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Report Suggests That Nanny State Might Actually Not Be For the Best
tonyreadsnews writes "Usually, 'thinking of the children' is a starting point to impose limitations on video games and internet in general. For once, a study requested by UK's Prime Minister seems to be a bit more objective than most. In the Executive Summary (PDF) 'Children and young people need to be empowered to keep themselves safe — this isn't just about a top-down approach. Children will be children — pushing boundaries and taking risks. At a public swimming pool we have gates, put up signs, have lifeguards and
shallow ends, but we also teach children how to swim.' I think that is an important point that most studies miss, that just 'thinking of the children' and locking the bad stuff away is actually setting them up for failure later in life. A direct link to the full PDF is also available."
At the same time, UK Social Services is committing acts of terrorism (yes, kidnapping threats are acts of terrorism) against a family with fat children.
Hypocritical much?
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
I always thought it was called either "culling the herd" or "being a Darwin Award recipient".
The needs of the US are different from the UK.
Obese people just naturally float, just like the really big chunks in the septic tank (and politicians) always rise to the top ...
Kevin Smith on Prince
Starting off by calling it the "nanny state" is already trying to frame the debate in a way that reinforces particular biases.
No, we should not attempt to foam pad the entire world so the precious little ones don't get hurt, but that doesn't mean we should just toss them out in the woods and let them fend for themselves either. Certain safety regulations are required for the functioning of an advanced society, many of which are created at least in part to keep children safe (school zones, crosswalks, etc).
The debate should be about which regulations and safety precautions make sense, not about creating a false dichotomy by calling any regulation the imposition of a "nanny state".
But sometimes I confuse myself. I mean, sure, don't show children "adult" things, and make sure they don't swear... but why? Why exactly do we embrace an arbitrary concept of "innocence" in children? I believe being honest is the best way to raise children. Of course my child has already seen breasts, he was breast fed. Why deny their existance just months later? Why not explain how society works and give them the honest scoop?
"Sex is only for adults, but since you asked..."
Sometimes I hear a young kid swear in public and it always catches me off guard, thinking "geez, kids these days have no respect." But then I think- what is inherently bad about swear words anyhow? We're just safegarding them from things that we've deemed innapropriate in our society- that they don't even realize is inappropriate, because they're new to society. Why not be brutally honest with them instead?
"Son, Fuck is a bad word that people don't like. Try not to say it in public or around your teacher. Also, don't use it around your parents, it's disrespectful."
Treat them like children.. they'll act like children...
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
At a public swimming pool we have gates, put up signs, have lifeguards and shallow ends, but we also teach children how to swim.
Most importantly, nobody suggest that swimming pools should be outlawed.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
You dope.
That's why we pay them.
In "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," Mark Twain warned about this kind of thing. The town was so proud of their righteousness that they wanted to keep that reputation so they made sure kids were never subjected to temptation so they'd never do bad things, then a stranger comes by, gets fed up with their self righteousness that all he does is tempt all the leading citizens. Since none of them have had much experience with temptation or resisting greed, they all fall in his trap and he shows how corruptible they are.
They change the two motto from "Lead us not into temptation" to "Lead us into temptation" because they learn that only by dealing with temptation will they learn to fight it.
It's the same thing here, just took over 100 years later for anyone to actually have the guts to stand up and say it.
Objective - Adj - A viewpoint which is closer to your own
Granted, I totally agree that a nanny state is a Very Bad Thing (tm), but it seems disingenuous to say that because the report doesn't glorify a nanny state, it is therefore more objective.
"Taking warning labels off of everything and letting things work out on their own" would also have been an acceptable answer
Think of the politicians! Think of the gadflies!
Won't somebody think of the busybodies?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
NEVER SHAKE A BABY!
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Children have parents coming to swimming pool with them. Imagine sending a 5 year old to swim by him/herself and not checking back for 3 hours. Now why would you do the same with an online (or just violent) game or Internet browsing/chat/so on session?
Now the situation would be reversed for a 16 year old teenager. He/she is expected to live independently in just two years, so supervision (on Internet or in the swimming pool) should only happen on voluntary discussion basis of if there is a reason to suspect problems.
