True, but the cost of a membership is $15. That implies that the value received by the SDMB of showing you those ads, over the course of a year, is no greater than $15. So to get their $15:
Having never seen the ads, I don’t know if it’s worth $15 just to get rid of them. Definitely is worth $7.95, though. 
Her point is that it is hypocritical to call this system “broken” while still participating in it. But she does not think this system is broken, IIRC. So I guess I am confused what your point is.
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Yes, and those goods and services would probably be more expensive in the absence of ads.
Can you explain where are you going with this? I’m not the poster (who also happens to be a “guest”) likening the world to a rotten place because people have to work certain jobs.
I don’t understand the line of reasoning here at all. monstro and you with the face have argued that having a menial job is a good way to learn the value of honest work, and that if people are pushing kids away from those jobs because they make a value judgment about “menial” labor, it’s problematic for those same people to benefit from that labor.
I don’t see any connection to opting not to buy a message board membership. None. Zilch.
Also, OMG, you’ve been writing notes back and forth to you with the face and monstro for almost 20 years. You’re in the same threads all the time–I am too. We, along with a few others, are like the “social/educational issues” crew. How on earth do you not know she’s a woman?
I don’t know, do they?
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a perfect utopia, even conceptually (my utopia might be your living hell). But I do think that there’s a possibility of successively improving society, but to do so, we must be prepared to radically alter our values.
As for horrible jobs, a large part of what makes them horrible is in fact due to social factors—low wages, low social standing, poor benefits, bad working climate. There’s lots of improvement possible, although I acknowledge that cleaning out sewers is probably few people’s idea of a dream job.
But isn’t more people becoming aware of the flaws of the system basically a good thing?
Fine, I’m not wedded to the wording. So let’s say ‘discomfort’—that’s what awaits one outside of one’s comfort zone, right?
The basic idea is still the same, though: we need to subject our children to discomfort to enable them to grow into well-adjusted adults.
Of course, discomfort can be a great teacher. If you get burned, you’ll likely avoid the stove in the future. But it doesn’t immediately follow that we should forcibly put a child’s hand onto the stove top, right?
But there’s a question of proportionality, surely. The basic reasoning can be used to justify beating your children, but that’s generally frowned upon these days. In fact, that sorta seems to be the general trend in child rearing: one generation’s reasonable ‘bending’ measures are the next one’s draconian discipline. So maybe we should think about whether there’s not something wrong with our whole approach?
Now, I’m no anti-authoritarian. I don’t think children are all precious little snowflakes that just need to be left to their own devices to blossom. But can’t we learn as well through positive as through negative reinforcement?
And I do question this sort of late catholic ethics of suffering-type of approach. We have a tendency to equate suffering with virtue: those that have suffered—silently, if at all possible—are typically viewed as ‘good’. Denying yourself pleasures is good. Working hard, working long hours is good. Having had a harsh childhood is grounds for bragging rights.
This is certainly a useful ethics, if you’re interested in trying to keep the peasantry in line. Maybe add in a few heavenly rewards for good measure. But does it really still make sense?
Suffering is bad. Shouldn’t we seek to minimize it? It seems to me that the most rational thing to do would be to find one’s comfort zone and set up camp.
I think it’s more like we need to do what is necessary to help children grow into well-adjusted adults, and that means teaching them how to cope with discomfort. Adults don’t have the luxury of only sticking to what makes their life nice and easy; the consequences to that kind of avoidant behavior are often bad.
Again, you are using language that suggests a lack of proper perspective. How is a job bussing tables at Chili’s or rounding up grocery carts anything remotely like burning your hand on a stove top? One of these things can cause irreparable skin trauma; the other is work that millions of people freely do everyday in exchange for money, without harm.
Staying in one’s comfort zone only protects one from suffering only if the world remains static and predictable. That is not the world we’re in. If you teach your kids to avoid “suffering” at any cost, then you will only increase their suffering later on, when bad things inevitably happen. Do you think that’s good parenting?
Even if we accept that it’s necessary (again, somebody advocating for corporal punishment could have made the same argument), is it a good thing? Bad? Neutral? If it’s not good, shouldn’t we strive to change it?
Well, it depends. There may be a difference in severity on average, but working crappy jobs can have severe consequences, too, in particular regarding mental well-being. On the other hand, millions of people burn their skin without lasting consequences.
I’m not saying we should teach children to avoid suffering at any cost—although of course, again, avoiding suffering doesn’t strike me as a bad strategy per se, provided it’s well thought out, and doesn’t merely seek to minimize short-term suffering at the possible cost of additional future suffering (and even so: I have sometimes chosen to reduce my suffering at boring parties at the future cost of next morning’s hangover). Rather, I’m questioning whether we should inflict suffering on children (no matter how much or little) to teach them to avoid suffering, and if so, whether that’s a state of affairs we should be comfortable with.
