The Final Underclass

How is owning a child different from owning a slave?

This is a repost/edit/remix of this post: https://underlore.drj.ch/the-final-underclass/

See also: https://newrepublic.com/article/145734/costs-millennial

I'd like to take a moment to briefly challenge the world and to make my position clear for peer (and not so peer) review.

I am in the extreme minority here.

Put simply I think the civil rights division of children and adults needs to be effectively abolished. Yes, really.

There is a false dichotomy implicit in the assumption that children must be treated as property, or allowed to destroy themselves and society with complete freedom. (Contrast Lord of the Flies propaganda, and the actual events it was “based” on.)

I believe that a person should be born a full and complete citizen of the species with all the default human rights and liberties. Not as an infant, property of parents and the state, for some arbitrary time.

So what is the alternative?

Simply treat them exactly as we treat newly awakened coma/stroke patients with good prognosis.

Think about what a coma patient is legally sometimes. A blank adult. An adult in need of (re)orientation and (re)education.

Functionally and qualitatively I can see no substantive difference between such an adult and a child. The legal framework is already in place.

There are guardians with enhanced temporary authority, but ultimately the patient in question is still a person. No one has the right to beat them, or arbitrarily control them. Their treatment must always take into consideration their default rights as human beings.

This is exactly how children should be treated because that is exactly what a child is.

A coma patient isn't assigned a religion, or a social role, they are given empowerment and choice. They are protected from themselves but that protection ends not on an arbitrary date, but based on objective criteria of development and ability. Not measures of utility or obedience to third parties.

Explain to me if you can how the current treatment is ethically or functionally superior.

We don't need schools, we need (re)habilitation facilities and libraries. The term for this in one case is particularly brilliant.

The Awakening Unit of the St John the Baptist Hospital, Rome, Italy, which opened in 1997, has the usual radiology and diagnostic equipment for assessing patients with head and brain injuries, and those in a coma. But also the medical staff specialize in rehabilitation, physiotherapy and occupational therapy, aimed at helping patients to recover from their injuries.

Instead of raising children, we should Awaken them.

The future could be so wonderful. If only I could make you see.

Addition 2015-08-22 0705 AM:

It needs saying, I suppose, that you could give kids the vote without playing with any other laws. (Age of consent for example.) After all, society is layered with such age specificity. Gun ownership, drinking, driving, consent, trial as adult limits (if any) etc. I see no reason why society couldn't parse children as voters. Hell, voting often happens in school gymnasiums anyway.

I'm sure adjusting those age ranges would be among the many issues that children would be disproportionately interested in. And hey, that's politics for you so I'm fine with that. Along with the issues noted in the West Wing episode, like longer term environmental policy, education, etc.

While I'm talking about it, I think the best reason to give kids the vote from a practical standpoint is civics education and future engagement. (Future me’s note: I was such an idealist wasn’t I?) It's sort of silly to take them on field trips to Washington DC and the like when everyone in the room knows they are essentially pigs as far as our legal system is concerned.

I, for one, would like to see all that change.

We live in a man hating culture, and if others are honest the first thing they think of when a white nerdy pudgy guy with glasses talks about empowering children is, stranger danger, complete with vans and sweaty trench coats.

(Never mind the statistical realities of child abuse. We all know facts are 99% irrelevant anyway.)

Beyond that the hideous fact is this: We, as a society, love having a domestic slave class to whip and command. We're not morally ready to treat children like human beings yet. When we start to be, you'll see more movement on this issue.

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_suffrage#United_States

"The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on July 1, 1971, lowered that age to 18. The primary impetus for this change was the fact that young men were being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War before they were old enough to vote."

So then step one would be pointing out that kids as young as 11 (at least) can be tried as adults. So fine lower the limit to 11.

See also:
http://underlore.drj.ch/oppositional-defiant-disorder-is-a-crock/
http://underlore.drj.ch/things-every-kid-should-know/

Added comment 2015-10-24 0220 AM:

The whole basis of the assertion that you can teach your kid what you want is that they are property. And there aren't any parents of which I am aware which refute that assertion. Power corrupts I guess.

Everyone that talks about “protecting” kids from this or that are in my view to some degree hypocrites because really what they mean is protecting other peoples' kids from “parenting” choices they themselves would not make.

No one is really willing in other words to protect their children from themselves. (ALL adults.)

