Look, if I’m going to vote for a totalitarian system, I’m voting for Vermin Supreme.
I for one would like to shake your hand for your work exposing the evil of adoption.
Chortle.
Rapist.
[QUOTE=kidchameleon]
Are spouses forbidden too?
[/QUOTE]
I imagine that marriage would not exist as an institution, but that there would probably still be people who choose to cohabit and be monogamous.
[QUOTE=snarkykong]
Yes, almost exactly. I imagine Smapti was just paraphrasing The Republic.
[/quote]
Not letter-for-letter, but i’d say the roots of these ideas are a bit of the Republic, a bit Brave New World, a bit of Asimov and a teeny tiny bit of Ayn Rand.
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Smapti, are you a Greener?
[/QUOTE]
No, I have a community college degree in journalism which turned out to be a complete waste because by the time I’d earned it I was disgusted with the state of the media and decided not to pursue it further. I do know some Greeners, and they’re mostly decent people.
[QUOTE=digs]
Smapti, are you a Nutter?
[/QUOTE]
No.
[QUOTE=guizot]
It has become clear from a lot of research that bonding with specific parental figures is key to basic cognitive development. If we did this, we’d soon have a nation of mentally crippled people.
[/QUOTE]
Suppose that that bond with a parent could be substituted with a bond to the state?
[QUOTE=John Mace]
So, you don’t think your beliefs should be implemented, but you still believe them.
Are they divinely inspired or something?
[/QUOTE]
I don’t believe that they’re implementable under current circumstances. This kind of sea change in human society would take several generations to implement, so you’d need a government that was committed enough to the idea of accomplishing it to hold several generations worth of politicians accountable to it, prevent corruption, and crush any public opposition to it - in other words, a dictatorship. And while it might sound like i’m advocating some kind of Brave New World style fascism, the society i’m imagining is meant to be an “enlightened” democracy based around the idea that the government’s purpose is to maximize the individual’s potential for self-actualization. Pretty much the only way I imagine it could be implemented is if there were some sort of complete breakdown of western civilization and we had to build a functioning society from scratch. And since I believe that neither generations of oppressive dictatorship, nor the collapse of civilization are in anyone’s interests, I don’t see my ideas as being implementable.
No hard feelings for the pitting, Qin. It’s actually kind of fun to be able to talk about these ideas without people shouting me down or calling me a monster for wanting to take their kids away from them. 
No–among other things, it has to do with face-to-face interaction with a specific person. Humans have evolved this way for a reason.
You know that book is a dystopia, right? Huxley wasn’t proposing anything of the sort.
It’s meant as a dystopia, but it’s quite appealing when you think about it and try to forget the ethical/moral angles. The people in the first world are happy (because they’re bred to, and are doped to the gills anyway), the people in the third world are happy (because even though they live in abject poverty, they love each other and all that), and the people on the island are happy (because they’re smarter than everyone else and have been acknowledged as such).
Seems to me, from a contentment standpoint, their world is above ours.
Well, actually, all the castes felts that way. The Betas were conditioned not to regard the Alphas as superior, but as the unlucky schmoes who had to deal with the stresses of managing the system, whereas the Betas were more like skilled technicians who operated the machinery. The Betas were conditioned to love being Betas, with no aspirations of “promotion”.
The Gamma, Delta and Epsilon castes were similarly conditioned to just love their place in society, though there were no significant characters in the book from these castes and thus no internal perspective presented to the reader.
Which is all well and good until The Computer takes over, goes insane, and starts ordering them by colors.
I agree with the 100% inheritance tax, for the record.
Knowledge of the colour order is an ultraviolet skill, citizen. Please report to the nearest incineration chamber. And remember : The Computer is your friend !
A 100% inheritance tax will simply mean that parents will find ways to pass on all of their assets to their children *before *they die. The end result will be the same, and the only people who will gain anything will be the lawyers.
There are already laws in effect to prevent that silly loophole from affecting the current inheritance laws.
ETA: explicitly, or at least it’s that way in French law, you’re only allowed so much “gift giving” to your siblings, and if you go above that threshold the Taxman sharpens his knife.
That’s fine. The transfers themselves are already taxable.
Same in the US. I think it’s ~$12,000/year. But I assume Allesan was thinking of clever ways that lawyers have of getting around that.
I misspoke.
Yes, I am quite aware that Brave New World is a dystopia, in the same vein as 1984.
I should have phrased it differently.
Huxley’s **characters **proposed and implemented those kind of eugenic nightmares.
Thanks for the clarification and correction.
I propose a new catchphrase: “I’m really awfully glad I’m a Doper, because I don’t work so hard.”
Is that too long?
Maybe we should be Alphas. But that would too dang hard.
But if what you laid out was followed, the kids would be rotated through different homes, and lose all there friends. After time, I’d bet many would stop making friends all together. I fail to see how that helps create an extended family group.
I just had a thought. Did you mean all the kids in a home would be moved to the same new home at the same time? That would allow them to keep friends, but I do not see the point in doing that. So I am at a loss.
I see what you did there. :rolleyes: