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Comment by Jach | Hacker News Reader

Responsibility in general is a great thing to instill in a kid. I got a pellet gun when I was young for a gift, I always knew my dad had a shotgun and hunting rifle and even shot them a number of times before my double-digit years. It never occurred to me to shoot someone, though, even if I was mad. I was taught firmly that violence was Wrong, had many surrounding influences reinforcing that, and I'm glad for it.

Some people shouldn't be parents. Can one as an outsider correct poor behavior in children without destroying the family that should never have been? Is it easier to correct poor parents? Even these types of stories of out of control kids discourage me, let alone the stories about child soldiers...

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>Some people shouldn't be parents.

it is obviously that the society is reaching the stage when procreation must be licensed (after appropriate education/exams, required professional/wealth level achievement and psychological/physical/aptitude tests) Once technology reaches the level when one just can't procreate without getting the permit - bingo!... well, we know the drill.

The issue is that in the past, if the parents were bad, then the kids would just die (and the parents probably wouldn't live that long either), and so the problem would take care of itself. But now things have improved just enough that death isn't an issue, so we're stuck with all these people who (according to the natural state of things) should have died.

Now you can debate all you want about whether these people have the right to live or not, but the fact of the matter is that their existence creates a new downward drag on society that did not exist before, and they threaten to bring down the rest of us if we don't do something about it.

The birth rates in the western world are already low enough that populations are decreasing excluding immigration. If your suggestion was implemented, they would literally go extinct in not that long a time span. Not sure I'd call that outcome a bingo!

Just because everyone in the world has the right has to be parents, it doesn't mean that it is right for them to be irresponsible.

Of course, in that case, if you want to argue, they have all their rights to be irresponsible as well as long as they don't break the law.

Now, if the society has come to this point that they value irresponsibility so much so that they argue for it, then we have gone a long way down then.

>everyone in the world has the right has to be parents

are you sure? For example, the freedom of speech is in US Constitution, while reproductive freedom isn't there. Btw, the conservative right (churches, hillbilly morons, their elected representatives,...) wouldn't be that successful in limiting the reproductive freedom (in particular access to contraception and abortion and sexed (as education about a specific freedom is the key to advancing of the freedom)) if it were among the basic freedoms.

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