The technical problem that was causing my latest column, "Pyramid Schemes," to intermittently load slowly seems to be gone, so if you didn't get a chance to read it by now, I'll post this snippet as a reminder that it's working well again:
Since my job is to speak the reasonable ideas that are presently thought unspeakable, here’s a suggestion. President Obama is a big fan of basketball, and the NBA has a famous “One and Done” rule mandating that young stars spend at least one year in college before jumping to the pros.
Obama should thus promote the phrase “One and Done” as a simple mnemonic advice for women who are in jail, on welfare, unwed, or illegal: Unless you get your life together, you shouldn’t have more than one child.
Read the whole thing there.
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11 comments:
One and Done is a good enough idea on the surface, but in practice, no amount of coaching for NAM felons, welfare recipients, and illegals to have the level of societal concern will work. What will work is turning off the free goodies tap. No more welfare unless you get a tubal ligation, no more conjugal visits in jail, etc.
Why would a Democrat endorse this? Dysfunctional welfare cases provide more Democrat votes than responsible middle class families.
Steve, relevant to my Egypt comment, there is a vast, not "deep state" but permanent bureaucracy of people who are basically glorified baby sitters and shouters on behalf of NAMs. Outreach coordinators, diversity advocates, community relations specialists, the like.
Hey, it beats working. And money for nothing.
I don't buy the claim of old glory days in Egypt. When israel peace negotiators visited Egypt as part of the Sinai peace accords, they were completely shocked at how filthy poor the country was - like third world African country poor (aside from the military, which was living high on the hog).
If you drive across the center of any large American city, you see a vast underclass created by the welfare state. They've grown up in homes and neighborhoods where no one ever worked or developed any habits or skills that would even make them employable. You can't do anything about the current ghetto inhabitants. They're beyond hope in most cases. All you can do is try to keep another generation of them from being born.
Eugenics by personal choice, or even with some incentives (like forgiveness on child support obligations in exchange for getting a vasectomy) sound reasonable. But I very much worry that it is likely to become mandatory once a voluntary system is started. Centralized power and mandates from on high are very much in the nature of US society these days. Bloomberg style paternalism, or worse, war on drugs style paternalism, is popular among the ruling class, at least when it's imposed on those below them.
sounds reasonable
How do you propose to stop number 2?
in practice, no amount of coaching for NAM felons, welfare recipients, and illegals to have the level of societal concern will work. What will work is turning off the free goodies tap.
Pure propaganda can work too. Imagine that One and Done is given a similar amount of attention in the media as, say, gay marriage have been given over the past decade or so. Q.E.D.
Eugenics in some form under some other name is likely to return.
Eugenics is a funny set of ideas. Everyone knows they are 'wrong' or 'discredited' or 'odious'. But no one can explain quite why. There is a lot of loose talk about the Nazis whenever the word is mentioned but it's easy to dream up a negative eugenics program that doesn't involve genocide or concentration camps.
It's as if we refused to administer MRIs because of the abuses of phrenology.
If I'm right about homosexuality being caused by the toxoplasma gondii parasite, the public will likely launch its own spontaneous eugenics program - no government needed.
There may very well be a spontaneous grass roots positive eugenics program too. The public and plenty of sports organizations have taken to anabolic steroids in a big way. Presumably there is a gene somewhere that increases testosterone naturally. That gene will be found and then the whole 'juicing' controversy may move into a new phase.
There are genes also that mediate male pattern baldness. That's another area for grass roots eugenics. All this is coming fast. We should talk about it.
Albertosaurus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prevention
From the article start:
Project Prevention (formerly Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity or CRACK) is an American non-profit organization that pays drug addicts cash for volunteering for long-term birth control, including sterilization. Originally based in California and now based in North Carolina, the organization began operating in the United Kingdom in 2010. The organization offers US$300 (£200 in the UK) to each participant. Barbara Harris founded the organization in 1997 after she and her husband adopted the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth children of a drug-addicted mother.[1] As of 7 October 2011 the organization had paid 3,848 clients.
The organization has been controversial, with some comparing it to the eugenics movement.[2]
I say: donate!
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