Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility be?

[Thestral]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

Agreed with Dennis and Kes on the uniqueness point.

As mentioned before, I do think that children's services could in theory be performed better by the private sector... The fact that people abandon that responsibility and leave it to "someone else" (i.e. the government), which leads to second-rate results, bothers me.

Based on what, and in what ways could the private sector do it better? What do you mean by second-rate results (I'll note that without these public programs there would often be no results at all, second-rate or otherwise).

And what part of "the public sector is us" don't you get? Just because the... oh, preschool education (to take one of cooleddie's examples) programs are funded by public taxes that doesn't make it "someone else." That makes it, by definition, not someone else. Unless you're saying that it's only "not someone else" if it's done by the individual directly, but that would also mean the private sector is "someone else" just as much.

Whereas fire, police, and military are probably some of the easiest to point to as examples of what the government should be doing.

Why are these more the role of government than providing nutritional assistance or pediatric medical care?

 

[Miss Chicken]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

We all know how "well" the private sector looked after the poor in previous centuries.

 

[IndyJones]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

As mentioned before, I do think that children's services could in theory be performed better by the private sector... The fact that people abandon that responsibility and leave it to "someone else" (i.e. the government), which leads to second-rate results, bothers me.

I'm curious: Has there ever been a country, at any point in the history of the world, where the private sector has taken care of those services to a significant degree? Has there ever been a time where the things you're proposing have been successful?

Because there are plenty of examples of governments doing a pretty good job of taking care of these things. The people that experience these programs are often quite happy and supportive of them.

So, with -what I assume is- the complete absence of your ideal ever being successfully employed, and the reality that even with a significant safety net now the private sector isn't picking up enough of the slack to show us its effectiveness, and knowing that plenty of governments have successfully taken a hands-on approach, why should we aim towards the option that provides us the least guarantee of support? Why should we work towards the least predictable outcome? And what is it about government that allows them to fight wars, and fires, and crime, but not disease, and not ignorance?

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

As far as government programs...I would say that yes, private organizations could in theory do the job better--but there's a big caveat.

That is the fact that in practice, they abdicate their responsibilities in a big way. I include my own church in this. To actually do our job in a fashion that would actually make a real difference and allow the full transfer of all social programs to the private sector would require personal sacrifice on an order that few currently do. Put simply, I believe that we (the private sector) could do better than the government, but make a choice not to, and that's a problem.

See that's what I'd like to see churches doing, grassroots care of vulnerable women who need support to keep their child. Enough with the lobbying and abortion protests. Jesus railed against what the individual failed to do, rather than what the government failed to do. Love your neighbour, take care of the poor. Whatever you do to the least of these you do to me. Turn the hierarchy upside down and put those without power first. And sure the pro life movement thinks that is all about the fetus.. but how did a fetus get to be so unwanted in the first place? For many women they are too young or too poor or with too few options and no one to help them. The church doesn't give a shit about them either, oh lets stop her from having an abortion and make her give her baby away to a nice middle class couple who are obviously more deserving.

How about offering women a home, help with access to services, childcare, eventual employment or further education. It is sooo easy to focus on a fetus because the fetus does not have issues that might be too confronting. The woman is only an incubator to keep that fetus alive until you can make someone else happy with it.

 

[horatio83]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

As mentioned before, I do think that children's services could in theory be performed better by the private sector, if people would actually get off their asses and take that duty to their neighbors seriously. The fact that people abandon that responsibility and leave it to "someone else" (i.e. the government), which leads to second-rate results, bothers me.

Whereas fire, police, and military are probably some of the easiest to point to as examples of what the government should be doing.

The problem in your argument is that it relies on the goodwill of people. I have problems with political ideas that revolve around changing people and favour ideas that deal with people as they are.
I am basically for stuff like the welfare state because I am a bit of a misanthrope. People do not give a shit about the suffering of others and given that there are around seven billion of us around we cannot really give a shit about each and every one even if we wanted to. Hence the need to address certain issues systemically.

Nothing against folks giving clothes, a warm place and a hot soup to homeless folks but the notion that charity can substitute for education, medical care and so on is absurd.

 

[Knight Templar]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

We all know how "well" the private sector looked after the poor in previous centuries.

Really? How about in the United States in 1965 or so?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

We all know how "well" the private sector looked after the poor in previous centuries.

Really? How about in the United States in 1965 or so?

It didn't. Fortunately we had a government safety net, courtesy of FDR and two generations of progressive government.

 

[Gil T.Azell]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

Don't put your dick into a woman's vagina unless you are prepared to accept any and all potential consequences--and that includes child support.

Well said.

 

[Knight Templar]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

We all know how "well" the private sector looked after the poor in previous centuries.

Really? How about in the United States in 1965 or so?

It didn't. Fortunately we had a government safety net, courtesy of FDR and two generations of progressive government.

Not anywhere remotely near the monstrosity that Lyndon Johnson created and that threatens the U.S. with bankruptcy.