People like risk because the thrill of danger followed by the realization of success pushes our pleasure buttons.
Life is dangerous. It's a terminal disease. We can't make everything safe no matter how much we try, because we're all going to die anyway. However, we can make life increasingly unpleasant by removing all the fun, interesting parts of it in the interests of a fundamentally unreachable goal of complete safety.
Thing is: it's a shifting goal. In the early 1900's, being able to buy dynamite at the hardware store made sense. Does it now, from a societal viewpoint? There *are* things that become increasingly dangerous as populations and technologic sophistication rise, so maybe we do need to change our rules over time, to deal with shifting situations. It's not like all safety laws and regulations are bunk. I'm living proof that seatbelts save lives, and if cars weren't legally required to have them, I might've been squished flat by a semi.
The thing is: we, as a culture, need to understand that 'safety' is not, by itself, sufficient reason to pass laws. A better understanding of the consequences is required, to prevent us ending up in a self-imposed prison.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I know we were all expecting "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense", but I was really hoping someone would tag it "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" instead.
I was confused there. I could have sworn that creating a risk-averse society was going to lead to a more daring and entrepeneurial economy, a government with balls of steel that stands up for the principles its society claims to hold dear, and a society of people who are independent and capable of functioning on their own without cradle-to-grave hand holding.
Of course the greater issue is how we got down this path in the first place. People don't want to admit it, but it's the feminization of society. It is offensive to modern values to suggest such a thing, but simple observation will show you that the outrage over these restrictions is far more common and fiercer in men than women. Women may disagree with the excesses, but they don't disagree with the principle nearly as much as men do because as voting records have shown countless times in many countries, women tend to value security over freedom. Ever wonder why most libertarians tend to be men?
I'm not trying to bash women here, I'm just saying that society as a whole has taken on an overtly feminized aura to it. There is no balance anymore, the way there used to be.
by the Journal of DUH.
Besides the nanny state, what about this concept that "everybody wins". Society needs mediocrity to reward the true winners. It also needs Darwin Award winners.
Take the locks off the cabinets, remove the safety plates from the electrical sockets, take down the fence around the swimming pool. It's time to put some danger in their lives. These kids want to take their place in society? Let the little buggers earn it. Just imagine how much better off we'd have been if our President had managed to get himself into the cleaning supplies cabinet as a kid instead of the liquor cabinet.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I propose the following test for all children (5 would be an appropriate age) - 1) Tell them that strangers candy always tastes the best. 2) Tell them that a highway makes a great playground. 3) Tell them that walking around in Harlem with a shirt that has a racial slur is a good idea. Those who survive these tests not only will have a firm understanding of how our society works, but have a healthy dose of common sense. The others we can weed out before they get a chance to breed.
Good heavens, this is a godawful summary. The submitter seems to have been so busy making every word as inflammatory or nerd-snide as possible that he only vaguely alluded to what the report is about! Also, I don't think he knows what "objective" means.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I was running down the highway a little after sunset and a girl, maybe 13, walked right into my path and I almost ran her over. She was in a bikini, walking home from the beach I guess.
Talk about situational awareness.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
"Children will be children -- pushing boundaries and taking risks."
That's what she said!
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
No shit, Sherlock!
But I guess it had to be said, because you can never overstate the obvious to the left.
I think it's a great idea to warn people about the danger of the nanny state. I showed that article to a friend of mine, who is a Congress staffer in Washington D.C. He was enthusiastic. His boss will present it in commission. They'll form a committee to formalize these recommandation and will draft a bill.
The bill will create a new Federal agency, the Protection Against Nanny State Agency. This new Agency will monitor public behavior and watch for complacency and exaggerated reliance on the State. Its agents will have power to monitor private conversations and intervene in public or private places. Whenever someone will be heard saying "they oughta be a law" or "why doesn't Congress do something", the agents will intervene, battering down doors if needed, and vigorously wag an aseptic, non-latex-gloved finger in the face of the offender, who will be sternly warned: "That would be asking for a nanny state, Sonny".
