i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about this?

[metalman]

not everyone starts on 3rd base. what can the free market do for those who start on 1st with lead weights on their ankles?

[santafe2]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

not everyone starts on 3rd base. what can the free market do for those who start on 1st with lead weights on their ankles?

I am not asking anything of you. Just tell people they should be there for their kids...

That's the key. Mothers and fathers need to be there for their kids and lead by example. It has nothing to do with wealth or position or the free market. It's about commitment to family, paying attention to your kids and giving direction.

The next level of commitment is to your community. The writer obviously knew this was a special kid in a difficult situation and for 14 years did nothing to guide or support him. This is what passes for humanity in the MSM today. The writer sets a worse example than the drug dealing father and somehow thinks of himself as better.

I would be embarrassed, shamed to admit I knew someone special who was in distress and I did nothing for them. Yet he writes about it as if his writing has value unto itself. His words only serve to carve his shame in stone.

[World Traveler]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

Believe it or not, France provides a very good role model for support of ALL children in their society. Michael Moore's movie Sicko did a good job of documenting it. New mothers are provided in-home assistance by drop-in helpers, families are paid benefits for each child to help with the cost of raising a future French citizen, and their day-care system is among the most affordable and professional in the world.

I don't know if he's still involved, but one of Colin Powell's first endeavors after leaving the Bush 1 administration was to set up a program that addressed early intervention for disadvantaged very young children. You have to catch and nurture them at ages 4, 5, 6 before they become molded by their horrific environment, and provide positive support.

I believe the government does have a role in helping these kids. If these future American citizens don't get the support to turn out "good", they turn out "bad", then society spends a huge amount keeping them in jail and prison as adults.

One of the problems going forward for America is that even if we do find the will to help disadvantaged children, will there be jobs for them in the future that allow them dinity and hope? Large swaths of American industry are going to second and third world level wages. (I just read that the "green" alternative energy factories in the Mid-West start that are the hope to replace auto jobs at $10 an hour).

I do not like No Child Left Behind, because it's a very punitive process, generally speaking. Here in Texas the testing starts in the third grade. And if you don't pass the test, you don't move to next grade. A friend teaches bi-lingual third grade to children of immigrants (many parents don't speak English) and she and the children live in fear of this test. She teaches to the test all year. If the designated number of kids in her class don't pass, she gets written up with a black mark, the kids may have to repeat the grade, and the school principal is also under a lot of pressure, since the school is rated on the basis of these annual tests. NCLB is a nightmare for all and is not the way to "lift up" these kids. It makes her and the kids nervous, sick wrecks - all punishment and no reward.

We need as a society to move to a "kinder, gentler" model to help these kids. With Obama as president, I'm hopeful we'll see some changes, especially if he gets eight years in office.

The alternative if we don't was discussed in an interview posted on iTulip last month, with the creator of the HBO series, The Wire. The kids grow to be a drag on a society that can't provide then adequate jobs for their low skill levels, so they turn to crime, and end up costing the U.S. and states a lot of money, via crime and the costs of incarceration.

By the way, since I grew up in Chicago and still have family there, I know where Humboldt Park area is, referenced in the article. It's a minority area. That kid in the article started out with 2 1/2 strikes against him. Very young parents who made bad life choices so that father was in jail, lived in a dangerous, poor part of the city surrounded by gangs, and he's a minority.

How can we judge him, we who have had so much help from family, are not a minority, and grew up in a good part of town? That's what always bother me about Libertarian philosophy, it assumes we all have the same opportunities and advantages in life and that is far from true.

[charliebrown]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

I'm not so sure about the Obama kinder gentler etc plan.

Kids need LOVE. Love means I'm going to do what is in your long term interest no matter what the cost to the death! You can't pay someone to give love like this to kids. Kids have a built in "Radar" they know when they are truly loved. Once in a while a "paid" person will fall in love with your child and goes the extra mile, but these situations are rare, and guess what ... they still leave when a better opportunity arises. I know there are lots of kids from broken homes where they are not loved. Yes they need some support from the gvt. but that is really not the ultimate answer. I'm surrounded by them. There are many kids right in my neighborhood who come from families without dads, families where there is dad, no dad, new dad, no dad, no mom, grandma, no grandma etc. etc. The kid is lonely, but I have to admire that he is not a psycopath. What is that telling the kid? Your not important enough for me to stick around or endure any hardship.