At any rate, hasn't anyone heard the expression "when the govt. steps up the people step down".

That is, if Americans think "the govt. will do it" then they feel little or no obligation to do things like help the poor, diseased and disabled themselves.

it makes no sense, if the federal govt. is going to take hundreds of your dollars every year to give to the poor, then why should you kick in several hundred more personally?

 

[Deckerd]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

What does your strange rant have to do with the question under consideration?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

What does your strange rant have to do with the question under consideration?

Good question.

At any rate, hasn't anyone heard the expression "when the govt. steps up the people step down".

I hear all kinds of gibberish and erroneous crap, and read an awful lot of it on the Internet. There's nothing special about this piece of nonsense.

 

[Knight Templar]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

What does your strange rant have to do with the question under consideration?

There are more ways to care for the poor and disabled in a country that a flood of government money.

 

[1001001]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

I don't understand why people divorce themselves from the government. The government is us. We can't possibly deal personally with all the things that need to be done in society, so we pool our money and specialize our labor. The government manages that process domestically.

People bitch and moan about the government like it's some form of alien invader. It is you and me, combining our resources so that we don't have to do everything ourselves. We pay someone else to provide our children healthcare because we can't all be doctors. We pay someone else to inspect our water and food because we all can't have a chemistry lab in our home. We pay someone else to build roads so we don't have to cut a swath to work every day.

So yes, when "pro-life" people also stand up repeatedly to cut social services, medical care, education, and other parts of the social safety net, they are indeed showing disdain for the very life they found so important when it was inside the mother.

And the idea of the "private sector" handling this kind of stuff is nothing new. That already happens all the time: they're called private non-profits. And believe me, the right wingers screw them over too.

 

[cooleddie74]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

^

This.

I'd buy you lunch if I could.

 

[1001001]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

^

This.

I'd buy you lunch if I could.

And I would eat it.

 

[Deckerd]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

Ah love's young dream.

 

[horatio83]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

Really? How about in the United States in 1965 or so?

It didn't. Fortunately we had a government safety net, courtesy of FDR and two generations of progressive government.

Not anywhere remotely near the monstrosity that Lyndon Johnson created and that threatens the U.S. with bankruptcy.

At any rate, hasn't anyone heard the expression "when the govt. steps up the people step down".

That is, if Americans think "the govt. will do it" then they feel little or no obligation to do things like help the poor, diseased and disabled themselves.

it makes no sense, if the federal govt. is going to take hundreds of your dollars every year to give to the poor, then why should you kick in several hundred more personally?

Of course the welfare state does destroy work incentives. But given that GDP growth has been around ordinary levels in the 1960s when the top marginal income tax rates ranged between 70% and 90% one has to wonder how quantitatively important the standard story of the disincentive effects of taxation (respectively subsidies in the case of the public welfare) is.
Taking about quantitatively important, the form of socialism that we have witnessed during the last years has been socialism for the rich, bank losses have been socialized while profits remained private. Furthermore many middle-class people have higher average tax rates than rich folks due to all the tax tax exemption nonsense.

There is nothing wrong with a neoliberal small government kind of worldview. Yet you can not witness it anywhere in practice as actual neoliberal politics include stuff like the aforementioned lemon socialism.

So to simplify it, your actual choice is not between small and big government. That's just propaganda which clouds the issue, right-wingers are totally fine with big government in the case of the military, corporations and banks.
The actual choice is between socialism for a few rich fucks or socialism for everybody.

 

[BillJ]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

At any rate, hasn't anyone heard the expression "when the govt. steps up the people step down".

That is, if Americans think "the govt. will do it" then they feel little or no obligation to do things like help the poor, diseased and disabled themselves.

Seems to me that when government is "of the people, by the people, for the people", you get out of it what you put into it. But the current Republicans don't believe in the people or else they wouldn't dabble in voter fraud and constantly shoot down laws that would reign in the influence of the rich and corporations.

And when people give money to charitable organizations they can use it as a deduction on their taxes.

 

[Knight Templar]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

At any rate, hasn't anyone heard the expression "when the govt. steps up the people step down".

That is, if Americans think "the govt. will do it" then they feel little or no obligation to do things like help the poor, diseased and disabled themselves.

Seems to me that when government is "of the people, by the people, for the people", you get out of it what you put into it. But the current Republicans don't believe in the people or else they wouldn't dabble in voter fraud and constantly shoot down laws that would reign in the influence of the rich and corporations.

And when people give money to charitable organizations they can use it as a deduction on their taxes.

Only if they itemize their deductions. Millions of people do not.

It is called "dilution of responsibility".

That is if EVERYONE is responsible for taking care of the poor (through govt. programs) then NO ONE feels actual personal responsibility for doing it.

 

[Deckerd]

Re: Unexpected/unwanted pregnancies: what should guys' responsibility

Do you not think it's done that way because if governments relied on 'personal responsibility' whatever that's supposed to be, people would ignore the problem exactly the way they do now?