The fact that we all to one degree or another endorse this assertion that children are slaves to be trained is why "education" debate persists. Because it lives in the distinctions and the fine print.

No one (except me apparently) is arguing that we should adopt a universal set of laws that applies to all humans (and AI? maybe all life?) from the moment they emerge.

Ultimately until you admit that children are human beings and should have the full compliment of human/citizen rights from the outset, then you'll never really have a solid basis for refuting what other people do to other kids no matter how repugnant or harmful.

Cliche tough guy comments about what kids "need" logically justify all manner of abuse and blame every possible victim so long as they are under 17.999999 years of age. No actual thinking healthy mind truly believes such things, and those that claim that they do can safely be dismissed as either delusional or disingenuous.

This kind of systemic disregard for your own young is something we abandoned around the time we started breathing air and internally regulating our body heat. The tough guy arguments are the kind of thing a fish would say if they could speak in defense of their practice of spraying sperm on a clutch of eggs and leaving their thousand young to fend for themselves.

Mammals on the other hand learned to care for their young, and as you climb the ladder towards sentience you find more and more regard for children as valuable. In fact there's a strong argument that child care and long development periods are the root and requisite of culture itself.

Sadly humanity has not yet extended full human rights to children but eventually we will. Or we'll die out as an opportunity cost for our failure to do so having collectively squandered their learning speed and cognitive flexibility. Extinction our price paid for continuing to treat them like livestock to be trained or machines to be fashioned.

Addition based on modified comment.

I totally understand where the child human trafficking market comes from. It's literally just an extension of what amounts to average parenting logic. Really think about this. I mean, if I have the right to basically plan "my" "child's" entire life such that I can force them to live however I want them to live for eighteen years with the backing of the state, up to and including beating them and drugging them when they deviate (!) why shouldn't I be able to sell them? Especially when there's such a huge foster adoption market. The ONLY difference between the average American parent and a human trafficker is degree, supply chain, and commitment to the logic.

Well, I'm the other end of that logical consistency. I want the entire concept of "child" removed in the EXACT same way it's removed for adults with the minds of children and adults recovering from brain injury. It is 100% possible to "awaken" a child instead of raise it.

http://underlore.drj.ch/the-tyranny-of-compulsory-schooling/ (I didn't write this one, but I adore it. I suspect you won't read it. Too scary.)

The entire "parenting" position is one of submission defense and the desire to force it on the next generation. It's literally no less cliche than "well I had to walk uphill in the snow to school and so should you, builds character."

How I would raise a child today is exactly like how I'd have anyone taken care of if they had a stroke and forgot everything. I'd see that they are cared for and do everything I could to protect and awaken them. The implied need to oppress and control a "child" is 100% myth. It simply does not exist for the same reason I would have no need to apply that treatment to this hypothetical version a stranger, or even myself.

This is not hard to understand, it's just inconvenient because we'd have to give up our slaves.

As for how I'd structure society, that's a big question and it's subject to a lot of change and further learning. underlore.drj.ch/emperor-innomen/

But in the case of children it's actually very simple. I would simply remove the concept of "child" as a legal entity and instead parse them, again legally, as adults with a regenerative brain condition. Everything about their handling would include the dignity and human rights implied thereby. Would those children turn out radically different from me? Of course they would. Am I crapping my pants in terror at the change that implies? No I am not. Because look around outside your bubble. Change is NEEDED.

I'm not trying to FORCE all future humans over which I have opportunistic power to become copies of me. Why would you?

'If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.' ~Frank Zappa

Sexual Consent

Lets just get this out of the way because it comes up 100% of the time eventually whenever I talk about liberating the child caste.

People always eventually balk at the idea of children having citizenship because of the idea that they could be manipulated into legally consenting to sex long before they are ready. False consent basically. Here is my response to that:

We do not have to enslave people to protect them from sexual predation. That argument is absurd. We've already solved this problem. For example, go try having sex with someone in a coma, or an adult with the mind of a 10 year old being properly cared for, or any other vulnerable adult in a sanctioned functional setting, and see how many layers of protection those fully adult recognized citizens have.

It's conceptually trivial to protect people, and honor their rights at the same time.

The argument (for oppression) is bankrupt because it implies an exchange of liberty for security is required and that is famously not the case. Implying that the desire to liberate children is equivalent to the desire to legalize raping them is specious to put it gently.

Thank you for reading. Here is the ground floor I arrive at everything from: