: : about hoarding the opportunities to develop talent (actually I'm talking about hoarding opportunities for adequate socialization, an even more egregious error on society's part), such hoarding having little to do with Donovan Bailey.: One could claim, with some justification, that a Bailey cannot exist unless 'society' favors sportspeople and his particular setting facilitated training, nutrition, backing etc.
SDF: The hoarding of opportunities cannot be conflated with their development.
: Regardless the hoarding of opportunities for socialization is not an inevitable by product of any particular political system. It is more the parent valuing his child over other peoples children. They seek to provide for their children without what they consider undue compromise, and that may include not wishing to share opportunities with others. I dont think another political setup will change this, nor would an attempt to change the way we perceive and prefer 'ours' over 'theirs'. Hence the rich parents you see around you are not helping out the others.
SDF: Parenting is not the only means of child care. And merely because some parents apply more resources to child development does not mean some parents care more than others.
: : It isn't the RECIPIENTS of educational largesse or athletic training who can be blamed for the artificial scarcity of situations for socialization.
: I am glad you cleared that uop however it is the recipient who would have to compromise any advantageous position relative to others in order to achieve any kind of equality of opportunity
SDF: You assume an "advantageous position" to living in a society where opportunities for adequate socialization are rationed (with its attendant alienation, illiteracy, crime), as opposed to living in a society where everyone can be integrated in a healthy manner.
: and it is this that I would not believe to be achievable by any voluntary means.
SDF: No, for the reasons specified above.
: : Meanwhile, a few libertarians around here advocate the privatization of the public school system. Great idea! Force more people to be "born poor" so we can incant the Tough-Luck Factor even more often!
: As an aside will you agree that state schooling as it is presently carried out is not conducive to a healthy *thinking* mind?
SDF: No, I would not agree AT ALL with such a conclusion, having participated in the "state schooling" system in one function or another for most of my life.
: That a school under command of a state will be tuned to what those in power seek to achieve and that those goals may be quite horrific.
SDF: Another false presupposition. Here is one conterexample. If school is constrained by the State, it is constrained in the same way that private (and private state-subsidized, which counts as public) schooling is constrained, by the ideology of the people.
: That parents who do know better are less able to choose by having to support a system which may be destroying, rather than nurturing, their children?
SDF: Precisely the opposite. Public schools are subject to the democratic input of the people whereas private schools aren't, even though the latter may receive lots of public moneys.
: : Thus, the amount of charity the rich can afford to give will always be less than the amount needed to really resolve a social problem, the more so as a society reduces the amount of government force that is absorbing the costs of privatized poverty.
: Youre suggesting that the principle is similar to government programmes which never actually solve the target problem -why?
SDF: Nope, government programs which "never solve the target problem" do not do so because the people who design them do not fund them sufficiently to do so. Meanwhile my government successfully "solves the target problem" of not enough Pentagon weapons, over and over again.
: Because if they achieved any kind of success that department wouold not be 'needed' and 'caring' beaurocrats would not be able to furnish their careers which ever growing burdensome budgets. That this is the 'sufficiency level'
SDF: Such logic applying with much more force in the private sector, as one can see in America's privatized medical system, which focuses upon emergency treatment at the expense of prevention so that America's doctors can have a stable population of sick people.
: : It takes a village to raise a child, but if we just say that it's "tough luck" for that child to be "born poor," we're washing our hands of the social problem thusly created while refusing to admit of the social costs (of the production of undernourished underclasses) thusly incurred.
: I do hope you are quoting "it takes a village" from its original source and not Hillory Clintons "it takes a village as long as its under my command" If so then you are relying upon the voluntary association of people.
SDF: Please lay out the details of Hillary's sinister plan in any actually recognizable citation of government action (LOL!)
: : My argument is that, if you're born "destitute," you should have the right to a public-sector scenario for your upbringing.
: This 'right' creates an active obligation upon others to provide it, which for many people means compromising their advantage.
SDF: Babies must die to preserve such an advantage, as they do when they are abandoned in dumpsters by women who are doubtless frightened at the cost of keeping such babies. Why not sacrifice them in the calderas of volcanoes instead, to appease the gods?
: Therefore I would suggest, under any system, that it will not happen voluntarily which, to achieve it necessitates strict authoritarianism.
SDF: If "strict authoritarianism" is your definition of the welfare state you live under today, than I endorse it wholeheartedly.
: : Well, it really does happen for those born into poverty, but that's to absolve those who are born. The rest of us, who buy into capitalism, remain guilty as charged.
: Do you mean that a child who grows up in reasonable comfort and uses these advantages without seeking to share is guilty at some point - upon becoming 18 perhaps.
SDF: Keep assuming that the recipients of privilege (children) are the same ones as the ones guilty of hoarding it (the architects of "laissez-faire" social integration). Cognitive dissonance 1, logic 0.