I hate to say it but maybe the courts need to stick up for kids and take them away from disfunctional situations and find homes where they are loved. I am the father of one adopted child. There is a long waiting list for kids. I waited two years. For good families in bad situations, maybe the gvt can assist getting them out of a bad situation. Many parents are trapped in a bad neighborhood. Cant afford to find a new job, move etc.
Very difficult situation there are no easy answers. The idea of the court tearing kids from their parents is not a good thought either.

I am the father of special needs child. Yes I could and did pay a bunch of people of to take care of my child but it didn't work. The best teacher, therapist, mentor etc is me. I was working and going to school to change careers and realized that without me my son would be lost, no matter how many specialists and care givers I hired. I quit my program, and refocused my career to give the most time I can to him.

A poorly paid teacher, and a worn text book produced our greatest thinkers and leaders of the past, why do we need to spend $8000 a student for an elementry school education? Parents are so busy working, teachers are so busy complining with the rules, testing etc that the kids are forgotten.

[Judas]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

The tragic thing is that this poor kid was a likely a product of our desire to start everyone on "third base". The destruction of the black family and community can mostly be traced back to the "war on poverty" and misguided government attempts to centrally plan outcomes. And the government's "war on drugs", which created and nurtured the gangs, looks to have ruined him in the end. I dread the next "war on X" which will produce many, many more of these kids.

EDIT: Actually, I wonder if the long term effect of the "war on terror" will be more broken families and disfunctional kids and communities.

[Sharky]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

not everyone starts on 3rd base. what can the free market do for those who start on 1st with lead weights on their ankles?

I'm not sure you're really asking an honest question, but in case you are, here are a few things that would be different in a real free market:

-- Drugs would be legal. The kid wouldn't be going to jail, because what he did wouldn't be a crime.
-- Legal drugs lowers prices and makes selling and being involved with drugs less enticing. The kid and his father may not have started to sell drugs at all.
-- The drug trade fuels the gangs. With less money, gangs wouldn't be as strong, and the kid may not have ended up getting involved with one.
-- A free market for schools would allow stronger schools that are able to reject gangs. Maybe the kid wouldn't have been exposed to them.

As far as having crappy parents -- a free market won't help with that. Some people are unlucky. That's called life. Some people have the strength (and luck) to rise up from the crap they start out in, and others don't. In a free market, at least we wouldn't have the crap that keeps some people bound to the welfare state, that discourages parents from living with each other, that prevents us from acting in our own self defense, etc, etc.

[santafe2]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

The destruction of the black family and community can mostly be traced back to the "war on poverty"...

:confused:...You've forgotten a little thing called slavery? And then nearly 100 years of Jim Crow Laws. To politcize this this and blame it on the War on Poverty is just dumb. Maybe you'd like to role back the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act as well.

[Judas]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

:confused:...You've forgotten a little thing called slavery? And then nearly 100 years of Jim Crow Laws. To politcize this this and blame it on the War on Poverty is just dumb. Maybe you'd like to role back the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act as well.

I haven't forgotten about slavery or Jim Crow. It isn't about politics. I'm not dumb. I wouldn't like to "role" back the Civil Rights Act or Voting Rights Act.

If you want to discuss the community cohesion, crime, single parent households, etc. of minority communities earlier in the 20th century as compared to after the rise of the welfare state, government housing projects, etc. which came later I'd be happy to oblige. If you're going to ask stupid loaded questions, imply I'm racist, insinuate I'm intellectually lacking, etc. then I have little to say to you.

EDIT: Actually, if you truly are interested in something more than an internet insult-fest a good place to start is with the works of Thomas Sowell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell

[Munger]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

The tragic thing is that this poor kid was a likely a product of our desire to start everyone on "third base". The destruction of the black family and community can mostly be traced back to the "war on poverty" and misguided government attempts to centrally plan outcomes. And the government's "war on drugs", which created and nurtured the gangs, looks to have ruined him in the end. I dread the next "war on X" which will produce many, many more of these kids.

EDIT: Actually, I wonder if the long term effect of the "war on terror" will be more broken families and disfunctional kids and communities.

Spot on. It is similarly tragic that government meddling in the free market is responsible for cancer, earthquakes, the extinction of the dinosaurs, AIDS, sharks, etc.

/sarcasm

[vinoveri]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

with all due respect, WAKE UP!

modernism -> moral relativism -> secularism - legal positivism driven by social pseudo science - why are you surprised?