The new Agency will cost an estimated $134 billion a year. But this is a small price to pay, considering the Federal government will protect us against the growing menace of the Nanny State.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/
I just find it amusing that they have chosen the UKs top celebrity child psycologist to write this report. I'm not trying to belittle Dr Byron as I am sure her TV work has helped far more parents than just working in the NHS, but I do wonder if this report would have even been noticed if a non celebrity had written it.
If you don't know her, her bio is here http://www.dfes.gov.uk/byronreview/biog.shtml and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Byron
There are two sides to this argument, the problem is that it's nothing more than two different a priori or axiomatic sets of philosophical truths. Unfortunately I rarely see either party attempting to find common group as they believe the other is necessarily fallacious because they stand in contradiction to a fairly emotionally invested topic. Saying "Children and young people need to be empowered to keep themselves safe" is has the same philosophical weight as saying "we need to protect our children in the best way we can". In the US this basically is the, now age-defining conservative vs. liberal debate and so I'll cut to the chase and say who the heck cares? If you're going to raise your kids, then raise them with the philosophical viewpoint you feel is best. Isn't rearing children really one of our most fundamental rights? If not, shouldn't it be? Why do people on both sides of the argument feel the need to push their agenda on each other through the legal system? It's wearisome for those of us who are politically moderate and find both "sides" to be just as fallacious as the other.
Never mind the children -- how do we teach the damn adults to take care of themselves? What a great world it would be if people took responsibility for their own lives rather than blaming the government for not giving them enough "free" goodies.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Don't know where you live, but I've lived all over the US, and in every city, county and state I've lived in, pedestrians have the right of way at all corners and crosswalks, which are the only places I've ever seen crossing guards.
This whole "crossing guards suck" and "Why do they always blame the driver?" line of reasoning seems like a personal tangent to me. You didn't, uhhhh, run over a kid by any chance, did you?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The problem with your thinking is that it seems to assume that children are just like adults, that they think the same way, have similar value systems, et cetera -- they just lack experience, so they should be "brought up to speed" in much the same way an ignorant adult would be.
Not so. Children are fundamentally different from adults. They don't think the same way. They don't experience the world the same way. Check out any good textbook on cognitive development and couple it with close, unprejudiced observation of your own children.
Most importantly, the way children think changes fairly rapidly as they grow. How a child reacts to a naked tit, for example, completely changes from age 1 to school-age, and again in middle school, and once again at sexual maturity. A wise parent considers these changes, and does not try to use the same reasoning and the same solutions at all ages.
And, in recognition of the fact that children don't think the same way at the same age, society tends to say that certain experiences should be shoved into certain age ranges, when they are easiest to successfully understand and cope with (either for the child or for the adults around him). It's among our oldest traditions as a species, the idea that certain experiences are best at certain ages, and it would generally be gross folly to overturn them without damn good reason. ("Gee! Tt seems reasonable to me! What could possibly go wrong?" doesn't qualify, by the way.)
The same arguments apply to purely intellectual stuff, too. For example, the present trend to teach algebra skills as early as grade 5 or 6 is almost certainly badly misguided. The mental circuitry required to easily learn algebra is usually (although not in every case) not "hooked up" until early adolescence. That means kids are tortured with stuff that is very hard to get, when waiting a few years would make it a piece of cake. Again, a failure to understand that children are not merely miniaturized, ignorant adults.
It seems like this is all just an attempt to deal with the symptoms of the original cause, which is unqualified parents. We require licenses and tests to be able to drive or fly. Licenses to fish or check out library books, yet we allow any drone or sheep-person to enter into the commitment to raise and rear a human being for the next 18 years without so much as a second glance. This is like trying to clean up pollution while hawking hummers to every soccer mom. -W
I give my 100% approval to this report.