Yes, helping kids learn how to cope with discomfort is a good thing when it ultimately helps them manage future adversity but is mild enough to not cause trauma. A better question is what are the net benefits to not helping them cope with discomfort?
Corporal punishment may make kids have tougher skin, but the tradeoffs outweigh this benefits. Your kid may learn how to respond to violence without falling apart, but they also absorb the lesson that violence is an appropriate way to respond when angry. That lesson is not going to serve them well later on when they’re in a conflict and don’t know what to do except hit someone (and then get arrested).
If a job is damaging mental health, then a person can quit.The vast majority of working teens aren’t mentally harmed by their jobs (just like most adults aren’t). You know this right?
Everyone who sticks their hand on a burning hot stove will be harmed. (It is silly having to type this out.)
At this point, I’m wondering if it might be more appropriate to start a thread on suffering and discuss the pros and cons to suffering-avoidance there. This thread concerns the pros and cons of teenage employment, and only concerns suffering if you think working automatically equals suffering.
Awareness all by itself doesn’t do a damn thing. People are aware of lots of wrongness in the world, but that doesn’t stop them from perpetuating it.
Rational != good and healthy. For instance, it is perfectly rational to maximize your access to resources by killing all your competitors. I wouldn’t advise doing this, though.
A wise man once said if there is no struggle, there is no progress. Most people don’t want to be the same person day after day for the rest of their lives, because that would make for a boring existence. Most people want to leave this world stronger and wiser than how they entered it. That requires experiencing shit.
That wasn’t the question, though. If pushing children to get jobs is the only (or at least, best) way to prepare them to cope with discomfort, then doing so is a good thing. But is it indeed good that this is the only way (provided it is)?
Perhaps an analogy might make it more clear. Vaccinations are an unquestionably good thing: there are diseases in the world, and vaccinations protect children from them. Nevertheless, there is some amount of harm—however trivial—associated with them. So, here I agree: it’s a good thing to subject children to this harm, in order to protect them from future, likely greater, harm.
But I don’t think that in itself is a perfect state of affairs. It’s only due to the lamentable situation that these diseases are a thing that the need arises. Given the opportunity, I think we should rather try and eradicate those diseases, and thus, remove the necessity for vaccinations, as a world in which children didn’t need to get vaccinated and nevertheless didn’t incur the risk of future disease would be better than one in which we have to drag them to get shots.
So, is pushing them to get their first job like getting shots, in this way? A lamentable necessity? Or would a world in which this necessity were removed—in whatever way—be a better one?
Hmm. I would think corporal punishment is mostly frowned upon because it harms the children, not because it teaches them the wrong lesson. After all, if corporal punishment wasn’t in and of itself harmful, it wouldn’t be a wrong lesson: it’d be perfectly appropriate to react with violence to disobedient children, for instance.
I disagree. Everybody who works a crappy job is harmed by it: they loose out in terms of time and opportunity, at the very least, plus they may incur negative effects of low social standing.
This thread concerns being ‘pushed’ to work. Being pushed to anything automatically incurs suffering, as one’s preferences will be frustrated.
But nevertheless, awareness is the first prerequisite to doing anything at all. If nobody is aware there’s a problem, nothing will happen to fix it.
I think we may have different ideas on what is rational. No action exists in a vacuum, and taking into account all foreseeable consequences of an action seems a perfectly rational thing to do.
So no, I don’t think it’s rational to kill all your competitors.
Well, wise men say all kinds of shit. I think this is really just a rationalization designed to be comfortable with the suffering one experiences. In my life, I have rarely found it true; most of my progress, such as it may be, came from me doing something I love. This often included struggle, but the struggle wasn’t the reason for my progress, it was merely an obstacle to it.
Upthread you said you don’t believe in the concept of utopia. So…why do you keep talking like you do? Sure, it would be nice to eradicate all diseases. And we should put resources into this endeavor. But how does clutching to this ideal inform our actions for right now? Should we raise children with the expectation that a utopia is just right around the corner, or do should we raise them with the expectation that things are going to stay the same for the foreseeable future?
It would be a better world where no one ever gets their heart broken and no one ever dies. Should we act like these things are inevitable and prepare kids accordingly, or should we shield kids from these things in hopes that doing so will cause someone to find a cure for these things? The answer here is self-evident to me, so I can’t tell if you’re genuinely confused or if you’re just jacking off.
There are plenty of people wallowing in abusive, toxic relationships because of this “love” you speak of. And there are plenty of spoiled brats who have received nothing but love their whole lives, and they get to the point where they can’t function without constant validation (narcissists), which means they crumble the moment they face adversity. A life of nothing but struggle is not a good life, but neither is a life that is fed on nothing but love and comfort. It’s a ying yang kind of thing, dude. It’s a happy medium thing. You’re overthinking this.
If we’re trying to prepare kids for the “discomfort” of having tough jobs when they become adults, then doesn’t it make sense that the best experience for them to get is a tough job that challenges them with “discomfort”?
If you question the notion that job experience is useful in preparing kids for the trials and tribulations of future jobs, what alternative experiences do you think rival it?
I don’t consider the need for us to work lamentable, so no to this. Even if society completely eliminated the need for jobs through automation, I believe people would come up with job-like activities just to stay busy, have purpose, and feel challenged. (Much like how we simulate hard strenuous labor by working out in gyms.) Or they would focus their energies on raising a bunch of kids, which is work of its own kind (wanna guess why I was awake at 2:44a reading this?). There would still be value in inoculating kids with tolerable doses of tough work; it is highly unlikely there will ever be a time this will hurt more than help.
I was just showing one way it is harmful, beyond the obvious of causing immediate pain to the child.
Ahhhh, so now we get to the marrow of the matter. Why would a kid lose social standing by getting a job? I sense some projection going on. How do you judge people doing low wage work? As low status losers?
When I was in high school in the 90’s, it was cool to have a job. And it really didn’t matter what you were doing; teens usually don’t take their jobs so seriously that they get their self-worth wrapped up into them.
You know what my first job was? Sweeping up cigarette butts and emptying trash cans at Six Flags! Very few jobs are as depleted in prestige as that one, and yet it was something that was accepted by me and my peers as a matter of course.
My husband is currently “pushing” me to schedule a dentist appointment for a persistent toothache.
We’re currently “pushing” our toddler to use the potty instead of soiling herself. We also just “pushed” her out of a major pacifier addiction.
At work, I’m currently “pushing” my direct reports to develop written procedures for their activities to ensure consistency and quality.
I’m currently “pushing” myself to eat better and exercise more after losing significant muscle tone after having kids.
Someone who equates being pushed in this way with suffering doesn’t have a healthy outlook on life and is unlikely to be achieving much. Inertia will always win unless there’s either internal or external pressure to change. Fearing change is exactly the kind of thing that results in young adults incapable of “adulting”.
Well, I also said that I believe continuous improvement is possible, but that it might necessitate us letting go of unquestioned assumptions, like that suffering is necessary for betterment.
The recognition that a world without disease would be better enables us to work towards such a world—as we do, in fact. Likewise, we might work towards realizing a society in which we don’t have to push our children to take bad jobs.
The latter would seem to be more productive, I grant.
You’re clearly misunderstanding me, but I’m not sure if willfully so. So I’ll try to explain again. You can teach children in two ways: positive and negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is the sort of thing you do when you push their hands onto the hot stove top: that’ll accomplish the goal of getting them to be careful around hot things, but it’s also pretty shitty. So, you try to find a different way—perhaps explaining it to them, or by example, or just by providing comfort when they do burn themselves. None of this entails denying that hot things exist, and that they’ll probably get burned at some point.
Pushing children to get shitty jobs is the same thing as putting their hands to the stove top: it’s subjecting them to harm in order to enable them to avoid it. I’m asking whether it might not be worthwhile trying to find a better, positive way of accomplishing that goal.
That’s still the wrong question. Acknowledging that they’re gonna get burned, we should teach them to avoid hot things. But putting their hands to the stove might not be the best way for that.
One thing would be to try and build a society where there are no trials and tribulations of future jobs; or, failing that, go as far along that way as we can.
Which would be the complete opposite of what this thread is about: labor as self-actualization, rather than labor as a means of ‘toughening up’ because well, you’re gonna feel shitty about your job at some point anyway, so let’s get that out of the way early.
Yes, obviously, that’s purely my projection. Society at large after all regards the cleaning lady as highly as the CEO.
If you need to be pushed, then that means you’d rather not do it. Now, it still might be good to do it—for instance, to avoid greater future harm. But that doesn’t eliminate the fact that it’d be even better not to have to be pushed in the first place. I would not have thought this a terribly complex point.
Extrapolating this analogy to the subject of this thread, I can only infer that you believe in telling kids to avoid employment forever unless they are assured a fun, happy, easy job.
If that’s not what you’re advocating, then please correct me.
You haven’t shown why we can’t do both things at once: prepare kids for reality and also work to make jobs less crappy (however you’re defining that).
You’re also not explaining what you think would remove those trials and tribulations.
But isn’t that the crux of the problem that you’re complaining about?! These attitudes factor into why some jobs are crappier than others. If so many customers didn’t think cashiers, waitstaff, and custodial staff were worthy targets for rudeness and abuse, imagine how less crappy their jobs would be.
