"never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence"
There is deep, culturally entrenched ideas here about how wealth is equated to goodness and righteousness, signs of $diety's blessings on you, etc. etc. and nobody, absolutely nobody is trying to unwind that. It's as American as Apple Pie and Baseball.
The attempt to steelman the policy probably comes down to encouraging personal responsibility (the libertarian way). Forgiving debts without consequence promote a culture of non-payment, undermining the sustainability of school meal programs.
The steelmanned version of why lunches require payment is likely down to sustainability of the program in general (ie: school budgets are already stretched to the limit, so parent contributions are necessary).
Now, this could obviously be solved by just budgeting for the entire thing to be included in the overall taxes of the state, but then you've got to surpass the hurdle of tax raises being insanely difficult in the states.
Honestly, this exercise kind of makes me see (yet again) how broken the whole USAmerican system is. "I've got mine and I don't want to give any more away for something I don't need"
What are the good faith arguments in favor of this?
- ignorance
- lack of critical reasoning skills
- religion
- sadism
- ?
I do have trouble finding good faith arguments in favor of this policy. It is cruel. But the people who decided to implement it aren't "other". They're humans who think they're good people (aside from a small minority of people who really don't care) and much as we'd like to think so we're not that different than them. If we can understand their justification, that's a step toward actually convincing them there is another way. And yes, I have changed many people's viewpoints with this level of patience, not everyone is too stupid/mean/insult of your choice to change their minds.
it's the continuous assumption of malice that prevents people from listening to each other. and that is still the case even if there is actual malice. almost by definition, if you do not present the assumption for good will to the other side, they will have difficulty attributing good will to you, no matter whether they themselves are acting are maliciously or not.
The people who decided to implement the policy believe that cruelty will create deterrence.
Persisting in this line of thinking despite centuries of cruelty and no end to the undesired behavior is what leads to sayings like “the cruelty is the point.” Psychologically, it’s well understood there are those who really get a kick out of making people suffer.
A cafeteria worker is likely doing what they're told to do from the principal and board of education. They're doing what they're told because of laws that have been passed. At any point along this chain of human beings, someone could be relying on their job to keep one of them family members alive.
I know I'm throwing out a random scenario, and that doesn't make it true, but there IS a story here, and it is one that none of us will ever know. There are so many human things that happen that people attribute directly to malice, especially when they have very little information.
Anyways. Point is. I really have a hard time blaming any individual here (except perhaps lawmakers) no matter how depressing the whole fiasco is. It is simply another unfortunate consequence of rigid policies that have serious impact.
It will never happen because additional analyzing would pretty quickly make it obvious that the problems are systemic and cannot be easily described by the kind of partisan quips and advocacy for "obvious" or "easy" solutions that dominate discussion of topics like this.
Basically any serious effort to understand and solve these problems precludes general audience participation and will therefore not be popular.
If you were cynical you might think that is precisely why some favor that solution.
On the contrary. Many people favor individually managed efforts because they disagree with your premise, and believe that such efforts scale better than centrally managed ones.
They favor individual efforts because they don’t want certain groups being helped.