On a completely different note, I would also suggest there's never been a better time to buy my flaming, radioactive razor-blade ball. It's the happy fun ball for the next generation. Fun for all ages!
water is wet, birds sing.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
My aunt is very protective of my cousin. She home-schooled him until high school, carefully monitored everything he ever saw or did, that sort of thing. One thing she did was cut out the scene in Bambi where Bambi's mother dies. She just removed it, one second she's there, the next she's not. Anyway, the kid ends up growing up to love hunting. I mean to the extent that he gets up at 4am and goes out before school to kill a couple of ducks or a deer, goes to class, then stops on his way home for some rabbit or quail. Their freezer is full of game meat, they can't eat it fast enough. Hunting and fishing is all he does. As far as I know, he's never even had a girlfriend. I just wonder if, as a child, he had had that moment of sadness watching Bambi, he'd have turned out a little differently.
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
news - there's a great tag. Can someone also tag it slashdot in case we forget?
"more objective then most" NO, WRONG "more objective THAN most".
Did anyone else ever play a little playground game my friends and I dubbed "launch?" Basically, what we did is this:
:(
1. Find a small person on the playground. Place them at the end of a teeter-totter/see-saw
2. Find a larger kid, have him stand on the fulcrum.
3. Small child wraps arms and legs around his/her end as tightly as possible.
4. Larger child runs out to end of see-saw, catapulting child A
The goal of the game was to not let go, lest you go flying into the air and down onto the ground rather painfully. It was great fun.
I've always wondered why I don't see those beautiful merry-go-rounds and teeter-totters in playgrounds anymore
If the children start thinking, who will think of the children?
I have found that Farm raised kids seem to be more balanced and hard working than city raised kids. The Farm raised kids realize that the world is there to hurt them and kill them. This makes them more hard working and responsible. Where the city kids that are spoiled rotte have no concept of personal harm until they get out of high school so they are very inexperianced when dealing with it. Farm kids are exposed to all sorts of dangerous farm machinery, dangerous chemicals and pestisides, vicious animals, and hazardous terrain. All this before they even get a drivers license. City kids are friggin creampuffs.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Funny that I recall as a child, the most dangerous thing about the swimming pool is the shallow part. When I was six, the first thing I did was jump in head first. I'm lucky I didn't break my neck in the 3 foot water. I also saw somebody loose a couple of front teeth in an accident with the shallow part of a pool. Perhaps the most important thing to understand about safety features is how dangerous they are.
Just callin' it like I see it.
China then. Unless you have the kids elsewhere then move to China.
The human race has successfully raised children for millenia, risks and all. The idea has always been to see them to adulthood, whenever that happens to roll around culturally, and then see them out the door. If this happens, you have successfully passed your Darwinian challenge course. If they learned enough from you in the process that they succeed in punting your grandkids out the door, the formula has continued to demonstrate its adaptive suitability. "Protecting" children - and even adults from miniscule risks, you know, terrorists for example, or guns even, is scarcely beneficial except to the nuerotic. Consider that the US homicide rate last year was 5.5/100K. The automobile related death rate is nearly three times that, and guns and cars are our favorite risks supposedly. The birthrate, at an all time low, is still one hundred times that. Violent USians haven't even nipped a dent their birthrate. The conclusion is that "protections" for such miserably minor risks do not make any sense demographically or economically. The only sense they DO make is within a society where media defines "social problems" - animal rights, disabled access, child risks, lead based paint, asbestos, ect. - and politicians act to look as if they are earning pay.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
I'm not saying treat them like adults, just don't baby them. The idea is simple: give them just a little more responsibility than they know so they have room to grow. Don't give them room to grow, and they won't.
Yeah, but with crazy talk like that you're not going to wind up with millions of kids getting drunk every Friday night so they can knock down their drilled-in barriers and have some sex. Pretty soon you're going to see reductions in accidental deaths and even accidental pregnancy.
Nah, on second thought let's keep the Victorian Fascism in place and pretend like sex is weird.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I think that Ben Franklin said it best.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
when I was younger (and no, I'm not that old) me and some friends would regularly meet up in the morning, raid respective parental kitchens for a pack lunch and vanish for 9-10 hours. We'd walk >5miles, make swings from old rope and swing out over the water cress beds, get soaked, throw stuff at each other and generally behave like children. This was before sat nav, gps, mobile phones and our parents had no way of contacting us. We all had small change for the public phones and the one time we needed help (someone broke a coller bone) we managed on our own to organise things.
It was simply how children behaved.
