From: dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM)
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 1997 13:38:59 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Market Failures, Monocultures, and Dead Kids (Oh My!)
In-Reply-To: <199703191217.MAA09556@mailhub.amaranth.com>
Message-ID: <o5wT4D5w165w@bwalk.dm.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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"William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes:

> In <gcmT4D3w165w@bwalk.dm.com>, on 03/19/97 at 11:01 AM,
>    dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM) said:
> 
> >What market force or natural selection discourages "abuse"?
> 
> Well before the STATIST took over there was an unwritten Parent/Child
> contract. The parrent would raise and care for their children and in old
> age the parents would be taken care of by their children.
> 
> This "contract" or "bond" has been distroyed by a multi-pronged attack by
> the STATE.
> 
> - -- The STATE has usurped the power of the parents to raise their chlidren.
> - -- The STATE has taken the responsibility of the children to care for their
> parents in old age. -- The STATE has actively distroyed the two parent
> household with Welfair programs & making it "politicaly incorrect" for a
> woman to be a housewife not to mention thier EEO policies.
> 
> It should be intresting to note that no one ever mentions the economic
> affect of doubling the number of workers compeeting for the same jobs by
> having women entering the workforce. Basic economics show that this drives
> down the rate of pay of all workers (suply & demand) making it quite hard
> for a man to support his family with 1 job enabling his wife to stay at
> home and raise their children. So even where you still have a two parent
> household the STATE winds up rasing the children because both parents are
> required to work just to survive.

That's a very interesting observation. However as far as the children's
responsibility to care for the aged parents, I'm not sure so if historically
it's so clear cut. In most nomadic cultures, the aged and the infirm were
just abandoned (left to die). There's plenty of evidence that in Mongolia and
Cenral Asia when a parent became too old to care for himself, he would be
left as the rest of the group moved on to new pastures - as late as 20th
century when the productivity was high enough for them to care for the 
elderly. Does the tradition to kill of the elderly hurt the society? Perhaps -
the elderly carry on the society's identity (folklore) and practical knowldge
(what's behind that mountain, how does one tie a stone axe to the stick). 
For whatever reason, in most argicultural societies the elderly were not killed,
but accordded respect (even if they weren't your parents). But in the last
50 years the medical technology has reached the heights never before seen in
the history of mankind - we can spend a lot of resources to keep an old fart
going for 30 or 40 years after he's stopped doing anything useful. If the STATE
hadn't stepped in with Medicare in the US and similar programs in the socialist
states in Europe, we'd see the papers filled with sob stories about an old
fart who _could_ be kept alive in a semi-vegetable state at the cost of
$200K/year and whose cold-hearted children refuse to remortgage their
houeses to pay the doctors to do that. The US wastes unbelievable resources
on extending the lives of people who are basically dead. That's one of the
anchors that will eventually pull it under.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps