Not at all. I'm arguing something quite different. That Nintendo often has this formula.
Something (we'll think it up, DDR, Golf, Soccer, etc.) + Mario = Innovative game
That's my problem. I've loved plenty of Mario games. I'm just begging Nintendo to think outside their franchises and come up with new and fresh properties similar to Katamari, Ouendan, games of that nature and not to rely on recycling Metroid, Zelda and Mario over and over again.
I've feared this as well. Innovation isn't always about innovation of control. My favorite games on the DS are games like Ouendan or Electroplankton. Games that absolutely couldn't have been done without the touch screen, but games that are fun nonetheless. Much of the DS library, however, grows old quickly. And most of the "innovation" is derived from things like one screen being used for a map and the touch screen being used for menus. Wow, groundbreaking.
I think Nintendo is thinking straight in so far as they're focusing on games that are easily accessible. I used to be a "hardcore" gamer, but basically I got sick of gaming and started getting into random stuff like Katamari Damacy, DDR, Amplitude, Ouendan, stuff like that. Quirky, fun experiences with some fun music, easy to learn the rules, easy to pick up and play, then put down.
So I think Nintendo is smart to be thinking about this market. As it not only includes non-gamers, but also includes disaffected former hardcore gamers that just want to have fun and are starting to feel like 40 hour+ games are tedious rather than fun, and that FPS and sports sequels aren't exactly thrilling either. They're heading in the right direction, but unfortunately being innovative in terms of control isn't enough. The game has to be innovative as well. And I look at that Wii list and I see Zelda, Metroid, Mario and retro gaming (no doubt playing Zelda, Metroid and Mario). At some point Nintendo has to stop relying on the franchises to carry them (i.e. Mario Soccer, Mario Basketball Zelda Pinball) and create unique interesting experiences. Aside from Pikmin, Ouendan, Nintendogs, Electroplankton, etc. where are the Katamari Damacy-type games from Nintendo? Where are the rhythm games that DON'T include Mario or Donkey Kong?
I think they mean before it gets to the point of requiring therapy. Ever sit in a game store for 5 minutes and watch the stream of parents buying their kids games they have no business playing or talking about buying them their 3rd system. Parents these days need to do a better job to teach their children moderation in everything, from food to entertainment. But then that would require the parents to practice moderation as well. Dad can't be bothered, he's busy with WoW.
Very true. However I too used a Mac originally. It was my first computer, the first one I owned. I played with Commodore 64s, etc. when I was younger. But when I got to college Apple was the defacto standard. I bought myself a Macintosh Performa for like $1500 and on that machine not only learned computers (my high school didn't have the best technology programm back from 89-93), but I eventually taught myself to program. I walked down to Powell's Technical in Portland, Or. and I picked up "Learn C on the Macintosh" by Dave Mark. Great book for me at the time and a great introduction. It was very easy, very painfree and I put my toe in the water, knowing that I didn't have to worry because the Mac *just worked*.
13 years later this is what I do for a living. So no matter how bad the Mac was back then, for many, including myself, it was a jump start into the world of computing and programming in large part because it just did its job and was easy to use. It was a good place to start. I now run Linux at home and have no interest in Macs any longer. But even without multi-tasking or a robust operating system, the Macintosh did its job for the time.
Have you ever administered a network running Microsoft everywhere? They don't exactly rush in like the Justice League to save the day. Nor do they answer the phone. They direct you at a giant difficult to search knowledgebase. So you just Google for the answer anyway and move on with your day.
As someone else says, if the existing firmware sucks, why would it matter? I ended up with one of those V5 WRT54Gs and a few months ago after getting sick of having to reset it, sick of it being slow, etc. I gave up on it, gave it to my little brother and moved on to using a D-Link "Gaming Router". Not that I game with it, but it's been rock solid so far. I wish this would have come out sooner. I would have tried "fixing" my WRT54G first.
By no means does a majority believe this. But there are definitely people who think that the purpose of school is to protect children from parents who are backward in some way, and they regard religion as being backward in some way. Thankfully, most people agree with me that we should just let each other alone.
Yes, they do. Most people are pretty libertarian on this, I believe. Leave each other alone and leave it at that. Of course there are a few people out there that want to tell you what to do. But isn't that true with anything? There will always be a fringe. But there really isn't this strong movement to make your faith or my faith illegal. Not from what I've seen. A few people here or there doesn't prove that there is this tidal wave of anti-Christianity that so many prominent Christians like to claim is washing over the country. It's just not true. The majority don't want to legislate the faith of others or your right to reproduce. In fact, if anything, it's becoming increasingly apparent that the opposite is true. That the majority wants to legislate faith INTO places it doesn't belong and to tell people how to live their lives if they're NOT religious.
Right now efficiency IS based largely on how little you can pay your workers. Otherwise wages wouldn't be stagnant and outsourcing wouldn't be so popular. Manufacturing wouldn't be all but dead in the US. And yeah, I guess "companies must follow". This is the race to the bottom. And the employee doesn't win this race in my opinion.
As far as your point about the Europeans, perhaps derision was a strong word. But the majority of your argument seems to be that the American way of doing business is fine and dandy so when you talk about Europe's economic model leading to high unemployment, etc. and making the argument that that's the main cause, it's clear that you don't think too highly of European labor laws.
They don't get 35-hour work weeks "for free". The lost time doesn't come out of some Evil Corporate Pot Of Gold (TM). The United States, equally, suffers economically from workers rights laws here (ie, minimum wage) when compared with China. It's a question of tradeoffs and ethics.
This is what I don't get, though. How would a 35-hour work week translate into unemployment? Explain it to me. I'm happy to be called the ignorant, uninformed rube with regards to economics I guess, because I just don't get this. Wouldn't a mandatory 35-hour work week simply mean you had more happy employees who had more time to attend to their lives. This should be a positive for productivity, no? At least productivity per hour. I think the picture is more complex than what you make it out to be, but please feel free to explain to me the direct correlation here.
As far as "ethics" go. What's ethical about making someone work 60 hours a week (which I did a large portion of the first 7 years of my career in IT)? What's ethical about trying to pay someone as little as humanly possible, such that they can't afford healthcare and can barely afford food to feed their family. I don't follow.
I understand what you're saying, however I think the economics of media would work much differently than they have for cigarettes and alcohol. I think if you made it prohibitive for even adults to just walk into a bookstore and get the book they wanted or if you balkanized the magazine rack and Maxim was behind the counter or did the same thing with games, the outcome would be much different than with cigarettes and alcohol.
I don't want to have to go to a porn shop to buy a graphic novel that has adult themes like Y: The Last Man or V for Vendetta. Or worse yet, I don't want those graphic novels to simply not be published because their exposure will drop so dramatically because the cost of selling them has risen so much for the local bookstore or comic shop and consequently for the producers of the art in question. Same with video games. I personally haven't played GTA for ever. But I'd much rather parents just did their job and maintained a dialogue with their child (worked with me and my brothers) than live in a world where Rockstar feels like they have to go REALLY hardcore with a game like GTA in order to get attention, because it's already so difficult to buy that most mainstream stores have stopped carrying it.
You see, there are consequences to what you're talking about. You put in laws like the ones you're talking about and there would be an effect on distributors and consequently on the manufacturers of the art in question. The unintended consequences to our ability to discource like grown adults could be tremendous. Why not put all TV shows with a hint of adult talk pay-per-view only. "The Office" has some adult content, I guess. Let's make you have to prove you're 18 to watch it.
Don't you see where this could take us? Do you really want the govt. spending time and money conducting sting operations (like they do with cigarettes) on booksellers? Do you have any clue what this would do to the market for the art economically not to mention to our freedom of speech?
