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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (7335)	6/11/2000 3:01:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9127

I am induced to ruminate upon a problem that has caught my attention lately. A basic feature/bug in public policy. I call it the search for the Optimum in Charity. In days of old when knights were bold, there was little or no institutional charity. The weak or low-functioning were either kept alive by their more able family members - or tossed out as beggars, where Charles Darwin "took care" of them. Laziness carried a death sentence, and the lazy (for whatever reason) didn't survive. The one inestimable advantage of this "system" isd that there was no class of people who grew up into a sense of entitlement. You wanna eat? You gotta work. ...But this state of things was merciless, and the temporarily unlucky but otherwise capable people got tossed out into the same beggar's hell as the crippled or crazy or lazy. I was listening to NPR a week ago, and they interviewed a homeless man with a mental diagnosis. He wasn't suited to holding a job. he was homeless. He was being helped through a pilot program that required the effectively undivided attention of two caseworkers. In the '80s our President executed the budgetary masterstroke of "defunding" mental health care. Naturally, the nutters didn't go away. They ended up on the streets, and from there most ended up cycling in and out of jail. Now our jail and prison systems are the largest mental health care provider in the USA. And our police forces have been transformed into a two-branch service - the uniformed social worker and the SWAT Soldier Ant. Talk about false economy. So I began wondering ... This isn't working. We need some non-jail place for the nonfunctioning crazies to go. But nothing I could think up would efficiently exclude the lazies. Or be much cheaper than lots of people in jail. The cost of even rudimentary institutional charity is HIGH. There has to be some optimum in institutional, universally available charity - the most misery undone at the least price to society. I would hate to think that the optimum is at zero, which lands us in the middle ages, where nobility hired small armies to keep the crazies and lazies at bay. I am too experienced to believe even for a moment in the communist idea that once suffering is removed, we will still have some sort of incentive to work for the good of the community. I do believe that the thing that keeps us all working is nothing more evolved than the fear of hunger and discomfort. We need some way of supporting the true beggars - the schizophrenics, the disabled ... without removing the sting of failure from the lives of the rest of us. I have no idea how to do that and still entertain the fundamental idea that we are all equal before the law.

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (7335)	6/11/2000 3:26:00 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9127

So, unless we're either really lucky (in terms of technical progress) or really unlucky (say, a global famine or war) we will soon be forced to decide how to regulate and limit the right to breed. I'm not at all convinced that this problem requires a regulatory solution or restrictions on rights, not if it's dealt with sooner rather than later. The subject doesn't get discussed because it's too sensitive both in the sense you mentioned and also the religious aspects. It probably won't be feasible to have a dialogue about it until the problem is so bad the only alternatives will be regulatory. Something simple (conceptually, not politically) like limiting tax deductions for natural children to two would retract the current message that society values large families. The deduction is more symbolic than actual since the amount of money involved is small. But it continues the message that we, the people, want to help support those with large families. It's about time that message changed IMO. Karen

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (7335)	6/11/2000 7:07:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9127

So, unless we're either really lucky (in terms of technical progress) or really unlucky (say, a global famine or war)we will soon be forced to decide how to regulate and limit the right to breed. Only way to do it, IMO, is to spread education and prosperity. The educated and the prosperous breed less, it's well established. How to spread education and prosperity is another question, a rather difficult one.