Why giving ignorant people the freedom to screw up is bad for society

[quikchange]

I'd been thinking about putting this argument into words for several days now after discussing the issue with several people recently but this blog entry finally prompted me to actually do it. I'm a big proponent of individual freedoms, generally ranking them higher than other desirable goals like financial security, professional recognition,

Comments

[ramou]

I agree with you all the way to the last paragraph. I think you failed to pass your test about understanding what makes people make bad decisions. No gov't money for you. Being aware of consequences does not mean a hill of beans. As you've stated it, the people don't have to give a damn about anything, as long as the can answer the questions properly

[quikchange]

It is human nature to pick short-term gain over long-term gain and some people may simply be incapable of making responsible decisions. But there are also people who make bad decisions simply because they don't know any better. My thought was to help those people without forcing everybody to accept centralized decisions even when they understand the problem and think they have a better approach for their particular situation.

[adamspitz]

I don't remember what I said in our conversation a few months ago. It's certainly possible that my opinions have changed significantly since then. Today, I don't think I'd "decree" that parents or other people "should" anything. I'd say that I might (depending on the specifics of the law) be willing to vote for a law that reasonably-clearly specifies certain conditions under which it would be legal to take a child away from his parents. (But it'd probably be pretty easy to convince me to change my mind about this

[quikchange]

Alright, so it seems that the implementation details of testing people would make my proposal unworkable. I think I shall concede this point. Let me see if I can suggest a better approach.
Instead of trying prevent people form screwing up, we just make a reasonable effort to educate them (using things like public service announcements). Again, this may lead to people assuming that they can rely upon the government for all their critical information. I'm not sure whether that trade-off is bad enough to avoid trying to improve the problem in this manner altogether or not.

[ramou]

We need to encourage the society (as a whole) to embrace education. If people actually wanted to learn, it wouldn't be an onerous task on our poor government, we all just grow up thinking that learning was the right thing to do... how do we do this? Well, certainly not be giving tax breaks for having children (which is what giving cash directly to parents amounts to).

However, if the government starts trying to educate people, I don't think the argument can be made, outside of a Huxleyan distopia, that people would start to rely on the government as the only source for useful information.

[adamspitz]

Sure, that sounds better to me than making people write tests.

In which subjects do you think these kinds of public service announcements would help?

My guess is that it's pretty easy, and not even particularly expensive, to learn most of the things that I can imagine you wanting the government to tell people. Are there subjects that you think are so expensive to learn about, or that private information sources (books, magazines, news organizations, word-of-mouth) do such a bad job of covering, that it'll make a big difference if the government steps in?

[tangbu]

Agreed, people are stupid, people are lazy. I also agree that education would help a lot of people - how much education does the average person receive in child rearing? Take a look at the grocery cart in front of you at the supermarket some time - most people can't even feed themselves correctly, let alone a kid. Most highly educated people will try to find out what's good for baby, but there's little or no incentive for most people to research the subject.

The trouble with enforcing such things is, who makes the rules? If we gave the State the ability to take a child away, what's to stop them taking a child from its parents if the parents refuse to take the kid to church? Or the "wrong" church?

That said, there's plenty of research documenting the cycles of poverty, drugs, abuse etc., and these things are almost universally considered to be Bad For Society. Breaking those cycles in a humanitarian way is a very difficult but commendable goal. I just don't think force is the right solution.

Part 1

[2much_thinking]

Tony, you've opened up a can of worms and you've entered an area of many heated debates. What is the "correct" way to raise a child? There isn't one. It is situationally dependant. You can't create laws that apply to a few and make them apply to everyone

part 2

[2much_thinking]

and on and on

Re: part 2

[ramou]

Violence does have an impact on children, beyond the infantile and popularized "immitation of" perspective. Listening to 50 won't make you go shoot someone 9 times, but in a mind that hasn't settled on its values yet, I imagine it can make it seem more normal to do small violence against another (that's where it starts

Re: part 2

[2much_thinking]

Very true, I agree that society must help eachother's members, but to a certain extent they need to butt-out. Because what makes them so right that their thoughts apply to my kids? it doesn't. They don't. That was my point there. The laws should be a bit more vague so it is subject to the situation and circumstance not some clear cut definition, because nothing in this world is clear cut