I can see your point on wanting to have a choice. That's obviously understandable. I want that choice too. I just think if you run down the list of lifestyle related illnesses and suffering (even in the middle to upper class), such as anxiety, stress, obesity it's hard not to see the possibility that the American way of life is bad for your health. Mentally and physically. We shouldn't have to put our foot down and risk our careers and jobs in order to get work / life balance and the chance to live healthy and happy. Yet I feel like I have to fight that fight all the time. So you'll have to excuse me if I can empathize with people who are tired of fighting that fight and want it codified into law so that companies have to respect that balance. Now, I think you're correct that mandating a work-week is not the correct way to approach it. But I don't know how you solve that one, personally. I look at all my friends and family who are still living on the edge financially, carrying high debt, often overworked, overstressed and the European approach, while admittadly heavy handed, is trying to solve a problem that is real and that is serious.
No, I wasn't thinking about you, exactly. I was thinking of 70% of the Christians I met in everyday life and about 90% of the ones that make their way onto Fox, CNN, etc. When you're "church shopping" like my wife and I are, you meet lots of Christians. And many of them are indeed this paranoid.
However, I have never my life met a single individual who has advocated anything in the ballpark of what you describe in the second paragraph. So either you know a minority of those "out to get" Christians or maybe you're paranoid too.
As a Christian myself, I don't get this either, for what it's worth. It's sad and scary at the same time, this attitude that the whole world is out to get you, so you have to protect yourself because anyone who doesn't believe in a theocracy wants to sterilize you, kidnap your kids, brainwash you, etc. etc.
I didn't say all parents didn't have their priorities straight, but a lot don't. A lot of adults don't period. Whho could dispute that in a nation where the debt to income ratio is higher than it was during the runup to the Great Depression.
As far as what you're saying with regards to regulating the sale of games? Fine, don't sell adult games to kids. Once again, though, kids are always going to have friends with the games. Parents are going to inevitably buy the kids the games and circumvent the whole process. So what's the point of working so hard to regulate their sale. I'm all for labels and informing parents. But after that parents have to be adults and teach their kids well. Period. There's no replacement for parents.
Besides, where does it end if you start controlling how things are sold? Why not movies? There's a lot of content in movies that kids can't begin to process either. Why not music? Why not graphic novels? Why not books? It's a little crazy to think you can use govt. to protect kids from everything. Parents have to do their job. Period. And if it doesn't work they can't blame the content manufacturers or restrict free speech or my ability as a grown adult to get the content I have a right to watch, play, read and listen to.
#1 - I'm not the only person that took what you were saying as being about immigration. Maybe it's something about the way you communicate.
#2 - I understand economics. Of course cheap labor supresses wages. Who decides to pay people cheap wages? Companies. Why do they want to pay cheap wages, other than greed? Because consumers want to spend as little as possible on the crap we feel we need to live "the good life". So back to my original statement about the problem being "us" writ large.
#3 - I'm not angry. Just stating the fact that wages are supressed. I'm actually happy. In part because I took control of my life long ago and decided that having time to exercise, eat right and spend time with my family was much more important than money and toys. So I put boundaries on my work hours and make sure to balance life and work. You deride Europeans for this, but there's something to be said for remembering that life is about more than money.
If that makes me angry... probably makes me a commie in your book. I could care less.
My point was to be ironic. We're talking about the possibility of govt. intervention and so I proposed alternative govt. intervention that doesn't affect those of us without kids or with bad parenting skills.
It was supposed to be ironic, just to clarify again.
Yeah, the parent post was just more of the same uninformed nonsense that you would expect these days. The immigrants are the problem (forgetting that other nations have more serious immigration and assimilation problems) and look at those crazy Europeans with their high unemployment and low productivity.
I like to enjoy life, thanks. Making a fair wage would be a bonus, but with tools like the one you responded to drinking the Kool-Aid, I suppose things will never change here in the US.
You can get snipped. You can not have sex. You can put kids up for adoption if you're not going to handle your responsibility seriously. Having children is a choice.
They aren't keeping up with inflation and I'm working more than my father had to. That's enough for me. Wages have been statistically stagnant for quite some time. Especially on the low end.
Who is supressing wages? We all are. Everything has to be cheap. There's a cost to living in a Wal-Mart society.
