So that’s what the issue. It’s not about caring for children per se, since that could be done without the pension by many and various voluntary arrangements. It’s about the fact that you openly prefer violence-based arrangements to bully other people into complying with your moral and sexual opinions – a moral and social approach that you have in common with the Taliban, don’t you? Yes.

So don’t try and squirm out of the fact that the quintessence of your argument is that violence and central planning are somehow morally or pragmatically superior as a basis for social co-operation. They aren’t. They’re worse. If people aren’t to be caged or killed to enforce the policy, then does that mean you think payment should be voluntary? No you don’t think that, do you? Thus you are caught in a double standard that you cannot justify.

This critical fact makes nonsense of both your ethical and your economic arguments.

If it’s true that the pension has the economic benefits you allege, then people would pay for it voluntarily, wouldn’t they – just like you aren’t doing?

And if your theory is true, then
a) Everyone else must be too stupid to know what’s good for them or society. So how do you know? How did you get to be in that unequal, superior and all-knowing position?
b) Why doesn’t the same reasoning apply to all parenting? Shouldn’t all children be regarded as little potential soldiers and all parents be regarded as chattels belonging to the state, in accordance with social Darwinist philosophy?
c) Why doesn’t the same reasoning apply to the provision of all goods and services? Since, according to you, coerced political redistributions of income presumptively confer economic benefits on society, why shouldn’t the tax rate be 100% and all income be thus determined? Please explain the principle by which you distinguish the political redistributions that do, from those that do not confer social benefits. Or rather, admit that are way up an absurd dead end.

d) Do you notice how the concept of freedom is completely missing from your conceptual framework?
e) Whatever happened to equal rights?
f) Do you notice how you have totally confused consensual with non-consensual relations, and society with the state and vice versa?

In fact you couldn't be in a bigger wallow could you?

Your blind love of the idea of the stronger taking from the weaker has so spell-bound you, that none of you has given any reason why those who want to look after children should not be constrained to do it by voluntary arrangements. By your moral and economic logic, there is no reason why the families who work to pay for themselves *and* the sole parents pension, should not be able to force the pensioners to work in their houses for nothing, on the ground of the alleged social and economic benefits it would create! All else that you have said is just fake moral superiority and fake economic conceits.

Note to Divergence: the function of the vagina is to receive the erect penis; but the same can’t be said of the anus, which is to excrete faeces. Thus your anatomical confusion is as bad as your moral confusion. In politics you favour inequality when you should be favouring equality, and in sexuality you jumble a meaningless equality between incommensurables when you should be respecting difference.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13717#237446
Tony not to be JKJ's defender here but just to correct you. "He/she" never asserted prostitution, they asserted they can automatically receive welfare by being a women and having child. I am not sure where your prostitution bit came from ?

As to CHERFUL's bit, yes they did say go live in a desert, re-vist the post. They also implied raping etc. Try not paying your taxes, you WILL eventually have armed police handcuff you and take you to jail. You will go to court and you will go to jail (eventually, if you don't pay the fines) and you have a high chance of being raped if prison stat.'s are to believed. All for others enforcing their concept of wealth distribution upon you. Sure, some will spout social responsibility as a justification for that "violence". JKJ seemed to be saying in response that if society puts such a high value on an action, forceful, coerciveness should not be needed, there IS something to be said for that, who exactly is Government supposed to be there for ?

I admire Thoreau (as did Gandhi and Martin Luther King), he didn't pay taxes to support the Mexican War and ended up in jail, I am not so brave to stand up for the causes I believe in that way.

Valley Guy,

This is from Jardine's first comment:

<Women have everything they need to obtain child support, and it's right between their legs.>

A Libertarian approach just might work in a frontier society. If you don't like the boss, you can always go over the mountain, clear some land, and start your own farm where you can work for yourself. That is why slavery hung on in the New World long after it was abolished in Europe. But what happens when all the resources already belong to someone? Libertarians are exquisitely sensitive to political coercion, but completely blind to economic coercion. Libertarians still do believe in government when it is defending their property rights, i.e. their ability to coerce people economically.

So far as welfare is concerned, there is a lot wrong with the present system, but in any case, it would be a non-excludable benefit. If some of us pay for it voluntarily, then Jardine shares the benefits (without having to pay for them) of social peace, of not having children so stunted by poverty that they will be unemployable in the future, and of having a safety net for himself if he ever falls on hard times. Voluntary charity is completely inadequate in any case, except under exceptionally favourable conditions, as was discovered in the Great Depression.

It is nice that Jardine would give a single mother a job as his housekeeper, but what happens to the children while she is at work? Does Jardine pay extra for childcare so the family has enough to live on, or will the children be getting up to mischief in his house?

Finally, Jardine, why does it matter what a part evolved for or was designed for, so long as you can use it to make money? Fingers didn't evolve for writing, after all, or voices for singing opera. It is hard to imagine anything more repugnant than being faced with a choice of starving or selling sex to some repulsive stranger, whether he/she is of the same or the opposite sex.

Jardine K Jardine

Your attitude is the same as someone who says,. "well look at all these extra streets in the city that I don't use but my taxes have to pay for them, how unjust and unfair to me."

Also my taxes do go towards paying for all the childcare centres and staff that the government has to pay for and yet I don't use them because my children are grown up. I don't have any objection at all to my taxes being used to help others. Maybe you should be less hostile and judgemental and jealous of what you think could be going to benefit you, instead of your fellow countrymen and women and children.
This seems to be an attitude that has crept into the Australian way of thinking and it is not a very nice one, when you resent the fact that your neighbour might be getting some benefit that you are not.
Tend your own back yard and stop looking jealously over your neighbour's fences.

You say my opinion on giving value to the work of raising children is like the Taliban. On the contrary, The Taliban is one of the cruellest oppressors of women on the planet. They throw bombs and acid in the faces of schoolgirls for going to school. I think your attitude resembles that hostility to women and women's work much more than mine does.

Quarantine every single cent so zero can be wasted.

If they wish to waste money, waste theirs, not mine, as I work and pay taxes, so the least they can do is respect my efforts by not wasting it.