You’re behind the times: the industrialized world is now below the replacement rate except for immigration, and the developing world is now growing much more slowly than before. The nightmare scenerios of the '60s where the world would expand to 20 or 30 billion people by the end of the twentyfirst century have been averted, precisely because of the emphasis on birth control. People are now wondering if the developed world will produce enough people to sustain itself.
Extreme views, hmmm?
I believe that we should return to being a nation under law and that all of the things the Federal Government currently does with no constitutional authority should be abolished and returned to the states.
I believe the 16th and 17th Amendments should be repealed.
I believe in term limits for the Congress as well as the President.
I believe we should implement the Fair Tax.
Several others, but those will do for a start.
I believe that I am better than you.
Private pharmaceutical companies should be disbanded and all medicine production and research taken over by the feds. Any medically necessary medicine should be affordable to any citizen that needs it.
The top earner (CEO, President, etc.) at any company or institution should make no more than 1000% of the lowest paid full-time worker.
So what? As long as we are playing overlord of other people’s bodies, why not go for broke? We’ve already established that’s it’s okay to forcibly stick things on or in people’s bodies for the greater good. I don’t see any real social benefit to teenage boys porking away, and at the very least, the belts would cut STD transmission. If we paired that with a mandatory STD test to get the thing unlocked, just imagine the public health benefits! The idea practically sells itself.
Anyway, my real point here is that teen pregnancy is not a “teen girl” problem, it’s a teen boy and girl problem. Men have several reliable forms of contraceptive, and a man is just as capable of ensuring he doesn’t get anyone pregnant as a woman is capable of making sure she does not get pregnant. It’s not 100% sure, but a careful and responsible man can make sure it is pretty damn close.
Yeah, and when he dies in agony from excrement induced infections; well , he’s only a boy after all. Disqualified from being human due to having a penis, and unworthy of compassion. Lock him up until his flesh rots off, right?
Birth control methods for males are much more limited and inferior. Especially if you rule out sterilization, which I expect you are counting under “reliable forms of contraceptive”.
Agreed.
I think there is something seriously wrong with the way work dominates the American consciousness. You shouldn’t have to give away the better part of your life just to survive economically. I would support mandatory 30 hour maximum weeks.
I don’t believe in free will, which basically means I don’t believe anyone is truly responsible for anything they do. We’re just the sum of our genetics and our experiences, for better or for worse. I acknowledge it’s best for us to pretend people have free will, and generally I act in society as if we all do have free will, but deep down I really don’t think we do.
Agreed, but the burglar should also be held accountable for all the costs invoked by the kind of crime he comitted. Not just the low street value of that jewelry, but also the cost of the time the victim was busy getting his locks changed and his papers replaced and the costs of repairing windows and doors and the costs of installing an alarm system and yes, even the costs of his own arrest.
That Taxes are the Price of Citizenship in the US. That complaining about high taxes should be seen as an attack on America from within because without a well-funded constitution, there IS no America. That people who think they can do better for their tax dollars should remember
that their tax-dollar is good on any store on the street. That there are almost 200 other independent countries in the world. That they should feel free to go shop elsewhere (flights leave on the hour from all major airports).
The main point of my OP was simply to say that an absolute, no-exceptions, no-excuses no-special circumstances anathema on any sexual interaction between an adult and a child falls into the trap of zero-tolerance idiocy; something that sociologists and child experts have also argued. I didn’t intend to develop this into a theory; I don’t want to develop it into a theory. I don’t want to have to argue this hypothetical, because there’s no way to do it without sounding pro-pedophile. I’m anti-anti-pedophile and let’s leave it at that.
I believe that post-mortem organ and tissue donation should be universal and compulsory, with exceptions granted only where there is no medical need for the parts in question and preservation pending need is impractical. Organ donation saves lives and restores quality of life; it’s inexcusable for people to want for parts due to superstitious squeamishness. There is no afterlife, you have no use for your body after you die, and it can be used to help others - so it should be used thus.
Sterilization is a prerequisite for receiving welfare. If you can’t financially support yourself you should not be having children. If some time later you become financially secure, then feel free to adopt.
Overweight people should be restricted from receiving food stamps. They can obviously afford excess food.
Prisoners should serve their sentence in medically induced comas. We should not be wasting money trying to rehabilitate prisoners.
I believe in Expanding Earth.
And the irony is that that attitude is kept in place largely by people who are one or two rungs up from poverty, and who are not educated enough to look past their immediate circumstances. If they weren’t conditioned by those factors - and their attitude weren’t taken advantage of by employers - I think there’d be a sea change.
Because “preventing sex” and “preventing pregnancy” are two very different things–I expect, were there a cheap implantable form of birth control for men the poster would advocate that as well.
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For me? I’m a pastiche of a few people who’s already posted.
Medical insurance should cost nothing out-of-pocket to anyone ever. No citizen should ever feel bad about going to the doctor to check up on a cough or an ache.
Doctors, in turn, should be given incentives to order only necessary specialist tests, and to do more appropriate diagnostician work in-office.
Taxes should be high enough to cover this.
People who are on welfare who can work should work, as there is plenty of infrastructure to be repaired/maintained in this country and any idiot can shovel gravel.
Provided there is registration and proof of adequate training, any citizen should be able to own any man-portable non-crewed weapon of any kind for any reason.
The military should have as few overseas commitments as possible–to the extent we offer military aid to other first-world wealthy nations, it should be in the form of technology rather than troops.
Committing fraud with regard to any government contract or procurement should be punished as treason, and the company involved banned from working with the government for several years (looking right at you, Boeing).
There should be a negative income tax, aimed at making sure no one is in what could be termed “poverty”. Combine this, as necessary, with the suggestion above to make those who can work do necessary public infrastructure work.
The ultimate goal of all governmental policy should be to equalize wealth/opportunity among people as much as possible without confiscatory activities (I do not count tax rates up to about 60% as confiscatory when applied to people above $1m/yr in income). Further, it should equally be the goal of government to influence society in such a way to reduce scarcity as much as possible and reduce the number of labor hours needed to maintain a comfortable existence. Balancing that against the need to maintain freedoms, including freedom to innovate and freedom to succeed, is a harder question than I feel like trying to answer in this box. 
Canada’s Indian Act needs to be scrapped and Canadian Aboriginals need to sink or swim with the rest of the country.
I was trying to make the distinction between a government or otherwise executive office setting and a restaurant. Something that houses people in career positions. Food service is not typically a career position.
Anyway, the point is that if there is a market for nonsmoking restaurants, let people fill that market and see how successful it is rather than doing it through what amounts to Prohibition.
Do you have a newsletter that I could subscribe to?
Thanks for the explanation. I would never have figured that out from your original post.
That’s some pretzel-y logic you got going there, but that’s for another thread.