Munkii: I was thinking of somthing similar, but that would be an unlikely situation. Oh, boy. You (we) are so brainwahsed it's scary. But there is hope for you since you are actually trying to learn on your own beside the standard fare that is served to you by the "educators".
And I am not talking about politics here but the use of language. There is an essay on the (mis)use of langiage by George Orwell - Politics and the English Language, and his book "1984" that is a brilliant illustration how the language is distorted to change the way people think.
You should stop thinking in artificual completely bogus concepts like "government", "society", "charity" etc. Those words have their place to denote certain valid concepts but taking them out of their proper area of use, pretending that those "things" actually exist as some kinds of acting entities - rather than denote certain systems of relations between acting individuals - is a fallacy that prevents many from thinking straight. (Assigning independent existence to an artificial concept is called "reification, IIRC)
People act. People make decisions. People make mistakes and learn form them.
Whan I say "charity", I mean individual people making decisions to help other people they deem worthy of their help - nothing more, nothing less.
Same as government is a group of people in certain relations towards other people and each other.
How would said charity determing whom recieved help, and who didn't? It would be irrelevant what I said because being voluntary, any charity would set its own standards.
Of course if a charity was asking me for an advice on how to administer their money, I would say find the cases where there would be the most bang for the buck and attach a lot of strings.
Find the most capable children who's talents would be most wasted and help them advance - so they become productive members of the society and benefit others.
Cut the help if the family does not do its utmost to utilise it. If they let a child skips school, if they have another child even though they could not afford the first two, if they pay for cable TV or jewelry - I'd take my money away from them and offer it to another family.
Of course everyone has his own priorities and the charities reflect that. Some address the most desperate cases instead of the most promising ones, as I would. That's free choice.
What would stop this charity from being abused like the welfare system we have today? Why would anyone care if a charity is abused besides a person who voluntarily paid money for it? I am not concerned how wisely you spend your food money, why would I question your charity spending?
Or rather I am very much concerned about how you spend your money - food, charity, education, etc. - make no mistake about it. I am just not going to endorse coercion as a way to influence your choices. Libertarians are not uncaring - just opposed to coercion.I'm fairly certain suburban America would be uneffected, but inner urban area's would see a sharp drop in graduating students, and a sharp rise in child labor. How much are those "educations" really worth? Those people may benefit much more from aquired work habits than a bogus diploma.
Education is an investment. As with any investment, it only makes sense if it brings fruit in excess of the cost. Education pays if it makes a person more productive so that the cost would be covered. If that is the case, it would be easy to secure a loan or some other kind of financing as it would be for any other venture.
We would see much more of such financing if the government did not make it illegal and did not divert enourmous amounts of resources from private economy, driving the real interest rates up.
The only percieved benefit would be the accumulation of capital for the family so they could escape the inner city, but that would sacrifice at least one generations educational opportunities. What's the other option? A family does not send a child to work instead of sending him to a private boarding school. A family sends a child to work at a factory so that the child does not have to work in the field, beg or starve.
If that family had educational opportunities, why would it choose to end a child to work? Of course, there is an illusion that by confiscating wealth from a capitalist you can benefit that family - and you can. But this would deter capitalists from investing and creating capital in the future, so the increase of wealth and real wages will be slower and many other families would be worse off than they could have been.
The road to common welfare is increasing productivity and production through accumulation of capital per person, not redistrisributing the existing wealth. Any such redistribution just slows down or reverses the progress.
Munkii, would you read the thread mentioned at the bottom of this post - it will give you an understanding for the philisophical underpinning of my positions.
I used some Hayekian wordings there but I am sure he was not the first one to come up with them.
crowMAW: It appears that the child in your senario of the economic unit known as the family is a slave.
Now if we truly open up a "free market" concept to all individuals, including children There is a distinction between children and their parents. It's a bit too complex issue to address righ now - the origin of people's rights in a free society.
In short, a parent is entitled to make decisions on behalf of a child. A perent can certainly send a child to work on the family farm or factory rather than let him or his siblings starve.
I would not call a child a slave of his parents because that word has a pretty specific meaning. There are all kinds of relations where one person is entitled to make decisions for another one.
Children cannot be considered rational actors because it is known that human brains does not develop it's cognitive abilities untill certain age, so they are not capable of acting rationally.
Here is a post on the nature of rigths I wrote in February. it covers the nature and origin of rights and touches the parent-child rights as well:
Rights, liberty and the Rule of Law. Here is a quote but read the whole post to understand the concepts of domain and rights that I use.
A child originates within a person’s body, so a child belongs to that person – part of his/her domain. A child does not have claim to any rights other than those voluntarily claimed on its behalf by its parents (see Rights above) – since nobody has incurred any obligation to such child/fetus. Parent has rights in a society by supporting its operation and can claim such rights for a child.
Nobody is allowed to offer anything – candy, ride, pornography, a book, let alone drugs or alcohol to an underage child because it would violate the parent’s domain - unless the parents agree, of course. Nobody can claim rights for someone else’s child because enforcing them would mean violating the parents’ domain.
When a child grows old enough to support the operation of the society, he claims the same rights as others. The exact moment when that occurs is a tricky question. Probably when a child steps outside and says “I am my own responsibility” and the parent says “OK, I am not responsible for him/her anymore and whatever is done to him/her is not a violation of my domain“. Probably the prevailing tradition will have a say on the age.
miko
