Posts by Bart Janssen
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Speaker: My People, in reply to Danielle,
Not who is going to pay
But mostly how and why.
Why is because we want the children to actually get what they need.
How is from us all contributing. And then how is by making what the kids need free.
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Sorry Joe, I was just a bit upset that what was a discussion about how to improve the lot of NZ children had somehow become about some eugenics plot that I was scheming and I missed the sarcasm tag.
I do think that it's of some significance that we now seem to be actively poaching the labour forces of less economically "developed" countries in order to subsidise or own standard of living.
Yup. Yet another example of how the only way our leaders can imagine growth is to increase the population of workers. It just isn't sustainable.
You want my vision of something we should try.
How about we say every child from age 2 to 20 gets "teaching" from skilled trained professionals at say a ratio of no more than 10 to 1. During that time we apply the best known educational theories to allow each child to hit their potential, creatively, intellectually, physically. We also say that all of those children will get healthy nutritious food even if the state has to provide it and will get reasonable exercise to establish a healthy lifestyle. We don't try and change the parents, it's too late for them. But we do try and give the children an opportunity to know how to do it right so that even if their home example isn't perfect then the kids have the knowledge to do it better.
The idea is we create a generation of kiwis who can do better.
Would it cost a fortune? - hell yes. Would it have failures and glitches - hell yes. Would it be worth it? I think so. Why don't we try?
In short we don't need more, we need to do better with the children we have.
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Ok so my comment has confused people
While I’ll argue vehemently that we ought to provide better for all the children regardless of how big the family is, I’ll also argue that those people who do have big families are doing some harm to our planet – less harm than any merchant banker but more harm than a family of 2 or 3 children.
Was in response to Gio saying we don't have a population surplus and part of a post about our local population being part of a whole planet.
What I was trying unsuccessfully to get to was that I don't want to penalise children for being part of a large family and I'm not keen on penalising parents either. However, I also don't think it's appropriate to promote having larger families because ultimately more people isn't a viable strategy for growing "wealth" (social, cultural and financial).
I don't think we need to actively try to encourage smaller families because that happens naturally anyway so long as you don't actively promote larger families. That's one reason for me wanting to disconnect providing for the children by paying the parents. You might choose to do both for different reasons but simply paying the parent because they have children is, to me, lazy.
I also do believe that having more babies is an environmental cost, much more so in a developed country like NZ than in a poor country. That isn't a directive to stop having babies but it is something to think about in much the same way people think about which car they buy or whether they need to be a three car household. To repeat myself, that is simply meant to reinforce the idea that our path to "wealth" can't require having lots more babies in NZ, even if NZ isn't overpopulated itself.
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I find it offensive that Ehrlich's Population Bomb arguments come up in a thread on Jackie's lovely post about the families she works with.
No they didn't until you brought them and I find that really disappointing since you could have been constructive.
What was said was we need to provide our children with all they need, better. Then we talked about how to do that and someone suggested a decreasing benefit to the family based on number of children. Then several people (myself included) suggested that this harmed the children and instead there ought to be a better way of doing it. Then someone said we ought to encourage more babies because NZ has a low population. Then I said no we have enough people on this planet already and we don't need to encourage more. I also pointed out that there is a cost to having lots of babies, which is not meant as an argument in favour of limiting the number of babies - you put those words in my mouth - something Craig has discouraged.
Note that is very different from suggesting we should penalize large families. That is the leap you made.
My desire in those whole thread has been to explore how we can get the best possible care for our children. And also to point out that we really should want to contribute more tax in order to do that.
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much as I hate this lecture
typo?
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Okay, I think it's safe to say it's not a pony.
Not even a celestial steed?
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and who should pay for that etc
Actually most of the discussion has been about how to pay for the best care of the children. With a strong thread of "that family rorting the system by having lots of babies is a myth".
Who is obvious ... all of us.
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So a family with no children would be even better for the planet? Or maybe we should all kill ourselves to achieve the best outcome for the planet?
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Without children, we have no continuance
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"save the rainforest, sterilise a Brazilian"
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And the best way to stop this from happening is preventing people from having more than the officially sanctioned number of children? Really?
If you want to argue extremes then go play on kiwiblog. None of those points is anything like what I’m saying. I have made it utterly clear that I value the children but I also am conscious that choices families make have real consequences.
I made my comments in response to the statement that we need more babies because New Zealand doesn’t have a big population. I think that argument is seriously flawed because it considers New Zealand independent of the whole world and also ignores the benefits of a low population. It is also mired in the dogma that the only way to grow “wealth” is to grow population.
At no point have I suggested we penalise families for having lots of babies I just think we need to approach how we care for children from a perspective of helping the children directly and completely without using the lazy approach of handing the parent some cash and saying we trust you to get it right.
Oh and evolutionary arguments have no relevance to homo sapiens at the moment. We don’t have any selection pressure therefore there can be no evolution and that has been true for 10s of thousands of years. The only thing likely to end our species is total environmental collapse as a result of overpopulation and diminishing resources and not from lack of breeding. It is utterly inappropriate to consider declining population a threat to our species at this point.
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You may be opposed to eugenics, but unfortunately, your arguments seem to suggest that you aren't.
Unfair Jackie. Sasha has been really clear and his arguments are nothing like eugenics.
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Surely we don't think only fecund parents will be rorting the system?
But that’s not the point. They aren’t rorting the system they are rorting the children, intentionally or unintentionally. Our tendency is to focus solutions on the parents, by taxation or benefits. I argue if you focus the solution on the children most of those discussions about mythical rorting of the system become moot.