From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Sat Oct 08 2005 - 21:03:13 BST
[Platt offers]
Kids with shovels is all the neighborhood needs. Tell 'em if they don't
shovel, they don't eat.
[Arlo]
So... rather than buying snowblowers they should all make babies. What's quite
intriguing about this is Platt stumbled on a significant historical factor of
why the poorer families among us tend to have the most children.
Namely, to create labor, and thus income, potential. (Ah, now before you have a
conniption, I'm not referring to modern welfare statistics, but to panglobal
working poor, who throughout time have tended towards the largest families).
Oddly, I've read the counter-argument asserted that wealthy families tend to
opt for one (or sometimes two) children is to keep the inheritence from
fracturing upon passing.
But, here I'll agree with you Platt. This is an "ace" solution (although I'm not
sure if I'd go along with starving the kids). But it is one that combines the
best of cooperative and self-derived goals.
It solves the problem without falling victim to consumerist marketing that tells
us the only way for us to be happy is to "own". It distributes wealth into the
local community, and it rewards active labor with profit. (I'll assume for now,
being the optimist I am, that the kids would work out a system that all who
were willing could participate, at various tasks, and no one willing would be
pushed aside. I'll also be the eternal optimist and say that they agree that to
share the revenue fairly among all participants. Finally, I'll also assume a
meaningful relationship between labor and wages, one that the children see as
meaningful.)
Furthermore, it enriches each individual home by preserving wealth that can be
saved, allocated to meaningful "flow" activities and so on.
Lastly, as is oh-so-important these days, it makes the children part of a real
"activity system" of the neighborhood and their families. They can contribute,
and participate, as meaningful members, valued for their skills and their
labor. Much better than the current ubiquitous system of "passive neglect",
where kids are pretty much excluded from real family and community activity,
and fill the void with hours of television, video games, hanging at the mall,
and other such activities that- although fun and likely important socially in
modernation, become damaging when they become the raison d' etre for the
child's life.
Ooops, tangenting again. Sorry.
Arlo
PS: I realize your suggestion likely entailed one family withholding food to
their own kid until he cleaned their own sidewalks, but I opted for more a "Our
Gang" vision. Hope you don't mind. :-)
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