The fact is you could have professional dolites spending all their money on cigarettes and alcohol, abusing the system and laughing about it the whole time.
But it is still completely irrelevant. It doesn’t feed the children.
Punishment for bad parents is another, more complex, debate.
Its not the children’s fault and frankly it is embarrassing to even have this debate (in Parliament I mean, not here) when the same government saying we can’t afford to feed the kids are blowing through billions in contracts handed out to friends, family and business interests.
They wanted to silence Rashford by awarding him the MBE. It would have silenced any of them. They’re bitterly confused right now as to why he still cares.
As for your fishing post, what size would you like your pedant hat?
it’s not really pedantry to expose the utter hollowness of the insipid aphorism you offered hungry children
even if you consider somebody on state aid buying newports a greater crime than the belgian colonisation of congo or invading iraq, even then, it’s not the f–king child’s fault
I think there is a psychological argument to this that people need to respect. Too many people’s arguments - like @Klopptimist - look at this and can’t get past how they can make rational decisions and can’t understand why everyone can’t. Therefore if they see someone making a terrible decision that will make their life worse - having another baby, buying a plasma telly instead of food, gambling away the shopping money - they are inclined to blame them.
But the thing is the brain of a person living a comfortable life with enough money and the brain of a person living with the stress of poverty simply don’t process things in the same way.
Stress is the key factor in this. I can’t remember the name of the book I read about this, but basically stress makes the act of rational decision making very hard. A brain operating under stress just does not do very well considering options and picking the best one. We know this from studies putting animals in stress situations, and we know it from the effects of people operating in war zones, people in stressful city jobs, and so on. If you want to see a human being make terrible decisions, then subject them to stress conditions.
It also happens that poverty is one of the most stressful situations people can be subjected to. So when someone in poverty makes an objectively terrible decision, like buying a massive telly when their kids are in rags, they’re not just stupid or reckless or shit parents - they are being psychologically damaged by their poverty to the point where they struggle to make the sensible decisions that are in their longer term best interests.
Ultra simplistic populist argument + severe lack of imagination and a general lack of empathy is not something I can be bothered with confronting in length.
It is not at all “simple” as you claim, it can be exceedingly complex, but for some reason you don’t understand or respect that. Your situation nr. 2 is ridiculously artificially constructed to justify a lack of empathy and I can’t then be bothered. I normally would not have responded to your post, but readily admit that you triggered me to respond with your parenthesis)
Have a good evening. I am going to watch some football and will not get back to this as I have said everything I wanted.
It’s not nice to troll. It’s not clever. It’s also such a 2010 thing to do, too…
If your not trolling, at what point do you pause and reflect on what you just said…
Just to indulge you… is it a great idea, given human history, for one grouping of people to decide whether another grouping of people has a right to live and exist into the future?
Using any parameter you like…race, religion, location, species, supposed intelligence…
I actually agree with you here, the answer can be and is quite simple, it’s just the ramifications people don’t like
For instance, using a really really basic example…
Imagine for a second, if Jeff bezos had 1 less billion dollars, let’s just imagine he gives it away in say, maybe a gift to the government for running a society he can operate in, let’s call it a tax on his earnings for shits and giggles…that’s all…the systems already established, no need to re invent the wheel…then imagine that billion dollars is distributed to the American health system…
Totalitarianism is always simple. There are good reasons for people not liking your ramifications and said solutions. It implies great cruelty in the ruler, biological effectiveness alone is Social Darwinism and that is what you are spouting here. And you are being loud and clear about it. That line of thinking was very popular in the 1920s, rose in the 30s, ruled an empire for 5 years in the 40s. Hell, in Norway we sterilized “traveling people” long after the war was over, that way of thinking was still popular until the 1960s. We consider it a shameful chapter now, but obviously it was effective and the travelers were not productive, so according to your vision, they deserved it and it should be done more.
But I don’t mind sharing a forum with someone who uses the vision for humanity that NSDAP did historically to justify his cynical lack of empathy, I am for free discourse also with totalitarian types. But I will note that what you write, is that exactly. Your opinions of your fellow men and women revolts me.
Biological effectiveness and easy solutions indeed. The “best” solution for biological effectiveness, which you use in your thinking , is to kill everyone above 60 that is not part of the elite, and massacre the poor (in death camps ? easier and cleaner if in camps for sure), maximizing economic gain.
Of course, such a society would be a living hell to live in and there would be little room for dissent or free thought due to the nature of said extreme solutions, meaning that more than just the poor would have to be removed to maximise effectiveness.
By banning such posters from normal, well-moderated fora they are driven to extremist channels; all of a sudden, a formerly irrelevant forum has hundreds of thousands of loud, disgruntled voices and influences political decisions.