Now mothers are frightened to let children out of their sight, and a whole generation is growing up mollycoddled and unable to think on their own or take risks. Worse, numerous studies show that without exposure to other people, children to play with etc., they grow up lacking many social traits they need to learn from their peers and with little immunity for many common viruses. And don't even get me started on education.
It's sad, and I wonder (a) how we got to this situations and (b) how to get out of it.
The title seems more like a hard-core libertarian using a very moderate report (it doesn't say end the ratings system or to not keep things away from kids) as a launching point for espousing his view of the world.
"just 'thinking of the children' and locking the bad stuff away is actually setting them up for failure later in life." This gets a big fat DUH. Next experiment please.
Where 'objective' = 'fits the /. groupthink'
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Not so. Children are fundamentally different from adults. They don't think the same way. They don't experience the world the same way. Check out any good textbook on cognitive development and couple it with close, unprejudiced observation of your own children.
It's true. My daughter (4.5 yrs) knows that a baby comes from a sperm from the Daddy and an egg from the Mommy and grows in her baby factory, but it has never occurred to her to ask how those two came to be together. An adult would pursue the inquiry to reduction at each level.
The same arguments apply to purely intellectual stuff, too. For example, the present trend to teach algebra skills as early as grade 5 or 6 is almost certainly badly misguided. The mental circuitry required to easily learn algebra is usually (although not in every case) not "hooked up" until early adolescence.
I read this idea elswhere a few weeks ago, and so decided to test it out. On a 20 minute car ride, my daughter learned the idea of X+ and X-, and thinks it's fun to solve for X, for small numbers anyway.
Granted, that's not all of the study of algebra, but the idea of symbolic representation isn't beyond the grasp of a relatively intelligent preschooler (she's not a math savant). I think the right question to ask is, "what ideas from Algebra might be appropriate for a first grader?" Right now everybody is focused on whether Algebra I is appropriate for Age X.
I think we're doing a disservice to learners by teaching:
This is what math is.
[insert 6 years]
Actually, this is what math is.
[insert 4 years]
Turns out, no, this is what math is.
[insert 4 years]
Well, yeah, that's what one kind of math was, but here are a bunch of others.
[insert 2 years]
Turns out we're still figuring out what math is.
We should be figuring out the right way to integrate rather than constantly stratifying. Granted, that's harder, but there are plenty of folks who like to study this stuff, and those of us stumbling around in the dark for lack of it would appreciate some real research.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I think I'll probably also be the third person who doesn't get what they've asked for.
An argument was made. Your response to it was
Which really had nothing at all to do with the OP or any statement he made, and was clearly done to inflame and close off debate. Veiled accusations of misogyny will do that, especially when they're plucked out of thin air.
Which then leads me to the conclusion that either you are wrong about intelligent people listening or you are missing a necessary qualifier for the "intelligent person" label.
We're protecting the swear words, not the kids.
If we have six-year-olds running around saying "fuck" willy-nilly, all that does is ruin the shock value of a perfectly good swear word. At that point you might as well be saying "boink."
"Oh yeah, boink me harder, baby."
"If Johnson doesn't get that report in by Tuesday the whole department is boinked!"
Now where's the fun in that? We'd just have to come up with a NEW swear word so horrifying that no child would be able to pronounce it without immediately being swallowed by the jaws of Hell, and honestly, I don't really feel like digging that far into the Windows API documentation.
Protected from reality your entire life, then when you finally make President (or bag boy at the local mini-mart, as the case may be), you're completely unprepared...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Much of this legislation has little to do with protecting children. It's largely a means by which to turn public sentiment to a particular party or candidate to reinforce power.
The report will be ignored. The current Labour government has a big old socialist control streak running down its core. It thinks progress is made by creating law, after law after law , putting barriers in the way, rather than doing what it should ( removing barriers to individual freedom & entrepreneurship ). It 'nanny's' adults, never mind children! It's illegal to change an electric socket in your own home. It's illegal to climb an extended ladder on your own in your backyard. No job ,Can't afford a house ? Have a couple of kids to unknown fathers & we'll give you a house and plenty of benefits for the next 16 years. No worries.
