this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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I like the copyright idea described above. I'm not sure how well it would work in practice, because I've never heard of anything like that being implemented, and new solutions almost always have problems. It's interesting though.
Regarding the kids making their own decisions thing- my example was intended to be a little funny, so I may not have picked the best one. Instead of the ice cream example, what about sex with adults? Sex changes? General amputation? Living on their own? Cigarettes? Harder drugs?
These are all things that kids can have opinions about, all things are mostly changes to their own body or bodily freedom, all things that can have terrible long term consequences. Should we prevent parents from controlling their kids, and allow the children to decide whether they want to do any of these?
Sometimes the finding-out part of the fuck-around-and-find-out experience is an irreversible addiction that there's no coming back from. Parents aren't always better, obviously, but they probably avoid more permanent harms for their kids than the kids would in their own.
Eeeeh, I can concede on the general premise of 'sometimes find out is something you don't come back from', although I am also skeptical of parents having childrens' best interests in mind when it comes to things like gender-affirming care because [gestures vaguely at the literally everywhere]
Yeah, fair. My parents were painfully religious and harassed me unmercifully because I wasn't, so I'm not saying it's all sunshine and roses. But leaving kids free to do whatever they want seems like it would have an attrition rate similar to turtles running for the ocean.
Adults can't be allowed to do whatever they want either, so it's not really a good idea to establish a hierarchy based on age. There are few things specific to kids that don't also apply to adults.
Actually the junk food example is a perfect example of this. Adults get diabetes from eating too much of it just as kids do, so everyone needs to cut down on their sugar intake.
And doing that doesn't require authoritarian intervention, just reclaiming of the means of production and restructuring them so food production no longer puts fucking sugar into everything.
This life doesn't have to be hard. Balancing health and freedom don't have to be hard. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
I would bet that the obesity rate among children if they didn't have parents deliberately trying to get them into sports and making them meals at home would be almost 100%. You're saying "this affects everyone" which is technically correct but ignores that it almost certainly affects one group much more.
Yet most kids don't, and most kids aren't obese from it.
You can't simply force people to be healthy either. People, including kids, have the right to be unhealthy, and that's just something you have to accept if you want a free society.
If you don't accept it, that just means you don't want a free society, that's all.
And if you don't, you can advocate for it in the thread. As I said, I want people's honest opinions. But you can't have it both ways.
You're asserting that they have a right to make all of their own decisions, then asserting that I don't believe in a free society unless I agree. Neither of these things is obviously true- it's possible to support children having some decisions made for them without supporting totalitarianism.
See my other reply for examples of kids making their own decisions. Do you support all of those?
That's actually a strawman. I asserted all people, kids and adults, have the right to be unhealthy, and they do.
What a kid eats is between their parents and them, and no one else, not you or the rest of the community, has the right to simply stick your oar in like that because you think you have the right to keep kids under your thumb like that. You don't. To assert otherwise is authoritarian.
You might not like being called authoritarian, but it's the truth, and it doesn't change because you think all people should eat is fucking rabbit food. ๐คฆ
If you want an authoritarian country, just say so instead of playing word gams with me. I'm not gonna give you the fight that you want.
Honestly.
Where did I say that I wanted a say? We were talking about whether kids should be free to make all of their own decisions. I'm using bad decisions with food as an example, and you're accusing me of trying to tell other people what to do, then calling me an authoritarian.
I'm not fighting, I'm just checking out of the conversation. Go fuck yourself.
You said you wanted a say when you advocated for that policy in the first place. To have that policy, you need that say, therefore you want it.
People of all ages make bad decisions with food and it is therefore something you'd have to enforce on people throughout life if you wanted to do it properly. That's all I and the others were trying to tell you. What you want is authoritarian, controlling food is a hallmark of an authoritarian country, and I'll say it for the third time, if that's what you want, just be honest about it.
You can say "I want an authoritarian country that controls the nutrition of its constituents for the health and betterment of all" and that would be consistent.
You can't say "I want a country that controls families to the point where we dictate what the kids can and can't eat, even against the parents' will, and still calls itself a free country" because it is not.
Getting mad at me because I want consistency and the others who rejected you outright is just silly. I have many ideas for a new country that I know for a fact will be universally rejected but I still advocate for them because I know they're ultimately better for everyone and I don't get bent out of shape when people do. Heavens above. ๐คฆ
...I just gave them the fight that they wanted. FML
What policy? Go find the thing that I said that you think is me advocating for overriding the will of kids and their parents, and just quote it at me.
When you advocated having a government with a constitutional policy to regulate what children eat, overriding the autonomy of families.
I don't get what you don't get about that. Why are you unwilling to see your own policy for what it is?
Quote where I said that.