A governmental and economic system which is not fundamentally oriented toward supporting the family - and respecting the perogatives of parents to govern the raising of their own children, and an economic system which doesn't force both parents to work (read debt serf) - and which seeks to marginal religion - is the enemy of the common man.

The secularist anti-theist have gained control over the public education system, starting at the highest university levels. There's TRUTH (which we are lacking), and then there is sentimental tripe and sophistry based on NOTHING, but taught from on high.

Libertarians stand around and watch their liberties being systematically stripped away.

[rogermexico]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

Spot on. It is similarly tragic that government meddling in the free market is responsible for cancer, earthquakes, the extinction of the dinosaurs, AIDS, sharks, etc.

/sarcasm

Food Pyramid.jpg


I am pretty convinced that government meddling through the official vilification of saturated fat consumption and the promotion of excessive carbohydrate consumption via the "food pyramid" has caused cancer, as well as obesity and heart disease.

Not sure about the dinosaur extinction, though. You might be right about that one.

[Master Shake]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

not everyone starts on 3rd base. what can the free market do for those who start on 1st with lead weights on their ankles?

The government's war on poverty fixed everything, didn't it?

[flintlock]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

You can politicize it it anyway you please, but this kind of stuff isn't going to stop until we make the losers who keep having kids they don't want nor can afford pay a price. Instead of paying a price for it, we make it easy for them and actually turn it into a way of living. Freedom without responsibility is a joke. Our system has removed all the responsibility but tried to maintain a parents "right" to have a kid. In the past, poverty and starvation held this type of behavior in check. Socialism only encourages it. In my opinion, we need take care of the kids, to fund orphanages if we have to, but get them away from the scumbag parents. A shovel and a 25 cent bullet would be money well spent in that regard as far as I'm concerned. :mad:

[Master Shake]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

I haven't forgotten about slavery or Jim Crow. It isn't about politics. I'm not dumb. I wouldn't like to "role" back the Civil Rights Act or Voting Rights Act.

If you want to discuss the community cohesion, crime, single parent households, etc. of minority communities earlier in the 20th century as compared to after the rise of the welfare state, government housing projects, etc. which came later I'd be happy to oblige. If you're going to ask stupid loaded questions, imply I'm racist, insinuate I'm intellectually lacking, etc. then I have little to say to you.

EDIT: Actually, if you truly are interested in something more than an internet insult-fest a good place to start is with the works of Thomas Sowell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell

The black community was much healthier and more vibrant under Jim Crow than after The Great Society. That fact does not mean that one pines for a return to segregation, only that the great liberal social experiments of the past 4-5 decades were dismal failures, unless you judge them by the percentage of people dependent on government or the emergence of an entitlement/grievance mentality.

Here's an except from one of Sowell's speechs on academic achievement under segregation v. now.

Back in 1899, when the schools of Washington, D.C. were racially segregated and discrimination was rampant, there were four academic high schools in the city-- three white and one black. When standardized tests were given that year, the black academic high school scored higher than two of the three white academic high schools.⁶ Today, exactly a century later, even setting such a goal would be considered hopelessly utopian. Nor was this a fluke. That same high school was scoring at or above the national average on IQ tests during the 1930s and 1940s.⁷ Yet its physical plant was inadequate and its average class size was higher than that in the city's white high schools.

Today, that same school has a much better physical plant and per-pupil expenditures in the District of Columbia are among the highest in the nation. But the students' test scores are among the lowest. Nor was this school unique in having had higher academic achievements during a period when it seemingly lacked the prerequisites of achievement and yet fell far behind in a later period when these supposed prerequisites were more plentiful.

This is obviously not an argument for segregation and discrimination, nor does it deny that counter-examples might be found of schools that languished in the first period and did better in the second. The point here is much more specific-- that resources have had little or nothing to do with educational quality. Numerous studies of schools in general have shown that, both within the United States and in international comparisons. It should be no surprise that the same applies to black schools.

http://www.tsowell.com/spracecu.html

[c1ue]

Re: i'm a libertarian end all, but i'm wondering tonight, what's the free market going to do about t

You can politicize it it anyway you please, but this kind of stuff isn't going to stop until we make the losers who keep having kids they don't want nor can afford pay a price. Instead of paying a price for it, we make it easy for them and actually turn it into a way of living.

Flintlock,

You are forgetting that by having a society based on democracy and votes, the effect is the creation of an inalienable commodity in every warm breathing body: a vote.

Is it so surprising that votes can be cultivated in a similar manner to commercially farmed pigs?