Children and the state ( Archived) (75)

And your parents moral code was probably a result of their environment. As an example in the 50's if a footballer deliberately hand-balled a goal like a certain french (or Argentinian) player has done what would have been the response? Look at the situation now. These people are the role models for modern children and parents, they see cheating, lying and plain dishonesty is REWARDED, not punished. How do you explain that lying and cheating is wrong when people are being REWARDED for doing that? My sister lives in an area where families have as many as three generations who have NEVER worked, how do you break the cycle? My sisters daughter is going to find work incredibly difficult because of the address she lives at and her accent. The school she went to failed her because most children from that school were going to end up on the JSA so what's the point in teaching them? The school was regularly vandalised and teachers there seem to have just about given up. When I hear children's hope for the future is to "become a drug dealer and own a flash car" it just sickens me. Society, as your parents knew it has broken, completely and now it is every man for himself and f^&* the neighbours! How do you get past this?

Forcing people to give up what is legally and rightfully theirs will never sell.

That sort of forced redistribution is totalitarian in nature and would have to be imposed on society by a soviet style totalitarian state. (such as Obama intends to install) And the result will be like the USSR where there is no work incentive, no productivity, generalized poverty for all, and gulags for any complainers.

As long as people's values are materialistic, forced redistribution of wealth will only make the situation worse.

Like one person from the "solidarity" trade union told a reporter back in the late 60s, speaking about the dysfunctional state owned industry in bankrupt Poland, "They pretend to pay us (in worthless "zloty"s), and we pretend to work".

The only sort of wealth redistribution that would really help society has to be voluntary. And it cannot be forced. It will have to come from an inner change in the hearts of people.



And you would fall into the same ditch that Marx led the Russian people into. Destroying all prosperity in the name of equality.
It doesn't work. There has to be wealth in order to share the wealth. Otherwise you just end up sharing the poverty.

If you try to force "equality" by taxing the rich to help the poor, immediately a new sort of inequality springs up in the form of the government elite who take the place of the industrialists at the top of the greedy food chain. And they are even worse because they have the military and the entire massive state apparatus at their immediate disposal.

As long as greed prevails, there will always be injustice. The two go together.

The needed spiritual change that eliminates greed and promotes good will cannot come by force. It has to come from an inner awakening and an change of values.

As long as the Royal Enfield wins out automatically over a person's sense of responsibility toward others in need, that person is not ready for such a change.

The time will have to come where the person seriously asks himself what is the "right" thing to do, and acts according to that decision.

The Royal Enfield may still yet be the right choice, depending on the situation. We just have to weigh "greed" vs "need".

Then you are lucky! I was actually sacked from a job with a very famous telecom company, a while ago, because I refused to lie to the people I was supposed to be serving. Have you never been in a position where somebody has benefited over you by dishonesty? As an example, how do you explain to a child, and I'll use the football analogy, why cheating, in the form of a deliberate handball to score a goal has not been punished? Why it is not OK for them to do the same? I know that teaching the difference between right and wrong is what I SHOULD do but the question becomes is it the RIGHT thing to do?

Yes indeed, that is the essence of the problem.
As long as our values are materialistic instead of spiritual, it's a losing battle. We can't teach altruism as long as the acquisition of material possessions is the standard of success.

But if we could learn to love our fellow men as much as wee do ourselves, and willingly sacrifice some of our own wealth to help others (not talking about taxation or entitlement programs here) then not only would the poor benefit, but we ourselves would benefit from having happier, more human, hearts.

Why stop there?

- Children of poor parents could be easily sterilized at birth and/or reassigned to more "responsible" parents.

- Unproductive adults could be prevented from reproducing by gathering them up and putting them to work at menial tasks in government factories.

- Drinking water in poor areas could be doctored to decrease fertility.

With measures like these wealth with become universal as the dreaded "poverty genes" disappear from the gene pool.

Yet, strangely, if you talk to people who lived in the old Soviet Union they look back on it as being a better time, when neighbours looked after one another. When the world seemed a fairer more equal place. Obviously there was a minority who abused the system (strangely Politicians, nothing new there than!) but it was rare, during Soviet times to see economic injustice. I have spoken to Russians who actually believe things were better under Stalin than they are now, which I find truly scary!



Isn't that exactly the argument that the church used to oppress the people? 'You might be poor and downtrodden in this life but in the next life you will benefit' so keep paying those swingeing taxes so we can live in comfort and wealth!



'Trickle down charity' has been tried since Victorian times and simply doesn't work, you'd think that after having 150 years to get it right people would have realised by now it doesn't work.




I'm sorry but we've tried Capitalism in various forms for what seems like forever and all that happens is the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. Adding religion into that just adds a whole new group of snouts at the trough. How long do you think it will be before the poor in places like the US ACTUALLY realise they have some power, how long before they put people with even stronger Socialist views than Obama into power? Then what? No vote unless you earn above a minimum level? Is this why the level of education in the inner city is so much less than in the suburbs, amongst the middle classes and above? Is this why the level of illiteracy in the US is going UP! After all 'Education is power' and the ruling elites whether Political, Economic or Religious know that. People, generally, want their children to do better than they did.
This creates a problem, if you are a street sweeper at the bottom of the social ladder and you want your children to do better who is going to be the next generation of street sweeper? The foreign labourer, enticed by the opportunities of having a wage? The street sweepers children, deliberately prevented from rising above their parents by a deliberate lowering of educational standards so they CAN'T rise up the social ladder? You tell me?