Abolish children.

You might as well give up right there. Uncle Albert can only understand immediacy. If a kid walking out of the class room isn't directly benefiting Albert, right then and there, he doesn't want to pay for it.

Only because you limit your understanding to what is direct and immediate.

The world is more nebulous than you'd like it to be.

But does he do something that benefits me? In most cases, he does not, if we limit ourselves to the same direct and immediate standard you've articulated for education. Use the same standard for both, and the cop fails to earn his keep.

I agree. I just differ on who is responsible for the costs associated with raising children.

So punish negligent parents who fail to provide for their children's education just as you would if they starved them. We should not be encouraging people to procreate beyond their means anyway.

Shove your condescension up your ass. It doesn't matter if it's graduation day or 20 years later, there are no guarantees.

Yes. In very real and very accountable terms, or he faces consequences.

So, will you be sending your children to private schools?

This would compare more directly if I were expected to buy you a car to drive on those roads, under the assumption that you will be able to get to work and become a contributing member of society.

Ideally, but the more important detail is that I'll be waiting to have children until I can support their upbringing without enslaving my neighbor.

Prove it. So far as I can tell, my local beat cop gives me a friendly wave each day, and nothing else of benefit.

ETA: I don't favor de-funding the police, I just don't understand how Albert's view can support continued funding.

Nothing about that justifies mandatory contribution. Usage fees, either directly or passed on through third parties like shipping companies who use the roads in the course of their operations, are more defensible in those terms. The problem is that this burdens individuals with too much responsibility for themselves and their needs.

And here we get to the bottom of the matter -- Uncle Albert is still trying to convince the world that he isn't ready to have kids, this time on the basis that he can't afford an unnecessary private education.

If he pulls over a speeder, arrests a mugger, or simply drives through a bad neighborhood and causes a wandering burglar to re-think his chances of success, you have benefitted.

Nothing so absolute can be argued with public education. This talk of the benefits to me are just a smokescreen for the core belief that it's the "nicer," more "compassionate" thing to do, that it makes you feel better that children are spared some of the fallout for their parents' failure to adequately provide for them, even if it requires other peoples' money against their will.

Right. Because I care so much about how I'm perceived by "the world".

I have not benefited if the speeder isn't going to crash into me, the mugger considers me too difficult a mark (or doesn't even see me because I'm a block over), or the burglar was planning on taking out the house across the street.

You have made no compellingly absolute argument about the cop. You are wrong about my motivation. If I think something is "nicer", it is because I think it makes the overall world a better place. Education matters because it benefits me, you, and the guy down the street. If we move to a world that depends on the parent, well, I've seen too many useless parents already. Some things I'd rather not leave to their discretion. An educated populace is one of them.

Just as we both rightly yield to the police force for keeping the neighborhood safe, I yield to public education for keeping the population educated. It is the best chance for the desired outcome. Argue against an educated populace, and you might be able to make a point other than "I don't want to pay !"

Sometimes, the smart thing to do is also the compassionate thing to do. Don't mistake motivation, though.

What does Mrs. Albert think about the idea?

Helping you read through the lines. By world, I mean Mrs. Albert.

If pragmatism is your core motivation, then you would agree that babies should be taken from their parents at birth to be raised warehouse-style, where every aspect of their health and education can be monitored with independent, cross-checked oversight to guarantee both the welfare of the child and their status as productive members of society. In other words, absolute control of the individual to exploit him for the benefit of the collective would be the height of social pragmatism. Anything short of that betrays your picking and choosing of arguments based in "practicality" according to the areas you feel more strongly about.

No, I wouldn't go that route, but I would like it very much if we had a viable method for establishing and enforcing responsible parenting benchmarks. Trouble is, who should be charged with this task? And who's to say that authority is correct or won't be abused?

I suppose one option would be committing ourselves to educating the kids spawned by the fucktards, so that they themselves don't become fucktards. It might take a generation or two, but I'm sure it would be a more satisfactory result than some sort of authoritarian standards and compliance system.

Both arguments could easily be raised against the idea of government education.

Satisfactory by what measure? No subjective emotional assessment merits consideration, only the end result. If my discontent over being forced to pay for the education of other peoples' children can be so easily disregarded, so can everyone elses' dissatisfaction with the idea of growing up in a child farm.

Yes, I realize that. But on the one hand, I'm arguing against public intervention of a sort that could be extremely dangerous if abused, while on the other hand, you are arguing against something that is far more recoverable against abuse.

Clearly there is a huge difference in scale here. Can you really only see black and white?

I'll acknowledge subtlety and nuance when it's used as something more than an attempt to obfuscate inconvenient facts.

As an educated man, I'm sure you have knowledge of the concept of positive externalities, ie, that certain things like public education and roads benefit society more than just one individual.

I'm pretty sure storm denies the concept of society. Note his comment about socialism in the education thread.

Compulsory collectivism is not the only way to run a society.

It's the only way to run a society of more than 100 people...