenty of people who repeatedly make bad decisions. How on earth is the solution to force them to do the right thing by threatening imprisonment? When that fails, how is imprisonment better than the harm they were causing themselves? What happens when you're wrong about what is right for those poor, incompetent people? Advise people all you want, but if you want to force people to do things because you think it's better for them, that makes you a Bad Person. Governments are supposed to protect freedom, so if you find yourself suggesting restricting the freedom of people in order to protect them from themselves, you've probably made a logical error somewhere.