The list goes on.
Never thought I'd say this but maybe we could do an exchange & have George W for a couple of years to help redress the balance.I can't see him giving a shit about liberal socialist opinion so he may make a difference. ( With no big red buttons to press , what harm could he do )
Report suggests that apple might be a music player monopoly.
Report suggests that tobacco might be dangerous to health.
Report suggests that OOXML might not be an open standard.
Report suggests that PHP might not be the best alternative for desktop application development.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
I'd like to see a similar report on religions. Catholic churches should have warning signage: "No unattended children beyond this point". Religions prone to fanaticism, from Islam to Scientology, need "Warning - Do Not Use More than 1 Hour Daily" to prevent overdosage.
There are far worse things than anything that runs on an XBox 360.
"Think of the children" is a propagandistic strawman cliche of libertarian propagandists.
It is more like "think of society, not only about a subset of individuals".
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Wow, ok, your point is eerily similar to a conversation I had with someone else.
I loves all my women friends (and more too) So I am for sure not misogynistic, but the feminization of government is primarily the cause of our failing as a society.
There are no females on slashdot so I don't worry about offending the hairy palmed thing in the basement.
Fear of injury and litigation have killed so many things for kids. I guess with today's way of thinking...it is amazing a sufficient number of people my age survived childhood in order to reproduce. Bikes without helments, bicycle ramps imitating Evel Kineval (sp?), swimming without 'swimmies', diving boards...[shudder] playing outside on our own days at a time without supervision or cell phones....
What the hell were our parents thinking?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No women allowed in Fight Club...
Eugenics is not Nazi. Nazis used gasoline so does that mean we are just as bad as them?
In the USA, the government used to sterilize people! Eugenics had gone a long ways towards being acceptable and normal in the 'civilized' world. Eugenics was practiced and gaining popularity all over the world until the extreme distortion and abuse of those ideas by the Nazis linked the two together and guilt by association caused Eugenics to fall out of favor.
Is it not possible that there is some middle ground? Should we be completely dismissing it?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"Intelligent" people breed far less then "unintelligent" people do
This is NOTHING new. This has always been so. But still , I certainly see a progress from the societies of the 15 centuries, compared to the societies of today. Would you care to explain WHY such a dumbing down would start to happen now ? And HOW could a better society comes up with such a dumbing down would always happen due to non-intelligent [sic] people procreating ?
If you have a monotonous decreasing quantity (as you seem to imply with your dumbing down and non-intelligent people procreating more) then there is no way you can have at any point of your function a global maximum.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"Oh yeah, baby, HeapAlloc me 'til GetLastError returns 8!"
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I thought that was why lawn darts were invented...
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
The term "Nanny State" refers to government treating its citizens like children. It is a contrast to the Daddy State that punishes you if you've been bad, and the Mommy State that shields you from the consequences of your actions. A Nanny State is one that is overly protective. All three assert that adults are too immature to run their own lives and that government must run their lives for them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanny_state
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
...more like thinking for them and wonder why they can't later in life.
Good ol' Gordon, he may be a bit creepy, but he knows what he's on about.
You mean counter-dysgenics.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
We've all been children at some point in our lives and we can all remember times when we were told, "Don't do that! Don't touch that! You're going to poke your eye out! etc...". Of course, our parents were trying to protect us from getting hurt due to lack of knowledge on our part. I still see this pattern of behavior between parents and children today via my nieces and nephews. Additionally, I see my in-laws trying to protect their children from every little disaster and they can't understand why their kids still get hurt or in trouble.
One thing I've figured out from observing this is that we can try to instruct children on being safe, right and wrong, etc but, in the end, sometimes they have to learn things the hard way and deal with the repercussions of their actions.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
On behalf of me, and everyone else with a serious nut allergy, I can safely say: fuck you. Those labels save my life on a day to day basis.
Yes, population will decrease, but it will not be due to our careful planning, it will be the 4 horsemen who do the work.
And before you assume I'm part of the problem (as 84% of people are), I added 0 children to the population. The 2 children who already existed that I helped raise are now productive engineers each with 0 children of their own.