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Pastimes : The New Judge Bleonard's Assorted Reef Life&Bottom Feeders -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (102)	6/8/1998 7:52:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 174

Fertility - Right or Privilege? I'm sitting here posting to myself - which can't be a good sign - musing darkly on the present aand future shape of society. I've been engaged in a few private exchanges that have served to get the frontal cortex simmering. I suspect that if we look at the far right and the far left of our political spectrum (and I'm gonna generalize greatly and recklessly here) we see the timeless conflict between Freedom and Compassion. Freedom means that the individual is given supreme power over, and responsibility for, his own fate. On the one hand, merit is rewarded without limitation. On the other hand, the individual, perhaps through no greater fault than to be born poor, is in real danger of starving. Compassion is the counterforce. This dictates the skimming of resources from the best-off members of society in order to feed and clothe the disadvantaged. In the socialist extreme, this means You Can't ** Up. Here's the monkeywrench. I suspect that a comprehensive social safety net, one that is sufficiently compassionate to head off starvation through economic disenfranchisement, has a bad side effect. It rewards laziness. The average Joe, given a choice between working for steak or standing in line for beans - how would he choose? If the proportion of those who view beans as some sort of right gets too high, the productive end of society can easily be bankrupted. Worse. What's to stop the poor from just having kids even if they can't honestly afford them? I recently heard a terrible court anecdote of some single mother who was up on charges of incompetency. Apparently she'd been entertaining her latest friend, with no provision or intent to shield her ten kids from the goings-on. Basically she got up and told the judge off to the effect that she was gonna have as many kids as she *** well wanted - and the state was gonna ***** well pay for them!!! Granted this is an extreme example. But what I find amazing is that there is no way to keep the real seroius parasites from breeding their little hearts out. So, I open the coralline floor to the question. Fertility - Right or Privilege?