I know many Christians (and I am one) who are careening the country towards a theocracy where NOT having a child isn't an option. So it cuts both ways. Thank God I got the snip snip done.
I was joking, of course. And the above has been considered, even tried, I believe. It's a legal and ethical minefield, of course. Since sometimes kids are just bad. And then what should parents do? Chain them to a wall?
In the end my bottom line is that having kids is a choice. No one puts a gun to your head and forces you to have kids. So once you make that choice you better damn well take it seriously. That means if you are overworked, find a way to work less. If that means cutting back on your consumerism, then do that. But by all means take care of your business. You've brought a human being into this world. A human being that could do great things or do terrible, awful things. It is absolutely your responsibility, no excuses, to raise that child well. And that can't be legislated. It's just something parents have to do.
#1 - I agree totally that PEOPLE (remember, us non-parents are people too) have supressed wages and are busier than we should be.
#2 - I have seen many many many many parents very fixated on having all the trappings of being wealthy, while neglecting their children. We're talking about video games after all here. If parents are too busy to spend time with their kids and monitor what they're doing, then I would posit that they should work less and not worry about making sure the family has a plasma TV, multiple computers and all the latest video game systems. Try some books and tossing the football around maybe.
I wasn't being serious. I was joking. I was trying to prove a point that at some point you just have to trust people to do the right thing. And when they don't you hold the correct party accountable. Not game makers. Not game sellers. But really bad parents (and there are a lot of them out there).
I've literally been at stores and watched parents debate with the store employee about the game being okay for their kids. And not in the way you might think. The employee was 100% of the time saying "that's not a very good idea, that's not for kids, try this instead" and the parent wouldn't listen. So what good does the label do when you even have a store employee warning the parent. Clearly some parents are too stupid to do their job.
Exactly. You can't pander well by holding the following press conference.
"I'm not passing any legislation today to label candy. I'm not passing any legislation today to label video games. Today I'm begging parents to take the time to do their jobs. That is all."
Slashdot Mirror
Not at all. I'm arguing something quite different. That Nintendo often has this formula.
Something (we'll think it up, DDR, Golf, Soccer, etc.) + Mario = Innovative game
That's my problem. I've loved plenty of Mario games. I'm just begging Nintendo to think outside their franchises and come up with new and fresh properties similar to Katamari, Ouendan, games of that nature and not to rely on recycling Metroid, Zelda and Mario over and over again.
I've feared this as well. Innovation isn't always about innovation of control. My favorite games on the DS are games like Ouendan or Electroplankton. Games that absolutely couldn't have been done without the touch screen, but games that are fun nonetheless. Much of the DS library, however, grows old quickly. And most of the "innovation" is derived from things like one screen being used for a map and the touch screen being used for menus. Wow, groundbreaking.
I think Nintendo is thinking straight in so far as they're focusing on games that are easily accessible. I used to be a "hardcore" gamer, but basically I got sick of gaming and started getting into random stuff like Katamari Damacy, DDR, Amplitude, Ouendan, stuff like that. Quirky, fun experiences with some fun music, easy to learn the rules, easy to pick up and play, then put down.
So I think Nintendo is smart to be thinking about this market. As it not only includes non-gamers, but also includes disaffected former hardcore gamers that just want to have fun and are starting to feel like 40 hour+ games are tedious rather than fun, and that FPS and sports sequels aren't exactly thrilling either. They're heading in the right direction, but unfortunately being innovative in terms of control isn't enough. The game has to be innovative as well. And I look at that Wii list and I see Zelda, Metroid, Mario and retro gaming (no doubt playing Zelda, Metroid and Mario). At some point Nintendo has to stop relying on the franchises to carry them (i.e. Mario Soccer, Mario Basketball Zelda Pinball) and create unique interesting experiences. Aside from Pikmin, Ouendan, Nintendogs, Electroplankton, etc. where are the Katamari Damacy-type games from Nintendo? Where are the rhythm games that DON'T include Mario or Donkey Kong?
Mario is a homicidal maniac. Anyone that's heard Benefit's "My Story" knows this.
