Naw, the whole skit thing? What do you think people did before board games? It’s traditional family fun. Think of it as a variation on Charades.
Todd Flanders.
Like I said, I can’t draw a sharp line in terms of permissible kilowatt hours per person per year, and you infer from this that I don’t have the right to criticize people whose resource usage is obviously so far outside the norm as to be inexcusable. Your reasoning is still unsound.
Well, it’s pretty easy to set the bar at your own level of usage, isn’t it? The point is that people in most parts of the world would look at you (or me…not trying to throw you under the bus personally) and say that our resourse usage is obviously so far outside the norm as to be inexcusable. You are looking at it from our perspective, which is skewed to begin with. The tragedy of the commons is as applicable to you and me as it is to the Duggars.
Besides, the Duggars probably use less energy per person than people like you or I do, because they usage is spread out among more people. For instance, their house is not quite 3 times as big as mine, but they have 5 times as many people living in it. I can’t see being more offended by someone who has a lot of children and is frugal with their resources than someone who has few or no children and is wasteful with their resources. Some people have few or no children because they want to be able to afford a big house and a lot of stuff…how is that less selfish than wanting to have a big family?
I think you may be assuming some things about S&I that have little relevance to his argument. To paraphrase what has already been said, it doesn’t make sense to dismiss his argument merely because of whatever you assume about his personal life, the point is that some behavior may contribute to “unfair” allocation of resources and that in a world where resources are limited, such behavior is irresponsible. If you or I happen to be contributing to that behavior, it would behoove us all to take this debate into account in our future spending habits–but none of that has any bearing on the truth or falsity of our arguments here.
Because “stuff” don’t procreate. If I live out the rest of my life as a bachelor and have fun with my stash of “lots of stuff,” I’ll sell off or give away or otherwise put back into circulation what’s left when I die. OTOH, If I have kids, they (and their offspring) will remain a ‘burden’ on the earth’s resources until the line is ended.
You have asserted that it’s irresponsible to consume an “unfair” allocation of resources when those resources are limited.
But your bald assertion does not constitute proof.
Where are the rules concerning fair allocation written, and when did I agree to them?
The only assumptions I’m making are that S&I lives above a subsistence level and uses a computer at least part of the time for a leisure activity…the same assumptions you can make about me. I don’t think this is irrelevant to the argument. If the argument is that we ALL can/should cut back in our consumption, that’s one argument (and Bricker’s right, so far it’s been an assertion that’s not been supported). If the argument is that the Duggars’ level of consumption in particular is far outside of what is reasonable, I think that a case has to be made as to what is reasonable.
Except that even with those 18 kids she is increasing the population growth by virtually nothing. It’s such a miniscule drop in the bucket that it’s not significant in any way.
No, that’s your strawman. I didn’t infer anything about you or your right to criticize. I disagree with you, and am explaining why, or questioning your logic where I find it wanting, just as you are doing in return. You can believe anything you like, but I am going to point out when it seems like your ideology is framed around your own lifestyle, just as you are welcome to do when you detect the same from me. The point being that our system is designed not to be based around the basic piques of our particular lifestyles.
I disagree. I don’t think we have to pin down exactly what counts as permissible before we can identify an extreme. For example, I can know what yellow and orange are without being able to identify (indeed, without even thinking it’s possible to identify) the precise wavelength at which orange becomes yellow.
Like I said, this type of moral reasoning (“If my violation of the rules doesn’t hurt anyone, it’s okay”) is a moral fallacy which contributes to the tragedy of the commons (which phenomenon nobody (but me) has addressed yet).
When did you and I agree that it’s wrong to kill each other? Moral rules are not made by explicit agreement, any more than rules of grammar are. But the rules are binding nonetheless. Justice, dealing with the fair distribution of benefits and burdens among people, is a fundamental element of moral reasoning. And extreme examples of wastefulness of shared scarce resources violate the tenets of distributive justice.
But you said you don’t have any kids. So the share that would have been “allocated” to your kids is not being used. It’s being used, so to speak, by the Duggar’s kids. It all works out, in the end.
Yes, I’m being facetious. But the point is that “the tenets of distributive justice” is an absurd concept. And I speak as a die-hard liberal.
Ed
I do have a kid, actually. But just one. Whom we adopted. (I don’t mention this to be superior, just to set the record straight.)
And taking advantage of other people’s compliance with resource-preserving measures in order to maximize your own consumption is known as being a free rider. It’s not a term of praise.
