Comment by timewizard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by timewizard | Hacker News Reader

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> and becoming productive members of society

Child labor was legal until 1930. It has been a part of society for longer than it hasn't. I think your calculus is a little off.

> your lifestyle would not exist

Because /some/ children struggle to eat enough? Which, again, has been a norm in our society for longer than it hasn't. We didn't fully get rid of horses as beasts of burden in agriculture until the 1950s.

> you personally don't need to walk places.

Carrying everyone who can't walk is not a universal good. Particularly when some of those people can't walk because of a tiny, temporary, and highly solvable problem.

Now you have people who make it their career to carry people. Their motivations are to carry as many people as is possible. If we actually made it so no one had to be carried they would be out a job.

We live in a world of odd incentives. There is no point at which abandoning the middle way will benefit you, regardless of how pretty those ideas sound.

> Child labor

Are you serious.

> Because /some/ children struggle to eat enough?

They said "without kids", not without this particular program.

> Carrying everyone who can't walk is not a universal good. Particularly when some of those people can't walk because of a tiny, temporary, and highly solvable problem.

> Now you have people who make it their career to carry people. Their motivations are to carry as many people as is possible. If we actually made it so no one had to be carried they would be out a job.

These are children. Someone is carrying them no matter what.

> Are you serious.

Yes. I'm calling into question the idea that modern treatment of children is responsible for the world we live in. Clearly it is not given the relative scarcity of it in our history. I'm not saying we shouldn't give children a free lunch just that the OPs reasoning was rather lofty and detached from history.

> They said "without kids", not without this particular program.

They're replying to someone with the obvious implication that this program is in some way critical to children "learning and becoming productive members of society."

> Someone is carrying them no matter what.

Now are you serious? Do parents consider it their career to raise their own children? Does this career have the effect of increasing the number of children they care for in exchange for greater profits?

Which is why I invoked incentives. The tragedy here being that schools consider their primary obligation to the child and not to the family. So when parents are in a situation where they cannot care for their children successfully, for whatever reason, we completely ignore the core problem and instead patch over it. Worse it can sometimes create negative stigma for the child and work to further destabilize their living situation.

Extended families, charity and churches exists long before public school exists.

They have been taking similar role before the industrial revolution.

> I'm calling into question the idea that modern treatment of children is responsible for the world we live in.

> They're replying to someone with the obvious implication that this program is in some way critical to children "learning and becoming productive members of society."

They were not saying it's "critical" or that the specific treatment of children is responsible for anything.

It was a very simple argument that everyone should care about children growing up well because we need them.

> Does this career have the effect of increasing the number of children they care for in exchange for greater profits?

This doesn't make any sense. I understand your incentive argument but what is Big Lunch going to do, make pro-birthrate propaganda? We're already sending children to schools and expecting them to eat the school lunch by default. It doesn't matter who pays as long as the school has motivation to reduce costs.

> The tragedy here being that schools consider their primary obligation to the child and not to the family. So when parents are in a situation where they cannot care for their children successfully, for whatever reason, we completely ignore the core problem and instead patch over it.

It would cost so so much more to do that, and while I agree that it would be good, fixing poverty is super far outside the scope of a school's job.

> Worse it can sometimes create negative stigma for the child and work to further destabilize their living situation.

This is an argument for giving all students free meals. No stigma.

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