I think they mean before it gets to the point of requiring therapy. Ever sit in a game store for 5 minutes and watch the stream of parents buying their kids games they have no business playing or talking about buying them their 3rd system. Parents these days need to do a better job to teach their children moderation in everything, from food to entertainment. But then that would require the parents to practice moderation as well. Dad can't be bothered, he's busy with WoW.
Very true. However I too used a Mac originally. It was my first computer, the first one I owned. I played with Commodore 64s, etc. when I was younger. But when I got to college Apple was the defacto standard. I bought myself a Macintosh Performa for like $1500 and on that machine not only learned computers (my high school didn't have the best technology programm back from 89-93), but I eventually taught myself to program. I walked down to Powell's Technical in Portland, Or. and I picked up "Learn C on the Macintosh" by Dave Mark. Great book for me at the time and a great introduction. It was very easy, very painfree and I put my toe in the water, knowing that I didn't have to worry because the Mac *just worked*.
13 years later this is what I do for a living. So no matter how bad the Mac was back then, for many, including myself, it was a jump start into the world of computing and programming in large part because it just did its job and was easy to use. It was a good place to start. I now run Linux at home and have no interest in Macs any longer. But even without multi-tasking or a robust operating system, the Macintosh did its job for the time.
Have you ever administered a network running Microsoft everywhere? They don't exactly rush in like the Justice League to save the day. Nor do they answer the phone. They direct you at a giant difficult to search knowledgebase. So you just Google for the answer anyway and move on with your day.
As someone else says, if the existing firmware sucks, why would it matter? I ended up with one of those V5 WRT54Gs and a few months ago after getting sick of having to reset it, sick of it being slow, etc. I gave up on it, gave it to my little brother and moved on to using a D-Link "Gaming Router". Not that I game with it, but it's been rock solid so far. I wish this would have come out sooner. I would have tried "fixing" my WRT54G first.
By no means does a majority believe this. But there are definitely people who think that the purpose of school is to protect children from parents who are backward in some way, and they regard religion as being backward in some way. Thankfully, most people agree with me that we should just let each other alone. Yes, they do. Most people are pretty libertarian on this, I believe. Leave each other alone and leave it at that. Of course there are a few people out there that want to tell you what to do. But isn't that true with anything? There will always be a fringe. But there really isn't this strong movement to make your faith or my faith illegal. Not from what I've seen. A few people here or there doesn't prove that there is this tidal wave of anti-Christianity that so many prominent Christians like to claim is washing over the country. It's just not true. The majority don't want to legislate the faith of others or your right to reproduce. In fact, if anything, it's becoming increasingly apparent that the opposite is true. That the majority wants to legislate faith INTO places it doesn't belong and to tell people how to live their lives if they're NOT religious.
Right now efficiency IS based largely on how little you can pay your workers. Otherwise wages wouldn't be stagnant and outsourcing wouldn't be so popular. Manufacturing wouldn't be all but dead in the US. And yeah, I guess "companies must follow". This is the race to the bottom. And the employee doesn't win this race in my opinion. As far as your point about the Europeans, perhaps derision was a strong word. But the majority of your argument seems to be that the American way of doing business is fine and dandy so when you talk about Europe's economic model leading to high unemployment, etc. and making the argument that that's the main cause, it's clear that you don't think too highly of European labor laws. They don't get 35-hour work weeks "for free". The lost time doesn't come out of some Evil Corporate Pot Of Gold (TM). The United States, equally, suffers economically from workers rights laws here (ie, minimum wage) when compared with China. It's a question of tradeoffs and ethics. This is what I don't get, though. How would a 35-hour work week translate into unemployment? Explain it to me. I'm happy to be called the ignorant, uninformed rube with regards to economics I guess, because I just don't get this. Wouldn't a mandatory 35-hour work week simply mean you had more happy employees who had more time to attend to their lives. This should be a positive for productivity, no? At least productivity per hour. I think the picture is more complex than what you make it out to be, but please feel free to explain to me the direct correlation here. As far as "ethics" go. What's ethical about making someone work 60 hours a week (which I did a large portion of the first 7 years of my career in IT)? What's ethical about trying to pay someone as little as humanly possible, such that they can't afford healthcare and can barely afford food to feed their family. I don't follow.
I understand what you're saying, however I think the economics of media would work much differently than they have for cigarettes and alcohol. I think if you made it prohibitive for even adults to just walk into a bookstore and get the book they wanted or if you balkanized the magazine rack and Maxim was behind the counter or did the same thing with games, the outcome would be much different than with cigarettes and alcohol.
I don't want to have to go to a porn shop to buy a graphic novel that has adult themes like Y: The Last Man or V for Vendetta. Or worse yet, I don't want those graphic novels to simply not be published because their exposure will drop so dramatically because the cost of selling them has risen so much for the local bookstore or comic shop and consequently for the producers of the art in question. Same with video games. I personally haven't played GTA for ever. But I'd much rather parents just did their job and maintained a dialogue with their child (worked with me and my brothers) than live in a world where Rockstar feels like they have to go REALLY hardcore with a game like GTA in order to get attention, because it's already so difficult to buy that most mainstream stores have stopped carrying it.
You see, there are consequences to what you're talking about. You put in laws like the ones you're talking about and there would be an effect on distributors and consequently on the manufacturers of the art in question. The unintended consequences to our ability to discource like grown adults could be tremendous. Why not put all TV shows with a hint of adult talk pay-per-view only. "The Office" has some adult content, I guess. Let's make you have to prove you're 18 to watch it.
Don't you see where this could take us? Do you really want the govt. spending time and money conducting sting operations (like they do with cigarettes) on booksellers? Do you have any clue what this would do to the market for the art economically not to mention to our freedom of speech?
I can see your point on wanting to have a choice. That's obviously understandable. I want that choice too. I just think if you run down the list of lifestyle related illnesses and suffering (even in the middle to upper class), such as anxiety, stress, obesity it's hard not to see the possibility that the American way of life is bad for your health. Mentally and physically. We shouldn't have to put our foot down and risk our careers and jobs in order to get work / life balance and the chance to live healthy and happy. Yet I feel like I have to fight that fight all the time. So you'll have to excuse me if I can empathize with people who are tired of fighting that fight and want it codified into law so that companies have to respect that balance. Now, I think you're correct that mandating a work-week is not the correct way to approach it. But I don't know how you solve that one, personally. I look at all my friends and family who are still living on the edge financially, carrying high debt, often overworked, overstressed and the European approach, while admittadly heavy handed, is trying to solve a problem that is real and that is serious.
No, I wasn't thinking about you, exactly. I was thinking of 70% of the Christians I met in everyday life and about 90% of the ones that make their way onto Fox, CNN, etc. When you're "church shopping" like my wife and I are, you meet lots of Christians. And many of them are indeed this paranoid.
However, I have never my life met a single individual who has advocated anything in the ballpark of what you describe in the second paragraph. So either you know a minority of those "out to get" Christians or maybe you're paranoid too.
As a Christian myself, I don't get this either, for what it's worth. It's sad and scary at the same time, this attitude that the whole world is out to get you, so you have to protect yourself because anyone who doesn't believe in a theocracy wants to sterilize you, kidnap your kids, brainwash you, etc. etc.
I didn't say all parents didn't have their priorities straight, but a lot don't. A lot of adults don't period. Whho could dispute that in a nation where the debt to income ratio is higher than it was during the runup to the Great Depression.
As far as what you're saying with regards to regulating the sale of games? Fine, don't sell adult games to kids. Once again, though, kids are always going to have friends with the games. Parents are going to inevitably buy the kids the games and circumvent the whole process. So what's the point of working so hard to regulate their sale. I'm all for labels and informing parents. But after that parents have to be adults and teach their kids well. Period. There's no replacement for parents.