And I don’t see how the notion of distributive justice is absurd. The notion of the fair distribution of benefits and burdens is a fundamental concept in any moral or political system–even a libertarian political system. I don’t really know what else to say, really; arguing that fairness in distribution of benefits and burdens is a legitimate moral concern is like arguing that the question of causing harm to people is a legitimate moral concern. If you don’t accept it, we don’t really have any common ground to continue the argument.
I’m sorry, I thought you were one of those who said you had no children.
To be specific, I accept that fairness in distribution in distribution of benefits and burdens applies in some circumstances, but not all. There is still a difference between people and other kinds of things. I’m a staunch pro-choice advocate, but at the same time if a woman wants to have a child that is her right as well, and for the same reason. It is up to her! As long as she can afford it.
Are you really even willing to imagine going up to the fifth child in a family and saying “You should never have been born because you’re eating the food that should have been eaten by someone else!”?
It’s all too theoretical to worry about. The someone else may or may not exist. The fifth child is really here.
The number of people who have really large families – greater than ten childen – is so minuscule that it has no effect on the overall burden on society.
Ed
Nothing to apologize for. I just didn’t want other posters, who remember that I have posted about my daughter in other threads, to think I was being dishonest in this thread about my resource consumption.
I agree that the Duggers have a right to have as many children as they want. Nobody has the right to prevent them from having children. But the fact that you have the right to do something doesn’t mean it is the morally correct choice.
Well, no, because I’m not a dick. Or at least not *that * big of a dick. I mean, it’s not the kid’s fault that she was born.
I entirely agree with you that very few families (at least in America) have that many kids. But having a big family is only one kind of resource abuse. If some people abuse resources by having big families, and others by driving gas-guzzling SUVs when they don’t really need to, and others by living in McMansions, then the total cost of all of this resource abuse is high. Again, this is the tragedy of the commons, which I have mentioned several times (along with the related free rider problem) but which nobody has addressed, even though I think these concepts are crucial to any discussion of resource abuse by individuals.
Right, but there is no common tacit understanding that having 18 kids is morally wrong.
Well, there ought to be. This is how one makes a moral argument: “There are compelling reasons for us to permit/forbid X, and here are the reasons.” Hopefully, in time, enough people come to accept those reasons and the moral imperative becomes widely practiced. But the mere fact that a set of morally compelling reasons isn’t widely recognized doesn’t mean that these reasons are not decisive. (Unless you just want to embrace relativism or subjectivism, which we all know are very naughty.) I have argued that having 18 kids (or living in a McMansion or whatever version of resource-abuse you might think of) are examples of the tragedy of the commons, and as such ought to be regarded as immoral, even if people in fact believe that these practices are permissible.
I disagree with you that it’s immoral. shrugs
To be honest, I find your argument far more morally questionable than having a lot of kids. You treat children as a commodity to be measured in terms of resource consumption as though they are a consumer good like an SUV. That makes me queasier than a family having a large brood.
That’s not at all how I view children. But any person must recognize that each additional person put on this planet puts additional strains on this planet’s finite resources. Anyone who regards their (or others’) children purely as a commodity is of course insane, but it’s also wrong-headed to ignore the cost of having children. I mean, if someone said, “We thought about having another kid, but decided we couldn’t afford to”, would you say that person was merely regarding their children in terms of resource consumption? Would it make you queasy? Probably not. What’s wrong, then, with saying, “We thought about having 7 kids, but decided it would be irresponsible”?
As for the rest, if you don’t think overuse of shared resources is immoral, then like I said above, we don’t really have any common ground for argument. Too bad.
True. But I can point to all sorts of evidence that our society has adopted the moral rule of “It’s Wrong To Kill Each Other.”
You, on the other hand, cannot point to anywhere near the same kind of persuasive evidence that our society has adopted the moral rule of “Don’t Have 18 Kids On Grounds Of Unfair Distributive Justice.”
In short, you’re claiming a moral rule that doesn’t exist. I can with equal authority say there’s a moral rule of “Mind Your Own Damn Business.” In fact, I can probably rustle up MORE objective evidence in support of the adoption of that moral rule than you can yours.
I do think that overuse of shared resources is immoral, but we haven’t developed a working definition of ‘overuse’, and I don’t think there is an equivalency between family size and SUV ownership. Going after SUV owners makes more sense. There are plenty of overconsumption sins to shake a stick at. What about any of us who has ever eaten more beef than we need to? That means more cows were KILLED for our gluttonous pleasure. Something I am guilty of to be certain. Maybe if I reduced my own consumption by 25% I could make room for two Dugger children.