I think dismantling these attitudes doesn’t happen if teenagers (and parents) see themselves as too good to work those jobs. The commitment you have to fixing this “broken world” rings rather hollow when you affirm this position. As I pointed out earlier in this thread, a positive consequence to having teens work low wage jobs is that they are more likely to see the “cleaning lady”, “stock boy”, and the “sandwich artist” as real people with dignity and respect. They also learn that the big boss is a real person too, and thus may not measure up to all the hype that big bosses typically get.
All of that aside, let me reiterate that social standing among high schoolers is not lost just because they work a job that involves a mop and broom, and the fact that you think so is a clear sign you didn’t work as a teenager and lack the perspective that I told Ruken comes from teenaged employment. And if norms have drastically changed since I was a working teenager, then it’s no wonder young adults who feel entitled to only happy fun jobs are floundering so much now.
It’s not that it’s terribly complex; it’s just it amounts to nothingness. If you’re saying pushing can be a good if the prospect of future harm is diminished through the pushing, then no duh. You should be agreeing with everything I’ve said in this thread. No one is advocating pushing people off cliffs.
Yes, obviously its best if people were inclined to always do what is in their best interests. Doesn’t even need to be said it’s so obvious. Since we know people are imperfect and don’t always do what is best–especially young people–then we need to accept the value in pushing them in the right direction sometimes.
For my part, I wasn’t ever “pushed” into a job. I did get a lot of encouragement from my family to get one, but it wasn’t ever a “Get a summer job or we’re kicking you out.” type situation.
What did happen was that my parents effectively quit funding my social life when I hit the age where I could handle that myself, which IIRC was about 13. From then on out, with one notable exception, I was on my own for anything other than the basic parental responsibilities of adequate clothing, food and shelter. If I wanted expensive brand-name clothing, that was coming out of my pocket, or possibly I could pay the difference between what they were willing to pay and what I wanted. If I wanted to go to the movies, grab a burger, get candy, buy video games, etc… that was all my own problem. I didn’t have a car, so that wasn’t an issue.
So working in some fashion was something I was very interested in- I didn’t like being able to hang out with friends and not be able to participate because I didn’t have the chump change to go to Taco Bell for lunch, or whatever it was.
I’m advocating for examining whether putting children’s hands on the stove is the best way of teaching them to avoid hot surfaces, nothing more. It’s not about whether one has a happy fun easy job, it’s whether it’s a good thing to push people to get one that’s not, in order to toughen them up, or whatever.
I really don’t get what’s so hard about the analogy. Rephrase the OP as ‘Are parents who don’t push their teenagers’ hands onto the stove top doing bad by them?', and there you go.
I also haven’t tried to show it; in fact, I sincerely hope that we can do just that.
True, but it’s not like you’re not allowed to point out a problem if you don’t also have a solution ready.
Agreed. Improving the social standing of these jobs would help make them less crappy, it’s one of the areas I noted improvement was possible in post 145.
Again, though, it’s beside the point: even if you make the crappy jobs less crappy, the moral issue is still centered around whether it’s OK to force/coerce/push children into doing them. Personally, I think even pushing somebody to live a life of purest pleasure is questionable, and thus, we should think long and hard about our justifications for doing so.
See, that’s still not quite it. I’m saying pushing is bad, but may be the lesser of two evils, if there’s a reasonable expectation that not pushing would lead to a worse outcome. What I’m asking is:
Again, you should be clear on the fact that one can use exactly that argument to justify corporal punishment, yet corporal punishment is typically regarded as being wrong. Hence, the argument itself can’t be sufficient.
Note the gaping absence of education on that list. And 13?!?! I implore anyone with this attitude today to please not reproduce.
Gaping absence or just so obvious to be not worth mentioning?
The analogy isn’t unclear; your position on jobs is unclear. So please clarify: what are you advocating as it relates to the subject of the thread? Be specific and please, no more rhetorical questions.
This may seem unkind, but I don’t think analogies are your strong suit. The above question doesn’t fit what we’re talking about. It should be “Are parents who don’t push their kids to get cooking experience (because they might get burned) doing bad them?” That’s a closer mirror to “Are parents who don’t push their kids to get job experience (because crappiness) doing by bad by them?”
How would you answer this question? Just give it a try.
Do you think the moral issue remains if the “push” takes the form of ceasing or decreasing their allowance (as what happened to bump)? Perhaps no, if you think 15-18 year olds are entitled to money from their parents. Perhaps you think it’s immoral to expect them to start picking up the cost for their own non-essential expenses, even when there are opportunities for them to do. Or perhaps you don’t think this. It isn’t clear to me what your positions are.