Besides, where does it end if you start controlling how things are sold? Why not movies? There's a lot of content in movies that kids can't begin to process either. Why not music? Why not graphic novels? Why not books? It's a little crazy to think you can use govt. to protect kids from everything. Parents have to do their job. Period. And if it doesn't work they can't blame the content manufacturers or restrict free speech or my ability as a grown adult to get the content I have a right to watch, play, read and listen to.
#1 - I'm not the only person that took what you were saying as being about immigration. Maybe it's something about the way you communicate.
#2 - I understand economics. Of course cheap labor supresses wages. Who decides to pay people cheap wages? Companies. Why do they want to pay cheap wages, other than greed? Because consumers want to spend as little as possible on the crap we feel we need to live "the good life". So back to my original statement about the problem being "us" writ large.
#3 - I'm not angry. Just stating the fact that wages are supressed. I'm actually happy. In part because I took control of my life long ago and decided that having time to exercise, eat right and spend time with my family was much more important than money and toys. So I put boundaries on my work hours and make sure to balance life and work. You deride Europeans for this, but there's something to be said for remembering that life is about more than money.
If that makes me angry... probably makes me a commie in your book. I could care less.
It was sarcasm.
My point was to be ironic. We're talking about the possibility of govt. intervention and so I proposed alternative govt. intervention that doesn't affect those of us without kids or with bad parenting skills.
It was supposed to be ironic, just to clarify again.
Sheesh.
Yeah, the parent post was just more of the same uninformed nonsense that you would expect these days. The immigrants are the problem (forgetting that other nations have more serious immigration and assimilation problems) and look at those crazy Europeans with their high unemployment and low productivity.
I like to enjoy life, thanks. Making a fair wage would be a bonus, but with tools like the one you responded to drinking the Kool-Aid, I suppose things will never change here in the US.
You can get snipped. You can not have sex. You can put kids up for adoption if you're not going to handle your responsibility seriously. Having children is a choice.
They aren't keeping up with inflation and I'm working more than my father had to. That's enough for me. Wages have been statistically stagnant for quite some time. Especially on the low end.
Who is supressing wages? We all are. Everything has to be cheap. There's a cost to living in a Wal-Mart society.
I know many Christians (and I am one) who are careening the country towards a theocracy where NOT having a child isn't an option. So it cuts both ways. Thank God I got the snip snip done.
I was joking, of course. And the above has been considered, even tried, I believe. It's a legal and ethical minefield, of course. Since sometimes kids are just bad. And then what should parents do? Chain them to a wall?
In the end my bottom line is that having kids is a choice. No one puts a gun to your head and forces you to have kids. So once you make that choice you better damn well take it seriously. That means if you are overworked, find a way to work less. If that means cutting back on your consumerism, then do that. But by all means take care of your business. You've brought a human being into this world. A human being that could do great things or do terrible, awful things. It is absolutely your responsibility, no excuses, to raise that child well. And that can't be legislated. It's just something parents have to do.
#1 - I agree totally that PEOPLE (remember, us non-parents are people too) have supressed wages and are busier than we should be.
#2 - I have seen many many many many parents very fixated on having all the trappings of being wealthy, while neglecting their children. We're talking about video games after all here. If parents are too busy to spend time with their kids and monitor what they're doing, then I would posit that they should work less and not worry about making sure the family has a plasma TV, multiple computers and all the latest video game systems. Try some books and tossing the football around maybe.
I wasn't being serious. I was joking. I was trying to prove a point that at some point you just have to trust people to do the right thing. And when they don't you hold the correct party accountable. Not game makers. Not game sellers. But really bad parents (and there are a lot of them out there).
I've literally been at stores and watched parents debate with the store employee about the game being okay for their kids. And not in the way you might think. The employee was 100% of the time saying "that's not a very good idea, that's not for kids, try this instead" and the parent wouldn't listen. So what good does the label do when you even have a store employee warning the parent. Clearly some parents are too stupid to do their job.
End
Of
Story
Exactly. You can't pander well by holding the following press conference.
"I'm not passing any legislation today to label candy. I'm not passing any legislation today to label video games. Today I'm begging parents to take the time to do their jobs. That is all."